U.S. Defector Given Russian Citizenship

MOSCOW — Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has granted citizenship to a U.S. medical researcher who defected to Moscow with his family in 1986, claiming he was being harassed for his Communist sympathies.

A decree signed by Yeltsin on Aug. 6 and published by the Itar-Tass news agency Sunday said the president has granted a request by cancer specialist Arnold Lockshin for citizenship of the Russian Federation.

Lockshin, now 52, abandoned a job as a senior cancer researcher in Houston to move to Moscow in October, 1986.

In widely publicized news conferences and interviews, Lockshin and his wife, Lauren, said they had been subjected to psychological warfare and death threats because of their politics. They brought their three teen-age children with them.