This is a feature called "A Political World," where we spotlight 20th Century comic book stories that came out back when comic books were not political at all, unlike comic books nowadays. Today, we look at a Defenders story that dealt with the Refuseniks.

I featured this years ago, based on a suggestion from reader Omar Karindu, as a Foggy Ruins of Time, but it applies here, as well.

One of the most clever things that Steve Gerber would do as a writer is that he would take these topics that were absolutely incendiary topics and wait a little bit until they were a little bit out of the news and THEN he would build storylines based around them, so that he would be able to do commentary that would probably have been far too controversial had he written about it when it was JUST in the news, but since he waited a little bit of time, he was able to get his points across without freaking people out. Especially since a number of readers probably didn't even know what he was talking about!

That's what he did in Defenders #40, which was drawn by Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson.

The set-up of the issue is that the Defenders had recently added Red Guardian, the Soviet superhero (basically the Russian version of Captain America. She was the second Red Guardian and the first one to be female). She was now living in the United States for the first time.

As you might imagine, not everyone was thrilled with a Soviet superhero joining an American superhero team...

Red Guardian chases down the vandals and after capturing one of them, he is injured. for!

She goes to a nearby apartment for help and she doesn't know what she is in

Red Guardian takes on the leader of the group and ultimately defeats him and gets away from their attempts to capture her and then blackmail the USSR over her identity...

So, what was Gerber referencing here exactly?

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Oddly enough, what Gerber is doing here is taking an oppressed people and actually making them the BAD GUYS of the situation. Well, I guess he would have said that they were people desperate to do whatever they could to help their people back in the USSR, but either way, it's fascinating to see him turn the "Refuseniks" into basically terrorists. It's an odd take on the news of the time.

In any event, this was all about the "Refusenik" movement. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the USSR severely curtailed the rights of its citizens to leave the country. Perhaps the most vocal in their opposition to this were Jews within the Soviet Union who wanted to emigrate due to what they found to be rampant antisemitism in the USSR during the Cold War. They found it extremely difficult to leave, though, as the Soviets continued to refuse their attempts to emigrate (hence "Refuseniks"). The Soviet Jewish community protested like crazy.

In 1970, a small group even tried to sort of kind of hijack a plane to get out of the country (their plan was to book a small plane for a fake wedding and then kick the pilot out right before take off). When they were all arrested, the Soviet government planned to kill the two ringleaders. The rest of the world freaked out and the Soviets eventually backed off. As the 1970s went on, more and more Jews were allowed to leave the country. By the time Gorbachev became the head of the government in the 1980s, it was becoming much and much less of an issue. And obviously when the USSR collapsed it became an official non-issue.

In the summer of 1976, though, it was not as MUCH of a hot button issue as it was during the 1970 situation, but it was still a difficult issue for Russian jews and their families around the world. Gerber probably could have been a bit less aggressive with how he depicted the "Refuseniks," but it was still clever how he worked the plot into the storyline.

In any event, while the politics are messy on this one, it's still an interesting usage of political topics period.

Okay, folks, I'm sure you have suggestions for good political storylines from the "good old days when comic books weren't political," so drop me suggestions at brianc@cbr.com!