Speech #980142300

In an echo of the campaigns against "cosmopolitism" in the late 1940s and early 1950s. the Andropov government has recently established with great public fanfare a new antiZionist. committee. The vast majority of Jews. the committee alleges. who wish to leave the Soviet Union have already done so. According to government statistics. emigration applications are down. but refuseniks explain this is exclusively because of the catch22 predicament new government regulations put them in. To apply for an emigration visa an individual must present a formal invitation from Israel. But applications now lapse every 6 months and letters from Israel containing formal invitations to immigrate are simply not allowed to get through. Jewish organizations in the West attest they have reliable information that more than 300.000 Russian Jews wish to emigrate. Incredibly. Soviet authorities put the number at less than 1 percent of this total. between 2.000 and 3.000. Ironically. the freest speech in the Soviet Union today is that of the refuseniks. Once a Soviet citizen indicates a preference to emigrate. the bridges of state loyalty are presumed burned. While Jews in the Diaspora have dreamed of returning to Palestine beginning with the Babylon exile 2.500 years ago. and the daily prayer for untold generations has been "next year in Jerusalem." Soviet authorities cannot tolerate the dissent implied in the desire of any citizen to vote against the regime with feet no matter how tiny or how old. An elderly refusenik who has been seeking the chance to emigrate for almost a decade told me that to request to emigrate is to condemn ones self and ones family to the treadmill of despair as long as the family remains in the Soviet Union. Registration. however. also seems to lift the burden of choice from individual refuseniks. Since signing an emigration declaration generally sets in motion job firings or at a minimum demotions. refuseniks become more open with Westerners than other Soviet citizens. They realize they have little more to lose. Harassment has already become the norm. with confinement to insane asylums an understood possibility for too assertive behavior. For scientists who seek emigration. degrees are sometimes stripped. For musicians and artists. performances stopped. Engineers not infrequently become janitors. nurses find their job skills suddenly unnecessary.