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
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