Soviet Union Sounds of Freedom

By William E. Smith

"Objectively, something real is happening. How far it is going to go is a complicated question. But I myself have decided that the situation has changed."

So said Physicist Andrei Sakharov, perhaps the Soviet Union's most famous human-rights advocate, in assessing last week's announcement by the Kremlin that it had begun to release as many as 280 political dissidents from prisons and other places of detention. At best this would represent no more than 40% of the 750 or more Soviet citizens who are currently imprisoned or detained for their political beliefs. Still, it is the first mass release of prisoners of conscience since the de-Stalinization drive of the late 1950s, as well as the latest and perhaps most important manifestation of Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's widely proclaimed program of reform and revitalization. Weighing the evidence, Sakharov, who was allowed to return to Moscow only two months ago, after spending seven years under virtual house arrest in the closed city of Gorky, concluded, "I don't know what Gorbachev wants personally, but there are a number of people at the top who understand that without democratization, all of his goals in the economic sphere ((and)) international sphere cannot succeed." In Washington, the Reagan Administration welcomed the Kremlin's announcement but called for the release of the remaining political prisoners and a relaxation of Soviet policy on emigration.

There were signs that the U.S.S.R. was reacting uneasily to the latest evidence of Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness. In announcing the prisoner release, Gennadi Gerasimov, spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, said he doubted that the number to be freed at the present time would exceed 280. He acknowledged that the Kremlin's action did not enjoy universal support within the party. "I can say to you that there are comrades who think the harsher the better," he declared. "But at the moment, we are heading into a softening, so that we may have fewer people behind bars and barbed wire." Significantly, the news of the mass release was made known to Western reporters but not to the Soviet public.

Even as some dissidents were enjoying their first days of freedom, Soviet authorities were cracking down on refuseniks, citizens who have asked to be allowed to emigrate but have been refused. Last Monday a group of about 20 refuseniks, mostly Soviet Jews, gathered on Arbat Street, a historic Moscow thoroughfare recently renovated into a pedestrian mall. They stood for 90 minutes with signs that read FREE YOSIF BEGUN and LET US GO TO ISRAEL. Begun, who in 1983 was sentenced to twelve years of prison and exile for publishing anti-Soviet literature, has recently been placed under "strict regime," meaning that his food rations have been reduced and his mail and visiting privileges curtailed. On the first day, police made no attempt to stop the demonstration, but onlookers argued among themselves about the merits of such a public protest. "Shame on you. You ride on our backs, and now you want us to help you leave," shouted one elderly woman.

It quickly became clear that Soviet authorities were not ready to extend glasnost to freedom of assembly. Every morning for the rest of the week, gangs of thugs showed up on Arbat Street and roughed up demonstrators and journalists who were covering the protests. The government blamed the troublemaking on right-wing hooligans known locally as lyubers, though most demonstrators suspected the authorities of connivance.

Soviet officials seemed determined to stop the refusenik protest before the opening last weekend of a three-day forum titled "For a Nuclear-Free World and the Survival of Mankind." A dizzying array of Western notables, ranging from John Kenneth Galbraith to Pierre Cardin, were expected to attend the session. One of the initial speakers was Sakharov, who called for a more democratic Soviet Union, but also said that there had been recent setbacks in such areas as human rights and emigration.

Soviet dissidents disagreed on the significance of the mass release. Sergei Grigoryants, a literary critic who was sent to prison for 13 years for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda but was freed last week, was somewhat optimistic. "Gorbachev is doing everything he can to activate people," he said, "but he has lots of opposition, both open and secret. His opposition is our problem." Naum Meiman, an activist whose cancer-stricken wife died in Washington last week, just three weeks after being allowed to leave the Soviet Union for treatment in the U.S., described the recent changes as a "more sophisticated way of dealing with dissidents." But in Jerusalem, Natan Sharansky (who changed his name from Anatoli Shcharansky when he was released from Soviet detention and allowed to move to Israel last year) warned, "In some ways we can say that the situation is much more dangerous, because ((Gorbachev)) is more sophisticated in using the mass media of the West for deception."

| The first word that a prisoner release was on the way came from Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner, whose tiny apartment on Chkalova Street has once again become the nerve center of the human-rights movement. The Sakharovs advised Western reporters that they knew of 43 political prisoners who had suddenly been freed, in what Bonner called a "wonderful turnaround" in Kremlin policy. Soon old friends and even distant acquaintances, some newly arrived at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station in camp clothes and close-cropped prison haircuts, came to call. When Yuri Shikhanovich arrived, Bonner sent him off with money to buy wine and vodka for a celebration.

Those released ranged from religious activists to Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists, but the majority seemed to have been imprisoned under Article 70 of the criminal code on charges of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." Many had been jailed for expressing criticism that in the Gorbachev era has become standard fare in the press. Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson, who recently led a delegation of members of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations on a visit to Moscow, remarked last week that he had been struck by the degree to which glasnost has affected Soviet life. Said Peterson: "We met with refuseniks and with Sakharov on different nights, and I sat there thinking, Ten years ago these people might have been imprisoned for uttering some of the same criticisms that the top leaders are now widely proclaiming."

Not included in the release were some of the more prominent Jewish dissidents, including Begun, Yuli Edelshtein and Sakhar Zunshein. Several of the remaining prisoners had apparently refused to sign a letter requesting a pardon and pledging that they would not engage in any more anti-Soviet propaganda. Though the Kremlin claims to have told 500 Soviet Jews last month that they could emigrate, a figure that is almost certainly exaggerated, it seemed clear last week that most refuseniks were not yet enjoying the benefits of glasnost. Naum Meiman, 75, a mathematician and close friend of Sakharov's, has repeatedly been denied permission to leave the country on the grounds that he was engaged in classified work in the 1950s. After his wife's death in Washington last week, U.S. officials urged the Soviet Union, to no avail, to allow Meiman to attend her funeral and then join his daughter, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Boulder.

Despite the Kremlin's glaring contradictions on human rights, most Western observers regarded the prisoner release as a positive sign. Said Arthur Hartman, the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow: "It seems to me that the Soviet government has recognized that its treatment of individuals has had an effect on the overall relationship of the Soviet Union to other countries, and I think it has been moving to dampen down that effect."

In other glasnost developments last week, the Kremlin for the first time gave small businesses and factories an almost free hand in decision making and in the investment of organization funds. Officials spoke glowingly of the day when party and economic posts would be filled democratically, with more than one candidate competing for every job. A Soviet editor announced that next year Boris Pasternak's 1957 novel, Doctor Zhivago, would be published in the Soviet Union for the first time. While those measures and the freeing of some dissidents gave reason to expect further liberalization, the crackdown on the refuseniks indicated that, as Ambassador Hartman observed, the Soviets have not yet changed their basic view of the relationship between the individual and the state.

With reporting by Ken Olsen/Moscow