Emigres on the Glasnost Express

The photograph of Mikhail S. Gorbachev that friends gave Elena and Vadim Chernobilsky when they left the Soviet Union last year evokes two vastly different responses when they show it around the kitchen table in the Anaheim apartment they now share with four other relatives.

On one hand, they express gratitude for the Soviet president and his policy of glasnost , which has opened the gates for thousands of Soviet Jews such as they to leave. But on the other, they are reminded of the stifling political system and what they describe as an increasingly dangerous surge in anti-Semitism in the country they left behind.

But as the sounds of laughter arise in the spring twilight from the pool outside, their smiles become irrepressible. “I believe in this country is all good things. I’m happy that now I’m over here,” said Vadim, 30.

“The same. Me,” said his mother-in-law, Inna Yurkovetsky, 53, with a grin.

100 Expected This Year

They are among 100 Soviet Jews expected to resettle in Orange County this year, according to Jewish Family Service, an affiliate agency of the Jewish Federation that has aided 35 Soviets so far. Last year, none of the 70 refugees the agency aided was from the Soviet Union.

Under the current relaxed emigration policies, Jews are now leaving the Soviet Union at the rate of 5,000 a month, according to the Council of Jewish Federations in Washington. According to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, as many as 40,000 Jews may leave the Soviet Union this year, contrasted with the 18,965 who left in 1988, the 8,155 who left in 1987 and the record 51,320 in 1979.

In Orange County, Jewish leaders are raising funds and seeking volunteers, not only to help resettle the immigrants, but also to help other Soviet Jews leave soon.

Many, including Vadim Chernobilsky, see the glasnost reforms as superficial and undependable. “Gorbachev spoke a lot of words about glasnost . They were just words,” Vadim said. “The system breaks everyone who goes against it. Even a president.”

“We have concerns about the ulterior motives behind glasnost ,” said Chelle Friedman, community relations director for the Jewish Federation. “What happens if Gorbachev changes his mind? Or if he gets into real trouble and glasnost suddenly ends? It could be tomorrow. That means every single person holding permission (to leave) gets cancelled.”

Passage to Freedom Campaign

The federation aims to raise $175,000--part of a $75-million national Passage to Freedom campaign--to help an estimated 100,000 Jews who want to leave to do so and to resettle as quickly as possible in either the United States or Israel.

“Most of us remember what the Holocaust was like,” said Selma Rosen, a co-chair, with her husband Samuel, of the Orange County Task Force on Soviet Jewry, a volunteer assistance organization that includes most leaders in the local Jewish community. “Most of us were not in a position to help (Jews in trouble during the Nazi regime). We say, ‘Never again,’ and here is an opportunity to help Jews who are living through terrible persecution get out. We failed once. We won’t fail again.”

Glasnost has meant that many Soviet Jews could obtain exit visas, that rabbinical schools and synagogues in the Soviet Union have opened, and, ironically, that anti-Semitism has been encouraged, Jewish leaders said. They put the blame for much of the anti-Semitism on Pamyat, a nationalist organization founded in 1980 that has grown to embrace the idea that there is an international Jewish conspiracy set to attack the Soviet Union.

“The freedom has brought all the problems a free society brings--like the freedom to hate,” said Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who returned last week )from a tour of the Soviet Union.

Wieder met with the family of her granddaughter’s pen pal, Victoria Kats, a 13-year-old in Kiev who is partly paralyzed because of a brain tumor. The two girls were brought together in a Jewish “twinning” program that provides religious rites by proxy for boys and girls unable to have bar or bat mitzvahs in the Soviet Union.

Citizenship Lost

The family members lost their Soviet citizenship when they applied for passports 5 years ago. But under glasnost , they will be able to leave for the United States in July.

The mother, a computer scientist, asked Wieder whether it would be degrading for her to work as a hairdresser and whether there would be sufficient health care for her ailing mother, who is 63.

The meeting in the family’s one-bedroom apartment had a strong emotional impact on her, said Wieder, who is a member of Temple Beth David in Westminster. “Here, you see a family,” she said, but “they’re not your average, normal, healthy family. They’re not in control of their own destiny. You wonder where they’ll end up.”

Wieder said she is exploring ways to help the family when they arrive, and she has asked them to keep in touch during their journey.

Soviet immigrants now hit a snag at a

refugee station in Italy, where, according to INS figures, 37% are now being denied refugee status by the United States.

“Merely being a Jew in the Soviet Union does not presumptively meet the refugee standard,” said Duke Austin, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington. “We must review each and every applicant to see whether they were persecuted as a Jew or not.” The reviews began last October, after the increasing numbers of exiting Soviets put a strain U.S. resources, he said. Those who are rejected may continue on to Israel, he said, or they may enter the United States under a different status.

The Chernobilskys and their daughter, and Elena’s parents and Elena’s younger sister were granted refugee status quickly because the family could prove that they had been subject to religious persecution: The KGB in 1985 had searched their home for Jewish literature, and the family had kept a copy of the report. In December, they settled in Anaheim, where a family friend, Naum Kreymer of Odessa, had been living for several years.

Having been trained under foreign work standards, the Chernobilskys face the problems typical for most Jewish Soviet refugees trying to adjust to life in the United States.

Elena, a former schoolteacher, has found work as a receptionist despite the fact that her English is limited. She is studying for a business degree at a vocational college.

Vadim, a former engineer, is working as a toolmaker in Los Angeles. He hopes for promotion.

Inna Yurkovetsky, a former psychiatrist, and her husband, Yefim Abinya, 59, a former engineer, are receiving public assistance while they look for jobs or a retraining program. Their daughter, Irina, 14, attends public school as does Yana, the Chernobilskys’ 6-year-old daughter.

In addition to seeking employers and job training for refugees, Jewish leaders are working to reacquaint the Soviets with their religious traditions.

Last month during Passover, Jewish Family Service held a seder, or ritual meal, for the refugees. The Chernobilskys and Elena’s parents said it was the first seder they had attended.

Orthodox leaders of the Chabad Centers offer free tuition for any immigrant Jewish child in their Hebrew or day schools.

But the Chernobilskys, who were reared as atheists--Elena taught atheism in Soviet schools--are not interested.

“They change our brains. It’s too strange for us,” Vadim explained.

“When you’re away from Judaism that long, it’s hard,” Selma Rosen said. “We who are fighting for these rights feel it will come. The Russian Jews who came out in 1900s were socialistic and atheist, but their grandchildren are in synagogue.

“Our eye is to the future,” Rosen said.