A Pogrom of the Spirit

...In a poignant test of glasnost, after days of anxious preparation, a group of Jews dared to break an unwritten but widely understood taboo—they sang Hebrew and Yiddish songs on the Arbat The singing went on undisturbed for several hours...

...Moscow Jews have applied to have a Jewish library...

...On the Moscow subway platform, after the incident on the Arbat, the Jews who had participated were quietly waiting to go home...

...Drowned out by the raucous music, the Jewish group quietly dissolved into the night Ten minutes later, having accomplished their purpose, the other group also split up and drifted away...

...The mini-pogrom that I thought might occur did not...

...Glasnost seems to mean that the pre-revolutionary days, an era permeated with overt anti-Semitism, can now be looked upon not with contempt but with pride, even nostalgia...

...Ethnic loyalties are re-emerging in the Soviet Union, they explained...

...This, too, is glasnost, protesting Jews were told, and we must allow people to voice their thoughts...

...Yet there is also a tremendous upsurge of interest in Judaism among the children of assimilated Soviet Jews This new interest is fueled by the general rise of ethnicity as well as by the influence of refusemks, who have taken advantage of the period since emigration was closed off in 1979 to teach themselves and others Hebrew, Torah and Jewish observance Even some children of parents who had bribed officials to take the word "Jew" off their identity cards are studying Hebrew...

...But what of the Jewish answer to this book' Permission to have a Jewish response printed by the state press was denied While I was in Moscow, the group that had organized the singing on the Arbat— a group that included non-refusemk Jews as well as refusemks—planned a demonstration against anti-Semitism to take place on September 13, requesting permission from the Soviet authorities weeks in advance On September 7, they were turned down and warned that anybody who publicly states that anti-Semitism exists in the Soviet Union can be prosecuted under the legal code that prohibits spreading anti-Soviet propaganda...

...The Arbat or Old Arbat Street is a boulevard closed off to cars, where artists sketch portraits of passersby and people gather at various spots to sing ethnic ballads or rock songs...

...The situation I am describing is one of contradiction on the one hand glasnost presents a picture to the West of greater freedom, but to Soviet Jews it signifies open expression of anti-Semitism and continued repression of attempts to oppose it...

...that it was not printed reflects the fact that a Jewish voicing on the subject of anti-Semitism is beyond the bounds of glasnost as the Soviets currently define it...

...You guessed it—the Jews In the eyes of the newly assertive superpatriots, it was the early Jewish Communists who advised Stalin to do his dastardly deeds...

...In the Soviet Union "Ivrit' connotes "ugly," "dishonorable," "inferior...

...Other Jews would hear of it and another time there might be more participants, more songs...

...Today, given the Soviet Union's new overtures to the West and Soviet sensitivities to the issue, recognition of the existence of anti-Semitism is too great an embarrassment to the Soviets to be permitted...

...what I saw, however, was a pogrom of the spirit This spiritual pogrom loomed large in my thinking as I talked to refusemks in Moscow, Leningrad, and in the Caucasian cities of Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan...

...That evening the newspaper Vechemaya Moskva denounced the organizers as traitors and warned that they might be subject to prison terms for their activities...

...Not only Jews, but Russians, Georgians, Armenians and people of many other Soviet nationalities are probing their ethnic histories in search of their roots Once-dormant groups of superpatriots with ties to the Russian Orthodox church—the groups historically responsible for anti-Semitism—are asserting themselves...

...Glasnost means literally "voicing," speaking out thoughts that were previously repressed, I was told by a Russian linguist...

...Under glasnost, Stalin's murder of masses of Russian peasants and others can be publicly labeled "crimes...

...Soon winter would set in, I was told, and the protection of meandering tourists would be gone from the Arbat...

...For them, the evening was a triumph because it happened...

...During the last half hour, four Russian teenagers appeared on the sidelines pointing, laughing and jeering...

...As I listened to Soviet Jews talk about this problem, I thought of American blacks who, in the 1960s, recognized the impotence that comes from having been forcibly cut off from one's culture...

...Before glasnost, anti-Semitism was widespread among Soviet officials and citizens, although it was against the law and sporadically denounced in the press...

...Ironically, during this period of glasnost, anti-Semitism is being expressed more openly and virulently A spokesman for the anti-Semitic organization of superpatriots known as Pamyat was permitted to publish 50,000 copies of his anti-Semitic book, The Class Essence of Zionism, using the state press...

...Many children of assimilated Soviet Jews react with shame to the word "Ivrit" ("Jew"), stamped on their identity cards...

...Still, I was assured, in many flats in Moscow on a Shabbat evening, "Hava Nagilah" will be sung.— C.A...

...in Leningrad they are asking for a Yiddish and Hebrew language club and Jewish dance group...

...Soviet citizens who oppose the super-patriots challenge them not because of their anti-Semitism, but on other grounds "We have to look to the Western press for any discussion of Russian anti-Semitism," a refusenik leader complained in a letter to Moscow News, the weekly that touts glasnost in every issue The letter was not printed, however...

...Widely disseminated, the book evokes all the traditional images of the age-old Jewish conspiracy libel...

...Perhaps the saddest note in all of this is the realization that many assimilated young Soviet Jews have no weapons against the spiritual pogrom...

...That the writer dared send the letter to Moscow News is itself a sign of glasnost...

...Having been denied access to Judaism, many young Jews are cut off from the source of ethnic pride Having grown up without Jewish prayers, songs, stories, without a consciousness of the events of four millennia of Jewish history, they have no sense of who they are...

...But who was responsible for these crimes...

...Stationing themselves on the fringe of the Jewish group, the accordionist played patriotic Russian music loudly as the group around him belted out lyrics at the top of their lungs...

...It was permitted to happen...

...They were clearly up to no good and I feared an act of violence Finally they moved away, but soon returned with an accordionist who had a crowd following him...