The Soviet Union has reneged on a promise it made to Senator Edward Kennedy (D. Mass.) in September and has decided not to grant an exit visa to Lev Roitburd, according to information received today by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Roitburd, 42, was one of 18 refusniks whose application Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev had agreed to expedite during talks with Kennedy.
An engineer from Odessa, Roitburd is a former Prisoner of Conscience who served a two-year sentence of internal exile for “resisting arrest.” His arrest occurred in 1975 while on his way to a meeting in Moscow with Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D. Conn.) and several other U.S. Senators. During his trip to the Soviet Union earlier this month, Ribicoff did not discuss Roitburd with Soviet authorities because it appeared that the promise to Kennedy was being met.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
