An appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the protection of basic civil rights in the Soviet Union against Stalinist-type-terror is being sponsored by 55 Soviet dissidents. The document, released to Western newsmen in the hopes that it will reach the UN through their mass media, said the persons signing it were “deeply indignant over increasing political persecutions in the Soviet Union, perceiving in them a return to Stalin’s times, when our whole country was in the grip of terror.” Among the “people seeking national equality and preservation of their national culture,” the document continued, are “Jews demanding the right to leave for Israel and believers seeking religious liberty.”
Meanwhile, Ilya Burmistrovich, 31, a Soviet mathematician, was sentenced to three years in prison for circulating typewritten copies of works of authors banned in the Soviet Union. One of the authors, Yuli Daniel, is Jewish. He and Andrei Sinyavsky were sentenced to long prison terms three years ago for distributing anti-Soviet works.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
