The Soviet Position
The Absence off Cultural Freedom The Soviet Position At a press conference held January 15, 1959, during his visit to the United States, First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan stated the Soviet...
...There would not be a sufficient number of students...
...They were enthusiastic, exultant...
...If we had seven-year schools for Jews in the Jewish language, where could the graduates go...
...In a lengthy series of articles on his visit to Russia, published more or less concurrently from October to December 1956 in the Canadian Yiddish Communist weekly, Vochenblatt, and in the New York Yiddish Communist daily, Morgen Freiheit, from which the following was excerpted, Salsberg wrote of a two-hour interview with the Soviet Premier in August 1956 on the Jewish question...
...It appeared in Le Figaro on April 9, 1958, and important sections of it were also printed in Pravda, though not his controversial remarks about the Jews...
...We wanted to unite them and establish Birobidjan for this purpose...
...Many of our most prominent leaders, in fact, have married Jewish girls, and they have excellent relations...
...In my country, all peoples enjoy freedom and the development of culture, and that includes the Jews...
...All of them were Jews...
...The Jews left era masse for Birobidjan...
...Is there a Jewish theater...
...TO BEGIN WITH, Khrushchev denied the slanderous accusations of anti-Semitism that have been directed against him and the Party...
...In my opinion, it is to be found in historical conditions...
...There are in the USSR less numerous and less initially gifted nationalities than the Jews...
...There are many Jewish writers who consider themselves Russian and prefer to write Russian...
...then one by one they come back...
...And now...
...Of the thousands of Soviet citizens who have toured abroad, only three failed to return...
...It can lead only to forced assimilation, rather than to voluntary integration...
...A. "If you happen to visit Sverdlovsk, you should go to see Colonel-General Kreizer...
...He emphasized that such integration is historically progressive, whereas the maintenance of a separate group existence is reactionary...
...An insight into Khrushchev's attitudes has been provided by J. B. Salsberg, who was for many years a leading member of the Canadian Labor-Progressive party (Canada's Communist party), and who was a member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament from 1942 to 1954...
...In the summer of 1957, Khrushchev's views were again solicited, this time by the American-European Seminar on the USSR, which included such well known friends of the Soviet Union as General Hugh Hester (ret...
...His published statements, or authoritative reports of them, go back to mid-1956...
...They are assimilated into the Russian culture and language...
...It is noteworthy that Moscow's lead in this matter was not followed by the French Communist press, which remained silent about the Groussard interview, evidently believing that so reputable a journalist could not be accused of inventing one part of an interview which Pravda otherwise saw fit to publish...
...A second characteristic: The Jews are essentially intellectuals...
...The following is from the official transcript of the United Nations Correspondents Association...
...The time has come for plain talk and public debats with the Soviet leaders on this question...
...Our position is that it all depends upon the will of the Jews...
...The Absence off Cultural Freedom The Soviet Position At a press conference held January 15, 1959, during his visit to the United States, First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan stated the Soviet position on the question of restoring cultural rights to the Soviet Jews...
...As far as the Jews are concerned, even if Jewish schools were established, very few would attend them voluntarily...
...He disagreed with the proposal to establish Jewish schools...
...There is no Jewish problem in the Soviet Union at all...
...He repeated the view . . . that the majority of Soviet Jews have become integrated into the country's general life...
...The land of Birobidjan is as fertile as any that exists...
...One of Khrushchev's most outspoken statements was made in a lengthy discussion on this subject with Serge Groussard, the noted correspondent of the Paris newspaper, Le Figaro...
...Q. "WHAT CULTURAL freedom do the Jews have in the USSR...
...The Jews are dispersed and engulfed in the culture where they live...
...These remarks, quoted below, created such a furor that Moscow felt impelled to issue a denial that Khrushchev had spoken them...
...They can have their theaters and their literature, and that includes the Jews...
...Because it is impossible to force the Jews to attend Jewish schools...
...We put it at the disposal of the Jews...
...As a member of the Government, do you contemplate any steps in the near future to re-institute the free exercise of the Yiddish theater, press and other Jewish cultural activities in the Soviet Union...
...And their interests are, in the last analysis, too diverse and frequently too contradictory for them to be content to live together, face to face, in one particular region...
...A real Jewish cultural community is no more realizable than a political community: The Jews are interested in everything, probe deeply into everything, debate everything and end by having profoundly different opinions...
...Q. "MR...
...But if you take the building trades or metallurgy, you can't find a single Jew, to my knowledge...
...If they want to create a state within our borders, like Birobidjan, nobody is against this . . . but to set up separate schools all over Russia would be too expensive...
...There used to be many Yiddish theaters in many cities Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, Lvov...
...A university in the Yiddish language could never be established...
...If a balance-sheet were drawn, it would have to be admitted that Jewish colonization in Birobidjan has been a failure...
...Now very few remain...
...I was much disturbed by the above remarks...
...They have always preferred to be dispersed...
...MIKOYAN, during your current trip in the United States, you have dissociated yourself from the late [Soviet Secret Police Chief Lavrenti P.] Beria...
...This problem is created by those who wish to impede good relations...
...Khrushchev's statements smack of Great Russian chauvinism...
...Wherever a Jew settles, the first thing he does is build a synagogue...
...You ask me why there are no Jewish schools in Birobidjan or elsewhere...
...They arrive there all fire and flame...
...In view of Khrushchev's statements, there can be no doubt of the need to undertake this task...
...Q. "CAN ANY minority group, such as the Jews, open a theater anywhere in Russia...
...After the liberation of Czernowitz, the streets were dirty...
...He, Khrushchev, agreed with Stalin that the Crimea, which had been depopulated at the war's end, should not be turned into a Jewish colonization center, because in case of war it would be turned into a base for attacking the USSR...
...It would be considered some kind of ghetto...
...A. "This is a very old question...
...To prove his point, he noted some negative features of the Jews: "When certain parts of Rumania, taken over by reactionary forces during the Revolution, were subsequently incorporated into the USSR, very many Jews preferred to go back to Rumania, rather than to accept Soviet citizenship...
...They reflect a backward prejudice against the Jewish group as a peoplea prejudice which sharply contradicts the Marxist mode of thought...
...Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself has been quite voluble on this subject...
...What is the explanation of this unhappy phenomenon...
...But these non-Jewish nationalities are capable of organizing a common existence...
...For this purpose, we chose . . . Birobidjan...
...This does not depend on the non-Jews...
...One cannot contend against the creative will, or, for that matter, against a lack of it...
...We would have to establish 10-year schools and special universities for them...
...All that is left now in Birobidjan are signs in Yiddish at the railroad stations, but there are no Jews there...
...It was a remarkable gift...
...Are Jewish writers able to publish their works...
...This interview was not published until June 1958, when it appeared in a Seminar pamphlet, Toward World Understanding...
...As soon as they can manage it, they want to attend the university...
...Khrushchev then pointed out that every people, be it Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish, has both its good and bad features...
...when the Jews were asked why the streets were not being cleaned, they replied that the non-Jewish segment of the population, which used to do that work, had fled the city...
...A. "In my country, all peoples enjoy freedom for the development of their culture...
...If Jews were to be compelled to attend Jewish schools, there would certainly be a revolt...
...During the war, we lost many Jews...
...It was a tragedy...
...The Jews are dispersed over the entire Union...
...They never consider themselves sufficiently educated...
...However, the Jewish population has merged with the Russians in Russian culture so fully that Jews participate in general culture and literature, on the Russian stage and in Russian literature...
...they work in glass or precious stones...
...THE USSR was the first country in the world that decided to aid the Jews not just as individuals but as a people...
...I have many friends who are Jews...
...He is my friend . . . he is a Jew...
...This is a matter of the Jewish intelligentsia...
...That is why it is possible for them to forge durable national institutions...
...The earliest is an interview he gave to a French Socialist delegation on May 5, 1956...
...The Jewish theater pined away for lack of audiences, in spite of subventions and subscriptions...
...Mr...
...If Khrushchev's distrust of the Jewish people is warranted, then this is a terrible indictment not of Soviet Jewry but of Stalinist crimes and of distortions in the nationalities policy, in particular as it is applied to the Jewish people...
...In all ages the Jews have preferred the artisan trades: They are tailors...
...They don't like collective work, group discipline...
...His approach to the problem of Jewish nationality is an unforgiveable violation of socialist democracy...
...Beria was apparently largely responsible for the liquidation of Jewish culture, particularly Yiddish culture, in the Soviet Union...
...You have seen in your travels the culture and customs of many different republics . . . but the Jews are dispersed throughout the Soviet Union...
...With regard to the Yiddish or Hebrew languages, there is no demand for their use in the State administration and in Soviet institutions...
...they are merchants, pharmacists, cabinet makers...
...The text appeared in the May 1957 issue of the French magazine, Realites...
...Would you encourage this...
...We do create all conditions in which Jewish and Russian literatures and the literatures of all other Soviet peoples should have full opportunities for their development, writing and creation...
...However, the theater is open to Jews...
...In Lvov, for example, there is a Russian theater, but the majority, if not all, of the actors are Jews...
...They are individualists...
...We cannot interfere in that matter...
...and Professor Jerome Davis...
...And that is why I am skeptical of the permanence of the Jewish community...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 33
