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
Natan Peled Natan Peled Natan Peled (, 3 June 1913 – 8 January 1992) was an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Immigrant Absorption from 1970 until 1974. Born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), Peled moved with his family to the Bessarabian region of Romania when he was 8, where he studied at a Hebrew school in Chişinău. He joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement, and was the secretary to the organisation's leadership in the country. He was also secretary to the central committee of the HeHalutz movement. He made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1933, and joined