Born in 1935 in Kislovodsk. His father was a member of the Communist Party, his mother was from a family of rabbis. At home they celebrated Jewish holidays (Pesah, Yom Kipur, Rosh ha-Shana). His uncle on mother’s side was the head of the Jewish community in Kislovodsk, he organized the brit mila for Vladimir. In 1958 Vladimir graduated from the Moscow Institute of Nonferrous Metals and Gold and was sent to work on the first Soviet base for manufacturing nuclear weapons in the closed town of Ozersk (Chelyabinsk−40). There in 1965 he defended his doctoral thesis on plutonium metallurgy. In 1966 he moved to Kiev and from 1967 till 1973 worked at Kiev Institute of Nuclear Research of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He applied for the exit visa in October, 1973, and in 2 months was refused because of “security clearance required by his previous work”. His Zionist activity started in 1973 after the refusal. He participated in organizing ulpans to study Hebrew, Jewish history and culture, organizing and a managing of the seminar for refusenik scientists, organizing of collective actions of refuseniks (collective letters to the authorities and abroad, demonstrations, celebrating of the Jewish holidays, etc.). He helped to supply ulpans and individuals by educational and other literature, organized a seminar on legal problems for refuseniks, consulted “green” refusenicks on various problems, organized the material aid to refuseniks and ulpans, carried out communication with other groups of refuseniks in different cities of the USSR. In 1974, having obtained the Israeli citizenship, he begun process of refusal from the Soviet citizenship, but always received refusals to his refusal. From 1974 till 1980 he used to be arrested from one to three times every year for 15−30 days. In 1980 after 30 days of administrative arrest he was put in the Kiev Psychiatric Hospital and contained there during the Moscow Olympic Games. In March, 1981 after the purimshpil which was held in a private apartment, he was arrested at a bus stop and formally accused of hooliganism (KGB agents, who carried out the surveillance on him were called as the “witnesses”). In May, 1981 on the trial in the Kiev Criminal Court he refused to participate in proceedings based on forged charge. He was sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment. Served his time in full in the Gulag camps of Dzerzhinsk and Zhdanov near Donetsk in the Ukraine. He was released in March, 1984, and returned to Kiev, where he found a job as a fitter on a factory, producing reinforced concrete structures. Soon he married a Moscow refusenik Bella Gulko and in 1985 moved to Moscow. In Moscow he continued his Zionist activity, led a seminar on legal problems for refuseniks and carried out communications with Jewish activists in other cities of the USSR. Participated in meetings with the officials from the Western countries, with President Reagan, President Mitterrand, ex-president Giscard d’Estaing and US State Secretary George Schultz. He received permission to go in January 1989 and in March left for Israel. At first he lived in Jerusalem, and from 1995 he lives in the community of Dolev, Binyamina region.
The information was provided by Vladimir Kislik.
