Post World War 2 Pogroms in Eastern Europe – Conclusion
Soviet involvement in the Kielce pogrom was only the beginning of their adaptation of anti-Semitism as a political tool. The Polish Informacja, an independent arm of the Polish government and Communist Party that closely collaborated with Lavrentii Beria’s SMERSH (Death to Spies, Soviet counter-intelligence agency), had almost complete autonomy in the planning and execution of provocations within Poland. One of the many tasks that it was assigned by Soviet leadership was to turn anti-Soviet and anti-Communist attitudes into anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist hatred.[1] This order coincided with a simultaneous increase in anti-Semitic policies by the Soviet government that had launched its own campaign against Zionism. Rather than being ideological in nature, Stalin’s attack on Zionism served as a pretext for the constriction of Jewish religious and culture life.
Similar steps were simultaneously taken in Poland with the same goal in mind as Poland itself underwent an accelerated process of Sovietization. By 1947, the short period of tolerance enjoyed by Jews in cultural and religious life unexpectedly expired and binding restrictions were implemented. The vast majority of Jewish institutions, including theatres, schools, co-ops, and theatres came under strict government control with the intention of curbing their freedom to operate.
The Soviet government took steps in limiting the freedom allowed to synagogues, Jewish worship and Jewish Holocaust memorial services as early as autumn 1946. A report sent by the Council of Religious Cult Affairs to the CC ACP(b) alleged that the losses suffered by the Jewish people during the war led to a significant growth of nationalistic feelings among the survivors which it termed “Soviet Zionism.” It further affirmed that the basis of nationalistic feelings was centered around the synagogue which was “the only place of national concentration and the only hearth of national culture.”[2] This type of national expression was in direct contradiction of Soviet ideology and therefore had to be eradicated.
As a result of this report, Soviet authorities launched a secret assault on synagogues throughout the country and attempted to severely restrict Jewish religious life. The Council of Religious Cults was assigned this task, and with its local representatives, it sought to establish control over every aspect of the Jewish community and its leadership in the rabbinate. The council spread the fight to Jewish customs and expressions of Jewish identity that it believed could “stir up nationalistic feelings.” These customs were basic Jewish rituals such as shehita (ritual slaughter of animals), consumption of kosher meat, the baking of matzoh, and the sale of places in the synagogue.[3]
The deprived state of Soviet Jewry in all aspects of life after the war allowed Stalin to be far more aggressive in his battle against “Soviet Zionism” than against the nationalism of other minority groups in the Soviet Union. Disregarding the Jewish wartime experience, the press began to subtlety reinvent old stereotypes, which implied that Jews were a foreign element with dual loyalties who would betray Russia in a time of crisis. Thousands of propaganda pieces were published between 1948-1953, some serious while others humorous. An examination of these articles revealed a grossly distorted image of the Jew that was reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda. The Soviet press depicted Jews as lazy exploiters of the proletariat, as swindlers, eternal wanderers and parasites by nature. Consequently, images of the Jew stirred up feelings of resentment, anger and disgust.[4] Clearly influenced by the press, lower level administrative authorities used this information to deny housing, employment and government positions to Jews.
Faced with incontrovertible state-sponsored discrimination, thousands of Jews sent letters with their plight and appeals for help to the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), which was the last Jewish organization left operating in the Soviet Union. In the course of the Stalin’s dubious investigation of the JAC, it was uncovered that in the summer of 1946, the chairman of the JAC, Shmuel Mikhoels had met with Zhemchuzhina, the wife of Foreign Minister Molotov. He told her about the letters the JAC had received letters from throughout the Soviet Union concerned with anti-Semitism and oppression by local communist authorities. He asked her who was the appropriate person to contact in the Soviet leadership to remedy this problem but to his dismay, Zhemchuzhina replied, “Zhdanov and Malenkov will not help you. All the power in this country is in Stalin’s hands alone and nobody can influence him. I do not advise you to write to Stalin. He has a negative attitude toward Jews and so will not support us.”[5] Shmuel Mikhoels soon realized Stalin’s attitude for Jews firsthand when on 13 January 1948 he was brutally murdered in a staged automobile collision by the MVD. Within a year, the JAC had ceased to exist and the remainder of its leadership was arrested. The dissolution of the JAC marked a peak in Soviet state-sponsored anti-Semitism that would reach its zenith shortly before Stalin’s death in 1953.
On 13 January 1953, TASS and Pravda announced the exposure of a conspiracy among the Soviet medical elite of assassinating Zhdanov and Shcherbakov and conspiring to kill other vital Soviet figures. Nine Kremlin physicians were charged, six of whom had stereotypical Jewish last names such as Kogan, Feldman and Grinshtein.[6] The announcement led to a wave of overt, clearly distinguishable anti-Semitism in the Soviet press that labeled Jews as Zionists, agents of U.S. and British imperialism and referred to them as “rootless cosmopolitans.”[7] The event that became known as the Doctor’s Plot marked the culmination of Stalinist state-sponsored anti-Semitism that began in the mid-1940s following the Kielce pogrom and intensified with the establishment of the state of Israel, the disbanding of the JAC and the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans.”
Some historians have argued that the articles published by TASS and Pravda along with the Doctor’s Plot itself, were specifically fashioned to provoke a wave of pogroms that would allow Stalin to deport Soviet Jews to the proposed Jewish autonomous region in Birobidzhan “for their own safety.”[8] Stalin’s desire to deport Soviet Jewry was indicative of the anti-Semitic nature of Soviet leadership and the lengths to which they went in the effort to cleanse the Soviet Union of the Jewish presence. Fortunately, the pogroms never materialized and Soviet Jewry was never forcefully transferred because of Stalin’s death later in the year.
The degree to which the Soviet population accepted anti-Semitic propaganda from the Party was determined by a number of factors stemming from the Soviet experience of the 1940s. Aside from the impact of Nazi propaganda, many non-Jewish Soviet citizens interpreted the reasoning behind the German invasion of the Soviet Union as rooted in the desire to make Europe judenrein. This inevitably aroused feelings of resentment within the Soviet population as they held the Jews responsible for the deaths of their fathers, mothers, children and 27 million of their fellow citizens. Postwar experiences, on the other hand, were rooted in the economic situation, the lack of housing, and fierce competition for work.[9]
The long history and multi-faceted nature of anti-Semitism made it a difficult concept to dispose of—even after the unthinkable, inhumane cruelties that were committed during the Holocaust. As Jan Gross accurately noted:
Mental constructs, including stereotypes, have a great staying power. They linger long after people, events, or circumstances that inspired and brought them to life have left the stage of history and are no longer with us.[10]
Thus, it is unsurprising that in the xenophobic paranoid jungle of the Soviet leadership, traditional, firmly established anti-Semitism throughout Eastern Europe and Russia was used as a political tool to first divide and conquer Poland and later to unite Soviet citizens under the nation less banner of Communism.
[1] Mushkat, “Philo-Semitic and anti-Jewish Attitudes,” pp. 244.
[2] Kostyrchenko, “Out of the Red Shadows,” pp. 54; RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 405, l. 98 -103; op. 117, d. 946, l. 144.
[3] Ibid, pp, 54; RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 405, l. 98 -103; op. 117, d. 946, l. 144.
[4] Pinkus, “The Soviet Government and the Jews,” pp. 86.
[5] Kostyrchenko, “Out of the Red Shadows,” pp. 55.
[6] Pinkus, “The Soviet Government and the Jews,” pp. 219: Source: ‘Arest gruppy vrachei-creditelei’ (Arrest of Group of Saboteur Doctors), Pravda, 13 January 1953.
[7] David Brandenberger, “Stalin’s Last Crime? Recent Scholarship on Postwar Soviet Anti-Semitism and the Doctors’ Plot,” in Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, Alexander Martin eds., Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Volume 6, Number 1 (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2005), pp. 194.
[8] Ibid., pp. 194.
[9] Pinkus, “Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union,” pp. 87.
[10] Gross, “Revolution from Abroad,” pp. 274.
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