Despite Reforms, More Soviet Jews Seek to Leave

At age 22, with a college degree and a belief in the reforms currently buffeting Soviet society, Sergei Reznikov would seem to be an unlikely candidate to emigrate.

But last March, Reznikov, who is Jewish, decided to become just that by formally applying for permission to leave the Soviet Union, a decision that consigned his young life to a kind of limbo and condemned him to social ostracism.

He joined a line of 20,000 to 30,0000 Soviet Jews that already includes his own parents, who live in hopes of one day being allowed to resettle in Israel or the United States.

Those in the West who monitor the plight of Soviet Jews believe the easing of restrictions on human rights here and the whiffs of greater liberalization to come have acted to swell rather than diminish the number of those wanting to leave the country.

The National Conference on Soviet Jewry in New York, for example, reports an increase in the number of Soviet Jews who have taken the initial step in the emigration process by seeking an official invitation from a relative in Israel.

“It could be they are concerned and uncertain about just what glasnost (openness) might bring,” stated conference spokesman Jerry Strober.

In part, new applicants have been encouraged by an easing of the tight restrictions on emigration, both for Jews and non-Jews.

Compared to about 1,000 Jews per year that Soviet officials permitted to leave during the mid-1980s, current emigration is running closer to 1,000 per month--a sharply improved pace, although still far below levels reached during detente in the 1970s.

Little Hope for Future

This heightened prospect of emigration is coupled to an unsettling conviction that, while reforms pressed by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev may be substantial, they seem to offer little hope of improving conditions for the country’s Jewish population, which numbers about 2 million, the largest anywhere except in the United States and Israel.

“I now believe in the changes, but I think they are too dependent on one man--Gorbachev,” Reznikov said over dinner not long ago at his family’s modest apartment in Moscow’s southern suburbs. “But no matter what happens, I think Jewish life here will always be, and always has been, second rate.”

Added Eduard Nadgornay, a physicist who has watched four Soviet leaders in power since he first applied to leave 6 1/2 years ago: “The fate of Soviet Jews changed with the founding of Israel. It isn’t possible to have an important job here when you are viewed as a fifth columnist.”

There is also the sense among many Soviet Jews that present political trends, however encouraging for Soviet society in general, will not end a level of anti-Semitism that they are convinced is ingrained in a culture that spawned the word pogrom (from the Russian pogromit --to destroy).

They and others, for example, pointed out that the limited freedom of expression that has characterized the Gorbachev years has led to increases in anti-Semitic literature and the desecration of graves in Jewish cemeteries.

They also note that Soviet reforms have so far failed to provide such basics as the right to study and speak Hebrew.

Consequently, although an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Jews are expected to be granted permission to emigrate this year, the number of those being refused exit permits, commonly called refuseniks, is also expected to climb.

In one group of refusenik women organized in Moscow earlier this year by Reznikov’s mother, Sulamith, about 70 of the original 280 members have already departed; but at the same time, the list of members has grown to around 300.

“When people see others leaving, they decide to try themselves,” Sulamith Reznikov said.

Just how far Soviet officials are willing to go in accelerating the pace remains unclear, but the National Conference on Soviet Jewry believes that about 380,000 Jews have already taken the initial step and that this number would almost certainly increase further if the prospects for emigration continue to grow and levels of official harassment decline.

Hope for further progress was stirred last month by the first visit of an official Israeli delegation to Moscow in over two decades. Israel and the Soviet Union have had no diplomatic relations since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Improved Conditions

For those who still undergo the nerve-racking wait to leave, conditions have improved.

Nadgornay’s wife, Nina, notes that the level of official harassment traditionally endured by refuseniks has eased to a point where they can chat on the telephone, organize meetings in each other’s homes, and even conduct small street protests about their plight, although this frequently ends in hours of unpleasant detention and an eventual fine.

“It is no longer dangerous to discuss our problems,” said Reznikov’s father, Gennady.

Nina Nadgornay now writes signed articles as the Moscow correspondent for a London-based weekly, the Jewish Chronicle, regularly dictating her articles by telephone, and the paper’s editors in London say that they are formalizing the arrangement with the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

Valery Soyfer, a molecular biologist who had been refused permission to emigrate for 10 years, managed to publish an article on the impact of Stalin’s purges on genetic science in the prominent Soviet weekly magazine, Ogonyok, before he was allowed to leave the country last March.

But for those who wait, a softer government approach has brought its own special agony. The apartments of veteran refuseniks, replete with dog-eared travel posters and outdated calendars decorated with pictures of Manhattan’s night-time skyline, exude a kind of unspoken desperation born of an endless uncertainty.

For many, this desperation is accentuated by the departure of those around them.

Eduard Nadgornay said his 30-year-old son left earlier this year, and he has watched membership in an informal refusenik group of scientists turn over twice since he joined in 1982. Pointing to a photo of himself with 14 other men taken during a 1983 hunger strike, he commented, “I’m all that’s left.”

Gennady Reznikov, an electro-chemist, believed that he would have to wait two or three years at most to leave the country when he applied for an exit permit in 1979.

“I was bad at politics,” he said. “I didn’t expect that detente would end.”

Over the past two years, refuseniks have also seen their best-known and most powerful personalities go.

One-time refusenik spokesman Natan Sharansky, pianist Vladimir Feltsman, mathematician Josef Begun, along with Vladimir Slepak, once known as father of the refuseniks, and Ida Nudel, an equally powerful mother-figure for the community, all have departed.

“After the (December, 1987, Washington) summit when many famous refuseniks got permission to go, we realized we were in a bad position because no one knew us,” said the elder Reznikov. “We understood we had to organize a collective movement.”

Guards Startled

A month later, Reznikov and his wife were among more than 100 refuseniks who suddenly appeared before startled security guards at the main reception of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee building in central Moscow to submit a list of their names and refused to leave until they were seen by an official.

The action resulted in the first meeting with a Soviet official of rank that most had been granted during their years as refuseniks. While others meetings have followed, they have so far generated few results.

“At one time, Soviet officials would say nothing,” Reznikov said. “Now they are happy to discuss anything, but they don’t want to change the situation.”

While a few refuseniks have given up, either because of age, illness or because children have married, the vast majority hold on, convinced they have little option but to keep hoping.

“When you start such an adventure,” said Nina Nadgornay firmly, “you must know there is no turning back.”