REFUSENIKS

 224609.11.2006

REFUSENIKS  [Ukrainian VIDMOVNYKY, Russian OTKAZNYKY) – this was the term which became common in the 1970s for Soviet citizens who had their application for permission to emigrate turned down, but who continued trying to leave the Soviet Union.  The term was applied in the first instance, and was sometimes a term people called themselves, by activists of the Jewish emigration movement. The mass nature of the wish to emigrate held in the 1970s and 1980s by many national and religious groups in the USSR led to the term becoming coined, and widely known, in the West. .