The topic of this book, devoted to the life issues of Soviet Jewry, did not find wide enough coverage either in scientific research or in journalism. Before World War II, the problems of Soviet Jewry served as the object of reasoning of Soviet agitators and communist ideologists, and some Western sociologists and historians tried to find out the situation of national minorities in Soviet conditions or explore ways to "resolve the Jewish question" on the basis of these materials. Even at the end of World War II, after the catastrophe of European Jewry and the "black years" experienced by Soviet Jews in the last years of the Stalinist dictatorship, only a few serious studies on this topic appeared.