They wrote letters to the UN and to Soviet newspapers, sang songs about the Land of Israel in whispers in their kitchens, created secret Hebrew circles, and took desperate steps, risking their freedom and their lives. Their names and destinies became symbols of the Soviet Jews’ struggle for the right to return home.

Today, on Aliyah Day, Israel remembers these men and women—heroes without weapons—who paved the way for national revival. But this is also a time to reflect on where we stand now.

When, in May 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed, Jews in the distant USSR responded with enthusiasm and hope. The engineer Y.B. Shmerler from Novosibirsk wrote to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, “Now, when the struggle is to the death, we Soviet Jews cannot remain silent… To participate actively means to fight shoulder to shoulder with our brothers. It is our sacred duty.”

These dreams of solidarity never came true, yet they captured a prevailing mood: Israel had become, for Soviet Jews, a symbol of strength and hope.

“The Letter of the Eighteen”: A Challenge to the World

In August 1969, eighteen families of Georgian Jews gathered in Kutaisi and signed an appeal to the UN:

“The time of fear is over, the time for action has come. We demand permission to emigrate. How can it be, at the end of the 20th century, that people are forbidden to live where they wish?”

Published by the world press, this letter marked a turning point. After its release, Israel officially entered the struggle for the freedom of Soviet aliyah.

At the end of the 1960s, in the wake of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, a new era began for Soviet Jews. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel called them “The Jews of Silence,” yet it was they who began to cast off Soviet clichés and form an organized Zionist movement.

According to KGB data, in 1969 alone, 27,000 Jews applied for invitations from relatives in Israel. Between 1968 and 1982, 375,000 Soviet Jews received such invitations; 163,000 managed to leave, but tens of thousands were refused exit visas.

Operation “Wedding”

In 1970, a group of Jews and dissidents led by Mark Dymshits and Eduard Kuznetsov attempted to hijack a plane to escape to the West and then reach Israel. The plan was codenamed Operation Wedding.

The participants knew what awaited them, arrest, imprisonment, possibly death, but they went ahead. The court sentenced Dymshits and Kuznetsov to death, and Yosef Mendelevich and Silva Zalmanson to long prison terms. Under intense international pressure, the death sentences were commuted.

Their names became symbols of courage, and their trial became a catalyst for a global movement advocating for Soviet Jewry.

“Eretz Israel” and Cultural Resistance

On March 27, 1971, KGB chief Yuri Andropov reported to the Communist Party about a letter intercepted by censors. It had been sent by Alla Smelyanskaya, a translator for Intourist, who mailed to Israel a song written by her husband titled “Eretz Israel.”

“We would love to hear it broadcast on Kol Yisrael,” she wrote, “and perhaps it could become our hymn of love for the homeland.”

These words were considered a “crime.” Yet it was through culture—through songs, underground Hebrew classes, secret seminars, and samizdat journals like Tarbut (edited by Felix Kandel), that the connection to the people’s language, land, and faith endured.

Letters and “Refuseniks”

In the 1970s, thousands of letters were sent to newspapers:

“Golda Shelanu – our Golda… We are proud of her, we who live in the USSR as Jews.”“To deny the existence of antisemitism in the Soviet Union is as absurd as denying racism in the United States.”

Each of these letters could cost the author their job, their freedom, or worse.

The names Vladimir Slepak, Yosef Begun, Natan Sharansky, and Yuli Edelstein became symbols of perseverance. Begun was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp and five years of exile. Sharansky spent thirteen years in prisons and camps. Edelstein was convicted on fabricated “drug” charges—his real “crime” was teaching Hebrew.

The Refusenik Movement became a symbol of moral resistance, a readiness to risk everything for the right to return. For many, supporting Israel meant persecution, but it also became a source of spiritual strength.

Every letter, every song, every attempt to emigrate was an act of bravery. Soviet Jews supported Israel not through slogans, but through their lives—at the cost of their freedom, careers, and future.

Their heroism lay in persistence: in the right to be Jewish, to teach Hebrew, to make aliyah.

Post-Soviet Identity: Double Loyalty Without Conflict

The collapse of the USSR ended the state’s antisemitic and anti-Zionist campaign and opened the era of free repatriation. With the end of official antisemitism and the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel, the old dilemma, whether solidarity with Israel meant disloyalty to the Soviet regime, ceased to exist.

As early as 2004, Evgeny Satanovsky, President of the Russian Jewish Congress, noted that in contemporary Russia, “the pro-Israel component” had become normal, accepted as naturally as it is in the United States.

Alexander Boroda, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, emphasized that “the Jewish community can and should contribute to strengthening Russian-Israeli relations.”

Yet there were more cautious voices too. Businessman Alexander Malis argued: “A Jew must be loyal to the state in which he lives. If you don’t like it, you can leave. You can influence internal politics only in Israel.”

A large survey conducted by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress showed that 69% of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova expressed solidarity with Israel, while 46–50% saw themselves as patriots of both their country of residence and Israel.

The identity of post-Soviet Jews thus became poly-loyal: a natural, conflict-free synthesis of solidarity with Israel and civic loyalty to their own states.

But how does this vision sound today, amid growing geopolitical tensions, resurgent antisemitism, the Russia–Ukraine war, and the trauma of the October 7 Hamas massacre?

The answers are no longer simple.

Aliyah, in our global and networked world, is not merely a change of geography—it is a moral choice: to live with one’s people, to share its fears, its language, its culture, its pain and hope.

The state has the right to expect from every new citizen participation, service, and solidarity—but it must also fulfill its part of the social contract: to provide real integration, not bureaucratic labyrinths.

Repatriate Day: A Time for Memory, Gratitude, and Hard Questions

Does everyone with Jewish roots truly have the right to a “safe harbor”, even if that harbor is far from calm, in Israel? This question divides not only the Knesset but families themselves. On one side, fears of a “tourist aliyah” without integration; on the other, the moral duty not to close the gates before Jews and their descendants.

Repatriate Day is an opportunity for honest questions: Who are we? Why do we return? For some, coming to Israel is not a spiritual homecoming but an evacuation from their birthplace. Where are we heading as a people? It is a day to look closely at how Jews live in the Diaspora and how they relate to the Jewish state -and a day to remember those who, still in the USSR, dreamed of return, who endured prisons and exile, who sang Eretz Yisrael in whispers, who risked everything as part of the “plane affair.”

These people are our contemporaries, and many still take part in building this country.

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than writing a letter to a newspaper, composing a song, joining a Hebrew circle -or simply answering “yes” to the question:

“Do you want to live in Israel?”

And then, inevitably, the next question follows:

“What kind of country do we wish to build for ourselves and our children?”

Today, these questions remain as vital as ever.