Natan Shcharansky and Yuri Orlov, the two leading human rights activists who were recently allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union, warned Friday against granting the USSR trade benefits before there is a marked increase in emigration.
“First improvement of emigration, then improvement of trade,” said Orlov, who was the founder of the Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group. “But not in reverse order.”
Orlov and Shcharansky, who were released from Soviet labor camps in apparent gestures to the Reagan Administration, testified before a Commission of Inquiry sponsored by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) on Capitol Hill to demonstrate the Soviet Union’s violation of the Helsinki Accords.
They were questioned by Sens. William Armstrong (R. Colo.) and Charles Grassley (R. Iowa), former Sen. Richard Stone (D. Fla.) and Stuart Eizenstat, the UCSJ’s legal counsel and a former special assistant to President Carter.
Both Orlov and Shcharansky said the West should not be taken in by gestures such as their release. Shcharansky said there is a “desire in the West to be deceived” by such gestures because of the fear of nuclear war.
NEW LAW, MORE RESTRICTIONS
Both former Soviet prisoners said that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev seems to placate the West with gestures such as the release of some Soviet prisoners and allowing emigration for the reunification of families, but he balances this with harsher restrictions at home.
Shcharansky noted that the new emigration law which went into effect January 1 starts by claiming a free emigration policy. But then, he noted, it makes emigration procedures more restrictive allowing emigration only for those who would be reunited with close relatives, defined as parents, children and brothers and sisters.
He said that as far as Soviet Jews are concerned, even if all 30,000 who fit the above category were allowed to leave, it would be only 10 percent of the 380,000 who have earlier received invitations from Israel and have been denied visas.
Shcharansky urged Congress not to continue with vague calls for increased emigration, which totalled only 914 in 1986, but to set fixed guidelines. He said if 20,000 Jews were allowed to emigrate, one concession could be made: if 50,000 left, another; and if all who asked to leave were allowed to go, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment could be lifted.
Eizenstat said that in 1979, after 50,000 Jews were allowed to emigrate, he brought carter a proposal from then Rep. Charles Vanik (D. Ohio), the co-sponsor of the amendment that links trade benefits for the Soviet Union to increased emigration, to temporarily lift the restrictions. But nothing was done because Sen. Henry Jackson (D. Wash.) and most Jewish groups were opposed, he said.
He noted that the next year emigration dropped to 21,471 and has fallen yearly ever since. He wondered whether the Carter Administration had made a mistake. But Shchransky said he believes the large emigration in 1979, at a time when he was in prison, was an effort by the Soviet Union to clean house. He said that at the same time Moscow was restricting new invitations for those who wanted to leave.
SAYS NESHIRA IS NOT CAUSE FOR EMIGRATION DROP
Shcharansky rejected the charge that the large number of Soviet emigrants who go to the United States, instead of Israel, is the reason for the drop in emigration. He said that while as an Israeli citizen he would like to see more Jews, from the U.S. as well as the USSR, go to Israel, the large number of dropouts is only an excuse used by Moscow.
Meanwhile, Lynn Singer, executive director of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry and a former president of the UCSJ, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she learned Friday that Lev Blitshtein, a 56-year-old Moscow refusenik who had been denied an emigration visa since 1975, was told he could leave. Blitshtein’s longtime refusal was based on his supposed knowledge of “secrets” regarding meat storage.
Blitshtein was forced to divorce his wife, Buma, so that she and their children, Boris and Galina, could emigrate. They have lived in the United States since 1976. Singer noted that Blitshtein has over the years been especially helpful to the families of Jewish Prisoners of Conscience.
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.
