As their community developed, different groups of refuseniks tended to specialize in specific spheres of activity. The movement’s general strategy focused on surviving the struggle, succeeding in leaving the country, and paving the way for others. Although the majority of refuseniks pursued the same goals, their choice of a particular refusenik activity depended largely on their own specific nature, age, personal circumstances, and inclinations. The process was rather complex: many experimented with various spheres of activity before finding their niche.

Any refusenik endeavor entailed the risk of harassment by the regime but individuals or whole groups consciously intensified the struggle in order to force the regime to choose either to arrest them or let them leave.

“Two viewpoints were common among the Jews,” recalls Aleksandr Lunts: “One ─ that the quieter you sit, the faster you’ll leave and the other that it was necessary to raise a ruckus. Because I did not fall into the category of people who easily receive exit visas, it was clear to me that as soon as I applied for one, I would experience all the ‘pleasures’ that could be derived from that situation.”[1] Vladimir Slepak and many other advocates of constant activity were in the same situation. Western correspondents very much liked activism or “action.”

Other refuseniks considered that less “noisy” activity was more effective and judicious, for example, the publication of samizdat journals, participation in seminars, Hebrew study and instruction, and the study of the Jewish religious tradition. “I decided that Hebrew study was the best possible unifying and organizing force for the Jews,” recalls Pavel Abramovich. I was sick and tired of demonstrations by that time! What was the point of sitting for hours in some stinking reception room and then landing in the lock-up for days? It was useless. The struggle for Hebrew or the publication of underground journals, however, really set them on edge, as could be seen clearly by their hatred of Yosif Begun.”[2]

By 1973 the process of writing protest letters, appeals, and petitions had become widespread and, in some sense, routine. No one seriously expected to receive a reply from the majority of Soviet official bodies or many international organizations to whom the documents were addressed; rather, they were written in order to mobilize Jewish and international society in support of our struggle. Collective visits to official institutions such as the Interior Ministry, the Supreme Soviet, the Foreign Ministry, and the CPSU Central Committee were organized many times. The visits were often accompanied by sit-in demonstrations and collective hunger strikes, which frequently landed the participants in administrative detention for fifteen days. Those collective actions were effective measures that, as a rule, attracted broad press interest. Many refuseniks thus experienced preventive detention at the police station or in real prison cells. It turned out to be not quite as terrible as the average Jewish intellectual had imagined.

As often happens, several young refuseniks who considered the above methods dull, ordinary, and insufficiently effective coalesced into a group. They wanted more ─ genuine demonstrations on the streets and squares of Moscow with posters and slogans. They were not anti-Soviet; they simply wanted to go to Israel, the sooner the better. They personally couldn’t rely on quiet diplomacy or the Western establishment because Western social and political figures appealed directly to the Soviet leadership only in the cases of major scientists and well-known refuseniks. As they did not fit into any of those categories, they decided to escalate the struggle.

It was a risky game. Not everyone supported it, considering such methods could provoke the regime to carry out punitive measures against the entire refusenik community. There was a measure of truth to those assertions but, in essence, all our actions and even the very desire to leave the Soviet Union were provocations in the authorities’ eyes. The group with the militant temperament and uncompromising nature was nicknamed “Hunveibins.”[3] They were also called “Herutniki” after the Israeli right-wing party Herut although there was no special connection with this party. Led by its founder Mikhail Babel, the group’s first demonstration took place May 3, 1973 on Pushkin Square; the last was on June 28, 1973 on the Mayakovsky metro station platform. In less than two months, the group held five demonstrations. Babel then received an exit visa and two weeks later, on July 19, he left for Israel.

Misha, they call you the founder of the group, I said to him. What impelled you to take such a risky step?[4]

The founder? No, not exactly. There were fine fellows ─ Valera Krizhak and Boria Tsitlenok who constituted the hard core, and then the rest joined one by one. We concluded that the old methods were not working, and we very much wanted to go to Israel.

You yourself wanted to leave for Israel or you thought you were helping everyone?

No, I didn’t intend to struggle for everyone. I simply understood that we could go on writing letters for dozens of years, but that wouldn’t get us out. I was strongly influenced by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who, I could see, blazed the trail for us.

I saw, Yuli, that I was alone, and I didn’t want to remain a refusenik for years. Gradually, I saw that Krizhak felt the same; then we saw Tsitlenok, Zakhar Tesker, and Lev Kogan were like-minded. We checked them out, considering such verification was important. There was also, of course, the provocateur Leonid Tsipin; such people couldn’t be avoided in those matters. The most important thing, however, was that we weren’t operating secretly; there was nothing anti-Soviet in it. At the start, I consulted with Andrei Tverdokhlebov [a noted human rights activist].

 Did you support close ties with the democrats?

No. I wasn’t interested in democracy [in the USSR] because I felt that it wasn’t my country and I didn’t need to bother with it. I had one goal and I asked his advice with regard to demonstrations. He replied, “Look, you want to jump across a puddle; why must you announce this to anyone or to ask permission for that?” I very much liked his approach—a marvelous person. I understood that, in general, there was no violation of the law. Later, the KGB officers also explained that the constitution does not prohibit demonstrations.

We were not upset by the presence of provocateurs. It’s useless to try to deal with this. As soon as you unmask one, the next one immediately will appear. Except for the very first one on Pushkin Square, we announced our demonstrations in advance. We did nothing illegal, but we had to pluck up our courage, and we weren’t bold people. When you overcome fear, then courage emerges. We were neither the positive heroes of the nineteenth century, nor Bolsheviks, nor “Hunveibins” but simply people who understood that we had to make a breakthrough. Yes, otherwise, you could sit passively, saying, “That’s life.”

How many of you were at the first demonstration?

There were five at Pushkin Square: Valera Krizhak, Boria Tsitlenok, Leva Kogan, Lenia Tsipin and I.

Were the demonstrations timed to coincide with any important evens?

No. Everything was an event for us. Sometimes people reproached us, saying that we were taking too great risks and undermining aliya, but later I became convinced that they were mainly people who subsequently bolted to America. I saw a connection between those phenomena: they wanted to avoid risky acts and to depart quietly to America.

 It’s hard to believe that the demonstration of May 3, 1973 accidentally coincided with the visit to Moscow of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to coordinate Brezhnev’s upcoming U.S. visit. As the summit meeting was planned for the middle of the following month, the Western press carefully followed everything that occurred in the Soviet Union at that time.

 Misha, how did you handle the Western press coverage of your demonstrations?

We took care of it but sometimes the matter was in the hands of Tsipin, the provocateur.

Do you think that he was a provocateur from the start or was broken later?

I think from the beginning. He worked very well, best of all. I received him from Slepak; he was trusted there, and I thought that Slepak had checked him out. From the start there were blank spots: it wasn’t clear where his parents were or where he was living. Something was suspicious in his passport… This already aroused suspicion.

But Tsipin was the contact with correspondents?

First Tsipin and then I. We held many demonstrations. Two weeks after the one at Pushkin Square, ten of us stood opposite the USSR Prosecutors’ Office. On June 10, fourteen people showed up at the Aleksandrovskii Garden near the Kremlin Wall. In fact, the demonstration didn’t actually take place because we were all detained. The following week we demonstrated near OVIR and on June 28 by the Mayakovsky metro station. The eight people at the latter all were detained for fifteen days and all were beaten in prison. The demonstrations were not provocative in nature; they were directed only at leaving the country. We demonstrated at Pushkin Square because Izvestiia refused to publish our appeal about exit visas.

 In Krizhak’s opinion, the demonstration at the metro fell under the article on disturbing public order. “Pandemonium in the metro,” said Valera, “is fraught with consequences. Had they wanted to, they could have been most tough on us: stopping the trains or pushing someone onto the tracks …. a demonstration is indeed pandemonium. We were placed in the Matrosskaia Tishina prison where we began to raise a ruckus, making demands, pounding on the cell doors … and we damaged the door. The guards came and beat us and put us in handcuffs. Then the prosecutors arrived and said, ‘What do you expect? People drank a bit before Saturday and you disturbed them. You yourselves forced them to take such measures.’ In short, they let us go on the sly.” [5]

With which aliya leaders were you in contact? I asked Misha Babel.[6]

Not with anyone in particular; they all condemned us….

Did Polskii condemn?

Yes. Via his wife, he told me, “You are kicking up your heels in vain; it’s better to sit quietly.”

Did Slepak condemn?

I didn’t hear that he did.

No doubt Lunts supported you.

He supported us in words, not deeds. None of them supported us in deeds as they considered it too risky. Several years later, Ida [Nudel] and Volodia [Slepak] hung up big signs on the balconies of their apartments, after which they were arrested.

But before you, too, there were demonstrations—at the Central Committee office, in the OVIR reception room, and the Central Telegraph Agency. There were also hunger strikes but not posters

I participated in all of that but I understood later on that it was all idle dreams.

You yourself said that a lot depends on a person’s character.

Yes. I never aspired to leadership, always considered myself an ordinary person. Today, too; I am not a leader.

Valera, who led the group after Misha Babel’s departure, I asked him.[7]

It’s hard to say, Valera said after some reflection. It’s clear that Misha was the locomotive. Afterwards, things continued by inertia.

What attracted you to this group?

Look, I signed letters but it didn’t seem to produce results. The letters turned the protest into something that didn’t bother anyone. I was feeling down and then Misha appeared. As you know, the granting or denying of exit visas was totally arbitrary. Misha said, “All these letters are a waste of time. We shall make sure that the dust won’t settle on our files.”

Misha says that many aliya leaders were dissatisfied with you, saying that you endangered aliya.

Possibly, but I used to meet also those kind of quiet Jews who said to us, “We don’t know whether your actions helped you, but it definitely helped us.” Incidentally, with regard to Tsipin, one shouldn’t have a preconceived notion. I don’t think that he was a provocateur from the very beginning.

What happened after Babel’s departure?

A lot of demonstrations.

 

Here’s how Misha Babel, who was already in Israel, described those demonstrations:

 On September 28, 1973 at 12:30, twelve Moscow Jews: Belfor, Gendin, Kogan, Krizhak, Liberman, Lurie, Raifeld, Rutman, Tesker, Tsitlenok, Tsipin, and Shcharansky stood next to the Interior Ministry with signs: “Visas to Israel instead of Prisons”; “Let My People Go”; and “Let me go to Israel.” The demonstrators wore yellow stars on their chests. A crowd (a few dozen people) gathered around the demonstrators. The police started snatching the signs and tearing them up. Then a police colonel proposed that the demonstrators move to the Interior Ministry reception room but they refused, replying that they had already made their appeals in all kinds of reception rooms, including that one. The demonstrators managed to stand there for all of seven minutes before they were hauled off to detoxifier [sobering up station] number eight. Officials of the all-union and Moscow OVIR—Verenin, Zolotukhin, and Koshelev—arrived there. The demonstrators were summoned to them one by one, but they refused to discuss the essence of the case since such discussions in a detoxifier are humiliating. The on-duty judge sentenced Belfor, Krizhak, Rutman, and Tsitlenok to prison terms of ten to fifteen days; Kogan, Lurie, and Tsipin were fined twenty rubles each. Gendin, Liberman, Raifeld, Tesker, and Shcharansky received strict warnings.[8]

 

Judging by the placards, the fellows were not only struggling for themselves but also truly shared the movement’s common goals.

How did you wind up in this group of cocky demonstrators? I asked Natan Shcharansky.[9]

It’s more a story of how I became part of the refusenik community. Near the synagogue, I made the acquaintance of Lev Kogan, who explained the structure of the refusenik world as follows: “Look, over here are the big shots, all kinds of Slepaks, Luntses, Prestins, and Abramoviches who run everything and consider that they know everything. They call our group ‘Hunveibins’ and we call them ‘big shots.’ We go out to demonstrations and don’t obey anyone.” Anarchist types (he laughs). Kogan said that at every occasion, the big shots ask Israel what to do and what not to do. “Israel has its political considerations. We don’t ask permission from anyone. We are struggling for our right to depart and we hold demonstrations. Join us.” He was the first person I met and I liked his freedom-loving approach. While still in the process of applying, I began to meet with this group of fellows regularly.

Once I also went out with them and sat out my fifteen days. That demonstration took place on October 2 with ten participants but you weren’t there.

I remember that demonstration very well. That day played a very important role in my life—my link with Avital began on that day. You stood near the TASS building and served time during the Yom Kippur War. Why wasn’t I there? I was not yet a refusenik as I had applied for an exit visa in the summer and had not yet received an answer. The “Hunveibins” decided that the end of September was a good time for political demonstrations; no one knew the war would break out then. On the one hand, many people advised me that it didn’t pay to demonstrate before receiving a refusal: “How can you demand that you be given an exit visa when you are not yet a refusenik?” On the other hand, Lev Kogan encouraged me, “Yes, forget it, let’s go…” Thinking that the important thing was not that I hadn’t received a refusal but that I did not yet have a visa, I decided to participate in the next demonstration. I liked their spirit of freedom and the romance of struggle. The first demonstration was at the end of September. Lev Kogan explained, “The first time we don’t say when and where. Come to me, make yourself a poster: ‘Visas instead of prison,’ ‘I want to go to Israel’ or whatever you want, better in English.” We arranged to meet an hour before the demonstration. One of the few that were photographed, it took place near the Interior Ministry building. In the photograph I am shielded by a policeman. We arrived and held up our posters. What happened? We were taken to the eighth Moscow detoxifier. Subsequently I was at that detoxifier eight times, but that was the first. Several people received fifteen days; Kogan and I were fined. The following day, the Sabbath, a tall young man named Misha Stieglits appeared near the synagogue. He said that he heard about the demonstration over the radio and he wanted to join us. He spoke openly even though the KGB was all around and looking at him.

Bella Ramm sent him to me, saying “Look, that fellow was at the demonstration; he probably could help you.” Misha was over six feet tall; as you know, I’m a bit shorter. In order to hear each other, we had to speak loudly. “You know,” I said, “the KGB men are all around; let’s change places.” He went into the street and I stood on the sidewalk but with the difference in our height¸ it didn’t help that much. I said, “If you want to participate in a demonstration, I can help you. We have already planned the next one.” I brought him to my home and explained, already feeling very important: “I don’t have the right to tell you where and when but let’s meet at such and such a time at Pushkin Square; bring a placard and I’ll take you to the place.”

We arranged to meet but at that time I unexpectedly received a message that the director of OVIR wanted to see me urgently. The demonstration was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., and he wanted to see me at 8:30. The head of OVIR wants to talk to me! This was the authorities’ first reaction of any kind to my application. I dressed warmly as in preparation for the demonstration, put the poster over my stomach, and went to OVIR. Zolotukhin, the head of the Moscow OVIR, said that my case was going to receive an affirmative response. “In a few days you will receive an official reply.” “Why did you summon me today if you don’t have an official answer?” “Well, so that you take it into consideration.” That meant that they knew something (of course, they knew everything because Tsipin was involved), and I was in an absurd situation. On the one hand, if I am going to receive the visa in a few days, it’s stupid to go to a demonstration. On the other hand, it was too late to warn anyone about my ambivalent situation. With those thoughts, I went to Pushkin Square, met Misha, and told him frankly—even though we hardly knew each other and had met only two or three times—about my dilemma. He said, “What kind of clever monkey business is this! Our goal, after all, is to leave, and they are telling you that you shall leave. If they deceive you, we’ll have a lot more demonstrations. Now explain what I should do.” I told him, “In fifteen minutes go to the TASS building; you’ll see other people there and you’ll raise your placard with them.” That was the very demonstration in which you participated.

By deceiving you so roundly they reinforced your motivation for the future….

After that, it became clear to me that one must never react to what they say. That’s their tactics.

I’ll tell you why that demonstration played such an important role in my life. Natasha Shtieglits, who had no idea that her brother was planning to go to a demonstration, was by chance riding in a trolley past the TASS building when she saw the demonstration. Catching sight of her brother, who, you agree, is hard to miss, she yelled to the driver: “Stop, stop!” But he drove on to the trolley stop, which is somewhere near Pushkin Square. By the time Natasha ran back, there was no one there. She began to rush about hysterically. The following week she arrived at the synagogue and began to clarify what happened to her brother. Leva Liberman sent her to me. As you recall, between the two Saturdays, the Yom Kippur War broke out. Naturally we were all preoccupied with the war, writing letters to the Red Cross and demanding the opportunity to donate blood for Israeli soldiers. I was collecting signatures for this near the synagogue. After the demonstration, I had acquired KGB tails for the first time in my life. I approached the tails and suggested that they sign, too…. And at that moment Natasha, who had landed in this fantastic world, approached.

Did she have any relationship to the movement?

None at all. I started to reassure her that it was nothing terrible; he received fifteen days. The KGB men observed us sullenly. In short, it was love at first sight. I understood that I didn’t have much time because Misha would get out in ten to twelve days. And that’s how our romance began.

The demonstration by the TASS building was the only time that I participated in one of the “Hunveibins’” actions. Having already thrice sat in prison for fifteen days, I was more than cool toward the romanticism of prison. I remember that demonstration very well. I rolled up my poster “Civil rights for the Jews” and stuck it under my jacket before joining the demonstrators. The participants looked resolute and stern; the KGB, however, was well informed about the meeting place and, in my opinion, about the participants. We had barely managed to assemble and unfold the posters when the policemen and men in civvies jumped out. The officer declared pro forma: “You are participating in an unsanctioned demonstration; disperse immediately.” In a few seconds the posters were torn to bits and we were shoved into a small bus and taken to the detoxifier. Tsipin said that correspondents were present and they managed to photograph it. It was a cascading demonstration; that is, every few days new people went out to demonstrate and each time in a different spot in Moscow.

I must admit that those were the most entertaining fifteen days that I spent in detention. We were kept separately from the criminals, there were many tales and jokes, and we sang songs in Hebrew. The policemen watched anxiously as we were visited almost daily by high-ranking officials and they were afraid to touch us.

After a demonstration on October 5, 1973 near the Interior Ministry, 12 activists were sitting in jail but the next demonstration was quick in coming: on October 9 near the Novosti Press Agency building.

Krizhak was a sight in the detention cell: cheerful, sporty, with the agility and speed of a monkey, he scudded along the upper bed boards.

Valera, I asked him, why did you keep rushing about on the upper boards?

I was young, excuse me, he smiled.

Misha Babel said that after the cascading demonstration, they sort of promised you an exit visa. What happened to you after that?

Who ever believed them? We thought about holding a demonstration for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union. As you know, it was established in December 1923. Following standard procedure, we wrote to the authorities requesting permission to hold a demonstration under the slogan: “Long live the Constitution and its embodiment ─ our departure to Israel.” It was then close to New Year’s. We were all picked up and scattered around prisons outside of Moscow for preventative reasons. I was in Volokolamsk along with Leva Gendin, Boria Tsitlenok, and, if I recall correctly, Arkadii Rutman. We were serving our time when the new year of 1974 entered.

In how many demonstrations did you participate?

I sat in prison five times but one time was even before our group was formed. It happened after the dispersal of the demonstration near the Supreme Soviet. I went together with Izi Palkhan to the Central Library and we stood up on the steps there with yellow stars on our coats.

After the New Year’s detention, my ardor cooled and I returned to my burrow. After some time, Kandel dropped in and said, “They want to see you in OVIR.” My telephone was disconnected at that time. “And I want to see them in the grave,” I answered. But my wife persuaded me, “Forget it; let’s go… A visa.” And then at OVIR they said, “Oh, yes, you don’t have your father-in-law’s consent [to your departure]….” I said, “Good-by. You sort things out with him on your own.”  “No. No,” they said, “come tomorrow, we’ll summon him here.” The next day they squeezed that consent out of him. It was quite a scene.

Valera received an exit visa at the beginning of June 1974 and was in Israel by June 17. After Krizhak left, and also during his presence, the group had a collegial leadership, in which Lev Kogan was the organizer. In connection with President Nixon’s second visit, which began on June 28, he, like dozens of other activists, was detained preventively and sent to Volokolamsk prison,101 kilometersfrom Moscow. We spent twelve days together there, the only two in a cell for six. We were released on July 3, when the president’s plane lifted up into the air. It was pleasant but simultaneously difficult to sit out this term. Having been arrested without having been tried or given any explanation, we began to demand to see the prosecutor and carried on noisily. They put handcuffs on Lev; I was taken out to the corridor, my hands were twisted back and jerked up by the wrist so that my arm was almost broken. I howled from pain. I was then thrown into the punishment cell but after a few hours I was brought back to the regular cell as they considered that I had learned my lesson. Three months later, in September 1974, Kogan received an exit visa.

After Lev Kogan’s departure, there were a few more demonstrations. “In September 1974,”recalls Dina Beilina, “ten Muscovites (Grigorii Bliufarb, Iosif Beilin, Lev Gendin, Vladimir Davydov, Semyen Pevzner, Zakhar Tesker, Boris Tsitlenok, Leonid Tsipin, Anatolii Shcharansky, and Hirsh Toker) and three Kishinevans (Moshe Kooperstein, Mark Abramovich, and Yuri Shekhtman) went out to demonstrate near the National Hotel. The Kishinevans were expelled to Kishinev and sentenced to thirty days of imprisonment whereas the Muscovites received fifteen days each.”[10] Shcharansky relates that this demonstration was memorable for him not only because of the imprisonment but also because two days earlier he had secretly undergone a brit milah (circumcision), and he had to restore his strength in the conditions of a Soviet administrative detention cell.[11]

On Purim, February 24, 1974, ademonstration was held near the Lenin Library that lasted half a minute. Demonstrators held up signs saying “Prisoners of Zion to Israel” and “Visas instead of prison.” The participants included Mikhail Liberman, Natan Tolchinskii, Hirsh Toker, Iosif Beilin, Mark Nashpits, Boris Tsitlenok, Ilya Koltunov, Anatolii Shcharansky, and Aleksandr Gvinter. People in civvies and the police dragged the participants into the library building and then brought them to the detoxifier. Aleksandr Lunts, who was observing the demonstration at a distance, was also taken away although he was released after eight hours. Nashpits and Tsitlenok were brought to trial. Tsipin and Shcharansky were released and the rest were arrested for fifteen days.[12]

It was the saddest demonstration, Shcharansky told me:

After it, Tsitlenok and Nashpits were sent into exile for five years. There were ten of us, only Tsipin and I were released. It was completely apparent to me that the KGB simply wanted to check whether we intended to plan another demonstration right away. You could say they drove Tsipin to this demonstration. We already mistrusted him so much that he had no advance information about where and when. When Gendin came out after ten days of detention, I went up to him and said, “Let’s get to the bottom of the matter; we have suspected him for half a year.” He then followed the trail, questioning his former girlfriends, and he taped the shocking testimony of one girl, whose name I don’t remember, who affirmed that he was informing to the KGB. She related the code words that he used when he made contact. When Tsipin was confronted with all this, he disappeared and was not seen for all of 1976. On May 17, 1977, Tsipin’s article against refuseniks appeared in the newspaper Vechernaia Moskva.

That woman adduced these facts: People called and would ask, “Is this the Baikal Cinema?” and he would answer, “No, it’s the wrong number.” That meant that he was supposed to go to a meeting. At some point she understood, and then he said to her, “Fool, be quiet; you don’t understand. I am playing for larger stakes, and I am doing this at the instructions of the Israeli intelligence service.” When Gendin broke him, she was still hoping that he was acting on the orders of Israeli intelligence. Like kindergarten.

What happened to the group after the arrest of Nashpits and Tsitlenok?

Things became worse. Do you remember that after the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and breakdown of the Trade Agreement negotiations, the regime began to tighten the screws? Two people were sent into exile for five years after an ordinary demonstration near the library. That made people think twice before going to a demonstration if it would result in being sent to prison. Other forms of activity got under way at that time but that was the last purely “Hunveibin” demonstration.

The trial of Nashpits and Tsitlenok was held on March 31, 1975 inthe Moscow municipal courtroom. They were tried on the basis of Article 190-3 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (the organization of and active participation in group actions disturbing public order). Around one hundred activists gathered near the court building. The court room was filled up with so-called “representatives of the public.” There were many foreign correspondents: Robert Toth from the Los Angeles Times, George Krimsky from the Associated Press, Patrick Worsnip from Reuters, and others. After the sentencing, many of us joined in a three-day hunger strike in protest against the verdict. That trial evoked a wave of protests in the West.

The regime permitted the majority of the “Hunveibins” to leave the country but two were sentenced to a lengthy exile. Street demonstrations ceased for awhile but hunger strikes and demonstrations in government institutions continued. A few years later, the demonstrators would again assemble on the streets of Moscow and a new group would form  ─  although not for long  ─  that would organize daring demonstrations under the Kremlin walls.