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For it was Mr. Gorbachev who thrust open wide the gates of Soviet Jewish emigration and allowed freedom of religious practice for the first time in the athe- ist nation's history. When Mr. Gorbachev entered office in March 1985, some 11,000 Jews were counted as refuseniks, and more than a score of prisoners of conscience lan- guished in prisons and labor camps for the crimes of try- ing to emigrate or teach Hebrew. The first omens of the Gor- bachev era were not good for Jews. The already paltry emigration figure of 1,140 for 1985 slid even more frighteningly low, to 914, in 1986. Soviet Jewry activists in the West at first feared Mr. Gorbachev would be even worse than his reform- resistant predecessors. Then the numbers of Jews allowed to leave began to grow, reaching 8,155 in 1987, swelling to 18,965 in 1988, then surging to 71,217 in 1989 and 186,815 in 1990. Few Soviet Jewry activists will ever forget the day of Feb. 11, 1986, when the prison gates swung open and nine-year refusenik Anatoly Shcharansky took his first steps toward freedom. He was soon followed by other long-term refuseniks, such as Vladimir and Maria Slepak, Ida Nudel and Yosef Begun. Emigration reforms were eventually codified in a long- delayed law passed by the Supreme Soviet last spring. This led to the lifting of U.S. trade sanctions against the Soviet Union, mandated by the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment. So profound were the changes Mr. Gorbachev enacted in the realms of emigration and religious freedom, that not even the most hard- line critics of the Kremlin's treatment of Jews could dismiss the Soviet leader's deeds. Mr. Gorbachev also re- versed the Soviet Union's longstanding animosity toward Israel, culminating in the resumption of full dip- lomatic ties with the Jewish state in October. Mr. Gorbachev "will go down in history as the man who let my people go," said one strong admirer, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the ecumenical Appeal of Conscience Foundation. Rabbi Schneier presented an award to Mr. Gorbachev, the Appeal of Conscience's first Man of History Award, when the Soviet leader was in Washington in June 1990 for a summit meeting with President Bush. "Not only did Gorbachev remove all restrictions im- posed by previous Soviet regimes against Jewish emigration and Jewish re- ligious expression, he was the first leader of the USSR Emigration reforms were eventually codified in a long delayed law passed by the Supreme Soviet last spring. to recognize and publicly state that religious believers were valued and valuable citizens of the Soviet Union," Rabbi Schneier said in a statement last week. Even the most ardent critics in the Soviet Jewry camp were lauding Mr. Gor- bachev's legacy. Lynn Singer, executive di- rector of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry, described Mr. Gorbachev as "a pragmatic politician, who understood" that allowing Jews to emigrate "opened new vistas" for his country. His pragmatism led him to respond positively to criticism, she said. "Much of what happened from 1985 until even yesterday was the result of Gorbachev's re- sponse to the West," she said. "He did in five and a half years to six years what it took decades for us to try to do." The stalwart Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, perhaps the toughest critic of the Soviet Union, remark- ed that even "though Gor- bachev was late in breaking out of the human rights gate," the "positive changes he ultimately initiated would have been un- thinkable to us in the Soviet human rights advocacy movement a decade ago."