I’ve always recognized that ultimately there’s got to be a settlement, a solution.
— Ronald Reagan, 23 December 1981
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along… We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
— George W. Bush, 15 May 2008
Refusenik‘s opening on Israel’s 60th birthday could not have been more timely. Recalling the long, difficult struggle of Soviet Jews following the Second World War, the documentary raises any number of issues concerning that history and the lessons it offers. These issues include the uses of pressure and diplomacy, discussions between adversaries, and risks of intransigence — perceived or actual. The film begins during a moment of extreme duress for Jews living in the Soviet Union, footage taken in May 1976 to show “for the first time the plight of our Jewish people who wish to leave and live in a free society.” As the subjects of oppression, Jewish citizens reached out to the West, imagining that if only they could make their plight known, U.S. and European powers would intervene, the dynamic would shift, and the Soviet government would grant them freedom of movement and religion. “We think it is very important,” says one activist, “for Voice of America or the BBC perhaps to say something about those people who are in very great danger.”
Refusenik underscores the crucial links among activists in the USSR and elsewhere, media coverage, and diplomatic intervention: all these pieces came together to change a desperate situation. And if it took time for the U.S. administration to pressure the Soviets, the eventual efforts and effects are well known and appreciated. “President Reagan,” recalls Secretary of State George Shultz in the film’s closing moments, “always felt that he should talk with the Soviets. He was a realist and he wanted to talk frankly.”
As it becomes increasingly clear today that such talk is at a premium, the documentary traces a history of non-communication, as it affected entire populations — systematically as well as chaotically. Historian Martin Gilbert points out that Soviet Jews felt “trapped,” both before and after WWII. Stalin’s support of the creation of Israel had at its base self-interest, and his Communist state was soon treating “Jews as the enemies of the people,” the very phrasing of this opposition painful to note. Multiple interviewees remember being abused as children by peers, authorities, and evolving social frameworks. Ephraim Kholmayansky recalls experiencing anti-Semitism and then realizing when he was five or six that “being Jewish is meaning cursed or corrupt, something intrinsically wrong in your soul.”
Children feared their neighbors for good reason: from 1948 to 1953, the “Black Years,” Jews were arrested, imprisoned, exiled, and killed (during the 1980s, tactics turned extreme in other ways, as outspoken Jews were locked in psychiatric facilities and drugged). Even Stalin’s death in 1953 did not stem the abuse, and so, Jewish citizens (some inspired by reading Exodus) decided, individually and collectively, to fight back. They started talking, to whomever they could reach, repeatedly and innovatively (making phone calls when they could, before phones were tapped or curtailed, sneaking film out with tourists). Among their supporters were Jacob Birnbaum, of New York’s Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and Glenn Richter, who notes here that he and other organizers had experience in the U.S. civil rights movement: they knew how to demonstrate, generate publicity, and raise awareness concerning Soviet oppression and racism.
Following footage of Bayard Rustin speaking in support of the cause (at a gathering where signs read, “Let my people go” and “Why no matzah?”), the film notes the effects of the Six Day War. Natan Sharansky, who was in 1977 convicted of spying for the U.S. and incarcerated for nine years, recalls that the war convinced his community of Israel’s viability and also what it meant to be Jewish. “That’s the day when you suddenly feel yourself free,” he says, “when you’re turning from a Soviet slave into a free person, from a frightened Jew who’s trying to escape his Jewishness, his identity, into a proud Jew.”
This sense of community across the globe helped to drive the movement to Free Soviet Jews. Si Frukin, a Holocaust survivor living in San Francisco, says he was moved to organize in 1969 in order to “repay the debt.” As he puts it, he believed “I survived for a reason. I didn’t want to have written on my gravestone, ‘Here lies Si Frumkin. He sold one million yards of drapery fabric.'” When he read letters from Soviet prisoners asking, “Why have you forgotten us?”, Frumkin says, “That struck a deep chord with me… I knew darn well that when I was in a concentration camp and others like me, the world had forgotten us.”
The film recalls some of the more famous cases of the Cold War, including that of Valery and Galina Panov, stars of the Kirov Ballet who were instructed never to dance again after they attempted to emigrate to Israel. Henry Jackson pressed Henry Kissinger and President Nixon to push for the Panovs’ release, arguing that the U.S. had to stand up for human rights around the world and engaging the support of other members of congress, from Elizabeth Holzman to Bella Abzug and Jacob Javitz.
Such petitioning was hardly easy, especially for those closely related to prisoners. The film subtly reveals tensions when Avital Sharansky, Natan’s young wife, arrives in the U.S. during the mid-’70s and speaks to the Congressional Wives for Soviet Jews, apologizing for her imperfect English as the camera looks out on a set of well-coiffed women seated before white tablecloths, their catered luncheon arranged on fine china.
The fact that Natan, Vladimir Slepak, and other prisoners are not released until Ronald Reagan’s administration takes an interest — following appeals to Nixon and Jimmy Carter before him — is both tragic and instructive. When Reagan made “human rights” a “main issue,” according to Schultz, the relationship with Gorbachev was strained. Still, they achieved a series of agreements and eventually, the Berlin Wall came down (during Bill Clinton’s presidency) and the Cold War ended. The process was long, and the talking was essential.