WORLD : Rotary Club to Open in Moscow
Rotary International, an independent business and charitable organization, will open its first club in Moscow this week and hopes to start chapters in half a dozen other Soviet cities, the organization’s president said today.
Twenty-five Muscovites, including two lawyers, a theater manager and a professional translator, will meet officially for the first time after three years of difficult negotiations seeking guaranteed independence for the club.
“The (Soviet) government wanted to appoint the Rotary club members but we backed away from that,” said Hugh Archer from Rotary’s headquarters here. “They also wanted us to join the Committee for Youth Organizations but we refused to have connections.”
There are also groups ready to start clubs in Leningrad, Kiev, Irkutsk and the Baltic republics of Lithuania and Latvia.
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