‘Bugs’ Found Hiding in Soviet Self-Examination

U.S. human rights activists said today they sensed a “terrific self-examination” of Soviet policies under way but learned that authorities were listening to their conversations with dissidents.

Asked about the reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, U.S. Helsinki Watch Chairman Robert Bernstein said: “I think it has to be something serious. . . . It’s a terrific self-examination of a nation.”

But Bernstein told reporters that the rights group learned that authorities were listening to their conversation when members met Monday with Lev Timofeyev, chairman of the group’s Soviet affiliate, Press Club Glasnost, in his apartment.

Bernstein said Giorgi Edelshtein, one of the Soviets who was meeting with the Helsinki group, heard the conversation in Timofeyev’s apartment being transmitted to a car parked outside.

Several minutes after Edelshtein returned and told the group what he heard, police called Timofeyev to ask him if he had a job and how he was supporting himself, Bernstein said. Soviet citizens can be prosecuted for not holding an officially approved job.

Many Soviet dissidents assume their apartments are bugged, and unmarked cars and vans often are parked nearby during dissident gatherings.

Bernstein and about 20 other members of Helsinki Watch groups from the West met this week with dissidents and government ministers and held a joint session with an officially sponsored human rights group.

The Western groups monitor compliance with the 1975 Helsinki agreement that defined basic human rights that should be observed by all signatories. They previously had visited the Soviet Union in the 1970s, but had been denied visas since 1979.

Soviet officials told the group that reforms will take time because they are rewriting more than 100 laws.

They accepted information from the group on specific human rights cases, but provided no details about them or about what legal changes will be made.