Visiting Russian Writers Called ‘Nazis’ at U.S.-Funded Forum

Seven Russian nationalist writers accused of holding anti-Semitic views sparred Tuesday with a group of American critics as the Bush Administration defended the use of about $60,000 in U.S. funds to help pay for the Soviets’ visits.

The most heated moment during a three-hour seminar featuring the writers occurred when a member of the audience waved an offending article from the Soviet press at its author, delegation leader Stanislav Kunyayev, editor of Nash Sovremennik (Our Contemporaries).

Kunyayev responded by playfully waving back an article that he claimed countered the anti-Semitism charge.

“Nazi!” shouted the man from the audience. But when the epithet was repeated deadpan by the interpreter, the audience burst into laughter.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the program under which the Soviet writers were brought to America has an educational goal of “teaching people about the United States.” The visit was sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency.

“We bring people with a wide range of opinions to the United States, some with whom we thoroughly disagree and whose views we find abhorrent,” Tutwiler said. “Bringing them here does not signal that we approve or sanction their views.”

In response to a question, Tutwiler gave credence to the charge that the Soviet visitors were anti-Semitic. “My understanding is that some of the people do hold those views,” she said.

Other officials conceded the same point but defended the Soviets’ tour of eight American cities, including San Francisco.

The Southern California Council for Soviet Jews said the visitors “represent the most vocal, outspoken, vicious, nationalist and intolerant segment” of the Soviet political scene. “They are Soviet neo-Nazis, the Russian chauvinists” who contend that “the purity of the Russian race is being destroyed . . . by the Jews and other such subhumans,” the council said.

Exchanges during the seminar resolved little. A typical exchange involved the accusation that Kunyayev had written admiringly of the infamous 1903 forgery, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” He replied that nowhere in his article did he specifically praise the work. Excerpts from his article, provided by critics, appeared to support both the charge and his defense.

All of the visiting Russians are anti-Communist, and many of them were imprisoned by earlier Soviet regimes. Besides Kunyayev, they are Leonid Borodin, Pavel Gorelov, Olveg Mikhailov, Viktor Likhonosov, Svyatoslav Rybas and Ernst Safonov.