MOSCOW: Soviet Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev said yesterday [July 9] that there should be a woman aboard any space flight lasting a year or more, “or we will be condemned to live in indescribable disorder”. Nikolayev’s remark brought a wave of laughter at a Press conference he participated in yesterday with Vitali Sevastianey. The two men established a record when they spent 18 days in space last month aboard “Soyuz-9”. The usually taciturn Nikolayev got another laugh when he commented, “if Sevastianey was as untalkative as me, the whole flight would have taken place in total silence”.
[Meanwhile, as reported by another agency in Moscow,] Young Russian poetess Natalya Gorbanevskaya has been declared not responsible for her actions after being investigated for alleged anti-Soviet slander, sources close to dissident intellectual circles said yesterday [July 9]. A hearing of her case by the Moscow city court decided that she should be detained in a mental institution. ...
The poetess was arrested last December in connection with alleged anti-Soviet slander, apparently after police seized underground documents in her flat. She was among a group of dissidents detained after protesting in Red Square in August 1968 against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2020
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