More than 8,000 Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union during 1987, a nine-fold increase over the 914 Jews who were permitted to leave in 1986, and the largest amount since 1981, when 9,500 Soviet Jews emigrated.
But Soviet Jewry activist groups expressed disappointment over the figure, noting that in the year in which “glasnost” was introduced the number of Jewish emigres comprised only a small fraction of the 400,000 Soviet Jews who wish to emigrate.
The National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) reported Monday that 8,155 Jews left the Soviet Union in 1987, 899 of them in December.
“In light of ‘glasnost’ and the summit meeting in Washington, we had hoped that there would be a significant increase in permissions for December 1987,” the NCSJ said in a statement issued here.
“While we recognize that 1987 proved to be a much better year for Soviet Jewish emigration that 1986, this year’s total is far from that of the benchmark year of 1979, when more than 51,000 Jews were granted exit visas.”
Pamela Cohen, president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), expressed dismay over what she termed the “low emigration figure” considering the improved U.S.-Soviet relations.
Speaking by telephone from her office in Chicago, Cohen said that 8,149 Jews left the Soviet Union in 1987. She disclosed that 2,072 of them went to Israel, 144 of whom reached the country on direct flights from Bucharest, Rumania, which were introduced last year.
Cohen charged that “the low figure of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union in 1987 indicates the continuing reluctance on the part of the Soviets to resolve the problem of Soviet Jewish emigration in any meaningful and substantial way. The Soviets are continuing to deal with the issue by a case-by-case approach, therefore denying that hundred of thousands of Soviet Jews, at least 400,000 of them, want to leave the Soviet Union.”
Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration, based in Geneva, reported Monday that 8,011 Jews left the Soviet Union in 1987. The committee said 1,955 of them settled in Israel. The committee’s December figures were 868 Soviet Jewish emigres, of whom 188 settled in Israel.
(Geneva correspondent Tamar Levy contributed to this report.)
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