Orlov’s Wife Has Plane Ticket to U.S.

The wife of exiled physicist Yuri Orlov was told Thursday by a Soviet official that she will soon be flown to the United States along with her husband, a family friend disclosed.

Orlov and his wife are being allowed to leave the Soviet Union as part of the agreement that brought about the release of American reporter Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow and Soviet physicist Gennady F. Zakharov in New York, both of whom had been charged with spying.

On instructions from the Soviet visa office, Orlov’s wife, Irina, bought an airline ticket for 900 rubles (about $1,350), according to the friend. She was not told where her husband is, when they will be reunited, the date of the flight or the exact destination.

She was told that she would be advised today of her departure date, the friend said.

Orlov, a founder of the Helsinki group here, which was set up to monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights section of the 1975 Helsinki accords, was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years of internal exile for “anti-Soviet agitation.” The Helsinki group disbanded after a crackdown by Soviet authorities reduced its membership to three. The others were imprisoned, banished to Siberia or forced to leave the country.

Orlov, 62, spent seven years in prison camps and, since 1984, has been confined to a village in the Yakutsk region of Siberia where the temperature in winter falls to 40 below zero.