Report New Restrictions Will Bar Soviet Jewish Exit Applicants from Soviet Olympic Cities

Reports of new regulations that would drive Jewish exit applicants out from the five Soviet Olympic cities for 21/2 months during the summer have reached the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ). A spokesman for the SSSJ explained that while the major Olympic Games will be held in Moscow, auxiliary Games will be held in four other cities.

According to the information first seen posted at a Moscow emigration office, exit applicants living in the capital, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk and Tallin will be barred from these cities from June 19, a month before the Olympics begin, through Sept. 3, a month after the Games, the two groups reported. Applicants residing mother cities, will not be permitted to enter any of these cities during this period.

The SSSJ and UCSJ said new regulations have taken effect in Moscow which legally allow authorities to exile from the capital anyone considered drunk. This is not only aimed at the USSR’s chronic and embarrassing alcoholism problem. In the past, scores of Jewish activists have been hauled off from demonstrations and placed in drunk tanks. This may now provide the “record” needed to banish them.

Reports which reached the West several months ago also asserted that Moscow parents, Jew and non-Jew alike, were being pressured to remove their children and teenagers from the capital during the Games to avoid “contamination” from Western tourists, the two groups reported.

On another issue, the SSSJ and UCSJ said that in Leningrad, Jews seeking emigration applications must now write to the local emigration office chief and prove their immediate family relationship to the person sending the necessary “invitation” document from Israel. The potential applicant must state his desired date of departure and destination.