“The Soviet dissident and writer died...”, “The famous Soviet dissident and. "

Portrait of Mikhail Kheyfets work M. Lemkhina Misha Kheifets was never a dissident. He wrote the article “Joseph Brodsky and Our Generation” not to secretly send it to the West, but to place it as a preface to the Samizdat collected works of Brodsky, which was prepared by Vladimir Maramzin. Maramzin did not take the article, Kheifets showed it to several friends and friends and put it on the table. But the Soviet court decided that the writing and distribution of this article (it was read, it seems as many as ten people - friends, writers, is this not a distribution? ) is a crime punishable under Article 70, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the USSR and sent Mikhail Kheyfets for four years to maximum security camps, without howling to add to this two years of exile.

“It was in the camp that he got involved in something he hadn’t done before - in political resistance. At the very beginning of the term, the KGB urged him to submit a petition for clemency.

He refused and even interrupted a meeting with his mother, who was sent to persuade him. He takes part in all hunger strikes and general protests of prisoners, ”says his accomplice Vladimir Maramzin * in the preface to the book“ Place and Time ”written by Kheifets in the camp, transferred for barbed wire and published in Paris.

Kheifets was not going to leave. But the camp convinced him. In the camp, he encountered and became friends with nationalists - Armenian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian. It was communication with them that convinced him that Israel was his country.

Kheifets gives an ironic epigraph to his book about the camp:.

“A Jew was taken to the KGB. “Rabinovich, it turns out you have relatives abroad...” - “What are you, what are you. I do not know them. And he never wrote ”-“ But now sit down and write ”-“ I don’t want to! - "

“Dear brothers,” Rabinovich began, “finally I have found time and place to write to you...” The book “Time and Place” Kheifets gave the subtitle: “Jewish notes”. “In the camp, where nationalists of many nations are gathered /... /, where SS and SFU workers sleep and work next to daring Zionists, where internationalism becomes honest, only serving the national cause, and nationalism is faithful to its principles only in an unselfish international struggle against evil. Hence, where, contrary to delusions and passions, if we are honest, we finally understand that we are the children of our people and that all the peoples of the Earth are still one family. ”.

Mikhail Kheifets was honest, so in the camp he did not write a letter to the prosecutor about his troubles, but reporting about “possible tragic consequences”: at the stage from the 17th to the 19th, the KGB zone took about 600 poems from the remarkable Ukrainian poet Vasily Stus - 300. Who can guarantee that the KGB will not destroy these manuscripts

And when Stus is sent to a pre-trial detention center, Kheifets goes on a hunger strike of solidarity. Kheifets from the camp sends a letter to the Prosecutor General of Armenia in support of fellow prisoners, members of the NOPA (National United Party of Armenia), demanding independence of their country.

Having delayed his four years, Kheifets with his wife and two daughters leaves for Israel and in Israel writes anew the book “Russian Field”, an essay book about Russian nationalists Sergey Soldatov, Vladimir Osipov, Nikolai Serkov (the book was written in the camp, but her manuscript died during. His next work is “Ukrainian Silhouettes”, a collection of essays on the fighters for independence of Ukraine - Chernovil, Rudenko, Zoryan Popadyuk, Vasyl Ovsienko. Behind her is the “Prisoner of War Secretary” about the Armenian dissident Payruir Hayrikyan.

It would be untrue to say that these books by Mikhail Kheifets were enthusiastically received by all. Someone said:

Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians - even if they themselves would go about their business. And we are worried about the Jews.

How did Mikhail Kheifets respond to this? He formulated the answer a long time ago: of course, we are the children of our people, but all the peoples of the earth are one family.

* Maramzin himself repented, received five years probation, was released in the courtroom, and immediately received permission to leave for France. Heifets was also offered.

Secret Police of the Third Reich.