Samizdat was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because typewriters and printing devices required official registration and permission to access. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship.
The Jackson–Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 is a 1974 provision in United States federal law intended to affect U.S. trade relations with countries with non-market economies that restrict freedom of Jewish emigration and other human rights. The amendment is contained in the Trade Act of 1974 which passed both houses of the United States Congress unanimously, and signed by President Gerald Ford into law, with the adopted amendment, on January 3, 1975. Over time, a number of countries were granted conditional normal trade relations subject to annual review, and a number of countries were liberated from the amendment.
Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and other countries of the Soviet Bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the "refusal" handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities.
Natan Sharansky is a Soviet dissident and later Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who spent nine years in Soviet prisons as a refusenik during the 1970s and 1980s. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018. Sharansky currently serves as chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an American non-partisan organization.
Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ) is a non-governmental organization that reports on the human rights conditions in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, exposing hate crimes and assisting communities in need. UCSJ uses grassroots-based monitoring and advocacy, as well as humanitarian aid, to protect the political and physical safety of Jewish people and other minorities in the region. UCSJ is based in Washington, D.C., and is linked to other organizations such as the Moscow Helsinki Group. It has offices in Russia and Ukraine and has a collegial relationship with human rights groups that were founded by the UCSJ in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Nativ, or officially Lishkat Hakesher or The Liaison Bureau, is an Israeli governmental liaison organization that maintained contact with Jews living in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War and encouraged aliyah, immigration to Israel.
Jacob (Yaakov) Birnbaum was the German-born founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and other human rights organizations. Because the SSSJ, at the time of its founding, in 1964, was the first initiative to address the plight of Soviet Jewry, he is regarded as the father of the Movement to Free Soviet Jewry. His father was Solomon Birnbaum and grandfather Nathan Birnbaum.
Moses Schorr, Polish: Mojżesz Schorr was a rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, assyriologist and orientalist. Schorr was one of the top experts on the history of the Jews in Poland. He was the first Jewish researcher of Polish archives, historical sources, and pinkasim. The president of the 13th district B'nai B'rith Poland, he was a humanist and modern rabbi who ministered the central synagogue of Poland during its last years before the Holocaust.
Yuli-Yoel Edelstein is an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Health from 2020 to 2021. One of the most prominent refuseniks in the Soviet Union, he was the 16th Speaker of the Knesset from 2013 until his resignation on 25 March 2020.
Ida Yakovlevna Nudel was a Soviet-born Israeli refusenik and activist. She was known as the "Guardian Angel" for her efforts to help the "Prisoners of Zion" in the Soviet Union.
In Israel, prisoners of Zion were Jews who were imprisoned or deported for Zionist activity in countries where such activity was prohibited. The former Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, and the former Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Nathan Sharansky, were both prisoners of Zion in the Soviet Union. In 1992 an Israeli law made the status of the prisoner of Zion official, however the status was in use long before.
The Soviet Jewry movement was an international human rights campaign that advocated for the right of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate. The movement's participants were most active in the United States and in the Soviet Union. Those who were denied permission to emigrate were often referred to by the term Refusenik.
The February Revolution in Russia officially ended a centuries-old regime of antisemitism in the Russian Empire, legally abolishing the Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued and furthered by the Soviet state, especially under Joseph Stalin. After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed. This campaign culminated in the so-called Doctors' plot, in which a group of doctors were subjected to a show trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate Stalin. Although repression eased after Stalin's death, persecution of Jews would continue until the late 1980s.
The National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ), formerly the National Council for Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), is an organization in the United States which advocates for the freedoms and rights of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, and Eurasia. Emerging from the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, now with a paid staff, it played an important role in the Soviet Jewry movement, including such landmark legislation as Jackson–Vanik amendment. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it is now an umbrella organization of about 50 national organizations and 300+ local federations, community councils and committees.
Iosif Ziselovich Begun, sometimes spelled Yosef, whose last name is pronounced "bee-goon" and in Russian literally means "runner," is a former Soviet refusenik, prisoner of conscience, human rights activist, author and translator. Over the course of 17 years, Begun was imprisoned three times and spent over eight years in prisons and labor camps as a political prisoner. He was pardoned and freed in 1987 after political pressure from Jewish political organizations and the U.S. Government.
Freedom Sunday for Soviet Jews was the title of a national march and political rally that was held on December 6, 1987 in Washington, D.C. An estimated 200,000 participants gathered on the National Mall, calling for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to extend his policy of Glasnost to Soviet Jews by putting an end to their forced assimilation and allowing their emigration from the Soviet Union. The rally was organized by a broad-based coalition of Jewish organizations. At the time, it was reported to be the "largest Jewish rally ever held in Washington."
Pamela Braun Cohen is an activist in the American Soviet Jewry movement. She began her activist work in the Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and served as the national president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) from 1986-1997.
David Jonathan Waksberg, was a leading activist in the Soviet Jewry Movement during the 1980s and early 1990s. In the 1970s he became involved in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. In the early 1980s he moved to California and began working for the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, first as Assistant Director, and later as executive director. He initiated public and political activities on behalf of Soviet Jewry, supervised research and monitoring of their welfare and coordinated financial, medical and legal aid to Refuseniks and Prisoners of Conscience trapped in the Soviet Union. During his first visit to the USSR in 1982, Waksberg was arrested and detained by the KGB while attempting, along with refusenik Yuri Chernyak, to visit Kiev refusenik Lev Elbert. He organized numerous protest demonstrations and vigils to raise public awareness of the plight of Jews in the USSR. In 1985 Waksberg became National Vice-President of BACSJ's umbrella organization, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Waksberg frequently visited Jewish communities of the Soviet Union and the former Soviet states and coordinated briefings of the American travelers interested in visiting those communities. In 1990 Waksberg took on the role of Director of the Center for Jewish Renewal, newly established by UCSJ. The mission of the CJR was to promote the renewal and development of Jewish life in the USSR and the emigration rights, human rights and resettlement needs of Jews in the Former Soviet Union. The CJR established a network of human rights and emigration bureaus in major cities of the former Soviet Union. In mid-1990s Waksberg was a member of Bay Area Council's Board of Directors and served as Director of Development and Communication of the UCSJ. Since 2007 Waksberg has served as Chief Executive Officer of Jewish LearningWorks.
The history of the Jews in Saint Petersburg dates back to the 18th century and there is still a Jewish community in the city today. In the late 18th century, the annexation of eastern Poland meant millions more Jews were now subjects of the Russian Empire, many of whom flocked to the city. When Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement to attempt to contain the new Jewish population, Jewish settlement was largely restricted. Under Tsar Alexander II upper class Jews fitting certain criteria were allowed to live in the city, and many other Jews who did not fit these categories settled illegally. By the end of his reign in 1881, the Jewish population of the city was 17,253. Unlike other cities in the Russian Empire, Saint Petersburg never had a pogrom, likely due to the amount of police and army presence it had as the capital. The community continued to grow, despite expulsions and persecution, and flourished creatively until the Bolshevik Revolution. Under the Soviet Union, Jewish life was stifled and repressed, and a number of Saint Petersburg Jews took part in the refusenik movement and underground revival of Jewish nationalism. Today, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city remains home to a sizable Jewish community and many Jewish institutions. The Grand Choral Synagogue of Saint Petersburg is the third-largest synagogue in Europe.
Boris David Bogen was a Russian-born Jewish-American educator and social worker.
