The Two Waves of Russian-Jewish Migration from the USSR/FSU to Israel: Dissidents of the 1970s and Pragmatics of the 1990s

Drawing on a hybrid view of migrant generations (demographic and historical/political), I examine generational dynamics among Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel. The first wave of Soviet Jewish migration to Israel in the early 1970s (some 150,000 migrants) was catalyzed by a surge of Zionist sentiment after Israel’s victory in 1967 and enabled by strong political pressure on the USSR from the West. Reflecting their Zionist persuasion, the 1970s arrivals often discarded their former identities, switched to Hebrew, and soon integrated into Israel’s social mainstream. By contrast, the 1990s wave was set in motion by the political turmoil and economic hardships of the post-communist transition, while Zionist ideals were secondary to most émigrés. About 1 million ex-Soviets of Jewish descent migrated to Israel as the most accessible destination throughout the 1990s. They have kept intense and positive ties with their former homeland, in part because one-third of them are Russians married to Jews or mixed ethnics and have family members remaining in the Former Soviet Union. At the same time, their integration in Israel has been fraught with problems. The different attitudes toward the ex-homeland among the parental generations of the 1970s and 1990s have influenced the extent of Russian cultural continuity among their children born in Israel.