A military junta of Afghan officers who were graduates of Soviet military academies and completely loyal to the USSR ruled Afghanistan. The young officers aspired to build communism in a backward, poor, illiterate country with a tribal feudal society and deeply-rooted Islam. They acted resolutely, hoping to achieve rapid results but, unable to win the population’s support, instead they received a civil war. When, as a result of another military coup, Hafizullah Amin came to power in September 1979, the Soviet leadership was concerned. Although Amin repeatedly expressed amicable feelings toward theUSSR, unlike the previous ruler Taraki, he had been educated atColumbiaUniversity, and the Soviet leadership suspected him of harboring secret sympathies for theU.S.

The decision to introduce Soviet troops was taken at the Politburo session of December 12, 1979; they crossed the border on December 25. “Professionals in the KGB said that the invasion was senseless; the army said it was senseless, but the part of the KGB that was headed by Yuri Andropov, who was also a member of the Politburo, insisted on the invasion.”[1]

On December 27, 1979, President Hafizullah Amin was murdered along with his family and 200 bodyguards by Soviet elite unit fighters (spetsnaz). Babrak Karmal, who returned from emigration inCzechoslovakia with the help of Soviet bayonets, became the leader of the revolutionary committee and the next president of the country.

In analyzing the strife in Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, wrote in a note to the president that the U.S.finally had an opportunity to cause the USSRto experience “its own Vietnam war.” Brzezinski expressed the opinion that this difficult conflict could lead to the collapse of the Soviet empire.[2]

Brzezinski was right; theUSSRreceived its ownVietnamand the Americans gained the opportunity for a powerful geopolitical counter-intrigue. The reaction to the invasion was universally negative, seriously undermining the Soviet status in the UN and in the non-aligned movement. Ronald Reagan, elected to a second term asU.S.president, christened theUSSRthe “evil empire” and declared that his primary task was to fight against its expansion. He began to implement a powerful Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with space-based elements. Popularly referred to as the “Star Wars” program, it drew theUSSRinto another spiraling arms race that was already beyond its capability. TheU.S.imposed a trade embargo on theUSSR, including on grain. Another ice age began in Soviet relations with the West.

The effective voice of those defending Jewish movement activists─liberals, human rights, and Jewish organizations─was drowned out in the powerful chorus of opposition to the Soviet invasion. In the first months after the invasion, however, another important event weakened the effect of the sharp cooling of the international atmosphere: the summer Olympic Games were scheduled to take place inMoscowin 1980. The games offered theUSSRa chance to show itself in a better light, but punitive operations against refuseniks and dissidents would not further that goal. The KGB, therefore, limited itself to administrative arrests, conversations, warnings and threats, and only in rare instances resorted to stricter measures. For example, the authorities exiled Andrei Sakharov, who voiced sharp criticism of the Soviet invasion intoAfghanistan, and expelled the Jewish activist Leonid Volvovskii fromMoscow. Several people were detained for fifteen days, including Vladimir Kislik inKievon July 4 (after fifteen days he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital and held there until the end of the Olympic Games), Grigorii Geshis inLeningradon July 14, and Dmitrii Shchtiglik inMoscowon July 16. Anatolii Khazanov and Mikhail Chlenov were sent on forced work trips by theInstituteofEthnographyof the Soviet Academy of Sciences and certain dissidents had similar experiences.

About 15,000 law-enforcement workers were assigned to guarding the safety of Muscovites and guests of the capital. The KGB was fully in charge inside the country but it was much harder for it to exert influence abroad. Aware of theUSSR’s heightened sensitivity on the eve of the Olympics, Jewish organizations doubled their efforts on behalf of prisoners ofZionand refuseniks.

In Great Britain, two years before the scheduled opening, the “35”organization started demonstrating against holding the Olympics in Moscow. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was a supporter of the Soviet Jewry movement, frequently appealed to Soviet authorities in defense of prisoners of Zion. During her term as prime minister, she used to meet with Avital Shcharansky and the “35”and often presented their demands to the Soviet leadership.[3]After visiting Moscow and Leningrad in June 1978, Patty Pyott, a member of the French “Committee of Fifteen,” recommended that the committee initiate a campaign against holding the games in Moscow, explaining to the world that it would be the same kind of parody of the games as was the Berlin Olympics in 1936. She also proposed an economic boycott of the USSR.[4]

The Americans reacted most strongly to the Afghan invasion. The executive director of the U.S. Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, Glenn Richter, related: On January 11, 1980, the students organized a petition campaign to Vice-president Walter Mondale, urging that the Olympics be transferred from Russiato another place in response to the invasion of Afghanistan.[5] The Anti-Defamation League and the National Conference for Soviet Jewry published a large notice in the New York Times with the inscription: “The 1980 Olympics inMoscow will have the largest audience of prisoners of conscience in history.”

In mid-January President Carter delivered an ultimatum to theUSSR: If Soviet troops were not withdrawn fromAfghanistanby February 20, theU.S.would boycott the games, which it did.

On the eve of the Olympics, a large number of American, Israeli, Australian, and European delegations visitedMoscowin order to evaluate how productive a boycott would be. Refuseniks and dissidents were always the most accurate and sensitive barometers of the domestic situation in theUSSR. Among them were individuals with expert knowledge of Soviet reality and a genuine understanding of the mechanics of totalitarian rule.

We were asked whether a boycott could have a negative effect on our situation and on the human rights situation in general and how the public would perceive Western sanctions against theUSSR. Naturally, we understood that the KGB was eavesdropping on our meetings and that a discussion of a boycott, as was the case in any discussion of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, threatened our already vulnerable situation. We were aware that the call to boycott the Olympics stemmed from the Afghan invasion, which was not exactly our struggle, and not from the problems of human rights or free emigration. The refuseniks, however, were almost unanimously in favor of a boycott.

The Israelis also supported a boycott but, as was their custom, they asked the refuseniks to operate unobtrusively and not be in the front line of the struggle.

The boycott succeeded: sportsmen from 64 states, including fromChinaandRomania, refused to participate in the games. On the eve of the Olympics,Moscowlooked desolate. Jews were barely touched during the games. Many leftMoscowon their own accord─the farther away the better. Those who remained in town were under watchful surveillance, but I don’t recall any preventive arrests.

Although Jewish emigration was not halted completely, it declined from 51,331 in1979 to 2692 in1982 (by a factor of twenty) and to 896 in1984. It could have been stopped completely but, following the same reasoning as that of Andropov and Gromyko at the start of emigration, the regime considered it necessary in order to get rid of “nationalistically inclined individuals and religious fanatics” who had a harmful influence on their milieu and it enabled the KGB to continue using this channel for operative goals.[6]

Jewish activist circles initially formed the impression that the regime started winding down emigration at the beginning of1980 inconnection with the new round of the Cold War but, in fact, it abruptly began to put a brake on the emigration process a year earlier, at the peak of détente.

I turned to Yakov Kedmi, former head of the Liaison Bureau (Lishkat hakesher) to clarify the timing of the drop in emigration.

The regime, reasoned Yakov, made the decision at the beginning of 1979 and began implementing it in April. The leadership decided that emigration was getting out of control and if they did not do anything, the numbers would significantly exceed the level that was acceptable to them. The potential for emigration was enormous and it was snowballing.

Yasha, how did they manage to do this without the Jewish human rights organizations or us refuseniks or even Lishkat hakesher reacting to it?

Western human rights groups and Jewish organizations were concentrating their efforts more and more on specific refuseniks and dissidents. In response, theSoviet Unionin 1979 gradually changed the rules, declaring that only those with direct relatives would be permitted to emigrate. Thus they did not need to issue a refusal; they simply did not accept the applications. The new practice started inOdessaand then, over the course of a year, it spread throughout the country. Those whose relatives immigrated toAmericacould not apply at all because invitations were accepted only fromIsrael. This broke the chain that enabled a relative to send a genuine invitation. The quantity of invitations thus began to decline as did the number of applicants, and the number of documents that were accepted for review was reduced even further.

Did you really stop sending invitations that were not from direct relatives?

We continued all the same to send from immediate and from non-first degree relatives but the Soviet regime did not accept the latter. We didn’t manage to draw attention to that problem because the effort was focused on the struggle on behalf of refuseniks and prisoners ofZion.

Did the media and psychological war of BAR[7] and other Jewish organizations against the USSR continue?

It continued but more cautiously because repressions began and we were apprehensive about the fate of the activists.

After the invasion into Afghanistan, the regime proceeded to destroy the organized Jewish movement.

Correct, because they no longer needed to take into consideration the West’s reaction. The West’s response to the arrest of some dissident was insignificant in comparison to the reaction to the Afghan invasion. The regime then began to suppress everything, including the Jewish movement.

Despite the strong domestic pressure in the USSR, Lishka emissaries continued to arrive; Israel continued to take an active part in international book fairs, from which activists contrived to “take away” thousands of books; a project for Hebrew instruction in peripheral cities was operating; seminars continued; and samizdat was published. Life went on.

Yes. International conferences were conducted, demonstrations held, streams of letters were exchanged, and, from time to time, some refusenik was released, and a festival started. Everything was in order. And even the Soviet regime was satisfied. Do you know why?

Why?

There was no emigration.

How much did the regime lower the temperature of the Cold War? The various activities continued and foreigners were permitted to contact refuseniks.

Indeed, the initiative for the Cold War did not come from theSoviet Union. It was a reaction by the West, which theSoviet Uniondidn’t want but insofar as it was underway, it reacted to it, without overstepping certain bounds. The Soviet Union just wanted to be left in peace aboutAfghanistanand then, it thought, everything would be all right.

Were economic relations affected?

Those trade relations that benefited the West continued; they kept buying oil.

Starting in the period from August to September 1979, refusals were issued by the hundreds inKievandOdessa. The total number of emigrants did not decline immediately as the amount of cases under review was greater than before. The authorities took care of the backup by limiting or completely ceasing to accept new applications.

Until 1980, the number of refusenik families, that is, those who had assembled all the necessary documents, applied, and received a refusal, was around 2000. In1979, several hundred thousand Jews in the USSRhad invitations from Israeland were able to apply for exit visas. In connection with the spread of rumors that year that emigration would be stopped and that a high emigration level would last at best until the end of the Olympics, many who possessed an invitation began to fear that they “would miss the train.” “In the second half of 1979,”recalls the Leningradactivist-refusenik Mikhail Beizer, “the lines at OVIR became awful. People would stand all through the night, write down numbers, and hold places in line, as if buying rugs. I probably stood in line for a month. There was a terrible panic.”[8]

The well-known activist from Kiev Vladimir Kislik tells a similar story: “In 1979, emigration was practically halted entirely, and thousands of people in Kievsuddenly wound up in refusal. They dashed about without housing or money, not knowing what to do… they had left work, sold their apartments in anticipation of departure─it was terrible what happened. Many also had a terrible fear of the system and all this together produced complete despair.”[9] A similar situation developed in other cities as well. The number of refusenik families increased considerably in 1979-80.

There are no official statistics about the number of refuseniks at the beginning of the 1980s. The circumstances suggest, however, that the reduction in the number of exit visas to30,000 in1980 occurred primarily as a result of new refusals. This does not take into account those who went through a significant part of the application procedure but were unable to complete it because of the stricter process of accepting applications in some places.

A rather paradoxical situation was thus created. On the one hand, the greater number of refusals and the new punitive measures were extremely dispiriting, but, on the other hand, many energetic people thirsting for action filled the refusenik ranks. Fearing a radicalization of the refusenik community, starting in 1981, the regime started to undertake measures to return refuseniks to work in their profession, but we shall discuss that later.

Personal Reminiscences

The Soviet invasion ofAfghanistanand the West’s reactions evoked unpleasant premonitions. KGB agents again adopted the insolent look of masters of the situation. At that time, I was teaching Hebrew, conducting a seminar for Hebrew teachers, and preparing to hold the second intercity seminar for Hebrew teachers in Koktobel, to which teachers from nine cities had been invited. In advance of the seminar, it was necessary to prepare considerable study material, select teachers capable of working according to the new methods, and to rent places to stay.

Holding an intercity seminar of that level was a serious challenge to the regime. As it was, they hardly tolerated Hebrew teaching and would send one teacher or another to jail from time to time and, now, to top it off, there wasAfghanistan, the Olympics, and a boycott.

It was not possible to hold an underground seminar as there were too many participants. Naturally, we took the necessary precautions with regard to sending technical items and samizdat and tamizdat material, and we tried not to “stick out” or speak out too much. To all outward appearances it was a matter of a vacation among a circle of friends.

The seminar was scheduled for August-September and the Olympics for the second half of July. Many activists leftMoscowearlier, however, knowing from experience that inMoscowthey could be subject to preventive arrest for several weeks. I also considered leaving a few weeks early in order to avoid any risks.

In advance of the Olympics,Moscowwas cleaned up, painted, and renewed very thoroughly. The number of cars in the streets was reduced and more law enforcement officers and also more “tails” appeared. In the context of the approaching Olympics, we met more frequently with foreigners, who discussed issues of a boycott of the games and the regime’s possible reaction. We also began to receive guests who were officially accredited to handle preparations for their Olympic teams’ arrivals and accommodations.Israel[Isi] Leibler, for example, an Australian businessman and public figure and old friend of the refuseniks, was in charge of the arrival and housing of his country’s team. In that capacity he visited theUSSRseveral times on the eve of the games and met with Soviet officials, but each time he would also arrange to meet refuseniks.

The KGB surveillance was intense. A car with four agents in civvies was on constant watch near my house, as was customary on the eve of major holidays or important foreign visits. The agents’ conduct, however, changed: they didn’t conceal their surveillance and at times even demonstratively flaunted it. I remember thinking to myself: how many agents must they have in order to use them so wastefully on people who simply want to leave the country?

As the boycott campaign expanded, the head of the surveillance team showed a more persistent desire to establish direct contact with me. Sometimes he would stand at the entrance when I went outside and say calmly, “Good day, Yulii Mikhailovich.” Sometimes, half-jokingly, he would ask: “Where are you going?”

I had already been through all the “hoops.” People from the “organs” were on duty and under orders. A kind smile could momentarily change into bared teeth. Nevertheless, it was not worth it to insult them needlessly. It was important only to maintain a distance and not create any false illusions, calmly to utter “good day” and not to enter into any conversations.

Less than two months remained before the Olympics when the head of the group approached me and started speaking: “Have no doubts, Yulii Mikhailovich, we know that you are gathering together teachers in Koktobel. Go ahead and travel. You can stay inMoscowduring the Olympics; it doesn’t bother us. If you want, I can even get you tickets to the opening and to the competitions; just say so!” I was astonished. He could not say such things on his own initiative. It was, undoubtedly, a premeditated step, but what was the meaning of this message? Perhaps, they were trying to use us to transmit a message abroad that the situation inside the country would be calm and no serious harassment of Jewish or human rights activists was contemplated? I, naturally, refused but the anonymous officer’s proposal calmed me down─and in vain.

Four days before the opening of the games, I was taken to the 119^th police station. Three KGB officers forMoscow and theMoscow region─Yurii Solovev, Valerii Gromov, and Petr Petrov (I refused to talk until they presented their credentials)─conducted a prophylactic conversation of several hours with me. Their threats included the possibility of expulsion fromMoscow, a trial similar to Shcharansky’s, or fabrication of material implicating me in sexual crimes or malicious hooliganism. They were well acquainted with my case. For them I was already a person who had been THERE.

This time the conversation was conducted in a business-like and cynical manner. They demanded that I stop teaching Hebrew and running the teachers seminar inMoscow. Afterwards, I wrote down the highlights of the conversation from memory and transmitted them to the West: after all, it was rather intimidating.

The games took place without incidents and, as local wits correctly noted, the sole winner in them was Andropov’s team of power structures. All the remaining teams lost. The “winners” relaxed after the tense months of work, and our departure to Koktobel proceeded smoothly.

At the beginning of the study sessions, the small resort of Koktobel, located on the southern shore of theCrimeanSea, was filled “to the gills” with Jews. It had always been a popular vacation spot for our brethren, and that summer around three hundred people arrived with the teachers─family members, friends, and students. Twice a day study sessions were held on the beach. Groups were located at a distance of 40 to50 metersfrom each other, the majority of those vacationing were Jews, and externally, nothing even attracted particular attention. People were sunbathing in groups, conversing quietly, or reading. Excellent teachers accompanied me: Misha Kholmianskii, Yulii Edelshtein, Zhenia Grechanovskii, Misha Nekrasov, Lev Gorodetskii, and others. In the evening people noisily enjoyed themselves: there were several good guitarists, we sang Hebrew songs, built campfires, and strolled in the neighboring hills. The atmosphere was marvelous. Many young people later told me that their path to Jewishness began with that summer in Koktobel.

On the third day, a new, important element was added to this pastoral Koktobel scene. About eight to ten people appeared on the beach wearing neat black suits, ironed white shirts, and black ties. Just picture a hot August day, the sun is scorching, people in bathing suits are lounging near the water’s edge, some of them under beach umbrellas, and thirty meters from them, in full dress, agents of the “organs” are steaming. Instead of fear, those identical fancy black suits evoked an ironic smile of compassion.

This continued for about ten days.

The morning study session lasted from nine o’clock to noon. I used to rise rather early and at six I would usually jog with one of the seminar participants. On the evening of September 14, however, we strolled until late and the fellows slept soundly that night. Thinking it most likely that the agents were also sleeping after their late watch, I went jogging alone. The agents not only were not sleeping but also they remembered the warning I had received at the police station on July 15: “Yulii Mikhailovich, you have two months. If you don’t halt your nationalist activity during that time, we shall take measures.” Honestly speaking, I didn’t expect such punctuality from them.

Not far from the spot where I was warming up stood a man with a package in his hand. When I started to run, he turned slightly and moved in my direction. I managed to outdistance him but he staggered and contrived to extend his hand with the package in my direction in order to brush against me and immediately drop the package. A bottle with wine wrapped in a newspaper fell with a clunk on the rocks and broke. The “drunk” noisily and angrily started yelling and immediately two civil militiamen with armbands appeared─this at around six in the morning! The “producers” didn’t even bother to make the staging seem realistic; they blatantly demonstrated their capabilities. Fortunately, a member of our group had seen this “drunk” circling around the place where I was sleeping for half an hour and then wait patiently while I warmed up. If they cooked up something serious, I had a witness.

We were taken to the local police station, from which, a few hours later, we were dispatched to the nearby city ofSudak. A quick trial on administrative violations was held there. We were both given 13 days, after which the suddenly sober stranger disappeared somewhere and I was sent to sit out my term in a preliminary detention cell at the local police station. This was already the seventh administrative arrest with a 10-15 day conviction during my time as a refusenik. I was sure that they did not consider this a sufficiently serious warning and waited for the continuation.

There were seven people in the cell: students who had imbibed too much alcohol and a couple of local fellows who had got into a fight with visitors. It was a southern resort city and the police were used to dealing with vacationers; they behaved decently and were not vicious. My friends quickly discovered my location, and in the daytime, almost constantly, someone kept watch near the detention cell just in case. When the warden went away, we could speak.

I could sense that there were no provocateurs among the students and tried to become friendly with them. Three days before my release (it’s interesting that in Sverdlovsk, too, I was informed of an additional charge three days before the end of the term), two well-dressed, robust fellows were brought in. There was no room on the boards so they settled on the cement floor, but after a little while they decided to move to the boards and tried to lie down next to me and a student. When it became clear that they wouldn’t succeed, they began to push me and the student off of the boards. In my first arrest, which the KGB evidently knew about, in a similar situation I moved the prisoner with a boot to his teeth and that closed the incident. In this case, I immediately had the feeling that something was “off” with these fellows and they were behaving unnaturally. We conceded and settled on the cement floor. After some time, one of them got up and went to the latrine bucket. On his way, he casually stepped on my foot and then on the student’s, cursed, and walked on. Then he turned around, as if challenging us, “What’s the matter? You’re weaklings?” He was clearly provoking us to a fight. I looked at the student but he showed me with a glance that it wasn’t worth getting involved.

That night the same fellow provoked me and the student again, but we didn’t get drawn into a conflict. The next morning the pair disappeared. The KGB, evidently, decided that I had learned my lesson, and the last three days passed without incident. When I left, six friends were waiting for me as well as my wife, who had flown in fromMoscow. The seminar ended successfully before I got out; we spent another two days in Koktobel and returned toMoscow.

A little more than a month had passed since my departure for Koktobel but the atmosphere inMoscowhad changed completely: systematic pressure started against the seminars, samizdat, Hebrew teachers, and any other organized refusenik activity. It was even worse in other cities.

I sent a complaint to KGB chairman Yurii Andropov about the provocation that his workers organized against me and sent a copy to the West. I did not plan to stop either teaching or running the seminar, and perhaps the complaint could play a small role in protecting me against further provocations, which were not long in coming.

On October 15, 1981, the KGB conducted searches in the homes of several Moscowactivists involved in the teaching and dissemination of the Hebrew language. Among them were Pavel Abramovich, Natalia and Gennadii Khasin, Leonid Tesmenitskii, and myself. Printed material, books, typewriters, tape recorders and tapes, textbooks, and everything in foreign languages were mercilessly confiscated. We all were warned to stop teaching. On the following day other Moscowteachers including Boris Terlitskii, Yulii Edelshtein, Viktor Fulmakht, and Vladimir Kuravskii received similar warnings.[10] After a twelve-hour search, a KGB officer took me away, declaring to my wife, who was holding our infant son: “Say good-bye, your husband will not be returning.” Apparently, that was an “innocent joke” because I was released in the middle of the following day. I found my pale and weeping wife at home. The KGB “joke” had dried up her milk and she couldn’t nurse the baby.

At first I though that this was another campaign: a few months would pass and the KGB workers would calm down─they truly did back away from some teachers. They continued, however, to apply increasing pressure on me, annoyed at the fact that I didn’t curtail my activity. I continued to conduct the seminar for Hebrew teachers, received many out-of-town and foreign guests, and actively taught Hebrew. I also had a telephone channel toIsraeland people from other countries frequently called me.

A year and a half later, they finally did succeed in forcing me to stop conducting the seminar and teaching, but this is a separate story.

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