I Refusenik Charged, Another Detained

Lev Elbert, a 34-year-old engineer of Kiev, has been officially charged with failure to report for Red Army reserve duty, according to the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ).

The nine-year refusenik had declined to report on the grounds that further military service would again subject him to a “secrecy” designation which would deny him emigration to Israel, the two Soviet Jewry groups said. Elbert’s original exit application was rejected on the grounds that he knew “secrets” from an army stint 10 years ago, during which he dug out earth for swimming pools. He faces up to a year in a labor camp.

In another development, the SSSJ and UCS J reported that in Moscow, Dr. Naum Meiman, one of the most senior scientists to have applied to emigrate, has been detained by the KGB, The 72 year-old mathematician and physicist has been refused emigration since 1975, Meiman was a member of the now-disbanded unofficial Helsinki Accord monitoring group in the USSR.

The SSSJ and UCSJ also reported that Kharkov Prisoner of Conscience Yuri Tamopolsky, arrested March 17, is on a hunger strike, as is Moscow refusenik Nadezhda Fradkova, a 36-year-old computer engineer. The home of Tamopolsky’s friend, David Soloveichik, was searched by the secret police after the latter was dismissed from his job.

Meanwhile, in Moscow on April 21 the Soviet government officially established the “Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public” after three weeks of intense pre-publicity, the two groups said, Former Gen. David Dragunsky, the USSR’s “token” high-ranking military Jew, is chairman. In Soviet bookstores, a new poster is being sold which proclaims that “Zionism is the fascism of today.”