Jail Replica Dramatizes Sharansky Plea : His Family in ‘Cell’ Near Soviet U.N. Mission on Behalf of Jews

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, his wife and mother locked themselves into a replica of a jail cell across the street from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan on Thursday to dramatize the plight of Jews still held in Soviet prisons.

The demonstration was designed to underscore the commitment of Sharansky and prominent U.S. Jewish leaders to Josef Begun, an imprisoned Hebrew teacher who is expected to be released this afternoon from Chistopol Prison, and also to serve as a plea on behalf of all dissidents seeking to emigrate to the West.

Sharansky, who recently changed his name from Anatoly Shcharansky, called the release of a series of prominent Jews from Soviet prisons “cosmetics” designed to bring closer economic cooperation with the United States. He urged the American public not to be deceived by the freeing of a few prisoners but to concentrate on the “real picture” inside the Soviet Union.

“It’s not only the case of one or two or three refuseniks.” said Sharansky, who spent nine years in Soviet prisons. “It’s a big national struggle.”

He charged that the freeing of Jewish dissidents is part of a campaign by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to improve not only the Soviet Union’s image but also its position in economic competition with the United States.

‘Danger of the Economy’

“Gorbachev’s real concern is economic. He understands, more than his predecessors, the danger of the economy, the competition with the West,” Sharansky told more than 100 supporters.

“For me, the release of my friends was a big triumph,” he said. “We will see how far the real picture is inside the Soviet Union, how far it is from the image that is already created in the West.”

“Shall we forget that every day people are receiving more and more refusals of permission to emigrate?” he added.

It was bitter cold when Sharansky, his wife, Avital, and his mother, Ida Milgrom, entered the black wooden cage--a cage used in past demonstrations, with numbers attached to its parts to facilitate rapid assembly. The 7-by-7-foot mock jail cell had been used by Sharansky’s wife when she appeared at demonstrations seeking support in the United States for his release.

Joined by Cousin

They were joined in the cell by Begun’s cousin, Zelda Tepper, a resident of New York City. “He is not asking for a pardon,” she said of her imprisoned relative, who was imprisoned in 1983 for alleged anti-Soviet activity. “He made no crime. He is asking for his human right to leave the country.”

Tepper said that even when Begun is freed, it will only be a partial step toward his ultimate freedom. “Russia is just a bigger jail,” she charged. “Out of jail means out of Russia.”

Sharansky, who also spent time in Chistopol Prison, described conditions in the penal institution 500 miles east of Moscow before placing a poster bearing Begun’s photograph outside the front door of the Soviet Mission.

“Inside the prison, there is a very deliberately developed system of punishments, torture by hunger,” he charged, “when you are given less and less food depending on your behavior. There are 18 different diets, norms of feeding, and if you insist in your desire to leave for Israel, they put you in worse and worse condition.”

Morris B. Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, told the demonstrators that about 400,000 Soviet Jews are seeking to emigrate to Israel and to Western nations.

‘Prisoners of Conscience’

“If the Soviet Union wants to demonstrate a new and human face to the world and demonstrate that it lives up to its solemn international commitments, it need only free the prisoners of conscience whom it incarcerated for teaching Hebrew and insisting on the right to be repatriated to Israel,” he said.

Abram said Moscow should grant visas to thousands of refuseniks, “many of whom have been waiting for 10 years or more to emigrate,” and should start issuing visas to hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who have started the emigration procedure by requesting and receiving invitations from relatives in Israel.