Avital Sharansky raised two daughters. Avital Sharansky Avital Sharansky (born Natalia Stieglitz (, ) in Ukraine, 1950; married name also Shcharansky) is a former activist and public figure in the Soviet Jewry Movement who fought for the release of her husband, Natan Sharansky, from Soviet imprisonment. Avital and Nathan Sharansky met in October 1973. Shortly after meeting, Nathan Sharansky's exit visa was denied, and he became an active refusenik. Avital applied for a visa to Israel, and the couple began to discuss marriage. They married in 1974, one day and a half before Avital's exit visa expired. The day after their wedding,
History of the Jews in Moscow groups gained traction while working underground in an atmosphere of repression. They protested, published samizdat, had seminars on Jewish history, and started Hebrew ulpans. Some of these activists, such as Natan Sharansky, Yosef Begun, and Ida Nudel were arrested as a result. During Glasnost and Perestroika, Jewish life in Moscow expanded and new cultural organizations formed. At the same time, anti-semitic organizations grew louder and there were rumors that a pogrom could occur during the Moscow celebrations of the millennium of Christianity in Russia. In 1992, firebombs were thrown at the Marina Rosha Synagogue in Moscow, and in 1999 there