Inside Report (5)
June 6, 1980
The Moscow Olympics, when open July 19, has already reached deep into many lives in the Soviet Union. University courses ended a month early in Moscow, at the end of April, so painters could move in prettify dormitories for foreign tourists. Police are said to be waging a determined drive to get pretty criminals and drunks off the streets in case they give a poor impression of Soviet life.
More than 40 dissident activists have been scattered in all five Olympic cities -- Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tallin, and Minsk -- by arrest or internal exile. And students from four institutes in Moscow, including Architecture Institute, spent all the last academic year working with picks and shovels on Olympic construction sites instead of studying.