the Jewish faith, it was resolved by Yaroslavsky, onetime head of the
League of Militant Atheists in the Soviet Union, who said:
The Jewish synagogues were not granted any privileges
whatsoever by the Russian state, but they were fully supported
by the Jewish bourgeoisie. The Jewish rabbinate, like its
sister priestcrafts, drew close to the side of the rich
because the Jewish church had also incorporated in its _credo_
the justification of the existence of exploiting classes in
society....
Karl Marx described Judaism as “anti-social” and an expression of Jewish
“egoism.” Marx, better than any other communist leader, illustrates the
gulf between Jewish tradition and communism. He could not be loyal to
both, so in accepting the communist ideal, he was not content to reject
Jewish tradition; he had to malign it and seek to destroy it with such
bitterness as: “Money is the jealous God of Israel, by the side of which
no other god may exist.... Exchange is the Jew’s real God.”
The unrestrained emotional outbursts of Hitler against the Jews were
reminiscent of the Marxian tirades against Judaism.
The Marxian denunciation of Judaism is not limited to invective. From
the earliest days when communism came to power in the Soviet Union,
communists have conducted a systematic campaign to cripple and destroy
organized Judaism. On January 23, 1918, the Soviets issued a sweeping
decree “On the Separation of the Church from the State, and of the School
from the Church.” All church property was nationalized; churches were
denied rights of legal recourse; the teaching of religion was banned
in public and private schools; the right of people to attend religious
services on workdays was revoked; and records of births, marriages, and
deaths were taken from the churches and put under the exclusive control
of civil authorities.
While religious services were still allowed, the clergy was reduced
to the status of second-class citizenship; a campaign of terror was
launched leading to the arrest and imprisonment or execution of priests,
rabbis, ministers, and other church leaders on such vague charges
as “counter-revolutionary activity” or “crimes against the people.”
Physical destruction of church property was conveniently explained as the
“spontaneous” acts of “aroused” peasants and workers to conceal the real
perpetrators, Soviet officialdom.
The main target, of course, was the Orthodox Church, which had long been
the state church of Russia; but all other faiths suffered, including
that of the Jews. The reports of refugees as compiled by Wladyslaw Kania
in the book, _Bolshevism and Religion_, published by the Polish Library
in New York City in 1946, prove the hypocrisy of the Soviet claim of
minority protection with accounts as follows:
The Jews are morally persecuted, the young Jewish population is
being brought up in un-religious ways....
* * * * *
The Jews in Russia are living only on the memories of the happy
past....
* * * * *
... during the Jewish feast Purim ... the Jews, Soviet
citizens, assembled for evening prayer. One of the neighbors
reported them to the NKVD. The premises were raided and the
host arrested and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
* * * * *
The rabbis have been deported; “kosher” meat, etc., though
promised, does not exist.... The synagogues and houses of
worship have been closed....
General Walter Bedell Smith, after his three years as Ambassador to the
Soviet Union, reported that in June, 1948, about thirty churches were
open in Moscow, which included one Jewish synagogue for an estimated
300,000 Jews. During World War II General Smith reported, “But two
religions—the Jewish and the Roman Catholic—did not gain even temporary
benefits from the wartime policy of greater religious tolerance; in fact,
on balance, it is probably safe to say that attacks upon them have been
stepped up rather than relaxed in recent years.”
Communist reports on the state of Jews in the Soviet Union make little
reference to Judaism as practiced. For example, the forty-seven-page
communist propaganda pamphlet, written by Paul Novick and J. M. Budish,
entitled _Jews in the Soviet Union_, makes only this single reference to
Judaism:
Then, there are Jewish religious activities. I visited the main
synagogue in Moscow during Yom Kippur. It was over-crowded,
with people outside listening to the cantor through loud
speakers.... I visited synagogues in Kiev, Vilna, Berditchev,
Zhytomir. There are about 300 organized religious communities
in the U.S.S.R....
The accuracy of this report is highly questionable, bearing in mind the
cold, systematic communist program of extinguishing religion. Among the
tactics employed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has been
the liquidation of the traditional Jewish school system, including the
primary school (Hedder), the secondary schools (the Talmud Torah), and
the rabbinical school (the Jeshiva). Thus, when the present generation of
Soviet Jews passes on, there will be no more rabbis.
This attack on Judaism becomes apparent when the role of the rabbi
is considered. He is not merely a preacher; he is the teacher of
Jewish moral law, the ritualistic laws governing the home, family, and
individual; he presides at such religious ceremonies as the marriage,
sits in ritualistic courts and supervises circumcisions and the
preparation of kosher meat. Hence, in abolishing the rabbinical schools,
the Soviets are gradually seeking the extinction of Judaism without a
pogrom. Judaism cannot exist unless Hebrew is taught so that rabbis can
study the Torah and Talmud in the original language in which they were
written.
Communist practice and communist theory are in direct conflict.
Communism, as we have seen, is essentially an international class
movement and therefore regards national loyalty, other than communist
loyalty, as a potential menace. The communists use “national rights” as a
propaganda device and support national movements only when it serves the
interests of the Soviet regime.
The communist propaganda line directed to Jewish people follows three
general themes:
1. The Soviet Union offers the Jewish people complete freedom.
As one apologist put it: “There is one spot on the earth where
the Jewish people are not under increasing pressure, one spot
where the Jews have full equality.... That is the socialist
Soviet Union.”
2. The Soviets have created a national homeland for Russian
Jews in the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan (or
Birobidjan), where they claim Jewish culture is flourishing.
3. In World War II the U.S.S.R. saved thousands of Jews from
certain death from the Nazis.
Standing by themselves, these claims admittedly make an impressive
appeal. If true, they would even justify the extravagant claim of
Alexander Bittelman, who recently was released from prison upon
completing a federal sentence for conspiring to advocate the overthrow
of the government of the United States by force and violence. Bittelman,
long one of the chief interpreters of communism to the Jewish people,
has described the Soviet Union as the “saviour of the Jewish people.”
The record, however, demolishes this propaganda line as a collection of
half-truths, exaggerations, and outright deceptions.
At best, Soviet tolerance toward Jewish culture was never anything more
than a temporary political tactic. And even then the Soviet claims were
contemporaneous with the 1917 revolution, when the communists were
seeking support from all quarters. Stalin’s _Marxism and the National
Question_, the acknowledged communist classic on the subject, though
consisting of 222 pages, contains only twenty pages written after 1927,
with the most important single part having been written in 1913. By the
late 1930’s alleged concessions to the cultures of the various minority
groups gave way to a policy of forcible denationalization rivaling the
brutal “Russification” tactics of the Czars.
To illustrate: In 1917 there were a total of forty-nine Yiddish or Hebrew
newspapers in the Soviet Union. By 1921 these had increased to sixty-two;
but no less than fifty were communist-controlled, while the forty-nine
not under communist control in 1917 had dwindled to twelve in 1921.
Jewish literature suffered a similar fate. From 1928 to 1933 books
published in Yiddish rose from 238 to 668, but there was a marked decline
in books dealing with Jewish history and tradition. In 1932 there were
thirty-six books in Yiddish classified as history—of these, sixteen were
memoirs chiefly of old Bolsheviks; six were studies on the Communist
International; six dealt with the revolution and history of the Communist
Party; five consisted of speeches of Stalin and other communist leaders;
and only three actually dealt with matters pertaining to Jewish culture.
These related to the labor movement and were an attempt to rewrite
history to conform with Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
The Soviet purge trials of 1936-37 should have made clear to the world
the communist objective mercilessly to crush the leadership of any
minority groups whose cultural resurgence conflicted with the advance
of Marxism-Leninism. To cite an example: of the ten representatives of
minority groups who served on the draft committee for the 1936 Soviet
constitution, only one was alive at the end of 1937. The other nine were
branded as “spies,” “enemies of the people,” and were shot, committed
suicide, or had disappeared.
The sad fate of the Jewish school system in the Ukraine proves the lie
to the Soviet propaganda claim of furthering Jewish culture. In 1925,
government reports reflected a total of 39,474 students in the Ukrainian
schools where Yiddish was the language of instruction. In 1931 the number
of such students reached its peak of 90,000. By 1940 this figure had
declined to 50,000, and the Jewish schools were completely suppressed
when the Nazis took over the Ukraine in World War II. Since the war the
efforts of Jewish educators to have the Soviet government construct new
schools have apparently failed.
One of the most crippling communist attacks on Jewish culture has been
prohibition of the use of Hebrew, the traditional language of Judaism.
As a tactic the Soviets launched a program of “compulsory Yiddishizing”
to destroy the influence of Hebrew among Russian Jews. Yiddish is a
jargon based on a German dialect. It is unrelated to Hebrew. Many Jews,
particularly Asiatic and Mediterranean Jews, do not know it at all. A
similar program of suppression of Jewish institutions shifted to the
satellites after World War II, where Jewish schools were abolished,
Jewish organizations banned, and even athletic clubs bearing Jewish names
were forced to change their names on twenty-four-hour notice.
The second propaganda claim of the Soviets in establishing the Jewish
homeland of Birobidzhan should be closely analyzed. Solomon M. Schwarz,
in his exhaustive study, _The Jews in the Soviet Union_, exposes the
Soviet propaganda for the falsehood that it is. The so-called Jewish
homeland was set up at a time when the threat of Japanese and Chinese
invasion of the U.S.S.R.’s Far Eastern frontier was not idle. Thus, the
Jewish homeland was conceived as a means of populating the vast spaces in
the Far East of Russia, and also provided a convenient place to settle
Jews not wanted in other parts of Russia.
By 1933 the Soviets envisioned a population of 60,000 Jews in
Birobidzhan. During its first six years 19,635 Jews arrived, while 11,450
left, leaving a net gain of only 8185. By 1939, after eleven years, the
Soviet Jewish homeland could claim no more than 30,000 Jews and by 1951
around 40,000 which was a small community surrounded by Asiatic peoples
completely separated from the mainstream of Jewish life. Furthermore, it
is in the maritime provinces of Siberia, where the climate is unsuitable
for those accustomed to European life.
The third communist propaganda claim, that of rescuing Jews from Nazi
extinction, is also a deception. In the first place, for two years prior
to the Nazi invasion of Russia, when Moscow was allied with Berlin,
_there is no record of any Soviet protest against the Nazi slaughter
of Jews_, so far as is known. The good-neighbor policy between the
communists and the Nazis, initiated by the Stalin-Hitler pact, is clearly
established by the following report sent by the German Ambassador to
Moscow to the German Foreign Office, where it came to light after the
war: “... The Soviet Government is doing everything to change the
attitude of the population here toward Germany. The press is as though it
had been transformed....”
Later the Foreign Office was advised that:
... the Soviet Government has always previously been able in a
masterly fashion to influence the attitude of the population in
the direction which it has desired, and it is not being sparing
this time either of the necessary propaganda.
Then, too, the silence of the Soviet leaders on the outbreaks of Nazi
anti-Semitism completely misled Eastern European Jews as to the real
character of the Nazi threat and hence, some 2,000,000 Russian and
Eastern European Jews made no attempt to escape the Nazis during the
early months of the German invasion of Russia. And even after the Nazi
onslaught, there was a shocking failure on the part of the Soviets to
reveal Nazi atrocities against the Jews.
For example, the Soviet government in 1942 condemned the “bloodthirsty,
criminal plans of the fascists” aimed at exterminating Russians,
Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and “other peoples” of the Soviet Union, with
no direct reference to the Jews. As late as 1945 the Soviets in a report
on the German concentration camp at Auschwitz (Oswiecim), where more than
4,000,000 persons were exterminated, did not even use the word “Jew,”
although they constituted the majority of those whose lives were so
brutally taken.
Not only did the communists in the Soviet Union fail to make any special
effort to save Jewish people during the war, they showed no concern over
their fate.
If further evidence is necessary to prove the falsity of communist
propaganda directed toward the Jewish people, it is only necessary
to look at the communist campaigns against Zionism. The communist
propagandist, Paul Novick, reflected the communist line both in the
Soviet Union and the United States when he wrote:
Ever since its inception Zionism has been an instrument of the
Jewish bourgeoisie to hamper the struggle of the Jewish masses
... a means of diverting the attention of the Jewish workers
from the class struggle and of keeping them separated from the
progressive forces of other nationalities....
In the Soviet Union, Zionism is ruthlessly suppressed. In the United
States communists have a more complex problem and avoid direct public
attacks on the Zionist movement, so as not to alienate that large section
of Jewish people who favor Zionism. The communist attacks are more subtle
and are directed essentially at individual Zionist leaders. The aim, of
course, is to discredit the Zionist movement without antagonizing its
rank-and-file members. The Party line changes from time to time when
it is expedient, but the communist objective of eventually destroying
Zionist influence among the Jewish people, without alienating its
rank-and-file members, has never changed.
Khrushchev more recently reiterated the Party line against the Zionist
movement when he was asked what the Soviet Union would do if the Zionists
settled in Soviet territory and demanded a state of their own. He replied
with communist contempt, “We have thrown them out of our country.”
Communist Party leaders in the United States exhibited some concern
over the Soviet campaign against Jews which was brought to light by
an anti-Zionist article in _Pravda_ on September 21, 1948, by Ilya
Ehrenburg, which referred to the state of Israel as a “bourgeois
country.” This article declared that in Russia there was no artificial
division between Jews and their Russian comrades but that Jews led lives
in common with other peoples of Russia. The proper solution to the
“Jewish problem,” according to Ehrenburg’s article, is the abolishment of
“nationalism” among Jews and the integration of Jews into the existing
society rather than their having a distinct life apart from other people.
It is known that when the information in the Ehrenburg article reached
the United States, there were considerable concern and confusion in the
offices of the _Morning Freiheit_ as to whether the article represented
a fixed Soviet policy. The fact that _Pravda_ is under Soviet Communist
Party control causes Party leaders in this country to give careful
consideration to anything it publishes. The matter was resolved by
directing an inquiry to Itzik Feffer, a friend of Stalin in Moscow,
to secure the correct Soviet line on the Jewish question. The report
came back to the United States that Ehrenburg merely was reflecting his
own ideas, along with some of the younger communists of Jewish origin,
and did not represent the correct policy of the Soviet Union. The then
foreign editor of the _Morning Freiheit_, Moise Katz, in an article
appearing in the January, 1949, issue of _Yiddishe Kultur_ criticized the
ideas appearing in the Ehrenburg article.
Events, however, were to prove the correctness of Ehrenburg’s
statements, which became the fixed policy of the Soviet Union, and the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, of which Itzik Feffer was a member, was
abolished. In the meantime the National Committee of the Communist Party
intervened and, according to reports, straightened out the _Morning
Freiheit_ on the new Soviet line. A letter of apology over the signature
of Moise Katz then appeared in the _Freiheit_ on March 29, 1949. This
incident was discussed in communist circles and the word leaked out
that three writers were discharged from the _Freiheit_ for “bourgeois
nationalism.”
When Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the Twentieth Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow in February, 1956, news
of the long-pent-up acts of oppression against Jews in the Soviet Union
began to leak out. It is, of course, significant that Khrushchev made no
mention of the mistreatment of the Jews in his exposure of Stalin, whom
he had so loyally served over the years.
Within a few weeks, as noted in Chapter 3, the disclosures of
anti-Semitism came in the Warsaw, Poland, Yiddish-language communist
newspaper _Folks-Shtimme_ on April 4, 1956, regarding the Soviet purges
of Jewish leaders and culture under Stalin. Later, on April 13, 1956, the
_Daily Worker_ expressed regrets and then admitted “... we were too prone
to accept the explanation of why Jewish culture had disappeared in the
Soviet Union in the late 1940s.” With the agility of “whirling dervishes”
the communists then sought to develop a justification for the Soviet
communist leaders’ action.
World public opinion over the Soviet communist leaders’ injustices
mounted and as Khrushchev turned on the “smiles” and started visiting
other countries, he was confronted with the accusation of anti-Semitism
in Russia.
In England, Khrushchev characterized “anti-Semitism” as “nonsense” to
which he would not listen. To a French delegation he protested that he
was not anti-Semitic but that the Yiddish language is fading away in
Russia as the Jews in the Soviet Union are learning to speak Russian.
A new low in deception was reached when Khrushchev claimed that, in
the early years of the revolution, “Jews occupied a disproportionately
large number of high Soviet positions because the country had few
trained people.” He then asserted that the Kremlin had received protests
from “the various Soviet Republics that too many Jews held desirable
positions.” The New York _Times_ story on June 10, 1956, then reported
that Khrushchev “... reportedly pressed Lazar M. Kaganovich, only
high-ranking Soviet leader of Jewish origin, to confirm his statements,
which Mr. Kaganovich finally did, saying one word, ‘correct’....” And now
there are no top communist leaders in the Kremlin of Jewish origin since
Khrushchev ousted and denounced Kaganovich last summer.
The president of B’nai B’rith, Philip M. Klutznick, answered the
communist propaganda claims when he made the factual observation that
only in Soviet Russia and its satellites is “Jewish life languishing and
approaching extinction.”
The Communist Party of the United States at its February, 1957,
convention sought to hoodwink the American public by a series of
statements to the press of how it had declared its independence from
Moscow. This deceit was established in no unmistakable terms by the
handling of a resolution dealing with anti-Semitism in Russia. The
resolution was submitted by Professor Morris U. Schappes in typical
communist language: “Resolution: On Jewish question, some aspects.”
The resolution stated: “This matter concerns us as Communists in a
country which includes 5,000,000 Jews.” It then points out,
Since the Jewish question is international in scope, we
communists must be alert to the problem and its world-wide
aspects. The Jewish question is a specific question that
requires specific attention.... The liquidation of the
outstanding Yiddish writers and Jewish communal and political
leaders, and the snuffing out of organized Jewish cultural life
have been known for some time....
He, of course, was referring to anti-Semitism in Russia.
The resolution called for the creation of a Jewish Commission, a return
to Leninist policy, and a request “... to make this subject one for
fraternal discussion with the Communist Party in the Soviet Union,”
which, of course, negates the view of independence of the communists in
the United States.
The resolution was soft-pedaled and disposed of, as was a similar
resolution dealing with Soviet terrorism in Hungary, by being referred
to the National Committee of the Party. _Pravda_, on February 16, 1957,
had this to say: “The 16th Convention of the Communist Party, USA,
confirmed the loyalty of the American communists to the principles of
Marxism-Leninism....”
Party leaders, however, in the face of the overwhelming evidence of
communist hate for the followers of Moses, still are attempting to
deceive unsuspecting persons of Jewish origin and, as this is being
written, communist tacticians are at work on a program of infiltrating
Jewish groups by seeking for the answers to such questions as:
—How to avoid the extremes of negating Israel and of accepting
its actions uncritically.
—How to work in religious groups while keeping ourselves and
our children free of the religious doctrine of these groups.
—How to avoid the extremes of taking on all issues and avoiding
all issues.
—How to balance Jewish work with our interests as Marxists in
general trade union, minorities and people’s movements.
The vigilant and patriotic members of Jewish organizations have
demonstrated their alertness to counteract the infiltration tactics in
Jewish institutions by communists who were born Jews. Where communist
infiltration tactics have succeeded in Jewish organizations, it has
been because of a failure on the part of leaders and members alike to be
vigilant and thwart the communist tactic of infiltration into the Jewish
community just as it has sought to infiltrate every other organization.
A _Pravda_ editorial on July 6, 1956, should remove all doubts as to the
antipathy of communism to those who worship God regardless of their faith:
As for our country the Communist Party has been and will be
the only master of the minds, and thoughts, the spokesman,
leader and organizer of the people in their entire struggle for
communism.
_Part VI_
THE COMMUNIST UNDERGROUND
20.
_How the Underground Works_