Resisting in Russia-A Refusnick's Account
Lazaris, Vladimir
RESISTING IN RUSSIA- VLADIMIR A REFUSNKIfS ACCOUNT LAZARB Two from the Crowd I last saw Eric and Masha about a year and a half ago. They live in Moscow and both are 30 years old. They married...
...Slepak shouted out and seized his scalded head, and from below the crowd roared with approval: "Fine...
...Soon a tractor was driven next to the house in order to mute Ida Nudel's voice by the noise of the motor...
...When speaking of our times, we are all prosecutors...
...Why don't you go naked in the street...
...Some of the militiamen were already breaking down the door of the room, while others tried to reach the poster by hooks from neighboring windows, to tear it off...
...What would other Jews think...
...Photographs courtesy of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry to do something for those people who won't do anything for you...
...To be more exact, it is not even a portrait, but a photograph reproduced on tracing paper...
...And one advantage of their intimacy with dissidents is the possibility of obtaining books "from there": that is, published and brought from the West...
...They fixed to the balcony a poster on which was written in large uneven letters: "LET US JOIN OUR SON IN ISRAEL...
...Fifteen seconds—everything is over...
...They took him to the KGB and kept him several days— then they let him go...
...Dead-end ahead...
...Eric jokes: "What is your Switzerland to us, old man, when we travel to Dombai every year...
...for they were right in the thick of things and personally acquainted with the participants in the course of events...
...Nobody was arrested, and soon many of them received permission to leave...
...Of course, Jews will not get to the top of the heap, and they are reconciled to that...
...and their children or grandchildren will return to Russia only as tourists and perhaps will not even speak Russian...
...They nod to the fellows with the cameras...
...And all build their little worlds, as fragile as butterfly wings...
...In time Jewish demonstrations acquired certain standard characteristics, in some ways quite different from those of the democrats...
...another one is waiting for the trolleybus...
...and "LET US GO OR PUT US INTO OUR GRAVES...
...But to beat one's head against an iron wall isn't stupid...
...And if you did nothing, and then were not permitted to emigrate, you might feel that you had failed because you just sat quietly...
...The militiaman approached the building of the Chief Staff and returned with one of the cars that was always parked there, ready to go...
...And they all summoned the people to change, but who followed them...
...And to demand new synagogues is not stupid...
...When, in their presence, the dissidents begin to talk about the "heroism, self-sacrifice, and devotion to an idea" of people known to them, Masha knits her brow slightly and says: "They are working for their cause every day and for them it is not a sacrifice or a feat, but work...
...They did not even write to their friend Nataliya after she moved to Paris...
...Ten seconds—the men with the cameras are feverishly clicking off shots, once, twice, three times...
...Later, in the seventies, with the start of the mass emigration, the demonstrations of the Jewish activists began...
...They teach their two little girls independence, enthusiastically think up all sorts of games for them and rejoice in life...
...Each demonstrator will be taken to the militia or to the sobering-up station, then interrogated...
...One of the neighbors, citizen Valiayev V.M., wrote in his testimony: "The woman stood on the balcony and yelled something, but I heard only fragments of sentences, but felt that she was very displeased with something...
...They are not considered to be as dangerous as the democrats' calls for a change of system and a changed way-of-life in the Soviet Union...
...There is nobody like that____ Their demonstration, on June 1, 1978, was a true spectacle...
...They included Moscow intellectuals, bearded "Platidesiatniks" (the Pentacostal sect), and Crimea Tatars...
...And piquant...
...Eric and Masha like to test the erudition of their acquaintances: They will throw out some quotation or a line of poetry and then, chuckling, look at their guest and ask, "Where is that from...
...And if people like us won't do it, then how can one speak of others...
...When Natasha left I asked her repeatedly, 'Why, why are you doing this...
...The Tatars, at the beginning of the seventies, conducted a demonstration that was entirely novel, erecting a tent city in the region of Simpheropol, near the Maryino village, thus declaring their rights to the Crimean soil...
...Copyright © 1979 Vladimir Lazaris...
...They live a quiet and balanced life: They raise their children, do their work with interest and passion, smoke a good deal and in the evenings play "preference" with friends for small stakes...
...Snow begins to fall...
...All participants in this demonstration insisted on permission to leave for Israel and official recognition of Soviet Jews' rights to emigrate...
...Once Eric decided to give Masha a birthday present and got hold of a pocket Bible for a large sum of money on the black market...
...Eric and Masha did not find an answer to this question but assured one another that "nowadays people are not killed so simply...
...But the solitary people standing with posters on the streets of Soviet cities seem like madmen in the eyes of both the crowd and the authorities...
...during the breaks Eric plays chess with friends...
...But who said that they are the ones in the cell...
...They are in love with their city, and Moscow for them is that Motherland, that Fatherland, of which Okudzhava and other bards sing...
...In the Soviet Union, both the democrats and the Jews have organized peaceful demonstrations...
...For Voice of America, everybody is a hero and a fighter...
...by plunging headlong...
...Natasha is an honest person and, if she speaks this way, many must think so...
...Standing on her balcony, she demanded in a loud voice that she should be let out to join her family in Israel...
...The duration of any demonstration in the Soviet Union is calculated in seconds, at best in minutes, because the authorities, as a rule, are ready for them and know in advance not only their place and time, but also the names of the demonstrators themselves...
...Does the society respond to it seriously or does it merely consider it desperate and senseless bravado...
...When I met him a few days later, I couldn't help but ask him: 'Why did you do this?' He responded: 'So that mother should believe me...
...When their age permitted they left the Komsomol and they have an indifferent attitude toward all social measures...
...One second more, and simultaneously all five dart up the wide steps to the very top...
...As a result of the demonstration, Slepak was sentenced to five years of exile for "malicious hooliganism," and his wife received a suspended sentence...
...If it's possible to get out of a subbotnik, they get out of it, if it's not possible they participate...
...I myself, after the Nashpits and Tsitlonak trial, did not go to demonstrations for a long time, because, to be honest, I was somewhat frightened...
...On June 1, 1978, Ida Nudel staged a demonstration in her own house...
...Under the conditions in the Soviet Union, what do you demonstrate to anyone...
...In a sense, the authorities already know quite well what can be expected from the Jews...
...In January, 1967, there was a demonstration in defense of Ginzburg and Galanskov...
...On the same day as Nudel's demonstration, a group of ten Moscow "Refusenik" women staged a demonstration in an apartment...
...One minute...
...Western newsmen are usually informed of the demonstrations by the demonstrators themselves a few days in advance, so that they should not be occupied with something else on the day in question...
...they idolize Tsvetayeva and Mandelstam (placing their photographs behind the glass of their bookshelves) and some time ago they began reading samizdat (the underground press) apprehensively but avidly...
...There are among them riff-raff, cowards, drunkards, and simply fools...
...One samiz-dat poet has written maliciously and accurately: / love table conversations Which have long enriched our lives...
...Sounds of shock...
...I don't speak of those who have been put in prison: That's a fact we're forced to accept...
...Finding himself in such a situation, the "professional's" first priority will be a good article for his editor (not for the "dissidents" he is acquainted with, who will come to him again on the following day regardless, looking for his assistance and participation...
...Just as pepper in one's food is piquant...
...But this game is not so strange as it is dispiriting: it is depressing, not because of the danger, and the physical fear, not because of the danger of being sentenced to a camp-term (although this is considered), but because one senses, always, that one is marching into a cul-de-sac...
...At the kitchen table they overthrow the regime and change the state system, reshape the present and compose the future...
...When speaking of our unpaid prostitution, we are all advocates...
...This long drawn-out bravado has already molded their character and weltanschaung...
...Now they are giving us five years of exile and it is necessary to think it over first...
...Work—home—work . . . home— work—home...
...Solzh" is Solzhenitsyn, a pencil portrait of whom hangs in their anteroom...
...Leaders of the democrats took part in them (Sakharov himself took part in several demonstrations and once made a speech near the Pushkin memorial in Moscow, on Constitution Day...
...In 1977, after five years of separation from his wife and son, and after numerous refusals of permission to emigrate, together with searches, interrogations and arrests, Vladimir Lazaris emigrated to Israel...
...Five seconds—they stand side to side and over their heads the bold, crooked words scream on the white background: "VISAS TO ISRAEL...
...And beyond that, nothing—or another dead-end...
...So the leaders of the Jewish national movement were reluctant to subject people to open force...
...They are both domestic family people...
...Dangerous: Both for the democrats and for the Jews, the loss of every person was the loss of a link in the chain...
...It also doesn't bother the bookkeeping department which pays me—I don't receive more than the others...
...They do know what happened...
...That is, those same people who worked out the ideological foundations of the protest and who maintained contacts with the West raised their voices in public...
...Passers-by are stunned...
...The so-called "dissidents" were a rather motley crew...
...They have never once traveled abroad and they are not straining on the leash to do so...
...The democrats were the first to use the street demonstration...
...We were with Natasha from the very beginning, but we never laid our lives on the line and won't...
...Oh, yes...
...On the mini-maps of Moscow, many American Jews marked two locations: the Moscow Synagogue and the "Slepak house...
...But can a battle be won only with a battering-ram...
...After a fierce storming of the apartment by militiamen, the posters were torn up, the demonstrators were beaten—but allowed to go home...
...Only a torn piece of poster lies on a step...
...Such liberalism on the part of the authorities prompts one to conclude that the Jewish demonstrations are regarded as a temporary phenomenon...
...And then a new reaction sets in...
...As for the correspondents from Reuters, they inspect their raped cameras and sadly return to their car...
...And it was terrible to think that this had happened in their country, in their city, and everyone had been silent...
...In addition, the "professionals" are accustomed to exchanging information with each other...
...She fixed a large poster to the glass pane of her balcony door, bearing the inscription: "KGB, GIVE ME A VISA TO ISRAEL...
...Everything is known...
...They completed a renowned mathematics school and then the Mechanics-Mathematics Faculty of the Moscow University...
...There is a devilish logic in this and as long as it exists, Russia will be what it is...
...For the same reason, they don't give their typewriter to acquaintances: 'If you type something wrong on it, we have to answer for it...
...but more likely they will imprison him...
...In cases of emergency there existed for such news a special telephone code which they themselves invented: The KGB was called "Galina Borisovna," a search was referred to as "tidying up" and an interrogation, "a party...
...Conversations in their apartment were carried on openly enough...
...To imprison them, or let them go...
...Masha herself is astonished at this...
...Everything dear to you is here, and we are staying here...
...To prove one's own decisiveness to oneself and to one's dear ones...
...they choke on words and hypnotize one another with them...
...To their credit, Eric and Masha, although frightened, continued to visit them until all hours and said that new times were approaching...
...Once they laughed at one of the immortal jokes of the late Polish satirist Jerzy Letz: "You'll break the wall with your head, but what will you do in the next cell...
...I'm so tired of everything that I want only one thing, that nobody should harass me, torment me or summon me, and that I should live by myself...
...It is difficult to say if they love one another: They have been together too long and know each other too well, down to the smallest details...
...They don't discuss politics at work and they don't express their real opinion...
...Not everyone is permitted in...
...But anyone who expects action or activity from them after any of these books is naive...
...Every time the conversation turns to Jews or dissidents who have left, Eric asks: "Well, why should we leave...
...A stop watch has been set: three seconds— they pull handmade posters from their pockets...
...Like all young people, they needed ideals and faith in those ideals...
...or "Andrushka is strong...
...I think five years of exile is too high a price to pay for a demonstration...
...The cameras are snatched from their hands, the film ripped out, and the men pushed aside...
...Home— work—home...
...The democrats' demonstrations (with the exception of the traditional "Minute of Silence" on December 5) have become less frequent and have almost ceased...
...on the fifth of December, 1965, in defense of Daniel and Sinyavsky...
...They were a cut above the gray mass which rode with them in the autobus and stood in line in the store...
...It was obvious to them that the Soviet regime should be met with a "frontal attack...
...But to call for the Czar-father is not stupid...
...Though they can always put us in prison, they can't stop the noise...
...But there, perhaps, it will work out...
...They refer to all the well-known dissidents by diminutive names, which imparts an intimate and knowledgeable character to their conversation: "I remember, Garik said...
...As I have said, they read a great deal (true enough, only in Russian, because they don't know foreign languages...
...You demonstrate that you are, at least, doing something: That you do not agree with their refusal to permit emigration...
...In company they laugh at one another and Masha often calls her husband by his family name as if to be aloof from him and to return to the sweet times of their courtship...
...The library is open, but two young black-bearded fellows, who saunter up to the steps with their hands in their pockets, don't go in...
...Had they arrested me and put me in prison, perhaps she would understand that I really mean this ...!'" The Soviet authorities, subjected to "frontal attacks," manifested as-'stounding patience...
...We go to our work and they to theirs...
...I shall never forget an elderly man with a tired face and insane eyes who, passing the CC of the CPSU building, suddenly opened his coat and the passers-by saw a poster that was pinned to his breast: "BREZHNEV, DO NOT KILL MY SON...
...All the same, they were rather original to hang it up at all...
...In Washington, Paris, London, and Rome, scores of the most varied demonstrations are held daily, from the extreme left to the extreme right...
...They imprisoned the Jewish demonstrators for a maximum of 15 days—with the exception of M. Nashpits and V. Tsitlonak, who were sentenced in March of 1975 to five years of exile...
...or "Solzh writes forcefully...
...The discontented, who before had trusted only friends and sheets of paper, now poured out in the streets and squares...
...For one thing, those who did demonstrate were, as a rule, young people who preferred this form of protest to all others...
...Then they slowly sip the fragrant drink from the ancient little cups which belonged to Masha's grandmother, and again they talk and talk...
...You want Left: Jewish activists Col...
...Just imagine, it's such a pity," she laughs, "every time I meet a good man, it turns out he's a Jew...
...They have recovered and calmed down from the fever of the sixties and have entered their well-trodden path...
...Eric always supports Masha: "It is not necessary to pin labels on them...
...The demonstration of August 25, 1968 was not simply dispersed, but crushed, and Victor Fainberg was incarcerated for many years in a mental hospital...
...It was always important for them to find out first hand whose apartment was searched, who was summoned to an interrogation and who had written what...
...They speak about it selflessly and, if one of their colleagues at work visits them, they can pass the hours discussing their special problems, ideas, and solutions...
...Oh, that's stupid...
...One such episode was described by Viktor Boguslavsky, who was sentenced at the Second Leningrad Trial in 1971 to three years in the camps: "In Autumn of 1969, the timid and shy Zhora A. went out quietly and unhurriedly to the Dvortsovay Square in Leningrad, came up to a militiaman who stood alone in the middle of the deserted square and unhurriedly and awkwardly unfolded a homemade small poster with the inscription: 'I WANT TO GO TO ISRAEL.' The militiaman looked at the small poster, looked at Zhora, and looked around—the square was still empty...
...The character of demonstrations is determined not only by the organization and preparation of their participants, but also by the degree of remoteness from Moscow (with its Western embassies, journalists, and tourists...
...they never signed petitions, did not keep up acquaintances with foreigners and did not correspond abroad...
...And, on the other hand, I would never go to a demonstration with Natasha...
...home—work— home, like three steps in a prison cell, those steps in any direction...
...then the passers-by began to raise their heads, and a frightened militiaman ran to a telephone...
...They often run off to the Conservatory (after depositing the children with Masha's mother) and still speak with sadness of Barshai's departure: "We won't have a chamber orchestra anymore...
...But when authorities decide to rise to a new level, instead of 15 days they produce other, longer terms...
...How They Go On a Demonstration A frosty Moscow morning...
...At that moment a stocky man stuck his arms out the window above the Slepak balcony and spilled a half-pail of boiling water on them...
...We have grown attached here and I won't leave here for anywhere, period...
...To their dissident friends Eric and Masha relate differently...
...The Komsomol (the Communist Party youth organization) was a boring formality for them, and an elite mathematics school inculcated in them definite ways of thinking: To seek out the strict logic in any social relations and systems, and not to take any watchwords or slogans seriously...
...Voice of America does not speak about this, not because it doesn't want to, but because it doesn't know...
...But for all those who live in this huge city, nothing, nothing at all happened on that day...
...Secret informers...
...But loads of people have left Russia...
...The demonstrators themselves were permitted to go home...
...Chance passers-by from the left and two militia men from the right...
...The first demonstrations—dissident as well as Jewish—were like a battering-ram...
...Don't be idiots, men, what kind of pogroms can there be in Moscow...
...But if one of the workers begins to talk about what "that Sakharov said yesterday," Eric looks at Masha and mumbles something under his breath...
...Under the joyful cries of the neighbors who gathered around, the militiamen broke into her apartment through the balcony next door and arrested her for "malicious hooliganism...
...Among the organizers of this first Jewish political demonstration was Yakov Kazakov, a young biology student, expelled from Moscow University after his application for an exit visa to Israel...
...A few days later the same women's group went to Trubnaya Square and even to the Red Square, where they managed to stand quietly and not be noticed for seven minutes (breaking the record of all demonstrations), holding posters demanding "VISAS TO ISRAEL...
...Outside of Moscow, demonstrations are rapidly and effectively suppressed, and this deprives the demonstrators of any faith in their strength or effectiveness...
...Yes, they read them and they agree that in the Union there is much that is rotten and that "things will get worse," but they themselves know how to live only there and only as they are living...
...Again there is nobody on the steps...
...two broad-shouldered men exchange a few words, lazily...
...Even the harshest sentences send the participants in the Jewish demonstrations to exile, not to prison...
...Do you remember the tomcat who wandered on his own...
...In return for giving information regarding the place and the time of a demonstration, they can obtain an interview with a Minister,"newsworthy information about an unpublished speech by Brezhnev, or be awarded a very interesting trip to the Far East...
...I think that they did this hoping . . . after all nobody wants to sit in a camp, or a prison, or to be exiled...
...They are happy that during their life they have been able to create their own little world, built with the help of their parents, in the form of a separate three-room cooperative apartment...
...Eric and Masha are very nice hospitable people...
...They will put him in prison for 15 days, or let him go home...
...Eric and Masha are sociable people and have many acquaintances and by a strange coincidence the majority of them are Jews...
...Their inactivity, apathy, and consumers' existence force them to seek some justification for themselves, and all their energy is exhausted in conversations...
...The demonstration as a form of protest is popular throughout the world...
...And another two men, dressed like foreigners, cameras hanging around their necks, don't go in either...
...In the end, the demonstrators got the personal word of the Chairman of the Presidium that a government commission would be formed to evaluate emigration practices...
...You try to achieve rights for those who don't need them and who don't understand at all what this thing called 'human rights' is...
...Salesgirls ran out of shops, passengers ran out of trolleybuses...
...This was more like "an attack from the rear...
...In what way are they not archetypical Muscovites...
...The next house is the Moscow Municipal Council and across the way, just a little bit to the side, is the statue of Yuri Dolgoruky, who points with his "long hand" straight to the Slepak house...
...They value their peace of mind and their well-organized existence...
...Eric and Masha are accustomed to reading a great deal, and, together with their generation, they have altered their tastes and affections from Hemingway to Kharms, from Veresayev to Bunin...
...In the evenings, they went to hear "new verses" at the Mayakovsky monument of the Poli-technic Museum...
...this was not 1937...
...One can define it in one word—apathy...
...Fun-loving Masha once wrote some rather bad verses and, after having taken a drink, likes to read them aloud without saying that they are hers...
...They read these samizdat books, duplicated on a typewriter in barely legible copies, seated around a table and passing the pages around the circle as they were read...
...Weeks, months, years pass after these conversations . . . and so they live, 30-year-old Eric and Masha, seeing their friends off abroad and returning to their life— to that life which they have chosen for themselves...
...a tough-looking guy lights a cigarette...
...The attack, one might say, becomes merely a tug-of-war with the battering-ram: at one end the dissidents, at the other end the authorities...
...Amid the shouts and general uproar, the doors were broken down and the Slepaks were dragged off the balcony and pulled downstairs...
...In the mid-sixties, the time of political anecdotes gave way to the time of political demonstrations, and friend Sanya unexpectedly turned into the son of a condemned writer, while friend Nataliya almost ended up in a psychiatric hospital for participation in a demonstration...
...they drive you around like an animal, and even acquaintances begin to fear you...
...LET US GO TO ISRAEL...
...Vladimir Lazaris is a lawyer, and the former editor of the Samizdal (underground} magazine Jews in the USSR...
...They are not even fellow travelers...
...surrounding the demonstrators are policemen on foot or on horseback, demonstrating at once the greatness of Western democracy and their own indifference toward the protesters...
...But all the Jewish demonstrations were held in Moscow and up to 1975 they were quite frequent...
...They have become accustomed to their regulated life and are absorbed in trivialities and details: They never ponder the sense or the character of what the dissidents are doing and they don't seek a place among them...
...Photograph relayed by Shomer Achi Anochi, the Israeli Movement for Saviety Jewry...
...But they don't keep Solzhenitsyn's books at home, because "of course, they will come and put us in prison...
...But sometimes a Jew demonstrated not so much to measure himself against the authorities, but to test his own strength...
...They don't deny their own Jewishness, but they don't like to discuss it, either...
...Among people glutted with Pravda, or, at best, with the Voice of America, they were special...
...This "wall Solzhenitzyn" does not threaten them—these are not the times for that...
...Why was everyone silent...
...And where should we go...
...And what should be done once the wall is broken...
...One of their friends draws Kafkaesque hallucinations, one writes "for the drawer," one has immersed himself in the study of Khlebnikov's prophesies...
...This was due, first and foremost, to the location of their house: in the very center of Moscow, on the crowded Gorky Street...
...They like to swear in colorful language, smiling slightly at the same time...
...Everyone who joins a demonstration knows that first there will be an arrest, a twisting of arms...
...Others, the majority, disliked the "frontal attack" theory and believed in systematic and professional work for awakening of a national consciousness in Soviet Jewry (the study of Hebrew, the publication of literary magazines, the organization of seminars...
...From their school days they have had friends with whom they could talk about everything under the sun, including their own country...
...They resemble one another: small, vivacious, rumpled...
...a knock in the face, an elbow in a stomach, arms twisted...
...Masha is not a bad dressmaker and Eric builds all kinds of things for the house...
...moment is pleased to print here an exerpt from Mr...
...Interwoven bodies rush down the steps toward the waiting van...
...He is a journalist, poet, translator, lecturer, and was— before he left Russia—one of the leaders of the Jewish national movement...
...Like many of the capital's ordinary intelligentsia, they can mention God in vain...
...A few days later she was tried and sentenced to four years of exile...
...Instead of sending them to a mental hospital or to a prison, it is enough to give them a knock in the teeth...
...This talking is the limit of their civic self-consciousness and as long as the fashion for democracy lasts they expatiate on it and this sweetens their coffee...
...However, time passed and nobody jumped, and the neighbors from the lower and the upper floors began to threaten the Slepaks with their fists and to call the militia...
...So it's written in my passport that I'm a Jew, what of it...
...But where are all these heroes now...
...Among them— healthy people—you pass like an infected person, a marked man...
...If we can't show our hands, the hell with it—let's keep our cards close to our chests, but we'll live here in Russia.' But she said: 'I can't any more, Eric...
...40 seconds...
...1937: They knew of this black year (being too young to have experienced it personally) from hearsay, from their parents, and also from some books of Shalamov, Ginzburg, and Margolin...
...And a concealed pride, masked by nonchalance, can be seen in their eyes whenever one of their new guests, astonished, recognizes it: "Why, that is Solzhenitsyn...
...My boss doesn't give a damn when I calculate a program for him...
...I want to be such a cat—a mangy stray cat, but at least on my own...
...You demonstrate to yourself and to the authorities...
...Does it unite the movement as a whole...
...In the same year 14,310 Soviet Jews received their visas and 40,794 new invitations were sent from Israel to the USSR...
...And nobody canTead my mind and they won't stick me into a gas chamber...
...and there amid books, canvases, and empty vodka bottles, they again talk about everything under the sun, including their own country...
...You understand, they themselves have left...
...Eric and Masha were never "fighters" or "activists...
...They also displayed posters, pinned to their bosoms, with the same message...
...He said in a strict tone: 'Take it away, or I shall call a car.' 'Call it, I shall wait,' Zhora politely agreed...
...Not only are they permitted by the authorities, they are even protected...
...Both are native Muscovites who grew up in assimilated Jewish families...
...And something else as well...
...Sex is one of the walls of their little world...
...They know Sakharov and respect him greatly, but why talk about this at work...
...They have simply found themselves alongside them and it is interesting...
...Jewish leaders distrusted the street demonstrations: They were ineffective, individualistic, and dangerous...
...They stood so until the militiamen, enraged by this insolence, drove them all into a bus...
...The Lenin Library, in the very center of the city...
...The leaders of the Jewish national movement, not taking part in the demonstrations, were divided in their opinions, but some (in the minority) considered them an exceptionally useful propaganda measure, irritating the Soviet authorities ("frontal attack") and attracting the attention of the West...
...Do it again...
...Honestly, fellows, why the hell do we need new synagogues...
...For several nights without a break they read the first volume of the Archipelago...
...Even if I'm a coward, I'm not a fool...
...They tuned in to Western radio stations, no longer fearing their neighbors or listening at night for the step on the stairs...
...Just recently, Volodia Slepak and his wife were sentenced to five years, and they did not even demonstrate but merely hung posters from their balcony...
...They played with these words but always feared both searches and interrogations...
...Frequently, taking part in a demonstration was the only way to solve a complicated family conflict with one's parents...
...Some of their Jewish acquaintances have already left for Israel and Masha says from time to time, "If I had another husband, maybe I also would . . . . " But Eric is categorically opposed, and Masha falls silent, giving one to understand that she is joking...
...Lev Ovsisher I with beret I and Grigory Hess idark jacket) lead 10.000 Minsk Jews at Memorial Service for Holocaust victims...
...At work in their computer center Eric and Masha do their programs and run to the neighboring canteen...
...One of them is looking through a newspaper...
...The authorities at least, seem to think that a demonstration is effective, judging from the way they react...
...Little by little a crowd gathered near the house and the crowd itself attracted attention...
...At midnight, tired of cards and smoking, they prepare coffee, and during this solemn rite they listen to the "Program for Nightbirds" and discuss the news...
...Besides, what can be called a success—30 seconds...
...What was this— the struggle for human rights or a desperate appeal for mercy...
...Another two people climb up from the underpass, and a man emerges from the metro, and they mix in the small group...
...Nothing...
...And if they were allowed to go, then to permit them to go to Israel or not...
...Is this form of protest effective...
...It is as if they have put together one of their own programs—calculated and well-grounded—and have begun to live in complete conformity with it...
...Continent often reaches them and they have read the new books of Maksimov, Galich, and Sinyavski...
...Only they don't speak...
...A black Volga and a roaring van erupt as if from out of the earth...
...The first of these demonstrations was held on February 24, 1971...
...And what do they know about their Jewishness...
...Publicity was from the very beginning the main objective of the organizers and participants of these demonstrations...
...From the windows they shouted in unison: "LET US GO TO ISRAEL...
...There were many spontaneous and individual demonstrations as well, which might have been political, or private...
...But later, all were permitted to return home...
...Sometimes rumors spread that "in Donetsk or in Minsk the workers held a demonstration," but there are almost never any details on the subject...
...And then there is sex...
...At 11 a.m., 24 Jews, 22 men and two women, came one by one into the reception room of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR and declared a hunger strike, demanding a meeting with a Chairman of Presidium...
...The leaders of the Jewish movement never took part in the demonstrations...
...A brief clash on the steps...
...The first to see them were the people from the house opposite...
...Jews begin thinking: "Aha, until now they used to put us into prison for 15 days: All right, we were ready for 15 days...
...Masha began to read it but then dropped it...
...Or perhaps an additional world, only a little smaller than the first...
...Among their friends they are accustomed to chance and short-lived affairs which they call simply "sleeping" and about which one usually jokes...
...Authorities were forced to make a spontaneous decision: What to do with these Jews...
...Slepak was the only one of the "refuseniks" who lived next to all the central hotels for foreign tourists and, in this way, he was the first person they visited...
...The following year, 1968, there was a famous demonstration in Red Square in which Bogoraz, Gorbanevskaya, Fainberg and others protested against the occupation of Czechoslovakia...
...The Slepaks stood together in silence, holding hands and looking down— where the crowd was roaring...
...They are all people just like you and me...
...Jewishness has remained in their faces, their mannerisms and their restless curiosity, but it has almost vanished from their souls...
...To the cars...
...But if they tightened the bolts to the very end, what would the world think...
...And there are two elderly women who are leaning in fear against a column, whispering to each other about what they have just seen...
...Both of them take part in this strange game with no viewers...
...They broke down the wall of silence, and authorities were forced to respond...
...Pale frenzied youths found out for the first time how millions were annihilated...
...They married early and have two children...
...He had to wait only for a few minutes...
...They were a small group of young people who year after year went out to the central streets and squares of Moscow...
...Yet the authorities are inconsistent...
...The crowd whistled in approval...
...And naturally the authorities made a detailed and thorough study to ascertain which links were most valuable, and they knocked out these links first...
...Eric and Masha, two of that enormous majority which always remains behind the scenes, divide their lives into "home and work...
...In Russia there have been Decembrists and Populists and now there are dissidents...
...But both Masha and Eric are complete atheists who are sickened by any intensification of this theme...
...However, in everyday life, ideals often became a theme for anecdotes, while faith turned into lack of faith...
...Eight seconds—but people are already running towards them...
...And, in these ways, the leak of information always comes too early to permit the demonstration to succeed...
...And how can one not be tired...
...The five men are thrown into it...
...From below it was difficult to understand what was taking place up above, and the first rumours speculated that the man and wife would both jump off the balcony right away...
...Right: Shadowing of Jewish Activists...
...The reaction of the authorities to such actions was merciless...
...The posters are torn into shreds...
...On the steps of the library there is nobody—but nearby, at the trolleybus stop, by the underground passage, a few citizens are scattered...
...The authorities, therefore, have two opportunities: first, to listen in to such a conversation (which is not difficult, because all contacts of foreign correspondents with Soviet citizens are carefully taped) and second, to find out about the demonstrations from the foreign correspondents themselves, who, being professionals, may exploit such secrets in making deals with the authorities...
...Here it's impossible so I'm leaving...
...Lazaris's work-in-progress on dissidents and Jews in the USSR, which is based upon inaccessible and little-known (and chilling) material...
...This is not duplicity or hypocrisy, it is simply habit...
...And so the Slepaks went out on that day, to their balcony on the eighth floor, having shut the doors of their room and the doors of the balcony...
...And it is as if nothing had transpired at all...
...Work is one more little world for Eric and Masha in which one can take shelter from all storms...
...They like to ski in the winter under the mountain skies at Planernaya or further away in Dombai...
...They work as programmers in a computer center...
Vol. 5 • December 1979 • No. 1
