Musicians/athletes defecting

[eelpot]

Musicians/athletes travelling from a dictatorship (e.g. North Korea, Belarus, the Sovjet Union) to a free country are often kept company by "handlers" of different kinds, who are responsible for stopping them from defecting

Comments

[kutsuwamushi]

Please edit in a subject line that describes your question!

[eelpot]

Sorry, I forgot. Fixed it now :)

[sethg_prime]

Yeah... the important thing, if you have this job, is that you can’t just say to all the folks you meet on tour, “hi, my name is Yuri and my job is to keep Vladimir here from throwing himself at the nearest host-country government official and saying ‘I want to defect’”. So you need some official excuse for why you and your three buddies are never more than ten feet away from Vladimir.

[sethg_prime]

I’ve only seen the term “political officer” used in a military context, although the purpose is very similar.

[green_grrl]

There should be plenty of biographical material on these famous defections: Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union to Canada in 1974. Nadia Comăneci's coaches defected from Romania to the US in 1981. She herself was closely monitored on a US trip in 1984, and finally managed to escape herself in 1988.

[emily_shore]

Another famous defector was Rudolf Nureyev.

[rodshark]

Government Appointed Assistant/Bodyguard/Escort or Cultural Liason for "so and so" sounds about right, basically it is a pretence of helping/protecting the musician/athelete while making sure they are safe and don't defect.

[bqueenbandit]

I was actually going to suggest Cultural Liason, so seconding that one!