Boris Kochubievsky

Boris Lvovich Kochubievsky was born in 1936 in the Soviet Union into a Jewish family. His parents had separated. His father, a major in the Red Army who served as a deputy regiment commander, was killed at the start of the Second World War; Russian Wikipedia says he was presumably shot at Babyn Yar, and Israeli reports in 2026 said he was murdered in the Babyn Yar massacre of September 1941. His grandparents were also killed during the war.

Kochubievsky grew up in a children's home. He finished evening school with a medal, studied at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and became a senior engineer at the Radiopribor factory in Kyiv.

After the Six-Day War of June 1967, Soviet workplaces held meetings to condemn Israel. At his factory Kochubievsky asked for his objection to be entered in the minutes, saying that Israel had not been the aggressor and had been defending itself from destruction. He was pressed to resign and left the plant in May 1968.

In June 1968 he married Larisa, a student at a teacher training institute. In August both applied to emigrate to Israel and were refused. Larisa was expelled from her institute and from the Komsomol. On 29 September 1968, the anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, he spoke at the memorial gathering after the official speeches, declaring himself a Zionist by conviction and insisting that the victims had been Jews.

On 28 November 1968 the KGB searched his flat. The same day he sent an open letter to Leonid Brezhnev, later known as "Why I Am a Zionist", in which he wrote that he would do everything in his power to leave for Israel, even on foot. Israeli reports say he was briefly held in a psychiatric hospital. He was arrested on 7 December 1968 and tried in Kyiv in the same building where Menahem Beilis had been tried early in the century. On 16 May 1969 the Kyiv Regional Court sentenced him under article 187-1 of the Ukrainian criminal code to three years in a corrective labour colony. He was the first Soviet Jew convicted for Zionist activity after the Six-Day War. He served his term at Zhovti Vody and in September 1971 complained formally to the Soviet Prosecutor General about humiliating treatment in the camp.

While he was imprisoned, the American group Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, led by Jacob Birnbaum, campaigned for him worldwide, and in 1969 Knesset member Haim Landau brought his letters before the Knesset. In June 1971 the Israeli association of engineers and architects admitted him as a member in solidarity. After his release in 1971 he was permitted to emigrate and settled in Israel, where his arrival drew wide public interest and he was invited as a guest of honour to a change of command ceremony for the Israeli chief of staff. He took the name Baruch Ashi and worked as an engineer at the electronics company Tadiran until his retirement.

His first marriage, to Larisa, ended around the time he emigrated, and she did not go with him to Israel. A daughter from that marriage remained in the Soviet Union and, according to a 2005 interview, later died of leukaemia that was linked to the Chernobyl disaster. In Israel he made his home in Jerusalem and raised three children, among them his son Uri Ashi, and he lived modestly, away from public attention. In 2023 he joined other former Prisoners of Zion in signing a petition in support of the Israeli government's judicial reform.

Boris Kochubievsky died in Israel in October 2026. His death was reported on Monday 19 October 2026 by Walla, NEWSru.co.il and other Israeli outlets; the activist Aaron Munblit was informed by Kochubievsky's son, Uri Ashi. The exact date was not specified in all reports, but Russian Wikipedia and Wikidata give 19 October 2026. He was about 90. The cause of death was not made public. His funeral was held on 19 October 2026 at 14:00 at the Yarkon Cemetery. Alex Rif, founder of the One Million Lobby for Russian-speaking Israelis, said he had been the first face of the struggle to free Soviet Jewry and thanked him for his courage.

Kochubievsky's stand at Babyn Yar and his letter to Brezhnev became early symbols of the Soviet Jewish emigration movement, at a time when the authorities suppressed any mention that the victims at Babyn Yar had been Jews. His trial helped turn Soviet Jewry into an international cause. In a speech on 5 December 2007 marking forty years of the struggle for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert singled out his role. Historians of the movement, including Yuli Kosharovsky and Gennady Kostyrchenko, describe him as the first Prisoner of Zion of the post-1967 era.