Class rivalry in ethno-national migration: Soviet intelligentsia vs. the Russian middle class in Israel

ABSTRACT

While most research on stigmatization in migration deals with the prejudice of locals toward immigrants, this article analyzes the symbolic rivalry and contest vividly present in the intra-group Russian-language immigrant discourse in Israel. Drawing on our recent digital ethnography, we focus on the heated discussion between the two social class-based groups – the Soviet-Jewish ‘Intelligentsia’, oldcomers from the Soviet Union to Israel, and the recent migration from Putin’s Russia. If the first is a remnant of the Soviet social structure, the latter is the symbolic successor of the former and is part of the post-Soviet transition. In our interpretation of the harsh digital exchange, we build on the conceptualization of educated middle-class migration and then employ the theoretical lenses of scapegoating and Orientalization – mechanisms of inter-group stigmatization that are both universal and driven by particular scripts of social relations. Our analysis contributes to understanding the broader context of contemporary migration by demonstrating the role played by significant social categories borrowed from home in post-migration processes and group relations. In addition, the article offers a pioneering sociological portrait of the new post-Soviet immigrant group leaving Russia under Putin’s regime.

KEYWORDS:

• Stigmatization
• post-Soviet immigrants in Israel
• Intelligentsia
• Russian middle class
• Putin’s Aliyah
• digital ethnography

Introduction

In October 2021, the Israeli Russian-speaking Facebook community was once again shaken by a scandal. The trigger was the ‘Letter by the Israeli Russian-Speaking intelligentsia’, signed by a group of immigrants that came to Israel in the 1970s and 1990s from the Soviet Union and warning Israeli politicians of dangers posed by the new immigrants to Israel fleeing from Russia during the last decade. The letter provoked strong reactions by the criticized group, which developed into a harsh accusatory exchange. It was one of the first explosive public expressions of a social media clash¹ that had been unfolding since the mid-2010s between two Russian-speaking groups in Israel: the ‘old’ or ‘veteran’ Russian-speaking immigrants and those who came from the former Soviet Union (FSU) starting from the 2010s. Their oral and written responses, together with the text of the original letter, present a ‘letter controversy’ – a digital ethnographic case we examine here. Our analysis was driven by the question of why such bitter discord has broken out among the Russian-speaking immigrants. In answering this question, we inquire into the scripts of inter-group relations that serve the parties in the contestation. We examine the main paths of stigmatization involved in the letter controversy to explain how they reflect late and post-Soviet² social class positions, group identities and cultural scripts.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, Israel was one of the top destination countries for immigrants of Jewish origin from the former Soviet Union. More than one million immigrants came to Israel, 370 thousand to the USA and Canada, and 200 thousand to Germany (Remennick, 2007, p. 5). Since then, a large community of Russian-speaking immigrants has formed in Israel, and its inner dynamics as well as its relations with different groups in Israeli society have been well-studied by both Israeli and international scholarship (for an overview, see Lerner & Feldhay, 2012; Remennick, 2012). This group is heterogeneous in its ethnic, religious and socioeconomic characteristics, but also preserves distinct cultural characteristics linked to its Soviet socialization and Russian language (Leshem, 2008; Remennick, 2007). In the 2010s, immigration from the FSU to Israel intensified once again, with Russia being the main country of origin in terms of number of immigrants – about 70 thousand immigrants came from Russia to Israel in the 2010s, and in 2022 a further 45 thousand (ICBS, 2020, p. 2023). This article offers a pioneering sociological portrait of this new post-Soviet immigrant group leaving Russia under Putin’s regime.

This renewed immigration to Israel was part of a larger wave of emigration from Russia to different parts of the world (Gudkov & Zorkaya, 2013), associated with the authoritarian turn in that country (Shalin, 2018). Thus, it mostly consisted of those who disagreed or experienced discomfort with Vladimir Putin’s rule (Fomina, 2021).³ Accordingly, upon their arrival in Israel, they were nicknamed ‘Putin’s Aliyah’.⁴

Recently, fractures have emerged between different immigration waves in the community of Russian-speaking immigrants. Expressions of hostility and mutual labeling between ‘old-wavers’ and newcomers are a recurring cultural motif in inter-group relations in Israel. The official model of legally-privileged homecoming Jewish migration,⁵ which assumes that the immigrant is joining a group with which they have cultural, ethnic, and religious ties (Markowitz & Stefansson, 2004; Shuval, 1998; Tsuda, 2009), is associated with tensions between immigrants from different countries (Khazzoom, 2003). Each new wave of Jewish migration is seen as competition, and criticized by the previous ‘homecomers’. In the particular context of ‘Russian’ immigration, it was already evident how the immigrants of 1970s reassessed their identity and belonging through their encounters with the immigrants that came to the country in the beginning of 1990s (Markowitz, 1994/2005). Accordingly, the current confrontation and even rivalry between the Russian-speaking longtime Israelis and newcomers from Russia would appear to be the reenactment of a local script.

However, the new confrontation goes beyond this Israeli inter-wave stigmatization script. We find the key to this controversy in the social class dynamics of post-Soviet transition: while the Intelligentsia is a remnant of the Soviet social structure, Putin’s Aliyah represents its successor and was born as part of the transition from Soviet rule. This post-Soviet encounter occurring far beyond Russia’s borders in a Russian-speaking migration space teaches us about the role of significant social categories borrowed from home in group relations in the host country.

Based on our analysis of discursive forms and rhetoric used for labeling the Other in the letter controversy, we argue that this confrontation should be understood in the historical and sociological context of post-Soviet transformation, both in Russia and in its migration space. We show that this harsh public exchange reflects a conflictual encounter between two groups, one of which is the other’s symbolic successor: the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia that is identified with ex-Soviet immigrants, and the ‘new Russian middle class’ that emerged as part of the transition from Soviet rule and represents the majority of Putin’s Aliyah. Their encounter in Israel leads them to clarify their positions and hierarchies, and to contest each other’s authority in the Russian-speaking digital public sphere.

While making sense of the controversy, our analysis inductively engages the historical and contemporary mechanisms of scapegoating (Girard, 1982/2010), and the ‘Orientalization chain’ (Khazzoom, 2003). The first is a classic universal anthropological inquiry into symbolic inter-group competition, and the second is one of the most significant sociological analysis of ethnic inter-group interactions in the Israeli context. The aim and the challenge of both theories to explain acts of othering that emerge out of similarity, closeness of the stigmatizer and stigmatized makes them particularly relevant to the case at hand. Moreover, while being universal mechanisms, they are ascribed with a unique meaning in the home and host societies of immigrants from the FSU, i.e. in the Soviet Union and in Israel. We show how the discourse of the letter controversy echoes Soviet authoritarian mechanisms of scapegoating on one hand, and intertwines with the Israeli ethnonational script of stigmatization through Orientalization on the other. Having landed on the ground of Israeli nationalist scripts, the post-Soviet rivalry intensifies and is ascribed with local meanings.

In the following, we present a (1) theoretical socio-historical understanding of Intelligentsia and middle class in migration and (2) our method of study of online digital exchange. Then, our analysis unfolds in two parts as it inductively develops theoretical arguments from the empirical findings. First, (3) we present the voice of the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia, understood through the framework of René Girard (1982/2010) scapegoat theory. Next, (4) we present the voice of Putin's Aliyah and analyze it with reference to Aziza Khazzoom’s (2003) Orientalization chain theory. In the concluding section we discuss our arguments of class rivalry and stigmatization that is based on similarity and proximity.

Migration timespan: the contested identity of class in migration

Our inquiry into the causes of the mutual derision within the community of compatriots who share a native language and a culture of origin is built on the shifts in social class structure in the post-Soviet transition. Hence, our conceptual perspective is anchored in historical and sociological analysis of the social category of the educated class in Soviet times (the Intelligentsia), its modification in post-Soviet Russia, and its dynamics in migration.

Historically, Intelligentsia has been a key term in Russian public discourse (see Berlin, 2014; Gella, 1976; Gessen, 1997; Malia, 1960). Since the nineteenth century, it has indicated belonging to a social class category and a political position, bearing a unique vision of the meaning and destiny of Russia and its people, and cherishing its particular habitus. In Soviet times, a new Soviet intelligentsia developed as a multiethnic group of highly-educated people, some of whom were associated with criticism of the regime, while others were actively engaged in Soviet intellectual production. In the 1980s and early ‘90s, the intelligentsia was the main engine of perestroika (Shalin, 2018). Thus, at the turn of the century, it was simultaneously seen as a social power potentially or actually opposed to authoritarianism (Epstein, 2018), and blamed for conformist collaboration with the regime and the rising nationalism in Russia (Gusejnov, 2018).

The Soviet Jewish intelligentsia was a significant group among the relatively small self-selective flow of immigrants of 1970s and the massive non-selective wave of the 1990s driven by the collapse of the Soviet Union (Lissak & Leshem, 1995). It became a distinctive group within the mass emigration from the FSU, with its own cultural habitus and capital (Bourdieu, 1983/2018). Belonging to the intelligentsia served the immigrants of the 1970s and ‘90s in their relocation within Israeli society (Epstein & Kheimets, 2000; Rapoport & Lomsky-Feder, 2002). Their Jewish origin was often seen as part of their intelligentsia identity, together with their higher education and appreciation of high culture (Lerner et al., 2007; Ro’i, 1995).

As the social structure of post-Soviet Russian society changed dramatically and new identities and hierarchies emerged, the intelligentsia became associated with the Soviet past (Shalin, 2018). Having begun to lose its significance in the 1990s, in the 2000s the concept was replaced in Russian discourse by the Westernized categories of ‘intellectuals’ or ‘professionals’ (Epstein, 2018). With the rise of the market economy and adoption of neoliberal consumer culture in the 2000s, these social categories became part of the constitution of a ‘new middle class’ or ‘proto-middle class’ (Chebankova, 2013). This emerging social group is composed of educated professionals whose consumption practices and living standards are close to their perception of the Western middle class (Mareeva & Ross, 2020), whereas their civic political attitude is similar to the new middle-class groups in other developing countries with quasi-liberal or authoritarian political regimes, such as in Iran or Latin America (Chebankova, 2013). The emigration of such groups from authoritarian regimes in search for stability of their personal resources and social position is one of the major trends in global migration (Van Hear, 2014).

While the new Russian middle class is politically heterogeneous (Mareeva & Ross, 2020), immigrants from this group who comprise Putin’s Aliyah in Israel tend to oppose the regime in home country (Preter & Lerner, 2021; Preter n.d.). Even if driven from Russia by circumstances different from those of previous migrants, their opposition to the authoritarian regime brings them closer to the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia that has already settled in Israel. Thus, the new Russian middle class and the intelligentsia are partially-overlapping social categories, and are also close cultural groups with ambiguous relations. Their cultural scripts and habitus(es) diverge as they were formed in different historical periods, but both groups have been in tension with the authoritarian regime, and both perceive themselves as bearers of Russian cultural and symbolic capital. The encounter with people ‘who were once like them but no longer are’ usually challenges the identities of both migrant cohorts (Markowitz, 1994/2005, p. 58). In this case, however, these ambiguous similarities turn into public contestation.

The letter controversy: a digital ethnographic case

Analysis of open letters and public petitions and their implications is an important method for understanding dynamics within the public sphere, especially in inquiries into social and political contestation (Fitzpatrick, 1996; Zaret 1996). Variations of this genre – fabricated and authentic personal letters to Soviet newspapers, letters to the government and Soviet public institutions, and open letters by political dissidents – had a major significance in late Soviet times where the public sphere was strictly censored and public self-expression was controlled. The Soviet intelligentsia played an important role in the formation of the Soviet public sphere, expressing civic opinions in public. Open letters, even if they were only signed, read and discussed by a limited circle, were considered by the authorities and the public as meaningful textual events, ones of great importance for imagining a general ‘public opinion’ (Atnashev, 2021; Rozenblum, 2021).

The tendency to express one’s opinion through writing public texts continues after migration and used by Russian immigrant communities in the USA and in Israel (Elias & Lerner, 2012; Markowitz, 1993). Back in the 1980s-90s, the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia established dozens of Russian-language newspapers (Caspi et al., 2002). By the 2010s, when Russian-language public discussions had moved to digital platforms (Gorham et al., 2014), social media served as the meeting place for Russian-language immigrants in Israel, and Facebook in particular became a formative domain for construction and articulation of group identities and internal tensions. The practice of publishing political manifestos and open letters was also adopted by the Russian-speaking diaspora on social media, where such letters become interactive – anyone could respond, and the first text became surrounded by a mass of layered reactions. It is such layering around the original open letter that we analyze in this article.

In October 2021 the ‘Letter by the Israeli Russian-Speaking Intelligentsia’ appeared on the Russian-language Israeli Facebook community, stirring intense discussion. It was posted by A. Romanov,⁶ a journalist, poet and literary translator, and one of the significant figures of the 1970s immigration wave. Officially addressed to the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), it was signed by 46 representatives of the intelligentsia. Romanov indicated that the letter had been submitted in support of MK Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionism Party (a Jewish nationalist party), who was lobbying for a revision of the Law of Return to annul the nationalization right of grandchildren of Jews. This amendment was highly relevant for the civil rights of immigrants from the FSU since many ethnically mixed families emigrated from FSU countries to Israel, resulting in large numbers of immigrants entitled to Israeli citizenship but not considered Jews in Israel (Lerner, 2017; Yakobson, 2010). The unusual alliance between mostly secular Russian-speaking immigrants and the agenda of the Jewish religious party was caused by a momentary overlap of the groups’ interests. There were no official reports about the receipt of this letter in the Knesset nor any comments by Rothman. Moreover, the fact that the letter was written in Russian and no translation appeared in public suggested that it was addressed to Russian-speaking immigrants.

The letter was published on October 10, 2021; on October 18, the author wrote that he had sent it to the Knesset. On October 19, the letter attracted the attention of N. Sokolova – journalist, writer and blogger from Putin's Aliyah – who commented on it in her journalistic critic’s column, which then launched a debate on Facebook that lasted until November 18, 2021. From there, it spilled over into other Israeli digital media as well as radio. Members of different groups of immigrants from the FSU in Israel, both ‘old’ and ‘new’, took part.

Data and method

The digital event we consider in this article is part of the ethnographic research on cultural dynamics within the latest wave of immigrants from Russia (Preter NB). A systematic digital ethnography within major Facebook groups and personal pages of Russian-language immigrants was conducted in 2020–2023. We observed the patterns of their everyday digital lives (Miller, 2018), and one such pattern was clear tension between Russian-speaking Israelis from different immigration waves. Flame wars and scandals in public outrage involving clashes between opinions and identities are a common and global communication pattern in social media studied by media scholars and digital ethnographers (Baysha, 2018; Madianou & Miller, 2013). In this context we consider the ‘letter controversy’ as a trigger for heated discussions that serve as a microcosm of the immigrant community and allow analysis of symbolic interactions and relationships between the groups involved. Both the level of vitriol in mutual accusation and the remise of the letter make the ‘letter controversy’ an extreme case crucial for an understanding of these inter-group relations.

Like most of the people studied, we learned about the letter on October 19, 2021, when Sokolova wrote about it. We began with the original post featuring the letter and then created a systematic corpus of posts and comments around it. The textual corpus was collected in two ways. First, we used our existing research database of digital networks of Russian-speaking immigrants, the public figures of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel whose activity on Facebook we had followed earlier, and collected all their posts on the topic of the intelligentsia’s letter. We knew most of them from face-to-face or Zoom interviews about their immigration experience conducted in 2020–2021. Second, we used the snowball method, as we went to the profiles of people mentioned in these posts to look for their responses to the letter. We finished following this topic when there had been no posts on the topic for a week, so the last text in our corpus was a post dated 18 November 2021. The corpus consists of 18 posts and 2262 comments. The corpus also includes a transcript of a radio debate between the author of the open letter and a representative of Putin’s Aliyah, as well as two items published in online media, whose precise titles and dates we elide for the sake of anonymity of our participants. This corpus is likely not comprehensive, as it does not collect texts by authors who are in no way connected with the main public figures, did not react to them and did not provoke a reaction from them. We perceive these open texts as part of the public sphere, since authors – journalists, activists, businessmen – use Facebook to communicate with a wide audience. At the same time, we do not consider friends-only posts, including those by our research subjects, for ethical reasons.

The work of coding and interpretation included identification of typical patterns (which are presented as narratives, and metaphors) in the text corpus and thick descriptions of them, focusing on what they mean to the immigrant groups that share them (Geertz, 1994). We also searched for markers of group belonging and references to local, national, and culturally-specific topics. As we were seeking cultural scripts of stigmatization and mutual delegitimation, we identified stereotypes used to label ‘new’ and ‘old’ immigrants. We also considered the statements’ tone, and metaphors and allusions used for constructing relations of power and hierarchy. All these inform the below analysis of utterances from both sides.

In examining the repertoire of stigmatization mechanisms among and between the immigrant groups, the authors worked in hermeneutic interpretive dialogue, using our different cultural and generational knowledge as representatives of the two groups. One author, (Varvara), is a representative of Putin’s Aliyah, having immigrated to Israel in 2019. The other, (Julia), identifies with the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia, having immigrated to Israel in 1990.

Non-Jewish scapegoats: the intelligentsia’s claims about Putin’s Aliyah

The intense labeling tone in the letter controversy can already be found in the original text of the letter, referring to the threat from a non-Jewish inner Other. It appeals to Jewish traditional religious ways of life and the idea of an exclusive Jewish identity, both of which feature prominently in Jewish-Israeli attitudes to non-Jewish migrants (Feinstein & Bonikowski, 2021). In a word, the recent immigrants from Russia lack in Jewishness. Romanov describes them as a ‘pseudo-Aliyah’, dangerous to Israel because of their indifferent or even hostile attitudes toward the country and its people.

A significant share of the immigrants consists of people not only remote from Jewishness⁷, but unrelated to the Jewish religion, Jewish tradition, and simply sharply hostile to Jews as such, that is, judeophobes. In social networks and in the Russian-language media, one can see how the attacks of anti-Semites on the fundamental values that determine the Jewish character of our state are intensifying day by day. The Judeophobia that is growing in the country […] is also aimed at splitting the community of Russian-speaking Israelis, tearing it away from ‘Klal Israel’.⁸ […] The continuation of the pseudo-Aliyah will further erode the Jewish character of the State of Israel and therefore threaten our future […]. Our war for survival requires us to confront more and more fiercely not only the outside enemy, but everything that threatens the Jewish character of our society from within. (Facebook, October 10 2021)

The new immigrants from Russia, as described in the letter, may have been entitled to Israeli citizenship as Jews, but they are not Jews in truth. Thus, they are perceived as people who violate social distinctions in Israel and are stigmatized as people with severe hostility to the Jewish character of this society – as ‘Judeophobes’.⁹ According to Romanov, Putin’s Aliyah brings with it the fear of losing the Jewish character of the State of Israel because it introduces non-Jews into the country as fully equal citizens.

Aliens with equal rights and pragmatic motives

In another significant text by supporters of the letter’s narrative, I. Kogan, a businessperson from the 1990s migration wave, mocks the new immigrants’ experience by pretending to adopt their point of view:

They [new immigrants] arrive in a tiny, hot, highly bureaucratic, overly socialist, and obscenely expensive Israel. Plus, it is always at war. […] The first thing that is completely incomprehensible to them is why these Jews want to keep this country Jewish. ‘Wait, it’s the 21st century, we have already come here on the basis of the Laws of Return […], we have received some kind of help ([…] free medical care and, most importantly, the COMPLETE RIGHT [caps in original], on an equal basis with everyone else, to determine how these Jews should live on. And how to live on, of course, without any idiotic Jewish superstition, such as kashrut [Jewish dietary rules], Shabbat, Jewish holidays … and other things that are completely unnecessary for a normal obschechelovek [universal human being]. (Facebook, November 16, 2021)

The text suggests that in escaping Putin’s regime, these people use their privilege to become citizens but do not seek to live according to the Jewish rules.

Suspecting (post-)Soviet immigrants of ignoring or even violating Jewish religious norms and traditions is not a new trend in Israeli public discourse. The immigrants of the 1990s faced this stigmatization because they came from a highly secular Soviet society, and many of them also had mixed ethnic origins, and were therefore only ‘partially Jewish’ (Lerner, 2017). Their doubtful Jewishness was a dominant topic of public and political discourse on the ‘Russians’ in Israel during the 1990s and early 2000s (Yakobson, 2010), and they were labeled with the painful stigma of being ‘non-Jewish Jews’ (Cohen & Susser, 2009). Dubious Jewishness serves as a gatekeeping mechanism by challenging the Israeli identity of various immigrant groups (a case in point is the immigration of Ethiopian Jews; see Ben-Eliezer, 2004). The stigmatizer usually purports to represent a generalized Israeli Jewish national collectivity, only this time the role is played by a former outcast himself.

Now the Russian-speaking longtime immigrants are turning this label against their own compatriots, the new immigrants from Russia. In the letter, the ‘Russian-speaking community that has developed in Israel’ is rigidly opposed to the recent newcomers, seen as a threat that jeopardizes the common collective spirit of ‘Russian’ Israelis based on love for Israel and respect for its spiritual basis. Moreover, Romanov raises the fear that new immigrants will negatively influence the way of life of the Jewish state.

Romanov stresses that his warnings do not refer to immigrants’ individual qualities but to the improper motivations that bring recent immigrants from Russia to Israel.¹⁰ These motivations, he claims, are mostly pragmatic and utilitarian and result in lack of real belonging to Israel. The condemnation of a purportedly instrumental attitude to the country also arises in a radio debate between B. Ostrovsky, a scientist and blogger from Putin's Aliyah, and Romanov, who accuses the new immigrants of coming ‘to take advantage of Israeli medicine’, and to benefit from a country that ‘is one large Mediterranean resort’ (Radio debate, October 20, 2021). Ostrovsky justifies himself by claiming his contribution to Israel:

It has been about two years that I have lived in the country. I am not sick (so I don't use medical services) and I almost never go to the sea. I am a healthy young man, I work at the Technion [a prestigious technical university], I work in science and I promote science in Israel. (Radio debate, October 20, 2021)

This pragmatism clashes with the perception of a meaningful symbolic contribution to the state, as Romanov understands it: ‘Your wife is not Jewish, is she? You should understand what a great problem you’ve brought upon yourself, your children and the entire Jewish people’ (Radio debate, October 20, 2021). In this way, Romanov shows that being Jewish and contributing to ethnonational continuity in Israel comes before modern rational perceptions of civic contribution.

Hypocritical obschecheloveks

Seen as outsiders with pragmatic motivations to immigrate and gain fully equal rights in the host country, the new Russian immigrants are considered to undermine the basic ethnonational distinctions of Israeli society and create a threat from within. This threat is formulated by labeling the immigrants as obschecheloveks (Facebook, November 16, 2021) – humanists or cosmopolites – a label that places them beyond the pale as far as the Jewish way of life is concerned.¹¹ We recognize here an additional path of stigmatization, where the group’s cultural and political marker joins the ethnoreligious one.

It may be counterintuitive for our readers, but in Russian right-wing political public discourse the notion of obschechelovek serves as a negative label, especially when used to describe a public figure. Obschecheloveks are driven by universal human values, neglect their national identity, and therefore betray the interests of their own group. Thus, they are seen as hypocritical, deceitful, and treacherous. In the context of recent official political discourse in Russia, which promotes a binary opposition between Russian traditional values and Western liberal ones, the notion of obschechelovek is associated with harmful foreign attitudes, seen in the individualism and consumerism of the new Russian middle class.

Paradoxically, while the intelligentsia is a group identified with humanist values, cultural sensitivity and individual ethos (Epstein, 2018; Shalin, 2018), historically, it has also held an ambiguous, critical relationship with the Soviet ideology of a common Communist man, and has sympathized with national sentiments seen as expressions of individual autonomy and opposition to state ideology. This is how scholars interpret the rise of Jewish national identity and adoption of religious practices by the intelligentsia in the late Soviet period, in the 1970s-80s (Kornblatt, 2004; Prital, 1982; Ro’i, 2016), and later their civil and political views in Israel (Shumsky, 2002; Takhtarova, 2012). Thus, the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia often considers the obschechelovek to represent a false and harmful political idea. Romanov does not use the specific term, but rather labels the immigrants using a more common and neutral title in Russian, ‘honorable people’:

Immigration from the former USSR continues. The situation in this country is unpredictable. Of course, among those who come to us thanks to this amendment, there are quite honorable people, but the Jewish state is not Australia or New Zealand, where all decent immigrants are welcome. (Facebook, October 10, 2021)

Romanov suggests that the migration of these generally honorable people will be legitimate and harmless if they choose some other Western destination, and not Israel with its exceptional national religious character. For example, Australia and New Zealand actively encourage immigration based on criteria of professional education and skills, and these countries are associated with high economic welfare and lack of spiritual depth. Thus, Putin's Aliyah is denounced for pragmatically using their Jewish origin for immigration. According to their vituperators, immigration to Israel under the Law of Return à priori implies loyalty to national interests and Jewish traditions. So immigrants from Putin’s Aliyah are denounced for seeking personal benefit and following universal values while betraying the interests of their ‘national group’. Thus, their non-Jewishness is constructed not only as a ‘spiritual’ security threat, but also as moral and political hypocrisy.

The condemnation of opportunism and hypocrisy includes clear reference to the past, the Soviet days, particularly regarding the attitudes of the Soviet intelligentsia to the regime:

A sad thing happens [to them] – people who ended up in an absolutely alien […] country [Israel]. And after some (very short) time they begin to hate this country quietly (and sometimes loudly), just as many of us hated the USSR, which it was impossible to leave. (Facebook, November 16, 2021)

Here, Kogan betrays an affinity with Putin’s Aliyah, as he shares their memory of living under an authoritarian regime. He remembers how he, like many among the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia, silently hated the Soviet regime for imposing its ideology, just as Putin’s Aliyah, in his view, experiences estrangement in Israel. Here Kogan constructs a similarity between the Soviet and the Jewish-Israeli regimes, curiously bringing the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia in the USSR and Putin’s Aliyah in Israel together in a continuity across chronology and space.

Scapegoating – the Russian-Israeli version

The proximity and similarity of immigrants and those who stigmatize them, the ambiguity of their belonging, and the unclearness of differentiation become the engines of stigmatization. This mechanism is explored by Girard (1982/2010) in his work on scapegoating, which introduces it as a universal principle of social dynamics of competition between groups over their common benefit and follows how scapegoats are discursively constructed. According to Girard, imitation is fundamental to social relations, creating a ‘mimetic desire’ – a yearning for the same thing the Other seeks as well. In moments of social crisis mimetic desire intensifies, and every other person becomes a barrier on the path to the desired. Therefore, the way to the desired object is found through violence toward this proximal Other, in making him a scapegoat.

The scapegoat in discourse is identified through ‘paradoxical marks of distinction’ – some physical or mental peculiarities, belonging to a minority, a combination of odd, monstrous qualities (Girard, 1982/2010, p. 44). Scapegoats are accused of having ‘committed crimes of (in)distinction’, that is, actions that violate established norms regarding social differentiation, and of not fitting into social hierarchies (p. 45).

Girard’s theoretical framework allows us to go beyond conflict based on racial, ethnic, national, or religious prejudice and discuss acts of symbolic rivalry deriving from the ‘mimetic desire’ of class positioning in the context of social transformation resulting from both the post-Soviet transition and the immigrants’ relocation. Accordingly, the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia in Israel, the former immigrants, scapegoat the newcomers. The discourse of scapegoating by the Jewish intelligentsia is dominated by two major labels they employ against Putin’s Aliyah: ‘non-Jews’ and ‘universal cosmopolitan human beings’. Both serve as marks and crimes of (in)distinction. By labeling Putin’s Aliyah ‘non-Jews’, the intelligentsia appeals to a local stigma anchored in the Israeli ethnonational context. In this way, immigrants from the 1970s and 1990s use a stigma previously used against them, directing it at a new scapegoat, thereby ‘cleansing’ themselves. By stigmatizing new immigrants as non-Jews insufficiently committed to the tasks of prosperity of the nation, the intelligentsia appropriates the gaze of the ethnocratic Israeli regime (Yiftachel, 2006). Thus, they reaffirm their own status as insiders and strengthen themselves in the ‘mimetic desire’ competition for definitive belonging. At the same time, in criticizing Putin’s Aliyah for being obschecheloveks, this group recruits a stigmatizing Soviet-Russian intelligentsia discourse suspicious of universal human rights.

Through these stigmas, the intelligentsia immigrants seem to be simultaneously reflecting on the position of their own group in Israeli society and on the role of the intelligentsia in the process of transition to a neoliberal culture in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, a preoccupation with ethnonational belonging in Israel, with Jewish origin and identity, is intertwined here with reflection on the place of the intelligentsia in the post-Soviet transition. As seen below, these two themes also resonate in the responses of Putin’s Aliyah, which in turn stigmatizes the intelligentsia using the labels of Jewish nationalism and communist authoritarian thinking.

Soviet backwardness: Putin’s Aliyah strikes back

The labeling and stigmatization we identify on the part of the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia in the letter controversy can also be identified on the part of Putin’s Aliyah. Both take us back in history and space to a public rhetoric associated with authoritarian language in the Soviet Union. In her critical response to the letter, N. Sokolova writes:

There are many theories on the subject of ‘Why people who come from the USSR are such xenophobes and racists, and so joyfully join all nationalist movements’. It seems as if belonging to the Jewish minority should have made them empathetic to any manifestation of violation on the grounds of origin, race, gender […]. But no. The phenomenon of hazing, the trauma of Soviet upbringing, the thirst to join the ‘majority’, is much stronger than ancestral memory. And scarier, in my opinion. (Facebook, October 19, 2021)

Sokolova uses the term ‘hazing’ (in Russian, dedovschina), which originally referred to violent behavior by old military recruits toward new recruits. In modern Russian, this term is used beyond the military lexicon to refer to harassment relationships between seniors and juniors, authoritative and oppressed, or ‘old’ and ‘new’ participants in various groups. Thus, Sokolova accuses the powerful of unjust and unlawful conduct. By doing so, she delegitimizes the authority of the letter’s author and signatories.

In her critical account, Sokolova identifies the views expressed in the letter as representing a ‘caveman mentality’. The signatories are presented as carriers of a conservative dogmatic Soviet outlook, loyal to one party which seeks total obedience. Sokolova diagnoses the style of the letter as a ‘Soviet collective complaint’, a particular performative genre of Soviet propaganda where a group or individual publishes an official complaint addressing a party authority, aiming at public stigmatization of deviant political views and immoral behavior (Bogdanova, 2021) – in other words, a tool used to serve the regime as a mechanism for the reproduction of its ideological dogma.

Jewish Bolsheviks

In a similar vein, V. Pasternak, a well-known business figure and a significant voice from Putin’s Aliyah, points to the Soviet origin of the letter’s discourse – its dogmatism and hatred toward all those who disagree. On his personal Facebook page, he writes that it has been written by ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’:

[…] I have missed the Letter of the Jewish Bolsheviks […]. If there are no enemies, then the Bolsheviks invent them. The Bolsheviks’ ideology matters more than life. What kind of ideology does not really matter. For the sake of their ideology, the Bolsheviks are ready to throw out the baby […]. The Bolsheviks believe that there is only one truth – their own [and] those who believe that there may be more truths are enemies. (Facebook, October 21, 2021)

In this interpretation the letter is seen as corresponding directly with a familiar communist propaganda style that distorts reality with demonizing rhetoric and smear campaigns. Here, ‘Bolsheviks’ is a label for ideological dictatorship, with an absolute truth imposed from above and supposed to replace individual reason and morality. The label ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’ refers not to the Bolsheviks’ ethnicity, but rather to the translation of their political style into a Jewish religious nationalism, creating a Jewish version of dogmatic ideology. In their responses, public speakers from Putin’s Aliyah associate the nationalist and xenophobic sentiments expressed in the letter with the Soviet ideological legacy of its authors, which is translated in Israel into their Jewish nationalist views.

While labeling the views articulated in the letter retrograde Bolshevism, Putin’s Aliyah’s representatives also contrast them with an imagined ideal of a Jewish morality that results from a long history of oppression. Sokolova criticizes the Israeli nationalist victimhood narrative (Feinstein & Bonikowski, 2021) and exclaims: ‘You appeal to the voice of blood, not the voice of reason!’ (Facebook, October 19, 2021) or ‘Tearing grandchildren from their relatives for the sake of nationalist ideas – what could be more terrible for a Jew?’ (Facebook, October 19, 2021). The Israeli version of the Soviet political dogma is seen as reproduced in the concept of exclusive Jewish blood and religious attitude as a basis of Israeli society and its migration policy. However, emphasizing a clear difference between the Soviet one-party system and the Israeli democracy, Sokolova hints at the marginality of the letter’s authors, and of the intelligentsia in general, within Israeli political discourse: ‘And I also wonder which party in the Israel Knesset would dare to say it today?!’ (Facebook, October 19, 2021)

The intelligentsia depreciated

Remarkably, the reflection of Russian-speaking immigrants on their Soviet heritage almost inevitably involves the category of intelligentsia as meaningful albeit extensively questioned. While some of the research participants we interviewed call themselves intelligentsia, implying their education, interest in culture, love of books, etc., others prefer not to use this term or even deny its applicability. An example of the latter attitude comes from S. Melenevskaya, a journalist, blogger and one of the admins of Facebook group of Putin’s Aliyah, who describes the intelligentsia as a phenomenon unique to the Soviet world. According to her, today it refers to people who have preserved an outlook of the past very different from the Western one, an outlook which allows them to express racism, xenophobia, homophobia, or sexism:

There is no intelligentsia in the West, there are ‘intellectuals’. The intelligentsia are not even always intellectuals. They live in their own world, and I have absolutely no idea how to communicate with them. I myself am from a family of Soviet intelligentsia, and I probably took something from there, but I have already moved on, far away from this. (Interview, January 25, 2022)

For Melenevskaya, the intelligentsia reflects the hypocrisy of Soviet morality and ideology. She distances herself from the intelligentsia and counts herself as closer to Western ‘intellectual’ groups with a liberal outlook. For Melenevskaya, the Soviet intelligentsia has become a negative label used for othering. Unlike the Western intellectuals, members of the intelligentsia appear to be a backward, controversial and obsolete group.

In positioning themselves as different from the Soviet intelligentsia, the voices of representatives of Putin’s Aliyah characterize their own outlook as liberal, pluralist and unprejudiced – which, they imply, is useful and healthy for the sake of humanity. As Sokolova writes in her polemic response:

I'm curious, what is this intelligentsia reading? […] Have they read, for example, Viktor Frankl, who wrote ‘Thousands of years ago, mankind created monotheism. Today is the next step. I would call it monotropism. Not faith in a single God, but awareness of a single humanity, the unity of humanity. A unity in the light of which the difference in skin color becomes insignificant’? (Facebook, October 19, 2021)

Moreover, these qualities of Putin’s Aliyah are presented as not harmful but necessary for the future flourishing of the country of Israel. This is how Ostrovsky answers Romanov in a radio debate: Israel, he says, needs people who will develop it, opposing traditionalism with progress:

I can say that if you want your country not only to exist, but also to develop and move forward, progress, you need free thinking. You need educated people who will come, who will take resources and make something out of them that will promote your country […]. Free thinking does not contradict religion, but a person with free thinking inevitably begins to ask questions about all the dogmas that are passed on to him […]. He will ask these questions, which will lead to ideological pluralism. (Radio debate, October 20, 2021)

In this dialogue, Romanov appears to represent both longtime Russian Israelis and, more broadly, Israelis with traditional religious or nationalist attitudes.

Sokolova also condemns the conservative nationalists for pushing progressive liberal people to leave Israel and ‘fly to study and work in other countries, take their children and realize their talents and pay taxes in another country’. She turns the condemnation of harming Israel’s future against the xenophobic Russian Israelis represented by the letter: ‘You do not let [us, Israeli people] build a free modern and progressive Israel here’. This type of exchange, conducted in a niche of immigrant media, also clearly echoes a general debate in the wider Israeli public sphere, where secular liberal voices confront conservative religious attitudes. In this context, this ongoing public disagreement is being reproduced within an immigrant community where the previously-described logic of scapegoating appears inverted: the progressive new Russian immigrants denounce the members of the old Soviet Jewish intelligentsia for jeopardizing Israel’s prosperity.

The Soviet-Israeli link in the orientalization chain

Putin’s Aliyah condemn the intelligentsia for being ‘Soviet’ in their manner of thinking and expression, recruiting a particular historical memory of a cultural and political regime. They also label the intelligentsia backward and uncivilized, recruiting a script of progress and superiority. The negative assessment of the Soviet legacy together with the positive cultivation of modernity, secularization and progress are central to Putin’s Aliyah’s strategy in response to their stigmatization by the intelligentsia.

Unlike the late Soviet intelligentsia, which presented its nationalist sentiments in opposition to hegemonic ideas of common socialist human beings, the Russian middle class shaped after the collapse of the Soviet Union adopted a neoliberal consumerist culture. Moreover, it was nourished on constant cultural and technological exchange with the West and its living standards and neoliberal practices (Mareeva & Ross, 2020). For the Russian middle class, Putin’s authoritarianism was associated with the threat of returning to a Soviet regime. Thus, for Putin’s Aliyah, the appeal to universal human progress is in a way an opposition to authoritarian discourse, in almost the same way as Jewish nationalist ideas were for the Soviet intelligentsia in 1970s and 1990s (Kornblatt, 2004; Prital, 1982; Ro’i, 2016).

When Putin’s Aliyah labels its opponents backward, it places them in the same category as ‘uncivilized’ religious elements in Israeli society with pronounced ethnonationalist attitudes. In this Israeli context, ‘uncivilized’ here clearly echoes ‘Oriental’ and becomes aligned with the well-known Israeli script of consecutive stigmatization of immigrant groups, which is conceptualized as a ‘great chain of Orientalization’ in Khazzoom’s (2003) classic analysis of labeling and othering in Israel. Khazzoom’s analysis employs Goffman’s (1986/2009) theory of stigma and Said’s (1978) Orientalism. She argues that the founders of the modern State of Israel, Jews from Eastern Europe, having been persecuted in Europe as ‘Oriental’ Others, redirected this accusation upon their arrival in Palestine at the indigenous Palestinian population and subsequent waves of Jewish immigration from Arab countries. The European Jews repositioned themselves as carriers of Western culture, who brought progress to the ‘wilderness’, and treated indigenous people and newcomers from the Orient as ‘primitives’, lacking European habits and qualities. This ‘chain of Orientalization’ preserved ‘Orientalized’ minorities at the position of marginal or non-hegemonic groups, reproducing their stigmatization (Khazzoom, 2003, p. 503).

Similarly to Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Israel in the early twentieth century, immigrants from the FSU employ Orientalist attitudes taken from their (post-)Soviet heritage in their relationships with the locals and stigmatize them as inferior, as obstacles to progress (Shumsky, 2004). Thus, members of Putin’s Aliyah view their compatriots from previous immigrant waves as uncivilized indigenous subjects that they are encountering as champions of modern progressive ideas.

Discussion

Goffman (1986/2009) considers the immigrant a typical object of stigmatization. Immigrants are seen as aliens that penetrate a community of local insiders. Indeed, research on prejudice in the migration context usually deals with immigrants’ stigmatization and scapegoating by either local political elites (Cecchi, 2019; Nacu, 2012; Quassoli, 2004) or local groups with nationalist and racist views fostered by perceived distance from the immigrants (Cochrane & Nevitte, 2014; Goodfellow, 2019). The case presented here is different, however. We have examined stigmatizing relationships within the community of compatriots based on rivalry between two distinct groups of immigrants from the FSU in Israel: the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia of the 1970s and 1990s and Putin's Aliyah of the 2010s. The analysis of this case contributes a unique and timely ethnography of conflicts that are based on closeness, familiarity and similarity. Since 2022–2024 both Russia and Israel are found in a state of violent political turbulence that is accompanied by deep frictions within the groups in both societies, mutual harsh blaming between well familiar parties and accusations in disloyalty. The article elucidates a precursor process within the context of post-Soviet migration. We will discuss here the implications of this particular case for a nuanced contextual perception of both specific post-Soviet immigrants’ cultural dynamics and broader inter-group relationships in the context of migration.

In analyzing the immigrants’ conflictual discourse in the digital case of the letter controversy, we have come to recognize an ambiguous relationship rooted not in cultural distance but rather in the cultural similarity and social proximity of these groups, which had left their common home country at different historical moments. The first group, the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia, is a survivor of the Soviet social structure, while Putin’s Aliyah is an offshoot of the new Russian middle class, that succeeded intelligentsia in present-day Russian society, although its identity and habitus have been modified due to recent cultural and political transformations. While the ‘old’ intelligentsia was formed in the Soviet authoritarian system and observed its weakening during perestroika, Putin’s Aliyah was formed during the turbulent 1990s and the stabilization of the 2000s, and in the 2010s began to observe the rise of a new authoritarian system under a capitalist economy. The new Russian middle class partly overlaps with the intelligentsia milieu, and often considers itself a ‘new’ or ‘post’ intelligentsia, partly rejecting its heritage.

With our analysis, we draw attention to internal tensions between groups within an immigrant collective and highlight the role played by social categories from the home country in group relations in the host country. We argue that in this space of migration, the Soviet and post-Soviet periods in Russia are shrunk in time and continues to affect groups’ positioning, collective identities and interactions. When encountering each other in Israel across historical time and political space, the relations of similarity and contest between the groups are expressed through rivalry and mutual stigmatization. Both groups claim similar status and symbolic authority in their attempt to convert their class capital into a resource of self-relocation in migration (Van Hear, 2014).

The conflicting groups can be seen as ‘post-Soviet subjects’ (Lerner, 2011) where the term ‘post-Soviet’ refers to symbols, rhetoric and group identities anchored in the historical, cultural and political Soviet reality. As a conceptual tool, the term ‘post-Soviet’ has recently been criticized for its outdated imperial connotations (see e.g. Ibañez-Tirado, 2015), and researchers of Putin’s Russia are searching for new conceptualizations. We find, however, that the Soviet political and cultural heritage still provides a powerful anchor for the identities of the groups in migration and shapes their interactions as references to the Soviet ethos and realities are used by political and cultural groups even beyond Russia in post-Soviet transnational space.

The intertwining of home and host, old and new labels is used to stigmatize the other group of compatriots, reflecting a competition for symbolic place, authority and positioning in a migration space. The intelligentsia employs the scapegoating mechanism, basing it on accusations of non-Jewishness, a local Israeli narrative, and of pragmatism and deceitfulness – a narrative imported from the FSU. Conversely, we also demonstrate a stigmatizing mechanism of Orientalization, involving the labeling of the intelligentsia as backward and uncivilized by Putin’s Aliyah. Here, that which is ‘Soviet’ appears backward, therefore Oriental. The identity of Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia is presented by Putin’s Aliyah as an empty signifier concealing Bolshevik authoritarianism and retrograde Soviet rigidity translated to an Israeli nationalist agenda. Conversely, in much the same way, the cosmopolitanism and liberalism of Putin’s Aliyah are presented as lacking national commitment, as instrumentalism concealed under cosmopolitanism. Thus, the confrontation between the groups is simultaneously anchored in a clash over Soviet/Russian cultural and political heritage, over questions of Jewish-Israeli belonging and identity, and over distinctions between a progressive West and a backward East.

Much of this mutual labeling reflects a symbolic strategy of ‘valuation contest’ (Harrison, 1995). The labelers devalue the symbolic meaning of each other’s identities. Accordingly, for the intelligentsia, labeling Putin’s Aliyah as obschecheloveks means devaluing ‘cosmopolitan humanity’ as false and hypocritical. Conversely, Putin’s Aliyah devalues the meaning of ‘intelligentsia’, associating it with Sovietness.

In this way, the stigmatization used in the letter controversy echoes major universal markers of the stigmatized victim in Girard (1982/2010) analysis, where the subjects of scapegoating are close to their accuser. They are not outsiders, but positioned within the boundaries of the collective, sharing similarities with the accuser but also differing from those who claim social authority; they appear weak but are presented as a threat to the collective.

The Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia and Putin’s Aliyah share the qualities of the scapegoat in different historical national contexts – in the FSU and in Israel. The letter that scapegoats Russian immigrants as a threat to Israel was published only a few months before the beginning of the war in Ukraine. In his speech on March 16 2022, Vladimir Putin called for ‘self-purification of Russian society’ of the ‘fifth column’, aiming at the new Russian middle class representing a threat by the ‘collective West’ inside Russia.¹² Indeed, the term ‘fifth column’ is associated with those representatives of the new Russian middle class who are disloyal to the state, are involved in protest activities and/or are emigrating from Russia. Then, upon their immigration to Israel, the members of the same group are once again labeled a ‘fifth column’. Here, they are denounced by their compatriots, Russian-speaking Israelis from previous waves of immigration to Israel, as a threat not to Russia’s but rather to Israel’s national existence and its Jewish character. Thus, the timespan of the conflict between the intelligentsia and Putin’s Aliyah echoes the recent global reemergence of historical patterns and rhetoric of stigmatization that travel across time and space, social structures and political regimes, and are reproduced in migration.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Prof. Tamar Rappoport and Prof. Anna Novikova for their constructive criticism and valuable comments, which helped to improve and enrich this article. They would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Social Identities and its editors for their rigorous but careful reading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Kreitman School for Advanced Graduate Studies, Ben-Gurion University of Negev (Negev grant for PhD students); Center of Integration in Science, Ministry of Aliyah and Integration (Grant for New Immigrants Scholars receiving PhD).

Notes

1 As immigration from Russia to Israel intensified in 2022–2023, new online scandals involving these groups took place on social media, such as the ‘Pumpkin latte’ controversy in October 2022 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-10/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-pumpkin-latte-became-a-metaphor-for-new-russian-immigrants-in-israel/00000185-96fb-d85f-a58d-fffbceff0000

2 In the context of the Russian War in Ukraine and the delegitimation of Russian imperial attitudes, the terms “Soviet” and “post-Soviet” have been questioned as colonial political term (see e.g. Aleksanteri Institute 2022). We employ here the term “post-Soviet” to make sense of symbols, rhetoric and group identities anchored in the historical, cultural and political Soviet reality.

3 Middle-class opposition to the regime began with the anti-government protests of 2011–2012, relating to claims of election fraud, and continued in response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and particularly the recent war in Ukraine.

4 Literally ‘ascent’, Aliyah is the Zionist Hebrew word for Jewish immigration to Israel.

5 The Law of Return and its Amendments (1950, 1954, 1970) entitle Jews and their children, grandchildren, and spouses to obtain Israeli citizenship immediately upon arrival.

6 All names are changed for the sake of anonymity.

7 The emphasizes in all quotations made by the authors.

8 Klal Israel refers to the unity of Jews as a collective entity. The letter uses this word in its Hebrew original.

9 The term ‘Judeophobia’ used in the letter is a synonym for antisemitism and usually appears in reference to archaic contexts. In this context the term emphasizes a negative attitude to Jewish religious tradition more than ethno-biological distance.

10 The utilitarian motivations for obtaining an Israeli passport were highlighted in the Israeli general media discourse. See report by Raviv Drucker on TV Channel 13, ‘Citizenship or Lawlessness’, October 25, 2020, https://13tv.co.il/item/news/hamakor/season-19/episodes/ep05-2070236; and article in a leading Israeli newspaper on the issue, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-04-14/ty-article-timeline/.highlight/directors-designers-advisers-all-here-the-russian-elites-fleeing-to-israel/00000180-5bb6-de8c-a1aa-dbbe2ff50000.

11 This is a term with pejorative connotations, most clearly found in Dostoevsky’s works as a kind of ‘homunculus’ raised on pan-European values, rejecting the specificity of Russian national characteristics, and despising the ‘Russian folk’ (Zakharov, 2013, p. 150). In the post-Soviet period, this term has been adopted in nationalist discourse.

12 URL: http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67996