Refuseniks Urge Superpowers to Agree on Emigration

A group of veteran refuseniks Tuesday urged President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to break a stalemate on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union and find ways to issue more visas to Soviet Jews when the two leaders meet this weekend in Iceland.

The number of Jews allowed to leave the Soviet Union, which had already fallen off dramatically when Reagan and Gorbachev met last November in Geneva, has remained at the same level, or even a bit lower, the group said.

In an open letter to the two leaders, the group said: “We understand that a turning point in political developments is being approached. Without finding a solution to the problem (of Jewish emigration), it will be impossible to guarantee stable progress in other areas and to overcome the crisis of trust.”

Policy of Candor

Alexander Ioffe, a mathematician who has been trying for 10 years to get an exit visa, said that he and six other refuseniks decided to speak out because of Gorbachev’s new policy of glasnost, or public candor.

Viktor Fulmacht, a computer specialist who for seven years has been prevented from emigrating, estimated that at least 25,000 and perhaps as many as 45,000 Jews have applied to leave and were turned down by Soviet officials.

Of the estimated 2 million Jews in the Soviet Union, he said, several hundred thousand may want to leave but fear that if they apply to do so, they may lose their jobs or suffer other reprisals.

Boris Klotz, a mathematician who has been trying to leave the country since 1980, said the meeting in Iceland has revived hopes for a change in Soviet policy on this issue.

“It is a moment of opportunity,” he said.

Plan to Speak Out

Members of the group, who discussed their ideas with several reporters, said they will be speaking out more often on the issue of Jewish emigration than they have in the past.

“As we see more openness, more delicate problems discussed in the newspapers and on television, we want to discuss the problem that affects us,” Ioffe said.

“Statistics show,” Klotz put in, “that the flow of Jewish emigration is about the same or a little bit lower than it was before the Geneva summit.”

The release this year of human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky from prison in an East-West exchange and the recent release of peace activist Vladimir Brodsky from a labor camp shows what can be done, Klotz said.

Since the start of the 1970s, about 250,000 Jews have received permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union, Ioffe estimated. But after more than 51,000 left in the peak year of 1979, the departures have dropped off to fewer than 1,000 a year.

According to recent Soviet statements, people who are allowed to emigrate are unhappy in Israel and the United States. Twice, an American TV film called “The Russians Are Here” has been shown on Russian television to support the official position that emigres have a hard time adjusting to new conditions.

Novosti, the Soviet press agency, recently invited a group of Western correspondents to meet with several Soviet Jews to discuss emigration. Viktor Magidson, a free-lance writer, estimated that only 1% of the Jews who left the Soviet Union to live in the United States are happy there.

But Magidson said he believes that as many as 15,000 people are still seeking permission to emigrate despite official refusals in the past.

Meanwhile, Inna Fleurova said Tuesday that she is torn between going to Israel to provide her cancer-stricken brother with a bone marrow transplant and remaining with her husband, Viktor, who is engaged in a hunger strike in an effort to get permission to accompany her.

Fleurova said she has not been able to get permission to go to Israel and return to her family in Moscow. Her request was denied on grounds that the Soviet Union does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

When she and her family decided to emigrate, her husband was refused an exit visa because his father would not waive any future financial claims against him.