I am reposting below a refutation from the blog Stalinsmoustache. In it the author refers to a question sent to Stalin by the US-based Jewish News Agency in 1931.
Stalin was the only world leader of any stature to
unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism.
He
responded to the Jewish News Agency as follows:
In answer to your
inquiry :
National and racial
chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the
period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism,
is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.
Anti-semitism is of
advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows
aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the
working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and
lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists,
cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-Semitism.
In the U.S.S.R.
anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon
deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are
liable to the death penalty.
J. Stalin
January 12, 1931
Did any other world leader of comparable stature denounce
anti-Semitism in such strong terms? Did
any other government declare anti-Semitism to be hostile to its economic and
political system, and have such strong penalties for active anti-Semitism?
If Stalin was insincere in his opposition to anti-Semitism
why then did Pravda publish Stalin’s statement five years later, on November
30, 1936? In the four years from 1933 to
the end of 1936, Nazi Germany introduced 24 laws and regulations restricting
the rights of its Jewish citizens, the last of which was a prohibition on the
genital examination of Aryan women by Jewish medical students.[1] Anti-Semitism was rife in other parts of
Europe and was of growing concern to Jews in the US, Britain and its dominion
states. It was a phenomenon to which a
great deal of momentum was attached, and against this tide, only one world
leader stood firm. Stalin’s definitive
statement on anti-Semitism, communicated to US Jews in 1931, was reproduced in
Pravda in 1936 to clearly communicate Soviet opposition to the growth of
anti-Semitism.
There are some who claim that Stalin was an anti-Semite from
his earliest days in the Tiflis Seminary; there are others who trace his
alleged anti-Semitism to the alleged murder of Solomon Mikhoels and the campaigns against Zionist
influence in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1948. Yet the committee
compiling the Russian edition of Stalin’s collected works saw fit to include
Stalin’s 1931 statement in the collected works published in 1949. It seems strange that if Stalin had decided
on a course of virulent anti-Semitism in 1948 he would want his 1931 statement
condemning anti-Semitism brought back to the attention of the Soviet
people. The same statement was included
in the English language edition of the collected works published after Stalin’s
death in 1955.
Here is the stalinsmoustache post:
Stalin’s ‘Anti-Semitism’
Posted by
stalinsmoustache under communism, Stalin | Tags: anti-semitism,
reading Stalin |
[5] Comments
[5] Comments
The accusation
that Stalin was an anti-Semite is a strange one. Neither Stalin’s written texts
nor his actions indicate anti-Semitism. Indeed, they indicate precisely the
opposite, as I will show in a moment. So those who wish to make the accusation
have to rely on hearsay – second- and third-hand snippets from passing
conversations, whether from an estranged daughter or from those within and
without the USSR who were not favourably disposed to Stalin.[1]
And once such a position is ‘established’, it is then possible to read some of
his actions and written comments in such a light. For instance, the
‘anti-cosmopolitan’ campaign of the late 1940s becomes a coded ‘anti-Semitic’
campaign. Or the ‘doctors plot’ of 1952-53 – in which leading doctors were
suspected of seeking to assassinate government officials – is seen as an excuse
for a widespread anti-Semitic purge and deportation,[2]
halted only because of Stalin’s death (we may thank Khrushchev for this piece
of speculation). However, the only way such an assumption can work is that many
doctors in the Soviet Union were Jewish; therefore the attack on doctors was
anti-Semitic. Equally, even more doctors were Russian, but for some strange
reason, the plot is not described as anti-Russian.
Unfortunately
for Stalin’s accusers, even the hearsay indicates that Stalin was opposed to
the deep-rooted anti-Semitism of Russian culture. During the anti-cosmopolitan
campaign of 1948-49 – which was actually anti-capitalist in the wake of the
Second World War – it became the practice in some journal articles to include,
where possible, the original family names in brackets after the Russian name.
Sometimes, such original names were Jewish. When Stalin noticed this he
commented:
Why Mal’tsev,
and then Rovinskii between brackets? What’s the matter here? How long will this
continue …? If a man chose a literary pseudonym for himself, it’s his right….
But apparently someone is glad to emphasise that this person has a double
surname, to emphasise that he is a Jew…. Why create anti-Semitism?[3]
Indeed, to the
Romanian leader, Gheorghiu-Dej, Stalin commented pointedly in 1947, ‘racism
leads to fascism’.[4]
At this point, we face an extraordinary contradiction: those who would accuse
Stalin of anti-Semitism must dismiss his deep antipathy to fascism and deploy
the reductio ad Hitlerum. If one assumes, even subconsciously, that
Hitler and Stalin were of the same ilk, then it follows that Stalin too must be
an anti-Semite. Apart from the sheer oxymoron of an anti-fascist fascist, this
assertion seems very much like the speculative thought bubble that becomes
‘true’ through a thousand repetitions.[5]
I prefer to
follow a rather conventional approach, instead of relying on hearsay, gossip
and speculation. That approach is to pay attention to his written statements
and actions. These are rather telling. Already in ‘Marxism and the National
Question’ (1913), in which Stalin deals extensively with the Jews and the Bund
(The General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), he points
out that dispersed minorities such as the Jews would be given the full range of
protections, in terms of language, education, culture and freedom of
conscience, within a socialist state. This would become his standard position,
reiterated time and again and contrasted with the tsarist autocracy’s fostering
of pogroms.[6]
It was also reflected in extensive programs among Jews, including the fostering
– not without problems and failures – of Yiddish, Jewish institutions and the
significant presence of Jews at all levels of government.[7]
From time to
time, Stalin had to deal with outbursts of anti-Semitism that still ran deep in
Russian culture (thanks to the residual influence of tsarist autocracy). For
example, in 1927 he explicitly mentions that any traces of anti-Semitism, even
among workers and in the party is an ‘evil’ that ‘must be combated, comrades,
with all ruthlessness’.[8]
And in 1931, in response to a question from the Jewish News Agency in the
United States, he describes anti-Semitism as an ‘an extreme form of racial
chauvinism’ that is a convenient tool used by exploiters to divert workers from
the struggle with capitalism. Communists, therefore, ‘cannot but be
irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism’. Indeed, in the U.S.S.R.
‘anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a
phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system’. Active ‘anti-semites are
liable to the death penalty’.[9]
This was no
empty boast, as those who accuse Stalin of anti-semitism seem to assume. It is
worth noting that article 123 of the 1936 Constitution ensured that this
position was law.[10]
Active anti-Semitism, even racial slurs, were severely punished. It may be
surprising to some, but one of the key tasks of the NKVD (precursor to the KGB)
was to counteract waves of residual anti-Semitism.[11]
Yes, one of the jobs of the infamous secret police of the USSR was to root out
anti-Semitism.
Further, the
‘affirmative action’ program of the Soviet Union,[12]
enacted in Stalin’s capacity as Commissar for Nationality Affairs (1917-24),
was explicitly a program in which territories of identifiable ethnic minorities
were established, with their own languages and forms of education, the
fostering of literature and cultural expression, and local forms of governance.
As for dispersed minorities, even within such regions, they were provided with
a stiff framework of protections, including strong penalties for any form of
racial denigration and abuse. Already in 1913 Stalin had prefigured such an
approach, specifying among others ‘the Jews in Poland, the Letts in Lithuania,
the Russians in the Caucasus, the Poles in the Ukraine, and so on’.[13]
They too – in a program of indigenization (korenizatsiia)[14]
– should be able to use their own languages, operate their own schools,
law-courts and soviets, and have freedom of conscience in matters relating to
religion. Indeed, by the mid-1930s the Jews too were identified as a ‘nation’
with territory, having the Jewish Autonomous district in Birobidzhan.[15]
This importance of this move (part of Crimea had also been proposed) is rarely
recognised. It eventually failed, but it was the first move towards Jewish
territory in the modern era.[16]
A final
question: what about the attacks on Judaism as a religion? In 1913, Stalin
wrote of the ‘petrified religious rites and fading psychological relics’[17]
fostered by pockets of the ‘clerical-reactionary Jewish community’.[18]
Is this anti-Semitic? No, it is anti-religious. Judaism too was subject
anti-religious campaigns, which had the result not so much of divorcing Jews
from their religious ‘roots’ but of producing a profound transformation in
Jewish institutions and culture, so much so that one can speak of a
‘sovietisation’ of Jewish culture that produced Jews who were not religious but
proud of contributions to Soviet society.[19]
What are we to
make of all this? Do the hearsay and implicit assumptions speak the truth, or
do Stalin’s words and actions speak the truth? I prefer the latter. But if we
are to give some credence to the hearsay, then it may indicate a profoundly
personal struggle for a Georgian, who was brought up with an ingrained
anti-Semitism, to root it out in the name of socialism.
[1] For useful collections of such hearsay, see Erik Van
Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century
Revolutionary Patriotism (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 201-7;
Erik Van Ree, “Heroes and Merchants: Stalin’s Understanding of National
Character,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8, no.
1 (2007).
[2] Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin’s Last
Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (New York:
HarperCollins, 2003); Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red
Tsar (London: Phoenix, 2003), 626-39.
[3] Van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A
Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism, 205.
[4] Van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A
Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism, 205.
[5] As a small sample, see Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of
the Soviet Union: a History of a National Minority (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 138-45; Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and
Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years, vol. Oxford University Press (Oxford,
1996), 157-58, 162; Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into
Conflict and Prejudice (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 33-38; Philip
Boobyer, The Stalin Era (London: Routledge, 2000), 78; Konstantin
Azadovskii and Boris Egorov, “From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism: Stalin and
the Impact of the ‘Anti-Cosmopolitan’ Campaigns of Soviet Culture,” Journal
of Cold War Studies 4, no. 1 (2002); Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of
the Red Tsar, 310-12; Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), 264; Van Ree, “Heroes and Merchants:
Stalin’s Understanding of National Character,” 45; Paul R. Gregory, Terror
By Quota: State Security from Lenin to Stalin (An Archival Study)
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 53, 265.
[6] I. V. Stalin, “The Russian Social-Democratic Party and
Its Immediate Tasks,” in Works, vol. 1, 9-30 (Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1901 [1954]), 20-21; I. V. Stalin, “Rossiĭskaia
sotsial-demokraticheskaia partiia i ee blizhaĭshie zadachi,” in Sochineniia,
vol. 1, 11-32 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury,
1901 [1946]), 21-23; I. V. Stalin, “To the Citizens: Long Live the Red Flag!,”
in Works, vol. 1, 85-89 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1905 [1954]); I. V. Stalin, “K grazhdanam. Da zdravstvuet krasnoe znamia!,” in Sochineniia,
vol. 1, 84-88 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury,
1905 [1946]); I. V. Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” in Works,
vol. 2, 300-81 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1913 [1953]),
319-21; I. V. Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” in Sochineniia,
vol. 2, 290-367 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury,
1913 [1946]), 308-10; I. V. Stalin, “Abolition of National Disabilities,” in Works,
vol. 3, 17-21 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1917 [1953]), 17; I.
V. Stalin, “Ob otmene natsionalʹnykh ogranicheniĭ,” in Sochineniia, vol.
3, 16-19 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1917
[1946]), 16; I. V. Stalin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Party in the National
Question: Theses for the Tenth Congress of the R. C. P. (B.) Endorsed by the
Central Committee of the Party,” in Works, vol. 5, 16-30 (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1921 [1953]), 17, 27; I. V. Stalin, “Ob
ocherednykh zadachakh partii v natsionalʹnom voprose: Tezisy k Х s”ezdu RKP(b),
utverzhdennye TSK partii,” in Sochineniia, vol. 5, 15-29 (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1921 [1947]), 16, 26;
Stalin, “Concerning the Presentation of the National Question,” 52-53; Stalin,
“K postanovke natsionalʹnogo voprosa,” 52-53.
[7] Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: a History of a
National Minority, 58-71, 77-84; Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher:
Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2006), xv-xvi.
[8] I. V. Stalin, “The Fifteenth Congress of the
C.P.S.U.(B.), December 2-19, 1927,” in Works, vol. 10, 274-382 (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1927 [1954]), 332; I. V. Stalin, “XV s”ezd
VKP (b) 2–19 dekabria 1927 g,” in Sochineniia, vol. 10, 271-371 (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1927 [1949]), 324.
[9] I. V. Stalin, “Anti-Semitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the
Jewish News Agency in the United States,” in Works, vol. 13, 30 (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1931 [1954]), 30; I. V. Stalin, “Ob
antisemitizme: Otvet na zapros Evreĭskogo telegrafnogo agentstva iz Аmerik,” in
Sochineniia, vol. 13, 28 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo
politicheskoi literatury, 1931 [1951]), 28.
[10] I. V. Stalin, “Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, With amendments adopted by the First,
Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the
U.S.S.R., Kremlin, Moscow, December 5, 1936,” in Works, vol. 14, 199-239
(London: Red Star Press, 1936 [1978]), article 123; I. V. Stalin,
“Konstitutsiia (osnovnoĭ zakon) soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik
(utverzhdena postanovleniem chrezvychaĭnogo VIII s”ezda sovetov soiuza
sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik ot 5 dekabria 1936 g.),” (Moscow:
Garant, 1936 [2015]), stat’ia 123. This also applied to the earliest constitutions
of republics, such as the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belorus. See Pinkus, The Jews
of the Soviet Union: a History of a National Minority, 52-57.
[11] Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: a History of a
National Minority, 84-88; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism:
Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 169, 186-87.
[12] Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations
and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2001); Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The
Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” in A State of Nations:
Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor
Suny and Terry Martin, 67-90 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
[13] Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 375-76;
Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 362. See also the exposition of the
seventh and ninth clause of the Party Program, concerning equal rights,
language and self-government in I. V. Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on
the National Question,” in Works, vol. 1, 31-54 (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1904 [1954]), 42-46; I. V. Stalin, “Kak ponimaet
sotsial-demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?,” in Sochineniia, vol. 1,
32-55 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1904
[1946]), 43-47.
[14] Korenizatsiia, a term coined by the Bolsheviks,
is ‘derived directly not from the stem koren- (“root”—with the meaning
“rooting”) but from its adjectival form korennoi as used in the phrase korennoi
narod (indigenous people)’ Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet
Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” 74.
[15] Stalin, “Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, With amendments adopted by the First, Second,
Third, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the
U.S.S.R., Kremlin, Moscow, December 5, 1936,” article 22; Stalin,
“Konstitutsiia (osnovnoĭ zakon) soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik
(utverzhdena postanovleniem chrezvychaĭnogo VIII s”ezda sovetov soiuza
sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik ot 5 dekabria 1936 g.),” stat’ia 22.
[16] For a little detail, see Pinkus, The Jews of the
Soviet Union: a History of a National Minority, 71-76.
[17] Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 310;
Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 300.
[18] Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 374-75;
Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 361.
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