ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to fill the void and reconstruct, based on Israeli, British and Soviet sources, an account of how the escape route was opened by the Soviet authorities and turned into a channel for pioneering immigration into Palestine. It explores the motives and modes of operation of these many actors, exploring the arrangements and mechanisms that enabled Zionist prisoners to leave Soviet Russia and surveying the often shaky cooperation that made possible their immigration into Palestine. The ‘substitution’ emigration allowed a small but committed minority from among the many thousands of active Zionists in Soviet Russia to reach the shores of Palestine, where they participated in the building of a new Jewish society and polity. An additional measure of protection from Soviet censure as well as direct financial aid came from the US-based Joint Distribution Committee, which supported all forms of Jewish agricultural settlement in Soviet Russia.
