Thinking Beyond the »Soviet Jewry« Narrative

The discursive construct of »Soviet Jewry,« defined as a homogeneous unit, was shaped to a significant extent by the Soviet regime’s centralistic features, including its nationalities policies. The concept of a »Soviet Jewry« was also widely adopted in the West during the Cold War era. It persisted as a trope in scholarship and public discourse, both in East and West, as long as the Soviet Union existed, and it continues to retain retrospective currency even today. Yet, seen subjectively from within the Jewish perspective, the Soviet environment was diverse and heterogeneous, and so were the experiences of Soviet Jews. Other populations, residing in the various (sometimes remote) parts of the Soviet state, similarly experienced life under the Soviet regime in ways fundamentally distinct from the dominant, »central,« Soviet normativity.

The spectrum of Jewish behaviors and experiences, spanning the broad middle ground between conformity to Soviet norms and values, at one end, and the heroic struggle for emigration, at the other end, has yet to receive serious attention. Thinking beyond the familiar narratives of assimilation, state oppression, and radical dissent, we aim to spotlight and examine the ethnic, cultural, and social diversity of Soviet Jews. We also seek to redirect our attention from the center to the Jewish communities at the Soviet »periphery,« in the so-called Soviet »national republics«.
The continuity of Jewish traditions, whether of pre-Soviet origin or having arisen in the wake of Sovietization, was palpable in many places outside Moscow and Leningrad – including Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova, as well as the Baltic, Caucasus, and Central Asian republics. Scholars have, for instance, pointed to the persistence of the Yiddish-speaking culture. Paramount also, was the vivid (whether explicit or tacit) memory of the Holocaust, associated exactly with these places.

We are interested in exploring the porous borders of Soviet (non)Jewishness, and the character and intensity of Jewish-non-Jewish encounters in the Soviet peripheries. Soviet Jews, who were simultaneous »insiders and outsiders,« were an integral part of Soviet society that, on the one hand, contributed to its construction and development and, on the other, as some scholars suggest, helped to expedite its unanticipated dissolution. This pericentral and decentralized gaze should facilitate the illumination of oft-overlooked themes and methodological issues in Jewish and Soviet history: everyday living and its effect on the identity of Soviet Jewry; Jewish subjectivity as it evolved under the severe objectivization imposed by the regime; social contacts and networks; gender and age; relationships with others, at the group-level and the micro level; and the convergence as well as divergence of Jewish narratives with the (late)Soviet national narratives. Shifting the focal paradigm by foregrounding multiple local Jewish experiences is also intended to highlight center-periphery relations as they were established in Soviet, East European and Jewish Studies.