A Columbia University expert predicted here today that the Soviet Government would continue to “muddle through” with its present policy toward Russian Jews of oscillating narrowly between improved and repressive local conditions. That policy was described as reflecting a basic contradiction between the Soviet Government’s wish to assimilate its Jews and its insistence on identifying them ethnically in all its dealings with them, a “self-defeating” effort.
The analysis was made by Zvi Gitelman of Columbia University, a member of the research institute on Communist affairs in the university’s school of international affairs. His views were reported in a special issue of Problems of Communism, published by the United States Information Agency, devoted to nationalities and nationalism in the Soviet Union.
The current policy, he added, singles out the Jews as a special national group with potential subversive interests allegedly nurtured by foreign Jewish forces, unacceptable loyalty to Israel, and a religion which, if revived and strengthened, would be antipathetic to Soviet nationalism. Mr. Gitelson, who is also an associate in the Government department of Columbia University, is currently studying the work of the Jewish sections of the Soviet Communist Party from 1917 to 1940.
Noting that the Soviet Government has allowed most of its non-territorial minorities, such as the Germans, to have such cultural facilities as schools, newspapers and social organizations, he added that such privileges have generally been denied to Soviet Jews. By repressing Jewish activities, he declared, the Soviet Government in effect gives the Jews a rallying point and strengthens the Jewish cultural and ethnic fiber. He added that if and when there is a change, it will probably be determined by “the nature and direction of the political evolution of the USSR.” At present, when fundamental decisions as to the future of the Soviet system “are being postponed,” the party is pursuing “the same kind of temporizing policy in regard to Jewish culture and the Jewish people as it is in other areas,” he declared. The policy of “muddling through” may be no more than inconvenient for the regime but “it is tragic for the nearly 3,000,000 Jewish citizens of the USSR.”
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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.
