The Story of One Drawing
Solomon Mikhoels, drawing by an unknown artist
It was the year 1987. After almost ten years of being denied exit visas, Moscow Jews started to emigrate to Israel and America.
My closest friend Mikhail Feinberg, who had received then the permission to leave Russia, called me and asked me to meet him together with his “accomplice” Valentin Pulver, also a refusenik who was going to leave the USSR.
We called Valentin an “accomplice” due to the fact that both he and Mikhail, a highly talented mathematician who would in the future become the creator of unique IT products for telecommunications and cancer treatment methods, during those visa refusal years were repairing people’s cars on the side in order to earn a living. I was also already seriously considering leaving the country, having offered to run a music-oriented publishing company in New Jersey. It turned out that this was precisely what their visit was about.
Mark Zilberquit