The World - News from April 28, 1989

A group of about 40 Soviet writers have decided to form a chapter of PEN, the international writers organization that defends freedom of expression around the world. The decision, announced at a Moscow news conference, followed a dispute over whether writers who joined in denouncing controversial Soviet authors such as Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn could join. “I would say we have reached an understanding,” said Igor Vinogradov, a literary critic who had opposed forming a branch of PEN with writers who had gone along with literary repression in the past. The Soviet application for membership in International PEN will be presented at a meeting in the Netherlands on May 6, said Francis King, the group’s international president.