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36
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1989
Soviet Jewry Activists
Wary Of Upheaval
■
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s the Iron Curtain
continues to unravel,
Soviet Jewry activists
are encouraged by the grow-
ing freedoms within the
Soviet bloc.
But the breathtaking
image of a crumbling Berlin
Wall has also heightened
awareness of a time bomb
ticking below the surface:
how long can Mikhail Gor-
bachev control the ac-
celerating chain-reaction in
Soviet-controlled Europe?
And if he can't hold it all
together, will the forces
unleashed by two years of
unprecedented upheaval
usher in a new and terrible
period for the Jews left
behind in the Soviet Union?
"If I were a Soviet Jew,
while I would welcome the
events in East Germany, I'd
also be concerned," said
Martin Wenick, executive
director of the National Con-
ference on Soviet Jewry.
Wenick recently returned
from 17 days in the Soviet
Union. "Where is this all go-
ing to lead? What happens if
it gets out of control? These
are very serious questions."
Other activists heard simi-
lar concerns expressed dur-
ing recent trips to the Soviet
Union. "The mood was ap-
prehensive, in some
respects," said Mark
Talisman, director of the
Council of Jewish Federa-
tions Washington Action Of-
fice. "But that's a gen-
eralization; things are mov-
ing incredibly fast. I was in
the gallery in the Supreme
Soviet when they were
debating the ownership of of-
fshore gas rights. The debate
was very open; I could imag-
ine Lenin spinning in his
tomb."
"At the same time, they
have a problem with food,
there's widespread concern
about the viability of the
government, and there is
this feeling that anti-
Semitism has been loosed in
the land. It's a very fluid
situation."
Micah Naftalin, national
director of the Union of
Councils for Soviet Jews,
reported a striking change
in the mood of Soviet Jews
during his most recent
trip. "I think there is a pro-
found and almost universal
sense that the instability is
so widespread, and so deep,
that people talk in terms of
the almost inevitability of
some form of catastrophe,"
he said. "That's the word
they use — catastrophe. And
it is not limited to Jews."
Although there is general
agreement that the Soviet
Union is more volatile than
at any time since the Rus-
sian Revolution, the experts
are cautious about predic-
ting the demise of Mikhail
Gorbachev.
"I expect it to hang
together — for a while," said
Dr. Robert 0. Freedman,
professor of political science
at Baltimore Hebrew Uni-
versity. "In the short term,
I'm confident he'll hang on
until 1991, when the next
party congress is scheduled.
But his problems are very
substantial. It's like a
pressure cooker; the cook
has to take the cover off to
get the food on the table, but
there are real dangers. Can
he get a handle on it? We
just don't know."
The pressure on Gor-
bachev include an economy
on the verge of collapse after
decades of mismanagement,
In a sense, the
Jews in these
regions are caught
in a squeeze from
several directions.
the growing nationalist and
autonomy movements, and
the newly revived Soviet an-
ti-Semitism.
In the economic realm,
Gorbachev's reforms have
elevated expectations for
Soviet consumers. But the
actual results of those
changes will not appear in
Soviet stores for several
years, at best.
One Soviet Jewry activist
described a recent incident
in a Moscow store. "We saw
a big crowd, and they were
fighting — literally fighting
—over several pairs of
Western-style women's
shoes. Food is a major prob-
lem. Sugar and tea are ra-
tioned. Soap is almost im-
possible to obtain. The peo-
ple we talked to indicated
that things are getting
worse, not better."
The Soviet economic crisis
is being aggravated by the
citizenry's newfound
freedoms.
"You have the combina-
tion of the rising expecta-
tions of perestroika, and the
rather remarkable degree of
acceptance of public dis-
sent," said UCSJ's Micah