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- WORLD, Page 45World NotesCITIZENSHIPBetter Late Than Never
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- Mikhail Gorbachev made a gesture to right old wrongs, but
- he may not have impressed all the victims. By executive order
- last week, he restored Soviet citizenship to 23 prominent
- exiles and emigres who had the right stripped from them in the
- period from 1966 to 1988. The list includes chess champion
- Victor Korchnoi, scientist Yuri Orlov and Nobel laureate writer
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The decision, said a Soviet official,
- was "a form of apology -- maybe late, but it is an apology."
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- It remains to be seen, however, whether Gorbachev's offer
- will be graciously accepted by all the exiles. While a Soviet
- spokesman claimed that Solzhenitsyn, 71, had agreed to take
- back his citizenship, the novelist's wife Natalya said, "No
- Soviet official has contacted us for the 16 years since my
- husband was exiled." She insisted that it would be more
- important for the Kremlin to revoke the treason charges that
- provoked her husband's expulsion.
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