Image source: kosharovsky.com

The Jewish Vaad (association) of Jewish organizations and communities of the USSR, established in Moscow in December 1989 amidst the revival of legal Jewish activities and the resumption of free Jewish emigration, marked the emergence of a new generation of independent "umbrella" Jewish organizations. It also became the platform for the first public conflict between various ideological currents within the underground and semi-underground Jewish national movement, as well as new friction between proponents of centralization and those favoring the creation of independent umbrella structures in the Soviet republics, which were already drifting toward independence. The USSR Vaad defined the foundational development models of the Jewish movement, which remained relevant for the next three decades. The congress clearly initiated an ongoing and complex public dialogue between the emerging Russian-Jewish elites and the leadership of Israeli and international Jewish organizations.

Exactly thirty years ago, on December 18, 1989, at the height of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, a congress of representatives from Jewish associations emerging across the Soviet republics opened in Moscow, proclaiming the creation of the Vaad (Committee) of Jewish Organizations and Communities of the USSR. This event was the culmination of the process of establishing an organized Jewish movement, which had been legalized less than a year prior. It unfolded against the backdrop of a new wave of mass Jewish emigration to Israel and Western countries that had begun in the autumn of 1989.

Both factors—the attempt to institutionalize Jewish organizations and communities in the disintegrating Soviet Union and the Aliyah to Israel, largely replicating similar processes within the local Jewish community during the early decades of the twentieth century—provided a powerful impetus for the emergence of diverse community-type Jewish structures across the CIS and Baltic states. In turn, the Union Vaad served as a model and catalyst for structuring a new generation of independent "umbrella" Jewish organizations, something that had long been deemed impossible.

The historical attempts of the Soviet authorities, who occasionally created "official" structures—such as the "Evkoms" within the People's Commissariat for Nationalities, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of the 1940s, and the parody of Jewish representation in the form of the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public created by the CPSU Central Committee and the KGB in 1983—can hardly be considered genuine. It is evident that these structures were mere surrogates for national Jewish institutions and were established solely in the interests of the Soviet regime. Any minimal attempt by bodies like the JAC to reach beyond their designated control-and-publicity framework was immediately and harshly suppressed. Similarly, postwar initiatives to establish an all-Union association of Jewish religious communities, which were barely tolerated by the authorities, were shut down.

An alternative, if only on a symbolic level, to these "legal" and quasi-legal structures was the underground Jewish associations that arose from the Jewish national-cultural revival in the USSR, whose participants were inspired by Israel's victory over the combined armies of five Arab states in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Notable initiatives of this kind included, for example, the All-Union Committee for the Coordination of Zionist Activity, which operated in 1969-1970, and the symposium "Jewish Culture in the USSR: Current State and Prospects" (Moscow, December 21-23, 1976), which was shut down by Soviet authorities during its preparatory stage[i], as well as the famous "City" project of the underground Moscow Zionist community, which included several functional departments and affiliated human rights, religious, educational, professional, and other groups, centered around the community of so-called "refuseniks"[ii].

Naturally, under those conditions, associations of this kind—characterized by instability, high turnover, and weak organizational structure—could not, by definition, be mass movements. Furthermore, they already exhibited significant ideological divisions between various currents of the underground and semi-underground dissident movement. Specifically, there was a divide between "politicians" (or "emigrants"), who viewed mass emigration as the only solution to the national problems of Soviet Jewry and advocated focusing on protest-based political struggles for exit visas, and two factions of "culturalists," who insisted on the necessity of fighting for the preservation and development of Jewish culture within the USSR. The first of these factions viewed this as a temporary measure while the gates of emigration remained closed; the second saw it as a long-term goal and was therefore willing to engage in limited cooperation with the authorities to develop Jewish culture within the USSR[iii].

The Post-Soviet Experience

However, during the underground years, these disagreements between the currents of the national Jewish movement were not highly pronounced and concerned methods rather than the actual substance of activities. It was only at the very end of the Soviet era, between 1984 and 1989, that supporters of these three currents formed distinct organizations: the Zionist Federation of the USSR (Irgun Tzioni), the Association of Hebrew Teachers (Ihud Ha-Morim), and the semi-official Association for Jewish Culture. The platform for their first public conflict was the first legal congress of Jewish organizations and communities of the USSR in December 1989, which is the subject of this article. "Radical Zionists" from Irgun Tzioni, led by Lev Gorodetsky, demanded the creation of a Repatriation Committee to facilitate the mass "evacuation" of Soviet Jews to Israel. In contrast, "moderate Zionists" and "culturalists" (Mikhail Chlenov, Yosef Zissels, Samuil Zilberg, among others) proposed the creation of the Vaad of Jewish Organizations and Communities and local communal autonomy.

The congress also revealed another division: between proponents of centralization (M. Chlenov) and those advocating for the creation of independent umbrella structures in the Soviet republics, which were already visibly drifting away from the Union center that ceased to exist at the end of 1991 (Y. Zissels, S. Zilberg, and others). Despite these disagreements, this congress and the established USSR Vaad defined the basic development models of the Jewish movement, which remained relevant for the next thirty years. First, by bridging the late-Soviet and post-Soviet eras, these events set the direction for seeking optimal forms of Jewish self-organization at local, regional, and supra-regional levels.

Second, the USSR Vaad became a blueprint for establishing similar republican and regional umbrella Jewish organizations, which in turn attracted numerous Jewish groups that emerged during the surge of Jewish emigration from the USSR in 1989-1991. These included Jewish Culture Societies (initially initiated by late-communist authorities who soon lost interest in them) and independent "municipal" communities, often created by former activists of the underground national and cultural movement. (The concept of a secular territorial community as the primary institution of Jewish national life was introduced at the "Roundtable on Jewish Culture," held in May 1989 in Riga, which was the first legal conference of Jewish organizations since the late 1920s). Dedicated educational, humanitarian, religious, memorial, informational, and other public organizations and projects also emerged, dominating the USSR/CIS Jewish movement in 1988-1992. Later, amid declining Jewish emigration from post-Soviet countries, they mostly integrated as departments within communal institutions.

In the subsequent phase, these organizations became partners with a new generation of "umbrella" structures. Some of these separated from the USSR Vaad (which briefly persisted as a confederation of Jewish organizations in post-Soviet countries after the dissolution of the USSR) and its successors, while others utilized their infrastructure and organizational principles. These include the still-active Associations of Jewish Organizations and Communities, short-lived Zionist Federations, historically pro-government structures like the Jewish Council of Ukraine or the Federation of Jewish National-Cultural Autonomies of the Russian Federation, associations and federations of Jewish religious communities, and Jewish Congresses. Finally, at the turn of the century, "super-umbrella" associations emerged, such as the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine (JCU) and the Jewish Federation of Russia, which served as a counterbalance to the Jewish Congresses.

All of this serves as a counterargument to researchers who believe that Jewish organizational initiatives, not only in late-Soviet but also in post-Soviet times, rely primarily on external organizational, ideological, and financial resources of the global Jewish community rather than their own internal potential[iv]. It is highly likely that most of these structures, much like the official bodies of the Soviet era, would have remained empty facades had they not met the objective needs of the rising wave of public interest in the Jewish national-cultural revival and grassroots initiative. This, however, does not diminish the significant, and in some aspects decisive, role played by Nativ (the Israeli government’s Liaison Bureau), the Jewish Agency for Israel (Sokhnut), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (Joint), religious movements, and other international Jewish organizations. These entities actively supported and occasionally initiated the growth of organized Jewish life and activity in the USSR and CIS, and, starting around 1994, began establishing their own institutional infrastructure in post-Soviet countries.

Third, the congress clearly initiated an ongoing and complex public dialogue between the emerging Russian-Jewish elites and the leadership of Israeli and international Jewish organizations. Essentially, the Vaad became the first large-scale and, crucially, legal organizational platform for Euro-Asian Jewry to establish multilateral connections with Jewish civilization and the wider Jewish world. This was a dramatic step forward compared to the isolated and symbolic attempts of underground coordinating and representative structures, whose role, of course, should not be underestimated.

Indeed, representatives of leading global Jewish organizations attended the first congress of the Union Vaad, and in the spring of 1991, the Vaad joined the World Jewish Congress (WJC). At that time, the delegation of Soviet Jews at the WJC plenary assembly proclaimed the creation of the Euro-Asian Section of the WJC, which a few months later was named the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC). However, this representative status was questioned by the leadership of several communities in the former USSR, which by the mid-1990s pursued independent integration into European Jewish structures, such as the European Jewish Congress (EJC), joined by Jewish associations of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Baltic states, and eventually, the Russian Jewish Congress.

Another challenge, as noted in an article by EAJC Director General Haim Ben-Yakov, was the persistent perception among foreign partners that organized Jewish life in Euro-Asia was merely a prelude to mass emigration, and that the very concept of "(post-)Soviet Jewry" would disappear within a few years[v]. This contradicted the view expressed by Mikhail Chlenov, head of the EAJC Strategic Council, who led the Vaad of the (former) USSR from its inception in 1989 until its dissolution in 2001, who argued that "Aliyah to Israel or emigration to the West is no longer the sole means for Russian-speaking Jews to connect with the global Jewish community"[vi].

It can be argued that both perspectives proved correct: the mass Aliyah of former Soviet Jews to Israel and the institutionalization of Jewish organizations and communities in post-Soviet countries became interconnected aspects of the same phenomenon of Jewish national-cultural revival in the former USSR. This reality was consolidated in 2001 when the EAJC transitioned from a formal external representative body of post-Soviet Jewry—lacking real influence over the Jewish umbrella organizations of the former Soviet republics, which were finding their own paths into international Jewish structures—into a fully-fledged regional branch of the WJC, holding the same status as other continental associations in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Israel. It is in this capacity that the EAJC must find adequate ways to realize opportunities and respond to the challenges defined by the objectives of the organization and its leaders.

Today, the primary tasks include:

– Transforming the Congress into an organizational and political center for peripheral Jewish communities in other countries of the continent;

– Enhancing its role as a key channel of influence on the vast "Russian-Jewish diaspora" that currently exists across dozens of countries on five continents;

– Utilizing the potential of interregional "umbrella" Jewish organizations, particularly the EAJC, to influence relations between key post-Soviet states (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and others) and Israel, as well as other nations whose societies now feature a demographically, economically, and politically significant Russian-Jewish component;

– Developing a coordination mechanism for members of macro-regional associations of Jewish communities in the "new" Eastern Europe, the post-Soviet space, the Balkan countries, as well as East and South Asia.

An additional matter requiring special attention under these new, altered conditions is the need for an objective assessment of the effectiveness of the various projects implemented by the Congress and its partner organizations aimed at preserving the Jewish communities of the Diaspora: their national-religious identity and culture, organizational structures in individual countries, subregions, and across the Euro-Asian space as a whole, and, naturally, strengthening their ties with one another and with the historical Homeland of the Jewish people.

This should also be viewed as a creative development of the ideas articulated 30 years ago at the first congress of Jewish organizations of the USSR.

[i] See archival and documentary materials on this topic: Vladimir Khanin, Documents on Ukrainian Jewish Identity and Emigration, 1944-1990 (London: Frank Cass, 2003); Ze'ev Khanin and Boris Morozov, "Traitors of the Homeland": Jewish Emigration through the Eyes of Soviet Authorities (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press, 2005, in Hebrew); and Boris Morozov, Jewish Emigration in Light of New Documents (Moscow: Ivrus, 1998).

[ii] For more details, see Alexander (Efraim) Kholmyansky, The Sound of Silence (Jerusalem, 2007)

[iii] Khanin V (Z). The Refusenik Community in Moscow: "Social Networks and Models of Identification", East European Jewish Affairs, London, Vol. 41, Nos. 1-2 (April-August 2011), P. 75–88

[iv] Altshuler M. "Soviet Jewry – A Community in Turmoil", Terms of Survival – The Jewish World Since 1945. Ed. by Robert S. Wistrich. London, Routledge, 1995. P. 195-230.

[v] Haim Ben-Yakov, "The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) in the Context of the Jewish Movement in the Former USSR," Jews of Europe and Asia: State, Heritage, and Prospects, Yearbook Vol. 1 (2018-2019/5779) Velvl Chernin et al. ed. ‑ Herzliya: Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019

[vi] Michael Chlenov, “Political Portrait of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress”, Jews of Eurasia, 28.04.2012 http://jewseurasia.org/page34/news30288.html