The article attempts to create a new theory of Russian-Israeli literature based on recent ideas about complex emergent phenomena. In particular, the author takes as a starting point some provisions expressed and substantiated by the British philosopher David Deutsch. During the analysis, a hypothesis is formed about what elements constitute the core and distinctive structure of Russian-Israeli literature. This hypothesis can serve as a starting point for creating a method for studying the ideological and poetic features of both this literature itself and the literary process and community based on it. The article presents the results of the first, initial stage of the theoretical and methodological project, the continuation of which is expected in subsequent works.

The article examines the evolution of a discourse on Jewish solidarity in Russian émigré communities during the 1920s. It explores the reception of Soviet plans for Jewish colonization in Crimea, the debates triggered by the works of Shul’gin, who systematized this notion, and Amfiteatrov’s “Stena Placha.” This discourse is crucial to understanding the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment among the Russian intelligentsia in exile, even within the liberal faction. Additionally, a parallel emerges between the Russian and Jewish exilic experience, which prompts a reflection on the very identity of the Russian diaspora. The perception of a supposed “cohesion instinct” of the Jewish people becomes a mirror in which émigrés attempt to define (or redefine) their own sense of belonging and national solidarity, thereby showing how dynamics of self-representation intertwine with the construction of new stereotypes and xenophobic sentiments.

Zvi Kasdoi (1862–1937) was a Russian Jewish traveler and Zionist who, along his travels, encountered unfamiliar Jewish communities like the Jews of Georgia. Kasdoi’s 1912 book Mamlekhot Ararat [The Kingdoms of Ararat] is an account of the author’s travels in the Russian Empire’s Transcaucasus region, during which he encountered and observed Georgian Jews. As a proponent of Jewish nationhood, Kasdoi set out to explain how the Jews he encountered could be so culturally, linguistically, and even historically different from the Russian Jews with whom he was familiar, yet still be part of the same nation. Alongside the ethnographic observations that typically characterize travelogs, Kasdoi draws on the range of the Jewish canon, as well as classical Greco-Roman literature, and employs exegetical methodologies to argue that the Jews of Georgia were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. The legend of the ten tribes allows Kasdoi to explain the differences between Russian and Georgian Jews while reifying their shared belonging to the Jewish nation. Additionally, through invoking the legend of the ten tribes, Kasdoi fuses the project of Jewish national revival with messianic expectation and proposes that, in the context of the Jewish national revival and Zionist movement, redemption was not only possible, but imminent. A study of Kasdoi’s Mamlekhot Ararat sheds light on the use of the legend of the ten tribes to bridge intercommunal Jewish boundaries and brings attention to the role of eschatological hopes within the discourse of Jewish national revival in late Imperial Russia.

This article analyzes the antisemitic discourse in Friedrich Gorenstein’s play Debates about Dostoevsky, an intellectual drama of ideas. The central theme is the perception of Dostoevsky as a symbol of “Russianness” and a target of ideological projections within Soviet society. The study examines how the writer’s figure is employed by characters to express xenophobic sentiments, particularly antisemitism — not as a reflection of Dostoevsky’s own views, but as a symptom of social and personal tensions. Special attention is given to the character of Chernokotov — a marginalized figure who masks his aggression and failures with the name of the great writer. The play emerges as a satire on Soviet censorship, cultural conformism, and ethnic prejudice, presenting antisemitism as a secondary but alarming consequence of ideological crisis. The paper raises the issue of the limits of interpreting cultural symbols under political pressure.

The article presents the figure of Mieczysław Weinberg, a composer of Jewish roots, who was born in Poland, but lived in the Soviet Union, and his peculiar approach to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s legacy. The Idiot, opera based on the eponymous novel by Dostoyevsky, was one of the greatest works that was performed on stage during the composer's lifetime. The inevitable question is: why Dostoyevsky's anti-Jewish and anti-Polish views remain unnoticed by Weinberg. This article is an attempt to understand this important issue by analyzing the facts of the composer’s biography, his works, and the historical realities.

The Moscow Choral Synagogue, unofficially considered the central Jewish religious institution in the USSR, operated throughout the entire Soviet period. In addition to meeting the spiritual needs of thousands of observant Jews, it was expected to serve as a propaganda display of the constitutionally proclaimed freedom to manifest religious identity. The authorities attentively controlled the appointment of the synagogue’s chief rabbis and their activity after taking office. Being fully cognizant that the regime instrumentalized religion for its political purposes, the rabbis had learned to act accordingly. This included playing a role in state-approved international contacts. Therefore, the article examines in detail the synagogue’s contacts during the rabbinical tenures of Solomon Shlifer (1944–1957), Yehuda Leib Levin (1957–1971), Yakov Fishman (1972–1983), and Adolf Shayevich, appointed in 1983. The New York-based Appeal to Conscience Foundation, founded in 1965 on the initiative of Rabbi Arthur Schneier, acted as a principal conduit for the Moscow Choral Synagogue’s links with religious organizations outside the Soviet Union. Still, the Choral Synagogue was not merely a gimmick for hosting foreign observers. Real life occurred behind its facade.

This article examines how Russian-Jewish intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – liberals, Zionists, and Bundists alike – constructed the figure of the “ideal Jew” as a model of national self-consciousness. Despite ideological conflicts, these groups shared a vision of a modern Jew who embodied both Russian and Jewish cultural orientations. The ideal Jew was imagined as an educated, socially responsible individual, capable of elevating the Jewish masses, articulating communal values, and serving as a prototype for collective regeneration. Tracing this figure from the Haskalah of the 1860s and 1870s, through the rise of Jewish nationalism after 1882, and into the post-1917 emigration, the article shows how attitudes toward Russian culture, diasporic identity, and nostalgia shaped the evolving conception of Jewish selfhood. By analyzing literary criticism, historiography, social theory, and journalism, it reveals a persistent pattern of synthesis, Russian and Jewish, cosmopolitan and national, underpinning intellectual debates across generations.

The review essay attempts a comparative analysis of two new English-language volumes of poetry by the major Jewish-Russian poets Ilya Ehrenburg and Semyon Lipkin. Special attention is paid to the legacy of Jewish-Russian literature in the post-Soviet period and to aspects of translatability and literalism.

The new Russian-language publication of Iulii Margolin’s Puteshestvie v stranu zeka; Doroga na Zapad; Poeziia, Part 1 of a three part edition that includes his correspondence and articles is a welcome addition to his published output. With compassion, philosophical insight, and a keen eye for detail, Margolin describes the plight of Polish Jews caught between the pincers of Nazi and Soviet invasions in 1939; life in the Soviet Gulag from 1940-1945; exile in the USSR; and his return to life in post-Holocaust Europe and Mandate Palestine. His camp poetry provides an emotional complement to the prose.