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Creating a Cold War Boogeyman: Aron Vergelis's Political Career
- Jewish Social Studies
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 25, Number 3, Spring/Summer 2020
- pp. 103-129
- 10.2979/jewisocistud.25.3.04
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
In November 1963, Aron Vergelis, editor of the Moscow Yiddish journal Sovetish Heymland (1961–1991), visited the United States for the first time. This was the first American voyage of a Soviet Jewish cultural personality since 1943, when Solomon Mikhoels and the Yiddish poet Itsik Fefer famously toured the United States as leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. As it turned out, this would be the beginning of Vergelis's quarter-century career as a globetrotting Cold War era propagandist. This article analyzes the circumstances by which Vergelis, a figure of modest influence and stature, appeared as a visible figure in the arena of Soviet-Western ideological confrontation.