The trend toward a relaxation of international tension became more pronounced in the 1950s-60s on the European continent. Representatives of the great powers met in Geneva in 1954 and the “spirit of Geneva” reigned for a brief time in international relations (1954-56).[1] Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin began to travel abroad (Stalin never traveled anywhere except to Teheran).

German chancellor Willy Brandt initiated a “new Eastern policy” (Ostpolitik) that culminated with the signing of agreements with the USSR and Poland[2] in which the parties to the agreements obligated themselves to respect the territorial integrity of all states in Europe and the inviolability of postwar borders. In 1971 the great powers signed a quadrapartite treaty concerning West Berlin.

France, under President Charles De Gaulle, started a process of serious rapprochement with the USSR that culminated in the signing of a joint Franco-Soviet declaration in Paris in October 1971. The road was thus paved for a real reduction in tension between the chief participants in the drama ─ the U.S. and the USSR. In the summer of 1971 it was announced that Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev would meet at a summit in May 1972.

The start of détente raised certain questions for the forces struggling for the free emigration of Soviet Jews. First, how deep was the desire for détente between socio-political systems, one of which, the eastern, openly declared its intention to destroy the western, capitalist one and made a claim for world domination? Second, in what way could the process of détente reflect on human rights practices and on the prospects for Jewish emigration?

The Soviet desire for détente derived from a series of strategic concerns in the military, political, and economic spheres. The Soviet Union was experiencing difficulties in controlling the states of Eastern Europe that it had seized during World War II. Uprisings in East Germany and Hungary and disturbances in Poland and Czechoslovakia convulsed the Soviet bloc. Moreover, the West’s non-recognition of postwar borders seriously disturbed the Soviet leadership.

The ideological chaos evoked by the debunking of the Stalinist personality cult and the Cuban missile crisis of1962 inwhich the Soviet Union was publicly humiliated and forced to retreat, contributed to a cooling in the relations between the USSR and its main ally, communist China. The situation devolved to blatant hostility and territorial claims. In March 1969 military clashes occurred in the area of Damansky Island. The Soviet Union was also concerned about the possibility of an alliance between the U.S. and China. The instability in Eastern Europe and on the border with China forced the Soviet Union to deploy large contingents of armed forces in regions that were separated from each other by an enormous distance. From the middle of the 1950s, the Soviet Union was also more entangled in military-political obligations in the Middle East.

The arms race, particularly in the nuclear missile sphere, demanding greater human resources and material expenditures, had a destructive effect on the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union managed to attain military parity with America but at the cost of the impoverishment of the overwhelming majority of the population and the ruining of the economy, which was completely oriented toward the military-industrial complex. The Soviet Union desperately needed détente.

On the other hand, the Americans were seriously tied up in Vietnam. There was no end in sight to the war: the country was suffering human and material losses, and it was shaken by a powerful antiwar movement. Moreover, the Americans had heavy military-political obligations in Korea, Europe, and other parts of the world. Tension was growing in relations with post-de Gaulle France. The unending arms race and the teetering on the verge of a major war did not create a positive perspective.

Overextended by their obligations, the U.S. and the Soviet Union strove to reduce their burdens at least partially. The West and East, however, perceived détente differently. Nixon considered that the essence of détente consisted of the legal recognition of the actual territorial situation in Europe and the elimination of the danger of nuclear war. It was also important to the West that the Soviet regime, which had acted in contradiction to its own proposals so many times, manifest greater predictability and transparency. In that context, especially in the beginning, the sides considered issues such as the expansion of personal contacts and a freer exchange of information.

The Soviet Union was primarily interested in de jure recognition of postwar borders and in access to western technologies. From its point of view, peaceful coexistence, even in the conditions of détente, did not exclude an economic, ideological, or political struggle between the two systems. The Soviet Union continued to support the “class struggle” in western countries and did not plan completely to renounce military confrontation. It regarded “wars of liberation” as completely compatible with détente. This category included the Middle East wars of the Soviet Union’s Arab clients.

The USSR was particularly suspicious of matters in the humanitarian arena; it did not intend to tear down the Iron Curtain; nor was it prepared for an open ideological competition between the two systems. Western values were defined as subversive and the “voices” of western radio stations were jammed. Zionist ideology was considered to be particularly dangerous because, in the opinion of the regime, it influenced a considerable stratum of Soviet citizens.

The massive nature of the Zionist movement and its broad support in the West caught the Soviet leadership by surprise. Taking into consideration its strategic interest in détente and in supporting the détente atmosphere, it was thus forced not to exceed a certain level of persecution.

Judicially, it was more complicated to harass the Jewish movement than the dissident one. The would-be emigrants generally explained their desire on the basis of nationalist motivation that had nothing in common with so-called “anti-Soviet activity” or a desire to reform the Soviet state order. The authorities, therefore, used either blatantly illegitimate means of suppression, presenting the Zionists as criminal elements, or else they got rid of the most troublesome activists by giving them exit visas to Israel. The regime also got rid of some dissidents in this way as a high percentage of them were Jews.

In the Shadow of the Moscow Summit

Nixon’s visit to Moscow was scheduled for the end of May 1972. An American president had not set foot on Soviet territory since the Yalta Conference of 1945 nor visited Moscow over the entire history of Russo-American relations or Soviet-American relations. Both sides attributed great significance to the visit. As a first confidence-building measure, an agreement worth several hundred million dollars was signed in November 1971 concerning the sale of American grain and drilling equipment to the Soviet Union.

Before the Moscow summit, Nixon made a rather unexpected visit to China that was accompanied by a partial normalization of relations between the two countries.

Jewish leaders around the world and leading refuseniks well understood the possibilities that these developments offered them; so did the Soviet regime. Well in advance of the twenty-eighth Congress of the World Zionist Organization that was scheduled to open in Jerusalem on January 18, 1972, the Soviets prepared an ideological counterattack. In December 1971, Moscow held a conference entitled “Racism ─ the Ideology of Imperialism and the Enemy of Social Progress.” A few days after the end of the conference, on December 18, 1971, an article appeared in Pravda entitled “Zionism, a Species of Chauvinism and Racism.” The author, academician Mark Mitin, was the same person who, during the preparations for the trial of the “doctor-wreckers” in 1953, went with academician Isaak Mints to collect signatures under a letter to the Soviet government demanding that the Jews be exiled to the east. He is also memorable as the author of several anti-Jewish publications during the Stalinist campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans.” On January 5, 1972, Izvestiia published an article by Grigorii Deborin entitled “The Social Face of Zionism.” The Jews reacted with letters of protest, reminding academician Mitin of his role during the period of Stalinist repressions and pointing to the unseemly position of “state Jews.”

Prisoners of Zion and activists sent greetings and telegrams to the Zionist Congress. “Brethren!” wrote Arkadii Voloshin, Lassal Kaminskii, Lev Korenblit, Iosif Meshener, Leib Khnokh, and Aron Shpilberg “Even here, behind the barbed wire, amidst the howling of guard dogs and in the sight of machines guns on the watch towers, we are with you in striving toward our common goal.”[3] Dozens of Moscow activists sent a petition to the Zionist Congress that included such lines: “We are numbered among those Jews who are not invited to press conferences…. We are among those … for whom participation in the building of a free, independent, and democratic Israel is a vital need and national duty….”[4]

Trying to minimize the effect of Jewish emigration issues on preparations for the Moscow summit, the authorities introduced a corrective to their emigration policy. On the one hand, for some time (from October 1971 until the end of May 1972), the regime did not conduct anti-Zionist trials, which invariably attracted considerable attention from the western press.  At the same time, however, the arrests of individual activists (Ilia Gleizer in Moscow, Yulii Brind in Kharkov, Vladimir Markman in Sverdlovsk and others) continued. On the other hand, while sharply increasing the number of exit visas issued (from 999 people in 1970 to12,839 in1971 and up to31,900 in1972), the regime significantly restricted the departure of youth and certain categories of specialists.

Just before the summit, the authorities isolated the most active Zionists, utilizing administrative arrests and army reserve call-ups. There was an intensification of anti-Zionist propaganda and extra-judicial harassment in the form of dismissals from work with consequent warnings about punishment for a so-called “parasitic way of life.”

Despite the relative outward calm, the time was full of inner drama. In January, searches were carried out in the homes of the Kharkov activists Solomon Grinberg and Konstantin Skoblinskii.[5] On January 21, Mikhail Rozik was beaten while attempting to enter the Dutch embassy. On January 27, Yuli Aronovich, conductor of the All-Union radio and television orchestra, suffered serious injuries from an attack of “hooligans” near his home. After submitting documents for an exit visa to Israel, he had been fired from his position. On February 7, a young Moscow biologist, Ilia Gleizer was arrested; a month earlier he had applied for an exit visa to Israel.[6]

In Kiev police detained activists near the synagogue, released nine, but imprisoned four ─ Kogan, Umanskaia, Feldman and Vanetis for fifteen days.[7]

In Moscow, Vladimir Slepak was warned about the possibility of a criminal charge “for leading a parasitic way of life.” Other activists were also threatened with arrest for “parasitism,” including Vladimir Makhlis, Boris Orlov and Sergei Gurvits in Moscow, Solomon Rozen in Leningrad, and Ernst Levin in Minsk.[8]

As the date of the summit drew closer, the authorities expanded and intensified their pressure. Five Jews were summoned to the Moscow KGB on March 27: Gabriel Shapiro, Viktor Yakhot, Boris Orlov, Yosif Begun, and Sergei Gurvits. They were warned not to conduct any celebrations near the synagogue on the approaching Passover holiday. On the eve of Passover, on March 29, police units began to disperse the crowd, but the youth gathered in another place, on Nogin square, and continued to sing and dance. Soon the police appeared again, this time accompanied by antisemitic thugs. The Jews were knocked off their feet, trampled upon, and dragged to police vans by their feet and hair. About thirty people were detained. They were released after three hours but some had to go to the hospital rather than to work the next day.[9]

A month before Nixon’s visit, additional pressure was exerted through orders to appear for army service, which were received by eleven Moscow activists ─ Viktor Yakhot, Gabriel Shapiro, Sergei Gurvits, Dan Roginskii, Misha Kliachkin, David Markish, Vladimir Lerner, Pavel Abramovich, Boris Ainbinder, Mark Nashpits, and Leonid Yoffe. These men were primarily Hebrew teachers, capable of quickly mobilizing a large number of people via their students. Two ─ Ainbinder and Roginskii ─ were in constant telephone contact with Israel; three others ─ Kliachkin, Yakhot, and Slepak ─ requested permission from the Moscow city council to conduct a protest demonstration during the U.S. president’s visit.

It was clear that the regime was trying to purge Moscow of Jewish activists during Nixon’s visit. The majority of the activists, incidentally, did not obey the army notices for fear that the army service could be used in the future as the basis for a refusal on the grounds of secrecy.

Did you go to the call-up? I asked Boris Ainbinder.[10]

No, I hid and spent the time in the hospital. They came looking for me at my home. When I returned, there was a notice to appear in court for “evading a call-up.” I went to the prosecutor and was told, “You are suspected of evasion.” He was conducting the investigation. I asked, “But who is this sitting next to you?” That person shows the  identification of KGB Lieutenant Gromov. “What relation,” I ask, “does the KGB have to this investigation? I refuse to answer.” Then I was summoned to the military registration and enlistment office. I showed them the certification that I have an ulcer. They released me, then returned, and sent me with a courier to the hospital to check whether I truly had an ulcer. It was confirmed.

Vladimir Markman was arrested in Sverdlovsk on April 29. He was detained on the platform of the train station as he was about to board a train with Mark Levin to Kazan in order to wait out the unsettled period of the summit. Probably suspecting him of trying to reach Moscow, the police detained Markman under the pretense of ascertaining his identity. For five days Volodia’s wife unsuccessfully tried to ascertain his whereabouts from the police, KGB, and prosecutor’s office. On the sixth day Markman was served an arrest order.

On May 12, ten days before Nixon’s visit, leading Moscow activists were summoned to the KGB and warned not to manifest any activity during the visit. The police began to register Jews who gathered in private apartments. For example, on that day the police went to Ilia Kornfeld’s apartment in Moscow, conducted a survey, and wrote down the names of all those present. Several days later they did the same with activists who left Boris Orlov’s apartment.

In Riga, on May 14 and 15, thirty-eight Jews were summoned to the KGB, where it was suggested that they sign an obligation not to leave the Latvian capital for the next two weeks.

In Vilnius, twenty Jews were summoned in May to the Interior Ministry, where it was recommended that they not leave Vilnius during Nixon’s visit. If someone tries to do this, they were warned, he will be removed from any means of transport at the exit from the city. The Jews of Kharkov received similar warnings.[11]

Many Jews appealed to Nixon to help them get out of the Soviet Union. Of course the letters to the American president from various cities around the USSR landed in the offices of the KGB, but some Jews managed to transmit their appeals by telephone to activists in Jewish organizations abroad who took upon themselves the task of publicizing them. Thus, for instance,  Lorel Abarbenel Pollak of Chicago, cochair of “Telephone Link Project with Jews of the Soviet Union,” wrote to the president:

 Dear Mr. President,

The enclosed letter, addressed to you, was read to me on March 15, during a telephone call I made to Lydia Korenfeld of Moscow.

The letter was written in English, and to the best of my ability, I reproduce it here, with no changes or improvement in style or grammar. The dotted lines represent content I was unable to hear because of heavy interference on the telephone line. …

It has been my privilege for some months, to telephone regularly to several of the signers of your letter. They are brave and unusual people, part of the Jewish remnant to survive physical destruction under Hitler, only to be faced with spiritual annihilation presently.

During my childhood, while the six million Jews of Europe were reduced to ash, Americans did not cry out to their president. My generation is not silent. Neither do we lack confidence in your sympathy for the plight of our fellow Jews.

Mr. President, I implore you to speak in behalf of the signers of the enclosed letter and other Jews who desperately need your help. I pray that your trip to the Soviet Union will meet with every success….[12]

 On May21, aday before Nixon’s arrival, KGB workers went to the apartments of leading Moscow activists Vladimir Slepak, Viktor Polskii, Roman Rutman, Lev Libov, and Boris Orlov and arrested them. They were kept in prison until the end of the visit. Yosif Begun and Valentin Prussakov were also arrested on the same day in Moscow. On the next day, Vladimir Prestin disappeared on his way to work. He was picked up near the Kursk metro station, accused of harassing a woman, and sentenced to fifteen days for “hooliganism.” It was sweet revenge for the KGB to accuse the aristocratic Prestin of an unseemly act and to conduct a trial with witnesses whom he had never seen before.

On May 24, Leonid Tsypin and Aleksandr Slepak (the son of Vladimir), who had planned to carry out a protest demonstration during the visit, were arrested. A day before Nixon’s planned one-day visit in Kiev, on May 25, Aleksandr Feldman, Lazar Slutskii, and Zinovii Melamed were arrested for ten days. In Sverdlovsk, Leonid Zabelyshenskii was arrested for ten days and in Leningrad the famous ballet dancer Valerii Panov was imprisoned for ten days. Many Jews in other cities were sent to army call-ups or provoked and arrested for ten to fifteen days.

The regime welcomed Nixon and his delegation most hospitably. The business part of the meeting was successful. A treaty on the limitation of strategic arms was signed (START-1); a joint Committee on Trade was created; and a Declaration on Principles of Mutual Relations was signed. “The most attractive part of the agreement for the Soviet side was the promise to extend to the Soviet Union the most favored nation status in trade and advantageous credits from the American Export-Import bank for obtaining American goods.”[13] A grateful Brezhnev, regarding the summit as his greatest personal achievement, promised Nixon that he would press Vietnam to negotiate with the U.S. on ending the war.

“Despite the fact that President Nixon’s government showed an understanding of the problems of Soviet Jews and sympathy for their struggle, it refused to discuss those problems during official contacts with the Soviet leadership for fear that it could undermine the spirit of détente.”[14] In an unofficial manner, however, the Jewish issue was raised at the summit as it was important to Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to make a good impression on the American Jewish community. In addition, human rights issues carried considerable weight with American public opinion. Brezhnev assured Nixon several times that the number of Jews receiving exit visas would increase; he even mentioned to Nixon an annual quota of 30,000 people.[15] Brezhnev, possibly, intended to implement his promise, but even then it was clear to the Soviet leadership that a quota of 30,000 would not solve the problem because the number of those who wanted to leave was much higher.

The dust had barely settled after the summit when punitive measures were restored. At the trial of Yulii Brind in Kharkov on June 1, he was sentenced to two and a half years of imprisonment. Among the basic pieces of evidence in the charges brought against him were a letter of 1967 to Pravda, a speech at a meeting discussing the international situation, and four taped recordings of Israel radio broadcasts.

In the case of Vladimir Markman, who had been arrested on April 29 inSverdlovsk, it seemed at first that the authorities themselves had no idea what formal charge to use at the trial. They spoke in interrogations about Markman’s malicious hooliganism during a telephone conversation with Israel and slandering the Soviet governmental and social order in numerous letters to Soviet and foreign addressees.

Markman’s trial took place on August 9, 1972. He was sentenced to three years of a strict regime labor camp for letters of protest, conversations on Jewish topics, and a rude conversation with a telephone operator. His friends (including myself) wrote several letters to Soviet and international bodies. Greta, Markman’s wife, declared a hunger strike in the Central Committee reception room in Moscow and was sent back to Sverdlovsk.

 

During Nixon’s visit, Gabriel Shapiro managed to hide from army conscription officials and didn’t go to the army call-up. In order to avoid the consequences, he and Judy Silver, a Soviet Jewry movement activist from Cincinnati, decided to register their marriage. Judy arrived in Moscow and on June 9, Rabbi Herzl Kranz from Washington arranged a huppah, a Jewish marriage ceremony for them.

On June 12, Gabriel accompanied his wife to the airport. Ten minutes after she disappeared into the airplane, he was arrested. On June 16, Mark Nashpits was also arrested. The two, charged with evading military service, were put on trial on July 26. Gabriel declared in court that he didn’t regard himself as guilty because he had received Israeli citizenship and renounced the Soviet one. Moreover, as the husband of an American citizen, he had turned to the U.S. secretary of state requesting American citizenship. Shapiro was given a one year suspended sentence of forced labor. That meant that he could remain at his place of work but twenty percent of his salary would be deducted for the benefit of the state. This victory owed much to the efforts of Judy Silver, who brought her husband’s dramatic story to the front pages of American newspapers. A week later, Mark Nashpits received an analogous sentence.[16]

In Odessa, Yurii Pokh and Gregorii Berman were tried for evasion of military service. Both, unfortunately, were not known in the West. On June 17, Pokh was sentenced to three and a half years and Berman (on August 10) to two and a half years of corrective labor camps. Both were sent to Berdiansk to serve their term.

The twin Wainman brothers were tried in Kharkov on September 7. They had received call-up notices on the eve of Nixon’s visit but considered it expedient to go to relatives in Nikolaev and sit out the visit. A provocation occurred at the railroad station; they were arrested, convicted of “hooliganism under aggravating circumstances,” and they were each sentenced to four years of imprisonment.

Isaak Shkolnik, a 36-year old Jewish activist from Vinnitsa, was arrested on July 5; he had previously been arrested on May 25 for ten days. This time the charge was much more serious ─ anti-Soviet propaganda. When the trial began on February 8, 1973, the charge would sound even more ominous ─ espionage on behalf of Great Britain (!).

On July 17, after a search of many hours, Lazar Liubarskii, an activist from Rostov-on the-Don, was arrested. There were few activists in the city but Lazar had established good connections with Moscow Jews. The authorities chose as the basis for their charge a letter that Lazar had written to Pravda in September 1970 in connection with the press conference of the state (in Russian, literally “trained” or “drilled”) Jews. Investigators had earlier tried to link his “case” with the First and Second Leningrad Trials and with the trials in Riga and Kishinev but they gave up after a ten-month investigation. The evidence that earlier had served as the basis for Liubarskii’s acquittal, was now used to justify his arrest.[17]

Ilia Gleizer, a scientist, was tried in Moscow on August 22 and sentenced to three years of labor camp and three additional years of exile. On the following day Moskovskaia Pravda published an article “Poison in an Envelope” that asserted, “The shameful and disgusting facts about the life of this pseudo-intellectual and amoral type, Gleizer, were completely revealed in the court verdict. … In the course of the investigation other figures from Gleizer’s milieu, his friends, such as Slepak and other adherents of the Israeli paradise, floated to the surface.”

This was not the only trial in which the authorities tried to implicate other Moscow activists. Similar efforts were made in the trials of Liubarskii and Markman, who had excellent ties with Moscow refusenik circles.

The summit did not lead to free Jewish emigration although the numbers increased. All the former obstacles and difficulties connected to the gathering and submission of documents for an exit visa, the long waiting period, and the completely arbitrary granting of visas remained. Nor did the refuseniks’ life become easier or more secure. The number of those who wished to leave the Soviet Union was none the less much higher than the30,000 ayear promised by Brezhnev.

The euphoria from the successful summit played an evil trick on the Soviet leadership. Calculating that the considerations impelling the U.S. toward détente were much weightier than the issue of Jewish emigration, the KGB considered that the time was ripe for placing another, practically insuperable obstacle on the path to emigration ─ an education tax. The upper ranks in the Kremlin, evidently, decided that it would be difficult to object to this as education in the West was paid for privately. Once again, however, the Soviet strategists were undone by their lack of a sense of proportion ─ the scale of the tax was monstrous, in effect, prohibitive. American legislators reacted indignantly to the education tax, introducing an exceptionally strong and significant countermeasure  ─ the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which established a legislative link between freedom of emigration from the Soviet Union and economic relations between the two superpowers. From being a specific, humanitarian issue, the question of Jewish emigration moved to the plane of strategic relations between the U.S. and USSR.