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The Canadian Jewish Nevys, Thursday, February 27, 1986^Page 9
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U,S^ ddcuments Som
WOLF BLITZER
WASHINGTON - \ .
Gbincidentallyj the Soviet Union's decision to free Anatoly Stcharansky came just as the U.S. state department released its annual worldwide huiirian rights report, including a lengthy section on the Soviet Union. It served as a dramatic reminder that there are still many more — but not as well-known 'Scharanskys" left behind the Iron Curtain.
^'Soviet performance in; the realm of human rights fails to meet even the most elementary of accepted international standards," it concluded; "The constitution forhialiy provides for most internationally recognized human rights and guarantees the right to education, medical care, and work. In p)ractice, however, these rights are lirnited by the admitted priority given to the in-, terests of the state. Freedom of speech is denied by vague laws prescribing imprisonment for . defaming the state." :
To back up this pointy the Soviet regime ''confines those attetnpting to exercise their rights to prison, labor camps, pr psychiatric hospitals . . . Beatings/ inadequate food, clothing, and shelter, heavy manual labor, iui-satisfactory medical care, isolation, extended interrogation, and threats against prisoners' families were characteristic abuses.. .Every year a number of persons die in prisons and labor camps because of the harsh conditions and inadequate medical attention.''
Many ethnic and religious groups in the Soviet Union suffer, but, the U.S. report ndted the special treatment given to Jews,, especially to those w'ho want to practice their religion, study Hebrew or emigrate. The report does not diplomatically shy away from the gor>; details, citing names of Jews in trouble. "Jewish cultural activist Yuliy Edelshtein was repeatedly beaten at the instigation of labor camp officials in an effort to persuade him to renounce . his religion."it said. "Lydia Koifman, wife of imprioned Hebrew teacher Yevgeniy Koifman, was comhiitted to a psychiatric hospital because of her efforts to assist and defend her husband." . He had been tried in Dnepropetrovsk "on a
trumped-up narcotics charge and sentenced to 2'/: years of closely supervised work release."
The repon continued: ''Moscow Hebrew teacher Dmitriy (Dan) Shapiro was brought to trial June 26. Aften other forms of pressure, Shapiro sighttj a 'confession' to Zionist and anti-Soviet activities. Later broadcast oh Soviet national television, Shapiro's statement named several Jewish 'collaborators,' many of whom in fact did not know him well. Shapiro was given a suspended sentence, but his public 'confession; was W'idely interpreted as a stem warning against assertion of Jewish culture and identity,"
There-Were many other arrests and trials of Hebrew teachers which "reinforced the climate of repression." A fihn, Conspiracy Against the Nation of Soviets, was ^liown on
Soviet television in February and again in September, as well as in theatres. "The film not only attacked major dissident figures but also spqght to link Jewish emigration with Western intelligence activities. Many Soviet Jews regard such films, books, and articles featuring anti-semitic themes as evidence of govemment^hspired hostility to them;"
Thus, Leningrad Hebrew teacher Roald Zelichonok was placed on trial on Aug. 8 and sentenced to 3 years in a labor camp for anti-Soviet slander, "apparently on the basis of statements made in private letters."
Ariother Hebrew teacher; Leonid Volvovskiy, '.'already e.xiled to the closed city of Gorkiy, was charged with anti-Soviet slander and sentenced Oct. 24 to three years in.a penal camp. His trial
est star in firmamerit of Refuseniks
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DAVID LEVY
Even if you knew- someone who went to jail .for good reason, to anyone with norrnal human feelings it is a troubling and unsettling experience. But when it is someone you knew who was "perfectly innocent, who was not just framed but framed by a state that the world accepts as a legitimate operation, it is too much to bear.
Thiat is how 1 felt in Moscow on. and well before, that day in mid-July, 1978, when a man I had known personally and as the brightest star in the firmament of Jewish would-be emigrants, was sentenced to 13 years in the hell of the Soviet gulag. ,
Covering the Scharansky trial was rriy last assignment in Moscow where I had first gone in 1964.for the CBG. and where! had witnes the rise and demise of a startlingly bold Jewish activist campaign for emigration to Israel. It was in following this istor\-. from the mornent it really started outside the Moscow synagogue on Sim-chat Torah in 1969 to the sorry aftermath of Brezhnev's signature on the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, that I got to know Scharansky.
Tolya, as we knew him, was easily the most intelligent arid the brightest of the actors in that historic drama. He knew his rights under the Helsinki Final Act, and be demanded them with vigor and even humor. He was, moreover, almost the drily one in the crowd of dissidents who spoke English fluently, and this brought him a more attentive audience among us foreign correspondents on whom he, as all Soviet dissidents, depended for the protection that only worldwide publicity affords in Soviet life.
Andrei Sakharpv. whomT also saw for the last time in Moscow that sumrrier of 1978. said of Schafansky's cruel sentence;
"Scharansky told the truth, and he told it in English, and that's why they have sentenced
him." .■ . :■• With his excellent English, he had a better opportunity than most to make a tolerable life for himself in the Soviet Union. I had another Jewish frifend in Moscow who appears to have done just that with the almost native English he acquired attending an Americah school in Shanghai. Those
who.saw PBS's wonderfully accurate documentary "Russia — love it or leave it" recently. Would have .seen him. the bearded man among the four who were answering questions of American tourists. Vladiriiir Posner, so ubi-. quitous as a guest on North American TV news shows, is.another example.
These people do not really think the way they talk in public. They play the dishonest Soviet game by lying every day of their lives. Very near the surface they think like Scharansky. At least my bearded Jewish friend does. But, as they say, it's a living.
Scharaiisky spumed the benefits that fluency in English can confer on a Soviet citizen and said what was on his mind. In this, he also manifested something else that is very rare in Soviet citizens and which niade it particularly easy to associate with Scharansky, He thought like a Westerner. He did not have that peculiarly convoluted Russian mind. He was charming and crazy in the Western way, not the Russian, which can be so exasperating for us foreigners. You could deal with him on the basis of our kind of logic and rationalism. He knew the risks he was taking, but betook them rationally. I had only one other Soviet friend, also Jewish, who was like that — an artist who finally emigrated. . . By saying I "covered" Scharansky's trial for CBG I am. of course, using the word loosely. Foreign correspondents just do not get into dissident trials. They can only report on.them from outside. Indeed, the word '.'trial" is itself a gross misnomer, How can one talk of a trial when the outconie is a foregone conclusion? When acquittals just do not happen? When the only case of mercy shown was that in commuting the death sentences of Mark DymshiLs and Eduard Kuznet-sdv to 15 years of .strict regime? And then only under extreme international pressure.
The Russian and Yiddish word protsess, cognate of our word process, is much more accurate. Scharansky was processed by the Soviet state grinding machine which has made mincemeat of so many millions of innocent lives before Scharansky was dragged into it by an angry and fearful KGB.
Scharaq§li^was frattied, and that was the really
hard thing to come to ternis with as a Western reporter sent in by CBG that July specially to report on the Scharansky trial. His knowledge of Soviet state secrets that he was accused of haying passed to Los Angeles Times correspondent Robert Toth, also framed as an alleged CIA agent (President Jimmy Carter denied it), was no more than that which every educated Soviet citizen possesses. As a well known Soviet joke puts it — they know how terrible Soviet technology is, and. that's a state secret! As a computer expert, Scharansky certairily knew that secret.
; Not counting Nazi Germany, in which illegality was national policy. France gave us the classic example of a state-sponsored frameup of a Jew with the Alfred Dreyfus case. With Theodor Herzl covering that trial, it became the genesis of Zionism, How fitting, I thought, as news of ■ Schararisky's awful .sentence ran through . Moscow's community of Western reporters, that' Zionism should now be the real crime for which that sentence was given.
Though the anti-semitic foundation of the Scharansky frameup needed no special explanation, iso obvious was it, thekremlin made just the sort of unusual effort to deny it that only served to prove its truth in the final analysis. Right at that time, Soviet media made much of the execution of a Soviet trading of-fkial caught spying for the CIA. Normally, this sort Of thing is almost never reported; and if reported, only for a very special reason, In this instance, the reason was not only clear. It was also explicitly stated a Gentile we execute, a Jew we spare, so what better proof do you want of Soviet humanitarianism?
Why the release is being taken now as a sign of Soviet humariity in some quarters can only be explained as wishful thinking. When Scharansky gets into the sort of fighting trim he was in when I last knew him, the tale he will have to tell might change the minds of the most hardened wishful thinkers and Soviet sympathizers. Novy the world will soon have a chance to see at first hand what a terrible thing the Soviet state did in falsely im^ prisoning a man like Anatoly Scharansky. That people will draw the right conclusions is less certain, however. ^
took place in an atmosphere characterized by anti-semitic slogans painted on waits: near his apartment and by hostile articles in the official local , press." ; . . ■ ;■■
One Of the better known Jewish dissidents, losif; Begun, was transferred from a labor camp to a pri.son, apparently for violation of camp rules. "His wife and son were repeatedly warned by ,. Soviet authorities to cease activities on his behalf, such as hunger strikes arid press conferences." ; Another Jewish activist, losif Beren.shtein. underwent treatrnenl for blindness suffered iri a prison attack but was transferred back to a camp at Zholtye Vody"with;little chance of regain-, ing his sight." '
In the:state department document, there is.also ■ mention of Alek.sandrKholmyanskiy. another Hebrew teacher who .suffered ill health. Samuel .Epshtein, serving a term for anti-Soviet slander, had his term extended by two years under a new law which permits extension of camp .sentences for minor infractions of camp rules; By last fall, U.S. officials in the Soviet Union had reached a "conservative" estimate that the number of imprisoned Jewish activists had reached 22.
It is that background which helps to explain ; why The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial on Feb, 12, urged the Reagan administration to maintain a tough posture in dealing with the Soviets. After suggesting that Soviet General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev hopes that the release of Scharansky will pave the way for the Soviets to obtain economic and other concessions from theWest, the editorial said: "Let's give him a disappointment ...
"The task now is to deny the Soviets the price that they hope to get for the Scharansky release,-it continued. "They want a growing Western .sen.se that they are ready for peace, but whenever we look at Mr. Scharansky we should remember that people capable of the barbarism we saw in this case are not to be tmsted to make peace. They want investment and trade, but a government that must make frequent resort to terror is not exactly a stable business partner."
But there is some reason to believe that the Reagap administration is not going to follow that editorial's stem advice. President Ronald Reagan, at his White House news conference on Feb. 11, hinted broadly that he accepts the notion that a general relaxation Of East-West tensions would ease the plight of other dissidents in the Soviet Union and result in an increased number of emigrants.
"I don't have any way to determine what their motives are in doing this," he said when asked whether the Scharansky release might herald • some real eharigc in Soviet policy. He noted, : however, tWtsOn\e other well-known Soviet dissidents had been allowed to leave since his Geneva summit with Gorbachev last November.
"I only know that since the Geneva meeting there has been not only this but others released, {. more so than in a great many years. I'm encouraged by this because I did talk at great length about the matter of human rights with the general-secretary and all we can; do is hope that this is , ■ a beginning, a sign for what's going to take place." .■:
The upshot, of course, was that things might unprove for Soviet Jewry if the overall American-Soviet relationship improved. Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz, who have forcefully raised the human rights issue during every meeting they have had with their Soviet counterparts, appear ready to give the Soviets a chance to establish their sinceri^ ty. They believe that the ball is clearly in Moscow's court.
The start of direct flights to Israel for Soviet Jewish refugees; for example, would signal a rria- ' jor breakthrough, according to U.S. and Israeli officials as well as American Jewish activists. This was a basic point made by Prime Minister Shimon Peres during his talk with Soviet Foreign , Minister Eduard Shevardriadze at the United Nations last October. There is a growing sen.se in Washington that such flights are certainly possible, although by no means yet certain:
In the meantime, the pattern of repression continues in the Soviet Union, as documented in the new state department human rights scoreboard. The KGB, it said, is charged by the Communist Party "with enforcing compliance by the population with policy decisions, directives, and legislation. They do so in large part by instilling fear among dissenters and potential dissenters."
Scharansky, in the coming weeks, months and years, will no doubt serve as an eloquent eyewitness to this coiitinuing and fundamental fact of life in the Soviet Union today. His freedom sparked a massive amount of American and worldwide media attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry. Among many Soviet Jewish activists in the United States, there already is a new spirit, a new momentum, an apparent revivalof the early days of the movement. That's good news to the other "Scharanskys" still left behind.