Moscow Publication Warns Against Anti-semitism; Cites Lenin’s View

For the first time in many years an official organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union appeared with an article sharply warning against anti-Semitism, the New York Times reports today. The report emphasizes that “explicit attacks on anti-Semitism have been absent from internal propaganda themes” in Moscow for quite a time. It then quotes an article which appeared in last month’s issue of “Party Life.” organizational magazine of the Communist Party of the USSR, as declaring:

“While fighting all forms of bourgeois nationalism, the Communist Party turns the attention of workers to the special harm of anti-Semitism. V.I. Lenin, in his speech ‘On the Persecution of Jews in Pogroms… exposed the criminal policy of capitalists, designed to inflame hatred toward Jews in order to divert workers attention from their real enemy–from capital. Shame to accursed Czarism, tormenting and persecuting Jews,’ Lenin said. Shame to those who sow hatred to Jews, who sow hatred to other nations. ‘… The Communist Party has always carried on a relentless struggle against anti-Semitism as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet structure.”

Pointing to the anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish campaigns which had been conducted in Soviet Russia from 1949 to the arrest of Jewish doctors in 1953, the Times says: “The practical impact of the passage in Party Life apparently is to order Soviet Communists to combat anti-Semitism along with similar feelings of hatred of other minority groups in the Soviet Union. Similar discussions in earlier postwar years have normally omitted anti-Semitism and, except for such incidents as the doctors case, the Soviet press has until recently tended to ignore the existence of Jews as Jews in the Soviet Union.”

With regard to the liquidation of all Jewish publications in the Soviet Union and the arrest and exile of many noted Yiddish writers, the Times finds that “some signs have appeared that the Soviet Government has relaxed its hostile attitude toward the Yiddish language.” It reports that a Soviet artist, Isaak Rakitin, has apparently toured the country in a program of the works of the Yiddish writer, Sholom Aleichem, delivering his works both in Russian and in Yiddish. “There are indications that one or more Jews may have been sent abroad to a Soviet diplomatic post thus ending the absence of Jews from such posts, ” the report adds.

The Times also sees a changed Communist attitude toward Soviet Jews in the fact that emigration of a handful of elderly Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel has been permitted during the past several months. “Emigration to Israel from the Communist countries of Eastern Europe has also been resumed on a small scale. Imprisoned Zionist leaders in Czechoslovakia and Rumania have been released in recent weeks, and those released in Rumania, together with other Zionist leaders, are being permitted to go to Israel, “the Times report says.

“The Soviet Government has indicated that there are at least eight Jewish congregations in that country,” the report continues. “The indication was given in the publication–unprecedented in recent years–of a joint statement by eight rabbis protesting against preparations for atomic war. The congregations apparently exist in Moscow Kiev, Odessa, Riga, Kutaissi, Minsk, Vilna, and Kovno. Formerly only Christian and Moslem leaders in the Soviet Union issued such group statements.

“The concern of the Soviet Government that the outside world be informed of the possibilities of Jewish religious life in that country was shown here last month in a statement distributed by the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. Signed by an otherwise unidentified person named ‘Rabinowich,’ the statement stressed that Jews could freely form religious congregations, like members of other faiths, and listed a number of rabbis in the Soviet Union.” the report declares.