In August 2019 Israel and some communities of the Russian-Jewish diaspora marked the 50th anniversary of the famous letter from 18 heads of Georgian Jewish families, which became a prelude to the first post-Second World War mass Soviet Jewish emigration wave of the 1970s. Activists of the Jewish national movement in the USSR in the 1970-s and 1980-s built the schemes and models of the renewed ethno-communal self-organization, which became one of the basic elements in the infrastructure of organized Jewish life in the USSR during Perestroika and in the post-Soviet countries. Understanding these models can explain the current schisms and conflicts of interest within and between the Jewish communities from the countries of the former USSR; it also suggests ways to overcome them.

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