the ninth year of a 13-year prison
sentence for treason and anti-Soviet
slander; as far from freedom as he
could possibly get.
Much has changed since then; since
that magical day in February when
he was transported to Moscow and
unceremoniously bundled aboard a
plane bound for an unknown destin-
• ation.
anheenwatshheeaprisogn.er-
noIttedwtahsat otnhleyplw
exorably toward the West that he
suspected he was on his way to
freedom; and it was only when the
• plane crossed the frontier and a KGB
escort formally announced he was be-
ing expelled from the Soviet Union
that he knew for sure.
After a night in East Berlin,
Ailatoly Shcharansky was marched
across the Glienicke Bridge to West
Berlin, and within a few hours he was
reunited with his wife, Avital, whom
he had last seen the day after their
marriage in June 1974, flown to a
tumultuous welcome in Jerusalem
and adopted the Hebrew name of
Natan.
The journey was complete. Or
almost.
A few months later, the Soviet
authorities fulfilled the second part
of the complicated agreement that
had secured his freedom when the
rest of the Shcharansky family — his
mother, brother, sister-in-law and
nephews — were allowed to join him
in Jerusalem.
And last month, just nine months
after his reunion with Avital, Anatoly
Shcharansky was delighted to an-
nounce yet another miracle in this
year of miracles: a baby daughter —
Rachel — the first child born to the
couple and the first female to be born
into the Shcharansky family for four
generations.
The long •ordeal was over. But it
was also just beginning. Now he is
• learning to cope with freedom, with
fame and, according to some reports,
with fortune, too.
"Suddenly I feel so very rich," he
says without reference to his bank
balance. "I have a wife, daughter,
mother, brother. I am not somebody
to be concerned about."
And he has to adjust to "living in
a sea of love," to being stopped half
a dozen times an hour by people who
simply want to wish him well while
he is trying to accomplish mundane,
everyday tasks in the city.
"Although it's very expensive to
use taxis all the time, I hardly ever
use the bus. People with the best in-
tentions want to say something nice,
and of course you have to smile and
say something nice in return. These
muscles of mine are sore all the time,"
he says, laughing again and pointing
to his cheeks.
Hailed as the international symbol
of human rights by Western leaders,
Anatoly Shcharansky is now at-
tempting the difficult task of settling
into something approaching a normal
life.
What, then, is a routine day in the
life of Anatoly Shcharansky? There
are two answers to that question, he
quickly points out. The first is the
ideal, theoretical answer; the second
is the reality.
The ideal, theoretical day begins at
7.30 a.m. when he sits down in his den
at home to write the 500-page book
he is contracted to complete by early
next year for Random House. That
activity continues until lunch time
when he moves across town to the of-
fice where he spends the afternoon
meeting with Soviet Jewry activists,
politicians, journalists and others
who seek a slice of his time.
The reality, though, is that on most
days, it is the second half of the dai-
ly schedule — the telephone calls and
the meetings — that consume his
mornings as well as his afternoons.
"And now Rachel is eating into my
time from the otifer direction; from
the night," he says.
For all that, Shcharansky has com-
pleted half of his book, which will set
out to show that "every person can
resist great pressures if he can
mobilize his inner resources — his
desire for freedom, his feeling of
solidarity. It's really a very powerful
weapon and I am trying to analyse
how I was building my inner re-
sources during all those years."
In the meantime, Anatoly Shcha-
ransky remains obsessed with the
problem of Soviet Jewry. The
be
seen
is
to
evidence
everywhere in his spartan
office-apartment.
A large noticeboard at the entrance
is covered with photographs of promi-
nent refuseniks, Shcharansky's
closest friends from his days in
Moscow...the aging Professor Alex-
ander Lerner, "father" of the Jewish
emigration movement, Vladimir
Slepak, Ida Nudel, Josef Begun.
There are rough wooden shelves
crammed with files and books and, on
one wall, the object of all his years of
struggle and hope: a framed colour
photograph of Jerusalem, the
Western Wall.
And on the coffee table, a strictly
non-coffee table book: Abandonment
of the Jews — an examination of
America and the Holocaust from
1941 to 1945 — by David S. Wyman.
Now his overriding campaign is to
ensure that the Jews of the Soviet
Union are not abandoned. Nor does
his campaign stop at the familiar
faces on his noticeboard. He is pas-
sionately concerned, too, about the
hundreds of thousands of other Jews
who, he says, want to leave the Soviet
Union.
"I tell the politicians about in-
dividual cases, but only to highlight
the real issue — the fact that 400,000
Jews are still trapped in the Soviet
Union."
There is a rare flash of irritation
when he describes the reaction of ac-
tivists in the United States to his call
for a massive demonstration to greet
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
when, and if, he visits Washington for
a summit with President Reagan.
He wants to mobilize 400,000 dem-
onstrators — to match the number of
Soviet Jews who want to emigrate —
for the occasion; but the activists tell
him they will be able to muster only
about 17,000. "They tell me it's too
cold for people to travel from Chicago
to Washington," says Shcharansky.
His relentless message to Western
leaders is that they must link any
agreements with the Kremlin to the
question of human rights in the
Soviet Union. And central to those
rights, he insists, is the right of
Soviet Jews to emigrate.
He is profoundly disturbed by the
latest restrictions on emigration an-
nounced by the Kremlin last month
and is more agitated than ever by the
ability of Gorbachev to score
diplomatic and public relations vic-
tories against the West.
Whatever the subject under discus-
sion, however earnest and intent he
is to make a point, his humour is
never far away. And he is disturbed
that his American audience often
misses the punchline.
Interviewed by one U.S. television
network shortly before the Reagan-
Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik, he
was asked why he was not traveling
to the Icelandic capital where Jewish
activists were planning to stage
demonstrations in support of Soviet
Jews.
Well, said Shcharansky, as far as he
understood, the Soviet leader was us-
ing the Reykjavik meeting as a
rehearsal for a later summit in
Washington, but the former prisoner
did not feel that he himself needed any
rehearsals and was ready to go
straight to Washington. His reply
was greeted with incredulity.
His humour was indeed one of the
most striking first impressions that
Shcharansky made on journalists.
Just 48 hours after his arrival in
Israel, he held a press conference at-
tended by hundreds of journalists,
many of whom had flown into the
country especially for the occasion.
"Was he ready to throw his weight
behind any Israeli political party?" he
was asked. Shcharansky didn't miss
a beat: The Soviet media had not
given him much chance to study the
various political parties in Israel
apart from the Communist Party, he
said. And, fresh out of a Soviet gulag,
he knew only that he would not be
susceptible to their attempts to
recruit him.
Now, ten months later, he still is no
closer to endorsing a political move-
ment. He is satisfied, too, that when
he is criticized in the Israeli .media,
the stones come from both the left
and from the right.
"How do I feel about this criticism?
If it is coming from both sides, I am
satisfied. But this doesn't mean that
"I'm getting too fat .. .
For years I didn't have
to worry about
losing weight."
Shcharansky hugs his mother Ida Milgrom at Ben-Gurion Airport.
C. es..!
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