Americans should not allow themselves to be blinded by the release of prominent Soviet dissidents and should continue to oppose oppression of Soviet Jewry, dissident Natan Sharansky told an audience of more than 300 people last night at Sever Hall.

"I think it is just the time now to remind ourselves what was from the very beginning the aims of our struggle," he said.

Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik who was released from his nine-year prison sentence three years ago, said that most Americans laud Mikhail Gorbachev for allowing the emigration of several well-known, prominent dissidents, but few realize that his regime has barred the bulk of other Jews from emigrating.

He described a taxi driver who recognized him but mistakenly assumed that his wife was Ida Nudel, another dissident. Sharansky understood that the driver was a supporter of human rights in the Soviet Union, but that he was only familiar with the two most well-known names.

"From all the Soviet Jews, he know two names," he said. "Very natural. If there is Sharansky, there is Nudel. If he hears that Ida Nudel is in Israel, I'm sure that he will have the impression that the struggle for Soviet Jews...is coming to a happy end."

Sharansky warned against allowing Gorbachev's release of the few well-known names to calm down the fervor of American supporters of Soviet Jews.

"Gorbachev knows how to speak to the West," he said. "He knows how to make good, but very limited, well calculated, nice gestures, and to get maximum publicity for this."

In 1979, when 51,000 Jews were released from the Soviet Union, American Jews criticized the Soviet regime for being too restrictive. But, he said "today, Gorbachev releases five, six thousand, and everybody says what a great human rights champion he is."

Sharansky urged that Americans demonstrate their support for Soviet Jewry at a rally on December 6 in Washington during the Soviet leader's visit, the first in fourteen years.

According to Sharansky, KGB officials ridiculed the letters he received from American students and housewives during his prison terms, but these letters helped to free him. Now, he said, is the time for these supporters to again show their support for the remaining Jews in the Soviet Union.

"The KGB was always warning me that our fate, my personal fate, was in their hands, and not in the hands of the students and housewives. They were wrong in this case."