
and prisoner, Israel
i politician, human rights activist and author.
Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky (later Natan Sharansky) was born in Stalino, Soviet Union
on 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family.
A lack of moral clarity is also the tragedy that has befallen efforts to advance peace and security in the world. Promoting peace and security is fundamentally connected to promoting freedom and democracy.
The conviction that freedom is a universal desire is not the property of any political camp. ... Yet those who hold it remain a precious few, outnumbered many times over by the skeptics who don't.
A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the Town square test|town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society.
Now we can see why nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.
Freedom's skeptics must understand that the democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator who loves you. Indeed, it is the absence of democracy that represents the real threat to peace.
and prisoner, Israel
i politician, human rights activist and author.
Biography
Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky (later Natan Sharansky) was born in Stalino, Soviet Unionon 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics
from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a child, he was a chess
prodigy
. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold
displays, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk. When incarcerated in solitary confinement
, he claims to have played chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov
in a simultaneous exhibition
in Israel in 1996.
Natan Sharansky is married to Avital Sharansky and has two daughters, Rachel and Hannah. In the Soviet Union, his marriage application to Avital was denied by the authorities. They were married in a Moscow synagogue in a ceremony not recognized by the government.
Sharansky was released in February 1986 after serving 3 years of prison and 5 years of strict-regimen forced labor penal colony
in Perm Oblast
, East Siberia. He was the first political prisoner
ever released by Mikhail Gorbachev
due to intense political pressure from Ronald Reagan
. Sharansky immediately emigrated to Israel. In 1988, he wrote Fear No Evil
, his memoirs of his time as a prisoner.
Political activism
He was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After that Sharansky became a human rights activist and spokesperson for the Moscow Helsinki Group. Sharansky was one of the founders of the Refusenik
movement in Moscow. In 1977 Sharansky was arrested on charges of spying for the United States and treason and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor in Perm 35, a Siberia
n labor camp
.
As a result of an international campaign led by his wife, Avital Sharansky (including assistance from East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel
, New York Congressman Benjamin Gilman and rabbi Ronald Greenwald
) Sharansky and three low-level Western spies (Czech citizen Jaroslav Javorský and West German citizens Wolf-Georg Frohn and Dietrich Nistroy) were exchanged for Czech spies Karl Koecher
and Hana Koecher held in the USA, Soviet spy Yevgeni Zemlyakov, Polish spy Jerzy Kaczmarek
and GDR spy Detlef Scharfenorth (the latter three held in Western Germany) in 1986 on Glienicke Bridge
.
Sharansky made aliyah
to Israel, i.e. he emigrated to Israel, adopting the Hebrew
name Natan. In 1988 Sharansky founded the Zionist Forum, an organization of Soviet emigrant Jewish activists dedicated to helping new Israelis and educating the public about absorption
issues. Sharansky also served as a contributing editor to The Jerusalem Report
and as a Board member of Peace Watch. In 1986, Congress granted him the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2006 US President George W. Bush
awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
, which the The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy denounced as the celebration of a racist.
On 17 September 2008,the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation
awarded Sharansky its 2008 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award
.
Israeli political career

", or a pun, "Israel on the rise") party, promoting the absorption of the Soviet Jews into Israeli society. The party won seven Knesset
seats in 1996. It won 6 seats in the Israeli legislative election, 1999, gaining two ministerial posts, but left the government on 11 July 2000 in response to suggestions that Ehud Barak
's negiotations with the Palestinians would result in a division of Jerusalem. After Ariel Sharon
won a special election for Prime Minister in 2001, the party joined his new government, and was again given two ministerial posts.
In the January 2003 elections the party was reduced to just two seats. Sharansky resigned from the Knesset, and was replaced by Edelstein. However, he remained party chairman, and decided to merge it into Likud (which had won the election with 38 seats). The merger went through on 10 March 2003, and Sharansky was appointed Minister of Jerusalem Affairs.
From March 2003 – May 2005, he was Israel's Minister without portfolio
, responsible for Jerusalem, social and Jewish diaspora
affairs. Under this position Sharansky chaired a secret committee that approved the seizure of East Jerusalem
property of West Bank
Palestinians. This decision was reversed after an outcry from the Israeli left and the international community. Previously he served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Minister of Housing and Construction since March 2001, Interior Minister of Israel (July 1999 – resigned in July 2000), Minister of Industry and Trade (1996–1999). He resigned from the cabinet in April 2005 to protest plans to withdraw Israeli settlement
s from the Gaza Strip. He was re-elected to the Knesset in March 2006 as a member of the Likud Party. On 20 November 2006, he resigned from the Knesset
to form the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies. Since 2007, Sharansky has been Chairman of the Board of Beit Hatefutsot
, the Jewish diaspora museum, and since June 2009 is the chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel
.
NGO work
In June 2009 Sharansky was elected to the Chair of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israelby the Jewish Agency Board of Governors. In September 2009 Sharansky secured $6 million from the Genesis Philanthropy Group for educational activities in the former Soviet Union.
Media recognition and awards
Before his rise to power in Israel, Sharansky appeared in the March 1990 edition of National Geographic in Mike Edward's article "Last Days of the Gulag". In the article he describes his life in the Soviet prison system and is shown in Israel looking at photos of the Gulag taken for the article. In 2005, Sharansky participated in "They Chose Freedom", a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement, and in 2008, he was featured in the Laura Bialis documentary Refusenik
. He was number eleven on the list of TIME
magazine's 100 most influential people of 2005 in the "Scientists and thinkers" category.
Published works
Sharansky is the author of three books. The first is the autobiographical Fear No Evil, which dealt with his trial and imprisonment. His second book, "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
" was co-written with Ron Dermer
. George W. Bush
offered praise for the book:
"If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy, read Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy... For government, particularly – for opinion makers, I would put it on your recommended reading list. It's short and it's good. This guy is a heroic figure, as you know. It's a great book."
His book Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy
, is a defense of the value of national and religious identity in building democracy.
Political views
Sharansky has argued that there can never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians until there is "the building of real democratic institutions in the fledgling Palestinian society, no matter how tempting a 'solution' without them may be."In a Haaretz
interview, he maintained the “Jews came here 3,000 years ago and this is the cradle of Jewish civilization. Jews are the only people in history who kept their loyalty to their identity and their land throughout the 2,000 years of exile, and no doubt that they have the right to have their place among nations—not only historically but also geographically. As to the Palestinians, who are the descendants of those Arabs who migrated in the last 200 years, they have the right, if they want, to have their own state... but not at the expense of the state of Israel.” In the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011, he told Moment Magazine, "To sign an agreement you must have a partner who is dependent on the well-being of his people, which is what democracy means."
See also
- Refusenik (2008 film)Refusenik (2008 film)Refusenik is a 2008 documentary film by Laura Bialis that chronicles the struggle of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1960’s and 70’s...
- New anti-SemitismNew anti-SemitismNew antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism has developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, emanating simultaneously from the far-left, radical Islam, and the far-right, and tending to manifest itself as opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel.The concept...
- Refusenik (Soviet Union)Refusenik (Soviet Union)Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals, typically but not exclusively, Soviet Jews, who were denied permission to emigrate abroad by the authorities of the former Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc...
- GulagGulagThe Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
- List of people who have beaten Garry Kasparov in chess
External links
- Natan Sharansky Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Natan Sharansky Jewish Virtual Library
- The View from the Gulag. An interview with Natan Sharansky
- Natan Sharansky on Leadel.NET Interview, Up Close and Personal with Natan Sharansky
- Sharansky's Final Statement in the Soviet Court, 14 July 1978
- Autobiographical article about his time in the GULAG Solitary Lessons October 2008.
- Natan Sharansky short speech on The Strength of a United Jewish People
- Mr. Sharansky, ease my doubts, by Martin KramerMartin KramerMartin Seth Kramer is an American scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Shalem Center. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics.-Education:...
- Sharansky Interview in Middle East Quarterly
- Sharansky Interview on BookTV's After Words (13 February 2005)
- Sharansky's Double Standard by Michael C. Desch, The American ConservativeThe American ConservativeThe American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
, 28 March 2005. - Anti-Semitism in 3D (Jerusalem Post) 23 February 2004
- Natan Sharansky Right Web Profile
- Natan Sharansky Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
- Is This the Deal We Were Hoping For? February, 2009.
- Sharansky the KGB Agent
- How the U.N. Perpetuates the 'Refugee' Problem (Wall Street Journal) 6 January 2009
- Sharansky's views about the Temple Mount (Haaretz) 16 October 2003