Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Gal Beckerman: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry

Tonight on behalf of Harvard Book Store and Amnesty International I am honored to introduce Joshua Rubenstein the north east regional director of Amnesty International who introduced us to go back home and for 30 years Josh Rubenstein has been with the Northeast which has been the north east regional director of Amnesty International overseeing amnesties work in New England New York and New Jersey. A long time fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Mr. Rubenstein has written widely on the Soviet human rights movements including two books on the subject. His first book Soviet dissidents the New York Review of Books hailed as sympathetic scholarly and comprehensive. Mr. Rubenstein has contributed articles and reviews on Russian and international affairs to many publications including the Columbia Journalism Review. The New York Times and The Boston Globe as an official amnesty

spokesman on radio television and in print. Mr Rubenstein is responsible for organizing public forums and benefits as well as participating in numerous human rights activities at the national and international level. Without further ado ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Josh Rubenstein. Thank you. We're specially grateful to our friends here at the Harvard bookstore for welcoming us for yet another wonderful and important program on the human rights topic. I also want to thank our co-sponsors action for post-Soviet jury and Harvard Hillel who are co-sponsoring this evening with our friends at MIT at the Harvard bookstore. I'm especially pleased to be with gall this evening we've already done two events in New York so I think it's great now he's in our hometown. This is an especially important topic for us at Embassy International. Throughout the 1970s and

1980s at the height of the Soviet Jewish emigration movement and the sea was following the cases of scores and scores of active human rights activists from all the different streams of defiance in the Soviet Union at that time nationalists in various republics like the way India and Ukraine and Georgia and Armenia human rights activists based in the major cities like Moscow and Leningrad and this of course involved many Jewish activists who are seeking to leave the country who were denied permission to leave and during that time while they were waiting who were then organizing demonstrations teaching Hebrew learning Hebrew making contact with western journalists and Western visitors. And this in turn got them into further trouble. So in the 70s and 80s amnesty took on the cases of people like letter mislay pock and into new Dell and others who were iconic figures in the Soviet Jewish immigration movement and for us they were sadly just more cases of

prisoners of conscience. The example you are gammas he does all over the world. Also of course this is a wonderful topic for a historian. It has a beginning and it has a conclusion because in a sense the Soviet Jewish emigration movement as a political movement as a movement defying Soviet officials and Soviet authority reaches a conclusion in the late 80s under Mikhail Gorbachev when the terms of being a Jew and wishing to leave the country completely change doesn't mean everything was resolved so happily but it completely changes and one can see the effects of the movement especially now with access to documents and activists who are who are so involved in the movement. Source specially pleased to introduce scholars though done so much work travelling around the world meeting people both in Russia in Israel and here and put together a very comprehensive history of this movement and placing it in the context not only of of the Soviet Union where of course it begins but also as an issue in American

foreign policy. And as an issue for the American Jewish community and for Israel's own relations with the diaspora and with this large diaspora community in the Soviet Union and how it chose to relate to Soviet Jews and how that relationship also evolved. So it's a very an a complex story and he's done it very well. And I want to introduce colleagues you now Gal Beckerman. It's water here. Thank you all for coming tonight. And I would be remiss if I didn't especially think my editor Amanda Cook who is in the audience here tonight and my wonderful publicist Megan Wilson have been truly blessed to have both of you behind this book. So I. I wrote this book and in the book really has

to this up a little bit. OK. There we go. The book the book has two levels the narrative arc has two levels to the story and I've been talking a lot over the last few weeks about one of these levels and I'll quickly describe that and then I'll move on to something that I have not had enough of a chance to talk about. But the Dove tells Well I think with the fact that this event is being co-sponsored by Amnesty at one level this story is very much one of redemption. Redemption for the first part for a Soviet Jews. This is a community that was a minority inside the Soviet Union that had been in many ways after World War 2 cut off you could even say imprisoned behind the Iron Wall. In a society that wasn't able to really completely assimilate them but also would

let them have a separate identity. Jews by the early 60s when this story begins were very much disconnected from any kind of history that they had had as Jews. For them Jewish identity meant maybe a a a grandfather who would go once a year to synagogue to pray a grandmother who still remembered some of the old recipes or a candle stick you know collecting dust in the corner that they knew had something to do with some kind of religious identity. But for the most part it didn't have any kind of positive sense for them. They knew they were Jews mostly for one reason and that reason was that every Soviet citizen had to carry an internal passport. And in the internal passport of Jews the word Jew was stabbed just like Ukrainians had the word Ukrainian Latvians had the word Latvian Jews had the word Jew but it meant very little besides difference besides a sense of difference. And and this was a kind of paradox that the Jews lived in on the one hand they weren't allowed to completely

assimilate on the other hand they weren't allowed to have a separate identity or to leave. And so the redemption of this story is how did this community who was so disconnected eventually find not only how did they eventually get out but how did they find a sense of self as Jews how did they learn the desire to even want to get out. So the and the and on the other hand you have American Jews who were very much integral to this story. American Jews fought for nearly 30 years to get Soviet Jews out. But it was more than just a camp a human rights campaign for them it was also about finding a kind of redemption for themselves because American Jews had a sense of deep guilt and shame as a community for what they perceived that they hadn't done during the Holocaust to help to help their brother in in Europe. So for American Jews the redemption that I'm talking about here is a redemption

in terms of finding a way to connect with with World Jewry to find a sense of themselves as Jews again. And and so these two kind of redemptions are really what make up one part of the arc of the story but not going to talk about that so much tonight. That's kind of the Jewish element of this story. I also want to talk and I want to talk about how this movement helped bring human rights into the fore. Help make it something that became an increasingly important part of our foreign policy decision making what role did it play in making that happen. Because as as American Jews fought for Soviet Jews in the Soviet years fought to get out. One of the side effects if you will was also that this issue which became eventually really a global cause was pushed to the center of the Cold War pushed the center of the cold war alongside issues like arms control alongside issues like trade. Was this moral issue. So

how does this movement go from being something that's really the province in the 60s of groups of activists here in the United States and in the Soviet Union you know small numbers of people in their living rooms trying to reignite some kind of Jewish life in the shadow of Stalin. The first thing that really happens that makes this truly a global cause is something that's known as the Leningrad hijacking. Now this to me was an extraordinary event extraordinary thing when I when I first discovered it I didn't really know much about it before I started researching the book and I don't know maybe some of you do or some of you remember this but it was an episode in which a group of Jews mostly from Riga decided that they would steal a plane to fly it out of the Soviet Union. They had all been refused exit visas. They'd all tried and been rejected to go to Israel. And they decided that I have a kind of fundamental desperation that they felt that they would

try to do something truly reckless or brave depending on how you how you looked at it. The plot was hatched in Riga. It was really the people that made it kind of come to life for two characters which I'll briefly describe because they're fascinating people. One guy Mark dipshits who was a Soviet pilot in the Red Army who had hit walls of anti-Semitism again and again and again in his career and finally kind of threw his hands up in the air and he come up with this idea. And another man Edward soft who was a Soviet dissident who for many years had been in the gulag actually because he had participated in some of the first creating some of the first underground poetry journals in the late 50s. And these two men came together with a bunch of other Zionists in Riga and they decided to to try to do this crazy thing. And the plan was to steal a plane that was leaving from Leningrad. That was going to make a state was flying along the Finnish border and was going to make a one stop. And then. And during that stop

the men were going to overtake the pilot and the copilot and then fly the plane off to Sweden where they would come out and give a big press conference and talk about their plight. And and that was going to be the happy ending to their story. But of course the KGB knew about it all along. Almost from the beginning I've seen the documents. They really knew exactly what was going on. And at some point the hijackers themselves kind of had a sense that they were being followed that they were going to get caught. But they kept going through with it anyways. And they kept going through with it because at one level this was about their own escape. Another level this was really a chance for them to bring attention to this cause. Well as they were on the tarmac about to get on the plane they were indeed tackled by the kid by the police. Thrown into prison and the Soviets saw an incredible opportunity this was their chance to show the world that this movement the Zionist movement that had been portraying itself as this desperate cause was actually just a bunch of criminals who were

really just interested in doing things like stealing planes and they would put on a big show trial and really tell the world that this was what they unmask this sinus movement. And they took that off and him should stay they sentence him to death to death by firing squad. At the end of this trial and to the Soviets surprise this really caused a world outcry. People could not believe the injustice of this and were moved by the desperation of this group of people that they were willing to go to that extent to risk their lives to leave the Soviet Union the things were that bad for them. And this wasn't just Jewish communities this was there were Tali and longshoremen in general what they refused to offload Soviet goods and sweetest children who were you know doing torch lit marches through the streets. They really people really responded to this on mass and for the first time a lot of people including Jews also really understood this to be an important cause and not just a matter of Jews

helping other Jews but really a human rights issue. And at this point in the hijackings I don't think I mentioned it was June 15 170 Soviet Jewry becomes a global cause. It's not going away after that because what happens is that as a wrist as a response to this real world outcry the Soviets within a week and a half and really unprecedented time commute the death sentence they basically buckle to two to the pressure that they're getting from from really world opinion. And this really puts Soviet Jewry on the map. And and the Soviets actually in the years following puts it on the map also as a as as a human rights issue people start mentioning in connection with this issue with these people who want to get out. They start mentioning Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is the right to leave your own leave or enter your own country at your own free will which

Soviet Jews. And by the way also its citizens did not have the civil union had no immigration policy. So the Soviets actually start letting people out following the Leningrad hijacking and in fact in 1071 13000 people are allowed to leave 13000 Soviet Jews which is more than in the last 10 years combined. The next year it's a little bit more than that but the Soviet starts a kind of. Freak out a little bit because this movement of people who are pushing to leave you know is not getting smaller. As more and more people who see that this is that they don't want to live with this fundamental paradox of their life inside the Soviet Union and they're trying to get out and and what they do in 1972 in the summer of 1972 they put in place what people came to think of as an immigration tax. They said this is this is their idea of how to stop people getting out. They said OK fine you can leave. But if you leave you have to pay back the state for your education.

That is that the state gave you that the Soviet state gave you. And usually this was an exorbitant amount of money that nobody could pay. You know hundreds of thousands of dollars of your of what your education cost. And once again just like the verdict the Leningrad hijacking this seems to everyone who witnesses it again not just Jews but just people around the world as as as just a grave injustice and almost like a ransoming ransoming of Jews and. And I I was able to kind of see that some of the emotions that were swirling about this decision is this wonderful. Wonderful as one of the illustrative cartoon in The L.A. Times from this from this particular moment when they when they institute the immigration tax where it's two it's two arms side by side and one has a tattoo with a number from a concentration camp. And it says Germany one thousand forty two. And the other one has another arm with the same number with a dollar sign in front of it saying you know Moscow August 972. So people really felt that this was this was once again a sort of persecution.

But at the mo at that particular moment in the early 70s the Soviet Union the U.S. were engaged in the taunt it was a new policy that a new foreign pilots in a foreign policy that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger was really kind of intellectual force behind it were engaged in. They wanted to move closer to the Soviets they wanted to to have a warmer relationship in each for their own reasons for their own kind of self-interested reasons but did taunt did not involve talking about each country's human rights standards or moral issues. It was very much a matter of you know quid pro quo in the realm of arms talks or trade. And in the middle of all of this really at the height of detente suddenly the Soviets dropped this news that they're going to institute this immigration tax just at the moment when one of the centerpieces of détente. Was Straight. The Soviets really badly wanted most favored nation trading status. What this meant is that they could buy. They could get credit to buy goods in the US and they could also sell Soviet goods without having

a tariff imposed on it so things like caviar and vodka and they're getting very close with Nixon Brezhnev and Nixon are getting very close to finalizing a trade agreement that would give them most favored nation status just at the moment where they introduced this immigration tax. Enter Henry Kissinger Henry Kissinger Henry Jackson excuse me and you're Henry Jackson. Every Scoop Jackson. Some of you might remember a senator from Washington who was kind of a pro neo con you might call him he was very liberal on social issues but very much a Cold War hawk. And and he for a lot of different reasons. Including the really kind of a strong sense of principle decides that if the Soviets want these if they want trade if they want most favored nation status then they're going to have to give something in return. But what they're going to give in return is not some one thing in the realm of Ryall Pulte Teac quid pro

quo. They're going to have to change something about their own society. They're going to have to change something about their internal policies particularly immigration and particularly he was thinking about Soviet Jews who were the ones who were really clamoring to get out. So he comes up with an idea he and his staff which include Richard Perle who was part of the story we know in other capacities later on in history come up with an idea of an amendment to the trade bill that's going to have to go through Congress to get this trade agreement approved and the trade bill lays out a very simple equation that says you want these these trade goodies you're going to have to let out a certain number of Jews. You're going to have to let open up immigration. And this is completely unprecedented I mean this didn't this didn't happen. That moral issue such as this one entered into entered into this particular realm. And also you have Congress telling the president basically placing a grenade in the middle of his foreign policy saying you're not going to just do business as usual

you're going to also demand that they change something about themselves. And and this really picks up steam this notion of an amendment that would that would demand this. It really and especially with the help of the American Jewish community that gets behind it in force and does so really at a grassroots level and begins to exercise for the first time really some real political muscle learns how to lobby. It's a community that we know knows how to lobby Well today but this is really I think in my estimation where this starts because you have you know from the most local level to Washington people really pushing for. For every senator every congressperson to back this bill. And it works. People really get behind it. And in the soviets the Soviets start to listen. They start to hear. And one of the most revealing moments I had in my research was discovering a transcript from a politburo meeting in which Brezhnev is talking with the other Soviet

leaders about the Jackson-Vanik amendment its March of 1973. And I my jaw kind of dropped when I read it because when you're studying this history when you're talking to people who are pushing here you don't really imagine that they're actually you know we're sitting there inside the Kremlin and affected by all of this. But this told me that they were I just want to read you a little bit of what Brezhnev was saying. So Brezhnev talking to the Politburo. How much are nine hundred seventy three. And he's saying when you read the materials and I read everything I went to my Russian accent today when you read the materials and I read everything then you see that all the same the official visit to the US has been seriously impeded by the issue of Zionism. He was supposed to then visit the United States in the last few months hysteria has been whipped up around the so-called education tax and individuals immigrating abroad. I have thought a lot about what to do and then he gets mad at Yuri Andropov who's the head of the

KGB and he tells him I told you Yuri that to stop collecting the taxes but stop collecting taxes without repealing the law. So so you know keep the law on the books but stop actually collecting money from people. And he says let out a group of 500 who have no relation to either secret work or to party organizations. Even if some and he's basically talking about older people who had applied he said let out some people who are of no significance to us. So even if some middle aged people fall into the group safe from bureau Bijon let them out they will talk about it and everyone will know you're Bijon So you know was this far off province that Stalin had created in the 30s for Jews. It was the Soviet idea of the Jewish homeland it was you know further than the eastern part of that period. And he said let some of people lots of people from there get out. And. And Brezhnev goes even further he's saying this is really creating a problem for us.

And he's saying I'll just read from history Brezhnev then went even further wondering in a bizarre ramble why more couldn't be done to appease the quote unquote Zionists. But his ideas betrayed how little he understood about the Soviet Jewish condition. And this is Brezhnev talking. Why not give them some little theater with 500 seats for a Jewish variety show. They will work under our censorship with a repertoire under our supervision. Let Auntie Sonia sings Jewish wedding songs there I'm not proposing this I'm just talking. And what if we open a school. I see it like this we could open one school in Moscow and call it Jewish. The program would be the same as in other schools. But the national language ish would be thought there would be taught there. And then he kind of chide himself for these he says these impudent thoughts. But he it was clear that he wanted his colleagues to think more creatively about what he called the Jewish question. And then Alexa Cacique who's the premier you agrees with him and he says of course we need to think because we are creating the jewish problem for

ourselves. And Brezhnev concurs and this might be my favorite quote from his he says yes Zionism is making us stupid. So we can see that this this effort this is something else. The ghost of Brezhnev. So we can see this effort inside the US to make an issue of Soviet Jewry is actually getting to them and in fact they decide to to to an all the tax they decide to and all the tax literally the day after this meeting Brezhnev says called get a lot of journalists to go to Oviedo which is the office where you go to collect your exit visa and have them film some Jews getting their exit visas without having to pay the tax. So you think at this point that Henry Jackson would say you know I've declared victory we don't need to put this amendment into place because the original idea was let's kind of put some pressure on them with this. But he says no this is about principle. If the Soviets want something they're going to have to give something they're going to have to change something

about their society and he keeps going and even there are elements of the American Jewish community who at that point say wait a second wait a second you know we're going up against Nixon here and his foreign policy we're going up against Kissinger who also was this paragon Jewish achievement you know is not anything to go against the first Jewish secretary of state in his foreign policy. But. Jackson says no we need to rally we need to keep doing this. And he really believes that that this is a question of human rights and a question of making human rights an element in foreign policy and I just want to read a section of a speech that Jackson gave because I think he has a much clearer than than than I can here because of all the human whole human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights none is more fundamental than in Article 13 the right to free immigration. And as we assess the developing detente there is no more basic measure than its impact on the free movement of people. The importance of free immigration

stems from the fact that whatever other liberties may be denied speech press religion employment any and all of these can be restored by immigration to the free countries of the West. All of human rights immigration is first among equals. And so Jackson is making a strong argument that you know we need to really rally around this particular human right. And he's not the only one who does this actually Andres one of the great Soviet dissidents and democracy activists really believed in the Soviet Jewry movement because he understood that if you allow people the right to immigrate they can essentially vote with their feet. And so it is in a sense the first among equals because it's giving people the right to just leave if some other part of their situation is and isn't good for them. So this amendment kind of barrels forward has immense support and even outlives Nixon's administration which goes down in flames as we all know and eventually if it's approved in in January 98 passes in January 975 along with the trade bill the Soviets the next day

say you know what you can take your carrot and your stick you know we don't want any trade with you. They were not about to let the American Jewish community essentially with you know Henry Jackson at their head decide their internal policy decide their immigration policy. So in the short term this did not suddenly lead to this massive exodus in fact it really upset the Soviets. But what it did do and this is kind of what I'm actually what I'm getting at here is it created almost kind of a I like to think of it as almost like a Pavlovian conditioning project. The Soviets understood that if they wanted to move closer to the west if they wanted to have any kind of relation with the West then they would have to deal with this issue with a human rights issue with the issue of immigration. It's it put it on the table and it could not go away it literally couldn't go away because there was legislation that if in future administrations any president wanted to talk about trade with the Soviets the Soviets would first have to make some kind of concession on immigration. And and we see how effective it was.

You know very very quickly in 1979 and I already had the power really. OK well then I'm speeding up here. Very quickly in one thousand seventy nine the Soviets want grain deal with the U.S. and they're engaged in arms limitation talks and they want something from the Americans and we see that suddenly immigration skyrockets to like 50000 which was unprecedented. And then the Soviets very quickly in the end in 1979 invade Afghanistan the Cold War goes you know very Because very antagonistic and the tap is literally turned off it within a year or two no more than six or eight hundred Jews are allowed to leave. So you don't need you know a transcript of Politburo meetings to understand the dynamic that's happening here the Soviets get that these two things are integrated that they're linked. And eventually when you have a Gorbachev who comes along in the mid 80s who wants to reform his society so that he can move closer to the west for his own

self-interested reasons he knows that the first thing he needs to do is deal with this issue and and he does and he starts to let people out. And we know we know the end of that story. There's a reason that the Soviet Union did not go the way of China maintaining a totalitarian grip on its population while reforming itself economically they couldn't because for 30 years there was this strong push from within and from without for them to make any liberalization include a change in their human rights and human rights conditions in the way that they were treating their own people. That went much faster than I thought it was going to. I was also going to read to a little from the book I guess that's not going to happen. But but I'm happy to take some questions and maybe some of the other stuff will come out in that forum. My one word answer is schizophrenia. I think I think I mean that's really I

don't have a counter stand otherwise but in 1933 Stalin puts in place a this law about an internal passport. Every Soviet citizen has to carry a passport that says you know where what their what their nationality is. And for Jews the only thing that they could put was Jewish. Now this must have been a very kind of horrible decision that he had to make on the one hand he did believe in these Leninist principles that all Soviet the Soviet people will just melt into one mass and that there won't be distinctions based on ethnic group or nationality or or or religion but on the other hand this was a totalitarian state. They wanted to have control over their population. And so how do you and particularly Jews always play this kind of role in the Russian psyche at various moments in history of being kind of a fifth column of being this kind of parasitic you know foreign body no matter how they could never completely assimilate. So he wants to know who is Jews are just like he wants to know who his Ukrainians are who is Tartars are who is. And so you can't do that and have people

assimilate completely and so that sets in in a way you could say that Stalin kept this Jewish population alive because you know if not for that line on their passport in the fifth line of their passport for many many many people I'd say you know 95 percent of you know of Jews there was very little else that made them feel Jewish. Yeah I mean it's obviously it's hard to generalize completely but in as much as I can you know I think people underestimated how much the experience of living under Communism would affect the identity of these people once they got out. So on the question of religion for example you know you were living people were living for three four generations 70 years in a in a in a state that saw religion as this superstition you know and so and for them Jewishness meant to be Jewish in any kind of way meant you were an Orthodox Jew or you were nothing like the notion of Reform or Conservative Judaism did not enter into people you know the other denominations of more liberal

denominational Judaism did not enter into people's list of possibilities of how one could be a Jew. And so there's a lot of lamenting in the American Jewish community that this population was so to speak last. You know because they didn't start coming to synagogue on Friday night you know with their American Jewish brother and but this was not kind of in their in their in their imagining of what it meant to be a Jew it just didn't it wasn't play it wasn't a place for that so that's just kind of on the on the question of religion and I think. But I think more generally I think there are like a lot of the immigrant groups you know the older generation the first comes created communities that are very insular. The younger generation you can see are breaking out now and making a mark in American society and certainly in Israeli society so. It's a change it's a continuing story. Well I think Zionism was kind of a for the Soviets was this was a very kind of general category that they included I mean they threw a lot of people into that they called people like you know a hero's wife Elin a bit of the cold resigned. I mean anybody who is doing

anything that was like vaguely nefarious was a Zionist. But but but you do but your question does get an interesting distinction that actually created a lot of tension in the movement which is that you know for a lot of these Jewish activists the goal was to live in a Jewish state. That's really what that's what they were. That's what they were what they were really pushing for that's what they were because they said that Ukraine you can live in the Ukraine I want to live. I'm a Jew I want to live in a Jewish state. But a lot of people got out especially after that first wave of real ideologically you know inclined activists they didn't go to Israel. A lot of them came here a lot of them in Vienna which was kind of the transfer point when you left the Soviet Union instead of going to Israel with their exit visas which were Israeli exit visas kind of dropped out that was the expression that was used and went to the states. And by the late 70s you're talking about you know nearly 90 percent are doing this. This created a lot of tension and so a lot of this is I'm paraphrasing you know in a big way but

you know American Jews saw this movement as one of free choice. They thought we were fighting for Jews to get out of the Soviets that they can live wherever they want to live. Israelis who played an integral role in this movement that I haven't even gotten into here but they were they were fighting kind of behind the scenes. I did see this is a Zionist movement for them getting Jews out was a way of helping helping the Jewish. The demographic issue in Israel of needing more Jews they would love to have an additional million two million Jews in Israel. So this created another sort is another source of tension in the history. Well I'd always been fascinated with this particular historical period. From the 60s until the until the 80s just all this big social changes and particularly the kind of advent of human rights during that period. But but but I was you know people often you know want to know if I have kind of a personal connection to the story if I have a Soviet Jewish parent or a grandparent because that's kind of the obvious reason to get involved.

I don't I have Polish grandparents my grand The closest I got was a grandfather who grew up on the bell Russian border and spent the war in a Soviet refugee camp. But I did have a connection that I think a lot of American Jews who came of age when I did also have and that's that I had a Soviet twin for my Bar Mitzvah. I don't know if any of you. Yes some shaking nodding heads OK. And that alone here and I mean I'm sure you know you know about this program and it was this program that was started in the late 70s and through the 80s. To try to personalize the movement for young American Jews when you had your bottom is for this rite of passage that all Jews have when they're 12 or 13 you were given a piece of paper with information about a Soviet Jewish young person who was your age who was having some kind of difficulty their family was and I was given information about a boy named Maxine young Kalev that she was living in Leningrad whose

father for you know family for seven or eight years had been refused an exit visa. They had lost their jobs. They were being his father was encountering all kinds of difficulties. And this truly sparked my imagination when I was 13. I just the notion that in 1909 when I had my permits some of you are doing the math in your heads. Thirty four were you know that there was a boys a Jewish boy somewhere in the world who was suffering in some kind of you know capacity for being Jewish you know and and and that you know I think that that always stayed with me in some way. You know this kind of my you know the fact that it affected me you know very you know very very limited man I was an activist I was involved but I was made aware of it and years later when I started out of intellectual curiosity investigate the movement I remember this very kind of touched me in a kind of an emotional way. Yeah I mean I think the concern you're talking about was certainly a concern in the early era of the

Soviet in the Soviet Union particularly around Trotsky and the people who might join him and but I don't know if the period that I'm writing about from the 60s until 70s I think the Soviets were pretty secure in that in their own power. Well so I mean to me that answer seems more. I mean there's there's the practical answer that some people give which is they were afraid of a kind of a brain drain. You know there are a lot of Jews in the Soviet Union were in the highest levels of the sciences all the lot of the technocrats were Jews. They would lose a lot of good people but I actually don't think that that's so much what it is I think in some ways it's more fundamental. It really posed an existential threat if you say an ideologically edge example so if you say that. That you know the place that you are the country that you've built is a paradise. And here is a large group of people nearly two and a half three million people who are living there who are is integrated as anybody else. And you say your paradise is our help. You are challenging the very heart of Communists of Soviet ideology. That's

one thing another thing is if the Jews are going to leave. Why not. You know another group that's unhappy. You know they they I think that they were afraid that if they pulled you know started pulling the string a little bit then the whole thing would on would unravel which which it did. I mean they were right to worry about that because because it eventually you know immigration was in some ways what brought down not only you know in the end it wasn't just Jews that wanted an exodus from the Soviet Union it was the Ukrainians and the and the Baltic states and you know all these other countries and so they were in some ways you know this was their way of putting the finger in the dam. Another cliche. They they couldn't let one group out because of the of the symbolism of it. It presented an ideological threat. Like China for example I mean I was the other day when the when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to that Chinese dissident the reaction of the of the Chinese government sounded to me exactly like the way the Soviets reacted in

1975 when under a czar of got the prize. And in fact it would seem so similar that I went back to the clips and there was they used the Chinese government said that it was a blasphemy that was blasphemous of the Nobel Committee toward him the prize. And I went back to the clips and I said exactly the same word that the Soviets used. But ultimately I think what it revealed in both cases was the in total insecurity of the Chinese government in this case and the Soviet government you know they knew that this wasn't something that they could stop this push for for human rights. I don't know. You know the context is so different you know it's not the Cold War was this very particular geo political order. It's hard to you know immediately say you know it's a match up situation then and say you know this is how we can apply a certain policy to Iran for example. But I think some of the same questions are definitely with us today. You know this balance of you know when you know just like during detente this question of you know what how do we think how do we balance our national security priorities with

pushing for this very idealistic goal that makes us feel good as Americans to push for. AND WHAT'S FOR STRATEGIC What's the smartest thing to do I mean Kissinger didn't not care about Soviet Jews. He just thought that if we reach a better relationship with with the Soviets by pushing aside these moral issues by not shoving it in their face then eventually that will lead to a better situation for Jews. I mean I happen to think that he was wrong in that particular instance. But but but I think that kind of debate is one that we still are having today about a lot of countries including China and Iran. And if that answers your question that's I got very lucky in a way because the Soviet archives are not opened any more. I mean that they haven't been for awhile. Once some kind of strong power asserted itself in Russia again those were closed but there was a brief period in the very in the early 90s when things were just so chaotic falling apart. Soviet Union when people could get into the archives and at that point this Israeli professor went in and he found everything that he

could having to do with Jews and Jewish immigration and collected it in a book translated it and it was sitting on a shelf collecting dust. And really nobody had used it to my shock because when you opened it up I mean every page had some revelation that was really extraordinary externally revealing about kind of where their mind was on these different KGB documents and. Lots of Politburo transcripts like the one I read from. And so. So that was really my great fortune. A lot of the book was based on you know as you can probably you can tell since you you know you seem like you've read it is you know based on a lot of oral history a lot of really sitting with people who were the activists on the front line in the Soviet Union and here I mean I interviewed hundreds of people over you know many many cups of tea and vodka sometimes. And you know I had a period of about four or five months where I was living in Israel and every day you know sitting in somebody's else's living room and hearing their story until both kind of a collective picture emerge because once you

start to kind of triangulate you know the same types of stories the same type of experience and you have a sense of what a particular group of people went through. But also just the kind of you know individual the color of each of each story. I mean there's a lot of different reasons why people stayed I think you know I mean it's hard to immigrate it's hard to leave your country everything you know especially when you're older. And there was a particular period of time in the early 90s where things were truly chaotic you know from an economic standpoint from a social standpoint there were you know these groups that were coming up with the name of you know groups that were you know protesting in the streets against Jews and so a lot of people just kind of were less kind of the way I put it they were less pulled by Israel than pushed by by Russia and the people who stayed were people who you know they they it was too much for them to leave either because they were too old or because you know moving to Israel or here was not easy they didn't speak the language. So I think that accounts for for the people who stayed I mean actually given it's more

remarkable that so many people left I mean you had about a million and a half people who left you know just from the late 80s until the mid 90s. So and about a million who stayed there. You are in Leningrad you were in Reagan you were recruited to the big to the first so the wedding up operation wedding because it was it was first this the hijacking idea kind of had different forms in the first one was truly crazy because it involved recruiting something like 70 or 80 people to fill a plane and they said that they were going to go every one of the plane was going to say they were going to a wedding. There was even a bride and groom who were picked out and I think they were going to go through Armenia through your event. It was but but but the problem was is that the problem was is that is that you know to do this you have to recruit all these people and every one person you recruit means like you know 10 people around the MU finds out about it and the KGB was extraordinarily good at

collecting information they didn't really know often what to do with the information they collected but they were very good at collecting it. So so there was no way that that and in fact when Edward Custance off I mentioned earlier who was the dissident who really kind of helped pull off the smaller more compact version of the hijacking which just involved 14 people. When he first found out from his son who was the guy in Leningrad who was organizing the recruiting there that there were that many people involved he just kind of slapped his head and complain that he was going to you know get involved in something like this.