“When Israel Was in Egypt’s Land.” Jewish Emigration from the USSR, 1968–1991

In the wake of World War II, against the backdrop of the Holocaust, the founding of the State of Israel, and at times intensely hostile discrimination against the Jewish population of the Soviet Union, the desire grew among Soviet Jews to emigrate to Palestine or Israel. Approximately 8,300 Soviet Jews emigrated between 1945 and 1968. In the détente era of the early 1970s, that number rose to nearly 35,000 a year, before declining again due to new conflicts and restrictions. Following the end of the Cold War in 1990, emigration again reached a new peak. In total, about 500,000 Jews left the Soviet Union between 1968 and 1990. Most of them traveled through Austria on the way to their new homes. Several broad overviews have been published on the situation of the Jewish population in the USSR, the Jewish exodus from the USSR, and various aspects of their transit. Nevertheless, a synthesis of these findings is still lacking, and a number of questions remain open with regard to both the Austrian and Soviet perspective of Austria’s role as a transit country. On the basis of material from Austrian and Soviet archives, this article attempts to address some of these research gaps.