JINGOISM IN THE USSR

Schwarz, Soloman

Jingoism in the USSR Anti-Semitic Innuendoes Spice Drive on Cosmopolitans' By Solomon Schwarz A REACTIONARY and antisocial nationalism is today coming into full flower in the Soviet Union....

...This newest flowering of anti-"cosmopolitism" has already resulted m the dissolution of the Jewish AntiFascist Committee and even the closing down of the only Soviet Jewishlanguage newspaper, the Moscow Ei nigkeit...
...And precisely because geniality is profoundly alien to us...
...That is the line...
...At first these "org-conclusions" were draw only in individual cases...
...The first to use it was Culture and Life, in an article devoted to the "machinations of the anti-patriotic group of drama critics" (January 30) Culture and Life, in its listing of "antipatriots," pointed .out that the critic E. Kholodov was really named Meyerovich...
...Ever since Stalin's famous toast to "the Rossi an people" .it a Kremlin I .a liquet "on May 24, 1945 -when he singled out "the Russian people" as the "most outstanding nation among the nations of the Soviet Union" this Great Russian super-chauvinism has become a standard fixture in official Soviet political life...
...Soviet Art...
...This is a terrible slander against the Soviet people, who saved the freedom and independence of Soviet citizens of all nationalities at the cost of untold sacrifices and efforts...
...as the author would have it, 'geniality is not alien to the Russian people.' "This is a libel on the Russian Soviet man...
...Abraham,' which is openly hostile to the Soviet people...
...They drag out the petty cosmopolitan, bourgeoisnationalist idea, which plays into the hands of our enemies, that there exists a so-called 'universal' Jewish literature...
...MORE SINISTER STILL is the fact that anti-Semitism — which never before enjoyed the direct and open encouragement of the Soviet government and Communist party—has now been injected into the fight on "cosmopolitanism...
...Its promoters must still mask themselves and act with caution...
...The Russian people - as opposed to all the many other diverse nationalities of the Soviet Union —-is the most gifted in the entire world...
...12) "exposed" Yakovlev as Holtzman and Melnikov as Melman...
...THE VERY CONCEPT "Jewry" is today viewed as criminal...
...The authors of the glossary take 'ail of Jewish literature' without differentiation as to countries and government systems...
...Kaiakh and Georgian literatures together...
...According to him, it'would seem that Shevichenko was bounded by his intransigeance with enemies and love of his people: Ivan Frankp, whose favorite poet was supposedly Heine, broadened the 'outlook,' and Lessja Ukrainka has brought Ukrainian literature to 'universal humanity.' "This Is complete and ultimate cosmopolitanism...
...we cannot but brand this comment as an attempt to slander the national Soviet character...
...Soviet Art...
...This is not yet an open, fully-organized program of anti-Semitism...
...Kovalchick said: "The cosmopolitan, o b j e c t i v 1 s t views of the authors of this glossary have expressed themselves particularly in the section of Jewish literature and the name* they included in this action...
...On March 6, Komsomolskaya Pravda exposed Yasny-Finkelstein, VictorovZlochevsky and Svetlov-Sheidman...
...The widelyheialded anti-Semitic campaign is only a part of the larger trend to jingoism...
...Bourgeois nationalism and abhorrence of the entire Russian Soviet art have invariably led him to slavish toadying to the West...
...The meeting of the Ukrainian Academy of Science probably rewarded the lecturer with noisy and this time not merely perfunctory applause...
...Jan...
...What is more, any suggestion that world civilization owes something to the creative endeavors of outstanding individuals of all nations is declared to be an expression of "rootless cosmopolitanism" and "slavish subservience to the West...
...And they list Soviet writers alongside the contemporary hucksters of America, Palestine and other countries...
...Dmiterko, recalls (Literary Gazette, March 9) a poem by Savva Golovanivsky...
...A little later, the Literary Gazette (Feb...
...In this poem Golovanivsky promulgates, a frightful, unheard-of libel . against the Soviet people and lies shamelessly that Soviet people—Russians and Ukrainians—turned away indifferently from the old Jew Abraham, who was led by the Germans through the streets of Kiev to his execution...
...But this was before the appearance of the January articles in Pravda and Culture and Life...
...But the turn towards militant nationalism has already created a new political climate in the land of Lenin and Crotsky, and the anti-Semites look into "the future with hope...
...Dmiterko says: "Golovanivsky is the author of the nationalistic poem...
...The purge began with drama critics, then proceeded to literary critics, art scholars, motion pictures, music criticfind musicology, sports writers and cirrus librettists...
...for the first time in the history of our culture, the national transcends itself and becomes the universally human...
...The struggle waged in the Soviet Union during the past two years against this "subservience" has now been carried from a generally ideological level into the area of "organizational conclusions...
...Gurvitch is guilty of "deriding the Russian people, the Russian man, Russian national traditions" (Simonov, in Literary Gazette, March 2...
...In February the press occupied itself by destroying Meyerovich and Holtzman...
...Moreover, the "government and party" are consciously taking steps toward creating the impression among the population that the entire cultural purge is primarily an attempt to rid Soviet criticism of the "anti-patriotic" influence of the Jews...
...inspired by the terrible Jewish tragedy in Kiev in 1941...
...And in the Ukraine, the set retary of the Executive Board of the Union of Ukrainian Soviet writers...
...This was the trial balloon...
...decade turns out to have merely insulted the Russian people: "What conception can A. Gurvitch have of the national character of the Russian Soviet man when he writes that the spectator saw his own reflection and 'experienced the Joy of recognition' in the genial humor and naively trusting optimism of Pogodin's play, which allegedly express the 'national character of the playwright's outlook.' for...
...The drama critic whose voice was hearkened to by the whole Soviet theatre for the past Solomon Schwars, distinguished economist and specialist on Russian affairs, is a member of the GraeXiato Faculty of the New School for Social Research...
...A vile libel...
...Gurvitch...
...12 carried an indignant article by E. Kovalchik on the projected "glossary of...
...Pervomaisky has developed corrupt, cosmopolitan theories, slipping down into the bog of bourgeois humanism...
...By March this proved insufficient...
...On March 9, the Literary Gazette, in an article devoted to Ukrainian affairs, exposed Burlachenko-Berdichevsky, Zhadanov-Lifshitz, Gnn-Kagan, Martich - Finkelstein, Stebun - Katznelson, and Sanov-Smulson...
...Everywhere "rootless cosmopolitans" are being thrown overboard en masse...
...Trauberg and Bleiman called for the same thing, derogating Soviet art, ridiculing the national form of our culture and slavishly eulogizing American plays and films...
...Dmiterko does not strengthen his case when he turns at the same time upon another Ukrainian Jewish poet, Pervomaisky, "who repeats Golovanivsky's slanders against the Soviet people...
...Here is how the Soviet leaders built up a case against the popular Ukrainian poet, Leonid Pervomaiskv...
...delivered at the Jubilee session of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, Pervomaisky said: "Thus the humanism of the Ukrainian literature is broadened and deepened, enhancing Shevtchenko's promeiheanism, his passionate intransigence with enemies and love of his people with the broader understanding of Ivan Franko and the luminous warmth and universal humanity of Lessja Ukrainka...
...LET US TAKE- a closer look at the accusations against the "rootless cosmopolitans": "Altman hates avary thing Russian, everything Soviet...
...This "bourgeois humanism" is actually nothing but "cosmopolitanism,' and "cosmopolitanism" in its turn is according to the Vice-Minister for the USSR film industry, V. Shcherbina: . . the banner of the American imperialist reaction, which seeks to spiritually disarm all peoples, to rob them of their will to struggle, to cast the peoples of the world into slavery of the masters of Wall Street who dream of world dominion...
...The fact is that the massacre of the Jews in Baby Yar in Kiev, in the autumn of 1941, aroused no noticeable reaction on the part of the local population...
...The secretary of the executive board of the Union of Ukrainian Soviet Writers, Dmiterko, replied promptly in the Literary Gazette (March 9): "Pervomaisky gives us here the complete theory of cosmopolitism...
...Of the many persons called "homeless cosmopolitans" and "passportless loafers," probably more than twothirds are Jews...
...Pravda...
...To do this, they have borrowed a widely applied stratagem from the arsenal of universal anti-Semitism...
...Now they are assuming a mass character...
...In a lecture on 'Lessja Ukrainka and Our Time...
...The authors make a rather odd statement: This glossary covers all of Jewish literature.' Contemporary Jewish literature occupies as much space in th* glossary as the Uzbek...
...March 5.) Thus cultural jingoism and intolerance become Stalin's prime weapons in his war against America on the battleground of the Russian mind...
...In the work of Lessja Ukrainka...
...In essence...
...The Literary Gazette of Feb...
...the 2nd edition of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia...

Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 23


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.