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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Feeling Alive: Unofficial Jewish Practices in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4np1x0vv Author Shayduk-Immerman, Olesya Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Feeling Alive: Unofficial Jewish Practices in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s By Olesya Shayduk-Immerman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Alexei Yurchak, Chair Professor Charles Hirschkind Professor Mariane Ferme Professor Yuri Slezkine Spring 2019 Abstract Feeling Alive: Unofficial Jewish Practices in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s by Olesya Shayduk-Immerman Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Alexei Yurchak This dissertation explores unofficial “Jewish practices” in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. The interest and participation in such practices in the late Soviet period are usually analyzed within either “totalitarian” or Zionist frameworks, which represent them as manifestations of “anti-Soviet” sentiments and goals, and as part of a political movement struggling for the chance to leave the Soviet Union, particularly for Israel within the Zionist framework. However, I argue, this interpretation reflects much less the real Soviet context than the set of assumptions about the Soviet system that have been shaped in Western liberal discourses during and since the Cold War. In this dissertation I show that Jewish practices and pursuits in the late Soviet period could not be grouped under the concept of a “political movement” or reduced to an anti-Soviet agenda and Zionist activity. Instead, they should be understood as a particular example of “searching for the extraordinary” – a much broader cultural phenomenon that developed among the Soviet intelligentsia during that period. My informants often mentioned a unique feeling of “liveliness” that they felt when engaging with Jewish practices and pursuits. Sometimes they linked this feeling with “freedom” – a concept that cannot be easily equated with the liberal conception of freedom understood in terms of individual choice. In fact, many of them also reported that after having emigrated from the Soviet Union to market democracies (Israel, USA, Canada etc.) they, surprisingly, experienced a “loss” of freedom. Analyzing what the experience of “freedom” might mean in the Soviet context, and what unique forms it could take in the context of the “Jewish practices,” I argue that a number of ideological, economic and cultural realities of state socialism made this experience of freedom part and parcel of the Soviet system itself. From this perspective, gaining the actual right to emigrate was just as important as, if not more important than, performing the actual act of emigration. The real “Exodus” happened within the borders of the Soviet Union rather than outside of them. This dissertation further reflects on the role of the global political context in shaping the unofficial Jewish practices and pursuits in the Soviet Union and in giving them a unique form that made them different from many other unofficial practices that developed around that time. 1 Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... iii Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Memory and Methodology ......................................................................................................... 1 Exodus Metaphor ........................................................................................................................ 4 The Fieldwork .............................................................................................................................. 5 Chapters Overview ...................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1 Reassembling the Jewish Movement in the Late Soviet State: The Character of the Phenomenon ................................................................................................................................... 8 Hebrew and a Lamb Shank ....................................................................................................... 16 “Hunveibini” and “Bonzi” in Moscow ....................................................................................... 18 Old refuseniks (starii otkaz) and new refuseniks (novii otkaz) in Leningrad ............................ 19 The Case of Institutionalization of an Interest in Judaic Studies .............................................. 22 Soviet Jews in Christian Groups – Same Phenomenon? ........................................................... 26 Is there a movement? ............................................................................................................... 27 New identity theory .................................................................................................................. 29 Chapter 2 The Art of Jewishness: Feeling Alive and the Freedom of Creation ............................ 33 The Shaping of Soviet Jewishness ............................................................................................. 34 An Explosion of Curiosity about Judaism among the Soviet Jews ............................................ 37 Encounter with Western/Israeli Jewish Institutions ................................................................. 42 The Freedom of Feeling Alive ................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 3 Practices of the Search for the “Extraordinary”: Economy and Ideology ................... 54 The Concept of the “Extraordinary” and Creation of “Extraordinary Social Milieus” .............. 54 The Concepts of “Professional Development” and “Unique Hobbies” .................................... 62 Organization of Time ................................................................................................................ 64 Structural Conditions for the Practices of Getting Connected to the Extraordinary ............... 71 Socialist Project: Successful or Not? ......................................................................................... 72 The Role of Culturedness (Kul’turnost’) in the Life of the Soviet Citizens ................................ 77 Culture and Culturedness as a State Project ............................................................................ 80 i Narrative Confusion .................................................................................................................. 82 Chapter 4 “Multiple Citizenships” of the Soviet Jews: Possibility of Emigration as a Practice and a Discursive Field ........................................................................................................................... 85 Calculated Kindness .................................................................................................................. 85 Citizens without Citizenship ...................................................................................................... 87 Studying Citizenship .................................................................................................................. 88 Israel and the Soviet Jews ......................................................................................................... 89 Studying Citizenship through Leave: Rights and Practices of Emigration ................................ 93 Emigration in the USSR ............................................................................................................. 98 Communicative Practices about “Leave” (ot”ezd) .................................................................. 102 The Land of Abaraham and the Land of Uncle Sam ............................................................... 103 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 105 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 107 ii Acknowledgements I am excited to give a credit to the people, teachers, informants, friends and relatives, as well as organizations that made this dissertation possible. Alexei Yurchak made the experience of writing a dissertation a thrilling trip with inspiring conversations. His respect and patience made me feel like a true scholar. Thank you Charles Hirschkind for producing perfect formulations on the spot. It made me want to write down every utterance of yours. Thank you Mariane Ferme, for sending me the notice of acceptance, for being my first professor in the program and most of all for being an attentive reader. Thank you Yuri Slezkine for being the ideal model Mercurian to follow and asking the challenging questions. Thank you Laura Nader for interesting lectures that made me realize why my dissertation particularly matters in the US. The research and writing of this dissertation were supported by the FLAS Fellowships; Wenner Gren Foundation Fellowship;