Funds Gone, Reporter Goes Home

A New York correspondent for Pravda, once the powerful voice of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, has packed his bags and gone home. The reason? He ran out of money.

Vladimir Sukhoi got paid in dollars, something Pravda doesn’t have much of these days. The newspaper’s assets--like all the suspended party’s holdings--were frozen after the failed coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev while investigators try to determine the party’s wealth.

“I had to sell my car, my furniture, my household assets to pay for myself, for my debts and credit lines, and now I am leaving not to create additional debt,” Sukhoi said in a telephone interview before his departure Wednesday.

Luckily, he bought a round-trip ticket the last time he flew to New York from Moscow.

Pravda’s other New York correspondent, Victor Linnik, will leave in a few weeks with his wife and two daughters--unless he can sell his new Volvo and live off the proceeds for a while.