A Profile of Courage

The release Tuesday of Soviet Jewish Prisoner of Conscience Anatoly Shcharansky as part of an East-West exchange of prisoners brings to a close one of the most celebrated human rights cases which drew international attention and the concern of numerous government leaders and politicians.

Nearly nine years after he was bundled into a car by Soviet secret police agents on Gorky Street in Moscow to later be tried on charges of treason, in a move by Soviet authorities with few precedents since the days of Stalin, Shcharansky’s name became synonymous with Soviet human rights violations and the harsh realities of life for Jews in the Soviet Union.

Now, with his release, he will once again be reunited with his wife Avital, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in July, 1974, just one day after they were married by a rabbi in Moscow, a marriage Soviet officials later declared invalid. Although she had not seen her husband since that time, Avital’s tireless efforts on his behalf are credited with keeping Shcharansky’s name in the forefront of international public opinion.

Born in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk on January 20, 1948, the son of a journalist and Communist Party member, Shcharansky graduated from the Moscow Institute’s Physics Department of Computers and Applied Mathematics in June 1972. An expert in computer technology and cybernetics, he began work for a research institute connected with the oil and gas industry.

Shcharansky’s application to emigrate was denied in 1974 on the grounds that “it is against state interests.” He soon became the subject of continuous harassment, surveillance and interrogation as he joined the growing ranks of Soviet Jewish refuseniks. At times, as many as eight KGB agents trailed him to monitor his activities. In early 1975, he was fired from his job at the Moscow Research Institute. In March 1975, after a series of arrests, he was reportedly informed by the KGB: “Your destiny is in our hands… No one in the West is interested in you and what you are doing here and nobody will say a word in the entire world if there is one more Prisoner of Conscience in the Soviet Union.”

Shcharansky became active in the Helsinki Watch groups formed to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki rights accords. More important, he served as a key link between Jews seeking to emigrate and Russians and others wanting to stay and liberalize the society.

David Shipler, The New York Times correspondent in Moscow when Shcharansky was arrested, wrote in 1977 that “he was a consummate public relations man, fluent in English and scrupulously accurate with his facts, who acted as a spokesman to the Western press on behalf of Jewish activists.

“As such, he was part of a chain that Soviet authorities… found threatening, a chain of communications that runs from the dissidents through Western correspondents to worldwide publications and back into the Soviet Union again via foreign radio stations such as BBC and the Voice of America.”

SUIT CLAIMS DEFAMATION OF SOVIET JEWS

In 1977, Shcharansky filed suit along with fellow activist Vladimir Slepak–whose emigration visa has still not been approved–and claimed that Soviet Jews were defamed as a result of the broadcasts of a blatantly anti-Semitic television documentary, “Buyers of Souls, “which was apparently aimed at the Soviet masses.

Shcharansky soon found himself the subject of a vicious attack in an article written by Dr. Sanya Lipavsky, a former roommate, and published in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia. Lipavsky accused the Soviet activist of working for the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge vehemently denied by Shcharansky, and also by then-President Jimmy Carter.

Ten days after the Izvestia article, Shcharansky was arrested and detained in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison until his trial in July, 1978. He was convicted on charges of “treason” and “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and sentenced to 13 years in prison and labor camps. He began his term at Chistopol Prison, 500 miles east of Moscow.

Throughout his 18-month detention, while awaiting trial, Shcharansky was held incommunicado, unable to see or speak to anyone except the Soviet secret police. He was also not permitted legal counsel, despite relentless efforts by his family to secure an attorney for him.

A PASSIONATE DEFENSE

But Shcharansky defended himself, despite being convinced that his was “a hopeless case from the very beginning — all the more so since I was declared guilty by Izvestia a full year-and-a-half before my trial took place and even before the case was opened and the investigation began.

“My people,” Shcharansky continued, “have been oppressed all over the world for 2,000 years. Yet, in every place in which they found themselves, they said again and again, ‘Next year in Jerusalem. Now, when I am further than ever from my people and my Avital, when I face long hard years of imprisonment, I turn to my people and my Avital and say: ‘Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in Jerusalem'” Shcharansky’s plight drew international attention and soon became an issue continually placed on the U.S. Soviet agenda. Carter spoke out on his behalf, as did numerous Congressmen and lay and religious leaders. As the Kremlin clamped down on Jewish emigration, Shcharansky’s picture soon adorned placards carried by demonstrators urging his freedom and an easing of the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union.

In March, 1980, Shcharansky was transferred from Chistopol to the Perm Labor Camp in the Urals. In April, his mother, Ida Milgrom, and brother, Leonid, were permitted to visit him for 24 hours — the first time since his initial imprisonment in 1978 that he was allowed visitors. The following September, they were again granted a visitation permit for a brief period, under heavy guard.

But Shcharansky’s health began to deteriorate. He Wrote a letter complaining of severe stomach and back pains. In early 1981, he was placed in solitary confinement which, in addition to poor food rations, led to a further deterioration in his health. All of his scheduled meetings in 1981 with family members were abruptly cancelled, and his letter-writing allotment was reduced.

In November of 1981, a surprise transfer once again brought Shcharansky back to Chistopol Prison. It was here, in September, 1982, on the eve of Yom Kippur, that Shcharansky began a hunger strike that would last 109 days.

The strike was to protest prison officials’ confiscation of his mail and the refusal to allow him to receive visits from his family, despite such allowances under the Soviet penal system. At the same time, international support for Shcharansky’s release began to gain momentum.

MANY APPEALS ISSUED

An appeal, one of the many, was addressed to French President Francois Mitterrand by exiled Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, urging the French leader to intervene on Shcharansky’s behalf. There were also efforts to negotiate an exchange of Major Aleksei Koslov, a KGB spy held captive in South Africa, for the release of Shcharansky. That effort was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, President Reagan also urged his freedom.

Shcharansky’s hunger strike, however, led to an unusual move by then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. He sent a letter, dated January 18, 1983, in which he stated that Shcharansky “had contact with his mother and ceased his hunger strike” in Chistopol and that “there is no threat to his life.” The letter was in response to an inquiry from French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais.

The hunger strike left Shcharansky in critical condition, and during a visit by his mother and brother to Chistopol, he complained of being unable to sleep because of chest pains. In January, 1984, he again went on a hunger strike, though only for two days, to protest the blocking of mail sent to his wife, Avital.

In October, 1984, word was received that Shcharansky had been sent once again to the Perm Labor Camp where he was immediately hospitalized in a “pre-heart attack” condition. He was given medical treatment. Milgrom spent two days with her son there on January 14 and 15, 1985. In January, 1986, Avital said her husband had been sentenced to a new six-month term in a labor camp for going on still another hunger strike, again protesting restricted mail privileges. And then it happened — word was out last week that Shcharansky would be released and allowed to go to Israel.