Russia: Chastising a Scion

In the wake of labor-camp sentences meted out to four youthful critics of the Soviet regime two weeks ago, the Kremlin last week cracked down on the man who had done the most to dramatize the plight of the dissenting quar tet to the outside world. The Soviet government fired Pavel Litvinov, 30, a physicist, from his post as a lecturer at the Moscow Institute of Precision Chemical Technology. It charged that his absence from the institute during the trial was "an infringement of work discipline."

The burly, leather-jacketed Litvinov was a...