Emigration Law Passed by Soviets : Travel: Measure gives virtually all citizens the right to go abroad freely. The action is expected ultimately to bring the lifting of U.S. trade and tariff sanctions.

In a landmark decision, Soviet lawmakers Monday approved a law giving virtually all citizens the right to travel abroad freely.

The measure, meant to tear away what remains of the Iron Curtain, had been bogged down since late 1989, blocked largely by government fears of an uncontrollable outflow of emigrants and would-be migrant workers. Even now, its target date for full implementation is not until January, 1993.

But the law’s backers acclaimed its passage as a major step in the Soviet Union’s transformation from a totalitarian state to an open society.

“Adopting the law is a historic act,” Fyodor M. Burlatsky, editor of the prestigious weekly newspaper Literary Gazette and one of the law’s main sponsors, told reporters. “There has been a traditional, Stalin-era fear of any contact with the West--the stereotype of the enemy that was in the minds of those who opposed the law.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky said proudly, “Such legislation has never before existed in pre-revolutionary or post-revolutionary Russia.”

The new law is expected ultimately to bring the lifting of U.S. trade and tariff sanctions that Congress imposed in 1974 to penalize the Soviet Union and other countries with cruelly restrictive emigration practices.

Bush Administration officials reacted cautiously to the measure’s passage, saying they are not yet certain if it satisfies U.S. requirements.

“We are glad that it passed, but we have not seen the details of it,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said in Washington. “We don’t know if it has a lot of conditions in it or other kinds of problems. But it is a hopeful sign that at least it passed this first step.”

The law’s passage could also affect the Kremlin’s pending request for U.S. food credits worth $1.5 billion, although President Bush, when asked about the request, has raised questions of the Soviet Union’s credit-worthiness rather than its commitment to free emigration.

Although the freedom to travel was approved Monday, certain details remain to be worked out in the implementation of the new law, including the exact timetable of when each provision will take effect.

The Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, approved the emigration bill 320-37 with 32 abstentions after days of debate in which conservatives contended that the country cannot afford to open its borders and liberals argued that the Soviet Union simply must live up to its obligations under international human-rights pacts.

Despite backing from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the measure failed twice last week to gather enough votes to pass, hindered in part by a government memo estimating that it would cost a whopping 11.8 billion rubles--$7.4 billion according to the commercial exchange rate--in Soviet currency and an additional $4.5 billion in foreign exchange.

Burlatsky and the bill’s other backers complained that the estimate--which included expenses ranging from the purchase of extra planes for the national airline to the printing of millions of passports and the opening of new border posts--was vastly overblown and that most costs would be covered by ticket prices and fees.

The government estimates there are 2 million Soviet citizens chafing to work abroad, about 5 million hoping to emigrate and 30 million who would like to take foreign trips over the next five years.

Burlatsky argued, however, that most countries have set such strict entry quotas for Soviet citizens that emigration has already reached its peak--about 500,000 a year--and that no great waves of Soviet guest workers will flood Europe.

Other Soviet officials have said that many West European countries are so frightened of a massive invasion by Soviet citizens that they appealed to the Kremlin not to hurry with the new law.

Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Shcherbakov said last week that Europeans are terrified of an influx of millions of ragged, hungry Russians “compared to which the invasion of the Huns was child’s play.”

Burlatsky estimated that, given immigration restrictions and skyrocketing ticket prices, freedom of travel will cost the government only 240 million rubles--about $150 million by the commercial rate and $190 million in hard currency--through 1995.

Known as the Law on Entry and Exit, the historic measure acknowledges the right to freedom of movement with only rare exceptions. It sets a five-year limit on exit restrictions based on a would-be emigrant’s knowledge of state secrets--currently the main obstacle to the several hundred remaining “refuseniks,” Soviet citizens who have been denied exit visas.

It also provides for appeal procedures for refuseniks, including those known as “poor relatives”--people who have been unable to obtain the permission that Soviet emigration rules require from parents or ex-spouses.

In essence, Soviet citizens will no longer need exit visas to leave the country, and passports for foreign travel may be denied only to people who face criminal charges or have had access to classified information within the last five years and to young men who are subject to military call-up.

The law was originally scheduled to take effect in July of next year, but the lawmakers, in a compromise, agreed to give the government six more months to prepare for its implementation.

“We cannot just remove the collar from emigres, kick them out with our feet and say, ‘Go wherever you want,’ ” budget committee head Viktor Kucherenko told fellow lawmakers.

“We must create conditions not like those we have now--an intolerable half-year wait for tickets and a wait of months to exchange money--but normal conditions, for which a year of preparation is needed,” he said.

Although the measure only enshrines in law many of the liberalized procedures that have already been in practice for two or three years, it evoked fervent opposition from a number of Supreme Soviet deputies.

Their complaints ranged from the possible spread of AIDS in the Soviet Union to the danger of such a massive brain drain that it could devastate Soviet science and the economy.

“We’re giving people the freedom to leave,” Leonid Sukhov, a taxi driver from the Ukraine, said in the Supreme Soviet lobby. “And as a result, the weak won’t leave, only the strong will.”

Sukhov and others were also angry that a law on travel, which will benefit mainly the rich and lucky who can afford tickets and wangle invitations abroad, took precedence on the legislative agenda over laws on vacations and wage indexation, which affect ordinary workers.

But Petrovsky had argued that the Soviet Union simply has to live up to its international commitments.

“With the adoption of this bill, our legislation has been brought into line with international law,” he said.