THE THIRD MIGRATION: PROFILE IN CURRENT RESEARCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81B00401R002400200021-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2004
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: September 1, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN

STAT Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 800401 R002400200021-4
Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 800401 R002400200021-4
 Vol. 18, No. 3, s11 ppromad For&ease 20041 07~/ 8NEMAMIDP81B0040002400200021-4 -Page 9
The Third Migration: Profile in Current Research
On December 19-203 1976, nineteen scholars
specializing in Soviet affairs met in Ann
Arbor, Michigan to consider the desirability
and ,feasibility of conducting research based
on interviews,with recent Soviet emigres. The
participants came from the United States,
Canada, and Israel, and represented the disci-
plines of political science, history, economics,
sociology, and Literature. The conference was
funded by the Research and Development Committee
of the American Association for the Advancement
of Slavic Studies, and was hosted by the
Center for Russian and East European Studies
of The University of Michigan. It was the
culmination of many conversations among Soviet
scholars, foundation and government officials,
and others concerned with Soviet affairs, who
had speculated on the possibilities of enriching
our understanding of the contemporary USSR by
interviewing those who had recently Lived
there.
Out of the conference emerged a realization
that a Lot of work and research is under way
using Soviet emigres as d resource, but the
work is scattered and the scholars involved
are not always in touch. The conference
revealed a clear-cut need for a summary of
work in progress as well as a statement on the
value of the emigres as research sources. The
following report, prepared for conference
participants by Professor Zvi Gitelman, is
being circulated via this Newsletter to'AAASS
members and others in the field with support
from the AAASS Research and Development
Committee.
In the last decade, over 200,000 people
have emigrated from the Soviet Union. This
represents the "third emigration" from the
USSR, the first having left after the revolu-
tion, and the second in the last years of the
Second World War. The present emigration is
ethnically and socially very different from
its predecessors. Ethnically, the'"third
emigration" includes about 160,000 Jews by
nationality, over 30,000 ethnic Germans, and a
few thousand Armenians. The rest are mainly
Russians, Ukrainians, and Balts. Socially,
well over a third of the emigrants have had
post-secondary education and tire in technical.,
professional, and acndcnric occupations.
Most of the emigrants have gone to Israel.
Betweem 1969 and April, 1978, some 126,000
Soviet emigres arrived in Israel. But whereas
in 1973, fewer than 50 of those atriving in
the Vienna way station from the USSR did not
continue to Israel, this percentage has gradu-
ally risen. Since 1976, slightly more than
half of the emigres have gone on to countries
other than Israel, mainly to the United States
Canada, Australia, and Western Europe. By the
end of 1977, nearly 24,000 Soviet immigrants
had come to the United States with the assis-
tance of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society),
Approved For Release 2004/07/08 :
and probably several hundred others had come
with the aid of other agencies.' The Germans,
of course, resettled in the Federal Republic.
of Germany, as did a few Balt's, Russians, and
Ukrainians. Other'Russians have immigrated to
England and France, but Canada ranks as the
fourth largest recipient of Soviet immigrants
(after Israel, the FRG, and the U.S.), with
about 5,000 recent Soviet immigrants.
There are some striking differences in
the geographical origins'of the Jewish emigres
who have gone to Israel, on the one hand, and
those who have come to the United States, on
the other. Though they made tip only about 3%
of the Soviet Jewish population in 1970,
Georgian Jews constitute nearPy a'quarter of
the immigration to Israel, as does another.
group, Baltic Jews, who also made up slightly
more than 3% of the Soviet Jewish population,.
Central.Asi.an,Jews are >!tearly 10% of the
Israeli immigration, and "Mountain Jews"
(from Daghestand and Azerbaijan) about 5%.
Most of the others haveicome.from the RSFSR,
the Ukraine, and Moldavia. By contrast,
nearly two-thirds of the Jews immigrating to
the United States come from the Ukraine, and
another 20% or more come from the RSFSR, so
that the two large Slavic republics have
contributed almost 90% of the American immi-
gration. 'Still, in both 1976 and 1977, there
were American immigrants from thirteen of the
fifteen Soviet republics.' One suspects that
the sharp contrast in the geographical compo-
sition.of the Israeli and American immigrations
is due to different levels of Jewish conscious-
ness, of education and skills, and to different
motivations for emigration among the Jews of
the several Soviet regions. It may also be
due to the change in the economic and military
position,of Israel after 1973.
The German emigres'have come from the
Baltic republics and from Central'Asia. They
are mostly industrial workers, peasants,.
clerks, nurses, and teachers. About the
emigres of other nationalities there is little
systematic information. As is well known,
some outstanding Russia artists, musicians,
writers, and scholars are now living in Western
Europe and North America.
As with most, cmigriitions, the young are
overrepresented among t. re Jews who have emi-
grated. The Soviet Jewipsh population Is
sharply skewed to the older ago cohorts,' hilt
28% of the immigrants to the United States
(1971-75) were ago twenty and under, and 54%
were. between twenty-one and fifty. The
immigration to Israel is somewhat older, with
about two-thirds under age fifty.
Among the immigrants to Israel, one-
quarter are classified as "scientific and
academic workers," another fifth are pro-
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fessionals, 37% are industrial and construc-
tion.workers, 10% were employed in services
and retail sales, and another 10% had various
other occupations. About 60% of the American
immigrants were in the labor force. Of these,
28%?are professionals and academics, 11% are
engineers, and 12% are technicians. Fourteen
percent were in "white collar" jobs (managerial,
clerical, sales), 17% in "blue collar" jobs,
and 12% in services.
The immigrants have been initially settled
in about one hundred. different communities in
the United States. Nearly half the arrivals
are located in New York City, with Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit,
Baltimore, and Boston - in that order - being
the other major centers of Soviet immigrant
resettlement.
It should be obvious that the emigres
constitute an unusual and valuable resource
for research on the Soviet Union. The results
of the Harvard Refugee Interview Project of
the 1940s and 1950s are testimony to the value
of systematic interviews, with Soviet emigres.
To date, there has not been an effort mounted
on a similar scale to interview the recent
arrivals, but several smaller scale studies
have been launched. Following is a listing of
such projects as have come.to my attention. I
am aware. that there may very well be many more
such projects, and I apologize to those not
listed here'who are doing research. among
emigres. Indeed, the major purposes of this
article are to alert scholars to existing
research potentials and, to inform the scholarly
community.of ongoing research, in the hope
that this will stimulate scholars to do-more
of this kind of research and to exchange
information about their research, so that our
knowledge will be cumulative and more refined
and duplication of effort will be avoided.
Research in Progress
The following is a brief listing of
current research involving Soviet emigres -
almost certainly not:a complete roster.
(1) At The.llebrew University (Jerusalem),
Cur Ofer (economics) and' Aaron V:inokur. (econo-
mist/sociologist, himself a Soviet emigrant,
now at Haifa University) have completed data
collection on the budgets of 1,000 households.
As of early.1977, at least three background
papers were produced as part of the project on
Family Budgets of Soviet Immigrants. (See,
e.g., Aaron Vinokur, "Industrial Workers'
Evaluations of Their. Families' Actual Monetary
Income and Their Conception About. Normal
Income in the USSR"; "Surveys of Family Budgets
in the USSR"; and "Average Net Monetary Income
of Workers' and Employees.' Families in the
USSR from 1964 to 1973," Research Papers, No.
Approved. For Release 2004/07/08: Cl
14, 17, 20, Soviet and East European Research
Centre, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.)
(2) Smaller-scale projects based at
Hebrew University include a study of journalism
and mass media, by Zev Katz (sociology); the
Jewish national movement and the use of law in
controlling dissidence.in the USSR, by Binyamin
Pinkus (Russian studies); the Party apparatus,
by Aryeh Unger (political science); local
government in Georgia, by Theodore Friedgut
(Russian studies); the informal organization
of the firm and effects of economic reforms,
by Martin Spechler (economics, also Tel Aviv
University).
(3) Studies,of the Jewish national move-
ment in the USSR have been conducted by
several scholars. A major pf jec't, involving
several thousand survey interviews and several
hundred indepth interviews, has been directed
by Yaacov Ro?i (Tel Aviv University) and
Mordechai Altshuler (Hebrew University), for
which data collection }as'been completed.
(4) An anthropological study of Georgian
immigrants has been conducted by Yitzhak Eilam
(Hebrew University), and there is a parallel
study of "Bukharans" by Rinah Ben-Shaul.
Reports of these studi4s.are available in
Hebrew.
(5) The Israeli Institute of_Applied
Social Research conducted ,a major study on
behalf of the Absorption Ministry of the
.integration of some 1,500 Soviet immigrants
who arrived prior to 1971. Two volumes are
available in Hebrew describing the results
.of the study. A brief English summary (a
report submitted to the Ford Foundation in
August 1975) is entitled "Patterns of Inte-
gration'over Time: Soviet Immigrants in
Israel," by Judith Shuval, Elliot Markus, and
Judith Dotan (42 pages). Judith Shuval has
published, in Hebrew, ~ study of the absorp-
tion of Soviet doctorslin Israel. This is
accompanied by an overview of the Soviet
medical profession.
. (6) Yeshayahu'Nir (Hebrew University) in-
cluded in his book, Th Israeli-Arab Conflict
in Soviet Caricatures (Tel Aviv, 1976), the
results of interviews ith 118. immigrants. who
were asked about their reactions to Soviet
political humor.
(7) Jeffrey Ross Hamilton College) did a
study (1972) of political alienation among
immigrants. See his article, "The Composition
and Structure of the Alienation of Jewish
Emigrants fromthe Soviet Union," Studies
Comparative Communism VII (Spring-Summer;
1974).
(8) Zvi Gitelman'(University of Michigan)
has studied the political socialization in
Israel of Soviet and American immigrants. See
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4t
his "Soviet Political Culture:' Insights from
Jewish Emigres," Soviet Studies XXIX, 4(October,
1977).
(9) Shalvia Ben-Barak and Neli Plotzker
of the Russian and East European Research
Center, Tel Aviv University, are studying
political and family socialization in the
USSR.
(10) The Soviet and East European Research
Centre at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
publishes a "Soviet-Institutions Series,"
consisting of monographs in Russian, by recent
emigres who had personal experience with
Soviet institutions. Nine such monographs
have been published, and the institutions
covered include. collective farms, newspapers,
labor camps, the Union of Composers, and
research institutes in mathematical economics,
sociology, criminology, and "machine-building
technology."
UNITED STATES
(11) Vladimir Treml..(Duke University) and
Gregory Grossman (University.of California,
Berkeley) have consulted: with emigre economists
and other recent arrivals in connection with a
research project on the "second economy" in
the Soviet Union.
(12) Zvi Gitelman (University of Michigan)
directed a study of 132 recent immigrants in
Detroit in the summer of 1976. See his "Soviet
Jewish Emigrants: Why Are They Choosing America?"
Soviet Jewish Affairs 7, 1(1977), and "Recent
Emigres and the Soviet Political System: A
Pilot Study in Detroit," Slavic and Soviet
Series (Tel Aviv University), II, 2(Fall,
1977).
(13) HIAS and some of its local agencies
and equivalents, and other resettlement and
welfare organizations, have' accumulated vast
amounts of information on the background of
emigres. Some have a detailed Soviet job
history for every immigrant in their area:.
The HIAS Division of Research and Statistics
publishes summary data on immigration to the
U.S.
(14) Stephen Feinstein (University of
Wiscdnsin-River Falls) has interviewed a
sample of recent Soviet immigrants in Minne-
apolis-St. Paul. He presented. his findings at
the Midwest Slavic Conference, May, 1977.
(15) A.number of individual specialists
in Soviet studies have interviewed emigre
specialists in their own fields of interest
(e.g., law, housing,-planning, cybernetics,
press, genetics, prison conditions, literature).
(16) The ICA .(formerly USIA) has made a
number of grants to scholars conducting in-
depth interviews with emigres who were special-
Approved For Release 2004/07/08
?ists or were active in social,.poli'tical, and
cultural life. The Research and Development
Committee of the AAASS has sponsored the
applications of some of these scholars. They,
include: (a) George Breslauer, assistant
professor of political science, University of
California, Berkeley. He is interviewing
former Communisty Party members now in Israel
and in the U.S. in an-investigation of informal
communications networks and center-local party
relations; (b) Stephen Sternheimer, assistant
professor of political science, Boston Univer-
sity, lie is complementing interviews con-
ducted in the USSR with emigre interviews,
investigating political relations among local
government officials and how access is obtained
to local power structures; and (c) Roman
Szporluk, professor of history,-the. University
of Michigan. He is studying the process
whereby new Soviet journals are created.-This,
entails interviews with former members of
editorial boards. -
Other scholars working with ICA grants
include Michael Swaffo.rd,,a=ssistant professor
of sociology, Vanderbilt University and
Maurice Friedberg, professor of Slavic lan-
guages and literature, University of Illinois.
(17)-Donald SchwartzjUniversity of
Toronto) has been aiding the local resettle-
ment agencies. Toronto has about 3,000
immigrants.
(18) Roberta Markus (University of
Toronto) has written a doctoral dissertation
dealing with political socialization and the
image of the Westerner in'ithe USSR. This
.involved interviews with eighty emigres. Her
current project involves. interviews with three
hundred immigrant children, their parents and
teachers, in order to examine perceptions of
the Soviet Union and the West.
WESTERN EUROPE
(19) Stephen White (Glasgow University)
has interviewed thirty-se1len Soviet emigres in
connection with a study of, Soviet political
culture. I
(20) Juozas Kazlas (YlIale University) has
interviewed over two hundr',ed ethnic German
emigres from 'the Soviet Union in. West Germany -
as part, of his research for a doctoral disser-
tation in political science.
(21) Radio Liberty has conducted interviews
in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and
elsewhere, and has published and aired a
number of.brief works of recent emigres.
has
(22)-Rasma Karklins (Boston'University)
been interviewing Baltic and German emigres
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from the USSR in Germany in connection with a
study of formal and informal institutions in
the Soviet Union.
(23) Several British specialists, notably
Peter ReddAway (London School of Economics)
and Mervyn Matthews, have been working with
emigres knowledgeable about Soviet dissent.
Matthews'.s forthcoming book on the lifestyle
of the Soviet elite is based in part,on emigre
interviews.
(24) The Bundesinstitut fur ostwissen-
schaftliche and internationale Studien in Koln
sponsors research. on the history of the Soviet
Germans, conducted by Drs. Pinkus and Fleisch-
hauer, as well as research on ethnic stereotypes
held by the emigres.
Some Soviet emigre scholars have published
their own works or are at work on memoirs or
analyses of aspects of. Soviet life and culture
(Aleksander Nekrich., Alexander Yanov., Grigori
Svirski, Boris Shragin, Aron Katsenelenboigen,
Mikhail Agursky, et al).
This partial survey illustrates the
potential for research among emigres, a
potential' which has only begun to be exploited.
The Research and Development Committee is now
seeking funds for an inventory of research
involving emigres and of emigres with special
skills, life experiences or expert knowledge
of the USSR. Such an inventory should stimu-
late and facilitate research and enable Western
scholars to take full advantage of the unusual
opportunities presented by the "third emigration
Call for' Proposals
The Research and Development Committee
has issued a call for proposals for., research
projects to be funded under the 197.7-78 .re-
newal grant from the Ford Foundation. AAASS
members are invited to communicate with the.
R&D Committee chairman, William Zimmerman
(Dept. of Political Science, U. of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109) for guidelines for
submitting research proposals. Research
support, according to the terms of the Ford
grant, can be given only to projects dealing
with the Soviet Union or the USSR in.coin-
pari.son with other world regions, .including
Eastern Europe. Deadline for consideration
of proposals is September. 22.
The Research and Development Committee
will meet during the AAASS convention this
coming October in Columbus, Ohio.
Currently, members of the Research and
Development Committee, in addition to Prof.
Zimmerman, include'S. Frederick Starr (Kennan
Institute for Advanced Russian Studies),
Murray Feshbach (U.S. Departinent.of Commerce),
Brian Silver (Michigan State U.) and Joan
Grossman (U. of California Berkeley).
Approved For Release 2004/07/08
ICA Awards Contract
The U.S. International Communication
Agency has awarded a.contract for $43,626 to
the MASS for a research project on "Informa,i
Communication Networks in the Political
Decision-Making Process in the Soviet Union."
The project will use as a basic resource the
pool of former Soviet citizens now outside the
USSR who have direct knowledge of the'informal
power and communications network inside the
Soviet Union. Project directors are George
Breslauer (U. of California, Berkeley),
Stephen Sternheimer (Boston U.) and Roman
Szporluk (U. of Michigan). The proposal for
the project was initiated by the MASS Re-
search and Development Committee; work began
in June and all funds are to tie expended by
summer 1979.
Three individual topics are to be pursued
under the project. Professor Szporluk plans a
"natural history" of Soviet journals. Through
intensive interviews with former Soviet citi-
zens involved in press and publishing, he
hopes to amplify what is known about the
establishment of journals. His interest is to
depict the informal process preceding sub-
mission to the Party apparatus of a request to
establish a.journal.
Stephen Sternheimer will undertake an'
examination of the formal and informal com-
munication processes in'Soviet. urban manage-
ment. Emigres who-were formerly employed in
administrative agencies of local'soviets,
municipal enterprises; trade unions and party
committees will. be interviewed. Professor
Sternheimer's research will provide insight
into the informal linkages within the context
in which urban policy takes shape.
George Breslauer, specialist on the
changing function of the CPSU, will focus on
the role of informal, pe'rsonal'ties and
connections within the Party itself. His
research will involve a number of Soviet
emigres. who held positions as raikom secretary
or higher., lie is especially interested in
such'questions as the informal processes of
consensus-building, inf rmal ties in personnel
selection, local perceptiions of and reactions
to differences between community-based social
roles and centrally derived political roles.
All three projects will make use of the
emigres as a research soiu?ce through question-
naires and interviews. Project directors are
working toward a conference on the three topics,
at which time they will share research expet-
iences and report on progress. Final written
reports are scheduled for completion in the
summer of 1979. William Zimmerman (U. of
Michigan) will be responsible for liaison
between project directors and the RF,D
Committee.
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