O

In Review -

The End Of The Soviet Union

The birth of hope for millions of Jews.

ommunism officially
ended with nary a
whimper last Decem-
ber, having lasted
slightly less than 75
years and causing
countless pain to the
millions who suffered under its constraints.
Not the least of these were the Jews
of the USSR who were denied the right
to practice their faith yet were perse-
cuted, imprisoned and even executed
because of their religion.

In its final decade, the Soviet Union,
home to some three million Jews, began
to ease its restrictions, freeing refuseniks
from prison and opening the gates of
emigration. Hundreds of thousands of
Jews fled for the West, most of them set-
tling in Israel where they began the long
and difficult process of rekindling their
Jewish spirit while learning a new lan-
guage, seeking a place to live and a job
to support their transplanted families.
Mikhail Gorbachev, credited with lib-
eralizing Soviet policies, stepped down

as head of the defunct Soviet Union and
was honored several months later in
Israel for his accomplishments.
With Israel's financial and bureau-
cratic problems in resettling the Jewish
immigrants well publicized, and with a
resurgence of nationalism among the
former client states of the USSR, the
flood of emigration slowed. But the U.S.
approval of a $10 billion loan guarantee
for Israel and reports that the Rabin
government is making housing and jobs
for the newcomers a priority are ex-

pected to spur increased emigration once
more in the coming months.
The demise of the Soviet Union has
changed the Mideast equation, which
pitted the U.S. and its ally, Israel,
against the USSR and its Arab allies in
the Mideast. The U.S. has emerged as
the world's only superpower, and Arab
states like Syria, long antagonistic to
Washington, have been forced for eco-
nomic reasons to be more accommodat-
ing of American interests. That is the
primary reason why the Mideast peace
talks became a reality, with Washing-
ton able to bring pressure to bear on both
sides.
The death of Communism and the So-
viet Union marks the rebirth of hope
that the millions of Jews who lived there
will not be lost to the Jewish future.

Boris Yeltsin tries to
hold the country together.

(Left) Communism goes bust: soldiers remove a
bust of Lenin as the Soviet Union came to an end
in December.