William Korey

With the Polish partitions, czarist Russia acquired a Jewish "problem" which it sought then and in subsequent epochs to solve by a variety of often contradictory means, ranging from integration to repression. Czar Alexander III's principal adviser, Konstantin Pobedonostev, projected a kind of apocalyptic vision of the final resolution of the festering issue: one-third of Russian Jewry would perish; one-third would be totally assimilated; one-third would emigrate. The "problem" would vanish when Jewry ceased to be. If macabre, the formulation proved to be remarkably clairvoyant. The Nazi invasion brought about the liquidation of approximately one-third of Jewry inhabiting the Soviet Union. With the twin polarities of assimilation and emigration currently pulling at Soviet Jews, the likelihood of a Jewish future in the U.S.S.R. is exceedingly dim, probably nonexistent.