ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 22, 1996 TAG: 9611220026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
A WOMAN in Moscow is in deep borscht with the Russian authorities.
Her fellow Russians, The Washington Post reports Valeria Novodvorskaya as saying, are "lazy, spineless, chronically depressed, 'good-for-nothing zombies' who do not fit well into the civilized world."
Russian prosecutors would like to send her to prison for a year and a half for "promoting inter-ethnic strife" with her acerbic comments, which she has made in newspaper articles and a broadcast interview.
The prospect that such a threat will daunt her seems unlikely, though. Novodvorskaya was arrested as a pro-democracy dissident 30 times over almost as many years under the old Soviet-communist regime in Russia, and has spent five years in prison.
The ludicrous case against Novodvorskaya has featured expert-witness testimony by a former KGB colonel and what can only be imagined as a verbal pummeling by a prosecutor demanding to know just who she meant when she used the term "quivering vermin" in one of her articles.
"It's from Dostoyevsky!" she reportedly replied. To which the prosecutor is reported to have warned: "You'd better watch it. We'll look into this Dostoyevsky business."
The sobering message in such a laughingstock is that, when it comes to civil liberties, Russia has still a long way to go. Its security system has yet to break free entirely from the old ways of communist authoritarianism.
In recent years, scientists, muckraking journalists, retired military officers and entertainers have been threatened with prosecution, and sometimes imprisoned, for transgressions ranging from reporting Russian violations of chemical arms treaties to satirizing Kremlin leaders in a puppet show.
Russian authorities don't know what to do with Novodvorskaya, whose case has been sent back to prosecutors for "further investigation." She is forbidden to leave Moscow, though. Too bad. With her way with descriptive language, she could come to America as a female counterpart to Rush Limbaugh.
Or write speeches for Republican Pat Buchanan.
Or, if neither of these pans out, try for the management fast track at Texaco.
LENGTH: Short : 44 linesby CNB