Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation don not indicate approval-Editor.] On the Offer for a “Jewish Republic” in Soviet Russia

The statement made by Michael Kalinin, president of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, at the land settlement conference in Moscow, that the road to a Jewish republic in the Soviet Union is open, is discussed by “The Day.”

While expressing satisfaction with the offer of the Soviet president to assist the establishment of the Jewish republic in Russia, the paper voices resentment against his advice to the Jews to abandon Palestine.

“The offer is truly a historical one,” the paper writes- “To create an autonomous Jewish territory in Russia, to form a self-administrative Jewish republic in the realm of the Soviet union, means to create new favorable conditions for the further Jewish development which have not been equaled in the Golus history of the Jews. It means, to give extraordinary opportunities for expression, political, cultural and national, to a considerable part of the Jewish people; it means to put the masses of Russian Jewry in a position where they can be completely equal with all other national groups in the Union of Soviet Republics.

“And even if this is merely an offer in this direction, though it may be quite far from realization, it is nevertheless a historical Jewish happening.

“But Kalinin did not content himself by making an offer to the Jewish people, he undertakes to give us advice, in regard to the attitude of the Jews to Palestine. According to him we must abandon every effort to build our national home in Palestine and concentrate our efforts entirely on the new ‘Jewish fatherland’ in Soviet Russia.

“This advice of Kalinin’s can under no circumstances be accepted by the Jews. We cannot give up Palestine, neither for Kalinin nor even for the new ‘Jewish fatherland.’ For had Kalinin looked at this matter the way it should be looked at, and had he seen a little further beyond the Soviet boundary, he would have perceived that the Jewish republic in Soviet Russia can never become ‘the Jewish fatherland.’ And certainly not the fatherland of the whole Jewish people. Kalinin the peasant, if not Kalinin the president, should have understood that Jews have intelligence, and that they cannot be so easily deluded.

“A Jewish republic for the Jewish masses in Soviet Russia-splendid, but that the whole Jewish people should exchange Palestine for the new ‘Jewish fatherland’ in Soviet Russia, this can be regarded as no more than a “tohes goi’ (a Gentile’s error), no matter how good or wise the Gentile may be, and even though he may hold the office of president.”

“Not from Zion but from Moscow.” is the way the “Freiheit,” Yiddish Communist organ of New York, epitomizes its opinion of Soviet Russia’s offer for a Jewish republic. The “Freiheit” takes occasion to compare Kalinin’s statement with the Balfour Declaration. terming the latter a “paper declaration regarding an imaginary home in the Holy Land.” and characterizes Kalinin’s address as “an earnest, sincere and simple speech, which will remain in the history of the Jewish masses in Soviet Russia and throughout the world.” The “Freiheit” further writes:

“Years have passed. The Balfour Declaration has resulted in a katzenjammer, plus a big collection box. All the guarantees for national minorities have evaporated into thin air. Of the autonomy in Kovno only a Hebrew gymnasium remains. But Jewish culture is blooming and growing, and a new Jewish life is developing and becoming stronger, precisely in the country where Jews did not get a charter or any other scrap of paper as a guarantee for special rights.

“Not in Zion, but in Moscow, burns the torchlight of the final solution to the Jewish problem,” the paper says.