A few hours after Natan (Anatoly) Shcharansky's arrival in the West, a journalist called me to ask if the struggle for Soviet Jewry was over. After all, he said, the main symbol of the movement now was liberated and a principal demand of the Western world--Shcharansky's freedom--was met. What more needed to be done? I responded by telling him an anecdote recounted by Jews in Moscow:
Shortly after publication of the Soviet census in
1979, General Secretary Brezhnev asked Premier Kosygin
the official Soviet Jewish population figure.
"The total is 1.8 million," replied Kosygin.
"I have an idea," said the Soviet leader.
"What if we permit the trouble makers among the
Jews to emigrate. Won't that win us some favorable
publicity overseas and, at the same time, defuse
tensions here?" "A fine idea," exclaimed Kosygin.
"How many do you think would leave, Kosygin?"
"No less than five million," he responded.
The point is, of course, that the struggle on behalf of the Jews in the Soviet Union, whose actual numbers may well be between 2-2.5 million (given serious inadequacies in the Soviet census method), is far from over. And many other Soviet citizens also seek to leave for a variety of political, religious, and family reasons. This in no way diminishes the importance of Shcharansky's liberation. Scharansky's name long ago entered the lexicon of human rights vocabulary and became, together with that of still-exiled Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov and imprisoned South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, among the best known prisoners of conscience in the world. His unyielding struggle, including a 109-day hunger strike, to maintain his innocence and identity as a Jew and a Zionist during nearly nine years of the most unimaginable prison conditions, represents an extraordinary profile in courage.
Conjugal advocacy
Avital Shcharansky's relentless advocacy in her husband's behalf, including countless meetings with Western leaders, demonstrations, and petitions, symbolizes the indomitable will of a loving and devoted spouse. As Anthony Lewis wrote in the New York Times in June 1983: "Moving the Soviet leadership on an individual human rights case often seems a hopeless business. But if you meet Avital Shcharansky ... you will know there is no alternative to trying." In addition, Shcharansky's elderly mother's unstinting efforts from Moscow to secure her son's release and her arduous trips to remote regions to seek even a brief glimpse of him have touched so many of us. I will never forget meeting this remarkable woman in 1981. At the time, she said tearfully:
"I have not received a single card or letter from my son in months. I traveled to the Perm labor camp in May, but they would not let me in. I begged the camp commander to simply show me my son, even from a distance, to assure me that he was still alive, but he wouldn't even do it. Can you imagine, I don't even know whether my son is
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