New Kichko Book Assailed by Congressman and in Washington Star Editorial

A new anti-Semitic book by Ukrainian author Trofim Kichko, published with apparent official sanction in the Soviet Union, was sharply criticized in Congress and by a leading Washington newspaper. The new work, “Judaism and Zionism,” last week was described by the Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry as equal in anti-Semitic slurs to Kichko’s first book, “Judaism Without Embellishment.”

Rep. Thomas M. Pelly, Washington Republican, cited in a House statement Kichko’s new book as an “example of the campaign of hate” against Soviet Jews. Assailing the Soviet Union’s “continued attitude and active discrimination against Soviet Jews,” Rep. Pelly said that there could be no peace in the world “when a powerful nation such as the Soviet Union condones and practices racial hate and seals its borders to those Jews who would seek their freedom by emigrating to Israel.” He called the new Kichko book one containing the anti-Semitic “slanders of the Stalinist era.”

The Washington Star noted that “Judaism Without Embellishment” was disowned by the Soviet Government and ordered withdrawn. The editorial noted that in the Soviet Union books, like tractors, “are the product and instrument of the State.” Approval of the second Kichko book, the Star declared, “gives the official change of heart” on Kichko’s status “a sinister aspect.”

The editorial also saw a link between the Mideast deadlock and approved publication of the new Kichko book. “Kichko sees the State of Israel as embodying what he calls the vengeful and destructive nature of the ‘God of the Jews.'” The editorial added that “as the Middle East hovers on the edge of a new war, as conversations continue about the intervention of the major powers, it is deeply distressing that the Soviet state should see fit to present such tired old travesties of thought as Kichko’s.”