The Jewish Movement in the Context of Soviet Dissidence
Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Connections and tensions between activists for Jewish emigration and the democratic rights activists in the final decades of the Soviet Union have been well documented. In this paper, I will consider the movement for Jewish emigration and culture in the 1960s-1980s within the broader spectrum of Soviet dissident groups and activities. In particular, I will compare unofficial Jewish cultural activity and literary dissidence not associated with the Jewish movement, focusing on activity in Leningrad. I shall seek to elucidate how this comparative perspective allows us to gain critical distance on established narratives about the Soviet Jewish movement, and facilitates greater attention to the cultural and community-building activity that ran parallel to and provided a foundation for the high profile political struggle for aliya.
This paper builds on my research of Jewish samizdat done for the volume on The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union, edited by Yaacov Ro`i, 2012, as well as my edition of Yuli Kosharovsky`s history of the Soviet Jewish Movement, We Are Jews Again, forthcoming from Syracuse University Press, 2017. The aim is to develop research into the cultural activity in Leningrad, which was less known to an international public at the time, but which had important implications for reconstructing Russian Jewish identity. While many who were active there at that time left Leningrad, the specifically Russian Jewish identity they helped revive continues to shape Jewish lives and imaginations across the three continents where former Soviet Jews now live.
This paper builds on my research of Jewish samizdat done for the volume on The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union, edited by Yaacov Ro`i, 2012, as well as my edition of Yuli Kosharovsky`s history of the Soviet Jewish Movement, We Are Jews Again, forthcoming from Syracuse University Press, 2017. The aim is to develop research into the cultural activity in Leningrad, which was less known to an international public at the time, but which had important implications for reconstructing Russian Jewish identity. While many who were active there at that time left Leningrad, the specifically Russian Jewish identity they helped revive continues to shape Jewish lives and imaginations across the three continents where former Soviet Jews now live.
Ann Komaromi
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