Description
Book SynopsisProvides a comprehensive history of Soviet Jewry during World War IIAt the beginning of the twentieth century, more Jews lived in the Russian Empire than anywhere else in the world. After the Holocaust, the USSR remained one of the world's three key centers of Jewish population, along with the United States and Israel. While a great deal is known about the history and experiences of the Jewish people in the US and in Israel in the twentieth century, much less is known about the experiences of Soviet Jews. Understanding the history of Jewish communities under Soviet rule is essential to comprehending the dynamics of Jewish history in the modern world. Only a small number of scholars and the last generation of Soviet Jews who lived during this period hold a deep knowledge of this history. Jews in the Soviet Union, a new multi-volume history, is an unprecedented undertaking. Publishing over the next few years, this groundbreaking work draws on rare access to documents from the Soviet arch
Trade ReviewThis is an inspired and inspiring history of Soviet Jews, what they contributed, and what they suffered. A necessary book. -- Robert Service, Emeritus Professor of Russian History, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Authoritative, comprehensive, impeccably researched. . . . Offers the definitive history of Jews in the Soviet Union during World War II. Compiled by an international group of distinguished scholars, this masterful work tells the story of tragedy, heroism, repression, and, ultimately, the birth of a new Soviet Jewish consciousness. -- Lynne Viola, author of Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine
It is hard to find adequate positive words for a book that tells a story of unprecedented horror. But this new synthetic history of Soviet Jewry in the years between the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the Great Fatherland War is a model of clarity and incisiveness. . . . The concise, readable text confronts head-on the controversies, the myths, and the silences, fulfilling the authors’ aim to write Soviet Jewry into both the history of the Soviet project and the history of Judaism. -- Juliane Furst, Head of Department of Communism and Society, Leibniz Centre of Contemporary History, Potsdam
