Russian antisemitism and Jewish immigration

by admin Comment Closed
‘Has antisemitism been increasing in Russia?’, ‘Is that the reason that immigration of Russian Jews has been so high lately?’ – these are the most frequently asked questions that I received since the publication of the report ‘Jewish migration today: what it may mean for Europe’. The report has shown that, since the outbreak of war between Russian and Ukraine in February 2022, immigration of Jews and their family members from Russia and Ukraine rose to the levels last seen at the end of the 1990s, almost quarter of a century ago. If these levels keep for the next 5-10 years, Jewish community of Russia would be less than a half of its current size while Jewish community of Ukraine would almost disappear. Immigration of Jews from France have been high in the early 21st century but really at an incomparably lower level compared to the new Russian and Ukrainian realities. It almost feels like immigration of Jews from Ukraine does...
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HOW TO UNDERSTAND RUSSIA, AND HOW NOT TO

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Autocracy it isHaving gone through a period of radical political transformation and economic crises Russia is back as a world player. It re-emerged gradually, but its recent direct involvement in Syria, its sightings within the context of the American election and finally its 2014-2022 ‘Ukrainian campaign’ brought it back to the Westerners’ attention. Russia, in the eyes of an average Westerner, is an exotic and somewhat incomprehensible place. Russian bears, Russian dolls, Russian oligarchs, Russian brides, Russian vodka, Russian baths. A soft form of ‘Orientalism’, if you ask me. ‘Natasha from Russia’ will tell you everything you need to know about that… A lot has been written on Russia by serious scholars since the collapse of communism and the access to the archival materials that followed. However, the area of Russian studies in the Western academia never stagnated. Robert Conquest, Robert Service, Richard Pipes, Orlando Figes published maybe 50 books on the Soviet period of Russian history, all before 1990. There...
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DO SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA WORK? A REPORT FROM THE NATURAL EXPERIMENT AND LESSONS FOR ISRAEL AND ISRAEL’S DETRACTORS

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Do Western sanctions against Russia work? Such was the question asked by the ‘Economist’ recently. Those sanctions, yes, ‘like none the world has seen’. Well, how does one know that something works, in principle?  In scientific fields, it is rather rigidly understood: something ‘works’ when it achieves the hoped result, and the result is confirmed by comparing the ‘before-policy’ situation to ‘after-policy situation’, and possible alternative explanations that could have generated the result are ruled out definitively. The comparison, in scientific fields, should be based on numerical indicators, not feelings. Presumably, Western sanctions were imposed to end the war against Ukraine. And, presumably, the causal mechanism, if it was ever specified by those who conceived the sanctions, would look something like this: sanctions will be imposed, prices would go up, hopefully scarcity would develop too, Russian population will suffer, it will then turn against Putin and depose him. That will end the war. Has it happened and, if not, how close...
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WHAT RUSSIANS WANT TO ACHIEVE IN UKRAINE? (=Xотят ли русские войны?)

by admin Comment Closed
I have said it before-the times of intellectuals opining about the current affairs-and 'ordinary people' listening in awe- are truly over. Who needs intellectuals to interpret and 'mansplain' situations, preferences and the ‘actual truth’ when there are opinion polls? There, people speak for themselves. And whoever is interested in what people actually think, can look at the results of these polls-nothing added and nothing taken away, or very little… Here I present, in translation into English, the results of the opinion poll taken in Moscow on 11-14 March 2022. (Sample size of 1,000). The Russian public was asked about the way they see the Russian 'military operation in Ukraine', as the war in Ukraine is called in Russia. The results came my way via a fellow Russian demographer Dmirty Zakotyansky who did the world a favour by publishing them in his blog in Russian. 'Russian Field' was a polling agency conducting the poll at the request of Roman Yuneman,...
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