Medical Refuseniks in the Soviet Union and Their Patients

In July 1986 we went to Moscow and Leningrad to visit refusenik physicians and to learn about the medical and psychiatric problems of this community. Refuseniks, the several thousand Soviet Jews who have applied for—and been refused—permission to go to Israel, suffer consider able official and unofficial punishment. We were interested in the effectsof this treatment on physical and mental health as well as in the experiences of Soviet Jewish physicians who apply for emigration. Our information comes from discussions with a number of doctors in both Moscow and Leningrad who gave us examples from their own experiences and those of their patients.