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The long silent revolution: capturing the life stories of Soviet-Jewish migrants to the West, 1970–2010
Author(s): Kobrin, Rebecca A.; Oppenheim, Jay
Date: 2017
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Russian Emigration, Russian-Speaking Jews, Aliyah, Oral History and Biography
Abstract: How can the prism of self-reflection help scholars see the mass exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union and its successor states in new ways? This article discusses the first effort to collect the life stories of the 1.6 million Jews and their non-Jewish relatives who left the former Soviet Union between 1970 and 2000. Believing that autobiographical essays elicits a unique perspective on Russian Jewish migration that would otherwise not be known, the authors set out to collect autobiographical materials from members of this last wave of Russian-Jewish migration through autobiography contests modeled after contests run by Max Weinreich and the YIVO Institute in the early twentieth century. Through its discussion of the two winning autobiographies collected through the contests, the article demonstrates why the full social scientific study of the role Russian Jewish migrants played in shaping Jewish history needs to pay heed to the voices and stories of regular migrants