​

1925

• November 15–20: During a conference of party activists, Mikhail Kalinin, the philo-Semitic head of the Russian SSR, declares that “it is completely natural that the Jewish population discovers itself (and) strives to find its national place in the Soviet Union.”

 

1927

• In an effort to contain mounting Jewish national and international aspirations, Hebrew publications in the USSR are halted, reflecting another shift in official policy. Approximately one third of all synagogues are closed.

• Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, is arrested and sentenced to death. Worldwide interventions and protests result in a 3-year sentence.

 

1928

• January: Leon Trotsky is exiled to Kazakhstan by Stalin. A Jew (née Bronstein), and a leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky is viewed by Stalin as a competitor for power.

• March: Birobidzhan is designated as the Jewish Autonomous Region. Located in the Soviet Far East, it is created as a “homeland” for Soviet Jews, and an alternative to Jewish national aspirations (Zionism). Few Jews move to this remote area on the Chinese border near the Amur River, although some Jewish families from abroad, including the United States, move to the region seeking to escape their collapsing economies. Less than 15 percent of the Birobidzhan population, Jews remain a minority until today.

 

1928–1933

• The first Five-Year Plan is launched as a series of nationwide efforts developed by state committees to strengthen the struggling economy.

 

1929

• Yiddish schools are closed, except those in Birobidzhan.

 

1930

• February: Reflecting the failure to integrate Jews as a distinct ethnic minority in Soviet society, the Evsektsia is dissolved, coinciding with Stalin’s efforts to seek greater central control over society.

• April 25: The Soviet Union establishes the Gulag administration to coordinate the network of penal labor camps for criminals and political prisoners. (Gulag is the Russian acronym for the government agency that administered the camps under the NKVD [secret police], the predecessor of the KGB). In the ensuing 3 decades, scores of Zionist, religious, and cultural activists will perish in the labor camps.

 

1932

• A new internal passport system is introduced.  On identification documents, Jews are categorized as a Jewish ethnic or national minority (“Yevrei”), along with other (non-religious) national minorities.

 

1933

• President Franklin Delano Roosevelt extends diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union.  

 

1934

• December 1: Assassination of Sergei Kirov, formerly a close associate of Stalin, but now viewed as a potential threat to his power.

 

1935

• Attempting to demonstrate success, the Soviet Union declares that more than 370,000 acres are under cultivation in the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan.

 

1936–38

• During the period known as the “Great Terror,” Stalin and associates launch a brutal purge of alleged opponents and plotters; several thousand are executed or sent to labor camps. This includes a disproportionate number of Jews, indicating an anti-Jewish bias.

 

1938

• A major purge of Yiddish cultural leaders and members of other cultural and ethnic minorities takes place.

• District leaders in Birobidzhan are singled out and accused of “Trotskyism,” a reference to Leon Trotsky’s views on organizing revolution in all countries. He was a political opponent of Stalin.

• Also deemed “anti-State” are those with past ties to certain Jewish parties or organizations, including the left-leaning, Yiddish-speaking Bund, and the left Zionist party Poalei Zion. The groups had been rendered illegal in 1921and were viewed as promoting Jewish national autonomy, as well as creating obstacles to the full assimilation of Jews into Soviet society.

 

1939

• The last state-sponsored art exhibition devoted to Jewish culture, at Leningrad's State Museum of Ethnography, is closed. During a mounting anti-religious campaign, nearly all remaining synagogues are closed.

• August 23: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a Non-Aggression Pact that includes the creation of spheres of influence in Europe and the division of Poland.

• September: The launching of German attacks on Poland marks the beginning of World War II and the first step in a proposed division of Europe into German and Russian spheres.

 

1940

• July 23: The Soviet Union invades and annexes the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) and Bessarabia, as part of its Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany, absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jews.

• Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, is granted permission to leave Riga, the capital of Soviet-dominated Latvia, where he had established his headquarters after being released from imprisonment. He relocates to Brooklyn, New York, which becomes the center of the worldwide Lubavitcher Hasidic movement.

• August 20: At Stalin’s behest, Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico, after having left the Soviet Union, thus removing him as a major symbol of opposition.

 

1941

• June 21–22: Nazi Germany breaks its Non-Aggression Pact with Moscow and invades the USSR (Operation Barbarossa), enlarging the geographic scope of World War II. Special units (Einsatzgruppen) are sent into the Soviet Union, alongside regular forces, to exterminate Jews.

• August 24: Prominent Jewish cultural figures are organized by the government for an international radio appeal seeking wartime support for the Soviet Union.

• September 29–30: The open-air massacre by the Nazis and their Ukrainian supporters of an estimated 33,000 Jews takes place at Babyn Yar ravine near Kyiv. For decades, Soviet authorities refuse any memorial marking the event or the mass grave, as a means of minimizing Jewish victimization and peoplehood. During the war, other mass killings of Jews take place throughout the western Soviet republics, notably in the Baltic region, Ukraine, and Belorussia.

 

1942

• April: The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), headed by the noted actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, Solomon Mikhoels, is launched to mobilize global Jewish support for the USSR during World War II.   

• November: The JAC begins publication of an official Yiddish newspaper, Eynikeit.

 

1943

• April: Solomon Mikhoels and the Yiddish poet Itzik Pfeffer travel to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and England to raise money and enlist public support for Moscow’s war effort. Jews are the primary audience, based on an exaggerated notion of Jewish influence. Pfeffer is reportedly primed to secretly “watch” Mikhoels for the Soviet security apparatus.

• June 8: The largest pro-Soviet rally in the United States, with Mikhoels as the focus, is organized by Jewish organizations at New York’s Polo Grounds.

• October: The Soviet Union’s ambassador to London, Ivan Maisky, visits Palestine, then a British Mandate.

 

1945

• May 9: Germany surrenders and World War II ends. Nearly 30 million Soviet citizens, including 2.5-3 million Jews, were killed.

 

1947

• November 29: The Soviet Union’s foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, addresses the United Nations General Assembly and supports the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Moscow hopes to replace Great Britain as the major force in the Middle East and create links with a future socialist Jewish state.

 

1948

• The beginning of the infamous Black Years (1948–53) in Soviet Jewish history, during which Soviet policies shift once again. An aggressive dismantling of the remaining Jewish institutions takes place, including newspapers and journals.

• January 12: Acting on Stalin’s orders, the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Solomon Mikhoels, is killed by KGB agents in a staged accident in Minsk. Within a year, the Yiddish theater is liquidated as part of the spreading anti-Jewish campaign.

• Alleged “Zionists” are arrested as threats to the state in response to a new wave of underground Jewish activism.

• May 18: Paradoxically, Moscow grants de jure diplomatic recognition to the newly declared State of Israel to satisfy its own international, political objectives.

• October 16: Ambassador Golda Meir heads an Israeli delegation to the Soviet Union. She visits Moscow’s Great Choral Synagogue on Rosh HaShanah and is greeted by a huge crowd of some 50,000 Jews. The event causes great concern among Soviet officials, who see it as a vestige of Jewish national sentiment. She also visited the synagogue on the preceding Shabbat and on Yom Kippur.

• The effort to expand the Jewish experiment in Birobidzhan is halted. The goal of a special Jewish geopolitical entity under Soviet control had failed to attract large numbers of Soviet Jews.

• November 20: The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the last vestige of organized Jewish cultural life, is dissolved and many of its leaders are imprisoned.

• The Yiddish newspaper, Einikayt, is closed.

 

1949

• Jews throughout the Soviet Union, notably those who had achieved fame in arts and sciences, are targeted as anti-Soviet nationalists and “rootless cosmopolitans” sympathetic to the West. Key Jewish personalities in Birobidzhan are swept up in the campaign; many are sent to prison or labor camps.

 

1950

• Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, reflects his country’s concern for the right of Jews to leave the Soviet Union, based on the concept of the reunion of families. He and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett intervene with Soviet delegates at the United Nations, in New York, but are rebuffed.

• Arrests of Zionist activists spread, this time in Moscow, the center of Jewish life in the Soviet Union.

 

1952

• August 12. Dubbed the “Night of the Murdered Poets,” the execution of 13 prominent Jewish writers, poets, scientists, and political figures, leaders of the defunct Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, takes place in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.

• As a reflection of concern, David Ben-Gurion creates a special high-level secret bureau, Nativ, publicly known as the Lishkat Hakesher (Contact or Liaison Office), to coordinate Israel’s efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews.

 

1953

• January 13: A new anti-Jewish campaign is launched, and Jewish medical professionals are arrested. Those targeted in the infamous Doctors’ Plot are accused of planning to poison Stalin and other Soviet officials. They are also labeled “agents” of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the international social welfare agency, in a conspiracy to subvert the Soviet Union.

• February 12: In another shift of political objectives, the Soviet Union seeks to gain a Middle East foothold by supporting Arab ambitions, as well as unify East European members of the socialist bloc behind anti-Zionism. Moscow recognizes its failure to bring a “socialist” Israel into the Communist orbit and severs diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Three days earlier, a bomb explodes at the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv, the pretext for Moscow’s action.

• March 1: Stalin falls ill prior to the Jewish holiday of Purim and dies 4 days later.

• April 4: The Doctors’ Plot is disavowed by Stalin’s successors, and the trial of the Jewish medical personnel is canceled.

• July 21: The new Soviet leadership restores diplomatic relations with Israel, hoping that the Jewish state will forge strong links to Moscow. Israel welcomes the move, which helps the young state establish international legitimacy and strengthen its position vis-à-vis neighboring Arab states.

• September 7: Nikita Khrushchev becomes First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

 

1954

• The Israeli legation in Moscow is upgraded to embassy status, while the situation for Soviet Jews remains unchanged.

 

1955

• The noted poet Yevgenii Yevtushenko, publishes his poem “Winter Station,” containing criticism of Soviet anti-Semitism.

• July 11: A dozen Jewish activists are arrested and accused of maintaining ties with the Israeli Embassy.

 

1956

• February 24: Nikita Khrushchev, considered in the West as a “reformer,” addresses the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party. He denounces the personality cult of Stalin and his excesses but ignores state anti-Semitism.

• June: A delegation of rabbis from the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) visits Moscow, to ascertain reports about the harsh and discriminatory conditions facing the Jewish community.

• Shortly after the RCA visit, authorities permit the printing of a “Peace Siddur” (Prayer Book), in an effort to demonstrate that religious freedom exists.

• August: Three Israeli diplomats, accused of having established contacts with Soviet Jews and arrested the previous year, are expelled. They include Nehemiah Levanon, from Kibbutz Kfar Blum in Israel, who will go on to head Nativ, Israel’s special bureau dealing with Jews in the Soviet Union.

​

1958

• The arrests of Jewish activists who had any contact with the Israeli Embassy continues.

​

1959

• September 25: During a meeting at Camp David, President Dwight D. Eisenhower urges Nikita Khrushchev to resolve issues concerning the status of Jews in the USSR. Eisenhower cites the “deep concern” expressed to him by Jewish groups.

• October 4: Moscow’s Malakhovka synagogue is burned, and anti-Semitic flyers are posted in the vicinity.

• A groundbreaking cover story by Moshe Decter, in the New Leader magazine, documents discrimination against Soviet Jews. It is viewed as a major publishing event in the Jewish community by a writer known as a social activist, editor, pamphleteer, and staunch Zionist working with Nativ.

​

1960

• January 25: Reflecting an easing of conditions in the post-Stalin era, the special Gulag office is closed.  

• October: A study by Dr. William Korey for B’nai B’rith International on the Right to Leave and Return is submitted to the United Nations. ((In1964 it is adopted by the newly organized American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ) as a legal argument for the rights of Soviet Jews.).      

• Yevgenii Yevtushenko publishes his poem “Babyn Yar,” an attack on official silence about Jewish martyrdom in World War II and on popular anti-Semitism. The work resonates among intellectuals, primarily in the West, and is cited by advocates for Soviet Jewry.

​

1962

• At the United Nations Australia’s chief delegate, Douglas White, states that the Soviet Union is obligated, under the terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to permit emigration. He is encouraged by Isi Leibler, an Australian Jewish community leader.

 

1963

• Moshe Decter organizes Jewish Minorities Research, a project initiated by Nativ, to engage the American public on behalf of Soviet Jews.

• September 4: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a noted Jewish teacher, activist, and philosopher addresses the Rabbinical Assembly at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. He utilizes the opportunity to focus on the plight of Soviet Jews and issues a plea for massive public action. The resulting publicity puts pressure on Jewish organizations to be more proactive.

• September 13: US Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Dutton issues a report indicating that the situation of Soviet Jews is of “continuing concern.” He commits the United States to intervene on their behalf, through the United Nations, to improve conditions. He notes that Soviet Jews are being placed under increasing restrictions affecting religious worship. 

• October: The Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism, under the leadership of Louis Rosenblum and Herbert Karon, is launched. Together with similar independent local committees, it eventually (1970) creates the nationwide Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.

• October 29: As news trickles out of the Soviet Union, Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, with Senators Abraham Ribicoff and Jacob Javits, meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. They challenge him about Moscow’s treatment of Jews, but no policy changes are forthcoming.

• Trofim Kichko’s anti-Semitic book, Judaism Without Embellishment, appears during an ongoing anti-religious campaign. It is made available to the United Nations by Morris B. Abram, a member of the US delegation and a leader of the American Jewish Committee. Copies of the book, with its virulent anti-Jewish text and graphic images, are circulated by the AJC; Kichko is denounced in the West.

​

1964

• April 5: Six months after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel issued his call to American Jews, national Jewish organizations meet at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.  They agree to create an American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ), a loosely structured coordinating body of national organizations and local community relations councils. It is designed to advocate and coordinate nationwide activities.           

• April 27: The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) is launched at Columbia University to involve college and university students in the advocacy movement.

 

1965

• April: Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach debuts his song “Am Yisrael Hai” at a New York City “Jericho March” rally organized by the SSSJ. It becomes a signature anthem for the Soviet Jewry advocacy campaign.

• September 19–24: Thousands attend a National Eternal Light Vigil, the first public demonstration in Washington, D.C., organized by the AJCSJ with the participation of national and local leaders and activists. Some remain around the clock at the symbolic Freedom Light.  An artist's rendering becomes a central symbol of the advocacy movement.

• October 15: Nikita S. Khrushchev is removed from power, and Leonid Brezhnev becomes First Secretary of the Communist Party, the beginning of the 18-year “Brezhnev era.” In 1966 his title is changed to General Secretary. 

• October 28: The largest protest rally for Soviet Jews organized by the AJCSJ, attracts 20,000 people to New York’s Madison Square Garden.

​

1966

• Elie Wiesel’s book The Jews of Silence is published. It highlights his encounters with Jews in the Soviet Union and stresses the apparent silence of  Jews in the West in the face of their plight.

• February: Dissident writers, essayists, and critics Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky are placed on trial for “anti-Soviet propaganda” in the first of a series of trials of human rights activists and democratic dissidents.

• August: The Central Conference of American Rabbis, representing Reform rabbis, undertakes a 5-week East European mission to explore the status and condition of Jews, primarily in the Soviet Union. Most Soviet sources are closed to the delegation.

• Public hearings are held in New York City by an Ad Hoc Commission on the Rights of Soviet Jews, organized by Jewish Minorities Research and endorsed by interfaith clergy, including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

• December 3: At a Paris press conference, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin startles the West when he declares that Jews could leave the Soviet Union, under the international principle of family reunification. However, permits issued are a small fraction of those seeking to emigrate.

​

1967

• June 5–10: After near defeat by an alliance of Arab states, Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War stirs ethnic pride among Soviet Jews. Applications to leave for Israel escalate, and Jewish activists meet secretly, especially in Moscow, Leningrad, and Riga. This marks the beginning of the active phase of the Jewish movement.

• In the wake of the war and the defeat of Moscow’s Arab allies, the Soviet Union and other socialist countries sever diplomatic relations with Israel. The trickle of Jewish emigration is closed off.

 

1967–68

• Restrictions on Jewish enrollment in top Soviet universities expand, leading to career deprivations and stimulating additional applications to leave for Israel, despite continuing refusals.

​

1968

• May: House Minority Leader Gerald Ford introduces a congressional amendment in Congress supporting Soviet Jews. During the next few decades, members of Congress draw attention to Jewish activists suffering harassment, especially those demanding the right to leave for Israel and the restoration of religious and cultural rights.

• Soviet authorities begin accepting new documents from Jews hoping to leave for Israel.

• The Academic Committee for Soviet Jews, soon to be chaired by Professor Hans Morgenthau, is launched. The group enlists thousands of academics in America and focuses on Jewish scientists and academics unemployed after applying to leave for Israel. Prime organizers are Moshe Decter, head of Jewish Minorities Research, and William Korey of B’nai B’rith International.

• The Chronicle of Current Events is launched in the Soviet Union by dissidents,  as a samizdat (self-published) journal on human rights.

​

1969

• May 16: Boris Kochubievsky, a refusenik whose father and grandfather were shot and buried at the infamous Babyn Yar killing ground, is sentenced in Kyiv to 3 years hard labor for “anti-Soviet slander.” It is the first known trial of a Jewish activist who demanded the right to leave for Israel. In the next few years, the arrests and trials of Jewish activists accelerate. Soviet intellectuals defy the authorities and petition the United Nations, protesting the Kochubievsky sentence.

• August 6: A public appeal to the United Nations from 18 Georgian Jewish families calls for their right to leave the Soviet Union. It is released by Israel, attracting wide media attention and new advocates for Soviet Jews.

• The United States takes a more aggressive stance on the plight of Soviet Jews when Rita Hauser, the US delegate to the United Nations, raises their status before the General Assembly.

• In an act of defiance, an underground national coordinating committee (VKK) is created by Soviet Jewish activists. They undertake a campaign of open protests and public appeals to the West.

• December: The Jewish Defense League, led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, launches a militant and often violent effort on behalf of Soviet Jews.

 

1970

• March 3: Local independent groups in the US launch the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, seeking to spur national Jewish organizations to greater activism.

• March 11: 39 Soviet Jews from across the country protest to the Foreign Ministry against the continuing anti-Israel and anti-Zionist campaign. Their letter, an “open declaration” to the West, unleashes a wave of public protests in Europe and America targeting Moscow.

• June: A heavily publicized propaganda campaign to condemn Israel is organized by Soviet authorities. Prominent Jewish cultural, artistic, and scientific personalities, including prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, are enlisted.

• June 15: Sixteen activists, mostly Jews, are arrested at Leningrad’s Smolny Airport, in a daring effort dubbed Operation Wedding. Frustrated by the many rejections to their efforts to leave they attempt to steal a small airplane, fly to Scandinavia, and then to Israel. The participants, from Riga and Leningrad, had been trying for years to secure exit visas.  The arrests ignite an anti-Zionist campaign throughout the Soviet Union, culminating in widespread searches and interrogations of Jewish emigration activists and underground Hebrew teachers

•  Human rights activists create a committee for human rights, led by Valerii Chalidze and Andrei Sakharov

• December 10: A daily Soviet Jewry Vigil staged opposite the Soviet Embassy, in Washington, D.C., is launched on Human Rights Day. It is spearheaded by the local Washington Jewish Community Council and lasts 20 years.

• December 21: In Moscow, authorities prevent the opening of a symposium on Jewish culture by detaining the refuseniks planning to participate, a sign that Jewish cultural activities would not be permitted.    

• December 25: The First Leningrad Trial, which opened on December 15, concludes. The mostly Jewish defendants are accused of “hijacking” an airplane, to escape to Israel, and receive sentences up to 15 years. The leaders, Mark Dymshits and Eduard Kuznetsov are sentenced to death, which is reduced to 15 years after strong international protests and an intervention by the White House.

​

1971

• February 23–25: The first World Conference of Jewish Communities on Soviet Jewry opens in Brussels, attended by 800 delegates from 38 countries, including prominent Israeli leaders David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Moscow launches a media campaign against the event. Rabbi Meir Kahane, a non-delegate, seeks entry and is rebuffed by security personnel. The meeting adopts the Brussels Declaration, with a commitment to strengthen the advocacy movement including the creation of an ongoing World Conference on Soviet Jewry to coordinate efforts.

• March: As a follow-up to the Brussels Conference, an International Consultation on Soviet Jewry is held in London, focusing on the broad advocacy effort.

• April: Jewish activists in the USSR issue The White Book of Exodus, a samizdat document filled with scores of personal letters and appeals. It is smuggled out and published by the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry.

• May 11-20:  The Second Leningrad Trial of 9 refuseniks takes place.  All are sentenced to the Gulag.  In the following weeks arrests and trials take place in Odessa, Kishinev, and Samarkand.

• June 6: Following the widespread arrests of refuseniks and Hebrew teachers, national Jewish organizations, together with local Jewish federations and community relations councils, endorse a reorganized AJCSJ. Reflecting a more assertive program, it morphs into the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), with a mandate to spearhead activist programs throughout the country.

• The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) joins the NCSJ; the Union of Councils remains independent. A separate Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry (GNYCSJ), later renamed the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews, is created.

• June 22: Raiza Palatnik, an Odessa librarian, is arrested on her 35th birthday and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. The case leads to the creation of the dynamic 35’s Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry, especially active in England, Canada, and the United States, referencing Palatnik’s birthday

• Moshe Decter dissolves Jewish Minorities Research, and the NCSJ assumes the bulk of its public and private initiatives.

• October 8: In cooperation with the American Zionist Youth Foundation, and the National Jewish Community Relations Council, the NCSJ organizes a nationwide tour of a Soviet Jewry Freedom Bus. It includes former refuseniks and college students, who take the bus to campuses and community groups.

• December 13: Linked to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the struggle for freedom, the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, in cooperation with the SSSJ, organizes a Freedom Lights for Soviet Jewry rally. It fills Madison Square Garden and attracts major publicity.

​

1972

• April 30: On “Solidarity Sunday,” thousands participate in a march and public demonstration for Soviet Jews in New York City’s Dag Hammerskjöld Plaza, near the United Nations, organized by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Some 100 local communities across the country organize parallel demonstrations. It becomes an annual event organized by the GNYCSJ and is discontinued in 1988.

•  Soviet Jewish activists issue The White Book of Exodus, which is smuggled out and published by the AJCSJ. 

• May 22–30: Richard M. Nixon is in Moscow for a summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev. Prior to his departure, the president is given a petition with over 1 million signatures, organized by the NCSJ with the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), urging him to raise the issue of Soviet Jewry. Some Soviet Jewish activists are placed under house arrest during the meeting, as their situation is covered broadly by Western media.

• July 3: Weeks after the summit meeting the Supreme Soviet of the USSR introduces a higher education levy on would-be emigrants, ostensibly to recoup education costs for those who might depart the country. It is viewed in the West as a “ransom” tax and meant to deter Jews from seeking to leave for Israel. News of the tax stirs protests in the West and embarrasses the White House, coming so soon after the summit meeting.

• September 16: In an act of resistance, 200 Moscow Jews file a 116-point document on emigration procedures with the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

• September 25–26: Following the announcement of the education tax, an emergency meeting is convened by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry at B’nai B’rith headquarters in Washington, D.C. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson attends and proposes legislation linking trade benefits for “non-market” (i.e., communist) economies to the liberalization of that nation's emigration practices.

• October 4: Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson submits a provisional form of his amendment to the 1974 Trade Reform Act as Washington's response to Moscow's education tax.

• October 31: A 2-page ad in the New York Times denounces the education tax.  It supports Jewish academics and scientists unable to work in the Soviet Union.  Thousands of academics from 100 campuses sign the ad, sponsored by the Academic Committee for Soviet Jews.

                                   

1973

• February 7: Congressman Charles Vanik co-sponsors legislation in the House of Representatives, joining Henry M. Jackson’s effort in the Senate to amend the Trade Reform Act and punish the Soviet Union. The campaign for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment is launched. The future of Soviet Jewry becomes a matter of continuing relations between Washington and Moscow.

• March 11–14: US Treasury Secretary George Shultz visits Moscow and meets with Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, who informs him that the education tax has been dropped.

• March 15: Notwithstanding Secretary Shultz's admonitions, Senator Jackson submits a final version of the amendment linking trade between the US and non-market (i.e. socialist or communist) countries to free emigration.

• March 21: The Soviet Union provides an unsigned letter to President Richard M. Nixon affirming the cancellation of the education tax. Nevertheless, the US Congress proceeds to debate the trade amendment.

• April 19: Fifteen Jewish leaders meet with President Nixon, who reaffirms his commitment to helping Soviet Jews, but criticizes the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which he deems an obstacle to détente between the two superpowers.

• May 2–9: New York’s mayor, John Lindsay, visits Moscow and discusses Jewish emigration with Soviet officials.

• May 4–8: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, on a trip to Moscow, transmits to Soviet officials a list of more than 700 Jews repeatedly refused exit visas. No significant movement takes place.

• June 17: Leonid Brezhnev arrives in Washington, D.C., for a meeting with President Richard M. Nixon and is greeted by a demonstration of 13,000 people, organized by the NCSJ with the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC). Moscow’s policies toward its Jewish minority are severely condemned. The actor, activist, and folk singer Theodore Bikel, with the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, lead a protest march to the Soviet Embassy.

​

1974

• February 13: Despite receiving a Nobel Prize for Literature, the prominent author and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn has his Soviet citizenship revoked and is exiled to West Germany. He and his family eventually leave for America but is permitted to return to the Soviet Union in 1991, after the Soviet Union is dissolved.

• March 24: The Soviet newspaper Pravda warns the US to avoid the emigration issue and accuses “international Zionism” of attempting to disrupt détente and cooperation between the US and the USSR.

• June 27: Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev hold their third summit meeting, in Moscow. The question of the deprivation of rights for Jews is not resolved.

• August: After Nixon’s mid-term resignation as president, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, President Gerald M. Ford meets with Senators Henry Jackson, Abraham Ribicoff, and Jacob Javits to discuss the issue of Soviet Jewry, including the pending Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act.

• August: Silva Zalmanson, a Jewish activist arrested during Operation Wedding, the plot to steal an airplane and fly to Israel, is released from prison. The only woman at the First Leningrad Trial, in December 1970, her release is linked to an international campaign on her behalf.

• December 20: After a strenuous  public campaign, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment is overwhelmingly approved by Congress, making US trade concessions and low-interest loans to any “non-market” country conditional on “respect for the right to emigrate.”

 

1975

• January 3: President Gerald M. Ford signs the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Reform Act into law, ignoring Soviet objections.

• January 14: The Soviet Union repudiates a 1972 trade agreement with the US, in retaliation for the passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.

• March 20: Professor Telford Taylor, a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi leaders, and a group of US lawyers issue a report on the failure of private negotiations to secure the release of the assirei zion (prisoners of Zion) following a visit to Moscow by the legal team on behalf of the prisoners and their families.

• July 29: Dissidents and refuseniks meet with a group of visiting US senators in Moscow, led by Hubert Humphrey. No visible progress is made with Soviet authorities on internal liberalization, on the release of prisoners, or the reunification of families in Israel, and the right to leave.

• August 1: Despite strong opposition in the prestigious Wall Street Journal and among conservative members of Congress concerned with “states’ rights” and possible intervention in Americas internal matters, such as allegations of racism in Southern states, President Gerald Ford signs the Helsinki Final Act (aka as the Helsinki Accords).   Among other things, the Act codifies the concept of “human contacts” and the free movement of people, as well as the reunification of divided families, as basic rights. Leonid Brezhnev signs for the Soviet Union; the document is utilized as a major instrument for pressing the issue of human rights, including the right to leave.

• October 10: Parliamentarians from 12 West European countries form a committee supporting Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

​

1976

• February 17–19: 1,000 delegates from 32 countries attend the Second World Conference of Jewish Communities on Soviet Jewry, in Brussels. The Soviet Union protests to the Belgian government.

• May 12: The first Helsinki Watch Group in the Soviet Union is organized in Moscow. It includes dissidents whose goal is the monitoring of Soviet adherence to the Helsinki Final Act.

• June 3: President Gerald M. Ford signs into law a bill creating a US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (aka the Helsinki Commission), to monitor adherence to the Helsinki Accords. The commission has the active support of American Soviet Jewry organizations and human rights groups.

• July 8: An officially approved memorial is unveiled at Kyiv’s Babyn Yar ravine, omitting any reference to the thousands of Jews killed and buried there by German troops, with help from Ukrainian units.

• October: The First Review Meeting of the Helsinki Final Act is held in Belgrade. The US delegation, led by Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, presses human rights issues, notably family reunification for Soviet Jews. Soviet delegates maintain a hard line on the free movement of people.

 

1977

• March 15: Anatoly Shcharansky, a young Jewish emigration activist and a participant in the human rights movement, is arrested on charges of treason and spying for the US. This is seen by Washington as a challenge to the humanitarian provisions of the Helsinki Final Act and an obstacle to détente.

• Following Shcharansky’s arrest, Congressional Wives for Soviet Jewry is formed in Washington, D.C., to serve as a public advocacy group. The initial co-chairs are Helen Jackson, Jeanette Williams, Paula Blanchard, and Joanne Kemp. The group enlists Theresa Heinz Kerry and Dolores Beilenson and will go on to advocate for Soviet Jewish Prisoners of Zion, aka Prisoners of Conscience.

 

1978  

• June 21: Vladimir Slepak, a prominent Soviet Jewish emigration activist, with strong links to the dissident or democratic movement, is placed on trial. Ida Nudel, who helped care for and advise other refuseniks, is arrested. Both are exiled to Siberia. Nudel is championed by the Washington-based Congressional Wives for Soviet Jewry.

• July 14: Following a lengthy trial, Anatoly Shcharansky, accused of spying for the US, is sentenced to 3 years in prison plus 10 years in a forced labor camp, His trial attracts world attention, and his fate becomes iconic for advocates on behalf of other refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion.

          

1979

• April 27: As a result of behind-the-scenes negotiations, 5 Soviet dissidents and Jewish refuseniks, exchanged by the United States for 2 Soviet spies arrested in the US, arrive in New York City. At the request of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Jewish prisoners, Mark Dymshits and Eduard Kuznetsov, sentenced at the First Leningrad Trial in 1970, become the responsibility of the NCSJ. They appear at the GNYCSJ’s annual Solidarity Sunday before leaving for Israel.

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