Feeling Alive: Unofficial Jewish Practices in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s
Journal: eScholarship (California Digital Library)
Year: 2019

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 interpr