The left wingers in the ranks of the Jewish Communists today launched an attack on Diamenstein, Chemerisky and A. Merezhin, three of the best known Jewish Communist leaders. The Yiddish Communist organ of Charkov, the Shtern, accuses them of being nationalists, opportunists and of propagating “Soviet Zionism.”
By “Soviet Zionism,” the Shtern refers to the program of Chemerisky and Merezhin in 1927 to make Bira Bidjan a Jewish land. Diamenstein is attacked for showing sympathy to the various foreign Jewish organizations working to aid the declassed Jews and for saying that they merit attention.
The attack on Merezhin, one of the leaders of the Comzet, the government department for settling the Jews on the land, is particularly bitter. The Shtern charges him of having converted the Comzet into an all Jewish institution and adds that he is carrying on a purely nationalistic policy.
This attack follows the revelation that five other prominent Jewish Communists have been involved in a plot against Joseph Stalin, head of the Communist party. M. Shatzkin, head of the Communist Youth Organization, Ch. Nusinov, V. Kavraisky, M. Halperin and M. Reznik are charged with being aides of Sergei Syrtov, former president of the Council of Peoples Commissars of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, who planned to overthrow Stalin.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
