Soviet Jews and emigration (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Russian annexation of Polish territory in 1654 gave Russia its first large-scale Jewish communities in towns like Minsk, Polatsk, Kiev, Brest and Vilkh. Other towns containing large numbers of Jewish inhabitants also came under the rule of the Tsar. Some years earlier in 1648 the Cossack leader Bogdon Chmielmicki led a revolt against the Polish gentry. After the defeat of the Polish army, his followers turned against the Jews; over 100,000 Jews were killed between 1648 and 1651, and others tortured and ill-treated This was the first large-scale massacre by the Cossacks. However, as early as 1545 Jewish goods from Poland were burnt in public, and Jews forbidden to enter Moscow. In 1563 Tsar Ivan IV ordered that all Jews who refused Christian baptism should be drowned. They were debarred in 1823 from owning land in White Russia by Tsar Alexander, and from following certain trades, and subject to immediate deportation and repeated pogroms. The word pogrom is Russian for a violent attack carried out against a section of the community.

Under the laws of 1793, Jews were mainly confined to the Pale of Settlement—an area which stretched from the Black Sea in the south to the Baltic provinces in the north, to Kalisz and Warsaw in the west and Chennigoy in the east. Even within the Pale of Settlement certain towns would only admit Jews as a special privilege. By 1897 there were more than 5 million Jews in the Pale, and a further 322,000 living outside. Moscow had 9,000; St. Petersburg 21,000; Krarkov 14,000 (official figures 1897).

In the population census of 1970 (before the emigration campaign) the number of Jews living within the USSR, excluding Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, was 2,150,707—less than 1 per cent of the population and twelfth in size of the 104 USSR nationalities listed (Insight No. 7, “Soviet Jews,” Oct. 1975).

In 1917 the Bolshevik revolution nominally removed many of the disadvantages suffered by the Jews, including the abolition of the Pale of Settlement. However, the pogroms re-commenced and continued until the outbreak of World War II. With the death of Stalin these were halted and the persecution of the Jews changed its violent character. It has instead become a political weapon in the present Russian government’s dealings with American capitalism and the US satellite in the east—the Jewish State of Israel, proclaimed as the Jewish national home.

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 gave fresh impetus to the Zionist movement everywhere, including Russia, but significantly the wealthier Jews, British, American and Russian, are not in too great a hurry to take advantage of it. All Jews are not Zionists; on the contrary. Zionism has the appeal of a happy land far far away, an appeal which becomes stronger as the economic and social conditions of Zionists in other parts of the world become worse. Undoubtedly the Soviet government consistently refuses to advance Soviet Jewish culture. The teaching of Yiddish is not encouraged. In fact, only 25 per cent. of the Jewish population speak Yiddish; 44 per cent., mostly women, being over the age of 60 and 75 per cent. over the age 40. (Insight, No. 8, Oct. 1975). Religious ceremonies such as circumcision require special permits. There are no longer any exclusively Jewish schools and practically no Jewish newspapers. The Russian government openly discourages Jewish culture (although a large number of Jews are following the footsteps of their British and American counterparts, where religious practices are observed only by a small number of orthodox Jews).

Since 1970 when the agitation for Jews to emigrate to Israel commenced, until 1977, approximately 5 per cent of Jews (118,000) left the Soviet Union, and a further 55,000 were waiting for visas in 1976. (The Jews of Russia, Martin Gilbert.) The rate of permits granted was 14,200 a year (National Council for Soviet Jewry circular, Feb. 1977).

Of those who emigrated since 1970, many went elsewhere. Some actually returned to the Soviet Union. The campaign for emigration which is promoted both by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the National Council for Soviet Jewry, is a demand not for the right of Jews to emigrate to any country of their choice, but that they should emigrate to Israel. The promised land has lost much of its attraction for Soviet Jews. The Yom Kippur war, compulsory military service for men and women, inflation, low wages and rising prices, and all the familiar problems of capitalism, are present in Israel. In addition, constant threat of war with the Arab states has placed the Israeli economy on a regular war footing, and it is anything but a secure and permanent home. According to an article in The Times (12th May 1977), of the Jews who left Russia in 1974, 20 per cent. sought destinations other than Israel. The following year the proportion rose above 50 per cent., and in April 1977 it increased to 70 per cent.

One of the drawbacks which future emigrants will have to face is the prospect of being deprived of financial assistance by the international Jewish organizations if their final destination is not Israel. The view of the Chief Rabbi of Rumania, Dr. Moses Rosen, is that it is Judaism that is threatened, and that emigrants should only go to Israel where they can lead Jewish lives. They should emigrate for “spiritual” not economic reasons, otherwise they should not be helped by Jewish public funds (The Times, 12th May 1977.) This will obviously affect the poorer Jews. Even if a visa is granted the Soviet government charge 900 roubles (£1,000) for every member of the emigrating family. This is a severe financial burden, and goes some way to explaining why only 7½ per cent of Russian Jews attempt to emigrate. A well-qualified professional Soviet citizen receives 160 roubles a month, and this is considered to be a good salary. In fact a number of Russian Jews who have settled in Israel want to move on elsewhere.

A further complicating factor is that despite the freedom of movement of Soviet citizens proclaimed under the Soviet Constitution, Russian workers whether Jewish or not are not permitted to emigrate, and the Soviet government claims to be making a special concession in the case of the Jews. Like all capitalist governments it does not wish to see its skilled labour force seek higher wages and better working conditions abroad. In this they are following the pattern set by the British government in the anti-Combination Laws of 1799-1824, which forbade the emigration of skilled workers in addition to prohibiting the formation of trade unions. For all practical purposes the Russian equivalent of the Combination Laws is still in force. Fear of opening the door to mass emigration lies behind the reticence of the Soviet government to allow unrestricted emigration of Jews. Also it is against the interests of Russian capitalism to help to build up present Israeli capitalism and its USA parent by allowing highly skilled workers to emigrate to these countries. Russian Jewish workers are no exception to the general rule prevailing within wage labour and capital relations. Dominated by the need to get a living in the only way workers can, by selling their labour-power, they will seek the best terms and social conditions for employment. Migration is part of the history of the working class. Workers have come and gone to all corners of the world in their attempts to find work and peace. Some countries refuse them entry, others refuse them exits. The Jewish workers are looking for the philosopher’s stone if they are looking for ideal conditions abroad.

Like any other workers, they cannot continue to live in the past, and must play their part in the removal of religious, nationalist and racial prejudice and the creation of a world in which there are no restrictions on people—freedom in the fullest sense of the word. Freedom from the domination of capital and wage labour; freedom from want, and freedom to extend the latent productive capacity which exists, and of course, freedom of movement. Socialism embraces all of these. Control of the world must be removed from the capitalists and the system abolished. This is the task of a class-conscious working class who are not divided amongst themselves on the basis of nationality, race, religion or sex.

Jim D'Arcy

Zionism – A case study in nationalism (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the nineteenth century there were conflicting views in Jewish communities as to how their best interests might be served. Some opted for a liberal view that assimilation was possible in an increasingly enlightened Europe.

Those favouring a reformed Judaism considered it best for the religion to be confined to the private sphere. The resolutely orthodox strove to maintain a traditional faith.

However, Europe was witnessing the emergence of an ideology that appealed to an increasing minority of Jews: nationalism.

Wider European society was embracing notions of national histories, distinctive cultures and languages, and self-determination. Jews found themselves faced with a choice between their Jewish or national identities. The latter was often compromised by persistent anti-semitism.

The concept of a Jewish national state began to emerge. Auto-emancipation was the term coined in the 1882 pamphlet of the same name written by the Russian Leon Pinsker.

Twenty years prior, in Rome and Jerusalem, Marx’s ‘communist rabbi’ Moses Hess proposed an independent Jewish socialist commonwealth, a blending of socialism with the nationalist ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini.

These declarations of Jewish nationalism did not initially attract widespread support. This began to change following the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the subsequent pogroms, the development of pan-Germanism voicing racist myths about all-powerful Jews, and the anti-semitism in the 1890s exposed by the Dreyfus affair.

Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist, began observing developments. Assimilated and relatively prosperous, he had little or no interest in the culture or religion of his forebears. His influences were Bismarck, Wagner and the pan-Germanists. However, he could not ignore the rising anti-semitic trend and came to the conclusion that assimilation had failed due to economic competition between Jews and gentiles. Liberated from physical ghettos, Jews were becoming confined socially.

Determined to free Jews from this emerging ghetto, Herzl considered both mass conversion to Christianity and socialist revolution. He eventually settled on the prevailing nationalist concept of self-determination.

In The Jewish State (1896), he argued for founding a European Jewish homeland that would remove the competition between Jews and non-Jews. Subsequently, both Argentina and East Africa were considered as possible locations. The Holy Land, Palestine, became the dream.

Palestinian Arabs, unsurprisingly, opposed this prospect. Herzl though regarded non-Europeans as backward, arguing that a Jewish homeland would be ‘a rampart of Europe against Asia’. In 1897 he organised the First Zionist Congress in Basel that established the World Zionist Organisation (WZO).

When Herzl died in 1904, his ideas were not universally accepted by all Jews. Another strand of Zionism aimed at renewing Judaism rather than confronting anti-semitism. Herzl’s supporters were accused of furthering assimilation, rejecting their forebears’ faith. This Zionist strand favoured a country that was uniquely Jewish, not a Jewish state on a European model.

Despite its disparate beginnings, Zionism gathered a momentum focused on Palestine, both as a reaction to anti-semitic nationalisms in Europe and as a nationalism in its own right.

Via the Balfour Declaration of 1917, made as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and the Nazi-instituted Holocaust, the Zionist cause achieved its objective in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel.

However, this was by no means the beginning of Jewish settlement in Palestine. There had already been a small Jewish community in that predominantly Muslim Ottoman area. The first formal Jewish community that can be considered an expression of Zionist aspirations was a kibbutz founded in 1910. This was followed by dozens more across the area that would become Israel. The kibbutz movement is significant as it was an expression of an ideological link that was destined to become horrifically problematic. That is the linking of nationalism with socialism.

From its early days Zionism was associated by some advocates with socialism. Moses Hess regarded it as an amalgam of socialism and Italian-style nationalism. Then Theodor Herzl introduced the notion of revolutionary socialism as a potential element of Zionism. Certainly, the kibbutz movement claimed Marxist influence in its organisation of communities. The goal was collective living. There was no private property, as all of it was held collectively by the community. Meals were even taken together.

Stanford economics professor Ran Abramitzky has stated, ‘Jewish immigrants who founded kibbutzim rejected capitalism and wanted to form a more socialist society.’ The paradox the professor seems not to have realised is that socialism is not something that can become the private preserve of one ethnic group, even if they do hold their property in common.

Herzl certainly made no secret of his view of the racial superiority of a Jewish homeland as a bastion against the barbarians beyond. The exclusive nature of the kibbutz reflected this attitude.

There is also the seemingly unquestioned acceptance that taking already occupied land for living space is justified. This is an idea that can be traced back to the very earliest days when humans began to develop a stratified society.

Certainly, in modern times the European conquest and settlement of the Americas paid little regard to any sense that indigenous populations had any rights.

For European Jewry, the concept of national exclusivity tied to ‘socialism’ and lebensraum became a monumental tragedy.

Before that tragedy could fully unfold, the seemingly antagonistic nationalisms had a moment of common purpose. In 1937 two SS officers, Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann, visited Palestine and met with Fevel Polkes, an agent of Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary force formed to protect Jewish communities in Palestine from Arab attacks. After 1948 it was incorporated into the Israeli Defence Force.

Polkes took the two Nazis to visit a kibbutz. In 1960 Eichmann wrote, ‘I did see enough to be very impressed with the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land… had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist.’

It would be a grievous mistake to equate Zionism with Nazism. But one thing all nationalisms have in common is that they pit what they see as their national collective interest against that of the ‘other’, those beyond, outside, excluded.

Whatever socialist pretensions Zionism had they have been subsumed into reformist politics that makes no claim to abolishing capitalism. Kibbutzim now only account for about 3 percent of Israel’s population. Collective living has been abandoned and the kibbutz has turned into village life.

Antagonistic nationalisms and competing economic interests are at the root of Hamas atrocities in Israel and Israeli atrocities in Gaza. While the outpouring of support for Gaza by Palestinian flag-waving demonstrators is an understandable reaction, the solution to the ongoing conflict is surely not to counterpose one nationalism with another.

A one-state or two–state solution will not remove the underlying tensions. It may ameliorate the situation for a while, but only until the next time competition flares into conflict.

To simply oppose Zionism could be interpreted as being anti-semitic. It would invite the question, why just pick on Jewish nationalism? The socialist response has to be opposition to all nationalisms.

The oxymoron ‘National Socialism’ is particularly mistaken. The definitions are mutually exclusive. Not only in the Nazi formulation, but also in such seemingly reasonable and moderate forms as ‘Scottish socialism’, a variant of Scottish nationalism.

Whatever label is attached to it, nationalism, as it arose variously in the nineteenth century, persists as an ideological shackle for the workers of the world, keeping them bound as wage slaves to capitalism. While workers continue to identify themselves with their countries of birth they will deny themselves the worldwide possibilities of socialism, without borders and the wars fought to maintain them.

The irony is that while Herzl thought Jews had been confined to an invisible ghetto, Zionism is confining them to a very visible one, Israel, even for those choosing to live beyond its borders. The way forwards is not assimilation, but socialism.

Dave Alton

Tsar Brezhnev and the Jews (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

About a year ago when the furore about emigration of Jews from the USSR to Israel was at its height there appeared in the letter columns of The Guardian (that gallant defender of the weak and the oppressed), a long, well-argued, and excellently written letter from a reader who wrote “as a Manchester Jew”. This gave him two positions of strength to start with. Manchester was of course the birthplace of the paper and its home when it had some right to call itself a liberal organ (perhaps I am being a little naive, but I prefer to cherish the notion that it was rather more genuine than it is today. Well, it must have been). And a Jew, seemingly, had the right to argue that Russia was not being beastly to its Jews as all these jackals and hyenas of the west were alleging.

The writer failed to add (no doubt through modesty) more about himself which would have helped readers to evaluate his contribution. He could have added that, as well as being a Manchester Jew, he was a lifelong Communist (whether card-carrying or fellow-travelling I know not). It would have enabled readers to appreciate that what they were really reading was a professional Communist propaganda effort fronted by a babe-in-the-wood from the Manchester ghetto. And they would have been on their guard accordingly. (How do I know this top-secret information? Well, it happens that I too am a “Manchester Jew” and used to attend the same Hebrew classes as this chap. I wasn’t born in the SPGB: very few of us are.)

What was he saying in this erudite epistle? The message came through loud and clear. Any talk of anti-semitism in the Soviet Union, that glorious fatherland of the Socialist Revolution, that fearless champion of anti-fascism, that gallant defender of minorities, not to speak of the widows and the orphans, was and by definition must be sheer scurrilous slander. Russia is not against the Jews. Perish the thought. It is only the Zionists, the dupes of the State of Israel, who are being put in their place in the USSR. And he went on to say, as they always do, that had it not been for the gallant Stalinist Red Army, Hitler would have solved the Jewish Problem once for all. (He forgot to mention, again they always do, that at the beginning of the war, Stalin had a pact with Hitler and was assisting his war effort until Adolf turned on poor old Uncle Joe. “Have we deserved to be treated like this?” as the Russian diplomat in Berlin whined as Hitler was kicking him out.)

I would have like exposing this stuff for the hypocritical Communist guff it undoubtedly was. But the great organ of freedom won’t print letters from the likes of me. But within a couple of days there appeared a far better demolition job than I could have done. The writer was a London Jew. Mr. E. Litvinoff (I don’t think he is any relation of the Stalinist foreign minister of that ilk, though he might be) wrote a devastating reply along the lines: So the Russians are not anti-semites eh? Only anti- Zionists? Well, get a load of this.

There then followed the story of a pamphlet recently issued in Paris under the imprimatur of the Embassy of the USSR. This official Communist document was not only a slander of Jews qua Jews. It was not, and could not be, against Israeli Imperialists. And why not? Because, as Litvinoff made clear, it was taken word for word from a pamphlet issued in the days of Tsar Nicholas, the last of the Romanovs, by an organization known as the Black Hundreds, whose sole raison d'ê·tre was anti-semitism of the most virulent kind. They were not merely propagandists. They organized pogroms of the most brutal kind. Before Israel was even heard of — nearly fifty years before, in fact. The men, women and children who were slaughtered in the pogroms had not been Israeli imperialist stooges — they were massacred and reviled because they were Jews.

Lots of good folk condemned these murderous monsters, including Lenin. So now we have the minions of the heir of Lenin indulging in the same filth as the Tsarists themselves. So much for the Stalin Constitution which guaranteed (so we were told) freedom for minorities — which never prevented Stalin from murdering “rootless cosmopolitans” right up to his death and the monstrous “Jewish Doctors’ Plot”. But Brezhnev is the heir not of Stalin, we are told, but of Lenin. He is clearly also the heir of the Tsars — of whom at least one thing can be said. The Jews were allowed to emigrate pretty freely; and enormous numbers of them did (including, I doubt not, the father or grandfather of our “Manchester Jew”).

Well, what did the latter reply to Litvinoff? You must be joking. He disappeared without trace into the Manchester fog from which he had emerged. That is the way with these people. They write a diatribe or speak a speech — and hope to get away with it. They often do. But when they are answered they show their lack of sincerity by keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. Hoping that everyone will forget.

Now, Litvinoff has made a book out of the episode and it was reviewed in the same Guardian as ever was by their Soviet “expert” Jonathan Steele (9th November 1974). The Guardian these days is a highly successful paper and its ever-growing circulation figures are enabling it to laugh all the way to the bank. It has a square creep in a square hole whichever way you look — Steele for Moscow, Gott for South America, Gittings for China et al. These people are not reporters, so much as artful dodgers and slippery eels on behalf of the red regimes. It must be some ten years since the paper had the temerity to print a letter praying to Gott to say something about the 20,000 political prisoners in Castro’s Cuba which he had described in glowing terms (having spent his time in the Havana Hilton instead of in a prison). For nine years I looked eagerly every day for His reply. I now realise that Gott (like our Manchester Jew) never replies.

Steele writes that he found Litvinoff’s book “very disappointing”. Well, having just come back from a three months’ trip to Russia where he seems to have visited everywhere apart from your actual salt-mines, he clearly felt hurt that anyone could be so cruel to his red-fascist friends. And what was wrong with the book? Mainly that Litvinoff pointed out (as he had done in the letter) that the Russians had indulged in the same scurrility as their Tsarist predecessors. He had failed to “define the line which should be drawn between anti-semitism and anti-zionism”. Why the devil should he waste his time in such rubbish? The import of the book (which was based on a trial in Paris when the editor of the pamphlet, a French Communist frontman who said in court that he had never even seen the thing till it was printed, was found guilty of stirring up racial hatred. Such communists) was to the effect that the Russians were not interested in any such line whether it could be drawn or not. 

They reprinted pogromist literature so slavishly that they reprinted the mistakes of the illiterate Tsarists. So that Parisians in 1970, like Muscovites in 1900, can read that it is better to cast meat to the dogs than to a goy; or that a Jew can be happy when he hears an "akum” is dying. (I am quite sure there is no such word in Hebrew or Yiddish or any other language as “akum”. But Brezhnev’s men are determined to copy their mentors, boobs and all.)

Oh yes, and while Litvinoff is right to criticise the Russians for equating Zionism with Nazism, he actually compares Nazism with Soviet anti-semitism. Litvinoff really has a cheek. On the other hand, I suggest that next time Steele is a guest in Russia he visit a prison or asylum where some Jew is incarcerated and tries to show the poor devil how much difference there is between Nazism and Red Fascism.

Just in case anybody gets wrong ideas, we Socialists are not only concerned with Jews. We are concerned with all the victims of the capitalist jungle. East and West.

L. E. Weidberg