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Soviet Education Commissar Advises Jews to Fuse in Russian Melting Pot

October 12, 1928
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(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The advice of Anatol Lunatcharsky, Soviet Commissar of Education, to the Jews in Soviet Russia is simply to fu## themselves in the melting pot of the union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

In a lecture Lunatcharsky gave last night in Leningrad on the question of anti-Semitism, he contradicted his previous statement that the Soviet Government would permit the establishment of schools with Hebrew as the language of instruction if there were agreement among the Jews on the question.

The “Krasnaya Gazetta,” Leningrad newspaper, reporting the lecture quotes Lunatcharsky as having said: “The solution of the Jewish problem in Russia lies in the fusion of the Jews in the great melting pot of the peoples who inhabit the Soviet Union. Those members of the Jewish bourgeosie who desire to leave Soviet Russia for an Anglo-Jewish state can go there.

“We won’t permit the opening of schools in Hebrew, a dead language. We will combat the relics of the Middle Ages, the Schneersohnovschina (referring to the religious activities of Lubawitsche Rebbe. Schneersohn, who is now in exile in Latvia). Our path is the fusion of all peoples and the opening of brotherly arms to the Jewish proletariat and intelligenzia.” Lunatcharsky declared.

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