In 1990, 228,400 Jews left the USSR, of which 183,000 arrived in Israel. This sizable aliya was the result of dividing the streams of emigration and of the practically free emigration from the USSR. Starting on January 1, 1990, immigration to the U.S. was implemented via direct flights, and the processing of documents took place in Moscow on the basis of invitations from direct relatives, in accordance with an annual quota of 40,000 visas for Jews and 10,000 for representatives of other Soviet nationalities. The process of submitting and reviewing requests for entry visas to the U.S. was rather lengthy, the quota was not that large, and the waiting period dragged out for several years. At the same time, Israel, based on the Law of Return, automatically granted entry visas to Jews and family members up to the third generation. The growing chaos, economic distress, and fear that emigration might again be blocked impelled the majority of those who potentially would have preferred the U.S. not to wait and to move to where they were accepted─Israel. The Black Hundreds kind of anti-Semitism of the late 1980s and early 1990s also enhanced the popularity of the Israeli direction.

There exists a point of view that the massive exodus was the result of a panicked flight from a disintegrating empire. Possibly, it appeared that way in those regions at the periphery where separatist attitudes were strong and mass demonstrations against the central regime had already begun. On the whole, however, people throughout the country did not think in those terms, and no one expected the empire to collapse; rather there was a feeling of an unstable transitional perestroika period, a Time of Troubles. In 1990, emigration became practically free and was limited only by the technical possibilities of OVIR and the customs.

By the beginning of 1990, the number of people who had obtained invitations from Israel reached almost 500,000. For them, departure from the USSR was the result of efforts that had been undertaken long before the empire’s collapse or even at the first signs of the process, that is, it was a calculated step that had been prepared in advance. The mass of people who succumbed to the panic of the years between 1989 and the early 1990s left already after the putsch of August 1991, but then the level of departures declined twofold. One can speak of a real panic only in the empire’s peripheral regions where armed clashes began.

It was necessary to have an invitation from the destination country up until the new law on emigration and the law on citizenship of February 6, 1992 came into effect, that is, after the collapse of the USSR. From then on, emigrants retained citizenship in the Russian Federation and a Russian passport. OVIR issued emigrants an international passport that was specially intended for departure to permanent residence abroad. The review time for applications to travel abroad was shortened to one month and to three months for applications for permanent residency abroad. The situation remained unchanged until the complete abolition of the visa regime on September 20, 2008, after which a person possessing an international passport simply purchased an airplane ticket at the counter.

Both the Sochnut and Lishkat hakesher, which had been able to open offices in the USSR, played important roles in implementing the mass immigration to Israel. Lishkat hakesher was situated in the former Israeli embassy building in Moscow; Sochnut emissaries worked in Leningrad, Odessa, Kiev, Kishinev, Minsk, Riga, and other cities.

Formally, Nativ’s (Lishkat hakesher) activity consisted of performing consular duties in the Israeli embassy, chiefly verifying whether the documents of potential olim met the requirements of the Law of Return. In actual fact, its functions were considerably broader and included an analysis of the situation of the Jewish minority in the USSR, supporting certain independent Jewish organizations, assisting prisoners of Zion and their families, conducting educational activity, and offering consultation and information. The Jewish Agency, in accordance with its mandate, was supposed to deal with strengthening Jewish identity and propagating programs connected to the State of Israel. This entailed disseminating appropriate literature, operating cultural and informational centers, organizing flights, and purchasing tickets. A real division of functions thus existed only with regard to two major issues: consular work proper─Nativ and delivering repatriates─the Sochnut (in truth, when it was a matter of bringing repatriates from regions immersed in fighting, Nativ took the most active part). All the other kinds of activity intersected, which evoked no little tension between the allies-rivals. One of the serious reasons for disagreement concerned budgetary matters, but that was resolved when the Israeli government took upon itself the full financing of Nativ.

The rapidly changing situation in the USSR made it impossible to predict the final outcome. The first tremors of approaching conflicts appeared by 1988. In several republics mass movements in support of perestroika arose one after the other. These quickly turned into movements for expanding sovereignty at the expense of the central government and in the future─into a striving for complete political independence. The Baltic republics were in the forefront of this process. In April 1988, the National Front was founded in Estonia, in June in Lithuania, and in October in Latvia. By November 16, 1988, the Supreme Soviet of Estonia adopted by a majority vote a Declaration of Estonian Sovereignty, which the USSR Supreme Soviet did not recognize. On August 23, 1989, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the national fronts conducted a powerful demonstration protesting the forced annexation of the three Baltic republics to the USSR that had followed after the 1939 pact. In the action, called the “Baltic way,” two million citizens of the three republics formed a live chain of about 600 kilometers in length between the capitals of the republics. In June 1988, a national front in support of perestroika arose in Belarus. In 1989, a movement to secede from the USSR arose in Georgia. On April 9, 1989, Soviet defense ministry forces brutally dispersed a meeting in Tbilisi. Sixteen people were killed, and horrifying reports that soldiers crushed the skulls of unarmed demonstrators using sappers’ shovels consolidated feelings in favor of state independence. Similar events with the use of armed forces and the loss of life occurred the following year in Baku and Dushanbe, and a year later in Vilnius and Riga.

A series of acute interethnic conflicts erupted between1988 and 1989 in republics such as Georgia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. In the context of the severe Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, the National Front of Azerbaijan was formed in 1988; on September 23, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan adopted a constitutional law about the sovereignty of the Azerbaijan SSR.

The National Front of Moldova was formed in May 1989. On June 23, the Supreme Soviet of Moldova confirmed the Conclusions of a special commission on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which the establishment of the Moldovan SSR was declared an illegal act and Bessarabia and North Bukovina were recognized as occupied Rumanian territories.

In September 1989, the movement of Ukrainian national democrats─Rukh─was founded.

The national fronts later took part in democratic elections to governing organs and joined the ruling structures.

The ethnic conflicts were accompanied by a sharply deteriorating economic situation that was exacerbated by a steep drop in oil prices. “In 1989, for the first time, the start of an economic crisis in the country was reported, when economic growth was replaced by decline. In the period from 1989 to 1991 the chief problem of the Soviet economy ─a chronic deficit of goods─became the most severe. Practically all basic goods except for bread disappeared from open sale. Rationing in the form of ration cards was introduced in practically all regions of the country.”[1]

After Gorbachev’s refusal to interfere in the domestic affairs of socialist camp countries, the communist regimes there began collapsing one after the other; the forty-year-old Iron Curtain fell and the borders were opened to Western countries. On the night of November 9, 1989, citizens of East Germany (the GDR) destroyed the hated wall separating West and East Berlin.

In Poland the former Solidarity leader Lech Walensa came to power (December 9, 1990) and in Czechoslovakia─former dissident Vaclav Havel (December 29, 1989). In Rumania, President Nicolae Ceausecu and his wife were shot after sentencing by a tribunal. In effect, the Soviet sphere of influence that had been built up after World War II collapsed.[2] Soviet controlled organizations of the Warsaw Pact and The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), which opposed NATO and the European Union, began to fall apart at the seams. The countries that were freed from communist dictatorship did not intend to remain in the Soviet sphere of influence, preferring to join the European Union. It represented the defeat of communist ideology and of Soviet influence in the international arena.

The occurrences in the socialist camp countries affected the frame of mind in several Soviet republics and were received enthusiastically by local nationalist movements, which succeeded in gaining strength. As a result of historical ethno-cultural ties, the effect was stronger and more concrete along the western borders of the USSR. Traditionally, events in Poland seriously influence the mood in the Baltics, especially Catholic Lithuania; events in Rumania have an effect on Moldova. Separatist sentiments thus intensified sharply in several republics. On March 8, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Lithuania declared an independent LithuanianRepublic, repealing the applicability of the Soviet Constitution and restoring the validity of the Lithuanian Constitution of 1938. The Supreme Soviet of Latvia approved similar measures on May 4, 1990. The bloody events of April 9, 1990 inTbilisi initiated a consolidation of forces in favor of Georgia’s secession from the USSR. Estonia and Azerbaijan also moved in the direction of independence.

At the time, of course, no one thought that the Soviet Union, which possessed a first class army and powerful political police force, could collapse like a house of cards. I would even suggest that outside forces were not interested in such a rapid collapse of the Soviet Union because of the potential danger of unguarded nuclear weaponry. The events were perceived rather as an affliction of the transitional period, some zone of troubled times, after which everything could be renewed in a more civilized and liberal form. Perhaps, the Baltic republics were capable of gaining independence, but even that was unlikely.

Mika, I addressed Mikhail Chlenov, you built the Vaad, an all-union umbrella organization while all that was occurring around you. I left in March 1989, and I had the feeling that things were rather stable. Just imagine─Pamiat! A bogey man for the ordinary citizen that stimulated aliya.

I would say that you left in the last seconds. In 1990, the country was reduced to a state of complete ruin. It led to efforts in the West to save Russia; the concept of humanitarian help appeared. Panic truly was spreading and in 1990 it reached its peak.

The people attained freedom and a free market appeared; why the panic?

I’ve thought about this a lot. The panic occurred primarily in 1990 and during the entire period up to the putsch, that is, until August 1991. It arose because the customary state system began to break down. People who had been living in a totalitarian society began to understand that totalitarianism is not only oppression: it is when everything depends on the regime─birth, death, work, food, security, education, in short, everything! In 1990, goods began to disappear from the stores and a black market developed. Right in front of the Bolshoi Theater thousands of people were selling soap, matches, etc.─right on the street. Only some rusks and yeast remained in the stores, there were no goods. The authority was disappearing. At the same time it seemed like everything depended on the black market, the underground. Cooperatives began to flourish; some people started mixed enterprises with foreigners. The country began to open in the direction of the West but immediately afterward was closed from that side. The West stopped letting in Soviet citizens, and visa control became very strict. In 1990 the Jews already had the Vaad, but panic began, there was fear of pogroms, etc.

Do you mean panic because of Pamiat and other antisemitic organizations?

Not only and panic not only among the Jews. I remember very well sending fellows to the party municipal committee to ask what it intended to do about this pogrom atmosphere. The fellows went there and were met by some bureaucrat who said: “Yes, there will be a pogrom, only not a Jewish one; it will be a pogrom against the communists. Therefore, we are inviting you: come and we’ll defend ourselves together.” Then I sent them to the municipal executive committee. There they said: “Yes, you’re right, there will be a pogrom, only not against Jews or communists but against stores. We are inviting you to come and together we’ll defend the groceries and warehouses,” and so forth. That’s how it was. In general, that great surge of emigration arose because the vast totalitarian country was writhing in convulsions. The regime became weak, ceased to protect or to control life and the country; it ceased to be the source of everything and that was frightening. People who a year earlier had refused to give their children permission to leave, started hurrying themselves to flee to wherever they would be let in.

Russians, Germans, Ukrainians, and Greeks who were able to go somewhere hurried away. It was good for the Jews and Germans because they had where to go.

Did they fear a savage Russian revolt?

Each person had his own fears. On the whole it was a reaction to the death of the totalitarian order. There was nothing else. Crime and banditry appeared. Murders started and the unrestricted free press began to write about all this. Television began to show horrible things─here a murder, there a robbery.[3]

Chlenov offers a description of mass emigration as seen from Moscow. The situation looked somewhat different in the hot spots that were the centers of separatist efforts. This is how another co-chairperson of the Vaad, the Riga activist Shmuel Zilberg, described it.

What do you regard as the basic reason for the mass exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union? I asked him.

I see it as one of the component parts of the disintegration of the empire. The Latvians went to their home in Latvia, the Armenians to Armenia, and the Jews had Israel. Few had either the strength or possibility in Latvia to prove that he or she was a Latvian Jew, and there was no special desire to do so. There were also people who remained in Riga, Moscow, and other places, but on the whole people got up and left. It was not, however, the result of the activity of the Sochnut, Lishkat hakesher, or Jewish activists. It was a result of the grandiose process of the disintegration of the empire.

One of the movement activists who received information from all over the Soviet Union was Aleksandr Shmukler, the editor-in-chief of the Russian-language Information Bulletin on Issues of Repatriation and Jewish Culture.

I know that you actively fought against Pamiat and similar organizations. Weren’t you yourself afraid of those fellows” I asked him.

We were apprehensive and we continually discussed it. Moreover, there were cases when our names were mentioned in Pamiat leaflets. My name was frequently mentioned in connection with my position as head of the B’nai Brith lodge in the USSR. There was a feeling that all this could turn into physical violence. “Mashka,” however, adopted the following position: Pamiat was created by the secret services, controlled, and directed by them, and therefore physical violence is possible only with the secret service’s approval. In other words, if they want to switch to repressions, one way to do so could be by “the hand of an antisemite.” We seriously discussed whether we should hire guards for the Vaad office, but we did not consider that there was a real danger on the popular level.

The year 1990 was one of approaching catastrophe?

I didn’t have a feeling of approaching catastrophe but rather one of fresh air.

Then the mass aliyah was not a panicked flight but rather the realization of accumulated potential, including from the negative tendencies in the security sphere.

Let’s not deceive ourselves. We interacted with rather high-ranking people, and we understood that Pamiat did not yet represent a danger. At the same time, we also used this card and played up the feeling of tension in order to stimulate aliyah. If we are talking about Moscow or St. Petersburg, there were isolated antisemitic manifestations, especially at the cemeteries, and we utilized this information with all our might.

“Mashka,” after all, did not simply analyze the situation but also channeled events into a certain direction. There were many letters to various authoritative bodies and we publicized all of them. The bulletin appeared, there was a Jewish newspaper, and sometimes Ogonek [a popular weekly] published these letters. The Jewish masses read these things. The empty store shelves and the hysteria about antisemitism played their role. Don’t forget that in 1989 and 1990 the border opened a little. People were already able to travel to relatives in Israel, America, and so forth. Many paid visits and brought back so-called live letters, that one needn’t fear leaving; everything would be all right. These three things produced the avalanche.

The international journalist Vladimir Tumarkin was part of Gorbachev’s team. A liberal, fully perestroika-minded individual, he previously worked in the ideological section of the Central Committee and was one of the first who made contact with Jewish movement activists. Although by temperament and self-identification he was completely Russian, he, too, had Jewish roots. I met him in September 2010 at one of the large Western banks where he was then working. At the end of the Soviet period, Tumarkin worked under Aleksandr Yakovlev in the Ideology Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and dealt with “the so-called Jewish question in international public opinion.”

What did you see as the faults of the Soviet system?

The cult of personality, the lack of freedom, the continuation of the Gulag system, and the fears that remained within Soviet people as the legacy of totalitarianism. These things take several generations to heal─the dead keep a hold on the living. In my job application I was registered as a Russian although, of course, I never concealed my father’s [Jewish] nationality. There were personnel workers who asked all kinds of questions. They were always suspicious of that rebellious Jewish blood.

Gorbachev replaced about sixty percent of the Central Committee apparatus with like-minded people even before conducting reforms. Nevertheless, many in the Central Committee did not understand the reforms and some frankly disliked them.

That’s putting it mildly. The fermentation was monstrous and without exaggeration one could say that hatred of Gorbachev among workers in the Central Committee apparatus was off the scale. People openly cursed in his direction when he walked along the corridor as they used to do to Khrushchev. Experts, secretaries, aides to secretaries, the division of the party organization that trained cadres for the provinces…. They said: “This won’t last long, it will fly the coop.” There was blatant sabotage in many branches of the economy.

In what way?

Indeed, there really wasn’t an economy as such. Eighty percent of it was based solely on the military-industrial complex. Once at some friendly gathering the son of Suslov, formerly the director of a major missile enterprise, was simply boiling over at the mention of Gorbachev’s name: “He doesn’t understand what he’s doing. Why is he taking away our funds; why is he sawing off the branch on which everyone is sitting; why is he letting the Americans lead him around by the nose; why is he opening our secret enterprises for observation?” The younger Suslov was expressing the opinion of many intelligent, educated professionals who until then lived untroubled lives, made this their life’s work, and suddenly the ground gave way under their feet.

What did you reply to him?

I said that it couldn’t go on this way. “Take a look around, see what is happening with other people. Where is the light industry? Where is the ordinary economy? Everything is fine for you─good salaries and good apartments, but what about the rest of the people?”

          You were speaking about ordinary Soviet citizens. Imagine how they related to society’s outcasts─refuseniks, Jewish activists, and dissidents.

I must tell you, first, that mail on this topic arrived all the time from inside and outside. Of course, less from abroad. There was material from the summits and Helsinki conferences. In addition there were inquiries from the Central Committee and so forth.

How was the mail dealt with?

Unfortunately, a huge amount of the letters simply went into the wastebasket and went unanswered.

I know people who were arrested because of letters to the Central Committee.

With Gorbachev’s arrival that part disappeared. People began to be let out of prisons. Letters with proposals arrived, such as a proposal by Chlenov’s group to meet and talk with some of the members of the Central Committee apparatus who deal with Jewish topics.

How did that letter reach you?

The letter arrived by mail and was forwarded by Yakovlev to the head of the division with a request that Shishlin, Grachev, and Tumarkin do the speaking. I went to Shishlin and to Grachev and said, “Why not? Who will go with me?”

This was before the founding of the Vaad?

Yes, in 1988. In 1988 it was permitted, for example, to set up a group of consultants that were not on the regular staff. Jewish topics began to develop actively. There was Pamiat, emigration, and conferences. Misha Gluz appeared with his idea for the MikhoelsCenter.

He also worked via you?

Of course.

Your group didn’t deal only with the Jewish question, did it?

Our group dealt only with the Jewish question. Leonid Yakovlevich Dadiani from the Institute of Sociology dealt with the issue from the sociological point of view. The first secret polls appeared, and a serious and intelligent approach to such problems began to be elaborated. There were also other contacts. Do you remember the Reichman brothers from Canada who brought in the first big construction projects? The Foreign Ministry recommended that Yakovlev meet with them. Yakovlev received them at eleven o’clock in the evening and I accompanied them. You should have seen the expression on the faces of the KGB majors with sergeants’ shoulder bars who were standing at the entrance. The brothers were religious and were wearing yarmulkes on their heads! Or when rabbis appeared in connection with the library of the Lubavicher Rebbe.

Gorbachev, according to the legend, was promised one hundred billion dollars. That promise was not carried out and everything ultimately collapsed. The treasury was empty, a real catastrophe.

How did people reach you?

I was already permitted to give my number openly. Anyone could call at his convenience. For the meeting with Chlenov and Satanovskii I gave them my telephone numbers, including the home one.

How did you work with them?

I tried to answer their questions. The circle of contacts expanded. I was allowed to meet with the acting Israeli ambassador and then with the ambassador. There were formal and informal contacts. At the very last stage, there were also people like Yakov Kedmi, whom I brought to Gorbachev, knowing who he was and what he did. Or Sasha Libin.

What was the attitude in your division toward the founding of the Vaad?

As you can understand, it evoked the most varied appraisals inside our division. Some didn’t understand what was going on; others thought─it’s early, don’t meddle. It’s cooking, let it cook but it’s not our business to help it, especially to bring it to the attention of those higher up.

I got the impression that the Jewish question in Russia is some kind of taboo; it’s better not to touch it.

Yes, there is some kind of animal fear, an absolute incomprehension of many elementary things; hence an unwillingness to come near or touch this topic. It is a lack of initiative and the absence of elementary energy at work. My nature is different. If people seemed interesting to me, I tried to help them. You see, Gluz opened his center, and I was taken away from work with my first heart attack.

A heart attack?

A week in the hospital. The activists assured me that it would not be an anti-Soviet center, but there was tension and pressure from all sides: “What are you getting into?” “What do you need this for?” “Where are you going?” Perhaps someone suspected that, although I didn’t consider myself a Jew, I was somehow subconsciously heeding the call of my ancestors.

But in fact there was nothing of this?

No. I was dealing with an interesting matter that I considered important, curious, and necessary.

You spoke about the hundred billion dollars as the main reason for Gorbachev’s fall from power. But I had the feeling that he took on too much and at a certain stage began to lose control of events. He put too much emphasis on international activity and lost control inside the country.

He lost control because they seized it from him. He understood very well what kind of mine field he was walking through every second. He soberly analyzed the country’s condition and felt the ground caving in under him, how it was being pulled out from under his feet. There were more than enough enemies, not opponents, with whom one could debate. Hence the source of tension and then the argument with Aleksandr Yakovlev, hence the irregular rhythm of the perestroika initiatives. If it had gone at a faster rate, not over six years, but, let’s say, over four years, he simply would have been removed, and that’s it. For this reason, there were such idiotic personnel appointments, for example, such as Yanaev. He knew those people’s worth. He was capable of juggling and reshuffling the pack with various people in order to maintain a certain balance of forces. Probably, those compromises did not enhance his policy.

He was trying, indeed, to build in Russia something that had never been there before.

There never was and never could be. He had a precise conception of what he wanted to build.

He had a detailed plan?

I can’t claim to have full knowledge, but having worked with him for a long time, including in the Gorbachev Fund with his intelligent associates, I can affirm that in reality there was no detailed planning or step by step plan. And there could not be such a thing because it was impossible to move forward and start building an entirely different economy without first tearing down the feudal walls and existing structures or replacing the key towers in the place where the new state mechanism of authority would be built. Hence the stumbling with the law about cooperatives or the law about selecting directors, which enriched those who knew how to benefit from it instead of advancing toward a new economy.

Did Gorbachev intend to tear down the communist order or, being himself a product of this order, was he unable to cross that bound?

He was, without a doubt, a progeny of that order, but at the same time he was an open, pragmatic person. He cultivated the new and opened the world himself with the help of his advisers, but he did not bring it to the public at large because he knew that it would not be understood, that he would be rejected, and removed at a plenum. Those who observed this intently, daily, who saw the prevailing atmosphere understood the zigzag nature of his behavior. He wanted glasnost─he got it but quickly was surfeited; it was already coming out of his ears because along with glasnost came dark elements; the scum lifted its head. The devil knows who used the freedom. All these nationalistic publications such as Zavtra, Den, and others appeared. Everyone wanted to live better right away.

When did you begin to work in the presidential administration?

Practically from the time the president was elected. We were confirmed a half year later because Valerii Boldin, a member of Gorbachev’s Presidential Soviet, hampered all initiatives to create a full presidential apparatus. Gorbachev‘s enemies thought that they could get rid of him earlier. It was a modest apparatus. Our press service initially consisted of five people and later it grew to twelve. Now there are hundreds of people; it’s hard to imagine what is happening there. Later I was offered the possibility of transferring to Yeltsin’s press service, but I refused, preferring to move to the Gorbachev Foundation as a consultant.

When did people get the feeling that the promised hundred billion would not be delivered and everything was collapsing?

Very quickly. Reports arrived, one gloomier than the other, that the domestic situation was deteriorating sharply. From 250,000 to a million people assembled at protest meetings at Manezh Square in Moscow in February 1990. It was practically impossible to halt. We were drowned in paper but basic bread was lacking. The worst of times had returned. There was hope that the West would help us.

When did the problems start to snowball?

In 1989. It was the best perestroika time but from the viewpoint of daily life…. Moreover, there were the national fronts in the Baltics and national movements in various republics!

How did you react to all this?

Variously. Mikhail Sergeevich was criticized for not using force but he categorically opposed a repetition of Yugoslavia. He was already pilloried for other demonstrations of force.

The whole world saw the skulls being smashed with sappers’ shovels in Tbilisi.

The whole world saw that there were victims in Tbilisi and Vilnius but it is not clear to this day who stood behind that, who was a provocateur, or who fired the first bullet.

In Lithuania, Catholic Poland played a large role.

Yes, of course, in Vilnius. But the Caucasus has been a boiling cauldron since the time of Griboedov [Russian nineteenth century playwright and diplomat who served in the Caucasus].

Who promised those hundred billion?

I don’t want to assign blame, but U.S. Secretary of State Baker and Genscher and Kohl from Germany promised; France─last of all. They promised all kinds of things. They promised not to come close to the borders of the USSR; they promised not to bring East European countries into NATO; at the same time, they wanted to force the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany, practically into a field, without the construction of normal barracks or arrangements for an enormous amount of officers and soldiers.

Many people were dissatisfied with the way that Gorbachev was ruling the country and condemned him for his indecisiveness, for the economic chaos and empty store shelves, the collapse of the socialist camp, and for the “parade of sovereignties.” Gorbachev spoke eloquently and convincingly, but in real life everything turned out just the opposite. Critics on the right demanded that he take decisive measures to restore order, deflate the overblown media, use force where separatist feelings had gone too far, and carry out reforms more cautiously. Critics on the left, reformists, however, demanded a more decisive and consistent introduction of reforms and an end to zigzagging in their implementation. Gorbachev kept wavering, seeking compromises, thus instilling hope in both camps of drawing him to their side. In firing Boris Yeltsin, a candidate member of the Politburo and the mayor of Moscow, at a Central Committee meeting, Gorbachev acquired an implacable enemy and an uncompromising critic from the left. Yeltsin regained political strength while Gorbachev’s own popularity fell precipitously.

In June-July 1988, Yeltsin became a delegate to the Nineteenth CPSU Party Conference, at which he requested that he be rehabilitated because the criticism that had caused his expulsion in 1987 was now sounded openly at the conference. He was subsequently elected to the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies and became first one of the leaders of the Inter-regional Deputies Group, then a member of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and ultimately a member of its presidium. In May 1990, he was elected a people’s deputy of the RSFSR from Sverdlovsk and two weeks later he was elected chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. On June 12, 1990, the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies of Russia under his leadership adopted a Declaration of the State Sovereignty of the RSFSR, that is, it did what, until then, had been done only in the Baltics and Georgia and patently violated the Constitution of the USSR. After Russia declared the supremacy of the republic’s laws over the all-union ones, so did Moldova (June 22), Ukraine (June 16), and Belarus (July 27). The other republics followed suit in a few months.

At the Twenty-eighth and final CPSU congress in July 1990, Yeltsin sharply criticized the Communist Party and its leader Gorbachev and announced his resignation from the party. Yeltsin attacked Gorbachev from radically democratic positions, constantly trying to pull the ground out from under the feet of the last Soviet general secretary. Yeltsin’s hatred of the party was not only a matter of personal experience: his grandfather had suffered in the campaign against the kulaks and been repressed and his father had been repressed. On January 12, 1991, during a visit to Tallinn, Yeltsin, ignoring Gorbachev, signed a treaty with Estonia regulating the foundations of intergovernmental relations between the RSFSR and the EstonianRepublic, in which both sides recognized the other as a sovereign state. On February 19, 1991, speaking on television, Yeltsin demanded that Gorbachev resign and hand over all power to the Federation Council, which consisted of leaders of the union republics.

Those developments undermined Gorbachev’s own plans; he had hoped to reform the USSR in a way that would suppress the wave of separatist feelings and preserve the integrity of the Union. He was elaborating his plans with a constant side glance at the West and at Yeltsin. In order to give his own plans democratic legitimacy, in March 1991, Gorbachev conducted a referendum on preserving the USSR in a renewed form, receiving 76 percent of the votes in favor. However, the Baltic states, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova refused to conduct the referendum.[4]

On June 12, 1991, in the first popular elections in the history of Russia, Yeltsin was elected president of the RSFSR by a large margin. It should be remembered that Gorbachev had been elected president [of the Soviet Union] not in a popular election but by the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, which gave Yeltsin a huge moral advantage. One of Yeltsin’s first presidential decrees was to liquidate party organizations at enterprises, and he began to conduct negotiations on signing a new union treaty with Gorbachev and the leaders of the union republics.

Along with Gorbachev’s plans for reconstruction of the USSR, various forceful options were also considered such as introducing a state of emergency in the “hot” spots and imposing direct presidential rule in them or even throughout the country. On March 29, 1991 at a meeting with Gorbachev, an emergency committee was formed that was supposed to prepare for the introduction of a state of emergency. A plan was drawn up under the leadership of the KGB chairman, Vladimir Kriuchkov, and, as the putschists affirmed, it later became part of their program.[5]

Taking into account the powerful international reaction to the bloody clashes between the army and demonstrators in Tbilisi and Vilnius, and still hoping to obtain financial aid from the West, in December 1990, Gorbachev proposed a plan to preserve the USSR by transforming it into a Union of Sovereign States. Approved by the Supreme Soviet, the plan was then upheld by a voice vote in the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies. Subsequently, in March 1991, it was approved in an all-union referendum (in which, as already mentioned, not all states participated). The proposal entailed renouncing the 1922 agreement and signing a new union treaty according to which “the states forming the Union possess complete political authority and independently determine their national-state structure and system of organs of power and management. At the same time, they can delegate part of their authority to other states that are participants to the Treaty.”[6] The treaty would enter into force from the moment of its signing by the republics. The treaty on the formation of the USSR would then automatically become invalid. Gorbachev declared that the new Union treaty would be available for signing on August 20, 1991.

On August 19, 1991, a group of putschists headed by KGB Chairman V. Kriuchkov and Vice-President Gennadii Yanaev announced the introduction of a state of emergency. “The reforms have reached a dead end, the country is sliding toward a catastrophe, Gorbachev is ill and cannot run the government,” they declared. The activity of political parties was halted; regular television broadcasts were cut off and the first channel broadcast a statement by the chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Anatolii Lukianov, saying that the Union treaty was not yet ready for signing. The decrees of the State Committee for the State of Emergency [with the Russian initials of GKChP] were immediately announced and the ballet Swan Lake was shown. The GKChP promised to impose order, lower and freeze prices, and distribute free personal plots of land to everyone.

At nine o’clock in the morning, the radio station Ekho Moskvy broadcast an appeal by the president of Russia Boris Yeltsin and his colleagues to the citizens of Russia calling for a general strike in protest against the coup. The world froze in anticipation. People gathered near the building of the Russian Supreme Soviet─the “White House,” as it was called. At midday Yeltsin climbed on a tank and read an appeal. Foreign correspondents momentarily transmitted it around the world, and at ten o’clock in the evening it was broadcast on Moscow television. The KGB chairman had been preparing the coup for about a year. Everything had supposedly been thought through, but the events of the first day showed that the GKChP did not completely control the situation. On the second day, around 200,000 people gathered to defend the White House.

Were you still there during the time of the coup? I asked Aleksandr Shmukler.

I wasn’t just there…. Yeltsin’s staff for countering the GKChP compiled lists of volunteers, and we were already working rather closely with the Inter-regional Group. I was called by Vladimir Petrovich Lukin─he was then in Yeltsin’s closest circle─and asked whether I could rouse the Jewish fellows. That was August 19, when the putsch had already started and television broadcasting had been cut off. We were then living in Orekhovo-Borisovo; the windows of my house faced the Ring Road [the road that encircles the city of Moscow]. I was offered an interesting task that consisted of sitting on my balcony and counting the military equipment that passed along the Ring Road. Similar observation points were set up all around Moscow. I phoned Lukin at the Government House and reported: a tank column and twenty military vehicles went in the direction of Kashirskii Boulevard, and so forth.

It was terrifying, it simply ended quickly, in three days; people therefore didn’t become really frightened. There was no information except for the Western “voices,” but they were jammed, although not whole-heartedly. There were many calls from America and we exchanged news. The television station broadcast Swan Lake around the clock, interrupting it only for the news program. They kept on showing the very same press conference at which GKChP head Yanaev’s hands trembled. The putsch made a terrible impression on me. I suddenly understood that it was impossible to remain in the Soviet Union any longer. We left what was still the Soviet Union on September 20, a month after the putsch. They managed to take away my citizenship.

Before the GKChP did the regime try to cooperate with you or didn’t they bother with the Jews?

Lukianov, then chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, invited us, the Vaad, to meet him. For some reason Mika couldn’t go and he sent me. That was in May, 1991. There they were actively preparing for the signing of a new Union treaty, and I, as a representative of the Vaad, wind up in the Kremlin. Yakovlev, Zhirinovskii, and another two people were present. Gorbachev dropped in. They proposed creating a group of centrist parties and social organizations, and suggested that the Vaad also become part of that structure. They regarded the presence of national-cultural autonomies as obligatory in the Union treaty. Zhirinovskii was already heading the Liberal-Democratic Party. It was the last days of the empire. I still have the picture with Yakovlev and Shevardnadze hanging on the wall.

The GKChP crashed down. It was clear by the first day of the putsch that they did not control the situation in Moscow. Yeltsin and his colleagues remained at liberty and managed to convey their categorical opposition to the putsch to the world and the country and to organize the defense of the “White House.” Their chief weapon was the dozens and then hundreds of thousands of Muscovites who became a living shield on the approaches to the White House. Western correspondents were able to work freely, and the putschists did not even control Soviet television completely. Although they controlled the army, the special forces, and secret services, many soldiers went over to the people’s side and many Chekists did not hurry to obey orders. They knew better than others what had happened in East Europe when the mob took over the Stasi headquarter in East Germany or drove away the secret services in Czechoslovakia and then Hungary. It is said that in Moscow the special forces simply did not receive the order.

The journalist Evgeniia Albats considers: “The second echelon of power did not join the coup─the shadow cabinets of the KGB, military-industrial complex, the army, and party and Soviet nomenclature in the localities. In other words, the coup was not supported by that most important vestigial mechanism, that, figuratively speaking “cog wheel,” which in a totalitarian state connects the elite with its “hands” and “feet,” the power structures. Without that “cog wheel,” orders cease being orders, they are simply sabotaged. On August 19, the second echelon of power bided its time.”[7]

Gorbachev committed many mistakes, but he was right about the main thing─the citizens of the capital, and, indeed, the country as a whole, despite all the problems of perestroika, did not want to return to the old style totalitarianism. The country had already changed by 1991. It supported Yeltsin, who demanded even more radical reforms than Gorbachev himself. The GKChP bared all the vapidity and weakness of the conservative leadership and the weakness of the central regime of the USSR, which, in fact, collapsed after the defeat of the GKChP.

Events proceeded at a dizzying speed. During the days of the putsch, Estonia (on August 20) and Latvia (August 21) declared their independence. They were followed by Ukraine and Moldova on August 24 and 27 respectively, Azerbaijan on August 30, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on August 31, Tajikistan on September 9, and Armenia on September 23. Kazakhstan was the last of this group to proclaim independence on December 16. Georgia and Lithuania had already proclaimed their independence before the coup attempt. In declaring independence, leaders of the republics subordinated union structures to the republican ones.

Gorbachev tried to save the plan for a Union of Sovereign States, receiving approval from seven republics─Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyziia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmeniia, and Uzbekistan (noticeably absent in this list was Ukraine). On November 14, they adopted a resolution to create the new union on a confederative basis with its capital in Minsk, and they designated December 9, 1991 as the date for signing the treaty.

“In December 1991, the heads of the three founding republics of the USSR (Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine) met at the state dacha in Belovezhskaia Pushcha (near the village of Viskuli in Belarus) to sign the treaty on forming the Union of Sovereign States. Ukraine, however, rejected the early agreements.[8] On December 8, 1991, declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist and it was impossible to form a Union of Sovereign States, the three leaders signed an Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).”[9] Gorbachev was furious, but he had already lost real authority. On December 12, the Supreme Soviet of Russia ratified the Belovezh Agreements and recalled the Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, after which the Council of the Union, the lower chamber of the latter body, no longer had a quorum and was unable to function.

On December 21, 1991, at a meeting in Alma Ata of presidents of the republics, another eight republics joined the commonwealth, signing an Alma Ata Agreement that became the basis for the CIS. The CIS was not a confederation of states but a kind of international organization of independent states. Gorbachev resigned from his position on December 25, and on December 26, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet, which still had a quorum, adopted a declaration on dissolving the USSR. That day became the last in the USSR’s existence. Disputes about the legality of the December decisions continued until the end of 1993, forming a basis for the opposition between the president of Russia and its Supreme Soviet.[10]

The disintegration of the USSR, representing one of the major geopolitical cataclysms of the twentieth century, led to the creation of fifteen newly independent states. The demarcation of borders and the disruption of socio-political, military, and economic links of a formerly unified state organism continued for several years, accompanied by mutual claims and conflicts, some of which still persist to this day. The socialist commonwealth headed by the USSR broke up: the Council of Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) ceased its operation, and the military Warsaw Pact dissolved. The world superpower collapsed peacefully like a house of cards practically without a shot being fired. Debates about the reasons for the incredible rapidity of the initial stage of the process continue to this very day.

Don’t you think, I asked Vladimir Tumarkin, the way that Gorbachev treated Yeltsin played a key role in their future hostility? People say that Yeltsin hated Gorbachev to such a degree that he was willing to dismantle the Soviet Union just to pull the foundations of power out from under his feet.

I share this opinion. Boris Nikolaevich [Yeltsin], with all his merits and his instinctive flare for politics, was boorish in a professional sense. Professionally he was like a construction superintendent and that’s how he remained. He was, of course, surrounded by a large number of intelligent advisers; in this respect he was normal, but he was allergic to Gorbachev and physiologically couldn’t stand him.

When Gorbachev was in control he removed Yeltsin from his position as Moscow mayor─then it was called secretary of the Moscow municipal party committee─and expelled him from the Politburo.

He removed him, there was a plenum, and there was reason for it. Yeltsin deserves credit for dismantling the old system and for the first government under the premiership of Gaidar, but he has as many real sins.

I understand that politics doesn’t tolerate the subjunctive mood but if there hadn’t been such hostility between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, perhaps, in your opinion, would it have been possible to preserve the Soviet Union?

No, no! It was a colossus with legs of clay. Theoretically, it could have continued to exist for some time, but the centrifugal tendencies were gaining strength, and with an economic situation in which cannons and butter were incompatible, the Union was doomed.

What happened to you personally in the process of the country’s disintegration?

We continued to work up until December 25, including preparing Gorbachev’s farewell statement. We saw with our own eyes how they unscrewed the nameplate when Yeltsin appeared with one of his closest associates Genadii Burbulis, and they drank a bottle of Hungarian wine, “Volantain,” in the office where Gorbachev was supposed to arrive in the morning to give an interview to Japanese television. But we warned him in time and he went to the second floor and gave an interview from another office. They then settled accounts with us and shoved us out of the Kremlin. We received our final salary on a bench in the vestibule of the Kropotinskii metro station. It’s hard to imagine a more brutal, absurd, and crude situation. But seeing what is happening now─I mean the abrupt dismissal of Moscow Mayor Luzhkov─I understand that in Russia, it’s never any other way. A boot in the butt and get out. Here in principle people are unable to hold talks and reach agreement. I don’t know whether this has been inculcated from the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible or Prince Ivan Kalita─let professionals argue that point─but it is a historical fact that we are incapable of being gentlemen, only gentlemen of fortune. I experienced that myself.

Yeltsin initiated the Belovezh Agreements, but at the time Gorbachev was president of the USSR , commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and head of an enormous apparatus where all the threads of power converged and were concentrated. Moreover, Yeltsin had constitutional problems.

Yes, and Gorbachev turned to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and it, including the Communist Party members, supported the Belovezh Agreements and the breakup of the USSR. Yeltsin was already president of Russia. All the republics had already adopted declarations of secession from the USSR, and the last one to vote for secession was Russia. It only remained to declare a state of emergency and give the order to spill blood. But Gorbachev said that he would never do that. He didn’t unleash a bloody massacre on one sixth of the earth’s land mass, and that was justified.

Would the people have supported him had he tried to use force?

No. The people were embittered. Gorbachev had already lost their trust; his political opponents did everything to ensure that. They were not opponents capable of conducting fruitful discussions but precisely opponents trying to satisfy their boorish underachiever egos.

 

As a result of the collapse of the USSR, without leaving their homes, the Jews unexpectedly found themselves in fifteen different states, each with its own national history, culture, and language. These states needed their own mythology that was radically different from that of the USSR; their own heroes, regarded in Soviet times as criminals because they had fought for national independence; their own traitors and collaborationists, who earlier had been endowed with honor and glory; their own culture, which earlier had been woefully neglected and now needed de-russification in all areas of social life; their own currency, and their own army. The overwhelming majority of Jews, who had grown up on Russian culture, encountered complex problems of adaptation to the new conditions: their children now had to study in the local national language and the new pantheon of heroes often included those who had dishonored themselves by participation in antisemitic pogroms or cooperation with the Nazis during World War II. These changes occurred against the background of chaos, popular antisemitism, a lack of basic consumer products, the stupor of industrial enterprises, a sharp rise in unemployment, and other cataclysms connected to the disintegration of the empire. The process of disintegration of the USSR stimulated massive emigration: 122,398 people in 1992; 110,714 in 1993; and 107,294 in 1994. At the same time, this was almost 200 percent less than in the first two years of free emigration in 1990 and 1991.

As a rule, recalling the complex problems that had arisen in that context in the USSR, the newly formed states did not object to the emigration of the Jews. At first emigration continued via Moscow but it was clear that the logistics of processing and transporting Jews to Israel had to be organized from the capitals of the new states. Lishkat hakesher and the Sochnut quickly and effectively solved the problem. Baruch Gur notes that whereas in 1991, Moscow was the sole dispatching point, by 1992 there were already eleven; in 1993 there were fifteen, and seventeen in 1994.[11] Lishkat hakesher, whose representatives were well acquainted with activists and local conditions, swiftly succeeded in obtaining the regimes’ permission to open their offices. They took upon themselves consular functions such as verifying documents and issuing entry visas to Israel. The Sochnut, which also had its representatives in many cities, undertook the organization and payment of flights. At the end of 1991, the Sochnut concluded an agreement with Transaero airlines to transport repatriates directly from Moscow to Israel. The first such flight landed at Ben Gurion airport on November 5 of that year. After the collapse of the USSR, the Sochnut entered into negotiations with the airlines of the independent states. Preference was given to national rather than private carriers although when necessary, charter flights were also used.

Carl Unger, head of the Sochnut mission in Moscow, was the coordinator of air transports, starting in November 1991. From January to February 1992, I worked for awhile as his deputy in Moscow and was impressed by this remarkable person’s business-like qualities. Every week he would fly to the capital of a new republic to organize the departure process, which in general features replicated the Moscow procedure: potential repatriates would order tickets in the local Israeli embassy (or mission); not long before the flight, family representatives would arrive there for a pre-flight discussion; then they would get to the airport on their own, where they would be met by local Sochnut representatives. This procedure also included measures for assuring security and medical aid.

The one disadvantage of air travel was transporting baggage. Each family was permitted to take up to forty kilos per adult on the flight. The remaining baggage was sent by sea, which occasionally led to problems. Some utilized another option of not taking baggage along and receiving compensation upon arrival in Israel. There also were attempts to transport the repatriates by sea but, despite the fact that it was cheaper and the baggage traveled practically together with the passengers, ship transportation continually encountered organizational problems. Only several thousand people were transported that way.

In almost all the states that were formed in the post-Soviet space, hot spots arose, at times developing into armed conflicts (Georgian-Abkhazan and Georgian-Ossetian in Georgia; Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ossetian-Ingush and Chechen in Russia, Transdniestr in Moldova, interclan in Tajikistan, and clashes in the Fergana Valley). The evacuation of repatriates from these conflict areas represented a complex and difficult task. The Lishkat hakesher generally undertook these operations. If circumstances permitted, its workers sometimes allowed Sochnut employees to join them.

The war in Moldova began on June 19, 1992. The Russian-speaking areas of south and east Moldova seceded from Moldova and formed the TransdniestrMoldovanRepublic with its capital in Tiraspol and the GagauzRepublic, which were not recognized by Moldova.

Semyon Vaisman, a resident of Tiraspol and co-chairman of the Vaad, told me:

We were just returning from a meeting of the Jewish Cultural Society in Kishinev and at the entrance to Bendery we heard the first shots.

Who was fighting against whom?

The Moldovan forces, the national army of the newly formed republic, against the Transdniestr army.

Did the Jews come under the crossfire?

Yes. The day after the war started, I called the JOINT, the Sochnut, and Lishkat hakesher. The JOINT representative in Odessa, Stuart Saffer, was also responsible for Kishinev; Aryeh Bentsel represented Lishkat hakesher and Isai Averbukh─the Sochnut. Grisha Kelman represented the Sochnut in Kishinev. On the following day, Saffer, Bentsel, and Feliks Milshtein, head of the Jewish organization of Odessa came to me. In two hours we divided up responsibilities.

For getting the Jews away from the gunfire?

Yes. First we set up a reserve headquarters because the city might be subject to bombing. I phoned Silva Glukhovskaia in Bendery and proposed choosing several apartments where people could be assembled. Via the JOINT, Stuart arranged for several double-decker Red Cross buses with enormous red crosses on the roof so that it would be most visible. Besides me, a representative of Lishkat hakesher accompanied every trip.

The authorities didn’t object to the Jews’ leaving?

The issue didn’t arise; they had their hands full with other matters. When we were crossing the DnestrRiver on those buses for the first time, a salvo of automatic fire came from the other bank. Fortunately, there was a railroad bridge there. We hid under the arch of that bridge until the attack was over. We didn’t make it to Bendery that day. Both sides suffered losses, and we reached an agreement with General Lebed, the commander of the14th Russian Army in Transdniestr, that we would bring people out during the temporary cease-fires, when the opposing sides carried away the corpses of the victims. The cease-fires would last for three hours. During that time, by advance agreement, we would rush on three buses to the district where people were concentrated and collect them─180 people in those three buses. We then brought them to Tiraspol and from there to Odessa, where Felik Milshtein would receive them with his organization. He directed them to pensions that had been rented in the Odessa area by the JOINT. Almost every day we would take people out on three buses. Two days after the start of the operation, I received a phone call: “If you take out only Jews, your family will be destroyed.”

Who else did they want you to take?

Everyone. There was a terrible panic among the local population. There was an antisemitic organization in the conflict zone called “Russian song.” Their basic slogan was: “A Jew will hang on every column.” I told the UN representative about this. Later, the chairman of the Transdniestr Supreme Soviet said: “You undermined the recognition of Transdniestr as an independent republic.” “I told the truth,” I said to him. For thirty days we worked day and night. The JOINT took care of the financial side and Lishkat hakesher processed the documents. The people whom we brought to Odessa had one more ordeal to face. When we were getting ready to send them to Israel, Moldova declared, “No one will fly to Israel. These are our citizens. And they must fly from Kishinev, not Odessa.”

Did this involve economic considerations?

Well, yes.

Couldn’t you reach an agreement with Ukraine?

As I was told later, the Sochnut paid the Moldovan government a certain sum for each person, and the Moldovans didn’t want to lose that money. And Ukraine did not want to get into an argument with Moldova over Moldovan citizens. Indeed, none of these people had Ukrainian passports. Stuart phoned me and said: “No one wants to go to Kishinev. They are afraid of being treated very badly.”

I arrive there in Odessa; everything is terrible: “We won’t go anywhere.” I said: “Look, my family is here. I’ll ride with them in the first bus.” And we drove to Kishinev across south Moldova along the line of the front. People with automatic rifles stopped us in every village to check us. What was there to check: no one had any valuable objects or gold.

Was there any kind of agreement with the Moldovan authorities, any guards? Or did a large element of risk remain?

It remained.

Then what was your hurry?

It was impossible to keep the people in the pensions any longer. The JOINT said that their money was running out. Moreover, there were some “clever fellows” who began to travel from Odessa to Kiev and ask for asylum in Germany. It didn’t look nice. The JOINT said: “That’s it; we are halting the financing. You solve the problem.” Leva Niv went to Kishinev, Lishkat hakesher greatly expanded the staff, and they began to prepare exit visas for everyone who wanted them. Every day an El Al plane would land and transport the people away.

We brought out about 8,000 people that way. I was rather quickly dispatched to another hot spot so my family left without me.

Did many Jews remain?

Around 1200, one tenth of the number who were there according to the census of 1989.

Processes analogous to those in Moldova but with local differences occurred in other hot spots as well. Lishkat hakesher, the Sochnut, JOINT, and local activists did everything possible to bring Jews out of dangerous zones as quickly as possible. The majority of those conflicts were not resolved and from time to time they flare up again. The possibility of dangerous developments remains to this very day.

Having reached 70,000 in 1989, emigration from the former Soviet Union did not go lower than 100,000 annually until 1997, declining gradually in the following years to an annual level of 60-70,000 until the contraction of the Jewish population made such a level impossible to maintain. In 2010, 7200 people arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union.

In the years of mass emigration, the overwhelming majority of Jews─over two million people─left the borders of the former Soviet Union. The majority─1,150,000─settled in Israel, comprising about twenty percent of the country’s Jewish population. A considerable number─around 700,000─immigrated to the U.S. and Canada. About 200,000 moved to Germany and several dozens of thousands settled in other countries.

As of 2010, about 450,000 Jews remained in the former Soviet Union, of which 230,000 were living in Russia, 104,000 inUkraine, and the rest were divided among the other republics.

Now the exodus of Soviet Jews has become part of world history. It was the largest exodus of Jews since the time of the exodus from Egypt. In an amazing manner the exodus from the USSR─some call it the exodus from the Red Pharaoh─combined, on the one hand, harsh realities of struggle and, on the other, a mystic feeling of reviving ancient prophecies, the presence of some unknown force that aided the Jews in the unequal struggle with a mighty superpower. As in ancient Egypt, the Soviet Union received its “Egyptian plagues” for the refusal to release the Jews. As in ancient Egypt, it lost the fight and was punished for its many years of stubbornness.

The Jewish people as a whole played not simply an active but self-sacrificing role in the fate of Soviet Jewry, putting aside disagreements, which abounded in Jewish life in the West. The victory of the exodus demonstrated the strength and worth of traditional Jewish values of brotherhood and mutual help in times of struggle and distress.

The State of Israel played a most important role in this exodus, rousing Jewish communities for the struggle and coordinating efforts. Over a period of more than thirty years it supplied activists in the Soviet Union with the necessary elements for the struggle and for survival in refusal, and it mobilized Western democracies in their support. The aliyah of a million people generously rewarded Israel for its efforts. Dozens of thousands of engineers, doctors, teachers, scientists, and cultural figures streamed into the Israel labor market, sharply improving the productive forces of Israeli society. Thanks to this aliyah, Israel turned into one of the world leaders of innovations and technical progress. This massive aliyah buried the hopes of the hostile elements who had hoped to achieve a victory over the Jewish state by demographic means, and it basically changed the domestic balance between religious and secular and Ashkenazim and Sephardim.

I personally had the honor of participating in this aliyah struggle and was a witness and participant in many events. Those were the most intense and vivid years of my life, lived at the limit of one’s possibilities. Many movement activists lived that way and I want to express my admiration for their immeasurable courage and perseverance. The exodus could not have taken place without them, without their self-sacrificing and uncompromising struggle. It was their protest letters, hunger strikes, and demonstrations that aroused public opinion in the West. Their courage in the face of persecution, searches, interrogations, arrests, exile, forced psychiatric treatment, or difficult army service that evoked the waves of solidarity in the West. Their spiritual strength opposed the entire might of the totalitarian state. The Jewish people found the inner resources to unite for this struggle and it was victorious.