Itzik Feffer is not only a talented Yiddish poet; he is also a gifted journalist and a splendid speaker. It is difficult to draw any fast line of demarcation between Itzik Feffer the poet and Itzik Feffer the public worker. His poems are calls to action. They are simply worded, like folk poems, full of … Read more
Andrei Sakharov died on 15 December 1989. The abundance of tributes accorded to him tended to concentrate on his more recent role is an opponent of the gradualist policies of the Gorbachev regime. Yet perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for the historic changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union and, … Read more
On December 30th 1988, the writer and translator, Yuli Daniel died in Moscow at the age of sixty-three. A few days later, Andrei Sinyavsky was allowed to return from self-exile in Paris to pay homage at his graveside at Vagavanskoye cemetery. For a whole generation, the names of Daniel and Sinyavsky were synonymous with the … Read more
At the end of last year, BBC 2’s “Timewatch” series screened a programme on the life and times of Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Bolshevik revolutionary and a central figure in the early Soviet state—in Lenin’s words “the favourite of us all”. 1988 marked both the fiftieth anniversary of his execution after a Stalinist show-trial and … Read more
When the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich died in the summer of 1975, The Times labelled him “one of the greatest twentieth century composers and a committed believer in Communism and Soviet power”. This was far from the truth. Although he never made ringing declarations against Stalinist terrors, Shostakovich quietly attempted to retain his independence of … Read more
On 12 August 1952, Peretz Markish, Dovid Berge!son and some others were executed in the dungeons of the Lubianka. Even today, thirty-ive years on, it is uncertain how many were killed or precisely when. Last month, family and Friends of the murdered Soviet-Jewish writers gathered in Jerusalem to commemorate them and to recall the manner … Read more
IN 1969, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Russian Writers’ Union. ‘Unlike Akhmatova and Pasternak, he did not acquiesce in the administering of his own last rites. Instead, he mercilessly assaulted the apparatchiks with tho full force of his vitriolic pen. Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open … Read more
Ceasing a life of double thinking JEWISH QUARTERLY: It is now ten years since the formation of the Moscow-based committee to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Accord. Why did Orlov, Amalrik and yourself decide to initiate it? ANATOLY SHCHARANSKY: We felt that the Helsinki Agreement between the Soviet Union and the European nations … Read more
ROSH Ha’shana, the Jewish New Year is welcomed with apple and honey but for many Soviet Jews it is the taste of bitter herbs which lingers. In the Jewish year 5746 (1985/6), approximately 1,000 were permitted to leave the Soviet Union. Although Anatoly Shcharansky, Ilya Essas and the Goldshtein brothers have all been permitted to … Read more
Anachnu Kan (‘We are here”), the popular Israeli song and dance ensemble, recently visited Britain to sing in the Yom Ha’atzmaut concert. Many of the members were amongst the wave of immigrants who were permitted to leave the USSR following the mass protests and sit-ins at the beginning of 1971. As their name suggests, this … Read more