1 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 200 Years Together Russo-Jewish History
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Heifetz was arrested, and his wife began looking for a lawyer with a “clearance,” that is, with a permission from the KGB to work on political cases, she “did not find a single Russian” among them as all such lawyers were Jews 50 ).
In 1956, Furtseva, then the First Secretary of Moscow Gorkom (the City’s Party Committee), complained that in some offices Jews constitute more than half of the staff. 51 (I have to note for balance that in those years the presence of Jews in the Soviet apparatus was not detrimental. The Soviet legal machinery was in its essence stubbornly and hardheartedly anti-human, skewed against any man in need, be it a petitioner or just a visitor. So it often happened that the Russian officials in Soviet offices, petrified by their power, looked for any excuse to triumphantly turn away a visitor; in contrast, one could find much more understanding in a Jewish official and resolve an issue in a more humane way). L. Shapiro provides examples of complaints that in the national republics, the Jews were pushed out and displaced from the bureaucratic apparatus by native intelligentsia 52 – yet it was a common and officially-mandated system of preferences in the ethnic republics [to affirm the local cadres], and Russians were displaced just as well. This reminds me of an example from contemporary American life. In 1965, the New York Division of the American Jewish Committee had conducted a four-months-long unofficial interview of more than a thousand top officials in New York City banks. Based on its results, the American Jewish Committee mounted a protest because less than 3% of those surveyed were Jews, though they constituted one quarter of the population of – that is, the Committee demanded proportional representation. Then the chairman of the Association of Banks of New York responded that banks, according to law, do not hire on the basis of “race, creed, color or national origin” and do not keep records of such categories (that would be our accursed “fifth article” *the requirement in the Soviet internal passport - "nationality"]!). (Interestingly, the same American Jewish Committee had conducted a similar study about the ethnic composition of management of the fifty largest U.S. public utility services two years before, and in 1964 it in similar vein it studied industrial enterprises in the Philadelphia region.) 53
Yet let us return to the Soviet Jews. Many Jewish emigrants loudly advertised their former activity in the periodical-publishing and film-making industries back in the USSR. In particular, we learn from a Jewish author that “it was due to his *Syrokomskiy's+ support that all top positions in Literaturnaya Gazeta became occupied by Jews.” 54
grew stronger … and by the second half of the 1960s it already amounted to a developed system of discreditation, humiliation and isolation of the entire people.” 55
assessment? Then from the high spheres inhabited by economic barons there came alarming signals, signals that made the Jews nervous. “To a certain extent, Jewish activity in the Soviet Union concentrated in the specific fields of economy along a characteristic pattern, well-known to Jewish sociologists.” 56 By then, at the end of 1950s, Nikita [Khrushchev] suddenly realized that the key spheres of the Soviet economy are plagued by rampant theft and fraud. 359
“In 1961, an explicitly anti-Semitic campaign was initiated against the ?theft of socialist property.” 57 Beginning in 1961, a number of punitive decrees of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR were passed. The first one dealt with “foreign currency speculations,” another – with bribes, and still another later introduced capital punishment for the aforementioned crimes, at the same time lawlessly applying the death penalty retroactively, for the crimes committed before those decrees were issued (as, for example, the case of J. Rokotov and B . Faybishenko). Executions started in the very first year. During the first nine trials, eleven individuals were sentenced to death – among them were “perhaps, six Jews.” 58 The Jewish Encyclopedia states it more specifically, “In 1961-1964, thirty-nine Jews were executed for economic crimes in the RSFSR and seventy-nine – in Ukraine,” and forty-three Jews in other republics. 59 In these trials, “the vast majority of defendants were Jews.” (The publicity was such that the court reports indicated the names and patronymics of the defendants, which was the normal order of pleadings, yet it was getting “absolutely clear from that that they were Jews.” 60 ) Next, in a large court trial in Frunze in 1962, nineteen out of forty-six defendants were apparently Jewish. “There is no reason to think that this new policy was conceived as a system of anti-Jewish measures. Yet immediately upon enforcement, the new laws acquired distinct anti-Jewish flavor,” - the author of the quote obviously points out to the publication of the full names of defendants, including Jewish ones; other than that, neither the courts, nor the government, nor the media made any generalizations or direct accusations against the Jews. And even when Sovetskaya Kyrgizia wrote that “they occupied different posts, but they were closely linked to each other,” it never clarified the begged question “how were they linked?” The newspaper treated this issue with silence, thus pushing the reader to the thought that the nucleus of the criminal organization was composed of the “closely linked” individuals. Yet “closely linked by” what? By their Jewishness. So the newspaper “emphasized the Jews in this case.” 61 … Yet people can be “closely linked” by any illegal transaction, greed, swindling or fraud. And, amazingly, nobody argued that those individuals could be innocent (though they could have been innocent). Yet to name them was equal to Jew-baiting. Next, in January 1962, came the Vilnius case of speculators in foreign currency. All eight defendants were Jews (during the trial, non-Jewish members of the political establishment involved in the case escaped public naming – a usual Soviet trick). This time, there was an explicit anti-Jewish sentiment from the prosecution: “The deals were struck in a synagogue, and the arguments were settled with the help of wine.” 62
else but rampant anti-Semitism, yet he completely disregards “the tendency of Jews to concentrate their activity in the specific spheres of economy.” Similarly, the entire Western media interpreted this as a brutal campaign against Jews, the humiliation and isolation of the
response from the Soviet leader. 63 However, after that, the Soviet authorities apparently had second thoughts when they handled the Jews. In the West, the official Soviet anti-Semitism began to be referred to as “the most pressing issue” in the USSR (ignoring any more acute issues) and “the most proscribed subject.”
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(Though there were numerous other proscribed issues such as forced collectivization or the surrender of three million Red Army soldiers in the year of 1941 alone, or the murderous nuclear “experimentation” on our own Soviet troops on the Totskoye range in 1954.) Of course, after Stalin’s death, the Communist Party avoided explicit anti-Jewish statements. Perhaps, they practiced incendiary “invitation-only meetings” and “briefings” – that would have been very much in the Soviet style. Solomon Schwartz rightly concludes: “Soviet anti- Jewish policy does not have any sound or rational foundation,” the strangulation of the Jewish cultural life “appears puzzling. How can such bizarre policy be explained?” 64
Still, when all living things in the country were being choked, could one really expect that such vigorous and agile people would escape a similar lot? To that, the Soviet foreign policy agendas of 1960s added their weight: the USSR was designing an anti-Israel campaign. Thus, they came up with a convenient, ambiguous and indefinite term of “anti-Zionism,” which became “a sword of Damocles hanging above the entire Jewish population of the country.” 65
Campaigning against “Zionism” in the press became a sort of impenetrable shield as its obvious anti-Semitic nature became unprovable. Moreover, it sounded menacing and dangerous – “Zionism is the instrument of the American imperialism.” So the “Jews had to prove their loyalty in one way or other, to somehow convince the people around them that they had no connection to their own Jewishness, especially to Zionism.” 66
The feelings of ordinary Jews in the Soviet Union became the feelings of the oppressed as vividly expressed by one of them: “Over the years of persecutions and vilifications, the Jews developed a certain psychological complex of suspicion to any contact coming from non- Jews. In everything they are ready to see implicit or explicit hints on their nationality …. The Jews can never publicly declare their Jewishness, and it is formally accepted that this should be kept silent, as if it was a vice, or a past crime.” 67
night of October 4, in Malakhovka, a settlement “half an hour from Moscow … with 30,000 inhabitants, about 10% of whom are Jews …, the roof of the synagogue caught fire along with … the house of the Jewish cemetery keeper … *and+ the wife of the keeper died in the fire. On the same night, leaflets were scattered and posted across Malakhovka: `Away with the Jews in commerce! … We saved them from the Germans … yet they became arrogant so fast that the Russian people do not understand any longer… who’s living on whose land.´” 68
D. Shturman: some “Jewish philistines developed a hatred toward Israel, believing it to be the generator of anti-Semitism in the Soviet politics. I remember the words of one succesful Jewish teacher: `One good bomb dropped on Israel would make our life much easier.´” 69
Yet that was an ugly exception indeed. In general, the rampant anti-Zionist campaign triggered a “consolidation of the sense of Jewishness in people and the growth of sympathy towards Israel as the outpost of the Jewish nation.” 70
There is yet another explanation of the social situation in those years: yes, under Khrushchev, “fears for their lives had become the things of the past for the Soviet Jews,” but “the foundations of new anti-Semitism had been laid,” as the young generation of political establishment fought for caste privileges, “seeking to occupy the leading positions in arts, 361
science, commerce, finance, etc. There the new Soviet aristocracy encountered Jews, whose share in those fields was traditionally high.” The “social structure of the Jewish population, which was mainly concentrated in the major centers of the country, reminded the ruling elite of their own class structure.” 71
Doubtless, such encounter did take place; it was an epic “crew change” in the Soviet ruling establishment, switching from the Jewish elite to the Russian one. It had clearly resulted in antagonism and I remember those conversations among the Jews during Khrushchev’s era – they were full of not only ridicule, but also of bad insults with the ex-villagers, “muzhiks,” who have infiltrated the establishment. Yet altogether all the various social influences combined with the great prudence of the Soviet authorities led to dramatic alleviation of “prevalence and acuteness of modern Soviet anti-Semitism” by 1965, which became far inferior to what had been observed “during the war and the first post-war years,” and it appears that “a marked attenuation, maybe even a complete dying out of `the percentage quote´ is happening.” 72 Overall, in the 1960s the Jewish worldview was rather positive. This is what we consistently hear from different authors. (Contrast this to what we just read, that “the new anti-Semitism grew in strength in the 1960s.”) The same opinion was expressed again twenty years later – “Khrushchev’s era was one of the most peaceful periods of the Soviet history for the Jews.” 73
Jews who previously did not show much interest in Jewish national problems or Zionism. An important impetus for the awakening of national consciousness among Soviet Jews and for the development of a sense of solidarity with the State of Israel was the Suez Crisis [1956+.” Later, “The International Youth Festival *Moscow, 1957+ became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist movement in the USSR among a certain portion of Soviet Jews … Between the festival and the Six-Day War [1967], Zionist activity in the Soviet Union was gradually expanding. Contacts of Soviet Jews with the Israeli Embassy became more frequent and less dangerous.” Also, “the importance of Jewish Samizdat increased dramatically.” 74
1960s), Soviet Jews were spiritually re-energized; they shook off the fears and distress of the previous age of the “Doctors’ Plot” and the persecution of “cosmopolitan.” It “even became fashionable” in the metropolitan society “to be a Jew”; the Jewish motif entered Samizdat and poetic soirees then so popular among the young. Rimma Kazakova even ventured to declare her Jewish identity from the stage. Yevtushenko quickly caught the air and expressed it in 1961 in his Babi Yar 75 , proclaiming himself a Jew in spirit. His poem (and the courage of Literaturnaya Gazeta) was a literary trumpet call for all of Soviet and world Jewry. Yevtushenko recited his poem during a huge number of poetic soirees, always accompanied by a roar of applause. After a while, Shostakovich, who often ventured into Jewish themes, set Yevtushenko’s poem into his 13th Symphony. Yet its public performance was limited by the authorities. Babi Yar spread among Soviet and foreign Jewries as a reinvigorating and healing blast of air, a truly “revolutionary act … in the development of the social consciousness in the Soviet Union”; “it became the most significant event since the dismissal of the `Doctors’ Plot.´” 76
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In 1964-65 Jewish themes returned into popular literature; take, for example, Summer in Sosnyaki by Anatoliy Rybakov or the diary of Masha Rolnik 77 (“written apparently under heavy influence of Diary of Anne Frank“ 78 ). “After the ousting of Khrushchev from all his posts, the official policy towards Jews was softened somewhat. The struggle against Judaism abated and nearly all restrictions on baking matzah were abolished …. Gradually, the campaign against economic crimes faded away too ….” Yet “the Soviet press unleashed a propaganda campaign against Zionist activities among the Soviet Jews and their connections to the Israeli Embassy.” 79
All these political fluctuations and changes in the Jewish policies in the Soviet Union did not pass unnoticed but served to awaken the Jews. In the 1959 Census, only 21% Jews named Yiddish as their first language (in 1926 -72%). 80
Even in 1970s they used to say that “Russian Jewry, which was *in the past+ the most Jewish Jewry in the world, became the least Jewish.” 81 “The current state of Soviet society is fraught with destruction of Jewish spiritual and intellectual potential.” 82 Or as another author put it: the Jews in the Soviet Union were neither “allowed to assimilate,” nor were they “allowed to be Jews.” 83
In 1966 the official mouthpiece Sovetish Heymland claimed that “even assimilated Russian- speaking Jews still retain their unique character, distinct from that of any other segment of population.” 84 Not to mention the Jews of Odessa, Kiev, and Kharkov, who “sometimes were even snooty about their Jewishness – to the extent that they did not want to befriend a goy.”
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Scientist Leo Tumerman ( already in Israel in 1977) recalls the early Soviet period, when he used to “reject any nationalism.” Yet now, looking back at those years: “I am surprised to notice what I had overlooked then: despite what appeared to be my full assimilation into the Russian life, the entire circle of my close and intimate friends at that time was Jewish.” 86
The sincerity of his statement is certain – the picture is clear. Such things were widespread and I witnessed similar situations quite a few times, and Russians people did not mind such behavior at all. Another Jewish author notes: in the USSR “non-religious Jews of all walks of life hand in hand defended the principle of `racial purity.´” He adds: “Nothing could be more natural. People for whom the Jewishness is just an empty word are very rare, especially among the unassimilated *Jews+.” 87
Natan Sharansky’s testimonial, given shortly after his immigration to Israel, is also typical: “Much of my Jewishness was instilled into me by my family. Although our family was an assimilated one, it nevertheless was Jewish.” “My father, an ordinary Soviet journalist, was so fascinated with the revolutionary ideas of `happiness for all´ and not just for the Jews, that he became an absolutely loyal Soviet citizen.” Yet in 1967 after the Six-Day War and later in 1968 after Czechoslovakia, “I suddenly realized an obvious difference between 363
myself and non-Jews around me … a kind of a sense of the fundamental difference between my Jewish consciousness and the national consciousness of the Russians.” 88
And here is another very thoughtful testimonial (1975): “The efforts spent over the last hundred years by Jewish intellectuals to reincarnate themselves into the Russian national form were truly titanic. Yet it did not give them balance of mind; on the contrary, it rather made them to feel the bitterness of their bi-national existence more acutely.” And “they have an answer to the tragic question of Aleksandr Blok: `My Russia, my life, are we to drudge through life together?´ To that question, to which a Russian as a rule gives an unambiguous answer, a member of Russian-Jewish intelligentsia used to reply (sometimes after self-reflection): `No, not together. For the time being, yes, side by side, but not together´… A duty is no substitute for Motherland.” And so “the Jews felt free from obligations at all sharp turns of Russian history.” 89
dilemma. Yet usually the problem in its entirety is blamed on “anti-Semitism”: “Excluding us from everything genuinely Russian, their anti-Semitism simultaneously barred us from all things Jewish …. Anti-Semitism is terrible not because of what it does to the Jews (by imposing restrictions on them), but because of what it does with the Jews by turning them into neurotic, depressed, stressed, and defective human beings.” 90
reliably cured from such a morbid condition. Jewish identity in the Soviet Union grew stronger as they went through the historical ordeals predestined for Jewry by the 20 th Century. First, it was the Jewish Catastrophe during the Second World War. (Through the efforts of official Soviet muffling and obscuring, Soviet Jewry only comprehended its full scope later.) Another push was given by the campaign against “cosmopolitans” in 1949-1950. Then there was a very serious threat of a massacre by Stalin, eliminated by his timely death. And with Khrushchev’s “thaw” and after it, later in the 1960s, Soviet Jewry quickly awoke spiritually, already sensing its unique identity. During the second half of the 1950s, “the growing sense of bitterness, spread over large segments of Soviet Jewry”, lead to “consolidation of the sense of national solidarity.” 91
were not humanitarians; the most colorful figure among them was Alexander Voronel) begin rebuilding of Jewish national consciousness in Russia.” 92
suddenly broke out and instantly ended in what might have seemed a miraculous victory. |
