SOVIET UNION: An Exile's Plea

While thousands of Jews struggle for the right to leave the Soviet Union, one celebrated Russian Jew was heard last week pleading for the right to return. He was Poet Joseph Brodsky, who was expelled from the U.S.S.R. last month (TIME, June 19), and is presently in Ann Arbor, Mich. In a letter to Leonid Brezhnev that was leaked by the Soviet secret police last week, Brodsky begged the party chief "for an opportunity to continue to exist in Russian literature and on Russian soil."

Written on the eve of his departure from Moscow, Brodsky's letter expressed bitterness at having...

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