Refusenik Literature: Liberation through Text

• In Event: Let My People Go: The Refusenik Movement in the Soviet Union

Abstract

Aleksei Surin’s paper will focus on the prose of Israeli refusenik writers written in Russian. He will analyze the texts of authors such as Hillel Butman, Eduard Kuznetsov, and Felix Kandel and explore the mythological plots and narratives they used to describe the process of physical and intellectual liberation from the tyranny of the Soviet regime. He will explain how these writers used their texts as a tool to search for and understand their own identity.

Author

• Aleksei Surin, Bar-Ilan U (Israel)