The celebrated letter written by 18 heads of Georgian Jewish families, whose 50th anniversary was commemorated in August of this year, served as the prologue to the "Aliyah of the 1970s" – the first mass Jewish emigration from the USSR since World War II. This migration carried profound implications both for the Jews of that region and for Israel. During those years, activists of the revived Jewish national movement in the USSR created underground models of self-organization, which subsequently became foundational elements of the infrastructure of organized Jewish life during Perestroika and in post-Soviet states. In Israel, the 1970s Aliyah reintroduced, after a nearly 50-year hiatus, the somewhat forgotten concept of "Russian" (in the broadest sense) Jewry into the active collective discourse of the local society. Studying these processes yields valuable insights not only into history but also into the current state and future prospects of both communities.   

In August and September, Israel and several communities of the Russian-Jewish diaspora marked – though not on the scale they arguably deserved – two significant milestones: namely, the 50th anniversary of the historic letter of August 6, 1969, in which 18 heads of Georgian Jewish families petitioned the UN to secure permission from Soviet authorities to emigrate to Israel; and the 30th anniversary of the onset of the "Great Aliyah" from the USSR and post-Soviet states in September 1989. The connection between these two events is manifest. The letter of the 18 families, followed by another petition to the UN Secretary-General signed by 531 Georgian Jews, is widely considered to have "broken the dam," serving as the catalyst for the first post-war mass emigration from the USSR and repatriation to Israel in the 1970s. This emigration and its accompanying processes established a psychologically vital precedent in the collective consciousness of the Soviet population: the legitimacy of emigration itself as a vehicle for realizing personal and collective rights. Despite a subsequent harsh restriction on departure rights in the 1980s, this served as the prologue to the mass Aliyah of the 1990s. Ultimately, the 1970s Aliyah reintroduced, after a nearly half-century interval, the concept of "Russian" Jews into the active collective discourse of Israeli society.

The Struggle for Aliyah

Indeed, the origins of Zionist repatriation are intrinsically linked with Jews originating from the regions within or formerly within the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, and to a lesser extent, regions (such as Georgia) outside it. They comprised the overwhelming majority of repatriates of the first, second, third, and fourth ("Polish") Aliyahs from the late 19th century through the first third of the 20th century. Immigrants from this region and their descendants formed the core of Israeli society and the country's cultural, political, military, intellectual, and economic establishment (the so-called "First Israel"). In subsequent years, Jewish repatriation from the USSR, and later from the post-Soviet CIS countries, experienced fluctuations but never ceased. Its significance was reaffirmed at the turn of the 21st century, when the country absorbed two major waves arriving between 1969–1980 and from 1989 to the present.

The arrival of the first of these major waves in Israel resulted from the strengthening of national consciousness among Soviet Jews and the revival of an organized Zionist movement in the USSR during the 1960s–1980s, which had previously been suppressed by the Soviet authorities. These processes were initiated by a generation of Soviet Jews whose national identity was shaped by the profound impact of the "biblical miracle of our time" – Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of June 1967 over the combined armies of six Arab states.

The emergence of "Russian neo-Zionism" and the attempts to reconstruct Jewish organizations in the USSR must be regarded as equally miraculous, given the near-total destruction of civil, religious, and formerly influential Zionist organizations by the late 1920s and early 1930s. This was compounded by the loss of remaining non-political structures during the Nazi genocide of the Jewish population in World War II and Stalinist persecutions in the pre-war and post-war decades. Consequently, at the turn of the 1970s, only minor remnants of the rich communal, cultural, and national-political traditions of local Jewry survived in the USSR.

The stance of the Soviet authorities vacillated: organized Jewish life was periodically suppressed, yet at other times, the activities of religious and certain cultural organizations were tolerated, and the policy toward Jewish emigration became more permissive. This alternated with the periodic establishment of "official" Jewish structures. The evolution of the latter spanned from the "Evkoms" under the People's Commissariat of Nationalities and the "Evsektsii" of the Communist Party committees in the 1920s–1930s, to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the 1940s, and finally to a parody of Jewish representation in the form of the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, established by the CPSU Central Committee and the KGB in Moscow in 1983, with branches in several union republics and regions.

It is evident that these structures served as mere surrogates for genuine national institutions, and any attempts by these bodies to exceed their designated monitoring and promotional functions were swiftly and severely suppressed. Similarly, attempts by Jewish activists to utilize the framework of the few remaining religious communities to foster broader professional, educational, cultural, youth, and other national initiatives were blocked. (Such attempts occurred both in the immediate post-war years and, after a long hiatus, during the national awakening of the late 1960s to early 1980s).

Independent Jewish institutions were primarily represented by small, underground groups of activists advocating for Aliyah, as well as national and civil rights. While attempts to establish such structures were made in the 1940s and 1950s, these associations acquired a new dimension only with the emergence of a new generation of Jewish activists in the 1970s. As noted, for instance, in a KGB report submitted to the CPSU Central Committee analyzing the actions of "Jewish nationalists and Zionists" from 1967 to 1971, it was no secret to the authorities that this heightened activity was a direct consequence of Israel's victory in the 1967 war.

These associations, operating in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Riga, and other Soviet cities, were typically structured around circles for the study of Hebrew, Jewish tradition, and history. They often included functional sub-units and affiliated human rights, religious, educational, and professional groups, while also acting as mutual aid organizations through informal social networks. The symbols and, in some cases, leaders of these associations were the "Prisoners of Zion" – individuals subjected to repression by administrative and punitive bodies for their Zionist and human rights activities. (Among them were Natan Sharansky, Ida Nudel, Yuli Kosharovsky; participants in the famous "Leningrad trial" Eduard Kuznetsov and Yosef Mendelevich; Alexander Kholmyansky, a key organizer of the underground Hebrew instruction network in the 1980s; and many others).

Ideological debates within the Jewish dissident movement of the 1970s–1980s involved disagreements between the "politicians" (or "emigrants"), who viewed mass emigration as the sole solution to the national problems of Soviet Jewry and advocated focusing on protest methods, and two factions of "culturalists," who emphasized the necessity of fighting for the revival and development of Jewish culture within the USSR. The former regarded cultural work as a temporary measure while emigration channels remained closed, whereas the latter – the "legalist culturalists" – viewed this as a long-term objective and were prepared to engage in limited cooperation with the authorities to foster Jewish culture within the USSR.

During the underground years, however, these ideological divisions were muted and pertained to methodology rather than the substance of their activities. It was only at the end of the Soviet era, between 1984 and 1989, that the proponents of these three currents formed distinct organizations: the Zionist Federation of the USSR ("Irgun Zion"), the Association of Hebrew Teachers (Ihud Ha-Morim), and the semi-official Jewish Cultural Association.

The core of the underground and semi-underground Jewish dissident organizations and new communal associations was the rapidly growing group of "Refuseniks" from the 1970s onward. These were individuals denied permission to leave the USSR. In 1969, under internal and international pressure, Soviet authorities agreed to adjust emigration policies to remove a small group of "problematic Jewish elements." However, realizing that the potential for Jewish emigration far exceeded their calculations, they shifted toward a gradual reduction of its scale, virtually closing official emigration channels by 1980–1981. The total number of Jewish emigrants in 1980 was 2.5 times lower than in 1979, when the wave of emigration from the USSR peaked at over 51,000 people. By 1981, the number of Jewish emigrants (approximately 9,500) had halved compared to 1980, and over the next five years, it ranged from a few hundred to just over a thousand people annually.

Concurrently, administrative authorities continued to accept exit applications, thereby increasing the number of "Refuseniks" and, consequently, active participants in the Jewish movement. (For example, in Ukraine, according to party records, approximately 80% of Jews who were denied exit permits participated in such activities in 1980). Nonetheless, despite state opposition, more than 300,000 Jews and their family members left the country between 1969 and 1988.

Notably, less than 60% of these emigrants arrived directly in Israel; the remainder opted for the United States, Canada, Australia, or Western Europe. This initially minor "drop-out phenomenon" of individuals leaving the USSR on Israeli visas grew significantly in the latter half of the 1970s. In 1976 and 1977, the number of Soviet Jews emigrating to Western countries equaled those repatriating to Israel (approximately 7,000–8,000 annually). In 1979, when departures peaked, and in 1980, the number of emigrants choosing countries other than Israel was double that of the repatriates. With the resurgence of Jewish emigration from the USSR in 1987–1989, some 70% to 80% of departing Soviet Jews utilized the "Israeli channel" to relocate to the United States and other Western nations.

The Second Generation of "Russian" Israel

Regardless, the "Aliyah of the 1970s" brought more than 170,000 repatriates from the USSR to Israel, expanding the Jewish population of the country at the time by 7 to 8 percent. However, the significance of this group extends beyond mere statistics. The immigrants of the 1970s, largely representing the second and third generations of Russian-speaking Jews, were primarily the product of acculturation within non-Jewish Soviet society. While Jewish by origin and self-identification, they were culturally Russian. Only remnants of the traditional culture of East European Jewry survived among them. This heritage, alongside the memory of the Holocaust, served as a strong pro-Israel component, shaped by their experience of living under state-sponsored antisemitism and a system of modern values perceived by their surroundings as "Jewish" – though this was far from the sole defining element of their distinct identity.

In other words, the representatives of this second mass wave of Russian-speaking Aliyah differed significantly in language, culture, and Russian-Jewish consciousness from the Jews who had arrived from Russia and the USSR in the first half of the 20th century and laid the foundations of the Jewish national home in Palestine/Eretz Yisrael. Consequently, these "cousins" arriving after a half-century hiatus were not immediately embraced as "our own" by the descendants of the founding generation. Furthermore, it soon became apparent that the cultural and political elites of different generations of "Russian" Jews in Israel held divergent views on the nature and role of the Jewish national state in the postmodern era.

The classical Zionism of the "founding generation"—which viewed Israel primarily as a vehicle for the national self-determination of the Jewish people and as a secure refuge for persecuted Jews—was already in a state of crisis by the time the new wave of Russian-speaking repatriates arrived. This was particularly evident in the "melting pot" ideology, which had lost relevance in a multicultural context. While the conservative faction of the old elites of "First Israel" sought solutions within the classical Zionist framework, the "New Left" advocated post-Zionist ideas of transforming Israel from a Jewish state into a Middle Eastern "state of all its citizens."

The intellectual and political leaders of the 1970s "Russian" Aliyah sought to intervene in this debate by introducing the concept of "neo-Zionism." Like classical Zionists, they continued to view Israel as the center of the Jewish world, maintaining that preserving the Jewish character of the state was its primary purpose. However, they simultaneously advocated combining the principles of classical Zionism with the creative integration of the heritage of the Russian-Jewish diaspora (focusing on high educational standards, general culture, and technical progress), alongside a "new Russian-Jewish nationalism" stimulated by Israel's victory in the Six-Day War[1]. In the 1970s, the traditional Israeli establishment dismissed these proposals; conversely, given their successful professional and social integration, the new immigrants were psychologically prepared to accept the existing rules of the game[2]. However, the arrival of a new wave of mass Russian-speaking repatriation starting in September 1989 altered the dynamic fundamentally.

The "Third Generation"

The struggle for emigration and the legitimization of the Zionist movement in its classical forms concluded in the USSR in 1987. A symbol of this transition was the multi-day spontaneous Jewish gathering in the Israeli pavilion at the International Moscow Book Fair that year. The democratization process eased ideological barriers; the authorities legalized the activities of Jewish cultural societies and revised exit and entry regulations (though the final version of the new law was not enacted until 1991). Within a single year, the number of applicants wishing to emigrate quadrupled. Due to the removal of most restrictions, the vast majority of these petitions (97.6%) were approved. The number of Refuseniks decreased fivefold, as they finally received the long-awaited opportunity to depart for Israel.

From the late 1980s onward, the Jewish movement, led by a new cohort of figures and activists, operated under different conditions dictated by the changing political landscape.

Conclusion

From this juncture, the chapter of Eurasian Jewish history that began with the letter of the "18 families" and concluded with the suspension of Jewish emigration by Soviet authorities on the eve of the 1980 Moscow Olympics might appear to be of purely academic interest. However, the matter should not be dismissed so quickly. It was precisely the activists of the Soviet Jewish national movement of the 1970s and 1980s who established the frameworks of ethnic and communal self-organization that became the foundation of organized Jewish life during Perestroika and in the post-Soviet states. Understanding these models can explain current divisions and conflicting interests within and among Jewish communities in the former USSR, while also pointing to potential paths toward resolution.

This subject is also highly relevant for contemporary Israeli society, where the Aliyah of the 1970s has largely been overshadowed by the "Great Aliyah" of the 1990s and 2000s. Although widely discussed in the past, it is rarely recalled today in the Israeli context. Yet, the immigrants of the 1970s (and the typologically similar "Refuseniks" of the 1980s) provided a significant portion of the political, intellectual, and professional elites of "Russian Israel." Consequently, studying their struggle for exit, alongside their experience of political, cultural, and professional integration within Israel, remains highly valuable for understanding the current state of the Israeli Jewish collective and outlining its future prospects. This work is urgent, as time is of the essence: currently, no more than a quarter of the original 170,000 Soviet repatriates of that wave remain alive in Israel.

Finally, there is a global Jewish dimension to this issue. The Jewish world today is searching for a unifying consensus to transcend divisions over the Arab-Israeli conflict, liberal versus conservative values, competition among various denominations of Judaism, and responses to modern forms of antisemitism. Three to four decades ago, this consensus was found in the collective struggle against the discrimination of Soviet Jewry and for their right to emigrate. Studying the experience of the 1970s Aliyah and its place on the global Jewish agenda may help address this contemporary challenge. In this regard, the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, as a regional structure of the World Jewish Congress, and its partner organizations have a vast and promising field of activity ahead.

[1]Ze’ev (Vladimir) Khanin, “The Jewish Right of Return: Reflections on the Mass Immigration to Israel from the Former Soviet Union”, in Lustick, Ian and Lesch, Ann (eds.), Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinian Arabs and Jews. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 183-203; L. Belenkaya and B. Zinger. Against the Current: The Jewish National Movement in the USSR and its Ideology. Minsk: Met, 2004. pp. 155-171.

[2]Nudelman, Rafael. "An Attempt to Renew Zionism: Between the Aliyah of the 70s and the Aliyah of the 90s". Jews of the USSR at the Crossroads, No. 4 (19), (2000) 67-84 [in Hebrew].