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Jerusalem. Correspondent
sraelis set aside their po-
litical differences just
long enough to indulge in
a moment of unvarnished joy
when Ida Nudel stepped out
of a private jet recently after
her long-awaited flight from
Moscow to Tel Aviv.
There to greet this veteran
refusenik, who had endured
the rigors of Soviet prisons
and the privations of internal
exile since she first applied to
emigrate to Israel 16 years
ago, was Prime Minister Yit-
zhak Shamir and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres.
There, too, was film star
Jane Fonda, who had energet-
ically championed her cause,
and thousands of ordinary
Israelis, all erupting in a
spontaneous outpouring of
song and dance.
Within the coming month,
that scene will be re-enacted
twice at Ben-Gurion Interna-
tional Airport when Vladimir
Slepak and Yosef Begun, the
two remaining high-profile
heavyweights of the Soviet
Jewish emigration move-
ment, arrive in Israel.
In the forefront of the
welcoming parties, of course,
are former Soviet Jewish ac-
tivists, who have themselves
made the long and difficult
journey and who have them-
selves been the subject of such
airport festivals —Anatoly
Sharansky, Yosef
Mendelevich and, most
recently, Victor Brailovsky.
But while their pleasure at
greeting their old comrades is
wholehearted and unreserv-
ed, they must be experiencing
private moments of intense
disquiet. For the era of
glasnost is providing them
with something of a
headache.
I
Soviet leader Mikhail Gor-
bachev is indeed obliging
Western demands by releas-
ing all of the best-known
Jewish activists, founders of a
movement which inspired
some half-million Soviet Jews
to emigrate during the '70s.
In the process, however, he
is neatly depriving the Soviet
Jewish activists of their most
potent symbols of resistance
and determination.
The men and women who
are now being allowed out
bear names which have
become synonymous with the
struggle for human rights;
names which have been in-
cluded in every indictment of
the Soviet Union by Western
Mikhail Gorbachev:
Doing the unthinkable
politicians over the past 15
years.
Almost all have suffered
terrible ordeals to reach their
promised land; all have
demonstrated a remarkable
tenacity in their determina-
tion to win their uncom-
promising struggle.
Not by accident, their
names — and the legends
they inspired — have tended
to evaporate almost as soon as
they received permission to
emigrate. By definition, their
battles were over, their
heroism rewarded, the
moment they set foot in their
ancient-new homeland.
With the exception of
Sharansky, all have grateful-
ly seized the chance to step
out of the limelight and once
again become anonymous
members of society, finding
jobs, lining up at the super-
market check-outs, worrying
about paying the bills.
Many, to be sure, are conti-
nuing the campaign from
their new homes in Israel, but
picketing a performance of a
Soviet cultural group outside
a Jerusalem theater is not in
the same league as picketing
the Supreme Soviet in
Moscow.
Ironically, by winning the
battle to live normal lives in
the country of their choice,
they are also losing the bat-
tle for that right to be extend-
ed to the estimated 400,000
Soviet Jews who have ex-
pressed the desire to leave.
With a single sweep of his
broom, Gorbachev has not on-
ly deprived the movement of
its superstars, symbols and
spokesmen, but he has also
scored an important public
relations coup — and taken
the steam out of dozens of pro-
test movements — by this ap-
parently open-hearted
gesture to Western public
opinion.
The point has not been lost
on Sharansky, whose own
public relations skills are
finely honed.
He loses no opportunity to
carry his crusade for Jewish
emigration and his message
of deep foreboding about
glasnost into the United
States Jewish arena and into
the international media.
Gorbachev might exude an
aura of liberality, he warns,
but having fulfilled a pledge
this year to let out 12,000
Jews in the coming year, the
Soviet leader will slam shut.
the gates on the hundreds of
thousands of Soviet Jews —
now leaderless — who want to
emigrate.
True, he concedes, times
have been tougher for Jews in
the Soviet Union, but, he
hastens to add, "the gap be-
tween perception and reality
has never been greater."
"Delighted as we are about
the happy endings of in-
dividual horror stories, we
must remember the hundreds
of thousands of anonymous
Jews still there."
But without such estab-
lished names as Slepak,
Nudel, Begun, Mendelevich,
Brailovsky — and, not least,
Sharansky — to wave before
Western politicians, that will
prove to be a formidable
challenge, even for the ardent
champions of the cause.
Gorbachev's overriding ob-
jective, however, is not to kill
the Soviet emigration move-
ment with kindness — or
simply to burnish his image
in the West. He is clearly
working on a much larger
canvas.
Soviet treatment of its Jews
has come to constitute
something of a litmus test of
its performance in the area of
human rights, and according
to some leading Sovietologists
in Israel, Soviet Jews have,
therefore, become an impor-
tant element in Gorbachev's
grand design.
His policy towards them is
intended both to demonstrate
his policy of glasnost (open-
ness) and to nurture its in-
tended progeny, perestroika
(economic and social
reconstruction).
Not even the most op-
timistic members of the
Soviet emigration movement
held out much hope that
Nudel, Slepak or Begun
would ever be allowed to
leave. So why has the Soviet
leader decided to open the
Continued on Page 52