Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The Jews of Russia: historical background; 2. The Jews of the Soviet Union: the years of construction, 1917–1939; 3. The years of destruction, 1939–1953; 4. The post-Stalin period, 1953–1983; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

This is a comprehensive and topical history of the Jews in the Soviet Union.

Reviews

'Through sifting memoirs, newspaper reports, oral histories and official documents, Pinkus recreates the precarious history of the Soviet Jews more fully and vividly than previous writers.' Publishers Weekly

'Through sifting memoirs, newspaper reports, oral histories and official documents, Pinkus recreates the precarious history of the Soviet Jews more fully and vividly than previous writers.' Publishers Weekly

This authoritative history of Soviet Jewry holds new insights. Behind the seemingly spontaneous massacres of Jews in tsarist Russia, Pinkus detects the guiding hand of Moscow. He assesses the Bolsheviks' equivocal attempts to solve the ``Jewish question,'' first by permitting the creation of Jewish Soviets and law courts, then by forcing Jews to move to remote Birobidzhan, made an Autonomous Jewish Region in 1934 in an experiment foredoomed to failure. Pinkus, professor of history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and author of The Soviet Government and the Jews, traces the remarkable blossoming of Jewish culture in the U.S.S.R. despite inbred, institutionalized anti-Semitism. After the grim ``years of destruction'' under Stalin, Jews began circulating their own samizdat, or underground pamphlets. Today the synagogue has again become an important meeting place. Through sifting memoirs, newspaper reports, oral histories and official documents, Pinkus recreates the precarious history of the Soviet Jews more fully and vividly than previous writers. (August)