The History of Soviet Jewry Part I: From the Pale to the Revolution

[Music] both of those projects initiatives got off the ground because of the garage prolific team members slain in west germany out of the 24 who were killed were americans who had come to learn i say one million jewish children who were made to become losers [Music] it is never too little it is never too late and it is never enough jewish history sound bites bringing alive the world of our glorious past here is our host live from jerusalem jewish historian and tour guide yehuda gabara gabriel with jewish history sound bites and this special series on the history of the jews of the soviet union has been made possible by shuvu avraham schools and it is sponsored by avraham biederman and yasi the co-chairman of shuvu and it is dedicated in honor of the thousands of shuvu tell me them now it has been a while since he had a jewish history soundbys episode aired almost two weeks i think since the last one which was under cayenne brisker which was wildly popular actually had a nice mistake there listener pointed out that i mentioned brisker's son-in-law purge glickson in an earlier episode about selanim and i mentioned in that episode that he was a slan khasid and then when i got to talk about rebecca and brisker i decided that birch gluckson was a garage husted so it happens to be it's uh very uh perceptive of that listener to pick that up well that's an oops uh sorry my bad it does seem that he was a gyroclass today i guess i got mixed up either way um i was on the road with some great great trips one after the other so it was a little bit hectic finally back and settling down and here we are ready for another episode i had the privilege uh actually of celebrating iseam on seder maid of the da fiemi in prague together with the avi esri shul from boro park a really great group a really great trip some groups are just interesting and inspiring and others are all that and also fun this was one of those so that was a fantastic trip now things are settling down we're ready to steam ahead with some really really exciting stories for the jewish history soundbites podcast coming up the next few weeks and there's a lot a lot in store so stay tuned they will be coming out more consistently and not in the erratic fashion that it has been in the last several weeks um we'll commence with something that i've been wanting to do for a while it has piqued my interest the last couple of years and i've read quite extensively about it and that is the history of the jews of the soviet union it is such a fascinating and unfortunately not a well-known enough episode of recent jewish history and what it is known about it is often misunderstood and then shuvu this incredible organization which runs a school system in israel for children from families primarily but not exclusively from the former soviet union approached me to do this project about the history of the jews of the soviet union so needless to say i jumped at the opportunity so here we are presenting a three-part series on soviet jewry and i'm pretty certain that the listeners of history sound bites will enjoy it immensely and i'm looking forward to hearing feedback from you and comments critique whatever it is um i want to remind you that this is a very vast subject and of course in three parts it's impossible to cover it extensively so for the most part it'll be a general overview and i'll zoom in occasionally on specific episodes and personalities all attempts will be made to have it as all-encompassing as possible so thank you to shuvu not only for the wonderful work which they do but also for affording us all with the opportunity to explore the history of soviet jewry another side note this series was discussed and planned over the course of the last couple of months i don't think anyone at that time anticipated the current challenging situation facing the jews of ukraine which is obviously the former soviet union and uh just this morning i received a message from shuvu that once again history is repeating itself as we speak is involved in the attempts to assist ukrainian jews who wish to leave the country and come to israel and is currently absorbing uh many of them into their shuvu school so it's absolutely incredible history is repeating itself before our very eyes in the most literal sense and many of the current arrivals there there's a struggle about which school to send them to is going to be the general public schools or is it going to be uh shuvu is going to get them into their school enroll them there so they can receive a jewish education so it's you know just uh it's redundant so it's um this um getting to the three-part series this is going to be a let's just wish uh you know let's hope that everything works out and and wish for the safety of all ukrainian jews at this point just want to mention that once again because it's it's definitely something uh uh concerning in current events um the this three part series is going to follow a chronological uh format uh the part one which i'm gonna try to do today the is going to be leading up to the revolution the revolution itself 1917 of course the aftermath of the russian revolution and the founding of the soviet union in 1922 the early years of of the soviet jewry um in general and then specifically will focus a little bit on religious life under the soviets during the 1920s and 30s that's what we're going to try to do today uh hopefully later this week or beginning of next week we'll do part two which will discuss the holocaust in the soviet union and then the last years of the stalin era in the late 40s and early 50s the khrushchev thor and then jewish life in the soviet union from the 1940s through the 70s will cover like four you know three four decades there and then the third and final um part in this series next week will um will be about the the different attempts from outside to assisting soviet jury in various aspects people who actually travel to the soviet union to connect with soviet jewry soviet jury in the 1980s um the last decade before it collapsed and then ultimately the collapse of the soviet union and then the jews of the former soviet union the few who actually stayed and then the majority who emigrated where they where they ended up and then jewish life for those jews of the former soviet union in the united states israel and other countries and we'll end off with the founding and the activities and of course the accomplishments of shuvu itself which is it to be seen in that context so once i mentioned shuvu so they didn't ask me to talk about this the organization um but i'm going to anyway because what i'm about to describe is is you know made a deep impact on me and i saw it in like you know just a larger frame you know sort of in a bigger context not just the meeting itself uh they they asked me to uh in preparation for this series to visit one of the shuvu schools and i was accompanied by ibrahimov the director of israel and and eitan himmelstein who's also one of the people in charge of the organization wonderful people and it was an amazing experience so i'd like to share my impressions and how in my view that fits into the historical context of the history of soviet jewry um i think the listeners will enjoy it as it happens it also fits into another historical context the history of the state of israel but that's not our topic so that we'll save for another time i heard of shuva growing up in the 90s when its founder of avramyakov palm was still alive and it was a relatively new organization i was growing up in muncie at the time i knew that it was an american-based organization which built and managed schools in israel for children of families from the former soviet union who arrived at the mass immigration to israel following the soviet union's collapse in the early 90s i even did what if i recall correctly most of us did back then which was to sponsor a parrot's fill in for a shoe student when we became bar mitzvah so i was you know i did that i think everyone did in those days so i knew of its existence but not much more than that so when i was contacted by shuvu to do a series on the history of soviet jury in honor of their upcoming dinner in that context i visited this school the shula school in pataktikva in elementary school and a girls high school and it was an eye-opening experience the best part of of the of it was being you know shown around as if i was some sort of donor and since it's unlikely that i'll ever reach that status this was a rare opportunity and i made the most of it i even got a cup of coffee i did the whole thing so i went into a classroom by the elementary school i spoke with the children i asked them about their family backgrounds and why they attended the school and then i interviewed the principal who was there from shuvu's inception and she related the history of the school and it's a fascinating story about how the parent body and the students adapted and changed over the decades uh what they were dealing with in the 90s when the initial stages of the immigration from the former soviet union began and and and you know there's a lot of apprehension about you know sending to school when they're actually recruiting for the schools and to to today when it's already a second and third generation and they're literally banging down the doors to get into the schools the whole different dynamic and then i went over to the girls high school and i spoke to the principal there as well and i interviewed three students i was most interested in their family backgrounds um you know i guess other people would have asked them about the religious observance but that didn't interest me as much so i asked them about their origins one of them her grandparents came from birobijan that wacky yiddish autonomous republic at the other end of the world that stalin established for the jews in the 1920s which way way back in the beginning of jewish history sound bites like probably i don't know two three years ago one of the earliest ones i did an episode on it so i never never met someone whose family was from theirs i was fascinated by that the second uh young lady was from moscow and she herself was an immigrant just several years ago but the family's origins were from ukraine they'd only moved to moscow in the 1920s and 30s the third girl was from kursk and and and one side of the family the other one was from kazakhstan which is also in this former soviet union two different areas i told her that the greatest tank battle in world history took place in kursk in july 1943 and that was when the red army took the strategic initiative and the vermont switched to defensive and pretty much a steady retreat for the remainder of the war on the eastern front the poor kid couldn't care less about my world war ii lecture um you know but as i tried to keep it short but either way her family's origins were from somewhere in the former pale of settlement as well before curse her grandfather served in the red army during the war as did one of the other ones um all of them had grandparents who were alive some of whom recalled some jewish traditions from their youth or the yiddish language from their youth it's which is amazing you know see the history come alive like dan raf pam the founder of shu actually had used the slogan of dairy v yeshuvuhena for shuvu yeshuvuhena dairavi the fourth generation this was the fourth generation coming back um and you know and they attempted to rediscover the jewish uh roots and traditions and and to reinforce their identity uh it was incredible to see it in front of my eyes i then spoke to a class of 10th graders about the importance of tracing their family's roots i told them that they need to speak to their grandparents and interview them to see how jewish identity was preserved in the soviet union until their recent rediscovery and connection through this this shuvu school i'm not sure how much of an impact the that little talk of mine made on the students but it sure did on the principal who was in the room with me she concluded after i finished she decided on impulse that the end of the year project for this class is going to be a presentation of an interview each student is to conduct with their grandparent and that the project is to be titled bubba mices so i was happy to have had an influence there but another interesting was thing that i realized as we were talking and something quite astounding was the the head of shuvu like i mentioned who accompanied me on this excursion he's from denmark the principal of the school is from israel i'm originally from the united states now i'm israeli and the three students are from the far reaches of the former soviet union so we had this little kibbutz gullius you know in gathering of the exiles in that little office there so i related a story to them i told them that i had a colleague of mine in yeah when i was still working in yad vashem who's a a fellow stars from the former soviet union completely totally secular totally non-observant not even a little bit i once asked him where he's from he says tashkent uzbekistan so i said your family always came from uzbekistan he says yohuda let me tell you something everyone or almost everyone i guess some people are from galicia but almost everyone is from the same place the pale of settlement some moved to the united states at the 19th at the end of the 19th century beginning of the 20th during the great immigration others stayed some were killed in the holocaust others escaped to places like tashkent and eventually made it to israel and others went straight to israel i said so i said to the to the girls there i said the same thing we have in this room all of us here are originally from the pale of settlement some moved to the united states others to israel others to more exotic places like denmark others stayed in various different places migrating within the soviet union moving to big cities like moscow's or places like vero bijan and then eventually moving to israel after the collapse of the soviet union and all of us are sitting here in the same room in peta in a religious school it's 130 years ago we were sitting in the same place in the payload settlement our paths have simply diverged for a century so we may seem different different background different language different culture different levels of religious observance but it's important to remember that we all come from the same place and we all made it back to the same place so that was my take anyway enough with my visit uh now let's get down to business the history of the jews in the soviet union it's going to be a three-part series like i said from the revolution in 1917 until the soviet union's collapse in 1991 and a bit beyond as well with the immigration of many jews of the former soviet union to israel and elsewhere and how they integrated in their new homes um so first i want to you know get into the historiography it's it's this the history of soviet jury is a hot field now the opening of the archives following the collapse of the soviet union gives us access to new sources new understandings new perspectives uh we contrast it to the old way of the story of soviet jewry to how we're understanding it today it's a completely better understanding um there's loads of sources used there's books and articles i just bought there had a sale on books on russian jewelry and one of the publishing houses in israel so i just bought like eight new books all on russian and soviet jewry it's literally a bottomless pit um so you know it's currently one of the hottest fields of research in modern jewish history and has become an obsession in many departments uh during the last uh several years so it it's this explosion of of you know has produced so much good work out there um like i said because of all these new archives not only the archives by the way it's also oral history uh we finally have access to people who lived in the soviet union and there's a lot of interviews a lot of talking to these people going on there's a new generation of young historians including many who themselves grew up in the soviet union and have now researched various aspects of soviet jewish life that have either been unknown or misunderstood but the field itself has been around for a while and there are many pioneering works which are still quite important today which were written back in the 50s and 60s and 70s when it was a relatively new field what follows is a very incomplete sampling of some of the prominent researchers in the field which has done which has been done on the history of soviet all of which and others were utilized in the preparation of this series so there's one of the pioneers it's v gitelman who's you know he kind of win pioneers in the subject entirely there's jonathan frankel vladimir levin jeff weidlinger mike michael biser ilya luria andrew sloyne our caddy zeltzer michael zandis royal bartal oleg bonnitsky yaakov mordechail schuler also one of the big pioneers and many many others they've each examined different aspects time periods and angles of soviet jewish life and the subject is more alive than ever we refer to it as behind the iron curtain and the result of that reference is is is a certain mode of thinking the iron curtain is a post-war speech of winston churchill delivered i think in missouri somewhere although he didn't coined the term it was it seemingly has was originally coined by yusuf gibbels of all people gurus of all people the nazi minister of propaganda and he was referring to the entire uh and i'm sorry but but uh it became famous because of churchill and churchill's referring to the entire communist orbit of eastern europe post-world war ii including the non-soviet union countries which were still within the soviet orbit such as poland hungary and romania and and a certain extent czechoslovakia others but the those weren't in the soviet union but they were considered within the soviet orbit but the mistaken impression is is that it's some sort of post-war post-world war ii thing and that's nothing and then after world war ii nothing really happens in eastern europe because it's behind the iron curtain and the iron curtains blocked off from the world and as far as as far as the attitude towards the story of the jewish community there this results in a bit of a skewed impression we tend to focus ultimately on two external factors uh not internal factors of the jewish community itself but we tend to focus on two external factors the first one is what did stalin or khrushchev or brezhnev do to soviet jewry with soviet jewry being some sort of object in the story and the other external factor we occasionally talk about is if we're talking about pre-world war ii we talk about polish jewelry or post world war ii we talk about american jewry or israeli jewry what did those jewish communities do or not do for their soviet brethren lost in the shuffle is what was soviet jury like itself during this time and that story is being told more than ever in the last 30 years or so and it's a very important one and an interesting one as well i'd like to illustrate this last point by reading a passage from a book by ana sternus titled when sonia met boris and it's about oral histories of soviet jews and it's a great book by the way in the introduction she addresses this view that outsiders have of soviet jewry in a very poignant way i'll read directly a passage from it um and and it'll get the idea of what i'm trying to bring out and here it goes boris g a retired surgeon from ukraine has had just reached his 90th birthday when a local jewish newspaper contacted him with an interview request in preparation he positioned his documents on the table a record of excellent service in a medical unit of the red army complete with three military awards and a workbook from the hospital where he worked for 40 years boris was born in 1913 in slavutta a small town in the kimitsky region of central ukraine his grandfather who owned a tiny beehive business was arrested in the 1920s when boris was a little boy his father who worked as an accountant encouraged him to get out of sloveta to get a better life following his father's advice boris left when he turned 15 and eventually completed his medical training in kiev in 1937. that same year two other important things happen he got married to his classmate sonja and his father was arrested in false accusations of espionage boris never heard from him again during the war sonia went to central asia where she worked in a hospital and took care of the their toddler's son boris was drafted into the red army as a military surgeon worked in a field hospital conducting dozens of surgeries per week and sometimes per day and saving the lives of countless soldiers after the war boris worked in a hospital in kiev first as a staff surgeon and eventually retiring as the chief of surgery in 1946 he found out that his parents his grandparents and many family friends had been killed in sloveta in 1941 along with the majority of both local jews and those from neighboring towns and villages he never found the strength to go back to slavita even for a short visit but he contributed money to help erect a monument to commemorate the victims of the war there he arrived to canada in the early 2000s after spending about ten years in israel his grandchildren were born in toronto as children found good jobs but boris felt out of place with no knowledge of english or understanding of local community he was sinking into a depression it was his great grandson michael a high school student who contacted the newspaper suggesting that they should interview his grandfather a decorated jewish surgeon from the soviet union michael also volunteered to translate the journalist arrived right on time a pleasant canadian-born jewish woman in her late forties she began by asking boris whether he had witnessed any programs because she said her great-grandparents too came from the russian empire and they had barely survived boris told her that his older brother had been wounded in a program in sloveta the family hid in a neighbor's cellar in 1918 when boris was 5 years old what about the holocaust she asked boris explained that he served in the red army as a doctor but as soon as the journalist found out that the story of the holocaust did not have references to auschwitz she seemed to lose interest then they moved to the questions of faith was it hard to practice judaism under stalin she asked boris misunderstood he started telling her about discrimination that his children encountered when they tried to enter medical schools about day-to-day negative remarks from neighbors all of that happened in the 1970s under brezhnev but the journalist wanted to know whether his wife lit candles for shabbos and whether they celebrated pesach in hiding boris who had learned about religious holidays after he left the soviet union in the 1990s had nothing to contribute in desperation the journalist asked whether she and his wife sonia had a jewish wedding when they got married in 1937. boris misunderstood again and showed her a photograph from his anniversary celebrating 50 years of marriage featuring guests from all over the world and a local ultra-orthodox rabbi the journalist wanted a picture from the 1930s but boris was at a loss about what to tell her he and his wife registered in a civil ceremony they did not really have a wedding and of course he had no photographs they spent an hour talking but boris never got to show the documents that he had prepared he had lived his life as a jew he never hid that he had been a jew he and his family suffered from discrimination but somehow he did not seem jewish enough or interesting enough to the well neat meaning but unprepared journalists his life story never appeared in print however the story of the failed interview firmly entered family lore i think i read enough of this book but you get the idea and i think that really says the whole entire story of soviet jewry here he's experienced the century of soviet jewish life with all its details but uh the lack of understanding of what soviet jury experienced uh created this um barrier to be able to get to hear the story um so it's important to understand the general timeline of events in those early years to put the jewish story within the general context the jewish world of the russian empire until 1914 we're talking about demographically it's the largest jewish community in the world by far it's five million jews approximately i mean there's nothing that comes even close to that maybe the united states which is all jews who just immigrated to the united states from russia uh so uh so you know that that would just be adding to that number essentially um there's these emerging political parties there's changing economics for the jews religious life is on the defensive there's all kinds of movements going on in the jewish street we could devote an entire episode to getting a screenshot of the jewish world what's going on in russia when world war one breaks out world war one breaks out russia is of course uh fighting germany and the austria-hungarian empire and um even the ottoman empire on its southern border and and the jewish community of russia is collapses i discussed this at length um on the series of world war one and the jews that i did way back in the day um and many of them are sent into exile many of them their their homes become the front line so they go into exile there are a half a million jews who serve in the imperial russian army of the czar so there's this huge um you know change of those who are serving in the army and then there's hundreds of thousands who are forced out of their homes or have to you know for whatever reason and um and and they're going to exile there there's a temporary opening of the pale settlement in august 1915 just to accommodate all those running into away from their homes there's anti-semitism from the czar's government who there's a distrust the the jews are considered um fifth column they're going to spy for germany and that's why they even exile many of them from certain districts um there's they face anti-semitism and discrimination in the military and from the general population there's a total collapse of the economy especially the jewish economy people become refugees there's a complete and total collapse of traditional structures uh and communities and religious life i discussed it all on that series and many jews are already revolutionaries against the hated tsar and the hated czarist government uh before world war one and the the result of the breakdown of communal life only intensifies that trend there is a lot of financial assistance that jews get mainly from rich wealthy the wealthy elite and saint petersburg also from the tsar's government itself who who do give some sort of financial assistance but also the american jewish communities coming together the joint distribution committee and they provide financial assistance as well so now we come to the revolution the february revolution is the first russian revolution and it's its effect 1917 february 1917 and its effect on russian jewry is in may there's total and complete instant emancipation for all the jews of the rus of the russian empire no more restrictions no more pale of settlement they can live wherever they want it seemed that in one instant because of this revolution all the dreams and the hopes of russian jewry of that oppression under the czars everything finally came to fruition instantly and they start to get organized and politically primarily um there's all the political jewish political parties and they're gonna you know want jewish autonomy and so on and so forth and a few months later in october it's really november but in the old calendar it's october uh julian calendar the october revolution and the bolsheviks rise to power and what it follows is the russian civil war and in the mayhem and devastation of the civil war it's a terrible time for everyone but especially for the jewish population in ukraine which again ukraine is in the current events also but ukraine then there's about a hundred thousand jews killed between the years 1918 1921. excuse me and um this is a terrible time it's the worst series of programs in jewish history pretty much up until that point um of course it would be overshadowed by the uh the holocaust a few years later but this at that time was the biggest devastation the jewish people had it had pretty much experienced um ukrainian nationalists who tried uh gaining independence at that time uh semen on the white russians who supported a return of the czarist government were were very anti-semitic as well they're all kinds of warlords and even the red army occasionally they're usually the best ones to the jews but even even the red army sometimes wasn't a good place either we weren't good to them either in in ukraine to top it off there was also the polish soviet war raging at the same time and jews were in the crosshairs of that as well so there's total bedlam lots of death destruction devastation instability and then we finally come to the settlements uh the 1921 the civil war comes to an end in 1922 is the formation of the soviet union the borders are solidified eventually there's the death of lenin and the rise of stalin in 1990 mid-1920s and even before lenin dies there's the implementation of the the nep the new economic policy as a transitionary stage to the so-called pure communism or a more authentic marxist version of the economy so the new economic policy allows for some uh privatization of the economy to give a boost to uh to uh to to the the the russian economy which is in shambles but eventually as the 1920s progresses there's forced agricultural collectivization a rapid development of heavy industry and then there's the uh the the program uh called uh the deco lockazation which is kulaks the kulaks were the ones were accused of being land owners or wealthy capitalist uh farmers who owned the land and enslaved the working class and anyone who who the who stalin basically or the soviet government disliked was accused of being a kulak even if they were you know not more didn't have a penny more than the than the peasant next door but they're accused of being a kulak their land and property was seized and they were deported to siberia usually never seen again it has happened to so many people it was a terrible terrible time and many jews suffered from that as well they were considered many of them were considered wealthy kulaks when in fact they were impoverished and they were uh their businesses were taken away their land was taken away and many of them were deported to the developing gulag the the undercover police the chekhov which eventually became nkvd and the gulag in siberia eventually the end of the new economic policy and the implementation of the five-year plans by stalin in an attempt to direct and centralize the entire soviet economy in the 1930s the late 30s really begins another devastating period another murderous period in the history of the soviet union and that is the great purge the great purges of the red army the sciences the arts and the government itself uh interesting that uh in all the old bolsheviks are eventually stalin sends them all to in show trials to their deaths um interesting there was several jews who were old bolsheviks one of them was laser kaganovich and he was one of the only old bolsheviks molotov one or two others but one of the only old bolsheviks to survive the great purge he was jewish he was a perennial survivor and he lived a very very long life he passed away at the age of 98 as the soviet union was collapsing in the summer of 1991. interesting uh tidbit either way um so what role do the jews play in the revolution many jews are revolutionaries many of them are happy that that they have gotten rid of the hated tsar who was so terrible to the jews um but were they associated with the bolsheviks and the mosaic revolution there's a famous saying not many jews were bolsheviks but many bolsheviks were jews because of that public perception there was long-term fallout because of that certain anti-semitic stereotypes uh were were came to be believed because of that in poland and later on nazi germany with the tragic consequences but the the truth of the matter is is that like it said not many jews were bolsheviks there were some bolsheviks who were jews um and and that that became you know part of the story the revolution in in 1917 with the civil war and the accompanying programs led to a huge stream of immigration many many jews left the country um they go to for you know the united states is still open for the first couple of years but many maybe you know hundreds of thousands maybe more leave during the that period from 1917 till 1923-24 when the borders became difficult to cross um so immigration was a huge story of those early years as it as it as it happened um once the formation of the soviet union was bolshevik control in 1922 so uh immigration out of the country uh trickled it came slower there's the sexia which i discussed in another episode uh earlier about a year and a half ago or so which is the jewish sections of the communist party and what they did to uh to make the jewish community into a jewish communist community and to uh you know destroy any vestige of the previous jewish life of the russian empire the kahal political jewish life zionism most of yiddish culture unless it was completely communist marxist bolshevik um and uh very much so of religious life jewish education religious life rabbis and all that i discussed that then so that's this time period also the 1920s there's this repression of jewish political life and economic life changes in in their economics um there are attempts at sustaining uh jewish religious life and cultural and political life under the soviets there is yiddish culture which flourishes at this time but it's soviet yiddish culture and they have the cultural elites in theater and in in literature and poetry and all kinds of things it's interesting that that actually flourishes and you know even to a certain extent reach the golden age in the 1920s and 30s um there's the famine the holdemore in ukraine which affects the jews just like it affects the ukrainians there the biggest story though during this time is the sudden equality equal rights that russian jewry achieves under the soviet union there's no more payload settlement they have emancipation and what follows is rapid assimilation it's actually shocking how quickly it happened anti-semitism somewhat disappears officially it does there's no anti-semitism an official sense in the soviet union but it's hard to uproot a lot of those prejudices that existed for so many centuries so it doesn't really disappear but it might have been the least anti-semitic country in europe perhaps even the world during that time which is again somewhat overlooked we always talk about the bad things of the soviet union but again this sudden equality and emancipation and and much less anti-semitism that they were used to upward social mobility educational opportunity economic opportunity higher education universities it was probably the most liberal society in the world as far as jewish opportunity was concerned during the 1920s and 30s i think even more than the united states and like i said mass secularization assimilation intermarriage becomes prevalent it's incredible how rapid that happens rapidly that happens and the big big story of this time is the internal migration before i mention the external uh immigration here it's internal migration moving from the former areas of the pale to big cities mainly to big cities huge massive urbanization to key event odessa and takarkov and to rostov and to leningrad and to even to stalingrad and to moscow and and and uh leningrad is formerly saint petersburg of course and many many many more urban since malensk and and places that jews never thought of living before and these places become centers of industry and factories and universities and jews are becoming doctors and lawyers and they are becoming very successful in in integrating um so this this is probably the biggest jewish story the biggest jewish change is this urbanization this mass migration from the areas of the former pale to the big cities of russia there's an explosion in jewish urban population and and and their entry into the professions another side story is the biro bijan story and the question of the role of jewish nationalism in the soviet cosmopolitan socialist society where there is somewhat nationalistic autonomy limited as it was during the early years of the soviet union and this goes all the way up until the war and and now i just want to mention uh for a few minutes uh the story of the religious life during the 1920s there is still the remnant of the older generation the old russian jury of the pale there are still rabbis there are still schools there's still khabar there are still others um you know the rep of the rayats which i'm going to get to a second is there still until 1927. so just to talk about that for a couple of minutes as well there's this struggle to maintain religious life in the early years of the soviet union there's this story of the khafiz khan is in russia during the revolution he's in russia and he stays in russia during the early years after the revolution during the civil war and then he makes a decision to leave russia and go into what's then independent upon the second polish republic and he leaves he leaves russia with his yeshiva he goes to poland and his yeshiva rather than the town of run is now within the borders of the second polish republic and he immediately regrets it and he keeps on expressing that regret for the rest of his life he keeps on telling those around him his students his followers his his friends other rabbis he russian jewry soviet jewry the ones who are behind the iron curtain remain on the skym's heart and consciousness for the rest of his life he kept on saying we should have stayed we should have fought them we should have showed some serious nephesh we should have what's going to happen to soviet jewry what's going to be with them they're going to become assimilated they're going to get lost to communism they're repressing religious life how they're going to survive it didn't stop he didn't stop talking about it and he even made a takana um that every young kipper knight davening everyone should dive in for soviet jewry which was a takana that was still kept in mira yeshiva in the 1970s and 80s a receiver of himself levitz would insist on reciting to hillary and kippur knight and miriam shivanush line for soviet jewry because of the takana made in the 1920s that empathy that continuation that continued even after the war so that is kind of like the theme defined it for a new for an entire generation for an entire century regretted leaving he said that we should have showed more mosquitos never should have fought the soviets that something should have been done and there's millions and millions of jews at that time that kind of was talking about there was three and a half million jews there was not three and there's three million jews almost as much as poland uh stuck in the soviet union um with under the uh communist uh uh life which did not allow for much religious life um so that's on the outside and that becomes a certain attitude that has and taught and was adopted by generations of jews afterwards who decided not to be silent and who decided they're going to do something about soviet jewry and that became a very historic moment when the khovitzkaim expressed that um there but within within uh the soviet union there's early activities on behalf of russian jewry there's the assistance during the revolution of civil war then there's the crossing the borders um there's all types of operations to cross borders the fact that was the rev of a town uh i think in raqqa at the time that was near the border so he assisted a lot with the border crossings the joint in the united states was providing funding there's other individuals and organizations and then there's the heroic story of the rayats of yitzhak schneerson the free of the kareba the sixth rabb of chabad and he is there in the early years of the soviet union the rashab his father ram shalom goes into exile during world war one eventually passes away in rastav in 1920 and he succeeded by his son the rayats who together with many of his followers who are rabbis and activists across the entire soviet union valiantly attempt to keep the torch burning to keep religious life to maintain institutions which increasingly have to go underground he himself eventually settles in leningrad which is formerly saint petersburg also petrograd during world war one maybe soon it's going to be putin grad who knows but from there the rayats continues to promote religious life the times go underground he's struggling to keep mikvah's open and shul's open he was arrested several times and was under content surveillance by the checkup which was the forerunner of the nkvd he was able to receive uh funding from the joint and he used it for sustaining religious life for buying matzos for doing all kinds of things under increasingly harsh conditions in 1927 he finally left the soviet union and he settled in riga in latvia and later on in warsaw but there were many of his followers who stayed behind and they kept it going under almost impossible conditions until almost everything came to an end with the holocaust there were other rabbis who stayed behind in the soviet union as well romesha feinstein was a rev in the soviet union in luban until nineteen thirty six ribcagolabramski was a rabbi in slutsk and smolensk until he was arrested and deported to siberia in 1929 and in 1931 he was finally released from siberia and was able to leave the soviet union absolutely ace of seven and or classical abramsky were members of a rabbinical organization in the soviet union initially organized by the rayats and the two of them founded a rabbinical journal called yagadil torah under the communists it's an amazing story there's plenty of communal rabbis still in the soviet union acting communal rabbis in the 1920s in the 1930s and for a very short time they even have this rabbinical journal yagadil torah and it's shut down very shortly after its inception by the communists by the soviets rev zeven left the soviet union in 1934 another legendary figure at this time was rebecca clems of moscow who also left in 1934 who did a lot for judaism in moscow and other parts of the soviet union uh in in in those uh early years many others as well too too numerous to mention the fate of all of them pretty much with rare exceptions was one of three things either they left in the 1920s and 30s like the ones i mentioned just now many of them some of them we don't even know their names were killed in the holocaust and others were deported to siberia almost zero of them had any chance of lasting long term in that capacity it was just too difficult under the new soviet regime along with these figures it's imperative to mention the countless anonymous individuals soviet jews who in their personal lives continued to maintain jewish tradition going to shul and shabbos keeping a shabbos table for their children and other jewish observances which was was pretty prevalent in the 1920s and 30s after the holocaust is a different story but during that time it still happened quite often this is often overlooked because almost all of those who did so were eventually murdered by the nazis during the holocaust so this is an extended lengthy part one because of my long introduction about my shubu visit so this is we're going to continue with part two and talk about the holocaust and and and the post-war history of soviet jury and then with part three of later on um this is you so keep stay tuned this is you the gabriel jewish history sound bites you can reach me at yahoo.you the gabor.com for questions comments sources tours trips sponsorships and lectures you can subscribe to jewish history salmons and pod bean or your favorite podcast platform and i hope you enjoyed