Speech #980166649

Shcharansky is not unique in the Soviet Union. What is uniqueand ominousis the increasingly aggressive. officially sponsored persecution of that countrys Jewish population. Jewish emigration has plummeted since 1979. when 51.320 Soviet Jews were allowed to leave. In 1982 emigration was only 2.688. and last year it reached a new low of 1.315. This was just 5 percent of the peak 1979 figure. To justify this drastic reduction in emigration. the officially sanctioned "AntiZionist Committee of the Soviet Public" has declared that all Jews who want to leave the Soviet Union have done so. This is patently untrue. There are literally thousands of Jews in the Soviet Union who want to emigrate. among them are many longterm refusenikspeople who have repeatedly applied for and been refused an exist visa. The emergence of this AntiZionist Committee is part of a disturbing trend affecting Soviet Jewry. There have been more and more signs that the Government of the U.S.S.R. is seeking not only to restrict emigration but is also attempting to virtually blot out Jewish cultural life within the Soviet Union through stepped up harassment. arrests. imprisonment. and officially sanctioned antiSemitism. This policy shift on treatment of Soviet Jews was initiated during Brezhnevs last years. but it has solidified and intensified during the 15 months of Andropovs leadership. when additional restrictive laws were introduced. The government has made it more difficult to apply for emigration by invalidating visa applications after 6 months. Requests for emigration have been further reduced by the application of the "redundancy law." which encourages the firing of people at the managerial level. combined with the tightening of a provision that stipulates a person out of work for only 2 months is criminally liable as a "parasite." Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate are thus more and more likely to be arrested and imprisoned. In the last few years the Soviet Government has relied more heavily on the threat of incarceration as a means of curtailing Jewish activities. In the most significant show trial since Shcharanskys.