Leonid Brezhnev, who had ruled the USSR for eighteen years, died on November 10, 1982 at the age of 76. The appointment of the 68-year-old Yurii Andropov as the new secretary general of the CPSU after a lengthy period of economic and spiritual stagnation inspired certain hopes. Unlike the utterly decrepit and faceless Brezhnev, Andropov stood out against the generally drab background of Politburo figures. He spoke intelligibly and, despite his fifteen years as head of the KGB, was practically considered a liberal, an admirer of music and literature, and an art connoisseur. Records by popular Western performers appeared in Soviet stores. But the hopes of a new Thaw were not justified. On the contrary, to the accompaniment of campaigns for discipline in production and a struggle against corruption, Andropov reinforced ideological control over society and intensified the persecution of dissidents.

Under Andropov emigration dropped to the lowest recent level; not one liberated prisoner of Zion received an exit visa, Jewish activists were increasingly harassed, and the methods of pressure became more refined and insolent. Brought in more frequently for intimidating conversations, activists were asked to sign that they would no longer conduct anti-Soviet activity. At the same time, the interpretation of anti-Soviet activity was extremely broad. For example, if a refusenik refused to halt activity that was lawful but the regime considered objectionable, such as teaching Hebrew or running a scientific seminar, the KGB could entrap him by planting narcotics or a weapon or staging a beating, subject him to unprecedented pressure in prison, and so forth. Activists quickly felt Andropov’s heavy hand. Matters were much tougher in the provinces than in the capital.

 

Yosif Begun (b. 1932), Moscow

The first token trial under the Andropov regime was that of Yosif Begun, who had been arrested in Leningrad when he was visiting Aba Taratuta. The arrest took place six days before Andropov’s accession to the position of head of state; the investigation and sentencing thus occurred under the new regime. Begun was widely known in the West as a strong advocate of familiarizing Soviet Jews with their national culture. He taught Hebrew, produced samizdat, fought for the legalization of that activity, and he was an active participant in the preparations for the international symposium on Jewish culture. Begun was first arrested on March 1, 1977 during the holiday of Purim. At that time he received two years of exile for “a parasitic way of life” and was released in March 1978 (a year in a Soviet prison counted as three years of exile). He was arrested again in two months, this time on trumped up charges of violating registration rules in Moscow, and he was given three years of exile. As soon as he was released in August 1980, Yosif immediately returned to his publishing activity. He was arrested for a third time two years later, as he relates:

I was arrested on November 6, 1982. They had clearly concocted some major Jewish case, but it wasn’t worth a wooden nickel. All they did was collect my papers in which I wrote about the Jews’ right to study Hebrew. In reality, this third trial was against Jewish culture.[1]

I thought for a long time about why they didn’t do this earlier, in the 1970s, and why they didn’t arrest any religious teachers. Religion didn’t have a chance of appealing to the masses in an atheistic country, but Jewish culture stuck in the regime’s throat like a bone. Culture, after all, involves ideology; Jews began to think about who they were, what was happening to them, and why they were in such a situation. They begin to demand Hebrew, a free press, and a link to their own national state. In the stagnating early eighties, culture became the element that preserved Jewry and aroused them to act. An independent culture implies an undermining of the foundations. And if the Jews were permitted their culture, then others would demand the same. Repressions against Jewish cultural figures were an expression of the fear of Jewish culture. I think that the regime was preparing a major, serious trial. The investigator-colonel told me: “You have [a charge of] Article 70,” and I said to him: “You must be mistaken. Perhaps 190 ‘prime,’[2] because that’s simply slander, but 70 is subversion of the Soviet regime.” He replied: “No, no, old fellow, 70. Look, in 1974 you wrote an article, ‘Traditions of Antisemitic Propaganda under the Guise of Anti-Zionist Propaganda.’” The KGB kept it until 1982 and presented it at the investigation as a dangerous anti-Soviet statement.

For a major trial they first had to break you down and force you to repent, but they already knew you rather well and understood that they couldn’t break you.

I nevertheless think that they needed a resounding trial that would be followed in a natural way by trials of Hebrew teachers. The authorities regarded culture as more dangerous than Zionism because the latter would be emptied by emigration. Moreover, Zionism was local in nature whereas culture was all-encompassing in the Jewish context and posed the danger of spreading to other nationalist minorities.

How did you react to the charge?

It was harsh. Article 190 is one matter and 70 is an entirely different one because they could give seven [incarceration] plus five [exile]. To be torn away from life for twelve years!

Refuseniks and people all over the world rallied to Begun’s defense. Protest letters were sent to Soviet authorities and to figures abroad. In the summer, all one hundred U.S. Senators interceded for Begun. The trial took place in the city of Vladimir from October 12-14, 1983. Begun was sentenced to the maximum punishment under Article 70─seven years of strict regime imprisonment and five years of exile.

 

Shimon Shnirman (b. 1958), Zaporozhe

Shimon Shnirman was re-arrested in Zaporozhe on January 10, 1983 for refusing to serve in the army. He had already been imprisoned for two and a half years at the end of the 1970s and was detained on the same charge. The 25-year old refused to serve because he did not want to have access to classified material. On February 13, 1983 the court sentenced him to three years of strict regime imprisonment.

 

Lev Elbert (b. 1948), Kiev

Under Andropov, even greater attention was given to the struggle against ideological deviationists, a category that included Hebrew teachers. The Kiev activist and Hebrew teacher Lev Elbert was arrested on July 10, 1983. At the time of his arrest, he and his wife, Inna Mizrukhin, had been in refusal for seven years. Lev taught Hebrew, knew English well, actively participated in preparations for the cultural symposium in 1976, and was acquainted with many activists in Moscow. In other words, he was an entirely noticeable and annoying figure to Kievan authorities. According to Lev:

The refusenik community in Kiev was more homogeneous than in Moscow. A few people had to deal with everything. The KGB was vicious and people were afraid. In Kiev, Kislik had an underground support fund and later I had one of my own. Kislik and I worked in parallel, but I had more possibilities. We worked with Muscovites, with Mushinskii. Literature would arrive in abundance. Ultimately, in 1982 I received a warning from the all-Union KGB: “Arrest is the only thing that will come next.”

What was the specific charge against you?

“You slander the social and state order”─I met with many foreigners. They were also bothered by the Hebrew. I was incriminated by a Jew from Konotop who testified after a search that I had given him some books. The interrogation took place on January 30, after which the head of the Jewish division of the KGB Anishchenko led me into a separate room and said: “You are writing anti-Soviet articles”─and just at that time material from the symposium, including my article about Babi Yar, had been published in Israel─“so I can guarantee you that your twelve-year-old son will not see you for another fifteen years.”

Three days later a note arrived from the army commission summoning me to an army reserves muster. They shattered my nerves for several months with regard to the Jew from Konotop, but then they closed the case for lack of proof and perhaps because they didn’t want to arrest me on a charge related to literature. I asked the military commission for a guarantee that there wouldn’t be any classified information in the army but of course they wouldn’t do that. The punishment for evading a reserve call-up ranges from a fine of 100 rubles to a year in prison. Well, I received the year in prison.

The appeal was not granted and I went to prison, where I was put in a cell for people under investigation. My belongings were put in a checkroom. Five days later, I was dragged out to a transport and conveyed in a “Stolypin car” [resembling a cattle car but used for carrying prisoners] to the Peshchansk camp on the border of the Vinnitsa and Odessa regions. At four o’clock in the morning, I was taken first out of the line up and brought to the head of the disciplinary department; they went through my things and pulled out a little package from the left armpit of my padded jacket. The packet contained thirty grams of what they called a narcotic substance. It later became clear that I had been brought to the central zone for the rehabilitation of drug addicts in Ukraine, as they knew.

Someone planted it?

The KGB men. After all, my things had been in the checkroom. They began to concoct a “case,” as if, knowing my destination, I had taken cigarettes and hashish with me for sale. “You yourself don’t smoke, right?” “If that’s the case,” I said, “then I must have made a deal with the director of distribution in Ukraine because I had to know where I was being sent.” I was immediately thrust into the penalty isolator for fifteen days.

For what? Because of what they found in your jacket?

Yes, for at attempt at illegal transport of narcotic substances. According to the criminal code of that time, the punishment, even if it was for sale, was up to fifteen years or capital punishment.

They wanted to intimidate you thoroughly?

Well, yes. And then the criminal case began. I had my troubles in the penalty isolator, and I slit my veins.

???

I had to get out of the common cell. The medic came and put on a suture clip. I was forced to wash the floor and they gave me a separate cell. When they wanted to transfer me back to a common cell, I tore off the suture clip in front of the head of the zone and the blood spurted out onto his jacket. He said, “Take this idiot away.”

How did the penalty isolator end?

I was sitting with a bandaged arm when my relatives came for a meeting, and I was, as they said, kind of pale. I told them without beating around the bush what had happened. Things got moving from then on. They wrote about 700 petitions in one year. I therefore did not sit in prison for fifteen years but only for that year.

The authorities backed down?

Far from right away─only in November, when they closed the case about drugs. Before that my wife Inna began a hunger strike. A KGB agent came to convince her to terminate it, saying: “It’s a misunderstanding; I promise you that all this will end.” She stopped the hunger strike after ten days and went to Moscow, where she met visiting U.S. Congressman Steny Hoyer and told him everything. Two days after she returned home, a search was conducted in the house and they discovered a packet in the bookshelf. They found it! The officer who conducted the search insolently placed it there. It contained half a gram of some kind of powder, which they immediately charged was the remainder of the drugs that I took with me. They then opened a criminal case against Inna, too. She, in turn, began another hunger strike at the apartment of Natasha Khasina in Moscow. Her hunger strike lasted 42 days.

I remember that hunger strike. It attracted a lot of attention abroad.

At the beginning, our son, who was thirteen years old, remained at home. An investigator in the drug case came to him and told him that he would be put in an orphanage, his father would be shot as an enemy of the people, and his mother would be sent to a psychiatric institution. The boy had a nervous breakdown. He was sent to Moscow and lived at Natasha’s house with his mother while she was on the hunger strike. I was taken to the camp zone.

What was the zone like?

A criminal zone for 3500 people; there were five Jews there. Another Kiev activist, Tolik Ocheretianskii, had been arrested in the fall of 1983. The camp contained many Baptists, including their bishop, who was imprisoned with us. I wove nets. I was then taken to an investigative prison in Vinnitsa for the narcotics case. I was placed in a prison hospital. Around that time, friends from abroad begged Inna to end her hunger strike because Cyrus Vance, the U.S. Secretary of State, had intervened in my behalf. The deputy prosecutor of Ukraine summoned my father and said to him: “You don’t need to get upset. We are investigating everything. We don’t sentence on the basis of fact but on proof.” My lawyer Zakharov visited me in prison.

For them to halt the case, they would have had to admit their falsification.

Completely true. The case was halted for lack of evidence. The case against Inna was also closed. On November 11, I was summoned into the corridor. The head of the prison arrived and said: “Your case has been closed.” It hit me like a blow on the head…in a good sense. In the cell they were getting high on chifir [a concentrated tea brew that is high in caffeine and nicotine], and I went out to the zone. Inna then fought also to get the first conviction─that got me into the penalty isolator─removed. She didn’t give them any rest. After that I served my time normally. Inna came to liberate me a day early as 1984 was a leap year but they kept me for that extra day. I was released on June 20. The police officer came the next day and said, “Please, don’t do anything else.” The one who phrased it best was the head of the military commission, who got a heart attack from the case. He said: “You won’t be arrested again by my hands.”

Before the Elberts received permission to leave, they endured many more hardships. Their son Carmi was seriously beaten up at school and he was blinded. His sight was restored by the famous Moscow healer Alan, who helped refuseniks. She also helped Inna, who had serious health problems after her hunger strike and all her other tribulations. In 1987, when their son turned eighteen, he, too, was called up to the army. Inna again declared a hunger strike, which lasted 43 days. After that, the Elberts received exit visas in September 1987.

 

Yurii Tarnopolskii (b. 1936), Kharkov

Yurii Tarnopolskii, a refusenik scientist, one of the organizers of the Kharkov scientific seminar and the university for the children of refuseniks, was arrested on March 15, 1983 inKharkov. Tarnopolskii also fought actively for the right to emigrate, wrote protest letters, and participated in the collective hunger strike. In 1982 he carried out a personal forty-day hunger strike. He was charged with slandering the Soviet social and state order and sentenced to three years of imprisonment.

 

Moshe Abramov (b. 1955), Samarkand

On December 19, 1983, Moshe Abramov, a former student of the Moscow yeshivah, was arrested in Samarkand , where he had been teaching the Torah. On January 23, 1984, two weeks before Andropov’s death, he was sentenced to three years of incarceration. The official charge was hooliganism.

 

Anatolii Ocheretianskii, Kiev

In the fall of 1983, the refusenik Anatolii Ocheretianskii was arrested in Kiev. He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for “a parasitic way of life.” He served his term in the same camp as Elbert.

 

Aleksandr Kholmianskii (b. 1950), Moscow

Aleksandr Kholmianskii, the leader of the Cities Project was arrested on July 25, 1984 in the Estonian town of Ekhiarve, where he was running a summer camp for advanced students from various cities. He was given a ten-day sentence. Before the ten days were over, he was transported to Tallinn for an investigation on a charge of hooliganism.[3] At that time the KGB managed to carry out a search in his Moscow apartment, where they “discovered” a pistol with bullets and a mass of forbidden literature.  In protest, Kholmianskii declared an open-ended hunger strike on September 13 and maintained it in prison for an unbelievable 207 days!

The prison authorities treated the hunger strike not as a protest against the falsification and illegality but as a violation of the prison regime. He was force fed through a feeding tube in his mouth and kept in a punishment cell. Starting on January 13, 1985, Kholmianskii declared a hunger strike of non-liquids, writing a declaration that it was a sign of protest against the planting of evidence, the fabricated charge, and against his being kept continually in punishment cells and his transfer in January to a special regime punishment cell at a temperature of 13 degrees Centigrade.[4]

Activists wrote protest letters, and demonstrations were held in the West in defense of the Hebrew teachers, who were being arrested one after the other. Politicians, and public and religious figures spoke in Kholmianskii’s defense.

The trial took place on February 1-2, 1985 in the Estonian city of Vöru. At that time, Kholmianskii had been on a hunger strike for 107 days; he was emaciated and pale, but not broken. At the trial, his brother Mikhail stated that, expecting some kind of dirty tricks by the regime in light of the other trials of Jewish activists, the family had carefully examined Sasha’s apartment immediately after his arrest. There had been no pistol in the place where the police later “found” one, declared Mikhail under oath.

Sasha conducted himself with dignity at the trial and called a spade a spade: there had been a planting of evidence, a provocation, and a lie. “I have no doubt,” he said, “that this whole fabricated case is nothing other than one more link in the chain of persecution of the long-suffering Jewish people, of its culture and tradition and its adherents.”[5] Kholmianskii was sentenced to a year and a half of imprisonment for “the illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition for it, and a one hundred ruble fine for breaking a post office box.” It was a victory, most of all Sasha’s victory. “Even the initially hostile Estonians, who had been rounded up from neighboring enterprises, shared our joy. That was some show trial! Look what happened to that [sentence of] seven plus five!”[6]

After the trial Sasha was left with another year of his term. He was released in January 1986 and left for Israel in January 1988.

 

Yulii Edelshtein (b. 1958), Moscow

Yulii Edelshtein, one of the leaders of the Cities Project, a well-known teacher and leader of a dibur and a member of “Mashka,” was arrested on September 4, 1984 inMoscow on a charge of drug possession. The young and charismatic Edelshtein had a talent for languages and mixing with people. He stood out at both our social undertakings and in meetings with foreigners. He had another talent that was very important in our circumstances─the ability to find a way out of the most complex situations, even in the provinces, where the KGB could be rather rough with activists.

When did you feel that the dark clouds were gathering over you? I asked Edelshtein.[7]

There were several stages. Starting in 1982, the KGB would regularly disrupt my lessons. Sometimes they would burst into a lesson and other times I didn’t even get to start. A few of my groups thus broke up because some students were frightened and others were fed up with the disrupted lessons. In addition, the KGB undoubtedly noticed me at outdoor meetings at Ovrazhki and at Simhat Torah by the synagogue in 1982, when I led a performance of our ensemble in front of an audience of thousands.

You think it began with that?

No. Before that they had already tried to drive me out of Moscow on the grounds that I was not living at the address on my registration document. I was lucky because my wife Tania managed to exchange her Kharkov apartment for a Moscow one. I applied to be registered with her as husband with wife. In the end, I was registered but, perhaps, that added to the KGB “comrades’” fighting mood.

The hardest year was 1984.

Yes, but don’t forget that was a time of confusion when the Soviet leaders were dying one after the other and the KGB felt only they were stable and that they were the masters of the situation. My arrest took place under Chernenko, when the KGB was totally in control. When I recall that time and the similarity of my case to Sasha’s or that of Berenshtein, who allegedly hit a policeman, I begin to think that this crude operation was all part of a planned spectacle. Thank God that I was not charged with rape because afterwards, in the camp zone, it’s hard to explain that you didn’t commit rape. With drugs everything quickly becomes clear. When they first understand that you have nothing to do with drugs, they tense up but then they say, “You’re here for other matters. They simply planted it on you.” At the same time, it seems to me that such gross clumsiness was part of a plan: you, so to speak, with all your rights, your Albrekhts [author of manual on how to behave at an interrogation and so forth], and other Western voices can go on yelling, but we’ll show you all the same.

 Did they try to get you in the prison camp for Zionist activity?

No, never. During the two years and eight months that I was imprisoned─my sentence was actually for thee years─there was not one interrogation or conversation with me in which they tried to link me to Zionism. From the moment of my arrest, the KGB disappeared from the scene.

Tanya, Yulik’s wife is a woman with character. A native intelligence and unflappable character enabled her at times to achieve striking results.

What happened to you after Yulik’s arrest? I asked.

At first I was in shock. I called everyone that I could and went to the local police station. I brought Yulik his siddur [prayer book] and tefilin [phylacteries] but they said it couldn’t be given to him. I didn’t stay to talk with the investigator but went immediately to complain to the regional supervisory prosecutor. I then went to the investigator. I heard some terrible cries. I suddenly had a sinking feeling, and he said to me: “All right, don’t get nervous, it’s not your husband whom they are beating. You’d better give me what you brought yesterday; I’ll take it.”

Yulik was transferred to Butyrka prison four days later, but a day before that they came to conduct another search in our home. They were looking for snuff and for drugs. As I understood it, they thought that we sniffed drugs at Havdalah [ceremony at the end of the Sabbath with sweet-smelling spices]. What idiots.

What kind of hunger strike did you carry out?

According to Soviet law, the penalty for possessing drugs is up to three years but if you give it to someone else to sniff, then it’s up to ten years. At that moment. I was afraid that the KGB wanted to put him away for ten years. The hunger strike attracted additional attention to the case. Foreigners came with protests and appealed to the authorities, saying that a second Beilis trial was getting underway. One of the foreigners was told that Yulik was not charged with smoking or distributing drugs but only with possessing them.

The trial took place on December 19, 1984. Edelshtein was sentenced to three years of imprisonment under a general regime “for possession of drugs.”

You were in a general zone? I asked Yulii.

The camp zone was in the settlement of Vydrino on the shore of Lake Baikal. You visited me there. I worked in that zone for almost a year and got badly injured at work: I fell from a height of four meters onto an icy building site. I was then taken to Yuzhlag, a strict regime zone in Ulan-Ude. From there I was brought to Novosibirsk for an operation; it was also a strict regime zone. At first they wanted to bring me to Buriatia but Tanya said that whereas she had carried out a hunger strike for forty days the first time, in this case she would declare a hunger strike until death because in my condition I wouldn’t make it to Buriatia. I was taken to the operation, however, by plane. I am one of the rare prisoners who was flown in handcuffs as an ordinary passenger on Aeroflot.

An infection had already set in?

I was already at death’s door and they brought me for an operation; afterwards they were proud that they had operated and cured me. In the end, they sent me to a general regime camp in Novosibirsk.

Edelshtein’s wife, Tania, who hurried to save her husband as soon as she heard about the accident, provided more details than Yulii, who, evidently, retains a trace of that trauma:

He was injured at the end of January 1986. At the beginning of February, I received a strange note: “Hello, my dear, don’t get upset. I fell.” With this letter in hand, I immediately went to the prosecutor. At that time, one could sign up to be received by the deputy prosecutor general, who had reception hours once a month. At the meeting I asked him: “What happened to my husband?” “He was seriously, injured,” he told me, “and we brought him to Ulan-Ude.” I flew to Ulan-Ude with Ira Shchegolevaia and Masha Slepak. Masha, who is a radiologist, went to help me. I arrived at the office of the doctor for the zone. A totally drunk person came out. “How is my husband?” I asked. “What do you want to know?” “Well, how is his foot?” He looked at me strangely. “Foot!? What foot; half of his pelvis is broken. The pelvic bones are broken as is the tibia, and the urethra is torn.” I demanded a speedy meeting with Yulii but was refused. I then went to the local post office and sent off a raft of telegrams. When I returned, they allowed me to meet him. I was taken to a local ward. Yulik looked awful. He wasn’t in a cast, and they still didn’t know what to do with him.

But they pieced him together internally?

They didn’t do anything; he was lying just as he had been tossed. You can imagine how it reeked. When he was transported to Ulan-Ude, the catheter fell out and no one put it back and he was just lying there. All that and also terrible pains.

An infection had already set in. They looked at him there and said: “He’ll die, why bother with him.” Next to him sat a serial murderer, who was serving a second or third term. He thrust a towel under him, pulled it our, and wrung it. But people said to him: “Just leave him alone, he’ll die anyway.”

They didn’t fasten the broken bones; they brought him that way?

They brought him just like that. Only after I arrived and raised hell did they begin to treat him. As he hadn’t died before my arrival, that meant something had to be done. I went to town to an orthopedist, who said that in such cases they put people in traction but in Yulik’s case, it was already too late. The orthopedist said: “Now, however it grows together, that’s how it will be; there’s nothing to do.” He was put in a cast from his armpits to his heels; a catheter was inserted from the wound in the urethra to the outside and thus he lay. They waited to do the urological operation because, as they explained to me, it was necessary to move his feet for such an operation and they couldn’t do that in the meantime. But even with bad luck one needs some success. The orthopedist, it turned out, was a pupil of the famous Eliazarov and he made the cast according to a new system in which the cast was cut at the knees. That enabled Yulik to begin to get up on crutches. He was in a cast for half a year.

I returned to Moscow and demanded that he be transferred to an ordinary hospital in order to do the urological operation. They said it wasn’t permitted. At the beginning of July, I went to the prosecutor’s office and was told that he had already been transferred to Novosibirsk and the operation had been carried out by a good surgeon in the strict regime zone. Later on in Israel, local doctors said that the surgeon’s hands should have been cut off. But at least he did something. Yulik got an infection from a blood transfusion and he was unconscious for two weeks. Only in September was he transferred to an ordinary zone. He weighed 45 kilo and walked with difficulty─complete dystrophy. He was, however, already an experienced prisoner, and he made friends with a zek [slang for prisoner] whose mama found a way of transmitting food products by having them placed in some pipes in a certain place at a factory from which the prisoners took them. Yulik himself didn’t take them out but through that friend he was able to receive food products from me.

Did letters reach you? I turned again to Yulik.

It was the same old story with correspondence. At first letters did not arrive. I said to them: “Let’s get started on the right foot; otherwise complaints will begin and then you’ll give them to me all the same.” That’s how it went. The prosecutor started to receive letters, no one wanted to deal with it, and all the letters were handed over. Sometimes I myself utilized the Zionist and political aspects. For example, after my arrival in the Fourth zone, having become hardened and insolent like the criminals in strict regime, I did not plan to work. Then some boss zealously took up my case and suggested that I join the CPP, the service for maintaining order: “You’re not from the squealers, you have a higher education. I’ll make you the head of a work group or a librarian. In any case, you can’t work after that operation.” “Listen, captain,” I said, “did you read my file? Look at my case carefully, read it through, and then we’ll bargain.” That is, I had to convince him that I was a Zionist and he shouldn’t touch me.

Were you released early?

Yes. There were all kinds of complaints from Tania, the public, and so forth. The first time I was summoned to a commission was when I was all broken up and very sick. That was in February 1986, and about a month and a half later I would have completed half of my sentence─ a year and a half. After serving half of one’s term, you could be summoned for conditional early release. They explained to Tania that if both my arms or legs had been amputated, then I could have been “decommissioned,” that is, released as an invalid. In the condition that I was in, however, there was no reason to release me. She then began to demand a conditional early release. And I was, indeed, summoned to a commission in Yuzhlag in Ulan-Ude. I came on crutches. The deputy political officer headed the commission. “Well, look, convict Edelshtein. A conditional early release after half a term is under consideration. Do you admit your guilt?” “No.” “Have you started on the road to correction?” The head of the unit said: “What kind of path to correction is there? He does not belong to any organization to maintain order. In his relations with the administration he is crude, boorish, and insolent,” and so forth. The commission decided that it was not possible to release me. It took all of five minutes and I was sent back.

The second time was much more interesting. It was the end of 1986 and suddenly the doctor who operated on me appeared in the zone in Novosibirsk. I was dragged away from work and taken somewhere. A most unpleasant situation. That doctor is sitting there: “Undress.” He examines me and says, “I’ll take him. Arrange the papers.” In a couple of days I was taken to a little hospital where I lay in the therapeutic not the surgical division and drank milk in the mornings as sick prisoners were supposed to. I didn’t do anything.

Was that already after Shcharansky’s release?

Yes, and many others had been released, but I didn’t know that. You’re just lying there, no one says anything to you, you aren’t treated, and the doctor never comes by. They summon me and don’t say to where. I enter a room. Again a commission is sitting. “Convict Edelshtein. He has already served two-thirds of his term. The issue of a conditional early release is under consideration. Head of the detachment, what can you say?” He replies, “The prisoner is calm and balanced. Polite to the camp administration and has not been involved in fights or in violence against other prisoners.” “Doctor, what do you have to say?” “The prisoner follows the regime, takes his medicine according to schedule. He has not been seen acting rudely, stealing medicines, or using drugs.” The head of the division: “We have no claims against the convict Edelshtein.”

The reference from my place of work: “He works as he is supposed to, fulfills the production norm.” I don’t understand what is happening. You begin to think and the heart starts pounding. Then the chairman of the commission turns to me: “I am happy that you reached the right conclusions. Your behavior improved. Only, pardon me, do you admit your guilt?” I say, “No.” And there is such a silence. He suggests that I think it over and give the correct answer, and they, accordingly, will also give the appropriate response.

Here’s the dilemma. He was not asking me to admit that I sold anti-Soviet literature to Kosharovskii. He asked me to say that I admitted my guilt on Article 224, subsection 3: “Illegal possession of narcotic substances with the goal of selling them.” Not an easy question. And I was a little carried away. I said to him: “Citizen director, I could have done that on the second day, when they picked me up in Moscow. And I could have said that I repented of everything, that the devil led me astray, And perhaps, the next day I would have drunk coffee with my wife. I have only one problem. My wife doesn’t drink coffee with those kind of people.” He also went ballistic: “Go. The commission doesn’t consider it possible to release you.”

There were other fellows who didn’t admit their guilt.

Evidently, it depended on the article. They needed a way out. For example, Leva Timofeev was imprisoned on a political charge. He wrote that he never slandered and would not slander the state order. But what was I to say? That’s the first thing. And second, it was October 1986. How was I to know what was going on outside. Even at the moment when I was already dressed in civilian clothing and was being led to the guardhouse where Tania was waiting and waving flowers, they could stop me. I didn’t even know about the word “perestroika.” Of course they sent me back. The rest of the term was not so terrible; I was already experienced. At the meeting, I said to Tania: “They brought me to prison without asking for my consent and they won’t ask for my consent when they want to release me. That’s the first thing. Second, when they truly want to release me, they will find me even if I run away from them to Mount Everest; they’ll find me and release me.”

That’s what happened. When they really decided to release me, they assembled a Moscow municipal court that reviewed an appeal from I don’t know where. The court decided that I had been convicted correctly, but the sentence was unjustly severe and that the crime that I had committed called for a sentence of two years and eight months. That was a day or two before I had been sitting for two years and eight months.

I was released exactly on Israel Independence Day. How is that for a coincidence?

 

Mark Nepomniashchii (b. 1931) Odessa

Mark Nepomniashchii, a Hebrew teacher and refusenik from 1979, was arrested in Odessa on October 12, 1984. He had studied Hebrew long before he applied for an exit visa. After receiving a refusal, his home turned into a center for teaching Hebrew and Judaism. His wife Hannah and daughter Yehudit actively participated in the Cities Project and taught not only in their own city of Odessa but also in other Soviet cities. In addition, the family often hosted foreign guests. All this irritated the Odessa KGB, which carefully followed the family’s activity. Mark was summoned to the KGB several times, warned, and threatened with arrest. Not regarding Hebrew teaching as a crime, Mark did not react to the threats.

In the course of the campaign of arresting Hebrew teachers, Mark, too, was arrested in October 1984. At the trial, which took place on February 4, 1985 inOdessa, Mark was sentenced to three years of imprisonment for “slandering the Soviet social and state order.” He served his time in the prisons of Simferopol, Odessa, and Nikolaev. Released in 1987, he left that same year for Israel with his family. Mark lived in Israel for 23 years and died in 2010 at the age of 79.[8]

 

Yakov Levin (b. 1959), Odessa

Yakov Levin, a young activist and Hebrew teacher, was arrested in Odessa on November 19, 1984. In 1974, at the age of fifteen, he became interested in Israel and Jewish culture and tradition. He first tried to apply for an exit visa in 1979, but OVIR refused to take his documents because his parents had not signed the necessary consent form. Yakov began to study Hebrew in 1981 and quickly reached a level at which he was able to teach others. He met the refusenik Yehudit Nepomniashchii and they planned to marry. Yakov spent a considerable amount of time at the Nepomniashchii home, where Hebrew lessons and seminars on Judaism were held and Jewish holidays were celebrated. In November 1982, Yakov’s parents tried to create a scandal at the Nepomniashchii home, and a month later, Yakov was summoned to the police for an interrogation about his Hebrew studies. At that time, in an article that appeared in the local newspaper, Yakov’s parents appealed for the return of their son, who had been “kidnapped by Zionists.”

In 1983, he was summoned to the KGB three times and threatened with major unpleasantness if he did not cease his Hebrew instruction. During a search of Yakov’s apartment in March 1984, the police confiscated prayer books and religious objects. Seven days before Yehudit and Yakov’s planned marriage on August 17, 1984, his apartment was again searched, after which he was arrested on a charge of slandering the Soviet social and state order. At the trial, which took place from November 15-18, 1984, he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment. Refusing to admit guilt, Yakov declared that he was being tried for his faith. On June 7, 1985, Yakov and Judith were allowed to marry according to the Jewish tradition in the meeting room of his corrective labor camp. A friend from Odessa conducted the marriage ceremony. Two years and seven months later he was released early─a result of perestroika. In that year of 1987, he received an exit visa and left with his wife for Israel. [9]

 

Yosif Berenshtein (b. 1937), Kiev

The Kiev activist and Hebrew teacher Yosif Berenshtein, a refusenik since 1979, was arrested in Novograd-Volynsk on November 12, 1984. The reason for his refusal was typical of that period─a lack of a direct relative. Immediately after his application for an exit visa, Yosif was demoted from a position as a research engineer to that of a worker and then he was fired. The same thing happened to his wife Faina and their daughter Yana. The Berenshteins fought actively for permission to leave, conducting protest hunger strikes. Jewish culture and tradition were studied at their home. Yosif taught Hebrew. He also knew English and Yiddish and was often visited by foreigners. The police, as usual, summoned, warned, and threatened him. When Yosif needed to place a headstone on his mother’s grave, he decided to do so via relatives in Novograd-Volynsk. A file was immediately opened against his relatives, who allegedly helped prepare a gravestone in violation of the law. Summoned as a witness, Yosif arrived and showed that all the forms had been filled out correctly. As he was returning home, he was arrested at the Novograd-Volynsk station.

The charge would have been laughable were it not so tragic. Berenshtein was charged with attacking a policeman and disobeying a policemen in the course of performing his duty. The forty-seven year old Berenshtein was neither very healthy nor physically strong. Accusing him of attacking a policeman was so absurd that the sole conclusion to be derived from this situation was, as Edelshtein said, to demonstrate to refuseniks that the “master” didn’t give a damn about plausibility─whatever he wants, that’s what he will write. There were witnesses at the station who saw the entire falsity of the charge, and they gave testimony to the investigation. At the trial, which took place on December 12, 1984, the court, however, considered the policemen’s testimony convincing. Berenshtein’s declaration that the police had threatened him several times because of his Hebrew instruction and promised to arrest him was also not taken into consideration. He was sentenced to four years of imprisonment for “resisting the police in performing their duties”. His wife was also threatened with arrest if she would say that her husband had been arrested on a fabricated charge.

Two days after the trial, Yosif was placed in the punishment cell of Zhitomir prison, where he was severely beaten by other prisoners. His face was gashed by glass splinters. Yosif almost completely lost his sight in one eye and the other was seriously injured. The prison authorities determined that he wounded himself and refused to list him as an invalid or reduce his sentence. When Faina and Yana visited him in the corrective labor camp in November 1986, they stated that his vision has been irrevocably impaired. He was released on March 16, 1987 during the wave of early releases. He received an exit visa and left with his family for Israel.[10]

 

Aleksandr Yakir (b. 1955), Moscow

Aleksandr Yakir, an offspring of the famous Yakir family and a refusenik from 1973, was arrested in Moscow on June 18, 1984. The charge was evading army service, a typical charge against young activists who had been excluded from institutions of higher learning after applying for an exit visa. The formal reason for the refusal was his parents’ secrecy classification. In 1977, Aleksandr submitted an application separately from his family, but he again received a refusal.

The danger of army recruitment hung over Aleksandr for several years. He went into hiding and did not respond to notices to appear at the recruitment station. While in refusal, the Yakir family received Israeli citizenship. The military authorities had no basis or reason to call up such people. The KGB utilized army service as a punishment for Zionist activity and as a means of intimidating potential emigrants. After Aleksandr’s arrest, activists appealed to worldwide public opinion to halt the persecution of the third generation of the Yakir family, whose life in the USSR had turned into an uninterrupted tragedy from the time of the shooting of Aleksandr’s grandfather, an army pilot, and of the latter’s brother Yonah, a Soviet army commander, and the arrests and harassment of his Piotr, a well-known dissident, and many other members of this prominent family. Two months after his arrest, Yakir was sentenced to two years of imprisonment. After his release on June 18, 1986, Aleksandr actively participated in the group “Second Generation,” a group of children of refuseniks who tried to obtain exit visas separately from their parents. He received a visa in December 1987 and left for Israel.[11]

 

Nadezhda Fradkova (b. 1946), Leningrad

Nadezhda Fradkova, a refusenik from 1978, was arrested in Leningrad on April 25, 1984. She fought for the right to leave long before she was able to submit documents for an exit visa, participated in demonstrations, including in Moscow, carried out hunger strikes, and wrote and signed protest letters. I remember her arrest for taking part in a demonstration in Moscow in the fall of 1972. She was then given fifteen days, which she spent in a cell with the Moscow activist Nora Kornblum, like her, a mathematician by profession.

The authorities tried many times to break Fradkova’s unbending will. She was subjected to forced psychiatric evaluation and several times was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where she was heavily medicated. In the spring of 1982, she conducted a 43-day hunger strike. In December 1983, she again started a lengthy hunger strike, but she was not allowed to continue it, and a few weeks later she was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Warnings and threats had no effect on Fradkova.

On March 8, 1984, she sent a declaration to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR renouncing Soviet citizenship.[12] On April 25, 1984, she was arrested for “leading a parasitic form of life”; on August 25 she was again placed in a psychiatric hospital, and on December 12 she was transferred from there to a prison. At the trial, which took place in Leningrad on December 18, 1984, she was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for parasitism. She was released in August 1986 and given an exit visa in April 1987.

 

Yosif Zisels (b. 1946), Chernovtsy

The prominent dissident and Jewish activist Yosif Zisels was arrested in Chernovtsy on October 19, 1984. He was charged with “slandering the social and state order.” Zisels had already spent three years in prison on the same charge from 1978 to 1981. On April 10, 1985, a court in the city of Sokiriana in Chernovtsy oblast again sentenced him to three years of imprisonment in a strict regime camp.

A theoretical physicist by profession, Yosif had been actively helping potential immigrants to Israel from the early 1970s. He disseminated samizdat, worked with Jewish activists in Moscow and Chernovtsy, with the Chronicle of Current Events, and then with the Moscow and Ukrainian Helsinki groups. As a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group from August 1978, he gathered data on the use of psychiatry against dissidents. The KGB offered him an exit visa but Zisels refused. That was followed by a search, a warning, and his first arrest and three-year sentence, which he served in the city of Sokiriana. Upon his release on December 3, 1981, he re-established ties with the democrats and Jewish activists and continued his work. He actively participated in organizing aid to families of repressed individuals, publishing textbooks, and setting up groups for Hebrew study. Zisels recalls:

When I was released the first time, it was a desert all around. The years 1981-82 were the darkest in the history of the dissident and Jewish movements. People who had spent time in camps and exile were given new sentences, even teachers were getting arrested. I view those years as the beginning of the [death] agony of the Soviet regime. By means of repressions, halting emigration, and overseas military adventures, it tried somehow to divert the population’s attention from the real problems. I was a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group from 1978. Our group advocated the Ukraine’s secession from the USSR and it was also my dream. I was always very sympathetic and close to the Ukrainian national movement and shared its views.

Were you close to it even before your first prison term?

Yes. In the 1970s, I made the acquaintance of many figures in the Ukrainian movement─it turned out to be interesting─via Moscow, the Chronicle, via Tatiana Velikanova, Sakharov, and others. I was arrested in connection with my joining the Helsinki group. In the Baltics, Jewish activists also joined separatist movements.

Zisels was arrested again on the same charges, but the witnesses at the trial were prisoners from the camp where Zisels had served his first term. The KGB gave them a thorough working over. Zisels received another three years, which he served in Lvov and then in Nizhnii Tagil. He rejected an early release in exchange for halting political activity. He was released on October 19, 1987, returned to Chernovtsy, was under administrative supervision for a year, and then returned to his former activity.

 

Evgenii Aizenberg (b. 1952), Kharkov

The Hebrew teacher Evgenii Aizenberg was arrested in Kharkov on March 19, 1984 on a charge of “slandering the Soviet social and state order”. He taught in Kharkov, a city noted for its intolerance. We did everything possible in order to attract the maximum attention and support for the defendant in this trial. I was also summoned for interrogations in his case and another search was carried out in my apartment: the investigation asserted that Aizenberg had received slanderous material from Moscow, including from me. At the trial, which was held on June 6, 1985, Aizenberg partially acknowledged his guilt and was sentenced to two and a half years of imprisonment. On August 15, 1985, the appeals court reduced the punishment─a very rare case in our experience─to twelve months of imprisonment. On March 19, 1986, Aizenberg left prison and in August of the following year he received an exit visa. He arrived in Israel in November 1987.

 

Roald Zelichenok (b. 1936), Leningrad

The Hebrew teacher Roald Zelichenok, a refusenik from 1978, was arrested in Leningrad on June 10, 1985. A highly qualified electronic engineer, the author of numerous professional articles and with several inventions to his credit, Roald was well-known in Leningrad as one of the best Hebrew teachers. He was an active participant in the intercity teachers’ seminar in Koktobel. Zelichenok also spoke English well and knew Japanese. His hospitable family often entertained foreign guests. The KGB exerted the heightened pressure on him that was their custom in dealing with noted activist refuseniks─conducting searches, confiscating books and learning materials, summoning him to interrogations, and warning and threatening him.

In 1984, I received another KGB warning, Alik (that was his name in our circle) told me.

Because of the Hebrew teaching?

That time because of the seminar. The seminars had already been prohibited but Hebrew teaching had not. From their point of view, the seminar was a kind of Zionist get-together.

I was one of the last Soviet political prisoners─I was arrested in Gorbachev’s time. They didn’t want to arrest me. And my article─190 prime [see earlier note in this chapter], slander, was not a good one because it meant that I would be sent to a general regime camp, i.e., total lawlessness.

On August 8, 1985, Zelichenok was sentenced to three years of general regime imprisonment.

Alik, what questions did the investigators ask at the beginning of the Gorbachev era?

I don’t know. I didn’t listen to them. I officially refused to testify. I did everything as the great Albrekht taught us: I wrote a well-grounded refusal according to his points. The investigators were terribly displeased and they conferred for a long time. One of them then said to me: “If you will take back your refusal to testify, I guarantee you that after your interrogation, I’ll let you go home, no matter what your testimony is. If not, you’ll land in Kresty prison until the trial, and then your conviction is guaranteed.” I refused.

You didn’t regret it?

No.

Zelichenok looks like he has a strong build but he suffers from high blood pressure and various other illnesses that were exacerbated when he was sent to the north. He was then sent to a camp zone in the south. He had to endure many transports and he was beaten. After one such beating, he landed in a prison hospital in an unconscious state. Nevertheless, they didn’t succeed in breaking him.

Do you have any interesting recollections of the investigation?

Not so much from the investigations as from the transports. While serving my term, I passed through ten prisons. Mentally, I was ready for what awaited me. The transports were the most difficult part of my imprisonment. I never was given the promised medical accompaniment; instead of that I was given medicines and permission to keep them in my possession. During a search on the way to camp, however, an officer tore up the prescriptions, threw the medicines on the floor, and crushed them, declaring: “So much for your medical care, so much for your pills, you swine.”

Were you released early?

Yes, I received three years and served two. Those were already the days when Ogonek [a popular weekly] removed their Lenin award from the masthead and perestroika and glasnost were spreading around Russia. Because I would not acknowledge my guilt, I was released, without a pardon, as a convict who had served two-thirds of his term.

After your release was your home again open?

Even before that it was open. When I returned home, it was Passover, and we held a Seder in our home. American Senator Bill Graham was our guest and the U.S. general consul in Leningrad, Mr. Gershovich was also present.

 

Vladimir Frenkel (b. 1944), Riga

The poet and essayist Vladimir Frenkel was arrested in Riga on January 15, 1985. He was charged with “slandering the Soviet social and state order” and condemned to a year and a half of imprisonment. A historian by education, he became interested in his people’s cultural roots early on and delivered several lectures at the Riga refuseniks’ cultural-historical seminar. One of the founders of this seminar was the well-known Riga activist Baruch Frenkel, Vladimir’s brother.

Vladimir Frenkel was released two months before the end of his term, and in 1987, he received an exit visa. He was rehabilitated under a law adopted in Latvia in 1990 on the rehabilitation of political prisoners.

 

Vladimir Brodskii (b. 1946), Moscow

The Jewish movement activist Vladimir Brodskii was arrested in Moscow on June 17, 1985. A refusenik from 1977, Vladimir actively fought for the right to leave and received several fifteen-day sentences. An offspring of a distinguished family of businessmen from Odessa, Brodskii had two advanced degrees, one in medicine (surgery) and the other in technology (wireless electronics). A sporty type (he received a top ranking in boxing in his student years), temperamental and fearless, he was greatly influenced by Boris Chernobylskii, whom he considered his teacher of Zionism. In 1981, together with Yurii and Olga Medvedkov, Sergei Botovrin, Oleg Rodzinskii, and others, he founded the “Group for Establishing Trust between the USSR and the USA.” Two months before his arrest, he married the activist Dina Zisserman, who equaled him in the force of her spirit.

At the end of July, Vladimir told me, there was supposed to be a youth festival. Perhaps I was taken in that connection. In general, I was prepared for arrest. Boria Chernobylskii told me: “With your attitude, you must prepare for prison.” And he told me how to behave in the cell and whom to be wary of. I had engaged in boxing as a youth and was able to stick up for myself. In prison I immediately declared a hunger strike and was given fifteen days in a punishment cell. After the first fifteen days, I refused to halt the hunger strike. They added another fifteen days. After this second round in the punishment cell, they took me in hand. I was brought to the prison director. A polished type. “What’s this, you refuse to eat?” And I was again given fifteen days in the punishment cell. At that point I was given a meeting with Dina and she said, “Stop it. The rabbis are asking you to, Kholmianskii stopped; stop it.” I still persisted but when they brought that thing for forced feeding, I decided it was enough. They stuck in a tube and I realized that they simply could tear my esophagus. Then I stopped.

When and how was the trial?

They set a date and changed it several times. It was then held in some kind of Culture House. They didn’t let me speak, people hooted from the hall. The first two rows were occupied by the KGB. I was sentenced to three years of general regime and immediately taken away. I was then transferred from prison to prison. I was given a meeting with Dina. She told me that we had a baby daughter and that over tens of congratulatory telegrams arrived for me every day. The transport lasted almost half a year. It’s indescribable what I saw there. There were cells where even flies couldn’t fly. They fell from a lack of oxygen.

Where did you serve time?

Near Tomsk, next to the village of Asino. I did what Boria taught me to do─never make yourself out to be what you are not. Zeks [prisoners] are very discerning psychologists and immediately understand who and what you are. In their language I was an “ordinary guy,” not a criminal. But I am a doctor and they were all very ill people─many with tuberculosis or liver diseases, and they would come for consultations.

Dina got me subscriptions for all the Soviet propaganda press: Pravda, Izvestiia, and Komsomolets. Professional journals were not permitted but those newspapers were; after all, I needed to be re-educated. That move had considerable practical significance. In the camp zone there is no paper in the toilets. And it you don’t wipe your behind, you could get serious illnesses from which you could even die. The zeks would come and ask for paper. The Soviet propaganda thus found a worthy use.

You were released early?

Yes. They organized a trial at which I was released on account of good behavior and transferred to “chemistry” [relatively lighter work in an urban area]. Never mind that my file listed penalty after penalty and a heap of punishment cells. When they need something…. Upon my exiting the zone, they took away the assignment to “chemistry” and instead gave me a document that I was going on a work trip to Moscow. Arriving home on September 18, 1986, I saw my daughter for the first time. She was not yet a year old. I wound up serving one year and three months.

You were one of the last arrested but you were one of the first to get out?

Yes, a half year after Tolik [Shcharansky].

You have to give Dina her due: because of her, people battled hard for you.

In Vienna I met with George Shultz [U.S. secretary of state at the time]. He said that he would not have met with Shevardnadze [the Soviet foreign minister] if I had not crossed the border.

You received an exit visa quickly?

We went to OVIR on the following day. There we were told that we had a visa and we had to fill out the necessary forms. Dina said: “We won’t fill anything out; Shevardnadze will do it for us.” I thought, well, I’ll be damned, now they won’t give us a visa. After all, I was just out of the zone and was still somewhat fearful. But everything turned out all right and we did receive the visa. Saturday arrived and we had to order plane tickets and be discharged by the municipal housing committee office (Soviet abbreviation─ZhEK).[13] I went there but the director was ill. Meanwhile, a black Volga sedan was following me everywhere. I just managed to call a couple of friends when a car braked near the housing office; an important-looking woman stepped out of the car and yelled: “Who here is Brodskii?” She then stamped the document and said: “They dragged me out of bed because of you.” When they need to….

How much time did it take to organize your things?

Two days.

And to do the paper work?

One day. Everything happened momentarily. Three days after my release, we were already in Vienna. Meetings, correspondents, pandemonium. And I was still fresh from the zone; I had just changed into civilian clothing.

On September 21, 1986, Vladimir Brodskii with his wife and daughter arrived in Israel.

Did you get a job quickly?

Yes. I didn’t even go to an ulpan. My boss said that he had been working in Israel for many years and got along with English and my English was decent. At first it was hard to make a name for myself. And I frequently dreamed of the zone; I lost all my teeth there.

 

Leonid Volvovskii (b. 1942), Gorkii

The activist and Hebrew teacher Leonid Volvovskii was arrested in Gorkii on June 25, 1985. A resident of Gorkii, he went to Moscow to work on his dissertation for a candidate’s degree and remained there after his defense. In 1974, he applied for an exit visa and received a refusal. He began teaching Hebrew in 1976. Artistic, always bubbling, he was not just a popular teacher. Volvovskii was also a regular lecturer at Ovrazhki, a director and participant in song festivals in the forest, an organizer and participant in performances near the synagogue on Jewish holidays, a participant in Purimshpiels, and an active organizer of the international cultural symposium. With such public activity, Volvovskii quickly earned the KGB’s displeasure and their dossier on him grew thicker and thicker. In January 1980, he was expelled from Moscow at about the same time as Andrei Sakharov. He settled in the city of Gorkii, where he had formerly been registered.

Volvovskii’s active nature, however, could not tolerate idleness. He arrived in Moscow in the spring and said that he was willing to participate in my Cities Project. I offered him Kishinev. Participants in his courses in Kishinev related that every day with him was like a holiday, but he was arrested after ten days, formally on charges of “vagrancy.” A powerful campaign was mounted in Volvovskii’s defense. He was held under arrest for about a month and then released. While still in Moscow, Volvovskii started to become religiously observant and mastered the profession of shochet. He continued to teach Hebrew and study the Torah for several years in Gorkii. On June 7, 1985, an article entitled “The Dangers of Judaism” appeared in the local newspaper Gorkovskii rabochii, railing against the “reactionary essence of Judaism.” Leonid was arrested eighteen days later and tried on October 18, 1985. Volvovskii rejected the services of a lawyer and spoke in Hebrew at the trial. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment for “slandering the Soviet state and social order” and sent to serve his term in Yakutiia. The transport to the city of Lensk, where the famous Lensk mines are located, lasted two months.

You, like many others, were released early, I said to Volvovskii.

Yes, I got out in 1987, in two years. The pressure on the authorities was enormous. A (KGB) general summoned me and asked: “What’s going on; is Reagan your friend?” I : “What?” He showed me a letter from Reagan. I said to the general: “Well, if he considers me his friend, than he is my friend.” I was subsequently summoned and told to sign a paper that I repented. I said to them: “For what? On the contrary, I shall continue to do the same.” Somehow a parcel arrived from Israel. It was Purim. I placed it on the table and stood there. There was a deathly silence. Finally one zek asked: “May I take one candy? “Of course,” I responded. In a second, nothing remained on the table.

Then one day: “Volvovskii, go to the camp director with your things.” You never know exactly what that means. Next─a transport at night to Yakutsk─500 kilometers. There was some hospital there, and I was put in a ward. I wasn’t treated but I was fed normally. I was scheduled, however, to have a meeting in three days. I began to demand my rights but they explained to me that nothing could be done: They were treating my teeth!! After a general inspection, I was led outside of the gates. They didn’t inform anyone. We went to the airport, but I didn’t have any money. I was given money for a train and five rubles per day but there were no trains to in Yakutsk! I borrowed money from an officer for the trip to Novosibirsk to Feliks Kochubievskii. He had already served time for three years and wrote to me all the time. After that everything proceeded normally. I came out in March and received an exit visa on December 30, 1987.

 

Aleksei Magarik (b. 1958), Moscow

The Hebrew teacher, poet, and musician Aleksei Magarik was arrested on March 14, 1986, on a charge of “possessing and distributing narcotics.” He had visited a friend and on his way back, during the inspection at Tbilisi airport, a pack of cigarettes with drugs “was found” in his traveling bag. Magarik, in fact, saw this cigarette pack for the first time.

At the trial, which took place in Tbilisi from June 6 to 9, 1986, Magarik was sentenced to three years of imprisonment “for narcotics possession.” In his speech in his defense, Aleksei declared his innocence. “Possibly, if I had listened to the advice of the investigator Chitadze and acknowledged my guilt, my situation would have been easier. But I am innocent, I did not possess drugs, and I have no desire to perjure myself.” At first, he served his sentence in Georgia and then in camps in the Omsk area of Siberia.

His father, Vladimir Magarik, who had left the country earlier, actively fought for his son’s release, organizing demonstrations and hunger strikes. His wife, Natalia Ratner, who knew several foreign languages including Hebrew, English, and French, conducted a struggle from inside the USSR. On September 14, 1987, when he had completed half of his term, the Tbilisi court reviewed the case and shortened the term by half. On that day Aleksei Magarik was freed. Five months later the Magarik family received exit visas and arrived in Israel on February 22, 1988.

The trials described here do not exhaust the list of people who were subjected to arrest or other legal harassment. I shall briefly mention only those about whom I succeeded in receiving reliable information. On April 24, 1984, the Kiev refusenik Aleksandr Cherniak was sentenced to four years of imprisonment on a charge of violating trust and forging documents. On January 5, 1985, the Chernovtsy refusenik Leonid Shrayer was sentenced to three years for “spreading deliberately false fabrications.” On February 22, 1985, Anatolii Vershubskii, a religious Jew from Moscow, was arrested in Kiev. He was charged with stealing religious books from the Kiev synagogue. At the trial on May 7, he was sentenced to two years of loss of liberty for “appropriating state property.” On June 19, 1985 the refusenik journalist Evgenii Koifman was arrested in Donetsk on a charge of drug possession. At the trial, which took place on September 17, he received a suspended sentence of one year. Betsalel Shalolashvili was sentenced by a Tbilisi court on April 21, 1986 to a year of imprisonment for “evading army service.” Vladimir Lifshits, an active member of the history seminar, was arrested in Leningrad on January 8, 1986. He was charged with “slandering the Soviet social and state order,” and at a trial on March 18, 1986, he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment. On September 26, 1986, the Leningrad refusenik Semyen Borovitskii was given a suspended sentence of five months of corrective labor for refusing to testify against Vladimir Lifshits.

It should be remembered that practically every arrest was accompanied by searches and interrogations of dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of people, each of whom could turn into a defendant at any moment.

Eventually, however, perestroika and glasnost had their effect. At the end of 1986, the top Soviet leadership decided to halt the criminal harassment of individuals struggling to emigrate by legal means. Those who had been convicted in such trials were “pardoned,” released, and soon afterwards received exit visas.