One of the most influential communities in Israel in the second half of the 1990s were immigrants from the USSR and post-Soviet states, called "Russians". In May 2005, out of the total population of Israel of 6.9 million people, there were 950,000 "Russians" (about 14%)1, and they make up 16-17% of citizens who have the right to vote [Feldman, 2003, p.279]. It is clear that their vote largely determines the outcome of the election. V. Hanin's work is devoted to the study of the influence of "Russians" on the Israeli state machine, the formation of political cohesion of the community and differentiation within it. A peer-reviewed essay belongs to a very small number of studies of this kind. The author's merit is an attempt to objectively analyze the processes that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s, despite the absolute difficulty of such an analysis, since "we are not just talking about living people, but, as a rule, personally familiar people and current events that are still in the power and near-power structures, which, although they relate to you directly, but not only the long-range, but also the short-range consequences of which are not at all obvious " (p. 10). As can be seen from the text, the work on collecting material for this book was started back in 1999. Using a wide source base (periodicals, interviews taken by the author, documents from personal archives, materials from the websites of political parties and public organizations), Khanin characterizes all-both influential and marginal - "Russians" political parties, organizations, and movements. The work is all the more valuable because the author himself belongs to one of the groups of influence - the academic elite of Israel of "Russian" origin, which plays a certain role in decision-making by power structures. Ethnicity, as V. Khanin quite rightly points out, is an important factor in the functioning of the mechanisms of the Israeli political system. The first ethnic party that emerged during ... Read more