The Jewish emigration from the USSR in the KGB documents

Abstract

The activity of the KGB aimed at controlling the next wave of Jewish emigration from the Ukrainian SSR has been traced back based on the declassified materials of the Sectoral State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine. The intelligence services were constantly improving their working methods to prevent the mass exodus of the Jews, which was disadvantageous to the Soviet Union, by using another state structure – the Department of Visas and Registration (DVAR). The majority of the refusals received by the applicants had unclear and incorrect explanations such as: “for reasons of the regime”; “for operational reasons”; “availability of valuable specialists” in the field of medicine, science, culture; “the presence of conscripts and conscripts”; “unreasonable requests for “family reunification”; classified “inappropriate”. The duties of the KGB officers included monitoring people who, after receiving a refusal to leave, embarked on a path of struggle under their newly formed status of “refusnik”. For this reason, the KGB, to prevent “anti-Soviet manifestations”, used forms of intimidation, harassment, beating, and dismissal. People who were “particularly dangerous” were jailed in a psychiatric hospital, detention center, or labor camps. In some cases, the state security agencies listened to “apartment meetings”, sent their agents, staged provocations, etc.