Soviet Jewry Backers Hunt for New Tactics

The gathering in a rented concert hall here earlier this month resembled a reunion--Gulag U., Class of 1970, or maybe 1975.

The conversation was all in Russian, and by most accounts, if a visitor closed his eyes and used a little imagination, it could have been a crowded apartment in downtown Moscow or Leningrad, with the heroes of one of the most successful human rights movements of the last generation sitting around a battered table, drinking strong tea and talking about the dream of emigration.

Sharansky Present

Viktor Brailovsky was there, and Ilya (now Eliyahu) Essus. Vladimir Slepak, Yosef Begun and Ida Nudel were out of town, but they sent telegrams. Yuli Edelstein and Alex Jaffe made it, however, and, of course, so did Natan Sharansky, who as Anatoly Shcharansky spent nine years in Soviet prisons and came to personify a cause.

All together, about 400 former Soviet Jews now in Israel participated, not in a reunion, but in the founding conference of what they hope will be an influential new group called the Zionist Forum of Soviet Jews. They unanimously elected Sharansky chairman and turned over to an initiative committee the tough job of coming up with a plan of action.

More than just the formation of the 25th Israeli organization committed to aiding their peers in Russia, however, the Jerusalem conference is symbolic of what leaders of the Soviet Jewry movement here and in the United States describe as a historic and difficult crossroads for their cause.

Having helped to bring about 280,000 Soviet Jews to Israel and the West in the last 20 years, the movement now finds that it must reassess its strategy and grope for new tactics to deal with a drastically changed situation, these leaders said.

Best Known Now in Israel

As was apparent at the conference, most of the best-known, long-term refuseniks who came to symbolize the cause are finally in Israel after years of being denied permission to emigrate. Meanwhile, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev is softening his country’s image by presenting a seemingly more humane Kremlin face both to his own people and to the world outside.

Soon, what many consider to be the most supportive U.S. Administration in the movement’s history will leave office, adding more uncertainty. And even the continuing Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip is indirectly damaging the Soviet Jewry cause by inviting unflattering--and, these leaders argue, totally unjustified--comparisons between Soviet and Israeli human rights records.

“Now we should start everything from the beginning,” said Shmuel Azarkh, director of the Soviet Jewry Education and Information Center and a member of the executive committee of the new umbrella organization. “We closed this volume of struggle, and now we should begin a new one.”

Changing Relationship

The new phase may well involve important changes in the relationship of Israeli and American Jews active in the cause. Some see the danger of new friction, with changing Kremlin emigration procedures throwing those two poles of the movement outside the Soviet Union into at least the appearance of direct competition in some cases.

“We’re still feeling our way,” said Jerry Goodman, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, in a telephone interview from New York. “What is the relationship between all of those impressive figures who created the movement and who for the most part are in Israel, and groups like the National Conference or our counterpart organizations in other countries, who bore the burden for so many years? It’s something yet to evolve.”

Born in the mid-1960s, the movement of Soviet Jews to emigrate first flourished in the era of Soviet-American detente. It was based, to some extent, on a lie.

Loath to accept the notion of free emigration for anyone, the Soviets grudgingly acknowledged a limited opportunity for Jews to leave in the interests of “reunifying” families abroad. Israel, whose raison d’etre is the ingathering of the Jewish nation, readily supplied invitations to Soviet Jews who wanted to leave, whether they actually had relatives already in Israel or not. And the United States steadily pressed the Soviets to permit increasing Jewish emigration as a demonstration of regard for human rights.

Most ‘Dropped Out’

Thousands did leave. They went mostly to Israel at first, but in recent years an increasing majority “dropped out” at their first stop outside the Soviet Union, choosing to go to the United States or other Western countries instead of Israel.

Thousands more applied to leave but were refused permission to emigrate, depending on the international political climate and other factors known only to the Kremlin. Long waits for exit permission, during which Soviet Jews lost their jobs and sometimes their freedom, were seen as Moscow’s way of trying to discourage others from clamoring for the right to leave.

The earliest refuseniks became Zionist heroes, as groups like Goodman’s National Conference and other supporters of the Soviet Jewry movement in Israel and the West tried to focus attention on individual personalities as a way of bringing international pressure to bear on the Kremlin.

It was a tactic that made many uncomfortable, noted Yuri Stern, an immigrant from Russia and spokesman for the Soviet Jewry Education and Information Center here. “But that was the rules of the game for years.”

Gorbachev Changes Everything

Then along came Gorbachev and glasnost , his policy of openness .

By allowing most of the old-time refuseniks to leave, Gorbachev has stripped the movement of its symbols, but without satisfying the basic demand that all Jews who want to leave should be allowed to do so, activists note.

“Now we have the same problem, we have to continue the same struggle, but we don’t have the same symbols,” said Stern.

“We’re out of the star business,” added Lynn Singer, a Long Island activist and former president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry. “We’re now into the people business.”

Gorbachev has done more than just letting a few dozen prominent refuseniks leave, however. He is also making changes at home that some think could have the effect of reducing the demand of other Soviet Jews to emigrate.

Strictures Relaxed

Under him, for example, the Soviets have relaxed some of the strictures that previously strangled Jewish cultural life in the Soviet Union. And a small but growing number of Soviet Jews are being given previously unheard-of visas to visit Israel--490 in 1987, and a forecasted 1,200 this year.

“If Soviet Jews see that they can visit their relatives every two, three, four years, they don’t feel so locked in,” noted Myrna Shinbaum, associate director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.

There are also moves afoot, apparently with Soviet blessing, to change the procedures by which Soviet Jews emigrate. Israeli leaders have long chafed under the current system, whereby an average of about two-thirds of Soviet Jewish emigres in recent years used an Israeli visa to leave, but then “dropped out” for some other destination.

About 165,000 of the 280,000 Soviet Jewish emigres in the last 20 years are now in Israel, while nearly 100,000 are in the United States.

Israel Radio reported last week that the government has decided in principle to deny Israeli visas to Soviet Jews who do not plan to settle here, reversing the policy of two decades. The same day, a Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed that negotiations have been under way for months to fly emigrating Soviet Jews directly to Israel via Bucharest, Romania, effectively ruling out other options.

Most Leave by Way of Vienna

Currently, most Soviet Jews leave by way of Vienna--where in April, for example, 908 of 1,088 emigrants opted to go somewhere other than Israel.

At the same time, the Soviets have begun permitting Jews with close relatives in the United States to leave on an American visa. About 300 did so last year, according to Shinbaum, a total matched in just the first quarter of 1988.

This emerging “two-track” system--with some Soviet Jews going directly to America while others come here--could put the Soviet Jewry movements in the United States and here at cross-purposes, some fear. At any rate, it is “a very sensitive issue,” conceded Goodman.

Gorbachev has also moved, dramatically in some cases, to improve political relations with the United States and Israel, and has made important inroads on public opinion in both countries in the process.

To many former Soviet Jewish activists here, any such inroads only make their job harder.

Harder to Mobilize Opinion

The most substantive change under Gorbachev, Sharansky said, is “the attitude of the world. . . . And as a result, our opportunities to mobilize public opinion of the West on the struggle (for Soviet Jews) is much more difficult today.”

Recalling a piece of U.S. legislation of the mid-1970s, which limited Soviet-American trade pending a change in Soviet emigration policy, Sharansky commented, “If today there were no Jackson-Vanik Amendment, it would be almost impossible to pass a new one.”

All these changes have removed much of the sense of urgency about the Soviet Jewry issue, activists here and in the United States say, even though some see great danger of a backlash stemming from possible failure of Gorbachev’s reforms. He might be toppled, leading to a retrenchment by the old Kremlin guard, they warn. Or he himself might unleash anti-Jewish sentiments in a bid to win important political support among Soviet nationalists.

‘Exciting, Dangerous Time’

“It’s an interesting, exciting, and dangerous time--dangerous because of the very exciting things that are happening and the potential for wrong moves,” said Goodman.