By JAY FORSTNER vt
NEWSSPKIAL WRmR / 2 3 j J
While the world has been praising Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost
and its relaxation of state authority,
former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky
says that "it is important
to realize that this
is just a very successful
public relations campaign
aimed at technology
and the Russian
economy. In fact, it is
more difficult for an
unknown Jew to obtain
an exit visa now than
when Gorbachev came
to power."
Sharansky spoke to a capacity crowd at
Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor Sunday
evening as part of a speaking tour designed
ly in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6, the day
before Gorbachev arrives for a summit
meeting with President Reagan.
The 8,000 Jews allowed to leave the Soviet
Union this year is better than the 1,000 allowed
to leave in 1986, Sharansky said, "but
how does that compare to the 51,000 who left
in 1979? We must realize that even though
some big names have been let out, the problem
has not gone away."
In order to bring his cause directly to the
Soviet leader, Sharansky is touring the
country "from city to city, trying to mobilize
people all over to attend a rally in
Washington, D.C. on Dec. 6."
The rally, which organizers hope will
draw 100,000 protesters, the largest demonstration
of Jews in the history of the capital.
The aim of the rally, according to Sharansky,
is to show Gorbachev that American
public opinion is strongly behind Washington's
demands that Soviet Jews receive the
human rights which were supposed to be .
granted them in the Helsinki agreement of
1976. It is evidence of that popular support,
he said, "that will determine whether the
attention the Soviets give to the American
demands at the bargaining table is just lip
£pton driven
from lions' den
Ann Arbor City Councilman Jeff
Epton lost his audience Sunday night
in Rackham Auditorium, leaving it up
to former Soviet dissident Natan
Sharansky to win
it back.
Epton, D-Third
Ward, had been
invited by the Hillel
Foundation to
speak briefly
about his view of
human rights before
Sharansky
took the stage.
'the
efforts were greeted by a
spread coughing campaign, hisses
and chants of "We want Sharansky,
we want Sharansky," which finally
drove him from the stage, an early
exit which drew a standing ovation .
from some members of the nearly capacity
crowd.
Epton told the heavily pro-Israeli
audience that Americans shouldn't
See EPTON, AB
service or genuine consideration of the issue.''
Asked if the rally will have any actual impact
on Soviet Jews, Sharansky said that it
should. "They will find out somehow," he
said. "They will hear about it on Voice of Israel
or they will talk to tourists or they will
see newspapers. Our message is to Reagan,
to Gorbachev, to the American people, but
also, very importantly, to the Jews still in
the Soviet Union.''
Sharansky, who changed his first name
and the spelling of his last name after immi-
grating to Israel, has become a
symbol of hope to many Soviet "refuseniks,"
Jews living in the Soviet
Union against their will.
Finally allowed to emigrate from
the Soviet Union in 1986, Sharansky
had long been a victim of the op·
pression of the Soviet state. On
March 5, 1977, he was arrested by
the KGB and charged with both
"high treason" and espionage for
the United States. He was sentenced
to a 13-year prison term
which ended with his departure
from the country.
It was when his captors formally
arrested him that he dedicated
himself to righting the wrongs
which he had witnessed as a prod·
uct of the government's attempts
to assimilate Jews into a homogeneous
Soviet nationality. "They
told me at the time, 'Now there will
be no press conferences, no con·
tacts with your friends in the outside
world. Nobody will hear from
you ever again. Your fate is in our
hands now.' I wanted to prove
them wrong," he said.
It was while he was awaiting trial
for his alleged crimes that a
KGB otficer inadvertently gave
Sharansky a "wonderful formula
for success." As part of his right to
examine the evidence which has
been gathered for use against an
accused Soviet crimioal (a case
which included 15,000 pages of in·
formation), Sharansky was allowed
to view a Western-produced
fiim of his own friends' accounts of
his supposedly subversive activi·
ties.
During one scene of a demonstration
in America, the accused
spy recognized his wife (who had
been allowed to leave Russia on
July 4, 1974, the day after the two
had been married) and asked his
interrogators to replay it for him
several times. In a fit of rage, he
says, the KGB officer told him to
"Look at them. Look at the people
you are counting on to help you. We
are the KGB and they are a bunch
of students and housewives."
Sharansky took the comment to
heart, setting in motion a movement
which "was started and is
furthered by the young. The older Russians were already tamed,
were already too afraid. They had
already accepted too much. It was
very rare that anyone over 35
joined in the cause."
Today Sharansky is the leading
spokesman for the Jews still living
in the Soviet Union whose pleas for
emigration have gone unanswered,
a group which he claims numbers
"more than two million." Four
hundred thousand Jews have offi·
cially filed for exit visas, of which
"90 percent will not qualify under
the new restriction that those who
apply must have first-generation
relatives outside the country to be
allowed to leave," Sharansky said.
He said American protests may
play a crucial role in the fate of Soviet
Jews.
"It is in the hands of us," Shar·
ansky concluded, "the students
and the housewives, to determine if
these will be some of the first Jews
to leave the Soviet Union - or the
last."