To the English courtroom, he was Victor Ben-Ari. To the judge, the charge was a simple case of obstruction. To the audience, he be another foreigner making a nuisance of himself. The pedestrians of the Bayswater Road knew better. They had seen a small mustachioed klbbutznik starve himself for over a week near the Soviet … Read more
I first met Ilana Friedman two years ago in Tel Aviv. Seeing her in the Anglo-Saxon civility of a Hampstead flat, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance she bears to her famous sister, the Moscow refusenik, Ida Nudel. At 43, Ilana is three years younger than Ida and is her only living relative. She … Read more
The formal opening takes place in Belgrade next week of the follow-up conference of those states which signed the Helsinki in the summer of 1975. The agreement, officially titled “The Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe”, was designed to represent the west’s formal recognition of the ideological division of Europe … Read more
Why did you involve yourself in an attempt to recreate Jewish culture in the USSR? My friends and I realised that one of the main problems of Soviet Jewry now is the problem of survival. Our activities were not so much directed at recreating Jewish culture but at helping those who wished to know something … Read more
There have been ominous developments in the case of Anatoly Shcharansky, the arrested Jewish leader and human rights activist. Among Moscow Jews who have been taken for interrogation to Lefortovo prison, where Shcharansky is being held, is Professor Benjamin Fain, who was asked for details of Shcharansky’s work within the Jewish movement. The line of questioning … Read more
Many Soviet Jews who do not share Bukovsky’s views hold him in high esteem for his guidance in the early days of the exodus movement in showing it how to contact western correspondents in Moscow and thus publicise even the smallest aspect of KGB harassment. Together with his friend, Vladimir Telnikov, he organised a … Read more
Duringthe past month, three Soviet Jews have been accused of criminal offences. Amner Zuvurov was sentenced to three years Zuvurov in Uzbekistan on parasitism and hooliganism charges and the failure to possess an internal passport. In Vilnius, physicist Naum Salansky is in his eighth week of investigation, accused of “slandering the Soviet Union for its … Read more
What did you do on arriving in Moscow? I tried to contact the people involved in the seminar and found that all the telephones had been cut. I then attempted to approach some of these people personally. For example, I went to the home of Professor Benjamin Levich. He had earlier been accosted as he … Read more
Despite the severe measures taken by the KGB last week against the organisers of the Jewish cultural seminar in Moscow, 1976 was a better year in some respects for the Jewish activist movement in the Soviet Union than the previous one. There were no trials (there were eight in 1975) and the activists adopted a … Read more
There are now grave doubts about whether the KGB will permit the Jewish cultural seminar to open in Moscow next Tuesday. Five of its 13 organisers were warned by the Deputy Minister of Culture last week that the symposium was a “provocation contrary to the interests of Soviet Jewry and to Marxist-Leninist ideology”. In addition, … Read more