In the early 1970s a number of Jewish scientists, denied visas and plunged into professional limbo after losing their jobs, organized seminars to help themselves stay informed of developments in their various fields. The seminars met on Sundays. In a photograph of one such seminar, Andrei Sakharov sits, chin in hand, listening attentively.
Volodya attended the Sunday seminars and remembers that among the many subjects dealt with were mathematical logic, radio physics, the architectonics of computers, the chemistry of polymers, quantum mechanics, computer programming, genetics, cybernetics. He could do little, however, to keep up with the field of engineering, for which special equipment was needed. Every Soviet citizen who attended those seminars stood the risk of sudden arrest, imprisonment, exile. But the knowledge gained, the fraternity experienced, the heartache assuaged, made the risk worthwhile.
At the same time, clandestine study groups where Jewish history and Hebrew could be learned were formed throughout the Soviet Union. In 1969 there were about ten groups in Moscow, a hundred or so individuals, studying Hebrew. By the 1980s many thousands in major cities of the Soviet Union attended secret Hebrew classes, with the result that a significant number of Soviet Jews arrived in Israel already knowing the language. I remember teaching one of the Moscow groups in the mid-1980s: the silent climb up the dim staircase of the apartment building; the warm, crowded room; the hushed voices; the quiet lecture; the subdued discussion; the silent climb down the staircase; the sudden snowy street; and the icy wind like a stinging slap across my face.
Volodya and Masha often helped duplicate textbooks for the groups, but, save for a class in Hebrew held on occasion in their apartment, neither participated seriously in Jewish study. That was not their weapon of choice in the visa war.
Volodya had been told by the OVIR authorities that he would have to wait five years before he could apply again for an exit visa. It was OVIR policy not to return documents; thus in order to reapply, one had to repeat from the start the entire documentation procedure. Volodya refused to wait and would not reprise the nightmarish grind and embarrassment of document acquisition; the first effort had taken about three months. Repeatedly he addressed applications to OVIR requesting that his case be reopened. Regularly he called the OVIR office, only to be told that his application had been refused. And when he asked for the reason, the response always was “Secrecy.”
Refusals from OVIR were communicated orally. If, however, one’s application for a visa had been approved, one received a postcard in the mail. On March 11, 1971, an OVIR postcard arrived for Masha’s mother, who had recently suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital. “You are permitted to leave for Israel. To obtain your exit visa, you must appear at the office of OVIR with these documents.” A list followed.
Masha went to see her the following day and showed her the postcard. After a long moment of silence, her mother said she would go alone.
“The trip is difficult,” said Masha. “Will you be able to make it?”
“It’s up to God. Begin the process.”
Masha spoke with her mother’s doctor, who said the trip would kill her. Masha said it was her mother’s decision; she would go.
Volodya and Masha went about collecting the necessary documents. The only place where her mother, weak and shaky, had to appear in person was the Austrian Embassy, for her transit visa.
Four days later, Masha and her mother were in the apartment on Gorky Street; Volodya had been arrested for participating in a sit-in. They drank tea and talked about the family, about Israel. Mother and daughter were up most of the night. “I’ll heal,” said her mother. “I’ll go to Europe and America. I’ll speak everywhere about you. I’ll be a bridge for you and get you out of here.” She seemed tortured by her decision to leave. “I am not abandoning you. We will see each other soon.”
She left the country on a stretcher and flew to Israel. She settled in Jerusalem and lived on a government old-age pension until her death in the desert city of Beersheba in 1980. Masha never saw her again.
By the early 1970s non-Jewish Russian dissidents of what had come to be called the democratic movement had established clear channels of communication to the West, along which flowed a steady stream of information about their activities in the Soviet Union and the efforts by the authorities to silence them. The refuseniks began to use the channels of the Russian dissidents to communicate with the West. Lists of Jews in refusal were slipped to foreign correspondents, along with carefully documented information concerning human rights violations. The lists also appeared in the Russian dissident samizdat publication Khronika.
The Slepak family chronicles are particularly clear on the help the refuseniks received during the early 1970s from those in the Russian dissident movement. Volodya recalls the day, March 13, 1971, when Vladimir Bukovsky, one of the leading Russian dissidents, suddenly appeared at the apartment on Gorky Street, accompanied by two men. Volodya had met Bukovsky some months before and had since that time been regularly giving him information to relay to foreign correspondents. A tall man in his early thirties, with broad shoulders, brown hair, brown eyes, and a wide face with a prominent nose and cheekbones, Bukovsky had been arrested for dissident activity while still on the faculty of biology at the University of Moscow. Assuming that the Slepak apartment was bugged by the KGB, he proceeded to write on a magic slate, from which the script could be easily and repeatedly erased: “I know that I will be arrested in two or three days. The KGB agents are following me day and night, making no effort to hide. It took me about two hours to lose them so we could come to you without the KGB tail. When I’m arrested, you can be in direct contact with these gentlemen, and through them with other foreign correspondents.” One of the two men was Bob Catlin of Reuters. The other was the UPI correspondent, whose name Volodya does not now recall.
The next day Volodya met one of the correspondents-he does not remember which one, but the agreement was that all information related to one would be communicated by him to the other-and informed him that on the following day he and a group of others were going to the Supreme Soviet with a list of grievances against the Soviet Union. Volodya was arrested March 15 and given fifteen days in jail. While he was serving his fifteen days, the KGB arrested Bukovsky, who was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp and an additional five years of exile.
That was the start of Volodya’s direct contact with the foreign press, the public word in the outside world, one of his weapons in the visa war. There were other weapons.
On March 15-a cold, cloudy day, with melting dirty snow on the ground-a group of about fifteen Jewish dissidents whose visa applications had been refused, arrived at the building on Pushkinskaya Street that housed the Office of the General Procurator. The entrance to the building was from the rear, which faced Sovietskaya Square. Earlier that morning, they had gone to the office of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on Mokhovaya Street near the Kremlin only to be told that their grievances had first to be presented at the office of the general procurator of the USSR. Now they waited in the receiving room of General Procurator Roman Rudenko’s office, after having informed the clerk that they wished to present their applications for exit visas, together with a number of demands: (1) that those arrested in Leningrad, Riga, Kishinev, and other cities for requesting visas to Israel be released and (2) that OVIR comply with Soviet law and send refusals in written form, stating the reasons for the refusal, the date of the refusal, and when the refusal would be terminated and the applicant free to leave the USSR.