Soviets Improve but Still Fall Short on Rights, U.S. Asserts

WASHINGTON —  Moscow has improved its human rights record but still falls short of its obligations under the Helsinki Accords, the Reagan Administration said Tuesday in a report issued on the eve of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s meeting with President Reagan and President-elect George Bush.

The 25th semiannual assessment of Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the 1975 Helsinki pact requiring human rights and security cooperation in Europe concluded that conditions have improved in most of the Warsaw Pact nations but that much more remains to be done.

“There was significant improvement in Soviet policies toward family reunification, although problem areas remained,” said the report, which was sent to Congress by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. “Jewish emigration increased significantly, and some longstanding Jewish refuseniks were given permission to emigrate; a number of others continue to await exit permission, however.”

The report concluded that most Jews who applied to emigrate for the first time in the last six months received routine approval.

“At home, the Soviet leadership’s campaign for more glasnost (openness) and ‘democratization’ continued to improve the opportunities for Soviet citizens to express their views, both in the official media and through unofficial organizations and publications, and gave impetus to ongoing reforms,” the report said.

It noted that Armenians, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were allowed much wider latitude to express themselves. But it added that Ukrainians received no such freedom and that “the Ukrainian Catholic Church continued to be outlawed.”

And it said: “While glasnost has, without question, brought remarkable changes to the Soviet mass media, the Soviet government continues to act to ensure that the dissemination of information ultimately ‘serves socialism’ and to take actions at various levels to impede the uninhibited access of Soviet citizens to news and information from abroad.

“Much has changed, and much remains the same.”