Physicist Criticizes Soviet Government In Talk at MIT

A Soviet Jewish physicist told a crowd of about 100 yesterday at MIT that people in the Soviet Union are so scared of the government they "stop being human beings."

Aleksandr Voronel lost his professorship and was severely harrassed by Soviet police when he applied for a visa to Israel in 1972.

Voronel and his wife Nina, a poet, were granted permission to emigrate to Israel this year in response to pressure on the Soviet government from American scientists and committees on Soviet Jewry.

Nina Voronel said yesterday the "only reason" her husband wasn't arrested when he applied for a visa is because of demonstrations in the United States.

"Soviet officials are very sensitive to public opinion abroad," Voronel said. "They want to look decent to the rest of the world."

Voronel was forced to resign from his position at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow and was further harrassed by a draft call for active duty despite his age (41 years) and a previous exemption due to a chronic back problem. The upper age limit for military service is 36.

"You become a traitor and lose all your friends when you apply for a visa." Nina Voronel said, talking about the alienation of Soviet Jews from their fellow citizens and the rest of the world.

"You live in a cell where there is no news, no communication," she said. "We try to catch the voice of America which is hushed, hushed, hushed."

Shortly after his professional life was abruptly terminated. Voronel began holding weekly scientific seminars in his home. These were attended by colleagues who were similarly denied opportunity to work in their fields.