ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches out the life trajectories of the Zionist exiles and of the substitution emigrants. The letters from Zionist exiles in Soviet Russia, passed from hand to hand in the 1920s and 1930s, contributed to the symbolic image of Jews and especially Zionists in Soviet Russia as 'prisoners of Zion'. Ironically, it was in prison and exile that the Zionists refocused their attention from the struggle against Soviet dictatorship to Palestine. The exiles expressed strong views on the issues discussed by the Jewish public in Palestine. Chasidic followers of the Rabbi from Lubavitch also came, with help from their communities abroad and the Jewish Agency. The lives of the immigrants followed several alternative paths, all of them intimately connected to the building of a Jewish society in Palestine. The immigrants responded to the reality around them in various ways, influenced by ties of comradeship as well as the political beliefs they had formed while in Russia.
