B’nai B’rith Accuses Soviet Lecturer of Rampant Anti-semitism

B’nai B’rith has cited the activities of an official Soviet propagandist, a professional public lecturer and writer, who accuses Zionists of being anti-Semites bent on world domination as evidence that “anti-Semitism remains very much a Kremlin political ploy.” David M. Blumberg, B’nai B’rith president, charged Dr. Valery Yemelyanov, an academician and a member of the “Znanie (Knowledge) Society,” with “promoting uninhibited anti-Semitism” in his government-sanctioned lectures and writings.

The Znanie Society conducts public lectures, a popular activity in the Soviet Union. According to a Communist Party journal, some 20 million lectures reached more than a billion persons in a single year.

Blumberg said that Yemelyanov’s career as a lecturer is sponsored by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, giving “an official imprimatur to his rabid anti-Semitism.” Yemelyanov, posing as a “scientific specialist” on Zionism, has described the Zionist movement as possessing “strictly secret frameworks” that include “almost all the presidents and parliaments of the developed capitalist countries, and especially those of the U.S.”

Blumberg said that in “similar absurdities,” Yemelyanov claimed that “80 percent of the economy and 95 percent of the mass media in the capitalist world are Zionist-owned,” that Zionists are the secret owners of foreign oil companies in Arab lands, and that the Torah was the “blackest book” ever written.

PROTEST TO SOVIET AMBASSADOR

Blumberg, who said B’nai B’rith would protest Yemelyanov’s lectures and writings to the Soviet Ambassador, noted that the Russian’s lectures were exposed by the Soviet Jewish underground. Recent Soviet emigres, Blumberg stated; say that lectures “are a powerful force in the Soviet Union, much more believable than the press.” Blumberg also said that Yemelyanov’s propaganda was spotlighted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in an interview published by “Falastin alThawra” (Free Palestine), in Beirut.

In the interview, Yemelyanov claimed that “Russian Zionists” were conducting “anti-Semitic terror designed to provoke Jews to emigrate. Zionism and anti-Semitism are “two sides of the same medal,” he said. Yemelyanov called for a world coalition, led by the Soviets and Arabs to combat Zionism. The struggle would be “extraordinarily bloody.” he predicted. Blumberg said B’nai B’rith would continue to monitor Yemelyanov’s writings and lectures.