New Delhi, June 14 -- WASHINGTON - The State Department blocked Olga Golovashchenko, head of the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, from traveling to Austin, Texas, in April for a conference of Russian studies scholars - a refusal that she says is part of a broader pattern of US administrative restrictions that have quietly circumscribed the center's reach across the country.

"We continue to face the difficulties that the US administration creates for us," Golovashchenko told RIA Novosti, citing the April rejection as a representative case. The center had planned to participate in the CARTA conference, an academic gathering of Russian studies scholars at the University of Texas at Austin, an event the institution had supported. The S...