“I can tell you that in every (Jewish living room, leaving the Soviet Union is discussed,” said Alexander Lerner, the former refusenik and eminent professor of cybernetics.
Lerner, 74, once of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and more recently of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was in New York last week as a guest of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute.
He was on his way to Los Angeles to deliver a talk at the University of California at Los Angeles on some of the dizzyingly brilliant problems he worked on as a famed Moscow scientist and later as “persona non grata” during the 16 years he spent as a refusenik.
In January, the Soviets allowed Lerner’s dream to come true, and he flew to Israel to take up an immediate post as professor emeritus at the Weizmann Institute, a position the prestigious school held for him for 15 years.
By any standard, in any country on earth, the Moscow savant had it good while in the Soviet Union. A five-room apartment filled with sumptuous belongings, a dacha in the country, two cars. Plus the rare ability to travel all over the world to deliver papers on complex scientific problems that would be published in scientific journals worldwide.
AN EVE TOWARD JERUSALEM
Yet, he always thought of “I’shana haba’a b’Yerushalayim” (next year in Jerusalem), said the 74-year-old scientist, a warm smile continuously on his lips and an energy that would make a 20-year-old jealous. He sat in a small circle of people from the press and the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute at the Sheraton Centre Hotel here.
The Soviet used Lerner’s success in the Soviet Union as proof that there was no discrimination against Jews. But “for my children, the gates were closed,” Lerner said. He recalled the intellectual promise of his daughter Sonya, who by the age of six had proved all the theorems of plane geometry and was written about in the newspapers as a “wunderkind.”
But in 1971, when he made the decision to emigrate, Sonya was immediately dismissed from her postgraduate studies. Lerner himself immediately lost his positions at the university and the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
His son, Vladimir, an engineer and expert in systems analysis, could not work in his field. Instead, “he played piano in the circus, worked as a carpenter and driving instructor and – ‘sof-sof’ (Hebrew for ‘finally’) – the last few years he reached an estimable level as maintenance engineer repairing pinball machines.”
Ironically, Lerner’s scientific development benefited from his condition of refusal, he said. “For the first time in my life, I had no obligations at all. I was in a position to have a lot of free time to work,” he said, grinning. “I needed nothing more than a piece of paper and a pencil and a little bit of a brain.”
Lerner was plunged into the scientific advances of the West as his colleagues from around the world learned of his plight and came faithfully to his Moscow apartment, allowing the “snowball process of talking to other scientists” to take effect.
In the second part of 1972, he said, he organized a private seminar in his home in which scientists discussed mathematical applications to biological and medical problems, including the development of an artificial heart. This lasted 10 years, until one day “the KGB came to my apartment and said, ‘Stop. The seminar is forbidden.'”
‘MOVING SEMINARS’
Lerner and physicist refusenik Viktor Brailovsky, whose seminar was halted at about the same time, organized “moving seminars” together. “This is alive up to now,” he said.
Lerner praised the immeasurable help he got from visiting foreign scientists, who kept him “au courant” and gave him the necessary psychological support. But he was most happy when the Israeli scientists came.
Upon his arrival in Israel, he proposed to the Weizmann faculty a special project to construct an artificial heart, working with experts in polymers who are interested in developing heart membranes, he explained.
“The artificial heart now in existence is not perfected and solves no practical problem,” Lerner said, claiming that there is a “real market” for 300,000 artificial hearts and “only a small group of scientists worldwide” working on the project.
Lerner recalled that in his long years as a refusenik he “served in the foreign ministry of aliyah.” His apartment was a meeting place for political figures from throughout the West, including Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
But among all his visitors, Lerner was most impressed by the late Vice President Hubert Humphrey. “He was extraordinary,” said Lerner, “a person who understood you immediately after you only said half a word.”
Lerner believes that “approximately 2 million Jews want to leave the Soviet Union” — the total number of Jews believed to be living there. “But not everybody is ready to do it, for many reasons,” he said.
DISCUSSED ‘IN EVERY LIVING ROOM’
“Some understand that they will never get permission. Some fear they cannot survive in competition. And some are so stupid they believe in progress in the Soviet Union, that things will get better,” he explained. “But I can tell you that in every living room, leaving the Soviet Union is discussed.”
Hearing that the Solidarity Sunday demonstration for Soviet Jews in New York would not be taking place this May, Lerner said, “It’s a pity that such a decision was made.” He said this demonstration is a favorite video program for Soviet Jews, and he believes it impresses Soviet authorities as well.
Lerner described himself as an optimist. “I have good reasons. Glasnost is not very important,” he said. It is just Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s ploy, because he “wants to improve the economy and badly needs cooperation with the West.”
And, he said, “the cheapest price for this is Jews.”
Although “not satisfied” with the number of Jews who have emigrated so far, he said that the increases this year are still “something. But of course we should pay for it. For nothing you get nothing.”
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.
