Bush Notes Rise in Soviet Anti-Semitism : Europe: The President meets with Jewish leaders. He pledges to assist in evacuation if necessary.

President Bush, expressing surprise that reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have led to increased incidents of anti-Semitism, pledged Monday that the United States would assist Jews if evacuation becomes necessary.

A 40-minute meeting between Bush and U.S. Jewish leaders focused more on such threats than it did on the problems of the Middle East, often the principal topic of discussion between the President and his visitors, according to participants in the meeting and a White House official.

“We talked about the sense of emergency about the problem,” said one of Bush’s visitors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

He added that the President said the United States would “do what we can” if the anti-Semitism grows into pogroms. Threats of a pogrom--historically an organized, violent attack on Jews, or their rounding-up for deportation or exile--have surfaced in Moscow, sending chills of fear throughout much of the still-sizable Jewish community there.

Most recently, a gang of thugs invaded a meeting of Moscow writers Jan. 18 and, using pejorative terms, demanded that Jews emigrate to Israel. They scuffled with the writers before leaving the headquarters with apparently little interference from police.

In December, the newly created Soviet Congress of Jewish Organizations drew anti-Semitic demonstrators who shouted slurs at delegates. An official in the organization reported more than 50 desecrations of Jewish cemeteries and hundreds of anti-Semitic rallies in recent months, according to one account.

And a November issue of Ogonyok, a progressive weekly magazine, printed a transcript of a meeting of the national writers union, in which Anatoly Builov compared the Jews to “a virus” that was metastasizing. As he spoke, a voice from the hall cried out, “What garbage, what garbage. We should be ashamed to listen to you.”

Builov said that he was not a member of Pamyat, a nationalistic, overtly anti-Semitic organization. However, he added, “I have read their (Pamyat’s) materials, and I like them.”

The threats and actual attacks appear to have increased with the relaxation of political controls in the Soviet Union, giving rebirth to a long history of anti-Semitism that was either stifled or hidden from public view during the years of more stringent Communist rule.

The incidents of anti-Semitism have not apparently received official sanction from the government, unlike the pogroms of the second half of the 19th Century that were linked directly to czarist policies. But public criticisms of Jews have historically been precursors to more organized attacks, and indeed were signals of the onslaught of the Nazi Holocaust.

In his State of the Union address last Wednesday, Bush spoke briefly about the need to fight all forms of bigotry, saying: “Every one of us must confront and condemn racism, anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate. Not next week, not tomorrow, but right now. Every single one of us.”

During the meeting Monday, the Jewish leaders urged Bush to ask Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to speak out “about anti-Semitism and bigotry just as he (Bush) did in the State of the Union,” said Seymour Reich, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who was one of the two dozen participants in the meeting.

Alexander Buravsky, a prominent Soviet playwright and a liberal supporter of Gorbachev, said during a recent interview in Southern California with The Times that anti-Semitism has received veiled backing from such conservative members of the Soviet Politburo as Yegor K. Ligachev and Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov.

The incidents of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, along with long-practiced restraints on Jewish education and worship, have played a central role in the efforts by massive numbers of Soviet Jews to emigrate to the United States, Israel and other destinations in the West. Flights arriving daily in Israel have been filled with emigrants from the Soviet Union, many of them reporting personal tales of bigotry and threats that they experienced.