Brezhnev's Jewish Problem

Korey, William

BREZHNEVS JEWISH PROBLEM WILLIAM KOREY Dr. William Korey is Director of B'nai B'rith International Policy Research and author o/The Soviet Cage published by Viking Press. His "Freedom Trail From...

...Korneyev's other assertions carried a similarly obscene thrust...
...In Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism has been and remains a potent tool in political struggles, whether to seize power or to maintain it...
...Bombs and shells explode in Lebanon—the bankers Lazars and Loeb are counting their profits...
...Practitioner of subversion and espionage, of racism and racial discrimination, of militarism and imperialism, Zionism is declared to be "the Fascism of today...
...Even before the Brezhnev denunciation of anti-Semitism, close students of Soviet propaganda noticed a quantitative reduction of anti-Semitic output in the media...
...Hence it is of special importance to placate them...
...It is quite likely that the Brezhnev remark was motivated primarily by internal considerations...
...the second carried the statements of Nazi Germany's ideologists...
...The business made on blood brings them enormous profits...
...For Zionism, since 1967 and especially since 1971, has become the code word for Jewry, just as "cosmopolitanism" had been the code word during the "Black Years" of Stalin's anti-Semitism, 1948-53...
...that the Talmud "morally corrupts people" through instilling the "spirit" of "extortion...
...The letter has posed the following query: At the beginning of the 1950s, the press carried articles about the Zionist organization "Joint" and its activities on behalf of the enemies of peace...
...Nor is it only from anonymous, subterranean sources that Brezhnev might perceive threats to his authority—threats that mysteriously revolve around the issue of Jews, Zionists and anti-Semitism...
...So much so that the Soviet Communist Party retreated with an historic—and unprecedented—apology...
...Nikita Khrushchev would later reveal in his "secret speech" to the 20th Party Congress how the plot was concocted by Stalin and how torture was used to extract fraudulent confessions...
...We do have other evidence of an intense internal power struggle within the USSR...
...The number of "hate" articles in the press during 1980 was certainly less than during 1979...
...They speculate that "the heir of Brezhnev is likely to become, in essence, Stalin's heir...
...At the same time, Rogov underscored a reference in the Brezhnev speech to the importance of ensuring "the The leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union denounces anti-Semitism during his major policy address to a Party Congress...
...Noting that her documentation was "very thorough," he went on to say that "it will be of use to us...
...This interpretation is strengthened by Brezhnev's repeated references, during the course of his address, to the value of detente and the importance of following the "path .. . which was laid in Helsinki...
...Marxist dissenter Roy Medvedev, whose contacts with Central Committee officials were never totally severed, had warned for some time that the single most important factor generating Zionist impulses among Jews was official anti-Semitism...
...The "enemy" was not merely abroad...
...Courtesy aside, Sazonov's observations were remarkably revealing...
...Since then, the only references to anti-Semitism by high Soviet officials have taken the form of denials...
...Had the "Doctors' Plot" campaign reached its climax, the mass expulsion of Soviet Jews to Siberia and Central Asia would have followed together with executions of the principal "culprits...
...But image-building, however important, is not nearly so central to the Kremlin's interests as its own status and power within the Soviet Union...
...It was signed by an otherwise anonymous "Russian Liberation Organization," and proposed that Zionists could be recognized by their "hairy chest and arms," "shifty eyes" and "hook-like noses...
...Committee requesting her to call Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sazonov, a Committee official...
...The Begun article is formally designed as an answer to a letter that the newspaper is said to have received from a "war veteran...
...Several months before the "Russian Liberation Organization" article was distributed, the Philosophy Institute of the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences produced an anti-Zionist booklet—Zionism in the Chain of Imperialism—written by one of the Soviet Union's most notorious anti-Jewish bigots, Yevgeny S. Yevseev...
...The Council of Europe in Strasbourg has officially documerited the massive hate drive...
...The study, entitled "A Few Pages of Analogy," ran to 87 pages...
...Pravda, April 4, 1964...
...we are concerned about exaggerations in this literature...
...The Soviet writer had acquired the reputation from his book Judaism Without Embellishment, published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in October 1963...
...The Ideological Commission of the Party's Central Committee denounced the Kichko book as carrying "serious mistakes" including "erroneous statements" and illustrations that "may offend the feelings of believers and might be interpreted in a spirit of anti-Semitism...
...And even the chastisement was seen in some quarters as unwarranted...
...As early as Ocotber 2, 1953, it was revealed by a Soviet source— Literaturnaia Gazeta—that Kichko had "compromised himself during the Nazi occupation of Vinnitsa...
...In the course of remarks regarding inter-ethnic tensions within the Soviet Union, remarks that had nothing to do with the "Jewish issue," Brezhnev inserted the following observations: The CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) has fought and will fight resolutely any such phenomena [inter-ethnic tensions] that are alien to the nature of socialism as chauvinism or nationalism, against any nationalistic aberrations such as, let us say, anti-Semitism or Zionism...
...the words are broadcast over the radio, carried in the press, and carefully studied for guidance and implementation in all Party organs...
...A storm of criticism, rare in the annals of international Communism, welled up...
...Kichko linked these features of the Jewish religion to Zionism, which he characterized as the instrument of colonial expansion in the Middle East...
...Duplicating machines are strictly controlled and allocated by the authorities, and their evidently surreptitious use for an attack against Chairman Brezhnev indicates a crack in the totalitarian structure...
...and that synagogue leaders are distinguished by "speculation . .. thievery, deception and debauchery...
...She assembled in three separate but parallel columns statements about the character and culture of Jewry as well as proposals for solving the "Jewish Question...
...Bandits in Afghanistan are poisoning school-children by gasses— and stacks of dollars multiply in the safes of the Lehmans and the Guggenheims...
...The article reflected the rising chauvinist and xenophobic Russian nationalism that has deep roots in the Party and its leadership...
...The appearance of the Begun article on the 26th anniversary of Stalin's death, almost to the exact date, must have triggered powerful—and dangerous—associations...
...Clearly, powerful forces were yet in contention...
...these authors often manage to evade our control...
...Whoever "Ryazanov" was, he did have well-placed protectors...
...On February 23, 1979, exactly two years before the Brezhnev speech, a six-page typescript article filled with anti-Semitic invective was placed in mailboxes throughout Moscow and distributed in Leningrad as well...
...the example is only marginally relevant to the major point of the argument...
...Why, then, introduce it...
...Two perceptive Soviet emigre scholars, Vladimir Solovyev and Elena Klepikova, in the journal Time and ^(published in Israel), argue that a "Russian party" with roots deep in the Communist Party apparatus as well as in the populace now seeks domination, and that their struggle has intensified as Brezhnev's aging infirmities progress...
...That tantalizing disclosure was not further elaborated upon...
...An article in its October 10, 1980 issue (by the notorious hate-peddler Lev Korneyev) is not unusual...
...On June 23, a surprised Okuneva received a postcard from the Centra...
...These same Party officials may have considered that the struggle against extremist anti-Semitism could produce an additional useful bonus...
...The evidence...
...That was 1964...
...Joint" (more precisely, the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) had been singled out in a massive and orchestrated propaganda campaign as the master instrument of World Zionism in a plot to murder all top Soviet leaders...
...In Madrid, during the November-December meetings of the Conference on Security and Cooperation of Europe, there was extensive elaboration of the charges, most notably by the Belgian delegate, Rene Panis...
...This is apparent from an extraordinary and unprecedented discussion between a Soviet Jewish researcher and a key official in the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee...
...It is the sacred duty of the Party to educate the working people in the spirit of Soviet patriotism and socialist internationalism, of a proud feeling of belonging to a single great Soviet motherland...
...The "lobby," it was alleged, functions in the following manner: "They do not allow themselves to be attacked with the excuse that this would bring on accusations of anti-Semitism, negative reactions in world public opinion, and damage to the policy of detente...
...It is precisely the media drive against Zionism that has unleashed and given sanction to the stereotypes, images and formulations of vulgar anti-Semitism...
...The article openly attacks Brezhnev and seven of his associates on the Politburo as "Kremlin Zionists"—to be distinguished from the "faithful sons,\' of Russia on the Politburo, such as Suslov, Romanov, Kirilenko and Kosygin...
...Hence the Brezhnev denunciation is an event most rare, and deserves attention...
...Yevseev criticized Soviet literature, movies and television because "from time to time, people of Jewish origin appear as positive heroes or as supporting heroes...
...In that sense, Sazonov's assertion to Okuneva that he and at least some of his Party colleagues were "concerned" and "were working" on the matter is not without substance and significance...
...thus far, however, it remains an act without serious meaning...
...The Jewish concept of the "Chosen People" was said to be a "racist invention" of the Zionists who "instill enmity and hatred towards all non-Jews...
...Incorporated into Judaism Without Embellishment were a number of crudely drawn cartoons portraying the Jew with hooked nose, uncouth facial and neck features, and wearing traditional religious garb...
...that Judaism is "impregnated" with "greed," the love of money and the spirit of egoism...
...The Soviet's vehement denial of anti-Semitism evoked laughter from the audience...
...Quite...
...The discussion was triggered by a two-year research project undertaken by Ruth Okuneva, a refusenik and former historian and researcher at the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences...
...The episode of the "Doctors' Plot" was so totally discredited and repudiated in official statements at the time that media references to it—and to "Joint"—disappeared...
...What was it that Brezhnev said— and why...
...Sergei Rogov, a prominent Soviet aide, approached B'nai B'rith and several other Jewish organizations in Washington in order to call their specific attention to Brezhnev's language on anti-Semitism...
...One way to ease that pressure was to reduce anti-Semitism...
...The inadequacy of the Brezhnev condemnation was glaringly revealed by an instructive article in the principal journal of Byelorussia, Sovetskaia Byelorussia, on March 6, 1981, only two weeks after the Brezhnev address to the Party Congress...
...But on February 23, 1981, at the 26th Communist Congress, that is exactly what Leonid Brezhnev did...
...The Central Committee official's comments, while indicating the depth of concern in some official quarters, also suggested that the issue of the hate-mongers' propaganda was far from being foreclosed...
...That the Soviets sense that their image needs refurbishing is evident from a striking episode in Washington, D.C, in late February and early March of 1981...
...The Ukrainian work boldly repeated ancient canards: that the Torah teaches Jews to steal from "goyim...
...and the third carried extracts from recent and current Soviet antiZionist books...
...Yevseev, who in numerous books and newspaper essays had resurrected the basic themes of that hoary fabrication, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," now charged that Zionism was "more dangerous than German, Italian and Spanish fascism...
...Emphasis added.] Given that Brezhnev's remarks were directed to tensions flowing from internal geographic mobility and migration, the use of anti-Semitism as an example of "nationalist aberrations" is startling...
...The following excerpt is characteristic: In view of the fact that Zionism is the instrument of the big Jewish bourgeoisie, it is backed by its enormous resources that are being pumped out from the gold, diamond and uranium mines of South Africa, the workshops and industrial plants of Europe, America and Australia...
...Whatever the motivations for this cut-back (which ranged from a fear about the "brain drain" to the perception of Jews as "hostages" to the state of American-Soviet detente relations), Soviet authorities still had to cope with the burgeoning Jewish pressure for exodus...
...Not until February 1964 did a copy of the Kichko work make its appearance in the West and, when it did, civilized society was stunned with disbelief...
...The coupling by the Party General Secretary of anti-Semitism with Zionism has, to a significant degree, the effect of reducing and constricting the struggle against hate propaganda...
...The Party leadership had decided some time earlier to cut back the Jewish emigration rate and, since late 1979, had imposed the kind of harassment that would reduce the exodus by approximately two-thirds, and more recently by three-quarters...
...That such sentiments exist is significant, but still more significant is the fact that they were reproduced and distributed in printed form...
...Written by an especially infamous propaganda "specialist" who promotes Jew-hatred, Vladimir Begun of Minsk, the article is entitled "Danger: Zionism," but its theme, stripped of Aesopian formulations, is one of the most incendiary that has appeared in recent years...
...its agents could also be found within the borders of the Soviet Union...
...The explosion of indignation against a resurgence of Nazi-type anti-Semitism threatened a serious confrontation between the Soviet motherland and international Communism...
...Even "Levi's" jeans are part of their operation: the profits from selling the pants are used by the firm for helping Zionists...
...The first of these obviously pointed to Brezhnev, whose name was interpreted as part of an elaborate secret code designed to help "hidden Zionists" recognize one another...
...Shortly afterwards, the "Plot" was disclosed to have been a total fabrication...
...Yet neither he nor the Philosophy Institute, which had sponsored the booklet, were punished...
...The article itself regurgitated discredited myths about the "Elders of Zion," about how "powerful Jewish magnates—Kuhns, Loebs and Lehmans"—manipulate Zionist-Jewish organizations, about how the "Joint," acting as the instrument of the World Zionist Organization, engages in espionage in the socialist countries and subsidizes "the Zionist secret service...
...Still, it was apparent that Brezhnev's men in the Party apparatus were profoundly concerned with the emergent anti-Semitism in the media, and were determined to confront it head-on...
...A chorus of similar attacks appeared in the organs of the Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, British, American, Canadian and Australian Communist Parties...
...Clearly authority for publication had been granted at the very highest levels of the state...
...Sazonov went on to say that he agreed with her "evaluation" of specific authors, including Yevseev, Vladimir Begun, Valentin Pikul, Lev Korneyev and Valery Yemelyanov—all literary hate-peddlers...
...Twenty-five thousand copies of his work will be published (in contrast with less than half that amount for Judaism Without Embellishment...
...Sazonov met with her on July 4. His queries and comments were cordial...
...The scurrilous stereotypes engendered, at first, incredulity, then shock...
...First, the Soviet image has by now been rather badly tarnished by disclosures of the Kremlin's virulent anti-Semitic propaganda campaign...
...His "Freedom Trail From Helsinki to Mddrid" appeared in moment, October 1980...
...Nothing in a Party leader's speech is accidental...
...By the third week in March, Communist Parties in the West were seized with the issue...
...They present the Jews as the enemies of the Soviet state, as counter-revolutionaries, spies, accomplices of Hitlerism...
...On March 11, 1979, the issue was formally aired in the Party Central Committee and Yevseev was verbally chastised...
...Unlikely...
...The Kremlin leadership may well have decided that the maintenance of detente and of the Helsinki Final Act required the elimination—or, at least, the moderation—of the more extreme manifestations of anti-Semitism...
...One column carried the assertions of the reactionary Russian "Black Hundreds" organization (during the Tsarist epoch...
...The printing was not done in a publishing house but in a facility housed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which supervises Soviet police work...
...Indeed, as we have learned once again from the Polish example, this historic device does not even depend on the presence of Jews...
...They had written that Jews are an ancient people and that Zionism appeared historically as a reaction to anti-Semitism...
...Pravda reported his speech the next day, and, six weeks later vigorously editorialized against anti-Semitism...
...And, unlike his earlier book, which was printed in Ukrainian, the new book is printed in Russian, and thus designed for a much broader "general readership...
...The early fifties is precisely the period when anti-Semitism in the USSR reached its most extreme form with the secret trial and execution of the Jewish intellectuals and writers (July and August 1952) and with the unveiling of an alleged "Doctors' Plot" (January-March 1953), which generated an especially dangerous pogrom atmosphere in the Soviet Union...
...Acknowledgement and public repudiation of Soviet anti-Semitism might conceivably help that process...
...The agents of the "Joint" were said to be nine Soviet doctors, mainly Jewish...
...security and sovereignty of all the states of this [Middle East] region, including Israel...
...A final indication that the campaign against Zionism mocks the condemnation of anti-Semitism even when articulated at the highest level of the Party is the planned publication of a new book by Trofim K. Kichko—Judaism and Zionism—Adherents to Racism...
...His book is certain to repeat and extend the themes he had articulated in Judaism Without Embellishment...
...Only the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953, brought a halt to the unfolding catastrophe and saved Soviet Jewry...
...And now, 17 years later, Kichko is back...
...The positive resurrection of the affair by Begun is unprecedented, and serves as a stunning reminder that those seeking a violent resolution of the Jewish problem are alive and well...
...The booklet was designed for a very limited and selective readership...
...Significantly, on the eve of the Party Congress that Brezhnev addressed, 130 prominent Soviet Jewish activists sent a 10-page plea to the delegates forcefully asserting that the anti-Semitic media campaign was one of two "principal causes" for the rapid rise in the number of applications for emigration...
...We are against tendencies aimed at artificial erosion of national characteristics, but to the same extent, we consider impermissible their artificial exaggeration...
...Just two months later, scores of influential people received a mimeographed letter (signed by a pseudonym— Vasily Ryazanov) that charged that "a powerful Zionist lobby" exists within the very Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party...
...The last time a high Soviet official denounced anti-Semitism was 16 years ago, on July 18, 1965...
...I am interested in learning whether this organization still exists...
...As Kosygin himself would declare, "there never has been and there is no anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union...
...There are two likely explanations...
...The Italian Party's Paesa Sera urged the withdrawal of the book while L'Unita warned that Soviet prestige was jeopardized by the anti-Semitism...
...Soviet leaders frequently accept the assumptions of their propaganda, holding that American Jews play a crucial and perhaps even decisive role in American policymaking...
...Zionists are trying to infiltrate into all the spheres of public life, into ideology, science, commerce...
...so has an Australian Parliamentary inquiry...
...The Jewish activists appealed for a "change in the Party's attitude to Soviet Jewry" and singled out, among other facets, the "virulent anti-Zionist campaign" that has reached "hysterical proportions" and "colors" the public attitude to Jewry...
...It is scheduled for publication during 1981 by "Molod," a Soviet Ukrainian youth institution...
...That the publishing privilege has been once again extended Kichko is an additional indication of the respectability still enjoyed by anti-Semitism in the Soviet media...
...The documentation of a rampaging Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda that echoed Tsarist and Nazi hate was devastating...
...He was openly denounced for "blatantly usurping" the Presidency of the USSR by ousting Nikolai Podgorny...
...Okuneva sent the study to Party General-Secretary Brezhnev on April 12, 1980 with a cover letter noting that the massive anti-Zionist propaganda was "violating the ideals of socialist internationalism that form the basis of the Communist Party's national policy...
...And, as in Nazi mythology, the Rockefellers were identified as an integral element in the Zionist conspiracy of conquest...
...It is understandable that for Zionism peace in the world is the main enemy...
...In his view, Zionism was "destroying the spiritual and moral health of the working class...
...He told Okuneva that "we are not always able to keep track of all their tricks...
...As recalled by Okuneva, he said: "Don't think, however, that you have invented the bicycle...
...Most of the major monopolies producing arms are controlled by Jewish bankers...
...We are also working on this matter...
...The plea of the 130 Jewish activists to the 26th Party Congress calls attention to particularly illuminating articles of crude bigotry in Pionerskaia Pravda, a tabloid organ of the powerful Komsomol for the 9-to-14 year old...
...And in Russia itself, struggles for power as far back as the 1920s were laced with anti-Semitism, a weapon again employed extensively by Stalin and Beria in later years...
...In a speech in Riga, the late Premier Aleksei Kosygin castigated manifestations of anti-Semitism...
...Her summary of the findings was sharp: "Their works are full of savage hatred of Jews, not only Zionism, and they do not conceal it...
...The Korneyev article highlights the basic limitation of the Brezhnev denunciation of anti-Semitism...
...Nonetheless, anti-Semitic propaganda has by no means ceased and its character remains unchanged...
...The other was the lack of facilities for cultural self-expression...
...Nor is there any indication that the racist authors and disseminators of the article have been apprehended by the omnipresent KGB...
...L'Humanite reprinted a sharply angry commentary demanding Soviet disavowal of the book...
...From it we learn that the propaganda of hate has yet to be brought under effective control, notwithstanding the danger it poses for the Party leadership and the damage it does to the state's image...
...The work was soon withdrawn from bookshelves...
...High-level concern about the growing chauvinist thrust with its distinctive anti-Semitic features became even more pronounced in 1980...
...His use of a mimeograph machine made that evident...
...For it turns out that Jew-baiting may reflect a serious challenge to Brezhnev's power, bizarre though that may seem at first...
...The announcement was made last year in a basic Soviet bibliographic journal...
...Prominent Soviet literary officials, Yevseev argues, including the chief editor of the major Soviet journal, Novyi Mir, Sergei Narovchatov, and philosophy specialists like B. Kedrov and Mark B. Mitin, are "Zionist supporters...
...Indeed, the Belgian's accusations prompted an angry and emotional response from the Soviet delegation...
...The Brezhnev repudiation of anti-Semitism is a historic pronouncement...
...Far more significant than the booklet itself is the question of how it was produced...
...The specific reference to the 1950s and the pointed question about the "Joint" are extraordinary...
...Those accused of being "Zionist supporters" bitterly complained of being maligned...
...It gets worse...
...Putting the query in the mouth of a "war veteran" was clearly designed to reinforce patriotic and chauvinistic memories even as it dredged up the passions of Jew-hatred...
...His name is given as F. Sergeenko...
...only 500 copies of it were printed...
...The Washington initiative was obviously linked to Soviet anxiety concerning the tough Reagan Administration approach to the USSR...
...Kichko was dubbed in 1964 the Soviet Union's "Julius Streicher," after the notorious Nazi hate propagandist and editor of the infamous Der Sturmer...

Vol. 6 • July 1981 • No. 7


 
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