Sociologist Sees Hopes for Jewish Survival in Russia As ‘very Slender’

Prospects of Jewish survival in the Soviet Union are “very slender,” Prof. Morris Ginsburg declared here in the first Noah Barou Memorial Lecture at University College. Prof. Ginsburg, prominent sociologist and professor at the London School of Economics, said that the factors which, throughout history, have contributed to the preservation of the Jewish people have been so weakened in Russia that they can no longer be counted on to fulfill their function.

There had been dispersion and atomization of the Jewish community in Russia without parallel in Jewish history he declared. Yiddish culture, at first encouraged by the Communists, had proven too weak to withstand the pressure of social and economic forces making for disintegration. The Jews in the Soviet Union continued to be isolated from world Jewry and this, he said, was bound to weaken their attachment to Judaism and the Jewish people. He also pointed out that, as a result of the levelling of the classes, assimilation had affected the masses, instead of being confined to the upper levels of society.

The Barou lectures are organized by the World Jewish Congress in memory of its late chairman.