Musing on the Political Aftermath of Totalitarianism for Jewish Immigrants

The subset of Volokh Conspiracy bloggers who are Russian-Jewish immigrants (Sasha and Eugene Volokh and Ilya Somin) have posted some interesting thoughts in recent months about their and their families' immigrant experiences and/or their pre-emigration lives in Russia.  All of this autobiblography from the Volokh Conspirators has led me to wonder about why so many refugees from Soviet totalitarianism are libertarian or politically conservative.  

This is an interesting question to me for a personal reason:  I'm the son (and the son-in-law) of refugees from German totalitarianism, and yet I have never discerned (in my own family or in the culture of German- and Austrian-Jewish refugees in the USA more generally) any such libertarian/conservative bent.  With the exception of an outlier like Henry Kissinger, something closer to the opposite is true of the political leanings of German- and Austrian-Jewish refugees and their descendants.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that European Jews oppressed by an anti-semitic, leader-worshiping, and totalitarian system might come away from that experience with similar attitudes toward government, yet that's obviously not the case for those who survived Stalin and those who survived Hitler.

Ilya Somin says that "the reasons [why Russian Jewish immigrants tend to be more 'right-wing' than they would otherwise be] are not hard to figure out. The experience of living under communism makes these refugee groups hostile to anything that smacks of socialism and also to those political parties and ideologies that they perceive (with some justice) as having been soft on communism during the latter part of the Cold War." 

Somehow I don't find this explanation completely satisfying, though.  Yes, Russian communism defined fascism as the enemy, and German fascism similarly demonized communism, but this left-right divide has always struck me (as it struck Hannah Arendt, at least sort of) as masking the many great similarities between the two totalitarian states and of what it must have felt like for a Jew to live in them. 

If Russian Jews escaped to America with a deep mistrust of state power, why did German and Austrian Jews escape to America believing in the power of the state to bring about social and economic change?  Why did one group's experience with totalitarianism generalize to a mistrust of the state while the other's did not?

I find this a very intriguing thing to think about.  I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts in the comments.

Comments

[Orin Kerr]

Interesting questions, Eric. Three thoughts.

1) As much as the left-right divide is artificial, it does reflect common perceptions. Those perceptions matter.

2) In the 1930s and 1940s, the Republican party's foreign party was generally pretty isolationist. If you came to the U.S. in the 1940s as a refugee from the Nazis, the Democratic party that favored intervention would be a natural home. In contrast, from the 1950s to the 1980s, the Republican party's foreign policy was largely defined by anticommunism. If you came to the U.S. in the 1980s as a refugee from Soviet Russia, the Republican party that favored intervention would be a natural hime.

3) Over time, Jews got smarter. ;-)

[jamie]

I think it's mostly because there was a tradition of social democracy in Germany prior to the Nazi takeover that many of those who immigrated to the US were associated with. On the other hand, before Communism, the czars had intermittently tolerated anti-Jewish persecution, and so state power had a much more negative connotation.

[Eric Muller]

All interesting suggestions, except for Orin's #3, which sort of disproves itself.

[Matt]

What's especially odd about some aspects of this is that many of the politicians who were most responsible for setting up Russian Jewish emigration (and immigration to the US) were Democrats- Scoop Jackson, Carter, etc. And, the Democrats at the time (and later, of course) were not plausibly "soft on Communism". That might have been a perception, but it certainly wasn't a well-supported one.

[onsale taobao]

Let us just do it.