Avital and Anatoly Shcharansky say they do not feel any different about each other not than they did 12 years ago before their separation. This is the core of what the couple divulged in an interview Monday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning, America.”
“I must disappoint you,” Anatoly Shcharansky responded to host David Hartman’s opening question about their personal rapport, a subject which has intrigued people both in Israel and abroad since the two were reunited last week after their 12-year separation the day after their wedding in Moscow.
The couple exchanged affectionate looks frequently during the interview from Israel which appeared to override the apparent differences in outward garb. Avital Shcharansky wore a head covering in accordance with Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law, while Anatoly Shcharansky was as bareheaded as the first day he stepped off the plane in Israel.
“He’s the same,” replied Avital, adding that they didn’t feel they had been separated at all.
When asked by Hartman how her husband’s account of his prison ordeal tallied with what she had known through her contacts, she said she “was amazed” by his ability to overcome the difficult conditions he had lived through. Avital Shcharansky’s main source during her husband’s prison confinement was his mother, Ida Milgrom, who was only able to visit her son infrequently during the nearly nine years of his incarceration in Soviet prisons.
Asked to pinpoint what allowed him to be able to avoid “falling in line” as so many other political prisoners do, Shcharansky replied, “The fact that I was dreaming of being a free man. I was simply trying to remain myself all the time.”
SKEPTICAL ABOUT CHANGE IN SOVIET POLICY
Shcharansky also indicated his skepticism regarding unconfirmed news accounts that his release from Soviet prison might be a harbinger of more freedom for Soviet Jewish dissidents. “All this talking makes me very skeptical,” he said.
He made the same point Sunday in an interview from Jerusalem on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” when he cautioned against undue optimism that any substantive changes in Soviet policy are imminent. Shcharansky stressed that recent moves by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “demonstrate” to the West that “he is ready to make some changes in his policy” should not be interpreted as a shift toward liberalization.
“Unfortunately, there is a set tradition that almost always when the Soviet Union makes such signs (it) immediately takes some steps in (its) inner policy in order to discourage those who can be encouraged by those signs,” Shcharansky told the reporters.
He illustrated this warning by noting that after the Soviets signed the Helsinki accords in 1975, pledging implementation of provisions on family reunification, dissidents were arrested for calling attention to Soviet violations of these agreements.
Shcharansky said that if the Soviets are indeed going to pursue a policy of “more liberalization,” on emigration, they should be “encouraged.” But, he warned, “if it is some separate acts, it must be made clear that they wouldn’t be able to deceive the West so as they were trying to do 10 years ago.”
CONDITIONS IN SOVIET PRISON CAMPS
Conditions in Soviet prison camps, Shcharansky added, have been “becoming worse and worse” in the past two-and-a-half years. He was not asked by the reporters to specify what conditions he referred to. “The more Gorbachev was speaking about the civilized methods of behavior, the more I was surprised by the fact (of) how uncivilized the policy of the camps is.”
Meanwhile, Shcharansky said that he has accepted an invitation extended by Mayor Edward Koch to visit New York. He will go there, he added, after he has had a short rest.
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.
