Shcharansky’s Mother Asks Brezhnev to Establish Committee to Clarify Violations During Her Son’s Tri

Ida Milgrom, Anatoly Shcharansky’s mother, has sent an open letter to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev calling for the “establishment of a committee to rightfully and truthfully clarify all violations of law during Anatoly’s case.” The text, obtained by the Students Struggle for Soviet Jewry and Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, further stated that “not for one moment will I forget that my son is simply the victim of a political game which has endangered his life.”

Coinciding with the completion of four years of Shcharansky’s 13-year sentence, the statement characterized the sentence as “unlawful, inhumane and barbaric.” Mrs. Milgrom has also said that Anatoly has been confined to an internal prison within the camp, that all visits for 1981 have been cancelled and that the majority of her letters to him have been confiscated. Mrs. Milgrom continued that “all this is against prison law and is again vile and inhumane treatment of him and myself, his mother.”

Mrs. Milgrom feels that all appeals will be standard because all replies “will be from the very quarters who were involved in the illegal actions during Anatoly’s interrogration, trial and the period after sentence. They are uninterested in a retrial, and would like very much to forget the whole affair.”

Meanwhile, the SSSJ reported exit visas have been received by two long-term Leningrad refuseniks. Karl Greenberg, a 51-year-old engineer will join his wife and two sons already in Israel. Another engineer, Alexander Genusov, his wife Larissa and daughter Dalia will reunite with an aunt. Two other refuseniks identified only by their surnames of Kunik and Rosen also received emigration permits, the SSSJ reported.

In another development, Moisey Tonkonogi, a Soviet Jewish Prisoner of Conscience from Odessa, was released from a labor camp after serving a one-year sentence for parasitism, it was reported here by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry.

Tonkonogi, 28, first applied to emigrate to Israel with his parents in 1973. His parents were permitted to leave but he was denied permission on grounds of “secrecy” since he served in the Soviet Army in 1971. The Conference said that Tonkonogi is now expected to renew his attempts to join his parents in Israel.