OUR RUSSIAN ALLIES

...So their case was known...

...The trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel provoked a vicious cycle of protest and repression...

...after all...

...P: And what were we fighting for...

...His special interest is Soviet affairs, and he has written on this and other subjects in various periodicals, including THE NEW REPUBLIC, COMMENTARY, and THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW...

...As far back as 1948, Golda Meir received a tumultuous welcome at the Moscow Synagogue as Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union...

...In March 1971, over 150 Jews staged a hunger strike for two days in the Reception Room of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet...

...If they do, the democratic movement may well become as important to Russia's Jews as pressures from abroad...

...In it, he urged the government to grant pardons to those convicted at the hijacking trials and suggested that charges be dropped altogether at other trials soon to begin...

...Under the leadership of Pyotr Yakir, an assimilated Jewish historian, the Chronicle became the preeminent tool of the movement...

...Amonth later, the Leningrad trial of Jews who had attempted to hijack a plane to Israel began...

...In reaction, the Party severely rebuked the young poet, terming his politics "crudely adolescent...

...While in general Zionist activists in Russia have avoided direct involvement in questions of internal democracy, thereby alienating some would-be supporters among the democrats, there have been instances where they protested the repression of leading dissenters...

...At the same time, the two movements shared important concerns...

...For the Zionists, by insisting on proper judicial and administrative behavior from the government, on the right to communicate freely and the right to hold opinions contrary to those of the regime, were affirming principles the democrats also upheld...

...An unofficial journal containing information about demonstrations, court proceedings and the condition of prisoners was begun...

...For two years, arrests and protests followed one on the other...

...In 1972, however, he was given a twelve year sentence for "anti-Soviet activities...

...The complex relationship between Joshua Rubenstein is a writer living in Boston...

...To turn our backs on them would be impossible as Jews...

...Out of decency and out of concern for Soviet Jewry, we must now support the efforts of the democratic movement in the Soviet Union...

...This might mean no more than passing on information about trials and other harassments that such organizations receive...

...And as 1970 drew to a close, that support would be increasingly important...

...Instead of ignoring the plight of imprisoned democrats, Jewish organizations should begin to voice support for those democrats whose activity on behalf of the Zionist cause has contributed to their difficulties with the regime...

...Bukovsky had attracted international attention for exposing the regime's penchant for sending political non-conformists to psychiatric hospitals, but the Jews remembered as well his persistent support of their cause...

...Within a year Litvinov himself was arrested, this time for demonstrating in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia...

...Any great country would be proud of these people, but only Russia, continuing her ancient tradition, devours her best sons...

...Between 1963 and 1972, he endured treatments in psychiatric hospitals and many years in a labor camp...

...Brought up as Russians with hardly any knowledge of Jewish history or custom, they still feel themselves to be strangers, to be Russians who are somehow incomplete...

...On one occasion, in January 1972, a group of activists appealed to President Podgorny on behalf of Vladimir Bukovsky, the young Soviet dissenter whose trial had just begun...

...For example, the Moscow Human Rights Committee, begun by Andrei Sakharov and two other physicists, Valery Chalidze and Andrei Tver-dokhlebov...

...The government of Israel discourages activity among its citizens in support of Soviet dissidents, not wanting Israel to become a center for "anti-Soviet" activity...

...Yet no Jewish organization, in America or in Israel, tried to publicize their situation, no doubt because these three Jews had been among the initial supporters of the Action Group for the Defense of Civil Rights...

...The poem, a moving indictment of anti-Semitism, caused a literary and political sensation...

...Instead, when the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky were arrested in 1965, several hundred people were willing to demonstrate on their behalf, turning the cultural opposition of the Khrushchev period into a movement that openly protested the regime's abuse of the Soviet Constitution...

...Meanwhile, several democrats had begun to fear that if the Zionists were successful the departure of many Jewish intellectuals would weaken their own movement...

...Although Chalidze is safe in New York and Sakharov, however much his family is harassed, seems protected by his prestige and the esteem of his colleagues, Bukovsky has no such defenses...

...Unfortunately, outside of Russia, Jewish organizations have not been eager to recognize the assistance these men have given...

...had despaired of a change in Soviet policies and now wished only to leave...

...For though the period of de-Stalinization ended by 1965, the regime could not restrain the hopes of those who had learned to speak openly for the first time...

...Khrushchev himself angrily denounced "Babi Yar," insisting that anti-Semitism had been abolished under Communism...

...Today, some Jewish activists in the democratic movement recognize the ambiguity of their position...

...Thus there are three overwhelming reasons for Jews in the West to support the democratic movement in the Soviet Union...

...Following the war in 1967, however, several factors impelled the Jews to act in a more openly disaffected manner...

...P: Well, there you are...

...Kochubiyevsky: Fascism...

...Between 1968 and 1970, almost two hundred petitions, some signed by as many as ninety people, were sent to government officials and international agencies...

...In every issue of the Chronicle since February 1969, a section concerning the Jewish emigration movement has included reports of petitions and letters, of hunger strikes and trials, attesting not only to the courage of the Zionists but to the solidarity of the democrats with a group of people who...

...His arguments prevailed...

...Yiddish is a dying language...

...Acting on the assumption that the Soviet government is sensitive to world public opinion, the Zionists accepted the strategy of their friends in the democratic movement...

...For the first time, extensive world attention focused on the plight of the Soviet Jews...

...P: Did we win...

...Larisa Bogoraz was banished for four years to a small town far from Moscow after demonstrating in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia...

...Most received their visas by the end of the month...

...During this period Valery Chalidze, a non-Jew of Polish-Georgian origins, produced one of the most significant expressions of support for the Zionist movement...

...Within a week, the death penalties were reduced by a higher court...

...By exposing the character of the proceedings, the democratic movement offered the Jews a means of protesting their condition...

...Between 1966 and 1968 nearly a third of the activists who protested the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial and other acts of repression were Jewish...

...If defended successfully by the Zionists, these principles would provide important historical and psychological precedents...

...The democrats helped to provide maximum publicity...

...But the Six Day War and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which caused profound despair over the possibility of internal Soviet reform, caused many Jews to abandon the democratic effort, to identify with the Jewish struggle for emigration and with a Jewish heritage they scarcely knew...

...In any case, life for Soviet Jews will not become any easier...

...Then in the fall of 1973, during the harrowing campaign against Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov that was conducted in the Soviet press, thirty-five leaders of the emigration movement sent a letter of solidarity to Sakharov...

...While the Zionists have pursued one particular demand—the right to leave — they have received profound inspiration and support from the liberal Soviet intellectuals who are struggling for internal reform...

...But it was too late...

...Out of decency and out of concern for Soviet Jewry, we must now support the efforts of the democratic movement in the Soviet Union...

...By protesting on behalf of Bukovsky and Sakharov, the Zionists recognized their obligation to men who had done so much for their struggle...

...but we cannot be indifferent to Russia, her people, and her culture...

...And just this past spring Vitaly Rubin, Vladimir Slepak, and Alexander Lunts urged support for Andrei Tverdokhlebov, a founder of the Moscow Human Rights Committee and a member of the Moscow chapter of Amnesty International...

...Near the end of 1969, the Zionists fashioned their own unofficial newspaper, Iskhod (Exodus), whose editor was a non-Jew named Viktor Fedoseyev...

...In their letter they protested the closed nature of his trial and reminded the authorities that for Jews "who want to go to Israel, it is far from being a matter of indifference that there is injustice in any corner of the globe, including the U.S.S.R...

...Although five Russian Zionists protested the trial, risking further delays in obtaining visas, Jewish organizations in the West chose to remain silent...

...At the same time, Mikhail Zand, a leading scholar of oriental languages, held a fifteen day hunger strike in jail to protest his arrest...

...Was it freedom...

...Only two thousand Jews had left the Soviet Union for Israel while many others were in prison or endured severe harassment...

...Specifically, the Jews' policy of noninvolvement struck some democrats as a selfish, even chauvinist, attitude, especially at a time when the liberals offered the Zionists so much support...

...But the Zionists also developed tactics that set them off from the democratic movement...

...The dam had finally broken...

...K: Yes...

...Obviously, the Israelis feel that such activity might harm the cause of Soviet Jews, making it even harder for them to emigrate...

...The party, however, refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of Stalin's rule...

...When Kuznet-sov and Dymshits received the death sentence, Bukovsky quickly relayed the information to Western journalists...

...For, along with Chalidze, who had offered legal advice to Zionists on innumerable occasions, Bukovsky and Sakharov were the non-Jews among the democrats who most actively helped the Zionist cause...

...only the culture and language of Russia "absorb her senses...

...Hebrew books are unavailable...

...Petitions and letters were sent to international agencies and to foreign newspapers, protesting Soviet repression...

...And by the sixth issue, on February World Wid* Photo 28...

...On May 20, 1971, he sent a letter to the Supreme Soviet which Sakharov and Tverdokhlebov, his colleagues on the Moscow Human Rights Committee, also signed...

...Even in Moscow thousands of young Jews gathered outside the synagogue on the eve of Simchat Torah...

...1969, the Chronicle began to describe a new phenomenon: the upsurge of Jewish national expression in cities across Russia...

...During the next year, 14,000 Soviet Jews would leave for Israel...

...As it happened, the harassment of these Jews from Kharkov — Vladimir Ponomaryov, Arkady Levin and Vladimir Nedobora — had been reported in issues of the Chronicle beginning in 1969...

...In time, the Zionists even began to employ civil disobedience, a tactic that contradicted the UNCENSORED RUSSIA (American Heritage Pr.i>, 19721 philosophy of the democratic movement...

...Reliable information was passed to foreign journalists exposing judicial abuses...

...K: Yes...

...He also made a remarkable admission to the authorities, noting that the Jews "have only one aim — to go to Israel, and the principle of non-interference (i.e., in internal Soviet affairs) is so carefully observed by them that . . . (they...

...And in the capitals of the Baltic states, in Riga and Vilna, many Jews still spoke Yiddish and Hebrew...

...the Chronicle of Current Events began describing the persecution of a Jew who had requested a visa to Israel...

...Several days later, ten important Jewish scientists who had been refused visas for Israel, among them Benyamin Levich, Mark Azbel, and Alexander Lunts, distributed an open letter, proclaiming: We decided to leave Russia because we feel that our place is not here...

...Others, like Vladimir Levin, a professor of Russian literature, have denounced both assimilation and hopes for reform of Soviet society, urging Jews in the democratic movement "to face their ultimate reality...

...So discrimination increases and Jews, in reaction, remember who they are...

...under the heading "The Case of Boris Kochubiyevsky...

...In Europe, America, and Israel, demonstrators urged clemency for the defendants, governments intervened officially on their behalf, even several western Communist parties objected to the verdicts...

...After Vladimir Bukovsky was convicted for demonstrating against several arrests, Pavel Litvinov lost his university position for distributing Bukovsky's defiant final statement to the court...

...Tverdokhlebov was arrested in April when the regime decided to suppress the Amnesty group, and these Jewish activists, who have long awaited visas, nonetheless did not allow his arrest to pass unnoticed...

...The democratic movement now developed its strategy...

...Within three months, he, too, would leave for Israel...

...For decades, Jews have been denied their own cultural institutions...

...Bukovsky arranged for English translations of the trial's major exchanges and of the defendants' final statements...

...then, we have freedom...

...In 1961, when Yevtushenko published his poem "Babi Yar," about the massacre of the Jews of Kiev, he directly challenged the regime on the issue of anti-Semitism...

...This crucial factor in the Zionists' success has been rarely acknowledged...

...OUR RUSSIAN ALLIES Joshua Rubenstein During the last five years over a hundred thousand Jews have left the Soviet Union for Israel, making the Zionist movement the most successful campaign of dissent in Soviet history...

...Second, Jews especially should be grateful to the democratic movement for its support of the Zionist struggle...

...In the United States, the same Jewish organizations which arrange demonstrations to bring the plight of Russian Jews to the attention of the American public and American politicians, have steadfastly refused to lend support to those Russian liberals who have befriended the Jews, and who now find themselves isolated or even imprisoned...

...And third, the regime intensified its long-standing policy of discrimination against Jews, limiting their admission to universities and curtailing their opportunities to advance in certain professions...

...By the end of that year the Zionist movement seemed to be faltering...

...In 1972 and again in 1973, over 30,000 would leave...

...in 1970, produced detailed, legal analyses of judicial and extra-judicial proceedings, reflecting their commitment to legal guarantees as the fundamental basis for reform of Soviet society...

...Finally, Chalidze was moved to offer a general defense of the emigration movement and of Zionism itself in the face of unrelenting Soviet pressure...

...The boisterous acclaim Yevtushenko had received for "Babi Yar" can be seen now as foreshadowing the open defiance of the regime by both the democrats and the Zionists by the end of the 1960's...

...In 1968...

...But during his infrequent periods of non-imprisonment, he continued to play a prominent role in the democratic movement and continued to support the Zionist cause...

...are sometimes even accused of egotism by those who are concerned with the defense of human rights in our country...

...But even as the regime enforces assimilation it does not allow a Jew to forget that he is a stranger, that he cannot be trusted...

...In fact, they have been virtually silent about the plight of the democrats...

...Unfortunately, Jews in the West have been reluctant to acknowledge how crucial this support was for the development of the emigration movement...

...At a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, Khrushchev initiated a controlled discussion of Stalin's abuses of power...

...the Soviet state had capitulated...

...But while she has been a key figure in the democratic movement, she has written in her essay "Do I Belong to the Jewish People...

...Moreover, if today, among the various dissident groups, only the Zionists have achieved more than token success, they must not imagine that the struggle is nearly over...

...In addition, there were moments when extreme Zionist activists resented the help they were receiving from non-Jews...

...Now both the Zionists and the democrats increased their activity...

...Still, if these arguments are not enough and if we continue to refuse to help the democratic movement out of fear that such support may jeopardize the Jews in Russia, then we cannot disregard the third reason: that without allies in a democratic movement, it may be impossible for Soviet Jews to sustain any struggle for their own national dignity, since the Soviet regime can be expected to treat the Jews more harshly than others...

...First, the desire to live in Israel, especially among religious Jews in Georgia and the Baltic region, became overwhelming...

...Regardless of how many Jews eventually emigrate, the vast majority of Russia's three million Jews will remain, either because they prefer to stay or because the government prefers to keep them...

...Though the two movements differed over tactics and over their commitment to the future of Soviet society, the democrats continued to lend the Zionists crucial support...

...Their appeals were more inflammatory than the appeals of the democrats...

...of her lack of place in Russian society, of her inability to identify with the Russian people, even though In effect, the Zionists deliberately provoked the authorities while the democrats challenged the government to obey its own laws...

...At poetry readings, audiences recited the stanzas in unison, forcing Yevtushenko to repeat it again and again...

...Soviet Zionists and Soviet democrats has its origins in events that occurred after the death of Joseph Stalin...

...Perhaps they feared, with the best of intentions, that to protest Bukovsky's trial would compromise their work for Zionist prisoners, making them subject to the usual charge of "anti-Soviet slander.'' Friends, however, deserve a less timid response...

...After a decade of struggle against censorship, the liberal intellectuals made the connection between civil rights and intellectual freedom...

...For several issues the Chronicle provided details of his case, including this remarkable exchange between the prosecutor and the defendant regarding World War II: Prosecutor: You know what we were fighting against...

...Despite the talent and energy Fedoseyev gave to the emigration movement, there was criticism from some Zionists concerning his involvement in their struggle...

...In December 1971, for example, when Boris Kochubiyevsky arrived in Israel, he reported that three Jews from Kharkov in the Ukraine had been convicted and given three year sentences for sending letters to the UN protesting his trial and the trial of other Zionists seeking to emigrate...

...In Israel, several Jews, among them Roman Rutman and Mikhail Zand, continue to protest the persecution of their friends in Russia...

...Of greater importance, writers like Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Alexander Solzhenitsyn insisted on furthering the project Khrushchev had begun — to confront honestly the crimes of Stalin...

...Although the Human Rights Committee worked closely with the Zionists, there were, as Chalidze acknowledged in his letter, severe resentments on the part of some democrats against the Jewish struggle...

...Inside the Soviet Union, the Zionists have deliberately avoided involvement in the democratic movement, while Jewish organizations in the West refuse to lend even moral support to those democrats who have been helpful to the Zionist cause...

...But Vladimir Bukovsky insisted that the Jewish struggle for national dignity was an integral part of the struggle for human freedom and that the right to emigrate was a fundamental human right...

...Even two years later, when Khrushchev upbraided a conference of writers and artists, "Babi Yar" was the focus of his renewed devotion to censorship...

...In effect, the Zionists deliberately provoked the authorities while the democrats challenged the government to obey its own laws...

...In the Georgian Soviet Republic a large community of Jews continued to follow traditional customs...

...Second, the Soviet government reinforced this desire to leave by sponsoring a scurrilous anti-Zionist campaign whose demented propaganda in the official press included caricatures similar to those that appeared in Julius Streicher's Nazi paper Der Sturmer...

...Today the list of scientists waiting for visas to Israel, despite the privileges they formerly enjoyed, eon-firms the self-defeating nature of the regime's assimilationist policy...

...Although he left for Israel he acknowledges wtth much gratitude that ' 'our national movement could not and would not have existed without the democratic movement...

...Gradually, the party came to allow frank discussion of the labor camps and numerous episodes of repression, which in turn instilled a critical spirit into the country's cultural life...

...The first issue of the Chronicle of Current Events, the journal of the democratic movement, appeared on April 30, 1968...

...If there were an enemy who hated everything Russian and who would like to destroy everything that is beautiful about Russia, he would begin with Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov...

...And though the right to emigrate will remain a paramount demand, the vast majority left behind will—hopefully—wish to defend their rights as Jews and as citizens...

...This in particular disturbed the liberal intellectuals...

...Acting as supporters of the human rights movement and not as Zionists, they still recognized the right to emigrate as part of the common struggle for human dignity...

...Zand, in particular, takes exception to this way of thinking...

...First, anyone struggling to attain elementary human rights deserves the support of free people everywhere...

...In fact, many Jews took part in both movements...