Disclaimer: The following blog post is not a reflection of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s opinion on the below topics.
The Second World War fostered an uneasy alliance between the powers of the capitalist West and the communist East.[2] United in their urgent mission to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny, the coalition of the United States, the Soviet Union (USSR), the United Kingdom, and other countries quickly devolved into the Cold War once the guns fell silent in Europe and the Pacific.[3]
For the remaining Jews of the Soviet Union, the defeat of Nazi Germany brought an end to the Holocaust. But what followed was a continuation of the state-sponsored Soviet antisemitism they had experienced for years before the war.[4]
Emboldened by the various other grassroots civil rights movements of the 1960s, young Jews in America banded together to demand the liberation of Soviet Jews. Their platform called for an end to government persecution of Jews, the right to emigrate from the Soviet Union, freedoms of cultural and religious expression, and other human rights.[5]
In April 1964, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) was born.[6] The mind behind this burgeoning movement was Jacob Birnbaum, a fiery activist who escaped Nazi Germany as a child and returned to mainland Europe as a young man to aid the survivors of the Holocaust, soviet labor camps, and the Algerian Revolution – Jews fleeing state-sponsored violence throughout Europe and North Africa.[7]
Finding the Western world unwilling to address the plight of Jews living in the Soviet Union, who were denied many of the rights afforded to their ethnically Russian neighbors, and fearing their fate could be similar to the Jews that fell under Nazi occupation, Birnbaum sprung into action.[8]
On May Day of 1964, as the Soviet mission to the United Nations in New York addressed the body, some 1,000 Jews, rallied by Birnbaum, protested outside the building. They demanded the right of Soviet Jews to leave the country. Their signs, which read “Let My People Go,” invoked Moses commanding the Pharaoh of Exodus to free the enslaved Hebrews, telling onlookers everything they needed to know.[9]
If there is one event though, that rallied the broader Jewish American community behind the cause of Soviet Jewry, it was the infamous Leningrad Trial of 1970. This prime example of Soviet “justice” saw two Jews sentenced to death for attempting to lead a group of sixteen ‘refuseniks’ (Soviet citizens, largely Jews, who were denied emigration from the country) out of the country on a small plane.[10] The trial sparked international condemnation, spearheaded by American Jews with the SSSJ.[11]
The outrage humiliated the USSR and forced them to commute the plot’s leaders’ death sentences to prison time. They also began to dramatically increase the number of exit visas issued to Jews, in an attempt to save face. During the 1970s, over 150,000 Jews emigrated to Israel and the West, in no small part due to the organized efforts of young American Jews.[12]
The following years would see Birnbaum and the Soviet Jewry movement engage in lobbying efforts to place economic pressure on the Kremlin. Birnbaum was influential in the passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974.[14] This piece of legislation restricts trade relations between the United States and any country that has a non-market economy and denies emigration rights to its people, which included the USSR.[15]
The movement would continue to grow, and in the 1980s would win the support of President Ronald Reagan, who formulated it within his broader anti-Soviet policies. Memoirs attest that at the beginning of several meetings between Reagan and the Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, the president would pull out a piece of paper with the names of refuseniks on it, demanding that the two leaders discuss their releases.[16]
The mass exodus of the 1970s slowed in the 1980s, signifying to the SSSJ and allied organizations that there was still work to be done. Luckily for them, the finish line was in sight.
Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, was a reformer. He enacted policies that allowed Soviet citizens (including Jews), to engage in political and cultural expression. For the first time in a long time, Jews in the USSR could be Jews again, with the freedom to practice their religion and speak their languages.[17]
Perhaps most importantly though, this last Soviet premier at long last opened the gates, allowing unlimited Jewish emigration from the USSR. The consequences of this decision can not be understated. In only a few brief years before and after the end of the Cold War, over a million Jews left the USSR and its successor states.[18]
Alongside the political ideals of this reform, it was a pragmatic, last-ditch attempt to save the Soviet economy, which was still being hindered by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.[19]
Nothing, at this point, could save the Union though. And on Christmas of 1991, the Soviet Union was officially disbanded.[20]
The dissolution also occurred during the holiday of Hanukkah, when Jews celebrate the victorious Jewish Maccabean revolt against the Greek Seleucid kingdom occupying Jerusalem.[21] Over two thousand years later, the Jewish people again stood against an empire, and they were once more victorious.
[1] Renee Ghert-Zand, “Once Heroes of Us Jewry, Soviet Refuseniks Are Largely Forgotten. Not for Long,” The Times of Israel, December 22, 2019.
[2] “Control of Germany by the Great Powers.” The Guardian. February 13, 1945.
[3] Stephen Rogers, “Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech – March 5, 1946,” The National WWII Museum | New Orleans, The National World War II Museum, March 4, 2021.
[4] William Korey, “The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti-Semitism: An Analysis,” Slavic Review 31, no. 1 (1972): 111–35.
[5] “Timelines of the American Soviet Jewry Movement,” American Jewish Historical Society, November 22, 2022.
[6] USA: JEWISH STUDENTS PICKET SOVIET UN MISSION (1964), British Pathé.
[7] Douglas Martin, “Jacob Birnbaum, Civil Rights Champion of Soviet Jews, Dies at 88,” The New York Times. April 19, 2014.
[8] Julia Schulman and Michael Hsieh, “Soviet Anti-Semitism Buried Rising Jewish Scientists,” Tablet Magazine, February 11, 2021.
[9] Martin “Jacob Birnbaum, Civil Rights Champion of Soviet Jews, Dies at 88.”
[10] Glenn Richter and Avi Weiss, “Fifty Years Ago, the Leningrad Trial Sparked the Movement to Free Soviet Jewry,” Tablet Magazine, December 15, 2020.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Total Immigration to Israel from the Former Soviet Union,” Jewish Virtual Library, Israel Central Bureau.
[13] Richter and Weiss, “A Holiday Miracle 50 Years Ago Reminds Us That We Can All Play a Role in Changing History.”
[14] “Statement on Introducing a Resolution to Honor Jacob Birnbaum,” Congressman Jerry Nadler, September 28, 2006.
[15] Caroline Moh, “The Jackson-Vanik Amendment and U.S.-Russian Relations,” Wilson Center, February 3, 2010.
[16] “How a Quest to Save Soviet Jews Changed the World,” NPR, NPR, October 30, 2010.
[17] Benjamin Ivry, “So, How Did Jews Fare under Mikhail Gorbachev Anyway?” The Forward, September 1, 2022.
[18] Ksenia Svetlova, “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Reluctant Liberator of Soviet Jews,” Haaretz.com. Haaretz, August 31, 2022.
[19] Ibid.
[20] “The Collapse of the Soviet Union,” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State.
[21] Ashley Ross, “The Hanukkah Story: How Much Is True?” Time, Time, December 4, 2015.