The Khruschev Period
Yet once again things began to turn unfavorably for the Jews. In March 1954, the Soviet
Union vetoed the UN Security Council attempt to open the Suez Canal to Israeli ships. At the
end of 1955, Khrushchev declared a pro-Arab, anti-Israel turn of Soviet foreign policy. In
February 1956, in his famous report at the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev, while speaking
profusely about the massacres of 1937-1938, did not point any attention to the fact that there
were so many Jews among the victims; he did not name Jewish leaders executed in 1952; and
when speaking of the Doctors’ Plot, he did not stress that it was specifically directed against the
Jews.
It is easy to imagine the bitter feelings this aroused among the Jews. They swept Jewish
communist circles abroad and even the leadership of those Communist parties, where Jews
constituted a significant percentage of members (such as in the Canadian and U.S. Communist
parties.) In April 1956 in Warsaw, under the communist régime (though with heavy Jewish
influence), the Jewish newspaper Volksstimme published a sensational article, listing the names
of Jewish cultural and social celebrities who perished from 1937-1938 and from 1948-1952. Yet
at the same time the article also condemned the capitalist enemies, Beria’s period and welcomed
the return of Leninist national policy.
The article in Volksstimme had unleashed a storm. International communist organizations
and Jewish social circles loudly began to demand an explanation from the Soviet leaders.
Throughout 1956, foreign visitors to the Soviet Union openly asked about Jewish situation there,
and particularly why the Soviet government had not yet abandoned the dark legacy of Stalinism
on the Jewish question? It became a recurrent theme for the foreign correspondents and visiting
delegations of fraternal communist parties. Actually, that could be the reason for the loud
denciation in the Soviet press of the betrayal of communism by Howard Fast, an American writer
and former enthusiastic champion of communism. Meanwhile, hundreds of Soviet Jews from
different cities in one form or another participated in meetings of resurgent Zionist groups and
-301
-
coteries; old Zionists with connections to relatives or friends in Israel were active in those
groups.
In May 1956, a delegation from the French Socialist Party arrived in Moscow. Particular
attention was paid to the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev found himself in a
hot corner – now he could not afford to ignore the questions, yet he knew, especially after
experiencing postwar Ukraine, that the Jews were not likely to be returned to their high social
standing like in 1920s and 1930s. He replied: “In the beginning of the revolution, we had many
Jews in executive bodies of party and government After that, we have developed new cadres. If
Jews wanted to occupy positions of leadership in our republics today, it would obviously cause
discontent among the local people. If a Jew, appointed to a high office, surrounds himself with
Jewish colleagues, it naturally provokes envy and hostility toward all Jews.” (The French
publication Socialist Herald called Khrushchev’s point about surrounding himself with Jewish
colleagues “strange and false.”) In the same discussion, when Jewish culture and schools were
addressed, Khrushchev explained that “if Jewish schools were established, there probably would
not be many prospective students. The Jews are scattered all over the country. If the Jews were
required to attend a Jewish school, it certainly would cause outrage. It would be understood as a
kind of a ghetto.”
Three months later, in August 1956, a delegation of the Canadian Communist Party
visited the USSR, and it stated outright that it had a special mission to achieve clarity on the
Jewish question. Thus, in the postwar years, the Jewish question was becoming a central concern
of the western communists. Khrushchev rejected all accusations of anti-Semitism as a slander
against him and the party. He named a number of Soviet Jews to important posts, he even
mentioned his Jewish daughter-in-law, but then he quite suddenly switched to the issue of good
and bad features of each nation and pointed out several negative features of Jews, among which
he mentioned their political unreliability. Yet he neither mentioned any of their positive traits,
nor did he talk about other nations.
In the same conversation, Khrushchev expressed his agreement with Stalin’s decision
against establishing a Crimean Jewish Republic, stating that such Jewish colonization of the
Crimea would be a strategic military risk for the Soviet Union. This statement was particularly
hurtful to the Jewish community. The Canadian delegation insisted on publication of a specific
statement by the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union about the
sufferings of Jews, but it was met with firm refusal, since were such a pronouncement issud other
nations and republics, which also suffered from Bolshevik crimes against their culture and
intelligentsia, would ask with astonishment why this statement covers only Jews? (S. Schwartz
dismissively comments: “The pettiness of this argumentation is striking.”)
Yet it did not end at that. Secretly, influential foreign Jewish communists tried to obtain
explanations about the fate of the Jewish cultural élite, and in October of the same year, twenty-
six Western progressive Jewish leaders and writers appealed publicly to Prime-Minister
Bulganin and President Voroshilov, asking them to issue a public statement about injustices
committed against Jews and the measures the goverment had designed to restore the Jewish
cultural institutions. Yet during both the interregnum of 1953-1957 and then in Khrushchev’s
period, the Soviet policies toward Jews were inconsistent, wary, circumspect and ambivalent,
thus sending signals in all directions.
In particular, the summer of 1956, which was filled with all kinds of social expectations
in general, had also became the apogee of Jewish hopes. One Surkov, the head of the Union of
Writers, in a conversation with a communist publisher from New York City mentioned plans to
-302
-
establish a new Jewish publishing house, theater, newspaper and quarterly literary magazine;
there were also plans to organize a countrywide conference of Jewish writers and cultural
celebrities. It also noted that a commission for reviving the Jewish literature in Yiddish had been
already established. In 1956, many Jewish writers and journalists gathered in Moscow again. The
Jewish activists later recalled that the optimism inspired in all of us by the events of 1956 did not
quickly fade away. Yet the Soviet government continued with its meaningless and aimless
policies, discouraging any development of an independent Jewish culture. It is likely that
Khrushchev himself was strongly opposed to it.
And then came new developments the Suez Crisis, where Israel, Britain and France allied
in attacking Egypt (“Israel is heading to suicide,” formidably warned the Soviet press). After that
came the Hungarian Uprising, with its anti-Jewish streak which has been nearly completely
concealed by historians, resulting, perhaps from the overrepresentation of Jews in the Hungarian
KGB. Could this be also one of the reasons, even if a minor one, for the complete absence of
Western support for the rebellion? Of course, at this time the West was preoccupied with the
Suez Crisis. And yet wasn’t it a signal to the Soviets suggesting that it would be better if the
Jewish theme be kept hushed?
Then, a year later, Khrushchev finally overpowered his highly placed enemies within the
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |