2 Dissident Soviet Editors Reported Arrested

Two editors of the independent magazine Glasnost, launched by former political prisoners to test the limits of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s openness policy, were arrested by police Friday, dissident sources said.

Kiril Popov, whose apartment serves as the editorial office of Glasnost, said eight plainclothes officers took Sergei Grigoryants away as he left the apartment in south Moscow.

Officers earlier detained Andrei Shilkov, another Glasnost editor, Popov said.

He said it appeared that authorities were detaining dissidents they suspected would take part in a demonstration later Friday evening on behalf of political prisoners. But he said the 46-year-old Grigoryants, a former political prisoner released early this year, had not been planning to take part in the protest.

Grigoryants has sought but not received official approval for his journal, which he named after Gorbachev’s policy of allowing greater openness in Soviet society.