We Are Jews Again

This book is a condensed version of the extensive, four-volume history of the Soviet Jewish Movement originally published in Russian during 2008–2012 by one of its key activists, the late Yuli Kosharovsky (1941–2014). The edited English edition makes this compelling insider account of Soviet Jewish activism from the early 1960s till the demise of the USSR in the late 1980s accessible to western readers. While the joint pressure of American and Israeli Jewish lobbies on the Soviet government to diminish state anti-Semitism and allow free Jewish emigration has been covered in multiple books, the story of the Soviet Jewish activists themselves is far less known. This is why “We Are Jews Again” makes a valuable addition to this literature: Kosharovsky’s memoirs and interviews with the key activists offer a detailed, first-hand account of how this civic movement unfolded at the backdrop of the last three decades of the Soviet regime, how Jewish activists weathered the challenges and persecution by the Soviet secret police.

Demise · Economic history · Emigration · Insider · Judaism · Memoir · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Soviet union · State (computer science) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies