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Most of the scientists, writers and artists who have been told to leave by the Soviets have—unlike Brodsky —been militant dissidents. The Soviets evidently reasoned that it was less trouble to force them out than to risk the embarrassment of arrests and trials. One of the most recent exiles is Alexander Yesenin-Volpin, 47, a renowned mathematical logician, and a former leader of the dissident movement in Russia. The son of the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin and a Jewish mother, the mathematician was pressured to leave after serving terms in a Stalinist concentration camp and, later, in prison lunatic asylums. He is now in Rome and hopes to come to the U.S. to teach.
Acid Holes. Another expatriate in Rome, Painter Yuri Titov, 44, last week was desperately trying to save some of the 62 pictures he took out of Russia last month. Titov and his wife —both members of a group called the "Democratic Movement"—had departed Moscow only after "it became ab—olutely impossible for us to live there any longer," and had insisted on taking the pictures with them. After the paintings had cleared Soviet customs in Moscow and been put aboard an Aeroflot plane, acid was surreptitiously poured on the painted surfaces of the Christ figures, Crucifixions and icons that are Titov's specialty. Shortly thereafter, the pictures developed huge holes, and the colors merged into blobs of paint. Titov, who was once committed to a Soviet mental institution for his religious beliefs, commented sadly: "The Soviet authorities tried to make sure that no one outside the Soviet Union would ever see my paintings."