“Nothing to do with melukhe”? Two Jewish alternative milieus under the late Soviet regime: Between defiance and cooperation

Abstract

The article examines attitudes towards the Soviet state and Soviet values shared by two dissenting Jewish minorities: the religious underground of Lubavitch Hasids and the nationalistic Jewish movement stemming from the struggle for emigration. Members of both groups identified themselves as Jews in the first place and retrospectively described themselves as victims of Soviet power and bitter enemies of the regime. Based on documentary evidence from between the late 1960s and the late 1980s as well as on later memoirs and interviews, the article argues that both Lubavitchers and refuseniks remained cultural products of the Soviet system and that their anti-Soviet declarations and struggle coexisted with their embrace of Soviet values and rhetoric and willingness to negotiate with the state in various ways.