Two Soviet Jews Who Petitioned for Right to Emigrate, Face Deportation to Siberia

Two Soviet Jews who petitioned for the right to renounce their citizenship and emigrate to Israel face deportation to Siberia, reliable sources reported here today. Ludmilla Prussakova and her husband, Valentin both lost their jobs. A letter they signed demanding emigration rights was published in the London Times last Feb. 25. The sources said they could be sent to Siberia as “vagrants,” a term often applied by Soviet authorities to persons fired for political reasons. Valentin Prussakov was dismissed six months ago when the couple first applied for exit visas and has been unable to find work since then. Last week his wife was fired from her job at Moscow’s Progress Publishers after she was denounced by fellow staff members. They branded her “an ideological enemy and traitor to the Motherland” and demanded that her Soviet citizenship be revoked. Ironically, the couple got into trouble originally for requesting the right to renounce their citizenship. They have received no reply to date to their request that this be linked to the issuance of exit visas so that they could settle in Israel. (Mikhail Zand, a Soviet Jewish activist, was reported in Wednesday’s JTA Daily News Bulletin to have been fired from his job at the Institute of Jewish Studies in Moscow. It should have read the Institute for Eastern Studies.)