SHARANSKY, NATAN (ANATOLY). (b. 1948). Soviet dissident, Refusenik and future Israeli politician. SP. (“Natan Sharansky”). 1p. 4to. N.p., N.d. Sharansky has written “Great moment!” above his signature on a magazine photo depicting the 1991 demolition of the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky who had headed the Soviet secret police organizations Cheka and OGPU. Additionally signed by his fellow prominent Russian Refusenik and Israeli politician YULI EDELSTEIN (b. 1958, “Yuli Edelstein”), who has added “Agree with Natan!”

In 1973, Sharansky, a chess champion and mathematician who had worked for a Soviet research laboratory, was denied a visa to travel to Israel because he had access to state secrets Finding himself among numerous refuseniks, Russian Jews who were being denied immigration to Israel, Sharansky joined the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization that worked on behalf of Refuseniks and other persecuted religious and ethnic minorities. Four years later, the KGB arrested him on charges of high treason, accusing him of spying for the Americans by giving them lists of Refuseniks. In 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of labor in a Siberian gulag where he endured solitary confinement and forced feedings. An international campaign seeking his release turned him into a symbol for human rights and the rights of Soviet Jews. In 1986, he became the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev as part of an East-West prisoner exchange, after which he immigrated to Israel where he was greeted as a hero. Sharansky co-founded the Yisrael b’Aliyah political party and served in the Knesset, in several ministerial roles, and as chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He is the author of Fear No Evil, The Case for Democracy and Defending Identity.

The son of Russian Orthodox converts, Edelstein was denied a visa to immigrate to Israel in 1977 after which he formed the underground City Project to train Hebrew teachers. In 1984, he was arrested and sent to several Siberian penal colonies, before his release three years later, the last of the Refuseniks to be freed. After immigrating to Israel, he co-founded Yisrael b’Aliyah with Sharansky and was elected to the Knesset, serving as that body’s speaker and in several ministerial roles.

Bolshevik revolutionary Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926) headed the Soviet secret police organizations Cheka and OGPU and was a leader in the Red Terror, the brutal repression of political dissidents conducted from 1918-1922, estimated to have killed between 50,000-200,000 people. After his death of a heart attack, he was lauded by Stalin, buried in a place of honor in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis alongside Lenin. Numerous cities were named in his memory. Under Putin, the identical statue was resurrected on September 11, 2023, and placed outside the building housing the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service in Moscow.

Accompanied by an unsigned photograph of Sharansky autographing this image.