Introduction

By now the figures are well known: over a period of six years, between 1 January 1989 and 31 December 1994, some 800,000 Jews emigrated from the regions of what formerly constituted the USSR. Five hundred and forty-five thousand of these migrants arrived in Israel and the remainder headed west, mostly to the United States. Migration is not unfamiliar to Russian and Soviet Jews. Indeed, as Gitelman points out in his broad historical overview, since the 1880s no group of Jews has migrated as often, in as great numbers, and with such important consequences. Yet, both the size of the recent migration wave, relative to the size of the Jewish population in the region of origin, and the rate of migration were unprecedented. These factors alone underscore the urgency of a comprehensive understanding of the antecedents, patterns and impact of this wave of migration.