Hundreds of Soviet refuseniks to receive increased pensions

Some 300 former Soviet refuseniks now living in Israel will receive increased pension benefits in recognition of their efforts to move here despite persecution, an interministerial committee announced this week.

Many of the immigrants are living in poverty, making the increased funding particularly significant.

The Immigrant Absorption Ministry is calling on Russian-speaking immigrants to submit an application for the benefits. To be eligible for the benefits, the immigrants must be Israeli citizens living in Israel who were refused an exit visa. They must have immigrated by 1990 and been at least 35 years old at the time, and they must have been engaged in "Zionist activity" for about a decade.

The changes comes "out of a sense of respect and gratitude on the part of the State of Israel," the interministerial committee that set the criteria said this week.

Soviet Jews who applied to leave the Soviet Union were frequently publicly ostracized and dismissed from their jobs. Many immigrated to Israel at a relatively advanced age. They were deprived of their Soviet pensions and were frequently either not entitled to an Israeli pension or received reduced pensions.

In January the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs decided to appoint an interministerial committee headed by Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver to develop criteria for receiving increased pension payments.

Former refusenik Aharon Gurevich, who fought for the increased pension benefits, was 50 when he arrived in Israel 22 years ago.

"I am very pleased with the progress on the subject," he said. "However, to my regret, we woke up [to the issue] late, since many of us are over 80, and their situation is not easy."

"Now we understand that things here don't move quickly when the government and institutions are like a concrete wall," said Gurevich. He called the assurances that he had previously received on the issue "an effort to calm us down and move us aside, and it was very hard for us. Now we have the first real step that proves that things are progressing."

Gurevich applied to Soviet authorities for an exit visa at age 35, but was refused the right to emigrate for 15 years, during which time he was active in the Soviet Jewish aliyah movement. He immigrated to Israel in 1988.

"Even when we were refused [visas], we didn't stay idle, but taught Hebrew and Judaism," he said, adding that many Jews knew little of their heritage.

Gurevich had been a computer expert in the Soviet Union. He found a job in Israel working in a computer store, where he earned just NIS 4,000 a month.

"I worked for a private individual, and I didn't realize that you don't receive a pension [here] automatically, as you do in Russia," he said.

Since retiring, Gurevich and his wife have been subsisting on old-age benefits of NIS 2,400 a month as well as an additional monthly income of NIS 850.