Between the 1960s and the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Americans were involved in the Soviet Jewry Movement. The activists´ goals were to help Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, to advocate for their rights to live Jewish lives in the Soviet Union. The movement rose in response to the plight of the so-called refuseniks, Jews had applied for an exit visa to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel but were denied permission. American Jews and American Jewish organizations were the most important actors in this movement in the West. Their efforts to raise awareness and rally support amongst elected officials and civil society are regarded as successful in the existing research. Especially during the 1970s, interest in the plight of the refuseniks grew exponentially as the issue became entangled with the international human rights movement and Cold War politics. Moreover, the movement is often described a success story in which American Jews found their collective political power and a renewed sense of pride in their ethnic identity.
My PhD project focuses on an underresearched aspect of the movement, namely American Jewish and American Jewish organizations` attempts to forge coalitions with non-Jewish America. It aims to broaden the story by drawing attention to those individuals and organizations who came to the movement from a non-Jewish background. It investigates collaborations between Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and individuals in the movement and asks how these collaborations framed and motivated their activism and how they impacted the movement.
