Soviets on USIA Tour Held Anti-Semitic

The United States Information Agency is financing a monthlong tour of the United States by a group of Soviet editors and writers associated with extreme Russian nationalist publications, some of whom have been accused of anti-Semitism.

Several leaders of American Jewish groups have criticized the USIA for bringing the group to this country. “Inviting these kinds of people from the Soviet Union with known anti-Semitic views is unacceptable and harmful,” said Mark E. Talisman, director of the Washington office of the Council of Jewish Federations. “Sponsorship by the federal government is ludicrous and appears to smack of approval.”

USIA spokesman Frank S. Johnson Jr. said: “I’m not in a position to confirm . . . whether they have anti-Semitic views or not. These people are Russian nationalists. That is why they were invited.

“This is the means available for the U.S. to transmit the value and advantages of a pluralistic society,” he said. “Is the situation such that everybody has to agree with us before they can be invited?”

The delegation of Russian nationalists includes well-known figures in a movement that is apparently growing in strength in the Soviet Union, according to news reports from that country. Though the movement contains many different strains, its adherents share a suspicion of Westernized liberals and an attachment to traditional Russian institutions and values. Many members of the movement have made anti-Semitic pronouncements.

Three of the eight members of the Soviet delegation are among 74 signatories to a letter published in Literaturnaya Rossiya--edited by a fourth member of the delegation, Ernst Safonov--that is viewed with great alarm by Jews in the Soviet Union.

The letter said: “It is precisely Zionism that is responsible for many things, including Jewish pogroms, for cutting off dry branches of their own people in Auschwitz and Dachau. . . .” The letter said Zionists deliberately stirred up anti-Semitism so they could more easily emigrate to Israel or become refugees in the United States.