Mr. President. when he was 17. his "best friends beat him up when they found out that he was a Jew." Avital Shcharansky reports of the experience which made Anatoly think of himself. as a Zionist. Later. after his emigration applications were refused. he began joining small refusenik demonstrations. Frequent arrests. frequent refusals. and he renounced his Soviet citizenship for that of Israel. By the time President Nixon was expected in Moscow. Anatoly was a marked refusenik who was one of those put under preventive detention for the duration of the visit. At the same time. Avital was given her visa and told she would have only 2 weeks to prepare for departure. Her preparations included sewing her wedding dress. cooking the wedding feast and hoping that Anatoly would be out of detention in time for the wedding and to see her off. He was. and when they last saw one another at the Moscow airport in July 1974. Anatoly was a refusenik with the additional reason for emigrationa new bride awaiting him in Israel. By 1976. he was working with the Helsinki Monitoring Group and Anatoly Shcharansky was no longer only a refusenik but was now one of those Andrei Sakharov honors as a courageous participant in the struggle for human rights because he "unites in his activity all aspects of the struggle for human rights in the U.S.S.R." So the Kremlin arrested him March 15. 1977 on trumpedup charges of treason and imprisoned him for an arbitrary term of 13 years. Mr.
Keywords matched
emigration visa emigrationa