Privilege and Prejudice: The Occupations of Jews in Russia in 1989

In: Slavic review: interdisciplinary quarterly of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, Band 57, Heft 2, S. 247-266

Abstract

Published census data on Jews have been very scarce, but these data and other sources leave no doubt that in comparison with other groups Soviet Jews were very distinctive in terms of such characteristics as their urban concentration and their educational and professional achievement. This level of achievement occurred despite popular and official anti-Semitism of varying intensity. With the recent release of new data from the 1989 census, a more precise understanding of the opportunities available to Jews in Soviet Russia is now possible. These data show the number of men and women by major ethnic groups (including Jews) in 257 job categories. Surprisingly, this new information is not referred to even in the most recent Russian scholarship on Jews, and it receives no mention in western sources. In this article, I use the new occupational data to evaluate differences between Russians and Jews and to explore the way in which employment disparities may have shaped interaction between the two groups.