A group of American scholars active in the Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry appealed today to the United States government to make every effort to secure the release of Anatoly Shcharansky, whose trial in the Soviet Union now appears immiment.
According to the leaders of the committee, which is headed by political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau, and consists of some 10,000 professors on campuses across North America, the Soviet authorities are persecuting Shcharansky because “he personifies the link between Jews actively seeking emigration and the movement for democratic change in the USSR.”
The scholars state “it appears that the Soviet authorities greatly fear the consolidation of persons struggling for human rights in the USSR, which Shcharansky represents.” Because of this, they “are attempting to link through Shcharansky,” according to preliminary reports, “in a show-trial reminiscent of Stalin’s days, American intelligence agents, diplomats, and journalists in a wholesale plot.” The purpose is to suggest “that all dissent in the Soviet Union is directed or exploited from the United States.”
Appalled by this persecution of Shcharansky “which could make a dissent or emigration a form of treason.” the professors “called upon the U.S. government to spare no efforts to secure Shcharansky’s freedom.” They urged the Soviet Union, “as a matter of right” to “release Shcharansky immediately and permit him to leave for Israel and rejoin his wife.” Shcharansky was arrested on March 15, 1 977 in Moscow and has been held in the notorious Lefortovo Prison.
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