In an article published in this magazine only four and a half years ago,¹ I had occasion to contrast the many disabilities suffered by the Jews of the Soviet Union with Communist Poland's relatively enlightened treatment of her tiny Jewish community. There is no need to relate in detail the drastic changes for the worse that have since occurred in Poland—changes which are bringing about the demise through virtual expulsion of a community that has existed for almost a thousand years. As to Soviet Jewry, its position has shown no improvement over the same period. Soviet Russia's Jews number some three million, a concentration second only in size to the Jewish community of the United States. Like Poland's, Russia's Jews are subjected to various kinds of discrimination, but unlike Poland's, they are not permitted to leave.

Forced to remain in Russia—there is every indication that many would leave if allowed to do so—Soviet Jews must continue to live as easily identifiable members of an ethnic minority that has for a variety of reasons long been treated, in practice if not in theory, as alien and suspect. Many, no doubt, would wish to assimilate—but they cannot: the internal passport that every urban Soviet citizen must produce on countless occasions clearly identifies them as Jews, and this entry cannot be legally changed any more than the date of one's birth. Besides, few are likely to forget the innumerable ways which have been used in the USSR in recent years to “unmask” one's Jewish origin—public disclosure of the victim's or his relative's Jewish-sounding names, or of his “Jewish” appearance, accent, etc.

Unable to cease being considered Jewish, Russia's Jews are nevertheless prevented from living as Jews, in either the secular or the religious sense. There are a half-dozen rabbis remaining—or one per half-million Jews—all of them aged, and soon there may be none, for none are being trained. In fact, the rabbis are outnumbered by professional propagandists for “atheism” who specialize in attacks on Judaism. In all of the Soviet Union there is not a single Jewish school, full-time or part-time, nor does any educational institution offer courses in the history and the literature of the Jews, or (with the exception of the linguistics department of one university) in Hebrew or Yiddish, Unless the ban on the training of rabbis and the teaching of Yiddish, Hebrew, and other related subjects is lifted in the very near future, the situation now prevailing may become irreversible. Within a few years there will be no teachers to train the next generation of educators and clergymen. For the first time in its long history, the People of the Book may become in Russia a community of Jewish illiterates.

An almost completely urban and highly-educated group, Soviet Jews are painfully aware that a number of careers are completely closed to them. There are no Jews today in the Soviet diplomatic service or in the upper echelons of the army and the Party bureaucracy, while only thirty years ago there were several Jewish generals, Jewish members of the Party's Politbureau, and a Jew at the head of the commissariat of foreign affairs. Nor is there any question that young Soviet Jews find it difficult to enter universities that in the 1920's and 1930's eagerly accepted their fathers. To be sure, not every Soviet Jew personally experiences the pain of discrimination; but then, in Czarist Russia, at the height of the pogroms, there were also some Jews who were exempt from the restrictions imposed on millions of their coreligionists. However, now, as then, none can escape the feeling of insecurity. (In this respect, it is instructive to read the late Ilya Ehrenburg's memoirs: as a high-school boy in pre-revolutionary Russia, he was insulted by some classmates. Many years later, a famous Soviet novelist and a thoroughly assimilated Jew, he narrowly escaped execution on charges of Jewish nationalism.)

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The establishment in 1948 of the State of Israel introduced a new factor into the condition of Soviet Jewry, reinforcing the longstanding Russian mistrust of an ethnic group with extensive family connections in the West. Soviet authorities in general are firm believers in the perpetuation of ethnic ties and even in “double loyalties.” In recent years, Soviet propaganda has devoted much effort to promoting “Zionist” sentiment among Armenians residing abroad, using the kind of language and arguments that readers of Jewish Zionist periodicals would find familiar. French, Egyptian, or American-born Armenians have been urged to “return” to their one true homeland, the only place where they can live in dignity and security and maintain their ancient language and culture. To put the matter simply, Armenian “Zionism” has been hailed because Armenia is located in the USSR, while the geographical position of Jewish Zionism makes it treasonable.

Not unexpectedly, attacks on “Zionism” have become more frequent and embittered in the period since the Six-Day War. Thus, for example, on August 5, 1968, the Novosti press agency charged that Zionist organizations in sixty countries were engaging in nefarious activities, ranging from religious missionary efforts to down right espionage. The list of “Zionist” organizations included two philanthropic agencies, HIAS and the American Joint Distribution Committee. The obvious implication was that “Zionist” agents were to be found among Soviet Jews, too, especially in view of the fact that their counterparts were just then being “unmasked” in large numbers in neighboring Poland. The mere mention of the Joint was sufficient to recall the Stalinist past; it was only fifteen years ago that the Joint was charged with having organized in Moscow a “doctors' plot,” the purported aim of which was to murder prominent Soviet leaders by means of medical sabotage.

Abundant use of anti-Semitic stereotypes is a most striking feature of the continuing avalanche of anti-Israeli articles and cartoons in Soviet newspapers and magazines. With the sole exception of the United States, no foreign country, friendly or hostile—not even China—has in recent months received so much “coverage” in the Soviet mass media as Israel. Anthropologically, the Israeli in the typical Soviet cartoon resembles the hooked-nose midget that was the Nazi image of the Jew, and the anti-Israeli newspaper and magazine articles are richly spiced with Yiddishisms and Jewish-sounding names and nicknames. The parallels with Nazi propaganda do not end here. Thus, the Nazis once perpetrated the myth that Franklin Roosevelt was really a Jew; Soviet propaganda never tires of affixing a “Zionist” label to the Rockefellers. Also, thirty years ago Berlin newspapers ranted about the danger to the Third Reich from an international Jewish conspiracy of bankers and Bolsheviks; here, too, the similarity to Soviet warnings about the means of “Zionism” is obvious.

Even more ominous is the tendency to link Israel's “Nazi-like aggression” with Judaism as a religion. It is in the teachings of Judaism, in the Bible, and in the Talmud, the argument goes, that the Israeli “militarists” find inspiration for their “inhuman” deeds, “racist” theories, and “expansionist” designs. It is worth noting that Trofim Kichko, the author of the viciously anti-Semitic tract, Judaism Without Embellishment, which only a few years ago created so much indignation around the world that the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party was forced to disavow it, was recently not only allowed to reappear in print, but was even awarded a decoration for his services to the cause of “atheist propaganda.”

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The response of Soviet Jews to the government-sponsored campaign of anti-Semitic vilification and intimidation is much the same as that of their grandparents at the turn of the century—except, of course, for the fact that unlike their grandparents, today's Jews are not allowed to leave. The great majority of Soviet Jewry remains passive and lives in a state of nervous apprehension. But there are also those, especially among the younger generation, whose alienation and resentment find expression in action. Like their grandfathers, they are drawn to quasi-revolutionary activity, or to defiant affirmation of a half-forgotten ethnic identity, or to both. Jews have figured very prominently among the recently-sentenced Soviet intellectuals and) among the signers of the various open letters and petitions that have accompanied their trials. Most recently, a Jewish engineer by the name of Boris Kochubiyevsky, who last year petitioned Soviet authorities for permission to emigrate to Israel, was sentenced to three years in a prison camp; his fate was protested in a letter signed by fifty-five Soviet intellectuals and others, among them several Jews. At the same time, tens of thousands of young Soviet Jews gather annually around the Moscow synagogue on Simchat Torah to sing Jewish songs (often without words), to dance the hora, or even to exchange a sentence or two in Hebrew. The rare performances of Yiddish variety shows are often attended by young Jews who know no Yiddish, and there is ample evidence that the Yiddish and Russian broadcasts of the Voice of Israel find a large and responsive audience. Visitors from abroad are nearly unanimous in reporting great interest among Soviet Jews of all ages in learning all they can about Israel and about Jewish life in America.

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In a volume recently published in this country,² one may find some twenty studies and speeches dealing with various aspects of Jewish life in the USSR, as well as several eyewitness accounts by visitors to that country. Nearly all of the material has previously been published in various journals or as separate pamphlets, much of it in the last few years. There is the moving story of a visit to the Moscow synagogue by the novelist Elie Wiesel, and by four other Westerners. Abraham Brumberg contributes two entries, an excellent survey of Soviet reactions to the Six-Day War, and (with his late father, Joseph Brumberg) a valuable study of Sovietish Heimland, the Soviet Union's lone Yiddish journal. William Korey is the author of a first-rate monograph dealing with the legal position of Russia's Jews, and of a brief account of the Nazi massacre of Kiev's Jews at Babi Yar and its later reverberations in the USSR. There are three articles by Moshe Decter; one of these, originally published in Foreign Affairs in 1963, is still the best single analysis of the status of Jews in the USSR.

Brumberg, Korey, and Decter are all well-known specialists in Soviet affairs and their contributions reflect a firm grasp of Soviet history, Communist doctrine, and Leninist tactics. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the other contributions, including Ronald I. Rubin's introduction, which contains several unfounded generalizations and hypotheses (can one really attribute Stalin's anti-Semitism at the end of the war to his fear of “encounters between many Jewish troops and Jews of other Allied nations?”). These chapters suffer from their authors' inability to view the subject of Soviet Jews within a general Soviet framework. On the other hand, Mr. Rubin's monograph on debates at the United Nations on the problem of Soviet Jewry contains much valuable data. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's rhetorical foreword is mercifully brief.

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Considering the magnitude and importance of the subject, very little has been written about Soviet Russia's Jews since World War II. Much of the writing to date is superficial and often misleading. A complete bibliography on the subject would look embarrassingly meager. Mr. Rubin's book demonstrates that, given painstaking research, it is possible to construct a reliable picture of many aspects of Soviet Jewish life. It also serves as a reminder of how much work is yet to be done.

¹ “The State of Soviet Jewry,” January 1965.

² The Unredeemed: Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, edited with an introduction by Ronald I. Rubin. Quadrangle Books, 317 pp., $10.00.