Refuznik (the USSR)

See also: Refuznik

Refuznik (Hebrew: מסורבים, me-known-rav-im ), or Otkaznik (Russian: “отказник”, of “отказ”, refusal, rejection), was the semi-official term nominating the persons to whom aimed at it emigration was refused by the authorities of the Soviet Union, mainly but not only of the Soviet Juif S.

A great number of Soviet Jews lodged requests for visas of emigration to leave the Soviet Union, in particular after the Guerre the Six Day old in 1967. Some were authorized to leave, but much wiped refusal, either instantaneously, or by the means of interminable waiting of treatment of their file by OVIR (ОВиР, “ОтделВизиРегистрации”, “Otdel Viz I Registratsii”), the department of the ministry for the Interior responsible for the delivery of the exit visas. In many cases, the excuse given for a refusal was that the person had had access to one moment or another of her career to vital information for the national security of the Soviet Union and that they thus could not for the moment being authorized to leave the country.

During the Cold war, the Soviet Jews were regarded a risk of safety or as potential traitors. Some were stopped, or punished by other ways, to have dared to express the desire to leave the country for the West, which was ipso facto regarded as a confirmation of the suspicions as for their lack of honesty. To lodge a request for visa, the whole family was obliged to give up her employment, which made its members likely to be accused of “social Parasitisme”, an penal offense.

One of the founders in 1976 of the movement refuznik, and its spokesperson, was Natan Sharansky.

As well the ultra-orthodoxe Jews wished to emigrate for religious reasons as of the relatively laic Jews wishing to escape the latent Antisémitisme caused by the Soviet authorities. In the same way, a great number of German of the Volga wished to join the Germany, of the Armenian which had believed to find in Soviet Arménie a national hearth wanted to turn over to live freely in Diaspora, Christians evangelic, roman catholics and others ethnicities and monk tried to escape persecutions or wished to seek a better life.

The come to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union of the middle of the years 1980 and its policy of Glasnost and Perestroika, just as the desire to maintain better relationships to the West, brought considerable changes. The majority of the refuzniks were then authorized to emigrate. With the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the decade, the term otkaznik passed to the register of the history.

The term refuznik was ressuscity in Israel ten years to indicate later Israelis refusing to achieve their military service or the soldiers refusing to be useful in the occupied territories.

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