The struggle between the Soviet Union and Israel

Article 126

In recent months, newspapers in all countries have been full of news of the defiant treatment of Jews by the Soviet-Communist authorities. Anyone who has closely followed and is following this news really gets the impression of the breakup that has taken place and the enmity that has begun. It is not uncommon to read indignant articles about the revived tradition of Nazism and the newfound “anti-Semitism.” The entire foreign “democratic” press writes about this, and the latest issue of the Socialist Messenger (January, 1953) insists on this.

One involuntarily recalls the time when the Soviet government considered it possible and desirable to allocate to the Jews a separate national semi-state in the Far East called Birobidzhan, and experts on the issue at the same time also argued that the choice of terrain and climate turns this entire allocation into an empty and fruitless gesture, from which nothing will not work. And I also remember those two decades during which in the “Soviet” any open condemnation of Jews was listed under the rubric of punishable anti-Semitism, i.e. lack of real and consistent “internationalism” - and was severely punished. And now?

Now the Jew, as such, is taken into question and suspicion in the “Soviet”; every Jew living on Russian territory or in occupied small states must be prepared for the fact that from hour to hour they will demand some kind of super-calculable and super-strong evidence his communist adherence, or that he would be immediately arrested, tortured and forced to make the most implausible “candid confessions” of “atrocities” he had not committed. The Prague trial, in which 11 of the 13 accused were Jews, cannot, however, be considered a turning point in this matter, because this atmosphere had been building up for a long time and in Prague it only broke out as a “show trial.” Since then, there followed a blow to the “life doctors” of the communist head in Moscow and a blow to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in St. Petersburg, and everywhere Jewish names were pointedly named and the alleged discovery of the connection of these hitherto trusted persons with international and, in particular, American Jewish organizations (“Joint”). The flight of Jews to the West began, which was reported in detail from Berlin. Real terror hung over the Soviet Jew in the very forms that had previously been developed in relation to other, non-Jewish peoples. Jewish conspiracy organizations responded to this terror on February 9th. g. - a bomb explosion in the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv, a bomb that damaged the embassy building and injured one official and two Soviets. Three days after this, the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, sent the Israeli embassy from Moscow and recalled its own. Israeli radical youth openly declared that they intend to continue their terrorist revenge...

We must foresee that the hostility will not end there, but will develop further. There are two million Jews inaccessible in the Soviet Union who have nowhere to run and whom the communist government can turn into “hostages.” Many of them may find themselves in a difficult position: communist “loyal” Jews may be required to denounce “disloyal” ones, and they may be forced into the system of persecution, torture and execution of their fellow tribesmen. The gap may gradually turn into an abyss, and the consequences of this terrorist ferocity are simply not foreseen now.

It is all the more important for us to correctly understand the foundations from which this conflict grew, and to give ourselves an understanding of the essence of this disagreement and this struggle.

First of all, it would be completely wrong and inappropriate to interpret this communist attack on the Jews as a revival of “Hitler’s anti-Semitism.” Some newspapers go so far as to write about the “Aryan paragraph in Russia,” thereby obscuring the very essence of the phenomenon: for the Soviet Union is not Russia and there is no “Aryan paragraph” there; such demagogic inventions only lead away from the truth. Only people who are not aware of Nazism and its “preaching” can write and speak like this. The anti-Semitism of the Hitlerites knows a superior race (Aryans or Germans!), more or less inferior races (all other peoples!) and a destructive race (Jews!): the superior race is called upon to crush all the inferior races and destroy the destructive race from the face of the earth. This program was set out in books and magazines and expressed “popularly” in a number of cynical slogans and sayings: “Jewry perish!” (in German much ruder), “what a Jew believes in is indifferent, his very race is indecent” (the translation softens the abusive rudeness of the German original). The Hitlerite leaders developed this racial hatred with such fantasizing, ferocious consistency that reading their articles and looking at their books often gives the impression of insanity or outright madness (Rosenberg, Streiger). There was no conscience, no reason, no historical knowledge, no justice; the sadism of Auschwitz was a consistent manifestation of this affected madness.

The Soviet communists do not and never had any such racial hatred and doctrine. For them, a person ofany raceis acceptable as long as he diligently participates in their communist “enterprises” or is a totalitarian servitor. But if not, then they declare him an “enemy of the people” or a “traitor to the socialist homeland.” For communists, people are divided not into races, but into “classes”; but this is not entirely accurate. They know one main division in the world: for them, for their world domination, for totalitarian-communist enslavement, and againstthem, and who is not for them, he is their enemy. And their enemies are subject to isolation, or forced hard labor, or extermination. It may be that they will exterminate entire nations (the so-called “genocide”, tribal extermination), but not for their racial properties, but for theircommunist disloyalty. This is where their break with the Jews occurred.

They exterminated the flower of the Polish officers in Katyn: was this a manifestation of “anti-Polonism”? No, because the Polish masses who were not executed were enslaved and used. They deal with Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians: they take away, kill, exterminate anti-communists and separatists of these nations, but no one sees “anti-Estonism”, “anti-Latvism”, “anti-Lithuanism” in this. They tried to exterminate, in the manner of “genocide,” the Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, Chechens, Karachais; however, not for racial reasons, but for the stubborn anti-communism, for the heroic disloyalty shown by these tribes. This is how tens of millions of rebellious Russians died before these tribes, and it is not without reason that Russian patriots consider the communists their enemies; but we do not attribute racial “anti-Russianism” to them, because this would be a distortion of historical reality, a political invention. Just submit to them and you are acceptable; just indulge in them to the point of humiliation, to the point of meanness - and you are good. And “race” is indifferent to them, Romanian and Chinese, Englishman and Malayan, Mongolian and Negro, Semitic and Ugro-Altaian, Hindu and Kartvelian-Iberian - all are good, like communists, and all are exterminated, like anti-communists.

Anyone who wants to correctly understand the gap between communists and Jews must leave talk of “Hitler’s anti-Semitism”; not all violence is “racial” violence; enmity knows other sources, hatred will be born from other motives. A doctor who reduces all diseases to one single cause makes incorrect diagnoses. If cholera and inflammation of the brain can equally destroy a person, this does not mean that they constitute one and the same disease. People may not love me and harm me for a variety of reasons, and the thought that they all have an aversion to my Russianness would never occur to me.

What actually happens is the following. The communists posed a dilemma: “with us - or against us.” With us - means for the totalitarian system, for the supreme power of communists in the world, for the rejection of national feeling, from state independence, from private property, from the democratic system , from family and from freedom. And for many years they believed that the Jews were for them on all these points, but now they are convinced that the vast majority of Jews are not with them and not for them, and the settling of scores began. It was a long-lasting illusion. To explain this illusion, it is enough to point to an interview with one prominent and influential Zionist, published a year ago in all newspapers. At this time, it was directly said that Jews are in vain considered socialists and communists; however, they acted and will continue to act as revolutionaries wherever they are deprived of equality, this was the case in Russia, but having achieved equality, they will defend freedom and democracy. However, “revolutionism” is not enough for totalitarians, they need communist revolutionism, they do not need “fellow travelers”, but obedient slaves, they want not nationalism, but international confusion, they strive for world omnipotence, and therefore Israel, as an independent, democratic state, is a “rebel” in their eyes. Any and all measures are “good” against this rebel, especially agitation among the Arabs, including organizational, monetary, and ammunition assistance to them, but above all, slander and terror are necessary...

Here the Jews committed a number of negligence. The Moscow Jews greeted the first Israeli embassy that arrived in Moscow too passionately and crowdedly: the impression was that “theirs” were rejoicing at “theirs,” and for the totalitarian police this was not even “suspicious,” but indicative. The Israeli state has clearly positioned itself independently and independently, by no means equating itself with other satellites. Everywhere there was a massive attraction of Jews from the Soviet Union, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Romania to Palestine, and the communists saw in this an unambiguous preference, which was true. The Israeli Communist Party found itself in a pitiful minority. American Jewish millionaires took a loyal position - for America and against communism. Let us also remember that in 1948, Rabbi Benjamin Schultz created the Jewish Anti-Communist League in the United States, the main thesis of which is that Zionism and communism are incompatible: according to Schultz , this thesis corresponds to the views of the overwhelming majority of American Jews... This League is growing in numbers and is successful. And to top it all off, the World Zionist Congress, led by Israeli President Weizmann, adopted a very specific resolution. This congress, which met in Switzerland at the end of the war, adopted a resolution according to which every Jew, wherever he may be, is first of all a citizen of the Israeli state, obliging it for obedience and services. At one time, this resolution caused a sharp reaction even in the most liberal-democratic newspapers in Switzerland, a reaction that, however, was soon muffled and reduced to silence.

Here is the real root and source of a new, unprecedented enmity: the dilemma “either - or” is now posed to the Jews; and they had independence and courage - after the destruction Hitler 5,600,000 Jews - choose the path of national and democratic independence. The communists antagonize and destroy them precisely for this reason, and not because of “anti-Semitism.” That is why renegade Jews who prefer the communist Soviet to their national state continue to occupy high positions among the communists: not to mention the Soviet, where, for example, the Kaganovich family flourishes, let us point out that in Hungary the minister of defense, the minister of education, and the chief of the secret police are Hungarian Jews. We see something similar to this in Poland, the Czech Republic, and other satellite states. It is not a matter of “race,” but of the political, social and cultural independence of Israel and all the Jews it included among itself at the last Zionist World Congress. Talking about anti-Semitism, no matter how convenient it is for compromising propaganda, only simplifies and obscures the matter...

It is to be hoped that the upcoming new world congress of Zionists in March 1953, having examined the issue of “anti-Semitism” of Soviet communists, will find the courage to express the historical truth.