Nevzlin Fellowship
In 2020, the Nevzlin Center announced a call for a new post-doctoral Nevzlin Fellowship, offered for the 2021-2023 academic years, for original research, to be carried out at the Center, on the theme of “Russian and East-European Jews under and after Communism (1917-2000).”
The post-doctoral program, which is slated to become a keystone of the Center’s activities in coming years, welcomes scholars from around the world and across a variety of disciplines. Nevzlin Fellows are expected to conduct their research primarily in Israel and to present their work in the context of guest lectures, Center workshops and conferences, and through the preparation of 2-3 peer-reviewed articles for scholarly publications.
Nevzlin Fellow 2022-2025
Dr. Anna Kushkova
Anna Kushkova is a socio-cultural anthropologist focusing on Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish communities in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova. As a research fellow at “Petersburg Judaica” Center (European University at St. Petersburg) she participated in many Jewish field expeditions in the former Pale of Jewish Settlement, in large urban setting of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as in the USA and Israel. She defended her first PhD dissertation at the Department of Anthropology at the European University at St. Petersburg in 2003, and her second PhD dissertation at the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, with the dissertation titled “Navigating the Planned Economy: Accommodation and Survival in Moscow’s Post-War ‘Soviet Jewish Pale’.” Currently she prepares this work for publication as a book. Anna taught four-field anthropology at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and was a fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (UPenn) in 2019-2020.
At the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Anna Kushkova plans to focus on the history of Jewish ethnic economy under state socialism in the former USSR, especially in period after WWII and until the collapse of the regime. Working off her recent dissertation study and extensive anthropological field research in various Jewish communities on the post-Soviet territory, she will research the following major issues: 1) What was “Jewish ethnic economy” under socialism, and where was it situated vis-à-vis the socialist system of production and distribution? 2) Which distinct economic niches Jews carved within the socialist “planned economy”? and 3) How were various practices and ethos of the more traditional Jewish economy in Eastern Europe creatively adapted to the “rules of the game” enforced by the Soviet regime? Detailed treatment of these and other issues will help filling one of the major gaps in our understanding of the Jewish life under socialism by recreating the rich of story Jewish entrepreneurship of that time.