POLITICS AND PROTEST
The American Advocacy Movement for Soviet Jews
PREFACE
Writing in the New Yorker magazine Jelanie Cobb observed that movements are born "when abstract principles become concrete concerns." This concept was dramatically illustrated in the last half of the 20th century when a Jewish activist cohort emerged in the Soviet Union. Their decades-long struggle sought to achieve the Right to Leave for Israel, or study their culture and religious traditions.
Small clusters of Jews, notably in Moscow, Leningrad, and Riga, challenged an intransigent bureaucracy and a brutal security system. Virtually unknown for years the activists, in a Jewish population that numbered about 3 million, became public figures when they secured support from an advocacy movement in the West, as they sought to secure the fundamental human rights that had been violated for decades.
Politics and Protest provides a brief history of events in Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States. It also includes an annotated Timeline that begins with the period before the two revolutions in 1917 and concludes with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (To assist with education programs and discussions a 6-session Curriculum is provided as well as a Bibliography).
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: 1917-1945
In the last half of the 18th century, the Russian Empire included a huge swath of today's Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania. Three different partitions of Poland, beginning in 1772, brought hundreds of thousands of Jews into an enlarged Russian state, greatly expanding the size and scope of the small, domestic Jewish population. The dilemma facing Russia's Empress Catherine II and the prelates of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church, who had been hostile to Jews for decades, was how to absorb an alien and unwanted people.
In response to this influx of Jews, official government decrees (ukazi) were issued, severely restricting their movement to Russia's newly acquired lands, designated as the Pale of Jewish Settlement, a term coined under the reign of Tsar Nicholas I. By the end 4 of 1885 an estimated 4 million Jews were living in the Pale, mainly in poor villages (shtetels) and towns, where they faced sporadic, often violent, pogroms as well as large-scale, targeted, and recurrent anti-Jewish riots. Most lived in fear or uncertainty, while struggling to earn a living and maintain their close-knit communities governed by their religious leaders.
One solution was emigration, setting an example for the future. In the last half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, many chose that option. Of the two million Jews who left Tsarist Russia, more than one million came to America.
Even as this migration was taking place a major industrial revolution stimulated impressive economic growth in the West. The Russian economy, however, one of the largest in the world, began a downward spiral. Tsar Nicholas II was blamed for the misfortunes, especially after he elected to join other nations to fight against Germany in World War I, further depleting Russia's dwindling resources. The number of wounded and dead mounted. The war became increasingly unpopular and as industrial and agrarian production diminished, the country found itself on the verge of collapse.
A series of changes among top officials reflected a lack of strong national leadership by the Tsar and fueled future chaos. Severe shortages of food and supplies were common; thousands deserted the army and navy. Masses of conscripts and reservists demonstrated their disaffection in public protests and by discarding their weapons. In this climate the public became angry and restless; riots broke out in major cities.
By 1917 the Russian state was in disarray. In February a revolution, led primarily by social democrats, workers, and disillusioned soldiers, met with little serious resistance from the weakened regime. Within a month the Tsar was forced to abdicate, and a Provisional Government was formed under Prince Georgy Lvov, the first Russian leader to grant full equality to Jews. All restrictions were lifted, and the Pale of Settlement was abolished.
Three months later, unable to resolve pressing demands, Prince Lvov was replaced by Alexander Kerensky, who proved to be weak and indecisive in meeting the many challenges facing a restless people. Jewish emancipation was deferred when, in October, a powerful faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, the Bolsheviks ("the Reds"), seized power under Vladimir Lenin. His priorities included battling counter-revolutionaries and Tsarist sympathizers ("the Whites"), in a bloody civil war, as well as stabilizing society. During the conflict, thousands of Jews became trapped in the war zones; pogroms by the local populace were common, especially in Ukraine.
Five years after the Revolution, the turmoil had ceased and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the USSR or Soviet Union) was founded under Lenin’s watch. It consisted of Russia and surrounding republics which, until 1991, included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
Lenin’s government imposed severe restrictions on the free movement of people and created a new intelligence and security apparatus to regulate and control society. The government also struggled to establish stability and launched its New Economic Policy (NEP), which was designed to ease some restrictions and support the tottering economy.
Lenin died from a stroke in January 1924, and by 1927 -- after eliminating his competitors including Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev -- Josif Stalin became the unquestioned ruler of the Soviet Union. During the next decade, Stalin's government forced the people to renew industries, modernize agricultural output, and rebuild an antiquated infrastructure. He also pressed writers, poets, artists, composers, and photographers to adopt an ideologically driven "Socialist Realism.” More ominously, in his zeal to consolidate power, he imprisoned or had killed those whom he perceived as a threat to his hegemony.
In 1938, on the eve of World War II, Soviet authorities unleashed a campaign that would have completely obliterated the remaining Jewish religious and cultural institutions and forced the Jews into surrendering their identity as a distinct national minority. That threat was interrupted, however, by the Soviet Union's entry into the war and Stalin's call for "national unity."
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: 1946-1967
The post-World War period, dominated by Stalin, was a time of madness and despair. People throughout the country such as government officials, Communist party members, journalists, and academics, were arrested and often executed or murdered, including prominent Jews. During that era, and in the years that followed, by dint of policy and practice, Soviet Jews faced the likelihood of losing any surviving remnants of their religious and cultural traditions. Widespread restrictions on Jewish communal life were imposed, initiating an anti-Jewish purge. From 1948 to 1953, a period described by the wartime journalist, Vitaly Grossman as the “Black Years of Soviet Jewry”, nearly all Jewish religious and cultural institutions were systematically shuttered. Anti-Jewish posters, newspaper articles, and publications appeared throughout the country.
This campaign reached its zenith on August 12, 1952 on what has become known as the “Night of the Murdered Poets.” Prominent Jewish writers, scientists, poets, and political figures were executed in the basement of Moscow's notorious Lubyanka prison. In July, at a secret trial, they had been charged with being "enemies of the Soviet Union,” agents of America, and "guilty of Zionism," as well as trying to create a Jewish republic in Crimea and severing it from the Soviet Union.
The arrests and secret trials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAF) reflected Stalin's post-war paranoia about Jewish loyalty to the Soviet Union, in particular their alleged endorsement of "anti-Soviet nationalistic activities" such as supporting the Jewish state. The subsequent killings demolished what remained of the Committee, created in 1942 to help mobilize worldwide Jewish support for the Soviet anti-Nazi war effort. The Committee was the last remaining national Jewish institution and had been led by Solomon Mikhoels, the central actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. He was murdered on Stalin's orders in January 1948, while visiting Minsk.
The post-war anti-Jewish campaign ended with Stalin's death in March 1953, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Purim, traditionally linked to the rescue of Jews in ancient Persia. The events are recounted in Yehoshua Gilboa’s book, The Black Years of Soviet Jewry, as well as in Joshua Rubenstein's study, The Last Days of Stalin. Despite the cessation of the more pernicious forms of anti-Semitism that had marked the 1950’s, by the early 1960's Israel and the U.S. Department of State identified Moscow as a major source of anti-Semitic books, pamphlets, posters, and articles in popular journals and newspapers.
Soviet Jews had been under the dark shadow cast by the Holocaust during Nazi Germany's war on Western civilization. Roughly six million Jews, or one-third of the world's Jewish population, were annihilated, primarily in Poland and the Soviet Union. This included the wartime killing of 1.5 million men, women, and children within the Soviet Union's traditional borders, a number compounded by the loss of an additional 1.5 to 2 million in the prewar annexed territories of Poland and the Baltic States, primarily in Lithuania and the former Pale of Settlement.
In the decades that followed, especially in cities where mass killings had taken place, Jews fashioned Holocaust remembrance into acts of resistance to the Soviet regime's anti-Jewish policies. In Kyiv, honoring the murder of more than 30,000 Jews at the nearby Babyn Yar ravine, Jews quietly met at the site and organized informal holiday and commemorative events. Jews in Riga uncovered mass graves in the forests of Rumbala and met regularly to clean the area. Such activities gave birth to an underground Zionist group in the Latvian capital that included Silva Zalmanson and her brothers, as well as the young, religiously oriented Josif Mendelevich.
As a result of Moscow's policy of restricting contact with the West, news of Jewish ferment remained sporadic. When Israel achieved independence in 1948, securing information was assigned to designated operatives at the Israeli Embassy in Moscow. In addition to reaching out to individuals, they scanned national and local newspapers for references to Israel or Jews. Reports from other diplomats, as well as occasional visitors, together with accounts from journalists and visiting scholars, became sources of information and also provided a much-needed profile of the local Jewish world.
THE SIX DAY WAR
In the wake of the June 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East and Israel's victory over the attacking armies from neighboring Arab states -- including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria -- Moscow severed diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. The Soviet Union had supplied arms, military equipment and training, and international political support to the Arab world, in the hope of building an anti-Western bloc. It now mobilized its citizens on behalf of its client states and unleashed an aggressive anti-Israel campaign.
Prominent Jews were forced to participate in public events condemning Israel, as were Jewish factory workers, faculty members still teaching at universities, and patients at hospitals. Articles condemning Israel appeared in newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as on radio and television broadcasts. Vicious anti-Semitic cartoons vilifying the Jewish people, Judaism, Zionism, and the State of Israel were common. Well-known Jewish personalities, such as the ballerina Maya Plisetskya, were brought before the public to denounce Israel. The full force of the state's propaganda ministry had now been unleashed.
Whereas Jewish activists ignored the campaign, many young Jews were so enraged or mystified that they began to think about their own Jewish identity. Scores of young Jews sought answers in a desire to leave for Israel. As explained by Alla Rusinek in her memoir, Like a Song, Like a Dream: A Soviet Girl's Quest for Freedom, Israel's defeat of a powerful Arab coalition was viewed as a strategic defeat for the Soviet Union.
Many Soviet Jews, including those who had not previously been involved in protesting anti-Jewish policies and had little understanding of Israel as a Jewish state, began to question whether they had a future in the Soviet Union. Hillel Butman, a former prisoner of conscience, ironically noted in his book, From Leningrad to Jerusalem, that "anti-Semitism in Russia was creating Zionism." A number of those who had become part of unofficial Hebrew study groups now embraced the emigration movement, creating additional pressure to leave.
With the memory of the Holocaust still fresh, the potential loss of nearly 3 million Jews resulting from Moscow's state policies weighed heavily on the emotions of American Jews, a major impetus for thousands of people in hundreds of cities across the United States to become advocates for Soviet Jews.
THE IMPETUS FOR ADVOCACY
Concerned about the news trickling out of the Soviet Union, local community and national groups in the United States coalesced in the 1960's and set in motion a broadbased American campaign. The efforts of a cohort of Israel's special representatives played a central role, albeit offstage. They were assisted by the activities of an unprepossessing center in New York City directed by Moshe Decter, a journalist, writer, and Zionist activist. Decter's mission was to convince national Jewish organizations and individuals to undertake active, albeit modest, public efforts such as circulating the information he provided and strengthening contacts with the media and government agencies.
The steady cultivation of international contacts and a trickle of departing Jews took place as part of a Soviet effort to encourage much-needed foreign investment and tourism. Concomitantly, it resulted in the gradual admittance of Western visitors to the Soviet Union who were able to communicate with Soviet Jews, thereby increasing the availability of information. Reports and written appeals from individual Soviet Jews were brought out by Western travelers, transmitted via telephone conversations, or circulated by Israeli authorities, with details about Jews repeatedly denied permission to leave for Israel and harassed by security forces. These Soviet Jews who had been denied the right to emigrate to Israel became known as refuseniks.
In America, a small network of volunteer activists transferred the information they had received to local Jewish community relations councils and newly created Soviet Jewry committees. The case histories of refuseniks now available gave the growing movement a sense of personal identification with individual Soviet Jews. Linking the two communities necessitated a review of tactics that could capture the imagination of a broad public. Without public support for the budding advocacy movement, success would not be possible.
New initiatives were developed. For example, young American Jews who reached their bar or bat mitzvah age of thirteen were "twinned" with a counterpart in the Soviet Union, who could not participate in a similar rite of passage. A centuries-old religious ceremony was now reimagined to include "absent" young Soviet Jews and their families.
The twinning project was designed to highlight a particular family's plight and simultaneously to engage or, at least, sensitize officials in Washington and the public at large through synagogue bulletins, letters, meetings, and media accounts. Envisioned as a protective technique for the family in the Soviet Union and a person-to-person partnership device, it evolved into a tool for educating synagogue members and the public about the constraints under which Soviet Jews were living.
Personal testimonies from the Soviet Union provided additional evidence concerning abuses against the religious, cultural, and civil rights of Soviet Jews. Religious training centers were shuttered, while the handful of remaining synagogues were not permitted to create mutual aid associations, even though such options were available to the powerful Russian Orthodox Church. Hebrew studies remained proscribed, although a few Jewish publications -- notably the quasi-Yiddish periodical "Sovietische Heymland", were permitted so long as they promoted official doctrine.
Soviet policy had placed restrictions on other religious, ethnic, and national minorities, but Jews were especially vulnerable. The institutionally weak Jewish community was notoriously susceptible to increased pressure by the authorities. By the early 1970's, there were fewer than a dozen, mostly aging, rabbis throughout the Soviet Union. Without such religious leaders, and with the nation’s one remaining Jewish theological seminary, in Moscow, closed, Judaism seemed destined to wither away.
As much statements of defiance as sincere petitions, appeals from refuseniks to Soviet authorities mounted in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They demanded the right to leave the Soviet Union to reunite with family in Israel. Although a great number lacked actual family ties, arranging for and sending the prerequisite invitations was a responsibility the Israeli government took upon itself.
Soviet authorities became increasingly alarmed by the mounting expressions of a Jewish national identity. When scientists and academics applied to leave for Israel, they were often punished by being fired from their places of employment, leaving them open to charges of "parasitism", a punishable offense. Others were accused of possessing “state secrets” and were, therefore, ineligible to leave, regardless of their specialties.
At the same time, an increasing number of Jewish students were denied entry to preeminent universities in the urban centers of Moscow and Leningrad. Some were told to apply to remote Central Asian or Siberian universities, thus isolating them from the greater Jewish population. On occasion, Jewish students were expelled from schools after applying to leave for Israel, thereby losing student-based exemptions from military service. No longer students and unable to find work, they too were left vulnerable to charges of parasitism.
Arrests of the most outspoken Jewish activists mounted, as did severe sentences in labor camps or internal exile to Central Asia. To suppress this activism, which had included public protests, homes were searched for samizdat or self-published documents. Known Hebrew teachers who had led study groups at home were periodically arrested. Broadcasts from the American-sponsored Radio Free Europe and Israel's Kol Yisrael (Voice of Israel) were jammed, and Jewish educational or religious materials were confiscated. Frustration and anxiety escalated.
In a mounting climate of intimidation, the pressure to depart for Israel grew, even though most applicants were rejected. While some restrictions were lifted, ostensibly in response to increasing critical condemnations from the West, the Soviet Union's ideologically motivated policy continued to severely restrict the departure of Jews and maintain tight control of its citizens. For Moscow to have countenanced even the idea that Jews would want to emigrate would have been an admission that assimilating its Jewish minority had failed. Furthermore, it would have encouraged dissent by other religious minorities, such as Pentecostals and Seventh Day Adventists, seeking to redress official harassment of their communities.
This Study Guide is designed for those seeking to learn about the American Advocacy Movement for Soviet Jews, and the parallel Jewish resistance movement in the Soviet Union.
ORGANIZING FOR ADVOCACY
The primary sources of information about Soviet Jews had been Israeli diplomats, visiting scholars, and reports from tourists and business travelers. This was enhanced by State Department and Congressional documents, Israeli specialists, foreign news accounts, and the careful scanning of the Soviet media.
Still, in the Soviet Jewry advocacy movement's early phase, there was virtually no direct contact with Soviet Jewish activists. Soon enough, most of them would become refuseniks, whose personal histories became known through their various appeals to the West. To help create a sympathetic climate, American correspondents in Moscow had been contacted by activist individuals and groups in the United States. Simultaneously, briefings of foreign news editors in American cities took place. Major newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Baltimore Sun were alerted to the growing number of arrests of refuseniks as well as plans for hunger strikes and public protests, in the hope that news accounts would serve further notice to Soviet officials that they were being closely watched.
While much of the useful data needed by the pioneering American efforts had come through Israel, long the center of international Jewish advocacy, within a few years, supplementary material was provided by other sources. It was difficult for the Soviet authorities to suppress all links forged by travelers since foreign contacts were useful to the local economy and Moscow’s long-range political agenda. Furthermore, it was impossible to identify all “contact tourists”, even after exposing suspect travelers to harsh questioning or invasive searches.
The Soviet authorities attempted to stem the bleeding of information by restricting the same human contacts they had previously welcomed. Among other tactics, they blocked international telephone calls to or from Soviet Jewish activists. A rapid response was necessary, and groups with ties to, for example, the domestic labor movement asked the Communication Workers of America to intervene. Strongly anticommunist, and sympathetic to the refuseniks, the labor group threatened to break all transatlantic links to Moscow. The result was a hasty retreat from telephone intimidation by the Soviet authorities.
The experience demonstrated how influential groups or individuals could be brought into the campaign to exert pressure on Soviet officials whenever and wherever feasible. The determining factor was the ability to identify and engage those sectors, including labor, church, academic, scientific, and trade associations.
Until the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel in June 1967, the Jewish state was reluctant to tip the scales of an already fraught balance by overtly encouraging public campaigns aimed at Moscow. Although relations between Jerusalem and Moscow were generally tense, the Israeli Embassy staff still enjoyed limited freedom of movement. They quietly met with Jewish activists and Hebrew teachers, and in turn provided educational materials, especially to communities distant from Moscow.
The government of Israel had assumed the task of establishing links as early as 1953, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion called for his country’s intelligence apparatus to develop a means of communicating with Soviet Jews. This led to the creation of the Lishkat Hakesher (Contact Office or Liaison Bureau), known simply as The Lishka, with the code name Nativ. Several members, notably its initial chief, Shaul Avigur, had participated in Aliyah Bet, the postwar underground Jewish immigration to Palestine. The embassy operatives in Moscow drew upon their experience and helped expand the impact of Jewish study groups in scores of cities and towns which, in turn, offered Nativ information about local Jewish life.
In addition to providing data to academics, the media, and multiple Moscow-based international agencies, Nativ sent specialists to work with Jewish organizations abroad and encourage them to accelerate advocacy. Some Jewish leaders in America, however, were initially concerned about entanglement in the tensions between the two world powers, fearing that public agitation on behalf of Soviet Jews would feed the Cold War and be counterproductive. On the other hand, activists on the local and national levels often cited the Holocaust and agitated for militant activism.
References began to appear in rabbinic sermons, as well as in letters and columns in the local American media. Grassroots committees evolved, notably the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and gave voice to growing concerns. At the same time, a few national organizations such as the Jewish Labor Committee, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress initiated educational projects to raise public awareness of the crisis facing Soviet Jews.
The most politically involved advocates understood that the government in Washington needed to be actively engaged in pursuing policy changes in the Soviet Union. This meant accelerating efforts to have local and national media broadcast community concerns as well as news from the Soviet Union, notably the profiles of Jewish activists. Some groups began to explore methods for utilizing the political, economic, and diplomatic tools at their disposal, to generate strong public support.
Several prominent personalities, including U.S. Senators Jacob Javits (R., NY) and Abraham Ribicoff (D., CT) and Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, finally provided the impetus for community-based organizing. They were joined by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who, in pursuing social justice issues, had established a presence in the U.S. civil rights movement. They and leaders in the Jewish community were encouraged by Nativ to become more involved while Rabbi Heschel, in turn, was vocal in urging a more aggressive approach toward Moscow.
Their voices resonated among Jewish leaders already aware of some of the restrictions facing Soviet Jews, notably the fierce opposition to their right to leave, by Soviet authorities. After much hesitation, the agencies agreed to meet in Washington, D.C., and in April 1964 the first national conference on advocacy was convened.
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY ORGANIZES
The outcome of the initial advocacy efforts was the launching in 1964 of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ), an ad hoc body to coordinate public activities and serve as an information clearinghouse. The decision represented progress in forging a common front in the effort to assist Soviet Jewish activism, with more than two dozen national organizations signing an agreement. (1) Nevertheless, the AJCSJ lacked a permanent staff and a regular budget, severely limiting its range of options.
A director, chosen from among member groups on a rotating basis, reflected the ambivalence of several organizations about committing to the open-ended allocation of resources. Others, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (later, the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, or JCPA), were extremely cautious about sharing their carefully nurtured influence in the Jewish community on such matters as civil rights, social issues, and Israel. Their hope was to fold the AJCSJ under their umbrella while otherwise retaining the facade of unity to the greater Jewish community.
Despite these operating constraints, the AJCSJ was able to develop a national strategy, including the creation of contacts with members of Congress and the State Department, briefing the print and broadcast media, and organizing or participating in academic conferences. It became a universal masthead under which its constituent organizations could establish links to known refuseniks and Hebrew teachers in the Soviet Union. Equally significant, it became a means of cooperating with emerging groups in other countries, notably England, France, Canada, the Netherlands, and Israel.
Targeting elected officials to exert their influence on the White House and Soviet leaders became a cornerstone of the Soviet Jewry movement. The early effort was marked by such events as the staging of a dramatic, weeklong "Eternal Light Vigil" in the U.S. capital, organized by the AJCSJ together with the Washington-based Religious Action Center (RAC) of Reform Judaism. Symbolic of the "eternal light" over the holy ark in synagogues, an artist's rendition of the theme would later become the torch of freedom emblem in the advocacy movement. Contacts with refuseniks increased, local meetings and protests were generated, sympathetic academics wrote articles in journals and participated in conferences, and the engagement of Christian clergy was expanded. This was done through an Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry supported by the American Jewish Committee.
The newly formed Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) initiated a university-based program to organize students and provide its members and supporters with a platform for engaging in greater activism. The SSSJ brought the experiences and tactics some of its leaders had learned from the civil rights movement. In April 1965 it held its first major public demonstration, a "Jericho March" to the Soviet Consulate in New York City, in which thousands participated. For the next three decades, similar dramatic actions marked the broader SSSJ advocacy campaign.
The advocacy movement was further strengthened with the creation of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) in 1970. This nationwide coalition was the initiative of an active group of synagogue members, scientific professionals, and academics in Cleveland, Ohio. At its peak, the UCSJ integrated nearly three dozen similarly minded local groups throughout the country. The UCSJ stressed the creation of personal links with the growing network of Jewish activists and refuseniks in the Soviet Union. Like the AJCSJ, it engaged members of Congress whose support was vital to the campaign. With the help of contacts in Montreal, London, and Israel, the UCSJ forged an independent channel for receiving and disseminating information from the Soviet Union. Although this initiative gave it additional leverage in its work, it also reflected divisions in the overall advocacy effort.
POLITICIZING THE CAMPAIGN
Periodic crackdowns by Soviet security forces on underground Hebrew teachers and politically emboldened refuseniks were met with mounting protests and demonstrations in the West. The Jewish activists in the Soviet Union learned of changing events in America from visitors and radio broadcasts, such as the official Voice of America, the BBC, and Radio Free Europe, as well as the more political Radio Liberty and Israel’s Kol Yisrael (Voice of Israel). To undermine their impact, Soviet authorities launched broad-based propaganda efforts in the mass media, disparaging the protesters in America and elsewhere as "cold warriors”, "hooligans", and "enemies of peace".
In the context of international advocacy, the American Jewish community became a major public force, reflecting its size, wealth, and organizational infrastructure. An utmost consideration was the knowledge that Washington, in its contacts with Moscow, had leverage. This brought additional responsibilities to the advocacy movement in America, thus necessitating new tactics. Most important were the spontaneous, as well as organized, initiatives to strengthen relations with the White House and the Congress, the institutions empowered to negotiate with Soviet diplomats on such issues as arms control, cultural exchange, trade, and the Middle East.
Engaging the president was a top priority of such planning. It was tested in 1963 by the same trio of insiders who had first urged Jewish leaders to become more involved in advocacy on behalf of soviet Jews. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Arthur J. Goldberg and Senators Jacob Javits and Abraham Ribicoff were persuaded to approach President John F. Kennedy with a request to intervene with Soviet leadership. They were discouraged, however, by State Department officials who were sympathetic but urged caution given the prevailing Cold War environment. Unwilling to accept such dismissal by bureaucrats, the two senators took advantage of an invitation to the White House to seek President Kennedy's intervention with Soviet authorities. However, any significant action that could have been taken by Kennedy was prevented by his assassination in November of that year.
Undeterred, Jewish organizations and community leaders agreed that, thereafter, the practice of engaging the President would be a central part of the campaign's strategy. When this was not possible, meetings with White House staff, including the national security advisor, or top-ranking State Department personnel -- all of whom were receptive -- proved equally effective. Individual hardship cases, emigration trends, and evidence of human rights violations were always on the agenda.
Whenever the White House hesitated to intervene directly, ostensibly to avoid upsetting the delicate balance in Soviet-American relations, other options were explored. In order to demonstrate broad-based public support for engaging Soviet leaders to change their policies, a massive, nationwide petition campaign was organized by the AJCSJ, gathering over a million names, with the help of the NJCRAC. Addressed to Richard Nixon on the eve of a May 1972 summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev, the appeal was designed to provide the American president with a strengthened position in discussing the status of the Jewish minority with his Soviet counterpart.
OPERATION WEDDING
A major shift took place with the June 1970 arrest of fourteen refuseniks and two non-Jewish dissidents, including the human rights activist and academic Yuri Orlov. A swelling number of refusals for permits to leave had led to increased frustration among both current and prospective applicants. In a radical response, a group of young people from Riga and Leningrad developed a plan to steal a small plane and escape to Israel via Sweden, ostensibly to attend a wedding. The daring plot, appropriately dubbed “Operation Wedding”, was doomed from its inception. Israeli authorities, who were made aware of the plot and its risks, urged its cancellation. In fact, having been infiltrated by the KGB, the group was arrested on its way to Leningrad’s Smolny airport, an outcome the members had foreseen as a possibility.
At a secret trial six months later, the plot’s leaders, former Soviet Air Force pilot Mark Dymshitz and Eduard Kuznetsov, an outspoken critic of the regime, were sentenced to death for treason. Others received up to fifteen years in a labor camp. The First Leningrad Trial, as it was later referred to in the West, was quickly followed by a nationwide series of arrests and trials, including scores of activists and informal Hebrew teachers.
The harsh pronouncement by the court, widely reported in the Western media, caused an international furor. The trial, and the additional arrests, energized advocacy groups in many countries, and public rallies, prayer vigils, and demonstrations took place. The American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry convened an emergency national meeting in Washington D.C. It urged its constituent organizations to accelerate their activities. It also empowered Max Fisher and Jacob Stein, two prominent figures in the Republican Party and respected Jewish communal leaders, to meet with President Richard Nixon and secure his willingness to intervene. The pair reported back to the meeting that the President had been sympathetic, albeit non-committal.
In a surprise move, and prior to the acceleration of a public campaign, the Soviet judiciary reduced the death sentences to fifteen years hard labor. Prison terms of four to fifteen years were imposed on the other members, including Silva Zalmanson, the only woman in the group. In spite of Nixon's expressions of sympathy, it was speculated that even if an intervention by the White House had taken place, it might not have been the primary cause of the reduced sentences. A parallel trial of Basque nationalist separatists in Spain, where the court had handed down death sentences, may have been a significant factor. After all, Soviet leaders were sensitive to any parity being drawn between the sentences at the First Leningrad Trial and those by General Francisco Franco’s fascist government. Historical documents offer little clarity.
Nevertheless, anger at the ensuing arrests of Soviet refuseniks and Hebrew teachers resulted in calls by Jewish advocacy groups to accelerate efforts to engage the American administration on a regular basis. This led to a demand for a restructured AJCSJ that could undertake a more aggressive nationwide campaign. Within a few months, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) emerged out of this restructuring and began to actively engage the Jewish community, the American political establishment, and the mass media.
THE MOVEMENT EXPANDS
With a modest budget, the NCSJ was given a mandate to integrate national Jewish organizations and their network of hundreds of local chapters, community relations councils, and federations. It immediately focused on congressional outreach, local and national public protests and events, media contacts, newspaper advertisements, and basic research. Funding from private sources and the Jewish Agency for Israel helped launch the Soviet Jewry Research Bureau, whose mission was to monitor and publicize Soviet policy shifts and the status of refuseniks.
Accurate and up-to-date information was critical for effective advocacy, and for the regular reports submitted to government agencies, the mass media, and congressional leaders. The reliance on the Soviet Jewry Research Bureau, as well as on the UCSJ’s contacts in the Soviet Union, for case histories and emigration statistics was an important factor in maintaining the integrity of the campaign. As such, advocacy for Soviet Jews began to assume new forms.
To help overcome the sense of isolation among Jewish activists and refuseniks, major advocacy groups and rabbinic seminaries, among others, sent travelers to the Soviet Union to meet with families who had suffered retribution by the authorities. Those with special skills served as transmitters of Jewish traditions, rituals, and history. Still, others provided kosher food and news of activities in America, a vital morale booster. Some supplied material goods, an important supplement for those forced into unemployment due to political persecution. Much of this was coordinated through a special program known as Operation Lifeline.
One weakness of the travel initiative was that no person or agency was tasked with coordinating or integrating the efforts of the various advocacy efforts despite the central role of the NCSJ. Even with the recognition that traveler initiatives helped overcome a sense of isolation among Soviet Jews, and personalized the campaign for all American advocates, there nevertheless remained many refuseniks and pockets of the Soviet Jewish dissident population who remained overlooked due to unresolved organizational and logistical problems.
The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews remained independent, with a primary focus on the community level as well as in Washington. The UCSJ fostered extensive person-to-person efforts in the media, drawing attention to individual or family cases. It also prevailed upon a cohort of congressional members to become engaged through publicly advocating on behalf of individual refuseniks or families.
The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, with its activist program to engage students and adults, no longer limited itself to college campuses. In the end, it chose to join the NCSJ. This decision gave its leadership increased opportunities to be heard and become participants in the broader campaign for Soviet Jews.
As advocacy campaigns arose around the globe, Nativ saw value in demonstrating that America was not the only center of political and community action, and promoted the idea of a world conference. Groups in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and South Africa agreed to convene an international gathering in Brussels in February 1971. The city, home to such international agencies as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), had already become a symbol of political globalization. The decision met with virulent protests from Soviet authorities, who unleashed a stream of media attacks lambasting the proposed meeting as a “tool of the Cold War.”
The leading Soviet newspaper, Pravda, labeled those supporting the conference as “enemies of the Soviet people.” Unable to prevent the event, and to ensure that there was broad awareness of its antipathy, Moscow sent several trusted Jewish personalities, including Samuel Zivs, to the Belgian capital to disparage it. This tactic merely provoked greater interest among Western journalists and encouraged them to attend. The result was that scores of media representatives came to Brussels, as did more than eight hundred delegates.
Nothing that emanated from Moscow, including diplomatic threats, diminished the political and media success of the Brussels Conference. The broad globalization of the advocacy campaign undermined Soviet criticism of the gathering as an instrument of “international Zionism,” a favored trope to demean advocates acting on behalf of refuseniks and other Jewish activists.
NEW STRATEGIES
Though the advocacy movement had become increasingly transnational, with committees in different countries exchanging data and experiences, a review of strategies underscored the need to broaden the campaign. The Brussels Conference had been useful in helping unite the various groups and reviewing tactics, but it was insufficient for a protracted campaign.
In America, President Nixon's policy objectives included the expansion of bilateral trade with the Soviet Union and achieving consensus on disarmament so as to diminish Cold War tensions. This agenda, however, threatened to set the stage for a confrontation with the Jewish community. Advocates sought to minimize any reported opposition to the President but were adamant in continuing their criticism of Soviet human rights abuses regarding its Jewish minority.
A new strategy called for a broadened effort, notably the recruitment of new allies, including scientists, academics, writers, educators, and medical professionals – those generally seen as supportive of human rights. Special interest and affiliated groups, such as the Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry provided a valuable channel to Catholic and Protestant clergy and lay leaders.
A uniquely fashioned and independent Committee of Concerned Scientists, which had hundreds of members, enlisted colleagues who traveled to the Soviet Union urging them to meet with their academic and professional counterparts, and to also establish contact with refusenik scientists forced into unemployment. Their primary mission was to conduct study sessions in the apartments of unemployed activists eager to learn about developments in their respective fields.
At the request of prisoner families, volunteer lawyers were brought together to represent their relatives, self-described as "Assirei Zion", Hebrew for “prisoners of Zion”. At least one group was formed, chaired by Columbia University Professor Telford Taylor, who had served as chief counsel at the post–World War II Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. Although none of the lawyers could claim legal status before the Soviet judicial system, all readily agreed to be involved. The group was assisted by NCSJ’s Soviet Jewry Research Bureau, which provided details on individual cases, together with information from the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry.
Drawing on Soviet law, Professor Taylor and his associates traveled to Moscow armed with meticulous legal briefs and petitions on behalf of the prisoners, meant for judges, lawyers, and the judiciary ministry officials. The Research Bureau lent credence to the effort by providing valuable case histories, often provided by the families of the prisoners, and data on the violations of international human rights standards.
Rebuffed by the Soviet legal authorities, the delegation issued a final report upon its return to New York. Their efforts and documents served as the basis of Taylor’s seminal "Courts of Terror", published in 1976, which became a primer for activists and helped enhance the campaign for refuseniks imprisoned on fabricated charges.
Operating on a parallel track, the Union of Council's Boston affiliate created a formidable legal center, built around a group of specialists focused on legal issues affecting refuseniks. A key function of the center was providing up-to-date information on imprisoned refuseniks, often obtained from their families and friends.
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THE WASHINGTON OPTION
One of the paramount tools for the advocacy movement was the establishment of a regular presence in Washington. This required a commitment of resources to maintain contact with members of Congress or their staff, arrange briefing sessions with State Department officials, and engage the office of the president.
Several major organizations, operating in Washington, were in unique positions to provide support to the NCSJ. This included, most notably, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith International, the National Council of Jewish Women, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Religious Action Center (RAC) of Reform Judaism.
This ad hoc coalition focused on how best to coordinate and implement national policy and program guidelines in the country’s power center. Within that framework, the primary targets were Washington-based government officials, members of Congress, the media, labor unions, and Christian clergy.
Following a protest held opposite the Soviet Embassy, the Washington Jewish Community Council instituted a daily vigil which was sustained for more than twenty years, to the chagrin of Soviet officials. The vigil forced embassy personnel to face the participants and their protests on a regular basis. “Never Forgive” and “Never Forget” became catchwords for the campaign, while visitors to the city were invited to carry word of the vigil to their local communities.
The UCSJ marshaled its international resources and fact-finding capabilities. Though it focused a good deal of energy on Capitol Hill and the State Department, it continued to engage its grassroots and community support.
Despite this whirlwind of activity, Moscow was not ready or willing to significantly alter its policies regarding the status of the Jewish minority. A wider spectrum of Americans, spearheaded by Jewish groups, would be needed if the campaign was to have an impact. Advocacy planners understood that for this aspect of the campaign to succeed, it would need to be more dramatic and that implementing a broader outreach would be neither quick nor facile.
An assessment of the possibilities led to the decision to involve America’s corporate world, particularly executives who interacted with their Soviet counterparts and government officials. The views of stockholders and customers who had expressed their concerns about Soviet Jews in various public forums were brought into the general campaign. This initiative was being negotiated through the NCSJ Business Advisory Council, as well as other organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Some American corporate executives agreed to become private messengers to Moscow, a rare initiative that helped maintain pressure on their Soviet counterparts. However, it wasn’t until the next national election in which President Richard Nixon hoped to announce a foreign policy reset with Moscow, that this strategy took a decisive turn.
THE JACKSON-VANIK AMENDMENT
In April 1972 Nixon returned from a summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev. On the eve of Passover, he met with Jewish organization leaders to inform them that he had reached an “understanding” with Moscow to facilitate greater Jewish emigration. The president’s gesture reflected the important role played by prominent Jewish donors and advisors in the Republican Party who had helped arrange the meeting. It also signaled a growing realization that the Jewish electorate, which had traditionally voted heavily for the Democratic Party, should be courted by the Republicans, especially during that election year.
The Jewish leaders at the White House meeting were wary of verbal “understandings” and therefore sought a signed and verifiable pledge from Brezhnev. They recalled that the Soviet Union had reneged on other previous “understandings”, such as support for Israel.
During this time, the Soviet Union was suffering from a faltering economy. It wanted access to American trade, investments, and technology to help overcome its shortcomings in producing consumer goods and strengthening its military-industrial complex. To help bridge the economic shortfall, Moscow sought a “most-favored-nation” status, which would have granted the Soviet Union lower credit terms equal to those of America’s best trading partners, thereby expanding economic growth. Nixon viewed this request favorably in the context of a desire to scale back the Cold War, increase domestic exports, and elicit Moscow’s help in ending the war still raging in Vietnam. The President anticipated that achieving these goals would secure his place in history.
A mere two and a half months after the summit meeting, the Soviet Union issued an edict to discourage the increasing number of applications from Jews desirous of leaving for Israel. It was a major blunder. It demanded “reimbursement” for the cost of educating and training Soviet citizens before they could depart the country. The levy, as high as $25,000 for an individual, would have had a profound, negative impact on innumerable Soviet Jewish students.
The authorities may have expected this emigration levy to curtail the growing tide of applications, but they had miscalculated. The edict instead caused an international uproar, especially in America. Announced so soon after Nixon’s return from the summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev, it was a personal affront to the President and thwarted his hopes of achieving détènte.
In an act of defiance Soviet Jews insisted that Western Jews not consider paying what they viewed as a “ransom tax.” Furthermore, even if such sums were available, there was no guarantee that Soviet authorities would not introduce new obstacles to Jews seeking the right to leave.
In America, some members of Congress and a core group of Jewish representatives in Washington had been considering extending, quid pro quo, economic incentives to "non-market" countries -- command economies such as the Soviet Union – in exchange for guarantees of the rights of Soviet Jews to emigrate. The most acceptable proposal came to be known as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974. This approach was recommended by several Jewish staff aides to Senators Jacob Javits and Abraham Ribicoff, among others. In order not to appear capricious or discriminatory, the amendment did not specify the Soviet Union. However, in public comments and Congressional debate, the sponsors were clear about the linkage. This elicited a remarkable response throughout the country, one that was to color the advocacy movement for many years to come.
Leadership of the advocacy movement in the Senate, including sponsorship of the Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, was assumed by Senator Henry Jackson, a Democrat from the state of Washington. A campaign to turn the amendment into law, which lasted from 1972 to 1974, drew active support from every national Jewish organization. Endorsements came from human rights groups, anti-communist labor unions, and sympathetic Christian clergy. Representative Charles Vanik, a Democrat from Ohio, soon joined Jackson’s effort, cementing the passage of the amendment.
As the major arms supplier to Israel and its most powerful supporter, the United States was anxious to maintain a delicate geopolitical equilibrium with the Soviet Union. Moscow was the primary arms supplier to the Arab world, and its Middle East partners understood that expanded emigration from the Soviet Union would only serve to strengthen the Jewish state. Though the President and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had repeatedly affirmed the right to freedom of movement, they viewed the amendment as disruptive to presidential prerogatives in foreign affairs and a threat to the improvement of East-West relations.
The public clamor in support of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment caused unease in some Jewish circles regarding the possibility that Washington might curtail its aid to Israel, or that Moscow would launch new initiatives against Jewish activists in the Soviet Union. High-profile refuseniks, including Vladimir Slepak and Yuli Kosharovskii, viewed the legislation as an effective opportunity to pressure Soviet leadership. In telephone conversations with American advocates, probably overheard by KGB monitors, these Soviet Jewish activists urged its acceptance. To those concerned about the endangerment of Israel's security, Nativ argued that Washington had not applied any pressure on Israel’s government and supported the amendment's passage.
With rates of emigration from the Soviet Union stagnant in spite of the demands of many Soviet Jews, Jewish organizations were determined to mobilize their constituents and actively endorse the new trade legislation. Opposing a sitting president's political will was risky, and there was some apprehension that the Kremlin, as well as the White House, would seek retribution. This fear was exacerbated when the leaders of a few Jewish organizations were approached by the White House to meet and discuss the pending amendment.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, whose chairman was a stalwart among Jewish Republicans, initially hesitated about supporting the Amendment, but the major national Soviet Jewry groups and their local affiliates held fast. With the approval of an overwhelming majority of Congress, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, as it came to be known, was attached to the Trade Act of 1974 and signed into law in January 1975 by President Gerald Ford. This firmly linked U.S. trade with non-market economies to the liberalization of emigration policies and practices.
This outcome was critical. Although the Soviet Union continued its pursuit of favorable credit terms and increased bilateral trade, it showed disdain for the new initiative. Its immediate response was to repudiate a Nixon-era trade agreement with the U.S. and reduce to a trickle the number of Jews permitted to leave. Not until after 1991, when the Soviet Union imploded and a new government assumed power, did emigration actually grow in any meaningful amount.
The passage of the Amendment was nevertheless a seminal moment in the history of Soviet Jewish advocacy. It proved a valuable tool to apply pressure on Moscow. Furthermore, it reflected a new awareness of the Jewish community's political power, and strengthened the partnership between activists in the Soviet Union, who bore the brunt of abusive and sometimes violent treatment, and their American advocates.
THE HELSINKI PROCESS
For decades, the Jewish community had been sensitive to accusations that it did not prod its leaders into more aggressive action to save Jews during World War II. Despite the existing racism, anti-Semitism, and hostility to foreign immigrants in many parts of America at the time, critics insisted that greater activism might have prevented the Holocaust. The capability of American Jews to have effectively altered American policy in the 1930’s and 1940’s continues to be debated.
What was not arguable, however, was the sense of accomplishment that the Jackson- Vanik Amendment gave to local Jewish communities across America, the spinal cord of the advocacy effort. Public demands and private interventions to ensure that the Amendment became law had transformed the Jewish community into one better prepared to engage the political system. Equally important, the effort demonstrated that with a common objective, a unified and highly motivated alliance could sustain a winning campaign.
If the Amendment was a significant domestic triumph, it was complemented on the international level by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, signed by thirty-five European and North American countries, including the United States, Canada, France, and Great Britain. What would later become known as the “Helsinki Process”, with its human rights components, was not what Soviet leaders had anticipated when Leonid Brezhnev signed the pact.
The agreement encompassed several significant international concerns, including economic relations and human rights. The primary strategic objective for the Soviet Union was the fixing of European borders that had been redrawn in the aftermath of World War II—a provision of the act. For advocates in the West, the use of the act, notably its provisions on the reunification of families, became a platform for monitoring and exposing violations of human rights in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Jewry advocacy community, together with Human Rights Watch and Freedom House, worked with Congress to create a monitoring mechanism—the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), also known as the Helsinki Commission. The CSCE was designed to keep a spotlight on Moscow and, hopefully, encourage changes in its human rights record. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, however, viewed the commission as another intrusion into the White House's constitutional role in foreign policy matters. Despite his opposition, the State Department reluctantly became a commission member.
Periodic international meetings of the signatory nations to the Helsinki Final Act were convened to review progress under the provisions of the Act designed to protect individuals from human rights violations. American Jewish groups recognized the need for coordination and for maintaining a constant watch, leading to a loosely constructed World Conference on Soviet Jewry.
This was especially critical in the early 1980's, when bilateral contacts between Moscow and Washington were minimal. Invariably, Soviet delegates at meetings under the provisions of the final act protested the intervention of non-governmental critics, signifying that the efforts of the advocacy campaign were irritating the Soviet government, a strategic objective.
Ironically, the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act created a moral dilemma for the inner circle that had gradually come to dominate the refusenik world. When the Act was signed, many political dissidents in the Soviet Union expected Moscow to “democratize” society. They not only ramped up their campaign against Moscow’s repression of writers, academics, and scientists, but also sought closer cooperation with Jewish activists, a move that would have been viewed by the security agencies as seditious, and a threat to the Soviet state. At great risk, the dissidents took advantage of the new atmosphere created by the Final Act to organize the Helsinki Watch Group. However, this never achieved the same level of public support as the broad-based Soviet Jewry advocacy movement.
After much internal debate, the aliyah movement in the Soviet Union chose not to join with the democratic dissidents, a decision that caused great anguish in both camps. Their decision was based on tactical as well as philosophical grounds. They viewed their struggle as inconsistent with undermining the Soviet system. Although they faced constant harassment and harsh prison sentences, the punishment for outspoken aliyah-minded refuseniks was often less severe than that meted out to the pro-democracy dissidents. To demonstrate solidarity between the two movements, however, some refuseniks agreed to join the Helsinki Watch Group.
The move to de-couple the aliyah movement from the Helsinki Watch Group’s modus operandi was opposed by others at the center of the aliyah movement, such as the outspoken Hebrew teacher and emigration activist Yuli Kosharovskii, who argued that it would endanger their own efforts. In the end, the refuseniks compromised and endorsed the move by those colleagues with close ties to the dissidents, including Vladimir (Volodya) Slepak and Anatoly Shcharansky (later, Natan Sharansky), who nevertheless remained committed to the Jewish struggle.
For the Soviet security apparatus, the potential cooperation between the two movements was seen as a threat to internal stability. It was not by coincidence that Shcharansky and Slepak were subsequently arrested and put on trial. In June 1978, Slepak was sentenced to five years of internal exile in Siberia. Meanwhile, Shcharansky, who was sentenced to hard labor, became an international cause célèbre when, at his June 1979 trial, he was falsely accused of spying for the United States. His sentence was cut short, however, following a steady campaign on his behalf, including appearances by his wife, Avital, at public and private events, notably a meeting with President Ronald Reagan and Vice President G.W. Bush arranged by Jewish communal leaders.
In February 1986, under the leadership of the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, a period of glasnost (openness) was ushered in. Shcharansky and other political prisoners were exchanged for convicted Czechoslovak spies and Soviet agents. He was taken to Berlin and flown to Israel, where he became involved in political life.
Slepak, who died in April 2015, received an early release from his five-year sentence in exile. He and his wife, Maria (Masha), who died in 2017, were finally permitted to leave for Israel, where they were reunited with their two sons, who had been granted permission to leave much earlier.
A CHAPTER CLOSES: Freedom Sunday
On December 6, 1987, an estimated 250,000 people gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They had come together on Freedom Sunday on the eve of the first summit meeting in the United States between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The rally reflected an expectation that the two leaders would hear their message—one of hoped-for change.
Although organized with only six weeks’ notice, the initial plans had been formulated by the NCSJ and the NJCRAC a year and a half earlier, as rumors of a possible summit meeting began circulating. During the intervening period, the two agencies issued a constant stream of alerts and notices to sustain interest. Taking part in the effort to mobilize the Jewish community was the recently released Sharansky, who had been touring the United States and Canada.
Over the ensuing years, marches and public rallies were staged across the country, as well as protest meetings in synagogues, Jewish community centers, and churches. In the New York City region, with its large population of Jews and sympathetic non-Jews, public demonstrations grew in size. Organized by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry (later the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews), annual Solidarity Sunday rallies brought together people from all sectors of society throughout the region.
On Freedom Sunday, Jews and non-Jews traveled hundreds of miles, carrying signs and banners on behalf of individual refuseniks or protesting basic human rights violations. People marched slowly to the Mall, with the Washington Monument at one end and the Capitol at the other, joining with elected officials, entertainers, advocacy stalwarts, and Jewish and non-Jewish community leaders.
The most electrifying aspect of Freedom Sunday was the participation of former “prisoners of Zion”, recently released from Soviet labor camps, prisons, or internal exile, including Natan Sharansky, Vladimir Slepak, and Josif Mendelevich. Vice President George H. W. Bush spoke, articulating the Reagan administration’s resolute support--a significant political message to Gorbachev, the visiting Soviet leader, who at that point was also President of the Soviet Union.
Those who gathered that day could not know they were participating in the advocacy campaign’s final phase. The next day President Ronald Reagan reportedly mentioned the demonstration to Gorbachev, impressing upon him the widespread support for changes in Soviet human rights policy and, specifically, for allowing Jews the right to study, worship, and leave.
For years the Jewish community had encouraged its members to organize and forge personal ties with refuseniks. Scientists, educators, rabbis, nuns, priests, ministers, writers, journalists, lawyers, doctors, students, and cultural icons were especially effective participants. Their major role was to encourage and support Jewish activists in America and refuseniks in the Soviet Union, while exposing Moscow’s violations of international practices and legal norms.
Gorbachev, in his desire to initiate economic and social reforms in Soviet society, rebuild a weakened infrastructure, and strengthen ties with the United States, began to allow Jews to emigrate in modest increments. The departures peaked in 1990 when 190,000 Jews left the Soviet Union. But Gorbachev was unable to manage the demands for improving the economy, besting his political opponents, or granting greater personal freedom to the general populace.
In 1991, following a brief but violent struggle by Gorbachev’s political opponents, the Soviet Union imploded and ceased to exist—a profound, historic development. The factors leading to its collapse included economic stagnation, increasing unrest among national, ethnic, and religious minorities, widespread alcoholism, political dissent, and restlessness in neighboring communist-ruled countries. Political analysts suggested that pro-Jewish public agitation and private interventions in America and the West, on behalf of Soviet Jews, also functioned as a lever bringing about the implosion of the Soviet Union.
Out of the wreckage of the Soviet Union emerged a weak and loosely constructed Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). After nearly eight decades of communist rule, the various republics that constituted the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics declared their independence. The Russian Federation, under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin, emerged as the largest and most powerful of these newly independent states. Jews were soon able to depart for Israel and, increasingly, America, without serious obstacles. In the decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly 2,000,000 Soviet Jews came to Israel; 600,000 to 800,000 settled in the United States, and some 125,000-150,000 arrived in Germany, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa. Equally significant state-sponsored anti-Semitism was halted. Furthermore, religious and cultural rights were slowly restored.
As a result of its success, the advocacy movement in the West, especially in the United States, gradually diminished. But even as state-sponsored hostility in the former Soviet Union faded, populist anti-Semitism, with some neo-fascist undertones, surfaced in some of the successor states, including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Latvia.
In achieving basic rights for Soviet Jews, advocates wrote a dramatic success story. Jews who had pressed for the right to leave for Israel and other welcoming countries could finally build new lives. Those Jews who were finally able to do so left for Israel with mathematics, engineering, or technology backgrounds and helped it become the technology-centered “Startup Nation” that it is today, expanding both its economic base and its global reach. Jews who remained in the former Soviet Union now had the opportunity to choose their own individual and community-based destiny.
For those who participated in the advocacy movement, whether in the Soviet Union, the United States, or elsewhere, it was a transformative experience, demonstrating the political strength of an organized movement.
(1) Among other national organizations the AJCSJ included the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Labor Committee, the America-Israel Political Action Committee, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Rabbinical Council of America, the American Jewish Congress, B'nai B’rith International, Hadassah—the Women's Zionist Organization, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the World Zionist Organization, American Section.
Note: Twenty-four national Jewish organizations took part in the Washington conference. Lacking a consensus, it adopted a program that would not be controversial or threatening to any member organization. Each one pledged minimal funds and staff to implement activities on an ad hoc basis. Though the structure was loose, the AJCSJ did launch major public activities, involve the mass media, and engage with federal and local officials. In 1971 it was reorganized into the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
For a more detailed account of the Jewish movement in the Soviet Union and the American advocacy movement, see the annotated Timeline of Historic Events, as well as the Bibliography, accompanying this narrative.
(c) 2022 Jerry Goodman