Speaker. as part of the 1983 Congressional Call to Conscience Vigil for Soviet Jews. I would like to draw my colleagues attention to the case of Yuri Tarnopolsky. a longtime Soviet refusenik whose trial is scheduled to begin in 2 weeks. Yuri Tarnoposky. a leading activist in the Kharkov community. became another victim of KGB arrests on March 15. 1983. for what the Kremlin terms "antiSoviet Slander." Tarnopolsky. a 47yearold organic chemist. applied to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1976. He immediately lost his job. After enduring persecution. police raids. and harassment. Tarnopolsky now sits in his prison cell on a hunger strike awaiting his trial. Tarnopoiskys plight is similar to several refuseniks who desire only to emigrate from the Soviet Union to live in freedom and rejoin friends and relatives. The Soviet Government denies Tarnopoisky and all refuseniks the basic human freedoms of speech and religion. and furthermore. subjects many to confinement in mental institutions. imprisonment. and harassment. Tarnopolsky himself most poignantly expresses his desire to emigrate: How is one to describe the gnawing despair. the stagnant anxiety. the tantalizing uncertainty. the unbearable frustration of our ordeal? If today we have no job. tomorrow we will have no foreign mail and telephone calls. If tomorrow we have no mall. the day after tomorrow there will be no higher education for our children and no free access to other places in the country.
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emigrate