Some Jews Seek to Return, Soviets in Israel Say

The first Soviet officials to visit Israel in 20 years said Thursday that they have been approached by Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union wanting to go back home as well as Israelis campaigning for greater Jewish emigration.

“There are some people who expressed their wish to return to the Soviet Union,” Yevgeny Antipov, head of the eight-member consular group, said in an interview.

Spokesman Alexander Onya said 20 such people have contacted the consular mission since it opened for business Wednesday in a small suburban annex of the Finnish Embassy.

Another 70 or 80 had written to Moscow before their arrival requesting permission to return permanently, Onya said.

A former Soviet physics professor, Gregori Bartleib, 80, who emigrated to Israel 15 years ago, said: “It is not good for me here. I want to go home.”

Another elderly man in the mission’s waiting room, who declined to give his name, said he did not enjoy life in Israel and wanted to return to his family in Samarkand, in Soviet Central Asia.

Most others said they wanted tourist visas to visit relatives in the Soviet Union.

“I haven’t seen my mother in eight years,” said Alex Esipovich, 26, an aspiring Leningrad-born film maker who lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and son.

Esipovich said he came to the Soviets’ makeshift consular offices to obtain a copy of his high school record and found the Soviets handing out visa applications. He said he would apply.

Not since the Soviet Union broke relations with Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967 have the Soviets made it so easy for Jewish emigrants living in Israel to apply for visas for trips back home.

But Antipov said his team is not empowered to issue visas or decide on the cases of emigres wishing to return and can only advise them on how to apply.

Because the two nations have no diplomatic ties, Israelis with visa approval will be required to travel to a nation with relations with the Soviet Union to pick up the visa at a Soviet Embassy.

The delegation’s stated purpose for the official visit is to inspect Soviet property in Israel, largely Russian Orthodox Church holdings, and to meet with Soviet passport holders living in Israel.

Antipov stressed that the mission is not political and does not herald any resumption of diplomatic relations with Israel. Finland has represented Soviet interests here since Moscow severed relations.

The Soviets’ arrival at their office was delayed about 30 minutes Thursday when five women laid down in front of the diplomats’ car outside their seaside hotel. The women said they were protesting the Kremlin’s emigration policy, which they said bars 400,000 Jews from leaving the Soviet Union.