Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict

Introduction 13 1 Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration “—How do Jews even know they are Jews? They are not so different from the rest . . . —Oh, they won’t mind forgetting all about it, but they are constantly reminded . . . ” —from a short story by Fazil Iskander, 1978 It is common wisdom now that there is no single and monolithic Jewish identity that would be valid across historic periods and cultures; Jewish identities in different countries of the Diaspora have been as diverse as were the conditions of their lives. For most of Diasporic Jewish history, and especially since the inception of assimilation in the nineteenth century, Jewish identities and cultures have been split between their national or local halves (Russian, German, Moroccan, etc.) and their Jewish halves. Across written history, Jews have been the single most multilingual and multicultural ethno-religious group. Jewish communities have been able to survive in hostile environments and adjust to whatever life had to offer in a specific time and place, trying to make the best of it. Another trait typical of most Jews is their being dynamic, mobile, fast learners, and often brokers of social change in their countries of residence. Historical studies reflecting on the Jewish people’s role in modern civilization generally and in Russian history specifically, exemplified by The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine (2004), attest to impressive Jewish adaptive potential and social mobility, which Slezkine reckons to be the Jewish people’s most basic common feature across times and places. Multiple mono13 14 Russian Jews on Three Continents graphs over the last decade have addressed more specific and localized dilemmas of Jewish life in different contemporary societies (Jewish Survival, by Krausz and Tulea [1998]; Mapping Jewish Identities by Silberstein [2000]; Forging Modern Jewish Identities by Berkowitz et al. [2003]; American Judaism by Sarna [2004], to cite only a few notable volumes); their very number points to complexities and controversies involved in understanding what it means to be Jewish today. What is the special place of former Soviet Jewry 1 on the global map of modern Jewish experience and how did life under the Soviet system shape its collective identity and the eventual drive toward emigration? Without going too far back into the history of Russian Jewry (for which I refer the reader to the concise and cogent account in chapters 3 and 4 of the Slezkine book, as well as chapter 2 in Brym and Ryvkina’s 1994 book), I will focus on the last three decades of state socialism that preceded the inception of the last Jewish exodus from the USSR. Demographic Profile of Soviet and Post-Soviet Jewry I will begin with a brief demographic sketch of Soviet Jewry that has direct bearing on its social characteristics; for more detailed statistical data on Russian-Jewish demographics the interested reader can consult publications by Mark Tolts (1997, 2003, 2004). Accounting for the assimilative processes, demographers usually distinguish between what they call core Jews and the Jewish periphery, or enlarged Jewish population. The former term refers to those who have two Jewish parents and self-identify in censuses and surveys as Jews; the latter—to persons with one Jewish parent or grandparent, as well as non-Jewish spouses of Jews. Although socially these two groups are closely intertwined, the percentage of their Jewish blood, so to speak, often made a real difference both in the face of Soviet-type institutional anti-Semitism and in contexts where religious Judaic authorities set the tone and policies regarding their rights as Jews, in Israel and in some other Orthodox communities in the Diaspora. As a result of mixed marriage between Jews and non-Jews, the share of partial Jews has been growing from one generation to the next, while the share of core Jews has been shrinking. The ratio between the enlarged Jewish population and its core in the Russian Federation increased from 1.5 in the late 1970s to 1.8 in 1994, and probably approached 2.0 by the time of the last Russian census of 2002 (Tolts, 2003). Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 15 Respectively, the estimates of the size of the Jewish population of Russia and the FSU may broadly vary depending on the chosen definition of the Jews and political agenda of those using these statistics. Religious Jewish organizations in the FSU, and their foreign sponsors, are usually interested in the “genuine Jews,” that is, those born of two Jewish parents or at least of Jewish mothers. Their numbers in the USSR and successor states have consistently dropped from one census to the next, from 2,279,000 in 1959, to 1,480,000 in 1989, 544,000 in 1999, and an estimated 400,000 in 2002 (the last censuses in Russia and the FSU had multiple organizational and performance flaws, so the numbers are estimates at best). By 2002, the majority of the remaining Jews (233,600) lived in Russia (vs. 551,000 in 1989), less than 90,000 remained in Ukraine, and all the other former republics counted together about 55,000 of core Jews (Tolts, 2003, 2004). At the same time, The Jewish Agency (Sochnut) that brokers and manages immigration to Israel, bases its count on the entitlement for aliyah and Israeli citizenship that embraces also half and quarter Jews, with their immediate families. Counted in this way, the enlarged Jewish population of Russia may exceed half a million (and according to some estimates, stands closer to one million), and for the whole FSU— 800,000 (1.2 million, by the upper-end estimates). The World Jewish Congress, United Jewish Appeal, and other international Jewish organizations also prefer to cite the upper-limit figures to facilitate their fundraising for Jewish causes in the FSU. The broad range of the existing estimates is impressive and leaves a lot of room for ideological and pragmatic speculation. The demographic decline of Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry is explained by four major factors: mixed marriage, low fertility, advancedage composition, and accelerated emigration. Mark Tolts estimated that between 1989 and 2002, the core Jewish population of Russia has dropped by 55 percent; about 42 percent of this decrease reflected negative vital balance (i.e., excess of deaths over births) and 58 percent was due to emigration. In 1994, 63 percent of Jewish men and 44 percent of Jewish women in Russia were married to non-Jews, compared to 51 percent and 33 percent, respectively, in 1979. Among Ukrainian Jewry, the shares of out-married men and women in 1996 were 82 percent and 74 percent, respectively; the same was true about Jews in Latvia (86 percent and 83 percent). No data on out-marriage are available for the early 2000s, but these numbers have definitely 16 Russian Jews on Three Continents climbed further up. The greater tendency to out-marriage among Jewish men reflects, to some extent, the lack of Jewish brides in the major Russian cities where young Jewish men had migrated earlier in great numbers. Culturally, it can also reflect lower attractiveness of Jewish women vis-à-vis Jewish men as potential marital partners for nonJews, reflecting popular stereotypes of Jewish men as hard-working, sober, and devoted to the family and of Jewish women as demanding and haughty (“Jewish princesses”) or, alternatively, as meddling and petty (Gershenson, 2006). As a result, among Soviet/Russian halfJews, the share of those with Jewish fathers (who are not recognized as Jews in Orthodox Judaism) significantly exceeds those with Jewish mothers. Between 1988 and 1995, the percentage of children born to Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers, out of all children born to Jewish mothers, rose from 58 to 69 percent, and by the early 2000s has probably exceeded 80 percent. As a result of these trends, in the younger generations (sixteen to twenty-four year olds) the share of youths having two Jewish parents, among those having any Jewish relation at all, stands at 25–28 percent (Tolts, 2003, 2004). In contrast to their forefathers in the Pale of Settlement and their counterparts in Israel and some Diaspora countries, Soviet Jews have typically had fewer children than the surrounding majority. During the post-communist years, their fertility rates dropped even lower: from 1.5 children in the late 1980s to 0.8 in 1994, compared to 1.9 and 1.25, respectively, in the general population of Russia. Besides low fertility norms in Russia and the modest living standards of most citizens, Jews limited their offspring to one or two children due to a strong emphasis on the quality of their upbringing and great parental investment in each child. Reflecting many decades of low fertility combined with high life expectancy among the Jews, their age pyramid was inverted, pointing to the rapid aging process. By the mid–1990s, death rates among Russian Jews surpassed birth rates by 27 units, leading to a steady decline of their numbers. Similar trends have occurred in other successor states. The Jewish population of the FSU is the oldest one among all Diasporic Jewish communities: the mean age of a Russian Jew today approaches sixty. While during the turmoil of the post-communist 1990s the life expectancy of Russians plummeted to the unprecedented levels of 57.9 among men and 71.3 among women, the longevity of the Jews showed only a slight downward turn and remained relatively high: 69.6 and Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 17 73.2 for men and women, respectively. For comparison, the figures for one of the last years of socialism, 1988, were 69.9 and 65.4 for Jewish and Russian men, and 73.3 and 74.2 for the Jewish and Russian women. Thus Jews had always had an advantage in longevity vs. non-Jews, but in 1993–94 a Jewish man in Russia lived on the average almost twelve years longer than his fellow Russian, and a Jewish woman lived two years longer than a Russian one (Tolts, 2003). I will elaborate more on the reasons for the Jewish survival advantage (especially on the male side), but one apparent conclusion from these statistics is that Jews as a group have adjusted much better than Russians to the drastic changes in the economic and social environment of the post-communist years. Former Soviet Jewry of European (Ashkenazi) origin has been the most urbanized ethnic group in the FSU: over 95 percent of them lived in the cities, mostly in the capitals and other large urban centers (in the Russian Federation, 54 percent of the Jews lived in Moscow and St. Petersburg*). Ever since the 1920s, Jews have also been the most educated ethnic minority, over half of them receiving postsecondary education. In certain birth cohorts of Jews, the percentage or carriers of university degrees was as high as 75 percent and about 90 percent worked in white-collar occupations. Jews who grew up in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Tashkent, Novosibirsk, and a few other mega-cities had a lot more opportunity to study in good schools, read diverse literature, and develop their talents in various cultural venues vis-à-vis their provincial counterparts. Some of the ambitious small-town Jewish students and professionals could, of course, relocate to the capital, but this was a small minority as, besides antiSemitic barriers in education and careers, Moscow and Leningrad had tight administrative regulations of residence, and one could get a living permit in these cities only via marriage or job contract (not unlike the U.S. Green Card). Thus, due to their disproportionate concentration of cultural and educational resources, Moscow and Leningrad became hothouses for a multifaceted Jewish professional and intellectual elite, represented in a whole range of scientific, medical, educational, artistic, legal, and technical occupations. According to the last Soviet census of 1989, the percentage of Jewish adults with a university education or equivalent in Moscow and St. Petersburg was 60.4 * In 1991 Leningrad had its pre-revolutionary name St. Petersburg restored. This is the second largest Soviet/Russian city, often called “the Northern Capital.” 18 Russian Jews on Three Continents percent and 55.2 percent, versus only 45 percent among provincial Russian Jews. The Jews of the smaller cities and towns of Russia, and the majority of Ukrainian and Belorussian Jewry, typically belonged to skilled industrial and technical occupations rather than humanistic or free professions (Tolts, 1997). By contrast to the educated, secular, and urban Ashkenazi Jews, the minority of Jews living in Central Asia (Bukharan Jews) and the Caucasus (Georgian, Mountain Jews, and Krymchaks) comprised together a minority of 8–10 percent among Soviet Jewry and had a very different social profile. These communities, living in remote and less urbanized areas, where the hold of Soviet power was weaker than in the big cities, managed to keep many of their ethnic and religious traditions and did not try to assimilate into the mainstream. These Jewish communities spoke Jewish languages of their own, various dialects of Farsi, Azeri, and Georgian (and often Russian as a second language), had organized Jewish life, married each other in arranged marriages, raised relatively many children, and confined most of the women to the homemaking roles. The levels of formal education among Asian and Caucasian Jews have been much lower than among European Jews (roughly similar to the Soviet average of 20–25 percent holding postsecondary degrees) and their occupational structure was dominated by tradesmen, artisans, and since the 1990s—small business owners. Virtually all of these Jewish communities left the FSU— some back in the 1970s and the majority after 1989—and resettled in Israel, and (in smaller numbers) in Europe and the U.S. As mentioned above, emigration significantly depleted the ranks of Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry from the early 1970s on. At this point, I will only cite the available statistics and will develop my argument on the social mechanisms of emigration in the following pages. The first emigration wave that left the USSR over the decade of the 1970s counted about 250,000; among them about 130,000 moved to Israel and 120,000 continued to the West, mostly to the U.S. When the gates of the deteriorating Soviet empire reopened in the late 1980s, Jews were the first ones to take their leave; ethnic Germans, Armenians, Greeks, and Finns soon followed in their steps. The majority of those who left the USSR with Israeli visas between 1987 and 1990 (around 85 percent) arrived in the U.S. under Jewish refugee status (their total number is estimated at about 235,000 [Dominitz, 1997]). Then at the end of 1989 the American government changed its refugee policy Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 19 towards Soviet Jews and drastically reduced the quotas and the terms of entry. At the same time, Israel opened direct flight routes from the major Soviet cities to Tel Aviv and closed the transition camp in Vienna where bifurcation of the migrant stream took place in the past. Since the early 1990s, these simultaneous changes effectively redirected the bulk of Jewish emigrants leaving the USSR to Israel, reducing the so-called dropout rates (neshira) to 20–25 percent (Dominitz, 1997). Between 1989 and 2002, over 1.6 million former Soviets emigrated from the FSU on the “Jewish ticket,” that is, as ethnically privileged migrants. About 60 percent of them belong to the Jewish core and 40 percent are partly Jewish or married to Jews. The four major receiving countries after 1989 have been Israel, the U.S., Germany, and Canada; smaller groups resettled in Australia, New Zealand, and a few European countries. Demographers estimate that roughly one-half of the 1.6 million core Jews born in the USSR/FSU reside in Israel, about one-quarter remain in the FSU, and the rest are spread between North America and Germany, with a few percent living in other countries (Tolts, 2004). In the wake of this exodus, the Jewish population of Russia shrank to 45 percent of its size in 1989, and for the FSU as a whole to some 30 percent. By the early 2000s, the outmigration flow of Russian-speaking Jews turned into a trickle of several thousand per year. The remaining Jews are either too old to migrate or fully assimilated into the Russian mainstream; many of them have achieved economic success under the new market economy and lead comfortable lives (Gitelman et al., 2003). In any event, it seems clear that the major potential of emigration of former Soviet Jewry has already been exhausted. The Imposed Jewish Identity vs. the Perceived One: Passport Jews and Others While demographers are interested in numbers and statistical trends, sociologists try to explain and interpret them. Let us now look at the social context behind the facts of Soviet Jewish demography and the forces that shaped Russian-Jewish identity, with its built-in emigration streak, during the last decades of the twentieth century. As the epigraph to this chapter reminds us, being Jewish had never been a matter of choice for Soviet Jews. Since the mid–1930s, internal passports of all Soviet citizens included a nationality entry, meaning ethnic origin, 20 Russian Jews on Three Continents the infamous fifth paragraph (piatyi punkt) that became synonymous with Jewish “social disability” among other “normal” citizens. At the age of sixteen everyone was ascribed the ethnicity of one’s parents; those born of mixed marriage could choose either ethnic designation. Thus a person born of two Jewish parents entered society officially defined as a Jew. Among the youths, who could choose between their Jewish and non-Jewish affiliation, about 90 percent registered as Russians, Ukrainians, etc., in order to avoid a negative label that could hinder their future education and career prospects. By the mid–1990s, only 6 percent of these youths chose to register as Jews (Tolts, 2003), suggesting that the popularity of Jewishness did not increase much in the post-Soviet era. Besides the overt statement of their nationality in the passport and most other documents (including medical records and library cards!), Jews were easily recognizable by their non-Slavic last names and typical patronymics such as Izrailevich or Abramovich, as well as their physiognomic features and some aspects of their speech and demeanor. So Jews were visible in the midst of the Slavic majority regardless of what their documents said. As the punchline of a sad Jewish joke goes, They [anti-Semites] hit you on your face, not on your passport.2 During the first two post-revolutionary decades, Jews became a privileged minority group as the young republic of peasants and workers needed their relatively high professional and administrative skills, as well as their political loyalty. As Slezkine shows in his book (2004), Russian Jews had a long-standing affair with communism as ideology and political regime, which ultimately entailed rather destructive results both for them and the country. By the late 1930s, the regime had recruited and trained enough cadres from the ranks of Russians and other Slavs so that the ubiquitous presence of Jews in high-ranking posts in the party apparatus, government, and secret services was rapidly reduced via relentless cleansing campaigns (Martin, 1998; Zeltser, 2004). Ever since, the rising and falling tides of anti-Semitic plots and campaigns, masterminded by the Kremlin and conducted by the NKVDKGB in team with the central party press, served as a mechanism for controlling Jewish social mobility and ethnic representation. Admittedly, the Russian chauvinism of the Soviet authorities, inherited from the tsarist regime and peasant mentality, targeted other non-Slavic minorities too (e.g., ethnics of the Asian and Caucasian republics). Yet, the position of Jews on the scale of ethnic intolerance has always Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 21 been outstanding, both due to age-old anti-Jewish sentiment and the lingering possibility of emigration, automatically rendering Jews untrustworthy, a black sheep in the flock of Soviet nations, a suspect neighbor in the infamous communal apartment (Slezkine, 1994). Having no designated land of their own in the USSR (besides the failed project of Birobidjan) but having a historic homeland of Israel and a thriving diaspora abroad, Jews (along with a few other minorities, most notably Germans, Greeks, and Armenians) had a kind of extraterritorial status on the Soviet geopolitical map and did not fit into the scheme of the party’s “nationality policy” (Friedgut, 2003). Given their propensity for higher education, they also competed with Russians and other “titular nations” (e.g., Ukrainians in the Ukraine) for positions in the public service and various professions, and often won the competition whenever merit rather than a “nomenclature principle” was at work. By the late 1960s, Soviet powerholders could no longer tolerate disproportionate representation of Jews in prominent positions in the sciences, education, technology, and culture; Jewish ambition and mobility had to be contained (Altshuler, 1987). The price Jews had to pay for their unprecedented social mobility under state socialism was the virtual destruction of Jewish culture (Altshuler, 1987, 1998). By the early 1950s, the system of Jewish schools and cultural institutions has been almost completely destroyed, as were synagogues and yeshivas. The majority of Jewish educated professionals and civil servants who grew up in the large Soviet cities did not speak any Yiddish and knew little about Jewish traditions. Some reserves of the Ashkenazi Jewish lifestyle still remained in the provincial towns of the former Pale of Settlement (parts of the Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, and the Baltic states) but they were also fading away as their carriers grew older and died. Reflecting forced secularization over seventy years of Soviet power, Jews became an ethnic minority rather than a religious denomination. Jewish affiliation became defined by purely bureaucratic means—parental ethnicity and registration in civil papers—and lost any direct connection with Judaic faith or religious practice. At the same time, Jews were the most Russified of all ethnic minorities: in the last Soviet census of 1989, about 90 percent of the Jews named Russian as their native language, compared to 30–60 percent among other ethnic groups (Remennick, 1998). Given the wide prevalence of mixed marriages between Jews and 22 Russian Jews on Three Continents non-Jews, growing from one generation to the next, the ranks of halfJews and quarter-Jews expanded as well over the decades of the Soviet regime. In contrast with the religious Judaic principle defining Jewish ancestry on the maternal side, in Soviet mixed families the father’s ethnic origin always mattered more for the identity of the offspring. Hence half-Jews on the paternal side were often more prone to identify as Jews, both psychologically and officially; some of them even chose to register as Jews in the passport. Yet, the majority of half-Jews grew up as Russians, or else as “internationalists,” with only a small fraction of them discovering their Jewish side in later life (Nosenko, 2004). In terms of the dominant culture and lifestyle of the mixed households, Russian wives of Jews more often adopted Jewish features of everyday living and child rearing than vice versa (i.e., Jewish women who married Russians and other non-Jews tended to adapt to their lifestyles). In other words, in most mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews the woman was usually the party to adjust and make changes, reflecting the dominant patriarchal gender culture. Many of these women willingly followed their husbands to Israel where, by an irony of fate, they assumed a minority status and had to undergo religious conversion (giyur) in order to become “normal” (I will say more about these women in the pages to follow). Whether a family kept any signs of Jewish traditional lifestyle was also defined by the size of the city they lived in, the presence of the Jewish elders in the household, education and occupation of the middle generation, and other circumstances. Usually educated urban professionals were more distant from the Jewish traditions than their small-town and lesseducated counterparts (Altshuler, 1987). Some recent research suggests that young people of mixed ethnicity became aware of their Jewishness later in life and under different influences than their peers with two Jewish parents. A survey in a representative sample among the Jews living in the major cities of Russia and Ukraine conducted twice (in 1992/3 and 1997/8) by the Jewish Research Center via face-to-face interviews (Cherviakov et al., 2003) compared the responses of pure or “passport” Jews with those of half-Jews. As all but a few of the mixed ethnics registered in their passports as non-Jews and had Russian last names, their exposure to institutional anti-Semitism was much weaker and many of them were not aware of their Jewish affiliation until early adulthood, typically their student years. Their self-awareness as Jews was developed mainly Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 23 by cognitive practices (e.g., reading literature on Jewish history or the current Jewish press) rather than direct personal experiences. Most of the pure Jews recounted that they became aware of their “ethnic disability” early, usually in elementary school, and mainly through direct encounters with anti-Jewish remarks or actions of their peers, teachers, neighbors, and others. When asked about the people who shaped their Jewish self-awareness, pure Jews more often named one or both parents, while half-Jews mainly named their friends and colleagues (suggesting that their parents did not discuss Jewish matters with them). Finally, pure Jews were more inclined to observe some of the Jewish traditions at home (30 percent vs. 18 percent in the Russian sample) and to attendance in Jewish organizations. Pure Jews were also twice as likely to perform any of the religious rituals, although the percentage of positive answers here was low in both groups (between 3 percent and 10 percent). A recent narrative-based study by Elena Nosenko (2004), including eighty-three oral histories of half-Jews living in the major Russian cities, largely confirmed these trends, showing that the Jewish component of their self-identity was diffuse and situational, with anti-Semitic attacks serving as its main trigger. Some respondents “recovered their Jewish roots” via participation in the Jewish educational and community projects (usually sponsored from abroad), which most attended for social and pragmatic reasons. Nosenko failed to trace any major role either of the Holocaust, or of Zionism and Israel as salient axes of their Jewish self-perception; most informants did not consider emigration and saw Russia as their homeland. Ethnic groups are defined by their common cultural signifiers (language, art, cuisine, etc.) and boundaries vis-à-vis other groups. Given that Soviet Jews lost their religion and traditional culture and immersed themselves in the midst of the general urban populace, what was the remaining ground for their self-identification as Jews? Was it mainly due to the ambient anti-Semitism or were there also some other specific qualities they ascribed to themselves and their ilk? Zvi Gitelman in his article “Thinking about Being Jewish in Russia and Ukraine” (2003) reflects on the signs and expressions of what he calls a “thin” Russian-Jewish culture that remained in the wake of their destroyed “thick” culture, based on common religious practice, language, and organized community life. What special cultural fabric, however thin, made Jews different from other ex-Soviets? No academic work was done on this topic during Soviet times, but quite a few social scholars 24 Russian Jews on Three Continents explored the issues of perceived Jewish identity during the post-Soviet era (Brym and Ryvkina, 1994; Gitelman et al., 2003; Ryvkina, 2005). Important reflections about Russian Jewish intelligentsia are found in the writings by the Russian Jewish historian and activist Mikhail Chlenov (1997), physicist and ardent Zionist Alexander Voronel (1997), and psychologist who joined political reforms of the early 1990s Leonid Gozman (1997). The construction of Russian-Jewish identity in contemporary fiction by Jewish authors is discussed by Mikhail Krutikov (2003) and Olga Gershenson (2006) explores the images of Russian Jews on screen. Multiple insights on the lifestyle and mindset of Russian Jews can be gleaned retrospectively, by analyzing the narratives of the Jewish immigrants in the U.S. and Israel, quite a few of which have been collected and published over the last decade (see for example Siegel, 1998; Orleck, 1999; Yelenevskaya and Fialkova, 2005). When researchers coming from the Anglo-Jewish world and raised in the “cultural Judaism” of the contemporary Diaspora first tackle the issue of Russian-Jewish identity, they are shocked by the apparent absence of the recognized pillars of the Jewish identity—knowledge of the Jewish history and holidays, keeping some household and cooking traditions, the imperative to marry other Jews, religious rites of passage and Jewish education for the children, knowledge of the Jewish languages, and identification with Israel. These components of the international Jewish cannon were obscure or foreign for most Soviet Jews, and are even less relevant for those who remain in the FSU today (Ryvkina, 2005). In the previously mentioned survey among Russian and Ukrainian Jews (Chervakov et al., 2003), only 0.5 percent to 5 percent of the respondents named the features listed above as essential for being a “genuine Jew.” By contrast, in both countries and at both times the majority (between 20 percent and 33 percent) chose the answers “to be proud of your nationality,” “defend Jewish honor and dignity,” “not to hide one’s Jewishness” and “remember the Holocaust” as chief expressions of their Jewish identity. It seems that the Holocaust memories form the only common denominator between the Soviet and other Diaspora Jews. In the survey among 1,000 Jews of Moscow, Kiev, and Minsk conducted by Brym and Ryvkina (1994), the most salient factors of respondents’ perceived Jewish identity (in the decreasing order in a regression model) were exposure to Jewish culture while growing up, plans to emigrate, mother’s and spouse’s “passport nationality,” experience of anti-Semitism, father’s national- Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 25 ity, fear of anti-Semitism, and city size. Among those self-identifying in this latter survey as pure Jews, only 12 percent celebrated high Jewish holidays or tried to pass some Jewish traditions on to their children; 8 percent participated in Jewish organizations, and 4 percent regularly read the Jewish press. Only 14 percent expressed interest in religion, among them more leaned towards Russian Orthodoxy than Judaism. In Brym and Ryvkina’s view, the Russian Jewish identity manifests as both elastic and pragmatic, that is, coming to the fore only when it serves a purpose (mainly related to emigration) and subdued for the rest of the time. Most of the building blocks of SovietJewish identity were imposed by state policies or came in reaction to discrimination and humiliation (so-called reactive ethnicity, described in the American context by Alba [1990], amongst others). The concept of identity is so complex and dynamic that in order to capture it one must to go beyond statistics and structured survey items and employ ethnographic tools such as in-depth interviews and group discussions letting people speak in their own voices. I will offer the reader some of my reflections about the positive core of RussianJewish identity drawing on multiple discussions with friends and on what is wryly called by anthropologists “home ethnography,” that is, a researcher’s first hand experiences in her own social circle. Multiple reinforcements for these observations come from the fieldwork of folklorists Larisa Fialkova and Maria Yelenevskaya (see, for example, their 2004 articles and 2005 book), anthropologists Fran Markowitz and Natalie Zilberg, media and culture scholars Olga Gershenson and Nelly Elias. Novels and stories written by contemporary Russian-Jewish authors, both in Russia (e.g., by Ludmila Ulitskaya) and abroad (e.g., fiction by Dina Rubina and Svetlana Schenbrunn in Israel, Svetlana Boym, Gary Shteyngart, Ludmila Stern, and Lara Vapnyar in the U.S., David Bezmozgis in Canada, Fridrikh Gorenshtein and Vladimir Kaminer in Germany) also helped me compile a fuller retrospective picture of Jewish lives and self-perceptions under socialism. My reflections pertain of course to this “thin culture” that evades strict definition and adequate measurement, but is nevertheless very real for its carriers. Perhaps the pinnacle of the perceived Russian-Jewish identity was (and still is) the ambition for excellence and achievement, in any given sphere of activity, with the corollary high valuation of education, hard effort, and intellectualism. Another related trait is the re- 26 Russian Jews on Three Continents spect for professionalism and its central place in an individual’s selfidentity and self-esteem. The value of professional achievement and self-actualization for many Soviet Jews exceeded the value of material wealth coming with higher occupational status, although they were not blind to the link between the two. This cult of education and professional mobility, juxtaposed with the discriminatory reality of the Soviet schooling system and most white-collar workplaces, resulted in the built-in fighter spirit and the drive to overcome the barriers erected by institutional anti-Semitism. You can make it, just be ten times as good as any Russian, and they will have to give in, was the wisdom that many Jewish youths digested with maternal milk. Hard effort often yielded Jewish students places in elite high schools and colleges, despite carefully designed attempts to fail them during entry exams. Jewish children and youths more often than their Russian peers had busy after-school schedules attending chess and music classes, studying foreign languages, drama, and pursuing numerous other activities that developed their abilities and ambitions. Jewish teenagers seldom participated in street gangs or hung out aimlessly in public gardens smoking and drinking alcohol. Like their parents, they knew too well that education and hard work would eventually earn them a place in the middle class, with its better access to both the material and cultural resources that Soviet urban life had to offer. The alternative would be the gloomy, drunk, and violent existence of the Russian working class, in whose ranks they would experience a full measure of hatred and humiliation as Jews. While among ethnic Russians heavy drinking and alcoholism have always been a national plague, Jews were usually moderate drinkers and also had low rates of criminal behavior and imprisonment (Shkolnikov et al., 2004). These features gave Jews a solid advantage in collective competition vis-à-vis their Slavic neighbors. Another identity-shaping feature of Jewish life (in Russia and elsewhere) is the central place of the family in a person’s life as a safe haven and primary support network, especially in the face of hostile outer society. The connections between husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings, and other relatives were usually those of duty and mutual care, regardless of intimate affections involved. Jewish parents are known for intense investment of time, effort, and emotion in their children’s upbringing and education (the flipside of which is sometimes excessive protection, control, and mutual dependence in parent-child relations). Jewish families stay connected over the life Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 27 course, grandparents helping the middle generation with childcare and being cared for, in turn, after becoming old and frail. The co-residence of multi-generational families under one roof, sometimes voluntary but mostly caused by the shortage of housing throughout Soviet era, also facilitated provision of mutual hands-on help and intense emotional ties in the Jewish families. When the older generation could arrange for separate living quarters for their adult children, both parties preferred living in the same neighborhood or at least in the same city. The incidence of child or spousal abuse in Soviet Jewish families was much lower than among the hegemonic majority, as were the rates of abortion and sexually transmitted diseases, other common Russian plagues (Remennick et al., 1995). By and large, Soviet Jews led healthier lives compared to the non-Jewish majority, marked by balanced nutrition, engagement in outdoor sports and hiking, moderation in drinking, lack of violence, social support, and optimal use of available health services and medication for their ailments. As was already mentioned, this modus vivendi found its ultimate expression in a significantly longer life expectancy of Soviet Jews, which even during the worst post-soviet years of general decline exceeded longevity of non-Jews by five to ten years (Tolts, 2003). Ever since the short-lived Thaw of the 1960s, Jews were among the most consistent opponents of the Soviet regime, reflecting both their own predicament and general intellectual contempt towards the stagnating System, inefficient, immoral, and ridiculous at every level (Chlenov, 1997; Voronel, 1997). Although only a few brave ones would come out of the closet as open dissidents, most others cultivated subversive ideas, read dog-eared samizdat (outlawed writings that no Soviet publisher would print) and tamizdat (banned Western publications), and ridiculed the Soviet system in late-night kitchen discussions. Political and ethnic anecdotes (jokes with deeper meaning reflecting social and political irony embedded in Soviet reality and virtually untranslatable) thrived as the chief genre of Soviet folklore.2 The culture of subversion and scorn, more rarely—explicit resistance, common in most Russian-Jewish homes, was the principal yeast on which young Jewish men and women of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s had been raised. Of course, such an atmosphere was not limited to the Jewish social milieu but was also typical of certain sectors of the Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, and other intelligentsias (let alone constant intersections of these social circles in mixed families as 28 Russian Jews on Three Continents well as between colleagues, friends, and neighbors), but among the Jews “anti-Soviet attitudes,” as they were called in official parlance, were paramount. At the same time, some Jewish professionals and bureaucrats excelled in the Soviet-style doublethink and doublespeak, were members of the Communist Party, and kept two separate ethical codes: one for external and the other for personal use.3 This was also part of their successful adaptation strategy. Featuring last but not least on the map of Soviet Jewish identity was the sense of common destiny and in-group solidarity in the face of harsh reality. Russian Jews could not help but divide the social world into us and them, easily identified each other in the crowd, and stuck together in informal social circles. Given their common problems in the face of institutional anti-Semitism (of which their Russian peers were often naively oblivious), the lingering dilemma of emigration, a peculiar sense of humor, and references to the common past experiences, their conversations were often strange and impenetrable for the outsiders. There were so many matters that they simply could not share with non-Jews without risking misunderstanding, tension, and even greater dislike of Jews. Such landmarks of Soviet-Jewish history as Delo Vrachei (see The Doctors’ Plot by Rapoport, 1991), and persecution of “rootless cosmopolitans” (a pure euphemism used for vilification of Jews as foes of Russia) were often unfamiliar to fellow Russians, or were differently interpreted by them. Many non-Jews were oblivious of the terrible losses most Jewish families had suffered during Nazi occupation and mass executions of Jews in the Ukraine, Baltic states, and other western parts of the USSR. In brief, Soviet Jews shared a common history and common language to talk about it. As a result, informal Jewish networks were often rather self-enclosed and exclusive of others: over 80 percent of Soviet Jews stated in the surveys that all or most of their best friends were Jewish (Brym and Ryvkina, 1994). In most social institutions Jews who had achieved positions of influence would support and promote other Jews (e.g., senior professionals would help younger ones, put a word for them, etc.), albeit usually rather tacitly, in order to avoid allegations of “ethnic protectionism.” Throughout Soviet times, Jews were connected by the special grapevine, a chain of mutual informal aid, helping their friends (and even remote acquaintances) to find a good doctor, a tutor for the children before college exams, a babysitter or a caregiver for the parent. When emigration became reality, Jews helped and advised Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 29 each other about how to by-pass Soviet bureaucrats, gave free Hebrew and English classes, disseminated letters from those already living abroad, exchanged names and telephones of their acquaintances who could help out during the first months in New York or Tel Aviv. This mutual support network comprised the most precious social capital that Soviet Jews had accumulated; some of these networks survived or replicated themselves in immigration, while others were irreversibly lost. It is hard to say if their dense presence in many professional guilds brought Soviet Jews much excessive material wealth. Throughout the postwar period Jews where ushered by the state educational policy towards technology, engineering, and science and were effectively discouraged from entering the prestigious faculties of humanities, social sciences, culture, and journalism as they were seen as a gateway to the ideological front where Jews were mistrusted. Despite harsh competition to enter medical schools, many Jews became physicians and other health professionals. Let me remind the reader that throughout the Soviet period educated professionals such as engineers, teachers, and physicians were universally low paid, often less than skilled industrial workers. They had no professional autonomy and were defined as civil servants trained and allocated to their jobs by the state (Jones, 1991). So the majority of Jewish rank-and-file doctors and engineers lived as modestly as their non-Jewish peers, dwelling in small urban apartments and riding buses and the subway rather than private cars (which had been a luxury). A more successful minority who had climbed to the top of Soviet organizations gained access to additional sources of wealth such as cars, summer cottages, larger apartments in prestigious housing complexes—all granted to them by the authorities rather than acquired on the non-existing free market. However, most educated Soviet Jews had greater than average access to invaluable non-monetary resources such as better schooling for their children, better health care, cultural events, and entertainment—though informal networking with each other and better ability at navigating the Soviet system. As an old Russian proverb says, Ne imei sto rublei, a imei sto druzei (What matters is having a hundred friends, not a hundred rubles). In the unpredictable Soviet economy plagued by permanent shortages of basic goods, the exchange of favors was a universal form of barter, so the most important factor of individual wellbeing was to get to know the right people and have something to offer 30 Russian Jews on Three Continents them in exchange for their aid (Ledeneva, 1998; Pesmen, 2000). Most former Soviets had to make moral compromises and partake in informal economic practices (barter, black market deals, bribery, and other connive-to-survive schemes) in order to get what they wanted. Jews were usually rather good at the art of networking with the right people and were themselves part of this vital exchange network. Across the Soviet empire but especially in its east and south, Jews (along with Armenians, Chechens, and other Caucasus ethnics) were also active participants in the socialist shadow economy that existed in parallel to the inefficient and corrupt “command economy,” providing the citizens with the merchandise and services unattainable via official channels. It included such branches as smuggling/import of foreign goods, underground manufacturing of consumer products, for instance false brand-name clothing items (e.g., Levi jeans), sidetracking and resale of goods from special warehouses catering to the Soviet nomenclature. An opportunistic entrepreneurial spirit and informal mode of operation were necessary to bypass the omnipotent system in achieving one’s goals, and over time this behavior was molded into the social norm for most business-minded Homo Sovieticus. Ewa Morawska, one of the foremost cultural historians of Eastern Europe, describes three basic principles of Soviet-style entrepreneurship: (1) deeply ingrained “beat the system, bend the rules” modus operandi (instead of legal-institutional approach) in pursuit of business goals; (2) reliance on personal patronage and informal networks instead of legal-civic arrangements, including the lack of formal written contracts and reliance on the “word of honor” of one’s business partners (the sanctions for the breach of trust being in-group ostracism and loss of income at best, violence at worst); (3) consumption-oriented capital accumulation instead of long-term investment and production development; immediate rewards take priority over deferred gratification. Businessmen Russian-style are prone to flashy public show of their wealth, for example by driving expensive cars, wearing furs and diamonds, and staffing their homes with middle-class status symbol objects (e.g., art, antiques, home electronics, kitchen appliances, etc.). These traits, molded in the clandestine Soviet business life, soared during the years of post-communist economic transition, when the established systems of regulation were demolished and new legal rules changed almost daily, asking to be bypassed. Moreover, this “cultural toolbox” of the former Soviet people with a business streak (many Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 31 Jews among them) came in extremely handy in the gray sector of liberal market economies where they found themselves as immigrants during the 1990s (Morawska, 1999). In sum, Jews occupied a special place in the economic, social, and cultural landscape of Soviet society, providing a unique example of so-to-speak “discriminated elite.” By this I mean that, despite constant policies of their control and containment at the entry to attractive career tracks and in all social institutions, Jews have achieved prominence in most important domains of professional activity and often accumulated significant influence and wealth due to their hard work, talents, entrepreneurial and social skills. In response to the policies of exclusion and vilification, Soviet Jews fortified some features of their traditional culture that helped them adapt and achieve upward mobility: cultivation of intellectualism, respect for hard effort and knowhow in one’s line of work, strength of family networks, in-group solidarity, moderation in their lifestyle, quiet negation or sheer manipulation of the Soviet system, in which they had to partake in order to achieve any success in their profession or business. All these features formed the basis of the unique Russian-Soviet Jewish identity and defined ethnic and cultural boundaries between the Jews and other Soviet people. The typical lamentation about the Jews often voiced by Slavs was that they “can always get by and make it” (a-hard-to-translate Russian adage evrei umeyut ustraivat’sia), hinting at the Jewish smarts, malleability, and self-interest vis-à-vis Slavic selflessness and naiveté. Despite all the barriers, not a few Jews made it to the top of the Soviet hierarchy in various domains of public life, aside from the party, politics, and administration. Soviet high and popular culture featured many Jewish high-flyers: composers Isaak Dunaevsky and Matvei Blanter authored most popular songs of early socialism, standup comedians and satiric writers Arkady Raikin, Mikhail Zhvanetski, Genadi Khazanov, and Gregory Gorin molded ironic self-reflection among Homo Soveticus, writers and poets Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Svetlov, David Samoilov, Boris Slutsky, and Josef Brodsky became household names of the Russian intelligentsia; in many homes one could find the tapes and records of amateur (bard) singers Alexander Galich and Alexander Gorodnitsky; most Soviets learned at school about the great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev (who compiled the Periodic Table of the Elements), Soviet-era physicists Nobel Prize winners Abram Joffe and Lev Landau, and so on and 32 Russian Jews on Three Continents so forth. By the virtue of their affiliation with this prominent group, ordinary Jewish people were often proud of their Jewish origins and somewhat arrogant towards their Slavic neighbors. Affinity with the great Jews in Russia and all over the world gave them moral compensation for living under the shadow of anti-Semitism and formed an important source of a positive Jewish identity, partly offsetting the negative identity based on common problems and discrimination. (A popular Russian-Jewish hobby was taking a painstaking inventory of Jewish figures of fame in history and in modern life, carefully peeling away various disguises such as Christian and literary names). This sense of belonging to the cultural elite, regardless of their personal achievements, often made a disservice to Russian Jews after emigration, when they suddenly found themselves at the bottom of the new social pyramid. Russian Jews, Russian Culture, and Russian Orthodoxy As was mentioned earlier, Jews were the most Russified of the Soviet ethnic minorities and counted Russian as their mother tongue. Having moved far away from the traditional Yiddish-based culture of their forefathers, Russian-speaking Jews across the USSR became ardent adepts of the Great Russian Culture, or in Yuri Slezkine’s ironic definition, “eagerly professed the cult of Pushkin.” The attitude of urban middle-class Jews towards their vanished shtetl culture and its language varied between nostalgic and pejorative; Yiddish was mainly used by the elders to keep secrets from the children. Reflecting their propensity for higher education and broad cultural interests, Jewish professionals of any kind were usually well read and often knew Russian history and fine literature better than many ethnic Russians. Naturally, few Russians enjoyed revelations of their ignorance by these outsiders, only enhancing the mutual antagonism. As was already mentioned, many Jews were among the prominent creators of the twentieth-century Russian culture. Many Jews occupied a highly visible place in the Soviet cultural pantheon as theater and cinema actors and directors, stand-up comedians, composers of popular music, chess champions, writers, and poets. They were also highly active on the backstage of Russian Soviet cultural production as editors of newspapers, magazines, television and radio shows, often working under Russian-sounding literary names in order not to “stick out” as Jews. Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 33 The biographies of renowned figures in the Soviet culture, science, and society comprise over half of the two thick volumes of The Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry (1998). One specific example of a highly influential, and explicitly Jewish, figure on the cultural scene of the 1980s was a satiric writer and stand-up artist Mihkail Zhvanetskii, whose bitter witticisms about every aspect of life under decaying socialism became an indispensable part of late Soviet folklore and in many ways spearheaded the advent of glasnost and perestroika (Nakhimovsky, 2003). This means that throughout the twentieth century Russian Jews have been at the core of the social category known as Russian intelligentsia. The intersections and complex relations that linked Russian and Jewish intellectuals over the twentieth century, and the Jewish contributions to the so-called “Russian national vision,” caused heated debates during the post-communist years, after the taboo on the overt discussion of the Jewish matters had been lifted (Krakhmalnikova, 1994). Jews were also ardent consumers of high culture of all available shades and sorts, attended concert halls and theaters, collected impressive home libraries, and vehemently discussed recent publications in the influential literary magazines such as Novyi Mir (New World) and Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature). Thus, despite their lingering label as rootless cosmopolitans, Russian Jews surely had deep roots in the Russian cultural soil. Although they were generally more rational and pragmatic than their fellow Russians, the famous keyword trio symbolizing Great Russian culture— sud’ba/destiny; dusha/soul, and toska/melancholy—formed a salient semantic frame through which they often construed themselves and their lives (Wierzbicka, 1996). For a part of Russian-Jewish intellectuals, the Russian Orthodox version of Christianity became an important spiritual anchor, helping them to fill in the void left by the Soviet atheist ideology in their inner lives. For many Russians of any ethnic background, joining the Church was a form of protest against the system, an escape or “internal emigration” in the times when actual emigration was impossible. Discovering religion in the atheist milieu was for many a salient part of what Russians call dukhovnost’ (spirituality in a broad sense as a spiritual drive rather than material pursuits). Christianity was also an easier spiritual outlet for many Jews, as it has few regulations of everyday lifestyle, as opposed to the tenets of Judaism. Its emphasis is on faith and moral living, not strict observance of daily rules of conduct. Al- 34 Russian Jews on Three Continents though most religious confessions were under pressure and control under state socialism, the Orthodox Church as the most traditional and deeply rooted religious institution in Russia was still better preserved and represented than either the Judaic or Muslim faiths. For those interested in religion, there have always been many more churches than synagogues, and many more devoted Orthodox fathers than ordained rabbis. Up until the late 1980s, in Moscow, with its tens thousands of Jews, there was only one functioning synagogue closely supervised by the KGB, while dozens of churches welcomed all those seeking faith and were relatively free of surveillance. The high Russian culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on which most Russian Jews had been raised, was rife with Christian symbols, arguments, and references: Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Bunin, Berdiayev, Soloviev, and many other important writers (whose books were banned or silenced during the Soviet era) have all positioned themselves vis-à-vis Orthodox philosophy and theology. At the same time, the writings by Gogol, Dostoevsky, and other twentieth century Russian classics often featured anti-Jewish sentiments typical of their time. So in many ways the closeted Christian faith was an attractive spiritual respite for many Russian intellectuals, including Jewish ones. As most of the urban Jewry knew virtually nothing about Judaism and had been raised as atheists, they did not perceive their turn to the Orthodox faith as betrayal of their original faith (as they had none) but as a discovery of a new spiritual world. When asked about their religious identity, they would answer that they are ethnically Jewish but Russian Orthodox by faith, seeing no conflict between the two. In her in-depth study among baptized Russian Jews, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt (2003) discovered that some converts even felt more Jewish after their baptism and more in touch with their Jewish roots and ancient history because Jesus himself was a Jew. Thus, during the 1980s a few passionate and articulate Orthodox priests have developed a sizeable following among younger Jewish men and women seeking meaning and purpose in the stifling confines of the Soviet society. The best known of them was definitely Father Alexander Men (himself a converted Jew) whose small parish in the vicinity of Moscow attracted multiple believers and fresh converts, Russian and Jewish alike. Father Men was also an original Christian philosopher and ethicist; his books, tapes, and public lectures carried a strong educational and humanist message going far beyond Orthodox dogma and offering an attractive Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 35 moral alternative to late Soviet cynicism. His brutal murder in 1990 (unsolved until today but probably ordered by the KBG) was a harsh blow for many decent people, believers, agnostics, and atheists alike. After the fall of communism Russia experienced a true religious renaissance, allowing different confessions to bloom and proselytize. Jewish religious organizations, Chabad the most visible and active among them, rushed into the open competition for the hearts and minds of the remaining Russian Jews. While both Russian Orthodoxy and several Judaic denominations welcomed those leaning towards organized religion, many chose the predominant and well-familiar Christian faith. Those interested in Orthodox Judaism went to religious schools and joined the synagogues for a short while only to realize that true Jewish life is hardly possible in Russia; eventually most of them left for Israel or U.S. Liberal Judaic confessions (Reform and Conservative) have weak representation in the Soviet successor states, and Orthodox Judaism is too dogmatic and obsolete for most former Soviets. Political power games between various rabbinical officials (e.g., the chronic conflict between the two chief rabbis of Russia— Adolf Shaevich representing the old Soviet/Russian version of religious Judaism and Berl Lazar appointed as a leader of “New Russian Jewry” from Chabad’s global headquarters in New York), aggressive proselytism of Hasidic organizations, their cozy relationship with the Kremlin and flashy demonstrations of alleged philo-Semitism by the current power holders (e.g., Chanukah celebration in the Kremlin Palace) further repelled many decent people from joining any Jewish activities. Secular (or cultural) Jewish schools in large Russian cities can only survive with external funding, and only if their curriculum is not “too Jewish,” that is, compatible with the national standards allowing their graduates to bid for higher education. There is not enough indigenous grass-roots initiative and drive to let Jewish causes thrive in Russia; many articles in the 2003 volume Jewish Life after the USSR edited by Gitelman et al., as well as my own recent visits to Moscow and conversations with few remaining Jewish relatives and friends—all attest to this sad conclusion. David Shneer’s upbeat depiction of the “Jewish revival” in Moscow (Schneer and Aviv, 2005) reflects the author’s outsider’s stance, highly selective sources, (interviews with Jewish activists) and certain naiveté in his interpretations. The remaining Jews are largely of mixed origin and/or well assimilated and consider Russian cultural traditions, with their built-in Or- 36 Russian Jews on Three Continents thodox streak, their own. Having no long-term cultural and demographic basis in Russia and other Slavic countries, the Judaic boom is superficial and will probably prove short-lived. It will dissolve along with its corollary social and financial aid programs sponsored from the West that, indeed, helped many Jews survive the hard times of the post-communist transition. Those ethnic Jews who chose Russia not only as their cultural anchor but as their homeland will hardly ever coalesce into a Jewish community or profess Jewish faith. In the end of his Jewish Century Yuri Slezkine cogently noted that in the Brave New Capitalist Russia the social and cultural distance between Jews and Russians is rapidly closing from both ends: not only are Jews becoming more Russian, but Russians are becoming more “Jewish” in terms of entrepreneurial spirit and dynamic lifestyle, adopting the business, trade, and mediation skills traditionally exemplified by the Jews. It seems unavoidable to conclude, along with Slezkine (p. 360), that the Jewish part of Russian history is (almost) over. “Suitcase Moods”: The First Wave and the Great Exodus Proneness to migration has been an important feature in the Jewish collective portrait ever since the destruction of the Second Temple. It reflected both their attempts to flee persecution and mass violence and their eternal search for better economic opportunities and more tolerant host societies. The driving forces and the push-pull factors involved in the two recent migration waves of Russian Jewry are not so different from this age-old pattern (Slezkine, 2004). Stalin was not so wrong when he coined the term “rootless cosmopolitans” as a collective second name for Soviet Jews; many of them have harbored dreams of leaving the Socialist Paradise ever since their affair with Soviet power began to dwindle, and especially after the end of the Great War and the shock of the Holocaust. For many years, these dreams were a dangerous diversion and could hardly be voiced, even between friends and relatives. Jews who had close relatives in Israel, the U.S., and capitalist Europe (and many did) had to conceal their existence, let alone correspond with them or exchange phone calls; having relatives abroad was a serious liability. All this started to change in the early 1970s. There is little doubt that the very possibility of emigration, even playing with this idea, became one of the main axes of SovietJewish identity throughout the last three decades of socialism. Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 37 Three historic events were involved in the upsurge of emigration motivation among Russian Jews: Israel’s impressive victory in the Six Day War of 1967, with the ensuing re-emergence of Zionist sentiments among parts of Soviet Jewry; anti-Zionist ideological backlash and the rising tide of state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the wake of these events; and finally the ruthless destruction by the Soviets of the Prague Spring in 1968. The last hopes for political reform and economic liberalization, still lingering after the short-lived Thaw, were gone now and many of the more active and self-conscious Jews realized that they, and especially their children, had no future in this country. Another potent push factor came in the form of severe restrictions for Jews in higher education. The tacit quotas for Jewish applicants to the universities and colleges were reintroduced by the Soviet administration (emulating the tsarist practice of the late nineteenth— early twentieth century) soon after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War and the ensuing anti-Zionist backlash in Soviet propaganda. Since the early 1970s, when Jews started to emigrate in significant numbers, most prestigious schools virtually closed their doors to Jewish candidates as all of them were seen as potential émigrés. The state did not want to grant free education and exposure to military and scientific secrets to this “nation of traitors.” State universities (following the initiative of the Moscow State University, the most prestigious national school) and the best science and technical colleges in the major cities stopped admitting Jewish students, with few exceptions. This campaign, signaling a red light in social mobility for the next Jewish generation, greatly boosted the moral readiness for emigration among parents and children alike (Altshuler, 1987; Orleck, 1999). The first real chance to leave presented itself with the beginning of détente and concomitant warming of East-West relations in the early 1970s. The analysis of the political forces that set in motion the emigration movement of Russian Jews in the 1970s can be found in multiple works of historians and political scientists, to which I refer the reader.4 I will simply note that Jewish emigration had for decades been a political bargaining chip in the Soviet politics, making ordinary Jewish citizens hostages of the give-and-take deals between the Kremlin and the White House, and later on—in the contested interests of American Jewry and Israeli government (Lazin, 2005). At the same time, Jews were the only ethnic group granted the privilege of exit relatively early (only for Israel and only on the grounds of family 38 Russian Jews on Three Continents reunification as a sole legitimate rationale for emigration by Soviet law); other diasporic minorities joined the movement only in the early 1990s. For my purposes now, it is important to understand the social profile of those who dared to start the emigration process during the 1970s vs. those who stayed put until the moment in the late 1980s when the gates opened again. Declaring one’s wish to leave was a brave and risky step to take in the 1970s as it was defined by the authorities, and perceived by the broad public, as the act of treason and meant severing one’s links with other “good citizens,” becoming an outcast. In order to apply for the exist visa to the Ministry of the Interior’s Visa Department (the infamous OVIR) every employee had to collect multiple papers authorized by his or her administration, certifying that s/he had no access to state secrets (those in occupations with access to classified data could not even apply). Thus early in the process one had to come out of the closet in front of one’s bosses and colleagues and reveal one’s “real face” as anti-Soviet scum (in addition, one also had to collect different papers in one’s residential administration, local medical center, and a few other offices, so soon enough everybody around knew that X or Y were applying for emigration). Several rituals of punishment had to be performed over every defecting Jew, excluding him or her from the ranks of the Party or Komsomol (if they had been members) and expressing public disgust over their deed. After revealing their plans to emigrate, most Jews had to quit their jobs in order not to cast a shadow over their collectives or were simply laid off, losing the sources of livelihood. Many were also subjected to the KGB surveillance and if they showed signs of political activism for Zionist or other dissident causes, they could be further prosecuted by means of the Soviet law prohibiting “parasitism,” that is, having no formal employment. An additional sanction came in the form of the so-called diploma fee (ironically called the brain drain tax) introduced in 1972, that is, the requirement to pay back to the state the costs of higher education that Jewish émigrés had received for free and were now taking out with them for the benefit of other countries. The fee was very high vis-à-vis the average Soviet income, especially given that most Jews had lost their jobs after application to exit. After intervention from the American pro-Jewish lobby, this tax was lifted in 1974. But another ridiculous tax—that for “declining Soviet citizenship” against their will— was collected from Jews before departure, meaning they could not Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 39 carry a Soviet foreign passport. They left their step-motherland without any personal documents but a small green piece of paper with their name and photo—an exit visa. As waiting for the exit visa was rather protracted and the response could always be negative, the “applicants” had to live from hand to mouth, often relying on the support of their parents and friends. Between 1971 and 1977 most applicants finally got their exit permits and Israeli visas and left the USSR; after 1977 the process slowed down and came to a halt in 1979–1980, the year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing international boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Those who applied for emigration in the 1970s and early 1980s and were refused exit visas (because of their alleged exposure to state secrets or without any clear reason), became so-called refusniks (otkazniki in Russian), and were stuck without jobs and income for an indefinite time as social pariahs. Their survival hinged on the mutual support, and thus dense social networks were formed by refusniks over the 1980s that included running free Hebrew and English classes, helping each other to find manual jobs, lending money, updating each other on any changes in emigration politics, distributing Western aid packages that reached them every now and then, spreading tamizdat publications, etc. The social groups formed by refusniks were chief fertile ground for the clandestine Soviet Zionist movement of the 1980s5; they were also intertwined with other streams of political dissidence and their leaders experienced harsh KGB persecution and imprisonment. Yet, at the same time, hunger strikes, sit-ins, and street demonstrations organized by desperate refusniks gave international visibility to the “plight of Soviet Jewry” and increased the political pressure on the Soviet government from the West (Gitelman, 1999). By early 1980, over 22,000 Soviet Jews found themselves living in an economic, legal, and political limbo for years at a time. The growing stream of letters, literature, and other alternative information sources from abroad (with mostly good news about life in emigration), the support from the Western Jewry, and the hope for the inevitable reopening of the emigration gates in the near future were forces that helped Soviet Jews to live through the final trying years of the Soviet regime, marked by material privations and new anti-Semitic campaigns inspired by the 1982 Lebanon war (Friedgut, 1989). The social composition of the Jews who were leaving the USSR during the 1970s was rather mixed. The first category included Jewry 40 Russian Jews on Three Continents from the Soviet periphery—the Baltic republics and the western parts of Ukraine, Belorussia, and Moldavia that had been included in the USSR only before the war, in 1939–40, and had experienced relatively less Sovietization and secularization than the central areas and cities. Jews living in the western parts of the USSR, especially in smaller towns, were much more Jewish in the traditional sense, had strong Zionist orientations, and even some active Zionist cells. Similar processes occurred among the Georgian Jewry and in smaller groups of Tats and Mountain Jews from the Caucasus. When the green light from the Kremlin was first given to the local authorities to let the Jews out, the bureaucratic process was expedient and by the mid–1970s the majority of these pioneers found themselves in Israel (a small number made a home in Vienna, West Berlin, and a few other European cities). The majority of these immigrants had average Soviet educational attainments and belonged to the varied ranks of clerical and technical workers, teachers, white-collar service, and trade occupations. After the Jackson-Vanik amendment of 1974 that conditioned U.S.-Soviet trade relations on the right to emigrate (reserved only for the Jews), the emigration movement received a new impetus, involving also the Jews of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and other major cities (Gitelman, 1999). Those who ventured out at this time were mainly educated professionals and intellectuals seeking freedom and economic prosperity rather than wishing to join the ongoing Israeli battleground. Some of them were Zionists (and went to Israel), but the majority were merely disillusioned refugees from state socialism. Additional discouragement from making aliyah had to do with the shock and losses of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the bitter realization that Israel was destined to fight for its existence for many years ahead. Thus an Israeli invitation and visa became mere procedural elements on the exit routes of Soviet Jews, as fake as everything else in their relations with the state that refused them an alternative excuse for leaving the country. Since the mid–1970s, the increasing numbers of those who arrived to the transit camps in Vienna opted to continue westward, mainly to the U.S., and proceeded to Rome where they waited for U.S. visas. By 1979, over 85 percent of the potential repatriates to Israel “dropped out,” in Israeli terms, and “defected” to the West. This “violation of the initial intent” (i.e., exiting on Israeli visas but not actually going there) was one of the pretexts used by the Soviet authorities to explain the virtual stoppage of the emigration by Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 41 the early 1980s (Zaslavsky and Brym, 1983; Friedgut, 1989; Lazin, 2005). The Israeli government was very angry at the U.S. Jewish organizations (HIAS and JDC) that allegedly lured Russian Jews to America by offering them generous financial aid. Responding to Israeli pressure, HIAS agreed in 1982 to accept in Vienna only those émigrés who already had first-degree relatives in the U.S. Therefore the few Jews who managed to leave in 1982–84 were compelled to go to Israel regardless of their wishes. The same scenario in the U.S.Israeli trade for Russian Jewish souls was reproduced later, after the inception of the mass Jewish exodus in 1989 (Dominitz, 1997). After the dead-zone period of the early 1980s, the first winds of change blew after Gorbachev declared his perestroika and glasnost plans in 1985–86, with the following renewal of the emigration movement in 1987–88. The refusniks and other Jews who had been morally prepared (“ripe,” as a euphemism of the time went) to leave were the first ones to apply for the exit visas. Then in the early 1990s, Russia and most other successor states enacted a new “Law of Exit and Entry,” according to which any citizen could receive a foreign passport and travel abroad for any private purposes, not having to justify it before the authorities and ask for an exit visa (but contingent on getting an entry visa for their destination country). The only difference between those leaving for good and those traveling abroad for a limited time was that the former had a stamp in their foreign passports saying Exit for a Permanent Residence Abroad. The émigrés also had to revoke their housing registration (propiska), return their apartments to the state, and hand in their internal Soviet passports. Following mid–1991, those leaving the country for good remained Soviet/Russian citizens and could register as such in the Russian or Ukrainian consulates in their new countries. This practically meant that anyone, regardless of ethnic belonging, could leave Russia and the FSU for any amount of time and for any destination, the limitations emerging on the receiving end. This was a real revolution in the Soviet legal regulation of the citizens’ movement across borders: the Iron Curtain fell down and, sure enough, tens of thousands of former Soviet citizens soon lined up at the embassies of Western countries seeking better fortunes abroad. 42 Russian Jews on Three Continents Russia, Israel, or the West? Deliberations of the 1990s What happened with now former-Soviet Jews and their deliberations on the eternal Jewish question: to stay or to move on? Is it preferable to live in the New Russia as a Jew, given the signs of the diminishing state anti-Semitism, a green light for every kind of social and economic activity, and the ability to travel and see the world as a tourist? Or is it still safer to leave Russia and make a fresh start elsewhere, where democracy is established and the economy stable? The country was rapidly changing, new opportunities appeared for industrious and talented people, along with new risks and stresses. The liberal reforms of the first half of the 1990s engendered severe economic polarization of the population whereby the majority sank into poverty or barely survived by juggling multiple jobs, while a minority gained access to the country’s incredible natural resources and industrial might in the chaotic campaign of privatization. Many Jews rapidly learned how to swim in the rising waters of the market economy and readily entered the entrepreneurial world; their material wealth and lifestyles significantly improved. Several highly visible Jewish figures moved in the newly emerging economic elite (the so-called oligarchs) also intimately involved in Kremlin politics; their thriving did not go unnoticed by the anti-Semitic propagandists (Goldman, 2003). At the same time, many other Jews, especially older people or those with a less developed business streak, led subsistence lifestyles on small academic, medical, or scientific salaries, especially bitter in the face of the booming consumer choice of goods and leisure venues. Mass unemployment and impoverishment, an influx of ethnic Russians and other migrants from the successor states to most large cities, rising nationalism and ethnic conflicts, the unending war in Chechnya, and growing signs of corruption and nepotism under “drunken Yeltsin’s democracy” gradually exhausted any remaining trust in democratic government, with the ensuing nostalgia for “good old communist times” with their predictability, modest but stable, and allegedly equal, living standards. As always in the times of change and turmoil, anti-Semitism, rising this time from the bottom rather than sponsored by the government, was a corollary of pluralism and democratic freedoms. The anti-Jewish sentiments found their pivotal expression in the activities of the first and rather ominous NGO of “free Russia”—the so-called Society Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 43 for History and Culture Pamyat (Memory) whose main activity was publishing and distribution of anti-Semitic materials, both old (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and new, blaming the Jews for all historic grievances suffered by Russians and other Slavs before and after the Revolution. Many Jews found anti-Semitic flyers in their mailboxes almost daily and some were preparing to fortify their doors in anticipation of pogroms. Although pogroms have never materialized, the anti-Semitic streak has always remained part of Russian nationalist discourse, and the emergence of the Jewish nouveau riche has only added oil to its flame. Once again, Jews were reminded that they have always been a foreign element in this country and would be better off leaving it for good (Friedgut, 1989). Thus, throughout the 1990s the decision to leave was shaped by a constellation of multiple factors: the accommodation to the new realities of “jungle capitalism” in the FSU, employment and career prospects in Russia vs. abroad, fear of anti-Semitism, age, state of health, and the wish to join family members already living abroad. The social costs of emigration became much lower: the formal procedures of exit after 1991 became easier and rituals of exclusion and punishment at work vanished with the rest of communist ideology. In addition, many urban residents had privatized their apartments by 1992, 1993 and could sell them for real market prices, making some initial resources for resettlement abroad. In any event, the emigration decisions of Russian Jews in the 1990s were driven by pragmatic rather than ideological considerations, that is, the careful weighing of the push and pull factors (or gains vs. losses) in the FSU vis-à-vis possible destinations abroad. Then the second crucial decision was: where to go? Israel and the U.S. had been the chief options during the 1970 and late 1980s; in 1989 alone 38,395 Soviet Jews have entered U.S. as refugees and another 30,000 or more had applications pending. The veto on the special status of Soviet Jews in the U.S. refugee program was introduced by late President Reagan before stepping down and confirmed by the newly elected President George Bush (the Senior); from the early 1990 on the influx of Soviet Jewish refugees sharply decreased, as new visas were now granted mainly to those already having close relatives in the U.S. In Western Europe, only Germany became an increasingly possible destination after 1992–93, but many Jews had strong anti-German attitudes and could not imagine living in the coun- 44 Russian Jews on Three Continents try that organized the extermination of European Jewry only one generation ago. For many others, though, the possibility of living in the heart of “civilized Europe” and the generous welfare policy of the German state towards “special refugee contingent” of Soviet Jews had been very enticing and outweighed anti-German sentiments. Many émigrés with partial Jewish ancestry and mixed families opted for Germany as no deep inquiries into their Jewish “purity” had been enforced by German embassies up until the late 1990s. A few other Western countries (mainly Australia and Canada) screened the candidates not by their Jewishness, but by education, occupation, age, and language skills; their immigration programs were generally small-scale and hardly known outside the capital cities. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Israel was the only country receiving all Jewish émigrés without any conditions or screening. The checks into Jewish “purity” were relaxed over time as the demographic potential for aliyah was fast running out, but the Israeli political establishment and Sochnut wanted it to continue no matter what.6 Yet, Israel was not an attractive destination for many pragmatically disposed Russian Jews: a small country in the Middle East with few job opportunities, a hot climate, a difficult language, and an ongoing military conflict with its neighbors. For many parents who went out of their way to save their sons from the draft to the Soviet Army and possible participation in the Chechen war, mandatory military service in Israel was another strong deterrent. This is not to say that Zionist sentiments were completely missing among Soviet Jews planning emigration, but they were certainly less common than in the early 1970s wave. Several surveys of the early 1990s (Brym and Ryvkna, 1994; Gitelman, 1997; Levinson, 1997) explored the emigration deliberations of Russian Jewry, trying to understand how the destination countries had been chosen. Their conclusion was that, if a free choice of destination had been available, over two-thirds would opt for the West (mainly the U.S., Canada, and Germany) and about one-third for Israel. Respondents preferring to move to Israel were usually those with stronger Jewish identity as measured by such indicators as some traditional observance and perceived exposure to or fear of anti-Semitism. Often these respondents were older people, residents of smaller cities (not Moscow and St. Petersburg), as well as those with lower education and less developed professional identity. Another pull factor for migration to Israel was the wish to join family members and friends Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 45 who had moved there earlier. On the other hand, America was perceived by many former Soviets as a country with unlimited opportunities, the goldene medina of their forefathers, where everyone can find their place and fortune. But the final destination was, of course, determined by the combination of their wishes and available opportunities. While Russian Jews were contemplating emigration, covert but intense political struggle about their fate and destination was going on between the two chief interest lobbies: the Israeli government and its Zionist arm Sochnut versus American Jewish organizations involved in immigrant aid—HIAS, JDC, and UJA—and their lobbyists in the White House. As a result of their efforts to reverse the restrictions introduced in 1989, the refugee quotas for ex-Soviet Jews were once again increased after 1992, and almost 157,000 of them were resettled in the U.S. by the HIAS till the end of 1996 (HIAS, 1997). The Israeli government observed the continuing influx of Russian and Ukrainian Jews to the U.S. with the growing frustration. In the words of a highranking Israeli official, Yehuda Dominitz (1997:121), “The start of the Soviet Jewish exodus to Israel was considered an historic opportunity to increase the Jewish population of Israel, build the nation and strengthen Israel’s social fabric and cultural foundations. To forfeit such an opportunity by letting tens of thousands of Jews opt for other countries of migration would be unforgivable” (my emphasis). Thus, Russian Jews were treated once again as a tool for reaching macrolevel political and ideological goals of state powerholders rather than individuals seeking better lives and making independent decisions. American Jewry was rather split on this issue: the Zionist circles believed that artificial direction of the wave of migrant Jews to Israel was necessary and morally justified, while a liberal lobby insisted on individual agency and freedom of movement for those leaving the FSU. Both sides realized that the U.S. would be the destination of choice for the majority of the new migrants. The Israelis remembered too well the dropout of Russian Jews in Vienna during the late 1970s, and made sure that this transit camp was closed in 1990. Soon after the reopening of the Israeli embassy in Moscow, Israel established direct flights to Tel Aviv from several major cities; those who wished to travel via Europe had to stop for a short while in Budapest, Bucharest, and a few other cities where they were carefully isolated from any contact with American representatives. Both applications and issuance of the visas to the U.S. (on case-by-case rather than automatic grounds) 46 Russian Jews on Three Continents moved directly to the American Embassy in Moscow, eliminating the need to use Israeli visas for the transit. Ever since then the process of emigration to Israel was fast-tracked (one could complete all the necessary paperwork and get free tickets to Israel within a few months), while emigration to the Western countries for ex-Soviets became as protracted and impeded as for other international applicants. As a result of this restructuring in the policies of the main hosting countries, Israeli authorities could proudly report that from 1989 to 1993, almost twice as many Soviet Jews made aliyah to Israel than moved to the West (close to half a million and 250,000, respectively7). 1990 and 1991 were record years in the aliyah movement: over 183,000 and 147,000 new immigrants, respectively, arrived in Israel in just two years (33 percent of the total size of the last wave). In historical terms, the mass exodus of 1990–91 came in the wake of the deep economic and political crisis surrounding the demise of the Soviet Union, with a concomitant rise in Russian nationalism and populist anti-Jewish propaganda. But in their personal narratives of immigration many Jews recollected that their decision to leave everything behind and rush into the unknown was party irrational, boosted by the social panic, by seeing that most of their Jewish friends, colleagues, neighbors, and everyone else were on the move, with the ensuing “fear to remain the last Jew in Russia, alone and trembling,” in the words of one of my informants. Many Jews shared the apocalyptic feeling that the fall of the USSR would practically mean the end of Russian history and will bury everyone under its debris; “leave now or never” was a popular motto of the time. The eternal Jewish “fight or flight” instinct propelled to move even those who considered themselves deeply rooted, well-to-do and never wanted to emigrate before; the need to erase one number after the other in one’s phone book acted as a strong incentive to change your mind. After 1993–94 the emigration drive of Jews diminished in line with the improving economy and living standards in Russia and the relaxation of anti-Jewish sentiments, now redirected to the new hate object—the growing ranks of Chechen refugees and other migrants from the Caucasus in the big cities. The pull to Israel was further diminished by the discouraging news from friends and relatives about the hardships of adjustment there: the lack of jobs for professionals, the challenge of learning Hebrew, housing shortages, and a broad cultural gap with Israeli Jews. Together, these changes curtailed the stream of Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 47 migrants to Israel by 300 percent, so during the mid–1990s between 68 and 50 thousand were registered annually as Russian olim (Hebrew for new immigrants 8), and a similar number left for various Western destinations, mainly U.S. and Germany. A brief upsurge in immigration to Israel occurred in 1999—over 67,000, vs. 46.000 in the previous year—in response to the financial crisis (default of the ruble) in 08.1998 in Russia, after which many citizens lost their savings and small businesses. Mark Tolts (2000, 2005) observed that throughout the post-Soviet period there had been a high and consistent negative correlation between the socio-economic situation in the successor states and the size of their Jewish population embarking on aliyah. After each local crisis there is an upsurge in the numbers of applicants for Israeli visa as the most accessible and expedient venue of exit. There has also been a clear inverse association between living standards in different parts of the FSU and aliyah harvest collected by the Sochnut in these places. Thus in Russia itself, Birobidjan (with the World Bank’s index of socio-economic well-being comparable to this of Jordan or Peru) has lost the highest share of its Jews to aliyah, and Moscow (rated roughly on par or higher than other East European capitals) —the lowest share, proportionate to their base Jewish populations in 1989. This is a strong indication of the push factor’s dominance in the aliyah movement of former Soviet Jews, and the perceived image of Israel as a shelter country. In the new millennium, the flow of new immigrants to Israel narrowed down to some 34,000 in 2001, and then to slightly over 10,000 in 2004. Since 2002, more exSoviet Jews immigrated annually to Germany than made aliyah to Israel; the numbers of those coming to the U.S. as refugees dropped to less than 5,000 per year. The social composition of the immigrants to Israel has significantly evolved over the seventeen years since the inception of the Great Aliyah, as it is called in Israel. The first to move this time was the top professional echelon from the capitals and other big cities, many of whom missed the train to the U.S. after 1989 but felt compelled to leave Russia fearing chaos and violence. In 1989–90, 34 percent of the olim came from Moscow alone and by 1993 their share dropped to 17 percent; the respective figures for the Jews of St. Petersburg were 28 percent and 12 percent. The share of immigrants from smaller provincial cities and towns grew respectively from 54 percent in 1989 to 71 percent in 1993, and reached 95 percent in 2001. Over time, fewer 48 Russian Jews on Three Continents olim came from Russia and more from the Ukraine, Belorussia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. As mentioned above, the size and location of the city of origin strongly correlates with the “human capital” of Soviet Jews, the professional elite usually coming from Moscow, St. Petersburg and a few other major industrial and academic centers such as Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and Novosibirsk. The share of university educated olim with academic and scientific occupations diminished in line with their being more provincial and often less Jewish (the share of core Jews dropped to one-third after 1999). The percentage of olim with higher education in 2002 was 35 percent, vs. 72 percent in 1990. This of course reflected the features of the increasingly assimilated Jewish population still remaining in the FSU, when and if they embarked on aliyah. As a result of these temporal changes, the current composition of the Israeli Russian-speaking community is a virtual blueprint of the enlarged Jewish population of the FSU, with some 15–20 percent of educated and well-adjusted professionals at the top and the majority coming from all possible regions, occupations, and walks of life typical of the late Soviet society. Although I have no direct statistical data to vouch for this, but a similar pyramid structure probably typifies Soviet Jewish immigrants who settled in North America and in Germany. However, the upper and middle tiers of these (Western) pyramids, that is, the proportions of educated middle-class Jews, are probably wider vis-à-vis Israel reflecting both their self-selection for the West, better information and access to Western embassies in the major cities, and some filters at the entry (such as Canadian point system). Due to the unselective character of its immigration policy aside from ethnic identity (and even this being broadly defined), Israel has received the older, less healthy, and less professionally fit part of the Soviet Jewish migration pool. In conclusion, let me point out the major features in the collective portrait of the Soviet Jewry that affected their migration movement and the processes of social integration in the receiving countries. The identity of this group was shaped along three main axes—Russian, Soviet, and Jewish, with dramatic individual differences in the manifestation of each component of this ideological mix. Over seventy years of socialism and mandatory atheism, the overwhelming majority of Soviet Jews drifted far away from their religion and Yiddish-based cultural practices. If they had any deities at all, these were Pushkin Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 49 and Chekhov, Pasternak and Bulgakov (as the icons of the Russian high culture), on one hand, and social mobility (expressed in the cult of education and professionalism), on the other. Getting one’s children a higher education was a must for the majority of Jewish parents, although the number of professional domains open to Jews had been gradually shrinking, and they were steered mainly towards engineering, science and technology occupations. As a result, engineer became the most common occupational title for a Russian Jew, both before and after immigration. Familial ties have been of paramount importance for the Jews, hence their propensity to migrate as extended families, together or in a chain, and choose destination countries by the location of their next of kin and close friends. The internal differentials within Soviet Jewry were largely a reflection of their geographic and social location with the ensuing access to economic and cultural resources, which in Soviet society were concentrated in the capitals and a few other major cities. Former residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg typically formed the elite of Soviet Jewry vis-à-vis those who had lived in smaller provincial towns. Although atomized and not having any organized community life, most Jews were nevertheless involved in the far-reaching informal social webs (in Fran Markowitz’s definition, “a community in spite of itself”) that were in fact their main survival and advancement resource in the face of the hostile outside world. Their collective identity was mainly based on the common past, which left a painful historic dent in almost every Jewish family, and on a difficult present in the face of systemic institutional discrimination or, in other words, on the sense of common destiny. They also shared their peculiar mental and social duality as “discriminated elite” of Russia and other FSU countries. Ambivalence may be the key trait of Russian-Jewish identity, shifting between the feelings of inferiority and superiority, self-loathing (as internalized anti-Semitism) and self-idealization (Gershenson, 2006). The constant need for adjustment and social mimicry (e.g., modifying Jewish names into Russian-sounding ones) has shaped their ethnic identity as highly elastic and pragmatic one, subdued or underscored depending on the circumstances. Molded by the Soviet system and at the same time excelling in the art of manipulating it to their own benefit, Soviet Jews emerged as a perfect sample of the social type known as Homo Sovieticus, although most of them would adamantly reject this label. Their mindset and 50 Russian Jews on Three Continents conduct paradoxically combined social dependency on the womb-totomb welfare state with mistrust of the establishment and great diligence in manipulation of different bureaucracies, bending the rules, and “oiling the wheels” to achieve their goals. The feelings of the shared fate, and the revival of the closeted Jewishness, were further reinforced by the advent of emigration possibilities, and for some, an ensuing predicament of life in the social limbo as refusniks. Like most members of the Soviet intelligentsia after the Thaw, Jews had a strong distaste for any kind of imposed state ideology, be it Marxism-Leninism or Zionism. Some of them embraced the tenets of Zionism when it was outlawed and dangerous, but it was usually a form of dissidence and resistance rather than a strong ideological commitment. An even smaller minority converted to Orthodox Judaism and rejected altogether the Russian/Soviet components of their cultural identity. In stark contrast to their forefathers who had been in the front lines of every revolutionary movement in Russia, Jews who came of age during stagnation of state socialism shunned any form of political participation and concentrated on their private and professional lives. They seldom joined the Party and other Soviet organizations, and even after the fall of communism had low participation in organized parties and groups, including the Jewish ones. As any self-organizing initiatives growing from below have been sanctioned by the Soviet state, and most forms of activism sponsored from above were distasteful and/or forced, most Soviet Jews were suspicious of any social activism as such. The very concept of voluntary or self-help organizations lying at the core of civil society was unfamiliar to most of them (some informal groups of refusniks were an exception to this rule, but only a small minority was involved in them). Despite their strong ties with the Russian language and culture, many Soviet Jews never felt at home in the country, and when opportunity presented itself, ventured on a long and difficult journey of emigration. Although this wave of migrants was endowed with impressive human capital in terms of their formal education and professional background, many of them turned out to be poorly equipped for economic and social readjustment in the West. More often than not, Soviet-type qualifications and skills proved to be as unconvertible a currency as were Soviet rubles. Some of the Russian-Jewish adjustment strategies proved to be useful in immigration, while others turned into disadvantages. At the same time, Soviet Jews carried their real treasure of social networks with each other (or Soviet Jewry and the Dilemma of Emigration 51 social capital, in current sociological parlance) that was traveling with them due to the mass character of this resettlement. The next chapter will explore how this constellation of assets and flaws has played out in the process of social adjustment of Russian olim of the 1990s in Israel. Notes 1. Throughout this book, I am using the terms Russian, Soviet, and former Soviet Jews (after 1991) as virtual synonyms. The most inclusive term is perhaps Russian-speaking Jews, pointing to the lingua franca of the Soviet Empire as the main common ground for otherwise diverse groups of Soviet Jewry. In the last Soviet census of 1989, about 90 percent of the Jews named Russian as their first language. 2. For an excellent collection of Soviet Jewish anecdotes in Russian see Evrei Shutiat (The Jews are Joking) by Leonid Stolovich, 2001. Some English translations (rather awkward but still informative) are cited on the Russian-American website http://russia-in-us.com/humor. Russian and Soviet history in anecdotes is represented in the new book by Bruce Adams Friend (Taylor and Francis, 2005). 3. A vivid example of this double life is chief protagonist of Yuri Druzhnikov’s 1989 novel Angels on the Head of a Pin, editor of a central Party newspaper Yakov Rapoport, a cynical chef in the kitchen of Soviet ideology. He is fully aware of the fact that his paper feeds its readership pure garbage but would never try to challenge his bosses, after having spent a few years in Stalin’s Gulag. 4. See for example a book by Victor Zaslavsky and Robert Brym Soviet Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy (Macmillan, 1983), edited volume by Murray Friedman and Albert Chernin. A Second Exodus: The American Movement to Free Soviet Jews (Brandeis University Press, 1999), and multiple books and articles by Zvi Gitelman. The most detailed account of this matter is found in the recent book by Fred Lazin The Struggle of Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus American Jewish Establishment (New York: Lexington Books, 2005). 5. Although political activists, and especially the “Prisoners of Zion,” were of course the most famous members of the refusniks, broadly covered in the Western media and literature, they were certainly a small minority among all Soviet Jews who were living in the limbo of refusal and did not dare to further jeopardize their condition by open dissent. 6. Russian-Israeli author Dina Rubina who served as Cultural Director for Sochnut office in Moscow in the early 2000s, describes in her sharp recent satire The Syndicate (Moscow: EXMO, 2004) the frantic attempts of Sochnut officers to “dig out of the ground” the few remaining Jews entitled to aliyah by all kinds of dubious tactics, including luring, misinformation, etc.—in order to fill in the expected quotas and justify their own existence and shrinking budgets (see part 1 of the novel at her website www.dinarubina.com). 52 Russian Jews on Three Continents 7. Here and below I am referring to the numbers of new immigrants published by Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and Central Bureau of Statistics (see www.cbs.gov.il), and in relation to the U.S. entrants, also Dominits, 1997; Gitelman, 1997; and HIAS statistics published on their website. 8. Both Hebrew terms applied to new immigrants are ideological labels ensuing from the Zionist tenet of homecoming. Aliyah means ascent or pilgrimage, derived from the ascent to Jerusalem as a holy site located in the hills of Judea. Olim literally means the rising ones, or the pilgrims. These terms are in common use in contemporary Hebrew, despite multiple challenges to the Zionist master narrative and growing realization that aliyah is no different from any other immigration experience, entailing losses, adjustments, and cultural gaps to the hegemonic majority. 

transaction www.transactionpub.com Since 1962 Russian Jews on Three Continents Identity, Integration, and Conflict Larissa Remennick PISCATAWAY, NJ – Transaction Publishers is pleased to announce the publication Russian Jews on Three Continents by Larissa Remennick. Following the demise of communism in the early 1990s, more than 1.6 million Jews from the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Larissa Remennick relates the saga of their encounter with the economic marketplaces, lifestyles, and everyday cultures of their new homelands, drawing on comparative sociological research among Russian-Jewish immigrants she conducted over the last decade. Although former Soviets of Jewish origin ostensibly left the former Soviet Union to flee persecution and join their co-religionists, Israeli, North American, and German Jews were universally disappointed by the new arrivals’ tenuous Jewish identity and lack of interest in Jewish religious and community life. In turn, Russian Jews, whose identity had been shaped by seventy years of secular education and assimilation into the Soviet mainstream, hoped to be accepted on their own terms, as ambitious and hard working individuals seeking better lives. These divergent expectations shaped lines of conflict between Russian-speaking Jews and the Jewish communities of the receiving countries. Since her own immigration to Israel from Moscow in 1991, Remennick has been both a participant and an observer of this saga, with optimal access to and cultural tools for the study of an ethnic diaspora. This is the first attempt to compare resettlement and integration experiences of a single ethnic community (former Soviet Jews) in various global destinations. It also analyzes their emerging transnational lifestyles, spanning three continents and embracing multiple domains of physical and virtual activities. Earlier studies of Soviet-Jewish experience have been narrow, focusing on Russian/Soviet Jewry in its homeland, on Jewish migrations during the twentieth century generally, or else describing the lives of the immigrants in one specific host country. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book opens new perspectives for a diverse readership, including sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, Slavic scholars, and Jewish studies specialists. Larissa Remennick is professor of sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University where she is also director of the Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities and editor of the Sociological Papers series published by the Institute. Transaction Publishers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a leading scholarly publisher of books and journals. Its flagship, Society, has remained the publication of record in international social science since 1962. ISBN: 978-0-7658-0340-5 (Cloth) 417 pages; January 2007 $49.95 I would like to order ___ copies of Russian Jews on Three Continents ISBN 978-0-7658-0340-5 at $49.95 ea. Subtotal ________ Add shipping and handling, $5.50 for first book, $1.00 for each additional book. __________ Subtotal __________ NJ residents add 7% sales tax ____________ TOTAL ____________ Method of Payment: ___Payment enclosed (check or money order) I prefer to pay by credit card: ___Visa ___Master Card ___American Express ___ Discover (U.S. Only) Account Number Expiration Date Transaction Publishers 390 Campus Drive Somerset, NJ 08873 USA Order by Phone Toll-free (U.S. only): (888) 999-6778 Fax: (732) 748-9801 Order Online at www.transactionpub.com Name Address E-mail Address Telephone Number Mail this order form to: (Required on all credit card orders.) Signature Prices quoted apply to U.S. orders only. (Order void without signature.)