Soviets Detain 2 From Glasnost Journal

Soviet police briefly detained two of the publishers of the unofficial newsletter Glasnost on Thursday evening and confiscated about 50 copies of the publication.

It was the first such action against the journal, which was launched by a group of former political prisoners last July as a test of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s commitment to greater openness-- glasnost in Russian.

The move was seen here as an ominous official warning that the newsletter, which has apparently proven more influential than at first envisioned, has already reached the limits of the authorities’ tolerance.

Dmitri Eisner, 27, was detained by a uniformed police officer as he emerged from the Moscow subway at the University Station on the capital’s southwest side. He was taken to a police office and questioned by plainclothes officers of the KGB, the security police.

Eisner was released more than three hours later, but friends said police confiscated about 50 copies of the eighth and most recent issue of Glasnost, which he had been carrying.

Andrei Shilkov, 35, the other publisher, was also detained briefly when he arrived at the subway station along with Glasnost editor Sergei I. Grigoryants and a Los Angeles Times correspondent. The three had gone to the station after an anonymous caller telephoned the journal’s makeshift editorial office and advised of Eisner’s detention.

Shilkov was released after about an hour and said he had been given an official warning that he was in Moscow without the necessary residence permit. Under Soviet law, three such warnings mean an automatic one-year jail term.

The authorities had previously appeared reluctant to move against Glasnost, even though all but government-approved publications are officially banned here.

The principals involved with the new journal, which was launched last July 3, had stressed that their efforts were in keeping with Gorbachev’s proclaimed policy of encouraging open discussion of important social issues. They said they had acted because there are still some areas of Soviet life not fully covered by the official press.

Always Published Openly

Grigoryants said Glasnost has always been published openly, and that he had sent copies of the first issues to Soviet authorities. He has applied for official permission to publish his journal, he said, but has not received it.

The 46-year-old editor, who was released earlier this year after serving half of a seven-year sentence in connection with an earlier publishing venture, was not himself detained at the subway station. But he and his companions were photographed by a plainclothes policeman, and at least one other man in plain clothes who had been seen outside the makeshift Glasnost headquarters followed the three to the station.

Grigoryants was barred from entering the police office where his associates were being questioned, but he said plainclothes agents outside warned him indirectly, but unmistakably, that he could soon be arrested.

“What happened today changes a lot,” he said. But he added that he hopes he and his associates will be able to continue publishing.

The group has been putting out an average of three typescript issues of Glasnost a month. Grigoryants said about 100 “master” copies of each issue are distributed to associates in a number of cities here and abroad. The distributors then make additional copies.

In all, he estimated, “tens of thousands” of Soviet citizens read Glasnost, and “hundreds of thousands” more hear articles from it which are broadcast into the Soviet Union by such Western radio stations as the British Broadcasting Corp., Voice of America and Radio Liberty.

Grigoryants’ activity has made him something of an instant celebrity in Moscow. Last week he was invited to meet at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with visiting New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.