SOVIET-JEWISH EMIGRATION AND SOVIET NATIONALITY POLICY This monograph is a study of the causes, dimensions and consequences of Jewish emigration from the USSR since 1971. Its focus is analytical, not descriptive. Using published research reports, memoirs and original survey and in-depth interview data the authors explicate and examine critically the sometimes unstated assumptions and theories that have been adopted in trying to make sense of this remarkable event. The various explanations of the movement found in the literature often appear to contradict one another. But Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym demonstrate that they are in fact not wholly incommensurable. Moreover, the authors add fresh explanations where available approaches fail to explain what they purport to. Specifically, their discussion of the historical development of Soviet nationality deepens the Western observer's under standing of the emigration movement's sources and significance. Zygmunt Bauman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, writes: I have read the book and found it deserving the highest praise. This is a rare example of contemporary history captured in the making. One of the most extraordinary events of our time has been forced to reveal its mysteries. 'The authors employ a unique blend of deep knowledge and thorough understanding of the Soviet social and political scene with high-level expertise in the modern methods of sociological investigation. The result is a document with an air of finality about it; it is a definitive account of a vital historical episode which combines an authoritative, scholarly description with a fully successful attempt to re-create the subjective experiences of its voluntary and involuntary actors. On both accounts the story as told by Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym can be hardly improved. 'In short-a necessary reading for political sociologists, contemporary historians and, indeed, anybody seriously wishing to understand the complexity of the world we live in.' Victor Zaslavsky was born in Leningrad in 1937 and studied at Leningrad Mining University, the University of Leningrad and Humboldt Universitat in East Germany. He taught sociology at various universities in Leningrad and participated in many social science seminars and working groups-both official and unofficial-in that city and in Moscow. In 1974 he was dismissed froll} work and blacklisted for 'political unreliability'. He emigrated from the USSR in 1975 and since 1976 has been on the staff at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he is now Associate Professor of Sociology. Victor Zaslavsky has contributed a great many articles to scholarly journals in the UK, the USA and Italy. He is the author of The Organised Consensus: Soviet Society in the Brezhnev Era (1981; in Italian) and The Neo-Stalinist State: Class, Ethnicity and Consensus in Soviet Society (1982). Robert J, Brym was born in Canada in 1951 and studied sociology at Dalhousie University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Uni versity of Toronto. He was on the staff at the Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1976 to 1978, and since then has taught and done research at the University of Toronto, where he is now Associate Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Sociology. Dr Brym has contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals and is the author of The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism (1978), Intellectuals and Politics (1980) and co-editor (with R. J. Sacouman) and contributor to Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada (1979). Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy Victor Zaslavsky Memorial University of Newfoundland and Robert J. Brym University of Toronto © Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym 1983 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1983 978-0-333-33627-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1983 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-06438-0 ISBN 978-1-349-06436-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06436-6 Contents List of Tables vi Preface vii 1 Introduction 1 2 The Soviet-Jewish Anomaly 9 3 Motivations and Precipitants 31 4 Basic Causes 64 5 The Structural Context 77 6 Size and Direction 118 7 Some Consequences of the Movement 137 Appendix 154 Bibliography 158 Index 175 v List of Tables 2.1 The Jewish population of the USSR, 1970 13 2.2 Jews and urban population of other national groups 1n the USSR by level of education, 1970 13 2.3 Jews in the USSR by republic and indices of assimilation 23 2.4 Jews in the USSR by republic and summary index of assimilation 25 3.1 Motivations for emigration 51 3.2 Principal motivations for emigration 51 3.3 Soviet emigrants going to Israel and to Western countries, 1971-81 53 3.4 Dropouts assisted, and not assisted, by HIAS, 1976-9 55 3.5 Principal motivations for emigration of IRC-assisted emigres 55 3.6 Motivations by socio-demographic variables: corrected X2 and significance levels 58 3.7 Verbal representation of Table 3.6 59 6.1 Hypothetical effects of aid restriction on emigration and neshira 130 6.2 Destination of Soviet emigrants by region of origin 130 A.1 Sample and population characteristics and t-tests for means 155 A.2 Sample characteristics from Lippe (1978) survey 157 vi Preface This monograph is a study of the causes, dimensions and consequences of Jewish emigration from the USSR since 1971. Its focus is analytical, not descriptive. Using published research reports, memoirs and our own survey and interview data, we have sought to state explicitly, and examine critically, the sometimes unstated assumptions and theories that have been adopted in trying to make sense of this remarkable event. The various explanations of the movement found in the literature often appear to contradict one another. But they are in fact not wholly incommensurable and we have tried to specify their ranges of applicability. We have also found it necessary to add fresh explanations where available approaches fail to explain what they purport to. Specifically, our discussion of the historical development of Soviet nationality policy is intended to deepen the Western observer's understanding of the emigration movement's sources and significance. In preparing this work we profited from discussions with Professors Alexandr Chudnovsky, Olimpiad Ioffe, Yuri Luryi, Vladimir Shliapentokh, Baruch Kimmerling, Dr Serge Luryi and Yehudit Rosenbaum. For these talks we are greatly indebted. However, we bear full responsibility for the contents of this book and, having participated equally in its production, share that responsibility equally. Research for this study was funded in part by the Structural Analysis Programme at the University of Toronto (funded, in turn, by the University's Connaught Foundation); the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and the Office for Research at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. To all these agencies we are very grateful indeed. v.z. R.B. vii 1 Introduction The sudden departure since 1971 of over 250,000 citizens from the USSR is surely one of the most unlikely events in post-revolutionary Soviet history. For the USSR is often viewed as a 'closed society', a nation situated enigmatically behind an 'iron curtain', an area of the globe where the practice, begun in Tsarist times, of issuing internal passports makes even a move between countryside and city a matter that can scarcely be taken for granted. It is therefore understandable that the emigration movement took Westerners by surprise, forcing them to scurry about searching for credible explanations of the anomaly. They often echoed the words of Boris Khazanov (1976: p. 137), a Soviet underground author, who remarked that his 'generation has grown up with the conviction that it is as difficult to leave the Soviet Union as it is to throw a stone so high that it will not return to the earth'. Nor have the causes of the movement been the exclusive focus of the Western observer's attention. He has been equally concerned with explaining its dimensions, i.e. the rate of emigration and the extent to which ~migr~s choose one country over another as their new homeland. Moreover, understanding the consequences of the movement - its significance for the USSR and for the major 'receiving' countries, Israel and the USA - has become an engaging topic of research, speculation and debate. Our principal intention in this book is not merely to describe the current Soviet emigration (although we shall of necessity devote a considerable amount of space to that task), but to evaluate existing analyses of its causes, dimensions and consequences. This will require our entering into some pretty murky political waters because one's interpretation of these issues inevitably affects one's judgement of Soviet, American and Israeli policies regarding Soviet Jewry and a whole range of related topics. This becomes evident once we discern what we think are the two basic modes of analysing the movement that have emerged over the past decade. (1) The first of these may be termed 'extrinsic' in the sense that those who adhere to this school of thought tend to locate the main forces shaping Soviet emigration outside the USSR itself. Thus, the movement is often said to be partly an indirect consequence of Israel's victory in the Six Day War of 1967, an event which allegedly gave rise to a revivified sense of national consciousness on the part of 1 2 SOVIET-JEWISH EMIGRATION AND SOVIET NATIONALITY POLICY many Soviet Jews and eventually prompted them to translate their identification with the state of Israel into a demand for exit visas to that country. Also important 1n this regard was the pressure exerted by the Israeli and American governments, and by Western public opinion in general, on the Soviet regime. These external exigencies heightened the resolve of Soviet Jews to leave the USSR and reduced their government's ability to maintain intact its exceedingly restrictive emigration policy, at least with respect to Jews. This argument is well summarised by the following quotations, the first from an official Israeli source, the second from a scholarly discussion. Until 1970, Russia's three million Jews were denied aliyah [immigration to Israel], save for a trickle permitted to JOln kinfolk in Israel. The barrier was pushed open by a massive revival of Jewish nationalism inside the Soviet Union, aided by pressure from Jewish and human rights groups in the West. In the years after the Six Day War, the Jews of the Soviet Union began to petition the Soviet authorities, the UN, and world leaders, asking that they be granted the right to emigrate, as guaranteed by the Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter. This revival of identification with Israel had been sparked by the Kremlin's vicious anti-Israel stand at the time of the Six Day War, and by national pride in the prowess of the Israel Defence Forces. (Israel Information Centre, 1978: p. 94) What were the reasons for the 'collectivization' of Jewish appeals [for exit visas] during the last months of 1969? Besides the mood of national revival which has prevailed among sections of Russian Jewry since the Six Day War, a number of direct causes .•• should be considered. Soviet policies on emigration to Israel underwent a significant shift in late 1968 .... In the autumn of 1969 a widely publicized campaign by the Israeli government began, calling for free emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel ..•. With the growth of Jewish activities in the West on behalf of the Soviet Jews' right to emigrate to Israel, Jewish protests inside the USSR increased. (Redlich, 1974: p. 28) It follows that the rate of emigration is often considered by followers of this line of argument to be basically a result of how much pressure is placed by external forces on the Soviet regime: presumably, more powerful Western