Leaving Russia: Russian-Israeli Literature of the 1970s–1980s

What is it about?

This article focuses on the history of Russian-Israeli literature in the 1970s and 1980s, exploring how it gained official recognition in Israel and began to position itself as a distinct phenomenon in world literature, existing at the intersection of Jewish, Russian, and Israeli cultures. The article provides a detailed overview of Russian-Israeli authors of the period, their works, and the poetics they employed in their texts.

Featured Image

Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash

Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The article examines a crucial period in the history of Russian-Israeli literature, marked by a significant influx of new authors due to the liberalization of emigration policies for Jews in the USSR. It demonstrates how these authors established and developed the poetic, ideological, and social foundation for the subsequent "big bang" in Russian-Israeli literature in the 1990s. Thus, it summarizes the achievements that allowed the 1970s and 1980s to become not only a distinct phenomenon in the Russian-Israeli literary process but also reveals the preconditions for the future leap in the evolution of Russian-Israeli literature following the arrival of the "Big Aliyah" in Israel.