This week in Jewish history | After decades as Soviet prisoner, Sharansky arrives home in Israel 09 Feb 2021 share this on On 11 February 1986, Soviet Jewish refusenik Natan Sharansky arrived in Israel under the terms of a prisoner exchange, after spending nearly a decade in prison in the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union supported the creation of the State of Israel in the United Nations General Assembly, its support for Israel declined for several reasons, including the Israeli Law of Return. Soviet Union leadership did not believe that Jews in the country were oppressed and therefore did not need an independent Jewish state as a continuous safe haven. In fact, the Soviet Union state newspaper