Refusenik
Refusenik (Russian: отказник, romanized: otkaznik, from отказ (otkaz) 'refusal'; alternatively spelt refusnik) was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and other countries of the Soviet Bloc.[1] The term refusenik is derived from the "refusal" handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities.
In addition to the Jews, broader categories included:
- Other ethnicities, such as Greeks forcibly removed by Stalin from Crimeaand other southern lands to Siberia.
- Members of Baptists and other Protestant groups, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Russian Mennonites.
A typical basis to deny emigration was the alleged association with Soviet
Applying for an exit visa was a step noted by the KGB, so that future career prospects, always uncertain for Soviet Jews, could be impaired.
The ban on Jewish immigration to Israel was lifted in 1971, leading to the 1970s Soviet Union aliyah. The coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, and his policies of glasnost and perestroika, as well as a desire for better relations with the West, led to major changes, and most refuseniks were allowed to emigrate.
History of the Jewish refuseniks
A large number of Soviet Jews applied for
During the
Many Jews encountered systematic, institutional antisemitism which blocked their opportunities for advancement. Some government sectors were almost entirely off-limits to Jews.[5][6] In addition, Soviet restrictions on religious education and expression prevented Jews from engaging in Jewish cultural and religious life. While these restrictions led many Jews to seek emigration,[7] requesting an exit visa was itself seen as an act of betrayal by Soviet authorities. Thus, prospective emigrants requested permission to emigrate at great personal risk, knowing that an official refusal would often be accompanied by dismissal from work and other forms of social ostracism and economic pressure.[citation needed] At the same time, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to significantly increase the emigration quota. In the years 1960 through 1970, only 4,000 people (legally) emigrated from the USSR. In the following decade, the number rose to 250,000,[8] to fall again by 1980.
Hijacking incident
In 1970, a group of sixteen refuseniks (two of whom were non-Jewish), organized by dissident Eduard Kuznetsov (who already served a seven-year term in Soviet prisons), plotted to buy all the seats for the local flight Leningrad-Priozersk, under the guise of a trip to a wedding, on a small 12-seater aircraft Antonov An-2 (colloquially known as кукурузник, kukuruznik), throw out the pilots before takeoff from an intermediate stop and fly it to Sweden, knowing they faced a huge risk of being captured or shot down. One of the participants, Mark Dymshits, was a former military pilot.[citation needed]
On 15 June 1970, after arriving at
The accused were charged for
Crackdown on the refusenik activism and its growth
The affair was followed by a crackdown on the Jewish and dissident movement throughout the USSR.[citation needed] Activists were arrested, makeshift centers for studying the Hebrew language and Torah were closed, and more trials followed.[9] At the same time, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to significantly increase the emigration quota. In the years 1960 through 1970, only about 3,000 Soviet Jews had (legally) emigrated from the USSR; after the trial, in the period from 1971 to 1980 347,100 people received a visa to leave the USSR, 245,951 of them were Jews.[citation needed]
A leading proponent and spokesman for the refusenik rights during the mid-1970s was Natan Sharansky. Sharansky's involvement with the Moscow Helsinki Group helped to establish the struggle for emigration rights within the greater context of the human rights movement in the USSR. His arrest on charges of espionage and treason and subsequent trial contributed to international support for the refusenik cause.[citation needed]
International pressure
On 18 October 1976, 13 Jewish refuseniks came to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet to petition for explanations of denials of their right to emigrate from the USSR, as affirmed under the Helsinki Final Act. Failing to receive any answer, they assembled in the reception room of the Presidium on the following day. After a few hours of waiting, they were seized by the police, taken outside of the city limits and beaten. Two of them were kept in police custody.[citation needed]
In the next week, following an unsuccessful meeting between the activists' leaders and the Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, General
On 1 June 1978, refuseniks Vladimir and Maria Slepak stood on the eighth story balcony of their apartment building. By then they had been denied permission to emigrate for over 8 years. Vladimir displayed a banner that read "Let us go to our son in
Various activist organizations constituted the
Another major source of pressure in favor of the rights of refuseniks was the Jackson–Vanik amendment to the 1974 Trade Act. Jackson–Vanik affected U.S. trade relations with countries with non-market economies (originally, countries of the Communist bloc) that restricted freedom of Jewish emigration and other human rights. As such, it was applied to the USSR. According to Mark E. Talisman, those who benefited included Jewish refuseniks from the Soviet Union, as well as Hungarians, Romanians, and other citizens that sought to emigrate from their nations.[14]
Refusenik as a word
Although Refusenik originally had a precise meaning – those denied exit from the Soviet Union – its meaning has sometimes diverged away from this sense. It began to be used to mean "outsider" for groups other than
In 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev referred to himself as the first political "refusenik of Russia," after buildings of the Gorbachev Foundation were taken by the Russian government and the country's high court requested that Gorbachev would be forbidden from leaving the country.[16]
It is occasionally used in the UK to mean "ones who refuse to comply",[17][18] and also in the U.S.,[19] with many people who use it being unaware of the word's origins.
However, the original meaning is preserved and used in parallel, particularly in Israeli and Jewish articles about the historical events from which it emerged.[20][21]
Documentary films
- In 2008 filmmaker Refusenik, chronicling the human rights struggle of the Soviet refuseniks.[22]
- Operation Wedding: a 2016 documentary film by filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov, about her parents story Sylva Zalmanson and Eduard Kuznetsov, leading characters in the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair—a daring escape attempt from the USSR in 1970 that kickstarted the Soviet Jewry movement.[23][24]
See also
- Ausreiseantrag
- Aliyah
- Balseros, Cuban citizens who are not legally allowed to migrate and who cross to Florida in improvised boats
- Eastern Bloc emigration and defection
- Herman Branover
- Iosif Begun
- Jackson–Vanik amendment
- Lishkat Hakesher
- Migration diplomacy
- Movement to Free Soviet Jewry
- Pidyon shvuyim
- Prisoner of Zion
Footnotes
- ISBN 0-395-30226-9
- ISBN 978-1-134-66922-6.
- ^ "Злоупотребления законодательством о труде" Archived 2015-05-02 at the Wayback Machine, a document of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
- ^ a b "Beyond the Pale: The Right to Emigrate II". www.friends-partners.org.
- ^ ISBN 90-247-1780-9; pages 69-82
- ISBN 978-0-521-38926-6; pp. 229-230.
- ISBN 978-0-7146-4911-5
- OCLC 489831449.
- ^ The Refusenik Project staff. "Historical Overview". The Refusenik Project. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
- ^ "Московская Хельсинкская Группа". Archived from the original on 2017-02-05. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
- ^ энциклопедии, Редакция (4 October 2018). "Советский Союз. Евреи в Советском Союзе в 1967–85 гг". Электронная еврейская энциклопедия ОРТ.
- ^ "Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ)". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
- ^ Ghert-Z, Renee. "Once heroes of US Jewry, Soviet Refuseniks are largely forgotten. Not for long". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
- ^ Pomeranz, William E. "The Legacy and Consequences of Jackson-Vanik: Reassessing Human Rights in 21st Century Russia". www.wilsoncenter.org. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary,(online). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-12-13.
- ^ "Refusenik". Merriam Webster Dictionary.
- ^ "Refusenik". Collins Dictionary.
- ^ Streeter, Kurt (23 May 2022). "A Saga Between Tries, Novak Djokovic Again Aims for His 21st Slam". The New York Times.
- ^ Adam Reinherz (26 June 2023). "Soviet refusenik and her filmmaker daughter recount 'Operation Wedding'". Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.
- ^ Renee Ghert-Zand. "Once heroes of US Jewry, Soviet Refuseniks are largely forgotten. Not for long". Times of Israel.
- ^ "The struggle behind the Iron Curtain". Philadelphia Daily News. June 27, 2008. Accessed June 28, 2008.[dead link]
- ^ "Operation Wedding, documentary - Official website". OperationWeddingDoc.
- ^ "The Refusenik Exodus From Slavery to Freedom United the Jewish World and Brought Down the Soviet Union". Tablet Magazine. 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
Further reading
Books and articles
- Pauline Peretz, Let My People Go: The Transnational Politics of Soviet Jewish Emigration During the Cold War. Ethan Rundell, trans. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015.
- "Soviet repression of refusenik scientists unabated. The arrest of chemist Yuri Tarnopolsky points up the continuing plight of refusenik scientists in the Soviet Union under its new leadership". .
- Galina Nizhnikov, Against the Kremlin Wall. A participant's account of the Soviet Jewish women movement of the 1970s and the events surrounding the arrest and imprisonment of Ida Nudel.
- Aba Taratuta, Cheerful Memories/Troubled Years: A Story of a Refusenik’s Family in Leningrad and its Struggle for Immigration to Israel.
Memoirs
- Natan Sharansky, ISBN 1-891620-02-9.
- ISBN 0-394-58867-3.
- Yuri Tarnopolsky, Memoirs of 1984. ISBN 0-8191-9197-3.
Fiction
- David Shrayer-Petrov (Russian: Шраер-Петров, Давид), Herbert and Nelly (a novel, in Russian, abridged 1986; complete 1992, 2006). A saga of a refusenik family set in Moscow in the 1980s.
External links
Media related to Refuseniks at Wikimedia Commons
- Timeline: 30 Major events the Soviet Jewry Struggle
- "Timeline of the Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union". Project for the Study of Dissidence and Samizdat. University of Toronto.
- * Let My People Go – A free educational resource in English and Hebrew