Two top Soviet officials have told five Jewish families in Moscow that the new exit fees for educated Jews seeking to emigrate represent those Jews’ “debt” to the USSR for schooling received. The officials, a woman surnamed Ryabova and a man surnamed Alyoshin, are Deputy Finance Minister and Deputy Chief of Culture, Health and Welfare in the Finance Ministry, according to Dr. David Korn, chairman of the Soviet Jewry Committee of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington. He added that Alyoshin was the designer of the new tax decree.
Dr. Korn said five Jewish families went to the officials’ offices and told them they could not afford the high exit rates, and that they were told: “You Jews should tell us ‘thank you’ that we don’t so far take money from you for nurseries, public schools, apartments that you live in and medical aid given to you. The entire Jewish intelligentsia in the Soviet Union is in non-redeemable debt to the Soviet society and working class for the education it received. You should pay what we ask you and when we ask you.”
Dr. Korn also noted that the Aug. 16 issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda included an article, “The Weight of Dissertation,” that said at one point: “Titles and learned degrees will be deprived for immoral and anti-patriotic and other crimes.” The new fee decree, promulgated Aug. 3, took effect Aug. 14. The official reported further that the Soviet authorities were giving Jews with visas only two or three weeks to pay the new taxes, telling them: “Get the money and get out or we will cancel your visas.”
Meanwhile, Judy Silver Shapiro was urged here in a telephone conversation with her husband, activist Gavriel Shapiro of Moscow, to tell Jews outside the USSR to protest “vigorously” the new fee set-up, which should be “crossed out and forgotten…completely erased.” Shapiro said the taxes created “Jewish slaves.” Dr. Korn also said that Moscow activist Vladimir Slepak is being accused in the controlled press of “anti-Soviet propaganda.”
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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.
