‘Russians’ in Israel as a post-Soviet subject: implementing the civilizational repertoire

Abstract

This article argues that the post-Soviet perspective on Russians in Israel allows a deeper understanding of this collective's extreme socio-cultural heterogeneity and opens up the meanings of its ‘Russianness’ often taken for granted in research literature. Empirical examples in the article trace the meanings of key cultural and sociological categories – intelligentsia and ethnicity – in the post-Soviet context, and their implementation in the Russian-Israeli field. The article stresses the potency and dominance of these categories, as well as their pragmatic usage and modification within local political and ideological contexts. The contemporary manifestation of these categories preserves the ‘civilizational’ aspect of Russian-Soviet identity, allowing their creative use by this diasporic group.

Keywords:

• Russian immigrants
• post-Soviet cultural space
• ethnic identity
• Israel

Notes

 1. Some of the ideas developed in this article were first presented at the Holberg International Conference in Honor of S.N. Eisenstadt in June 2007 and were published in Gad Yair and Orit Gazit eds., Collective Identities, States and Globalization, Essays in Honor of S.N. Eisenstadt (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2010). I want to thank the participants of this conference for their insightful comments.

 2. Here and throughout the article, the term ‘Russians’ in Israel refers to the cultural, linguistic, historic and political link of Russian-speaking Israelis to Russia and the Soviet Union, without any direct ethnic connotations.

 3. Nelly Elias and Marina Shorer-Zeltser, “Immigrants of the World Unite? A Virtual Community of Russian-speaking Immigrants on the Web,” Journal of International Communication 12, no. 2 (2006): 70–90.

 4. Tamar Rapoport and Edna Lomsky-Feder, “Visit, Separation, and Deconstructing Nostalgia: Jewish-Russian Students Travel to Their Old Home,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29, no. 1 (2000): 32–57; Larissa Remennick, “Transnational Community in the Making: Russian-Jewish immigrants of the 1990s in Israel,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28, no. 3 (2002): 515–31.

 5. Vladimir (Zeev) Khanin, Velv Chernin and Alek Epstein, The Community of Israelis in the FSU: the Socio-Cultural Picture of Emigration Tendencies (Ramat-Gan: Rapoport Center, Bar-Ilan University, 2009).

 6. Mordechai Altshuller, Judaism in the Soviet Vise: Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union between 1941–1964 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar Center, 2007); Mikhail Chlenov, “The Characteristics of the Ethnic and Religious Identity of the Russian Jews,” Jews of the Former Soviet Union in Israel and Diaspora: 20–21 (2003): 254–73 [in Hebrew]; Zvi Gitelman, The Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); Yaacov Ro'i, “Religion, Israel, and the Development of Soviet Jewry's National Consciousness, 1967–91,” in Jewish Life after the USSR, ed. Z. Gitelman, M. Glants, and M.I. Goldman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 13–26; Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

 7. Slezkine, The Jewish Century; Larissa Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007).

 8. For a general inquiry see Ronald G. Suny and T. Martin, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). For the application to Jewish groups see Chen Bram, “Ethnic Categorisation and the Plurality of Cultures” (PhD dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2009).

 9. Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents.

10. Julia Lerner, “Introduction: The Pragmatic Power of Culture in Migration,” in “Russians” in Israel: The Pragmatics of Culture in Migration, ed. Julia Lerner and Rivka Feldhay [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuhad, forthcoming).

11. See for example Asher Cohen's concept of ‘Non-Jewish Jews’: Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser, “Jews and Others: Non-Jewish Jews in Israel,” Israel Affairs 15, no. 1 (2009): 52–65.

12. Chen Bram and Julia Lerner, “Haredim in Russian: Considering the Religiosity Processes among the Russian Speaking Collective in Israel” (paper presented at the conference “Haredim and Harediyut in Israel at the Crossroads,” Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, November 2007); Nelly Elias, “Newly Born Christians of the Jewish State: Post-Soviet Immigrants in Search of the Spirituality?” (paper presented at 7th Annual Aleksanteri Conference “Revisiting Perestroika – Processes and Alternatives,” University of Helsinki, November 2007).

13. My analysis of the post-Soviet field is based on my PhD dissertation: Julia Lerner, “From ‘Soul’ to ‘Identity’: The Constitution of the Social Sciences in Post-Soviet Russia and the Sociologisation of Russianness” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007). The insights on Russians in Israel derive from my earlier research: Julia Lerner, By Way of Knowledge: Russian Migrants at the University [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Working Papers of the Shaine Center of Research in Social Sciences, 1999) and are also based on the empirical studies included in the forthcoming edited collection: Lerner and Feldhay, “Russians” in Israel.

14. For a detailed analysis and literature review see Chapter 3 (“‘Intellectuals’ and ‘Professionals’ Deconstruct Russian Intelligentsia”) in Lerner, From Soul to “Identity.”

15. Robert J. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism (London: Macmillan, 1978); Judith D. Kornblatt, Doubly Chosen: Jewish Identity, the Soviet Intelligentsia and the Russian Orthodox Church (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); David Prital, In Search of Self: The Soviet Jewish Intelligentsia and the Exodus (Jerusalem: Mount Scopus Publications, 1982).

16. Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry since the Second World War (London: Macmillan Press, 1987); Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust: A Social and Demographic Profile (Jerusalem: Center for Research of East European Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 1998).

17. Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents; Slezkine, The Jewish Century.

18. Julia Lerner, Tamar Rapoport, and Edna Lomsky-Feder, “The ‘Ethnic Script’ in Action: The Re-grounding of Russian-Jewish Immigrants in Israel,” Ethos 35, no. 2 (2007): 168–95; Sveta Roberman, “‘Decent People are not Coming Here’: Imageries of Jewish Communities among Russian Jews in Germany” (paper presented at the conference: “The New Voices. Research on Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia,” Tel-Aviv University, November 2009).

19. Alek Epstein and Nina Kheimets, “Immigrant Intelligentsia and its Second Generation: Cultural Segregation as a Road to Social Integration?,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 1, no. 4 (2000): 461–76; “Does Emigration of Russians from Israel indicate failure?,” interview with Michael Philippov, YNET, February 28, 2008; “On the Necessity of Non-ethnic Base for Migration,” interview with Larissa Remennick, Haaretz, November 5, 2007.

20. Referring by this concept of Sherry B. Ortner, “On Key Symbols,” American Anthropologist 75, no. 5 (1973): 1338–46.

21. For Israel see Tamar Rapoport and Edna Lomsky-Feder, “‘Intelligentsia’ as an Ethnic Habitus: The Inculcation and Restructuring of Intelligentsia among Russian Jews,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 23, no. 2 (2002): 233–48; for the US see Fran Markowitz, A Community in Spite of Itself (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993); for Germany and for a comparative picture of strategies of cultural acculturation see Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents.

22. Lerner et al., “The Ethnic Script in Action.”

23. Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tali Leibovitz, “Inter-Ethnic Encounters Within the Family: Competing Cultural Models and Social Exchange,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36, no. 1 (2010): 107–24.

24. Inna Leykin, “People of the War – Soldiers of the Peace: Disabled Second World War Veterans from the FSU in the Israeli Public Space” (paper presented at international conference “‘Russians’ in Israel and Beyond: Meanings of Culture in Discourse and Practice,” VLJI, June 2005).

25. Alon Wainer, “Against What? The ‘Counter’-Culture of Russian Rock in Israel” (paper presented at international conference “‘Russians’ in Israel and Beyond: Meanings of Culture in Discourse and Practice,” VLJI, June 2005).

26. Adi Kuntsman, “Between Gulags and Pride Parades: Sexuality, Nation and Haunted Speech Acts,” GLQ: Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies: 14, no. 2–3 (2008): 263–87.

27. Irina Tachtarova, “‘Would Dostoyevsky Have Said That?’ Soviet Intelligentsia and the Jewish Nationalism in Israel” (paper presented at 7th Annual Aleksanteri Conference “Revisiting Perestroika – Processes and Alternatives,” University of Helsinki, November 2007).

28. Vladimir Malahov, Skromnoe Obayanie Rasizma (Moscow: Dom Intellektual'noy Knigi, 2001).

29. For a detailed analysis of the uses and meanings of ‘ethnicity’ in post-Soviet discourse and related literature review, see chapter 5 (“Conversion of ‘Ethnicity’ in the Post-imperial Nationalizing Process”) in Lerner, From Soul to Identity.

30. For an analysis of culturology as a new discipline see Alexei Elfimov, Russian Intellectual Culture in Transition: The Future in the Past (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2003); Jutta Scherrer, Kulturologia: Russia in Search of the Civilizational Identity (Essen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003).

31. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); V. Shlapentokh, M. Sendich and E. Payin, eds., New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republic. (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994).

32. For the discussion Russian politics towards Russian-speaking Israelis and ‘Sootechestvenniki’ project see Illa Ben Porat, “Perpetual Diaspora, Changing Homelands: The Constitution of Russian Speaking Jews as a Diaspora of both Israel and Russia” (PhD dissertation, Ben-Gurion University, in preparation).

33. Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents; Nelly Elias, Coming Home: Media and Returning Diaspora in Israel and Germany (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008); and Eliezer Ben-Rafael et al., Building a Diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and the USA (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

34. See note 6 above.

35. Majid Al-Haj, Immigration and Ethnic Formation in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of the 1990's Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

36. Dimitry Shumsky, “Ethnicity and Citizenship in the Perception of Russian Israelis,” in Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration, ed. D. Levy and Y. Weiss (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 154–78.

37. Michael Philippov, “1990's Immigrants from the FSU in Israeli Elections 2006: The Fulfilment of the Political Dreams of Post-Soviet Man?” in The Elections in Israel 2006, ed. Asher Arian and Michal Shamir (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 135–58.

38. Edna Lomsky-Feder, Tamar Rapoport, and Julia Lerner, “Orientalism and the Challenge of Migration: Russian Students read Israeli Ethnicity,” Theory and Criticism 26 (2005): 119–47 [in Hebrew]; Dimitry Shumsky, “Post-Zionist Orientalism? Orientalist Discourse and Islamophobia among Russian-speaking Intelligentsia in Israel,” Social Identities 10, no. 1 (2004): 83–100.

39. Yehudit Rosenbaum-Tamari, “The Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, Their Motives for Immigrating and Commitment to the Life in Israel” (Research report, the Ministry of Immigrants' Absorption, 2004).

40. Sabina Lisitza and Yohannan Peres. “The FSU Immigrants in Israel: Identity Formation and Integration Process,” Israeli Sociology 3, no. 1 (2000): 7–30 [in Hebrew]; Moshe Lissak, The Immigrants from the FSU: Segregation and Integration [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, 1995); Moshe Lissak and Eliezer Leshem, “Russian Intelligentsia in Israel: between Ghettoization and Integration,” Israel Affairs 2, no. 2 (1995): 20–37.

41. Baruch Kimmerling, “Russian Speaking Immigrants,” in his Immigrants, Settlers, Natives: The Israeli Society between Cultural Pluralism and Cultural War [in Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2004); Yossi Yonah, “Israel's Immigration Policies: The Twofold Face of the ‘Demographic Threat’,” Social Identities 10, no. 2 (2004): 195–218.

42. For historical writing see Shumsky, “Post-Zionist Orientalism”; and Shumsky, “Ethnicity and Citizenship in the Perception of Russian Israelis”; for sociological analysis see Tamar Horowitz, ed., The Soviet Man in an Open Society (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989); for publicist writing see Ilana Gomel, The Pilgrim Soul: Being a Russian in Israel [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Zmura-Bitan, 2006).