Over two hundred thousand Jews have left the Soviet Union since 1971. Perhaps fifty thousand Germans as well as hundreds of dissidents of various national origin have also emigrated in this period. While this development is largely taken for granted today, few observers anticipated it in the late 1960s. Nonetheless, for all the element of unpredictability, the new Jewish emigration – a phenomenon which has its roots deep in Soviet history – is the culmination of a long and complex process.

This work examines the Soviet policies towards the nationality problem in general and the Jews in particular during the years 1948–67. Although emigration was not then treated by the Soviet government as a legitimate policy alternative, the period from the late Stalin years to the 1967 War in the Middle East saw the maturation of those factors which made possible the volte-face of March 1971. It was a time of critical historical importance in the development of Soviet Jewry.

In 1948, the State of Israel was established with the decisive support of the USSR and other countries of the Soviet bloc. At the same time, the years 1948–9 witnessed the murder (by the secret police) of the famous Yiddish actor, Shlomo Mikhoels; the closing of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; the liquidation of all the institutions responsible for Yiddish culture; and the launching of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. This dichotomy revealed as never before, and in their most extreme form, the contradictions inherent in Soviet policy towards its Jewish population.