Former Soviet Chess Champion Emigrates to West

Former Soviet chess champion Boris Gulko and his family arrived in Vienna on Thursday after waiting seven years for permission to emigrate to Israel.

Meanwhile, in Cologne, West Germany, an international group of physicians said that the Soviet Union has released a dissident doctor, Alex Shatravka, from prison and will allow him to emigrate. A second imprisoned dissident physician, Vladimir Brodsky, is expected to be released soon, the organization said.

The chess champion, his wife and their 7-year-old son flew to Vienna from Moscow on an Aeroflot plane and were met by an official of the Jewish Agency, which helps Soviet Jews process paper work for entry to Israel.

Gulko, gray-haired and looking older than his 38 years, did not speak to reporters. His wife, Anna Akhsharumova, also a leading chess player, said the family is “very happy” to be in the West.

Won Championship in 1977

Gulko won the Soviet chess championship in 1977. After he applied to emigrate in 1979, he was not allowed to participate in international tournaments, although he competed in some domestic competitions.

After the Gulkos said last month that they would stage a daily protest in central Moscow for permission to emigrate, they were detained at least four times on their way to the protest site. Twice, however, they were allowed to unfurl for several minutes a banner reading “Let Us Go to Israel.”

Authorities told Gulko earlier this month that he would be allowed to leave if he stopped protesting.

Friends in Moscow said that Soviet customs officials kept the chess medals won by Gulko and his wife but promised they would be sent to the couple.

Officials Kept Medals

“Be champions over there,” shouted one well-wisher seeing the family off in Moscow. “You are already champions for getting permission to leave,” said another.

Akhsharumova said the family hopes to leave for Israel by Sunday. Vienna is the usual transit point for Jews leaving the Soviet Union for Israel or other destinations.

Appeal by Cardiologist

In Cologne, John Pastore, secretary of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said the news about the two dissident physicians was brought to the organization’s four-day congress by Yevgeny I. Chazov, the Soviet cardiologist who is co-president of the organization. The organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

Pastore said that the group’s American co-president, Harvard Professor Bernard Lown, had made a personal appeal to Chazov for Brodsky’s release.

“Dr. Chazov has informed us that in response to the concern of IPPNW physicians, competent Soviet authorities are giving favorable consideration to the case of Vladimir Brodsky,” Pastore said. “We anticipate his release from prison in the near future.”

He said Shatravka has already been released and been given permission to leave the Soviet Union.

Shatravka and Brodsky were members of a group set up in 1982--the Moscow Group to Establish Trust Between the Soviet Union and the United States--to promote open relations between the two countries. The group was not sanctioned by Soviet authorities.

Sentenced for ‘Hooliganism’

Brodsky was sentenced last summer on a charge of malicious hooliganism to three years in prison. Shatravka, arrested in July 1982, was sentenced in March, 1983, to three years in jail on charges of forging a document.

The Soviet Union granted exit visas to 1,140 Jews last year, up from the record low of 904 in 1984. Emigration peaked in 1979, when 51,330 Jews were allowed to leave.

On Tuesday, the State Department announced in Washington that Soviet officials said 117 people would be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Officials said 36 divided families, with relatives in the Soviet Union and the United States, would be affected.