Refusenik



Refusenik (отказник, otkaznik, from "отказ", otkaz "refusal") was an unofficial term for individuals, typically but not exclusively Soviet Jews, who were denied permission to emigrate abroad by the authorities of the former 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.

Over time, "refusenik" has entered colloquial English for person who refuses to do something, especially by way of protest.

History
A large number of Soviet Jews applied for exit visas to leave the Soviet Union, especially in the period following the 1967 Six-Day War. While some were allowed to leave, many were refused permission to emigrate, either immediately or after their cases would languish for years in the OVIR (ОВиР, "Отдел Виз и Регистрации", "Otdel Viz i Registratsii", English: Office of Visas and Registration), the MVD (Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs) department responsible for exit visas. In many instances, the reason given for denial was that these persons had been given access, at some point in their careers, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave.

During the Cold War, Soviet Jews were thought to be a security liability or possible traitors. To apply for an exit visa, the applicants (and often their entire families) would have to quit their jobs, which in turn would make them vulnerable to charges of social parasitism, a criminal offense.

Many Jews encountered systematic, institutional antisemitism which blocked their opportunities for advancement. Some government sectors were almost entirely off-limits to Jews. In addition, Soviet restrictions on religious education and expression prevented Jews from engaging in Jewish cultural and religious life. While these restrictions led many Jews to seek emigration, requesting an exit visa was itself seen as an act of betrayal by Soviet authorities. Thus, prospective emigrants requested permission to emigrate at great personal risk, knowing that an official refusal would often be accompanied by dismissal from work and other forms of social ostracism and economic pressure. At the same time, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to significantly increase the emigration quota. In the years 1960 through 1970, only 4,000 people (legally) emigrated from the USSR. In the following decade, the number rose to 250,000, to fall again by 1980.

Incident
In 1970, a group of sixteen refuseniks (two of whom were non-Jewish), organized by dissident Eduard Kuznetsov (who already served a seven-year term in Soviet prisons), plotted to buy all the seats for the local flight Leningrad-Priozersk, under the guise of a trip to a wedding, on a small 12-seater aircraft Antonov An-2 (colloquially known as "кукурузник", kukuruznik), throw out the pilots before takeoff from an intermediate stop, and fly it to Sweden, knowing they faced a huge risk of being captured or shot down. One of the participants, Mark Dymshits, was a former military pilot.

On 15 June 1970, after arriving at Smolnoye (later Rzhevka) Airport near Leningrad, the entire group of the "wedding guests" was arrested by the MVD.

Aftermath
The accused were charged for high treason, punishable by the death sentence under Article 64 of the Penal code of the RSFSR. Mark Dymshits and Eduard Kuznetsov were sentenced to capital punishment but after international protests it was appealed and replaced with 15 years of incarceration, Yosef Mendelevitch and Yuri Fedorov - 15 years, Aleksey Murzhenko - 14, Sylva Zalmanson (Kuznetsov's wife then, and the only woman on trial) - 10, Arieh-Leib Khanokh - 13, Anatoli Altmann - 12, Boris Penson - 10, Israel Zalmanson - 8 years, Wolf Zalmanson (brother of Sylva and Israel) - 10, Mendel Bodnya - 4 years.

The affair was followed by a crackdown on the Jewish and dissident movement throughout the USSR. Activists were arrested, makeshift centers for studying the Hebrew language and Torah were closed, and more trials followed. At the same time, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to significantly increase the emigration quota. In the years 1960 through 1970, only 4,000 people (legally) emigrated from the USSR. In the 1970s alone (right after the First Leningrad Trial) 163,000 Jews were liberated, for a total in subsequent decades of over $1 1/2$ million.

A leading proponent and spokesman of the refusenik movement during the mid-1970s was Natan Sharansky. Sharansky's involvement with the Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group helped to establish the struggle for emigration rights within the greater context of the human rights movement in the USSR. His arrest on charges of espionage and treason and subsequent trial contributed to international support for the refusenik cause.

Refuseniks included Jews who desired to emigrate on religious grounds, Jews seeking to immigrate to Israel for Zionist aspirations, and relatively secular Jews desiring to escape continuous state-sponsored antisemitism. Also, large numbers of other ethnic groups tried to escape persecutions or desired to seek a better life, including Volga Germans attempting to leave for Germany and Armenians wanting to join their diaspora.

The coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, and his policies of glasnost and perestroika, as well as a desire for better relations with the West, led to major changes, and most refuseniks were allowed to emigrate. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, the term "otkaznik" largely passed into history.

Memoirs

 * Natan Sharansky, Fear No Evil. The Classic Memoir of One Man's Triumph over a Police State. ISBN 1-891620-02-9.
 * Chaim Potok, Gates of November: Chronicles of the Slepak Family ISBN 0-394-58867-3

Fiction

 * David Shrayer-Petrov (Шраер-Петров, Давид), Herbert and Nelly (a novel, in Russian, abridged 1986; complete 1992, 2006). A saga of a refusenik family set in Moscow in the 1980s.

Documentary films

 * In 2008 filmmaker Laura Bialis released a documentary film, Refusenik, chronicling the human rights struggle of the Soviet refuseniks.