Soviet Congress Ends Without a Public Word on Future of Emigration Policy

Throughout its 10 days of speeches and discussions, the 24th Soviet Communist Party Congress which ended Friday, no reference was made to the demand by Jews who want to emigrate, nor was there any indication as to what policy the Kremlin leadership intends to follow in the future on the granting of exit visas. In what some observers thought was a gesture to the Jewish community, two Jews were elected to the 81-member Central Auditing Commission, a watchdog group of less prestige than the Party’s Central Committee. The lower echelon posts went to Col. Gen. David Dragunsky, an Army officer who has been a constant defender of Soviet policy toward Jews, and to Vladimir, J. Peller, a collective farm chairman from the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidjan where only some 15,000 of Russia’s three million Jews reside.

Named to full membership in the Central Committee was Nikolai V. Goldin, a name usually Jewish in the Soviet Union. There are, however, no biographies available on him and no evidence beyond the name that he may be of Jewish origin. The only known Jewish members of the Central Committee are Veniamin E. Dymshits, a Deputy Premier, and Aleksandr B. Chakovsky, editor of the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta. Neither have been identified with Jewish causes. The career of Viktor V. Grishin, one of the four men newly elected full members of the powerful Politburo is interesting because of the man he replaced when he was elevated to the prestigious post of Moscow city Party leader in 1967 by Communist Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Grishin succeeded Nikolai G. Yegorychev who was dismissed by Brezhnev because he differed with the Party leadership on Middle East policy. The assumption is that Yegorychev’s dismissal was prompted by his more dovish views on the Mideast compared with that of his successor.