WHAT'S BEHIND KREMLIN CRACKDOWN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200980158-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 158
• Publication Date: March 18, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000200980158-8
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THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITLJ~
18 March 1980
What!s. behind Krzm- fin CCk'd~wi,rs
With SALT II on ice, Russia has less incentive
for good behavior, as a dissident crackdown in-
dicates. President Carter is trying to keep the
t eaty alive, but prospects are poor (below left)..'
By David K. Willis
Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Detente is in tatters. The Moscow Olympic Games are scheduled!
for July despite the boycott movement. The SALT Ii treaty is stalled)
by an anti-Soviet swing to the right in and out of the US Senate. Soviet
hopes for lower US trade tariffs are out the window for the moment.
Add all these facts together, and you come up with reasons why the
Kremlin has been cracking down hard on Soviet dissidents in the last '
five months, and why it has reduced Jewish emigration by 25 percent
in the last two months.
The crackdown widened and intensified in March with the sudden
arrest of an Estonian scientist, Dr. Juri Kukk, on a street in his home
city of Tartu March 13. Details were telephoned to this correspondent I
from Tartu on March 17 by friends. They said Dr. Kukk's wife and two
young children were greatly distressed.
The arrest was the strongest move the KGB has yet made against)
Baltic dissidents, who have been newly active since last August,- when
45 signed a "Baltic appeal" calling for independence for Latvia, Lith-
uania, and Estonia.
At least 11 other dissidents have been arrested in Moscow or in the
Baltics since Nov. 1. The most prominent to be seized was the 1975 No-
bel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Andrei Sakharov. Several other dissidents
have been searched, warned to stop their activities, or attacked in
print.
As Western diplomatic sources here see it, the Carter administra-
tion has lost any leverage it might have had over the Kremlin to en-
sure that dissidents are treated humanely. The Soviets no longer feel
SALT and trade concessions are on the diplomatic boil and about to be
granted. "The Soviets want dissidents out of the way before Olympic '
tourists try to contact them," says one veteran diplomat, and now
they see no real reason to hold their hand."
. The latest issue in the Communist Party journal Kommunist car-
ries a long article which in part attacks dissidents as spies and propa-
ganda agents for the CIA. It was written by the man who is deputy to
KGB chief Yuri Andropov - his first deputy chairman, Semyon
Tsvigun.
-VIt'urn, all this antidissident activity comes-as the Soviet stance on
Afghanistan remains blunt and unyielding. Officials here dismiss all
talk of a "neutral" Afghanistan as an imperialist "trick." Western
diplomats say the Soviets will never accept the idea because to do so
would be to signal to Eastern Europe, Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam
that the Soviet hold over its own communist allies may be weakening.
To the aging, conservative, suspicious, and defiant Kremlin, even an
inch backward . is to- be 'feared; for it may lead to unimaginable I
consequences.
To counter Western shortwave broadcasts in Russian,
about rising Soviet casualties inside Afghanistan, both the
armed forces newspaper, Red Star, and the party newspa-
per, Pravda, have just published long articles designed to
show that Soviet troops are welcomed by the Afghan peas
ants, and living in comfortable tents with letters and newspa
pers from home.
In Moscow rumors circulate of coffins returning and fam-,
ilies of soldiers grieving: "Have you heard? Do you
know? ...
The actual number of casualties is unknown. Officially ca-i
sualties are not mentioned. Neither of the two articles men-'
tioned any. But Pravda did indicate that Soviet troops would!
be needed for a long time to come, and that rebel forces had';
been organized in the mountains.
For Estonian scientist Dr. Kukk, the arrest in his home
city ended for the time being a year and a half of increasingly j
open dissident activity after a lifetime of conformity, includ-
ing 12 1/2 years of membership in the Communist Party. - .
In Moscow in January to give Western correspondentsi
copies of official Baltic protests against the invasion of Af-
ghanistan and the Moscow Olympics (whose yachting events
are to be held in the Estonian capital of Tallinn), he was de-
tained and held for three days at a police station before being
escorted back to Tartu.
Finally he decided to try to emigrate to Israel. He hadl
gathered all the necessary papers and intended to file them
on March 14 but was arrested the day before. Friends who
telephoned me said he had been taken to Tallinn for investi-
gation. Charges were under Article 194, Section 1", of the Esto-
nian criminal code: anti-Soviet slander.
He could be sentenced to three years in jail, or fined 100
rubles, or sent for one year to a labor camp.
Meanwhile, Mr. Niklus also lost his job late last year. A.',
Tartu court refused to reinstate him. He appealed to a
Tallinn court, which ordered a rehearing. That rehearing has !
been postponed five times in Tartu, while the KGB interro-
gates his former students at an evening school of languages.
Mr. Niklus said in an interview March 17 he believed the,
KGB would try to have him declared unfit to teach and get
around the Tallinn decision that way. -
The KGB has also tightened pressure against Jewish dis-
sidents. Last year more than 50,000 were allowed to emi-
grate, a record number, as the Soviets tried to soften Senate
opposition to the SALT U treaty and to granting Moscow
lower tariffs on Soviet-manufactured exports.
But with both issues-now bogged down in the detente crisis
that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviets
have cut down on the flow. In the first two months of this
year, only 6,139 Jews were given exit visas, down 24 percent
from the 8,166 in the same period last year. --
Meanwhile, the number of dissident leaders available to
talk to Olympic Games visitors is dwindling. The record of
arrests since last-November includes Dr. Sakharov-(ban-
ished from contact with the West in the closed city of Gorky),
and Helsinki - human-rights activists Tatyana Velikanova
(Nov. J) and Malva Landa (March 1 )
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000200980158-8