“Silent No More”: Saving the Jews of Russia, The American Jewish Effort, 1967–1989 (review)

Henry Feingold’s new book, “Silent No More,” is a carefully researched and balanced interpretation of the 1967–1989 American Jewish effort to rescue Soviet Jews by fostering emigration from the USSR. The period is framed by the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War, which touched off an upsurge in Zionist sentiment among Jews in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which began the process leading to the collapse of the Soviet regime and the realization of the right of free movement for citizens of the Soviet Union and its satellites. Although he focuses on these years, Feingold places his account in historical context by noting that this was one of many episodes in the long history of Jewish efforts to escape oppression and pursue opportunity. This continuity notwithstanding, Feingold is aware of crucial differences between the Jewish dispersals under the Russian and Soviet empires. The former empire was an authoritarian state that was eager to rid itself of Jews and raised no obstacles to their emigration from its territories. The latter was a totalitarian regime that regarded the right of emigration, especially to the enemy West, as a challenge to its power and a blow to its (now perverted) image as a revolutionary utopia. Other differences between the Russian and Soviet Jewish migrations also are elaborated in “Silent No More”: the new nation of Israel was now a powerful factor in influencing the movement of Jews seeking to leave their Soviet homeland, and a more politically confident American Jewry was willing to put greater pressure than ever before on the American and Soviet governments to make Soviet Jewish emigration possible.

One of the strongest features of Feingold’s book is his discussion of the fact that increased pressure did not always yield the intended result. Indeed, at times it may have had unintended negative consequences. Feingold also effectively probes another noteworthy motive of American Jews in aiding their fellow Jews in the Soviet Union after 1967: for many American Jews, working on behalf of Soviet Jewry was an act of contrition for what many Jews in the United States regarded as the failure of their community to do all it could to prevent the Holocaust.

Feingold’s narrative of the rescue of Soviet Jewry is necessarily complex. To his credit, his account conveys the multifaceted and often conflicted effort clearly and with few factual errors or analytical weaknesses. His story encompasses the motivations, policies, and operations of three nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, and Israel), as well as the complexities of the relationship between the American government and Jewish organizations. During the twenty-two years between the Six-Day War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the waxing and waning of Cold War sentiments shaped the complex of forces and counter-forces involved in policy-making on this issue. Conflicts arose between pragmatists and hard-liners in Washington, Moscow, and Jerusalem. The thinking of Jewish organizations in the United States was characterized by a similar lack of unity. Among the contested issues were the relative priority of rescuing Soviet Jews as opposed to pursuing other Cold War aims such as disarmament; how to balance Israel’s need for settlers against Soviet Jewish émigrés’ right to choose their destination; and whether US policy should focus on pressuring the Soviets to allow Jewish emigration or on pressuring them to improve Soviet Jews’ situation within their native country.

The complexity of the problem that Feingold explores in “Silent No More” is reflected in his conclusion. It is not an interpretative failure on Feingold’s part, but rather the nature of the problems with which he deals, that makes it impossible to provide definitive answers. Feingold raises but then leaves open at least two important questions: Did US economic pressure on the Soviet Union, as epitomized in the 1972 Jackson-Vanik Amendment...