The Question of Belonging: New Perspectives on Late Soviet Jewish Emigration

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel offers new perspectives on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union in the era of late socialism and highlights how it was shaped by a range of actors and processes within and outside the Soviet borders. We explore how memory politics and material culture contributed to the revival and consolidation of Jewish identities in the Soviet Union and the ways in which Soviet Jewish emigration was shaped by global consciousness of the Holocaust, the international politics of migration, and transnational activism. Together, these papers shed light on the experiences of Soviet Jews as they wrestled with questions of belonging and challenges of emigration in the final decades of Soviet empire.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Maxim Matusevich, Seton Hall U

Papers

• No Monument: Kyiv and the Soviet Jewish Experience - Victoria Smolkin, Wesleyan U

• Soviet Jewish Migrants in Italy: The Position of the Italian Government - Denis Kozlov, Dalhousie U (Canada)

• Artefacts of Dissent: Material Culture of the Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration - Dina Fainberg, City St George's, U of London (UK)