RUSSIA'S JEWS

...A prominent Russian exile economist and writer, Schwarz illustrates again how the cultural autonomy of Soviet nationalities, which is so genuinely impressive to the outside observer, was in fact subject to sudden alterations and outright suppressions through government edict...

...The moral suggested by Solomon Schwarz's The Jews in the Soviet Union is that a totalitarian regime inevitably aggravates rather than alleviates the delicate nationality issue...

...At the same time, however, The Jews in the Soviet Union gives adequate allowance of the Jewish peculiarity of being a nationality without any historical territorial center within the U.S.S.R...

...The answer may appear to be yes— but in fact it is a rather unmistakable no...

...When it suited Soviet designs, wide autonomy, and even independence, was granted generously to nationalities that had been part of the old Russian Empire...

...It is to Schwarz's genuine credit that he places the Jewish problem in the U.S.S.R...

...It may well be true that this aspect of the Soviet regime has kept more Americans from turning away from it completely, both just before and after World War II, than anything else...

...In other words, even a local independence in language, folklore, history is subject to constant and strict control...

...This may be interpreted as either appeasement of popular sentiment or even an encouragement to channel anti-Soviet feelings toward an age-old scapegoat...

...It is this whole Soviet nationality problem which is richly illuminated by Solomon Schwarz's ambitious The Jews in the Soviet Union...

...There, and almost only there, it is still often asserted by some non-Communists, neither the government nor the population discriminates against anyone because of his ethnic background...

...In the case of the official line, outright and active opposition to anti-Semitism is being steadily replaced, ever since World War II, by disinterest if not antipathy toward Soviet Jews...

...Does this not seem to conflict with the picture just presented, of Machiavellian-like Soviet juggling and hypocrisy on the issue...

...The important conclusion to be drawn is that the Soviet regime has rigidly limited nationality rights not only in the broader political sphere —the Jewish republic in the Far East was first founded and now apparently abolished with little if any say about it by any Jewish community leaders—but in the narrower cultural sphere...

...This brings us to a complex paradox...

...The answer provided in Schwarz's work is that anti-Semitism is a highly erratic and varied phenomenon there, and yet is more extensive as well as intensive than is suspected by the outside world...

...Specifically, it now appears to be established that ever since Stalin became Commissar for Nationalities, following the 1917 revolution, the Soviet government used this issue to further its own power throughout the land, and for little else...

...in the broader panorama of Soviet politics...

...Too often, when dealing with this question, the emphasis is so exclusively on the narrowly Jewish aspects that the presentation loses much if not all of its meaning...

...And yet, detailed scholarly research of recent years has begun to paint a picture of Soviet national policy which is far from in accord with the hopes (or illusions) on the subject of many an American...

...II There remains the question so often asked in America: What about anti-Semitism in the present- day U.S.S.R...

...In other areas—or at a later stage—similar policies were discarded with an awesomely light hand, and local independence movements suppressed in blood...

...This work also suggests that, in the period ahead, the free world will do well to watch the nationality problem jn the U.S.S.R., and to keep an open mind on this intensely complex, unpredictable, and controversial issue...

...It is often emphasized that the Soviets did much to further the language, the literature, and the native culture and scholarship of the many nationalties of the U.S.S.R...

...Reviewed by George Fischer ONE of the hopes or (illusions) about Stalin's Russia which lingered among Western intellectuals is that the Soviet Union had at least resolved one of Europe's thorniest headaches, the nationality problem...

...This moral is true regardless of lofty aspirations, slogans, or external appearances which have endeared the U. S. S. R. to many a sincere non -Communist American...

...Mass anti-Semitism has also fluctuated in intensity...

...The picture painted in The Jews in the Soviet Union suggests rather subtle alterations both in governmental policy and in popular attitudes...