"Refusenik" Women Against Repression

By Amy Schuman

Feminist analysts of Jewish history agree that throughout years of exile and oppression, women have played a central role in the survival of the Jewish people: "to be the life force of the culture". As an American Jewess, I have studied the heroic actions of Jewish women in history, from Biblical to Warsaw Ghetto times. In April, together with my mother, I met my Jewish sisters in Russia, heroines of our time. And sisters we truly are, for if my own

Emma Landsman, Dawn Schuman, Nellie Mae, Amy Schuman grandmother, heavily pregnant with my father, had not hidden herself and her two daughters in the bottom of a hay cart Crossing the Russian border, I too could be struggling with them for my freedom to live openly as a Jew.

My mother and I went to Russia to bring emotional and material support to Refuseniks in Moscow, -Kiev, and Leningrad. "Refusenik" has become an international word describing a Soviet Jew who, having been denied permission to emigrate to Israel, is harassed by the KGB via dismissal from work, subjection to frequent arrest, and imprisonment on trumped-up charges.

For the past year, reports trickling out of Moscow have referred to the valiant and highly effective actions of a Refusenik "women's group". The exact composition, purpose and methods of this group were unknown, and I was to bring back detailed information. Because of my involvement in feminist groups here, it was hoped that I could provide useful information to the women's group in Moscow.

The women's group does exist: estimates range from 80-100 women members. They are determined, innovative, and courageous. For the past year, a representative group of 30 women have gone to the Ovir (immigration) office very week. They have been granted an audience only three times. These visits could be grounds for imprisonment, yet they persist.

A favorite tactic of the women is to wear a large banner proclaiming "Let My Family Go To Israel" hidden under a coat. At a pre-arranged time, from all over Moscow, members of the group converge on one metro station and open their coats for a 30-second protest before they board a metro and disappear, hopefully, into the crowd. After riding the metros, packed with more uniformed men than we see in an entire year in Cleveland, I can better appreciate their courage. Many times the women have been followed and arrested after such a protest.

'Although evidence of feminist activity in the USSR has recently been reported in many women's papers (see Ms., April 1980, and WSW, June/July, 1980), the Moscow Jewish women's group is not a women's liberation group. Their chosen target is not the male chauvinism and rigid sex roles that are so apparent throughout the USSR. Their goal is freedom, the freedom to live openly as Jews.

In many ways, Russian women appear to be more liberated than they actually are. Nearly all women

work: many are professionals such as engineers, mathematicians, and doctors. This can lead to the mistaken conclusion that they are "liberated". However, while an increasing number of Russian women work to alleviate economic pressures on their families, there has been no concomitant increase in the role of Russian men in the home. Like their American counterparts, working Russian women hold two full-time jobs..

Economic conditions in the USSR are so harsh that most Russian families are forced to limit their family size to one child, even when they'd prefer to have a larger family. Many times, because of a lack of apartment space, children must live apart from their parents, which causes great anguish. The Russian woman spends much time providing for the basic needs of her family. Washing is done by hand. Fresh food is a challenge to procure. Clothing and shoes are frequently missing from the shelves for long periods of time. This explains the answer I received time after time to my questions about a women's liberation movement. "We want the right to not have to work." Even our Russian tour guide, a highly competent woman with nothing but praise for the USSR, commented, "Women in the USSR tackle too much."

The members of the Moscow women's group do suffer as women, and as women they unite and fight. Yet, when they gather together, it is not the oppression of women they address. In this way, they are fulfilling, without questioning it, a role that Jewish women have served for centuries. Their attention is devoted to the nurturance of their families, and the continuation and survival of their culture.

Ida Nudel, a founder of the Moscow women's group, has been a leader of the Refusenik communitysince her application to emigrate to Israel in 1971. For seven years she was known as the "Guardian Angel of the Prisoners of Conscience". Her apartment served as a headquarters for all Moscow efforts on behalf of Jewish dissidents serving prison terms. Ida collected and distributed clothes, food, and other articles to the prisoners. She devised schemes for smuggling valuable items into prison so that prisoners could bribe camp personnel. She concocted a faultless method of baking vitamins into cakes, and sending boxes of white chocolate, which was not recognizably edible, to the prisoners. For these activities, she was repeatedly detained, beaten, humiliated, and imprisoned:

...I am pushed into an iron box, locked up, and being driven somewhere. My person is

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Kiev Ballet Theatre searched. I demand to know of what I am being accused. They do not stand on ceremony. Grabbing me by my hands they push me into a room and start undresing me by force. Dirty hands are touching my breasts, my whole body, lifting my skirt and crawling into my pants. They find neither atom bombs nor revolvers. They don't know themselves what to look for. They push me out of the room to the cell. I lie

down on the floor. I am alone, I am cold-cold in my body and soul.

In June, 1978, as part of a protest organized by the women's group on International Children's Day, Ida hung a banner on her balcony reading, "KGB, Give .Me a Visa to Israel". That simple but courageous act led to charges of “malicious hooliganism”.

At her trial, Ida's words shed some light on the strong connection between her womanhood and her commitment to her people:

During the past seven years I have learned to walk proudly with my head held high, as a human being and as a Jewish woman.

These seven years have been filled with a daily battle for myself and others. Every time I was about to help another friend, my heart filled with an extraordinary feeling unlike any other. Perhaps the closest such feeling is that which a woman feels when giving a new life.

Ida was sentenced to four years of internal exile in Siberia. The village to which she was sent, Krivosheino, harbors violent criminals who are not permitted to live in the cities. She is the only woman in the barracks.. Over the years, friends have helped her build an outhouse and a small hut where she can sleep, a bit freer from nightly fears of rape and harassment. Meanwhile, rumors spread through the town that the Jewess has poisoned the town's drinking water, and she is in peril for her life.

After Ida's arrest, her efforts were picked up by another woman, Natasha Hassina. Natasha has now become the center of all activity in Moscow on behalf of the prisoners, Ida now among them. With the same fearlessness, Natasha writes letters, circulates petitions, meets with foreigners, and keeps the Jewish prisoners provisioned.

Ida's activities on behalf of Jewish prisoners are one example of the women's groups' most effective weapon: their ability to band together on behalf of Refuseniks. In a society where privileges and freedom are handed out to only a few individuals, it becomes terribly dangerous to become identified as part of a group. The temptation is to become very, very cooperative as an individual, in the hope that maybe one day, big brother will let you emigrate. Activity in groups is discouraged. KGB agents are frequent visitors to dissidents' meetings. They take names, telephone numbers, and places of employment. Within weeks, the women are jobless.

Each woman is distraught with the fear that her family will remain trapped in the USSR, and wants to put all her efforts toward her own family's freedom. Why should she struggle for another family? Why not fight for her family alone? The women realize, however, that their unity is their strength, even though they may become more easily targeted as part of a group. As a group, they choose to throw all their support behind a few of the most tragic situations. It is this united support that brings effective change.

The Landsman and Tufeld families have been designated by the group as high priority families who must be gotten out of Russia. Emma Landsman's son has leukemia. Without a visa, he will die: there is a lack of needed medication in the USSR. Emma greets us with great anguish in her brown eyes. She has a long list of different strategies to save her family. We stay for hours, drinking tea, analyzing every angle. She squeezes possibilities from nothingness. We gently suggest to her that American supporters feel her son has a better chance of leaving Russia if he'd apply to emigrate with his father, rather than with her, who has been so active in the resistance movement. We expect shock, tears, but she immediately says, "Of course. I too have thought of that. Do anything that will help my son." We leave her with our (continued on page 12)

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Page 8/What She Wants/August, 1980

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