The story of Soviet Jews is not a story of a single identity or a single role. It is a story of builders and critics, of loyal citizens and disillusioned dissidents, of idealists who believed in the Soviet dream and victims crushed by the very system they helped create. Across seven decades, Jews stood on every side of the Soviet project — as passionate revolutionaries, administrators, cultural leaders, soldiers, skeptics, silent conformists, targets of repression, and ultimately as the men and women who helped bring Jewish life back to the world stage.