A One-Way Ticket to Freedom

--Anatoly Tkachenko, 24, would like to work for a television network, where he figures they might be able to use his expertise on Soviet affairs. Alexander Genkin, also 24, would like to work for an American newspaper, once he learns English. Both say the absence of censorship in the United States was a bigger attraction than money when the two Soviet journalists decided two years ago to defect, making good on their plans last week. Their chance finally came, they determined, when they noticed that a Soviet delegation was going to Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait for the signing of a historic protocol easing travel restrictions between Siberia and Alaska. The two, who were working for a Moscow monthly, painstakingly assembled forged documents that would authorize them to cover the event and called in sick to explain their absence. Once there, the men asked for asylum and were flown to Anchorage, where they are waiting for a decision on their request. “I think if you are a journalist and you wish to work in freedom . . . to be creative in your job, that’s the most important thing for you,” Tkachenko said. Both were anxious about their duplicity, figuring they would get several years in prison if they were found out, and they apologized for casting any kind of a pall over the signing ceremony. “We are very sorry that we kind of marred and soured the ceremony at Little Diomede, but there was no other way,” Tkachenko said.

--Don’t make book on it, but it looks as if the battle for the George Bush presidential library is shaping up as a bout between Texas and Connecticut, with Bush’s alma mater, Yale, vying with three Lone Star State schools for the honors. At stake are prestige and economics; an estimated 400,000 tourists are expected to pass through the library once it is built. Yale has the distinction of having conferred a degree upon the President-to-be in 1948. But Rice University in Houston and the University of Houston are both citing Bush’s ties to their city. “He’s spoken on the campus many times. We just feel that this is very much a part of his home,” said Mimi Crossley, a spokeswoman for Rice. But it’s Texas A&M;, 80 miles northwest of Houston, that has mounted the most ambitious battle plan. Last week the school announced a detailed plan to capture the library, including a steering committee to prepare the bid. “I’m flattered (at A&M;’s interest) and it may be what I want to do,” Bush recently told Newsweek. But he also cited Rice as a “logical” location. None of this has deterred Yale, which will point to the Bush family’s ties to the region and impressive collections and scholars, said Jack Siggins, Yale’s deputy librarian.