Boris Kochubiyevsky, the Soviet-Jewish engineer whose arrest in 1968 sparked the beginning of the world-wide movement on behalf of Soviet Jews, was released from prison Saturday night upon completion of a three-year sentence, according to information received here today by Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the California Students Council for Soviet Jews. Yaroslavsky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the information came from the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews in Cleveland of which his organization is a member. It was attributed to Jewish sources in Moscow. No other information was immediately available on Kochubiyevsky’s release.
The report said that immediately upon his release, Kochubiyevsky, now 37, applied for a visa to go to Israel. Visa applications he had made prior to his arrest were rejected. Kochubiyevsky was the first reported Russian Jewish activist to write to Soviet authorities protesting the treatment of Jews and denial of their right to emigrate. His letter was the first to be published in the West. He was arrested in Dec. 1968 and convicted in May 1969 on charges of slandering the USSR. He is married and has a daughter.
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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.
