Remember Stalin? He's back.

Precisely 25 years ago, when we were distributing 250,000 food packages around Moscow, the "Memorial" office was one of many distribution sites. When an elderly recipient saw the U.S. flag on one side of the box, and the Joint Distribution Committee menorah on another, he told my colleague that Stalin's regime had sent him to the Gulag, falsely accused as a spy for the CIA and the Joint. Now, he was receiving a modest but vital gift from the U.S. Government and the Joint. And now, this.

Democracy by any other name

A senior colleague once visited a group of Soviet Jewish trans-migrants in Italy, in the final months of the Soviet Union. They had many complaints, but they all started shouting, "We want democracy!" So he asked them, what did they think democracy means? "It means we can do whatever we want!" was their response. It's all a matter of perspective...

As Central and Eastern European countries continue their post-Cold War democratic evolution, and African, Asian and Arab countries begin their own paths, it's worth noting that "democracy" and "representation" can mean very different things in different societies. This does not have to mean that certain countries are not ready for independence or popular rule. It should mean that different cultures may dictate different forms of government, and in ways that affect the discourse -- what people are thinking when they say and hear different terms.

Post-Soviet aliyah a game-changer in Israel-Palestinian peace

Israel gained considerably from the past 20 years of post-Soviet Russian immigration, economically and demographically. It has weathered the bursting of the hi-tech bubble, and its population has increased by one million non-Palestinians, which becomes especially important if a viable peace is to be pushed further off the horizon.

Most of these Russians came in long after the Zionist dichotomy of 1967 and 1973; after Begin and Sadat signed the Camp David Treaty; after the sobering 1982-84 Lebanon War; after the Intifadah and the Oslo Accords. They did bring with them tremendous hatred for Arabs and Muslims, along with a Soviet-enforced Russian definition of Islam as a separatist ideology rather than a multi-faceted religion.

Two generations of balanced and counter-balanced Israeli politics, including the shift in Sephardic voting that brought Menachem Begin's Likud to power in the late-1970s, were rapidly overturned when so many hard-wired right-wingers flooded Israel within a few short years. The subsequent downturn in progress toward peace has helped to push other Israelis closer to the Russian attitude, along with some justified pessimism. All this gives the average Israeli less opportunity and less appetite for active peacemaking with the Palestinians, who have also exhausted their own reserve of peace.

In the 1970s, the USSR made clear to the Arab states that Soviet Jews were a lever. If the Arabs complied with Moscow's directives, the Jews would remain behind the Iron Curtain; if the Arabs strayed, the flood gates would open and they would face ever greater numbers of new Israelis. Ironically, the post-Soviet aliyah may indeed turn out to be the Palestinians' worst nightmare and a godsend to rejectionists within Israeli politics and across the Arab world.

Mideast myths die hard, but when they do...

The USSR and its satellite states were all premised upon a common ideological myth and an interlocking security framework, so when Poland pushed back and the Berlin Wall fell, there was no stopping it. Each Mideast state has its own form of monarchy, Ba'athist or theocratic underpinning, and military coordination has been shoddy since… forever. So it won't be so easy, though some countries are already far more open economically and culturally than anything that existed behind the Iron Curtain.

Many of the region's leaders have used fears of Israeli or imperialist threats to maintain their regimes. Their opponents have used the same tools to try to discredit them and the corrupt status quo. Recent developments in Tunisia and Egypt have been relatively free of such paranoia and thought control, or at least the people have broken through it. One of the Egyptian military's first acts since shedding its golden Mask of Mubarak was to reaffirm the peace treaty with Israel.

Stop trying to convince Iran - just focus on stopping it

Especially since this month's midterm election gains by Republicans in Congress, President Obama has been getting much public advice to make sure Iran understands that a military strike against it is a credible threat. That can't hurt, but it misses the point.

My friend Nir Boms published a new piece on Iran, showing how Iran's economy is starting to go critical. Whether by sanctions or domestic policies, Iran's decline points up an important reality about that country's illicit nuclear program (and one with which Nir may or may not agree).

As much as Americans and Israelis may hope for a military strike that miraculously takes out Iran's far-flung and dug-in facilities, this would actually be the best boost for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his clerical backers. Iranian public opinion is clearly slanted against him, which is why he had to rig last year's election. Following his crackdown on post-election demonstrators and opposition leaders, and with daily life impacted by economic misery, a "Zionist" attack would be his deus ex machina.

If Iran does get too close to achieving a dangerous nuclear capability, a military strike may be unavoidable, given the costs of inaction. In the meantime, though, the Iranian regime is unlikely to abandon the nuclear program on its own (nor will it allow open inspections). The sanctions will not convince the regime, but they are definitely depriving the regime of capital and public support.

Whether the Islamic Republic runs out of money first, or is somehow overthrown (which wouldn't by itself end Iran's nuclear program), our default strategy should be to DEPRIVE the regime of its capacity to continue, not to CONVINCE it.

Iran is not the Soviet Union, and not only because it is not a rational, predictable actor. The existential threat Soviet ICBMs once posed to the United States was two orders of magnitude above the hypothetical threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. Mutually Assured Destruction and nuclear deterrence theory are poor guides to dealing with today's Islamic Republic and its opportunistic regional ambitions.

In the end, Iran will not be deterred by the threat of a military strike, no matter how credible or severe. Iran's quest can only be denied, whether by the impact of economic weapons or by an actual military strike.

The most important mission of the military planning on Iran is to mean business, not to "look" like we mean business.

50 years after the Night of the Murdered Poets (originally published Aug. 12, 2002)

Fifty years ago, on August 12, 1952, 13 prominent Jewish intellectuals were murdered in Moscow on orders from Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Although the world learned of this travesty in March 1956, reports had filtered out during the prisoners’ extended incarceration that something was amiss. The Jewish world, and no less the world at large, did little at the time to investigate their status or protest their incarceration.

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, created by the Soviets to promote U.S. support during World War II, was a group of Jews loyal to the Soviet cause and was by all accounts a success. Two of the Committee’s organizers – Isaac Fefer and Solomon Mikhoels – conducted a seven-month American tour in 1943, speaking to mass audiences including a packed rally in New York’s Polo Grounds, and gaining warm receptions from leading politicians, entertainers, and intellectuals. Later, as the aging Stalin consolidated his post-war power, he saw the Committee’s international work as a threat, and its Jewish flavor offered a prototype and pretext for stepped up persecution of Soviet Jews. Fifteen Soviet Jews were arrested in connection with the Committee from 1948 to 1949, with their interrogation and trial lasting until July 1952.

Fifty years ago, the lessons of the Holocaust were still raw and the lessons of the Soviet Jewry movement were yet to be claimed. Yet Itzik Fefer, in the chilling transcript of the secret trial [reprinted in Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir Naumov, editors, Stalin’s Secret Pogrom, Yale 2001] answered the presiding officer’s challenges with no expectation of reward – quite the opposite. When asked, “Were the Jews really the only ones to suffer during the Great Patriotic War?” he replied unapologetically, “Yes, you will not find another people that has suffered as much as the Jewish people. Six million Jews were destroyed out of a total of 18 million – one-third. This was a great sacrifice. We had a right to our tears, and we fought against fascism.”