Anti-Semitism in the USSR: Why the Soviet Government Didn't Like Jews

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Soviet Union has always prided itself on being a multinational country. Friendship between peoples was cultivated, and nationalism was condemned. An exception was made with regard to the Jews - history has left us many examples of anti-Semitism in the USSR. This policy was never directly declared, but in reality the Jews had a hard time.

Old guard

Among the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, which in 1917 was able to take power, there were many Jews. The people trapped in the Russian Empire gave birth to a whole galaxy of revolutionaries who joined the party and were able to participate in the construction of a new political regime. And after the revolution, the abolition of the Pale of Settlement opened the way for the large Jewish population to cities and universities, factories and public institutions - and, of course, up the party ladder.

If the struggle for power after the revolution had gone according to a different scenario, then perhaps no anti-Semitism in the country would have appeared. Leader of the state, for example, could be Leon Trotsky - aka Leiba Bronstein. But together with other opponents of Stalin, he was ousted from the leadership of the party. In those years, even an anecdote was born: “What is the difference between Moses and Stalin? Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin brought the Jews out of the Politburo."

The repressed old guard included not only Jews: for example, apart from Trotsky, a prominent opposition figure was Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, the son of a Russian archpriest. And one of the Jews was on the other side of the barricades: the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov, who was also Meer-Genokh Wallakh, remained a supporter of Stalin.

Therefore, Stalin did not use the "Jewish" argument directly - he fought with his opponents, not with another people. But anti-Semitic notes were used when necessary. When the Trotskyist demonstration was dispersed in 1927, the crowd shouted "Beat the opposition Jews!"

Israeli question

After World War II, thanks to the support of the international community, Jews managed to recreate their own country - Israel. At first, the Soviet Union supported this process, hoping for strong friendly relations with the new state in the Middle East - it supported the Jewish population of Palestine during the so-called War of Independence and did not oppose contacts of its Jewish diaspora with abroad.

The Cold War set its priorities: Israel preferred long-term cooperation with the West, and the USSR, in turn, took the opposite side of the conflict. Since then, for many years in the Arab-Israeli conflicts, Moscow sided with the Arab states, branding "Israeli aggression" in the press, propaganda and diplomatic speeches.

During Israel's Six-Day War with the Arab coalition, many Soviet Jews in important public positions were pressured to openly condemn the policies of the Israeli state. Once in Moscow, they even convened a whole press conference, at which several dozen scientific workers, representatives of the arts and military men of Jewish origin officially declared this position.

The Soviet press at times argued that Israel was an outpost and a springboard for international imperialism in the Middle East, in which the local Jewish bourgeoisie exploited the Jewish laboring masses. Zionism, a political movement calling for the unification of the Jewish people, was declared the main enemy. Unfortunately, in pursuit of propaganda, publicists could cross borders and abuse Zionism so much that their creations hardly differed from anti-Semitic literature.

Rootless cosmopolitans

Cosmopolitans are those who put the interests of the world and all mankind above the interests of the nation and the state. Since the deterioration of relations with Israel, cosmopolitans in the USSR were more often called representatives of a certain nationality, because, from the point of view of the Soviet authorities, the Jewish population in the USSR could put the interests of "world Zionism" (as well as the "world bourgeoisie" and "world imperialism") above their Soviet citizenship.

As part of the campaign to combat cosmopolitanism, scientists, architects, and writers were criticized and even dismissed from their jobs, accused of "servility to the West" and capitalist values. Many of them (though not all) were Jews. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, created during the war, was closed, and its members were arrested as American spies. Many Jewish cultural associations were also liquidated.

Despite the fact that the campaign ended with the death of Stalin, prejudices against Jews persisted at the level of state policy until perestroika. Ekaterina Furtseva, Minister of Culture under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, publicly stated that the percentage of Jewish students should not exceed the percentage of Jewish miners.

Formally, again, there was no policy of anti-Semitism. But there were significant restrictions: with the same admissions to universities, as well as to work in law enforcement agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the highest party apparatus. The reasons were not only suspicions of Jewish sympathy for Israel and the West, but also, in general, the desire not to lose sight of the ideological state of society - the intelligentsia of Jewish origin has long been distinguished by free-thinking.

The head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, in 1968, offered to allow Jews to leave for Israel. In their opinion, this could improve the reputation of the USSR in the West, release disgruntled Jewish activists abroad, and at the same time use one of them for intelligence purposes.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews emigrated over twenty years. Not without difficulties - not everyone was given an exit visa. This did not weaken the anti-Jewish restrictions in Soviet domestic life, although, perhaps, it really did rid the country of at least some of the potentially disaffected citizens. Among them there were many talented people - scientists and cultural figures, who were never able to realize themselves in their native country.

Continuing the theme, a story about how a Nazi and anti-Semite during WWII helped save Jews in Denmark