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.THE FRAUD OF
“SOVIET
ANTI¬
SEMITISM”
By HERBERT APTHEKER
THE FRAUD OF
“SOVIET ANTI - SEMITISM”
By HERBERT APTHEKER
°°°°OOOOOCXDOOOOOCK^^
NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS: New York
1962
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HERBERT APTHEKER was born in New York City, in 1915.
Since his first work. The Negro in the Civil War, was published in
1938, he has authored more than a dozen books and scores of pam¬
phlets, among the best known being American Negro Slave Revolts
(Columbia University Press, 1943), To Be Free (International Pub¬
lishers, 1948), A Documentary History of the Negro People (Citadel
Press, 1951), History and Reality (Cameron Associates, 1955), To¬
ward Negro Freedom and The Truth About Hungary (New Cen¬
tury Publishers, 1956 and 1957), The Colonial Era and The Ameri¬
can Revolution: 1763-1783 (International Publishers, 1959 and
i960). The World of C. Wright Mills (Marzani 8c Munsell, i960),
and Dare We Be Free? (New Century Publishers, 1961). His latest
work is a comprehensive study, American Foreign Policy and the
Cold War (New Century Publishers, 1962).
Dr. Aptheker served in the field artillery for over four years in
the Second World War, rising through the ranks from private to
major. He was awarded a prize in history by the Association for
the Study of Negro Life in 1939, and was a Guggenheim Fellow,
1946-47. He is presently the edtior of Political Affairs, and on the
editorial board of Mainstream. Dr, Aptheker’s articles ant! reviews
have appeared in most of the leading historical journals, including
the American Historical Review, the Political Science Quarterly,
the Journal of Negro Education , the Journal of Negro History ,
Phylon, and many more.
Aptheker’s contributions have earned him a place as a conse¬
quential figure in the field of American scholarship.
“Stop the Press” Flash
On June 17, 1962, the Soviet Government announced the
appointment of Veniamin Dyrmhitz (mentioned on page 8) as
Chairman of the State Planning Commission, and as Deputy
Prime Minister of the U.S.S.R.
Published by New Century Publishers, 832 Broadway, New York 3
July, 1962 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
THE FRAUD OF
“SOVIET ANTI-SEMITISM”
By HERBERT APTHEKER
For many months a concentrated campaign has been conducted
in the United States by every means of communication having as its
object to portray the Soviet Union as a land and a government
drenched in anti-Semitism. Via radio and television, from the
mouths of leading politicians—like Senators Javits and Keating of
New York and Dodd of Connecticut—and in the pages of publica¬
tions whose circulation amounts to many millions-such as Life,
Look, Saturday Evening Post, N.Y. Herald Tribune, N.Y. Post,
Readers Digest —this charge, with more or less circumstantial de¬
tails, has been hurled against the U.S.S.R, It has also come from
organizations with considerable influence-such as the Workman’s
Circle, the American Jewish Committee and the (Orthodox)
Rabbinical Council.
Half the Jews living in the world today-after Hitler’s barbar¬
ism—reside in the United States; millions of Americans who are
not Jewish know very well and very truly that anti-Semitism is a
hallmark of social 'backwardness and political reaction. These two
facts make the charge of anti-Semitism against the Soviet Union
an especially damaging one because it is an obstacle to efforts to
end the Cold War and to achieve a stable era of peaceful co-ex¬
istence. The main concern of those responsible for the campaign
is not any alleged injustices against Jews, but rather a desire for
the freezing of the Cold War and the launching of World War III.
They choose the most effective weapon they can find-anti-Semitism
-with which to besmirch the Soviet Union, the better to accom¬
plish their real and sinister aim.
Nevertheless, this campaign has great impact upon many mil¬
lions of people in the United States-Jewish and non-Jewish-
and the vast majority of these millions are perfectly sincere folk
who want peace and not war, and who at the same time despise
3
anti-Semitism. As part of Uie necessary effort to get at the truth,
anti as part of the effort to liquidate the Cokl War, let us turn to an
examination of the present reality concerning this charge of anti-
Semitism hurled against the Soviet Union.
Who Is Guilty?
The Soviet government is not guilty of anti-Semitism; on the
contrary, it is one of the few governments in the world—there are
several others now, since there are several Socialist states—which
illegalizes all expressions or manifestations of anti-Semitism or any
other form of racism. It is one of the few governments on earth
which not only illegalizes anti-Semitism and all forms of racism,
but also conducts a vigorous and sustained campaign of denuncia¬
tion of such poisons and of education in human brotherhood in
accordance with its socialist morality and law.
Would, as an American, that 1 could say the same about the
United States. The government of the United Stales, however, is
guilty of the systematic sustaining, both in a positive anti a nega¬
tive sense—that is, 'both in what it docs and does not do-of the
most awful system of racism in the world today, challenged for
“supremacy” in this only by the Republic of South Africa, Present
in the racist fabric of American life-though not in governmental
sanction—is deep and chronic anti-Semitism. As Benjamin R.
Epstein and Arnold ForsLer, of the anti-Detarnation League of
B'nai B’rith, state in their recent book (Some of My lies!. Friends,
N.Y., 19(12) discrimination against Jews is "virtually a built-in
part of American living.” This applies to housing, occupations,
education, social intercourse and to a very widespread belief in
elements of the anti-Semitic mythology among scores of Americans;
with the rise of the ultra-Right, this disease is spreading and in¬
tensifying.
No discussion of the position of Jews in the Soviet Union should
begin without bringing to the fore two basic lacts. Firstly, CzarisL
Russia was the prison-house of nations, and among its most awful
features was the thorough and official policy of anti-Semitism. 1 ’he
ghetto and the pogrom were regular features of czarist life; and in
that society there existetl the most widespread anti-Semitism among
the populace, especially in the predominant rural areas. I his was
4
as wide and deep as is white chauvinism in the United States today.
The struggle against anti-Semitism by the Government and the
Communist Party of the USSR has been one of the very important
features of Soviet life since the Revolution; one of the most momen¬
tous successes of that Revolution is the cleansing from Soviet life
of anti-Semitism. This does not mean that all its aspects and
vestiges have been eliminated, and certain events since the Revo¬
lution—to which I shall revert—have tended to retard the cleans¬
ing. But the historic fact is that since and because of the Great
Socialist Revolution in Russia that vast land has been transformed
from one characterized by intense racism and anti-Semitism into
one singularly devoid of both.
Secondly, there are only two European countries in which a
substantial portion of the Jewish population managed to survive
the Hitlerite holocaust; these were Bulgaria and the Soviet Union.
The fifty thousand Jews of Bulgaria were saved by the struggles
of the Leh and by the very militant resistance therein by" the
Jewish people themselves. With the Soviet Union, however, one
is not dealing with Jews by the thousands but by the millions,
and while none of the nations of Europe-or the rest of the world,
for that matter—intervened, as governments and states, with any
effectiveness at all on behalf of Jewish survival, the Soviet Union
did.
In the Soviet Union top priority was given to saving elements
of the population especially threatened by the nazi beast. Among
these elements were the Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from
Poland and Rumania and hundreds of thousands of Jews from
the USSR were shipped east out of the path of the nazis. It is
because of this—undertaken in the face of fantastic difficulties,
when all priorities went to movement from the east to the west—
that literally hundreds of thousands of Jews were saved by moving
them from west to east. And it is because of this that there are
living today-as full and equal citizens of the Soviet Union-about
two and a half million Jewish people.
It will not be remiss to recall the words of Albert Einstein,
spoken in New York City in December, 1945, before a Noble Prize
winners banquet: “We do not forget the humane attitude of the
Soviet Union who was the only one among the big powers to open
her doors to the hundreds of thousands of Jews when the nazi
5
armies were marching in Poland.” Nor is it irrelevant to quote
the publication of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, International
Conciliation (April, 1943): “Of some 1,750,000 Jews who suc¬
ceeded in escaping the Axis since the outbreak of hostilities, about
1,600,000 were evacuated by the Soviet Government from Eastern
Poland and subsequently occupied Soviet territory. . . . About
150,000 others managed to reach Palestine, the United States,
and other countries beyond the seas.”
The Soviet Union has been the savior of the Jews of Europe.
That is a fact, and it is a central and basic fact for any discussion
of the attitude of the Soviet Government towards Jewish people
and towards anti-Semitism.
What are some of the main charges leveled today against the
Soviet Government by those who accuse it of pursuing an anti-
Semitic policy?
The “Special Passport” Hoax
It is alleged repeatedly that the Soviet Government requires
all Jews to carry a special passport indicating the fact that they
are Jews. What are the facts?
All citizens of the USSR carry as identification what is called
an “internal passport”—something not at all unique to the Soviet
Union but rather common among European countries. One of
the elements of identification on this passport is nationality; all
passports carry the nationality of the owner. This includes Jewish
citizens of the USSR, for in the Soviet Union the Jew is considered
a member of a national group—lienee the establishment, thirty
years ago, of Biro-Bid jam a Jewish autonomous region, which is
still very much in existence. Historically, Jews, while having
elements of nationality do not have all such elements and do not
have all completely—notably the absence, in Eastern Europe,
of a common territory. Therefore, Jews in the Soviet Union have
the option, when getting their passports, of giving their nationality
as either Jewish or as that of the Republic wherein they may reside.
This fact was stated, accurately for a change, in the Neta York
Times, April 2, 1962, although it was buried in a dispatch from
Seymour Topping describing the general decline of religions in
the USSR. Topping, noting that many Jewish youths in the
Soviet Union had lost all religions belief, observed that as a
6
consequence there is growing integration of Jew and non-Jew.
He then continued: “At the age of 16, when'Soviet citizens are
issued their internal passports, Jewish youngsters have the option
of entering their nationality as Jew or that of the republic in
which they live.”
Of course, in the United States—marked as it is by national
persecution and by chronic anti-Semitism-there are tendencies,
especially so far as official documents are concerned, to resist the
inclusion of nationality identification. Thus, the National Asso¬
ciation for the Advancement of Colored People has fought to
remove all designation of race or nationality from documents—
even drivers' licenses. In our country, under present conditions,
that is a progressive effort, especially as it pertains to documents
related to employment or police records. But when white
chauvinism has been illegal!zed and sustained education against
it lias been conducted over a prolonged period, and the whole
fabric of social, political and economic life has been changed, such
demands will fade away, and the obvious usefulness, for purposes
of identification and statistical knowledge, of the nationality of
the person will be dear and primary, Such characterization then
will be in no way invidious, and data on nationality will be offered
as naturally as today one offers the color of his eyes.
The So-Called “Quota System”
Another common charge is that there exists a “quota” in the
educational institutions of the Soviet Union, as there used to exist
in old Russia—and old Poland, Hungary, Rumania-and as exists
presently in many educational institutions in the United States,
where it is still applied against Jews, let alone the notorious and
rigid discrimination against Negroes.
This charge, too, is false. Merit in the Soviet Union—unlike
in the United States—basically determines entrance into educational
institutions and increasingly, since education is free-as facilities
grow—everyone is receiving equally more and more education.
Thus, as of December i, i960, there were 3,545,000 Soviet citizens
in schools of higher education; of these, 2,070,000 were Russians,
517,000 were Ukrainians, 291,000 were Jews, 95,000 were Byelo¬
russians, 88,000 were Georgians, 74,000 were Armenians, etc. Jews,
though standing eleventh in terms of numbers among the nationali-
7
ties within the USSR, stood third in the number of students attend¬
ing higher institutions of learning; put another way, though Jews
amounted to only 1.1% of the population of the Soviet Union,
they amounted to 8.2% of the number of students in institutions
of higher learning in that country.
At this point it is sometimes objected—as by Senator Javits,
for example—that while the percentage of Jewish students at such
institutions may be beyond the percentage of Jews in the popu¬
lation, still the present percentage is below what it was in 1935.
And that fact—it is a fact—is supposed to show some kind of quota
system and to be explicable only on the basis of such a system,
reflecting an alleged policy of anti-Semitism. , First, if the per¬
centage of Jewish students is about 8 times that of the Jewish
population as a whole it surely does not reflect a quota system
against Jews. Second, the fall in percentage in the past twenty-five
or thirty years is explained by two things: (a) the casualty rate
among Jews in World War II was higher than that for most other
nationality groups in the USSR; (b) the literacy and cultural
levels of other nationalities in the Soviet Union have leaped forward
as a result of the Socialist revolution.
Additional data may be brought forward demonstrating the
absence of any quota system and simultaneously going a long way
to demolish the myth of “Soviet anti-Semitism.” Specialists em¬
ployed in the Soviet Union, possessing a higher education, number
427,000 Jews, 257,000 Byelorussians and 155,000 Georgians, yet
both of the latter nationalities considerably outnumber the Jews.
Among scientific workers in the USSR—in both the natural and
the social sciences—Jews stand third: Russians, 230,000; Ukrainians,*
35,000; Jews, 33,500. In fact, though, as we have noted, the Jews
number but 1.1% of the Soviet population, they constitute today
14.7% of all doctors, 8.5% of all writers and journalists, 10.4%
of all jurists; 7% of all art workers (actors, musicians, artists,
sculptors, etc.).
These facts demonstrate conclusively that the charge of a quota
system—while true in many countries of the “free world,” includ¬
ing the United States—is not true as regards the Soviet Union.
In this connection, it is noteworthy that Jewish scholars are
present in considerable numbers among the faculties of Soviet
universities. Thus, several of the faculty members of the Moscow
8
Institute of Foreign Languages are Jewish, including: Sophia
Frey, Ilya Galperin, Elisa Rizel, Isaac Salistra, Israel Shekter.
Forty members of the faculty of the Lenin Teachers’ Center, in
Moscow, are Jewish. The Dean of the Faculty of Music at the
University of Moscow until his death early in 1962 was Jewish—
the famous composer, Alexander Goldenweiser. At the Byelo¬
russian State University in Minsk, 68 of the faculty members (out
of a total of 300) are Jewish, and five departments at that
University are headed by Jewish scholars, including Professor
Grigori Starobinets, head of the Department of Analytical Chem¬
istry, and Professor Lev Shneerson, head of the Department of
Modern History.
“No Outstanding Jewish Leaders”?
It is frequently alleged, as part of the charges of anti-Semitism
against the USSR, that there are no leading personalities, espe¬
cially in government and in the foreign service and in the armed
forces, who are Jewish. The facts demonstrate this to be as false
as the charge of a quota system in education.
Who are some of the outstanding figures of Jewish nationality
in the Soviet Union today?
They include:
M. B. Mitin , Chairman, All-Union Department of Po¬
litical and Scientific Education, Communist Party of the
Soviet Union.
Veniamin Dymshitz , Member, Central Committee, CPSU,
Member, State Planning Commission of the Soviet Union,
formerly chief engineer of the Bhilai Steel Mills project in
India.
Jacob Kreizer , Colonel-General in the Soviet Army,
Member, Central Committee, CPSU, Hero of the Soviet
Union, Member, Supreme Soviet, RSFSR, Commander-in-
Chief of all Soviet Armed Forces in the Far East.
David Dragunsky, General in the Soviet Army, Twice
Hero of the Soviet Union, Delegate XXII Congress of the
CPSIJ; Commander, Southern District, European Front,
Deputy from Armenia to Supreme Soviet.
It may be added that there are 400,000 Jews who are members
9
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; and there are over
100 Jews who are Generals in the Soviet Army.
Among Jews holding very responsible positions in the foreign
and diplomatic services of the USSR are: N. Tsarapkin, Chief
of the Soviet Mission at the Geneva Disarmament Conferences;
G. Mendelevitch , Secretary of the Soviet Mission to the United
Nations.
Cabinet rank in several of the Republics of the Soviet Union
is held by Jews; among others are Ilya Beliavicus of the Lithuanian
Socialist Republic, and Leonid Paperny of the Byleorussian Socialist
Republic. In many other cases positions of great political conse¬
quence are held by Jewish people, as in the instance of Genrikas
Zimanas, Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party
of Lithuania (and Editor-in-Chief of the Party’s organ in Vilna);
of Ilya Egudin , Chairman, State Collective Farm of the Crimea
and Member of Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Republic; of
Israel Kazhdan , Deputy Chairman, City Soviet of Minsk.
The editorial staffs of leading newspapers and journals almost
always include Jews among other nationalities, and in not a few
cases chief editorships are held by Jews. Thus, for example, the
editor-in-chief of the very significant journal, Problems of World
Economics and International Relations is Jacob Khavinson , while
the editor-in-chief of Problems of Oriental Research is Professor
Joseph Braginsky , also Jewish.
Outstanding research and administrative figures in scientific
endeavor in the Soviet Union include Jews. Thus, the Chief of
the Theoretical Section, Institute of Atomic Energy, is Savely
Feinberg (a Lenin Prize winner), and the Chief of the Magnetic
Laboratory of the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism is Shmai
Dolginov. Among the many outstanding medical institutions in
Moscow, seven are headed by Jewish scientists; Professors Berlin-
Chertov , David Vas , Nahum Altshuller , Mendel Vasserman , Zinovy
Lurye , Liber Nisnevich and Yetim Pasnykov. The chosen Presi¬
dent of the Society of the History of Medicine of the USSR is the
revered scientist—a Jew—Professor Ilya Strashun. The Chief of
the Physical and Electronic Optics Division of the Institute of
Surgery (Moscow) is Dr. Eliazar Rosenfeld.
Among those announced in i960 as having been awarded the
Lenin Prize were 38 Jews, and their fields of accomplishment
10
included physics, mathematics, medicine, history, economics, ma¬
chine-construction, automation, metallurgy, chemistry, energetics,
architecture, communications and agriculture.
One of the most distinguished physicists in the Soviet Union
—and in the world—is Dr. Lev Landau , who is Jewish. A foremost
psychologist, Dr. A . R. Luria— well-known in the United States,
for his work has been published here and he toured this country,
speaking before professional assemblies, in i960—is Professor of
Psychology at the State Institute of Experimental Psychology
(Moscow); Dr. Luria is Jewish.
Directors of world-famous artistic and cultural organizations not
infrequently are Jewish. Thus, the Director of the Russian Drama
Theatre in Vilna is Lurye; of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow
is Chaikin; of the Bolshoi Ballet is Feier; of the Maly Theatre in
Leningrad is Rabinovich; chiefs of choreography with the Kirov
(Leningrad) Ballet are Fenster and Yakubson .
Several of the Soviet artistic performers and literary figures
whose genius has gained applause from the entire world are
Jewish: Emil Gilels, David and Igor Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan ,
Vladimir Ashkenazi and Ilya Ehrenburg.
Yevtuschenko’s “Babi Yar”
Even the publication of the very moving poem, “Babi Yar.”
by Evgeny Yevtuschenko, has been made into an attack upon the
Soviet Union and some kind of “proof” of its being guilty of
anti-Semitism.
But what is the truth of this matter? Yevtushenko is a splendid
product of Soviet society; he is a Russian, a non-Jew, who has
helped in the translation of the work of such Jewish writers as
Feffer and Vergelis. He is a Com mini is L
His “Babi Yar” appeared, together with another poem from his
pen hailing the Cuban Revolution (for some “unknown" reason the
American press, so smitten with Yevtushenko’s poetry, has ignored
entirely Ms work on Cuba!), in The Literary Gazette. I hat
journal is ihe central organ of the Soviei Writer’s Union and has a
circulation of over 700,000.
Yevtushenko has stated that the immediate inspiration for the
poem was the publication of the Draft Program of the XXII
11
Congress of the CPSU—a Draft envisioning the building of Com¬
munism in the USSR., and containing a very strong attack upon
all forms of racism and explicitly against anti-Semitism. The
poem memorialized the scores of thousands of Jews who, together
with many Soviet Army officers, were slaughtered by the nazis near
Kiev during World War II.
This stirring poem concludes:
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look sternly ,
like judges.
Everything here cries out in silence ,
and doffing my hat ,
I feel
how I suddenly become gray ,
And myself—
like one entire soundless cry
over thousands and thousands of buried ones .
I am—
each old man shot right here.
I am—
each baby shot right here .
Nothing within me will ever forget it!
Let thunder the “International/’
when forever buried shall be
the last anti-Semite on earth.
There is no Jewish blood in my blood.
But hated vehemently I am
By all anti-Semites.
Just as a Jew
And therefore—
I am a true Russian.
This poem has been recited before thousands in the Soviet
Union, in addition to reaching hundreds of thousands in printed
form. It was passionately discussed—culture is a matter of uni¬
versal interest in the USSR. In some cases it was criticized, justly
(as failing to make any mention of the struggle against anti-
Semitism that was characteristic of the best in the Russian revo¬
18
lutionary tradition; as failing to note the many non-Jews slaughtered
with the Jews in the Soviet Union, and at Babi Yar, itself), and
unjustly, too in a dogmatic and sectarian way.
But, basically, the poem and the poet reflect the health of the
Soviet Union, the best in its younger generation, and the refresh¬
ment coming with the post-war purging of the rigidity, excesses and
illegalities associated with the latter years of Stalin’s power. While
the first edition of Yevtushenko's collected poems was printed in
20,000 copies, the second edition recently issued numbered 70,000.
He himself recently visited Great Britain, France, the United
States and Cuba and has now returned home.
Yevtushenko s Babi Yar’ was written as news of the swastika
paintings in West Germany and the United States, the attacks
upon Jewish communities and people in many places of the
“Free World," were horrifying all civilized mankind. It is a cry
of outrage against such barbarism in all its forms and no matter
how covert its vestiges, coming from one of the magnificent
products of a socialist society. It reflects the finest values created
and nurtured by that society.
Economic Crimes Against Society
1 he Soviet Union is now consciously building a Communist
society. This is the task set forth in the Program of the Com¬
munist Party adopted at its XXII Congress. It is the third
Program that Party has so far adopted: the first, at its II Congress
( 1 9 ° 3 ) set the task of destroying Czarism; the second, at the VIII
Congress (1919) set the task of building Socialism. Both those
Programs were accomplished; the third also will be accomplished
-if peace is preserved in the world-and by 1980 Communism will
have taken shape in the Soviet Union.
To accomplish this, economic crimes against society-such as
large-scale and systematic stealing, speculating, black marketeering
-must be eliminated, For they reflect the persistence of an ethic that
is incompatible with socialism and communism and they constitute
blows of a material character that intensify the difficulties of
accomplishing (he Program of the Party. Such crimes are few
because the society has been transformed and with it its people
have been transformed. .Still such crimes do appear; under present
conditions and in that kind of society they are the worst forms
of criminality. Hence for them, in aggravated and repeated in¬
stances, severe penalties have been provided, including even
execution.
Since these laws were passed, several score people have been
found guilty—among the 210 , 000,000 people of the USSR—of these
crimes and perhaps as many as twenty or twenty-five have been
executed. Those jailed and executed make up many nationalities
of the USSR and include Jews; the press of the West, and espe¬
cially of the United States—but not of the USSR—has made
much of the fact that Jews appear to be among the criminals
arrested and/or executed in these cases. These laws and their
enforcement have nothing at all to do with anti-Semitism, They
are laws aimed against criminals; they severely punish the forms
of crimes held to be most awful in a society that is socialist and
that is consciously struggling to build communism. They are
applied to those guilty, and their nationality has nothing what¬
soever to do with the cases.
Professor Harold Berman, of the Harvard Law School, was in
the Soviet Union for several months in 1962 lecturing on American
Constitutional Law as a Visiting Professor in the University of
Moscow. Himself Jewish, Professor Berman had the following to
say about this matter:
In the past months I have read reports in American news¬
papers that anti-Semitism is supposedly growing in the Soviet
Union. To my mind there is a large element of subjectivism
and inaccuracy in these reports , I know they are often con¬
nected with the recent trials in the USSR of big speculators ,
thieves and embezzlers. However, this in my opinion> does
not mean that any policy of discrimination is being pursued
against the Jews. My Jewish friends in the Soviet Union ,
with whom I discussed this question, confirmed this. For
among those convicted are not only Jews but individuals of
other nationalities.
On the general question of the existence of anti-Semitism in the
Soviet Union, it is worth quoting Professor Berman again:
I have been in the Soviet country for almost a year and
have not seen any manifestation of anti-Semitism . 1 have
attended many meetings and conferences of Soviet lawyers
14
among whom there were quite a few Jews. At these meetings
there were often heated, even sharp > arguments on the ques¬
tions under discussion. But I have never felt any element
of national or racial hostility in these arguments. (Vochen-
blatt: Canadian Jewish Weekly f May 10, 1962,}
The “Banning" of Matzoh
Much capital for the Cold War was made as a result of the
order in 1962 by the Soviet Union banning the baking of matzoh
(unleavened bieacl) in State Bakeries; this also was played up in
the Western press as evidence of anti-Semitism, The fact, however,
is that the same decree which banned the use of State Bakeries
for the making of matzohs also banned them for the making of
wafers used in the religious services of the Greek Orthodox Church.
Tn neither case was the baking of the product forbidden, or its use
in any^ way prohibited; as a matter of fact, both products were
made in homes and in private religious institutions and were
used during the appropriate holidays. But they are no longer
to be produced by the State; this has nothing to do with being
anti-Semitic (or antbGreek Orthodox), but is rather part of the
continuing effort to divorce absolutely and completely the state
and the church—the secular from the religious—within the Soviet
Union.
Revival of Yiddish Culture
For the last several years a process of the revival of Yiddish
culture has been going forward in the Soviet Union. Among the
crimes, illegalities and excesses associated with the repudiation
of collective leadership and Leninist principles of Party and gov¬
ernment functioning, during the last years of Stalin's life, measures
were taken against the cultural life of the Jewish people. In
addition, among the many peoples victimized in that period were
Jews. Related to this was the corrupting impact of years of nazi
occupation in considerable areas of European USSR, as well as
the incorporation within the Soviet Union of areas that had been
dominated by quasi-fascistic governments in Poland and in Ru¬
mania. These harmful and anti-Marxist and anti-Soviet acts and
policies—organically lied to preparing for World War II and then
the worst years of the Cold War—have been utterly repudiated
*5
and stern measures of correction and of renovation have been
undertaken.
In the recent period in the Soviet Union scores of thousands
of copies of the works of Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moishe-
Seforim, I. L. Peretz, David Bergelson, Osher Swartsman, have
been published, in Yiddish, in the Soviet Union. The bi-monthly
magazine, Soviet Homeland , in Yiddish, has been issued since
August, 1961; it is published in 25,000 copies and during the first
year carried the creative writings of 112 Soviet Yiddish authors,
poets and dramatists.
Concert tours, recordings, plays, theatre groups, choruses— 4
all performing in Yiddish—have been seen or heard by millions
and millions of Soviet citizens in the past six or seven years. These
individuals or groups have toured every major city in the Soviet
Union; their appearances have been advertised in both Yiddish
and other languages (on billboards of various Republics) and
their audiences are made up of every nationality in the vast
country.
As a few examples: A Soviet Yiddish revue, “Zol zein Fraid”
(Let There be Joy) has been performed, in 1961, in Zoporozhe,
Dnepropetrovsk, Yalta, Sinferepol, Evpatoria, Kislovodsk, Yesen-
tuki, Piategorsk, Moscow and other cities. In Riga, Latvia, the
Distributive Workers formed a Yiddish Dramatic Group and it
has given many performances not only in Latvia but in other
Republics. The Pensioners' Council of Lithuania also formed a
Yiddish Theatre Group which performs regularly at the Kovno
State Theatre. The Trade Unions of Lithuania have formed a
Yiddish Amateur Theatre Ensemble (52 members) which has
presented Yiddish plays in Vilna, Minsk, Moscow and Leningrad
in the past few months. A concert ensemble was formed in
Czernowitz and this has carried classical and modern Yiddish
culture to Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tashkent, Vitebsk, Gomel
and Odessa in the recent past. There are many other examples of
collective—and individual—cultural performances in Yiddish every¬
where in the USSR today, and they are witnessed by literally
millions of people each year.
Other forms of activity directly related to Yiddish cultural
activity may be instanced. Thus, in December, i960, an exhibit
of the life and works of the great theatre personality, Solomon
16
Mikhoels, was offered at the Central Actors' House, in Moscow.
In July, i960, in Czernowitz, the Writer’s Union held a literary
evening, attended by 1,500 people, at which Ukrainian, Russian
and Yiddish literary figures read from their works—Moishe Altman
and H. Blushstein, reading from the Yiddish. In April, 1961, a
Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Meeting was held in Vilna, under the
auspices of the Trade Union Cultural Council of that city; the
Vilna Yiddish Chorus sang partisan songs, a Russian survivor of
nazi imprisonment spoke (in Russian), a Lithuanian spoke, in his
language, and a Jewish survivor, Mendel Deitch, spoke in Yiddish.
The rehabilitation of those victimized in the “Bad Years”
includes Jews, of course, as well as non-Jews. The works of
Mikhoels, of Feffer and of Kvitko have been issued in hundreds of
thousands of copies: records of readings of the writings of Feffer
and others, in Yiddish and in Russian, have been produced by the
scores of thousands. Late in 1959 a monument to Mikhoels in
Moscow was unveiled in a very impressive public ceremony
attended by outstanding political and artistic figures; the sponsor
of the monument was the All-Russian Theatrical Association. On
the suggestion of the Soviet Writer's Union, the city of Rogochev,
birthplace of the famous Yiddish poet, Shmuel Halkin, named a
main street after him. (The city already has a street named in
honor of Sholom Aleichem,) It is worth adding that the city of
Vitebsk, in the Ukraine, named a street, in i960, after Morris
Winchevsky, the Lithuanian-born Yiddish socialist poet and editor,
who lived in the United States from 1894 until his death in 1933.
Of perhaps even greater consequence, in terms of the evidence
concerning anti-Semitism, than the renaissance of 'Viddish cultural
expression which is again in the process of development in the
USSR, is the really impressive evidence of the bringing of the
best in Yiddish culture to the vast masses of tire non-Jewish
population of the Soviet Union, in forms understandable by them.
Literally millions of copies of classical and modern Yiddish
literature have been published in recent years in the Russian,
Ukrainian and other languages of the USSR. 1 Inis, in 195?* *^ ie
Russian language, David Bergelson's poetry ivas issued in 75,000
copies; L. Kvitko's in 300,000 copies; the books of Sholom Aleichem
in 700,000 copies, and many others.
In 1959, the centenary of Aleichem’s birth, millions of copies
*7
of his works were issued—including a six-volume collection in
225,000 sets. A general commemoration-day was held with out¬
standing figures of the governmental and literary world participat-
in ®', Th® government issued a postage stamp carrying Sholom
Aleichem's face and name. In 1961, the All-Union Group Pub¬
lishing House issued an exquisite book of lithographs on Aieichem
themes by the Jewish artist, Anatoly Kaplan.
In 19G0, there was issued a "Collection of Jewish Songs” with
texts in Russian and Yiddish, and musical scores by the prominent
Soviet Jewish composer, Kampaneyetz. In that year and in 1961
there were performances and recordings of Shostakovich’s “From
Jewish Poetry,” the record containing the voices of outstanding
Soviet artists, as Zara Dolukhanova and Mark Reisen.
Plays by Jewish artists having themes exposing the horrors of
anti-Semitism, either in Czarist days or in fascist countries, have
been produced in many Soviet cities and witnessed by tens of
thousands. A feature movie on Biro-Bidjan ran for several months
in Moscow theatres in 1961; in i960, an East German film based
on the Ann Frank diary ran for weeks in various Soviet cities;
the Youth Theatre of Riga, in 1961, performed its own version
of the Ann Frank story.
In the latest issue of Soviet Homeland (June, 1962) figures are
published showing that from 1955 through 1961 there were pub¬
lished in the Soviet Union 187 different books by 80 Jewish writers,
in printings totalling almost twelve million copies , in all languages!
including Yiddish, Sholem Aleichem's works, during that period,
were published in the USSR in seven languages (including Yiddish)
in 3,062,450 copies.
Just as it is a fact that the Soviet Union was the savior' of the
Jews of Europe, it also is a fact that no country in the world
approaches the Soviet Union in its systematic effort to bring the'
riches of Yiddish thought and culture and the realities of Jewish
life to its entire population .
Education in Communist Outlook
Furthermore, there is, of course, in the Soviet Union continual
education in the Communist world outlook—i.e., materialist, scien¬
tific, humanist, anti-religious, anti-mystical. As part of this, there
is repeated reference, including from the highest level of govern¬
18
ment, to the abomination of anti-Semitism, its sources and the
necessity to combat it. This appears not only in terms of the
publication, in millions of copies and in the languages known by
the masses of people, of the greatest classics of Yiddish writings;
it appears positively, as in Boris Polevoi’s best-selling novel, The
Story of a Real Man , and in the beautiful film made from that
book.
It appears, too, in specific and unequivocal condemnations of
anti-Semitism. Thus, for example, the Prime Minister of the
USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, in addressing the Supreme Soviet,
January 14, i960, noted the upsurge of anti-Semitic outrages in the
West, especially in West Germany, and went on to say:
The current fascist anti-Semitic incidents in many cities
of West Germany are a characteristic sign of the upsurge of
reaction, whose evil maneuvers have long since been widely
known to the world community. Many decades ago, during
the period when Czarist reaction was rampant, anti-Semitic
pogroms had been organized by the “black hundred n 1 gangs ]
from time to time. Lenin, the Bolsheviks and all progres¬
sives, decisively combatted that ignominious manifestation.
In Germany Hitler aggressively fanned the flames of anti-
Semitism. He suppressed all freedoms, ruthlessly crushed
democratic rights. And he perpetrated all that in order to
launch his bloody cause—to spark war .
It would be well if a President of the United States would some
day favor the Congress with such a lesson.
In New Times , November 4, 1961, as another example—and
New Times is a weekly magazine published in Moscow in seven
languages in addition to Russian with a circulation of many
hundreds of thousands—one finds a leading historian, Zinovy
Sheinis, quoting Lenin on the Jewish question. Sheinis writes:
It is not the Jews who are the workingman's enemies .
The workers' enemies are the capitalists of all countries .
Among the Jews there are workers , toilers, they make up the
majority. They are our brothers in oppression by capital, our
comrades in the struggle for socialism. . . . Shame on accursed
Czarism, which has tormented and persecuted the Jetos.
19
Shame on those who sow enmity for the Jews, who sow hatred
for other nations.
Professor Sheinis then continues:
In the Soviet Union , whose Jewish population is half as
large again as that of Israel } Jews are working devotedly, with
all our other peoples, in the building of communist society *
In the war years they fought and laid down their lives for
the Soviet homeland; many were honored with the title of
Hero of the Soviet Union, and tens of thousands were
awarded decorations. Nang in peacetime, they are active in
all branches of our economic , scientific* and cultural life .
With such statements coming from a nation's Prime Minister
made before its Parliament, and from a nation's leading his¬
torian published in one of its most widely circulated publications,
it is difficult not to believe that those who persist in spreading
slanders about ''Soviet anti-Semitism” are engaged in this effort not
because of concern for Jewish people, but because of a desire to
condemn Socialism and to worsen international relations.*
There is great complexity on the whole question of Jewish
culture, and much room for honest disagreement and fraternal
seeking of the best possible approach. The general trend, espe¬
cially in the USSR, but also in most advanced societies, is toward
full integration of Jew and non-Jew. The Jews of the Soviet
Union have features*of a nationality, but are not a nation; and
in the United States—where anti-Semitism, as we have stated, is
sharp and deep and widespread—integration also has gone far.
There are now, for example, in the United States only three Yid-
dish-language daily papers, and no English-language papers de¬
voted largely to Jewish people’s affairs. The Yiddish-language theatre
has all but disappeared, and publication of creative works in Yid¬
• Afteir this pamphlet was in galleys three additional publications from
Soviet authors came to the writer's attention directly touching on the question
of anti-Semitism, its bestiality amt the need to extirpate it. These are the
UNESCO study, Equality of Rights Between Races and Nationalities in the
USSR, by I. P. Tsamerian and S. L. Ronin (1962), Communism Creates Brother-
hood, by M. Visinetsky, and Communism Ensures Equality, by P. S. Mstislavsky
(London, 1962).
20
dish is done in editions that may total about 1,000 copies. Real
integration has gone much further, and is on a much higher
level, in the Soviet Union. But the tendency there, very definitely,
is away from the decision of post-World War II and towards
rebuilding Yiddish cultural activities and expressions in Yiddish
itself. This process undoubtedly received a boost when the census
returns in i960 showed that about 450,000 Soviet citizens stated
that their first language was Yiddish.
Of course, the general long-term commitment of Marxism-
Leninism towards human integration as a whole should be borne
in mind; it is reiterated in the Program of the XXII Congress
of the CPSU, laying out the road from Socialism to Communism.
It is basic to understanding the Soviet Union to keep in mind
its commitment to a materialist philosophy and its principled
opposition therefore to religious ideology. This is reemphasized
in the present period with the planned move to a communist
society. The number of churches—and synagogues—has been declin¬
ing and will continue to decline, as has the number of seminaries
—and yesliivas. They all still exist and are maintained privately
by those who feel the need for them, but the long-term commit¬
ment of the building of communism is away from religious ideology,
practices and institutions. This has nothing to do with anti-
Semitism; it is opposition to superstition and to the idealistic
philosophical outlook—to obscurantism and mysticism. It is aimed
not at Judaism per sc, but at all religious outlooks.
Anti-Capitalism Is Nat Anti-Semitism
It is necessary, also, to bear in mind the anti-capitalist com¬
mitment of Marxism and of the Soviet Union. This is relevant
to the kind of attitude reflected in certain upper-class Jewish
circles, where hostility to the bourgeoisie is confused—more or less
deliberately—with anti-Semitism, or hostility to Jews per se.
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, for example, the President of the
Workl Zionist Organization, speaking in Jerusalem, May 2y, 1962,
according to tire A r . K Times # "declared that Jewish communities
abroad, while not seriously threatened by anti-Semitism, were fac¬
ing dangers of a different nature. He noted the revolutionary
atmosphere prevalent iti many areas of the world and the fact that
social upheavals could ruin Jews of the prosperous middle and
21
upper classes. I he classic example,' Dr. Goklmann said, 'is
Lasuo s Cu£>a where a flourishing Jewish community was ruined
overnight, not because of any anti-Semitic tendencies of the Castro
regime but because of the social revolution he brought about.’ ”
• J? i* hl V S ™ matlon ' then man y Jewish communities-not only
in Cuba, but m Atlanta and Miami, too-are in for “ruination” in
time. But the Jewish community under Batista and the Jewish
communities in the midst of systematized Jim Crow do not live as
real Jews, and do not live as full human beings. And in both
cases, also, of course, the anti-Semitic poison is not absent.
Refutations of “Soviet Anti-Semitism”
Denials of the charge of anti-Semitism brought against the
Soviet Union have come from several eminent sources that cannot
be suspected—if that is the right wonl-of being Communistic.
He have already quoted Professor Harold J. Berman of the Harvard
Law School to that effect. Dr. Goklmann himself, in the above-
cited speech, said that the Soviet Union "does not deny equal
human and civil rights to Jews”; he differed with its approach
to the matter of religion and of nationality-as one would expect
from the head of World Zionism—but this is not a charge of anti-
Semitism. . On the contrary, Dr. Goklmann specifically denied its
existence in the USSR; this denial, made in May, 1962, was a re¬
iteration of what Dr. Goldmann had said earlier at the 25th World
Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem.
In October, 1961, Andre Blumel, a prominent French attorney,
and former head of the Zionist Organization in France, having
returned from his fourth visit to the USSR, said:
After carefully studying the situation there, I found
no anti-Jewish discrimination.
The cultures of the various Soviet nationalities are
reaching ever newer heights and the USSR is determined to
fight every manifestation of anti-Semitism.
Besides the Jewish paper in Biro-Bidjan and the Moscow
journal , Soviet Homeland, and besides the books that have
appeared in Yiddish , there are in fhe Soviet Union fifteen
performing groups in the Yiddish language.
Jews are to be found holding various official posts , include
22
ing high military posts and prominent positions in the sci¬
ences. Jews are heads of such a vital ministry as atomic en-
ergy.
Jews in the Soviet Union are not ashamed of their Jewish
origin. Jews must not be dragged in as pawns in th$ cold
war. (Vochenblatt, November 2, 1961).
These are the findings, as of the end of 1961, by die former
President of the Zionist Organization of France. They are in ac¬
cordance with the vast body of evidence. It is clear that the
Soviet Union is a remarkably cleansed country so far as anti-
Semitism is concerned and that, most certainly, the Government
of the Soviet Union is not guilty of anti-Semitism. On the con¬
trary, the truth is that the Soviet Government is one of the few
governments in the world committed to the extirpation of that
fascistic poison.
The Ultra-Right and the Cold War
In the United States today, the rise of the ultra-Right and the
accentuation of the danger of fascism are clear. The intensifica¬
tion of anti-Semitism, including violent assaults upon the property
and the person of Jews, is a fact in our country at the present
time and this certainly is related to the threat from the Right.
Parties such as the National States Rights Party, the American
National Party, the American Nazi Party, and the whole collection
of Right-wing vermin from the White Citizens Council to the (so-
called) Christian Anti-Communist Crusade are saturated in anti-
Semitism and some of them put out literature openly calling for
a policy of genocide so far as Jews are concerned. Here, for
example, before me as I write these lines is the February, 1962
issue of The Stormtrooper , a lavishly illustrated magazine pub¬
lished by Rockwell’s Nazi Party, in Virginia. On the cover, in
color, is a Streicher-like caricature of what is labeled “A Miami
Beach Kike”; inside are offered for sale, such choice objects as
the "Jew Zoo—A portfolio of 20 brutal caricatures of some of the
top Hebrews in our national life—plus Eleanor herself,” and
"Ann Frank Soap Wrappers—Look absolutely genuine and guar¬
antee soap is wo percent kosher. Put it on regular cakes and
delight your friends.”
This is what is printed in the United States and goes through
23
the mails; and the editor of this magazine is not troubled by the
McCarran Act!
In the face of menaces real and awful as these are; in the face
of the realities of the Cold War today and what a Hot War would
mean with modern weaponry, the concocting of a frantic cam¬
paign denouncing the alleged "official Soviet anti-Semitism” is a
service to no one except atom-maniacs and George Lincoln
Rockwell.
Among the greatest achievements of the Great October Social¬
ist Revolution of it) 17-despite fantastic difficulties and awful
setbacks and fearful human failures—stand the building of So¬
cialism, breaking Hitler's back, creating a society with the lowest
death rate in the world, the lowest illiteracy rate in the world, the
lowest crime rate in the -world, the second mightiest industrial
capacity in the world, and the least racism in the world.
Remembering' what Gzarist Russia was-—the prison-house of na¬
tions and the land of institutionalized anti-Semitism, of the pale,
the ghetto and the pogrom—and seeing what, the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics is today-a land where racism is outlawed,
where anti-Semitism is considered barbarism, and where scores of
nationalities live in equality and fraternity, one must hold this to
be a signal achievement of the Revolution and a powerful tribute
to the Marxist answer to -the question of racial and national op¬
pression.
Americans must labor not to intensify hostility towards the
Land of Socialism but to develop a sense of friendship for that
country and its more than two hundred million peoples. What is
needed by all Americans—and most certainly, what is needed by
Jews in America-is not the freezing of the Cold War, but the end¬
ing of that War. The truth about the two and a half million Jews
now living in the USSR will serve to enhance Soviet-American
friendship, and so play its part in preventing world war.
* # #
The author wishes to acknowledge his great indebtedness to the Morning
Frdheit, Jewish Currents, and Vochenblatt (Toronto), and particularly to the
writings of Paul Nomck, Morris U> Schappes, J. Gershmtm , Will Simon, and
Chaim Sutler. The responsibility for views expressed and for all inadequacies
remains, of course, solely my own _H. A.
H
