EXPERTS ON SOVIET INTERVIEW EMIGRES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640041-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: October 2, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640041-5
ARTICLE
ON PAGE
APPEARED
mwi/
NE5,4; YORK TIMES
2 October 1983
EXPERTS ON SOVIET
INTERVIEW EMIGRES
U.S.-Funded Project Is Aimed
at Gaining Deeper Insights
. Into Russian System
By BERNARD GWERiZMAN
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 ? The De-
fense Department, the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and the State Depart-
ment have financed a five-year, $7.5
million academic research project into
how the Soviet system works, based on
interviews with emigres.
In a news briefing Thursday, details
of the project, which began two years
ago, were disclosed by Paul K. Cook, a
longtime State Department specialist
on the Soviet Union, and James R. Mil-
lar, a University of Illinois economist,
who heads the nine-person research
team at the university in Urbana.
Mr. Cook, who is the Government
coordinator for the project, said $3.7
million of the $7.5 million had been allo-
cated so far, with two-thirds coming
from the Pentagon, less than a third
from the C.I.A. and the rest from the
State Department.
The results of the project, which is di-
rected by the National Council for
Soviet and East European Research, a
nongovernmental body financed by the
Government, are to be published.
Near Half Came to the U.S.
Emigration is severely restricted for
all Soviet citizens, but Jews have been
most prominent among those getting
permission to leave.
Mr. Millar said 250,000 Soviet citi-
zens, about 85 percent of them Jewish,
10 percent Armenian, and the rest Rus-
sian, Byelorussian and Ukrainian, had
emigrated since 1970. About 100,000 are
in the United States, and half of them
live in the New York area.
When the flow of Soviet Jews began
. in the early 1970's, the State Depart-
ment asked Israel, where most of them
were then going, whether it would
allow interviews, and the Israelis re-
jected the request, for fear of jeopard-
izing future emigration. The current
' study is based on interviews with
emigres in the United States.
An earlier inquiry into the workings
of Soviet society based on interviews
with emigres was conducted at Har-
vard University in the early 1950's by
Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and
Clyde Kluckhohn, sociologists with an
interest in the Soviet Union. Mr. In-
keles has been an adviser on the new
project, Mr. Millar said. -
Most of the people interviewed in the
Harvard project were Ukrainians who
had come under German occupation in
World War II and preferred not to re-
main in the Soviet Union.
Sc.bolars Are Aware of Bias
Mr. Millar said that both this study
and the Harvard project were aware
that respondents were potentially
biased and did not necessarily repre-
sent Soviet society as a whole.
But one emigre, Aaron Vinokur, a
former Novosibirsk sociologist who is
now at the University of Haifa in Is-
rael, said that Jews, who make up the
majority of the emigres, were repre-
sentative of Soviet urban society and
that the selected sample of 2,800 people
to be interviewed included non-Jews as
well as assimilated Jews.
Mr. Millar said be did' not believe
that the use of emigres for such an in-
terview project would jeopardize fu-
ture emigration. He said emigration I
had declined in any event by the time
the study began. The peak was reached
in 1979, when 51,000 people left.
The purpose of the research is "to fill
crucial gaps in our knowledge about
the structure and function of the Soviet
system," according to Mr. Millar. He
said the interviewing would be over by
Nov. 1 and it would take a year to corre-
late results and two more years before
publication would begin.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640041-5