The Communist Party of the United States announced here today that a national conference on the party’s work “among the Jewish people” which is to include a debate on anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, will definitely be held “in the next few months.”
A resolution calling for the convening of such a special meeting on the national level was adopted at the 18th convention of the American Communist Party last summer. Later, there were reports that, due to disagreements inside the party on the question of Soviet anti-Semitism, plans for the conference had been canceled. Today, The Worker, official organ of the CPUSA, announced that the conference will take place.
The Worker revealed at the same time that very sharp differences on the issue of Soviet anti-Semitism had developed inside the party during the behind-the-scenes debate of whether or not to hold the special conference. The newspaper, regretting these divisions, reported that some “comrades” called those who wanted the Soviet-Jewish issue to come to the surface such names as “bourgeois nationalists, ” “national chauvinists” and “anti-Soviet.” Those thus accused retorted with such labels as “national nihilists,” “sectarian” and “irresponsible.”
The “most serious” development, however, according to The Worker, is the fact that some party members, busy throwing rocks at one another, have overlooked the “alarming growth of anti-Semitism in the United States” and have failed to combat the cold war propaganda regarding “alleged Soviet anti-Semitism” which the newspaper attributed to “the State Department and right-wing reaction.”
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.
