Young Zionists in the USSR in the 1920s could sometimes avoid arrest or administrative exile. As a rule, however, this required writing a letter of recantation to the press, publicly renouncing one’s views, and giving the security services the names of one’s comrades. This is precisely what can be seen in the case of Nuta Itskovich Barboy, presented in the J-Doc digital archive. Barboy, who was born in 1909, was arrested on 20 January 1928 in the shtetl of Chernevtsy, Vinnyts

The J-Doc digital archive contains a case file from the archives of the Soviet security services that reads like a political detective story and reveals the specifics of underground work carried out by youth Zionist organisations in the USSR. On 2 September 1924, the OGPU of Podolia Governorate in the Ukrainian SSR arrested a young man who, at the time of his detention, gave his name as Zeilik Rudin. Only during the third interrogation did the accused admit that the documents

March 1946. A small Ukrainian railway station. On the platform, a former inmate of a Nazi camp sees a man in whom he recognises “Solomon the interpreter,” who had tormented prisoners. He reports the traitor to a railway police officer. This opening, entirely worthy of a Hollywood film, led to the opening of the Solomon Sherf case file, now held in the J-Doc digital archive. On 24 March 1946, Solomon Borukhovich Sherf, a native of Chernivtsi Oblast, was arrested by the police

The J-Doc digital archive contains the archival investigation file of Riva Moiseevna Reiderman, a milliner from Zhmerynka, born in 1900. On 2 September 1924, Reiderman was arrested by the Podolian OGPU on charges of participating in illegal Zionist activity. She was probably a member of the Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair. At the time of her arrest, Reiderman tried to burn some papers in the stove. However, the unburned scraps were seized and added to the case fil

Did a prisoner have any chance of early release from Stalin’s GULAG? The J-Doc digital archive contains the case file of Shmul Borukhovich Ashkinazi, a native of the Polish town of Kazimierz Dolny who lived in Ladyzhyn. In 1938, he was sentenced to ten years in forced-labour camps, but in 1943 he was released early under a directive regulating the release of prisoners suffering from severe incurable illnesses. Ashkinazi was arrested on 20 December 1937 as part of the NKVD’s “

What happens when an archival document is brought onto the stage? On 14 July in Haifa, Zeev Project, Fulcro Theatre, and the J-Doc digital archive will present a theatrical reading of the “KRUG” agent case file — a case opened under the “Zionist” classification against Jewish writers in Kyiv: Dovid Hofshteyn, Itsik Kipnis, Abram Kagan, and Riva Baliasna. “Okraska,” literally “colouring,” was the term used by the Soviet security services for the preliminary classification of a

On 30 July 1937, Nikolai Yezhov, People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs of the USSR, acting on a decision of the Politburo, signed Operational Order No. 00447, “On the Operation to Repress Former Kulaks, Criminals, and Other Anti-Soviet Elements.” The document became the basis for the largest mass operation of the Great Terror and provided for cases to be reviewed by extrajudicial troikas. The materials in the J-Doc digital archive clearly show how the repressive system work

The NKVD’s “Polish Operation,” carried out in 1937–1938 on the basis of Order No. 00485, became the largest of all the “national operations” of the Great Terror. Its victims were not only ethnic Poles, but also people of various nationalities suspected of having ties to Poland. In Polish Operation cases, sentences were handed down by the “dvoika” — the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor of the USSR. Cases were reviewed from lists of arrested individual

The declassified case file of Itsik-Leiba Moishe-Ioylevich Breitel, a native of Mohyliv-Podilskyi who was arrested during the “Romanian Operation,” contains a poignant document: an appeal from his wife, Genya Breitel, requesting a review of her husband’s case. On 27 December 1937, Itsik Breitel was sentenced under Article 54-1, treason against the Motherland, and Article 54-10, anti-Soviet agitation, of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR to ten years in forced-labour camp

Malka grew up in an observant Jewish family. She attended school and, after completing her studies there, continued her education at home by her parents’ decision. We may assume that this education was of a high standard: Malka’s father, Yosel, was a shochet, a ritual slaughterer — a role that required special training and a serious examination before the religious authorities. In the community, the shochet was one of the most important religious figures after the rabbi, and

On 9 March, Ilya Lensky, Director of the Jews in Latvia Museum, gave a lecture in Paris titled Baltic “Bricha”: Illegal Jewish Emigration from Latvia, 1945–1946: Figures, Routes, Fates. The lecture took place as part of the seminar Sorties de la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans les confins de l’Union soviétique (1944–1991), organised by CERCEC — the Centre for Russian, Caucasian, East European and Central Asian Studies. The lecture focused on illegal Jewish emigration from Latvia

During a period of strict control over religious life in the USSR, one remarkable exception was the Kol Yaakov (“Voice of Jacob”) yeshiva — the only Jewish religious educational institution officially permitted by the Soviet authorities before perestroika. Opened in 1957 at the Moscow Choral Synagogue on Arkhipov Street, Kol Yaakov was an unusual phenomenon in an anti-religious Soviet state. It could not be called a full-fledged yeshiva in the traditional sense: its activitie

In January 1953, the Soviet press announced the exposure of a “terrorist group of doctor-saboteurs” allegedly working for foreign intelligence services. This event, which became known as the “Doctors’ Plot,” was one of the final political cases of the Stalin era and led to a sharp rise in antisemitic sentiment in Soviet society. After the official announcement that the group had been “exposed,” a large-scale propaganda campaign began. Archival documents show that, alongside “

The Trotskyist movement in the USSR formed around the ideas and figure of Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein), one of the key Bolshevik leaders of the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. After Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, a fierce struggle for leadership began within the Bolshevik Party. The main rivals were Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. Trotsky defended the theory of “permanent revolution,” which called for the revolutionary movement to spread on a global

Несмотря на официальную поддержку палестинцев, советские органы пристально следили за малейшими отклонениями в их политической линии.

In late October 1928, the Foreign Section of the Counterintelligence Department of the State Political Directorate of the Ukrainian SSR (INO KRO GPU Ukrainian SSR) prepared a detailed memorandum on the activities of Zionist parties and organisations in Mandatory Palestine. Part of the memorandum concerned Brit Shalom, an organisation active in Eretz Israel. Its name means “covenant of peace” in Hebrew. From the Chekists’ point of view, the central figure in Brit Shalom was Ar

27 January marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops in 1945. This date has become a symbol of remembrance for the millions of victims of the Nazi regime, among whom the tragic fate of Jewish soldiers and officers taken prisoner occupies a special place. Of the 65,000 Jewish soldiers of the Polish Army captured by the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, 25,000 had died by mid-1940

В советский период судьба еврейских кладбищ сложилась особенно трагично.

В 1943 году в СССР начала формироваться система негласной дискриминации по национальному признаку.

In the history of the Soviet period, the celebration of Hanukkah acquired a special meaning that went far beyond the boundaries of a religious holiday. Two historical documents — a 1970 information report by the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR and a 1976 appeal by the organising committee of the symposium “Jewish Culture in the USSR” — show how this ancient holiday became a symbol of resistance to assimilation and of the struggle to preserve Jewish identity. According to the KGB, du

The Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public (AZCSP; Russian abbreviation: AKSO) was created in the spring of 1983 as part of a large-scale anti-Zionist campaign initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the KGB. The committee’s leadership was made up of prominent Soviet figures of Jewish origin. Its chairman was Colonel General of Tank Troops David Dragunsky, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. Its first deputy chairman was Samuil Lazar

Under Soviet criminal law, “wrecking” was considered a serious state crime. The relevant provision was Article 58-7 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. Article 58-7 — Article 54-7 in the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR — provided for the death penalty, or for declaring the individual an enemy of the working people, with confiscation of property and deprivation of Soviet citizenship. In the presence of mitigating circumstances, the convicted person could be sentenced to impr

In the early twentieth century, a unique social phenomenon emerged in Palestine, or Eretz Israel: the kibbutz movement. Young Zionist idealists who arrived from Eastern Europe during the Second Aliyah (1904–1914) dreamed of creating a new and just society. The first kibbutz, Degania, founded in 1910, became a living embodiment of that dream, laying the foundations for collective ownership and shared labour and resources. The heyday of the movement came in the 1920s, when a ne

On 29 October 1956, the Israel Defense Forces, acting in accordance with a secret agreement reached with Britain and France, launched a military operation against Egyptian positions in the Sinai Peninsula. The Suez Crisis, which erupted 68 years ago, affected not only international politics but also the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union. The USSR’s official position was to support Egypt and condemn the actions of Israel, Britain, and France. This led to an intensification