Refusenik authorities to significantly increase the emigration quota. In the years 1960 through 1970, only about 3,000 Soviet Jews had (legally) emigrated from the USSR; after the trial, in the period from 1971 to 1980 347,100 people received a visa to leave the USSR, 245,951 of them were Jews. Refuseniks included Jews who desired to emigrate on religious grounds, Jews seeking to immigrate to Israel for Zionist aspirations, and relatively secular Jews desiring to escape continuous state-sponsored antisemitism. A leading proponent and spokesman for the refusenik rights during the mid-1970s was Natan Sharansky. Sharansky's involvement with the Moscow Helsinki Group helped
Sharansky District Sharansky District Sharansky District (; ) is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the fifty-four in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. It is located in the west of the republic and borders with Bakalinsky District in the northwest and north, Chekmagushevsky District in the northeast, Buzdyaksky District in the southeast, Tuymazinsky District in the south, and with the Republic of Tatarstan in the west. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the rural locality (a "selo") of Sharan. As of the 2010 Census, the total population of the district was 22,514, with the population