In an unusual bid to enable Soviet Jewish dancer Valery Panov to leave the Soviet Union, Israeli concert pianist David Bar-Illan offered today to raise the necessary funds to reimburse the USSR if it “feels its investment in Panov’s training is too great to forfeit.”
The famed pianist made his offer in a cable transmitted via the American Jewish Congress to Communist Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow.
Mr. Panov, a leading Russian dancer, was dismissed from the Leningrad Kirov Ballet in April after having applied to emigrate to Israel. Responding to a report that Panov felt “he could not indefinitely sustain himself physically and mentally.” Bar-Illan wrote Brezhnev:
“As a performing musician I find it impossible to understand how the Soviet government, which has nurtured some of the greatest performing artists of our time, can now devote its energies to the destruction of Valery Panov, whose only crime is his desire to join his relatives in Israel.
“Performing artists were the first to act, through cultural exchange for better understanding between our countries, but no understanding can be achieved without mutual trust,” he wrote.
“It is difficult to put faith in your government’s intention as long as Panov’s plight belies your declaration that any Jew who wants to be reunited with his family can do so,” his letter continued. Mr. Bar-Illan, now a resident of New York City, asserted: “if the Soviet government feels that its investment in Panov’s training is too great to forfeit, my colleagues in the arts and I shall be only too willing to raise the necessary funds to reimburse you, although we are convinced that Panov’s artistic contribution to the USSR has more than compensated for whatever the Soviet government has invested in him.”
Appeal for permission for Panov to emigrate had previously been sent to Brezhnev by Theodore Bikel, a co-chairman of the AJCongress’ governing council and first vice-president of Actor’s Equity; and by Eleazar Lipsky, chairman of the Congress’ Commission on International Affairs.
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