Richard Crossman, Labor member of Parliament, and authority on Soviet affairs, declared here tonight that “there is a new hope that external pressure, if fairly and diplomatically applied, can achieve for Russian Jewry a status it has not enjoyed since the Russian Revolution.”
Speaking on the BBC Hebrew Service, he said that two recent developments have made Soviet authorities “even more anxious” to silence foreign criticism of their treatment of Russian Jewry. He described these as the sharpening ideological conflict inside the Communist world, and the desire of Soviet Premier Khrushchev for a relaxation of tensions with the West. He stated that these factors, plus the need to buy American wheat and British fertilizer factories, opened the way for external pressures to greatly improve the status of Soviet Jews.
The existence of Israel, he added, makes the hope of assimilating Russian Jewry “purely utopian, ” With Israel in existence, political Zionism has become the ideology of survival for Russian Jews and “the emotional nexus which binds Russian Jews to Zion is stronger than ever, ” He asserted that, therefore, an essential part of the improvement of the status of Soviet Jewry which the West must seek is a simultaneous improvement “in the Soviet attitude toward Israel.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
