Plight of Refuseniks Likely to Be a Minor Issue at Summit in Moscow

The liberalization of Soviet emigration policy in recent years has relegated the plight of Jewish “refuseniks” to a minor issue on the agenda of summit talks taking place here next week between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

That is in sharp contrast to the summits of the late 1970s and 1980s, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Vitaly Churkin pointed out at a news briefing here Wednesday.

He recalled how during previous summits, the American side continually raised individual cases of Jews and members of other ethnic groups denied permission to leave the country.

Next week’s summit, delayed since February, will be highlighted by the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which cuts the size of the two nations’ strategic missile arsenals, and by a U.S.-Soviet agreement to cooperate on regional issues, including the Middle East.

With thousands of Jews leaving the Soviet Union each week, the refusenik problem has all but disappeared, Churkin said.

But not according to some organizations in the United States that have been active for decades on behalf of Soviet Jewry.

The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews estimates that there are at least 550 Jewish families in the Soviet Union who have been denied permission to emigrate, and it is urging Bush to present its list of long-term refuseniks to Gorbachev during next week’s summit.

The National Conference on Soviet Jewry is also presenting a list of some 500 refusenik cases to the Bush administration. The group’s chairman, Shoshana Cardin, is heading a delegation of leaders who will discuss the summit at a White House meeting Friday with Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.

NUMBERS DOWN DRAMATICALLY

The delegation will also ask the administration to raise a number of issues relating to the well-being of Jews in the Soviet Union, including recent anti-Semitism, bureaucratic delays in processing refugees coming to the United States and concerns about new emigration regulations.

While the National Conference remains concerned about unresolved refusenik cases, as well as a series of new refusals that have occurred recently, Martin Wenick, the group’s executive director, emphasizes that the number of long-term refusenik cases has “come down dramatically. It is a low number,” he said.

Myrna Shinbaum, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Soviet Jewry Project, said she did not think the number of refuseniks was very high, but admitted, “I just don’t track that anymore.”

But Lynn Singer, executive director of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry, which is affiliated with the Union of Councils, said that “in Leningrad, in particular, we seem to be getting new refuseniks every week or so.”

In Washington, a State Department official said that although “some progress is being made in the cases we are hearing about, new cases are being brought up.”

But here in Moscow, Churkin of the Foreign Ministry shrugged off the refusenik problem.

“Maybe occasionally some case comes up, but I recall at one time that was what talks between foreign ministers started with. This is no longer the case,” he said.

“It is now handled routinely, at a working level, and comes up only very occasionally in our relations,” he said.

Churkin pointed to the emigration law passed by the Supreme Soviet in May, which enshrines the right to travel abroad and emigrate.

HUGE WAVES OF TRAVELERS

“One could expect that with tens of thousands of people wanting to emigrate, from time to time a case would arise requiring examination, and that someone would be refused permission on some grounds,” he said.

“This is always present, but it is not prominent in our discussions with the Americans.”

The new law effectively legitimized the freer movement across borders in recent years. Approximately 400,000 Soviet citizens emigrated last year — mostly Jews, Armenians and ethnic Germans — and 3.7 million took trips abroad.

The liberalized measures were fiercely opposed in the Soviet parliament by a motley group of conservatives and deputies representing workers, who said they were too costly. Concern about how consular and customs services would cope with huge waves of travelers delayed implementation of some of the provisions until 1993.

But one of the spinoffs of the legislation was an end to the automatic stripping of Soviet citizenship for those going to Israel.

That means, however, that would-be Jewish emigres have to follow the same complicated process as other Soviet citizens. Jewish organizations blame that requirement for slowing down the numbers leaving for Israel.

The Union of Councils sees the new emigration law aggravating the problem. Its assistant director, Kim Lamberty, spent several months in Moscow at the union’s bureau, whose very existence is a sign of how far things have come.

David Leopold, a Cleveland attorney who spent four months at the union’s Moscow bureau, said the figure of 550 refusenik families “is a working number,” and the actual number is probably higher.

A STICKY PROBLEM

Leopold expects the new emigration regulations that take effect in January 1993 to present many problems, particularly with regard to the definition of state secrecy.

“The issue is not really which terms they use, but how they define it,” he said.

Leopold, along with former refusenik Leonid Stonov, presented an alternative form of the bill to the Supreme Soviet, but it was rejected.

“The point is that the legislation provides for a five-year restriction or five-year refusal. It appears to set a cap on the amount of time an individual can be refused, but provides a loophole that a commission can extend it.”

Moreover, a sticky problem exists in the new law regarding men of draft age, 16 to 27.

Leopold said that those in that age group, or those liable for army reserve call-up, “cannot leave the country without permission of their district military supervisor.”

In its letter to Bush, the Union of Councils urged the president to “convey the disappointment of the United States and the international community with the new emigration law.”

(JTA staff writer Susan Birnbaum in New York contributed to this report.)