The long happy life of a Marxist Likudnik

It is sometimes said of the elderly that their past is no longer discernible on them. This cliche does not apply to Don Kozlents.

Even at the age of 86, it is possible to detect the qualities that got him through his stormy life. He was awarded the Red Army's medal of valor in World War II. His brother was killed in action during that war, while most of his family was murdered by the Nazis. He came up with new drug patents in the Soviet Union, and he is a former refusenik who succeeded after a stubborn fight to immigrate to Israel.

In the period between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day, Kozlents is the ultimate symbol of the Jewish ethos.

Yet there's more to it. To this day, he remains a fervent communist, but over the years he has also become a loyal "Bibi-ist." According to him, Benjamin Netanyahu is following in the path of Karl Marx, more or less, and if we fail to understand this, that's our problem. Kozlents says he is a real Marxist, just as he is a real communist, a real Jew and a real Likudnik - he sees no contradiction among these elements.

You could say that Kozlents is the second generation of this Jewish complexity. His father, Shimon, was an officer in the Red Army, a committed communist and an ardent Zionist, who even named his eldest son Ben Zion. This is the son who fell in World War II, while Kozlents, the younger son, was seriously wounded in the Battle of Kursk, one of the biggest tank battles in history. He was a signal operator, a job that got him wounded but also saved his life.

At the height of the battle, his primitive communications equipment stopped working. Kozlents crawled out of a pit to reconnect the wires that had been cut off, and took a direct hit from a shell that shattered his arms. Luckily, his load of equipment shielded his body and reduced the blow's intensity.

To this day, fragments float everywhere in his body. He tells all this in his small room in an apartment in Rishon Letzion, which he shares with one of his grandsons. Medals are spread out on the table, including the medals of elite units in the Red Army. "I did good work as a soldier," he says. "I was there for Russia, but as a Jew for Russia."

Stellar scientist

Based on the medals, he was not only an outstanding soldier but also an outstanding communist and worker in the huge tank plant where he was transferred after his injury. Later on, he was a stellar scientist at the drug plant where he developed a secret formula. Thanks to this effort, he has a certificate signed by Joseph Stalin. "I worked in the plant from morning until evening," he says. "We sent the drugs to Africa and Asia. I worked to achieve a better world. I wanted to change the world."

But the big change actually happened in Kozlents' personal life. In 1979 his son Mark managed to get to Israel. The price was high. Kozlents the outstanding communist was thrown out of the party. In retrospect, he says he didn't care, because he had been thinking for a long time about immigrating to Israel.

But this goal turned out to be not simple. His secret formula became an obstacle or an excuse to deny his repeated requests to leave. Kozlents went from being an outstanding communist to an outstanding dissident and an active refusenik. He fought alone and went to demonstrations that became part of Soviet Jewry's struggle.

Once, he recalls, a kibbutznik arrived at their home posing as a visitor from Canada. The kibbutznik learned the details of Kozlents' story and went to London; this man apparently had great connections. Kozlents' story made it all the way to Britain's prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. She approached Mikhail Gorbachev and suddenly the exit permit arrived.

"Thanks to the kibbutznik, thanks to Thatcher," says Kozlents, summarizing his story in halting Hebrew. That's how he arrived in Israel, bringing in his own form of Marxism. "In Russia, the communists weren't real communists," he says, "certainly not the counterfeits of Lenin and certainly not Stalin. I'm a real communist. Marx wasn't a Bolshevik."

But unlike Kozlents, Marx was not a member of Likud, the party that Kozlents joined immediately after his immigration. How does that mesh? Kozlents doesn't understand the question. "Read this," he says, pointing to one of the volumes of "Das Kapital." "The rules written here are Marx's economy. Bibi understands these rules. More or less." A remark that Bibi is a capitalist does not sway him. "So was Marx," he claims, without showing any confusion.

This week Kozlents will celebrate two holidays. The 60th anniversary of Israel's independence and the victory over the Nazis, which falls on May 9. For him, the two days complement each other. "Without our victory over the Nazis, there wouldn't have been a state," he declares proudly. "Everything is connected."