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268 | 52 The Soviet Union Reappraised (1956) Jewish Life In February 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a four-hour speech to the Communist Party Congress detailing crimes committed by Joseph Stalin. This led to the publication of an article in Poland’s Communist Yiddish daily denouncing Soviet anti-Semitism and the suppression of Yiddish culture. The American Yiddish Communist daily Di morgn frayhayt reprinted the article, and a translation soon appeared in Jewish Life, a monthly magazine published under the Yiddish daily’s auspices. Thus began a long, painful process of reevaluation and self-reflection among Jewish Communists. In 1958, Jewish Life reorganized itself as Jewish Currents and moved away from the Communist Party. The wiping out of Soviet Jewish culture, confirmed in the past few months, horrified us. The revelations also impose obligations upon us. Why did this magazine in the past eight years fail to raise questions concerning the shutting down of Jewish cultural institutions in the Soviet Union? Why did we not suspect foul play in the disappearance of leading Soviet Yiddish writers?1 Why did we not detect the anti-Semitism injected in the Prague trial?2 Answers to these questions constitute our form of apology to our readers for having failed them in these important respects. We feel sorrow and resentment—but these are not enough. Understanding and perspective are just as necessary. What is the significance of the injustices against the Jews in the Soviet Union for the continuing fight for peace, which is central for all people? What are the prospects for a revival of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union? To regard these anti-Semitic manifestations in isolation from the evil condition of which they were one expression would be a distortion. For not only The Soviet Union Reappraised | 269 were the crimes committed against Jews. Other nations and nationalities also suffered from the one-man rule that afflicted the Soviet Union for some 20 years. These manifestations, so harmful to the East European countries, were profoundly anti-socialist in character, for they violated socialist principles of democracy and equality. The leaders of the socialist countries are taking steps not only to repair whatever damage can be remedied, but also to avoid recurrence of these evils. Our anguish and anger do not blind us to the efforts made during the past three years to uncover the malignant growth on a state that is advancing the cause of peace and equality of peoples. The disclosures by the socialist countries themselves of anti-national and undemocratic practices are signs of the determination to prevent a recurrence of the evils exposed. But why were we so insensitive to anti-Semitism as to ignore or to deny outright the reports published in the press about measures taken against Jews and Jewish culture in the Soviet Union in the five years before 1953? It is true that no authentic information from any original socialist source was forthcoming. We did know, however, that all Jewish cultural institutions in the Soviet Union outside of Birobidjan3 were closed down after 1948 and that the flow of literature from Soviet Yiddish writers ceased. This should have been enough to arouse insistent questions that should have been expressed and pressed. For such drastic cutting off of cultural expression could not be justified. If, as we privately speculated, some Jewish writers may have violated Soviet law, could this have justified the wiping out of a whole culture? The answer is obviously no. It should have been apparent then and expressed publicly. The reasons why this wasn’t done will be discussed later. Again, why did we not perceive that the campaign against “cosmopolitanism ,” which was directed preponderantly against Jews, was a thinly disguised form of anti-Semitism? Most people suppose that the idea of “cosmopolitanism ” was thought up recently in the Soviet Union. But it was in fact a leading idea of the Russian revolutionary democratic literary critic V. G. Belinsky in the mid-nineteenth century. He polemicized against Russian writers of his time who slavishly looked for inspiration to foreign literature as their model and held their own national literature in contempt. This concept was applied in the Soviet Union during the cold war to polemicize against those who were according to the critics, in their writing, expressing pro-imperialist attitudes in the cold war. Critics of “cosmopolitanism” maintained that such writing became an instrument in the United States’ attempts at world economic and political domination. [3.141.100.120] Project...

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