Activists Buoyed by Kremlin Moves, Plan Few Protests

NEW YORK —  Across 67th Street from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, )where Soviet President spent Tuesday night, is a bronze plaque, dedicated almost 24 years ago on behalf of Soviet Jews.

“Hear the cry of the oppressed,” the marker, the first of many such silent reminders to be installed in New York through two decades of frustration and anguish, pleads in both Hebrew and English.

To a remarkable degree, says the man who erected the plaque, that cry is being heard and answered. “Yes, I’m very hopeful,” Rabbi Arthur Schneier said Tuesday. “It is not only a question of believing--we have seen.”

Promises Questioned

When Gorbachev last visited the United States a year ago, human rights activists questioned his promises of reform. Now, many are convinced of his intentions and heartened by increased emigration and freer expression within the Soviet Union. The question they are pondering at this point is whether Gorbachev can succeed.

Instead of protests, many activist organizations are planning demonstrations aimed at expressing cautious support and encouragement. None is expected to draw a crowd even close to the 200,000 who marched in Washington to mark Gorbachev’s visit a year ago.

The first New York protest, at John F. Kennedy International Airport when Gorbachev arrived Tuesday, drew only about two dozen Jewish activists. Rabbi Ari Weiss, the protest leader, said he was troubled by the changing view toward Gorbachev.

“The silence of the Jewish community today as he arrives is nothing less than perfidious,” Weiss said. “Gorbachev has engaged in an excellent public relations campaign, and he has succeeded in lulling the American public and the American Jewish community into complicity.”

Even those who salute Gorbachev point out that the Soviet Union still has a long way to go. They worry that recent ethnic unrest--to some extent, an exercise in the Soviet Union’s experiment with new freedoms--may compound the leader’s problems in implementing reforms.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), just back from Moscow as chairman of a U.S. commission monitoring human rights progress under the 35-nation Helsinki Accords of 1975, said his recent discussions with the Soviets “attained a level of candor and seriousness which was surprising to me and to the members of our delegation. . . . Something new, real and important is taking place in the Soviet Union.”

Further, he noted in a speech last week in Baltimore, the progress stems from internal pressure, not outside protests. He says Gorbachev seems to recognize that the country will not unleash its people’s energy to work for economic progress while they do not enjoy personal freedom.

“By living up to their commitments,” Hoyer said, “they will better their own societies by giving alienated, passive populaces the chance to live in dignity and without fear.” However, he cautioned, “the West cannot be satisfied by words alone, no matter how encouraging they are.”

Gorbachev appears ready to provide hard evidence of his intentions. Last week, immediately before his New York visit, the Soviet Union moved to lift emigration barriers for at least 45 people who had been barred from leaving because the government claimed they knew state secrets. That move came a day after the Soviet Union stopped jamming broadcasts by U.S.-financed Radio Liberty for the first time in 35 years.

Overall, emigration of Soviet Jews has reached 16,572 this year, according to the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration, an agency in Geneva that aids in resettlement. The figure, while far below the 1979 peak of 51,330, is a marked increase from about 1,000 a year in the mid-1980s.

Schneier, who has traveled to the Soviet Union repeatedly as chairman of the New York-based ecumenical Appeal of Conscience Foundation, also noted a marked change in the attitude of government toward religion. When he met with a top official in 1965, Schneier recalls having his appeals brushed aside with the comment: “Religion is dying out.”

So he understood the significance of hearing Gorbachev say last April that religious believers “are Soviet people, workers, patriots, and they have the full right to express their conviction with dignity.”

Susan Osnos, a spokeswoman for the organization Human Rights Watch, added: “Gorbachev is saying things far more radical than people have ended up in prison for saying.”

So great are the hopes raised by Gorbachev that some activists hope their ripple effect will reach all around the world.

Arn Chorn-Pond, a 20-year-old Cambodian war survivor in New York to receive a Reebok Human Rights Award for his efforts to raise U.S. awareness of abuses in his home country, said recent Chinese-Soviet negotiations over Cambodia’s future had finally created “hope, especially for peace, in my country. . . . It’s very hard for my country to solve its own problems.”

By allowing freer debate and criticism, however, Gorbachev has loosed a force he cannot control--seen most vividly in the turmoil and violence that has resulted as the non-Russian ethnic groups, who constitute more than half the Soviet Union’s population, are given a chance to vent their longstanding grievances and rivalries.

Conservative Backlash?

Some worry that this may trigger a backlash among conservatives that could loosen Gorbachev’s grip over the direction of his country.

Gorbachev also has thus far failed to win one big prize he is seeking: an agreement by the United States and its allies to hold a 1991 international conference in Moscow on human rights. The issue has entangled conventional arms negotiations and prolonged an international conference on human rights in Vienna, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Western allies have set a series of conditions, including the release of all Soviet political prisoners, that the Soviets must meet before they will agree to a Moscow conference. Although the two sides cannot agree upon how many people this means, the fact that the Soviets at least have tacitly acknowledged holding even a handful of people who would be considered political prisoners is considered a major step.

Times staff writers Robert Gillette and Douglas Jehl contributed to this report.