Posted on 08/04/2004 5:02:48 AM PDT by A. Pole
As the Iron Curtain began to fall, Igor Dzhadan left the Soviet Union with his family, bound for Israel and a longforbidden opportunity.
Dzhadan was luckier than most of the 11,000 Soviet doctors who rushed to Israel around the same time, 1990, under Israel's Law of Return. He was able to continue practice and research. Still, he returned to Russia in 2001 to become an editor at Moscow's Jewish News Agency.
"It was interesting for me to live in a Jewish state, but I feel more comfortable in Russia," Dzhadan said. "I knew from the experience of others that I could find work here and my life prospects wouldn't be worse than in Israel."
Dzhadan is part of a tide of emigrants who have returned to Russia from Israel over a litany of concerns: the second intifada, Israel's worsening economy, an inability to adapt to cultural and social realities. According to a study released this March, at least 50,000 emigrants returned from Israel from 2001 to 2003.
The exodus has stirred up a discussion in Israel, said Boruch Gorin, head of the public relations department at the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities, which commissioned the study. On the one hand, millions of Jews already live outside Israel. On the other hand, "living in Israel is an ideology, and tthat the people who sought a shelter in the country have been leaving is a blow to the ideology," he said.
Israel had two waves of Russian immigration that altogether boosted its population from 5 million to 6 million, according to Gorin. In the first wave, 200,000 Jews left the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The second wave, which coincided with perestroika in 1986, brought 800,000 more Soviet Jews.
Under the Law of Return, anyone having at least one Jewish grandparent may seek citizenship.
Recently, however, Israel has seen its population growth subside, with citizens leaving not only for Russia, but also Europe and the United States. Only 20,000 to 30,000 immigrants entered Israel from 2001 to 2003, which was for the first time less than the outflow, Gorin said, citing the study.
According to the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, up to 100,000 Jews left Russia annually in the 1990s; last year the number was down to 10,000.
At first, emigrants, mostly businessmen, began venturing back to Russia in 1995 in small numbers, Gorin said. Russia beckoned them then with greater economic potential and relative political and economic stability, Gorin said.
One such businessman was Anton Nossik, who came back in 1997 because, he said, his ambitions had outgrown the Israeli market. He left Russia in 1990 after graduating from college as a surgeon. He could not land a job in medicine and began working as a journalist.
His big success came in 1996, when he started a web design company and won orders to create web sites for the Museum and the Central Bank of Israel and the Eastern European department of the Foreign Ministry.
"In principle, everything was great and successful," Nossik said. "I won as many tenders as were available. But confining your business to a small and remote country is like hobbling a horse."
Nossik, 38, has created many high-profile Internet news sites in Russia, where, he said, the number of Internet users is 14.6 million, compared to just 2.2 million in Israel. His most successful news portals are Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru and Newsru.com.
The second tide of returns began in 2000, as the Russian economy developed sufficiently for returnees to find jobs with greater ease, sometimes within companies created by Jewish businessmen who returned in the late '90s.
At the same time, the start of the second intifada, in 2000, damaged security in Israel and, along with it, the investment and employment climate.
Although Dzhadan, 40, did not lose his job, he had to face military service. He was twice called to serve in heavy fighting areas, in Bethlehem and Hebron.
"I had to wait during operations to see whether there would be any wounded that I would have to treat," he said. "I saw dead bodies."
The 23-day conscriptions caused Dzhadan to lose his salary at work, and state compensation was hard to receive, he said, due to a tangled bureaucracy.
Another reason for returning was what Dzhadan called the "sectarian" structure of the society. In order to rent an apartment or find a job, a person has to operate through members of his party or immigrants from the same country or area.
"I didn't like it," he said. "I'm used to operating in an open society where people don't ask you to what community you belong."
Gorin named several other reasons that prompt Soviet and Russian Jews to come back. One of them is that most highly educated immigrants have to take blue-collar jobs in Israel. "Doctors, physicians and mathematicians were cleaning the streets," Gorin said.
Also, immigrants from Russia largely lacked a Jewish identity, while at the same time they longed for the Russian culture they left behind. They fled the Soviet Union because of its state policy of discrimination against Jews and felt they could then return once that policy had seen its end.
The Jews that have come back find many signs that they can feel more at home in Russia than before, one of them being the appointment of Mikhail Fradkov, whose father is Jewish, to the post of prime minister.
According to Gorin, the Jewish Community Center in Moscow, with a wide range of sports facilities, an Internet cafe and a library, is one of the best in Europe. Moscow is also home to four Jewish universities, 10 schools, three newspapers and one online news agency, Gorin said.
Anti-Semitism remains a problem, certainly, but it "isn't the main form of xenophobia in the country" and looks less frightening than elsewhere in Europe, according to a 2003 Moscow Human Rights Bureau report. "Russia has been spared the surge in anti-Semitism that has disturbed the whole Western world in the past three years," the report said.
Nossik said he feels fairly safe as a Jew, and is more scared by random street crime. He said he walks around in traditional Jewish headwear, a kippah, but the only time he was attacked in the street was when Russia lost to Japan during the 2002 soccer World Cup. He happened to be in the way of an infuriated drunken crowd of fans.
"I don't see anti-Semitism," he said. "I don't see a position that a Jew can't occupy, especially after Fradkov's latest appointment." Russia's capitalist economy "allows you to exist regardless of your religious beliefs."
Most Jews -- including Nossik and Dzhadan -- that come back to live and work in Russia retain Israeli citizenship and travel to Israel on a steady basis, Gorin said. Dzhadan said he plans to visit friends in Israel, but would never return there for good because he belongs to Russian "civilization."
Nossik did not rule out living in Israel in the future. "When I drop out of business for age or health reasons, I could go to Israel to enjoy the cuisine and the nature," Nossik said. "It's a very beautiful and pleasant country."
Leni
Bump
Right now French Jews are coming to Israel in record numbers. With the economy rapidly improving and Palestinian violence being checked by the IDF and the security barrier people aren't leaving and aliyah is increasing again, even from the States.
Many Russian olim came to Israel for economic reasons in the first place. They were never Zionists and some failed to integrate themselves into Israeli culture. For them to leave isn't surprising, but the vast majority have stayed in Israel and I suspect that will never change.
This history of often violent ant-Semitism in Russia is a long one. I would like to believe that it is in the past, but I am cognisant enough of history to fear that these Russian Jews may flee to Israel once again.
The article fails to consider the possibility that among the immigrants returning back to Russia a majority are ethnic Russian non-Jews, a significant number of whom immigrated to Israel in the 90s.
This issue is quite tricky - do you realize than no pogroms took place in Russia proper? They happened on the Ukraine.
The reason was old conflict between Jews and Ukranians caused by the system of arenda of XVII century in which Polish nobles gave Jewish overseers absolute power over serfs in exchange for high fees. The worst largest pogroms occured during the peasant revolt of Khmelnitsky when countless Jews and Poles perished.
I know personally two Jewish families which returned to Russia from United States (one of them was living for years in Israel). On the other hand you can have ethnic Russians (usually married to a Jew) who do not want to go back.
And a ping for those on Alouette's list, she's away from her computor.
Yes, the pogroms were mostly within what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, all then parts of the Czarist Russian empire. Jews had already been restricted to the Pale of Settlement by that time and weren't allowed to live in Russia proper. The policies of forced conscription, forced assimilation, and eventually extermination came from the Czarist government. The Black Hundreds were funded by the Czar.
Sorry, I can't let Russia off the hook that easily. Indeed, all the nations in that region, including Poland, have a history of anti-Semitism. That is NOT a reflection on the people living there today, who should be judged as individuals, or the governments of today. Indeed, both Poland and Ukraine are positioning themselves as close allies of the United States and have excellent relations with Israel. Relations between Russia and Israel, while not nearly as close, are still cordial.
Looking at all the countries in the region I am much more sanguine about Poland and Ukraine than I am about the Russian Federation. Indeed, the direction both the Polish government and people are moving in, politically, socially, and economically is very positive. I cannot say the same for Russia under Putin, as much as I would like to.
The worst atrocities took place in XVII century and at that time the area was under Polish rule (and Poles were among the victims too). Forced conscription or draft applied to all ethnic/religious groups. Russia did not have a volunteer army. Extermination?! First time I hear something like that.
Present day Russia is different place for most part, especially from crap that western communist media print.
I read a good analysis by Israeli historian of Khmelnitsky's revolt. He says that majority is overrated...why? Because he did research on census before and after (ok within 20 years after) but applying natural growth rate...two things come up: one Khmelnitsky could not have killed off so many Jews because all of Eastern Europe did not have as many as was claimed. two: the Jewish population was way to high on the next census for such massive depopulations.
I would humbly suggest that you do some research on "The League of Russian People" a/k/a the Black Hundreds, who organized the pogroms of 1905-06. They were pro-Czarist, used to put down revolution and instill terror, and their stated policy towards the Jews was extermination and they were (albeit unofficially) backed and funded by the Czarist government.
My grandparents left, and never looked back; neither wiull I.
"This issue is quite tricky - do you realize than no pogroms took place in Russia proper? They happened on the Ukraine"
This has virtually no basis in reality. Pogroms, state sponsored and otherwise, took place not just in the Ukraine but all over the Pale of Settlement (Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland) into which Jews had been herded by Russia, and particularly in Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Herewith a map:
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/pogroms.htm
"The reason was old conflict between Jews and Ukranians caused by the system of arenda of XVII century in which Polish nobles gave Jewish overseers absolute power over serfs in exchange for high fees. The worst largest pogroms occured during the peasant revolt of Khmelnitsky when countless Jews and Poles perished"
There were many reasons for the anti-Semitism which even today flourishes in Central and Eastern Europe. Jews were and are still hated for every reason under the sun: because they were rich, because they were poor, because they were weak, because they were powerful. The chief reason though was the virulent and incessant anti-Semitism spread by the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.
The Khmelnitsky revolt had absolutely nothing to do with the pogroms which occurred in the territories controlled by the Russian Empire in the last thirty years of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century.
For those who doubt the very long history of Russian anti-Semitism, go to Google and search the terms "Russian anti-Semitism" and "Russia + anti-Semitism."
Furthermore, your own experiences of Russian Jews are obviously so limited that they can be utterly discounted. It is beyond dispute though that Israel, in an act of supreme insanity, let in hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Russians who had zip feelings for the Jewish state in the last decade or so. It therefore wouldn't be surprising if they have run away at the first sign of trouble. In actual fact, very many immigrants to the US, especially from Eastern Europe (not Jewish) left these shores within a few years of arriving, so there is a precedent here.
There were jews outside of Pale, professionals of the first and second order allowed to move to major cities. Extermination was never policy...again it occured during civil unrest but not once policy. Assimulation become policy under Alexander III & Nicholas II.
Of course in consideration that most Jews of Eastern Europe fled Western Europe during mass pogroms and total expulsions, like what Richard Lionhearted did.
That is your choice, though lack of freedoms or economy may change that one day.
"The worst atrocities took place in XVII century and at that time the area was under Polish rule (and Poles were among the victims too)."
The worst atrocities took place during the Holocaust when the Nazis together with their countless collaborators in Eastern and Central Europe murdered millions of Jews.
To begin with, Jews not herded into Pale. Pale is where Jews living when Russia aquire such territories as in Ukraine and Poland. Thus they ordered to remain and not migrate further east, and again that apply to villagers not professionals. One such reason is the already land hunger in Russia proper.
"There were jews outside of Pale, professionals of the first and second order allowed to move to major cities."
This was extremely rare.
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