Dancing on Thin Ice ― The Travails of a Russian Dissenter

In this memoir, replete with Jewish humor and sardonic Russian irony, exiled Russian journalist and human rights advocate Arkady Polishchuk (b. 1929) colorfully narrates his evolution as a dissenter and his work on behalf of persecuted Christians in 1970s Soviet Russia. Told primarily through dialog, this thrilling account puts the reader in the middle of a critical time in history, when thousands of people who had been denied emigration drew international attention while suffering human rights abuses, staged show trials, forced labor, and constant surveillance.

From 1950-1973, Polishchuk worked as a journalist for Russian state-run media and at Asia and Africa Today, where all of the foreign correspondents were KGB operatives using their cover jobs to meddle in international affairs. His close understanding of Russian propaganda, the use of "kompromat" against enemies and his knowledge of "pripiski" (defined as "positive distortions of achieved results and fake reports") makes this memoir especially eye-opening for American readers in today's political climate.

Through the course of the narrative, we are along with Polishchuk as he covers an anti-Semitic show trial, writes samizdat (underground political self-publications), is arrested, goes on hunger strikes, is followed and surveilled, collaborates with refuseniks and smuggles eyewitness testimony to the west. The absurdity of his experiences is reflected in his humor, which belies the anxieties of the life he lived.

Arkady Polishchuk (b. 1929) is a Russian Jewish dissident and former journalist who has authored articles, essays, and satires for leading Russian periodicals, as well as two books about Africa. His writings have appeared in many publications in Europe and the United States including the National Review, The Chicago Tribune, and Witness. Polishchuk was a broadcaster and correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1985-2008 in Washington DC, Munich and Prague. Polishchuk has been heavily involved in human rights throughout his career, including as a testimonial speaker for Amnesty International and working on behalf of 30,000 Russian Evangelicals trying to escape decades of persecution under communist rule. In 1981 he was awarded the British McWhirter Human Rights Foundation Award and has received numerous travel grants for his human rights activities as well as being covered by Life, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Nightline with Ted Koppel and international publications.

Polishchuk became a dissident in 1973 and spent several weeks in prison, where he staged a hunger strike as part of his own four-year campaign to emigrate. When the Christian Emigration Movement was born after the Helsinki Accords in 1975, Polishchuk concentrated his human rights efforts on helping persecuted Christians, which included the dangerous smuggling of witness testimonies out of the USSR. After successfully petitioning for the right to emigrate he spent several years in Europe before arriving in the United States, where for two years he was the managing editor and spokesman for Door of Hope International, an Evangelical human rights organization focusing on religious persecution. He holds an advanced degree in Philosophy from Moscow University.