Tale of Two Citizenships

Despite their anger over the way their U.S. host was peeking into the activities of Americans at U.N., the U.N. high command had to admit that some pretty startling creatures were still being found in the woodwork. The most startling of all was Olga Michka, a slim, cold-eyed blonde of 33. Called before the Senators, she told a strange story of two citizenships. Her parents are both naturalized Americans who were born in Russia. Several years ago, she said, they had split over politics: her mother decided she preferred Soviet Russia, her father and brother maintained their loyalty to the U.S. "My mother always wanted to go back. Being close to her, I decided to go back with her."

She applied for a Soviet passport at the U.S.S.R. Embassy in Washington in 1939, but heard nothing from the Russians. In 1946 she went to work for U.N. as a $3,500-a-year clerk-typist in the Russian section of the radio division (she spoke and wrote Russian). Three years later the Russians sent her a passport. "I took it for granted," she said, "that on receiving the Soviet passport I was a Soviet citizen."

She boasted to friends of her switch, but never notified the U.N. Not until the McCarran committee subpoenaed her did U.N. officials investigate the matter--and then they hastily suspended her on the technicality that she had fraudulently accepted reimbursements for U.S. taxes while contending that she was a Russian citizen.

"If the Soviet Union can make citizens by handing out passports promiscuously in the U.S.," growled Pat McCarran, "then the Congress will have to do something about it." But in Washington, State Department officials explained that Olga is still a U.S. citizen whether she likes it or not. To become a Russian, she would first have to leave the U.S. So far as the State Department is concerned, she can leave any time she pleases.

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