Red Paper Opens Drive on Zionism in Soviet Poland; Brands It ‘anti-revolutionary’

Alarmed at the strength of the Zionist movement in Soviet-occupied sections of Poland, the Yiddish Communist newspaper Stern of Kiev today published a long article claiming to expose the “anti-revolutionary face of Zionism.”

Zionism, the paper declares, “has been and remains the agent of imperialism, particularly a loyal agent of British imperialism which uses it for its own purposes.” The article appeals to the Jewish Communists to “open the eyes of our brothers and sisters in liberated West Ukraine and West Byelo-Russia and to explain to them the hideous anti-revolutionary role of the Jewish bourgeois nationalist parties.”

In particular, Stern attacks Vladimir Jabotinsky, head of the New Zionist Organization, whom it accuses of being an agent of Simon Petlura, Ukrainian anti-Semitc leader, in 1921, and reproduces a purported secret document of Petlura’s agent in Prague, Maxim Slavinsky, who is quoted as reporting that he reached an agreement with Jabotinsky to organize a Jewish gendarmerie in the Russian districts under Petlura. The agreement was allegedly signed by Slavinsky, Jabotinsky and Col. J.H. Patterson during the Zionist Congress in Prague in 1921. (The 1921 Zionist Congress was held in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia.)

“This shameless document,” the paper states, “reveals the anti-revolutionary Petlurist role of Zionism.” It accuses “General” Jabotinsky of having organ zed “bandit tutunik” — Zionist detachments to fight against the Red Army.

The paper also refers to Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, as having reached an understanding with the Czarist ministers, particularly Minister of Interior von Plehve. Herzl, the paper declares, was undertaking “to prevail upon Jews to give up the class struggle” and von Plehve was promising to legalize the Zionist movement.