The Movement to Free Soviet Jewry was an international human rights campaign that advocated for the right of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate.

The earliest organized effort was the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry

Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry

The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, also known by its acronym SSSJ, was founded in 1964 by Jacob Birnbaum to be a spearhead of the US movement for rights of the Soviet Jewry.-“Let My People Go” foundation period in 1960s:...

, founded by Jacob Birnbaum

Yaakov (Jacob) Birnbaum

Yaakov Birnbaum is the founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and many other human rights organizations. Because SSSJ was the first initiative to address the plight of Soviet Jewry, he is regarded as to be the father of the Movement to Free Soviet Jewry. He is a son of Solomon Birnbaum...

 at Yeshiva University

Yeshiva University

Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...

 in 1964. The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews

Union of Councils for Soviet Jews

Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union is an umbrella organization of Jewish human rights groups working in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The UCSJ is based in Washington, D.C...

was formed in 1970 as an umbrella organization of all groups working to win the right to emigrate for oppressed Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union.

Sources

• From exodus to freedom: a history of the Soviet Jewry movement, ‎Stuart Altshuler, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005
• The Last Exodus, Leonard Schroeter, University of Washington Press, 1979
• Soviet Jewry in the 1980s: the politics of anti-Semitism and emigration and the dynamics of resettlement, Robert Owen Freedman, Duke University Press, 1989
• A second exodus: the American movement to free Soviet Jews, Murray Friedman, Albert D. Chernin, University Press of New England, 1999