Aliyah from the Soviet Union העלייה מברית המועצות

In the 1970s, after a long struggle by Soviet Jews and their supporters abroad, about 160,000 were allowed to move to Israel. Those refused exit visas, the refuseniks, became a cause around the world. When the Soviet Union opened and collapsed, about a million Jews and their families arrived from 1989 through the 1990s, the largest Aliyah in the state's history. They transformed Israel's science, technology, medicine, music and politics.