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This volume tells the largely unknown story of how Zionists imprisoned by Soviet authorities were allowed to choose sentences of permanent departure to Palestine, where they helped build Jewish society and the backbone of left-wing parties and the powerful trade union movement. The authors bring to light unknown documents from archives opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and revise fundamental assumptions about these events. They examine the means by which internal power struggles and personal interventions in the uppermost echelons of the Soviet leadership allowed the Zionists to disseminate their message and recruit thousands of members before the massive arrests of the mid-1920s. They also demonstrate the extent to which personal contacts between Zionists and those who aided them, and Soviet leaders and members of the security services, were vital to initiating and sustaining the practice of substitution; and using a broad array of British and Zionist documents, reveal the crucial role of Anglo-Soviet cooperation in facilitating the immigration of Zionist convicts. This book will be of great interest to all students of Jewish and Israeli history, Russian and Soviet history and European and British history.
