Soviets OK Emigration of Begun, Others : Ease Ban Against Refuseniks Linked to State Secrets

Soviet dissident Josef Begun and several other Jews barred from emigrating on grounds that they have knowledge of state secrets have been told that they will be given permission to leave the country, Begun said Monday.

The decision may indicate that the logjam blocking the departure of many would-be emigres on secrecy grounds may have been broken.

Begun, 54, became a symbol of Jewish protest earlier this year when his family and friends demonstrated on the Arbat, a pedestrian mall in central Moscow, despite harassment and beatings by operatives of the KGB, the Soviet security agency.

It was only after the weeklong “Battle of the Arbat” that Begun was released from Chistopol prison under a Kremlin pardon. Now, Begun said, he and his wife, Inna, and her mother have been told to begin filing papers in anticipation of emigrating to Israel after 16 years of refusals.

May Be Best Known

Because of the KGB suppression of demonstrations on his behalf, Begun may be the best-known Jewish dissident in the Soviet Union since Natan Sharansky left in a prisoner exchange early in 1986.

Other long-term refuseniks who received word Monday that they will be allowed to leave the Soviet Union included Viktor Brailovsky and his family; Semyon Yantovski, and Lev Sud.

“Of course, I am very happy,” Begun told a Western correspondent. “But the fact that a few cases have been resolved does not mean that the question of Jewish emigration as a whole has been resolved.”

Since his release from prison, Begun has applied for government approval to give private lessons in Hebrew, which has been officially discouraged in the past. Several years ago, several teachers of Hebrew were sent to prison on charges that they and their friends said were trumped up by the police. Some, however, have recently been released and allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Brailovsky, 52, a cyberneticist, applied to emigrate 15 years ago. He was convicted in 1980 of defaming the Soviet state and sentenced to five years in internal exile, then freed in 1984.

In the first eight months of this year, a total of 4,681 Soviet Jews have emigrated to the West, compared with a total of 945 for all of last year.

This year’s figure represents a sharp increase in Jewish emigration. The number of departures is already almost five times the total for 1986, but still less than 10% of the 51,000 Jews who left the Soviet Union in 1979.

Despite the change, many long-term refuseniks insist that they are being denied permission to leave on the grounds that they once had access to secrets in their work or in army service, in some cases many years ago.

The release of Brailovsky, who was once denied an exit visa on grounds that he possessed state secrets, could indicate that secrecy may no longer be cited so widely.

Sud, who has said he was refused permission to emigrate on grounds of state security, has said that as a professional musician he never had knowledge of any secrets. Even in the Red Army, Sud said, he was director of a brass band and a vocal-instrumental ensemble.

In Baltimore, meanwhile, Sharansky said that the release of Begun and Brailovsky is only a superficial gesture, the Associated Press reported.

Sharansky, 39, who spent eight years in Soviet prisons until he was freed, said the new releases are tied to superpower talks between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze scheduled for later this month in New York.

“I do think that before Shevardnadze comes, we will hear about other cases” of dissidents being released, said Sharansky, who changed his name from Anatoly Shcharansky after he emigrated.

In a speech earlier Monday at Baltimore’s annual Jewish American Festival, Sharansky was critical of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s announced policy of glasnost, or openness.