Letter: Russia: it wasn’t antisemitism

A sentence that was added by an editor for context to my article for Solidarity 688, on the antisemitic protests in Dagestan, unintentionally misrepresented my views on migration to Israel from the (former) Soviet Union. Contrary to the editor, I do not believe that the majority of Soviet Jews were “fleeing Russian antisemitism”. While Soviet Russia certainly had a horrific history of antisemitism, by the 1980s and 1990s this was considerably less pronounced than it had been for almost the entirety of the rest of the union’s existence.

The reasons for migration to Israel were far more linked to the comparative prosperity and better economic prospects in Israel (and elsewhere) than the threat of violence at home. Russia’s collapsing public infrastructure and the impending economic destruction of shock therapy were significant factors that drove millions to opt for emigration. Jewish people were a significant portion of those millions — but by most indicators, this was due to existing familial and cultural ties with the hundreds of thousands that migrated to Israel and the USA in the 1970s. It is misleading to suggest that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a significant threat of antisemitic violence, and that the Jews that left were emigrating for different reasons to the many other Soviet citizens who emigrated in the 1990s.

Michael Baker, Enfield