"Silent No More": Saving the Jews of Russia, The American Jewish Effort, 1967–1989 (review)
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This book is about both an important era in American Jewish history and a chapter in cold war history. From 1967 to 1989, the efforts of Jewish organizations and their congressional friends to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate became a crusade with clear diplomatic repercussions in Soviet-American relations.
Feingold begins with some historical background to illustrate that, even before the twentieth century, American Jews, deeply concerned with [End Page 482] the fate of Russian Jews, established a tradition of seeking government intervention. He then points to Jacob Schiff, who campaigned to prevent loans or credit to a cash-starved Tsarist government. He also draws attention to the endemic, consistent antisemitism in Russia that persisted even as Tsars were overthrown, Lenin and Stalin came and went, and Brezhnev bargained with American diplomats over emigration. Feingold thinks that without this pattern of antisemitism, the desire to emigrate would have been less intense.
It was not until Richard Nixon became president that the movement for emigration took off and immediately crashed into the efforts for détente that marked Nixon and Henry Kissinger's foreign policy. The history of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which Feingold thoroughly explores, is where the diplomatic cold war met American Jewish history.
President Nixon and National Security Adviser Kissinger set out to improve relations with the Soviet Union as part of a complicated plan that the president hoped would help conclude the war in Vietnam. After signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972, Kissinger moved to further implement détente. He answered the strong Soviet desire to obtain most favored nation (MFN) status by promising it would be in the new trade bill before Congress.
But Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, vehemently opposed to détente, scuttled that promise by introducing an amendment that tied the MFN provision to the release of all persons, mostly Jews, who wished to emigrate. As Feingold points out, Jackson was a Christian from Seattle who battled on behalf of Soviet Jews for two years against "a heavily accented Jewish refugee" who kept closing the gates (146). Moreover, the story of Jackson-Vanik is remarkable for another reason. Although there had been individuals in the Jewish community seeking to counter Soviet policies, Jackson presented his amendment without the backing of Jewish organizations which, at first, were a "reluctant Jewish cavalry" and only later became the necessary army (146). When the amendment finally passed, Feingold believes it marked a turning point in Jewish political advocacy. He also points out that it removed "the stigma of Holocaust abandonment" that American Jews had carried as heavy baggage (147). The book includes an entire chapter on human rights because, in Feingold's view, the Jackson-Vanik amendment landed the first blow in that fight.
New problems arose when the émigrés began to emerge from the Soviet Union. They carried Israeli visas, and Israel was eager to accept them because of what the author refers to as a demographic deficiency. Instead, many émigrés became "drop outs," choosing to come to the U.S. and other countries (149). Tensions arose between the American Jewish [End Page 483] organizations themselves, the Israeli organizations, and Israel. The author treats in some detail the problem of proliferating Jewish organizations, and their tendency to disagree.
After discussing the new tensions with the Soviets that emerged in the Reagan years and the freedom that came in 1989, Feingold concludes with some afterthoughts. Here he may give too much credit to the efforts of Jewish organizations on behalf of the émigrés. Political leadership was also essential. Without the leadership of Jackson and his committed staff members, emigration would, indeed, have waited until 1989.
By the time the Jews could freely emigrate, the United States was no longer an option, and so Israel, with financial help from the U.S., finally received and assimilated hundreds of thousands of new immigrants. Feingold concludes on a very...
