New Biannual Magazine on Soviet Jewish Affairs Launched in England

“Soviet Jewish Affairs,” a new biannual magazine, has been launched here. It is published by the Institute of Jewish Affairs in association with the World Jewish Congress, and succeeds the Institute’s “Bulletin on Soviet and East European Jewish Affairs,” which appeared six times between January, 1968, and December 1970. “Soviet Jewish Affairs” is subtitled “a Journal on Jewish Problems in the USSR and Eastern Europe.” Its first issue, running 144 pages and dated June, contains 13 articles and documents, reviews of six books, and a separately bound 48-page translation of the fourth issue of “Exodus,” an underground Soviet Jewish journal. The articles include “The ‘Right to Leave’ for Soviet Jews: Legal and Moral Aspects,” by William Korey; “USSR and the Politics of Polish Anti-Semitism 1956-68,” written anonymously; “The Jewish Labour Movement: Some Historiographical Problems,” by Chimen Abramsky; “Leaving Russia: A Personal Experience,” by Viktor Fedoseyev, and “Hungary’s Liberal Policy and the Jewish Question,” by George Garai. The documents include the text of the appeal adopted by the World Conference of Jewish Communities on Soviet Jewry, which met in Brussels in February. The “Exodus” issue includes an account of the first Leningrad trial of Jews, with excepts from testimony, and copies of Jewish protest letters to Soviet authorities. “Soviet Jewish Affairs” editor J. Miller writes that “The aim of the new journal is to combine academic integrity with practical vitality” in an attempt to “help illuminate the past and present of Jewish communities in the USSR and Eastern Europe.”