Proshchay to Russian-language newspaper Vesti’s

CLIFF SAVREN columnists@cjn.org

The news of Vesti’s demise was tucked away as a business brief in Haaretz, the Israeli daily I work for. Vesti wasn’t a person, but rather an Israeli Russian-language print newspaper. Although it will still exist as a news website, the print publication, which had been a daily and was more recently published as a weekly, is shutting down, resulting in the layoff of its small remaining eight-person staff.

Vesti’s closure says a lot about the challenges that all print newspapers are facing in the internet age, but in the Israeli context, ironically, it also says a lot about Israel’s success in integrating nearly a million Russian-speaking immigrants. Vesti’s slow death may be partly a function of the decline in popularity of print newspapers in general, but I would image it had more to do with the fact that former Vesti customers are now reading the Hebrew-language press, either in print or online.

In 1989, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev lifted tough emigration restrictions on Soviet Jews. That was followed two years later by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The two events set the stage for the immigration to Israel of more than a million Russian-speaking immigrants since 1989. The immigrants were transformed in the process, but they also transformed Israel.

“Within a few years, Israel had to absorb about 20 percent of its population,” Natan Sharansky, the best known of the Soviet Jewish aliyah activists, noted in comments published in Haaretz to mark the 25th anniversary of the wave of Soviet aliyah. “There is no other example in the world of such a successful integration.”

That integration has meant the demise of publications such as Vesti. It may also spell the ultimate disappearance of Yisrael Beiteinu, the political party headed by Israel’s defense minister, Soviet-born Avigdor Lieberman, which appeals to Russian-speaking voters. His party has sunk from 15 seats in the Knesset a decade ago to five today. There may be other things at play here, but my hunch is that Russian-speaking immigrants, most of whom have been here for quite some time, see themselves as Israeli for all intents and purposes and simply don’t feel the need to vote “Russian.”

I have my personal connection to the Soviet immigration story. In 1985, I was one of a group of six people from Northeast Ohio who went on a mission to the Soviet Union, sponsored by the then-Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

Cynthia Dettelbach, the editor of the Cleveland Jewish News at the time, was one of the other participants.

We went to reach out to Jews who had been denied exit visas to go to Israel, at a time when almost no Jews were being allowed out and when those who applied risked losing their jobs. We came back to raise awareness over an issue that was a clear case of good against evil, of Jews who were persecuted in the Soviet Union and deprived of the right to live their lives as Jews, and who simply wanted to leave.

The trip had a major impact on me. I recall sitting in the apartment of a Jewish activist in what is now St. Petersburg, the home of a man who was teaching Hebrew clandestinely and who had been harassed by Soviet authorities. How ironic, I thought, that he and his associates were risking so much for the dream of living in Israel when I could make aliyah too, but hadn’t. It took me another 14 years to make the move. And thanks in large part to the worldwide effort to free Soviet Jewry, among my fellow Israelis, there are 1 million former residents of the Soviet Union.

Cliff Savren is a former Clevelander who covers the Middle East for the Cleveland Jewish News from Ra’anana, Israel. To read more of Savren’s columns, visit cjn.org/savren.

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