scholarly journals The Israeli Case

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-464
Author(s):  
Fred Lazin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Russian Immigrants ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Israeli Population ◽  
Israeli Government ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
The Eu

The paper presents an account of the Israeli government’s efforts to absorb and integrate an influx of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia. With fewer than five million persons, Israel accepted 400,000 Jewish refugees between 1989–1992. At the time, the Israeli government discouraged granting of political asylum to tens of thousands of mostly Muslim refugees from East Africa. Furthermore, an Israeli law prevented family reunification of Israeli Arab citizens who married Palestinians living outside of Israel (including the occupied territories). The paper looks at policies designed to provide housing and education to the Russian and Ethiopian immigrants. Israeli absorption policies were not coordinated. Prime Minister Shamir later told the author “Who needed policy? Let them come and we will make policy.” Policies gave preferential treatment to Russian immigrants who had more clout than the Ethiopians. They also had greater social capital. While the national government and the Jewish Agency, an NGO representing world Jewry, set immigration policy, mayors had some input in implementation. One mayor discussed here used absorption of immigrants as a means to foster local economic growth and development. The major finding here is the importance of “political will”. Israeli government officials and much of the Israeli population favoured mass immigration of Jews regardless of where they were from. Israeli leaders want to preserve a Jewish majority among its citizens. With respect to lessons for the EU, the findings here suggest that the successful absorption and acceptance of refugees lies in the attitude of the host country toward immigration. Policies and issues of coordination and implementation are secondary concerns. In the Israeli case despite the lack of adequate resources and lack of coordination absorption of immigrants succeeded.

scholarly journals SOVIET REPRESSION AGAINST REFUGEE JEWS FROM THE TERRITORY OF POLAND AND CZECH-SLOVAKIA BEFORE AND AT THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Natalia Kuzovova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Southern Ukraine

Purpose: to analyze a set of documents stored in the funds of the State Archives of Kherson region – cases of repressed refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1938-1941. Based on historiographical and source studies on this topic, to outline the general grounds for arrest and persecution of refugees by Soviet authorities and to find out why Jews – former citizens of Poland and Czechoslovakia – found themselves in the focus of repression. Research methodology. The main research methods were general and special-historical, as well as methods of archival heuristics and scientific criticism of sources. Scientific novelty. Previously unpublished documents are introduced into scientific circulation: cases of repressed refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia, analysis of the Soviet government's policy towards Jews who tried to escape from the Nazis in the USSR and the Union Republics in southern Ukraine, including Kherson. The forms of repression applied by the NKVD to refugee Jews are analyzed, and the consequences of such a policy for the German government's policy of genocide in the occupied territories are examined. Conclusions. The study found that the formal reason for the persecution of Jewish refugees was the illegal crossing of the border with the USSR, since the Soviet Union, like many countries in the world, refused to accept Jews fleeing the Nazi persecution. The Soviet government motivated this by the fact that refugee Jews spread mood of defeat and panic, spied for Germany, Britain, and Poland, had anti-Soviet views, and conducted anti-Soviet campaigning. As a result of the arrests and deportations of Jewish refugees, the Jewish population, particularly in southern Ukraine, was unaware of the persecution of Jews in lands occupied by Nazi Germany. In fact, the Jewish refugees sent to the concentration camps, along with the Germans of Ukraine and the Volga region, were the only groups of people thus "evacuated" by the Soviet authorities on ethnic grounds. However, due to the enemy's rapid offensive, refugees who did not fall into the hands of the NKVD shared the tragic fate of Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust.

scholarly journals Securing ‘from within’

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Mariya Polner
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Push Factor ◽  
Political Settlement ◽  
The Eu

The dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted not only interindependence for Moldova. It also served as a push factor for the secessionist conflict on its territory which due to its unresolved status is referred to as frozen. All attempts of the political settlement since 1990s have ended in deadlock. Interestingly, the EU policies towards Transnistria changed significantly in 2003-2004. From the ‘security consumer’ the EU has been slowly turning into the ‘security provider’. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the EU in ensuring security and stability through its involvement in the Transnistrian conflict. For this purpose the study will focus on EU-Moldova relations and the instrument it dedicates to ensuring stability, the EU Border Assistance Mission.

scholarly journals The Gulag of Poets: The Experience of Exile, Forced Labour Camps, and Wandering in the USSR in the Works of Polish-Yiddish Writers (1939–1949)

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Magdalena Ruta
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Times ◽  
Literary Output

The literary output of the Polish-Yiddish writers who survived WWII in the Soviet Union is mostly a literary mirror of the times of exile and wartime wandering. The two major themes that reverberate through these writings are: the refugees’ reflection on their stay in the USSR, and the Holocaust of Polish Jews. After the war, some of them described that period in their memoirs and autobiographical fiction, however, due to censorship, such accounts could only be published abroad, following the authors’ emigration from Poland. These writings significantly complement the texts produced during the war, offering plentiful details about life in Poland’s Eastern borderlands under Soviet rule as it was perceived by the refugees, or about the fate of specific persons in the subsequent wartime years. This literature, written in – and about – exile is not only an account of what was happening to Polish-Jewish refugees in the USSR, but also a testimony to their coping with an enormous psychological burden caused by the awareness (or the lack thereof) of the fate of Jews under Nazi German occupation. What emerges from all the literary texts published in post-war Poland, even despite the cuts and omissions caused by (self)-censorship, is an image of a postwar Jewish community affected by deep trauma, hurt and – so it seems – split into two groups: survivors in the East (vicarious witnesses), and survivors in Nazi-occupied Poland (direct victim witnesses). The article discusses on samples the necessity of extending and broadening of that image by adding to the reflection on Holocaust literature (which has been underway for many years) the reflection on the accounts of the experience of exile, Soviet forced labour camps, and wandering in the USSR contained in the entire corpus of literary works and memoirs written by Polish-Yiddish writers.

Everyday Life in Wartime Europe

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Mick
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Foreign Occupation ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Working And Living Conditions ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses everyday life under foreign occupation during the Second World War. Living conditions were very different depending on class, race, location, and time. People living in Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union were not only much more exposed to terror and mass crimes; their standards of living were also much lower than in western Europe. Some experiences, however, were shared. The chapter focuses on certain common daily experiences: procuring food and other daily necessities; the relationship between peasants and urban populations; the working and living conditions in cities and towns; the role of families and the importance of networks; and the impact of terror, destruction, and insecurity on society and individuals. Living under foreign occupation partly corrupted the moral standards governing human relations, but there was also solidarity which focused on a core group of people consisting of family and close friends.

Russia

2019 ◽  
pp. 379-384
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communal Property ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Property Confiscation ◽  
Property Restitution

In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, in violation of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The invasion marked the beginning of what Russia would later call the Great Patriotic War during which the Soviet Union suffered tens of millions of civilian and military losses. Private property in the Soviet Union was earlier confiscated through Lenin and Stalin’s nationalization programs. Nazi-occupied territories of the Soviet Union suffered property confiscation by the German forces, with most of the confiscation taking place in the Soviet Republics of Belarussia and Ukraine and western Russia. Russia does not have any private or communal property restitution and/or compensation laws relating to Holocaust-era confiscations, or return of property confiscations dating back to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Russia also does not have any special legislation dealing with heirless property. Russia endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009, but declined to endorse the 2010 Guidelines and Best Practices.

scholarly journals After homo sovieticus: Democratic governance gaps and societal vulnerabilities in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood

European View ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-162
Author(s):  
Igor Merheim-Eyre
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
The State ◽  
Social And Cultural Capital ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Homo Sovieticus ◽  
The Eu

This article explores three intertwining issues facing the countries in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood: (1) the continued legacy of homo sovieticus or the ‘Soviet Man’, (2) the state of democratic governance and (3) societal vulnerabilities. Existing since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they can be seen as both barriers to reform as well as vulnerabilities exploited by domestic and foreign actors for the purposes of division and subversion. The article argues that if the EU or the wider transatlantic community wants to support the countries of the eastern neighbourhood on their road to security, democracy and prosperity, we must place the dignity of the individual at the heart of our policies. This requires (a) fostering deeper social and cultural capital, and (b) ensuring that we strengthen the resilience of society rather than that of autocratic leaders and oligarchic structures.

Vergessene Opfer von Mord und Missbrauch: Behindertenmorde unter deutscher Besatzungsherrschaft in der Ukraine (1941-1943) und ihre juristische Aufarbeitung in der Sowjetunion

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-376
Author(s):  
Tanja Penter
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Occupied Territories

In November 1943, shortly after the liberation of the occupied territories by the Red Army, three mass graves with 144 corpses were discovered in a former colony for disabled children in the Zaporizhia region. The disabled inmates had been shot in two mass murder actions by German SS and Wehrmacht units in October 1941 and in March 1943. During the course of the investigations into the case in 1944 by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), seven former Soviet employees of the colony, among them four women, were put on trial and convicted for complicity with the Germans in the crime. The trial not only condemned the murder of the disabled, but also revealed their sexual abuse under the German occupation and in Soviet pre-war times. This article combines three different research perspectives. First, the previously unknown context of the crime is described for the first time on the basis of newly accessible Soviet file material from the Ukrainian secret service archives. In the process, the differing logics behind both the locals and Germans’ roles in the events surrounding the murder are brought to light and examined in the broader context of the German occupation of the Ukraine. Second, the legal treatment of the crime by a Soviet military tribunal is viewed against the background of the general prosecution of Nazi criminals and Soviet collaborators in the Soviet Union. Third, the current handling of the crime in the local Ukrainian culture of remembrance is surveyed. This reveals in particular the consequences of the Soviet memory policies that continue to this day.

The Baltic States in the European Union

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanel Kerikmäe ◽  
Archil Chochia ◽  
Max Atallah
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Digital Development ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Eu

Integration with the European Union has been far less distressing for the three Baltic States than for numerous other accessing countries owing to their strong societal impetus to (re)join Western political, economic, and legal culture after they regained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. However, the accession of these states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—had several distinctive features related to constitutional background and settings, which heavily influenced problem solving between government and the EU institutions. In general, the controversial issues regarding how to solve the problems with supranational power have never been dramatic with regard to the Baltic States, which leads to the assumption that often the governments have taken rather compliant positions. The latest cases, such as the European Stabilization Mechanism, indicate the change in paradigm: the three Baltic States are more aware of the margin of appreciation and actual borderlines between policy making- and decision making. Today, in setting up an EU-related agenda, more skills than previously are needed in finding allies and choosing partners. The road the Baltic States took in joining the EU was a difficult one, nor has their role in the EU been easy. Should a small state with a big initiative be allowed to mentor other member states regarding that initiative, meaning in particular Estonia and its digital development? Another peculiar aspect of the Baltic States is their (inter)relationship with Russia. Considering themselves a bridge between East and West, the Baltics have been active in Eastern Partnership and Development Aid initiatives and have also spoken out strongly against intervention in Georgia and Ukraine. This position sometimes complicates any EU attempt to achieve consensus on foreign policy.

scholarly journals EU Enlargement to the Balkans: Membership Perspective to the Balkan Countries

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Rıdvan Karluk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Balkan States ◽  
The Eu

After the dispersion of the Soviet Union, the European Union embarked upon an intense relationship with the Central and Eastern European Countries. The transition into capital market and democratization of these countries had been supported by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of 1989 before the collapse of the Soviet Union System. The European Agreements were signed between the EU and Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia on December 16th, 1991. 10 Central and Eastern Europe Countries became the members of the EU on May 1st, 2004. With the accession of Bulgaria and Romania into the EU on January 1st, 2007, the number of the EU member countries reached up to 27, and finally extending to 28 with the membership of Croatia to the EU on July 1st, 2013. Removing the Western Balkan States, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina from the scope of external relations, the EU included these countries in the enlargement process in 2005.The European Commission has determined 2014 enlargement policy priorities as dealing with the fundamentals on preferential basis. In this context, the developments in the Balkans will be closely monitored within the scope of a new approach giving priority to the superiority of law. The enlargement process of the EU towards the Balkans and whether or not the Western Balkan States will join the Union will be analyzed.

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