SHORT TAKES : Pair Regain Soviet Citizenship
Cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya, have had their Soviet citizenship restored to them 12 years after the government took it away, Tass said today.
The Soviet legislature gave them back their citizenship and nullified the decree that had stripped them of their medals and honorary titles, the official news agency said.
Rostropovich, 62, gained international renown with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, but in the early 1970s he incurred the Soviet government’s disfavor by giving refuge to dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He left the Soviet Union with his family and was stripped of his citizenship in 1978.
He has since become a household name in the West. Queen Elizabeth II conferred a knighthood on him in 1987 on his 60th birthday.
Several other prominent Soviet cultural figures who lost their citizenship under past regimes have had it restored in recent months amid the cultural thaw that prevails under Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
Solzhenitsyn is a notable exception; Soviet officials say they have not received any application from him to have his citizenship restored.
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