The Russians are Coming

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The exit out of the former Soviet Union that began in the 1970s and reached its peak in the 1990s, following the dissolution of the USSR, led to the subsequent worldwide resettlement over four decades of almost two million Soviet Jews. A large majority of these Jewish emigrants relocated to Israel and the US, while others found new homes in other western countries, including, it is suggested, probably around 12,000 in Australia. Indeed throughout the period, Soviet Jews represented one of the three major sources (alongside South Africa and Israel) of new Jewish immigration to Australia. However, for many of these former Soviet citizens, the resettlement process, particularly their reception and integration into their new ‘communities’ did not always go as the Jewish leaders and activists who had helped facilitate their exit from the USSR had envisaged.

In this paper, I first present an overview of the broader historical contexts of both Jewish life under the Soviets and the process of emigration since the 1970s . I then explore the broader demographic characteristics of those former Soviet citizens who chose to settle in Australia as well as some of their post-immigration adaptation issues. I conclude by identifying a few of the more significant sociological, psychological, cultural and political factors that together may have contributed to the observable tendency for many Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union and their families to still both be perceived as, and to see themselves as “Russians”; a social identity that remains separate and distinct from other Australian-born and other immigrant Jews, who together constitute  ‘mainstream’ urban Jewish community life in contemporary Australia.

Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, Vol. XXIIII (part 1), 2016, --. 149-186