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Friday, January 9, 1987
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK
Special to The Jewish. News
A
veteran American
correspondent who
served as a news
bureau chief in Moscow de-
clares that it is time for the
United States to take the in-
itiative and adopt new tactics
to secure Soviet agreement to
Jewish emigration from the
Soviet Union. The Stevenson
Amendment to the Export-
Import Bank Amendments of
1974 and the Jackson-Vanik
Amendment to the Trade Act
of 1974, enacted for the pur-
pose of securing increased
Jewish emigration have, he in-
sists, had the opposite effect.
"The unfortunate likeli-
hood," he warns, "is that if the
United States retains its cur-
rent policy, so will the Soviet
Union. The refuseniks will
continue to languish and many
thousands of other Jews who
might have applied to emi-
grate under more promising
circumstances will continue to
lead their lives of quiet desper-
ation."
So argues Robert B. Cullen,
diplomatic correspondent for
Newsweek, writing in the
winter issue ofForeign Affairs,
the influential quarterly jour-
nal of the Council on Foreign
Relations. Publication of the
article coincided with the na-
tional observance of Human
Rights Day.
"Humanitarian concern,"
Cullen declares, impels the
United States to take the in-
itiative to break the impasse
and promote Jewish , emigra-
tion from the Soviet Union
without compromising Ameri-
can principles or interests. It is
time to repeal the Stevenson
Amendment and to change the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment so
that it might serve its pro-
claimed purpose."
In taking this stand, the vet-
eran correspondent took issue
with Anatoly Shcharansky,
the Soviet Jewish refusenik
who is leading a rescue cam-
paign for Soviet Jewry and who
opposes scrapping the amend-
ment.
Rather than help prospec-
tive Jewish emigrants, Cullen
argues, the two amendments
"have given Soviet leaders one
more reason, however per-
verse, to keep people in. Emig-
ration rates for Soviet Jews
today are far lower than they
were before the amendments
were adopted. It is, in fact, rea-
sonable to infer from the his-
tory of the past 15 years that
many thousands of Soviet Jews
now languishing in the re-
fusenik's limbo might have
been released had the amend-
ments not been enacted."
With the advent to power of
Mikhail Gorbachev, official
policy toward Soviet Jews re-
mains much the same, Cullen
reports. The Soviet Union pays
lip service to the concept of
ethnic equality and tolerance.
"It flouts its human rights ob-
ligations, but the ultimate goal
of its repression is not the an-
nihilation of Soviet Jews, but
their assimilation into the
Soviet masses."
Only the Soviet authorities
know for certain, Cullen re-
marks, why they have cut
down on the number of emigres
in recent years. The official
reason most often cited is that
all or nearly all of the Jews who
wanted to rejoin families in the
West have done so. Those who
remain, the line goes, cannot
leave because they were privy
"The trick is to
devise a set of
trade incentives
that serves both
American interests
and those of Soviet
Jews."
to "secret" information that
the state has the right to
safeguard. But "any American
correspondent who works in
Moscow knows that this is pa-
tently false," he comments.
There are, he says, other,
more genuine reasons for re-
stricted emigration, and Soviet
policymakers will need "coun-
tervailing incentives to let
Soviet Jews emigrate. One of
them is that the Soviet Union
is attempting to operate a
sophisticated yet closed
economy. For this it needs and
trains specialists, some of
whom, as in mathematics, are
the equal of any in the world.
But their rewards are much
less than they would receive in
the West and if emigration
were freely permitted, these
specialists would have a strong
incentive to live in the West.
"This drain might be beara-
ble if it could be confined to
Jews," Cullen suggests. "The
Jewish population, by Soviet
count, is less than two million.
But if Jews were allowed to
emigrate freely, the number
might swell since children of
mixed marriages can choose
their nationality."
Even so, "the emigration of
talented Jews would be a man-
ageable loss to a country with a
population of roughly 280 mil-
lion." But other nationalities
might demand the same right
to emigrate and "the Soviets
might then face a choice be-
tween political unrest among
minority groups or a serious
drain of educated workers and
valuable labor."
From the foreign policy
standpoint, Cullen says re-
lease of large numbers of
Soviet Jews would conflict
with important Soviet inter-
ests in the Arab states.
Further, the movement of
nearly half the Soviet Jews,
once they are out, to the United
States "must be especially ir-
ritating. It undercuts all Soviet
efforts to portray the quality of
life under socialism as superior
to that under capitalism."
The fact that since 1969 the
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