Despite the intensified pressure by the authorities, people still attended the ulpanim. They would switch from teachers who were under KGB pressure to lesser-known instructors with whom it was less dangerous to study.Moscow was well supplied with Hebrew teachers thanks to the efforts of the previous years; indeed, there were enough teachers not only for local needs but also for helping other cities. Guests from other cities often visited my teachers’ seminar, and we were happy to give them an intensive Hebrew course in Moscow if they were able to spend some time with us; otherwise, we sent teachers to them if there was an interested group. In addition, we supplied them with textbooks and technical means. Lev Ulanovskii took care of that in his day─he attracted out-of-towners because he led a dibur and taught in other cities as did I.

The regime was unhappy with the spread of Hebrew and Jewish knowledge to other cities in the Soviet empire, and in the early 1980s, embarking on a plan to destroy the Jewish movement as a whole, the authorities made the suppression of Hebrew studies an important part of this policy.

In December 1979, Sasha Kholmianskii, a young teacher and active participant in the teachers’ seminar, came to me with a proposal to designate Hebrew teaching in provincial cities as a separate project. He was critical of the open courses of intensive training for out-of-towners on the assumption that it could put the participants from the provinces in a vulnerable position. A year earlier I would not have taken those views so seriously; in any case, we had tried not to especially publicize the Koktebel seminars but just at that time the USSR sent its troops into Afghanistan, and Sasha’s conclusions coincided with my own misgivings. The circumstances demanded stronger precautionary measures. Sasha proposed going one step further─closing the project to outsiders and making it conspiratorial. In theory that would have been desirable, but it practice it was hardly feasible. Even if one could select suitable candidates for conspiratorial activity among the veteran activists, the students would be ordinary people without any experience in underground work, and there would be many of them.

In our activity it was important that everything appeared natural, without external signs of organization, conspiracy, or “projects.” We understood that we were going against official ideology and practice, but we behaved like people engaged in legitimate activity who were not breaking the law, which, in fact, was correct. Indeed, THEY were the ones violating the law in harassing us. There was enormous moral strength in such an outwardly naïve position.

It was important to find the golden mean with regard to conspiratorial issues. Unnatural secrecy would be more likely to attract attention to the project. There was no doubt that such an all-Union project had to be completely conspiratorial at the upper echelons: the financing, the organizers, the group of teachers, the production of textbooks and other material, lists of addresses and telephones. It was also desirable to divide the project into autonomous sectors in order to keep it afloat in case of individual blunders. It was about two years since Sasha had applied for an exit visa, and, in the meantime, he had not gotten into any serious trouble. He did, however, study Hebrew with the prominent teacher Lev Ulanovskii, one of the first serious proponents of spreading Hebrew beyond the bounds of Moscow. The stakes were high and there was much to consider.

An important feature of Sasha’s proposal was our active position at the center: we would not wait until we were approached for help but would search on our own for contacts in the cities to organize ulpanim, receive literature and textbooks for independent study, and carefully collect information about the situation in the cities and about people who sympathized with our movement. When out-of-towners came to Moscow for help, there always was the probability that we could face a provocateur or simply a weak individual who would blurt out everything he knew at the first interrogation. In any case, we needed to develop ties around the country in order to reinforce the movement.

In general, I liked Sasha himself and his proposal. His Hebrew was excellent and so was his English. His words conveyed logic and conviction. When I went to the intercity seminar in Koktebel in 1979, he took the initiative and conducted several sessions of my teachers’ seminar in Moscow without even coordinating it with me in advance. I saw in this a confidence in his powers and a boldness bordering on impudence, qualities that our circumstances required. He was, undoubtedly, a passionate and ambitious personality, not burdened by a heavy KGB dossier and not wearied by years of refusal. We met a couple of times and agreed that we would form a group of four people who would implement the project and decide principled questions in a collegial fashion. The group included Sasha himself, his brother Misha Kholmianskii, and the young, very promising Yulii Edelshtein. I took upon myself the issues of financing, material procurement, and representation; Sasha took on implementation of the project in Odessa and the southern part of Ukraine, Moldavia, and the Caucasus; Misha took on Leningrad and the Baltics; and Yulik─Kharkov, Minsk, and the rest of Belarus.

While working on this book, I met with Sasha to refresh our memories.

When did you come to the conclusion that it was necessary to find a special person, not under police observation, who on the basis of fragmentary information received from various sources, would travel to the various cities, corroborate the reliability of the information and try to establish reliable contacts for forming Hebrew groups?

Rather quickly. I was consumed by this project, thought about it constantly, and tried out various models in my mind. The first person who seriously began to deal with this was Feliks Kushnir, who appeared rather early, in 1981. You introduced me to him.[1]

When did you develop the final model?

Approximately in a year. I had two groups of teachers in Moscow who were working entirely for the cities: a senior and middle group of my students, already quite advanced by that time in language study. Yulik Edelshtein began to have all sorts of unpleasant problems─the authorities wanted to deprive him of his residency permit for Moscow and the threat of being recruited into the army hung over him…. In the end, we diminished his activity and I began to operate in his regions. It became clear that I had to direct this project. Yulik retained the mobile camps, that is, seminars on boats, trips, and the like. He, for his part, posited only one condition, that the group included people suitable for complete immersion in Hebrew. That’s how it was and, thank God, he didn’t have any slip-ups.

You had other activists in addition to Feliks Kushnir who traveled around the cities. For example, Dov Kontorer. In my opinion, he was the most effective. Highly motivated, a conspirator, like you, he didn’t stick out.

He appeared when Kushnir left. There was a problem with Dov─he managed to be exposed.

How long did Kontorer “cultivate the virgin soil” in the cities?

He worked for a few years with me and several years after my arrest. He used to travel, meet people, and evaluate the situation. Sometimes Baevskii carried out the same function.

What about Geizel?

No, Geizel carried out other functions and I got him involved relatively late. He had the same problems as Yulii Edelshtein.

Too public a figure?

Yes. Then I decided there might be a positive side: the authorities wouldn’t suspect that such a person could be involved in a secret project. After my arrest, Kontorer and Geizel carried on with the project.

Did you send basically your students to teach?

Yes. I weeded out some of them, choosing people whom I knew were not too talkative and could do what was necessary.

How was the project structured with regard to the various functions?

The first task, as I said, was reconnaissance trips: Kushnir, Kontorer, and Baevskii. Sometimes people in the regions carried out that function: Zhan and Ania Nepomniashchii, Ella Giser, and Frida Natura. The second function was teaching in the localities and in Moscow for out-of-towners. Starting in 1981, we brought together in Moscow people from other cities who were willing to sacrifice their vacation for intensive study. They either lived for a few weeks with various teachers or we rented an apartment for them. Zhenia Gurevich took care of that as did Kontorer in the beginning. A third function was to supply literature to the cities. Sometimes Dov would do that and sometime I myself. I traveled a lot to the cities which no one had yet visited in order somehow to inspire the public there. In addition, the function of storing the material was carried out by Vitalii Degtiarev, a.k.a., Reuven Ben Shalom. He sought out people and distributed material at the different addresses. There were dozens of addresses for warehousing; it’s even impossible to describe.

Kontorer also taught?

At first he had a problem with teaching. He was so good at mastering a language that he didn’t understand how it should be taught. But he managed that. Moreover, Dov became the first religious person in my system, and he began to read the Bible with them. I was also successful with that kind of activity. The second successful instructor who taught in Moscow apartments was Mark Zolotarevskii. We would bring individuals who had taken our courses and were of unquestionable reliability to summer camps. I did that with my brother Misha and Yulii Edelshtein. I also was always looking for other people to do that.

Were you the only person who knew the schedule of studies in the cities?

Yes, there was a problem with guarding information. I used several methods. There was a sheet of paper that was so thin it could be swallowed if necessary. I always kept it with me. The complete list was kept in a certain place with instructions: destroy in case of danger. And there was yet another list in another place. When I was arrested, only one list was supposed to be destroyed but by mistake they destroyed both so that Geizel and Kontorer had to reconstruct all the information.

From nothing?

No, not from nothing. Dov had traveled a lot himself and some of those involved in the work had some knowledge.

How did you decide on the places to which you could send teachers?

I sent a person if it was possible to form some kind of group. If there was a person at the location with high motivation, we could send him to study in another place.

Did you yourself conduct a summer camp every year?

Yes, and that created a certain problem. There is an ideal model and there is reality. According to the ideal model, I was not supposed to run the summer camps. It was wrong, because it could end badly for the cause and for me myself. Every year I thought that I would find someone to replace me and that I shouldn’t be trying to patch up all the holes myself. Nevertheless, there were years when I organized more than one summer camp.

Who handled the preparation of printed material?

That was an entirely separate system. I was friendly with Igor Gurevich and Vitia Fulmakht. Misha Danovich appeared fairly early. He is a first rate physicist and for many years he took care of supplying the cities with textbooks produced by photocopying. At the time, I didn’t know that he was doing that.

I also supplied you with material all the time.

Yes, you did. But the main part came from an autonomous system. At first, we began to produce teaching material using Fulmakht’s negatives. We told him that it was for special purposes. He didn’t show any curiosity.

In how many cities were you teaching?

We made attempts in approximately fifty cities, but it didn’t work in about thirty of them.

I remember that around 70 cities were involved in this project.

Seventy cities received self-instruction manuals and literature that we brought. I am referring to organized activity, when there was a regularly operating group. There were twenty such places. I didn’t include in my count the cities in which people studied individually.

Did the KGB discover you because of some bungling or did they perceive the rapidly rising level of activity?

There were no particular blunders but information about our activity gradually leaked out. Honestly speaking, I had hoped to keep the project going for three years at the maximum. I think that for around two years, they didn’t understand what was going on. In 1983 the term “all-Union ulpan” appeared in their questions. Then I saw this via my students. From 1982 onward, more and more people were summoned for questioning.

Were you also summoned?

I was summoned on various pretexts. For example, to clarify where I was working.

What was your family’s attitude toward your work?

My parents also participated actively in the project. They transported material and information. Mama was simply a very active person. My whole family was involved. At some point, via various people, I started to get the impression that the authorities were on to what I was doing. At first the word “cities,” that we used among ourselves, appeared and then the term “the all-Union ulpan,” which we never used, appeared in questioning. Moreover, I felt the clearly expressed disapproval of Lishkat hakesher in 1983.

The project required serious financing and the Lishka wanted to know what was going on. It’s understandable. I never kept any secrets from them. They always acted responsibly with delicate information and never poked their nose in where they shouldn’t have. You, however, at some point started to be over secretive, and they began to have serious questions. I think there was an instance when foreign tourists visited one of the ulpans in a city that you didn’t want to reveal to foreigners. I had to explain to the Lishka and to give my word that you didn’t build any “Potemkin villages.” The project simply demanded a minimum of outside interference. At the same time, sometimes you overdid it.

We said to Lishkat hakesher: Send us authorized people and we’ll sort it out. About two months later, two people with authority came to the book fair; they checked it out and supported us. There were no further problems, aside from a technical one. At some point you said that you couldn’t deal with the finances for the project and it all fell on me.

That was the same time as I was being tailed especially closely.

I know, I know. And then a complicated dilemma arose. Someone suggested either to you or to someone else to change money via Georgian millionaires. I was afraid to do that.

I did it all the time.

In general, I didn’t do that. To this day I don’t know whether that was right or not, but, at that time, all kinds of things fell on me and I realized that I was walking on thin ice.

You started to tire?

No, I was like someone possessed. It was my most important project, the kind that you have only once in a lifetime. Despite everything, we operated it for four years in the most difficult period when all possible screws were being tightened. We reached some kind of peak in 1984. I no longer could stop it, but I tried to transform our activity into semi-autonomous sectors, to divide it into smaller cells.

And you were arrested.

In the summer of 1984. I was with my group in Estonia. I chose it because there were few Jews there and no Jewish activity.

After Kholmianskii’s arrest, his two colleagues and students, Dov Kontorer and Zeev Geizel, continued the project. Despite the arrests of Hebrew teachers in Moscow and other cities, these two, who had been active in the project for years, decided not to give in, which at the time was, undoubtedly, a courageous decision. Born into a Jewish intelligentsia family, the energetic, always smiling Geizel landed in Moscow from Novorossiisk. Despite winning the mathematics Olympics in 1976, he was not accepted into the MGU mechanical mathematics department and entered the Institute of Transport Engineers, the refuge of many talented Jews. Mark Drachinskii, later one of the popular Hebrew teachers, studied in the same institute and taught Geizel Hebrew. By nature a social person, Geizel produced Purimspiels, sang, and taught Hebrew. In 1983, at the age of 25, he joined the Cities Project.

Sasha was arrested a year after you joined the project. What happened with the cities? I asked Geizel.[2]

At first we didn’t understand that his arrest was for a long duration; when we did, I said to Dov that we had to continue the project. I went to Misha Kholmianskii and said that I was willing to keep the project going and he went to you. You two invited me “onto the carpet” and at some point gave me the go-ahead. The main thing was to re-establish the addresses. Grisha Levitskii and Volodia Mushinskii restored the book production and then I began my own production.

What did you manage to restore after the searches, arrests, and trials?

First of all, there were a number of people who were not afraid of anything. I also was not afraid because I was young and stupid. Only later on did I understand that there was reason to be fearful. I did things that shouldn’t have been done. For example, I was summoned on Sasha’s case. The conversation began, and I had already read Albrekht’s book on interrogations. The interrogators said, “Well, what are you planning to do─teach us the laws?” “What do you mean,” I said: “Do I really look like a stupid person?” Then they complimented me, saying that I didn’t look stupid. And I insolently replied, “I would say the same to you with pleasure, but I can’t because I already signed a note about my responsibility for giving false testimony.” That was some kind of unnecessary bravado.

Which people traveled around the cities?

There was Uri Fainshtein from Kharkov and Kontorer continued to travel.

Did he only prepare groups or did he also teach?

He did both.

What reading material did you supply to the cities?

Primarily, books published by Biblioteka Aliya in Israel. Translations of Exodus and The City of Safed were tremendously popular; there was Uri Dan’s book on Entebbe, a book about the Six-Day War by the two Churchills [Randolph S. and Winston S.]. I had the samizdat book Forged in Fury [by Michael Elkins about the hunt for Nazi war criminals after the end of World War II]. I used to hand out reading books to my students and that helped in selecting the best ones to send to other places.

Did you refresh the line of books?

Of course, everything changed constantly. I collected the books from storerooms at Degtiarev’s and brought them to Kontorer. “Look,” I would say, “how many books there are, it will last a long time!” Dov snorted and said: “Yeah, sure, for a long time! Perhaps for around three weeks.” Each week I would drag books to him in a rucksack.

Were you the only one in contact with Degtiarev?

We didn’t have super secrecy like Sasha did. We treated everything more simply. Grisha Levitskii was initiated into the Cities Project. He didn’t know, however, what specifically was happening in a given city, but he didn’t need to. He was in contact with Degtiarev and, of course, Kontorer.

How many teachers were sent to the cities?

Those who traveled included Valia Lidskii, Misha Volkov, Reuven Degtiarev, Liuda Lubenskaia, Alesha Lorentson, Sasha Baevskii, Bella Kopelevich, and of course, Kontorer, but he was a director of the project along with me; my brother traveled to the Caucasus, I traveled to Minsk, the Caucasus, and Derbent. In Derbent they immediately wanted to marry me off.

How long did you continue the project?

Until my departure in 1988.

The bubbling, lively Geizel was the complete opposite of Kontorer. Calm, balanced, outwardly very restrained, not seeking any recognition, Kontorer participated in the project starting in 1982, when he was not even twenty years old. He, nevertheless, displayed a remarkable combination of talents that enabled him successfully to carry out the most complicated and potentially dangerous functions in the project for six years. Kontorer was the person who made the exploratory trip to the new cities, established contacts, evaluated the situation, supplied literature, formed groups, and taught. His brown eyes and darkish skin gave away his Jewish origin. The features that frequently evoked aggression in a Russian milieu, however, facilitated his contacts with Jews.

Kontorer was very highly motivated. He decided to make aliya to Israel at the age of ten. That was during the Yom Kippur War. He saw how his parents agonized and how his father didn’t sleep at night, listening to the radio, but when he asked questions, his parents feared to say a word to their son. Dov did not want to live that way and the ten-year old decided that he would go to Israel. In 1979 he made the acquaintance of religious Jews at the Marina Roshcha (Habad) synagogue in Moscow, underwent circumcision, and decided that he would not enter any Soviet institution of higher learning─he did not want to pursue a career in that country. Starting in the spring of 1982, he traveled around the country at the request of Shimon Yantovskii, who was involved in documenting old synagogues and neglected Jewish cemeteries. In January 1983, Sasha Kholmianskii drew him into the Cities Project.

How did you manage to operate for so many years without botching it up? I asked Kontorer.[3]

We rarely traveled on planes in order not to purchase tickets by name. Almost all our trips were by train. Nothing was said over the telephone. In order to transmit any information about the program, a person would travel to the city. No one spoke in apartments [because of bugging], only on the street. No unnecessary information was conveyed. Not only we ourselves but also the people whom we contacted were in a dangerous situation. It didn’t take much to get arrested in the provinces. For that reason, our expenses were greater but the security was effective. The authorities had no idea of the scale of our operation. From 1982 to 1984 I traveled incessantly. Then the KGB began to sense something but it absolutely was unaware of the real scale. I think that they would have arrested Kholmianskii earlier if they had understood what was going on. A very narrow circle of people in Moscow knew what I was doing. My friends who were not involved in it did not know about it. I didn’t present myself as a homo soveticus; I followed the life style of a religious Jew with some Zionist views and a corresponding social circle. Those people didn’t know about my activity. I didn’t even tell my parents to where I was traveling. Leva Fridlender generally was informed about my itinerary, and my parents knew that if I didn’t appear at any time, they could contact him. He was in some sense the contact for my parents.

How were the financial issues resolved?

I always worked. I tried not to wind up in a situation where I would be critically dependent on my Jewish activity. I was not given money for my trips. I received a sum for daily expenses, say, five rubles a day.

Did you frequently bring books with you?

Yes, and my home thus turned into a kind of warehouse. It was convenient, because I was always traveling and it was inconvenient to drag a rucksack around Moscow.

What was your wife’s attitude toward this?

Normal.

How many cities did you visit?

About thirty.

What agreements did you reach?

Sometimes, we agreed that a teacher would go there to teach or that we were prepared to receive two or three people in Moscow for an intensive course of instruction or that we were planning to hold a summer camp in such and such a place and needed to know who wanted to come. One place would need a tape recorder and cassettes, another─books, and so forth.

Dov, did you clearly understand the risks of going around with a full backpack? After all, there were not only textbooks but also samizdat.

I understood and tried not to take unnecessary risks. I followed all of Sasha’s rules and could explain to people why and how one should keep them. It wasn’t so simple. For example, when a person would travel to Moscow, there was a circle of people with whom he would openly associate: he would go to the synagogue and drop in on a dibur. Why did he have to hide his acquaintance with me so carefully? That was not so obvious. I could not, after all, say to him that there are another twenty cities, some kind of centralized project. I therefore said, “All right, don’t ask any superfluous questions, just follow the rules.”

What happened after Sasha Kholmianskii’s arrest?

Geizel and I took over his functions. He took on the representative part, he contacted you and foreigners while I remained with the cities. We worked well together, each doing his own thing. At the same time, it was understood that both of us would teach.

And you did this without interruption?

Until I left in May 1988. Geizel left three weeks before me.

As far as I recall, the project continued even after your departure.

Yes, we handed everything over to Valia Lidskii and Misha Volklov. Soon, however, this became rather legal.

Unlike Dov Kontorer, Yulii Edelshtein, another one of the young leaders of the Cities Project, had already been in refusal for a year. Yulii knew English very well and had an excellent pronunciation. He strove for the same excellence in Hebrew. In 1980, when the Cities Project started, he was barely twenty-two years old, but he had already been through a rather tough school of hard knocks. In Riazan, where his parents taught at a pedagogical institute, the trial of the Jewish-dissident group of Yurii Vudka was held in July 1969. A former habitué at the Edelshteins’ home, the nineteen year-old Vudka wrote a long theoretical work about improving Soviet socialism, and the KGB’s suspicion fell upon Yulii’s father, who possessed an advanced degree. Until his innocence was established, the family suffered hard times. Yulii experienced further difficulties when he tried to enter an institute, moved to Moscow, decided to make aliya, and actively participated in the Jewish movement. Before the start of the Cities Project, he had stood out in the teachers’ seminar and at meetings with noted foreign guests. Open-natured, sporty, a direct fellow, Edelshtein visually fit in well in a Russian milieu, and his appearance alone inspired confidence. I unhesitatingly proposed him for one of the leading roles in the project. And I must say that he handled the job very well.

When Sasha Kholmianskii was arrested, were you in the Baltics? I asked Edelshtein.[4]

Yes, but it was pure rest before the “aquatic trip” in the framework of the project. When Sasha was taken, I realized that if I went on the trip, I could “drown” everyone.

During the difficult 1980s, the most difficult year for Hebrew teachers was 1984.

The Soviet leaders were dying one after the other, and the KGB agents felt that they were the masters of the situation because the KGB was the only stable element. My arrest occurred during Chernenko’s rule, a time of total decay and complete KGB control. The hatchet jobs of the “organs” were not haphazard but part of a plan. When you want to show someone who’s in control, you don’t beat him up out of sight; you beat him in full view of the crowd. That was the situation in Sasha’s case and also Berenshtein’s, who allegedly struck a policeman.

They went after the teachers because they felt that they were the most steadfast element among the activists.

Remember our dibur from 1981 to 1982? In 1981 Sarale Sharon came to the book fair. Was there a notice about that in the newspapers? At the dibur, amongst thirty teachers and semi-teachers, I declared that a concert of the Israeli singer would take place at such and such an apartment. In the course of a week, hundreds of refuseniks knew about it─without telephones or anything else. It was a pyramid that operated on an all-Union scale and it worked in the various cities. It was a constantly operating network. The regime attached top priority to disrupting it; another objective was to settle accounts with long-time activists.

Were you in charge of Kharkov and Minsk in the Cities Project?

Yes, I taught there in 1980 and 1981.

Did you plan the trips yourself?

Yes, but I prepared more with you before the Minsk trip because it was the first one. After that, it became routine. Following your Koktebel adventure, we decided to work conspiratorially.

In your first trips was anything botched up at the preparatory level?

No, rather on the local level. For people in the sticks, a visitor from Moscow was the equivalent of a foreign visitor for us. A crowd gathered, perhaps someone informed or someone called someone else and said that Yulii Edelshtein arrived from Moscow. I explained to everyone that we were not doing anything illegal but, on the other hand, if someone rings the doorbell, you are not obliged to open it immediately. Let’s first remove the books and tape recorders and we’ll drink tea.

After that you switched to organizing summer camps in the form of canoe trips?

We did that for three years. The first group included Feliks Kushnir, Yakov and Tamara Dubin from Minsk, Tania and Lenia Feivert from Kharkov, Zhenia Koifman with his wife from Dnepropetrovsk. There were also good groups in the following years.

The Cities Project was carried out by courageous, highly motivated people, who trained others like them in the localities. Many paid for this with their health and with years of imprisonment, but their efforts were not in vain, When perestroika arrived in the USSR, one could find active and educated participants in the Jewish movement in seventy cities of the Soviet Union, people who already had the opportunity to become acquainted with their national culture, history, and religion; in twenty cities at least one group was studying Hebrew. These people, who were willing to take risks in the dark 1980s, even more enthusiastically joined in the struggle for national life in the more favorable perestroika period. Just as the Moscow activists succeeded in creating a ripple effect that encompassed many cities, within the cities themselves knowledge, connections, and activity spread. By the second half of the 1980s, a wide network of activists who were striving to make aliya and bring about a revival of Jewish national life was operating in the USSR.