Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 9 Nov 1988

Vol. 121 No. 5

Jewish Community in the Soviet Union: Motion.

Mr. Norris

I move:

That Seanad Éireann — recalling the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

—Recalling the final act of the Helsinki conference on security and co-operation in which the participating States undertake to recognise and respect religious, cultural and national freedom and to deal in a positive and humanitarian way with applications to emigrate of persons who wish to reunite with members of their families or to go to their national homeland, and recalling that the concluding document of the Madrid meeting reaffirms and strengthens these undertakings.

—While welcoming recent positive developments in the attitude of the Soviet Union towards its Jewish minority nevertheless is disturbed by reports of continuing harassments and anti-Semitism towards Soviet Jews.

—Noting that the Jewish community in the Soviet Union is still an oppressed cultural minority subject to systematic discriminatory action by the authorities and considering their position to be a cause for international concern.

(1) Calls on the Soviet Government to permit all Soviet Jews applying to leave the Soviet Union to do so without impediment and to ensure that the presentation of such applications does not prejudice or modify the rights of the applicants or of members of their families in the areas of employment, housing, resident status, access to social, economic, or educational benefits or any other rights.

(2) Calls on the Soviet Government to permit Soviet Jews full freedom to pursue Jewish religious, cultural activities which includes the teaching and learning of Hebrew as a national dimension.

(3) Calls on the Soviet Union to limit refusals for emigration based on secrecy to a defined period of time.

At the outset, I would like to say that I very much welcome the fact that the Government have allowed this motion and provided time for it. I believe it is important that we on this side of the House should not always be carping or critical of the Government and their attitude on these matters. I would like to say that I am very grateful that the Government have taken this motion in the name of myself, Senator Bulbulia and a number of others. I would like also to point out that if the Government wish to adopt certain other items that we have put down on the clár we would be very happy to make these available. I say that, not just humorously, but because I think there are a number of items which also relate to this area. I will speak about one of them at least later. That is the suggestion that Raoul Wallenberg, a man of extraordinary eminence and greatness and whose case has been forgotten very largely, should be recognised by this country and made an honorary citizen of Ireland in the manner this has been done in Canada, the United States of America and one or two other countries. I shall perhaps return to that.

This is I think, a very appropriate day on which to take this motion because this is, as the Minister knows, the anniversary of a shaming event that took place 50 years ago in Germany, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Jewish business premises were attacked by an orchestrated mob who had been provided with the weaponry to cause damage and destruction by organs of the State, such as the fire service. There is this appalling irony, and I would say and would be happy for it to be on the record of this House, that as a Christian I feel deeply ashamed of what was allowed to happen in Germany in 1938.

I would also have to say that I do not approach this issue in any spirit of antagonism towards the Soviet Union. This country has friendly relations with that great nation and the movement that led to the establishment of the Soviet Union as an independent republic took a lot of comfort and inspiration from the ideals of Irishmen like James Connolly who helped to establish this State. I wish it to be understood that I do not wish to be antagonistic or confrontational to a country for whom, like an increasing number of Irish people, I have an affection, a respect and an admiration in many ways and never more so, may I say, than under the régime of now, I understand President Gorbachev.

I also have to say that none of us in the west is guiltless. Even this building heard to its shame in 1943 a Member of another House associating himself quite disgracefully with the operations of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Therefore, none of us can totally distance or detach ourselves from guilt in relation to the persecution of the Jewish people. I do not, however, wish to speak of a Jewish problem because this phrase can be insulting to the Jewish people. I wish to speak of certain problems relating to the treatment of a minority of people, citizens of the Soviet Union and it is for this reason that the motion has been quite carefully framed.

The Minister will be aware, of course, that a roughly similar motion was passed unanimously by Dáil Éireann on 6 December 1984. It is an interesting exercise to look at the shift in emphasis from that important Dáil motion which was heavily critical and deeply censorous of the Soviet Union. The Minister, I am sure, will be aware that is the original wording of this motion tabled over a year ago in Seanad Éireann by myself, Senator Bulbulia, Senator Manning, Senator Robinson, and Senator George Eogan, we followed the lines of the original motion very closely and we were very critical. We used words such as "severe and systematic discriminatory action taken against the Jewish community by the Soviet authorities.

I am sure the Societ Embassy will take an interest in this debate. I understand they already have and that they have provided briefing material to people who will speak in this debate and I greatly welcome that. This is a very useful exercise in dialogue. I am sure the Soviet Embassy will take note of the fact that there has been a change in the direction, of moderation of some of the most severe criticisms.

We acknowledge also, for example, by deleting an entire paragraph that things have changed in the Soviet Union. The Minister will note that the entire paragraph which runs as follows:

Noting the increase in the number of Jews who are being allowed to leave this year which is small compared to the number of those wishing to leave, seriously disturbed by reports of thousands of Soviet Jews who would like to leave the Soviet Union but who, according to the new regulations, cannot even apply unless they have first degree kin, relatives abroad

has been removed from the motion altogether. In other words, acting responsibly, Seanad Éireann in the form of the sponsors of this motion wish to acknowledge the process of glasnost and perestroika that has quite evidently been occurring in the Soviet Union.

However, this is not to say that it is enough. It would be wrong, it would be mean, it would be carping, it would be destructive not to recognise reality in political terms and not to recognise what is happening and what has been happening. We must all admire President Gorbachev for the way in which he has steered his administration through very difficult times. Nobody here would wish to make his task more difficult but it would be equally irresponsible, simply in order not to cause any disturbance, that we should allow the pressure to be removed altogether because there is still very considerable room for a further amelioration of the position of the Jewish minority in the Soviet Union in terms both of political and cultural rights.

The emphasis of this motion is clearly on emigration, either for repatriation to Israel or to the country of the citizen's choice, as well as for and the full right to religious and cultural expression. I had already intended to say that the Irish people, of course, can closely identify with this because of our tragic history, in terms of the repression of a whole culture that was autonomous to the people here in this country, and also the tragic loss of our own language — and language is one of the principal items of grievance for the Jewish people in the Soviet Union.

While I say that we view with encouragement and optimism the Soviet Union's attempt to solve problems concerning Soviet Jews on the levels of emigration, religious and cultural practices and while we are heartened by the fact that Hebrew as a language is now being taught, very recently allowed under the auspices of private enterprise schemes, nevertheless, we want the Hebrew language to be recognised as the proper language of the Jews and to ask that they be allowed to have full access to books, libraries, theatre and seminars embracing their full cultural expression. It is, I think, also a reasonable request that Jewish schools and chadars, Jewish Sunday schools, should be permitted so that kindergartens may develop to assist children to grow up with an identity of their ethnic culture. The availability of kosher food, etc., we would feel, should all be sanctioned by the Government as it forms an integral part of Jewish life. I feel that the question of the cultural life of the Jewish people is an exceedingly important one and one with which, as I have said, I believe the Irish people will find no difficulty whatever in understanding and empathising.

I have to place on record the fact that the Soviet Government have long pursued a policy aimed at suppressing Jewish culture in the Soviet Union and at severing Soviet Jewry from its cultural heritage. A key element of that policy is the effort to deny Jews the right to study the Hebrew language. Hebrew is the language of the Bible and the official language of the state of Israel. It is historically the only language to have always been the common property of all Jews everywhere. A knowledge of Hebrew is indispensable, not only to the practice of Judaism whose liturgy and sacred texts are written in Hebrew but also to secular Jewish culture. Nevertheless, the Hebrew language has been rendered virtually inaccessible to Soviet Jews through an unpublicised ban enforced by various means.

I have some very up-to-date information on the methodology by which this repression is still practised in the Soviet Union. I hope that pressure will now be applied under the terms of various protocols on the Soviet Union to indicate to them that this subtle, invidious process is being closely monitored by us here in the west. I make the point that the Jewish language is important for dispersed people, it is an important factor in retaining their identity. It was, of course, and to some extent remains a lingua franca among the Jews just as Latin was to pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism and just as Latin also was until a couple of hundred years ago the language of international diplomacy. It is a very important element.

In the USSR, courses in the Hebrew language exist for certain narrow state purposes as part of the curriculum of three universities. Jews as a rule — strangely, bizarrely are excluded from these courses. They are denied participation in academic courses which explore the roots of their own culture. This is even implicitly admitted by the Soviet Government themselves in a document prepared with the aim of showing how well Jews fare in the USSR. In other words, it is incumbent upon us to examine and decode statements emerging from the Soviet Union, even under Mikhail Gorbachev, so that we understand precisely what is going on. We cannot abrogate that responsibility. We cannot just simply accept blandly what emerges from the Soviet Union. It is our moral responsibility to examine and understand what may be going on under the surface.

According to the document to which I have just referred, Hebrew is taught at Soviet higher educational establishments which train philologists or orientalists; for instance, at the Institute of Asia and Africa, affiliated to Moscow University, and at the University of Tbilisi and Leningrad. What about those who wish to study Hebrew for purposes other than philology or orientology? I would like to make it plain that I do not intend, and it would be deeply insulting and wrong for me, to draw a parallel between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. I really do not want to do that at all. However, I have to point out that this freedom existed even in Nazi Germany, that it was possible to study oriental and semitic languages and even a person such as Adolf Eichman had studied and was familiar with the philology of Hebrew and the other semitic languages. So it is, if I may use a phrase of the people, no big deal to allow the study of philology or orientology in relation to Hebrew.

Officially approved Hebrew instruction is available elsewhere only in a few Christian religious seminaries and Soviet Jews are thus denied the opportunity to study Hebrew, except for those few private enterprise classes that now appear, I am glad to say, to be springing up. No textbooks of the Hebrew language are produced in the USSR and virtually no books of any kind in Hebrew have been published there for over 50 years. That is an astonishing statement. Indeed, almost no books at all are published on Jewish history and culture and there is also no institutional framework of any kind where Jews may study topics of Jewish interest. Private seminars devoted to Jewish subjects in the past have been forcibly repressed by the police.

Again, a little later on I hope to be able to place this in the context of international law. I do not wish to make a song and dance about this kind of repression without demonstrating very clearly to the Minister how, under international instruments, it would be possible to apply pressure legally, the legal framework in which this can be done. In addition broadcasts of Israel Radio, which are of a general educational character and which seek to transmit information on Jewish history and culture, are also systematically jammed. I say that because I believe it comes under the Helsinki Agreement.

I really intend and hope to be as responsible as possible, and it is important to state without going into it in too great detail that the treatment of the Jews in Soviet Russia must be distinguished and separated from the question of certain developments in the Middle East, particularly relating to Israel. That is, in my opinion, a separate and different matter. It is one which I hope this House will have the opportunity to address later on, and it is one I have no doubt to which the Foreign Affairs Committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas will address themselves. I am glad to see such a positive and pleasant expression flickering across the Minister's face and I know that he will take this opportunity to welcome the establishment of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs. I would be most interested in receiving his help and encouragement on this very important committee that has, as he knows, been established. I want to reiterate that there is no intention——

Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs (Mr. Calleary)

Very informally.

Mr. Norris

I think we better not get into parsing and analysis because there might be a possibility that "book-serology" would raise its head again and that might damage the dignity of the House. I want to reiterate that I separate the question of the tragic events in the Middle East from the question of the cultural and political rights of Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union.

Throughout the length and breadth of the Soviet Union there is not one single officially recognised school with Hebrew as its language of instruction. A small informal private Jewish kindergarten in Moscow where very young children were taught the rudiments of Hebrew was forcibly closed by the police in 1983. Of course I am well aware that this is pre-Gorbachev but still it is worth placing on the record that it is a mere five years ago. Several other efforts by Jewish parents to organise extra curricular classes for their children have met with varying degrees of success. However, even in the best of cases only a minuscule number of children is involved. I would like to place on the record of the House the words of somebody who actually has personal experience of this. I would like to quote from information supplied by a Jewish mother and long-time refusenik who describes the existing situation in her country as follows:

All the attempts of Jewish refuseniks to create children's groups where Jewish children can play together, acquire some knowledge of Jewish history, culture and traditions, learn about Jewish holidays, and learn the Hebrew language, have been suppressed by various authorities using all sorts of pretexts. The people who have selflessly undertaken the difficult task of organising such groups have been given strict warnings about the possible consequences that they could face.

Given the total absence of Jewish schools and the almost complete lack of Jewish cultural and religious textbooks, even in the Russian language, the overwhelming majority of Jewish children, even those whose parents identify actively as Jews have almost no opportunity to learn about their Jewish heritage. They experience anti-semitism and anti-zionism in greater or lesser degrees depending on the fluctuations of the political climate from the Soviet authorities and Soviet society but are unable to learn the corresponding, very positive side, of the inheritence of Jewish culture.

In response to this they have attempted to create their own private classes, in informal groups. This, of course, will strike another echo with Irish people for does it not remind us of the hedge schools where Irish people, also deprived of access to that most precious of gifts, education in their own culture, background and civilisation, had to resort to the hedgerows of this country because they would not yield up that essential human right, the right to knowledge of their own cultural background.

The authorities have sought in the past, including in the very recent past, effective means to suppress such private Hebrew instruction by Jews without openly forbidding it. They seem to have decided that the private teaching of Hebrew alone in contrast to the private teaching of all other languages — and again and again one comes back to the fact of the special treatment of the Jewish people — is not to be regarded as a legitimate employment. Newspapers have refused to accept advertisements for Hebrew lessons and the offices of the Ministery of Finance have rebuffed the efforts of private Hebrew teachers to pay income tax on their earnings. That is most extraordinary and bizarre, people actually queue up to pay income tax and a Government agency refusing to collect it because it has been earned by the teaching of a language of which they apparently disapprove. Only in novels have I recently come across anything quite so bizarre. It is worrying. The only parallel that I could remember, and I suppose it is mildly frivolous, is the intense embarrassment caused to certain local French authorities when prostitutes queued up to pay their income tax and the French state was terrified of being accused in the vulgar press of living on immoral earnings. That is the only parallel I can think of. It is not just absurd, I am sorry to say it is sinister.

Until the end of 1986 private Hebrew teachers and their pupils were subjected to all manner of harassment, persecution and even imprisonment. Hebrew books and educational materials were on numerous occasions confiscated. Yosif Begun of Moscow, as an example to others, was sentenced to years of exile as a parasite, his teaching of Hebrew not even being considered "socially useful labour".

By all of the means outlined, the Soviet authorities attempted systematically to destroy any infrastructure for the informal teaching of Hebrew and the dissemination of the Jewish heritage among Jews. Similar barriers are not constructed for any of the other languages which are officially taught. However, the attitude of hostility has tended to subside in recent months. Prison sentences are no longer likely but the overall behaviour of the Soviet authorities with regard to the study of Hebrew and Jewish culture and religion in general continues to be hostile and discouraging.

I would like to refer to information I recently received about attempts to create a Hebrew school in a region of the Soviet Union, in a town called Baku. I have received information about this, where young Hebrew teachers applied for and were given permission to hold classes in modern Hebrew in a rail-wayman's trade union called Udarnik. This was a matter of great excitement and so they overcame the various official difficulties presented in their way. Then in July they were evicted because it was felt by the authorities that repair and redecoration work was vitally necessary on this building. The organisers, Mikhail Dvorkin, Lev Fuks and David Khants-kashvili, had protested fiercely that other language courses, Pharsee, Arabic and Azerbaidzhani were not being interrupted, only Hebrew appeared to be a matter for interior decoration. The protest is being given backing by a former organiser of the classes, Vladimir Zeev Farber, who has written to President Mikhail Gorbachev from Israel, where he managed to emigrate a few weeks ago and I quote from part of his letter:

It is not for me to tell you about the situation of Jewish culture in the USSR, or about the persecutions to which Hebrew teachers were subjected not so long ago. Thus, the appearance of official Hebrew courses in Baku was understood by public opinion in the West as the beginning of the long expected changes in the authorities' policies in relation to the Jews.

These courses also had special significance because they were the first and for the time being the only experience of successful co-operation between the authorities and an informal Jewish movement...

Unfortunately, after several sessions the courses were closed under the pretext of remodelling work having to be done... I am convinced that this is either a misunderstanding or another attempt by opponents of the new policies to turn the clock back. I cannot believe that anyone in the Soviet Union seriously believes that the study of the Hebrew language is contrary to the principles of socialism.

I know that my friends in Baku will try to reopen the Hebrew courses in one of the city's clubs in the fall. I ask you to remove from their path the senseless obstacles remaining from the time of stagnation. As we all know it is difficult to remove these kinds of bureaucratic obstacles.

President Gorbachev is attempting to remove just such bureaucratic obstructions in the economic field. We are all with him in this courageous attempt. We do not blame him personally. We regard him as an important beacon of hope. But we wish to encourage him to apply the same vigour in removing these other parallel and equally unjustified obstacles in the cultural field. We feel that this is an exceedingly important measure of the reality that underlies the words which have become so familiar to us now, glasnost and perestroika. In fact the world will be watching and expecting a lot. Hopes have been raised by Mikhail Gorbachev on the subject of glasnost and perestroika. It is a tribute to the changes in the Soviet Union that we are watching so closely.

I would like now to place this inside a legal context because Soviet policy towards Jewish culture, Jewish Hebrew teachers and Hebrew language instruction for Jews in general infringes the individual rights of teachers concerned, of their pupils or potential pupils, as well as the collective rights of the Jewish minority, on an individual level parents and, in appropriate cases legal guardians, have a right to choose for their children the kind of education that conforms to their religious and moral convictions. Once again surely this is the kind of thing with which the great majority of the Irish people will instantly sympathise — the right to choose the ethical as well as cultural context in which one's children are brought up.

This right is guaranteed in several international instruments to which the Soviet Union is a party. I would like to list some of them. Article 26 (3) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares:

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 13 (3) of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights states:

The States parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.

Article 5 (1) (B) of the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education — concluded under the auspices of UNESCO stipulates as follows:

It is essential to respect the liberty of parents and, where applicable, of legal guardians... to ensure in a manner consistent with the procedures followed in the State for the application of its legislation, the religious and moral education of the children in conformity with their own convictions...

The main collective right, granted to minority groups, is defined in Article 27 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which declares:

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.

It is clear from everything I have said that the Jewish people in the Soviet Union constitute just such an ethnic minority because it is a religious minority and a linguistic minority. So, under all such headings, the Jewish people qualify for the protection of this internationally binding covenant to which the Soviet Union is a signatory. We are entitled, as members of the international community, to ask that these solemn covenants be respected by all the contracting parties.

The USSR violates, in a systematic way, the rights of this minority to self-preservation as an ethnic religious and linguistic group. It does so in pursuit of a policy which is not just anti-minority. This is not Big Brother collectively wanting this huge corporate State and objecting to any kind of linguistic, ethnic or social dissent: it is not because one can look at any other number of linguistic minorities which are appropriately treated in the Soviet Union. Indeed we are very glad that they are. The Ukranian language, the Polish language, Hungarian, Moldavian and so on are freely available to people from the relevant ethnic minorities.

It is rather interesting that, even when the Soviet authorities do intervene, they arrogantly assume to themselves the right to tell the Jewish people what is their language. The Minister probably knows already that the Soviet Union believe that Yiddish is the language of the Jews. It does seem to me, surely, that a fundamental right of a minority is to decide themselves what is their language. We know all too well in this country how deeply destructive it is to be told by superior centralised Government forces what language rights we have, what language we should speak, what language we are able to speak.

I was reading just last night "Mo Scéil Féin" by an tAthair Peadar O'Laoire, I am sorry to say, in an English translation. I was struck by a little snippet of dialogue between two children at the time of the Famine, overheard by the author. One of them, a girl called Sheila, says: "I have no talk now, Con," to the stable boy, and Con says: "Why, what have you no talk?" and she replies: "I have no talk, only English". I thought that the most heartrending thing, this transition from something that was deeply felt, spiritually and culturally, by a whole people, which was so tragically lost in the last century and recorded by the phrase: "no talk, only English".

The Jewish people are being presented with an option now: no talk, only Russian or, at the best Yiddish. They are not allowed their own language. This suppression is a blatant violation of the collective cultural rights of the Jewish minority to use and study its own language. It is something of which we must be aware and to which we must be sensitive. That is why it is clearly expressed in various additional treaties to which the Soviet Union is a party. I have already mentioned Article 27 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There is also Article 5 (1) (c) of the 1960 UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education which states:

It is essential to recognise the right of members of national minorities to carry on their own educational activities, including the maintenance of schools and, depending on the educational policy of each State, the use or the teaching of their own language.

This right has been, and still is, systematically denied. There is also no opportunity for employment of Hebrew teachers. The Soviet Government is obliged to respect the right of Hebrew teachers in this manner. Article 23 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares:

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment to just and favourable conditions of work...

The 1966 International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 6 (1), states:

The States parties to the present Covenant recognise the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.

Article 6 (2) of the same Covenant states:

The steps to be taken by a State party to the present Covenant to achieve the full realisation of this right shall include technical and vocational guidance and training programmes... under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual.

Convention No. 122 (1964) of the International Labour Organisation — in Article 1 (2) reinforces the notion of freedom of choice of employment.

Finally, I return to the question of the jamming of Israeli radio broadcasts which violates the International Telecommunication Convention and also contradicts the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act, with its specific provisions in section 2 (3) on wider and freer dissemination of information.

That is international law. In terms of Soviet law I believe that it can be demonstrated that, regrettably, there are clear infringements of the internal legislative provisions of the Soviet Union itself. The discriminatory suppression of the Jewish national language and culture violates the Soviet Union's own Constitution as well as Soviet laws which prohibit any form of discrimination on the basis of nationality and any preference or limitation regarding the national languages of the peoples of the USSR. Article 46 of the USSR Constitution stipulates:

Citizens of the USSR have the right to enjoy cultural benefits.

That is the wide umbrella. Article 34 of the RSFSR, the Russian Socialist Republic Constitution states:

Citizens of the RSFSR of different races and nationalities have equal rights. The exercise of these rights is ensured by a policy of comprehensive development and rapprochement of all nations and nationalities of the USSR, ...and by the possibility to use one's native language and the languages of other peoples of the USSR. Any direct or indirect restriction of rights whatsoever, the establishment of direct or indirect privileges for citizens on grounds of race or nationality, as well as any preaching of racial or national exclusiveness, hostility, or contempt are punished by law.

Again regretfully I would have to mention the publication of a scurrilously anti-Semitic paper called Pamyat which is a cause of concern to those of us in the West who are interested in these matters.

Article 40 of the USSR Constitution reads:

Citizens of the USSR have the right to work..., including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account to the needs of society.

I have got a great deal of further information on these laws. But, rather than be tedious, I will perhaps mention merely the heads of the sections without specifying them with any greater particularity. Simply, by mentioning them under their headings, it can be demonstrated that, in terms of the internal legislation in the Soviet Union, there are violations going on.

Article 17, paragraph 2 of the USSR Constitution protects the rights of people in terms of the teaching profession. Article 6, paragraph 2, of their Constitution also protects certain labour activities and provides for appeal to an executive committee of a higher-ranking Soviet of Peoples Deputies in a case of controversy. However, in spite of these laws and in spite of new laws, problems still remain. There is no question whatever of that.

In concluding this section I would like to quote words which are not mine, words which were spoken by somebody who has a very direct experience of the situation. Just over a year ago, in August 1987 Yosif Begun posed the question:

Has the situation of Soviet Jews improved recently? Not at all. Just as always, there are no classes in which to learn our language. There are no Hebrew language or Jewish history textbooks. There is nothing from which one can learn about Judaism; just as it always was. There is not even any permission to teach Hebrew privately. This is the situation of our culture in a State having millions of Jews in it. Not all of them will be able to emigrate to Israel. So what will their future be?

Of course he concludes that, bereft of their culture, this noble people who throughout this diaspora have miraculously retained their identity will find that very identity evaporating away from them under the conditions that obtain still within the Soviet Union.

I would like to say a little about emigration. The situation here, I am very glad to say has improved considerably. I do not want to go into this in too great detail because I may have an opportunity to come back on it later. Nevertheless it is important to make the point that there is a certain perversely tantalising attitude in certain levels of the Soviet bureaucracy with regard to long-term refuseniks, people who have been denied permission to leave the Soviet Union on various grounds, sometimes contact with scientific material, classified information and so on. Some of them have been left in this state of limbo for every long periods, I have a list here of a few of these people.

On this day of Kristallnacht it is important that we remember these prisoners, cultural prisoners, prisoners of their identity. One thinks of Yuly Koshorovsky, in Moscow, waiting for 18 years to be allowed to leave the land which is the land of his birth but which he no longer regards as his home. There is this extraordinary homing instinct which we in Ireland can understand — the wish to return home. Home for these people — and they have decided themselves at a deep level — is the State of Israel. One thinks of Zinovy Ostrovsky waiting for eight years, of Roald Zelichenok, waiting for 17 years, Vladimir Kislik waiting for 20 years, of Evegeny Lein waiting 17 years, of Vladimir Rais, waiting 19 years, of Benjamin Charny waiting nine years, of Gennady Reznikov waiting 12 years and of Yuri Cherniak waiting 12 years.

But the man of whom I think principally at this time is waiting longer than 19 years. He has been waiting over 40 years. It is highly likely that he is still alive. I have sought the permission of the Jewish community to mention him, to mention him with honour and respect. I speak of Raoul Wallenberg who was captured by the Soviet Army in 1945 attempting to continue his humanitarian work, who was taken to Moscow — although the Russian authorities denied this — who was held in prison in Moscow — although this was again denied. Eventually in 1957 a statement was issued that Wallenberg had died in Lubianka Prison in 1947, which was not correct. That is known to be a lie. But still the mystery has not been explained.

I would ask the Minister to consider action rather than just words and rhetoric. It is very important that we take this opportunity here in Seanad Éireann to discuss, in a balanced way, this important human problem, this question of Jewish people in the Soviet Union. It is important to ask these questions, but if the Government are really serious, if they want something more than a talking shop there is one thing they can do to measure glasnost. It is something that is non-violent, non-aggressive, that is in the spirit of people like Wallenberg and Ghandi, that is, to set in motion the machinery whereby Raoul Wallenberg has the citizenship of this country conferred upon him so that, appropriately and with dignity, the representatives of the foreign service of this State of Ireland — a small neutral, military non-aggressive State — has the entitlement to question the position concerning the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.

Mrs. Bulbulia

I second the motion. I have listened with great interest to the impassioned proposal of the motion from Senator David Norris. This motion has been on the Order Paper in the names of many Senators for some considerable time. It is quite extraordinary that, through a series of accidents really, we come to discuss it on Kristallnacht and on the fortieth anniversary of the celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We wish to debate and discuss this motion in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

My colleague dealt at particularly great length with the cultural aspect of this motion, with paragraph 2 as it is on the Order Paper. I propose to speak at greater length on the actual prohibition or inhibition on leaving the Soviet Union because anybody who thinks about the refuseniks and the circumstances in which they find themselves must reflect that what we really are concerning ourselves about is a tremendous waste of human potential. Many of them are forced to live lives of desperation, quiet desperation, mostly. They do not know if they will ever be able to travel to the west, to Israel or wherever they choose to travel and whether they will ever be able to realise and develop their potential. As the years pass there must be a fear that their talents are growing less, perhaps being dissipated; they are growing physically old and spiritually weary. That is why it is of extreme importance that those of us who cherish freedom stand in this House and elsewhere and speak on behalf of these people who are being denied and have, over the centuries, been denied a certain basic right.

It is interesting that, since we first put this motion on the Order Paper, we have been able to amend it. The changes are not purely textual. They are in some ways substantive because we must recognise the fact that glasnost and perestroika have meant a certain amelioration of the position of the Jewish people in the Soviet Union. I am happy to note that that is the case. I am pleased to record the fact because it must be very clearly understood that those of us who speak on this motion are not anti-the Soviet Union. We have reservations about a system which discriminates against and penalises certain Soviet citizens. But that is separate from any suggestion that we would be anti-Soviet in our orientation or expression.

All of these people experience fear and anguish. They all face the prospect of seeing their lives wasted simply because they wish to emigrate. There has been a history of oppression of the Jewish people in the Soviet Union. It is important that we speak about the historical perspective of this problem. I am indebted, for briefing material, to the Irish National Council for Soviet Jewry incorporating the Dublin 35's women's campaign. An eminent member of that organisation is in fact in the public gallery listening attentively to the debate here this evening. I would also like to express my gratitude for a very positive response from the Soviet Embassy to my request for briefing material.

The oppression of Russian Jews predates Communism. It is very important to state that. Long before the Russian Revolution the Tzars founded and maintained the Russian Orthodox Church as the State religion and as a pillar of the official ideology. As a consequence there were periodic oppressions of non-Russian, non-Orthodox minorities. Jews had become Russian subjects when the Empire extended itself into eastern Poland, so really they became Russian subjects as a consequence of aggrandisement and not by choice. But, of course, they were not Slavs; nor were they members of the Orthodox church. From time to time, during periods of strict enforcement of the laws, Jews were required to live in the pale of settlement, an area in the southern and western portions of the Empire. Quotas governed their admission to higher education and periodically there were pogroms. Of course, the word "pogrom" has come to be associated with the oppression of the Jewish people. It is interesting to note that it is a Russian word and comes from the Russian verb — pogromit — to destroy.

In 1903 there were protests in the United States because people there were concerned about the terrible pogrom in Kishinev. At the time the Russian Revolution was good for Jews. In fact many actively participated and others welcomed it, seeing in it some relief from oppression. It is very interesting to look at this oppression in the context of Marxism which is, of course, fundamentally hostile to all religions. In fact, Marx condemned anti-Semitism seeing it as a ruling class mechanism to divide and control the masses. Lenin personally denounced it. But, of course what is said by the upper echelons of any system, very often, is out of kilter with what is actually happening on the ground and with concrete situations as people are experiencing them. Under the Bolsheviks Jews became one of more than 100 minority nationalities living within the USSR. Unlike the Georgians, the Uzbeks and the Asabijanis and the other groupings they did not have a distinct territory and, therefore, they never formed a constituent republic of the USSR. At that time they had their own schools. The language that was recognised for them was Yiddish, as Senator Norris has so ably expressed it; it was not Hebrew, it was Yiddish. At that time there was a special department in the Government dealing with Jewish affairs. Several Jews occupied positions of political power, among them Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. These are perhaps the most famous or the better known names.

Life at that time, at the start of the Revolution and in its aftermath, was by no means ideal but it was far better than anything experienced under the Tzars. Maxim Gorki boasted at the time: equality of the Jews is one of the more wonderful achievements of the Revolution. It would be interesting to know if those words of Gorki form part of the corpus of thought of Gorbachev and the school of glasnost and perestroika.

Stalin's period is of extreme significance in this historical perspective because, of course, equality for the Jews, as equality for so many other minority groups, took a nosedive under Stalin. So did many of the ideals of the revolution. There was a campaign against Trotsky. In the thirties we witnessed the closure of Jewish schools, institutions and synagogues. During World War II there was something of a respite when Jews were enlisted into the fight against Fascism when very many of them took up arms for that cause. In the late forties purges began. Hundreds of Jewish intellectuals were shipped to the Gulag. Trials for so-called economic crimes, in which a disproportionate number of defendants were Jews, were the order of the day. During the Kruschev era things improved but only in the early years of that period. He rejected Jewish emigration to Israel. Prosecutions for economic crimes began again and many synagogues were closed.

This brings us to the present day and the era of glasnost. It is true to say that changes in the political climate of the USSR gathered momentum in 1987 and these have continued. They are encouraging signs and are to be welcomed. I expect that everybody who speaks in the debate will give due recognition to that fact and accord those changes a welcome. Mikhail Gorbachev, now President of the Soviet Communist Party, both in speeches and in an article in Pravda spoke of promoting and protecting human rights and stressed the obligation of governments to make their legislation conform with international norms in this area. During 1987 the USSR ratified the UN Convention against Torture and a major review of the criminal law was embarked upon by Soviet legislators.

Debate adjourned.