Memory, Nostalgia, and the Transnational Meanings of the Russian-Jewish Past after 1953

• In Event: Transnationalism in Soviet Jewish Identity and Emigration

Abstract

Drawing on primary materials documenting informal encounters between Soviet Jews and foreign—predominantly Israeli—tourists to the USSR during the late 1950s-1960s, this presentation offers an initial mapping of the divergent ways in which the Jewish past in Russia and the USSR was understood, conceptualized, and utilized by Soviet Jews themselves, as well as by Jewish communities and institutions in the West and Israel. It will show how rather than merely reflecting actual Soviet-Jewish realities, these conceptualizations of Soviet Jewry juxtaposed questions of historical memory, nostalgia and Jewish and Israeli self-identification in the first decades of the Cold War. While many contemporary interpretations – mostly in Israel and the West – tended to frame emerging Soviet-Jewish self-understanding in dichotomous terms of “oppression” vs. “reawakening,” I suggest that Soviet Jewish historical self-reflection did not correspond to such a simplistic understanding. In this sense, Jewish-Soviet dynamics closely aligned with broader patterns of historical reflection and rapprochement characteristic of mainstream Soviet public discourse during the Thaw years.

Author

• Alex Valdman, Ben Gurion U (Israel)