Scientific Monkey Business in the U.S.S.R.

For some time now, I’ve been followmg with interest media accounts of the effects of glasnost on life in the Soviet Union. It’s certainly been heartening, for example, to witness the release of the dissident Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov, Yuri Orlov, and Anatoly Shcharansky. Now if only another major Soviet science figure currently living in internal exile would receive a kindly phone call from Mr. Gorbachev! I’m speaking, of course, of Yerosha, the brave little monkey

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For some time now, I’ve been followmg with interest media accounts of the effects of glasnost on life in the Soviet Union. It’s certainly been heartening, for example, to witness the release of the dissident Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov, Yuri Orlov, and Anatoly Shcharansky. Now if only another major Soviet science figure currently living in internal exile would receive a kindly phone call from Mr. Gorbachev!

I’m speaking, of course, of Yerosha, the brave little monkey who refuseniked to be restrained during a joint U.S.-Soviet bioscience flight this fall. He managed to free his left paw and began exploring his environment. Yerosha (his name means “troublemaker”) failed to do any real damage to the spacecraft, but still returned to Earth—only to become a non-monkey and find himself in internal exile in Siberia.

I’m pleased to report that I’m the first Western reporter to make contact with Yerosha and get his ...

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