DOCUMENTS ON UKRAINIAN JEWISH IDENTITY AND EMIGRATION, 1944-1990

Vladimir Khanin

This source book aims to fill a considerable gap in our understanding of Jewish life in postwar Ukraine. The documents present the issue from two different perspectives: on the one hand, the evolution of the policy of the Soviet regime in the Ukraine towards the Jewish population and the practical impact of the Jewish national movement on the formulation of that policy in the postwar period. On the other hand, they examine the struggle for emigration and for the re-establishment of a Jewish communal existence in the Ukraine. These issues are analyzed in the framework of three specific historical periods: 1944-53 (the late Stalin years); 1953-67 (‘the Thaw’); 1967-87 (from the Six-Day War to perestroika).

...In Documents on Ukrainian Jewish Identity and Emigration 1944-1990, Vladimir Khanin provides an eloquent introduction to a little-known dimension of postwar Ukrainian Jewish history, the intimate relationship between Ukrainian communists' Jewish policy and Ukrainian Jewish cultural and religious survival... Khanin brings together an extraordinary collection of such documents, published for the first time within the present volume. The documents themselves, carefully translated from the Russian and Ukrainian and annotated with extensive footnotes, offer a fascinating read-whether for experts in the fields of Jewish, Ukrainian, and Soviet studies or for students new to the subject altogether-and serve as useful teaching materials...

Canadian Slavonic Papers,  Vol. 47 Issue 1/2 (Mar-Jun2005)