Soviet Jewish Aliyah, 1989-92: Impact and Implications for Israel and the Middle East byClive JonesReview by: John D. KlierThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 574-575Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212713 .

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574 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

in distinction to other cases of national liberation, the anti-Soviet liberation movements 'did not adopt the oppressors' organization and strategy' (p. I 59). Cohen profoundly misinterprets Gorbachev's intentions and policies as an attempt 'to rationalize imperial control' (p. I63), and fails to see that it was exactly Gorbachev's skilful dismantling of the imperial structure from above which explains the peacefulness of the transition. What made the Soviet empire different from other empires was that one aspect of its legitimizing ideology namely a liberal interpretation of classical Marxism - provided the discursive space for a more sincerely egalitarian understanding of the character and purpose of the 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'.

Cohen has taken an important first step in bringing together theoretical perspectives on empires with the Russian case. However, truly comprehensive explanatory and taxonomic schemes for the interpretation of the Soviet period in particular are still missing.

Department of Histoy A. UMLAND Free University of Berlin

Jones, Clive. Soviet Jewish Al?yah, I989-92: Impact and Implications for Israel and the Middle East. Frank Cass, London, I 996. ix + 244 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?30.00.

THIS is a useful book with a wealth of detail about the impact of Soviet Jewish migration (aliyah) to the state of Israel. Like the Soviet olim (immigrants) themselves, however, it occasionally suffers from a clear sense of identity.

Jones asserts the utility of a transnational model to explain the aliyah phenomenon. This model rejects the singular role of states as the dominant actors in world affairs. Asserting that society is autonomous from the state, the model emphasizes the impact on state behaviour of individuals, companies, and special interest groups. Migration from the USSR is just such a transnational phenomenon, born of the vagaries of Israeli internal politics, with its variegated pressures, and the intricacies of international relations.

The international context of Soviet aloyah was the determination of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to secure a benign international environment for his efforts at perestroika. This goal was pursued by permitting the departure of virtually all Soviet Jews and their families who wished to leave. Due to changing political circumstances, the preferred destination, the United States, was closed to most emigrants. The bedrock operational principle of Israel as the Jewish national state, the so-called Law of Return, ensured that any person with Jewish origins (one female Jewish grandparent) could claim Israeli citizenship, along with all family members. Internal Israeli politics determined how stringently this principle was enforced.

The core of Jones's book is a narrative history of the process of emigration which brought over 400,000 former Soviet citizens into the Jewish state in the period I989-92. The nature of the emigrants, most of whom had little sense of Jewish identity, little knowledge of Judaism or Jewish tradition, and who often lacked even the requisite Jewish grandparent, necessitates a sociological examination of their sense of identification once in Israel. Jones compares and

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REVIEWS 575 contrasts this new aliyah with that of the more militant Soviet 'Prisoners of Zion' who trickled in during the late I96os and 70s, and the large 'Oriental' al4ah ofJews from African and Middle Eastern countries.

Understandably for a lecturer in politics, Jones also explores the internal politics of the political coalition, led by the Likud Party of Yitzhak Shamir, which presided over the al~yah. Jones depicts Shamir's policies as fatally flawed. For Shamir, ideology was triumphant over pragmatism. He always pursued the fundamental principle of Revisionist Zionism, Eretz r'Israel, the concept of a 'greater Israel' which incorporated the territories conquered in the Six Day War of I967. Problems of absorption notwithstanding, the flood of new olim could be used to promote settlement of the West Bank, thus overturning the numerical superiority of the Arab Palestinians with their higher birthrate.

It was upon this ideological obsession, according to Jones, that Likud stumbled. The influx of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews frightened Israel's Arab neighbours at the very moment that the dominant Middle Eastern power broker, the United States, was eager to keep them on board the coalition against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The costs of olim absorption were enormous, and depended upon American loan guantantees. These were attainable only with the assurance that Soviet olim would not be settled en masse on the West Bank. The Shamir government's solution was to promote the construction of West Bank settlements and their occupation by non-olim, attracted by financial benefits away from Israel's coastal settlements.

Jones chronicles the failure of this endeavour: settlement-building alienated the United States. It became dogged by financial mismanagement, failed to attract the requisite non-olim settlement, and alienated Likud's natural constituency, the Oriental community, by siphoning off resources. The arrival of Soviet olim who were economic rather than ideological immigrants, created tensions which further polarized Israeli society. The factors, many of them transnational, explains Jones, led to Likud's surprising electoral defeat in 1992.

Jones's study offers a few comments about the immediate political future, based on the assumption that Likud will reside in the shadow of victorious Labour for some time to come. The obvious failure of his predictions points up an important failure of Jones's analysis: serious consideration of security issues. The intifada merits only fleeting mention, and there is little attention given to security concerns exacerbated by terrorism. Yet it was precisely this problem which, after the assassination of Labour Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, permitted the Likud coalition of Binyamin Netanyahu to regain power. Ironically, the issues that now bedevil Netanyahu are much the same as those which Jones describes as undermining Shamir's government.

Jones's blend of politics, history, and sociology at times attempts too much, and the yearly tables of Soviet migration in the appendix are completely muddled. His book none the less contains much of interest to students of the Middle East, and provides a good introduction to the problems created for Israel by this embarrassment of olim riches.

University College London JOHN D. KLIER

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