Discrimination against Jewish writers in the Soviet Union and the liquidation of Jewish cultural life there evoked a number of “open questions” at a meeting arranged by the Union of Soviet Writers in Moscow, Warsaw newspapers reaching here reported today.
The Moscow meeting was arranged in honor of the delegates to the World Youth Festival which concluded several days ago. About 800 delegates from various countries attended the gathering and were permitted to ask questions, “Why is there not a single Soviet Jewish writer present at this meeting? One of the delegates asked. He pointed out that while writers of other national minorities in the Soviet Union had been invited, no such invitation had been sent by the Union of Soviet Writers to Jewish literary men, as far as he had been able to establish.
This question, which proved quite embarrassing to the organizers of the meeting, inspired other delegates to pose other questions dealing with the liquidation of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. They wanted to know why there was no Jewish publishing house in the USSR where there are so many thousands of Jews, why the only newspaper in the Yiddish language was closed down, and whether the Union of Soviet Writers approved of the existence of a ban on Yiddish culture.
Alexei Surkov, secretary of the Moscow Writers Union, admitted that “it was a mistake” not to have invited Jewish writers to the gathering. “It is too bad,” he continued, “that the Soviet-Yiddish authors have not been asked to participate. The fault lies with the group that carried out the organizational details of the meeting. It did a poor job.”
Implying that not all Jewish writers have been liquidated in the Soviet mass-execution of Jewish intellectuals, Mr. Surkov told the audience: “I can assure you that coups of Jewish writers do exist in Moscow, Kiev and other Soviet cities. They create in Yiddish, and you can meet some of them right here in Moscow and have a talk with them, if you wish. Our Soviet literature is composed of literary works of writer of various nationalities.”
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