Zvi Gitelman

Soviet Political Culture and “Covert Participation” in Policy Implementation

Our study of political participation in the Soviet Union, based on interviews with recent emigres, leads us to conclude that Soviet political culture is neither a “subject” nor a “subject-participant” one. There are meaningful forms of participation in the system, but they take place either outside the nominally participatory institutions, or within those institutions but in nonprescribed ways. The citizen may participate covertly, utilizing unsanctioned or blatantly illegal methods in attempts to influence policy implementation, not policymaking. The findings support the concept that traditional, prerevolutionary modes of citizen-state interactions are reinforced by the pattern of Soviet socioeconomic development and by a highly centralized and hierarchical administrative structure, itself a continuation of tsarist patterns. This study describes how different types of Soviet citizens try to influence policy implementation, and how they differentiate among the bureaucracies. Analysis of this activity leads us to reformulate our conception of Soviet political culture.

Soviet Political Culture: Insights From Jewish Emigres

(1977). Soviet political culture: Insights from Jewish Emigres. Soviet Studies: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 543-564.

Religion and ethnicity: Judaism in the ethnic consciousness of contemporary Russian Jews

Jews have debated whether they are a racial, religious, ethnic or cultural group. Historically, Judaism (religion) and Jewish ethnicity have been fused. The Soviet regime suppressed traditional Jewish identities and substituted a secular, socialist Jewishness based on Yiddish which proved unpopular. Now that they are free to reconstruct Jewish life, we interviewed 1,300 Jews in three Russian cities to ascertain what they think being Jewish means. Judaism plays a very small role in their conceptions of Jewishness. To the extent that religious rituals are observed, they are manifestations of ‘symbolic ethnicity’. Many do not ‘feel’ Jewish because their culture and consciousness are largely Russian. Nevertheless, they are interested in learning more about Jewish traditions and culture. A Jewish ‘civil religion’ may emerge in Russia. Jewish identities have varied over space and time, and a uniquely Russian Jewish identity may evolve in the coming years.

Soviet Zion : the quest for a Russian Jewish homeland

Anti-Semitism, Anticapitalism, and Jewish Colonization - Establishing the Partnership for Jewish Colonization - Larin, Bragin, and the Soviet Jewish Technocratic Elite - Mikhail Kalinin and Soviet Political Leadership - James Rosenberg and the American Jewish Community - Semyon Dimanshtein and the Jewish Communists - The Antagonists: Russians, Zionists, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars - Crimea Defeated - To a Jewish Land: The Soviet Jewish Territories - Death and Determination: War, Revival, and the Final Defeat of the Territorial Idea - Contemporary Resonances

Ethnic identity and ethnic relations among the Jews of the non-European USSR

Abstract This study of ethnic identity and ethnic relations in the Caucasus and Central Asia uses a 1985 sample of Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel. Georgian, ‘Bukharan’ (Central Asian) and Mountain Jews are more attached to religion and tradition than their Ashkenazi brethren. They do not use religion as a surrogate for ethnicity, and they have a strong sense of ethnic identification, including a highly specific self‐identity as Georgian, Bukharan or Mountain Jews, different from other Jews. Georgian Jews report less frequent encounters with anti‐Semitism than any other Jewish group, but all groups believe that ethnicity plays a major role in daily life, in encounters with officials, and in social relations. Ethnic stereotypes and ethnic distances are clearly revealed in tests among the respondents. Ethnicity emerges as an important factor in daily life and ethnic gaps appear quite wide. These conclusions are supported by recent events in the USSR.

Developments in Soviet Politics

A new Soviet politics?, S. White redefining Soviet Socialism, A.B.Evans the leadership, P.Willerton the party, R.J.Hill the Soviet state system, J.Hahn agencies of control, W.Butler the Soviet multinational state, Z.Gitelman patterns of political participation, N.Lampert economic management and reform, P.Rutland social policies and issues, M.Buckley the politics of foreign and security policy, A.Pravda perfecting the socialist political system, Y.Ambertsumov the social basis of Perestroika, D.Mandel Gorbachevs revolution and communist politics, K.Jowitt.

Developments in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics

Preface - List of Tables, Figures and Exhibits - List of Abbreviations - Notes on Contributors - Introduction: From Communism to Democracy? S.White - PART ONE THE NEW RUSSIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM - Yeltsin and the Russian Presidency J.P.Willerton - Representative Power and the Russian State T.F.Remington - Parties and the Party System R.J.Hill - Citizen and State Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin R.Sharlet - PART TWO PATTERNS OF PUBLIC POLICY - The Economy: The Rocky Road from Plan to Market P.Rutland - Privatisation: The Politics of Capital and Labour S.Clarke - The Politics of Social Issues M.Buckley - The Politics of Foreign Policy A.Pravda - PART THREE POST-SOVIET NATIONS AND STATES - Nationality and Ethnicity in Russia and the Post-Soviet Republics Z.Gitelman - Politics Outside Russia D.Slider - PART FOUR CONCEPTUALISING THE POLITICS OF POST-SOVIET RUSSIA - Russia, Communism, Postcommunism R.Sakwa - Normalisation and Legitimacy in Post-Communist Russia L.Holmes - Guide to Further Reading - Index

THE PHOENIX? JEWISH STUDIES IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE

In the two decades since the collapse of Communist systems in the USSR and Eastern Europe, change in economies and polities has been greater in some countries than in others. Thus, while Belarus and the Central Asian Republics have undergone relatively little transformation, the three Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania have been admitted to the European Union. Russia and Ukraine headed for market economies and democracy in the 1990s and 2004, respectively, but reverted to more authoritarian politics and state-controlled economies. By contrast, one is struck by the across-the-board revival of Jewish studies in those countries that had such a tradition before Communism. No post-Communist state has impeded the development of Jewish studies in institutions of higher education, though some of the institutions have been more receptive than others to this area of academic endeavour. During the Communist period, Jewish studies were deliberately excluded from academia in most of the Soviet bloc, as several essays in this issue make clear. What may be less apparent to the contemporary reader is why this was so. Communists were ideologically committed to the equality of nationalities and religions. Indeed, they looked forward to their disappearance as vestiges of the capitalist exploiting classes deliberately constructed to divert the proletariat’s attention from their misery, and focus their emotions and loyalties on ethnicity and religion. In the first decade after the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Bolsheviks adhered faithfully to the promise of equality of all peoples, but mounted anti-religious campaigns against all the faiths adhered to by the many peoples of what had become the Soviet Union. By the mid-1930s, Joseph Stalin had abandoned the Leninist policy of equality of nationalities, though lip service continued to be paid to “friendship of the peoples” and “proletarian internationalism.” Stalin, a Georgian, made it clear that the Russian people were first among equals. The Russianizing trend was accelerated during World War Two and by the anti-Western and anti-Jewish policies of late Stalinism (1948–1953). The campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans” in the USSR (1949 ff.) was paralleled—and no doubt, triggered—by the trials of the Jews in the Czechoslovak political leadership (Rudolf Slansky et al.). The Soviet Union’s increasing hostility toward Israel and the post-Stalin campaigns against Zionism and Judaism were followed by most of the Bloc countries, except Romania. Poland launched its own anti-semitic campaign in 1968 as a result of the Polish public’s sympathy with Israel in the 1967 war, internal power struggles in the Polish United Workers Party (the ruling Communist Party), and a crackdown on intellectual and political dissent. As a result, in all socialist

A jagged circle: from ethnicity to internationalism to cosmopolitanism – and back

Over the last 150 years, Jews of the former Russian Empire have moved for the most part from an unequivocal sense of their Jewishness and acceptance thereof, to a fascination with the possibility of submerging their ethnicity in a new world of undifferentiated humanity, or to maintaining it, but as a Soviet nationality among other nationalities. They moved from an intense, unquestioned sense of being Jewish to a ‘cosmopolitan’ meta-ethnic identity as ‘Soviet people’. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many are moving back to a more positive cognisance of their Jewishness, though they are uncertain about what it is and what behaviours should flow from it. Post-Soviet Jews have not come full circle ‘back home,’ but have traversed wide expanses only to return to a now unfamiliar ‘neighbourhood’: a sense of Jewishness that remains somewhat undefined despite the efforts of foreign Jews to define it for them.

Documents on Ukrainian Jewish Identity and Emigration 1944-1990 (review)

From the late 1960s on, successive Soviet governments were confronted by Jewish citizens’ demands to emigrate—demands supported by many in the West. Perhaps surprisingly, the Soviet regime took these demands seriously. True, Jews had the highest levels of education of any Soviet nationality and were almost completely urbanized, placing them near the levers of power, though few could actually approach them. On the other hand, Jews constituted less than 2 percent of the population in every Soviet republic, and they had long since abandoned or been deprived of all their political, social, and cultural institutions. The documents in this volume demonstrate that in Ukraine, which had well over a third of the Soviet Jewish population, ofacials in the Communist Party, the State Security Committee (KGB), and government took very seriously the challenge posed by the would-be émigrés. The authorities mobilized the mass media, party and state organs, economic enterprises, and domestic and foreign opinion to try to counter the demands of the Jewish activists. As A. Grigorenko, a secretary of the Chernivtsi oblast party committee, wrote in 1967: “The Party obkoms [provincial committees], gorkoms [city committees], raikoms [district or rural committees], together with the primary [Communist] Party organizations at . . . enterprises . . . and institutions are carefully studying the attitudes and remarks of citizens of Jewish nationality” (p. 156). Because the regime had no intention of satisfying Jewish aspirations or demands, Jews saw this “study” as harassment, and it probably spurred their attempts to emigrate. At times, Soviet ofacials seemed to believe their own myths and propaganda, but they were fully aware that the movement for emigration could spill over to other Soviet groups and weaken the system as a whole. In March 1971, Petro Shelest, the arst secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, wrote to the Soviet Politburo (of which he was a full member) that despite the rejection of two of every three applications to emigrate, the prospective emigrants continued to “send large numbers of letters and complaints and to engage in provocative conversations. These are then used by Zionist elements to incite anti-Soviet sentiments among the Jewish population.” Shelest indicated that the “relevant organs” were “reviewing the earlier denials of exit visas for those who are not valuable specialists or privy to state secrets, or who incite on behalf of pro-emigration groups”