| Refusenik | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster | |
| Directed by | Laura Bialis |
Release date |
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Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Languages | English Russian Hebrew |
Refusenik is a 2007 documentary film by Laura Bialis that chronicles the struggle of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. A former refusenik, Natan Sharansky, appears in the film.
The Village Voice calls it an "absorbing portrait of the refusenik movement." [1] The New York Sun says that it is "a thorough and engaging nonfiction account of the plight of Soviet Jews systematically oppressed under communism as they had been under the tsars, and denied the right to emigrate to Israel once the Jewish state was formed in 1948." [2]
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 Eastern bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the "refusal" handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities.
Yosef Mendelevitch, was a refusenik from the former Soviet Union, also known as a "Prisoner of Zion" and now a politically unaffiliated rabbi living in Jerusalem who gained fame for his adherence to Judaism and public attempts to emigrate to Israel at a time when it was against the law in the USSR.
Bricha, also called the Bericha Movement, was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape post–World War II Europe to the British Mandate for Palestine in violation of the White Paper of 1939. It ended when Israel declared independence and annulled the White Paper.
The Dymshits–Kuznetsov aircraft hijacking affair, also known as The First Leningrad Trial or Operation Wedding, was an attempt to take an empty civilian aircraft on 15 June 1970 by a group of 16 Soviet refuseniks in order to escape to the West. Even though the attempt was unsuccessful, it was a notable event in the course of the Cold War because it drew international attention to human rights violations in the Soviet Union and resulted in the temporary loosening of emigration restrictions.
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.
The 1970s Soviet Union aliyah was the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel after the Soviet Union lifted its ban on Jewish refusenik emigration in 1971. More than 150,000 Soviet Jews immigrated during this period, motivated variously by religious or ideological aspiration, economic opportunity, and a desire to escape anti-Semitic discrimination.
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, a prisoner of Zion is a Jew who was imprisoned or deported for Zionist activity in a country where such activity was prohibited. The phrase is taken from words of Rabbi Judah Halevi: "Oh Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your prisoners." 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.
Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual Russian-American author, translator, and literary scholar, and a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College.
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 1917 Russian Revolution overthrew a centuries-old regime of official antisemitism in the Russian Empire, dismantling its Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued 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.
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.
David Shrayer-Petrov is a Russian American novelist, poet, memoirist, translator and medical scientist best known for his novel about refuseniks, Doctor Levitin, his poetry and fiction about Russian Jewish identity and his memoirs about the Soviet literary scene in the late 1950s-1970s.
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 250,000 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."
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.
Alexander Smukler is the chairman of the board of Agroterminal LTD and the chairman of the board of Century 21: Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. He is a former managing partner of Ariel Investment Group, which develops commercial enterprises and civil engineering projects in Russia.
Albert S. Axelrad is an American Reform rabbi, author, educator, and community leader. He fostered the American Jewish counterculture of the 1960s-1980s. He also served as Jewish chaplain at Brandeis University and Executive Director of its B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation from 1965 to 1999.
Soviet Jews in America or American Soviet Jews, are Jews from former Soviet Republics that have emigrated to the United States. The group consists of people that are Jewish by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality, that have been influenced by their collective experiences in the Soviet Union. In the 60s, there were around 2.3 million Jews in the USSR, as ethnicity was recorded in the census. Jews from the Soviet Union consisted mostly of the Ashkenazi sect, and emigrated in waves starting in the 1960s, with over 200,000 leaving in the 1970s. As of 2005, over 500,000 Jews had left Soviet Republics for the United States. American Soviet Jews are often covered by the blanket term, "Russian-speaking Jews", and are a self-selecting group, due to the barriers that people leaving the USSR had to face. Often-times, Soviet immigrants struggle with the abundance of choices that they can make in America, but after learning the language, have been shown to be as well-adjusted as other immigrant groups.
Roselyn "Lynn" Brod Singer was an American activist for the rights of Soviet Jewry 'refuseniks'. As the leader of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry and a member of the board of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry, later known as the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, she brought the issue of Jews trapped in the Soviet Union to international attention through a series of political actions, including sit-ins at the United Nations and the Soviet compound in Glen Cove, as well as protests and marches.
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