The group consists of people that are Jewish by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality, that have been influenced by their collective experiences in the Soviet Union.
The idea was to apply enough pressure to pry open the iron curtain, and have the resources to settle and assimilate Soviet Jews in the United States.
[6] Biblical phrases such as "Let my people go," dominated the activism, with American Jewish community playing a large role in disseminating and spreading information about the stories of Russian Jews.
[8] Soviet Jews tended to be more agnostic than their American counterparts, but upon arrival to the United States, were accosted by a wide variety of Jewish institutions.
[3] Jews immigrated in much larger proportions from Ukraine than Russia, altering the characteristics and types of communities that were formed in the U.S.[11] Soviet Jewish migration consisted of several waves, the main one in the late 1980s.
[12] 1980 Census data shows that 98.6% of Soviet Jews lived in a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, with 36% concentrated in the New York SMSA, or 300,000.
[13] Located in the southern-most part of Brooklyn, Brighton Beach, or "Little Odessa" as it has come to be known, is the most dramatic example of a "Russified" neighborhood (despite the fact that Odesa is a city in Ukraine).
Lacking an understanding of American social mobility, the group views first jobs as a measure of self-worth and prestige, over purely monetary compensation.