Why was there a need to set up a committee to monitor the Helsinki agreement? The implementation of the Helsinki agreement – and in particular its human rights clauses – is essential for the development of the USSR. It would create a healthier and stronger society. How the committee originate? It was founded on May…
US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance flew out of Moscow last week leaving the issue of human rights in a stalemated limbo and perhaps paving the way for a renewed repression of the Jewish activists. Vance and Soviet party-leader Leonid Brezhnev agreed to disagree on this issue as well as on arms limitation. If,…
SOVIET Jews are preparing for the Festival of Passover in a state of fear and depression unequalled since the height of the Stalinist era. Despite the release of Dr Mikhail Shtern half way through his eight-year prison sentence and the news over the weekend that he has been granted an exit visa for Israel, the…
SOVIET Jews are facing their worst crisis since the collective trials of 1970. Mathematician Anatoly Shcharansky, seized by the KGB last week, is the first major Moscow activist to be arrested since the new movement came into existence after the Six-Day war. He is being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, accused of “anti-state activities”. This…
VORKUTA, by Edward Baca. 352 pages (Constable). 15.95. In 1945, Edward Buca was a 19-year-old member of the Polish Home Army. Poland at the end of the war was no place for an ardent nationalist. The victorious Red Army was in no mood to tolerate an independently-minded man and Buca soon found himself in a…
Many Soviet Jews who do not share Bukovsky’s views hold him in high esteem for his guidance in the early days of the exodus movement in showing it how to contact western correspondents in Moscow and thus publicise even the smallest aspect of KGB harassment. Together with his friend, Vladimir Telnikov, he organised a…
Duringthe past month, three Soviet Jews have been accused of criminal offences. Amner Zuvurov was sentenced to three years Zuvurov in Uzbekistan on parasitism and hooliganism charges and the failure to possess an internal passport. In Vilnius, physicist Naum Salansky is in his eighth week of investigation, accused of “slandering the Soviet Union for its…
President-elect Jimmy Carter’s position on human rights in the USSR is being deliberately examined by a relentless KGB offensive. Beginning with an unexpected willingness to release Vladimir Bukovsky, the KGB has stepped up its campaign to intimidate Soviet Jews and human rights activists. Two weeks ago, Amnir Zavurov was arrested in Uzbekistan for violating passport…
What did you do on arriving in Moscow? I tried to contact the people involved in the seminar and found that all the telephones had been cut. I then attempted to approach some of these people personally. For example, I went to the home of Professor Benjamin Levich. He had earlier been accosted as he…