Fifty years ago, these refuseniks tried to hijack a plane — and they're still soaring
The early 1970s were fraught with a veritable epidemic of skyjackings for political or financial gain. Between 1968 and 1972, over 130 US aircraft alone were overrun by hijackers holding planeloads of innocent passengers hostage while demanding ransoms, the freeing of terrorists, or political asylum. But those who are old enough surely remember a particularly noble and courageous hijacking plan with a very different agenda — one that would change the face of the Soviet Jewry movement and create so much international pressure that the locked gates of the Iron Curtain would finally open.
Fifty-three years ago this week, a small band of Soviet Jewish refuseniks attempted a daring — if improbable — escape to Israel. The Leningrad hijacking plot — known as “Operation Wedding” — is a powerful modern-day story of courage and commitment by a group whose Jewish identity was just beginning to reemerge after decades of Soviet oppression.
It was 1970, three years after the Jewish State’s miraculous victory in the Six Day War. While anti-Israel propaganda was fed to the Russian proletariat, news of Israel’s supernatural successes had made its way into the consciousness of Soviet Jews and ignited a new passion, firing up the sparks of nearly-extinguished embers. Underground, clandestine classes in Hebrew language and Jewish tradition were organized, and many idealistic young people began to apply for exit visas in order to escape the grip of the Russian bear.
After having been refused visas and stripped of their professions (the general fallout for applying for a visa), a group of 16 dissidents plotted to buy all the seats on a small 12-seater Antonov An-2 propeller plane, make a local flight from Leningrad to Priozersk under the guise of a trip to a wedding, remove the pilots, and continue across the border to Finland and then on to Sweden, with Israel as their final goal. On the morning of June 15, 1970, 12 of the group arrived together in Smolny Airport near Leningrad (another four were to be picked up in Priozersk), only to land in the waiting arms of the KGB, who’d been tailing them all along.
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