Lev Elbert, a longtime Jewish refusenik, revealed Monday that the Soviet government is threatening to charge him with “parasitism” for not having a job while refusing to provide him with employment.
Elbert told this to Rep. Larry Smith (D. Fla.) during a telephone call from Smith’s Capitol Hill office to Elbert in Kiev.
“If anybody is listening on this telephone line, I hope they understand it is a disgraceful, despicable thing for the Soviet Union to keep you from getting a job, and prosecute you for not having one,” Smith told Elbert.
A spokesman for Smith said there was little difficulty in getting through to Elbert. However, Soviet Jewry activist groups in the United States and Canada who tried to call refuseniks in Moscow and Leningrad Monday were told the lines were “out of order.”
Smith promised Elbert that he will ask Rep. Steny Hoyer (D. Md.), co-chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to press Elbert’s case with the Soviet government both at the Soviet Embassy here and in Moscow.
During a recent visit to Moscow, Hoyer brought up the Elbert case in talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; Yuri Dubinin, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States; and his predecessor, Anatoly Dobrynin. He was told a decision would be made within three weeks on whether Elbert and his family could emigrate to Israel, but six weeks have already passed, according to Smith. Elbert, who has been trying to emigrate with his family since 1976, was released from prison on June 20, 1984, after serving a year on the charge of “evasion of draft by a reservist.”
He had been denied permission to emigrate on the grounds that he possessed classified information, even though his army service was as a private in a construction battalion that had been building a swimming pool.
Smith said that during his conversation he learned of a new concern for Elbert and his wife, Inna: their son, Karmi, will be eligible for the draft in a year, which could give the Soviets new grounds for denying the family an emigration visa.
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.
