The Scholar as Pawn

In part, Soviet accusations of alleged American espionage have been motivated by the Kremlin's desire to divert domestic discontent against foreign scapegoats. By arousing fear of foreign "spies," the Kremlin has sought to break down the attraction of Western culture for the Soviet people.

So wrote Professor Frederick C. Barghoorn in The Soviet Image of the United States more than a decade ago. The words proved prophetic last week when the Russians announced that Barghoorn, 52, longtime chairman of Yale's Russian studies program, was under arrest for "espionage." Then, as suddenly as it began, Moscow called off its seemingly pointless exercise. After being held in a Moscow prison for 16 days, the scholar was released and expelled from Russia.

Friendly Welcome. Barghoorn is a charter member of the influential band of experts who have devoted their careers to the occult art of Kremlinology. Ever since the first U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange agreement was signed in 1958, he has also played a key role in arranging for Russian and American intellectuals to travel and study in one another's countries. Faced with the news of Barghoorn's arrest, President Kennedy postponed negotiations for an extension of the exchange program, firmly gave the official U.S. answer to the Russian charge: "He is a distinguished scholar. He was not on an intelligence mission of any kind."

A shy, serious bachelor, Barghoorn liked nothing better than to hole up for a ten-hour stretch in his top-floor office at Yale's Hall of Graduate Studies. There, amidst bundles of old laundry and discarded razor blades, he meticulously pored over books, clippings and back issues of Pravda. Russian-speaking Barghoorn knew his subject firsthand. From 1942 until 1947 he was a press attache at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. To avoid trouble, Barghoorn deliberately did not carry a camera during five trips to Russia between 1956 and last March, when he arranged for scholarly exchanges or gathered information for his recent books, Soviet Russian Nationalism and The Soviet Cultural Offensive. His critical opinions were no secret ("While talking peace, the Kremlin wages war"); nevertheless, he got a friendly welcome from academicians wherever he traveled inside Russia.

The latest trip seemed no exception. Traveling on a 30-day tourist visa, the professor spent most of his time touring the capitals of Soviet Asia, including Tashkent, Samarkand and Alma Ata. Back in Moscow, he stopped off for a drink at the apartment of U.S. Minister-Counselor Walter J. Stoessel. From there, an embassy chauffeur drove Barghoorn back to the Hotel Metropole at about 7:15 p.m. on Oct. 31. Then he disappeared from view, but since Barghoorn was scheduled to fly to Warsaw the next day, he was not missed.

From the Cell. One afternoon last week the U.S. embassy was informed that Barghoorn had been arrested as a spy "a few days ago." Six times during 48 hours, the U.S. protested that Barghoorn was innocent, demanded his release. But all U.S. Ambassador Foy Kohler got from Deputy Foreign Minister Valerian Zorin was a stubborn nyet. Nobel Prizewinner John Steinbeck, winding up a trip through Russia, declared angrily: "They should have arrested me. I covered more territory and asked more questions." In New Haven, Yale students and faculty launched a movement to circulate protest petitions on 1,200 U.S. campuses.

The uproar was obviously more than the Kremlin had bargained for. Five days after his arrest was announced, the prisoner was taken from his cell, put in a car packed with Soviet plainclothes cops, and driven to the ramp of a London-bound airliner. Barghoorn was "not doing the proper work" of a scholar, insisted the Russians, but he was being released because of the "personal concern expressed by President Kennedy."

One theory, publicly advanced by former CIA Chief Allen Dulles, is that the Soviet had arrested Barghoorn by way of retaliation: the U.S. has just expelled two Soviet diplomats for spying and arrested a "chauffeur" for a Soviet trade agency in Manhattan. According to this theory, the Russians meant to swap their spies--a blackmailing deal which President Kennedy had previously ruled out. Another explanation, forecast by Barghoorn himself in his book, is that the Kremlin may feel that cultural exchanges have gone too far, that Russians have become too ready to mix with visiting foreigners. The arrest of a well-known U.S. professor would serve as a warning to Russian citizens that "the attraction of Western culture" can still be extremely unhealthy.

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