A conference and presentation of the four-volume publication “Documents on Israeli–Soviet Relations, 1954–1967” took place at Tel Aviv University (TAU). The project is a joint academic initiative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at TAU. The conference, as well as the preparation and publication of the collection, were carried out with the support of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC).
The event featured addresses by Dr. Yaakov Livne, Head of the Department of Public Diplomacy and Deputy Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Dr. Haim Ben Yaakov, Director General of the EAJC; Professor Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni, Director of the Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies at TAU; and Professor Vera Kaplan, Head of the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at TAU.
Among the speakers were the co-editors of the collection: Professor Yaacov Roi, patriarch of the Israeli academic school for the study of Soviet and East European history; Dr. Yehoshua Freundlich, former Director of the Israel State Archives; and Dr. Boris Morozov — author of several books on the history of Jewish emigration, research fellow at the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at TAU, and member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (IEAJS).
Also among the speakers were Professor Dmitry Adamsky, faculty member at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University; Professor Amir Weiner, Director of the Center for the Study of the USSR and Central Europe at Stanford University; and Dr. Dmitry Asinovsky, postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University.
The four-volume collection “Documents on Israeli–Soviet Relations, 1954–1967”, published in the summer of 2025, was prepared by leading scholars of international history — Professor Yaacov Roi (Editor-in-Chief), Dr. Yehoshua Freundlich, and Dr. Boris Morozov. The series is based on more than 600 archival documents from Israeli and Russian archives, most of which are published for the first time. The new volumes continue the previous project covering the years 1941–1953, first published in 2000.
The series offers a comprehensive account of some of the most dramatic and turbulent periods in the history of relations between the USSR and the State of Israel: from the restoration of diplomatic ties after their first rupture in 1953 to their cooling during the Suez Crisis; from the pre–Six-Day War confrontation to the final severing of relations in June 1967; from the struggle of Soviet Jews for the right to emigrate to Israel to the rise of the mass international movement supporting their cause in Israel and the West. Special attention is devoted to the interactions between the Israeli Embassy in Moscow and Soviet Jewry, as well as to Israel’s role in the USSR’s Middle Eastern policy.
The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress will continue to support academic research in the field of Israeli history and the history of Soviet Jewry, considering the preservation of cultural and historical heritage one of its key missions.
