Natan Sharansky His wife had become religiously observant during his detention, but he did not follow her on this path. Due to his age and poor health, he was exempted from the standard mandatory three years' military service, but had to undergo three weeks of military training and do a stint in the Civil Guard. In 1988, he wrote "Fear No Evil", his memoirs of his time as a prisoner, and founded the Zionist Forum, an organization of Soviet immigrant Jewish activists dedicated to helping new Israelis and educating the public about integration issues, known in Israel as "klita" (lit. "absorption"). Sharansky
Natan Sharansky High treason carried the death penalty. The following year, in 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor. Sharansky spent time in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, followed by Vladimir and Chistopol prisons, where for part of the time he was placed in solitary confinement. His health deteriorated, to the point of endangering his life. Later he was detained in Perm 35, a post-Stalin-Gulag-type so-called "strict regimen colony" in Perm Oblast. He kept himself sane during solitary confinement by playing chess with himself, in his head. Sharansky appeared in a March 1990 edition of "National Geographic" magazine. The