The Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya has again come under attack in the Soviet press. Ratushinskaya arrived in the UK in December last year after being freed from a Soviet labour camp where she had been imprisoned for 'anti-Soviet agitation'. She has caused the ire of the Soviet media before, with her criticism of the Kremlin's human rights record and her warnings against what she sees as Soviet propaganda moves designed to deceive the West. The latest media attack on her came in mid-August in the pages of the Sovetskaya kultura (Soviet Culture) newspaper, which said that her activity in the West constituted treachery and a betrayal of her homeland. 'Her comments in the West have been oppressively monotonous, aiming to present everything happening in the USSR in an utterly distorting light,' Sovetskaya kultura said. It accused her of playing up to certain quarters in the West which are keen to promote fear of the USSR. In poetry published in the West, Ratushinskaya has described her Communist homeland as 'hateful'. Such a gesture is not easily forgiven in the USSR even in times of'openness' and 'restructuring', which Sovetskaya kultura has - some say boldly - reflected. Ratushinskaya was recently deprived by decree of her Soviet citizenship. It seems her exile is not to be temporary, and she is unlikely to be returning to the USSR.

However, stranger things have been known to happen. Also in August the Soviet monthly magazine Teatr (Theatre) published an interview with none other than leading ...