The big tourist bus rolling through the green fields and hedgerows of Normandy looked like any other. But there was a difference: Tourist Vsevolod Kravchenko, 45, and his 25 fellow passengers were all Russian citizens who had served the Soviet state so well that they were permitted to take a pleasure trip abroad.
One evening last week, the bus pulled into the river port of Caen, famed for its
Calvados apple brandy, and stopped before the comfortable Hôtel Moderne on the Boulevard du Général-Leclerc. Kravchenko. a moderately well-known author of Russian children's books, ate dinner with his companions in the hotel...