After a moment the official yielded. Gathering up the application form and the documents, he said tersely, “You will be informed about the decision.”

Volodya and Masha went out of the OVIR office and rode the minibus back to the apartment. Volodya was forty-three years old, Masha forty-four.

Their sons, Sanya and Leonid, seventeen and ten, knew that their family was applying to emigrate to Israel. They continued to attend school without incident. No one seemed aware of their family’s plans.

One day two KGB officers appeared at the school and told the principal, Gregory Suvorov, that the family of one of his students, Leonid Slepak, was applying for a visa to Israel. The KGB was requesting, said the agents, that the principal and all the teachers in the school organize themselves into a pressure group to persuade the student, Leonid Slepak, to change his mind about going to Israel and to incite him against his parents.

Gregory Suvorov was a Russian, a teacher of history, and a member of the party. All in the school held him in high esteem; many loved him. Politely he informed the KGB agents that they had their business and he had his; he was responsible for everything that took place in the school and would not allow any interference with his work. He then asked them to leave the premises. Soon afterward he met with the teachers and told them that they were not to say anything about the status of Leonid Slepak; they were to make him feel warm and welcome.

No further incidents occurred in the school over the Slepak family’s emigration plans.

Weeks went by. The Slepaks heard nothing from OVIR. On a day in June, after having waited about two months, Volodya telephoned the OVIR office.

The official who answered said, “Your name is Slepak?”

“Yes.”

“We have just received the decision of the commission.” He said nothing about the nature of the commission or who had served on it. “Your request for a visa has been refused.”

“What is the reason?” asked Volodya.

“Secrecy,” the official said. “According to regulations, you have the right to reapply after five years; then your case will be reviewed.” And he hung up.

In the single word “secrecy” Volodya read the true and complete response of the Soviet authorities. His years of scientific work on the air-defense system of the Soviet Union had given him access to vital state secrets. He was a major security risk, and quite probably would never be permitted to leave the country.

7 The Visa War

On the afternoon of June 15, 1970, some days after the telephone conversation with OVIR in which Volodya was informed that his exit visa application had been refused, he and Masha were alone in the apartment when they heard the doorbell ring. Masha went to the door, while Volodya remained in the smaller of their two rooms. He heard the door being opened and called out, “Who is there?”

Masha returned to the room. “They came to make a search.”

From somewhere outside, a man said, “Please come here!”

Volodya followed Masha out of the room. In the hall near the entrance door stood five men in civilian clothes and one in a militia uniform. One of the men in civilian clothes said in a soft voice, “I am Major Nosov of the KGB.” He had on a dark gray suit, a white shirt, and a tie. Under his jacket he wore a pistol. “I have a warrant to search your apartment,” he said.

“In connection with what case?” asked Volodya.

“The case of Yuri Fedorov,” said Major Nosov. He was very polite.

“What is he accused of?”

“Anti-Soviet activity,” said Major Nosov. He pointed to the man in uniform. “This is a representative of the militia. These two are witnesses, and these two are my aides. So, if you please, give us voluntarily all the anti-Soviet material that you have in your possession. Otherwise we will begin to search.”

Volodya said, “I don’t know Fedorov. I know nothing about his anti-Soviet activity, and I have no anti-Soviet material.”

The men proceeded to search the apartment. They went about the search slowly and with great care. Major Nosov read English fluently. He began to look through the English-language books, listing their titles in English, which he then translated into Russian, He came upon shelves that held lawbooks, hundreds of lawbooks.

“You’re an engineer, why these books?” he asked.

“I’m interested in Soviet law,” said Volodya.

Sanya Slepak, eighteen years old, watched the search in fascination, imagining himself inside a movie, remembering films he had seen about tsarist police ransacking the living quarters of courageous Bolsheviks. At one point he said he needed to go to the bathroom, and one of the men in civilian clothes accompanied him to the small water closet. Sanya remained awake throughout the eighteen-hour search, witnessing the gradual confiscation of much of his father’s library. His younger brother, Leonid, eleven, went to sleep.

The men riffled the pages of every book, turned over every sheet of paper. Books and journals printed in a foreign language were impounded, together with personal letters and notebooks. Also seized were tape recorders, tape cassettes, the shortwave radio, even a broken typewriter once owned by Solomon Slepak. Those devices might be used to spread anti-Soviet propaganda, explained Major Nosov politely.

In the course of the search, two friends of the Slepaks, Norman Sirkin and Mark Elbaum, appeared in the doorway of the apartment on a visit and were ordered by Major Nosov to remain until the search was completed. The KGB did not want them informing anyone that a search was in progress because that would attract people to the apartment house. Especially to be avoided was the annoying presence of the foreign press. At about two in the morning Volodya fell asleep in an armchair. His noisy snores brought from an astounded Major Nosov the comment “I have never had anyone fall asleep during a search. Sometimes they jump out the window or hang themselves in the toilet by their tie.” Norman Sirkin later told Volodya that he said to Major Nosov, “Only a person with a clear conscience can sleep in a situation like this.”

The search came to an end at six o’clock in the morning. Major Nosov presented Volodya with a list of the items the KGB was about to remove from the apartment and requested that he sign it. Volodya refused. He said the search was against Soviet law and the confiscated objects had no connection to anything illegal. Without further ado, Major Nosov folded the list and slid it into an inside pocket of his jacket. The men left, carrying with them four large sacks of the Slepaks’ possessions. Nothing they took was ever returned.

The chronicles record Volodya’s odd comment that books confiscated by the KGB often ended up in prison camps. Some of the most politically unreliable books in the hands of some of the most intractable political prisoners! And books that might help one learn a foreign language. And take one on a journey into forbidden lands. Asked what kind of logic there was to that, Volodya responded, “If you want logic, you have to go someplace else.”

Ten days earlier, on June 5, Volodya and seventy-four others had signed a letter to Secretary-General of the United Nations U Thant, who was soon to visit Moscow. The letter, which has come to be known as the Letter of the 75, was read on overseas radio stations and appeared in newspapers around the world. It was an appeal to U Thant that he intercede with the Soviet government for the right of the signers to emigrate to Israel.

Volodya did not know Yuri Fedorov, the man named by Major Nosov as the reason for the apartment search, and was unaware that he had been arrested in Leningrad in the morning of that same day on the charge of having hijacked an aircraft for the purpose of fleeing from the Soviet Union. Also searched that day were the apartments of others who had signed the letter to U Thant.