My family came over from the USSR in the late 80s and although I was too young to remember the details, my parents told me that the USSR did not make it easy to

My family came over from the USSR in the late 80s and although I was too young to remember the details, my parents told me that the USSR did not make it easy to leave: they had to go through a whole slew of questions that tried to show that they were perfectly well off in the USSR and there was no persecution. Their story makes it seem to me that it would have taken a more than voluntary effort to leave the USSR, whether you were a Jew or not. As an aside, before the mass immigration of the Soviet Jewry there was a whole group of people called the Refuseniks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusenik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusenik) which were denied the right to immigrate but were not allowed to go back to their jobs. There was a very good documentary made about them recently (http://www.refusenikmovie.com/ http://www.refusenikmovie.com/) that I recommend watching if you are interested in this topic.