Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Premier, evaded giving a clear answer to the Rome correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as to whether it could be expected that in the near future Soviet citizens would be permitted to leave the USSR and Join their families living abroad.
The correspondent, Tallia Levi, who escorted President Giovanni Bronchi of Italy on his recent official visit to the Soviet Union, posed this question to Premier Khrushchev during a reception in the Kremlin in honor of the Italian President. Mr. Khrushchev, indicating annoyance with the question, said:
“Soviet citizens are already allowed to leave the country and will be even more so allowed in the future. But going abroad requires accumulation of wealth and the availability of cash. We are rich in natural resources, yet individually we are poor.”
Experts in population and Jewish problems in the Soviet Union told the PTA correspondent regarding the census data published this month in Moscow that they doubt whether the figure of 2,268,000 given in the census as the total Jewish population in the USSR is correct. They estimated that there must be at least 3,000,000 Jews in the Soviet Union today.
Authoritative sources expressed the opinion that the number of Jews in the census figures is smaller than the actual Jewish population because a substantial number of Soviet Jews defined themselves in the census as Russians, or members of another Soviet nationality, since the census regulations did not threaten any punishment for those who attempted to switch from one nationality to another. The false declarations by Jews of their nationality were made apparently because of fear that as Jews they may face discrimination.
In giving the total number of Jews in the USSR as 2,268,000, the official census date indicated that 20,8 percent of them declared Yiddish as their mother tongue. It subdivided the number of Jews and their percentage of the total population as follows: In the Russian Soviet Federation, including Birobidzhan, 875,000 (0.7 percent); in Soviet Ukraine, 840,000 (2 percent); in Byelorussian, 150,000 (1.9 percent); In Uzbekistan, 94,000 (1.2 percent); in Bessarabia, 95,000 (3.3 percent); in Georgia, 52,000 (1.3 percent); in Lithuania, 25,000 (0.9 percent); in Latvia, 37,000 (1.7 percent) and in Estonia, 5,000 (0.5 percent).
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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.
