Inheritance and disinheritance of memory within families of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union

This dissertation identifies factors which affect the persistence, loss, and transformation of collective memory across time. "Inheritance of collective memory" is defined as the extent to which members of a collective acquire and utilize knowledge of the ways in which common ancestors referenced their collective history. The dissertation is a qualitative study of the complex collective memory possessed by Jewish veterans of the Soviet war effort in World War II who have immigrated to the United States with their families. Sixty in-depth interviews with Jewish ex-Soviet immigrants were the principal source of data. The grandparents of the veterans came of age in the Pale of Settlement, whereas the veterans themselves came of age, for the most part, in large cities in the Soviet Union, and there are parallel differences between the structural contexts of the veterans' and the grandchildren's youth. The factors that emerge from analysis of the veterans' inheritance of Yiddish language and Judaic traditions include events in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the century, Soviet policy, such as terror and Soviet schooling, and the veterans' parents and grandparents. The data link co-residence between veterans and their grandparents to the enrollment of the veterans' grandchildren in Jewish private schools in the United States. The veterans' grandchildren's inheritance of Judaic traditions, Jewish languages, and Russian language is patterned according to their schooling and the ages at which they arrived in the United States, whereas their inheritance of memory of World War II and the Holocaust is more affected by their relationships with their grandparents, the veterans. Overall, the data indicate that intimacy between grandparents and grandchildren exercises greater influence over inheritance of collective memory of historical events than over inheritance of collective memory of language and ritual practices because formal training and habitual collective action are more essential to inheritance of the latter. Ultimately, the dissertation shows that one of the most powerful ways that social structure intrudes into the immediately impinging environment in which individuals live is by affecting the extent to which individuals utilize various domains of collective memory.