studies of the third wave: recent migration of soviet jews to the united states.by dan n. jacobs;...

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Studies of the Third Wave: Recent Migration of Soviet Jews to the United States. by Dan N. Jacobs; Ellen Frankel Paul Review by: Rasma Karklins Slavic Review, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 560-561 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2497044 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 02:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Slavic Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.126.35 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 02:37:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Studies of the Third Wave: Recent Migration of Soviet Jews to the United States. by Dan N.Jacobs; Ellen Frankel PaulReview by: Rasma KarklinsSlavic Review, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 560-561Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2497044 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 02:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Slavic Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.35 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 02:37:35 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

560 Slavic Review

RUSSIA'S FUTURE: THE COMMUNIST EDUCATION OF SOVIET YOUTH. By Kitty Weaver. New York: Praeger, 1981. x, 227 pp. Photographs. $21.95, cloth. $8.95, paper.

EDUCATION IN THE USSR. By Joseph I. Zajda. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1980. x, 272 pp. Figures. Tables. $29.00, cloth. $12.00, paper.

Neither Joseph I. Zajda's Education in the USSR nor Kitty Weaver's Russia's Future: The Communist Education of Soviet Youth adds significantly to our knowledge or under- standing of Soviet education. Of the two volumes, Zajda's is likely to be of greater interest to readers of the Slavic Review, since it could be of some value as a supplemen- tary textbook. In particular, it contains reasonably up-to-date summaries of Soviet educational statistics, as well as useful synopses of some recent articles from the Soviet pedagogical press. In addition, Zajda reliably recapitulates some long familiar but important material on the philosophy, history, structure, and curriculum of the Soviet school system. None of these topics, however, receives more than superficial treatment, and the place of the school system in the broader functioning of Soviet society is almost entirely ignored. References to the impact of education on national integration or political recruitment are conspicuous by their absence, and the few assessments which are offered on the schools as agents of political socialization or social differentiation lack both comparative perspective and historical depth. Given the scope and sophistication of prior scholarly work in the field, it is reasonable to expect even an introductory text to meet higher standards and to leave the reader with something more than the truisms that Zajda presents as his conclusions. It would be sad if the most stimulating insights to be derived from the study of Soviet education were that "the Soviet educational system is far from perfect," that "Soviet education was and still is riddled with administrative and socio- political problems," or that "the most fundamental goal of Marxism, the creation of a free, classless society, has not been, strictly speaking, achieved."

If Zajda's volume is regrettably simplistic, Kitty Weaver's is deplorably naive. More precisely, it is a starry-eyed celebration of the joys of membership in the Pioneers and the Komsomol - and, by extension, of the joys of growing up in the USSR. After invoking the experience of a visit in the 1960s to the USSR in which she found "none of the American stereotypes of the sinister Soviet to be true," Weaver takes the reader with her on a return visit in which, with the help of a variety of "marvelous" mentors (including an expatriate veteran of the American branch of the Pioneers), she confirms that each and every official Soviet stereotype is truth incarnate. One would have to go back to Beatrice Webb to find an equally captivated Western visitor, and even then one would find no counterpart for the selfless credulity that leads Weaver to quote and paraphrase entire pages of blatant official propaganda without a hint of personal skepticism, let alone boredom. The real puzzle, however, is not Weaver. It is Praeger Publishers, which has put its imprimatur on a book that can only damage its considerable reputation as a publisher of scholarly works on Soviet affairs.

JEREMY AZRAEL

Washington, D.C.

STUDIES OF THE THIRD WAVE: RECENT MIGRATION OF SOVIET JEWS TO THE UNITED STATES. Edited by Dan N. Jacobs and Ellen Frankel Paul. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981. ix, 176 pp. Tables. $20.00.

Among the increasingly numerous studies dealing with recent "third wave" emigrants from the USSR, one can distinguish two basic types, the one focusing on the information the emigrants can provide - even indirectly - about the Soviet system, the other focusing on the adjustment process of this specific immigrant group in the United States.

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Reviews 561

Although this book touches on the Soviet system as well, it is primarily a study of immigrants' adjustment.

This relatively thin volume does not constitute a thorough sociological analysis of the recent Soviet Jewish immigrants, but rather provides a general, descriptive, and some- what superficial comment on the main reasons that motivated these people to leave the USSR, as well as the basic problems they encounter in the first phase of building a new life in America. The first four chapters consist of reports on the results of limited scale surveys undertaken in Detroit by Zvi Gitelman, in Baltimore by Jerome Gilison, in Minneapolis and St. Paul by Stephen Feinstein and in Cincinnati by Ellen Frankel Paul and Dan Jacobs. The four case studies were undertaken independently from each other and thus differ in approach and technique. There is also little evidence of an at- tempt to integrate the chapters during the editorial process, and readers are thus left to draw their own broadly based conclusions from the various data cited. The ones that stuck in my mind are that anti-Semitism in the sense of limited job opportunities constitutes the one outstanding motive for emigration, that the interaction between the emigrants and resettlement agencies in the United States is encumbered by differing approaches to bureaucracies as well as misunderstandings, that the Jewish identity of the emigrants typically is underdeveloped and makes it difficult for them to integrate into the American Jewish community, that the immigrants are primarily concerned about finding jobs and apartments and in doing so encounter numerous practical problems, and that their general economic standard is relatively low during their first few years in the United States. Not surprisingly, however, we also read that the level of income is positively correlated with English language facility.

When giving evaluations of life in America, the emigrants express concern for social problems such as unemployment and crime. Many have the perception that Americans lead rather isolated lives without strong ties to friends and family, read shockingly few books, and are generally less interested in cultural pursuits than people in the Soviet Union. Freedom and economic opportunity are the aspects of American life cited most approvingly. There also appears to be general agreement that life is becoming bleaker in the Soviet Union and that anti-Semitism is increasing. In spite of this, and in spite of some general hostility toward the Soviet regime, many emigrants feel nostalgia for Russian life. When asked what they would like to tell Americans about the USSR, "the predominant response (55%) was to warn Americans that the Soviet Union was a cruel and oppressive regime, or that it represented a threat to world peace. Others spoke of the beauty, culture, and generosity of the Russian people as distinct from their rulers" (pp. 110-11).

These general impressions are confirmed by the last three chapters which focus on individual portraits of Soviet immigrants to the United States. While the last chapter provides long quotations from conversations with a number of persons, the fifth and sixth chapters consist of two versions of the same person's experience, once through his own eyes and once through the eyes of an American friend. The contrast of the two accounts is a suggestive comment on their difference in background and concerns.

Overall this book is clearly readable, but it is basically a pioneer effort without much scholarly depth. Its main accomplishment is to show that research based on interviews with recent emigrants from the Soviet Union is both possible and valid. The authors note that when starting their research they encountered frequent warnings that the emigrants would be less than candid in answering questions and may even be purposefully decep- tive, but that in fact they found the opposite to be true. This is noteworthy because there generally exists a gap between the popular assessment of the feasibility of conducting meaningful survey research with emigrants and actual experience.

RASMA KARKLINS University of Illinois at Chicago Circle

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