simon@elwood.DEC (Product Safety 237-3521) (01/24/86)
A few days ago I posted an article on net.religion.jewish. There were a few letters to me with questions, I answered on the same group, but somebody suggested me to post my answers to net.politics also. I do not read net.politics, but if you have any questions or comments, please either send them directly to me or post on net.religion.jewish. Leo Simon ********************************************************************** After I posted my original article on the net, I receive a letter showing a typical American attitude for the matter which is quite normal. First I was going to answer but then I thought that other people might want to know more about the Soviet Union and decided to post it here. Since I don't have the author's permission to quote his letter, I'll do with a few lines from it. >I ... have good reason to distrust a lot of what I read in >the Western press. However I have no idea whether the accounts >of life in the Soviet Union are accurate or not. We hear much >talk of the Evil Empire, oppression, lack of freedoms. >...whether you can see any areas in which Soviet society is "better" >than American society. The impression I have from the press here is >that Soviet society is an unmitigated disaster, which is hard to >believe. That's right, it is hard to believe. And the Western press's accounts of life in the Soviet Union can hardly be called accurate. Because the reality is much worse. The reason for the misleading information is that the Americans will not believe the truth if they are told the truth. Besides, the life there is so different that American mass media tries to bring it to the format understandable for American mentality, and this is impossible. However, since this is net.religion.jewish, I will have to limit myself to this side of the matter only. You may know that every Soviet citizen has an internal passport which he/she must always carry. On the first page it states your name and ethnic origin. That means that if my parents are Jewish, I am also Jewish whether I am religious or not. This gives the authorities tremendous advantages. The first thing they ask me when I apply for a job, or college, or a room in a hotel, or vacuum cleaner rent, or ..., is my passport. And if my passport says "Jewish", I got a problem. Not with a vacuum cleaner, but with finding a job. All that I telling you here is either my own experience or people's whom I knew really very well, so it is not theory or exaggeration. After I graduated from high school in Moscow, I already knew that the best colleges in Moscow are barring Jews. No official regulations, of course. My brother still decided to give it a try. With two of his friends (one Jewish and the other Russian) he applied to one of the best schools in Moscow. All three passed the tests. Then the Jewish guys were rejected for health reasons, and the Russian was accepted. But the interesting fact was that just a few days before that the Russian guy was relieved from the Military duty because of his health and the other two were OK! This was just an example, but that was an everyday life. My friends were rejected nice jobs, when they got jobs -- rejected promotions, they were refused tourist visas to see other countries, etc. All this comes from the Government. If we are to speak about anti-Semitism among ordinary people, the Russians were always anti-Semites. During late 50's and early 60's, when anti-Semitism was not that strong, many Jews got education, achieve good standing in the society, and now people cannot forgive them for it. So it was not infrequent to hear something like "Get out of here and go your beloved Israel, Kike!". And I couldn't do anything about it because if I tried to fight, it would be me who will get behind the bars! One can get used to almost everything, but the worst time was after I applied for emigration. The Soviet government does not recognize such a conception as emigration. In any normal country democracy is when one can leave the country any time he wants. In the Soviet Union democracy is when nobody wants to leave. Really, what for: Everybody knows that the best life is in Russia! (Russian Express: Don't leave home.) The authority recognize what they call "Reunification with relatives living abroad". So I had to secure an invitation from Israel from people I never knew, as if they were my relatives. We applied for visas. The next day I was fired from the job. There is no place to file a complaint. There is no provisions in the law that one can take the government or police to court. After I waited for almost a year (for any reply at all!), the Soviet troops gave "brotherly help to the people of Afghanistan". A few days later I was summoned to the visa agency and a police colonel announced that "there was a decision that to give me and my family visas to go to Israel does not serve a purpose". What purpose, whose decision? But he continued to repeat the same phrase again and again. Where can I file a complain? -- Nowhere. -- Who can re-consider the "decision"? -- Nobody, and go away. As you can see, I couldn't do anything. Officially I was jobless, not to work there is a criminal offense, and I didn't want to go to Siberia instead of the West! To survive, I worked under a table, and a few parcels from somebody from Denmark with clothes items which I was able to sell, helped us. I knew, of course, that the parcels were sent by Jewish organizations, just the return address stated that they were from a person, not an organization. The whole thing was terrible! Until you know that you live in a prison, you don't mind. But once you know that there is freedom, you can't stop thinking about getting there! For a few years I lived in a prison country and all my dreams were to get to freedom! This is only a tip of the iceberg. I could tell you about the country where the laws are substituted by special instruction which public is not allowed to read, but to which the local authorities refer. About workers at factories or construction sites drinking vodka every lunch break (six ounce glass at a time -- please believe me, it is true, I did it myself!), about standing in lines every day, for groceries, shoes, toilet paper (average 2 hours in lines daily), about several completely non-related families sharing the same apartment because of shortage of apartments, etc., etc. Of course there are some good sides about the USSR. But it is another story, much shorter, which I also can tell you if you are interested. I will be happy to answer any questions -- it may help you to understand the Soviet Union better than press coverage during Reagan-Gorbachev meeting. --- Leo B. Simon Digital Equipment Corp. 333 South St. Shrewsbury MA, 01545 (617)841-3521 DTN 237-3521 Mail Stop SHR-4/D26 UUCP ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-elwood!simon ARPA simon%elwood.DEC@decwrl.ARPA You realize of course that all of the above does not have anything to do with my emloyer. -------------------- Please note that this mail message is likely to be incomplete. The sender aborted the transmission. rhea::MAILER-DAEMON --------------------
simon@elwood.DEC (Product Safety 237-3521) (02/01/86)
>Is there anything that we can do to help more people leave the country? Actually, not much can be done. The Russian government, however much it needs Western grain and hi-tech, continues to claim that Jewish emigration is the Soviet internal affair. Or they lie that there no more Jews in the Soviet Union who want to leave. And the "refusniks" are those who had access to the military secrets. Of course in some cases the pressure from the US officials can help, and the example of it could be the visa for Sakharov's wife, Yelena Bonner, to visit the US. On the other hand such a pressure is the only way to help the people out of that county. The back side of the problem is the people themselves. Many refusniks do not want any attention, they want to keep low profile. Like me, who was fired from my job (not to work there is crime punishable by law), I didn't want the police noticing me and asking questions about my job. Some people are afraid that if they are considered by the authorities "troublemakers", they will never be allowed to leave exactly for that. Please keep in mind that the Soviet Union is the country without law, the government actions can not be contested. >Could you tell us about the Nomenklatura? Nomenklatura is a phenomena unknown to a democratic society. It is a bunch of people who got to some level of power. Once getting there, they get all the benefits: High salaries, good apartments, special grocery distributors, cars, sea resorts and anything you can think of. And because of that they depend on each other. And they cover each other. So once they get there, they are there for good. Unless a major turmoil happens, which wasn't the case for almost 70 years, until last year when Gorbachev took over. >What do the Russians think of Gorbatchev? Is he going to liberalize >the Soviet Union or is he prisonner of the system like all the others >members of the Polit Buro? What is his past? Did he have to >get dirty hands to access to power? Unfortunately, I cannot say much about Gorbachev. I left the Soviet Union four years ago. But one thing I am sure about is that the structure of the system is such that nobody can get there getting dirty hands. That's the system itself. >I post this just having seen portions of the "A Citizen's Summit", an hour long >discussion between Americans in Seattle, WA, and Russians in Leningrad. It was >moderated by Phil Donahue (in Seattle) and a Russian television man, Vladimir >... (I don't recall his last name). When at college, and working for college Young Communist League organization (was still too stupid at the age of 18) I know how meetings like that get organized by the Russians. The participants are selected very carefully. They are told what to say in various situations. They are told what to answer. ("Never mind Jewish emigrations, what about racial discrimination in your American cities!"). From my previous article you know that it is impossible to resist, one has to say that. It is not a secret for you that many clergy is cooperating with authorities and KGB, so you saw them also in the hall. Having lived 30 years in Moscow I did not see a single priest anywhere outside of a church, and there were a few of them at this meeting! When in the previous articles I referred to "useful idiots", I talked about people in the US who organize such meetings. Did you noticed that the Americans criticized a lot the US and were very careful about saying something "wrong" about Russia? Did you also notice that the Russians did exactly the same: criticized the USA and did not say anything bad about the Soviet Union? Can you imagine a country where there is not a single problem exists?! What a great place for the Soviet propaganda! The Soviet moderator, Vladimir Pozner (sp?), is a guy who knows America very well, he was born here, lived many years in New York, one of his parents is American. (There was an article about him in the Boston Globe). When on ABC Nightline show, where he is a frequent guest, he defended downing of the Korean airliner ("it was a spy plane"), Olympic boycott by the Russians ("the US government organized anti-Soviet demonstrations and doesn't do anything to prevent terrorism against Russian athletes"), etc. He and Phil Donahue, what a match! >I, for one, would like to >know more of the atrocities that the Russian government commits against our >brethren. It would be very educational for all of us; more so for those who >have not heard any of the horror stories. There is a lot to tell, but it already got too long. Next time. --- Leo B. Simon Digital Equipment Corp. 333 South St. Shrewsbury MA, 01545 (617)841-3521 DTN 237-3521 Mail Stop SHR-4/D26 UUCP ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-elwood!simon ARPA simon%elwood.DEC@decwrl.ARPA You realize of course that all of the above does not have anything to do with my employer.