The Jew in the Soviet Union today is “quite safe provided he behaves as a good Communist, suppresses his emotions about Israel and is prepared to integrate completely with Soviet society,” The Times of London said today in a long review of the Jewish position within the Soviet Union.
The paper declared that the political influence of the Jews in the Soviet Union had “completely disappeared,” although it noted Jews were still prominent in other branches of Soviet life such as nuclear science, literature and sports.
Basically, The Times declared, the Soviet State demands from the Jews unquestioning subservience and support of all its policies and actions.
Communism is anti-Jewish in the sense that it opposes all religions, the paper noted. It is anti-Jewish in the political sense because it follows an anti-Israeli policy, it added, but it is not anti-Jewish on any racial principle. Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, the paper declared, is thus “caught between two fires on these vital issues; he denounces anti-Semitism, but he appears to practice it.” The Soviet leader, The Times added, is “becoming more and more aware of the attachment of many Russian Jews to Israel.”
The article reviewed the history of the Jews since the Russian Revolution and described the “vicious campaign against the Russianized Jewish intellectuals” who were branded as cosmopolitans. It also described the attempts to prevent the learning of Hebrew and the use of the Yiddish language during the cold war years and cited the execution of leading Jewish writers in 1952 in the so-called “doctors’ plot.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
