How Soviet Jews Confounded American Jews (and Still Do)

Soviet Jews began arriving in the US in the mid-1970s, with that wave culminating in 1979, before picking up again during Glasnost and post the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

The American Jews who’d battled so hard for their release were confused. They thought these newcomers would be just like them. After all, hadn’t their own grandparents left Russia because they were warriors for socialism who were being cruelly repressed by the Czar? Isn’t that why they came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century? To continue the political struggles on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and elsewhere across the country? Chicago? San Francisco? Boston?

What do you mean the Soviet Jewish refugees were anti-socialism? What could have possibly turned them against it? What do you mean a lifetime spent having a glorious socialist future shoved down their throats only to witness the reality of it, the political repression, the lack of food and housing, the arbitrary arrests for not properly towing the party line or the re-education camps for those deemed not progressive enough, made them think that maybe the left side of the political spectrum wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?

Who were they going to believe, their own eyes, or what people who’d gotten political science degrees from Brandeis and Columbia and Barnard wrote their dissertations about?

Read more at: https://awriterofhistory.com/2025/05/01/how-soviet-jews-confounded-american-jews-and-still-do/