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FREE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 1 September 2022
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5 Ellul 5782
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Issue No.1278
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@JewishNewsUK
Israel’s president recreates iconic Theodor Herzl image to mark 125 years of Zionism. See page 6
Sharansky’s tribute to
Gorby the ‘phenomenon’ But former Soviet leader ‘didn’t realise there’s no such thing as a little bit of freedom’, iconic refusenik tells Jewish News EXCLUSIVE by Michael Daventry mike@jewishnews.co.uk @MichaelDaventry
Mikhail Gorbachev was a “unique phenomenon” who tried to rebuild the Soviet system after reaching its summit – according to the man he released from six years of hard labour. Natan Sharansky, the political activist who became a symbol of the plight of Soviet Jews persecuted during the 1970s and 1980s, praised the last Soviet leader for recognising the need for greater freedoms. But that also triggered the unravelling of the USSR, a process that Gorbachev – who died in a Moscow hospital this week aged 91 – was unable to stop. “What he didn’t realise was that there is no such thing as a little bit of freedom,” Sharansky told Jewish News in the hours after Gorbachev’s death was announced.
Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky with Prime Minister Shimon Peres (right), Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon (top) arrives in Israel in 1986 following his release
“The more people get some freedom, they demand all the freedoms. “And so the process started which he didn’t want and which he wanted to stop: the disappearance of the Soviet Union.” Gorbachev was a loyal believer in Lenin’s ideas who wanted to give socialism “a more human face”, Sharansky said, and tried “very hard” to stop the collapse – by sending troops to the break-
away Baltic republics, for example – because “he was fighting for something that he believed. He was fighting until the last days because he wanted to keep the monopoly of the Communist Party.” He continued: “So it is really a unique phenomenon of a person who is at the top of the pyramid, of the system, and decided to change the system. “But you have to remember that the real changes that he did were because of the big pressures of the free world and the big crises in which the Soviet Union was in.” Gorbachev Continued on page 3