DONAHUE WINS ALL BUT THE REFUSENIK ROUND

“Everything else worked,” Phil Donahue said. “Everything but this.”

It was Tuesday, two days after his return from eight days of taping in the Soviet Union for his syndicated “Donahue” program. The weeklong Soviet segments will air starting Monday (3 p.m. on Channel 4).

What concerned Donahue as he spoke by phone from New York, though, was the segment that won’t be shown, the hour on Soviet Jewry that had been billed to air Tuesday.

The press release had promised: “A studio audience consisting of Jewish dissidents and refuseniks, along with Jews who are contented with their life in the Soviet Union, discuss their opposing views.”

How could this be pulled off by an American talk show visiting Moscow? It couldn’t, as things turned out.

“I’m really disappointed,” Donahue said.

Donahue and his staff had been planning the Soviet trip for months to follow his co-hosting of two “spacebridge” TV dialogues linking American and Soviet citizens by satellite.

One of his goals was to test the Soviets’ new policy of glasnost or openness by doing an hour only with refuseniks, Jews refused permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union. There are 400,000 Jews “still trapped in the Soviet Union,” former refusenik Natan Sharansky (Anatoly Shcharansky) said in Los Angeles recently.

Donahue traced the long, arduous negotiations (his group included two translators from the United States) leading to the big collapse late last week.

“We were in partnership in Moscow with Gosteleradio (Soviet broadcasting, an arm of the Kremlin). So we ask if we can bring refuseniks into one of their studios, because Gosteleradio can give us simultaneous translation.

“They say, ‘What about “contented” Jews?’

“They say that ‘if you put all refuseniks on, it will look like all Jews in the Soviet Union are unhappy. You must have contented Jews on.’

“Then they add the proportionality issue.”

The Soviets claimed that it would be unfair to have on as many refuseniks as “contented” Jews because the latter outnumber the former 50 to 1, Donahue said.

“I said, ‘Puleeeeze . ‘ “

And on and on it went.

“At one time, everyone consented to being on the program together,” he said. “But at various times throughout the long days of negotiations, the anti-Zionist Jews--I’m not really comfortable with calling them that--said, ‘We don’t want to go on with the refuseniks,’ and the refuseniks later said, ‘Fine, we don’t want to go on with them, either.’

“So we get a deal by which we will have separate appearances by the refuseniks and anti-Zionists.” Then the issue became numbers.

“How many of each? The refuseniks are ready to deliver 300. Gosteleradio says 300 is a small army that will deceive the West into thinking all Jews in the Soviet Union are malcontents. ‘How about 100?’ they say. After a three-hour lunch with Gosteleradio officials, we agree on 50. We shake hands.”

Donahue immediately returned to his hotel, where prominent refusenik Vladimir Slepak was waiting. They went to a small apartment to meet 20 to 25 other refuseniks.

“Some of them were older women married to men in prison. One woman showed me a picture of her husband in a locket around her neck. Another woman was herself in a psychiatric hospital (Soviets typically incarcerate dissidents and refuseniks in such institutions). Another was married to a man who was busted for drugs at the airport as he was about to emigrate.

“So I give these people the deal. They have a lot of discourse in Russian, then they buy it. They start going over the lists of people who will be on the show.”

Donahue again returned to his hotel at about 11:30 p.m. where he found his executive producer, Patricia McMillen, arguing on the phone with a leader of the Moscow “anti-Zionist” Jews.

“He wants 25 apiece and he wants to do both sides together. We say we had a deal for 50. We shook hands. The refuseniks are bringing in people from out of town.”

Donahue demanded and got a meeting the next day with top Gosteleradio officials. “We sit around another long table and tea is served. We’ve got interpreters and various functionaries and I’m saying, ‘You broke the deal. You can’t send me back to the refuseniks after I’ve agreed on 50 and separate appearances.’

“He (the Gosteleradio official) tells me that these ‘contented’ Jews are hard-working people with jobs and families and it’s hard to get 50 together because they’re not politically motivated. Anyway, this is the sense I was getting. It takes 45 minutes, but I’m successful in separating the format again. But now we’re in a numbers contest. He writes out on a piece of paper ’15 or 20.’ I write ‘25’ over the ’20.’ ”

So it was settled: separate segments, one featuring 25 refuseniks, the other 25 “contented” Jews.

Back Donahue went to the refuseniks. “They hit the ceiling. They say they’re not going there with 25 people. The deal is off.”

To heck with Gosteleradio. Donahue suggested that he try to find independent TV equipment and a room large enough to tape the original number of refuseniks by themselves. “I’m proposing to shoot a program with 300 people with consecutive translation with one hand-held camera in a room somewhere in Moscow. They like this idea and they suggest using a room in the American Embassy.”

Next day, Donahue’s staff arranged to borrow a camera from NBC’s Moscow bureau. But U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman refused let Donahue and even 50 refuseniks use the embassy, Donahue said, and also informed the talk-show host that the Kremlin “controls all the buildings.”

Everything was now almost kaput.

“Now the refuseniks say they will consent to meet me with my camera in Slepak’s apartment and will say why they refuse to take the deal for 25, but will not answer questions about their personal situations.”

Donahue and his staff pleaded with them. He now believes that the refuseniks didn’t trust him. “Remember, I’m the guy who was partner with the Soviets throughout this visit.”

As far as the refuseniks are concerned, Donahue said, all he came away with was a brief tape of some of them explaining “why they will not do it, that what they say will be twisted anyway and in effect, that they are angry and will not be abused anymore.”

That footage will be shown during Wednesday’s segment on which Donahue also visits Chernobyl and other sensitive Soviet sites.

Donahue said that some of the refuseniks had felt from the beginning that cooperating with Gosteleradio was unwise. He said that some of the younger refuseniks wanted to go along with the offer to put just 25 of their number on the air, however, but they were overruled by veteran refuseniks who insisted on unity.

“Many of the people who accompanied me were bewildered by this strategy of the refuseniks and I’m trying to understand it, too,” Donahue said. “But, to meet with them as often as we did and to be in the company of these people who are not free to leave their own country is itself a profound emotional experience, and so the last thing I’m going to do is to presume to drop out of the sky from the West and give them advice.”

Donahue said he ultimately got a call from some of the younger refuseniks saying they would agree to speak. “But by then,” he said, “I no longer had a camera and I had an airplane leaving for Leningrad.”