Opening the Doors : Soviet emigration law holds promise and peril

For centuries, two great fears have shaped Russian attitudes toward the outside world. One has been the fear of foreign invasion. The other has been the anxious suspicion that if ordinary Russians were exposed to liberal Western influences they would be inspired to demand reforms that would doom absolutist rule. Now, in a landmark step, the Soviet legislature has finally acted to put one of those enduring phobias to rest. For the first time, subject to certain conditions, Soviet citizens are to be given the right to emigrate or to travel or work abroad.

The new legislation won’t immediately throw open the exit gates that most of the country’s citizens have long found locked against them. The law isn’t scheduled to come into force until Jan. 1, 1993, with the delay partly justified by the need to create between now and then the kind of passport and customs bureaucracies that have long existed in other countries. Some Soviet legislators also worry that the cash-strapped central government will be forced to spend a small fortune to upgrade the air and rail facilities needed to accommodate an expected crush of new travelers. Meanwhile, conservative opponents of the new law warn that it is certain to promote a brain drain that the country can ill afford. On that count they may be right.

It’s likely that those who would be most interested in permanently resettling abroad or in seeking work in another country--the latter in practice is often only a prelude to the former--are those with portable skills and talents. That means professionals, artists, musicians and the like. The emigration of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews to Israel and the United States is already seen as having depleted some of the Soviet Union’s intellectual capital. When the barriers for nearly everyone are lowered, the outward trickle of the educated could become a torrent.

Sponsors of the legislation in the Supreme Soviet estimate that up to 500,000 Soviets will emigrate annually, while millions more will apply for the right to travel. But a great irony suddenly attaches to this novel freedom. European nations, already worried about unemployment and a rising tide of largely poor and in many cases dependent emigres from North Africa and Asia, could refuse to open their borders to Soviet citizens trying to escape a collapsing economy and deepening political uncertainties. Soviet citizens eager and now free at last to leave their country may find it impossible to obtain the foreign visas that would let them do so.

It remains to be seen whether the United States will allow expanded Soviet immigration from the current 50,000-a-year level once the new law takes effect. Certainly there will be pressures to do so, especially if European countries adopt more restrictive policies. One change can be forecast. Washington is soon likely to grant Soviet trade goods those preferential tariff rates known as most-favored-nation treatment, denied since 1974 because of Moscow’s curbs on emigration. In the meantime, millions of Soviet citizens can rejoice that they will soon enjoy a legal right unique in their country’s history.