I asked: Did they regret having left the Soviet Union, seeing that the regime had collapsed?

Without hesitation, they answered: Not for a moment.

Volodya saw no immediate good future for the people of Russia; it would take forty years to create the beginnings of a worthwhile society there. And there was no hope at all for the Jews, who would ultimately vanish through assimilation. “The cultural buildup of Jews in Russia today is temporary and unnatural,” he said. “It will be good until the first pogrom.” And Masha added, “If we had not made the effort to leave, our children would have assimilated and disappeared as Jews.”

Back in the 1960s they had talked at some length about the possibility of leaving the Soviet Union, long before that fateful December night, in 1969, when Masha prevailed upon Volodya to choose with her the dangerous path of emigration. They knew what they wanted: to have the same possibilities as everyone else for a job and a place in society; to be able to speak freely; to educate their children in the best schools; not to be stopped in one’s tracks because one was a Jew. They did not want their sons to live in a society where a lifetime of achievement and gain could be destroyed in an instant by anti-Semitism. Why invest one’s energy and creativity in such a society? Yes, while in refusal they had looked upon Israel as a perfect society, as one single harmonious family. Now they saw it as flawed, unified only in times of extreme crisis. True, it was a democracy, an open society; and yes, the entire world entered their sunny apartment through their radio and cable television. But they were concerned about the peace process, the terrorist attacks, the divisive politics, were appalled by what seemed to them a prevailing prejudice among some Israelis against Russian immigrants, who were at times accused of bringing criminals and prostitutes into the country, causing an increase in the number of road accidents, engaging in child abuse and acts of incest. A nasty business, all that bigotry. And in Israel! But no, they did not want to live in America. They had family in Israel. And many friends. They loved the informality of the country, the intimacies, the way people dropped in on one another, met and talked in each other’s kitchens. They were suspicious of the government, the parliament, the authorities; they liked the people. Their dream? To live nine months of each year in Israel and three months in America, where they could be with their children and grandchildren. And, for a long time in the future, to receive no telephone calls from the other world.

They accompanied us to our car, Volodya still barefoot, walking easily on rough pebbles and grass. I warned him about deer ticks and Lyme disease, and he answered cheerfully in his loud and husky voice that he knew about it. They stood in the driveway, watching and waving, as we backed out onto the paved road and drove away.

Many things come to mind as I near the end of this work, things omitted and included. The long hesitation with which I approached it: How write it once the subject of the refuseniks dissolved? All the worthy people left out: impossible to include them all. Should I have written about Alexander Lavout, the mathematician in Moscow who monitored what he claimed were the Soviet psychiatric hospitals where dissidents were drugged and silenced? And Natasha Khassin of Moscow, who took it upon herself to care for prisoners in far-off regions of the Soviet Union? And Yuli Kosharovsky of Moscow, the clandestine teacher of Hebrew? And Arkady Mai of Moscow, the historian? And Elena Seidel of Moscow, teacher of English? And Misha Beizer of Leningrad, the historian? And Leonid Zeliger and Aba Taratuta, both of Leningrad, the former a teacher of Hebrew, the latter an engineer and a teacher of Hebrew? And Iosif Zisels, the physicist from Chernovtsy, who helped prisoners improve their tormented lives? And-well, in truth, the many omissions are painful to contemplate. But an end has to be made.

I consider the things included. The central mystery of Solomon Slepak’s life: his repeated escapes from the clutches of Stalin. There has been no success in obtaining his KGB files, though many attempts were made before and during the writing of this work.

Recently a letter arrived from the KGB addressed to the grandmother of Olga, Leonid’s wife. The grandmother, a woman in her eighties who resides in Moscow, was terrified by the return address and immediately telephoned Leonid in New York. It turned out he had forgotten to tell her that while in Moscow some weeks before, he had made out an application to see the KGB files on his father and grandfather and given her name as an in-care-of local address.

The letter, dated June 27, 1995, reads:

Your application regarding Slepak, Vladimir Semyonovich, was reviewed.

In accordance with Article No. 5 of the Legal Code of the Russian Federation, “On Search Activity in the Russian Federation,” materials in connection with Slepak, V. S., as an individual whose guilt in committing a crime was not proved in an established manner, were destroyed.

At the same time, we also inform you that, in accordance with the above-mentioned article, the right to demand from the authorities of the Federal Service of Security the data about the nature of the received information in regard to that person is available only to the person himself, whose guilt in committing a crime was not proved according to the procedures established by law.

A. V. Tsarenko

Deputy Chief

It is not much of a consolation for Volodya and Masha to be told now by the KGB that Volodya’s sentence to five years of exile was illegal. Volodya has decided to pursue the matter of his KGB files and will address his request directly to President Boris Yeltsin.

There is no mention in the letter about Leonid’s request to see the KGB files on his grandfather, the Old Bolshevik, Solomon Slepak.

I consider, too, my fascination with Volodya’s story, the way it held me in its grasp for years after its proximate appeal evaporated. Why did interest linger? What was there about it that was so beguiling? Perhaps the writer as amanuensis, as one watching from the sidelines and recording in safety the savage struggles of the activist, and wishing he had that courage, that boldness, to plunge into the foulness of existence, engage its cruelties, chance the scars of flesh and mind, face the possibility of annihilation? The individual who crosses the boundary from bystander to activist and hazards his or her life to change the world-an eternal mystery how that choice is made, that moment of crossing, the wonder of that transfiguration. The writer gazes upon it with awe, is mesmerized by its large daring, its radiance.

I have thought often about the exile of the Slepaks compared with the years in prisons and labor camps meted out to so many others. Torture, we know, leaves permanent psychic scars. Refusal is a condition of torture, crueler perhaps than exile, for there is a terminus to exile, and none to refusal. And surely exile is torture. During their five years in Siberia, Volodya and Masha experienced physical and mental subjugation, torture of an explicit and violating sort, and an initiation into the indifferent cruelty of despotism. But it was not the horror experienced, for example, by Gregory Steshenko in a psychiatric hospital, or by Natan Shcharansky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in prisons and camps. In this regard, Volodya and Masha appear to have been more fortunate than some. Still, what point can there be in comparing pain and punishment? Do we know what scars they bear, what dreams wake them, what echoes of that cruel corner of Siberia haunt their sleep?

And finally, I write with the sobering impression that there is a cautionary tale in the Slepak chronicles; it waves a flag of danger at us in the sullen atmosphere of the early third century of the American Republic. Are there American variations of Solomon Slepak, those rendered so rigid by ideas that all reason fails them? Prudence, a cautious awareness of nuances, of complexities, of consequences, a perception of the unity of the American experience, and a saving sense of irony and humor-pervasive in the Founding Fathers and lacking in contemporary ideologues. Can we learn something from these chronicles about iron righteousness and rigid doctrine, about the stony heart, the sealed mind, the capricious use of law, and the tragedies that often result when theories are not adjusted to realities? Do the chronicles seem to reveal a glaring and almost obvious truth: the larger the nation, the more tumultuous its demise? Are we approaching the finale now to the bright possibilities once inherent in this land? Is that old America forever gone? Indeed, did it ever exist? Were we seduced as schoolchildren into a vision of a land green and golden from sea to shining sea, a land as illusory for many Americans as the Motherland of Solomon Slepak was for Volodya and Masha? Perhaps the more sensible question is not about what we once were but about what we intend ourselves to be one day. Things are happening to us today that we don’t seem able to explain. Can we enter the uncertain future without the corrosive cynicism, the clutching greed, the divisive self-interests-the beasts that destroyed the world of Solomon Slepak and rendered it uninhabitable to his family?