Former refusenik asks: Who speaks their names?
The death of Boris Kochubiyevsky in Israel in October at the age of 90 reminded me of a time when the names of Jewish political prisoners were known throughout the free world. Their photographs appeared at demonstrations; their cases reached the US Congress; and the successful struggle for their freedom united millions of Jews.
I remember that time not from history books, but from my own life.
In 1968, Kochubiyevsky, a Jewish engineer from Kyiv whose father was murdered at Babi Yar, wrote to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev: “I am a Jew. I want to live in Israel.”
For challenging Soviet policy and demanding the right to emigrate, he was sentenced to three years in a labor camp. His trial took place in the same Kyiv courtroom where Mendel Beilis had faced the notorious blood libel accusation in 1913.
Kochubiyevsky eventually reached Israel. His courage helped inspire the international movement for Soviet Jewry.
I was eight when he wrote his letter. On Aug. 3, 1980, I applied to emigrate to Israel and began my own 11-year ordeal as a refusenik.
I joined the underground Soviet Jewish movement. We organized Hebrew classes, circulated publications, documented discrimination and maintained contacts with Jewish organizations in the West.
The Soviet government had created a remarkable contradiction: Our passports identified us as Jews, while the state restricted our ability to study Jewish history, practice Judaism, learn Hebrew or emigrate.
We also confronted a fundamental question: If the gates finally opened, who would leave Mother Russia, who would stay and what would happen to those who remained? Millions of Jews and their relatives eventually left the former Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands stayed.
• • •
When communism collapsed, I believed the era of Jewish prisoners of conscience in Russia had ended forever. I was wrong.
On July 27, 2024, Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old Jewish pianist who opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, died in pretrial detention in Birobidzhan. His supposed threat to the Russian state was a YouTube channel with reportedly only five subscribers.
The location was bitterly ironic. Birobidzhan, capital of the Soviet-created Jewish Autonomous Region, was once promoted as an alternative to Jewish national aspirations in Israel.
Arrested for alleged public encouragement of terrorism, Kushnir began a dry hunger strike, refusing food and water. He died before his case could be heard. According to reports, only 11 people attended his funeral.
I remember demonstrations where thousands demanded freedom for Soviet prisoners they had never met. How could a Jewish prisoner die in such isolation in today’s interconnected world?
Evgenia Berkovich, a Jewish theater director and poet, was arrested in 2023 over her production “Finist the Brave Falcon,” which examined Russian women recruited by radical Islamist groups. Convicted of publicly justifying terrorism, she was sentenced to six years in prison, later reduced on appeal to five years and seven months. Her co-defendant, playwright Svetlana Petrinchuk (who wrote the play), was also convicted and is serving five years and 10 months.
I appealed publicly for attention to her case shortly after her arrest. Today, she remains imprisoned.
In October, Sofia Rosenfeld, a Russian-Israeli scientist specializing in Arctic birds, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison over two donations totaling approximately $25 to the late dissident Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. Her family maintains that she set up the recurring donations before Russian authorities designated the organization extremist.
During the Soviet period, we struggled for the right to reach Israel. Rosenfeld holds Israeli citizenship, yet it has not protected her from imprisonment in Russia.
Lev Shlosberg, a Jewish journalist and opposition politician from Pskov, received an aggregate sentence of 11 years and one month in August. Unlike Soviet refuseniks, Shlosberg chose to remain in Russia and challenge its government. We demanded the right to leave. He defended the right to stay.
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Perhaps most disturbing is the Kriger family’s story. Mikhail Kriger, a veteran human rights activist and opponent of the Ukraine war, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2023.
During the trial, when Kriger’s brother Pavel gave his nationality as Jewish, the judge asked whether he spoke Russian — an exchange painfully familiar to those who remember Soviet attitudes toward Jewish identity.
Mikhail’s nephew, Artyom Kriger, a journalist with the independent outlet SOTAvision, was arrested in 2024. He was sentenced last December to five and a half years for alleged involvement with an extremist organization, and his conviction was upheld on
Oct. 22.
That is an uncle serving seven years and a nephew serving five and a half — two generations of one Jewish family behind bars.
There is no established evidence that these prisoners were prosecuted because of their Jewish ancestry. Their cases concern political expression and opposition activity. But Jewish solidarity has never required that persecution be motivated exclusively by antisemitism.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the names of Boris Kochubiyevsky, Yuli Edelstein, Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky, Yosef Begun and Ida Nudel became symbols of an extraordinary international campaign. Jewish organizations lobbied governments, organized demonstrations and ensured that prisoners knew they were not forgotten.
Some organizations have intervened in contemporary cases, including the Russian Jewish Congress in Berkovich’s case.
But where is a comparable international movement today? Why are Berkovich, Rosenfeld, Shlosberg and the Krigers not household names in Jewish communities?
• • •
I do not believe Jewish prisoners deserve greater freedom than non-Jewish prisoners. But I believe our historical experience imposes a particular responsibility to speak out against political repression.
In September, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov called on Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s envoys in negotiations with Russia, to raise the issue of Russian political prisoners in their meetings with Vladimir Putin.
I strongly support that appeal.
Both men are Jewish Americans with access to high-level discussions involving Russia. They could personally request the release of Berkovich, Rosenfeld, Shlosberg, the Krigers and other prisoners of conscience.
In Jewish tradition, pidyon shvuyim — the redemption of captives — expresses a profound moral responsibility toward those deprived of freedom.
For Witkoff and Kushner, such an appeal could be a meaningful mitzvah. It would not end the war in Ukraine or resolve Russia’s political crisis. But it might save lives and reunite families.
Boris Kochubiyevsky lived to see the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Soviet Jewry. Pavel Kushnir died in Russian custody. Others remain imprisoned.
I remember what it meant when someone in Washington, Jerusalem or London spoke our names. The generation of Soviet refuseniks taught us that Jewish solidarity can change history. The least we can do to honor that generation is to remember those still waiting for freedom.
Alexander Smukler, a former refusenik, was president of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ).
