refusenik

refuse +‎ -nik, calque of Russian отка́зник (otkáznik).

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refusenik (plural refuseniks)

1. (Soviet Union, slang, historical) One of the citizens of the former Soviet Union, typically but not exclusively Jewish, who were refused permission to emigrate.

   Synonym: otkaznik

   • 1990 December 14, “Remember the Refuseniks?”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     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.

2. (colloquial) A person who refuses to do something, for example one who refuses conscription or vaccination.

   Hyponym: anti-vaccinationist

   • 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:

     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.

3. (colloquial) A person who wants to do something but is refused permission to.

• recusant

• “refusenik”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.