The Social Preconditions of the National Awakening of the Jews in the USSR

Physicist Alexander Vladimirovich Voronel was born in Leningrad. He was a vocal critic of Soviet antisemitism and anti-Israel policy. He studied physics at the University of Kharkov (Ukraine) and researched thermodynamics of phase transitions at the Russian Institute for Physical-Technical and Radiation Measurements in Mendeleyevo, Moscow. In the early 1970s, he copublished a series of samizdat essays titled “Jews in the USSR.” Voronel immigrated to Israel in 1975, where he became a leader in Russian Jewish circles. Since then, Voronel and his wife, Nina Abramovna (Roginka) Voronel, have helped to found the Russian-language cultural magazine 22, and Voronel has written extensively on Jewish subjects. He continues to teach physics at Tel Aviv University.