Avi Goldstein, the nine-year-old son of a well-known refusenik family, in Tibilisi, in Soviet Georgia, sent a letter to Samantha Smith prior to her Soviet-sponsored trip, asking that she deliver a message to Yuri Andropov “because he never answered my letters sent directly to him,” according to the Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry.
The Council, a member of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, said it received a copy of the boy’s letter, dated May 10, which was addressed to “the lucky American girl who received a letter from Mr. Andropov himself.”
“My parents applied for exit visas to Israel two years before I was born and got refused,” wrote Avi. “… So I have experienced a lot: imprisonment of my uncle in 1978, searches of our apartment, etc. The goal of my letter is not to make you pity me, not at all. I just want you to forward my letter to Mr. Andropov.” The boy’s letter asked that he and his parents and his uncle and grandmother be allowed to live in Israel.
Avi’s father, Isai, and his uncle, Grigory, were first refused permission to emigrate in 1971 because of “security reasons.” Both are physicists and were immediately fired from their jobs upon applying.
Since then, the Goldsteins have suffered continuous persecution by the KGB (secret police). Their phone was disconnected, they were forbidden to travel outside their city, they have been threatened and attacked in the streets. In 1978, Grigory was charged with “parasitism” and served one year’s strict regime in a labor camp.
After nine years of waiting, and in the desperate hope that without him, Avi and his mother might finally be given visas to go to Israel, Isai applied for and was granted a divorce from his wife, Elizaveta. Nothing come of this, however. Avl Goldstein has grown up in an atmosphere of constant tension, the Council reported. He suffers severe headaches, and because of this, his vision has been impaired.
Hoping that Samantha Smith might agree to take his letter to her Soviet host, Avi wrote of the possible results of her efforts: “The answer could be exit visas to my family. If so, you won a victory in the human rights fight. If not, you know more about human hypocrisy.” Eleven-year-old Samantha Smith left the Soviet Union July 21, never having met directly with Andropov.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
