Soviet Union Siren Songs from Moscow

By Michael S. Serrill

When Mikhail Baryshnikov fled a touring Soviet dance troupe in Toronto in 1974, he left a homeland he loved and a professional life he could no longer bear. A performer of electrifying excitement, "Misha" saw nothing but stagnation in the rigid Soviet system. In the U.S., however, his dreams have come true: he danced the gamut of Western choreography, now heads a major company, the American Ballet Theatre, and is making his third film, Giselle. His second movie, White Nights, tells the tale of an emigre star whose plane crashes in the Soviet Union, forcing him to outwit the KGB in a second flight to freedom.

Last week the seemingly unthinkable happened. In one of the most startling turns yet in Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign of glasnost (openness), Baryshnikov was asked to visit Moscow to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet. The invitation came from Yuri Grigorovich, the artistic director of the Bolshoi, who was in the U.S. to arrange a tour by the Soviet company, which has not been to the U.S. since 1979. Baryshnikov hesitated. "That's very nice," he reportedly answered. "But I'll have to think about it."

The Soviet offer, besides being a personal vindication for Baryshnikov, helps confirm indications that dozens of other prominent Soviet-born dancers, artists, writers and filmmakers who reside in the West may be permitted to return to their native land. "If you had asked me just six months ago whether this was possible, I would have said no," said Dusko Doder, the author of a new book on the U.S.S.R. called Shadows and Whispers. Until recently all defectors were stripped of their citizenship, and their names were banished from public records.

Baryshniknov is not the first prominent defector to receive feelers from Soviet officials about returning. Last week Ballerina Natalia Makarova got a similar offer from Grigorovich. The Soviets have also approached Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Novelist Vasily Aksyonov and Theater Director Yuri Lyubimov. Grigorovich noted that there is a new "atmosphere of openness" in the Soviet Union. Said he: "We now have a wise leader who is loved by the whole country."

Western diplomats in Moscow see two motives in Gorbachev's initiative. They believe that the Kremlin would like to limit defections by giving artists enough freedom to make it unnecessary for them to flee the country. Rules governing travel abroad for artists and intellectuals are being relaxed, provided their trips are financed by foreign sources. Gorbachev would like to gain the trust of the Soviet intelligentsia, something no Soviet regime has enjoyed since Lenin. "He's giving them a little more room to work," said one diplomat, "and in return he will expect their help in his foreign and economic policies."

Since Baryshnikov and other defectors have been reviled in the press as traitors, Gorbachev risks alienating conservative officials by inviting them back. But the Soviet leader is apparently counting on strong public backing to offset any such problems.

Men like Baryshnikov and Aksyonov, explains Dimitri Simes, a Soviet specialist in Washington, "are the idols of popular Soviet culture. Their return would be an enormous political victory for Gorbachev."

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow