Ukrainian Scholars Will Not Visit U.S.

Seven Soviet Ukrainian scholars who were asked to join the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute last fall will not come to Harvard next year because the Soviet government has refused to grant them passports.

Omeljan Pritsak, professor of Linguistics and head of the institute, said yesterday the scholars received letters and wanted to come, but were not able to get the permission they needed from the Soviet government.

Valentyn Moroz, a Ukrainian historian and sociologist and one of the invited scholars, has spent all but nine months of the last nine years in prison on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda.

Moroz is now on a hunger strike to protest the charges, and asserts he has been treated inhumanely by prison authorities.

Pritsak said he would not disclose the names of the six other Ukrainian scholars, but that he will extend the invitation to them again next year.