News Brief

Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Israel may be resumed within six months. This forecast was made last week in Moscow by Soviet diplomats in discussions with this correspondent. From personal talks with persons in Soviet diplomatic circles it became clear without doubt that Moscow is interested in the resumption of diplomatic ties. In the Soviet capital nobody makes a secret out of the fact that numerous contacts on various levels are presently being kept between the Soviet Union and Israel.

Meanwhile, Soviet public opinion has reached an unprecedented level of anti-Arab animosity-a fact which certainly facilitates the resumption of relations between the USSR and Israel. The anti-Communist campaign of killings, repressions and trials of the Leftist elements in Egypt, Libya and Sudan has found a strong and negative echo in wide-flung Soviet circles. The workers’ organizations and trade unions, particularly, are under heavy pressure from Communist bodies in the Western world and have started appealing to the Soviet leadership to take a clear-cut stand on the Middle East and on the Arab persecutions of Communists.

This pressure became particularly evident after the repression of a recent strike in the Egyptian province of Helouan. In Moscow, this correspondent learned that M. Scelepin, head of the Soviet trade unions, recently clashed violently with the Kremlin’s top leadership over the Arab world. Meanwhile, public opinion in the Soviet Union is further and subtly being prepared for the day when the links with Israel will be reforged. Much publicity was given recently to the six-member delegation of Israeli intellectuals who toured the USSR earlier this month.

Soviet circles stressed, however, that a primary condition for bettering relations between Israel and the USSR would have to be Israel’s implementation of Resolution 242 of the United Nations Security Council. This, the Russians say, is a viewpoint which the USSR shares “with Washington and most western countries.” Thus, in Soviet diplomatic eyes, the only real obstacle to a resumption of official relations with Israel would be some kind of military action undertaken by Israel. This might result in the renewal of Middle East hostilities-an eventuality which the Soviet leadership just now most strongly wishes to avoid.

JEWS SEEK LINKS WITH JEWISH CULTURE

This correspondent also discussed the problem of Soviet Jewry with one of the intellectual leaders of the Soviet Jewish community. This leader, who asked that he not be identified, stated that some 80,000 Jews probably want to emigrate and that those who remain strive to renew their ties with Jewish cultural sources and ask for cultural exchanges with Jews abroad. This leader’s estimate of 80,000 Jews who want to emigrate was also offered by several other political, diplomatic and western sources in Moscow who said that this figure was a realistic one.

The reason for their wish to emigrate, according to this high-ranking official Soviet personality is “their frustration at the total absence of Jewish culture.” Jewish intellectuals in Moscow also said that they would prefer to obtain full free cultural rights inside the Soviet Union, rather than be forced to emigrate. They added, however, that an intensive campaign for obtaining full cultural rights was “difficult to achieve” and that no short term effects were likely to result from such a campaign.

The reason for this, these sources said, is that the curtailment of Jewish cultural freedom was only part of larger issues, such as the problem of intellectual freedom inside the USSR and that of the various nationalities of the Soviet Union. The latter problem is becoming more and more critical and will probably be decisive for the future of the USSR, the sources concluded. This correspondent travelled to the Soviet Union on an Israeli passport and on a visitor’s visa.