On the Gross Accusation of Institutional Antisemitism in the USSR

IntroductionThis is a master post related to a prior response to a question in r/Communism101. In the West, we typically characterize certain governments or systems in lights not truly reflective of the character of its leaders, it’s ideology, or even its people.One of such characterizations holds the belief that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was that it’s government and party created policy and orders that disproportionately targeted its Jewish citizens. The aim of this post is to prove that from 1917-1990, there was not a single point at which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or it’s leaders engaged in antisemitism.Most importantly, I think everyone should take the time to listen to this good Prolespod episode, "Stalin Was a Mensch". Comrade Talia from the Jewish ML podcast "The Minyan" was able to research and debunk the main points of purported antisemitism. If you pair this post with the episode, you'll find I am basically framing the former with the latter, as she does such a good job with explaining the topic. If you are wondering where something is sourced and it isn't hyperlinked, it's from the podcast.Pre-Soviet Treatment of would-be Soviet JewsAcross European Christian societies, since essentially the Roman Empire, antisemitism has plagued the land. Pogroms (massacres of Jews) were frequent across European history. During the Black Plague, Jews were blamed as having been responsible for the deaths and resulted in 300 pogroms which in effect exterminated whole communities of Jews in Europe. Forced conversions, expulsions, and other ways to remove Jews from Europe were typical of European history prior to the end of World War II.Specifically in Tsarist Russia, Jews were banned from learning Russian, limited to speaking only Yiddish. Obviously not knowing Russian in Russia is a system of forced illiteracy, barring Jews from many social and economic opportunities that were afforded to gentiles. The Pale of Settlement was set up, which was where Jews were forced to live isolated. In 1905, 700 pogroms occurred which resulted in tens of thousands of murdered Russian Jews. Below is a quote of a Tsarist prosecutor on the Russian policy towards Jews:We must pursue a policy which would make one-third of the Jews embrace Christianity, will lead to the extinction of another third of the population, and will complete the last third to emigrate.(As an aside, this is exactly the position that Christian Zionists, or Philosemites, make in their support of the State of Isr*el. US evangelicals are the largest Zionist donor base in the country)Leo Tolstoy's Jewish neighbor wrote the following, which absolutely debunks the belief that Soviet, and in this case Russian society, was inherently antisemitic:Tolstoy was indignant at the Jewish pogroms. The Russian people were not to blame for the pogroms, and the Jews knew that.In response to this, the Jewish Labor Bund was founded in 1897. It also was a response to the establishment of the Zionist cause in the same year. The Bund recognized the class character of both these pogroms and Zionism as both products of bourgeois reaction. In the belief of power within the Jewish Diaspora, Bundists believed that the only way towards Jewish liberation was through class struggle, not settling on land that is already inhabited.Returning to Russia, the revolution was being organized. Lenin was also well-aware of the evils of antisemitism at this time. Naturally, Jews were at the frontlines of the revolution, understanding that overthrowing the Tsar and building a socialist society would create the conditions of Jewish liberation.No nationality in Russia is as oppressed and persecuted as the Jews - V.I. Lenin, 1914In the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, one in three members of the Central Party Committee was a part of the Jewish Labor Bund. Jewish students were activists who were present in the Narodnaya Volia attacks against the Tsar, helping plan attacks and assassination attempts on Tsarist officials. From the 1890s up until 1917, Leftist Jewish organizing was finally challenging the antisemitic rule of the Tsar by strategic actions and agitation.A Jewish factory owner in Vilnius explained: “I prefer to hire Christians. The Jews are good workers, but they are capable of organising revolts against the boss, the regime and the Tsar himself”.The Bund in Russia was absorbed by the Communist Party of Russia (and ultimately, the Soviet Union), and many would criticize that this as a betrayal and removal of Jewish autonomy within the revolution. This is not the case, as this false narrative denies the democratic method in which the Bund was dissolved. Jews of the Bund took leadership posts within the Communist party, as they had in the RSDLP. The Communist Party, also, was able to take the evil of antisemitism, and show that in struggling jointly, oppression of ALL kinds is an enemy to ALL workers.1917-1922: Lenin and Soviet "Anti-Antisemitism"When the Bolsheviks took power, there were immediate changes to the antisemitic rule of law that had afflicted Russia. The literacy bans were immediately abolished. The ghettoization of Jews was abolished. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks called for "the destruction of the antisemitic movement at its roots" by banning pogroms as well as persons inciting pogroms. The Bolshevik published hundreds of pamphlets informing workers of the dangers and evils of antisemitism. Lenin recorded his speech on antisemitism, knowing that it would reach a greater audience to even those who were illiterate, and highlighting how important fighting antisemitism was to the Bolsheviks.Lyber Katz, a Soviet Jew and son of Anarchist Moishe Katz, remarks on this age in this interview, calling it "a period of extreme anti-antisemitism."Conversely, the White Army committed a pogrom that led to the murder of tens of thousands of Jews. The White Army propagated antisemitic beliefs and attributed the October Revolution to "Jewish plotting". It almost makes you wonder if anti-communist claims of Soviet antisemitism are projection...Aside from political and social rights, the Bolshevik government invested a lot of resources in Yiddish and Jewish culture. Free secular schools were set up in which lessons were coordinated in Yiddish, however, many Jews wanted to learn Russian because assimilation was preferred. The government-funded the publication of a "Red Haggadah", which was the text typically recited during a Passover Seder but infused with the Marxist ideology of proletarian liberation. In 1919, the Jewish State Theater was established. Here's a quote from Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg's book, "Radical Yiddishland":It is nonetheless difficult to negate the reality of the Jewish cultural rebirth in the USSR in the 1920s, rebirth attested to by the remarkable development of Jewish theatre in this period, by the intensive and non-uniform Yiddish literary production, by the establishment of Jewish schools, etc. What characterises this cultural boom, this mutation, is that it is a direct consequence of real political factors.Lenin also set the foundations of Soviet Jewish Autonomy, but sadly Lenin's health deteriorated and he would pass away in 1924, two years after Stalin had already become General Secretary of the CPSU.1922-1953: Stalin YearsAs the 1920s continued, the Zionist ideology remained among a segment of the European Jewish population. Former bundists decried this, calling out the colonialist nature of stealing Palestinian land. Stalin, in a solution to combatting settler-colonialism in Palestine but providing Jewish autonomy.Birobidzhan, the first Jewish autonomous settlement, was established on March 28, 1928, by Stalin. With a climate similar to the US Midwest, it was a prime location for agricultural work and provided land to Jews without displacing an indigenous population. Also, unlike the Zionist state of Israel, guaranteed the rights of non-Jewish residents. Now, Zionists manufacture a narrative that Stalin just wanted to get Jews out of Western Russia, but many Jews internationally supported the project.+Red+Star+Over+Birobidzhan:+Canadian+Jewish+Communists+and+the+%22Jewish+Autonomous+Region%22+in+the+Soviet+Union.&source=bl&ots=jl5xHoU28H&sig=ACfU3U2NGGwq5Fep9FoWb-a5Iq1yVUHEnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjyhoOZ-dTpAhVSR60KHbMnDEkQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=icor&f=false). The Association of Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union and International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR), raised money to send agricultural supplies to Birobidzhan, as well as funded travel for Jews wishing to immigrate to the Soviet Union. ICOR itself published a report on the ten year anniversary of the founding of Birobidzhan.The Soviet government did not rest satisfied in ringing the death knell of anti-Semitism and every form of racial persecution, but made it its business to secure for all groups the fullest opportunity to use the newly won liberty to their best advantage and for sound development.On August 29th, 1936, the Soviet Government took the opportunity to make public a special statement that the Jewish workers in Birobidzhan had earned the government's complete confidence, and that greater effort would be exerted to develop the Jewish autonomous territory with all possible speed. It ought to be mentioned at this point that sabateurs who have greatly hindered various projects in the Soviet program of development, have not overlooked Birobidzhan either. Here too, there have been Trotskyist criminals who have done a great deal of damage, but who have not succeeded in wrecking the marvelous building of the Jewish autonomous territory, the foundation of which was laid on March 28th, 1928.30,000 Jews migrated to Birobidzhan on their own accord within the first decade, including those not originally from the USSR.Stalin continued the programs which subsidized Yiddish theater and art and encouraged the publication of Yiddish literature and texts by the same degree that Lenin had in prior years. Still, the nonexistence of a single pogrom within the borders of the Soviet Union persisted, while the rest of Europe fell victim to fascism, laying the ideological grounds for the Holocaust.In 1931, the Jewish News Agency, a group of US Jewish journalists, asked of the conditions of Jews in the Soviet Union, and reported Stalin's response, provided here:In answer to your inquiry :National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.Nonetheless, during the Great Purge in 1936, many cultural institutions across the Soviet Union, including but not exclusively Yiddish institutions, were temporarily closed down, only to be rehabilitated after the victory against fascism. At the beginning of the war against Fascist Germany, Joseph Stalin again had this to say:In point of fact the Hitler regime is a copy of that reactionary regime which existed in Russia under tsardom. It is well known that the Hitlerites suppress the rights of the workers, the rights of the intellectuals and the rights of nations as readily as the tsarist regime suppressed them, and that they organize medieval Jewish pogroms as readily as the tsarist regime organized them.The Soviet Union evacuated hundreds of thousands of Jews from Nazi extermination during the Second World War. 313 Red Army Generals were of Jewish background, and countless Soviet Jews enlisted to destroy the antisemitic Nazi regime. While the United States, Great Britain, and countless other allied powers rejected Jewish refugees, the Soviet Union was the ONLY country to open its borders to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Arthur Miller, famous US playwright and a Jewish member of the Communist Party USA, remarked:If it had not been for the Soviet Army there would have been no Jews on earth at all.In another pamphlet by Jewish Life, a progressive New York-based monthly magazine focusing on domestic Jewish affairs had this to say in "Soviet Antisemitism: The Big Lie!":On the basis of this data, which I believe to be conservative, the Russians saved over ten times as many Jews from Nazi extermination as all the rest of the world put together. Let that also sink into your minds my fellow Jews.In the aforementioned podcast, Comrade Talia recalls a recount of Holocaust survivors.I know who saved me from those camps, and it wasn't the Americans. Don't believe what America says, it was the Soviets that saved me, and I will always be grateful for them.After the war, Zionists took advantage of the Holocaust, saying the only way to safety was by immigrating to Palestine. This created a lot of resentment across the Soviet Union, who had lost over 20 million citizens and needed to rebuild but saw Zionist settlers ignore these calls to remain together as a community.In 1948, Stalin made a speech on "rootless cosmopolitanism". Many western organizations point to this as evidence of antisemitism, in which Stalin was utilizing the term as a dog whistle. While there is actually no source of him saying the exact term, he did say the following:Recently, a dangerous tendency seems to be seen in some of the literary works emanating under the pernicious influence of the West and brought about by the subversive activities of the foreign intelligence. Frequently in the pages of Soviet literary journals works are found where Soviet people, builders of communism are shown in pathetic and ludicrous forms. The positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitanism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded. In the theater it seems that Soviet plays are pushed aside by plays from foreign bourgeois authors. The same thing is starting to happen in Soviet films.Now, this was not specific to Soviet Jews, nor was it even specific to Zionists. This was directly in relation to anti-socialist nationalist movements, such as the far-right Ukrainian nationalist movement, and the Polish government-in-exile which were both known antisemitic movements that collaborated in some form with Nazi liquidation of the Jews. In the above speech, I think all reasonable people would agree that the rhetoric is referring to such movements and not Soviet Jewry.Nonetheless, people point to how it was the precursor to two events towards the end of Stalin's time as General Secretary: The Night of the Murdered Poets and the Doctor's Plot. For these, we turn to Grover Furr to help clarify such matters:The Night of the Murdered PoetsThis event is actually not one night, nor were the people killed all specifically poets. Many were associated with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), the organization started by Stalin and Jewish cultural figures to build support in the USSR and the West for a coordinated response to Nazi Germany.The head of the JAFC, Solomon Mikhoels, was killed in a car accident in January 1948. People accuse Stalin of having him murdered and base it on a document that claims this order. Grover Furr debunks these claims in his book, "Blood Lies":Snyder introduces the chapter as follows:"In January 1948, Stalin was killing a Jew. Solomon Mikhoels, the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the director of the Moscow Yiddish Theatre, had been sent to Minsk to judge a play for the Stalin Prize. Once arrived, he was invited to the country house of the head of the Soviet Belarusian state police, Lavrenty Tsanava, who had him murdered, along with an inconvenient witness. Mikhoels's body, crushed by a truck, was left on a quiet street. (339)"This is false. Stalin did not order Mikhoels to be murdered. The documents purporting to "prove" this are crude forgeries. This forgery has been discussed in Russia for over a decade. Iurii Mukhin discussed the evidence of a forgery in Ubiystvo Stalina i Beria (2002). Mukhin has written some absurdities in his day, but his discussion of the "Mikhoels murder documents" is very cogent. Zhores Medvedev, a Soviet dissident with strong anti-Stalin and anticommunist credentials, wrote that he does not believe the story to be true either. Snyder shows no familiarity with this issue whatsoever.Outside of Mikhoels, 13 Jews were arrested during the affair and charged with, armed insurrection, treason, and espionage (it was later revealed they were attempting to form a Jewish ethnostate in Crimea, serving as a US base for espionage on the USSR). Knowing of the arrest of exclusively Jewish individuals, this is obviously an act of antisemitism. However, this wasn't the case. In total, 26 individuals were arrested and charged during the affair, with half not even being Jewish! How does an antisemitic act only include non-Jews? Does that not negate the whole "targetted for their ethnicity" argument?If that isn't convincing, and one believes there is still some ulterior motive done out of the resentment of Soviet Jewry, consider that around half of the winners of the 1948 Stalin Prize were Jewish.The Doctor's PlotA group of doctors (most but again not all of which were Jewish) was plotting to kill several Soviet leaders including Stalin in 1948. While this was rather concerning, an investigation was made, the doctors were arrested, investigated, and those who were have found guilty were convicted.This is typically considered a manufactured story to justify an antisemitic crackdown, yet it's proven that there was a threat to Andrei Zhdanov's life. Grover Furr writesIn fact there was indeed a conspiracy among Zhdanov's doctors to mistreat Zhdanov: to deny that he had suffered not just one heart attack but two recent ones and possibly a third the month before; to ignore the diagnosis of Dr. Timashuk, the cardiologist, and therefore to allow Zhdanov to get out of bed. The direct result of this was Zhdanov's death. Gennady Kostyrchenko quotes from Dr. Vinogradov's note to Beria on March 27, 1953:"All the same, it must be admitted that A.A. Zhdanov did have a heart attack and the denial of this fact by myself, professor Vasilenko and Egorov, and doctors Maiorov and Karpai was a mistake on our part. We had no evil intention in making our diagnosis and our treatment."Again, the KGB responded to threats on the lives of Soviet officers and acted accordingly. There were Jewish doctors, and there were Russian doctors. It does not qualify as an antisemitic attack, however, it didn't stop Khrushchev from lying in his "Secret" speech.Miscellaneous DebunkingsIn 1949, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) claimed that the USSR published an allegedly antisemitic cartoon. Newsweek picked up the story and went so far to claim that the word "Zhid", a slur towards Jews, was written on the suitcase of the man. However, it was learned that Newsweek doctored the image, and left off the entire name, which was referring to Andrei Gide, a French author. The New York Times issued a correction, but it was basically buried a couple of paragraphs into the article.The stickers on the suitcase read:"Сом. У. Могэм" (William Somerset Maugham), "Д. Гриффит" (David Wark Griffith), "Андре Жид" (Andre Gide), "Сартр" (Jean-Paul Sartre), "Липпманн" (Walter Lippmann) and "Андре Мальро" (Andre Malraux)The papers in his backpack read "клевета на российское искусство" ("slander on Russian art") and "клевета на советскую культуру" ("slander on Soviet culture"), the one in the pocket is just "клевета" ("slander" once again). The ink case is labeled "ЯД" ("poison"). The subtitle under "Passportless vagabond" is a quote by XIX century literary critic Vissarion Belinsky: "I confess that I find pathetic and unpleasant [such] calm skeptics, abstract people, passport-less tramps in humanity".The AJC continued their crusade against the USSR, headed by Zionist Louis Blaustein. Blaustein, an oil magnate and fervent anti-communist who had lobbied the US President Harry Truman to recognize Israel in 1948 and intervene in the Korean War. Another goal of his was to start a campaign to manufacture charges of antisemitism within the USSR government.Stalin dies on March 5th, 1953."I know that, after my death, they will heap garbage on my grave, but the winds of history will pitilessly scatter it!" - J.V. Stalin1953-1967: Khruschev and Israeli Further Aggression Towards PalestineOn February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, now General Secretary of the CPSU, releases his so-called "Secret" Speech. He decries Stalin as a fervent antisemite, supplying the charge with many if not all the aforementioned myths above.Another charge of this time is that Soviet Jews were given special passports marking that they were Jews. In the USSR, if you were Jewish you were given the choice between stating what SSR you were from or simply writing "Jewish". This was of course voluntary, and simply a reach.An interesting story is one in which 23 Rabbis from the United States visited the Soviet Union, with the aim to prove that religious persecution in the USSR was a real issue. By the end of their visit, they had celebrated multiple Shabbat services in multiple regions of the Soviet Union.1967-1990: Post-67 and the "Free Soviet Jewry" CampaignUp until 1967, Israel and the USSR remained rather friendly in their relationship. Joseph Stalin had recognized the Zionist state and allowed Czechoslovakia to send Nazi-confiscated arms to Israeli armed forces. Upon Stalin's death, the Israeli Communist Party mourned the loss of their Comrade, and prior had held May Day celebrations honoring Stalin.Among Soviet Jews, Zionism was extremely alienating. The story of Soviet Jews, as we've learned through this thread, is one of collective liberation through class struggle. Millions of Jews in Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia gained rights and opportunities never seen through the October Revolution, so to claim that Israel presented a somehow better reality was utopian to a majority of Soviet Jews.The Six-Day WarAfter the Six-Day War in 1967, whatever segments of the international Left that had still allied itself with Israel virtually diminished. The invasion and occupation of the West Bank illustrated clearly to Marxists worldwide that the Palestinian people were engaged in a decolonial struggle, and that the Israeli government was a settler-colonial project.The Soviet Union had allied itself at this point with the Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan) and supplied them with around 2,000 tanks.The USSR after 1967 presented their position on Zionism as follows:A capitalist movement, dependent on the creation of a colonial ethnostateIsraeli is an anti-communist state and an enemy of socialismIsrael's ruling class pushes for colonial expansionism, furthering militarism and violence in the region and specifically on PalestiniansZionism, as practiced by the State of Israel, is historically paralleled by the implementation of fascism by the German Nazi RegimeOf course, one can see the blowback this position created and led to an explosion of antisemitic claims directed at the USSR. We all witness the same disgusting slandering of individuals who speak out against Zionism and Israel today, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Ilhan Omar, George Galloway, Ilan Pappe, Rashida Tlaib, to name a few. Even Jews who speak out against Israel are labeled "self-hating Jews". This baseless, revolting ad hominem attack is hurled at anyone who seriously challenges the human rights abuses committed by the settler-colonial state of Israel.In 1975, the Soviet Union stood its ground against Israel, by leading the coalition of recently-decolonized and socialist states in passing UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which declared clearly that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." No coincidence was it that US President George H.W. Bush requested the revocation of the resolution only days after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.The Communist Party of Israel, in its theses for its 17th congress, supported the Resolution, claiming:Zionist ideology is reactionary because its point of departure is nationalist, racist. Zionism claims that the solution of the Jewish question, the liberation of the Jews from persecution from anti-Semitism, lies in their leaving the countries in which they live and in their immigration to Israel. Thereby it ignores the capitalist class roots of anti-Semitism adn denies the sole correct and realistic solution, which is the change of regime and the triumph of democracy and socialism."Free Soviet Jewry"After the UNGA Resolution, the Zionist smear campaign was in full force, promoting a campaign to "Free Soviet Jewry". The campaign is likely well known to many US Jewish communities, as it became the cause of many Jewish-American organizations, especially during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, in which the Cold War had once again heated up. Rhetoric reminiscent of Exodus painted the American Moses demanding the Soviet Pharoah "let my people go".But what was the material situation of Jewish Americans in the 1980s?On November 9, 1985, fourteen Jewish-owned shops were vandalized in New York. Kristallnacht 47 years [before] marked the beginning of the Jewish pogroms and death-camp extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany. In 1982, antisemitic attacks exceeded 700 in the United States, including attacks on Jewish organizations and individuals. They were, at the time and still today in many cases, not admitted to certain neighborhoods, clubs, educational establishments and professions. One third of the 175 companies building rental housing in New York did not lease apartments to Jews in 1983. Over 800,000 US Jews live below the official poverty level. 700 business and professional clubs in 46 clubs in 46 states deny membership to Jews. A poll of the Jewish population of Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, MO revealed that most had been victims of antisemitic attacks.The USSR has accused of banning the manufacturing of matzo, the unleavened bread used during the observance of Passover. In reality, the USSR did end the state manufacturing of matzo but encouraged individuals and workers co-operations to produce the bread. The party had felt it was a contradiction to support the separation of state and religion yet produce food for a specific religion. Florence Fox, and American Jew, was one to investigate the many lies about the situation of Soviet Jewry.On our first visit to Moscow in August of 1983, my husband and I visited the Choral Synagogue and wandered into a room where teenagers were learning Hebrew. On coming home, we found that the Los Angeles Times (8/18/83) had fron paged a story about the same Moscow synagogue, stating that "The teaching of Hebrew (in the USSR) is forbidden."During our visit, we asked the rabbi why his government would not allow Jews to have matzohs on Passover. "Come" he said, "I'll show you where we manufacture our matzohs. On Pesach, we have an exchange program with rabbis in Brooklyn and we send matzohs to each other."It was clear that Zionists were seeking a mass emigration from the USSR to Israel. Even those such as Stephen Shenfield who may have subscribed to some parts of the Zionist belief of exceptional Soviet antisemitism had this to say:The work of finding out about the position of Soviet Jews and exerting pressure for imporvement should not be left up to the ZIonists. Zionists are concerned pretty well exclusively with helping people to emigrate, a process which the Soviet authorities have now decided to stop.However, the sad reality is that the large majority of Soviet Jews that were persuaded to emigrate ended up in poverty once they arrived in Israel. In this documentary, the impoverished "Olim", or Soviet Jews living in Israel, live in squalor and in tent housing. At the time of recording, one Olim committed suicide each month due to the lack of dignity and opportunity Israel presented.ConclusionAs Marxist-Leninists, we are familiar with the piles of rubbish the reactionary will heap upon every project of building socialism. As the largest and most notable, the USSR is not an exception.Florence Fox, in her 1983 visit to the USSR recalled a conversation she had with a Soviet Jew.We asked whether anti-Semitism existed in the USSR. "Of course," he answered. "It exists everywhere, especially in your country which permits a KKK and an American Nazi Party. Unfortunately, we cannot extinguish racism totally by illegalizing it. Our constitution states that all preaching of racial and national discrimination, anti-Semitism included, is punishable by law. Some 130 nationalities who were historically at war with one another, now live in total amity, equality and peace, devoid of racism. But there are inevitably lingering vestiges of anti-Semitism in a country emerging from a history of Czarist pogroms. Some Soviet women resented the fact that when World War II ended, many Jewish women whose families had been safely relocated, were able to renew their lives with their menfold, whereas non-Jewish Soviet women lost their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers who died fighting Hitler's legions. Such bitterness is difficult to overcome."This sentiment is worth adopting. While it is absurd to assert that no antisemitism or bigotry occurs in a country of millions, it is even more ridiculous to contend that it is exceptional to one nation of people. Even further, it should be recognized that the USSR's exceptionality lies in its historic antifascist efforts to protect the Jewish people and dozens of other marginalized. ethnic groups.Many of these nauseating vestiges of antisemitism within the United States that I mentioned in the previous segment are still present. The largest mass murder of Jews in recent history occurred in Pittsburgh. Antisemitism is again on the rise, yet Zionists point their fingers to those which support BDS and Palestinian Human Rights. This fascist canard Zionists place not only lets the antisemites and white supremacists enacting this violence off the hook, but it also trivializes the concept of antisemitism as a whole. Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism endangers Jews, by displacing blame. As we now understand the misguided claims of government-enacted antisemitism in the USSR, may we better unpack how the same claims are weaponized to silence opposition to Zionism.​​Further Reading/Citations from The Minyan's Podcast Episode "Stalin Was a Mensch".(Direct hyperlinked citations may not appear below.)Almazoṿ, S. Ten years of Biro-Bidjan, 1928-1938. New York: ICOR. 1938.American Icor Commission for the Study of Biro-Bidjan and Its Colonization. Report. New York: Icor. 1929.Aptheker, Herbert. The fraud of "Soviet anti-semitism". Sydney: Current Book Distributors. 1963.Brossat, Alain, Sylvia Klingberg, and David Fernbach. Revolutionary Yiddishland: a history of Jewish radicalism. 2017.Davies, Dave. “Anti-Semitism and the Soviet Anti-Zionist Campaign.” Australian Left Review no. 76 (1981): 24-30.Furr, Grover. Blood lies: the evidence that every accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is false. New York: Red Star Publishers. 2014.Furr, Grover. Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every "revelation" of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) "crimes" in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, Is Provably False. Kettering, OH: Erythros Press and Media, 2014.Hoffman, Matthew, and Henry Felix Srebrnik. A vanished ideology: essays on the Jewish communist movement in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century. 2016.Kochan, Lionel. The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.Losurdo, Domenico, and Luciano Canfora. Stalin: storia e critica di una leggenda nera. Roma: Carocci. 2015.Mandel, William M. Soviet but Not Russian: The "other" Peoples of the Soviet Union. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1985.Martens, Ludo, and John Plaice. Another view of Stalin. 1st ed. Raleigh, NC: Proles Press. 2018.Miller, Moses. Soviet "Anti-semitism": the big lie. New York: Jewish Life. 1950.Novik, Paul. Jews in the Soviet Union impressions of a two months' visit to the USSR, November-December, 1964. New York: Morning Freiheit. 1965.O'Connor, Tom. The truth about anti-semitism in the Soviet Union: exposing the fraud perpetrated on the American people. New York: American Committee of Jewish Writers, Artists & Scientists. 1949.Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Rabinovich, Solomon. Jews in USSR. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1967.Tartakower, Arieh. "The Jewish Problem in the Soviet Union." Jewish Social Studies 33, no. 4 (1971): 285-306. via /r/communism https://ift.tt/2XfrcQl