Mr. President. as part of the Union of Councils of Soviet Jews ongoing campaign to publicize the plight of the much persecuted Jewish minority in the Soviet Union. I rise to express my concern over the Soviet Governments intransigence on the issue of Jewish emigration. General Secretary Gorbachev has made Western headlines by infusing Soviet arms control negotiations with a new sense of imagination and flexibilitythe prospective treaty on intermediate nuclear forces is a case in point. Domestically. too. the new Soviet leader seems to have given new energy to a static. moribund state with calls to reconstruct society and government along more open. efficient lines. But I am concerned that the spirit of glasnost and Perestroyka has not seemed to affect Soviet policy toward Soviet Jewish emigration. Mr. President. my colleagues know that there are an estimated 400.000 Soviet Jews who have expressed a desire to leave the Soviet Union. But. under current emigration policy. the Soviets consider the applications of a mere fraction of that number. and permit even less to leave. Indeed. at current emigration rates. the Soviets will permit only 7.000 Jews to leave the U.S.S.R. this yearfar below the peak of 51.000 in 1979. And most of those lucky enough to receive permission to leave are taken from a select. if distinguished. list of wellknown refuseniks. It seems that the Soviet practice is to permit those Soviet Jews such as Anataoly Shcharansky. who are potential lightning rods of Western attention. to leave. thus ridding Soviet authorities of an unwelcome problem. Unfortunately. the applications of hundreds of thousands of lesserknown Soviet Jews are ignored. or used as the basis for persecution. Mr. President. a common illustration of Soviet policy toward Jewish emigration is the case of the Magarik family. Alexey Magarik. a 29yearold cellist. has no permanent position as a musician. Since the late 1970s he has participated in various unofficial Jewish musical groups which specialize in Hassidic and modern Israeli songs.
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emigration