I ANALYSIS
SAVE 307.
Fear Among Soviet Jews
Worries Activists Here
JAMES D. BESSER
Washington Correspondent
S
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oviet Jews today are
caught up in an un-
precedented panic.
Real outbursts of anti-
Semitism are mingling with
out-of-control fears about
what might happen if the
Soviet Union flies apart at
the seams.
Newly uncorked nation-
alist sentiments are ge-
nerating a barrage of
virulent rhetoric directed
against Soviet Jews; rumors
of pogroms crackle between
Washington and Moscow,
suggesting that the rhetoric
could turn into reality.
This overheated envi-
ronment makes it more
difficult for Soviet Jewry ac-
tivists to facilitate the
departure of thousands of
Soviet Jews. More ominous-
ly, some warn, the uncon-
trolled panic could generate
a kind of self-fulfilling pro-
phecy with potentially dead-
ly consequences for Soviet
Jews.
Steve Freeman, legal af-
fairs director for the Anti-
Defamation League, recent-
ly returned from a fact-
finding trip to the USSR to
assess the rising tide of anti-
Semitism. "The perception
among Soviet Jews is that
they are especially
vulnerable, isolated, and
ripe for being scapegoated at
a time when the nation is in
turmoil," he said.
Like most Jewish activists
watching the unfolding
drama in the Soviet Union,
Freeman is trying to sort out ,
contradictory information.
"It's a paradoxical pic-
ture," he said. "I've been to
the Soviet Union before, and
things were so much more
open this time; more
meetings, more things being
done out in the open by Jews
there."
But the spread of nation-
alist groups like Pamyat was
also evident.
"We went to a rally of na-
tionalist groups, including
Pamyat," he said. "There
were a number of anti-
Semitic banners, anti-
Semitic literature being
handed out. I didn't witness
any assaults or attacks, but
the fact that this sort of
thing is going on, and the
government has not con-
demned it, contributes to the
anxiety that people feel."
Another factor in the un-
controllable wave of fear was
the treatment of ethnic
Armenians in Baku. "They
see the rise in popular anti-
Semitism, and they don't
think they can count on the
state to protect them,"
Freeman said. "That
enhances the sense of
vulnerability they feel."
So does the sense that the
nation is on the brink of
complete economic collapse
— something which Jews,
with their grim awareness of
Russian history, have spe-
cial reason to fear.
The newborn cultural and
communal organizations
created by the Soviet Jews
are too new to provide a real
sense of security. There is
nothing comparable to the
ADL within the Soviet
Union to provide a modicum
of protection.
"Given Russian
history, we have to
be careful not to
dismiss things."
Dan Mariaschin
of B'nai
—
And Soviet Jews may be
having a difficult time ad-
justing to the new realities
of a state no longer
dominated by a totalitarian
government.
"The Soviet Jews need to
understand that the Soviet
government is not
monolithic any more,"
Freeman said. "There are
people who are sympathetic;
they have to build coalitions,
they have to play the polit-
ical game the same way
Western Jews do. Their
whole attitude has to be
changed; they have to start
thinking of participating in
the political process."
American organizations
like ADL, Freeman said, can
help calm the panic by shar- •
ing information on how Jews
in democratic countries pro- ,-\
tect themselves, how they
build political coalitions to
combat anti-Semitism.
Part of the extraordinary
difficulty for Soviet Jewry
activists in recent weeks has
been the problem of ,(
separating fact from rumor.
Despite more open com-
munication between the two
countries, accurate informa-
tion has been hard to obtain
in this frenzied atmosphere.
"The first rule is that we
must be careful not to spread
unverified rumors, of which