After 16 Years, Refusenik Nudel Gets OK to Emigrate

MOSCOW — Ida Nudel, one of the best known Soviet Jewish refuseniks, said Friday that she had finally received permission to emigrate to Israel after a 16-year wait.

The 55-year-old economist, who was once exiled to Siberia for four years for her agitation for emigration, described herself in an interview as “excited” and “so happy” after being assured in a telephone conversation with the head of the Soviet visa agency that she could leave the country.

Nudel, who has a sister in Israel, first applied to emigrate in November, 1971, but was refused ostensibly because she learned state secrets while working as an economist.

She is the latest in a series of long-term refuseniks and other prominent Jewish activists who have been given permission to leave in recent weeks. Early last month the authorities notified half a dozen activists that they could leave, including Josef Begun, a mathematician and Hebrew teacher who spent three terms in jail, and Viktor Brailovsky, a cyberneticist.

Last week Yevgeny Yakir, a mechanical engineer and latest in a long list of Yakir family members to suffer under Soviet rule, received permission to emigrate after a 14-year wait. And on Thursday, Alexei Magarik, a Hebrew teacher released last month after serving half of a three-year prison sentence, was told that he had 15 days to leave the country. Magarik was the last so-called “Jewish prisoner of conscience” known to be in Soviet jails and camps.

To Improve Image

The actions are seen as part of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts to improve the image of his country by dealing with some of the better known human rights cases that have proved a constant strain in its relations with the West.

In a meeting last Monday with Isi Leibler, an Australian businessman and vice president of the World Jewish Congress, Rudolf A. Kuznetsov, head of the Soviet office of visas and registration reportedly said that by December “the problem of long-time refuseniks will disappear.”

According to an account of the conversation from Alexander Y. Lerner, a leading Soviet Jewish activist and close friend of Leibler, Kuznetsov said that decisions had already been made on 100 cases and that “many more” would be reconsidered this month and next.

Gorbachev and President Reagan are scheduled to meet in late November. In December, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke is due to visit the Soviet Union.

Lerner, who cautioned that Kuznetsov’s remarks are so far “only words,” said that “about 200” Soviet Jewish families remain who have been refused permission to emigrate for more than 10 years.

Increased Emigration

The Soviets have also allowed overall Jewish emigration to increase substantially this year, with more than 5,000 granted exit visas so far, compared to fewer than 1,000 in all of 1986.

The official reversal in Nudel’s case is the first to be reported here since Leibler’s conversation with Kuznetsov, and it was also the visa office director who gave her the news.

Nudel, who was refused permission in 1982 to move back from Siberian exile to her native Moscow, was in the Soviet capital to appeal the residence decision Friday when a neighbor reached her by telephone from her current home in Bendery, near the Romanian border in Soviet Moldavia.

The neighbor said a local visa office official was trying to reach her to tell her she had permission to leave for Israel, a report that Nudel said “I did not believe.”

Nevertheless, she called the Moscow headquarters of the visa office and was immediately connected to Kuznetsov when she identified herself.

‘Go to Moldavia’

“ ‘Kuznetsov speaking with you,’ ” Nudel quoted the official as saying. “ ‘You have permission. Go immediately to Moldavia.’ ”

Nudel said she was so taken aback that she thanked the official, “forgetting all about our cruel conversations before.”

She said she immediately called her sister, Elena Friedman, in Israel with the news. “She cried,” Nudel said.

Nudel then went to Moscow’s synagogue, where she attended Yom Kippur services, ushering in the Jewish day of atonement.

Nudel said she will leave for Israel in “the quickest time,” but that it would take her at least three weeks to get her affairs in order.