Visit with a Survivor

The small, borrowed apartment in Jerusalem where Anatoli and Avital Shcharansky are staying bears a striking resemblance to the cluttered flats in the Soviet Union where dissidents once congregated. Folders of correspondence and masses of newspaper clippings lie scattered about--some of the detritus of Avital's ceaseless nine-year campaign to rouse world opinion on her husband's behalf. Gifts and congratulatory messages are displayed on every available surface: a silver kiddush cup from a Jewish congregation in New York, a crayon drawing by a child that shows a flourishing green tree and Israeli flag. Floating on the ceiling are big, colorful balloons, some heart shaped, one bearing the inscription in English and Hebrew, WELCOME HOME. In this cheerful new setting, Shcharansky agreed to talk with TIME Associate Editor Patricia Blake. Her report:

Tolya, as his friends call him, comes into the room with his characteristically bouncy gait. A diminutive man, Shcharansky is dwarfed by the strapping sabras who are with him in the apartment to keep the press at bay. "To be so small is a great advantage in camp," he jokes. "The prison clothes you get are always much too large." He flaps his arms and kicks out his feet in mock illustration of how the sleeves and trouser legs flopped over. "When you are put in a freezing-cold punishment cell, as I was for a total of 430 days, the extra material helps a little to keep you warm."

In all, Shcharansky spent 3,255 days in the Gulag, the extensive Soviet penal system, almost completely cut off from external contacts. He had only the faintest sense of his international celebrity. "The method the KGB uses against prisoners is to isolate them fully from the outside world," he explains. What is so terrible about this isolation, he believes, is that it often leads a man to begin compromising himself morally "because he has been cut off" from the system of values he ordinarily lives by.

Shcharansky says he was determined not to let this happen and spent long hours trying to keep his moral balance. He remembers creating the kind of unity among prisoners that he once strived for among Soviet dissidents. "The Soviet authorities hate any kind of solidarity among independent-minded people," he says. "In prison this becomes even clearer than it is in ordinary life. Prisoners are forbidden to write collective letters of protest. You are punished if you write to the authorities on behalf of another prisoner --say a sick man who is not getting any medical attention. The authorities say, 'Look, your letters don't help.' And they are right logically. But there exists another, inner logic: the prisoner who writes such a letter may not save his neighbor in the next cell, but he saves his soul."

Such acts as writing protest letters were a crucial element in his struggle for survival. Another was his reading of Psalms, which he recited from memory in the punishment cells, where all books were forbidden. While there he had no opportunity to lie down during the day, and at night a wood-and-metal board was put in his cell for sleeping. "Of course, there are no blankets and no warm clothes," he says. The menu: black bread one day, followed by a day of "very poor" hot food. "This went on for 30 and sometimes 40 consecutive days." While in isolation, he found chess a distraction. "I spent a lot of time analyzing chess positions. Of course, I can play the game in my head without a board. That really helped me keep in psychological control."

During those long months, Shcharansky relates, he inevitably turned inward, and his sense of his own Jewishness grew. "Before my arrest . . . I was an assimilated Jew, as practically all Jews are in the Soviet Union. But I gradually came to realize that my denial of my national identity as a Jew was a self-deception."

Shcharansky's compassion for other persecuted ethnic and religious groups in the Soviet Union is strong. He shared cells during his years in prison with Russian Orthodox believers, Lithuanian, Estonian and Ukrainian nationalists. Since he has been in the West, he has already begun to speak out for the rights of various persecuted peoples.

"I am first of all concerned with the people who belong to the same Jewish movement I do," he says. "At the same time, I cannot forget the prisoners with whom I spent so many hard years and who continue suffering. It's my obligation now to remind people in the West of the fate of people like Andrei Sakharov."

Still, Shcharansky insists that there is a distinction between him and other Soviet dissidents. "My desire has always been to leave the Soviet Union, not to change it. How to reform that country is a problem for people who want to stay there. Even when I was part of the Helsinki Watch group, I never signed documents recommending changes in the system, but I signed a lot of appeals on behalf of individual people."

Shcharansky is uncertain whether his release will prefigure a wider opening of the Soviet gates for other Jews. But he expresses pride in the courage and enduring will of those wishing to leave. "In spite of all attempts to repress the movement for Jewish emigration, there are still people who openly declare their religious affiliation. Even in the cruel camps there are people who remain true to their beliefs in word and in practice."

As he sees it, one man's act of courage inspires another, and that person's inspires a third, forming a chain of ethical defiance. "When I was put on trial after months of complete isolation, I was inspired by the behavior of people who had gone through the same experience and remained the way they were before. They hadn't given in or given up, and that gave me hope." He adds: "I also gained strength from the pages of our Jewish history." Shcharansky cites Judah Maccabee, leader of an Israelite band that revolted and threw off the yoke of Syrian oppressors in the 2nd century B.C. Says he: "The fact that there is a history of resistance always helps."