Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry

The American Soviet Jewry Movement was initiated in the early 1960s, when the first public protests were made by American Jews against the suppression of Jewish religion and Jewish national culture in the Soviet Union. Though random and spontaneous initially, those actions started to attract attention of the mainstream Jewish community and incited creation of the organizations dedicated to the support of Soviet Jews. American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ) and Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) pioneered the movement in 1964. AJCSJ was largely considered as a think tank rather than a defense organization. Its methods emphasized leveraging with the Soviet authorities via the official channels. It proved dysfunctional due to the inner conflicts in tactics and strategy, and failure to secure support of the broader American Jewish community. AJCSJ was restructured and renamed the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in 1971. SSSJ was conceptually limited to working with college students and youth volunteers. A need was felt for a more strategically versatile and more community-oriented organization.

The widely publicized Leningrad Trial incident, in which 34 men and women were accused of hijacking a plane at the Leningrad airport in order to emigrate, prompted many American Jews to protest against the injustices of the Soviet regime, and gave rise to a multitude of grassroots Soviet Jewry Movement organizations.

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