Refusenik chronicles the thirty-year international movement to free Soviet Jews. Told through the eyes of activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain (including interviews with Natan Sharansky and L.A. Country Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky) - many of whom survived punishment in Soviet Gulag labor camps - the film is a tapestry of first-person accounts of heroism, sacrifice, and ultimately, liberation.
In the early 1960’s, reports came to the West of blatant anti-Semitism in the Communist-controlled Soviet Union. Synagogues were being closed by the government and the study of Hebrew was forbidden. Soviet Jews were required by law to carry “internal passports” identifying their Jewish heritage. They were barred from studying at many universities; refused entrance into selected professions. Yet those who asked permission to emigrate were told they could never leave. Soviet Jews were prisoners in their own country.
Soviet Jews who applied for exit visas were refused, then immediately fired from their jobs. Many of these so-called “Refuseniks” took the unprecedented step of publicly challenging the communist regime. Their stories include courageous activism and tales of hardship: the development of an underground Hebrew school; risky smuggling of information to the West; fear of being arrested; shock of being brought to trial on trumped up charges; suffering in prison or in exile merely for demanding freedom.
Meanwhile, activists in the United States, England, Canada and France organized demonstrations, smuggled contraband to Refuseniks, and lobbied democratic governments to put pressure on the USSR. Eventually, the activists’ incessant demands pushed the issue to the forefront of American foreign policy. American legislators enacted a law limiting the amount of business the United States would conduct with countries that violated human rights – the first time the US placed restrictions on a country for rights abuses of its own population. Nuclear disarmament negotiations with the USSR included American demands for a change in Soviet emigration policies. In 1989, the Soviet Union finally succumbed to international pressure and the gates were opened.
Refusenik is a film about the triumph of grassroots activism. It is the story of ordinary people who—with no money or political power—successfully launched an ecumenical, non-violent movement that crossed all ethnic, racial, and religious boundaries. What had started as a fledgling movement of students and housewives eventually freed one and a half million Soviet Jews, and cracked the seemingly impenetrable wall of Soviet Communism.
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