Soviet Jewish Family United Again, This Time in U.S.
--A 17-year-old Soviet Jew, reunited with his mother after a seven-year separation, said he always believed that his family would be one again. “It’s beautiful,” said Margarita Stukalin, 48, of Rochester, N.Y., introducing her son Mikhail to reporters at New York’s Kennedy International Airport after they stepped off a plane from Europe. The teen-ager was one of 10 Soviet citizens given permission to emigrate to the United States as a prelude to last November’s Geneva summit. He was left orphaned in the Soviet city of Kiev in July when his father, Isaac, died of cancer. Mikhail brought the ashes with him to hold a family memorial. The mother and son were separated in 1979, when Mikhail was 10, after her husband unsuccessfully sought permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union. She said she divorced her husband to win an exit visa with her older son, Felix, but planned to be reunited later with Isaac and Mikhail. “Soon after we departed, however, Jewish emigration was sharply cut back and Isaac was repeatedly denied permission to leave,” the mother said. After the airport meeting the two went to Boston to meet with Felix, now 24, before going on to Rochester, where the two will live.
--The grand old man of Italian literature, Alberto Moravia, 78, married a 32-year-old publishing executive in a brief ceremony at the Rome City Hall. “Moravia is different because no one can write as well as he does,” Carmen Llera said of her new husband, with whom she has lived for three years. The couple declined to kiss for photographers and television cameramen and left almost immediately after the ceremony--Moravia going back to work on his novel and Llera off to the publishing house where she runs the press office. Moravia established his reputation in 1949 with “The Woman of Rome,” and Sophia Loren won an Oscar in the movie version of the book “Two Women.”
--The paralyzed son of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said he will go to the United States and Canada this spring to study services for the handicapped. Deng Pufang, 42-year-old director of the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped, was paralyzed from the waist down when he was pushed or thrown from a window during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Speaking at a reception he hosted in Peking’s Great Hall of the People, Deng said he expected to study services and facilities for the disabled during the tour. China has an estimated 20 million handicapped people.
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