Workers Non-partisan Conference in Kiev Asks Soviet Government to Prohibit He’chalutz in Russia

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The demand that the He’chalutz, the Palestine Pioneers’ organization in Soviet Russia, which is now legalized by the Soviet authorities, be prohibited, was voiced in a resolution adopted by a conference of non-partisan workers just concluded in Kiev. Six hundred and sixty delegates participated in the conference.

The resolution declares that the “legalized He’chalutz actually represents the Zionist Organization in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and, through its literature, which is prejudicial to the Soviet policy, carries on Zionist propaganda in the entire Union and shielding the Zionist Organization proper. At the time when other counterrevolutionary organizations were annihilated, the awakening Jewish counter-revolutionists gather strength as is seen from the Zionist proclamations. “Considering every form of Zionism, including that of the He’chalutz and even its Socialistic and Communistic groups as dangerous and counter-revolutionary, the conference urges the respective authorities to end the damaging anti-Soviet work by prohibiting the He’chalutz and suspending publication of their periodical.”

Yesterday’s issue of the “Emes,” the Yiddish organ of the Jewish section of the Communist party, acrries an article by Litvakoff in which he declares that not the Hebrew language, but militant Hebraism as a means of anti-Soviet propaganda is persecuted in Russia. The author of the article quotes the decision of the national commissariat of education for July 1919, allowing the Hebrew language to be taught in the upper classes at a special cost to the parents of the pupils. The commissariat also allowed Hebrew courses and groups, in conformity with the sanctioned programs and manuals. Litvakoff declares that the talk of the persecution against Hebrew is nothing but “Zionist insinuation.”