Khrushchev And The Jews
Howe, Irving
Les Juifs Ne Savent Pas S'Orga'niser En Collectivitd. (The Jews Do Not Know How to Organize Themselves Collectively.) So ran the headline over an interview by Nikita Khrushchev to Le...
...But these non-Jewish nationalities are capable of organizing a common existence, and thus it is possible for them to forge lasting national institutions...
...A real Jewish cultural community is no more realizable than a political community...
...Now it is a known fact that no Yiddish publications appeared in 1956...
...The Jewish Communists—the handful that remains in America—have been suffering intensely under the blows of Khrushchev's statements...
...In all ages the Jews have preferred artisan trades: they are tailors, they work in glass or precious stones, they are merchants, pharmacists, cabinetmakers...
...that the entire membership of the Jewish AntiFascist Committee, previously the main Communist political body among the Russian Jews, had been liquidated...
...Wonder of wonders...
...It was written by Levy himself, who was subsequently expelled by the party for expanding his criticism into a book...
...So ran the headline over an interview by Nikita Khrushchev to Le Figaro, a Parisian newspaper, on April 9, 1958...
...don't like collective work, group discipline...
...They * I wish to thank Eugenia Herbert fortranslating the Figaro interview...
...the Yiddish poems written in Halkin's honor were published in Poland and France, but not in Russia...
...If in the days to come the movement begun in East Berlin, Posnan and Budapest spreads, the names of Imre Nagy and his friends will be remembered...
...even they, apparently, could not avoid seeing that Khrushchev's statements come from the traditional storehouse of anti-Semitic fables...
...H.] 111 It would be the sheerest insult to the readers of DISSENT to "discuss" this rubbish...
...The committee in charge was headed by the Rusian poet Sergei Vasiliev, a leader in the anti-Semitic incitement against "rootless cosmopolitans" in 1948-9 who had then written an "anticosmopolitan" poem entitled "Without Whom Is It Good to Live in Russia" (his poem is still being circulated in Russia...
...But by April 1957, so far as statistics for war-time heroism are concerned, the Jews had ceased to exist...
...They never consider themselves sufficiently educated...
...He wanted to mend fences that had to be broken down...
...Because, answers Suslov, the Jews have not requested them...
...Yiddish is not listed —though even "Tat," the language of a Daghestan tribe, is credited with a single item in an edition of 1,000 copies...
...The catch-phrase was: "a society can be judged by its treatment of women...
...VII It is true: the quality of a society can be judged by its treatment of women...
...At the root of this mutilation lies a theory which is partially felt in the [Khrushchev] interview .. . Jews are ostensibly too individualistic, have varied cultural tendencies, dislike collective labor and are against group discipline .. . [But] under very difficult conditions the Jews have showed heroism in building Birobidjan, as they showed heroism DURING THE WAR, in constructing socialism in the Soviet Union .. . The Jewish folk masses showed their ability for organization and collective work IN AMERICA in constructing the union movement with great sacrifices .. . The regrettable interview demon strates the urgency of this ques tion...
...The Jews who in Khrushchev's version are unassim liable cosmopolites, unalterably hostile to "colective work and group discipline," turn out to be, in Suslov's version, so perfectly integrated into Soviet society that they have lost all interest in collective identity...
...the Jews are interested in everything, to go to the roots of everything, discuss everything and end up by having profoundly different opinions...
...The measure of a society is a human measure...
...The progressive Jewish ele ments which value the role of the Soviet Union in the struggle for freedom are awaiting the moment when this question can be solved...
...They are individualists .. A second characteristic: the Jews are in essence intellectuals...
...Socialists had not said that the character of a society can be determined by its production statistics...
...They have always preferred to be dispersed...
...As soon as they can manage it, they want to go to the university...
...The June days of East Berlin were the spark that ignited the October days in Hungary...
...Currently the arrivals and departures continue, but one must acknowledge that the departures predominate more and more .. . If one draws a balance sheet, it must be admitted that Jewish colonization in Birobidjan has been a failure...
...No Jews are listed...
...It was a remarkable gift...
...Emphasis added—I...
...In the memory of the Russian Revolution, which he witnessed, and the Civil War years, in which he participated, he wanted to return to the original meaning of socialism through a series of reforms...
...But in wanting reforms, he became the symbol of a revolution...
...Three hundred and ninety seven persons are missing, what would constitute the third largest nationality grouping, after the Russians and Ukrainians...
...Now very few remain...
...In subsequent years Jews were similarly mentioned in Russian publications...
...but nowhere does the word "Jew" appear...
...Levy confirms the fact that since 1948 there has been no publication of Yiddish or Hebrew books in Russia...
...The book in question, however, lists nothing for Yiddish either in 1913 or in 1956...
...I quote from Khrushchev's interview with Le Figaro*: The USSR was the first country in the world to decide to aid the Jews no longer as individuals but as a people...
...The report which this delegation brought back about the condition of the Jews in Russia and published in the British Communist paper, World News, was amazingly frank...
...In my opinion it is to be found in historic conditions...
...They were enthusiastic, exultant...
...And now...
...Nor was Nagy a revolutionary leader who could articulate the needs and firmly direct the demands of the people...
...IRVING HOWE For Imre Nagy .. . To their memories even their executioners had to pay tribute: they dared not say that the defendants had confessed...
...For reasons of their own, the executioners announced their deed on the fifth anniversary of the revolt of the East Berlin workers, placing it truly in its proper historical context...
...Or so it had always been assumed until, as one of the improvements of the twentieth century, we had come up against people who persist in calling "socialist" a society of which its leading figure, its representative spokesman— Nikita Khrushchev— is a vulgar anti-Semite...
...They arrive there all fire and flame, then one by one they come back...
...they could not convince both the Russian rulers and their own followers that they were the right men to lead their country during a period of transition...
...His report gives a vivid but by now, alas!, all too familiar description of how the Yiddish writers were arrested, taken to camps and finally shot...
...IV In October 1957 a delegation of Brit...
...Nagy and his friends lacked the political skill of a Gomulka...
...There follows a break-down by nationalities —and the total comes to 10,543...
...Staring at this headline, I found myself thinking back, with apparent inconsequence, to a catch-phrase which a few decades ago socialist and Marxist groups frequently used to employ...
...Which totalitarian do you believe...
...It is as if this people did not exist...
...I quote a few passages from the Freiheit: The injustices that were committed against the Jewish people in the last years of the Stalin regime have been only PARTIALLY rectified— in the respect that the work of Yiddish writers are being published in Russian...
...ish Communists, which included Professor Hyman Levy, perhaps the outstanding intellectual with open membership in the British CP, visited the Soviet Union...
...Given integrity and an unwillingness to compromise, the reforms he and his friends proposed had to end in rebellion...
...not a single Yiddish writer was invited to speak...
...he was carried away by it...
...The Jews left en masse for Birobidjan...
...And because he advised the leaders of his party that "in the interest of the people, the country and socialism, let them depend not on bayonets but on the people," he had, finally, to be executed in a Iand of tyrrany...
...In their Yiddish paper, the Morning Freiheit, of April 13, 1958 there appeared a long editorial both rebuking and pleading with Khrushchev...
...In 1913 there was an enormous quantity of Yiddish publication in Russia...
...The land of Birobidjan is as fertile as any that exists...
...But a few observations: a) Why does the fact that the Jews "never consider themselves sufficiently educated" prevent them from establishing a "real Jewish cultural community"— unless, of course, it be their alleged insistence upon going "to the roots of everything" and discussing "everything," admittedly not a mode of behavior calculated to make one popular with the rulers of the Russian state...
...There exists in the USSR less numerous and less initially gifted nationalities than the Jews...
...that among Russian Jews the years from 1948 to 1952 were commonly known as "the black years...
...b) A year ago there appeared a volume, "The Achievements of the Soviet Regime in 40 Years in Figures," issued by the State Publishing House for Statistics in Moscow...
...And this moment cannot come too soon—it has been delayed too long...
...c) In an official Soviet booklet entitled "The National Traditions of the Peoples of the Soviet Union" published by the State Publishing House in Moscow, it is declared that 10,940 soldiers and officers received the order "Hero of the Soviet Union" during the Second World War...
...What is the explanation for this unfortunate phenomenon...
...Some of the material in this article is taken from documents made available by the Theodor Herz1 Foundation and also from two pamphlets published in Yiddish in TelAviv, each entitled "Jewish CommunistsOn the Jewish Question in the Soviet Union...
...c) If they are inherently unsuited to a collectivist society, why not permit the Russian Jews to emigrate to some other country...
...Capitals in original] VI How this question is at present being "solved" can be surmised from the following facts: a) In January 1958, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, the Soviet-Yiddish poet, Samuel Halkin, received a Soviet Order and was guest of honor at a writers' reception in Moscow...
...The 358 pages of the book include statistics and tables about almost every conceivable aspect of Russian life...
...We put it at the disposal of the Jews...
...He did not lead the movement which brought him to power...
...Because, answers Suslov, the vast majority of Jews in Russia have been absorbed into Russian life, a great many of them are party members, they have no interest in preserving cultural distinctiveness, many of them do not even know Yiddish...
...And why not...
...But what is most interesting in Levy's report is his summary of a conversation with Suslov, the neo-Stalinist member of the Russian Politburo...
...BASICALLY the question has remained mutilated in that Jewish culture has NOT been revived, in that cultural INSTITUTIONS and SOCIAL institutions whose destruction began toward the end of the '30s...
...Why, asked the British Communists, are there still no Yiddish newspapers, books and theaters in Russia...
...None of the speakers at the reception for Halkin (who had been arrested in 1948 and was released only in 1955) mentioned Yiddish literature...
...Les Juifs Ne Savent Pas S'Orga'niser En Collectivitd...
...More specifically: On page 294 there is a table which depicts the "Publication of Books in the Different Languages of the Soviet Peoples," giving comparative figures for 1913 and 1956...
...But if you take the building trades or metallurgy you can't find a single Jew to my knowledge...
...They will perhaps be honored most if men learn from their mistakes.—L...
...have not been revived...
...The Jews Do Not Know How to Organize Themselves Collectively...
...But in 1913...
...For this purpose we chose a sparsely populated region in Siberia, north of Manchuria, Birobidjan...
...they had said that the true quality of a society could be discovered in its treatment of women—women who from the beginning of history had suffered injustice and exploitation...
...b) By labeling certain characteristics, particularly intellectual interests, as harmful to collective life, Khrushchev singles out the Jews as the one —the only—major group not fitted for normal life in Russian society...
...In 1944, however, it was announced in Moscow at a meeting of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee that until April 1, 1944 there had been 3,517 recipients of the award of "Hero of the Soviet Union," among whom were more than 100 Jews...
Vol. 5 • July 1958 • No. 3
