Marking Anniversary of Jackson-vanik, Activists Say Much Work Left to Be Done

Activists marking the anniversary of U.S. legislation that helped open the emigration gates for Soviet Jewry say there is still much work to be done for those in the former Soviet republics, as well as for those who left.

Some 500 former refuseniks, Prisoners of Zion and Western activists were gathered in Jerusalem this week to mark 20 years since the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was signed into law on Jan. 10, 1975 as part of the Trade Reform Act.

Sponsored in the Senate by Henry Jackson (D-Wash) and in the House by Charles Vanik (D-Ohio), the amendment made the granting of most-favored-nation trade status conditional on policies of free emigration.

Participants at the three-day conference agreed that the amendment, which was mostly the work of Jackson, was an important landmark, if not the turning point, in the struggle for Soviet Jewry.

It came as the Nixon and then Ford administrations were seeking detente with the Soviet Union. And it put the muscle of American law behind the efforts of a number of grassroots organizations seeking to keep the issue of free emigration alive.

Activists say it was Jackson-Vanik which made the Soviets backtrack on crippling taxes designed to keep Jews from leaving.

Natan Sharansky, perhaps the most famous Prisoner of Zion and chairman of the conference, was jailed in the 1970s after being convicted of high treason and anti-Soviet activities.

At the conference this week, Sharansky said the charge of high treason was for helping fellow dissidents communicate with Jackson. “One of my interrogators claimed that the Jackson-Vanik Amendment had cost the Soviet Union $20 billion, and rhetorically asked me, `Do you think you can pass this amendment and not suffer?'”

Organizers say the gathering was not only an opportunity to commemorate the efforts of a friend of Israel and the Jewish people, but also to discuss the lessons learned from Jackson-Vanik and whether they can be applied to present and future issues.

Glenn Richter, head of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, said Jackson- Vanik taught young activists how to lobby Congress, and alluded to one area in which this knowledge could be put to further use.

“There are presently 56 instances in the [former Soviet Union] where Soviet Jewish citizens are being denied the right to emigrate because they had access to state secrets,” Richter said. “We learned from Israel that you don’t abandon your soldiers on the battlefield.”

Susan Green, of the New York Coalition for Soviet Jewry, said a by-product of the collapse of the Soviet Union is anarchy in some of the republics.

She warned that some people in those republics believe that the only way to restore order is to go back to old repressive ways, and that the ones who suffered from repression most were the Jews.

“We must hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst,” Green said. It is estimated that some 2 million Jews remain in the former Soviet Union.

Elena Bonner, widow of dissident physicist Andre Sakharov, used the plenum to call for world condemnation of Russian attacks in Chechnya, the breakaway republic currently embroiled in an armed rebellion against Moscow.

Other participants talked of the approximately 800,000 Soviet Jews who have emigrated to Israel. More than a half-million have arrived in the past five years, and their absorption has been problematic.

“Our real challenge now is to absorb the Soviet Jews here.” said Amos Eran, who as a diplomat at Israel’s Embassy in Washington 20 years ago, became a close friend of Jackson.

While former refusenik Yuli Edelstein believes most of the recent arrivals have put their logistical problems behind them, he doubts they have become an integral part of Israeli society.

“This is true not only for the most recent arrivals,” Edelstein said, “But also for some of those who came in the 1970s.”

Shransky criticized Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for failing, in his address to the conference, to acknowledge the difficulties faced by Soviet Immigrants.

Soviet immigrants helped Rabin and his Labor Party win the 1992 elections, and reports here say these voters, who now make up the largest single ethnic community in Israel, could very well remove Rabin and Labor from power in 1996.

Much of the conference was taken up by tributes to Jackson, who died in 1983 at the age of 71.

Eran called the Jackson-Vanik amendment “a central part of his personality and agenda.”

Eran related how Jackson had visited the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation in 1945. “I’m going to do whatever I can to ensure that this won’t happen again,” he said Jackson had told him.

Other speakers emphasized that Jackson was very pro-Israel, supporting financial aid and helping to circumvent senators who were not as friendly and who chaired critical committees during legislation efforts which were important for the Jewish state.

Richard Perle, a Jackson aide who went on to become an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, spoke of Jackson with great emotion during a coffee break. “He was warm and generous. He treated me like a son. For Scoop, no issue was too small.”

Before the participants headed for the dedication of a city square named in Jackson’s memory, Sharansky closed the conference by saying that the senator from Washington was a true Zionist. “Maybe,” added Sharansky, “he was even a secret Jew.”