Four seminars involving refuseniks took place as planned last Monday in Moscow, although minus the international telephone connections for which they had asked. Soviet telephone operators told their American counterparts that lines to four apartments were “out of order.”
Soviet Jewry activists had requested that people in the West show their solidarity with the refuseniks by calling them during the seminars on June 1, which was International Children’s Day.
Leonard Terlitsky, a Soviet emigre living here, was among the many people unable to get through, but he spoke to his relatives in Moscow following the seminars, and was told about the gathering at the apartment of Viktoria and Andrei Lifshitz. The seminar topic was the problems of Jewish education and children’s emotional stress.
Terlitsky said that 60-70 people attended– “a large group for a Moscow apartment” — where children performed Hebrew songs. A professional educator noted that children who grow up in religious families are often ostracized in Soviet schools and have difficulty studying because of the pressure.
“What they are taught at school leads to depression,” said Terlitsky, an architect living in New York who emigrated alone in 1977, leaving behind his brother Mark, also an architect; their mother Fanya, now 70 and suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease; Mark’s wife Svetlana and their daughter Olga. Mark has been unable to work in his profession since 1976, when they applied to leave.
RECURRENT DIFFICULTIES REPORTED
Lynn Singer, executive director of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry, which was promoting and placing phone calls to the apartments, said the phone connections were restored the following day but that she had continuous difficulties with those numbers and others in the Soviet Union, throughout the week. The calls were constantly interrupted, she said.
Singer brought the subject up Friday with Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin in the office of the mayor of Glen Cove, NY Dubinin, who had come to present a replica of the original Sputnik to the Nassau County Cradle of Aviation Museum, was “charming and affable, even gallant,” said Singer, although she admitted she was leery of his attitude. Singer said she discussed with Dubinin in their private 10-minute meeting the case of Yakov Rabinovich, a Leningrad refusenik promised a visa at the Bern review of the Helsinki Accords in May 1986. She also told him of long-time refusenik Naum Rabinovich (not related), a World War II aviation hero whose son Vladimir lives in New York. She said, “His work certainly precedes the Sputnik era, so what kind of state secrets could he be holding?”
Dubinin discussed nothing about these cases, but gave his word that her letter of requests would be forwarded to Moscow When she discussed the telephone interference, she said, “He simply listened to that and let me know that everything that we discussed would be forwarded.”
Singer described his affability as “funny, because he told me he noted a deep sense of sincerity in my voice.”
SAID 799 CASES UNDER REVIEW
Dubinin told her that he wanted her to know that 799 emigration cases were being reviewed by “the new commission” and that “now there were two meanings to the word refusenik: those who were refused based on prior government decisions and those who were given permission to go to Israel and who refused.”
Dubinin told Singer that he has a list of 100 people who were given permission to go to Israel but refused, she said. She said she had on time to ask if they were dissident prisoners who were non-Jews. Singer claimed that Dubinin said he would continue the dialogue with her in Washington at her request, and he told her that he would inform his consuls that she was to be admitted to the Soviet Embassy.
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.
