REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Anastasiia Strakhova, "Benefits of Illegality: Clandestine Jewish Emigration from Eastern Europe, 1870s-1914"

While Jewish migration from the late Russian Empire is fairly well-researched, the less-known fact is that seventy-five to ninety percent of departures occurred illegally. This lecture explains the ubiquity of illegal border crossings and why Jewish emigrants had to choose the clandestine route when legal options were also available.

Anastasiia Strakhova is Associate Director of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in Modern Jewish history with a concentration on Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine, and migration. After receiving her Ph.D. in History and Jewish Studies from Emory University in 2022, she has been working on a book that examines how ordinary Jews actively resisted their criminalization and marginalization in the late imperial Russian migration policies and border-crossing practices. Before joining the University of Illinois, Anastasiia held postdocs at Duke and Harvard Universities.