Soviet Union Allows Dissident to Leave

The Soviet Union has allowed a Ukrainian dissident invited to speak at Harvard to leave the country. He and his wife are now in London on their way to the United States.

Soviet authorities recently granted an exit visa for Sviatoslav I. Karavansky, a Ukrainian translator who spent 30 years in Soviet prisons before his release in September.

Karavansky had previously accepted an invitation from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures to give two lectures at Harvard on the problems of translating classical English texts into Ukrainian.

There are at present no plans to offer Karavansky a position at Harvard, but sources say he may be asked to stay on at the Ukrainian Research Institute.

Karavansky and his wife, who had been imprisoned from 1972 to 1975, left Moscow last Thursday on a flight to Vienna. After meeting with press and officials from Amnesty International (A.I.) they went on to London Friday night. They will arrive in Washington, D.C., next Monday afternoon, an A.I. official in New York said last night.

Omeljan Pritsak, Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, said he was gratified and surprised that Soviet authorities had permitted Karavansky to emigrate so soon after his release from Mordovia Prison. The dates of his lectures have not been set, he added.

Stephen Chemych, president of the Ukrainian Studies Fund which supports all institute activity, said there would be "no problem" financially if Karavansky is offered a position.

A 59-year-old translator, poet and literary critic, Karavansky was imprisoned for political reasons in the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1960 and from 1965 to September 13 of this year.

Harvard's invitation, extended at the Institutes's prompting by Donald Fanger, chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, probably had a "positive effect" on the Soviet decision to allow Karavansky to emigrate, officials at Harvard and elsewhere said yesterday.

"I think it--(the invitation)--hastened his release quite a bit," Roman Kupchinsky of A.I. said yesterday.

He said the British Pen Club (a London literary group) and friends of Karavansky in Israel and the United States, as well as Harvard, had urged his release.

The Soviets probably granted an exit visa to the Karavanskys for Israel rather than for the United States because of "the damning connotations of admitting that Harvard's invitation had an effect," Kupchinsky said.

But Kupchinsky and others cautioned that the real reasons for Karavansky's relatively quick release could not be determined.

In July of this year, Valentyn Moroz, a Ukrainian historian exchanged in April along with five other imprisoned dissidents for two alleged Soviet spies, joined the Institute as a visiting scholar.