Year-end Report: the Situation of Soviet Jews

Stepped-up harassment of Jews and an “onslaught” of anti-Semitic propaganda using Czarist and neo-Nazi themes marked the year 1983 for Jews in the Soviet Union, it was reported today by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Morris Abram, Conference chairman, said in releasing a year-end report that 1983–which coincided with the first year in power of Soviet President Yuri Andropov — was marked by:

* “The denial of exit visas to all but a handful of Jews and strong efforts to discourage and inhibit Jews from applying to emigrate. “

* “Harsh measures against Jews seeking to express their cultural and religious heritage.”

* “An alarming hate campaign against Jews using Zionism as the ostensible target and portraying Jews as potential traitors to the Soviet motherland.”

* “Intensified efforts to reduce and eliminate contacts between Soviet Jews and Jews living abroad.”

Through December 22, Jewish emigration from the USSR totaled only 1,284 — the lowest annual figure since records have been kept on the Soviet Jewry emigration movement

CRACKDOWN ON JEWISH CULTURE

For the first time in 1983, according to the report the Soviet press described as “subversive” and antithetical to Soviet law the private and unofficial teaching of Jewish history and Hebrew. The USSR drive against the teaching of Hebrew culminated in the trial of losif Begun, a former mathematician who became a self-taught but unlicensed Hebrew teacher in Moscow. Begun, who first applied to emigrate to Israel in 1971, was sentenced to a maximum prison term of seven years in a labor camp and five years of internal exile for “anti-Soviet agitation.”

MASSIVE PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN

“The most disturbing aspect of Andropov’s Jewish policy,” the report said, “concerns the call in an ‘appeal’ issued by the Anti-Zionist Committee for a massive propaganda effort for the ‘political unmasking of Zionism.'” The report added:

“Judaism is seen as the source of ‘Zionist evil;’ the Torah and Talmud are presented as works preaching racism, hatred and violence. The Committee’s June 6 press conference signaled a heightened onslaught of the media offensive. In a particularly vicious attack, (Committee) Chairman Dragunsky labeled Zionism a ‘man-hating ideology’ based on ‘the ideas and methods of Hitler'”. The report continued:

“Much of the propaganda campaign is drawn from a newly-published book by Lev Korneyev entitled ‘The Class Essence of Zionism,’ which was favorably reviewed in the Soviet press. Korneyev acknowledged, for the first time, an ideological debt to a Czarist anti-Semite who claimed that Zionist agents provoked pogroms in order to increase Jewish emigration to what was then called Palestine, the implication being that today’s ‘Zionist agents’ are conducting there selves in a similar manner.”

Komeyev’s writings, according to the report, are frequently published in military indoctrination pamphlets.

Recently the Soviet propagandist introduced “another hate-filled theme,” the report said, adding: “In declaring the Holocaust a ‘myth of Zionist propaganda,’ he borrowed from current neo-Nazi and neo-fascist revisionist doctrine, which argues the same theme — that the figure of 6,000,000 Jews killed is a gross exaggeration.”

CONTACTS CUT

The report quoted statements by the Anti-Zionist Committee last March that “Soviet Jews reject with contempt attempts by Zionist propagandists to interfere in their life” and that “citizens of the USSR who are Jews are an inseparable part of the Soviet people.”

Commenting, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry report said: “Soviet Jews were thus warned against having contacts with their ‘Zionist’ brethren in the West. This policy has been implemented by the interception of mail, protests against the presence of American diplomats at Moscow’s Central Synagogue, and periodic newspaper stories accusing Western Jewish tourists of ‘Zionist provocation’s.'”

The report concludes: “Although the past year mode life increasingly difficult for Soviet Jews … the arrival of Vilnius activist Eitan Finkelstein and his family in Israel in December, after 12 years of refusal, indicated that the doors have not been irrevocably closed.”