This is a comprehensive and topical history of the Jews in the Soviet Union and is based on firsthand documentary evidence and the application of a pioneering research method into the fate of national minorities. Within a four-part chronological framework, Professor Pinkus examines not only the legal-political status of the Jews, and their reciprocal relationship with the Soviet majority, but also the impact of internal economic, demographic and social processes upon the religious, educational and cultural life of Soviet Jewry. A second layer of analysis describes in depth the complex...

Provides the English reader with a comprehensive study, based on first-hand documentary material, of Soviet policy towards the Jews of the USSR from the Stalinist era, through to the interregnum (1953 7), the Khrushchev period and the 'collective leadership' of Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny (1964 7). In 1948 the State of Israel was established with the support of the Soviet bloc. But the period 1948 53 (the so-called 'black years'), also witnessed the murder of the actor Shlomo Mikhoels, the closing of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the liquidation of all Jewish cultural institutions,...