Aliyah from the Soviet Union in the 1970s

In the 1970s a major immigration wave of Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

went to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

Background

A mass emigration was politically undesirable for the Soviet regime. In the wake of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

's victory in the Six-Day War

Six-Day War

The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...

in 1967, the USSR broke off the diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Anti-Zionist

Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...

propaganda campaign in the state-controlled mass media

Mass media

Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

and the rise of Zionology

Zionology

Soviet Anti-Zionism was a doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the course of the Cold War, and intensified after the 1967 Six Day War. It was officially sponsored by the Department of propaganda of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and by the KGB. It alleged that Zionism was a form...

were accompanied by harsher discrimination of the Soviet Jews. By the end of 1960s, Jewish cultural and religious life in the Soviet Union had become practically impossible, and the majority of Soviet Jews were assimilated

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...

and non-religious

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

.

The sense of pride for victorious Jewish nation over Soviet-armed Arab armies stirred up Zionist feelings.

Many were formally refused permission

Refusenik

Refusenik originally referred to citizens of the former Soviet Union who were refused permission to emigrate.Refusenik or refusnik may also refer to:*An Israeli conscientious objector, see Refusal to serve in the Israeli military...

to leave. A typical excuse given by the OVIR (ОВиР), the MVD

Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs

The Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del is the interior ministry of Russia. Its predecessor was founded in 1802 by Alexander I in Imperial Russia...

department responsible for provisioning of exit visas was that the persons who had been given access at some point in their careers to information vital to Soviet national security

National security

National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...

could not be allowed to leave the country.

The increase in the number of emigrants

After the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair in 1970 and the crackdown that followed, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to increase the emigration quota. In the years 1960-1970, only 4,000 people left the USSR; in the following decade, the number rose to 250,000.

In 1972 the USSR imposed the so-called "diploma

Diploma

A diploma is a certificate or deed issued by an educational institution, such as a university, that testifies that the recipient has successfully completed a particular course of study or confers an academic degree. In countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, the word diploma refers to...

tax" on would-be emigrants who received higher education

Higher education

Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...

in the USSR. In some cases, the fee was as high as twenty annual salaries. This measure was apparently designed to combat the brain drain

Brain drain

Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as "brain drain", is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge. The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from countries and individuals...

caused by the growing emigration of Soviet Jews and other members of the intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

to the West. Following international protests, the Kremlin

Moscow Kremlin

The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...

soon revoked the tax, but continued to sporadically impose various limitations.

Many of those allowed to leave to Israel chose other destinations, most notably the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

The emigration policy of the USSR

Whoever requested to leave the USSR had to apply for a visa, which would have a request letter from a family member living in the same country which they were interested in emigrating to. The person sending of the visa, would be obligated to support his family member. The request of the family member should be notarized in the country of origin, and then sent to the family member that lives in the USSR. The person requesting the visa would then need to go to the department of the Ministry of the Interior, which was called “Ovir” (the office of visas and to registrations of the Ministry of the Interior). In the Ministry of the Interior he had to fill all sorts of documents, which partly included filling up intrusive questions which weren’t pleasant to answer. . One then had to bring a “karakteristika” – a sort of a recommendation letter from his manager in his workplace. To obtain a visa he also had to get approvals from any children's schools and from the local community where he was living. An approval that one did not have any economic debts inside the USSR, an approval from ones parents and even an approval from one’s divorcee if the person requesting the visa was divorced. If the emigrant was a party member, he had to obtain an approval from the offices of the local party and from the professional union that they had agreed he could leave. After all the approvals were handed in and everyone affiliated with the person requesting the visa was notified of his intention to leave the country, all the documents were handed to the “Ovir”, with an additional payment of forty Russian rubles. Typically, an official response to the request would arrive after half a year. If the answer was positive, then one had to hand in confirmations attesting that any children had left their schools, and that one had left the workplace and that the apartment had been sold. During the six day war, the emigration wave from the USSR almost stopped completely, and in addition to that the authorities did not accept any requests for emigration visas. The reason was that the USSR supported the Arab states during the war, and due to a dissociation with Israel.
In 1971 the anti-Zionist wave reached a record, and even so, during this year a decision was made by the senior decision makers regarding the granting of exit-visas to emigrating Jews.

Factors for the emigration

The overwhelming victory of Israel during the Six-Day War

Six-Day War

changed the opinion of many of the Jews in the USSR. The victory increased the feeling of Jewish pride amongst them. Furthermore, it increased their feeling of alienation with the USSR, which had a pact with the Arab states during the course of the war. After the war the Soviet Jews started to send letters to the Soviet authorities in demand of letting them immigrate to Israel. Except for the arousal of the national emotions amongst the Jews of the USSR, there were also additional reasons for them to choose to emigrate:

Jews were discriminated against in higher education institutions (in a policy known as Numerus clausus
Numerus clausus
Numerus clausus is one of many methods used to limit the number of students who may study at a university. In many cases, the goal of the numerus clausus is simply to limit the number of students to the maximum feasible in some particularly sought-after areas of studies.However, in some cases,...

), by government institutions, and in professional advancement.
Anti-Zionistic propaganda was common in the Soviet media.
Many Jews were dissatisfied with the political and economical situation.
Increased nationalism among Soviet nations made some Jews consider their right for a national identity.
There was increased communication between Soviet Jews and Jews worldwide.

The absorption of the emigration wave

During the 1970s, about 163,000 people emigrated to Israel from the USSR; the majority of the emigration wave happened actually between the years 1969 to 1973. In comparison with the other emigrants who emigrated to Israel during the same period of time, it is reported that the emigrants of the USSR felt a strong connection with Israel, and most intended to remain in the country.

In comparison to the emigrants who arrived from the western countries, a smaller percentage of the USSR emigrants reported that they were unsatisfied with their jobs. In the aspect of finding a job, only one third from the workers claimed that the state helped them finding work.

The USSR emigrants during those years felt that the acquisition of the Hebrew language was important almost as finding housing and employment, and therefore they considered it a high priority. Language schools (“Ulpan”) were set up by the country and available for free for the immigrants, which helped them acquire the Hebrew language.

Background

The increase in the number of emigrants

The emigration policy of the USSR

Factors for the emigration

The absorption of the emigration wave

See also