Human Rights? Let’s Talk, Soviet Envoy Says to Emigres

In an extraordinary encounter between Soviet officialdom and former members of the dissident movement in Moscow, Soviet Ambassador Yuri V. Dubinin has given assurances that the deadlock in the Reagan-Gorbachev arms talks in Reykjavik does not foreclose progress on human rights issues, two participants in the conversation said Tuesday.

Dubinin made his remarks in a 40-minute conversation Monday evening in an aisle of an Icelandair jetliner bound from Reykjavik to New York. In the course of the talk, the new Soviet envoy to Washington invited three former Soviet citizens to come to the Soviet Embassy here for further discussion of human rights cases they had raised with him.

No firm date was set for a meeting, but the dissidents described as unprecedented the Soviet official’s willingness to talk with hard-core critics of the Soviets’ human rights record.

‘Armed With the Facts’

Alex Goldfarb, an early leader in the Jewish emigration movement who came to the United States 10 years ago, said that three well-known dissident cases were raised with Dubinin and that, after listening, the Soviet envoy responded, “I understand your feelings and I don’t have reason to disbelieve what you say, but you are armed with the facts and I am not.”

At that point, Goldfarb said, the ambassador invited them to bring information on the cases to the Soviet Embassy and added, “I assure you we will consider them seriously.”

Goldfarb, accompanied by Alexander Slepak and Ludmilla Alexeyeva, two other well-known former Soviet dissidents, went to the Iceland summit to protest the Soviets’ human rights record. On their flight back to New York, they found themselves seated about three rows behind the Soviet ambassador and his party.

Goldfarb said that he first attempted to give a note to Dubinin but was brushed aside. However, about 30 minutes later, Dubinin got out of his seat, walked to the row where the three sat and engaged them in conversation.

Daniloff on Board

The unusual meeting took place in view of a number of reporters. Also aboard the plane was U.S. News & World Report correspondent Nicholas Daniloff, who had been jailed in Moscow in late August and charged with espionage.

Coincidentally, the case that Goldfarb put to Dubinin involved his father, David Goldfarb, who he said has been refused permission to leave the Soviet Union because of his refusal several years ago to cooperate with the KGB in framing Daniloff as a spy.

The other cases that Dubinin promised to consider at a meeting at the embassy are those of Slepak’s father, Vladimir Slepak, a veteran Jewish “refusenik” who has been seeking an exit visa for 17 years, and Anatoly Marchenko, who is now on a hunger strike protesting his treatment during his imprisonment.

Marchenko, like Alexeyeva and recently freed dissident Yuri Orlov, was one of the founding members of the Moscow group organized to put pressure on the Soviet government to comply with the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights.

Alexeyeva said that she at first held back from joining the conversation. However, after seeing that Dubinin was talking seriously with Goldfarb, she joined in, urging the Soviet ambassador to support the release of 1,000 political prisoners held by the Soviet government.

She said she was not completely surprised that Dubinin was willing to talk with them because there had been indications in Iceland that the Soviet government would discuss individual rights cases in private.

Sovietologist Present

Another witness to the conversation, although he was out of earshot, was Dimitri Simes, a Russian-born Sovietologist now with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“I was quite impressed,” he said. “In the past, you would never have seen the Soviet ambassador talking with dissident figures in this way. He could have avoided it, but he did not. It was clearly a policy decision on their part.”

For Alexeyeva’s part, however, the encouragement was still tempered. When asked whether she expects the ambassador to make good on his promise to hear them further, she replied, “I don’t know.”