Sharansky Family Plans to Demonstrate for Refuseniks at Soviet Mission to U.N.

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky and his family left Israel on Wednesday for New York, and he said his wife, their 3-month-old daughter and his mother intend to demonstrate on behalf of Soviet Jews outside the Soviet Mission to the United Nations.

Sharansky said they hope their action will help achieve a breakthrough on the issue of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. Its immediate goal, he said, is the release of Josef Begun, 55, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence for anti-Soviet activity.

Not long after the Sharanskys’ plane took off, it was announced in Geneva that Soviet authorities had pardoned Begun. Samuel L. Zivs, head of the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee and vice president of the Soviet-American Friendship Assn., said that President Andrei A. Gromyko or one of his deputies had signed the pardon Tuesday night.

Will Work for Others

Sharansky’s wife, Avital, said that even if it is confirmed that Begun has been released from prison, they will go ahead with their protest in support of other Jewish refuseniks, Soviet citizens who have applied to emigrate and have been refused.

Sharansky, who has formally changed his name from Anatoly Shcharansky, said at a press conference that he and his family were going to New York in response to what they consider an empty propaganda campaign of glasnost (openness) by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“I am not one who can trust such a person as Gorbachev,” said Sharansky, who was released a year ago in an East-West exchange after nine years in Soviet prisons and prison camps.

Closed the Border

He said that Gorbachev, while proclaiming a new openness in Soviet society, has closed the border to hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who would like to leave but are not even permitted to apply for emigration under regulations that became effective Jan. 1.

Sharansky pointed out that a member of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, Georgy A. Arbatov, had said Sunday on the CBS network’s “Face the Nation” that Begun had already been released from Chistopol Prison. But Sharansky said he had talked by telephone Wednesday with Begun’s wife, Inna, and that she quoted Soviet prison officials as saying that her husband was still behind bars Wednesday morning.

Sharansky noted that his own release was part of a secret Soviet-American agreement under which his mother, brother, sister-in-law and two nephews were also to be allowed to emigrate immediately. He said it was only after he publicly disclosed the terms of the arrangement and began agitating on his relatives’ behalf that they were finally allowed to come to Israel last September.

Women Will Lead

Avital Sharansky said the Sharansky women will lead the anti-Soviet protest in New York in keeping with the “very courageous demonstrations of women in Moscow” on behalf of Begun.

A group of protesters, mostly women, demonstrated for five straight days in downtown Moscow last week. On the first day they were not interfered with, but on succeeding days Soviet security agents broke up the demonstrations, punching and kicking participants and dragging them off the street.

The U.S. and British governments called on Moscow last Friday to prevent further violence against the Begun protesters.

Asked if he would join his wife, mother and infant daughter outside the Soviet U.N. Mission, Sharansky replied, “Maybe.” He said the intent is “to draw maximum public opinion” and to “mobilize people of good will all over the world.”

Neither Sharansky nor his wife would say how long they expect to be in New York. He said, “Even if we will come back soon, I hope others will continue the demonstration.”

Increasingly Concerned

In an interview last week, Sharansky conceded that he has become increasingly concerned over what he sees as Gorbachev’s success in blinding the Western news media and Western public opinion to continued repression in Soviet society.

He said Wednesday that he would be more impressed with the Soviet leader’s good will if Gorbachev demonstrated it domestically. Gorbachev’s statements “are mainly for you, for foreigners,” he said.

He conceded that it is now possible for him to speak more freely by telephone with Soviet citizens such as Andrei D. Sakharov, the dissident physicist, but said that if people in Kiev or Leningrad want to hear Sakharov’s views, they have to listen to the Voice of America.

“If it is a policy and not just public relations, then why don’t they let (Sakharov) speak openly inside the Soviet Union?” he asked.

The increased accessibility to Soviet officials and events like last week’s Kremlin-sponsored peace forum, which attracted 1,300 Soviet and foreign scientists, politicians and celebrities to Moscow, “doesn’t change life in the Soviet Union,” Sharansky said. “All this is a public relations campaign.”