Saving Soviet Jews and the Future of the Global Jewish Diaspora

2021 ◽  
pp. 539-560
Author(s):  
David Shneer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Soviet Jews ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
Multiple Languages

Soviet Jews were once an object of Israeli, American, British, and other Jews’ efforts to get the Soviet government to “free them,” since the borders to the Soviet Union were closed without permission. With the collapse of the country, post-Soviet Jews went from being a group in need of other Jews’ assistance to active subjects of their and others’ destinies. Post-Soviet Jews speak multiple languages and hold dual citizenships, which gives them financial, social, and political capital with which they shape the global Jewish future. They have done so by forming political parties in Israel such as Yisrael ba’aliya to the far right Yisrael beiteinu, whose politics have become mainstream in the Israeli electorate. Wealthy post-Soviet Jews have used their vast financial resources and connections with political power to shape the future. They have done this by donating huge sums of money to cultural institutions and universities as well as by forming large-scale Jewish philanthropic endeavors like the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the Blavatnik Archive to put issues of concern to former Soviet Jews on the global Jewish communal agenda. This has not been without consequences for the future of global Jewish life.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future. Vol. I: The Soviet System: Stasis and Change

1989 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
John C. Campbell ◽  
Alexander Shtromas ◽  
Morton A. Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future

Some Recent Changes in Soviet Economic Policy

1956 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Rate Of Growth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future

SOVIET economic policy in the few years since Stalin's death has been characterized by flamboyance and ferment. In an attempt to free economic growth from the bottleneck of stagnation in agriculture, Khrushchev has sponsored some extravagant gambles in corn-growing and in expansion of the sown acreage. Policy toward the consumer has gone through two complete reversals: the regime at first experimented with offering the population an improvement in the standard of living, but is now once again asserting that abundance in the future requires austerity today. Perhaps the most startling innovation of all emerged in the past year when the regime began to develop a program of foreign economic assistance as a weapon in its economic competition with the capitalist part of the world. Because of their spectacular nature, these shifts of policy have attracted considerable attention in the West and have been commented on at length. Aware diat the Soviet Union is expanding her economic power at a more rapid rate than are the capitalist countries, Western students of the Soviet economy have sought in these policy changes-some clue as to whether its rate of growth is likely to decline or to be maintained in the future. The early indications of a rise in standards of living that would cause a reduced growth of heavy industry and so a decline in investment and in the rate of growth have now been dispelled. The inability of Soviet agriculture to provide an expanding food supply for a growing work force certainly appears to be a real threat to industrial growth, and with die failure of Khrushchev's gambles, this threat remains. Thus the evidence as to the over-all effect of these changes on the rate of expansion of die Soviet economy is still inconclusive.

SPATIAL LAYOUT OF THE SOVIET UNION TIMBER PROCESSING COMPLEX: THE IDEA BEHIND THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-154
Author(s):  
Ivan V. ZYKIN
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Far East ◽  
Spatial Layout ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Wood Industry ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Regions

During the years of Soviet power, principal changes took place in the country’s wood industry, including in spatial layout development. Having the large-scale crisis in the industry in the late 1980s — 2000s and the positive changes in its functioning in recent years and the development of an industry strategy, it becomes relevant to analyze the experience of planning the spatial layout of the wood industry during the period of Stalin’s modernization, particularly during the first five-year plan. The aim of the article is to analyze the reason behind spatial layout of the Soviet wood industry during the implementation of the first five-year plan. The study is based on the modernization concept. In our research we conducted mapping of the wood industry by region as well as of planned construction of the industry facilities. It was revealed that the discussion and development of an industrialization project by the Soviet Union party-state and planning agencies in the second half of the 1920s led to increased attention to the wood industry. The sector, which enterprises were concentrated mainly in the north-west, west and central regions of the country, was set the task of increasing the volume of harvesting, export of wood and production to meet the domestic needs and the export needs of wood resources and materials. Due to weak level of development of the wood industry, the scale of these tasks required restructuring of the branch, its inclusion to the centralized economic system, the direction of large capital investments to the development of new forest areas and the construction of enterprises. It was concluded that according to the first five-year plan, the priority principles for the spatial development of the wood industry were the approach of production to forests and seaports, intrasectoral and intersectoral combining. The framework of the industry was meant to strengthen and expand by including forests to the economic turnover and building new enterprises in the European North and the Urals, where the main capital investments were sent, as well as in the Vyatka region, Transcaucasia, Siberia and the Far East.

Soviet Defectors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Riehle
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Privileged Information ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Threat Perceptions ◽  
Aggregate Analysis ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Decision Making System ◽  
The Stability

This book identifies 88 Soviet intelligence officers who defected from 1924 to 1954 and provides an aggregate analysis of their information to uncover Soviet strategic priorities and concerns. When intelligence officers defect, they take with them privileged information and often communicate it to the receiving state, and thereby they open a window into a closed national security decision making system. The book provides the most comprehensive list of Soviet intelligence officer defectors compiled to date representing a variety of specializations. Through the information they provided in now-declassified debriefings, documents they brought with them, and post-defection publications and public appearances, this book shows the evolution of Soviet threat perceptions and the development of the "main enemy" concept in the Soviet national security system. It also shows fluctuations in the Soviet recruitment and vetting of personnel for sensitive national security positions, corresponding with fluctuations in the stability of the Soviet government. The shifting motivations of these officers also reveals the pressures that they were experiencing at the time, leading to their choice to break with the Soviet Union.

scholarly journals Lend-lease Program through the Prism of Official and Ego Sources

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
O. Lysenko ◽  
O. Fil ◽  
L. Khoynatska
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Global Challenge ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army

Discussions around various aspects of World War II in the world’s scientific space and memory field have continued throughout the postwar decades. Initially, they were determined by polar and antagonistic ideological paradigms, and after the end of the Cold War – the discovery and introduction into scientific circulation of previously classified sources, testing of avant-garde methods of scientific knowledge, the development of interpretive tools. In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union found itself virtually isolated, alone with the Axis bloc and their allies. It was difficult for the Soviet leadership to overcome the existing threats on its own, especially after the German attack. Only the realization by the Western Allies that Berlin’s aggressive course had become a global challenge made it possible to find a constructive way to join forces in the fight against a common enemy. One of the channels of cooperation between the states of the Anti-Hitler Coalition was the organization of supplies to the USSR of military equipment, ammunition, food, and materials necessary for the facilities of the Soviet military-industrial complex within the framework of the land lease program. Until recently, the problem of land lease was more in ideological discourse than in purely scientific. The currently available source base allows for an unbiased analysis of this phenomenon and elucidation of the place and role of foreign revenues to the USSR in strengthening its defense capabilities during the war against Germany and its allies. However, to this day, the researchers look out of focus, because of the perception of this phenomenon by veterans who fought on foreign military equipment, ate food from overseas. The authors of the article sees their task as combining these two dimensions of the lend-lease and finding out its impact not only on the scale of the large-scale armed confrontation, but also on the moral and psychological condition of the Red Army, for whom the war was an extremely difficult test.

Immigration Wave: Soviet Jew Exodus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assaf Razin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Behavioral Characteristics ◽  
Soviet Jews ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Residential Capital

The disunion of the Soviet Union and the destruction of communism in the USSR 1987-1991 triggered the recent emigration wave of Soviet Jews to various parts of the world, primarily to Israel. The professional, social, attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of the 1990s Jewish exodus cohort proved to be distinctive. Immigrants came mostly from urban areas, with advanced education systems. Immigration produced massive investments, both in residential structures and in non-residential capital. These investments were so substantial that they increased the capital to labor ratio and facilitated economic growth, aided by the remarkable human capital brought by the immigrants. The massive investments in physical capital and infrastructures were financed by capital imports as immigrants themselves fled their former homes almost penniless and credit constrained so that they hardly saved.

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