Among the privileged castes in Soviet Russia there is on which, though little known to the outside world, is nevertheless as conspicuous in Russia as the Tcheka and equally hated. This caste consists of the so-called “arbkors” who are the workers and village correspondents of the Soviet press.
These “arbkors” are deeply hated by the peasams and workers because they serve as informers for the Soviet power. Despite the official position which they hold they are constantly abused, persecuted and frequently even beaten by their fellow workers. In a number of instances “arbkors” were actually murdered by workers who suspected them of furnishing treacherous information to the Soviet officials.
According to Lenin, who created the “arbkors” class, these non-professional proletarian journalists were to fulfill an important cultural function in the interests of communism by spreading among the peasants and workmen with whom they labor side by side the communist principles and a daily knowledge of the activities and interests of the laboring class, to establish a more intimate contact between the interests of the workers in each locality and the wider interests of the proletarian class.
But the trouble is that, like most theories of the communists, the “arbkor” idea has turned out in practice as a crippled, perverted thing. The correspondents are for the most part ignorant, uncultured types who misrepresent matters in their reports to the Soviet press, who take every opportunity to inform and “squeal” on their fellow-workers, who are constantly “discovering” counter-revolutionary movements in the factories and on the farms. The most devoted readers of the “arbkor” letters are the members of the Tcheka who never fail to take action on the complaints made by the “arbkors” against their fellow-workers.
In line with the general “arbkors” there are special Jewish “arbkors” whose duty it is to “communize” the Jewish masses.
But the Jewish “arbkors” know that it is very difficult to influence the minds of the Jewish masses in favor of communism both because the Jew, being more intelligent than the rest of the population, has his own opinions and because the majority of Jews belong to the middle class. to whom communistic ideas do not appeal. Hence the Jewish “arbkors” employ the policy of insulting and abusing everything that is held sacred by the Jewish people. They trample on the synagogue, on Zionism, on Jewish traditions and ideals. The occasional affronts offered to religion and Russian national feelings by the Russian “arbkors” are nothing compared to the affronts which the Jewish “arbkors” offer to the Jews.
Most of the Jewish “arbkors” are ignorant, like their Russian confreres; instead of educating themselves they are “educating” others.
To be an “arbkor” one needs to have no qualifications such are generally required of journalists. Any worker can get a job as an “arbkor”.
The Jewish masses know the “arbkors” for what they are, and while they do not, as a rule, use physical violence on the Jewish members of this peculiar class of writers, they despise them heartily and call them simply “informers”.
“If ever the rights of the Jews in America are assailed ## Knights of Columbus will spring to your defense,” declared William D. Cunmingham, formerly Judge of the Court of Claims and one time District Attomey of Ulster County, at a rally of the Young Men’s Club of the Eighth Avenue Temple, Eighth Avenue and Garfield Place, ## N. Y.
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.
