refusenik

From refuse +‎ -nik (suffix denoting a nickname for a person who endorses, exemplifies, or is associated with something, often a particular ideology or preference), a calque of Russian отка́зник (otkáznik),^[1] from отка́з (otkáz, “denial, refusal, rejection, repudiation”) + -ник (-nik, suffix forming masculine nouns, usually denoting adherents, etc.).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈfjuːznɪk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) enPR: rəfyo͞oz'nĭk, rē-, IPA^(key): /ɹəˈfjuznɪk/, /ɹi-/
• Rhymes: -uːznɪk
• Hyphenation: re‧fuse‧nik

refusenik (plural refuseniks or refuseniki)

2. (Soviet Union, historical, slang) One of the citizens of the former Soviet Union who was refused permission to emigrate (typically but not exclusively a Jewish citizen denied permission to emigrate to Israel).

   Alternative forms: refusednik, refusnik

   Synonym: otkaznik

   • 1985 June 2, Louis Moore, “‘Refuseniki’ look to the West with hope”, in Houston Chronicle, volume 84, number 232, Houston, Tex.: Houston Chronicle Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, section 1, page 3, column 1:

     The refuseniki say they don’t want to change anything in the U.S.S.R., only leave it.

   • 1990 December 14, “Remember the Refuseniks?”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 May 2015:

     In 1974, a handful of brave Soviet Jews haunted foreign embassies in Moscow hoping for exit visas. Refuseniks, they were called; the Brezhnev Government wouldn't let them out.

   • 2005 April, Dan Richardson, “Jewish history in Russia”, in The Rough Guide to Moscow, 4th edition, London; New York, N.Y.: Rough Guides, →ISBN, page 185:

     The refuseniki (those refused exit visas) were at the forefront of the dissident movement of the 1970s and a major irritant in US-Soviet relations until Gorbachev signalled a change in policy by allowing the veteran refusenik Anatoly Scharansky to emigrate in 1986.

3. (by extension, informal) A person who refuses to do something, usually as a protest; for example, one who refuses conscription or vaccination.

   Alternative form: refusnik

   Synonym: recusant

   Hyponyms: anti-vaccinationist, conscientious objector

   • 1998, Martin J[oseph] Beck Matuštík, “Hope and Refusal”, in Specters of Liberation: Great Refusals in the New World Order (SUNY Series in Radical Social and Political Theory), Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 98:

     Hope in liberation can imbue the singular transgressive body-performativity as well as the performative uses of fallibilist pragmatic presuppositions of human communication action. This risky hope—it is another name for the coalitions and the communities among refuseniki—appears under the figures of a radically existential and multicultural democracy.

   • 2006, Lawrence Thompson, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, page 678:

     Richard Ellmann once referred to Samuel Beckett as “Nayman from Noland”—the author as national refusenik. Beckett famously refused to allow a national representative from either Ireland or France to pick up his Nobel Prize, sending his publisher instead […]

   • 2008, Sergio Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas: Dilemmas of a Conventional Army, Routledge, →ISBN, page 94:

     One IDF refusenik recounted how commanders on the field tried very hard to accommodate potential conscientious objectors by offering alternative and less controversial missions, in order to avoid their refusal to serve from becoming a public, and thus, political statement: […]

   • 2021 February 26, “What life is like in countries where Covid-19 vaccination is increasingly a success”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     Authorities are offering incentives to those slow to accept the needle. In Tel Aviv, this has meant one bar offering a 'shot for a shot.' In Bnei-Barak, a bowl of stew has been offered to get the Ultra-Orthodox refuseniks over their reservations.

• refusenik on Wikipedia.Wikipedia