The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union ed by Yaacov Ro'i (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union ed by Yaacov Ro'i Larissa Remennick The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union. Edited by Yaacov Ro'i. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. 450 pp. This edited collection, The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union, includes six sections: Overview, Soviet Jewish Identity, The Political Ambience, Social Aspects, The Cultural and Spiritual Setting, The World Beyond, and an epilogue written by George P. Shultz, a prominent political scientist and US Secretary of State (1982-1989). Although Soviet Jewry's struggle for the right to emigrate has been addressed in many earlier academic and popular books, most of them have been written to present the external (mostly American) perspective on the movement's formation, heroes, and activities (Friedman and Chernin; Lazin). Yet, there was no academic work collected under a single cover focusing on the Soviet Jewish movement itself, from the inside perspective, showing the political and social context under which it took shape, how it developed its goals, tactics and leadership, its regional spread, and relations with its western and Israeli supporters. Together, these components enabled the achievement of its ultimate goal—mass Aliya of Soviet Jews to Israel and their emigration to the West. The contributions to this volume shed new light on a major wonder of state socialism in its prime years—how, despite the oppressive "national policy" with its built-in antisemitic streak, over 250,000 Soviet Jewish citizens could gain an exclusive right for emigration denied to the rest of the Soviet people. The three introductory chapters offer a broad general picture of the movement, its social basis, mode of operation, and evolution over the years since its inception in the late 1960s. They depict the political and social milieu in the years following Khrushev's Thaw, with their failed hopes for true political reformation of socialism after Soviet tanks crashed the liberalization movements in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). These [End Page 140] events formed the antecedents of the nascent movements of different kinds (religious, ethnic, nationalist), including the Jewish national movement, reinforced by the feelings of pride for Israel in the aftermath of its victory over united Arab armies in the Six Day War of 1967. The Jewish involvement in the opposition was multifaceted from the outset: while some Jewish professionals became key figures in the general political resistance to the Soviet regime (e.g., supporting Prague Spring), others chose to identify with Jewish ethnonational goals—the resuscitation of Jewish culture in the USSR or the right for Aliyah to Israel. Part 2 offers further elaboration on the matters of collective identity of Soviet Jews, their mindset, and relations with the Soviet regime, which many of them (or their parents) ardently supported in the initial postrevolutionary decades. The articles discuss the built-in contradiction of this uneasy relationship whereby Soviet Jews were strongly encouraged to assimilate and sever their ties with their religion and tradition, while at the same time the state's antisemitic policies and street-level antisemitism fostered sharp awareness of their otherness and the glass ceiling in their social mobility. This conflict was especially potent among the generation that came of age in the poststalinist 1950s and 1960s. This section also includes an excellent article on the emerging discourse of the Holocaust in the Soviet territory during World War II (carefully downplayed by the authorities throughout the Soviet period) and the role of Israel in the fortification of the Jewish identity among Soviet Jews. Part 3 reviews Soviet policies towards emigration (general and Jewish) during the Cold War and subsequent détente, in light of its negotiations with the US over trade agreements and disarmament. It highlights the role of Jewish emigration as a bargaining chip in these complex political games, as well as the place of Jewish emigration in the context of the emerging human rights movement after the USSR signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975. Part 4 brings to the fore the main figures of the Jewish movement and their everyday lives, especially after they joined the ranks of "refuseniks" (whose emigration petitions had been denied by the state). The loss of jobs and livelihood, social ostracism, and...