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Euroasian Jewish News
International Conference "Jews in the Post-Soviet Space: Experience, Problems, Achievements", Dedicated to the 20th An
26.05.2009
 On the 21-22 of May, 1989, the Pan-USSR Round Table “Problems and Pespectives of Soviet Jewry” took place in Riga. Among the participants were representatives of the newly-created independent Jewish communities from various republics of the then yet united Soviet Union. In essence, this even became the starting point for a true Renaissance of the Jewish community on a territory equal to 1/6 of dry land in the world. For the first time in the USSR, the leaders and activists of the Jewish movement gathered legally to discuss pressing problems and develop a common strategy.
The reality of the Perestroika of the end of the 1980's changed rapidly. It was a time when that which seemed impossible even in theory yesterday, became reality the next day. In lively discussions and heated debates, the decision to create a pan-USSR Vaad was taken (name and concept suggested then by the famous scientist, ethnographer and philologist Michael Chlenov), and the first congress of this organization tool place in Moscow, in the December of 1989. Vaad, one of the co-chairmen of which became Michael Chlenov, became an umbrella organization, which united on a confederate base nearly all independent Jewish organizations of the Soviet Union. It was then, as another co-chairman of the Vaad of the USSR Joseph Zisels, who led the first officially registered independent Jewish organization twenty years ago, noted, that the Soviet “Jews of silence” finally found a voice, which resounds through the world since that moment, and will be silent no longer.
The difficult reality of the last twenty years has scattered the participants of the historic Riga Round Table around the world. Some of the participants no longer live, some are involved in a professional sphere far from social activity. But many of the activists which had gathered then in Riga became leaders of community structures that evolved from the societies and communities created twenty years ago. Michael Chlenov is now the Secretary General of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC), Joseph Zisels is the chairman of the EAJC General Council. On the whole, the Congress, as a confederate union of the communities of the countries of the region, can be considered to be the legal successor of the Vaad of the USSR. It is the EAJC which is now first and foremost in being the "voice" of the Jews of the post-Soviet space within the context of world Jewry.
It is not surprising, then, that it is the EAJC that, in cooperation with the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia, became the initiator and organizator of the International Conference "Jews in the Post-Soviet Space: Experience, Problems, Achievements," which took place in Riga on the May 22-24, 2009.
Many of those who gathered in Riga twenty years ago took part in the work of the conference, alongside community leaders from various world countries from Bulgaria to Uzbekistan, representatives of Israeli, American, and international Jewish organizations, and scientists – sociologists, political scientists, art experts and ethnographers.
The most impressive delegation to participate in the conference was the delegation of the National Conference (NCSJ), which arrived in Riga after its visits to Moscow and Kiev, where it met with government representatives and leaders of Jewish organization.
Before the beginning of the Conference, a joint meeting between its Organizational Committee, representatives of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the NCSJ, as well as the leadership of the Jewish community of Latvia, with the president of Latvia Valdis Zatlers, during which gratitude was expressed to the government and people of Latvia for moral and political support of Jewish initiatives, both twenty years ago and recent.
According to the plan of the Organizational Committee of the Conference, led by Joseph Zisels, the jubilee was not only an occasion for old friends to meet and joyfully remember those fateful days, but a space for experts and discussions, for analysis of the path undertaken by the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union over two dozen years. The speakers and participants in the discussion, remembering the agenda of the Riga Round Table, made a first attempt to reflect upon the achievements and misfortunes, successes and failures, which accompanied the creation of communities in the post-Soviet space. This is the reason why, besides community leaders and participants of the 1989 round table, experts from different countries also took part in the 2009 conference – they were invited to analyze the various aspects of life of post-Soviet Jewish communities and Jews from the former Soviet Union who were scattered around the world.
 During the three days of the conference's intensive work, such topics as identity, community building, education, mass media, restitution of Jewish property, the preservation of cemeteries and objects of material culture, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and others, were discussed. A separate meeting was dedicated to the activity of Israeli and international Jewish organizations, such as Jafi, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, ORT, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), whose representatives also attended the Riga conference.
The format of the event included a “panel” model, in which the participants of the conference not only listened to reports prepared by experts, but where difficult questions were honestly discussed. Even though according to the organizators' assessment, not all spheres of Jewish life were able to be analyzed on a scientific level, it is important that an honest exchange of opinions, which at times differed significantly, took place. Without such an honest discussion, it would probably not have been possible to begin an adequate analysis of the path undertaken by the Jewish communities of the former USSR.
The participants were read the greetings of the President of the EAJC Alexander Maskhevich and Eitan Finkelstein, which had kind words from the current leaders of Jewish building and the oldest participants of the battle for the rights of Jews of the former USSR, who gathered at the conference in El Kana (Israel).
In his speech to the participants of the Conference, the President of the EAJC Alexander Maskhevich underlined that the "Riga meeting, like many years ago, shall certainly give a new impulse to the development of Jewish community life in the entire post-Soviet space."
It is planned to publish the materials of the conference.
The Organizational Committee is planning to continue the talk on pressing problems of the Jewish communities of the post-Soviet space in Moscow, in December 2009, at the 20-year anniversary of the Vaad of the Soviet Union. If it was planned in Riga to analyse the path which the Jewish community has undertaken in the last twenty years, in Moscow experts and community leaders are planning to look to the future and formulate answers to important challenges before the Jewry in post-Soviet territory.
On photos: above – meeting of the participants of the Conference with the President of Latvia Valdis Zatlers; in the center – the Presidium of the Conference (left to right: EAJC Secretart General Michael Chleniv, EAJC General Council chairmal Joseph Zisels, Vice-President of the Federal Jewish National-Cultural Autonomy of Russia Valeriy Engel); below – a working moment during the conference (left to right: Artyom Fedorchuk, Israel; Victoria Mochalova, Russia; Boris Haimovich, Israel).
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