Sovietologists have said that General Secretary Gorbachev is in stark contrast to his predecessors in that he is willing to open up the Soviet society. Yet we have not seen this with regard to human rights. Many hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews want to emigrate and are unable to. These refuseniks are being persecuted by the KGB and Soviet police for the crime of wanting to emigrate and take up residence in a free country. I can only hope that these experts are right about the General Secretary and that he will now allow free emigration. One might think with such wellknown refuseniks such as Anatoly (Natan) Scharansky. Ilya Essas. Vladmir Brodsky. Yakov Gorodetsky. Grigory. and Isai Goldstein being allowed to emigrate this year that overall Soviet Jewry emigration has increased. Just the opposite is true. Soviet Jewry emigration has reached an alltime low. If the figures continue at the present rate. less Soviet Jews will leave the U.S.S.R. this year than in any other year. Through September only 631 Soviet Jews have been allowed to emigrate. This figure includes all the wellknown refuseniks. So. despite all the fanfare on the release of these wellknown refuseniks. emigration has actually worsened. My own adopted refusenik Aleksandr Paritsky was reported in early September to be in a Moscow hospital for serious heart ailments. He is physically fragile and weak. I call upon the General Secretary to allow Aleksandr to emigrate to Israel where he can receive some of the best medical attention in the world. It is bad enough to be kept in a country against ones will. It is even worse when ones medical condition is fragile.
Keywords matched
emigrate emigration