ABSTRACT
Western observers remarked upon "the apparent diminution in the volume of Soviet anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda and the curbing of some of its worst excesses." Besides an increase in Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union during 1986 and early 1987, there appeared to have been some improvement in the situation of Jews still living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two days earlier, Literaturnaia gazeta published an article by Nina Velekhova on the Jewish Studio Theater in Moscow. The official media had always vigorously denied the existence of such a problem in the Soviet Union and had claimed that all Soviet peoples were equal. There were many signs that the new Soviet leadership had decided to change its policy toward Jews, but the--by Soviet standards--considerable liberalization of cultural life and the greater freedom simultaneously accorded the press suggested that the diminution of state anti-Semitism involved not only political but also ideological factors.
