The Soviet Union has agreed to a ``joint venture'' with American Jews for the opening of a Jewish cultural center in Moscow, Jewish sources said Friday. Details of the project will be discussed next week in Moscow between Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, the sources said. The decision, which contrasts sharply with decades of official repression of Jewish cultural and religious life, reflects the widesweeping changes undertaken by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet society and economy. Until recently, the teaching of Hebrew and practice of Jewish culture often resulted in jail terms on trumped-up charges ranging from anti-Soviet propaganda to drug possession. An understanding in principle on the cultural center was reached last May in talks Bronfman held with Soviet officials, including Shevardnadze and Konstantin Kharchev, chairman of the state committee on religious affairs, said the sources. ``The Soviets have given the green light for this joint venture,'' said one source, who declined to be further identified. What remains to be discussed are the funding and exact location of the center, he said. The center will include a library, museum and rooms for celebration of weddings, bar mitzvahs and other religious ceremonies, the sources said. If the Moscow project is successful, similar centers will be opened in Kiev and other Soviet cities, they said. The center will be run by Soviet, American and European Jewish groups in a building supplied by the government, the sources said. The handful of synagogues allowed to operate in the Soviet Union are run by the state under close supervision. The agreement is the latest in a series of changes affecting the lives of the estimated 2.5 million Jews living in the Soviet Union. Authorities allowed some 12,000 Jews to emigrate this year, up from the 8,700 allowed to leave last year and a significant increase over the estimated 900 exit visas granted in 1986. The easing of restrictions also has affected other ethnic and religious minorities, who are enjoying greater freedom under Gorbachev. The changes also have extended to Soviet relations with Israel, which Moscow cut off in 1967. An official Soviet delegation went to Israel last year and an Israeli consular team is in Moscow now.
