INTERNATIONAL ISSUES REVIEW

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005630179
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: June 24, 2015
• Document Release Date: July 26, 2011
• Case Number: F-2010-00530
• Publication Date: February 28, 1979

National
Foreign
Assessment
Center
T
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
APPROVED FOR RELEASED
DATE: 07-20-2011
International
Issues Review
RP 11R:79-002
28 February 1979
 S Vt,RET
Dissidence in the USSR
The Soviet regime's behavior toward dissidents
since the highly publicized trials last July has been
a mixture of selective repression and guarded toler-
ance. The regime apparently continues to view the
various dissident groups as a serious political prob-
lem. But rather than incurring the costs of draconian
policies to root out all dissenters, the regime has
adopted a twofold strategy to contain the dissent.
This entails harassment and at times severe punishment
of leading activists, while also permitting increased
emigration of Soviet. Jews and exercizing a cautious
flexibility toward other religious and ethnic minori-
ties. The regime's approach has been only partly
successful. Although dissident groups remain gener-
ally isolated from one another, they have maintained
contact with sympathizers in the West, and the spec-
trum of dissent is somewhat broader than it was six
months ago.
Morale among most dissident activists and religious
groups dropped in the wake of the trials last July. The
branches of the Helsinki Monitoring Group have been par-
ticularly hard hit. Two of the dissidents sentenced in
July, Anatoliy Shcharanskiy and Aleksandr Ginzburg, were
members of the Moscow branch, and the group's specialist
on governmental psychiatric abuses, Aleksandr Podrabinek,
was sentenced to five years of domestic exile in August.
At a press conference in September, spokesmen of the Mos-
cow branch told of threats received by persons friendly
to the group. They reaffirmed their intention to remain
active even though only six of the group's active members
were free at that time.
Branches of the organization in Armenia, Georgia,
and Kiev fared no better. Robert Nazaryan, a member of
the Armenian branch, was sentenced to a total of seven
years confinement and domestic exile for anti-Soviet ac-
tivities, and Avandil Imnadze, an associate of a member
28 February 1979
:T
 of the Georgian branch, received sentences totaling nine
years for distributing anti-Soviet literature. The
founding member of the Kiev organization, Oles Berdnyk,
was picked up by the KGB in December and questioned.
Two other members of the Kiev group received sentences
for engaging in a strike at their place of employment:.
Last November, various members of the Helsinki Mon-
itoring Group circulated a petition against a new Soviet
law that makes it relatively simple for the regime to
deny citizenship to dissidents, but in general the group
has been relatively inactive in recent months.
Dissident Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, one of
the strongest voices for human rights in the USSR, pub-
licly contradicted the Soviet court's verdict against
Armenian Nationalists S. S. Zatikyan and two accomplices
who were convicted of perpetrating the Moscow subway ex-
plosion two years ago and were executed. According to
the Western press, Sakharov said that Zatikyan was not
Sakharov, who had been warned a number of times in
the past by the authorities not to make such statements,
visited the US Embassy recently and gave his impressions
of human rights issues in the Soviet Union. Despite re-
ports to the contrary, Sakharov said he was not pessi-
mistic about dissident efforts to foster human rights in
the USSR and asserted that authorities will not be able
to eliminate the movement or. stop its work.
Moscow's treatment of Soviet Jews is the one clear
indication of the regime's willingness to grant limited
concessions to some active dissidents. The total number
of Jews permitted to emigrate in 1978 exceeded 30,000
and may average 5,000 a month for at least the first
part of 1979. This approximates the rate during the
peak year of 1973, when nearly 35,000 Soviet Jews emi-
grated. The backlog of Jews in Odessa applying for exit
permits reportedly led the government to open a large,
new office to handle the processing. In explaining the,
higher emigration figures, Soviet Jews point to the
Jackson-Vanik amendment, to the larger number of appli-
cants and, increasingly, to a desire by the regime to
vet --rid of "malcontents" before the 1980 summer Olympics
28 February 1979
 The status of the Jewish "refuseniks" (those pre-
viously refused exit permits) may also be improving.
some
persons formerly denied emigration because they at one
time held security clearances will now be permitted to
leave. In addition, refusenik scientists held an inter-
national scientific conference in December, with three
US scientists present,. even though authorities had seized
some of the conference documents from the residence of
one of the organizers and denied visas to five other US
The regime's attitude toward various Protestant
groups appears to be somewhat ambiguous. The All-Union
Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, for example,
was given permission to import 25,000 Russian Bibles;
this is the first time a Soviet government has permitted
a significant influx of Bibles since 1947 when 10,000
copies were imported. On the other hand, Soviet media
continue to inveigh against "Bible smugglers," terming
them "paid agents of Western intelligence."
The US Embassy in Moscow has been deluged with re-
quests by Pentecostals and. Baptists to emigrate. Repre-
sentatives of these groups in the Ukraine, Byelorussia,
Lithuania, and the cities of Leningrad and Nakhodka
submitted lists containing nearly 2,000 names of members
wishing to leave the country. Spokesmen for the groups
contend that Soviet emigration officials have told them
that their "only hope" is that President Carter will
raise the issue with President Brezhnev during the sign-
ing of a SALT agreement. A religious activist from a
town near Moscow was sentenced to a year in prison for
organizing a seminar on the "defense of rights of be-
lievers in the USSR." In the Kirgiz Republic two citi-
zens were sentenced to three years in a labor camp for
conducting a children's Sunday.school. An 84-year-old
member of the Seventh Day Adventists, Vladimir Shelkov,
is being tried in Tashkent for illegal religious activity
because he wrote an eight-volume treatise condemning the
"dictatorship of state atheism." Shelkov could get as
much as five years imprisonment or internal exile and
confiscation of his property if convicted.
28 February 1979
3
SEC ET
 The spectrum of dissent seems to be broadening once
again. In October, an independent "trade union" surfaced
in Moscow. Calling itself the Free Inter-Professional
Union of Workers, the group focuses on worker grievances
ignored by the official trade unions. Reports indicate
that the organization lacks internal cohesion and is
plagued by diverse interests. On those rare occasions
in the past when dissidents have tried to organize Soviet
workers, Moscow has reacted quickly and sternly. Al.-
though several members of this group have been arrested
and one of its leaders has been confined to a state psy-
chiatric hospital, the "union" has not yet disbanded.
On another front, a new journal called Metro of
appeared in January. The avowed intention of its pub-
lishers is "literary excellence" rather than political
debate. The first issue, however, contain artlles
critical of Soviet literary restrictions.
Despite official Soviet denials concerning national-
ities problems--most recently in Premier Kosygin's dis-
cussion of 6 February with President Carter's science ad-
viser--several ethnic areas continue to prove trouble-
some. Last August Crimean Tatars sent two petitions to
Brezhnev requesting permission to return from Central
Asia to their ancestral homeland. The government, as
usual, made no direct response; one report claimed au-
thorities in the Crimea have bulldozed the houses of il-
legal returnees and deliberately stirred up local antip-
athy toward the Tatars. As,a result, one of the lead-
ers of the dissident Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, publi-
cally renounced his Soviet citizenship and applied
permission to emigrate to the United States.
Unrest in the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic (ad-
ministratively a part of the Soviet Republic of Georgia)
that surfaced last spring is still causing problems for
Moscow. The Georgian party leader recently warned the
Abkhazi leaders that they were not dealing firmly enough
with "nationalist chauvinism." Although Abkhazis make
up only about 10 percent of the population in their own
28 February 1979
E RET
 .autonomous republic, they are Muslim, and current un-
rest among their coreligionists in nearby Turkey and Iran
made made the leadership in Moscow especially uneasy.*
In general, the Brezhnev regime is ready to punish
individual dissidents harshly on occasion, and seeks in
various ways to divide and demoralize all of them. But
the leadership is avoiding recourse to draconian meas-
ures, not only out of concern for both its international
image but also because of its own perception of what is
required to maintain the stability and cohesion of the
soviet administrative machinery. In recent months, for
example, a reported directive from Moscow party chief
Grishin cautioned officials against firing Jewish "re-
fuseniks" lest they spread their "c.ontagion" to their
new places of employment. Because the regime refrains
from using the harshest measures to deal with protests,
and because the reasons for political protest continue,
at least some of. the dissidents are encouraged to per-
sist in activities.,
*Because of their relatively high birthrate, Muslims in the year
2000 may, according to recent projections by some Western academi-
cians, number about one-third of the total Soviet population. F
28 February 1979
3
SE