Introduction

Abstract

The sudden departure since 1971 of over 250,000 citizens from the USSR is surely one of the most unlikely events in post-revolutionary Soviet history. For the USSR is often viewed as a ‘closed society’, a nation situated enigmatically behind an ‘iron curtain’, an area of the globe where the practice, begun in Tsarist times, of issuing internal passports makes even a move between countryside and city a matter that can scarcely be taken for granted. It is therefore understandable that the emigration movement took Westerners by surprise, forcing them to scurry about searching for credible explanations of the anomaly. They often echoed the words of Boris Khazanov (1976: p. 137), a Soviet underground author, who remarked that his ‘generation has grown up with the conviction that it is as difficult to leave the Soviet Union as it is to throw a stone so high that it will not return to the earth’. Nor have the causes of the movement been the exclusive focus of the Western observer’s attention. He has been equally concerned with explaining its dimensions, i.e. the rate of emigration and the extent to which émigrés choose one country over another as their new homeland. Moreover, understanding the consequences of the movement — its significance for the USSR and for the major ‘receiving’ countries, Israel and the USA — has become an engaging topic of research, speculation and debate.