Nudel Complains of Incitement

Ida Nudel, the Soviet Jewish activist serving a four-year sentence of exile in Siberia, has accused a regional newspaper there of “knowingly inciting hatred for the purpose of bringing about violent reprisals” against her. The text of telegrams she sent on March 2 to President Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet officials making the charge, was received by her sister, Elana Fridman, a resident of Holon.

Nudel’s accusations were leveled against the newspaper Kasroye Znomya (Red Banner), published in Tomsk, which, she said, published a slanderous article against her on Feb. 28. In addition to Brezhnev, she sent her protest telegrams to interior Minister Shchelokov, to the Governor of the Tomsk region, the editor of the newspaper and to the Dutch Embassy which handles Israel’s interests in Moscow.

The telegram said: “On February 28 of this year, the regional newspaper in Tomsk oblast published a slanderous article against me. The attitude of the local residents toward me in my place of exile was already hostile and the malicious allegations contained in this article have exacerbated the existing hostility. The townspeople are aroused–absurd suspicions and rumors are circulating about me. I accuse the authors of this-article of knowingly inciting hatred for the purpose of bringing about violent reprisals.”

The telegram did not specify the allegations and copies of the Tomsk newspaper have not yet reached Israel. Nudel, a 48-year-old economist known as the “guardian angel” of Soviet prisoners of conscience, was arrested in Moscow in June, 1978 and charged with “malicious hooliganism.”