When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (40 page)

He was shocked by his own vehemence and the sudden realization that the world he had inherited from his father was not one that he could ever embrace. The crisis of the Doctors' Plot passed when, in March of 1953, Stalin died. Volodya saw his father cry for the first time. A new period in Soviet history was beginning.

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, life became more comfortable for Volodya and Masha Slepak. They advanced in their careers and raised a family. Masha decided to give up her dream of becoming a surgeon and settled for radiology, which allowed more flexible hours. Their first son, Alexander, was born in 1952, and their second son, Leonid, in 1959. Solomon Slepak moved out of the Gorky Street apartment in 1960 after his wife died, and he married a Russian woman. Volodya's career was solidifying. He started working as a senior radio engineer at the Scientific Institute for TV Research, and then in 1962 he was asked to lead his own laboratory, one that would work exclusively on a project to design better display screens for the Soviet air defense system. Even though the job would not give him access to any highly sensitive secrets—the technology he was working on was well known in the West—the project fell under Ministry of Defense supervision, and Slepak was vetted by the government. He received first-form security clearance, the second-highest level possible—a classification that would ensure his exit-visa refusal many years later. The thaw touched the Slepaks, as it did all Soviet citizens, and they felt the slackening of fear and government control. They read, with special interest, a copy of Khrushchev's 1956 speech repudiating Stalin. Even Solomon Slepak was pleased that the cult of the Party was finally winning out over the cult of Stalin's personality.

During the sixties, Volodya and Masha Slepak's social circle widened to include a number of other Jewish families, all professionals like themselves, engineers and doctors. Many of these new friends Slepak met at his institute, a place that would eventually serve as a kind of petri dish of Jewish nationalist feeling because of its unusually high percentage of Jewish scientists. The friends raised their children together and on weekends would leave the city center for the forested outskirts of Moscow. There they camped, cooked, went fishing, and enjoyed being in nature, free from the stifling grayness of the city. They were able to talk more openly, discuss politics and the ways Soviet society was changing or not changing. Raised by their parents to fear that "walls have ears," they felt the forest was their freedom. The radio was a key piece of this. Outside the city, it was easier to bypass the jamming technology that kept out foreign stations. The friends would sit around a campfire listening to the shortwave broadcasts from the Voice of America, European stations in Germany, and Kol Israel, the Voice of Israel. Hearing news from the outside made the Slepaks wonder what it was like to be a Jew in America or Israel, if all that they had become accustomed to—the subtle anti-Semitism, the quotas, the pervasive undercurrent of aggression—was normal. So addictive were these broadcasts that in 1963 Slepak started listening to his shortwave inside their apartment, using a metal beam in the wall to block the jamming. Late at night when Sanya and Leonid were asleep, Volodya and his wife would huddle around the radio, the volume turned down low.

Among their friends were David Drabkin and his wife, Naomi. Drabkin was a stubborn man who had become a fierce Zionist, one of the few who was trying to organize the Moscow Jews. His wife was from Riga and through her he became acquainted with the Latvian Zionists. In the forest around the fire, he argued with his friends, trying to persuade them to take a more aggressive stance. The Slepaks often listened just out of curiosity. But Drabkin's talk was attractive. His reasoning had an elegant simplicity. What was Russia to them anyway? How had it treated its Jews? What belonged to them here? For Drabkin, Israel was the obvious answer. Only Israel was theirs. Volodya and Masha listened, took it all in, and slowly—without being fully aware of the transformation at first—the frustration that had caused Slepak to lash out at his father turned into a positive desire, an objective. One day Masha even said impulsively that she could imagine them living in Israel. But these still seemed just escape fantasies, words that made them laugh seconds after they were uttered. When Simchat Torah arrived each year and it was time for the annual celebration in front of the Moscow synagogue, Volodya Slepak decided it was too dangerous to join.

The Six-Day War had an energizing effect on this small group of friends. That summer they were vacationing at Lake Tzesarka, near Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The war was over but they stayed glued to broadcasts from Kol Israel, curious to pick up any information about the victory. This was the summer that Drabkin finally decided he was going to find a way out. Slepak was still not convinced. After the vacation, which took them all through Latvia and Estonia, he returned to his life in Moscow, the work in the institute, the apartment on Gorky. The next summer, 1968, vacationing this time along the Dnieper River, south of Kiev, they followed news of the demise of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the brief, seemingly crazy protest by eight people in Red Square. But still, that Simchat Torah, Slepak wouldn't go to the synagogue.

That fall, David Drabkin told his friends that he had requested an invitation from Israel, the first step to obtaining an exit visa. The small group of Riga activists had just gotten permission, among them Mark Blum, who had organized the cleanup of Rumbuli. When Blum came to Moscow to collect his exit visa, he met with Drabkin and his friends and asked if anyone else wanted an invitation sent. The meeting took place in Drabkin's dark apartment on a winter evening at the end of December. Volodya and Masha had to make a quick decision. They went off to confer. They knew that their comfortable life was at stake. They might lose everything. But Masha said it was an opportunity they simply could not pass up. Volodya reluctantly agreed.

The invitation finally arrived in March of 1969, two sheets of paper fastened together. It referred to a "relative" of the Slepaks who requested that the family be reunited. Volodya and Masha didn't know quite how to feel about those flimsy pages. They held them between their fingers with both dread and exhilaration. They would now begin the process, one that was familiar to all applicants. But first, Slepak realized, they would need another invitation—their names had been misspelled and all their details confused. He looked for someone else to take his information to Israel. The KGB, however, now aware of his intentions, wasted no time. Before Slepak had a chance to tell his bosses about his decision to emigrate, the KGB informed them. He was fired on the spot. This was a shock. Even though he knew the consequences of applying, he was unprepared for how swiftly it would all happen, how suddenly he would be spit out by a society that had once made him feel so comfortable. Losing his job placed him in an impossible situation with regard to his application. He needed to include a character reference, a
kharikteristika,
from a workplace. No job, no
kharikteristika.
On top of that, it could take months to find someone to bring his request for a new invitation to Israel. Volodya and Masha both tried to be strong for the other, to maintain a pose of confidence, but inside there were moments when they both felt like they were in free fall, as if the ground had opened up beneath them and they were not sure how long it would take before they landed somewhere solid again.

Around this time, Volodya decided to tell his father about his plans. Solomon Slepak was not pleased to hear that his son was leaving the paradise he himself had fought to build. He felt betrayed by his son, by his whole weak and undisciplined generation. Before slamming the door on his way out of the Gorky Street apartment, Solomon yelled that he would do whatever he could, work every connection he still had, to prevent his son from gaining an exit visa.

Volodya and Masha Slepak were quickly pushed to the margins. It was becoming difficult to obtain even the basic necessities—and they hadn't even formally applied to leave. In August, they finally sent another request for an invitation. While they waited, now with much less to lose, they decided to participate in the Simchat Torah festivities. If the world they knew was going to turn its back—all those former friends and coworkers who now refused to speak to them—then they would retreat deeper into this second society of Jews. Soon they were dancing to the unusual sound of Hebrew music blaring out of two speakers set up in front of the synagogue. They found themselves twirling for hours, becoming drunk on the idea that this might all end well.

They received the second invitation in January 1970, this one with their names spelled correctly. Slepak began the long application process that, as one of the refused wrote at the time, served "to isolate the applicant, put stumbling blocks in his way, and train a spotlight on him." First, they had to submit
kharikteristikas
signed by their supervisors—luckily Slepak had managed to find part-time work—and then by various members of the Party apparatus, such as the local secretary and the head of the trade union committee. Then an additional certificate was needed from the office in charge of their specific housing complex, attesting to their legal status as residents of Moscow. Finally, and hardest for the Slepaks, they needed to obtain letters from any former spouses or living parents stating whether they approved of the departure and whether there were any outstanding financial obligations.

By the end of this process, dozens, if not hundreds, of friends, co-workers, neighbors, and acquaintances had been made aware that the good citizen they thought they knew was challenging their way of life. Often the required documents were simply impossible to obtain. A signature could be withheld out of fear or malice. All it took was one disgruntled ex-wife or terrified boss or, in Slepak's case, resentful father. Solomon told his son he considered him an "enemy of the people" and he would never grant permission. Volodya had to include a notarized affidavit attesting that his father refused to participate in the process. His employer agreed to sign his
kharikteristika
on the condition that he then resign from his job. Everyone, from the Slepaks' most peripheral friends to their neighbors to the local KGB office, knew they had applied for an exit visa. The family felt watched, scrutinized, in a way they had never been before. These consequences were enough to prevent thousands from applying. For those who did, the process transformed their relationship to society from one of complacency to one of hostility.

In April of 1970, four months after they received the second invitation, having gathered all the necessary documents, they visited OVIR and submitted their applications. It was a relief to think that the anxiety, the interminable limbo, that had suffused the past year might soon be over. But now a new wait began. Every time the phone rang, they rushed to see if it was OVIR. One month, and then two. Finally, in early June, Volodya called OVIR, and the impersonal voice on the other end of the line read the decision. Application denied. The Slepaks could try again in five years.

A community of the refused began to coalesce. But unlike the Leningrad Zionists, the Moscow activists never created a formal organization with membership fees and a hierarchical structure—they knew that would be a death wish. Natural leaders such as Volodya Slepak did, of course, emerge, but there was no detectable structure.

Moscow itself provided a good setting for the movement, if only because it was saturated with foreign journalists. Most major Western news outlets, including the big American and European papers and wire services, had bureaus in the city. Reporters such as Hedrick Smith from the
New York Times
and Robert Toth from the
Los Angeles Times
were usually walled off from the reality in the Soviet Union, watched over by minders and forced to work with little more than Kremlin press releases. The story of Soviet Jewry was a huge opportunity for them, combining great human drama with accessible characters. Some saw their coverage as a moral imperative—Christopher Wren, a
New
York Times
reporter, told colleagues they should treat the refuseniks' struggle like the civil rights movement. Many of these journalists became openly friendly and sympathetic, inviting Jewish activists to their homes for meals and introducing them to their families. These associations did not go unnoticed: in 1970 alone, three American correspondents in Moscow had their visas revoked, and in early 1971, Anthony Astrachan, the
Washington Post
correspondent in Moscow, was ordered to leave. But for the refuseniks, such contact was critical. It saved them from the more severe retribution they would have otherwise suffered at the hands of the KGB.

Also unique to Moscow, and beneficial to the refuseniks in many ways, was the presence of the members of the dissident movement (the democrats, as they were sometimes known). The Moscow Jewish activists were for the most part secular humanists who sympathized with opponents of the regime. Many of them came from the democratic movement and saw their struggle for freedom as part of a wider push to liberalize the Soviet Union. On the other side, some of the most important democracy activists had Jewish parents. The emergence of a robust Zionist movement was a kind of challenge to them, forcing many to confront issues of identity. Were they Russians first, or Jews? Anti-Semitism was just as present in their lives. But for most of them, Israel was not the solution. They wanted to try to create a more tolerant society at home.

Larisa Bogoraz embodied this tension. She was at the nexus of much dissident activity; she had been married to the poet Yuli Daniel and then to Anatoly Marchenko, the nearly illiterate former prisoner whose memoirs—a devastating account of the Gulag as it persisted after Stalin—she helped write. She was also a Jew and struggled with her conscious decision to distance herself from the Zionists. She explored the question in a samizdat essay: "Who am I now? Who do I feel myself to be? Unfortunately, I do not feel like a Jew. I understand that I have an unquestionable genetic tie with Jewry. I also assume that this is reflected in my mentality, in my mode of thinking, and in my behavior. But this common quality is little help to me in feeling my Jewish identity as a similarity of external features ... such as community of language, culture, history, tradition; perhaps, even, of impressions, unconsciously absorbed by the senses: what the eye sees, the ear hears, the skin feels. By all these characteristics, I am Russian."