DOCUMENTS ON SOVIET JEWISH EMIGRATION

Boris Morozov

This volume contains a selection of 75 outstanding Soviet documents relating to the struggle for Jewish emigration in the years 1957-89. These documents qualitatively broaden the base of source material for the topic. They reveal those aspects of the problem which most preoccupied the leadership and the factors which had the greatest impact on the decision-making process. Finally, they provide fresh insight into the nature of the information which was received by the Kremlin and the mechanism by which it was procured.

Included are minuntes of Politburo meetings, resolutions of the Politburo and Secretariat and materials prepared by the KGB and Ministry of the Interior concerning the activities of 'refuseniks' and Zionist activists in the USSR; dossiers on individual activists; statistical data on the emigrants and on those refused exit visas; reports arriving through embassy channels on activities of foreign activists and political figures on behalf of refuseniks and Prisoners of Zion; as well as documents of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation, in which the character and methods of the struggle against Zionist ideology were established.