In 1974 Teivel Abramovich Silnitsky and his family, residents of Krasnodar, applied for emigration visas to Israel.
Silnitsky’s son Alexander was at this time a fourth-year student at Krasnodar Polytechnic Institute and was scheduled to take part in a pre-call-up military muster. He refused to take part in this muster and was therefore expelled from the institute. This was followed by summonses to the military enlistment office. A. Silnitsky, who had meanwhile obtained Israeli citizenship, sent a letter to the Minister of Defence through the enlistment office. In the letter he explained that because he was an Israeli citizen, he could not serve in the Soviet Army.
The Silnitskys were refused exit visas as their sons Alexander (b. 1953) and Mikhail (a few years younger than Alexander) still had to undergo military service. Case materials on Alexander Silnitsky’s avoidance of military service (Article 80 of the RSFSR Criminal Code) were passed to the Krasnodar procurator’s office.
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On 28 October 1975 Alexander Teivelievich Silnitsky was arrested in Moscow. He was sent to Krasnodar in a prisoners’ convoy and arrived there in the middle of November. Silnitsky declared that he considered himself to be a citizen of the State of Israel and would not take part in the investigation.
The case was heard on 15 December by the People’s Court of the Lenin district in Krasnodar. The presiding judge was V. P. Goncharova, the prosecutor was Tolmacheva and the defending lawyer was N. 1. Kovalyov. The following were summoned as witnesses: Silnitsky’s parents, an official of the district enlistment office and the head of the military department at the polytechnic institute. The case was heard not In the People’s Court building but somewhere else — exactly where, the court office refused to say.
In court Silnitsky declared that he considered himself an Israeli citizen and had no intention of breaking the law.
The prosecutor made a speech in which in particular he reproached Silnitsky senior for ingratitude to the country that had saved his life, given him and his children an education and was now asking his children to fulfil their obligations as citizens by serving in the army.
The defence lawyer pointed out that Silnitsky’s avoidance of army service had been prompted by his desire to emigrate from the country, but that the permission to emigrate granted to the Silnitsky family a few days before the trial in fact removed any guilt from his client. The court sentenced A. Silnitsky to two years in ordinary-regime camps.
A few days before the trial KGB officials in Krasnodar told Silnitsky’s father to stop his relatives in Israel and the USA sending protest telegrams to the local authorities. If this continued, they said, his permission to emigrate would be cancelled.
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Alexander Silnitsky’s father, mother and brother have now left the USSR.
A Silnitsky’s father is a native of Warsaw; at the age of 16 he participated in the Warsaw ghetto rising. Ten members of his family died in the ghetto. Silnitsky’s mother grew up in the Kharkov ghetto, where her father, brothers and other relatives perished.
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In 1972 Mark Lutsker applied to emigrate but he soon received a call-up notice. He travelled to Moscow to press his case and was told at the offices of the Central Visa Department that his application would be granted. However, when Lutsker returned home and went to the local Visa Department, he was arrested there and sentenced to 2 ½ years in camps ‘for avoiding military service’. After serving his sentence (in a camp and on compulsory assignment to industrial labour) Lutsker again applied to emigrate on 10 October and once more received call-up papers from the military enlistment office. He is now 24 years old.
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Yury Pokh from Odessa got a prison-term for refusing to serve in the army after handing in an application to emigrate to Israel [CCE 26.3]. On 21 December 1975 he returned to Odessa. When he was put on the register at the military enlistment office, the commissar said: ‘You’ll have to serve your time in the army!’ A few days after this conversation, Pokh’s father died of a heart-attack.
Leonid Levit (from Tiraspol) is being threatened with arrest because of his refusal to serve in the army, as are Zakhar Braginsky (from Leningrad) and Boris Levitas (from Kiev).
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Army service is an obstacle to many would-be emigrants to Israel.
After applying to emigrate in 1970, E. Feldman was conscripted into the army. After he was demobilized, he again applied to emigrate, together with his mother and brother. They were refused permission because Feldman had served in the army. In the spring of 1975 his brother was called up.
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V. Maksimenko was called up after applying to emigrate in 1971. In 1973, when he ended his army service, he was told that he would have to wait for at least five years before emigrating to Israel.
Marantsenboim and Kuperman were also refused permission to emigrate because they had served in the army. The following have so far been unable to emigrate to Israel: Baras (demobilized in 1969), Mishkin (in 1968), Ass (1968), Kantor (1968), Tesker (1968), Pekarsky (1967), Khess (1967), Raskin (1967) and Zitserman (1966).
On 13 October 1975 the Moscow city court examined the appeal presented by the lawyer S. V. Kalistratova on behalf of A. Malkin (CCE 37.3) and confirmed the original sentence.
On 28 October the Presidium of the Moscow city Bar examined a complaint by A. Malkin’s father against S. V. Kalistratova (CCE 37.3) and found there to be nothing incorrect in her actions.
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As reported in CCE 37.3, Ya. Vinarov was given a three-year sentence in the summer of 1975 for refusing to serve in the army. His letter to Brezhnev, written in June, is now available:
“In September 1974 I handed in an application to the Visa Department of the Internal Affairs Administration of the city of Kiev, asking to emigrate to Israel, In March 1975 I was refused a visa for security reasons without being given a date when I could emigrate. V. N. Siforov, head of the Kiev Visa Department, told me that this was on account of my education in Voronezh polytechnic institute and the course in military training that I had attended there.
“In this connection I would like to report the following. I was expelled from the third year of the mechanical-technological department at Voronezh polytechnic institute in May 1974. The courses in military-technical training began in the fourth term of the second year, so I had been attending them for only one year. The greater part of this time was taken up with learning drill and also in learning the following subjects:
“The strategy and tactics of the West German and American armies: this information cannot be a Soviet State secret.
“The composition and regulations of the Soviet Armed Forces, through open sources freely sold in the Knigtorg bookshops.
“The other literature I read was not secret but for general use by personnel. I was never under the authority of any military units. I have never signed any promise not to divulge secret information, and as a result I have never had access to secret literature. More than a year has passed since my expulsion from the institute. I also know that people who attended the same military training courses have been given permission to emigrate to Israel.”
In connection with his forthcoming call up into the army, Vinarov speaks of ‘the insincerity of taking an oath of loyalty to a country which you have expressed a wish to leave.’
He asks that ‘the legally unjustified decision of the Kiev Visa Department be revoked’.
Similar declarations have been sent to other places by Ya. Vinarov.
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