Abstract
Sometime in mid-1993 the millionth Jew emigrated from the former USSR in the twenty-five years since 1968. During that period fewer than two-thirds of the emigrants settled in Israel. Over one-third settled elsewhere, mostly in the USA.
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In this section I draw on Robert J. Brym, “The changing rate of Jewish emigration from the USSR: Some lessons from the 1970s”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2, 1985, 23–35
Robert J. Brym, “Soviet Jewish emigration: A statistical test of two theories”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 18, no. 3, 1988, 15–23
Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym, Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy (London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin’s, 1983)
Tanya Basok and Robert J. Brym, “Soviet-Jewish emigration and resettlement in the 1990s: An overview” in Tanya Basok and Robert J. Brym (eds.), Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Resettlement in the 1990s (Toronto: York Lanes Press, York University, 1991), xi–xxii.
Laurie P. Salitan, Politics and Nationality in Contemporary Soviet-Jewish Emigration, 1968–89 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992).
Data sources for 1971–1991: “Immigration data— 1991 “, in Yehudei brit hamoatsot (The Jews of the Soviet Union), vol. 15, 1992, 188; for 1992: Sidney Heitman, “Jewish emigration from the former USSR in 1992”, unpublished paper (Fort Collins CO: Department of History, Colorado State University, 1993).
Igor Bestuzhev-Lada, “Social problems of the Soviet way of life”, Novy mir, no. 7, 1976, 215.
“Kosygin on reunion of families and national equality (1966)” in Benjamin Pinkus (ed.), The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948–1967 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 78.
Robert O. Freedman, “Soviet Jewry and Soviet-American relations” in Robert O. Freedman (ed.), Soviet Jewry in the Decisive Decade, 1971–80 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984), 38–67
Robert O. Freedman (ed.), Soviet Jewry in the 1980s: The Politics of Anti-Semitism and Emigration and the Dynamics of Resettlement (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1989), 61–96
Gary Bertsch, “US-Soviet trade: The question of leverage”, Survey, vol. 25, no. 2, 1980, 66–80.
Richard Lowenthal, “East-West détente and the future of Soviet Jewry”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 3, no. 1, 1973, 24.
Zaslavsky and Brym, 49–51, 121–2
Zvi Gitelman, “Soviet Jewish emigrants: Why are they choosing America?”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 7, no. 1, 1977, 31–46.
At the time, some commentators argued that the Soviets cut the emigration rate in the 1980s because many Jews started using Israeli exit visas to leave Russia but then “dropped out” and went elsewhere. Presumably, that practice undermined the pretext that Jews were permitted to leave for purposes of family reunification. The Soviets allegedly feared that non-Jews might get the idea that emigration for reasons other than family unification was possible. They therefore virtually stopped the outflow of Jews. See, for example, Zvi Alexander, “Jewish emigration from the USSR in 1980”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 11, no. 2, 1981, 3–21
Zvi Nezer, “Jewish emigration from the USSR in 1981–82”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 12, no. 3, 1982, 3–17.
Arkady N. Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 261.
Murray Feshbach, “The Soviet Union: Population trends and dilemmas”, Population Bulletin, vol. 37, no. 3, 1982, 1–45
Alexander J. Motyl, Will the Non-Russians Rebel? State, Ethnicity, and Stability in the USSR (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987), 158–9.
Peter Reddaway, “Policy towards dissent since Khrushchev” in T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway (eds.), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR: Essays Dedicated to Leonard Shapiro (London: Macmillan, 1980), 186.
“Miscellaneous reports”, Chronicle of Current Events, no. 52, 1980 [1979]), 129.
Theodore Friedgut, “Soviet anti-Zionism and antisemitism—Another cycle”, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 14, no. 1, 1984, 6.
“Soviet anti-semitism said to be ceasing”, Canadian Jewish News, 20 August 1987.
Vladimir G. Kostakov, “Employment: Deficit or surplus?”, Kommunist, no. 2, 1987, 78–89
Irena Orlova, “A sketch of the migration and refugee situation in Russia”, Refuge, vol. 13, no. 2, 1993, 19–22.
Robert J. Brym, “The emigration potential of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Russia: Recent survey results”, International Sociology, vol. 7, no. 4, 1992, 387–95.
Gregg A. Beyer, “The evolving United States response to Soviet-Jewish emigration” in Tanya Basok and Robert J. Brym (eds.), Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Resettlement in the 1990s, 105–39.
Roberta Cohen, “Israel’s problematic absorption of Soviet Jews” in Tanya Basok and Robert J. Brym (eds.), Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Resettlement in the 1990s, 67–89.
Sidney Heitman, “Jewish emigration &”.
Michal Bodemann, “A renaissance of Germany Jewry?”, paper presented at a conference on “The Reemergence of Jewish Culture in Germany”, University of Toronto, 6–7 May 1993.
In the October 1992 survey I conducted with Andrei Degtyarev in Moscow there were only 23 Jewish respondents, of whom 5 (22 per cent) expressed the desire to emigrate. This is a small sub-sample and one should not read too much into the results. Nonetheless, the fact that 22 per cent of the 535 Moscow Jews in the survey conducted with Ryvkina (weighted n) also expressed the desire to emigrate should increase one’s confidence in my findings. Compare Table 5.6, panel 1, with Robert J. Brym and Andrei Degtyarev, “Who wants to leave Moscow for the West? Results of an October 1992 survey”, Refuge, vol. 13, no. 2, 1993, 24
Rozalina Ryvkina, “Value conflicts of Russian Jews and their social types”, unpublished paper, Moscow, 1992.
A large random sample for a 1990 survey in ten republics of the USSR happened to include thirty-four Jews, a fifth of them from Georgia and none from Moscow or Leningrad. When the respondents were asked whether they would like to emigrate permanently, 71 per cent of the Jews said “yes”. Note, however, that the sample of Jews is tiny and skewed towards regions with high rates of emigration. The survey was, moreover, conducted during the period of panic emigration. See Lev Gudkov and Alex Levinson, Attitudes Toward Jews in the Soviet Union: Public Opinion in Ten Republics (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1992), 26–7.
For example, the USA is apparently planning to implement a new policy allowing people from the former Soviet republics with refugee status only one year to emigrate. This may speed up the pace of departure for some people with refugee status but it may force others to choose to go to Israel and still others notss to leave at all. See “One-year limit on US refugee status for ex-USSR”, Monitor: Digest of News and Analysis from Soviet Successor States, vol. 4, no. 25, 30 July/ 6 August 1993), 1.
Natan Sharansky, “The greatest exodus”, The New York Times Magazine, 2 February 1992.
I note that the 1993 Israel budget proposal, tabled in 1992, predicted 154,000 CIS immigrants in 1993. A 1993 Israeli Treasury economic assessment paper lowered the figure to 80,000, but predicted 120,000 CIS immigrants per year starting in 1994. Based on actual figures for the first ten months of 1993, I project 70,000 CIS immigrants for 1993. See Government of Israel, “The State Budget for 1993: Submitted to the Thirteenth Knesset” (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1992) (in Hebrew), 114
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© 1994 The Institute of Jewish Affairs Limited
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Brym, R.J. (1994). Emigration. In: Spier, H. (eds) The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13515-8_5
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