Mathematician Irina Brailovsky's story typifies those of hundreds of
Jewish scientists, engineers and physicians who applied to emigrate
from the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. In retaliation, they were
dismissed (or demoted) from professional employment and were shut out
from mainstream Soviet science. She, her husband Victor, a computer
science expert, and family were first refused exit in 1972. For 15
years they lived in limbo until they were finally allowed to leave.
Throughout their long ordeal they managed to earn a meager livelihood
at odd jobs not at all commensurate with their skills and experience.
With Irina at his side, Victor helped found then and hosted the famed
Moscow Seminar on Collective Phenomena (the Sunday Seminar) in an
effort to overcome refuseniks' (people refused permission to emigrate)
denial of access to libraries, laboratories and scientific seminars.
Through this forum, they and other refuseniks struggled valiantly to
maintain their scientific skills. At the Seminar they presented their
theoretical research, born of lack of access to facilities that
fostered practical applications, and kept abreast of research and
development with the help of visiting foreign scientists. Irina's and
Victor's position as leaders of the Moscow refusenik community left
their family open to a range of harassments such as house searches,
confiscation of scientific papers, interrogations and threats of
prosecution on charges of "parasitism." This culminated in Victor's
arrest in November 1980 and trial in June 1981 on a charge of defaming
the Soviet state. He was sentenced to five years' internal exile in
Khazakstan. And CCS sprang into action intensifying its support for him
and for the Sunday Seminar by organizing a series of weekly Scientific
Seminars in Exile across the length and breadth of the U.S. With the
participation of world renowned scientists, we were able to sensitize
more and more scientists to the situation and to attract press
coverage. Concurrently in Moscow, Irina held the family together while
assuming a central role in the functioning of the beleaguered Sunday
Seminar, which was under constant surveillance. Of special interest is
the fact that the numerous rejections of the family's applications for
exit were refused on grounds of Irina's alleged knowledge of state
secrets -- knowledge supposedly gained when she had worked at the
Computer Center of Moscow State University. She persisted in presenting
a constant stream of irrefutable concrete evidence to the contrary,
trying to overcome this false allegation and triumph over the
formidable bureaucracy. Meanwhile, when Victor tried to leave with his
son Leonid (who was then under danger of call-up for military service)
and without Irina, the two were refused -- again on the same grounds of
Irina's alleged secrecy. At another juncture, Irina organized a "Let
Our Children Go" movement in hopes of extricating refuseniks' children
from Soviet oppression. Nevertheless, when her son Leonid (already
married) applied to leave on his own, he was refused on grounds that it
was against Soviet policy to divide families. The family left together
-- Irina, Victor, son Leonid with his wife and son, daughter Dalia and
Irina's mother Fanya Fefer -- the first family in their group of
veteran refuseniks to leave as beneficiaries of Gorbachev's
perestroika. They arrived in Israel in September 1987. Today Irina and
Victor are part of mainstream science at Tel Aviv University where
Irina is a senior researcher and senior lecturer in mathematics, and
Victor is a professor of computer science.