Soviet Jewry and Soviet Policy (review)

146 SHOFAR determined to transport Jews to a "new pale of settlement." Indeed, the book's broad claim tends to diminish the unique specificity and particularity of the Nazi holocaust, which linked a racialist ideology with the power of the modern state and sought in the end to eliminate Jewish existence entirely. This reader is struck by the important differences between the two cases. Nonetheless, Stalin's War Against tbejews fills in crucial details about the fate of Soviet Jewry after World War II. It enlightens the reader greatly on the vulnerability of Soviet"Jews in the final Stalin years, and it helps clarify some of the roots of the exodus of Soviet Jews during recent decades. Today, in Gorbachev's Russia, a Solomon Mikhoels Jewish Cultural Center has recently been erected in Moscow. However, amidst reform and repression, the exodus of Soviet Jews sharply increases, carrying with it the offspring of many of the victimized people in this story. Kenneth Waltzer James Madison College Michigan State University Soviet Jewry and Soviet Policy, by Alfred D. Low. New York: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1990. 249 pp. $35.00. Published in 1990, Alfred Low's study focuses on Jewish victimization at the hands of the Soviet government in the seventy-year period since the Revolution of 1917. Through his exploration of the ideological and structural bases upon which anti-Jewish policies have been fashioned in that country, Low concludes that Soviet leaders were most influenced by three distinct factors in their delineation ofJewish policies. First, and most important of aU, the multi-national character of the Soviet empire necessitated the formulation of policies and programs which would have the effect of placating the ethnic and cultural groups without undermining the bases of Soviet power. Second, the ideological hostility inherent in Marxism to religion in general and to Judaism in particular placed all aspects of Jewish life under a cloud of suspicion for many of the revolutionaries who came to power after November 1917. Finally, long-standing antipathies on the part of key Soviet leaders, principally Stalin, also contributed to the shaping of official attitudes and approaches to Jews in Vol. 10, No.3 Spring 1992 147 the U.S.S.R. However, while all three of these factors contributed to the· history of Soviet antisemitism, it is Low's view that it was the linking of Jewish policy to the larger national question which proved to be so detrimental to both the character and quality ofJewish life in the Soviet Union after the Revolution. Low's essays in this study demonstrate the validity of that contention. Adherents ofa world-view that stressed class, Le., international, rather than ethnic or cultural affinities, the Bolsheviks seized control over the centralized Tsarist Empire in order to use it as a base for their intended revolutionary thrust into central and western Europe. However, when their first revolutionary effort failed, the Bolsheviks were forced to take several steps backwards in order to conserve their revolution and to await their next opportunity. Thus, they found themselves in control of a multinational empire in which separatist tendencies had recently been enflamed. Committed to preserving the central character of the state in order to protect the revolution and determined to create an egalitarian society based on a commonly shared ideology, the Bolsheviks were compelled to develop a policy which would extend national rights to the peoples of the empire while at the same time seeking to subvert or reduce considerably those national and cultural differences. In recognizing the Jews as one such nationality, the Soviets incorporated them into this new structure and immediately tied their fate to the capriciousness of those conflicting ideological considerations. Professor Low examines the implementation of these policies as they affected the Jewish community of the state. He describes the manner by which Jewish cultural development was forced to conform to official ideological tenets and reviews the campaign against Zionism in the post-World War II era. Low's assessment leads him to conclude that even with the recent relaxations which have given rise to a variety of new Jewish cultural efforts, the legacy of the past will be too difficult...