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Factory Antisemitism in Soviet Russia Causing Anxiety to Jewish Communists

May 7, 1931
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Scientific study of the new phases of factory antisemitism manifesting themselves in the Soviet Union, with a view to the adoption of a policy to bring about its complete eradication, is the principal subject under discussion at the third Annual Conference of the Institute for Jewish Culture, Opened to-day at Kiev. Mr. Dimanstein, one of the Jewish Communist leaders, who since the dissolution of the Jewish Communist Sections looks after the Jewish affairs on the Central Executive Committee, urged in speaking of the antisemitic problem that in the Soviet Union antisemitism has neither legal nor Party support, as is the case in Fascist countries, where, he said, entire sections of the population build up their political and economic programmes on the issue of hatred to the Jew. In the Soviet Union, on the contrary, he said, antisemitism is an inheritance from the old regime, with which the Soviet Government is struggling to such an extent that antisemitism to-day is legally placed on the same level as counter-revolution.

The methods employed by the Soviet Government for fighting antisemitism should be given wider attention ahd publicity, he urged, in order that the Communist parties elsewhere might emulate the example of the Soviet Government and use similar methods for combating antisemitism in their own countries. The antisemitic spirit in Russia, he argued, is being fanned by small groups of kulaks and nepmen, and he thought that scientific research into the causes of antisemitism on Soviet soil would be a helpful means of completely discrediting and eliminating antisemitism from Russian life.

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