Most of them made aliyah nearly 30 years ago, but in terms of politics, it can be said that time has not obfuscated the identity of Russian-speaking immigrants. Just like the vast majority of these born in Russia or other states in the former Soviet Union will never erase their accents, most of them have also retained similar voting habits and attitudes on a variety of political and civil matters. There is no chance that the parties running in this election will be able to change the minds of olim from the former Soviet Union, and all that remains is to try and present their own positions in a way that seems as close to their stances as possible.
Outside of politics, it's a different world. Russian and Russian-speaking immigrants are an integral part of Israeli society – in the military, in business, in the workforce, in culture, in the arts, and of course, in academia. They are a heterogeneous society that includes religious and assimilated members, traditional Jews and atheists. But something still binds them to the world of values from which they came. It's not only the language, it's an entire world of characteristics and worldviews. In every election campaign, parties try to reach out to this rich, multifaceted world to score votes. Not all of them can. Not all of them manage to.
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The Likud party, for example, has decided this time to launch a full-power campaign to court Russian-speaking voters. It looks as if the party has put unprecedented resources into its Russian-language campaign headquarters. That's how it is when Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman, the most successful Russian-language campaigner of all time, left the national camp two months ago and became the element that will tip the scales in the next election.
Despite the enormous resources and budget, the Likud still hasn't figure out how to move votes from Lieberman to Netanyahu. It seems that decades of immovable voting patterns can no longer be changed. They can barely be nudged.
It is even harder for the left-wing parties to convince the Russian-speaking public that their path is the right one. On civil issues like separation of religion and state, they have something in common, but when it comes to diplomacy, the left-wing parties lose the Russian speakers. Russia is a world superpower. Although they got out as soon as they could in the early 1990s, when the huge nation collapsed, the sense of pride and commitment to excel at any price still courses through their veins and will not allow them to accept any scenario of concessions and ineffectiveness, which is what the Left is offering.
On the other hand, when it comes to religion and state, the situation is completely the opposite. For those who arrived from a country in which there was an extreme, even radical separation between religion and state, the Likud is seen as problematic because of its alliance with the ultra-Orthodox parties.
Lieberman managed to crack the code, but he, too, has lost the thread in recent years. From the 15 seats his party won in 2009, Lieberman dropped to only five in the April election. The Russian-speaking public might be rigid, but they aren't stupid. Many of them called his bluff and abandoned him. This round could decide everything – both for them, and for Israeli society as a whole.
