Soviet Jewish Women Begin Fast in Appeal for Emigration

A large group of Jewish women began a hunger strike Sunday, a date celebrated in the Soviet Union and elsewhere as International Women’s Day, to protest the denial of permission to emigrate.

Rimma Yakir, one of the participants, said that 75 women in Moscow, Leningrad and seven other cities were joining in a three-day fast.

They were among 89 so-called refuseniks who wrote to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal parliament, demanding exit visas.

“We protest the illegal, senseless, prolonged and unjust detention of our families,” the women said in a Feb. 5 letter to the Supreme Soviet.

Yakir said that no reply was received to the letter and that most of the women who signed it decided to stage the hunger strike to back up their demands.

Another protester, Inna Ioffe, called the fast “a symbolic act of protest. We want to show that we are still here, because often our newspapers write that there aren’t any people in the Soviet Union who want to leave.”

Ioffe added that many of those who joined the fast have been waiting 10 years or longer for exit visas.

During the detente era of the 1970s, Soviet officials allowed freer emigration. Departures peaked in 1979, when more than 51,000 Jews were given exit visas, but the number fell to fewer than 1,000 in 1986.

In a related development in Jerusalem, 11 mothers of Soviet Jews denied exit visas ended their hunger strike after five days when three of them collapsed outside the office of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Israel radio said.

They gave up out of concern for their health, the radio report added. The women, members of a group calling itself “Mothers for Freedom,” said they were disappointed that new Soviet emigration rules did not lead to the immediate reunification of families.