Anatoly Malkin, a 21-year-old Moscow activist, was sentenced yesterday after a one-day trial to three years in prison for “draft evasion,” it was reported here today by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry The sentence, which followed a two-year sentence for Lev Roitburd, a 39-year-old Odessa activist, was denounced today by Jerry Goodman, executive director of the NCSJ, and the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.
“Soviet authorities are waging a war of repression and arrests, whose face bears little resemblance to that presented to the West at the recently concluded Conference on European Security and Cooperation,” Goodman said. He added that if the West was deceived by the USSR on its treatment of Jews “then these three million (Jews) have a special claim on our Administration to come to their aid.”
The SSSJ called Malkin’s sentence “a truly sickening spectacle–the flouting of basic human rights and the just-signed Helsinki principles before world public opinion.” The SSSJ noted that Malkin was expelled from the university when he applied to emigrate to Israel and threatened with the draft. “We believe that the Kremlin’s motive for this harsh sentence is to dissuade thousands of young Jewish men from handing in their visa applications,” the SSSJ declared.
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.
