Deputy Minister Boris T. Shumlin of the Soviet Union’s Interior Ministry said in an interview reaching here yesterday that there were only an “insignificant” number of applications for emigration on file at this time, and called foreign estimates of the number “absurd…truly fantastic.” It was ascertained here today that the interview, circulated by the Novosti feature service via Tass, the government press agency, was not published within the USSR.
Shumlin said 21,000 Soviet Jews have gone to Israel since World War II–10,000 of them last year alone–and said there were only 258 applications on file in Moscow, 119 in Kiev and 50 in Leningrad. At the same time, he downplayed Arab apprehensions over any Jewish migration to Israel at all, pointing out that of Israel’s population of three million, 800,000 were refugees from Arab lands. Shumlin also became apparently the first top Kremlin official to acknowledge that Soviet citizens with knowledge of secret defense information were barred from leaving the country.
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