Five young Jewish scientists in Russia, all of them officers in the Red Army Reserve, have been ordered to register for active service although they are not likely to be called to duty in the immediate future, Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported today. All five have applied for exit visas to go to Israel and the effect of their orders will be to reduce their chances of leaving the USSR, the sources said.
The five are Victor Yakhout, Gavriel Shapiro, Michael Kalatchnik, Dan Rozhinski, and Vladimir Lerner. Rozhinski is 36 years old. The others are under 30. Yakhout, who was fired from his teaching post after applying for a visa, was summoned before his local employment committee last week and ordered to find “useful” work or face a prison sentence for parasitism. Like several other unemployed Jewish scientists, Yakhout had been supporting himself by tutoring students in physics.
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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.