fbpx
Wikipedia

Joseph Stalin and antisemitism

The accusation that Joseph Stalin was antisemitic is much discussed by historians. Although part of a movement that included Jews and rejected antisemitism, he privately displayed a contemptuous attitude toward Jews on various occasions that were witnessed by his contemporaries, and are documented by historical sources.[1] In 1939, he reversed Communist policy and began a cooperation with Nazi Germany that included the removal of high-profile Jews from the Kremlin. As dictator of the Soviet Union, he promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews shortly after World War II, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. At the time of his death, Stalin was planning an even larger campaign against Jews.[2][3][4] According to his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin was fomenting the doctors' plot as a pretext for further anti-Jewish repressions.[5]

Early years

No aspect of Stalin's upbringing in Gori, Georgia, his education at an Orthodox seminary in Tiflis, or his political activities up to 1906 stands out as a motive to later antisemitism. Interactions with Jews were infrequent and unlikely to concern him as such. He began meeting Jews more frequently with the Stockholm Congress, including zealous revolutionaries whose competition he might have resented.[6]

Stalin's earliest antisemitic rhetoric appears in relation to the rivalry between the Bolshevik and Menshevik political factions. Jews were active in both groups, but more prominent among the Mensheviks. Stalin took note of the ethnic proportions represented on each side, as seen from a 1907 report on the Congress published in the Bakinsky rabochy (Baku Workman), which quoted a coarse joke about "a small pogrom" (погромчик) Stalin attributed to then-Bolshevik Grigory Aleksinsky:

Not less interesting is the composition of the congress from the standpoint of nationalities. Statistics showed that the majority of the Menshevik faction consists of Jews—and this of course without counting the Bundists—after which came Georgians and then Russians. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik faction consists of Russians, after which come Jews—not counting of course the Poles and Letts—and then Georgians, etc. For this reason one of the Bolsheviks observed in jest (it seems Comrade Aleksinsky) that the Mensheviks are a Jewish faction and the Bolsheviks a genuine Russian faction, so it would not be a bad idea for us Bolsheviks to arrange a small pogrom in the party.[6]

1917 to 1930

Although the Bolsheviks regarded all religious activity as counter-scientific superstition and a remnant of the old pre-communist order, the new political order established by Lenin's Soviet after the Russian Revolution ran counter to the centuries of antisemitism under the Romanovs.

The Council of People's Commissars adopted a 1918 decree condemning all antisemitism and calling on the workers and peasants to combat it.[7] Lenin continued to speak out against antisemitism.[8] Information campaigns against antisemitism were conducted in the Red Army and in the workplaces, and a provision forbidding the incitement of propaganda against any ethnicity became part of Soviet law.[7] State-sponsored institutions of secular Yiddish culture, such as the Moscow State Jewish Theater, were established in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union during this time, as were institutions for other minorities.

As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin was the cabinet member responsible for minority affairs. In 1922, Stalin was elected the first-ever General Secretary of the party—a post not yet regarded as the highest in the Soviet government. Lenin began to criticize Stalin shortly thereafter.

In his December 1922 letters, the ailing Lenin (whose health left him incapacitated in 1923–1924) criticized Stalin and Dzerzhinsky for their chauvinistic attitude toward the Georgian nation during the Georgian Affair.[9] Eventually made public as part of Lenin's Testament—which recommended that the party remove Stalin from his post as General Secretary—the 1922 letters and the recommendation were both withheld from public circulation by Stalin and his supporters in the party: these materials were not published in the Soviet Union until de-Stalinization in 1956.[10]

After the incapacitated Lenin's death on 21 January 1924, the party officially maintained the principle of collective leadership, but Stalin soon outmaneuvered his rivals in the Central Committee's Politburo. At first collaborating with Jewish and half-Jewish Politburo members Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev against Jewish arch-rival Leon Trotsky, Stalin succeeded in marginalizing Trotsky. By 1929, Stalin had also effectively marginalized Zinoviev and Kamenev as well, compelling both to submit to his authority. The intransigent Trotsky was forced into exile.

According to Polish historian, Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, Kamenev was denied the position of Chairman of the Soviet Union on Stalin's suggestion due to his Jewish origins. Stalin favoured Alexei Rykov and placed him in the position due to his Russian, peasant background.[11]

When Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's personal secretary who had defected to France in 1928, produced a memoir critical of Stalin in 1930, he alleged that Stalin made crude antisemitic outbursts even before Lenin's death.[12]

1930s to 1940s

Stalin's 1931 condemnation of antisemitism

On 12 January 1931, Stalin gave the following answer to an inquiry on the subject of the Soviet attitude toward antisemitism from the Jewish News Agency in the United States:

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.[13]

Establishment of Jewish Autonomous Oblast

To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin's nationality policy, an alternative to the Land of Israel was established with the help of Komzet and OZET in 1928. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast with the center in Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East was to become a "Soviet Zion". Yiddish, rather than "reactionary" Hebrew, would be the national language, and proletarian socialist literature and arts would replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture. Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, the Jewish population there never reached 30% (as of 2003 it was only about 1.2%). The experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges, as local leaders were not spared during the purges.

Great Purge

Stalin's harshest period of mass repression, the Great Purge (or Great Terror), was launched in 1936–1937 and involved the execution of over a half-million Soviet citizens accused of treason, terrorism, and other anti-Soviet crimes. The campaign of purges prominently targeted Stalin's former opponents and other Old Bolsheviks, and included a large-scale purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of the kulak peasants, Red Army leaders, and ordinary citizens accused of conspiring against Stalin's administration.[14] Although many of Great Purge victims were ethnic or religious Jews, they were not specifically targeted as an ethnic group during this campaign according to Mikhail Baitalsky,[15] Gennady Kostyrchenko,[16] David Priestland,[17] Jeffrey Veidlinger,[18] Roy Medvedev[19] and Edvard Radzinsky.[20]

German–Soviet rapprochement and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

During his meeting with Nazi Germany's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Stalin promised him to get rid of the "Jewish domination", especially among the intelligentsia.[21] After dismissing Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939,[22] Stalin immediately directed incoming Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews", to appease Hitler and to signal Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks.[23][24][25]

Antisemitic trends in Stalin's policies were fueled by his struggle against Leon Trotsky and his global base of support.[26][27]

In the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s far fewer Jews were appointed to positions of power in the state apparatus than previously, with a sharp drop in Jewish representation in senior positions evident from around the time of the beginning of the late 1930s rapprochement with Nazi Germany. The percentage of Jews in positions of power dropped to 6% in 1938, and to 5% in 1940.[28]

Relocation and deportation of Jews during the war

Following the Soviet invasion of Poland, Stalin began a policy of deporting Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and other parts of Siberia. Throughout the war, similar movements were executed in regions considered vulnerable to Nazi invasion with the various target ethnic groups of the Nazi genocide. When these populations reached their destinations, work was oftentimes arduous and they were subjected to poor conditions due to lack of resources caused by the war effort.[29]

After World War II

The experience of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of approximately six million Jews in Europe under Nazi occupation, and left millions more homeless and displaced, contributed to growing concern about the situation of the Jewish people worldwide. However, the trauma breathed new life into the traditional idea of a common Jewish peoplehood and became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist idea of creating a Jewish state in the Middle East.

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast experienced a revival as the Soviet government sponsored the migration of as many as 10,000 Eastern European Jews to Birobidzhan in 1946–1948.[30] In early 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR announced a plan to build new infrastructure, and Mikhail Kalinin, a champion of the Birobidzhan project since the late 1920s, stated that he still considered the region to be a "Jewish national state" that could be revived through "creative toil."[30]

Israel

From late 1944 onward, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would speed the decline of British influence in the Middle East.[31] Accordingly, in November 1947, the Soviet Union, together with the other Soviet bloc countries voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine,[32] which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel. On May 17, 1948, three days after Israel declared its independence, the Soviet Union became the first state to officially recognize Israel.[33] In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Soviet Union supported Israel with weaponry supplied via Czechoslovakia.[34]

Nonetheless, Stalin began a new purge by repressing his wartime allies, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In January 1948, Solomon Mikhoels was assassinated on Stalin's personal orders in Minsk. His murder was disguised as a hit-and-run car accident. Mikhoels was taken to an MGB dacha and killed, along with his non-Jewish colleague Golubov-Potapov, under supervision of Stalin's Deputy Minister of State Security Sergei Ogoltsov. Their bodies were then dumped by the side of a road in Minsk.[35][36]

Despite Stalin's initial willingness to support Israel, various historians speculate that antisemitism in the late 1940s and early 1950s was motivated by Stalin's possible perception of Jews as a potential "fifth column" in light of a pro-Western Israel in the Middle East. Orlando Figes suggests that

"After the foundation of Israel in May 1948, and its alignment with the USA in the Cold War, the 2 million Soviet Jews, who had always remained loyal to the Soviet system, were portrayed by the Stalinist regime as a potential fifth column. Despite his personal dislike of Jews, Stalin had been an early supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine, which he had hoped to turn into a Soviet satellite in the Middle East. But as the leadership of the emerging state proved hostile to approaches from the Soviet Union, Stalin became increasingly afraid of pro-Israeli feeling among Soviet Jews. His fears intensified as a result of Golda Meir's arrival in Moscow in the autumn of 1948 as the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR. On her visit to a Moscow synagogue on Yom Kippur (13 October), thousands of people lined the streets, many of them shouting Am Yisroel Chai! (The People of Israel Live!)—a traditional affirmation of national renewal to Jews throughout the world but to Stalin a dangerous sign of 'bourgeois Jewish nationalism' that subverted the authority of the Soviet state."[37]

Historians Albert S. Lindemann and Richard S. Levy observe: "When, in October 1948, during the high holy days, thousands of Jews rallied around Moscow's central synagogue to honor Golda Meir, the first Israeli ambassador, the authorities became especially alarmed at the signs of Jewish disaffection.[38] Jeffrey Veidlinger writes: "By October 1948, it was obvious that Mikhoels was by no means the sole advocate of Zionism among Soviet Jews. The revival of Jewish cultural expression during the war had fostered a general sense of boldness among the Jewish masses. Many Jews remained oblivious to the growing Zhdanovshchina and the threat to Soviet Jews that the brewing campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" signaled. Indeed, official attitudes toward Jewish culture were ambivalent during this period. On the surface, Jewish culture seemed to be supported by the state: public efforts had been made to sustain the Yiddish theater after Mikhoels's death, Eynikayt was still publishing on schedule, and, most important, the Soviet Union recognized the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. To most Moscow Jews, the state of Soviet Jewry had never been better."[39]

Purges

In November 1948, Soviet authorities launched a campaign to liquidate what was left of Jewish culture. The leading members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. They were charged with treason, bourgeois nationalism, and planning to set up a Jewish republic in Crimea to serve American interests. The Museum of Environmental Knowledge of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (established in November 1944) and The Jewish Museum in Vilnius (established at the end of the war) were closed in 1948.[40] The Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Georgian Jewry, established in 1933, was shut down at the end of 1951.[40]

In Birobidzhan, the various Jewish cultural institutions that had been established under Stalin's earlier policy of support for "proletarian Jewish culture" in the 1930s were closed between late 1948 and early 1949. These included the Kaganovich Yiddish Theater, the Yiddish publishing house, the Yiddish newspaper Birobidzhan, the library of Yiddish and Hebrew books, and the local Jewish schools.[41] The same happened to Yiddish theaters all over the Soviet Union, beginning with the Odessa Yiddish Theater and including the Moscow State Jewish Theater.

In early February 1949, the Stalin Prize-winning microbiologist Nikolay Gamaleya, a pioneer of bacteriology and member of the Academy of Sciences, wrote a personal letter to Stalin, protesting the growing antisemitism: "Judging by absolutely indisputable and obvious indications, the reappearance of antisemitism is not coming from below, not from the masses. . . but is directed from above, by someone's invisible hand. Antisemitism is coming from some high-placed persons who have taken up posts in the leading party organs."[42] The ninety-year-old scientist wrote to Stalin again in mid-February, again mentioning the growing antisemitism. In March, Gamaleya died, still having received no answer.[43]

During the night of 12–13 August 1952, remembered as the "Night of the Murdered Poets" (Ночь казнённых поэтов), thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers of the Soviet Union were executed on the orders of Stalin. Among the victims were Peretz Markish, David Bergelson and Itzik Fefer.

In a 1 December 1952 Politburo session, Stalin announced: "Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA. . . They think they are indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists."[44] He also quoted Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "eat the rich" in this speech.[citation needed].

A notable campaign to quietly remove Jews from positions of authority within the state security services was carried out in 1952–1953. The Russian historians Zhores and Roy Medvedev wrote that according to MVD General Sudoplatov, "simultaneously all Jews were removed from the leadership of the security services, even those in very senior positions. In February the anti-Jewish expulsions were extended to regional branches of the MGB. A secret directive was distributed to all regional directorates of the MGB on 22 February, ordering that all Jewish employees of the MGB be dismissed immediately, regardless of rank, age or service record. . . ."[45]

The outside world was not ignorant of these developments, and even the leading members of the Communist Party USA complained about the situation. In the memoir Being Red, the American writer and prominent Communist Howard Fast recalls a meeting with Soviet writer and World Peace Congress delegate Alexander Fadeyev during this time. Fadeyev insisted that "There is no anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union", despite the evidence "that at least eight leading Jewish figures in the Red Army and in government had been arrested on what appeared to be trumped-up charges. Yiddish-language newspapers had been suppressed. Schools that taught Hebrew had been closed."[46]

Doctors' plot

In secondary evidence and memoirs, there is a view that the Doctors' plot case was intended to trigger mass repressions and deportations of the Jews, similar to the population transfer in the Soviet Union of many other ethnic minorities, but the plan was not accomplished because of the sudden death of Stalin. Zhores Medvedev wrote that there are no documents found in support of the deportation plan,[47] and Gennady Kostyrchenko writes the same. Nevertheless, the question remains open.[48]

According to Louis Rapoport, the genocide was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors, and then the "following incidents would follow", such as "attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police, the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews, and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken. A three-stage program of genocide would be followed. First, almost all Soviet Jews ... would be shipped to camps east of the Urals ... Second, the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another ... Also the MGB [Secret Police] would start killing the elites in the camps, just as they had killed the Yiddish writers ... the previous year. The ... final stage would be to 'get rid of the rest.'"[49]

Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, and there were rumors that they were for Jews.[50] A special Deportation Commission to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created.[51][52][53] Nikolay Poliakov, the secretary of the Deportation Commission, stated years later that according to Stalin's initial plan the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental task of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed.[51][53] "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half-breeds" (polukrovki).[51] Before his death in March 1953, Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of Doctors' plot defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953, and then he would cast himself as the savior of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace.[51][54][55] There are further statements that describe some aspects of such a planned deportation.[53]

Similar purges against Jews were organised in the Eastern Bloc countries, such as with the Prague Trials. During this time, Soviet Jews were dubbed persons of Jewish ethnicity. A dean of the Marxism–Leninism department at a Soviet university explained the policy to his students: "One of you asked if our current political campaign can be regarded as antisemitic. Comrade Stalin said: "We hate Nazis not because they are Germans, but because they brought enormous suffering to our land. Same can be said about the Jews."[56] It has also been said that at the time of Stalin's death, "no Jew in Russia could feel safe."[57] Throughout this time, the Soviet media avoided overt antisemitism and continued to report the punishment of officials for antisemitic behavior.[58]

Associates and family

 
Joseph Stalin with Lazar Kaganovich (left).

Stalin had Jewish in-laws and grandchildren.[59] Some of Stalin's close associates were also Jews or had Jewish spouses, including Lazar Kaganovich, Maxim Litvinov, and Lev Mekhlis.[60] Many of them were purged, including Nikolai Yezhov's wife and Polina Zhemchuzhina, who was Vyacheslav Molotov's wife, and also Bronislava Poskrebysheva.[60] Historian Geoffrey Roberts points out that Stalin "continued to fête Jewish writers and artists even at the height of the anti-Zionist campaign of the early 1950s."[61] However, when Stalin's young daughter Svetlana fell in love with prominent Soviet filmmaker Alexei Kapler, a Jewish man twenty-three years her elder, Stalin was strongly irritated by the relationship. According to Svetlana, Stalin "was irritated more than anything else by the fact that Kapler was Jewish."[62][63] Kapler was sentenced to ten years of hard labor in Gulag on the charges of being an "English spy." Stalin's daughter later fell in love with Grigori Morozov, another Jew, and married him. Stalin agreed to their marriage after much pleading on Svetlana's part, but refused to attend the wedding. Stalin's son Yakov also married a Jewish woman, Yulia Meltzer, and though Stalin disapproved at first, he began to grow fond of her. Stalin's biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote that Lavrenty Beria's son noted that his father could list Stalin's affairs with Jewish women.[64]

In his memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev wrote: "A hostile attitude toward the Jewish nation was a major shortcoming of Stalin's. In his speeches and writings as a leader and theoretician there wasn't even a hint of this. God forbid that anyone assert that a statement by him smacked of antisemitism. Outwardly everything looked correct and proper. But in his inner circle, when he had occasion to speak about some Jewish person, he always used an emphatically distorted pronunciation. This was the way backward people lacking in political consciousness would express themselves in daily life—people with a contemptuous attitude toward Jews. They would deliberately mangle the Russian language, putting on a Jewish accent or imitating certain negative characteristics [attributed to Jews]. Stalin loved to do this, and it became one of his characteristic traits."[65] Khrushchev further professed that Stalin frequently made antisemitic comments after World War II.[66]

Analyzing various explanations for Stalin's perceived antisemitism in his book The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939–1953, historian Michael Parrish wrote: "It has been suggested that Stalin, who remained first and foremost a Georgian throughout his life, somehow became a 'Great Russian' and decided that Jews would make a scapegoat for the ills of the Soviet Union. Others, such as the Polish writer Aleksander Wat (himself a victim), claim that Stalin was not an antisemite by nature, but the pro-Americanism of Soviet Jews forced him to follow a deliberate policy of antisemitism. Wat's views are, however, colored by the fact that Stalin, for obvious reasons, at first depended on Jewish Communists to help carry out his post-war policies in Poland. I believe a better explanation was Stalin's sense of envy, which consumed him throughout his life. He also found in Jews a convenient target. By late 1930, Stalin, as [his daughter's] memoirs indicate, was suffering from a full-blown case of antisemitism."[67]

In Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews, historian Albert S. Lindemann wrote: "Determining Stalin's real attitude to Jews is difficult. Not only did he repeatedly speak out against anti-Semitism but both his son and daughter married Jews, and several of his closest and most devoted lieutenants from the late 1920s through the 1930s were of Jewish origin, for example Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, Maxim Litvinov, and the notorious head of the secret police, Genrikh Yagoda. There were not so many Jews allied with Stalin on the party's right as there were allied with Trotsky on the left, but the importance of men like Kaganovich, Litvinov, and Yagoda makes it hard to believe that Stalin harbored a categorical hatred of all Jews, as a race, in the way that Hitler did. Scholars as diverse in their opinions as Isaac Deutscher and Robert Conquest have denied that anything as crude and dogmatic as Nazi-style anti-Semitism motivated Stalin. It may be enough simply to note that Stalin was a man of towering hatreds, corrosive suspicions, and impenetrable duplicity. He saw enemies everywhere, and it just so happened that many of his enemies—virtually all his enemies—were Jews, above all, the enemy, Trotsky." Lindemann added that "Jews in the party were often verbally adroit, polylingual, and broadly educated—all qualities Stalin lacked. To observe, as his daughter Svetlana has, that 'Stalin did not like Jews,' does not tell us much, since he 'did not like' any group: His hatreds and suspicions knew no limits; even party members from his native Georgia were not exempt. Whether he hated Jews with a special intensity or quality is not clear."[68]

See also

References

  1. ^ Tolstoy, Nikolai (1981). Stalin's Secret War. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. p. 27f.
  2. ^ Johnson, I. O. (2021). Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War. Oxford University Press.
  3. ^ Moorhouse, R. (14 October 2014). The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941. Basic Books.
  4. ^ Vladimir P. Brent, J. & N. (2003). Stalin's Last Crime: The Doctor’s Plot. Harper Collins.
  5. ^ Hornsby, R. (2023). "Chapter 3: Time to talk about Stalin". The Soviet Sixties. Yale University Press.
  6. ^ a b Pinkus, Benjamin (1990). The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 143–144. ISBN 978-0-521-38926-6.
  7. ^ a b Pinkus, Benjamin (1990). The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-521-38926-6.
  8. ^ Lenin, V. I. (1919). "Anti-Jewish Pogroms". Lenin's Collected Works, 4th English Edition. Trans. George Hanna. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 252–253 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/mar/x10.htm Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
  9. ^ Lenin, V. I. "The Question of Nationalities or "Autonomisation". In Lenin Collected Works, Volume 36. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 593–611. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
  10. ^ Lenin, V. I. "'Last Testament' Letters to the Congress". In Lenin Collected Works, Volume 36. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 593–611. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
  11. ^ Dziewanowski, M. K. (2003). Russia in the twentieth century. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-13-097852-3.
  12. ^ Kun, Miklós, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait, Central European University Press, 2003, ISBN 963-9241-19-9, p. 287.
  13. ^ Joseph Stalin. "Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States". Works, Vol. 13, July 1930 – January 1934. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954. p. 30.
  14. ^ Figes, Orlando (2007). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. New York: Metropolitan. pp. 227–315 ISBN 0-312-42803-0.
  15. ^ Baitalsky, Mikhail "Russkii evrei vchera i segodnia", unpublished manuscript. Quoted in Roy Medvedev (1989). Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. Trans. George Shriver. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 563. ISBN 978-0-231-06350-0.
  16. ^ Igolkin, Alexander (2002). "Умение ставить вопросы". "Наш современник" N5. Retrieved 4 February 2011. (in Russian)
  17. ^ Priestland, David (2009). The Red Flag: A History of Communism. New York: Grove Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-8021-1924-7.
  18. ^ Veidlinger, Jeffrey (2000). The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. pp. 10–11. ISBN 978-0-253-33784-9.
  19. ^ Medvedev, Roy. (1989). Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. Trans. George Shriver. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 562. ISBN 978-0-231-06350-0.
  20. ^ Edvard Radzinsky. Stalin (in Russian). Moscow, Vagrius, 1997. ISBN 5-264-00574-5; available online. Translated version: "Stalin", 1996, ISBN 0-385-47397-4 (hardcover), 1997, ISBN 0-385-47954-9 (paperback) Ch. 24
  21. ^ Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev Twilight, Moscow, 2003, ISBN 5-85646-097-9, page 208 (Russian: Яковлев А. Сумерки. Москва: Материк 2003 г.
  22. ^ Herf, Jeffrey (2006), The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, Harvard University Press, p. 56, ISBN 0-674-02175-4
  23. ^ Alastair Kocho-Williams, "The Soviet diplomatic corps and Stalin's purges." Slavonic and East European Review 86.1 (2008): 90-110.
  24. ^ Resis, Albert (2000), "The Fall of Litvinov: Harbinger of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact", Europe-Asia Studies, 52 (1): 35, doi:10.1080/09668130098253, JSTOR 153750, S2CID 153557275
  25. ^ Moss, Walter, A History of Russia: Since 1855, Anthem Press, 2005, ISBN 1-84331-034-1, p. 283.
  26. ^ Etinger, Iakov (1995). "The Doctors' Plot: Stalin's Solution to the Jewish Question". In Yaacov Ro'i, Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 0-7146-4619-9, pp. 103–6.
  27. ^ Rappaport, Helen, Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion, ABC-CLIO, 1999 ISBN 1-57607-084-0, p. 297.
  28. ^ Gennady Коstyrchenko "Stalin's secret policy: Power and Antisemitism"("Тайная политика Сталина. Власть и антисемитизм" Москва, "Международные отношения", 2003)
  29. ^ How Joseph Stalin (Inadvertently) Saved Some Of Poland’s Jews, http://www.ibtimes.com/how-joseph-stalin-inadvertently-saved-some-polands-jews-1099571
  30. ^ a b Weinberg, Robert (1998). Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 72–75. ISBN 978-0-520-20990-9.
  31. ^ Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987) p. 527
  32. ^ UN General Assembly Resolution 181 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  33. ^ Recognition of Israel JSTOR - The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 4, No. 3, July 1948.
  34. ^ Norman Berdichevsky (20 September 2010). "Israel's Allies in 1948; The USSR, Czechoslovakia, American Mainline Churches and the Left".
  35. ^ Robert Conquest. Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Norton, (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 101
  36. ^ Deutch, Mark (6 September 2005). . Moskovskij Komsomolets (in Russian). Archived from the original on 27 May 2007.
  37. ^ Figes, Orlando (2008). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. New York: Picador USA. p. 493. ISBN 978-0-312-42803-7.
  38. ^ Lindemann, Albert S. & Richard S. Levy (2010). Antisemitism: A History. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-19-923503-2.
  39. ^ Veidlinger, Jeffrey (2000). The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 266. ISBN 978-0-253-33784-9
  40. ^ a b Pinkus, Benjamin (1990). The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-0-521-38926-6.
  41. ^ Pinkus, Benjamin (1990). The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-521-38926-6.
  42. ^ Gamaleya, Nikolay. Letter to J. V. Stalin, Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Quoted in Vaksberg, Arkady (2003). Iz ada v ray i obratno: yevreyskiy vopros po Leninu, Stalinu i Solzhenitsynu. Moscow: Olimp. pp. 344–346. ISBN 978-5-7390-1235-7. (in Russian)
  43. ^ Vaksberg, Arkady (2003). Iz ada v ray i obratno: yevreyskiy vopros po Leninu, Stalinu i Solzhenitsynu. Moscow: Olimp. pp. 344–346. ISBN 978-5-7390-1235-7. (in Russian)
  44. ^ Lindemann, Albert S. & Richard S. Levy (2010). Antisemitism: A History. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 187–188. ISBN 978-0-19-923503-2.
  45. ^ Medvedev, Zhores A. & Roy A. Medvedev (2006). The Unknown Stalin. London: I. B. Tauris. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-85043-980-6.
  46. ^ Fast, Howard (1994). Being Red: A Memoir. Armon, New York: M. E. Sharpe. pp. 217–218. ISBN 978-1-56324-499-5.
  47. ^ Medvedev, pp. 238–239
  48. ^ Samson Madiyevsky,"1953 год: ПредстоЯла ли советским евреЯм депортациЯ?"
  49. ^ A Mark Clarfield (2002). "The Soviet "Doctors' Plot"—50 years on". British Medical Journal. 325 (7378): 1487–1489. doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7378.1487. PMC 139050. PMID 12493677.
  50. ^ Brent & Naumov 2003, p. 295.
  51. ^ a b c d Brackman, Roman (2001). The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life. Frank Cass Publishers. p. 388. ISBN 978-0-7146-5050-0.
  52. ^ Brent & Naumov 2003, pp. 47–48, 295.
  53. ^ a b c Eisenstadt, Yaakov, Stalin's Planned Genocide, 22 Adar 5762, March 6, 2002.
  54. ^ Brent & Naumov 2003, pp. 298–300.
  55. ^ Solzhenitzin, Alexander, The Gulag Archipelago, 1973.
  56. ^ Benedikt Sarnov,Our Soviet Newspeak: A Short Encyclopedia of Real Socialism., Moscow: 2002, ISBN 5-85646-059-6 (Наш советский новояз. Маленькая энциклопедия реального социализма.), "Persons of Jewish ethnicity", pages 287–293.
  57. ^ Chris Corin; Terry Fiehn (31 July 2015). AQA A-level History: Tsarist and Communist Russia 1855-1964. Hodder Education. ISBN 978-1-4718-3782-1.
  58. ^ Sheila Fitzpatrick (2015). On Stalin's Team. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. p. 217.
  59. ^ See also: Boris Berezovsky, The Art of Impossible (Falmouth, MA: Terra-USA, 2006), 3 vols, "There was a neighbor called Moroz who used to be married to Stalin's daughter Svetlana Allilueva. Our families spent a lot of time together. Now my daughter Liza has married a son of Svetlana and Moroz, thus giving to me a grandson who is also a great-grandson of Josef Stalin."
  60. ^ a b Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Random House Inc. 2003.
  61. ^ Roberts, Geoffrey (2006). Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 341. ISBN 978-0-300-11204-7.
  62. ^ "То, что Каплер – еврей, раздражало его, кажется, больше всего."
  63. ^ N. Tolstoy, ibib., p. 24.
  64. ^ Sebag-Montefiore, Simon (2005). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Random House. p. 267. ISBN 978-1-4000-7678-9.
  65. ^ Khrushchev, Nikita & Sergei Khrushchev (Ed.) (2006). Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Volume 2. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-271-02861-3
  66. ^ Khrushchev, Nikita & Sergei Khrushchev (Ed.) (2006). Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Volume 2. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-271-02861-3
  67. ^ Parrish, Michael. The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939–1953. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-275-95113-9.
  68. ^ Lindemann, Albert (2000). Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 454. ISBN 978-0-521-79538-8.

Further reading

  • Arkady Vaksberg (1994). Stalin Against The Jews, tr. Antonina Bouis. ISBN 0-679-42207-2
  • Louis Rapoport (1990). Stalin's War Against the Jews. ISBN 0-02-925821-9
  • Emil Draitser (2008). Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin. ISBN 978-0-520-25446-6
  • Korey, William. “The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti-Semitism: An Analysis.” Slavic Review, vol. 31, no. 1, 1972, pp. 111–135. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2494148.
  • Ginsburg, Michael. Reviewed Work: The Jews in the Soviet Union by Solomon M. Schwarz, Alvin Johnson, Syracuse University Press, 1951, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 42, no. 4, 1953, pp. 442–449. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43059911.
  • András Kovács (ed.) Communism’s Jewish Question. Jewish Issues in Communist Archives, 2017, Walter de Gruyter. e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041159-1

External links

joseph, stalin, antisemitism, accusation, that, joseph, stalin, antisemitic, much, discussed, historians, although, part, movement, that, included, jews, rejected, antisemitism, privately, displayed, contemptuous, attitude, toward, jews, various, occasions, th. The accusation that Joseph Stalin was antisemitic is much discussed by historians Although part of a movement that included Jews and rejected antisemitism he privately displayed a contemptuous attitude toward Jews on various occasions that were witnessed by his contemporaries and are documented by historical sources 1 In 1939 he reversed Communist policy and began a cooperation with Nazi Germany that included the removal of high profile Jews from the Kremlin As dictator of the Soviet Union he promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews shortly after World War II especially during the anti cosmopolitan campaign At the time of his death Stalin was planning an even larger campaign against Jews 2 3 4 According to his successor Nikita Khrushchev Stalin was fomenting the doctors plot as a pretext for further anti Jewish repressions 5 Contents 1 Early years 2 1917 to 1930 3 1930s to 1940s 3 1 Stalin s 1931 condemnation of antisemitism 3 2 Establishment of Jewish Autonomous Oblast 3 3 Great Purge 3 4 German Soviet rapprochement and the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact 3 5 Relocation and deportation of Jews during the war 4 After World War II 4 1 Israel 4 2 Purges 4 3 Doctors plot 5 Associates and family 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External linksEarly yearsNo aspect of Stalin s upbringing in Gori Georgia his education at an Orthodox seminary in Tiflis or his political activities up to 1906 stands out as a motive to later antisemitism Interactions with Jews were infrequent and unlikely to concern him as such He began meeting Jews more frequently with the Stockholm Congress including zealous revolutionaries whose competition he might have resented 6 Stalin s earliest antisemitic rhetoric appears in relation to the rivalry between the Bolshevik and Menshevik political factions Jews were active in both groups but more prominent among the Mensheviks Stalin took note of the ethnic proportions represented on each side as seen from a 1907 report on the Congress published in the Bakinsky rabochy Baku Workman which quoted a coarse joke about a small pogrom pogromchik Stalin attributed to then Bolshevik Grigory Aleksinsky Not less interesting is the composition of the congress from the standpoint of nationalities Statistics showed that the majority of the Menshevik faction consists of Jews and this of course without counting the Bundists after which came Georgians and then Russians On the other hand the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik faction consists of Russians after which come Jews not counting of course the Poles and Letts and then Georgians etc For this reason one of the Bolsheviks observed in jest it seems Comrade Aleksinsky that the Mensheviks are a Jewish faction and the Bolsheviks a genuine Russian faction so it would not be a bad idea for us Bolsheviks to arrange a small pogrom in the party 6 1917 to 1930Although the Bolsheviks regarded all religious activity as counter scientific superstition and a remnant of the old pre communist order the new political order established by Lenin s Soviet after the Russian Revolution ran counter to the centuries of antisemitism under the Romanovs The Council of People s Commissars adopted a 1918 decree condemning all antisemitism and calling on the workers and peasants to combat it 7 Lenin continued to speak out against antisemitism 8 Information campaigns against antisemitism were conducted in the Red Army and in the workplaces and a provision forbidding the incitement of propaganda against any ethnicity became part of Soviet law 7 State sponsored institutions of secular Yiddish culture such as the Moscow State Jewish Theater were established in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union during this time as were institutions for other minorities As People s Commissar for Nationalities Stalin was the cabinet member responsible for minority affairs In 1922 Stalin was elected the first ever General Secretary of the party a post not yet regarded as the highest in the Soviet government Lenin began to criticize Stalin shortly thereafter In his December 1922 letters the ailing Lenin whose health left him incapacitated in 1923 1924 criticized Stalin and Dzerzhinsky for their chauvinistic attitude toward the Georgian nation during the Georgian Affair 9 Eventually made public as part of Lenin s Testament which recommended that the party remove Stalin from his post as General Secretary the 1922 letters and the recommendation were both withheld from public circulation by Stalin and his supporters in the party these materials were not published in the Soviet Union until de Stalinization in 1956 10 After the incapacitated Lenin s death on 21 January 1924 the party officially maintained the principle of collective leadership but Stalin soon outmaneuvered his rivals in the Central Committee s Politburo At first collaborating with Jewish and half Jewish Politburo members Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev against Jewish arch rival Leon Trotsky Stalin succeeded in marginalizing Trotsky By 1929 Stalin had also effectively marginalized Zinoviev and Kamenev as well compelling both to submit to his authority The intransigent Trotsky was forced into exile According to Polish historian Marian Kamil Dziewanowski Kamenev was denied the position of Chairman of the Soviet Union on Stalin s suggestion due to his Jewish origins Stalin favoured Alexei Rykov and placed him in the position due to his Russian peasant background 11 When Boris Bazhanov Stalin s personal secretary who had defected to France in 1928 produced a memoir critical of Stalin in 1930 he alleged that Stalin made crude antisemitic outbursts even before Lenin s death 12 1930s to 1940sStalin s 1931 condemnation of antisemitism On 12 January 1931 Stalin gave the following answer to an inquiry on the subject of the Soviet attitude toward antisemitism from the Jewish News Agency in the United States National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism Anti semitism as an extreme form of racial chauvinism is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism Anti semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism Anti semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle Hence Communists as consistent internationalists cannot but be irreconcilable sworn enemies of anti semitism In the U S S R anti semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system Under U S S R law active anti semites are liable to the death penalty 13 Establishment of Jewish Autonomous Oblast Main article Jewish Autonomous Oblast To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin s nationality policy an alternative to the Land of Israel was established with the help of Komzet and OZET in 1928 The Jewish Autonomous Oblast with the center in Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East was to become a Soviet Zion Yiddish rather than reactionary Hebrew would be the national language and proletarian socialist literature and arts would replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign the Jewish population there never reached 30 as of 2003 it was only about 1 2 The experiment ground to a halt in the mid 1930s during Stalin s first campaign of purges as local leaders were not spared during the purges Great Purge Main article Great Purge Stalin s harshest period of mass repression the Great Purge or Great Terror was launched in 1936 1937 and involved the execution of over a half million Soviet citizens accused of treason terrorism and other anti Soviet crimes The campaign of purges prominently targeted Stalin s former opponents and other Old Bolsheviks and included a large scale purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union repression of the kulak peasants Red Army leaders and ordinary citizens accused of conspiring against Stalin s administration 14 Although many of Great Purge victims were ethnic or religious Jews they were not specifically targeted as an ethnic group during this campaign according to Mikhail Baitalsky 15 Gennady Kostyrchenko 16 David Priestland 17 Jeffrey Veidlinger 18 Roy Medvedev 19 and Edvard Radzinsky 20 German Soviet rapprochement and the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact Main article Molotov Ribbentrop Pact During his meeting with Nazi Germany s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop Stalin promised him to get rid of the Jewish domination especially among the intelligentsia 21 After dismissing Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939 22 Stalin immediately directed incoming Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to purge the ministry of Jews to appease Hitler and to signal Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non aggression talks 23 24 25 Antisemitic trends in Stalin s policies were fueled by his struggle against Leon Trotsky and his global base of support 26 27 In the late 1930s 1940s and 1950s far fewer Jews were appointed to positions of power in the state apparatus than previously with a sharp drop in Jewish representation in senior positions evident from around the time of the beginning of the late 1930s rapprochement with Nazi Germany The percentage of Jews in positions of power dropped to 6 in 1938 and to 5 in 1940 28 Relocation and deportation of Jews during the war Following the Soviet invasion of Poland Stalin began a policy of deporting Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and other parts of Siberia Throughout the war similar movements were executed in regions considered vulnerable to Nazi invasion with the various target ethnic groups of the Nazi genocide When these populations reached their destinations work was oftentimes arduous and they were subjected to poor conditions due to lack of resources caused by the war effort 29 After World War IIFurther information Jewish Anti Fascist Committee and Night of the Murdered Poets The experience of the Holocaust which resulted in the murder of approximately six million Jews in Europe under Nazi occupation and left millions more homeless and displaced contributed to growing concern about the situation of the Jewish people worldwide However the trauma breathed new life into the traditional idea of a common Jewish peoplehood and became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist idea of creating a Jewish state in the Middle East The Jewish Autonomous Oblast experienced a revival as the Soviet government sponsored the migration of as many as 10 000 Eastern European Jews to Birobidzhan in 1946 1948 30 In early 1946 the Council of Ministers of the USSR announced a plan to build new infrastructure and Mikhail Kalinin a champion of the Birobidzhan project since the late 1920s stated that he still considered the region to be a Jewish national state that could be revived through creative toil 30 Israel From late 1944 onward Joseph Stalin adopted a pro Zionist foreign policy apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and would speed the decline of British influence in the Middle East 31 Accordingly in November 1947 the Soviet Union together with the other Soviet bloc countries voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine 32 which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel On May 17 1948 three days after Israel declared its independence the Soviet Union became the first state to officially recognize Israel 33 In the 1948 Arab Israeli War the Soviet Union supported Israel with weaponry supplied via Czechoslovakia 34 Nonetheless Stalin began a new purge by repressing his wartime allies the Jewish Anti Fascist Committee In January 1948 Solomon Mikhoels was assassinated on Stalin s personal orders in Minsk His murder was disguised as a hit and run car accident Mikhoels was taken to an MGB dacha and killed along with his non Jewish colleague Golubov Potapov under supervision of Stalin s Deputy Minister of State Security Sergei Ogoltsov Their bodies were then dumped by the side of a road in Minsk 35 36 Despite Stalin s initial willingness to support Israel various historians speculate that antisemitism in the late 1940s and early 1950s was motivated by Stalin s possible perception of Jews as a potential fifth column in light of a pro Western Israel in the Middle East Orlando Figes suggests that After the foundation of Israel in May 1948 and its alignment with the USA in the Cold War the 2 million Soviet Jews who had always remained loyal to the Soviet system were portrayed by the Stalinist regime as a potential fifth column Despite his personal dislike of Jews Stalin had been an early supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine which he had hoped to turn into a Soviet satellite in the Middle East But as the leadership of the emerging state proved hostile to approaches from the Soviet Union Stalin became increasingly afraid of pro Israeli feeling among Soviet Jews His fears intensified as a result of Golda Meir s arrival in Moscow in the autumn of 1948 as the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR On her visit to a Moscow synagogue on Yom Kippur 13 October thousands of people lined the streets many of them shouting Am Yisroel Chai The People of Israel Live a traditional affirmation of national renewal to Jews throughout the world but to Stalin a dangerous sign of bourgeois Jewish nationalism that subverted the authority of the Soviet state 37 Historians Albert S Lindemann and Richard S Levy observe When in October 1948 during the high holy days thousands of Jews rallied around Moscow s central synagogue to honor Golda Meir the first Israeli ambassador the authorities became especially alarmed at the signs of Jewish disaffection 38 Jeffrey Veidlinger writes By October 1948 it was obvious that Mikhoels was by no means the sole advocate of Zionism among Soviet Jews The revival of Jewish cultural expression during the war had fostered a general sense of boldness among the Jewish masses Many Jews remained oblivious to the growing Zhdanovshchina and the threat to Soviet Jews that the brewing campaign against rootless cosmopolitans signaled Indeed official attitudes toward Jewish culture were ambivalent during this period On the surface Jewish culture seemed to be supported by the state public efforts had been made to sustain the Yiddish theater after Mikhoels s death Eynikayt was still publishing on schedule and most important the Soviet Union recognized the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine To most Moscow Jews the state of Soviet Jewry had never been better 39 Purges In November 1948 Soviet authorities launched a campaign to liquidate what was left of Jewish culture The leading members of the Jewish Anti Fascist Committee were arrested They were charged with treason bourgeois nationalism and planning to set up a Jewish republic in Crimea to serve American interests The Museum of Environmental Knowledge of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast established in November 1944 and The Jewish Museum in Vilnius established at the end of the war were closed in 1948 40 The Historical Ethnographic Museum of Georgian Jewry established in 1933 was shut down at the end of 1951 40 In Birobidzhan the various Jewish cultural institutions that had been established under Stalin s earlier policy of support for proletarian Jewish culture in the 1930s were closed between late 1948 and early 1949 These included the Kaganovich Yiddish Theater the Yiddish publishing house the Yiddish newspaper Birobidzhan the library of Yiddish and Hebrew books and the local Jewish schools 41 The same happened to Yiddish theaters all over the Soviet Union beginning with the Odessa Yiddish Theater and including the Moscow State Jewish Theater In early February 1949 the Stalin Prize winning microbiologist Nikolay Gamaleya a pioneer of bacteriology and member of the Academy of Sciences wrote a personal letter to Stalin protesting the growing antisemitism Judging by absolutely indisputable and obvious indications the reappearance of antisemitism is not coming from below not from the masses but is directed from above by someone s invisible hand Antisemitism is coming from some high placed persons who have taken up posts in the leading party organs 42 The ninety year old scientist wrote to Stalin again in mid February again mentioning the growing antisemitism In March Gamaleya died still having received no answer 43 During the night of 12 13 August 1952 remembered as the Night of the Murdered Poets Noch kaznyonnyh poetov thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers of the Soviet Union were executed on the orders of Stalin Among the victims were Peretz Markish David Bergelson and Itzik Fefer In a 1 December 1952 Politburo session Stalin announced Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA They think they are indebted to the Americans Among doctors there are many Jewish nationalists 44 He also quoted Jean Jacques Rousseau s eat the rich in this speech citation needed A notable campaign to quietly remove Jews from positions of authority within the state security services was carried out in 1952 1953 The Russian historians Zhores and Roy Medvedev wrote that according to MVD General Sudoplatov simultaneously all Jews were removed from the leadership of the security services even those in very senior positions In February the anti Jewish expulsions were extended to regional branches of the MGB A secret directive was distributed to all regional directorates of the MGB on 22 February ordering that all Jewish employees of the MGB be dismissed immediately regardless of rank age or service record 45 The outside world was not ignorant of these developments and even the leading members of the Communist Party USA complained about the situation In the memoir Being Red the American writer and prominent Communist Howard Fast recalls a meeting with Soviet writer and World Peace Congress delegate Alexander Fadeyev during this time Fadeyev insisted that There is no anti Semitism in the Soviet Union despite the evidence that at least eight leading Jewish figures in the Red Army and in government had been arrested on what appeared to be trumped up charges Yiddish language newspapers had been suppressed Schools that taught Hebrew had been closed 46 Doctors plot Main article Doctors plot In secondary evidence and memoirs there is a view that the Doctors plot case was intended to trigger mass repressions and deportations of the Jews similar to the population transfer in the Soviet Union of many other ethnic minorities but the plan was not accomplished because of the sudden death of Stalin Zhores Medvedev wrote that there are no documents found in support of the deportation plan 47 and Gennady Kostyrchenko writes the same Nevertheless the question remains open 48 According to Louis Rapoport the genocide was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors and then the following incidents would follow such as attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken A three stage program of genocide would be followed First almost all Soviet Jews would be shipped to camps east of the Urals Second the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another Also the MGB Secret Police would start killing the elites in the camps just as they had killed the Yiddish writers the previous year The final stage would be to get rid of the rest 49 Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin s death in 1953 and there were rumors that they were for Jews 50 A special Deportation Commission to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created 51 52 53 Nikolay Poliakov the secretary of the Deportation Commission stated years later that according to Stalin s initial plan the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953 but the monumental task of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed 51 53 Pure blooded Jews were to be deported first followed by half breeds polukrovki 51 Before his death in March 1953 Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of Doctors plot defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953 and then he would cast himself as the savior of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace 51 54 55 There are further statements that describe some aspects of such a planned deportation 53 Similar purges against Jews were organised in the Eastern Bloc countries such as with the Prague Trials During this time Soviet Jews were dubbed persons of Jewish ethnicity A dean of the Marxism Leninism department at a Soviet university explained the policy to his students One of you asked if our current political campaign can be regarded as antisemitic Comrade Stalin said We hate Nazis not because they are Germans but because they brought enormous suffering to our land Same can be said about the Jews 56 It has also been said that at the time of Stalin s death no Jew in Russia could feel safe 57 Throughout this time the Soviet media avoided overt antisemitism and continued to report the punishment of officials for antisemitic behavior 58 Associates and family nbsp Joseph Stalin with Lazar Kaganovich left Stalin had Jewish in laws and grandchildren 59 Some of Stalin s close associates were also Jews or had Jewish spouses including Lazar Kaganovich Maxim Litvinov and Lev Mekhlis 60 Many of them were purged including Nikolai Yezhov s wife and Polina Zhemchuzhina who was Vyacheslav Molotov s wife and also Bronislava Poskrebysheva 60 Historian Geoffrey Roberts points out that Stalin continued to fete Jewish writers and artists even at the height of the anti Zionist campaign of the early 1950s 61 However when Stalin s young daughter Svetlana fell in love with prominent Soviet filmmaker Alexei Kapler a Jewish man twenty three years her elder Stalin was strongly irritated by the relationship According to Svetlana Stalin was irritated more than anything else by the fact that Kapler was Jewish 62 63 Kapler was sentenced to ten years of hard labor in Gulag on the charges of being an English spy Stalin s daughter later fell in love with Grigori Morozov another Jew and married him Stalin agreed to their marriage after much pleading on Svetlana s part but refused to attend the wedding Stalin s son Yakov also married a Jewish woman Yulia Meltzer and though Stalin disapproved at first he began to grow fond of her Stalin s biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote that Lavrenty Beria s son noted that his father could list Stalin s affairs with Jewish women 64 In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev wrote A hostile attitude toward the Jewish nation was a major shortcoming of Stalin s In his speeches and writings as a leader and theoretician there wasn t even a hint of this God forbid that anyone assert that a statement by him smacked of antisemitism Outwardly everything looked correct and proper But in his inner circle when he had occasion to speak about some Jewish person he always used an emphatically distorted pronunciation This was the way backward people lacking in political consciousness would express themselves in daily life people with a contemptuous attitude toward Jews They would deliberately mangle the Russian language putting on a Jewish accent or imitating certain negative characteristics attributed to Jews Stalin loved to do this and it became one of his characteristic traits 65 Khrushchev further professed that Stalin frequently made antisemitic comments after World War II 66 Analyzing various explanations for Stalin s perceived antisemitism in his book The Lesser Terror Soviet State Security 1939 1953 historian Michael Parrish wrote It has been suggested that Stalin who remained first and foremost a Georgian throughout his life somehow became a Great Russian and decided that Jews would make a scapegoat for the ills of the Soviet Union Others such as the Polish writer Aleksander Wat himself a victim claim that Stalin was not an antisemite by nature but the pro Americanism of Soviet Jews forced him to follow a deliberate policy of antisemitism Wat s views are however colored by the fact that Stalin for obvious reasons at first depended on Jewish Communists to help carry out his post war policies in Poland I believe a better explanation was Stalin s sense of envy which consumed him throughout his life He also found in Jews a convenient target By late 1930 Stalin as his daughter s memoirs indicate was suffering from a full blown case of antisemitism 67 In Esau s Tears Modern Anti Semitism and the Rise of the Jews historian Albert S Lindemann wrote Determining Stalin s real attitude to Jews is difficult Not only did he repeatedly speak out against anti Semitism but both his son and daughter married Jews and several of his closest and most devoted lieutenants from the late 1920s through the 1930s were of Jewish origin for example Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich Maxim Litvinov and the notorious head of the secret police Genrikh Yagoda There were not so many Jews allied with Stalin on the party s right as there were allied with Trotsky on the left but the importance of men like Kaganovich Litvinov and Yagoda makes it hard to believe that Stalin harbored a categorical hatred of all Jews as a race in the way that Hitler did Scholars as diverse in their opinions as Isaac Deutscher and Robert Conquest have denied that anything as crude and dogmatic as Nazi style anti Semitism motivated Stalin It may be enough simply to note that Stalin was a man of towering hatreds corrosive suspicions and impenetrable duplicity He saw enemies everywhere and it just so happened that many of his enemies virtually all his enemies were Jews above all the enemy Trotsky Lindemann added that Jews in the party were often verbally adroit polylingual and broadly educated all qualities Stalin lacked To observe as his daughter Svetlana has that Stalin did not like Jews does not tell us much since he did not like any group His hatreds and suspicions knew no limits even party members from his native Georgia were not exempt Whether he hated Jews with a special intensity or quality is not clear 68 See alsoHistory of the Jews in the Soviet Union The Hitler Book Population transfer in the Soviet Union Soviet Anti Zionism Soviet pro Arab propaganda Antisemitism in the Soviet UnionReferences Tolstoy Nikolai 1981 Stalin s Secret War Holt Rinehart and Winston p 27f Johnson I O 2021 Faustian Bargain The Soviet German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War Oxford University Press Moorhouse R 14 October 2014 The Devils Alliance Hitler s Pact with Stalin 1939 1941 Basic Books Vladimir P Brent J amp N 2003 Stalin s Last Crime The Doctor s Plot Harper Collins Hornsby R 2023 Chapter 3 Time to talk about Stalin The Soviet Sixties Yale University Press a b Pinkus Benjamin 1990 The Jews of the Soviet Union The History of a National Minority Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 143 144 ISBN 978 0 521 38926 6 a b Pinkus Benjamin 1990 The Jews of the Soviet Union The History of a National Minority Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 85 ISBN 978 0 521 38926 6 Lenin V I 1919 Anti Jewish Pogroms Lenin s Collected Works 4th English Edition Trans George Hanna Progress Publishers Moscow 1972 Volume 29 pages 252 253 http www marxists org archive lenin works 1919 mar x10 htm Marxists Internet Archive Retrieved 23 February 2011 Lenin V I The Question of Nationalities or Autonomisation In Lenin Collected Works Volume 36 Moscow Progress Publishers pp 593 611 Marxists Internet Archive Retrieved 23 February 2011 Lenin V I Last Testament Letters to the Congress In Lenin Collected Works Volume 36 Moscow Progress Publishers pp 593 611 Marxists Internet Archive Retrieved 23 February 2011 Dziewanowski M K 2003 Russia in the twentieth century Upper Saddle River N J Prentice Hall p 162 ISBN 978 0 13 097852 3 Kun Miklos Stalin An Unknown Portrait Central European University Press 2003 ISBN 963 9241 19 9 p 287 Joseph Stalin Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States Works Vol 13 July 1930 January 1934 Moscow Foreign Languages Publishing House 1954 p 30 Figes Orlando 2007 The Whisperers Private Life in Stalin s Russia New York Metropolitan pp 227 315 ISBN 0 312 42803 0 Baitalsky Mikhail Russkii evrei vchera i segodnia unpublished manuscript Quoted in Roy Medvedev 1989 Let History Judge The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism Trans George Shriver New York Columbia University Press p 563 ISBN 978 0 231 06350 0 Igolkin Alexander 2002 Umenie stavit voprosy Nash sovremennik N5 Retrieved 4 February 2011 in Russian Priestland David 2009 The Red Flag A History of Communism New York Grove Press p 282 ISBN 978 0 8021 1924 7 Veidlinger Jeffrey 2000 The Moscow State Yiddish Theater Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage Bloomington Indiana Indiana University Press pp 10 11 ISBN 978 0 253 33784 9 Medvedev Roy 1989 Let History Judge The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism Trans George Shriver New York Columbia University Press p 562 ISBN 978 0 231 06350 0 Edvard Radzinsky Stalin in Russian Moscow Vagrius 1997 ISBN 5 264 00574 5 available online Translated version Stalin 1996 ISBN 0 385 47397 4 hardcover 1997 ISBN 0 385 47954 9 paperback Ch 24 Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev Twilight Moscow 2003 ISBN 5 85646 097 9 page 208 Russian Yakovlev A Sumerki Moskva Materik 2003 g Herf Jeffrey 2006 The Jewish Enemy Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust Harvard University Press p 56 ISBN 0 674 02175 4 Alastair Kocho Williams The Soviet diplomatic corps and Stalin s purges Slavonic and East European Review 86 1 2008 90 110 Resis Albert 2000 The Fall of Litvinov Harbinger of the German Soviet Non Aggression Pact Europe Asia Studies 52 1 35 doi 10 1080 09668130098253 JSTOR 153750 S2CID 153557275 Moss Walter A History of Russia Since 1855 Anthem Press 2005 ISBN 1 84331 034 1 p 283 Etinger Iakov 1995 The Doctors Plot Stalin s Solution to the Jewish Question In Yaacov Ro i Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union London Frank Cass ISBN 0 7146 4619 9 pp 103 6 Rappaport Helen Joseph Stalin A Biographical Companion ABC CLIO 1999 ISBN 1 57607 084 0 p 297 Gennady Kostyrchenko Stalin s secret policy Power and Antisemitism Tajnaya politika Stalina Vlast i antisemitizm Moskva Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya 2003 How Joseph Stalin Inadvertently Saved Some Of Poland s Jews http www ibtimes com how joseph stalin inadvertently saved some polands jews 1099571 a b Weinberg Robert 1998 Stalin s Forgotten Zion Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland Berkeley University of California Press pp 72 75 ISBN 978 0 520 20990 9 Paul Johnson A History of the Jews 1987 p 527 UN General Assembly Resolution 181 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Recognition of Israel JSTOR The American Journal of International Law Vol 4 No 3 July 1948 Norman Berdichevsky 20 September 2010 Israel s Allies in 1948 The USSR Czechoslovakia American Mainline Churches and the Left Robert Conquest Reflections on a Ravaged Century Norton 2000 ISBN 0 393 04818 7 page 101 Deutch Mark 6 September 2005 Kak ubivali Mihoelsa Moskovskij Komsomolets in Russian Archived from the original on 27 May 2007 Figes Orlando 2008 The Whisperers Private Life in Stalin s Russia New York Picador USA p 493 ISBN 978 0 312 42803 7 Lindemann Albert S amp Richard S Levy 2010 Antisemitism A History New York Oxford University Press p 187 ISBN 978 0 19 923503 2 Veidlinger Jeffrey 2000 The Moscow State Yiddish Theater Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage Bloomington Indiana Indiana University Press p 266 ISBN 978 0 253 33784 9 a b Pinkus Benjamin 1990 The Jews of the Soviet Union The History of a National Minority Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 205 ISBN 978 0 521 38926 6 Pinkus Benjamin 1990 The Jews of the Soviet Union The History of a National Minority Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 193 ISBN 978 0 521 38926 6 Gamaleya Nikolay Letter to J V Stalin Archive of the President of the Russian Federation Quoted in Vaksberg Arkady 2003 Iz ada v ray i obratno yevreyskiy vopros po Leninu Stalinu i Solzhenitsynu Moscow Olimp pp 344 346 ISBN 978 5 7390 1235 7 in Russian Vaksberg Arkady 2003 Iz ada v ray i obratno yevreyskiy vopros po Leninu Stalinu i Solzhenitsynu Moscow Olimp pp 344 346 ISBN 978 5 7390 1235 7 in Russian Lindemann Albert S amp Richard S Levy 2010 Antisemitism A History New York Oxford University Press pp 187 188 ISBN 978 0 19 923503 2 Medvedev Zhores A amp Roy A Medvedev 2006 The Unknown Stalin London I B Tauris p 43 ISBN 978 1 85043 980 6 Fast Howard 1994 Being Red A Memoir Armon New York M E Sharpe pp 217 218 ISBN 978 1 56324 499 5 Medvedev pp 238 239 Samson Madiyevsky 1953 god PredstoYala li sovetskim evreYam deportaciYa A Mark Clarfield 2002 The Soviet Doctors Plot 50 years on British Medical Journal 325 7378 1487 1489 doi 10 1136 bmj 325 7378 1487 PMC 139050 PMID 12493677 Brent amp Naumov 2003 p 295 a b c d Brackman Roman 2001 The Secret File of Joseph Stalin A Hidden Life Frank Cass Publishers p 388 ISBN 978 0 7146 5050 0 Brent amp Naumov 2003 pp 47 48 295 a b c Eisenstadt Yaakov Stalin s Planned Genocide 22 Adar 5762 March 6 2002 Brent amp Naumov 2003 pp 298 300 Solzhenitzin Alexander The Gulag Archipelago 1973 Benedikt Sarnov Our Soviet Newspeak A Short Encyclopedia of Real Socialism Moscow 2002 ISBN 5 85646 059 6 Nash sovetskij novoyaz Malenkaya enciklopediya realnogo socializma Persons of Jewish ethnicity pages 287 293 Chris Corin Terry Fiehn 31 July 2015 AQA A level History Tsarist and Communist Russia 1855 1964 Hodder Education ISBN 978 1 4718 3782 1 Sheila Fitzpatrick 2015 On Stalin s Team Carlton Melbourne University Press p 217 See also Boris Berezovsky The Art of Impossible Falmouth MA Terra USA 2006 3 vols There was a neighbor called Moroz who used to be married to Stalin s daughter Svetlana Allilueva Our families spent a lot of time together Now my daughter Liza has married a son of Svetlana and Moroz thus giving to me a grandson who is also a great grandson of Josef Stalin a b Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar New York Random House Inc 2003 Roberts Geoffrey 2006 Stalin s Wars From World War to Cold War 1939 1953 New Haven Yale University Press p 341 ISBN 978 0 300 11204 7 To chto Kapler evrej razdrazhalo ego kazhetsya bolshe vsego N Tolstoy ibib p 24 Sebag Montefiore Simon 2005 Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar New York Random House p 267 ISBN 978 1 4000 7678 9 Khrushchev Nikita amp Sergei Khrushchev Ed 2006 Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev Volume 2 University Park Pennsylvania Pennsylvania State University Press p 47 ISBN 978 0 271 02861 3 Khrushchev Nikita amp Sergei Khrushchev Ed 2006 Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev Volume 2 University Park Pennsylvania Pennsylvania State University Press p 50 ISBN 978 0 271 02861 3 Parrish Michael The Lesser Terror Soviet State Security 1939 1953 Westport Connecticut Greenwood Press p 197 ISBN 978 0 275 95113 9 Lindemann Albert 2000 Esau s Tears Modern Anti Semitism and the Rise of the Jews Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 454 ISBN 978 0 521 79538 8 Further readingArkady Vaksberg 1994 Stalin Against The Jews tr Antonina Bouis ISBN 0 679 42207 2 Louis Rapoport 1990 Stalin s War Against the Jews ISBN 0 02 925821 9 Emil Draitser 2008 Shush Growing up Jewish under Stalin ISBN 978 0 520 25446 6 Korey William The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti Semitism An Analysis Slavic Review vol 31 no 1 1972 pp 111 135 JSTOR www jstor org stable 2494148 Ginsburg Michael Reviewed Work The Jews in the Soviet Union by Solomon M Schwarz Alvin Johnson Syracuse University Press 1951 Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society vol 42 no 4 1953 pp 442 449 JSTOR www jstor org stable 43059911 Andras Kovacs ed Communism s Jewish Question Jewish Issues in Communist Archives 2017 Walter de Gruyter e ISBN PDF 978 3 11 041159 1External linksStalin s Secret Pogrom The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti Fascist Committee introduction by Joshua Rubenstein 50th anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets National Coalition Supporting Soviet Jewry 12 August 2002 Letter from President Bush links Seven fold Betrayal The Murder of Soviet Yiddish by Joseph Sherman Unknown History Unheroic Martyrs by Jonathan Tobin in Russian Ne umri Stalin v 1953 godu If Stalin Had Not Died in 1953 by Yoav Karni BBC in Russian language Russian political parties and antisemitism Mircea Rusnac http www banaterra eu romana rusnac mircea un proces stalinist implicand agenti imperialisti 22 evrei si social democrati Central Intelligence Agency Office of Current Intelligence Foreign Broadcasts Attitudes towards Soviet Leaders Anti Semitism 16 April 1952 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Joseph Stalin and antisemitism amp oldid 1221889942, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.