A shortened transcript of the conversation which took place on 16 February 1976 in the reception rooms of the CPSU Central Committee, between six representatives of the Jews trying to obtain the right to emigrate to Israel (Mark Azbel, Vladimir Lazaris, Yuly Kosharovsky, Vitaly Rubin, Vladimir Slepak and Anatoly Shcharansky) and Albert Ivanov, head of the Administrative Department of the Central Committee, together with Vladimir Obidin, head of the All-Union Visa Department (OVIR).
*
Ivanov: The Central Committee has received your letter, in which you express the wish to discuss the question of emigration with competent representatives of the Central Committee. Vladimir Sergeyevich and I are such representatives and we are ready to answer questions that are of interest to you.
Kosharovsky: What are the general grounds on which emigration visas to Israel from the USSR are refused?
Ivanov: First of all, I want to say that the great majority of people who have wanted to emigrate (98.4 per cent) have gone. In deciding this question we are guided by Soviet laws, by the humane principles laid out in international documents signed by the Soviet Union and by the interests of the State.
So emigration visas from the USSR are refused mostly for the following reasons: (1) Considerations of security. But that’s not for ever. Security terms end, information becomes obsolete and people emigrate. (2) The material claims of parents, and also those of former wives, demanding the payment of alimony. In addition, we must know the attitude of parents to the emigration of their children, as we don’t want to be guided by purely financial considerations, Often, parents are morally against the emigration of their children.
Lazaris: What procedure is used to determine the degree of security clearance necessary? Are there set periods of time during which emigration will not be allowed for security reasons, no matter what form of access to secret material a person may have had?
Ivanov: There is classified and non-classified work, and the enterprise concerned itself decides in each case, in a given specific area, how many years are necessary to remove security status from a specialist it has employed.
Slepak: Why don’t you announce in advance a maximum security clearance period, so that people can tell ahead of time when they will be able to leave the country?
Ivanov: The length of security clearance periods will not be announced in advance. Matters which were not secret yesterday could become secret tomorrow, and vice versa. So it is quite possible that a man who had a high security rating may emigrate at once, while someone who has a third-grade security rating will be refused a visa, because his particular held has begun to develop in a profoundly secret way.
Rubin: Is it really in the interests of the State to keep thousands of people in a state of complete insecurity for years, deprived of their elementary rights?
Ivanov: Now why are you talking of thousands …?
Rubin: Even according to your own figures, 1.6 per cent of 120,000 who emigrated is thousands …
Kosharovsky: Are there any instructions, orders or legal documents that lay down the period of time during which emigration visas may be refused for security reasons? May we hope that such instructions will be issued?
Ivanov: No, there are no such instructions, nor will there be. It would be impossible to compile them, as an individual decision is taken in each case… … A couple don’t live together for years; then one of them wants to emigrate and is ready to pay out all his alimony in advance, but the wife comes to us and says: ‘I don’t want any money in advance, I want him to live here and pay me what he owes every month.’ Just out of a wish to mess things up for him, you understand. And we must take these factors into account…
Rubin: We don’t intend to discuss individual cases here; however, I shall quote the reason given for refusal in my own case, because it demonstrates clearly that the reasons for refusing emigration visas are not restricted to the two examples you have given. I am a specialist in ancient Chinese philosophy, and I was refused a visa because I was ‘a valuable specialist’.
Ivanov: We must always respect the interests of the State. If, for example, we have two specialists in ancient Chinese philosophy in our country, can we let both of them leave? Or, to take another example, there are many doctors among people of Jewish nationality. If the doctors working in a polyclinic are 70 per cent Jewish, and if they all want to emigrate at once, can we let them all go?
Shcharansky: … Some refusals are formulated thus: ‘Your case is not one of family reunion.’ Such an explanation was sent, for example, to the family of Matus Rabinovich from Krasnoyarsk, who have a daughter in Israel.
Ivanov (to Obidin): Do you know this case?
Obidin: Yes. Rabinovich was interviewed by me. He lives here with his wife and two daughters, while only one daughter lives in Israel with her family. If they want to be reunited, it would be more logical for that daughter to come to the USSR, not the other way around. Everything here is legal,
Ivanov (spreading out his hands): Yes, of course.
Shcharansky: In many cases, no reasons whatever have been given. If we assume that all these strange refusals can be attributed solely to the unfairness or arbitrary decisions of the local authorities, it still compromises the policy of emigration, and its relation to those humane principles and international norms of which you spoke at the start. All this shows the necessity for a law on emigration, which would regulate practice in such a way that arbitrary refusals would become impossible.
Ivanov: We already have laws and we act according to them.
Rubin: We are talking about a law that would make it possible for everyone to know in advance what he could expect. Like the law on pensions, for example.
Ivanov: i have already explained that each case is examined by us on its individual merits, according to the interests of the State. Truth is always a concrete matter. A law or instruction cannot be thought up to cover every possibility in life.
Obidin: A law was in fact published in the Gazetteer of the Supreme Soviet…
Lazaris: Is that so? Can you give us the reference?
Obidin: I don’t remember exactly. But, in general, it was the same as that hanging on the wall in O V I R offices, about the way to formulate and hand in documents applying for emigration.
Kosharovsky: What changes have there been in the application procedure for emigration?
Obidin: Now we don’t require a character reference from your place of work, just a certificate.
Slepak: …That has turned out to be more difficult to obtain, sometimes, than a character reference. Firstly, a certificate must also be signed by the ‘triumvirate’ [three key work-place officials]; secondly, it must show that you owe nothing materially to your place of work. This means that you must hand in all material goods belonging to it, books, tools, working clothes, and so on. In practice, it often means that you have to leave your place of work before applying to emigrate.
Obidin: In such cases people can obtain a certificate from their place of work after their application to emigrate has been considered.
Shcharansky: Until now that has been impossible. Can Jews now apply to you if OVIR refuses to accept their applications without such a certificate? Obidin: Yes, you can.
Lazaris: There is now a widespread practice of calling up young people for army service after they apply for emigration to Israel. What, in your opinion, is the point of such call-ups and of military training for people whose aim is to live in Israel?
Ivanov: Until a former citizen of the USSR has crossed the border, he is still a citizen of the USSR and, as a result, he has to continue fulfilling his duties as a citizen, above all that of army service.
Shcharansky: In 1975 three young Jews, Anatoly Malkin (from Moscow), Alexander Silnitsky (from Krasnodar) and Yakov Vinarov (from Kiev), were sentenced to terms in prison for refusing to serve in the army. All these young men were expelled from colleges because of their desire to emigrate to Israel, and this made it possible for them to be called up into the army. Ivanov: We shall not give a higher education to someone who wants to emigrate to Israel.
Shcharansky: Do you regard it a natural situation, when a young man is thus deprived of the possibility of emigrating by immediately being called up into the army?
Ivanov: They must do their army service and then they can emigrate. Lazaris: Is army service in itself not used as an excuse for refusing a visa? For example, Gleb Kuperman (from Chernovtsy), before his call-up into the army, specially warned the army authorities of his desire to emigrate to Israel, and this was noted down in his military documents. However, now, two years after being demobilized, he has been refused a visa because of his army service.
Ivanov: Service in the army cannot be a reason for refusal, in itself. Many people have emigrated immediately after their army service. The Kuperman incident shows that O VI R should phrase its replies more accurately. Shcharansky: We should also like to bring up the question of the fate of those who were sentenced in Leningrad in 1970 for planning to hijack an aeroplane to Israel. The law punishing hijacking was passed only in 1973, and the maximum penalty under this law is 10 years, less than the sentences passed on three of the defendants in the Leningrad trial. Can we hope for a review of their case and a shortening of their prison terms?
Ivanov: I am not the procurator and I am not prepared to answer this question now. However, we shall bear in mind your interest in this matter.
Azbel: Unfortunately, I must point out that we have not received specific answers to all our questions. When you justify existing practice by saying that Soviet citizens will start emigrating to Israel to avoid army service, or that 70 per cent of the doctors in a polyclinic could try to emigrate all together, then we, although we are greater optimists than you about emigration, find it difficult to take you seriously. However, we understand that such busy people as you would not waste two hours of your time in talking to us without telling us something new. Would you like us to pass on any message to the 70 Jews who are waiting for us downstairs at the entrance to the reception rooms of the Central Committee?
Ivanov: Of course, we cannot answer all your questions at once. However, we will take note of your concerns. As you see, we have written down your questions; now we have to think all this over and let it ferment, as the saying goes…
Shcharansky: It’s important not just to let all this go unacted on …
Ivanov: However, I must say again that the truth is a concrete matter. So let everyone apply directly to Obidin and his case will be reviewed, with guidance from the Central Committee.
Lazaris: And will this review take place within a fixed period?
Ivanov: Well, yes, we’ll try to keep it within a month.
Lazaris: And after that, can we come to you again and discuss the results of this re-examination?
Ivanov: Yes, certainly, do come. We won’t refuse to meet you.
Rubin: In conclusion, I should like to express my disillusionment at the fact that, as our talk has made clear, human rights are being ignored as before and are regarded as opposed to the interests of the State,
Ivanov: That is not true. The truth is plain. Hand in your applications for review, and then you will see.
*
Sometime later, many Jews who had been trying to obtain permission to emigrate, including those who had taken part in this conversation, received another refusal.
=============================================
A Chronicle of Current Events 