The Russians Aren’t Coming

While almost every ethnic and national group in Israel is jumping on the social-justice protest bandwagon, the Russian-speaking community at large is staying home.

By KSENIA SVETLOVA
Soviet Russian hammer and sickle_311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Soviet Russian hammer and sickle_311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
ELLA AND ALEX SIT IN front of their television in their small apartment in Rishon Lezion south of Tel Aviv, watching the reports of one of the mass country-wide social protests in early August, in which some 300,000 people reportedly participated.
They zap the remote through the channels impatiently, looking for something other than the coverage of the demonstrations. “It’s absurd!” Alex mutters. “How long is this going to go on? What’s the point of this anyway?”
Alex is a policeman and Ella is a nurse; both are in their early 30s. They both arrived here in the 90s, graduated high school, served in the army, earned college degrees, and think of Israel as their one and only home.
Their two toddler children are sound asleep. They acknowledge that childcare “costs them more than university tuition in Britain,” that their bank account is overdrawn and their debt is “growing by the hour.” The three-room apartment that they bought five years ago now costs more than a six-bedroom house in New Jersey. It’s well designed but obviously too small for their expanding family – and still much too expensive for their budget. The mortgage for their small, cozy apartment hangs over their heads, Alex says, “like the sword of Damocles.”
Yet, neither Alex nor Ella would even consider joining the protest demonstrations, even though the demonstrators are calling for lower prices, affordable housing and the reinstatement of social welfare benefits – which would make their lives, like the lives of the protesters, affordable.
“Just look at these guys, they are all peaceniks, they don’t really care for us and for our needs. All they want is to topple the government,” Ella says, switching channels in vain. Their belief that the demonstrations are little more than a “leftist conspiracy” against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government is unshakable.
Some 1.5 million olim from the former Soviet Union live in Israel, making them the largest recent immigrant community. And although definitive numbers are impossible to obtain, it is clear that by and large, a majority of the older members of the Russian-speaking community have not only refused to join the widespread social revolution that has been sweeping across the country since it began on July 14, but regard it with contempt and disdain.
But Dr. Zeev Khanin, Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Absorption and professor of sociology at Bar-Ilan University, adds a caveat: unlike Alex and Ella, some of the younger members of the Russian immigrant community may indeed be taking part in the protest – but do not identify as Russian immigrants and so it is virtually impossible to tell them apart from their veteran-Israeli peers.
NOTHING CAN SOUND MORE detestable to Israelis of Russian origin than the epitaph “commies” – which politicians and members of the Russian-language press are using quite freely in describing the protesters, while adding, for good measure, that the protests have been instigated and supported by left-wing organizations.
And so, while almost every ethnic and national group in Israel, from Palestinians to Haredim, is jumping on the social justice wagon, Russian MKs are vocally demanding that sources of financing will be investigated, Russian-language journalists discuss conspiracy theories, and the community at large is staying home.
MK Faina Kirshenbaum, chair of the rightwing, largely Russian immigrant Yisrael Beiteinu party, has demanded the establishment of inquiries to uncover the sources of financing. “Maybe they have something to hide?” she sneers while speaking with The Report. “And what about so-called transparency? Demonstrations that cost hundreds of thousands shekels are sponsored by an American millionaire who is known as ultra-leftist,” she claims, but does not name the individual or corroborate her allegations. “The attempts to hide the sources of financing overshadow this legitimate protest. Maybe they just want to change the regime and not to solve the social problems in Israel.”
“At the same time, I fully understand that this wave of protests is an expression of grave problems in Israeli society,” she continues. “We are not against solving problems.”
Conspiracy theories are much more common in the Russian-language media than in the mainstream Hebrew, Dr. Alla Shainskaya, head of “Our Heritage – Charter for Democracy,” tells The Report. Created as an NGO in 2007, Our Heritage seeks to promote concepts of social justice and peace within the Russian-speaking community. “We monitor and research the Russian language media in Israel, and we [find]…blatant propaganda against these protests colored in distinct political colors,” Shainskaya says. “The initiators of the protests are pictured as opposition-sponsored figures, whose only goal is overthrowing the current government. Since most Russians supported [Yisrael Beiteinu leader] Avigdor Lieberman and Netanyahu over [opposition leader] Tzipi Livni, they perceive this idea very negatively.”
But Shainskaya also points to the disappointment, anger and resentment that many immigrants from the FSU feel towards the elites and middle class. Even though they have “made it,” she says, they can still feel the insult and rage that they felt when they first came to the country, and society was indifferent, or even hostile, to their plights as immigrants. She cites a recent article by prominent Russian-language columnist Lazar Danovich. Addressing the protesters, Danovich wrote, “Where were you when we went through the horrors of direct absorption? Nobody stood for our rights back then. And now, after we survived it all, you demand that we’ll drop everything and just join you there?”
Alexander Eterman, well-regarded analyst and commentator who publishes in both the Russian-language and the Hebrew press, tells The Report that the education that Russian immigrants received in their countries of origin also contributes to their disdain. “We were brought up in the Soviet Union, and therefore we, as a community, tend to stay away from any form of public protests. The Soviet system produced the ultimate individualists – protests are just not our thing. It’s hard for me to imagine that I’ll go out and join the thousands or the millions, and that has nothing to do with being for or against any particular cause.”
FROM A PURELY ECONOMIC perspective, this position seems paradoxical. After all, says Eterman, the Russians have more reasons to protest than anyone else. “An immigrant who earns the same wage as his Israeli-born colleague, is actually poorer, since until he achieved this social status, he had to solve many more problems, didn’t have any support from parents and has less savings in the bank.”
Moreover, a large percentage of the immigrants are elderly, among them World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors, who subsist on National Insurance Institute pensions. Unemployment among Russian immigrants is higher than average, Eterman says, and many earn minimum wage at best. Furthermore, because of the dissolution of the nuclear family in the FSU and the strains of immigration, the percentage of Russians who are single-family, mostly female-headed, households is also large.
According to Khanin, demography also plays a role in the economic picture. “Statistically the average age of the Russian community is older than that of the general population,” he notes. “The percentage of people over the age of 40, who have already taken mortgages and bought their apartments, is greater [than in the general public]. Those people feel that they are trapped and that reforms will not improve their situation. Since at the time, in the beginning of the 90s, no one told them that they shouldn’t take all those impossible mortgages and loans, today they don’t understand why they should join the protests.
Journalist Nelly Gutina, who has also authored the recently published (in Russian) “Israel Goes Russian,” a study of the Russian Jewish community, tells The Report that the Russian Israeli community has little in common with the demonstrators.
“Let them [veteran Israelis] join us!” Gutina declares. “The Russians’ economic interests are different than veteran Israelis. If a young man, a student who lives in Tel Aviv, is protesting because the rent is too high, that’s fine, but let us also remember that someday he’ll probably inherit an apartment from his uncles or aunts in the very same city. This scenario will not happen to Russians or to others who are part of the social periphery.”
While the Hebrew-language media has embraced the protesters, a review of the Russian-language media reveals that the majority of op-eds mock and ridicule the campaign, while the talkbacks on the Internet pour in by the hundreds, exploding with anger and contempt. Even as the right joined the bandwagon, with Danny Dayan, chairman of the settler movement, paying a visit to the protest tent camp on Rothschild Boulevard, with prominent rabbis, including the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Meir Lau, expressing their support – the Russian community has kept its distance.
“The most energetic supporters of socialism are the richest people. Socialism is the merchandise that they trade,” writes Annie Schwartz in a talkback to one of Gutina’s articles.
According to Eterman, a majority of Russian immigrants who came to Israel over the age of 25 consume Russian-language media almost exclusively. At their disposal are a number of cable television channels, in addition to one public channel, several private radio stations and one public station, a daily newspaper and weekly newsmagazine, as well as dozens of popular web portals. “The older the immigrant population gets, the more their dependency on Russian media is. However, it’s also important to mention that the quality of Russian media has deteriorated during the years, and nowadays the 40-45-year-olds in the Russian community are less informed about politics, economics, and society than their Israeli-born peers,” Eterman says.
ETERMAN ADDS, “WE ARE talking about youth protests – students and young people, and it makes sense that some Russians are there. But should we even call them Russians? Some were born here and don’t even speak any Russian. It is important to make a generational distinction here.”
Gutina predicts that the Russians will begin to take part in social protests at some point in the future. “If the current wave of protests calms down, the Russians might start another round. The community is educated enough to set its own agenda, and perhaps to lead those social peripheries that are not taking part in this “festival.” But Russians will no longer agree to be used by anyone,” she concludes.
Shainskaya believes that the Russian immigrants are simply incapable of solidarity and can’t organize themselves into some form of protest, no matter what the agenda is. “It’s the individualism and the sense of non-belonging. Until recently all of Russian newspapers were exploding with angry articles about housing problems and other social problems… but they were never able to organize even 10,000 people to protest.”
Yet there are some dissenting voices, especially among the younger generations.
Narine Melkian, a social activist who participates in and films the protests in Tel Aviv believes that the non-protesters are motivated by fear. “They fear that they will be rejected, that they won’t be heard. This is the reason for this no-show” she explains. “There are many young Russians who participate in these protests, but they don’t necessarily identify themselves as such, they don’t hold protest signs or anything like that,” she adds.
“Why are we – homo Sovieticus – the last bastion of the rotten elite-oligarchic system, the meek herd that is being enslaved for life?” demands a young blogger, who refers to himself as the Seventh Wheel. “Why do we hold our hands behind our backs and lower our gaze, unable to struggle for our rights and for a better future? Why can’t we close the ranks with those who aren’t ‘us’ and why have we wedded ourselves to the positions of ‘outsiders’ and ‘strangers’?”