MARX, LENIN & STALIN ON ZIONISM.

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Reference Material / Further Reading

Yaacov Ro'i - Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union-Taylor & Francis (1995).epub

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CONTENTS
Preface
KARL MARX AND THE JEWISH QUESTION
Stalin and Lenin’s Views on the Jewish Question and the Bund; Early History of the Bund
THE FORMATION OF THE SOVIET JEWISH HOMELAND - BIROBIDZHAN
THE UNDERLYING OBJECTIVE LOGIC FOR THE ZIONIST CALLS FOR " ANTI-ASSIMILATION" - WAS AN AID TO NAZI GERMANY
"LEGALISING" THE FORMATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL BY THE UNITED NATIONS PARTITION & THE USSR RECOGNITION - 1947
Molotov Warns Jews of the Killing Squads But the Zionists Do Not.
ESTABLISHING THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE OF JEWS IN PALESTINE
THE CHANGING LEADERSHIP OF THE SECRET SERVICE
The Case of Ezhov And the Appointment of Beria To The Secret Services
The Post-War Reshuffle That Removed Beria From Sole Control of the Secret Services- The Atomic Threat
(ii) The General Zhukov Affair
THE JEWISH ANTI-FASCIST COMMITTEE AND THE ANTI-JEWISH PLOT
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Preface

Bourgeois nationalists, whether of Zionist and Pan-Islamic persuasions, both accuse the USSR of the socialist era (from 1917-1953) of racism, aimed against either Jews or Arabs respectively. But, in reality Lenin and Stalin gave an even-handed and single reply, to both the Pan-Islamists and to the Zionists. This reply was to eschew a narrow bourgeois nationalism, in order to create socialism.

In Alliance 30 we attempt to put the recent history of Jewry into a Marxist-Leninist context. This means we will first examine the views of Marx, Lenin and Stalin upon the ideologies of Zionism and its precursors. Next we discuss the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan established by the Soviets. Of necessity we examine the so called “Jewish Plot” and the “Doctor’s Plot” in the USSR. This is necessary to sensibly to discuss how it was that the USSR would come to agree at the United Nations, to a recognition of the imperialist-led partition of Palestine, and the planting of the colony of Israel.

In the companion Alliance Number 31, we will examine the views of Lenin and Stalin on Pan-Islamism. The form Pan-Islamism took in the USSR, was known as Sultan-Galiyev-ism. We then briefly examine the versions of Pan-Islamism represented by the Ba’ath Party ideology of Syria and Iraq; and finally we will assess the views of Samir Amin.

A Methodological Foreword Upon Recent Sources For Marxist-Leninists

Alliance has always tried to punctiliously show its source material with as precise references as is possible. This is not an academic peccadillo- to be disdained as “armchair Marxism.” Rather it is essential to root a Marxist-Leninist view of the world in an objective and clear manner. Only this permits any possible rebuttals that are based on facts rather than those of opinion. It has not been necessary to comment on this matter till now. However three new issues have arisen, regarding source materials that directly affect the Marxist-Leninist movement.

Firstly: Certain documents have been released in the Gorbachev era and more recently, from the Soviet archives. This is generally of benefit to Marxist-Leninists, who try to explain the real events inside the former USSR in its Marxist-Leninist days of Stalin’s life time. Previous readers of Alliance, will know that we generally try to highlight the most significant of such documents; and we draw readers’ attention to the confusion that this raises in the bourgeois academic circles. For instance, we previously discussed how the school of so called “revisionist” historians – such as Arch Getty Junior – have tried to struggle with such evidence that contradicts the standard Trotsky influenced bourgeois academic histories. But a caveat must be introduced. It is very unlikely that ALL relevant documents will surface in our lifetime. Moreover, we do not know what documents of Stalin’s and other relevant leading personalities may have been destroyed. All the written archival materials are unlikely to be made available to us anyway, since some of these will be deemed “too sensitive.” Why should the Russian state behave any differently to the British Kew Gardens Archives for instance? We therefore simply raise a caution regarding the appropriate interpretation of documents that may become available. These are likely to be only “spotty” and unlikely to give us all the facts.

Secondly: As a corollary, this leaves some to a continuing abundance of the hear-say, “he said-they said,” type of scurrilous evidence. This leads to a dilemma for the Marxist-Leninists, as to whether to even use this type of evidence at all. But to ignore it is to ignore the charges that the authors lay at Stalin. This does not help Marxists-Leninists currently since one of our current tasks – is to counter the bourgeois historiography and lies. On the other hand, in using these sources it is necessary to be highly selective. Instances are provided in Alliance 30 of two especially problematic sources.

Very little written is available on Stalin’s attitude to the Jewish Question. A new low in scurrilous writing on Stalin is provided by the virulent Arkady Vaksberg in “Stalin Against The Jews,” New York; 1994. Much of the tone and a large measure of the content of this book is scurrilous. For instance – Vaksberg alleges that Stalin did not really research and write the famous article on “The National Question.” Nonetheless we will use the Vaksberg source – albeit with caution – since little else is available on the subject.

Another such problem source is the memoirs of Pavel Sudoplatov, published in 1994. After 1939, he was the officer in charge of the NKVD (later MGB) special operations. Several attacks upon Sudoplatov’s honesty and reliability have been made. Sudoplatov claimed that he organized the assassination of Trotsky under direct orders from Stalin, and that the Soviet atomic bomb was only made possible by secrets divulged by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr.

Both claims are untrue. David Holloway has exposed the latter lie in an article in “Science,” (Holloway D; Science May 27th, 1994), and the former lie is contrary to key facts as discussed by the CL. (CL article reprinted Alliance Issue Number 7.) It is interesting that these memoirs were recorded from Sudoplatov by Jerrold L. & Leona P. Schecter. This same couple first fully published Khrushchev’s memoirs in 1970, in an association between Life magazine & Little Brown Publishers. (See Pavel & A Sudoplatov; with JL & LP Schecter: “Special Tasks”; Boston; 1995 p.xxiii) . It is also not a coincidence that one of the most anti-Communist writers, Robert Conquest, exonerates Sudoplatov of falsification in a glowing foreword.

Of course, Conquest is careful to cover himself by saying that:

“Sudoplatov is by no means immune from error”

(Ibid; p.xv).

Nonetheless Conquest ends by lauding the memoirs:

“But it will be seen that (criticisms-ed) are of little consequence compared with the solid substance we Sudoplatov offers is.. A unique document.. The most valuable of all possible sources for important matters over the whole period of High Stalinism”

(Ibid; p.xiv.)

We reply that the most solid evidence about the period is in Stalin’s own writings. The fragmentary additional evidence must be sensibly pieced together using in addition, Marxist-Leninist theory.

Thirdly: We have increasingly over the last few months/years used sources derived from the world wide web. We caution however that it is sometimes difficult to know who is posting these various documents on the web. We thus attempt to use these documents sparingly. Above all, if web sources are used, we attempt to fully reference the web site.
Introduction

When Zionists attack Lenin and Stalin for their alleged racism against the Jewish peoples, the accusation devolves onto one issue. That issue is that Lenin and Stalin denied at the turn of the century, that the Jewish people had a national status.

After German fascists, aided by Western imperialism launched the genocide against Jews, before and during World War II, a national identity was then formed in the state of Israel. In fact the German fascists helped to weld a later national possibility for Jews in the imperialist stooge state of Israel. This later event was not one that could have been dealt with by Lenin or Stalin in their early writings. In “The National Question,” Stalin had pointed out, that nations come into being and pass away. Obviously a different situation arose after World War II, engineered by imperialism, which before turned a blind eye to the genocide of the Jews. This was part of the overall strategy of turning Germany against the USSR. But some imperialisms, especially the USA promoted the migration of Jews into former Palestine, to consolidate their position against other imperialisms. This created a further tension between the British imperialists and the USA imperialists.

It was not racism that informed the views of Lenin and Stalin. The attitude of Lenin and Stalin was to destroy separatist tendencies that would ghetto-ise and narrow the proletariat. Lenin quoted with approval the words of Ernest Renan, which quickly summarize the views that Lenin had on ghettos and racism of all sorts:

“‘When the National Assembly of 1791 decreed the emancipation of the Jews,'” writes Renan, “It was very little concerned with the question of race.. It is the business of the Nineteenth Century to abolish all ‘ghettos,’ and I cannot compliment those who seek to restore them. The Jewish race has rendered the world the greatest services. Assimilated with the various nations, harmoniously blended with the various national units, it will render no less services in the future than in the past.”

(Lenin, Quoting Ernst Renan of Paris, 1887, in : “The Position of Bund In The Party” 1903)

MARX, LENIN AND STALIN UPON ZIONISM
Introduction

When Zionists attack Lenin and Stalin for their alleged racism against the Jewish peoples, the accusation devolves onto one issue. That issue is that Lenin and Stalin denied at the turn of the century, that the Jewish people had a national status.

After German fascists, aided by Western imperialism launched the genocide against Jews, before and during World War II, a national identity was then formed in the state of Israel. In fact the German fascists helped to weld a later national possibility for Jews in the imperialist stooge state of Israel. This later event was not one that could have been dealt with by Lenin or Stalin in their early writings. In "The National Question", Stalin had pointed out, that nations come into being and pass away. Obviously a different situation arose after World War II, engineered by imperialism, which before turned a blind eye to the genocide of the Jews. This was part of the overall strategy of turning Germany against the USSR. But some imperialisms, especially the USA promoted the migration of Jews into former Palestine, to consolidate their position against other imperialisms. This created a further tension between the British imperialists and the USA imperialists.

It was not racism that informed the views of Lenin and Stalin. The attitude of Lenin and Stalin was to destroy separatist tendencies that would ghetto-ise and narrow the proletariat. Lenin quoted with approval the words of Ernest Renan, which quickly summarize the views that Lenin had on ghettos and racism of all sorts:
When the National Assembly of 1791 decreed the emancipation of the Jews, writes Renan, AIt was very little concerned with the question of race.. It is the business of the Nineteenth Century to abolish all ghettos, and I cannot compliment those who seek to restore them. The Jewish race has rendered the world the greatest services. Assimilated with the various nations, harmoniously blended with the various national units, it will render no less services in the future than in the past."
(Lenin Quoting Ernst Renan of Paris, 1887, in : The Position of Bund In The Party . 1903).
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KARL MARX AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

Marx's Views

There can be little doubt that the position of Germany Jewry was that of a discriminated section of the German people. This is attested to even in the biographies of the few that managed to climb out of the slums such as the Rothschilds. (Elon A; Rothschild ; London; 1993)

We will not need to itemize these discrimination in detail, as the texts and interpretation are easily available. In brief, the Jews suffered severe restrictions including curfews, limits on where they could live, special mandatory requirements in order to allow them to perform any work, no State employment allowed, and a host of petty problems including upon marriage rights. This does not even discuss the excluding the possibility of pogroms.

The views of Lenin and Stalin on the Jews, followed those of Karl Marx- himself a Jew. In turn, Marxs views on the Jewish Question, were very similar to contemporary Jewish progressives, such as seen in the early views of Moses Hess, a Jewish social democrat. In essence they all urged Jews to fully embrace secular society in order to merge into it. But Hess then renounced a secular progressive stand to adopt Jewish mysticism. But Moses Hess turned to embraced mysticism. In doing so he ensured that later on, 'progressive minded Zionists, would point to Hess rather than Marx, in order to argue that Socialism and Zionism are supposedly compatible!

In contrast to their support of Hess, Zionists loathe Marx, and charge him of racism. But the grounds for this Zionist charge, are transparently flimsy. The charges invoke a Marx - alienated from his Jewishness. The charges of anti-Jewish racism has to deal with the fact that Marx was a descendent of a long line of Rabbis in Germany and Italy. His father in Trier had converted to Christianity, in order obtain livelihood, although his mother never did convert. Marx, it is claimed hated his Jewishness - Saul Padover uses the term ;

"Selbsthass (self hatred)of Marx."
(Padover S.K.; Introduction vol 5, On Religion; Karl Marx Library; New York; 1974, p. Xiii.).

As Padover puts it :
As an understandable defense mechanism, young Marx deprived of a spiritual base of support in Judaism, imbibed the ancient hostility to his people and accepted all the ugly stereotypes of the brutally caricatured Jew then widely prevalent in Europe .. This was an expression of what the Germans call Selbsthass."
(Padover Ibid; p. xiii)
The evidence for this is said to reside in his letters, and, especially in his early work. But when these are read, it is clear that what is objectionable to the Zionists, is simply the boldness of the following assertion: That to be free, and to truly and fully exercise civil rights, the Jew must renounce Jewishness, just as the Christian must renounce Christianity.

Even the most antagonistic Zionists, such as Saul Padover, are forced to acknowledge, that Marxs first published work on the Jewish Question which appeared in the Cologne Rheinische Zeitung, in the summer of 1842, was a forthright defence of the Jews. At that time, Heinrich Hermes of the 'Kolnische Zeitung, a Catholic paper, had attacked Jews. In this attack, Hermes denied that Jews had any rights to Civil Equality . Marx openly counter-attacked this in print. Following his defence of civil rights for the Jews, Marx told Arnold Ruge that he had been approached by local Jews, to put a petition on behalf of Jews to the Landtag (Diet) :
Just now the chief of the local Israelites came to see me and asked me to forward a petition for the Jews to the Landtag (Diet) and I want to do it. Revolting (Widerlich) though the Israelite religion is to me, nevertheless Bauers opinion (In the Jewish Question) seems to me to be too abstract.
(Marx; Letter to Ruge A; March 13th 1843; Cited Padover Introduction Ibid; p. Xxi.)
The petition was successful, and marked the first time that a German parliament had granted Complete equality of Jews in civil and political matters. Padover is forced to take note of this, but he deals with it, by simply dismissing it as: a Apolitical gesture taken by Marx in spite of His revulsion for Judaism. But it is clear that Marx calls the Israelite religion revolting, not Jews themselves. In fact the whole of Marxs work testifies to his determination to tear the veils that perpetuate slavery and enchainment. With Engels, Marx identified backward looking nationalisms and religion as narcotic-laden veils - Marx called a spade a spade. He is just as virulent about Christianity, about Islam, about Hindooism and all religions. Indeed all these were means to disguise and veil the reality of the world. Hear Marx on the Hindoos, and the Brahmins:
We must not forget that.. that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism.. the perpetuation of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns.. this passive sort of existence evoked.. murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan...the little (Hindoo) communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery.. they subjected man to external circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of circumstances.. they transformed a self-developing social state into a never changing natural destiny, .. brought about a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that Man the sovereign of nature fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman the monkey, and Sabbala the cow.
(Marx.,"British Rule in India";: "Marx & Engels On Britain." Moscow; 1971; p.168. p171-172.)

AI share not the opinion of those who believe in a golden age of Hindostan... the mythological chronology of the Brahmin himself, places the commencement of Indian misery in an epoch even more remote than the Christian creation of the world .
(Marx The British Rule In India',Ibid. p.168)
Who denies that Marx fought the religious vapours of the Brahmins? Just so, he fought the religious and pseudo-nationalist Zionist vapours. Neither of these fights, made him a anti-Indian racist, or somehow alienated from Indian problems, as Padover would have us believe!

What did Marx say On The Jewish Question?
Marx only wrote two main articles that explicitly dealt with the Jews as a central theme. They both took the same essential line.
Namely that:

That the Jews in general, had found a niche in capitalist society, by acting as money lenders. Stripping away sanctimony, Marx therefore proclaimed that something else, besides religion, defined the Jews. In his first article, Marx contrasted the actual secular Jew with the Sabbath Jew . Since the public role of he most prominent Jews was as money merchants, he concentrates on the haggling and usurious life of the Jewish trader:
Let us consider the actual secular Jew, not the Sabbath Jew as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of religion in the actual Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the world cult of the Jew? Schacer (Bargaining, haggling, or huckstering-Ed). What is his worldly god? Money! What actually was the foundation in and of itself, of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. Hence the Jews monotheism, is in reality, the polytheism of many needs, a polytheism that makes even the toiler an object of divine law.. The god of practical need and self-interest is money. Money is the jealous god of Israel before whom no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of mankind-and converts them into commodities.. The god of the Jew has been secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange... What is contained abstractly in the Jewish religion-contempt for theory, for art, for history, for man as an end in himself - is the actual conscious standpoint and virtue of the money man.. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the money-man in general.
(On the Jewish Question - Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher- Vol 3 Marx Collected Works; pp 146-74)
Padover makes Marx into a mythical Christian loving and Jew hating person. But in reality Marx describes clearly, from where in his view, Christianity came from. It arose from Judaism:
Christianity arose of Judaism. It has again dissolved itself into Judaism. .. Christianity overcame real Judaism only in appearance, It was too noble, too spiritual to alienate the crudeness of practical need except by elevating it into the heavens. Christianity is the sublime thought of Judaism, and Judaism is the common practical application of Christianity; but this application could become universal only after Christianity as the compete religion had theoretically competed the alienation of man from himself and from nature.
(Marx; On The Jewish Question; p.191; in Padover Ibid).
For Marx, it was necessary to emphasize the need to dissolve the religious fetters upon the Jews, and by so doing allow them to enter into the rest of society. The article ends with the words:
The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Jewishness .
(Marx; A The Holy Family (b) The Jewish Question No 1. The setting of the question. Volume 4; CW; Moscow; 1975; p. 87; also in Marx On The Jewish Question; p.192; in Padover Ibid.)
The second article was contained within a section of the Holy Family , which was a settling of accounts, by Marx and Engels, with the pre-Marxist ideologies in Germany as represented by Bruno Bauer, a member of a philosophical grouping known as Absolute Criticism.

Bauer argued to deny civil rights to Jews, because like everyone else, they had no inborn Rights of Man , no dogmatic claim for this that over-rode everything else. The implication was that nothing was owed to the Jews. In an attack on the materialists, whom he names the Spokesmen of the masses , Bruno Bauer repudiates any Rights of Man:
How thoughtless the spokesmen of the Masses are; they have God knows what a great opinion of themselves for supporting emancipation and the dogma of the rights of man.
(Marx Karl: The Jewish Question No 1. The Setting of the Question. Part of The Holy Family . (1844); In Collected Works; Volume 4; Moscow; 1975; p. 87).
Marx replies that the abstract Rights of Man are irrelevant as compared to the much more real, fundamental and practical assertions of the inborn rights of man to fish, hunt etc , as had been pointed out by Charles Fourier:
As for the rights of man it has been proved to Herr Bruno (On the Jewish Question - Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher- Vol 3 M CW- pp 146-74) that it is he himself, not the spokesmen of the Mass, who has misunderstood and dogmatically mishandled the essence of those rights. Compared to his discovery that the Rights of Man are not inborn- a discovery which has been made innumerable times in England during the last 40-odd years - Fourier's assertions that the right to fish, hunt, etc are inborn rights of men is one of genius.
(Marx Karl: The Jewish Question No 1. Part of The Holy Family ; Ibid; p.87-89).
One of Bruno Bauers assertions, had been that it was only to be expected, and indeed was quite natural, that a Christian state would not enshrine rights for Jews:
The Christian state having as its vital principle a definite religion, cannot allow adherents of another particular religion .. Complete equality with its own social estates.
(Bauer cited In Marx The Holy Family Ibid; p. 88.)
Marx in reply, points out that the Christian states render this whole question meaningless, since they do not even allow civil equality to their Christian their own social estates - to use Bauers phrase, to even non-Jews:
The Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (showed) that the state of social estates and of exclusive Christianity is not only an incomplete state but an incomplete Christian state... Absolute Criticism still regards the abolition of religion atheism, as the condition for civil equality... It has therefore not yet acquired any deeper insight into the essence of the state.
(Marx Karl: The Jewish Question No 1. Part of The Holy Family ; Ibid; p. 88)
For further detail, the interested reader can consult the Appendix (Via Table of Contents) for a detailed annotation of Marx's article. Although those two articles are the basic and longest exposition on the nature of the Jews by Marx, an isolated later description of the Jews by Marx is often quoted, as another example of Marx's alleged Antisemitism . Here Marx discussed the historical role of the Jews, and he was equally graphic as in his earlier remarks. Marx's vivid phrasing - Jews in the pores of society - offends Zionists. It seems that this image of the Jews who were not fully visible in the middle of society, Marx painted by Marx, is somehow a racist view of Marx. But in what context does Marx place this image? Marx is talking about trading for commodities in the ancient world, where the dominant relations of production are not commodity based. Marx asserts that Jewish trading is ancient in its history:
In the modes of production of ancient Asia, of Antiquity etc; we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and hence the existence of men as mere producers of commodities plays a subordinate role, which however increases in importance as the ancient communities approach closer and closer to the stage of their decline. Trading nations proper exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the Gods of Epicurius in Intermundia, or like the Jew in the pores of Polish society. These ancient social organisms of production are extraordinarily more simple and transparent than the bourgeois ones, but they are based either on the immaturity of the individual man, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him naturally with his own species, or on direct master-servant relationships. They are conditioned by a lower stage of development of the productive forces of labour and the correspondingly encompassing relationships of men within their material generating processes, and hence to each other and to nature. This actual narrowness is realised ideally in the ancient worship of nature and in folk religions. The religious reflex of the real world can vanish altogether only when the relationships of practical everyday life offer men daily visible and reasonable relationships to each other and to nature. A
(Marx K; Capital Volume 1; Chapter 1; Section 4; Cited by Padover Ibid; p. 137.)
Well, is this unfair? Marx is simply pointing out that Jews were not given full civic right in then Poland. There is another dimension, relating to the Jewish concentration in trading. Perhaps Jews were not important traders in the ancient world, and perhaps commodity trading was a more main-stream and prominent feature in antiquity?
But, no evidence to contradict Marx, is shown by those such as Padover who critique Marx here.
The very useful function of providing loose monies for loan, had been the prerogative of the Jew, right up until the Reformation. Until then, loans were made only in the interstices of society. But the increasing need of capital, fueled a demand for the practice of charging interest, or usury. This became a root cause of the Reformation, the vast social movement that upturned traditional Catholicism, and is usually portrayed as the rise of the Protestant religion. But the underlying reasons for the Reformation are still often overlooked. The drawback of Catholicism, one the Protestant version of Christianity could overcome for society, was the lack of money trading. Under Catholicism but not under Protestantism, money trading by loans (known as usury) was forbidden as avarice:
The historical background.. Consisted of the body of social theory stated & implicit, which was the legacy of the Middle Ages. The formal teaching was derived form the Bible, the works of the Fathers & Schoolmen, the canon law and its commentators, and have been popularized.
(Tawney R.H. Religion & The Rise of Capitalism ; London; 1975; p. 28)
The condemnation of usury supported a land owning feudal society. Pope Innocent IV argued:
If usury were general, men would not give thought to the cultivation of their land except when they could do ought else, and so there would be so great a famine that all the poor would die of hunger..
Tawney R.H. Religion & The Rise of Capitalism ; London; 1975; p. 56

Early Councils had forbidden usury to be taken by the clergy. The Councils of the 12th & 13th Centuries forbid it to be taken by clergy or laity, and laid down rules for dealing with offenders... The Legislation of the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Viene (1312) ... re-enacted the measures laid down by the third Lateran Council (1175) & supplemented them by rules which virtually made the money-lender an outlaw.
Tawney R.H. Religion & The Rise of Capitalism ; London; 1975; p. 58.
Luther's views largely echoed traditional Catholicism. But Calvinism, in contrast, was unlike Lutheranism - it was largely an urban movement that reflected the needs of the growing capitalist society. Calvin could write:

What reason is there why the income from business should not be larger than that from landowning? Whence do the merchant's profits come.. except from his own indulgence & industry?
Tawney R.H. Religion & The Rise of Capitalism ; London; 1975; p. 113

There was an intense frustration, by all capitalists and traders, inside the developing capitalist Middle Ages society of developing nations. Even in Florence, the greatest mercantile centre in the Middle Ages, the patent nonsense of the old laws, was shown by the simultaneous hypocrisy of banning usury, whilst depending upon imported Jews to conduct it:
Florence was the financial capital of medieval Europe; but even at Florence, the secular authorities fined bankers right and left for usury in the middle of the 14th Century, and fifty years later first prohibited credit transaction altogether, and then imported Jews to conduct a business forbidden to Christians.
Tawney R.H. Religion & The Rise of Capitalism ; London; 1975; p. 49.
So there was a societal need and drive, to adopt the mores of Calvinism. Following this, the social utility of Judaism to a developing capitalist society diminished. Large scale pogroms would follow the rise of capitalism, which had now ensured its own secure form of usury. (This is a very truncated synopsis. Since Marx's views on this question encompass the whole place of religion in civil society, we carry a more detailed view of this in Appendix 1).

In Conclusion: Marx stripped bare of camouflage, the vice in which modern workers of all colours and creed were held - capitalist relations. This meant the dissolution of religious faith. Naturally, religiously biased ideologues, like Zionists, will find this offensive. Too bad! We next examine how Marx's views were echoed by Lenin and Stalin on this question.

[RedAlert]

Stalin and Lenin’s Views on the Jewish Question and the Bund; Early History of the Bund
Background – The Position of Russian Jewry

In 1791, Tsarina or Empress Catherine II created what was to become known as the Pale Of Settlement. This restricted Jewish residence to either territories annexed from Poland along the Russian Western border, or to territories seized from Turkey along the shores of the Black Sea. Later other annexed territories were added. (See Map below from web site Beyond the Pale). The same type of restrictions noted briefly above, on Jews in Germany, prevailed both here and Poland itself.

mappalesettlement.webp (27.42 KiB) Viewed 4506 times

Perhaps the worst anti-Semitism in Europe was in these parts.

Tsar Alexander II‘s reign saw at least the legal and theoretical emancipation of the serfs in 1861. It marked some hopes on the part of Russian Jews for major change in their living circumstances. In fact there were some improvements with Jews being able to live outside the Pale of Settlement:

“On the first anniversary of Alexander’s coronation the hated Cantonist system is repealed. Bit by bit, small groups of Jews considered useful are allowed to settle outside the Pale: merchants, medical doctors and artisans. The Jewish communities of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa grow rapidly, and Jews start to participate in the intellectual and cultural life. The industrial development of the 1860s, following the disastrous Crimean War creates opportunities for a small group of Jewish entrepreneurs, particularly in banking and the export trade, in mining and in the construction of railroads.”

(Web: Beyond The Pale:
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

But this was short lived, and the Polish Uprising of 1863, led to an anti-Semitic wave again. After Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by Narodniks, in 1881 the following repression was associated with pogroms aimed at blaming the Jews for the social unrest, and to divert social criticism. The Tsarist authorities used the Jewish question as a means of “dividing and ruling”:

“Beginning in Elizabetgrad, a wave of pogroms spread throughout the southwestern regions, more than 200 in 1881 alone. The authorities… (often) showed sympathy for the pogromists. An official investigation confirmed: the plunderers were convinced that the attacks were sanctioned by the Czar himself. The same investigation blamed ‘Jewish exploitation’ as the cause for the pogroms.”

Web Site : (Web: Beyond The Pale:
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

Severe restrictions and persecution under the so called “Temporary Laws” of May 1882 lasted until 1917:

“The area of the Pale of Settlement was reduced by 10 percent. Jews were once more prohibited from living in villages, to buy or rent property outside their prescribed residences, denied jobs in the civil service and forbidden to trade on Sundays and Christian holidays….. In 1887, the number of Jewish students entering secondary schools in the Pale was restricted to 10 percent. As in some towns Jews constituted 50 to 70 percent of the population, many high school classes remained half empty. In 1891 a degree was passed that the Jews of Moscow, who had settled in the city since 1865, were to be expelled. Within a few months about 20,000 people were forced to give up their homes and livelihood and deported from the already overcrowded Pale.”

Web Site : (Web: Beyond The Pale:
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

Nicholas II, succeeded Alexander III in 1894, and was as autocratic. But the reform movement gained strength. Both workers and students rebelled. Again the tactic of divide and rule was used in pogroms against Jews. At the same time the anti-Japanese war was launched. The pogroms were directly financed and supported by the vicious reactionary Minister of the Interior Viacheslav Plehve. For example, a pogrom in Kishinev in 1903, led to forty-five people’s murders, and 1,300 homes and shops were plundered. The rioters were protected:

“For his anti-Semitic agitation, the editor of the local newspaper, Bessarabets, had received funds from…Viacheslav Plehve. When the perpetrators of the Kishinev pogroms received only very light sentences, it became clear that pogroms had become an instrument of government policy, and Jews began to form self-defence units.”

(Web: Beyond The Pale: http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

After the defeat of Russia by the Japanese, the pogroms intensified, led by the rabid ultra-reactionary Black Hundreds:

“The Black Hundreds now openly declared the extermination of the Jews as their program. But the worst orgy of violence broke out after the Czar was forced to grant a constitution in October 1905. Mainly organized by the monarchist Union of Russian People, and with the cooperation of local government officials, pogroms were staged in more than 300 towns and cities, leaving almost a thousand people dead and many thousands wounded.”

(Web: Beyond The Pale http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

But by end 19th Century, the Jewish population was over 5 million. Assimilation did occur and Jews took part in the political movements, including the Narodniki:

“The early Jewish revolutionaries among the Narodniki saw themselves as Russians fighting for the right of the Russian people, and believed that the Jewish problem would be solved through assimilation after the liberation of the masses.”

(Web: Beyond The Pale: http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

But more Jews were convinced of the need for a separate Jewish workers movement. In 1897, the Jewish labor movement Algemeyner Yiddisher Arbeter Bund was founded in Vilna, and argued for “national and cultural autonomy” but not for a territorial separation:

“The Bund advocated national and cultural autonomy for the Jews, but not in the territorial sense; it argued for a middle course between assimilation and a territorial solution. The Bund also developed trade union activities and formed self-defence organizations against pogrom violence. In 1905, it had about 33,000 members. “

(Web: Beyond The Pale: http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/32.html)

It is this central question of a seperate territory that distinguished the Bundists from the Zionists. Of course the Bund was more orientated to the workers movement and socialism also. So much so, that even the avowedly Zionist organisation formed in Russia adopted a socialist tone:

“Many Jews no longer saw any point in the struggle for emancipation within Russian society and turn after the publication of Herzl’s Der Judenstaat in 1836 to Zionism instead. The largest Zionist party, Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion), founded in 1906, was Marxist in orientation and defined the establishment of a socialist-Jewish autonomous state in Palestine as its ultimate goal.”

Web Site : Beyond The Pale; Ibid; p.39

Even more Jews left Russia, rather than enter the political movement, going mainly to America and Western Europe:

“Between 1881 and 1914, more than 2 million Jews left Russia.”

Web Site : Beyond The Pale; Ibid; p.39

In March 1917, the revolution moves on and the Czarist regime is toppled. This was greeted:

“With joy among the Jewish community. The Provisional Government, as one of its first acts, abolished all limitations based on religion or nationality. For the first time in their history, the Jews of Russia were free to organize and express themselves. Synagogues and schools are opened, publications appeared in Hebrew and Yiddish, and political and cultural life flourishes…. The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia recognized the right to both religious and national autonomy.”

Web Site: Beyond The Pale; Ibid; p.40

The separation of Church and State, was decreed by both the Zionists and the religious minded Jews. This edict, introduced in January 1918, was coupled with the active organisation of Jewish Bolshevik sections in the party termed Yevsektsii. All this:

“Resulted in the confiscation of religious properties and the prohibition of religious instruction in schools….the Yevsektsii conducted a systematic campaign against all aspects of Judaism and Jewish life. Its first decision was the dissolution of the kehilla, the Jewish community administration, which served as the main instrument of Jewish religious and cultural life.”

Web Site: Beyond The Pale; Ibid; p.40

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War against White counter-revolutionaries had a major focus in the Ukraine, where 60 percent of Russian Jews lived. The pogroms of the White led armies were only fought off by the Bolsheviks. That left the Jewish population at the end of the Civil War depleted, but with gratitude to the Bolsheviks:

“In spring 1918, the Red Army had to defend itself against the Germans, the Ukrainian Army under Petlyura struggling for Ukrainian independence, and the ‘White’ Armies under Denikin and Wrangel that tried to topple the Bolshevik government. Apart from these more organized armies, armed gangs of bandits under their own leaders (atamans) joined the fighting. All groups took part in anti-Jewish attacks, looting and murder. Only the Red Army Command prohibited anti-Semitic violence and even punished some of the attackers. No such policy was introduced in the Ukrainian Army. During 1919, when the Ukrainians had to retreat, anti-Jewish violence on an unprecedented scale claiming tens of thousands of lives. None of the perpetrators were prosecuted. The majority of Jews in the Ukraine, fearful of Ukrainian independence, came to regard the Red Army more and more as the only force capable to stop the violence. The other major participant in the Civil War, the ‘White’ Army, also engaged in looting, rape and murder, using the old slogan ‘Strike at the Jews and Save Russia.’ When they had to retreat southward at the end of 1919, they vented their rage on Jewish communities along the way. Jewish self-defence units were occasionally able to stop them, partly with material support from the Soviet government. By the time the Civil War was over, about 2,000 pogroms left an estimated 100,000 Jews dead and more than half a million homeless.”

Web Site: Beyond The Pale; Ibid; p.42

Stalin & Lenin’s View On the Jewish Question & The Bund

Stalin was asked by Lenin, in 1923, to write a work to define the Bolshevik response to the national question. This became the famous classic Marxism And The National Question. What did Stalin consider as the definition of a “nation?” Stalin held that nationality was not dependent upon religion, nor upon a racial mixture. The famous succinct definition given by Stalin is that:

“A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p. 307.

Stalin pointed out, that under conditions of a national oppression, the workers suffer more than the bourgeoisie. One of the examples he uses to demonstrate this are the Jewish workers. This might in fact, imply that Stalin views Jews as a ‘nation’. He states :

“Restriction of freedom of movement, disfranchisement, repression of language, closing of schools, and other forms of persecution affect the workers no less, if not more, than the bourgeoisie. Such a state of affairs can only serve to retard the free development of the intellectual forces of the proletariat of subject nations. One cannot speak seriously of a full development of the intellectual faculties of the Tartar or Jewish worker if he is not allowed to use his native language at meetings and lectures, and if his schools are closed down.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p.304. OR: via: http://gate.cruzio.com/~marx2mao/Stalin/MNQ12.html

Stalin therefore argued that the national liberation struggle was a key issue for the workers movement. But the national liberation struggle must also be supported for another reason. Because the national struggle is diversionary for the real interests of the working class. It obscures and diverts from the real workers struggle – for socialism:

“The policy of nationalist persecution is dangerous to the cause of the proletariat … It diverts the attention of large strata from social questions, questions of the class struggle, to national questions, questions ‘common’ to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. And this creates a favourable soil for lying propaganda about ‘harmony of interests’, for glossing over the class interests of the proletariat and for the intellectual enslavement of the workers. This creates a serious obstacle to the cause of using the workers of all nationalities.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p. 320-21

And linked to this, moreover, nationalism encourages a policy of “divide and rule,” allowing a ruling class to split workers apart, again diverting from the main struggle – the class struggle:

“The ‘system’ of oppression leads to a ‘system’ of inciting nations against each other to a ‘system’ of massacres and pogroms. Of course the latter system is not everywhere and always possible, but where it is possible – in the absence of elementary civil rights – it frequently assumes horrifying proportions and threatens to drown the cause of unity of the workers in blood and tears. The Caucasus and the South Russia furnish numerous examples. ‘Divide and rule’ – such is the purpose of the policy of incitement. And where such policy succeeds, it is a tremendous evil for the proletariat and a serious obstacle to the cause of uniting the workers of all the nationalities in the state.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p. 321

In part, the work “Marxism and the National Question”, was written in order to refute the shallow reasoning of the Austrian revisionist Marxist, Otto Bauer. Otto Bauer had proposed a programme of so-called “Cultural-national autonomy” for groups of workers of one national background within a single state. Stalin explained what the programme actually meant:

“Let us now examine the essence of the programme itself. What is the national programme of the Austrian social-democrats? It is expressed into words: Cultural-national autonomy. This means firstly that autonomy would be granted let us say, not to Bohemia or Poland, which are inhabited mainly by Czechs and Poles, but to Czechs and Poles generally, irrespective of territory, no matter what part of Austria they inhabit. That is why this autonomy is called national and not territorial. It means secondly that the Czechs, Poles, Germans and so on, scattered over various parts of Austria, taken personally as individuals are to be organized into integral nations, and are as such to form part of the Austrian state. In this way Austria would represent not a union of autonomous nationalities, but a union of autonomous nationalities, constituted irrespective of territory.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p. 331-332

The fact that Otto Bauer was a socialist leader, made such theories especially dangerous for the working class, as they dressed up bourgeois ideology in a more palatable dress, to mask it. This made it more likely for the workers movements to be fooled into adopting the theories:

“There is no need to mention the kind of ‘socialist principle of nationality’ glorified by Bauer…. True such nationalism is not so transparent, for it is skillfully masked by socialist phrases, but it is all the more harmful to the proletariat for that reason… But this does not exhaust the harm caused by national autonomy; it prepares the ground not only for the segregation of nations, but also for breaking up the united labour movements. The idea of national autonomy creates the psychological conditions for the division of the united workers’ party into separate parties built on national lines. The break-up of the party is followed by the break-up of the trade unions and complete segregation is the result. In this way, the united class movement is broken up into separate national rivulets.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p. 342-343.

In specific reference to the Jews, Stalin explains that Otto Bauer, despite his praise for “cultural autonomy” in general, is against autonomy for the Jews. Why? In part on the basis of the historical background of assimilation:

“In brief the Jewish Nation is coming to an end, and hence there is nobody to demand national autonomy for. The Jews are being assimilated. This view of the fate of the Jews as a nation is not a new one. It was expressed by Marx as early as the forties, in reference chiefly to the German Jews.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p.344

Stalin does not disagree with Otto Bauer’s view that the Jews cannot be preserved as a nation. But Stalin does question Bauer’s grounds for rejecting, Bauer’s own “cultural autonomy,” to the Jews. After all points out Stalin, while Bauer allows Pole, Germans etc this mythical “cultural autonomy,” he denies it to the Jews! But Stalin says, he does so on partial grounds. The reason Bauer offers is “That the Jews have no closed territory or settlement.” Stalin says: “This explanation in the main a correct one, does not however express the whole truth.” We may ask what is this “whole truth?” Stalin goes on to raise the issue of the absence of a national market:

“The fact of the matter is that there is no large and stable stratum connected with the land, which would naturally rivet the nation together, serving not only as its framework But also as a ‘national market.’ Of the five or six million Russian Jews only 3-4% are employed in trade industry, in urban institutions and in general are town dwellers; moreover they are spread all over Russia and do not constitute a majority in a single gubernia.”

J.V.Stalin Works, Moscow; 1956; Vol 2; Marxism and the National Question; p. 345

In conclusion, Stalin in Marxism And The National Question thought there was no stable geographical territory within which a Jewish nation could feasibly be “riveted” together. These views certainly influenced Stalin, or at least were indistinguishable on the whole from those of Stalin.

Lenin’s Remarks On The National Question: On Jews And The Bund

How did Lenin regard the Jewish minority, some of who saw themselves as a nation? Jews certainly wanted liberation from oppressions, and this wish frequently took the form of national aspirations. This was the explicit view of the socialists of the Jewish Bund. The Bund is discussed in more detail below. Lenin first discusses the Jews in a more general vein, in “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” written in 1913.

Here he states that the Jews were not a separate nation. He acknowledges that racist reactionary behaviour forms them into an “unhappy, downtrodden and disfranchised caste.” But rather than separation, Lenin argued that assimilation was the best progressive step:

“It is the Jewish nationalists in Russia in general and the Bundists in particular who vociferate most about Russian orthodox Marxists being ‘assimilators.’ And yet…out of the ten and a half million Jews all over the word, about half that number live in the civilised world, where conditions favouring ‘assimilation’ are strongest, whereas the unhappy downtrodden disfranchised Jews in Russia and Galicia who are crushed under the heel of the Purishkeviches [NB: Lenin uses ‘Purishkevich’, derived from the landowner monarchist, Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich; who founded the reactionary Black Hundreds in 1905 period to ward off revolution] (Both Russian and Polish), live where conditions for ‘assimilation’ least prevail, where there is most segregation and even a ‘Pale of Settlement’, a numerous clausus and other charming features of the Purishkevich regime. The Jews in the civilised world are not a nation, they have in the main become assimilated, say Karl Kautsky and Otto Bauer. The Jews in Galicia and in Russia are not a nation; unfortunately (through no fault of their own but through that of the Purishkeviches) they are still a caste here…”

Lenin “Critical Remarks on the National Question” In “Lenin On USA”; p. 87; or Collected Works; Vols 20; pp 28-30, and 37; OR:
http://gate.cruzio.com/~marx2mao/Lenin/CRNQ13.html

The Bund argued for “cultural autonomy” and a separate educational system. But Lenin replied that assimilation can work, even under capitalism he argued, pointing to the process at work in the USA:

“A rough idea of the scale which the general process of assimilation is assuming under the present conditions of advanced capitalism may be obtained from the immigration statistics of the United States of America.. The 1900 census in the USA recorded over 10,000,000 foreigners. New York state…grinds down national distinctions.”

Lenin “Critical Remarks National Question” In “Lenin On USA”; p. 87; or: Collected Works; Vols 20; p.28-37;

Lenin concludes that the plans for a non-assimilation is reactionary, and negatively compares it to the introduction of “separate” school systems in the South of the USA:

“In practice the plan for ‘extra-territoriality’ or ‘cultural national’ autonomy could mean only one thing: the division of educational affairs according to nationality i.e., the introduction of national curia in school affairs…How utterly reactionary it is even from the standpoint of democracy let alone from that of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.. A single instance and a single scheme for the ‘nationalisation’ of the school system will make this point abundantly clear. In the USA the division of the States into Northern and Southern, holds to this day in all departments of life: the former possess the greatest traditions of freedom and of struggle against the slaveowners; the latter possess the greatest traditions of slave ownership, survivals of persecution of the Negroes, who are economically oppressed and culturally backward (44% of Negroes are illiterate and 6% of whites), and so forth. In the Northern states Negro children attend the same schools as white children do. In the South there are separate ‘national’, or racial, whichever you please, schools for Negro children. I think this is the sole instance of actual ‘nationalisation’ of schools. In Eastern Europe there exists a country where things like the Beilis case are still possible, and Jews are condemned by the Purishkeviches to a condition worse than that of the Negroes. In that country a scheme for nationalisation Jewish schools was recently mooted in the Ministry. Happily this reactionary utopia is no more likely to realised than the utopia of the Austrian petty bourgeois.”

Lenin “Critical Remarks on the National Question”; Ibid; p. 88-89.

[Note: Beilis Case: An infamous case where a Jew was framed and brutally put to death for crimes he had not committed.]

Related to the issue of whether the Jews formed a nation, was the concept of a multi-national state. In his later polemics of 1914, with Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin wrote “The Right Of Nations To Self-Determination.” Here Lenin firmly upholds the rights of nations to self determination, against Luxemburg’s hesitations. But in this work, Lenin holds that the “typical normal” capitalist state is one inhabited by a single nation:

“The tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which…requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied. The most profound economic factors drive towards this goals and, therefore for the whole of Western Europe, nay, for the entire civilised world, the national state is typical and normal for the capitalist period.”

Lenin; “Right Of Nations Self Determination”; Selected Works; Vol 1; Moscow; 1977; p.569; C W 20; p 393;
OR http://gate.cruzio.com/~marx2mao/Lenin/RNSD14.html

Departures from this are unusual. Lenin goes on to cite the then Marxist, Karl Kautsky, who agreed that multi-national states are formed in territories where the state structure remains “abnormal or underdeveloped” in relation to the needs of capitalist society:

“States of mixed national composition (known as multi-national states, as distinct from national states) are ‘always those whose internal constitution has for some reason remained abnormal or underdeveloped (backward)’. Needless to say, Kautsky speaks of abnormality exclusively in the sense of lack of conformity with what is best adapted to the requirements of a developing capitalism.”

Lenin; “Right Of Nations to Self Determination”; Ibid; p. 569.

Elsewhere Lenin continues to be hostile to any chauvinism, on the part of the Jewish representatives. This naturally came to a head with the Bund.


The term Zionism, actually dates from the late 1890’s and was supposedly coined by Nathan Birnbaum. But many authorities accept that it was only made into a popular term by Theodore Herzl.

The Bund and Early Zionism

“The term Zionism was first used publicly by Nathan Birnbaum at a discussion meting in Vienna…23 January 1892. The history of political Zionism begins with the publication of Theodore Herzl’s Judenstaat four years later at the first Zionist Congress… Before the word Zionism became generally accepted, the term Palestinofilvsto (Hibat Zion) was widely used in Russia.”

Preface; Walter Lacquer; A History of Zionism; New York; 1976; p. xiii

Theodore Herzl was a first a lawyer, and then a journalist and playwright. He believed that the idea of the Jewish state was a historical necessity, that was essential in order to overcome anti-Semitism. He considered both the Argentine and Palestine as potential places where the Jews of the world could find a haven from persecution. Herzl always maintained that he had not made a new discovery, but that he had simply resurrected an old solution- that of a Jewish State:

“Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question) was written in 1896…(In it – Ed) Herzl disclaimed having made any sensational new discovery. On the contrary…’The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one. It is the restoration of the Jewish state…I have discovered neither the Jewish situation as it has crystallized in history, nor the means to remedy it.'”

Walter Lacquer; A History of Zionism; New York; 1976; p. 86

So convinced was Herzl that a separate state existence was the only solution for the Jews, that he came to a secret agreement with Plevhe – the notorious Tsarist Home minister who had sponsored pogroms in Russia (See above) to encourage Jews to leave Russia for Palestine. This was simply the first of many later “accomodations” of Zionists with rabid anti-Semites.

The First Zionist Congress was held in Basle, Switzerland on 29 August 1897. (Walter Lacquer; A History of Zionism; New York; 1976; p. 103).

Most Marxists agree that the growth of Zionism, reflected the intense anti-Semitism persecution that the Jewish people, workers especially, suffered. A Trotskyite Jew, the Belgian Abraham Leon, wrote a useful study of the Jewish Question. According to Leon, Zionism was a response to the worst racism, expressed in the anti-Jewish pogroms:

“Zionism was born in the light of the incendiary fire of the Russian pogroms of 1882 and in the tumult of the Dreyfus Affair…In Russia the association of the ‘Lovers of Zion’ were founded. Leo Pinsker wrote ‘Auto-emancipation’ in which he called for a return to Palestine as the sole possible solution of the Jewish question…In Paris Baron Rothschild, who like all the Jewish magnates viewed with very little favour the mass arrival of Jewish immigrants in the Western countries, became interested in Jewish colonization in the Palestine… A short while later.. Theodore Herzl saw anti-Semitic demonstrations at Paris provoked by the Dreyfus Affair.”

Abraham Leon, The Jewish Question-A Marxist Interpretation; New York; 1970; pp.244-245.

In Russia there were several Jewish ideological movements. The first Zionist movements were led by David Gordon and Perz Smolenskin. But these were superseded by various socialist currents within the Zionist stream. One sprung out of the Lovers of Zion movement mentioned above by Leon, and was called Workers of Zion (Poalei-Zion) which formed in 1906 from groups in Minsk and in Southern Russia. They were led by Ber Borochov, who:

“Affirmed that Jewish immigration would flow to Israel by a process of natural attraction. The Zionist revolution would be carried out by the Jewish proletariat through class struggle.”

Benjamin Pinkus: The Jews of the Soviet Union; Cambridge; 1988; p.41

But these various currents, were in general eclipsed by the Bund (Or the General Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia). This was the most important Jewish workers socialist party and was established in 1897. It stood for the autonomous organisation of Jewish workers. It was a section of the general Russian Social-Democrats until it formulated its policy for a so called cultural autonomy. This took place at Bialystok in May 1901. This step led to its membership being torn in two, but it nonetheless between the years 1903-1905, had some 30,000 members. But by 1916 it had declined, only to jump up in numbers by the time of December 1917. (Benjamin Pinkus: The Jews of the Soviet Union; Cambridge; 1988; p.43).

It took a social-chauvinist stand during World War I and during the Civil War supported the counter-revolutionary forces. It finally dissolved itself in 1921.

Stalin explained why the Bund was more or less, obliged to take up the position of the cultural autonomy in the way it did. By its Sixth Congress (1905), the national programme on the grounds of national autonomy was enshrined. Stalin argued that it was made inevitable by two factors.

The first was the organizational refusal to join with the larger international tide of Russian Social Democracy (ie Marxism-Bolshevism) as it grew:

“The first circumstance is the existence of the Bund as an organisation of Jewish and only Jewish Social Democratic workers. Even before 1897 the Social-Democratic groups active among the Jewish workers set themselves the aim of creating a ‘special Jewish workers’ organisations’. They founded such an organisation in 1897, by uniting to form the Bund. That was at a time when the Russian Social Democracy as an integral body virtually did not yet exist. The Bund steadily grew and spread, and stood out more vividly against the bleak days of Russian social democracy.. Then came the 1900’s. A mass labour movement came into being. Polish Social Democracy grew and drew the Jewish workers into the mass struggle. Russian social democracy grew and attracted the Bund workers. Lacking a territorial basis, the national framework of the Bund became too restrictive. The Bund was faced with the problem of either merging with the general international tide, or of upholding its independent existence as an extra-territorial organisation. The Bund chose the latter course. Thus grew up the ‘theory’ that the Bund is ‘the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat’. But to justify this strange ‘theory’ in any simple way became impossible… The Bund seized on >Cultural -national autonomy.”

Stalin; “Marxism & The National Question”: Ibid; p.346-347

The second factor was the peculiar and isolated position of the Jews:

“The second circumstance is the peculiar position of the Jews as separate national minorities within compact majorities of other nationalities in integral regions. We have already said that this position is undermining the existence of the Jews as a nation and puts them on the road to assimilation. But this is an objective process. Subjectively in the minds of the Jews, it provokes a reaction and gives rise to the demand for a guarantee of the rights of a national minority, for a guarantee against assimilation.. The Bund could not avoid being in favor of a ‘guarantee’.. it could not but accept national autonomy. For if the Bund could seize upon any autonomy at all, it could only be national autonomy, ie. Cultural national autonomy for the Jews since the Jews have no definite integral territory.”

Ibid; p.347.

Stalin asked pointedly:

“Can institutions guarantee a nation ‘complete freedom of cultural development?’ Can a Diet for cultural affairs guarantee a nation against nationalist persecution? The Bund believes it can. But history proves the contrary.”

Ibid; p.349

Stalin’s central point is that the absence of democracy ensures no guarantees for “freedom of cultural development.” Stalin goes on to cite the cases of Russian Poland and Finland. He then pointed out that the Bund’s splitting tendencies of the workers movements were exposed, by its further actions. These included the clauses whereby the Bund placed emphasis on the Jewish language above all others:

“But it becomes still more harmful when it is thrust upon a ‘nation’ whose existence and future are open to doubt. In such cases the advocates of national autonomy are obliged to protect and preserve all the peculiar features of the ‘nation’, the bad as well as the good, just for the sake of ‘saving the nation’ from assimilation, just for the sake of ‘preserving’ it. That the Bund should take this dangerous path was inevitable. And it did take it. We are referring to the resolutions of recent conferences of the Bund on the question of the ‘Sabbath,’ ‘Yiddish’, etc. Social democracy strives to secure for all nations the right to use their own language. But that does not satisfy the Bund; it demands that ‘the rights of the Jewish language’ be championed with ‘exceptional persistence’ and the Bund itself in the elections to the 4th Duma declared that it would give ‘preference to those of them (ie electors) who undertake to defend the rights of Jewish language.’ Not the general right of all nations to use their own language, but the particular right of the Jewish language, Yiddish!…But in what way then does the Bund differ from the bourgeois nationalists?”

Ibid; p.352-353

Stalin now exposed the Bund’s passage into a chauvinist position, one that was anti-internationalist and anti-proletarian:

“It is not surprising that the effect of this state of affairs upon the workers is to weaken their sense of solidarity and to demoralize them; and the latter process is also penetrating the Bund. We are referring to the increasing collisions between Jewish and Polish workers in connection with unemployment. Here is the kind of speech that was made on this subject at the 9th Conference of the Bund: ‘We regard the Polish workers, who are ousting us, as pogromists, as scabs, we do not support their strikes, we break them.'”

Ibid; p.358-359.

Lenin made clear in several subsequent articles that he agreed with Stalin. For example, in “Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an ‘Independent political party?'”, in 1903, Lenin expresses caustic surprise as to a recent violation by the Bund. Despite polemics with the Bund, where the Bund asserted its= wish to remain part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), the Bund was now proclaiming itself as an independent political party:

“The Jewish proletariat had formed itself into an independent political party, the Bund. We did not know this before. This is something new. Hitherto the Bund has been a constituent part of the RSDLP…It is true that at the 4th Congress of Bund, the Bund decided to change its name…On the other hand when Iskra polemicised with the decision of the Bund’s 4th Congress, the Bund itself stated very definitely that it only wanted to secure the acceptance of its wishes and decisions by the RSDLP; in other words it flatly and categorically acknowledged that until the RSDLP adopted new Rules and settled new forms of attitude towards the Bund, the latter would remain a section of the RSDLP…But now… this is something new.”

Lenin, V.I: “Does the Jewish proletariat need an independent political party?”; Iskra 1903; In Collected Works; Moscow; 1985; Vol 6; p. 328-329.

Lenin goes on to describe how the Bund has attacked the Jewish Ekaterinoslav Committee – which had adopted an internationalist position already. The Bund’s attack was on the question of where does anti-Semitism arise from? The Ekaterinoslav committee had argued that the roots of anti-Semitism were international, and that it found “adherents among the bourgeois and not among the working class sections of the population” (Lenin Ibid; p. 331).

But the Bund had chastised the Ekaterinoslav committee for this, arguing that anti-Semitism has “struck roots in the mass of the workers.” Lenin denied the Bund’s view linking anti-Semitism with the bourgeois interests:

“The link that undoubtedly exists between anti-Semitism and the interests of the bourgeois, and not of the working class sections of the population. If they had given it a little more thought they might have realised that the social character of anti-Semitism today is not changed by the fact that dozens or even hundreds of unorganised workers, nine-tenths of whom are still quite ignorant, take part in a pogrom…We must not weaken the force of our offensive by breaking up into numerous independent political parties.”

Lenin Ibid; p. 331-332.

He elsewhere repeated again that the way forward was assimilation, and not separation:

“Can we possibly attribute to chance the fact that it is the reactionary forces all over Europe and especially Russia who oppose the assimilation of the Jew and try to perpetuate their isolation? That is precisely what the Jewish problem amounts to: assimilation or isolation? — and the idea of a Jewish ‘nationality’ is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social Democracy (The Bundists). The idea of a Jewish nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish proletariat, for it fosters among them directly or indirectly, the spirit of the ‘ghetto.'”

Lenin: “Position of the Bund in the Party”; Collected Works; Vol 7; Moscow; 1986 p.101

Should Workers Always Support A National Status?

We argued earlier, that Stalin’s central position regarding Jewish claims of nationhood, was that democratic rights and freedom from oppressions were the key demands that needed to be won – and not “nationhood.” The position, of Lenin and Stalin, was always that nations – if a national status did in fact exist (by definitions provided by Stalin) – should have the full right to self-determination.

“The right of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its life in the way it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign, and all nations have equal rights.”

Stalin; Ibid; p.321.

But even if there is a nation, NOT all claims to nationhood are strategically defensible from the workers perspective. For example the Marxist-Leninist will not necessarily support all claims to nationhood if they obstruct the working peoples. For instance, the resurrection of the influence of the beys and mullahs, in Transcaucasia, would not have been in the best interests of the toiling strata. The best answer for the workers and toilers, depends upon the precise historical situation. It must be carefully found by looking at the precise facts:

“A nation has the right to arrange its life on autonomous lines. It even the has the right to secede. But this does not mean that it should do so under all circumstances, that autonomy or separation, will everywhere and always be advantageous for a nation; ie. For its majority, ie for the toiling strata. The Transcacausian Tartars as a nation may assemble, let us say, in their Diet and succumbed to the influence of their beys and mullahs, decide to restore the old order of things and to secede from the state. According to the meaning of the clause on self-determination they are fully entitled to do so. But will this be in the interest of the toiling strata of the Tartar nation? Can Marxists look on indifferently when the beys and mullahs assume the leadership of the masses in the solution of the national question?…Should not Marxists come forward with a definite plan for the solution of the question, a plan which would be most advantageous for the Tartar masses?…But what solution would be most compatible with the interests of the toiling masses? Autonomy, federation or separation? All these are problems the solution of which will depend on the concrete historical conditions in which the given nation finds itself…Conditions like everything else change, and a decision which is correct at one particular time may prove to be entirely unsuitable at another.”

Stalin; Ibid; p.324

Stalin was clear upon the rights of minorities and the national question. For example, where there is one geographical region with different minorities, or proto-nations, living side by side. This is a special type of national problem. Such situations are still frequent. In Stalin’s day, in Europe, this situation existed in Transcaucasia. As a precondition to solve the problems of these areas, Stalin insisted that:

“The complete democratisation of the country is the basis and condition for the solution of the national question.”

Stalin; Ibid; p.373.

But, Stalin recognised that there was a possibility that independence and secession was necessary for some parts. He then considered the possibility that for some parts regional autonomy was preferable. This was so he argued, for “The Jews in Poland, the Letts in Lithuania, the Russians in the Caucasus, the Poles in the Ukraine and so on…”

This was for two reasons;
Firstly, because it disposed of a fiction bereft of territory; and,
Secondly, it did not divide people by nation:

“The only correct solution is regional autonomy, autonomy for such crystallised units as Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, the Caucasus etc. The advantage of regional autonomy consists first of all in the fact that it does not deal with a fiction bereft of territory, but with a definite population inhabiting a definite territory. Next it does not divide people according to nations, it does not strengthen national barriers; on the contrary it breaks down these barriers and unites the population in such a manner as to open the way for division of a different kind, division according to classes…Of course, not one of these regions constitutes a compact homogeneous nation, for each is interspersed with national minorities. Such are the Jews in Poland, the Letts in Lithuania, the Russians in the Caucasus, the Poles in the Ukraine, and so on. It may be feared therefore that the minorities will be oppressed by the national majorities. But there will be grounds for fear only if the old order continues to prevail in the country. Give the country complete democracy and all grounds for fear will vanish.”

Stalin; Ibid; p.376.

Again – the key issue for Stalin, was that definite, visible, meaningful and clear democratic rights (for instance to use its own language etc). should be granted. So strongly did he feel about this, that he repeats it. He argues that without it an “artificial union” means nothing; and that with it the perceived need for “national union” disappear. He identifies what is it that “agitates” a national minority as discrimination of language, liberty of conscience – religious liberty, self regulated schooling etc:

“What the minorities want is not an artificial union but real rights in the localities they inhabit. What can such a union give them without complete democratisation? On the other hand, what need is there for a national union when there is complete democratisation? What is that particularly agitates a national minority? A minority is discontented not because there is not national union but because it does not enjoy the right to use its native language. Permit it to use its native language and the discontent will pass of itself. A minority is discontented not because there is no artificial union but because it does not possess it own schools. Give it its own schools and all grounds for discontent will disappear. A minority is discontented not because there is not national union, but because it does not enjoy liberty of conscience (religious liberty), liberty of movement, etc. Give it those liberties and it will cease to be discontented. Thus equal rights of nation in all forms (language, schools, etc) is an essential element in the solution of the national question.. Complete democratisation of the country is required.”

Stalin; Ibid; p.375-377

Stalin’s view, regarding the formation of multi-national states, was the basis for Lenin’s viewpoint that echoed Kautsky (See Lenin above). This was that the formation of multi-national states, is a “special method” of the formation of states, and one which takes place in territories where certain conditions hold, that are more common in the East.

These conditions are:
1) Where more than one pre-nation (or nascent nationality) exists;
2) Where capitalism has not yet been eliminated; and
3) Where capitalism is feebly developed but is more developed in one of the pre-nations concerned than in the other (or others):

“Whereas in the West (of Europe-ed) nations developed into states, in the East multi-national states were formed…This special mode of formation of states could take place only where feudalism has not yet been eliminated, where capitalism was feebly developed, where the nationalities which had been forced into the background had not not been able to consolidate themselves economically into integral nations.”

Stalin Ibid; p.314.

Again, even in this context of the multi-national state, Stalin used the example of Transcaucasia. Stalin favoured Democratisation and Regional Autonomy – equating with national status – within a larger federation.

In summary the views of Lenin and Stalin on Zionism were:

1. The Jews did not form a nation;
2. The Jewish workers were the most oppressed section of the Jewish peoples, all of whom were discriminated against and maltreated;
3. The solution to their woes was assimilation; and ultimately socialism;
4. But their legitimate feelings of oppression should be directly addressed by immediate granting of full democratic rights, including language rights etc;
5. The Bund and other Zionist organisation which tried to pull workers away from affiliations with the internationalist workers movement, were objectively fomenting a counter-revolutionary division.

[RedAlert]

Part 3:
On Birobidzhan; on the Zionists sabotage of an anti-Nazi Front;
On the Setting up of Israel;
On Revisionist Gromyko's participation in this;
On the Yalta & Potsdam conferences & the Atomic Bomb

___________________________________________________________________________
THE FORMATION OF THE SOVIET JEWISH HOMELAND - BIROBIDZHAN

Russian Jewry prior to the revolution had been intensely persecuted. The Russian census of 1897 had enumerated 5,215,800 Jews - of whom nearly 2 million emigrated between the years 1881 and 1914.
(Zvi Gitelman: p. 1; Introduction to Robert Weinberg: "Stalin’s Forgotten Zion-Birobidzhan & the Making of A Soviet Jewish Homeland, An Illustrated History 1928-1996." Berkeley 1998 ).
The majority that stayed were left in the "Pale of Settlement". The majority were peasants and earned their living from agriculture. But since they were banned from owning any land, they were condemned always to be at the poorest status of peasantry. By the beginning of the First World War, about 50,000 Jews (3% of the total Jewish population of the Russian Empire) were tilling agricultural land. Most Jews were engaged in commerce, manufacturing and services - mainly in a petit bourgeois capacity. (Weinberg Ibid, p. 18.)

Subject to the worst racism and pogroms, the Jewish leaders were split as to how to deal with this. One section argued they should readily embrace the limited reforms offered by some of the Tsars - and assimilate completely. At the extreme were those advocating conversion to Christianity. Another "moderate" section however wanted to modernise the Jewish traditions and including a dropping of the Yiddish language for Hebrew. These were known as the maskilim (enlighteners) and their movement as the Haskalah (enlightenment).

Others in reacting to the pogroms of Tsar Alexander III (1881-94) and Nicholas II (1894-1917) argued for a completely separate Jewish state. This tradition, led by such as the physician Leon Pinsker, became known as shivat zion (Return To Zion). In the midst of this was the Jewish Bund whose positions have been already discussed above.

After the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the situation of the Jewish people was considered as part of the overall question of the minorities within the Soviet Union. Within a year the Bolsheviks had organised Jewish Sections within the Communist party (Evreiskie seketsii or Evsektsii or Yevsektsii). A commissariat for Jewish Affairs was set up known as Evkom. It was placed within the Commissariat of Nationalities, headed by Stalin. The language question was resolved in favour of Yiddish this being the language of the Jewish masses and not Hebrew.

There is no doubt that the correct Soviet policy of restricting the medium of the religious Hebrew language and encouraging Yiddish was at least in part responsible for the rapid assimilation of the USSR Jews:
"The Yevsektsii also campaign against the Hebrew language. In their eyes, Hebrew is the reactionary language of the Jewish bourgeoisie, whatever its content, and has to be eliminated in favour of Yiddish, the language of the Jewish proletariat. Hebrew schools and printing are closed. At the end of the 1920's, Hebrew becomes the only language which is officially outlawed in the Soviet Union. Jewish religious education is now impossible. The only permitted expressions of Soviet-Jewish life are secular Yiddish education, literature, press and theatre... The newly established Yiddish schools are very popular at first. But as only few secondary school and no university courses are in Yiddish, their numbers decline. At the end of the 1930's, they have completely disappeared. With the almost complete elimination of organized Jewish religious and communal life, the Yevsektsii have become redundant and are dissolved in 1930. "
WWW site "Beyond the Pale"; A History of Soviet Jews;
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... index.html
The same source makes the point that many of the Yevsektsii were later persecuted as "nationalists":

"During the Stalinist purges of the late 1930's, most of its members are accused of having had "nationalist tendencies", and are deported or killed."
"Beyond The Pale"; Ibid.

But the point has been repeatedly proven in the pages of Alliance, that the purges of the 1930's were not under the control of Stalin, but the hidden revisionists such as Yezhov. They were aimed at the alienation and or physical elimination of the best Bolsheviks from the party. A policy of Korenizatsiia ("Implanting Bolshevism in the non-Russian masses") was launched. Stalin’s view at the Commissariat of Nationalities was to stimulate cultural diversity, if it was "National in form and socialist in content". (Cited Weinberg p.15)
As Gitelman puts it, the promotion of the Yiddish culture was - and remains - a unique experiment:

"This would be done by having party and government institutions operate in their language and educating their children with a Bolshevik content but a national form, as Stalin put it. For Jews this meant the creation of networks of Yiddish schools, newspapers, journals, and theatres. Two academic institutions operating in Yiddish were set up in Kiev and Minsk. Courts, trade unions and even party cells were encouraged to operate in Yiddish. This was the only time in history that a state invested heavily in Yiddish institutions and the promotion of Yiddish culture."
Gitelman Ibid; p. 6-7.

According to Gitelman, largely speaking, the Jews rejected this effort to build a Jewish state. But this view is countered by Weinberg - who has become the most visible historian of the Birobidzhan:
"The notion of a Jewish homeland appealed to many Soviet Jews, and the Birobidzhan project was intended to undercut the Zionist focus on Palestine."
Weinberg Ibid, p.13.
Weinberg’s book corroborates the view that a general interest was definitely present. In any case, if Gitelman’s view is accepted, Gitelman explains the lack of interest as being due to the power of the assimilation offered by the new Soviet state. For Gitelman, the main reason was an embrace of Russian language and the opportunities given by the revolution:

"Traditional Jews saw it as an attempt to replace authentic grassroots Judaism with an ersatz product imposed Afrom above".. Those uninterested n traditional forms of Jewishness saw no reason to remain loyal to Yiddish culture when the broader horizons of Russian culture beckoned to them. Jews rushed to take advantage of the educational and vocational opportunities the revolution had given to them. Clearly Russian was much more useful than Yiddish."
Gitelman Ibid; p. 6-7.

This confirmed the views of Lenin and Stalin - that once the Jews were allowed to play a part in society in free democratic manner - links to the past would be eroded. Gitelman draws an explicit parallel to the dying of Yiddish as a language in America.. where English was the key to assimilation. Gitelman’s states that on this basis:

"The idea of a territory in which Yiddish would be the dominant language as Birobidzhan, had limited appeal to Soviet Jews in the 1920's."
Gitelman, Ibid, p.7.

But as Weinberg argues, nonetheless there were still many Soviet Jews who retained the belief in a separate entity. In May 1934 that the Jewish Autonomous region was set up. It was located as Map 2 shows, in remote and poorly populated area of the Soviet Far East. In this setting it would not displace indigenous peoples. Of course this was in contrast to the creation of the future Israel which displaced the Palestinians in a brutal manner. To this end the plan was evolved to settle 100,000 Jews in agricultural colonies.

In Hard Copy form only:
MAP 2: From page 15 Weinberg Ibid.

By the early 1920's the number of poor Jewish unemployed in the USSR was high. Around Belarus, in the city of Gomel it was about 70%. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 16).

In addition, many of the petit bourgeoisie of the Jewish population had to be brought into the socialist economy. Since the petit bourgeois nature of their work had in the majority of Jews, been continually eroded by the socialist policies of collectivisation in both manufacturing and agriculture, a question arose of the "productivization" of Jewish life. Weinberg comments:

"Given the devastated condition of Soviet industry in the 1920's government officials focused on agricultural resettlement as a strategy. Despite the long-term objectives of presiding over an industrialised society, the Kremlin in the 1920's could not pursue a concerted policy of industrialisation that could absorb significant numbers of economically marginal Jews. The publication of two issues of the journal Evreiskii krest’ianin (The Jewish Peasant) in 1925 and 1926 underscores this official interest in Jewish land settlement."
Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 19.

In the 1920's therefore two organisations were set up, OZET (Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land) and KOMZET (Committee for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers on the Land). OZET was controlled by KOMZET members, who examined conditions for settlement in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Crimea. After 1928, attention focused on the formation of a Jewish Autonomous Region (J.A.R).
Jews from the Shetls (Shetls were the villages or ghettoes where large numbers of Jews were concentrated) were moved to the area. By 1930, some 47,000 Jewish families were working in agriculture in the Soviet Union.

The 1928 decision to make the Biro-Bidzhanskii district a JAR - took in a region the size of Belgium. It had been annexed in 1858 by Russia. The Biro and the Bidzhan were tributaries of the river Amur. The population consisted then of "several hundred" indigenous Siberians and some settlers - Russians, Cossacks, Koreans and Ukrainians over the late 19th-early 20th century. There was some early resistance from 1924, until the decision was finally taken in 1928, to have the Biro-Bidzhanskii district as the site of the JAR. This resistance, from some activists in KOMZET, argued that it was too far from the current pockets of Jewish populations. Many Jews argued that Birobidzhan was preferable to Palestine, since it was within an area they already had roots - an argument put by I.Sudarskii in 1930 in the book "Birobdizhan And Palestine". (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 22).

Moreover the Ukraine Belarus and Crimea were becoming crowded and the Far East resources had not been sufficiently tapped. This meant that the Soviet Government made conditions attractive for Jews to move there:

"Many in the Kremlin were interested in creating a Jewish national territory within the borders of the Soviet Union... Soviet policy in the 1920's aimed at normalizing the status of non-territorial minorities by establishing official enclaves."
Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 21-22.

Official USSR sanction for the project was given by President Mikhail Kalinin:

"It is completely natural that the Jewish population.. Strives to find its place in the Soviet Union.. The Jewish people faces the great task of preserving its own nationality, and to this end a page part of the Jewish population must be transformed into an economically stable, agriculturally compact group, which should number at least hundreds of thousands. Only under such conditions can the Jewish masses hope for the further existence of their nationality."
Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 22

In March 1928 a decree was published reserving the district for the settlement of Jews who would work the land:

"The decree banned agricultural settlement by non-Jews and states that if Jewish settlement were successful, "a Jewish national administrative - territorial entity" might be set up. This idea was realised in 1934, when the district was designated as the Jewish Autonomous Region, (JAR) with Birobidzhan as its capital city."
Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 23.

Strong incentives were provided to move impoverished Jews to the JAR. Even those who had been declared as Anon-labourers" were allowed to have electoral rights in the JAR if they engaged in productive work. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 24). But no doubt, conditions were hard, and were not helped by a serious flood in 1928 and 1932, and Soviet reporters criticised the lack of preparations for the settlers. So there was a yearly drop-out rate of about 50% in the first few years. By 1931, the territory was however decreed to become an autonomous administrative entity, and accordingly a broadening of the original agricultural focus allowed more scope for settlers to stay if they were not farmers. By 1939, only 23% (4,404 of 17,695) lived in the countryside of the JAR. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 32.)

But the JAR grew as more Jews came . By World War II it’s capital Birobidzhan, had a population numbered at 30,000, and the JAR was an important source of cement, tin, bricks, paper products, and clothing. (Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 39).

A number of non-Jews went also despite the original intention. In fact gentiles outnumbered Jews. By 1939 Jews were 18,000 of the 109,000 residents of the JAR. Seman Dimanshtein, a leading Jewish activist proclaimed:

"We do not set ourselves the goal of establishing quickly a Jewish majority in the JAR; we are confident that this will come about as a natural consequence of migration.. Our first task is the expansion of and strengthening of socialist construction in the JAR. Therefore we shall welcome assistance from abroad and non-Jewish cadres as the most important and vital form of help".
Cited Weinberg Ibid; p. 43.

It is not surprising that foreign Jewish support was sought, including foreign emigration. Over one thousand foreign Jews moved to the JAR by the mid-1930's. From 1935, each foreign Jew who wanted to move to the JAR, had to pay KOMZET two hundred dollars. The wholly bourgeois American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) (Later often known simply as the Joint) and the Jewish Colonization Committee were:

"Enthusiastic about the idea of Soviet Jews working the land. In 1928 there were nearly 220,000 Jewish farmers. By the mid 1930's the JDC had depended $13.8 million on other agricultural work and an additional $10.3 million on other assistance."
Gitelman Ibid; p. 8.

Gitelman cites one of the American leaders of the JDC, James Rosenberg saying approvingly in an international report:

"Anti-Semitism in Russia is a crime. The ghetto dwellers of Russia have been transformed into hardy workers on farms and in factories. For us in the United States, there is no Jewish problem in Russia".
Gitelman Ibid; p. 8.

By 1930 the drive towards creating a socialist state, had both unified many of the former minorities into a common struggle, and had created a higher purpose. "Accordingly the Evsektii were abolished in 1930." (Gitelman Ibid; p. 8). But still the JAR continued to attract world wide Jewish attention. Although certainly, simultaneously many Zionists bitterly attacked it. However many cites throughout the world organised committees of support that continued to donate both monies and equipment and people. Prominent Jews the world over defended the JAR. Lion Feuchtwangler, the prominent Jewish writer, wrote:

"The Jewish Republic of Birobidzhan is a reality".
Weinberg Ibid; p. 53.

In the context of the Soviet state, hidden revisionists aiming to disrupt socialism sought ways of alienating the world wide Jewish support. The secret security apparatus was controlled by hidden revisionists such as Ezhov. At this juncture correct tactics to the minorites was subverted. Thus at this juncture, an anti-Jewish attack did take place. For example the leading Jewish official Iosif Liberberg - the former head of the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Kiev - was arrested and charged with:

"Attempting to establish the JAR as the center of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union." Weinberg Ibid; p. 67

But, since this was precisely what had been intended for the JAR, such charges themselves can be seen as provocative and anti-Soviet.
Further anti-Soviet acts ensued:
Following the charges, both OZET and KOMZET were disbanded; and Semen Dimanshei was executed. (Weinberg Ibid; p. 68).
By 1941, virtually all the Yiddish schools in the JAR were closed barring only two. But the institutional and legal foundations of the region were un-changed. Nonetheless by 1939, the Jews accounted for only 16 % of the population(17,695 of about 109,000 inhabitants. Weinberg Ibid; p. 69.

After the war, while there was a temporary set-back for the hidden revisionists, there was a resurgence of Jewish immigration in the JAR. In 1948 Mikhail Kalinin continued his public support for the JAR:

"He stated in 1948 that he considered the region a "Jewish national state" that will Aregenerate Soviet Jews through creative toil".
Cited Weinberg Ibid, p. 72.

Thus, following the war there was a revived Government sponsored support. Again only Jewish immigration was allowed into the JAR. In 1946 a synagogue was approved by the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults. In early 1946 the:

"Council of Ministers announced a plan to stimulate the development of the region....... focused on the building of industrial enterprise and the construction of new houses..... the government also offered free transportation a and loans and other incentives to those settlers who chose to till the land."
Cited Weinberg Ibid, p. 72.

Again the international community of Jews rallied to the JAR. Between 1945 and 1948 some 6 million rubles worth of food and supplies were sent to the JAR from the USA alone. Albert Einstein was one of the prominent supporters.
The conventional wisdom is that:

"In 1948, Stalin launched a murderous campaign to destroy all Jewish intellectual and cultural activity throughout the Soviet Union. His ruthless attacks on "rootless cosmopolitanism" and Abourgeois nationalists" culminated in early 1953 with the infamous "Doctor’s Plot". .. A rumour circulated that the JAR barracks to house the deported Jews were reportedly built, but Stalin’s death in 1953 prevented the implementation of this sinister plan."
Cited Weinberg Ibid, p. 82.

As even Gitelman points out the ultimate failure of Birobidzhan left the reactionary alternative of a so-called "Homeland", of Israel-Palestine , as was then being heavily promoted by the Zionists - with no competition from a socialist alternative:

"Even if the Project (Birobidzhan) was not designed to fail, the fate of Soviet Jewry raise serious questions about the viability of secular Jewishness outside a Jewish state..... The attempt to create a Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Far East remains largely forgotten.. And Birobidzhan’s chief competitors, the Zionists have emerged triumphant."
Gitelman Ibid, p. 9.

In Summary
It is no accident that a veneer of "socialism" was adopted in the fledgling state of Israel.
Not only did it serve to better harness the energies of immigrant Jews into the new state.
But it served to confuse those Jews who had been previously drawn to the example of the JAR of Birobidzhan.
The JAR itself was conciously sabotaged as a potential homeland for Jewish workers.

___________________________________________________________________________
THE UNDERLYING OBJECTIVE LOGIC FOR THE ZIONIST CALLS FOR " ANTI-ASSIMILATION" - WAS AN AID TO NAZI GERMANY

The desire to be free of oppressions from pogroms is naturally understandable. But could that desire lead to an alliance with forces of fascism that would promote the worst pogrom known to us to date?
It is most "politically incorrect" to say that it did.
However Lenni Brenner clearly illustrated this indeed occurred. He has described this well in the book: "Zionism in the Age of Dictators".
The natural consequence of a Zionist 'separatist’ mentality was described by Mussolini as only being correctly understood by one of the founders of Israel - a fellow "fascist" - Vladimir Yabotinsky:

"The highest.. accolade was from Mussolini who, in 1935, told David Prato, later to become chief rabbi of Rome, that: For Zionism to succeed you need to have a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky."
Bar-Zohar, "Ben-Gurion-The Armed Prophet", p. 46.
Cited by Brenner, Lenni in Chapter 10:"Zionist- revisionism and Italian Fascism; in: "Zionism in the Age of Dictators"; 1983, Kent; ISBN (GB) 0-7099- 0628-5; p.117;
Web site of International Secretariat of the War & Holocaust Tales Ancient Amateurs’ Association; (WHOTAAAN) in 1996;
http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html


As shown by Brenner, the Zionists across Europe were in fact, at best ambivalent to fascist regimes, and informed many of the key Zionist colonists of Palestine including the notorious Stern Gang. Brenner’s contentions inflame Zionists. But the objective reality was that Zionist Jews turned their views and thoughts towards, what was for them a "Zion", but which was in reality the Arabic Palestine. Zionists had agreed that their current place of residence was only a temporary historical stopping over.

We will now follow Brenner, and cite Brenner at great length, to illustrate the objective logic of "Zionist separatism" versus "Assimilation" during the Second World War, up to 1945.

In the First Phase the Zionist forces obstructed the anti-Nazi United Front;
Secondly and later on, they denied that the extermination of the Jews was occurring.
Thirdly, in yet another phase, the highest echelons of the Zionists indicated that they were prepared to "sacrifice" a substantial part of European Jewry, as the Allies post-war would now accept the need for a seperate "Jewish Homeland".
Fourthly: Zionist sympathies were not primarily given to the only potential forces - communism and socialism - that could stop fascism. This especially applied to German Jews:

"German Jewry was deeply loyal to the Weimar Republic which had put an end to the discriminations of the Wilhelmine era. Germany’s Jews, (0.9 per cent of the population) were generally prosperous: 60 per cent were businessmen or professionals; the rest artisans clerks, students, with only insubstantial numbers of industrial workers. Most were for liberal capitalism with 64 per cent voting for the Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP). About 28 per cent voted for the moderate Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). Only 4 per cent voted for the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), and the rest were scattered Rightists."
Lenni Brenner:" Zionism in the Age of Dictators"; Chapter 3; "German Zionism & The collapse of the Weimar Republic"; p. 27; or http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad3.html
On web; Ibid 1996;

When Hitler appeared to be gaining ground in Germany, Jewish organisations led by their youth, did belatedly try to counter the worst fascist atrocities:
"Religious Jewry turned to its traditional defence organisation, the Centralverein, the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith; now, for the first time, the department store owners, who had become a prime target for the attentions of the Nazi brown-shirts, began to contribute to the CV’s efforts...younger members of the CV pushed aside the old leadership and were able to get the CV .. to subsidise the SDP’s anti-Nazi propaganda. After the DDP’s betrayal, the SDP picked up approximately 60 per cent of the Jewish vote. Only 8 per cent went Communist."
Brenner Chapter 3; op Cit; p.27
Web Citation. http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad3.html
Elsewhere it has been pointed out by the Marxist-Leninists of the Communist League, that the effective resistance to the Nazis was sabotaged by the criminal sectarianism foisted upon the KPD by the revisionists of the KPD and the revisionist leaders of the Communist International led by Dimitrov. (Compass Issue 1996.)

Brenner correctly points out that if both the SDP & the KPD did not organise effectively against fascism - neither did the German Zionists:
"If the SDP and the KPD must bear their full measure of guilt for Hitler's triumph, so too must the Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland (the Zionist Federation of Germany-ZVfD). Although conventional wisdom has always assumed that the Zionists, with their dire view of anti-Semitism, warned the Jews of the Nazi menace, this is in fact not true..... a diligent search of the pages of the Jeudische Rundschau, the weekly organ of the ZVfD, will not reveal.. prophecies (foretelling Hitler’s accession to power-Ed). When a Jew was killed several hundred Jewish stores looted in a November 1923 hunger riot in Berlin, Kurt Blumenfeld, the Secretary (later President) of the ZVfD, consciously played down the incident:
'There would be a very cheap and effective kind of reaction, and we ... decisively reject it. One could incite deep anxiety among German Jewry. One could use the excitement to enlist the vacillating. One could represent Palestine and Zionism as a refuge for the homeless. We do not wish to do that. We do not wish to carry off by demagoguery those who have stood apart from Jewish life out of indifference. But we wish to make clear to them through [our] sincere conviction where the basic error of Jewish galuth [exile] existence lies. We wish to awaken their national self(awareness. We wish ... through patient and earnest educational; work [to] prepare them to participate in the upbuilding of Palestine."
From Brenner Ibid; Chapter 3; p. 29; also citing Stephen Poppel, Zionism in Germany' 1897-1933, p.119.
Brenner cites Stephen Poppel, author of "Zionism in Germany 1897-1933", to the effect that until 1931 "Far from warning and defending the Jews, prominent Zionists opposed anti-Nazi activity." The logic of the Zionists in Germany was to agree with the Nazis that Jew and Gentile could not in fact co-exist:

"It had been the German Zionists who had most fully elaborated the ideology of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) before 1914 and in the 1920s they developed the argument to its logical conclusion: Judaism in the Diaspora was hopeless. There was no possible defence against anti-Semitism and there was no purpose in trying to develop Jewish cultural and community institutions in Germany. The ZVfD turned away from the society in which they lived. There were only two Zionist tasks: instilling nationalist consciousness in as many Jews as would listen and training youths for occupations useful in the economic development of Palestine. Anything else was useless and palliative."
Brenner Chapter 3; op Cit; p. 30; Or at Web Citation. http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad3.html

The rigorous extent to which this type of logic was taken is instructive when assessing the claims of present day Zionists proclaiming the Anecessity" of the state of Israel in its current form. Thus In 1925 the "total abstentionist" Jacob Klatzkin, a co-editor of the "Encyclopedia Judaica" stated:

"If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right, therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity. Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends who desire to defend our rights."
Jacob Agus, The Meaning of Jewish History, vol. II, p. 425; cited Brenner; p. 30.

After the June 1930 elections in Saxony, where Nazis obtained 14.4 per cent of the vote:
"The Berlin Jewish community put pressure on the ZVfD to join a Reichstag Election Committee in conjunction with the CV and other assimilationists. But the ZVfD’s adherence was strictly nominal; the assimilationists complained that the Zionists put barely any time or money into it, and it dissolved immediately after the election... Siegfried Moses, later Blumenfeld’s successor as head of the federation, demonstrated the Zionists, indifference to the construction of a strenuous defence:
"We have always believed the defence against anti-Semitism to be a task which concerns all Jews and have clearly stated the methods of which we approve and those which we consider irrelevant or ineffective. But it is true that the defence against anti-Semitism is not our main task, it does not concern us to the same extent and is not of the same importance for us as is the work for Palestine and, in a somewhat different sense, the work of the Jewish communities."
"Reactions Jewish Press to Nazi Challenge", Leo Baeck Inst. Yr Bk, V (1960), p. 312; In Brenner; ibid; p. 31.
It is not the case that all Jews were so blind to the dangers. Obviously the position of the Zionists was directly contrary to that section of the Jewish population that had accepted and welcomed assimilation:

"The ZVfD leaders could never effectively unite with the assimilationists on defence work. They were total abstentionists politically, and they were volkists they did not believe in the CV's fundamental premise that the Jews were Germans. Their concern was that the Jews should emphasise their Jewishness. They reasoned that if Jews started to consider themselves a separate national minority, and stopped interfering in AAryan" affairs, it would be possible to get the anti-Semites to tolerate them on a basis of a dignified’ coexistence. The assimilationists would have none of this; to them the Zionist position was just an echo of the Nazi line. There is no doubt that the assimilationists were correct."
Brenner Chapter 3; op Cit Web Citation.

But in the face of the KPD sectarianism the best of the Jewish assimilationists had no effective United Front to go to. Moreover, to their own youth, the Zionist leadership preached fervent anti-communism, describing it in 1932 as "red assimilation" (See Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, p. 30).

Sections of the Jewish bourgeoisie, such as Georg Kareski, a banker, disagreed with the Zionists. In 1919 he founded the "Juedische Volkspartei". But in 1930, he unsuccessfully stood for the Reichstag on a Catholic Centre platform. He then set up the "Organisation of Jewish Centre Party Voters". Even the left wing of the Jewish population was dominated by the idea of a Zion:

"On the Zionist left the German branch of the Poale Zion backed the incompetent leadership of the SDP. Before 1914 the SDP refused to associate with Zionism, which it saw as separating the Jews from other workers, and only those elements on the far right of the SDP that supported German imperialism in Africa patronised the Labour Zionists, whom they saw as fellow socialist colonisers. The Socialist International only established friendly relations with Poale Zion during and after the First World War, when the left-wing anti-colonialist forces joined the Communist International. The Labour Zionists joined the SDP with one central purpose: to gain support for Zionism."
Brenner Chapter 3; p. 33; op Cit; Or at:
Web Citation. http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad3.html

Even after Hitler’s accession to power, the Jewish leaders did not organise effectively. The Zionists position has been explained. However the assimilationists also were tragically short sighted. They wished to not create waves to draw attention to them. This is perhaps understandable. However the attitude of actively identifying with the Nazi concept of "Volk" was also adopted by sections of Zionism:

"Gustav Krojanker, editor at the Judischer Verlag, the oldest Zionist publishing house in Europe, also saw the two movements’ common roots in volkist irrationalism, and drew the conclusion that Zionists should look positively at the nationalist aspects of Nazism. A benign approach toward their fellow volkists, he naively reasoned, would perhaps bring forth an equivalent benevolence toward Zionism on the part of the Nazis."
Brenner Ibid; p. 35-36; citing Herbert Strauss, Jewish Reactions to the Rise of Anti-Semitism in Germany, p. 13.

As far as Krojanker and many other Zionists were concerned, democracy’s day was over. Harry Sacher, a Briton, one of the leaders of the WZO in the period, explained Krojanker's theories in a review of Krojanker’s book, "Zum Problem Ausutschen Nationalismus":

"For Zionists, Liberalism is the enemy; it is also the enemy for Nazism; ergo, Zionism should have much sympathy and understanding for Nazism, of which anti-Semitism is probably a fleeting accident."
Harry Sacher, review of Gustav Krojanker, Zum Problem des Neuen Deutschen Nationalismus, Jewish Review (London, September 1932), p. 104; Cited By Brenner Ibid; p. 36.

Thus international Jewry was not only confused about the nature of fascism, but often its leaders took mis-guided steps to dissuade even any moderately active anti-Nazi organisation, such as goods boycotts:

"Certainly those Jewish groups like the JWV, the Anti-Nazi League and the AJC were ineffectual, but there were those in the Jewish community in America and Britain who specifically opposed the very notion of a boycott. The American Jewish Committee, the B’rnai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) fraternal order and the Board of Deputies of British Jews refused to back the boycott. They feared that if the Jewish workers, and others as well, took it into their heads to fight Hitler, perhaps they would stay in motion and come after their own rich closer to home. These worthies confined themselves to charity efforts for German Jewry and its refugees and prayed that Hitlerism would not spread. The Agudas Yisrael (Union of Israel), the political arm of the most extreme wing of traditional Orthodoxy, opposed the boycott on religious grounds as well as their social conservativism. They claimed that ever since the ancient Jewish kingdom was destroyed by the Romans, the Talmud had forbidden Jews to revolt against Gentile authority in the Diaspora; they interpreted the boycott as rebellion and therefore forbidden. However, of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea, the most important was the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers. The WZO saw Hitler's victory in much the same way as its German affiliate, the ZVfD: not primarily as a defeat for all Jewry, but as positive proof of the bankruptcy of assimilationism and liberalism. Their own hour was at hand. Zionists began to sound like tent-revivalists: Hitler was history's flail to drive the stiff-necked Jews back to their own kind and their own land. "
Lenni Brenner: "Zionism in the Age of Dictators"; Chapter 6"The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott and the Zionist-Nazi Trade agreement"; Op Cit p. 58;
or at: Web site for index, as before: http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

It is true that some were far more aware, such as the American rabbi, Abraham Jacobson, who:

"Protested against this insane idea, which was still quite widespread even as late as 1936: "How many times have we heard the impious wish uttered in despair over the apathy of American Jews to Zionism, that a Hitler descend upon them? Then they would realize the need for Palestine!"
Lenni Brenner: "Zionism in the Age of Dictators"; Chapter 6"The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott and the Zionist-Nazi Trade agreement"; p. 60; Op Cit; or at: Web site. http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

However most of the leaders were drawn to the prospect of using Nazism as a vehicle for the creation of a Zionist homeland - kicking out the resident Palestinians.
This desire, was the vehicle by which the WZO itself destroyed even the weak boycott of Nazi German goods. They supported and then took over the 1933 independent proposal of a Sam Cohen:
"The owner of Ha Note’a Ltd, a Tel Aviv citrus export firm. Even under Chancellor Bruning the German government had put a flight tax on capital leaving the country and Cohen had proposed that Zionist emigres be allowed to avoid the tax by purchasing goods in Germany which would later be turned back into cash after sale in Palestine. Bruning had no interest in the idea, but in 1933 Cohen, on his own, presented the plan again. The Nazis were already worried about the effect even the spontaneous and lamentably organised boycott was having on their balance of trade, and Heinrich Wolff, the German Consul in Jerusalem, quickly grasped just how useful Cohen's proposition could be. He wrote to his ministry:
"In this way it might be possible to wage a successful campaign against the Jewish boycott of Germany. It might be possible to make a breach in the wall.’
The Jews, he argued, would be put in a quandary. Further boycott would be seen as imposing problems on emigrants seeking to find new homes for themselves in Palestine or elsewhere. Because of his location, Wolff was one of the first Germans to perceive the growing importance of Palestine in the Jewish equation, and in June he wrote again to Berlin:
'Whereas in April and May the Yishuv was waiting boycott instructions from the United States, it now seems that the situation has been transformed. It is Palestine which now gives the instructions... It is important to break the boycott first and foremost in Palestine, and the effect will inevitably be felt on the main front, in the United States.’
Brenner Chapter 6; p. 61; Op Cit;
or at Web Site. http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
Accordingly contracts were soon signed that were then taken over by the WZO. Moreover the WZO now used this lever to transfer monies out of Germany ear-marked for buying land in then Palestine:
"In early May 1933 the Nazis signed an agreement with Cohen for one million Reichmarks ($400,000) of Jewish wealth to be shipped to Palestine in the form of farm machinery. At this point the WZO intervened. The Depression had badly affected donations and in March 1933 they had desperately cabled to their followers in America pleading that if funds were not forthcoming immediately’ they were heading for imminent financial collapse. Now Menachem Ussischkin, head of the Jewish National Fund, got Cohen to arrange for the release of frozen JNF monies in Germany via Ha Note’a. The bait for the Nazis was that the cash was needed to buy land for the Jews whom Hitler would be pushing out. Cohen also assured Heinrich Wolff that he would operate: Behind the scenes, at a forthcoming Jewish conference in London to weaken or defeat any boycott resolution’. Dr Fritz Reichert, the Gestapo’s agent in Palestine, later wrote to his headquarters reminding them of the affair:
'The London Boycott Conference was torpedoed from Tel Aviv because the head of the Transfer in Palestine, in close contact with the consulate in Jerusalem, sent cables to London. Our main function here is to prevent, from Palestine, the unification of world Jewry on a basis hostile to Germany... It is advisable to damage the political and economic strength of Jewry by sowing dissension in its ranks.'"
Brenner Chapter 6; p.62; Op Cit;
or at Web Site. http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
But the WZO had even grander aims than Sam Cohen. They saw an opportunity to draw enough money and immigrants into Palestine to drown by weight of numbers the indigenous and inconvenient Palestinian Arabs. The calculations involved the tacit approval of the British. This was a plan woven by a self-proclaimed "Socialist-Zionist", named Chaim Arlosoroff. Brenner describes the secret calculation as "cold":

"Sam Cohen was soon superseded.. by Labour Zionist, Chaim Arlosoroff, the Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, the WZO’s Palestine centre. ..In 1932 he had concluded that they had failed to attract enough immigrants to overcome the Arabs’ numbers and they were not drawing enough Jewish capital. Hitler in power would mean war within ten years... Now.. he had the way for Zionism to solve its difficulties: with Britain's agreement, they could get both the immigrants and the capital needed through extending Cohen’s project. In an article in the Rundschau .. he coldly explained that this could only be done in complete co-operation with Berlin:
'Naturally, Germany cannot expose herself to the risk of upsetting her currency and exchange balance in order to meet the Jews, but a way out can be found to adjust these different interests... It would be worth while, leaving all sentimentalities out of the question, to reach such an agreement with Germany.
The self-styled "Socialist-Zionist" then proposed the ultimate alliance, a deal between the Zionists, the Nazis, the Fascists and the British Empire, to organise the evacuation of Jewry from Germany:
'It could also be possible to establish a company, with the participation of the German State and other European, primarily British and Italian interests, which would slowly liquidate the particular properties by issuing letters of credit... [and creating... a guarantee fund."
Brenner Chapter 6; p. 62-63; Op Cit;
or at Web Site; http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

Harry Hopkins related the events of a meeting on 27 March 1943 between President Roosevelt, Anthony Eden and others on the question of saving Bulgarian and other Jews. Eden said:

"We should move very cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany. Hitler might take us up on any such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in the world to handle them."
Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p. 228; Ibid; or at http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html

Brenner points out that according to Churchill, the Arabs were no better than a backward people who eat nothing but camel dung’. (Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p. 228; or at web: http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html )
As far as the British were concerned they could control the Arabs better than they might be able to control the Zionists. They temporarily therefore favoured the Arabs. Most sections of the Zionists therefore saw merit in "currying favour" with the British. They tried to consider the benefits of the war to Jewry:
"Their first thought was how to turn the war to their advantage in Palestine. Yoav Gelber of the Yad Vashem Institute (Israel’s Holocaust Institute-ed) gives a good account of this view among the Labour Zionists in September 1939:
'The majority of the leaders tended to Palestine and its problems as the touchstone of their attitude towards the war. They were inclined to leave the front-line fighting as such, if unconnected to Palestine, to the Jews of the Diaspora.'"
Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p.229; ?Ibid; or at web: http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
In fact there was very little attention to the plight of the European Jews from the Jewish Agency Executive. Zionist leaders in the USA were also not only unhelpful, but argued not to assist even with food packages as this relieved pressure on the Nazis:
"Furthermore, the American Zionist leadership campaigned against those Jews who were trying to aid the stricken. Aryeh Tartakower, who was in charge of aid work for the World Jewish Congress in America in 1940, has told some of the story:..:
'We received a call from the American Government, from the State Department and they brought to our attention that sending parcels to the Jews in Poland was not in the interests of the Allies... The first one to tell us to stop immediately was Dr Stephen Wise... He said: 'We must stop for the good of England."
Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p. 229; Ibid;
http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
The Zionist-Nazi Pact And Trade
In 1933, a Zionist-Nazi Pact was announced.
This is a little known -yet extraordinary event. It's lack of reporting must be compared to the constant malignment of the USSR for the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

That USSR-German pact was essential for the survival of the USSR against imperialist machinations' and the USSR had tried repetitively before hand, to get a united front against German fascism. The Western imperialists had refused and had sabotaged even their own weak-kneed commitments to protecting the sovereignity of several countries, that German Nazism blithely ignored with no repercussions to itself. In fact the clear and obvious strategy of the Western imperialists was to drive Germany against the USSR by so-called "appeasement". (See articles by Communist League & Alliance elsewhere).
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact "spiked the guns of the imperialists", buying vital time to move the industry East of the Urals and continue fevered preperation for inevitable war.
But, the Zionist-Nazi Pact was quite different - it was simply another instance of how far Zionists were prepared to go to create a Zionist homeland in Palestine.
The Pact allowed the Zionists to ship 3 million Reichmarks worth of Jewish wealth, in the form of German export goods, to Palestine.
The Zionist leaders of the WZO tried to prevent any serious discussion of this manouevre of theirs:

"The Zionist-Nazi pact was announced by the Nazis in time for the 18th Zionist Congress in August in Prague. Hitler’s shadow completely dominated the Prague Congress. The WZO’s leaders knew that the Nazis were interested in a deal and they determined to avoid offending Germany by limiting discussion of the situation there to the barest minimum. The regime as such was not condemned... No plan was proposed to put pressure on the world body, nor was any specific action called for."
L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; p.63; ibid;
or via web: See index page at: http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

This news, of the "Zionist-Nazi Pact", effectively discouraged adoption of an anti-Nazi Boycott. To further facilitate and absolutely ensure this rejection further, the case for the Boycott was actually presented by the fascist Zionist Vladamir Jabotinsky, whose brown shirted troops, had thoroughly alienated the Congress:
"The Zionist-Nazi pact became public the day before a boycott resolution was to be debated, and it may be speculated that the Nazis did this so as to discourage endorsement of the boycott. The leader of the right-wing .. Vladimir Jabotinsky, presented the boycott case.. Jabotinsky’s support for the boycott, and his opposition to the pact, was dismissed as the raging of a terrorist opponent of the democratically elected moderate leadership. His resolution was defeated by a vote of 240 to 48."L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; ibid; p.63; or at http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
However when the Nazis publicised the pact, the floor of the Congress was furious. The leaders of the WZO lied about their role:
"When the Nazis announced that they had signed an agreement with the Zionists allowing German Jews to ship three million Reichmarks’ worth of Jewish wealth to Palestine in the form of German export goods.. pandemonium broke loose. The leadership.. tried to protect themselves by outright lying; the Labour leader, Berl Locker, brazenly proclaimed: the executive of the World Zionist Organisation had nothing to do with the negotiations which led to an agreement with the German government’. No one believed this crude fabrication."
L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; p. 64;
or at http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
The Zionist leaders pretended the blame lay solely with a bank. But since it was their bank, this shallow pretence was clearly seen through:

"The Political Committee".. leaders did not dare take official responsibility for the Ha’avara’ or Transfer Agreement, and pretended that it only bound Germany and the formal signatory, the Anglo-Palestine Bank. But, since the bank was their own bank, they only succeeded in making themselves look ridiculous.. The debate over the Zionist-Nazi pact continued angrily until 1935."
L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: p. 64; "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

The financial trading associated with the Zionist-Nazi Pact was considerable, and laid at least some of the basis for the colonisation of the Arab owned Palestine. It did operate under Nazi rules, and it did have a top limit of cash transfer. This meant that the richest fractions of the Jews transferred monies (somehow) elsewhere. But the proportion sent purely for a Zionist Palestine was critical at that time:

[RedAlert]

"The Ha’avara rapidly grew to become a substantial banking and trading house with 137 specialists in its Jerusalem office .. in essence the agreement was always the same: German Jews could put money into a bank inside Germany, which was then used to buy exports which were sold outside Germany, usually but not exclusively in Palestine. When the emigres finally arrived in Palestine, they would receive payment for the goods that they had previously purchased after they had finally been sold. ...its attraction to German Jews remained the same: it was the least painful way of shipping Jewish wealth out of Germany. However, the Nazis determined the rules, and they naturally got worse with time; by 1938 the average user was losing at least 30 per cent and even 50 per cent of his money. Nevertheless, this was still three times, and eventually five times, better than the losses endured by Jews whose money went to any other destination. The top limit through the Ha’avara scheme was 50,000 marks ($20,000 or ) per emigrant, which made the Ha’avara unattractive to the richest Jews. Therefore only $40,419,000 went to Palestine via Ha’avara, whereas $650 million went to the United States, $60 million to the United Kingdom and other substantial sums elsewhere. Yet if, in terms of German Jewry’s wealth, Ha’avara was by no means decisive, it was crucial to Zionism. Some 60 per cent of all capital invested in Palestine between August 1933 and September 1939 was channelled through the agreement with the Nazis."
L.Brenner; WWW; Ibid; Chapter 6: " The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; p. 65; or at:
http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

The rank and file of the Jewish workers in many countries abhorred and organised against the Pact:

"The great majority of Jews opposed the Ha’avara. It had no defenders outside the WZO, and trading with the Nazis was not popular with many inside its own ranks. Protests started pouring in while the Prague Congress was still in session. The pact was extremely unpopular in Poland, where the Jews feared that if there was no resistance to the anti-Semitism next door, their own Jew-haters would start demanding that the Polish government imitate the Germans. In America and Britain, each with a more or less democratic tradition, many Zionists, including some of the leading names in the movement, opposed it (like-ed) the prominent Cleveland rabbi, Abba Hille Silver."
L.Brenner; Ibid; Chapter 6: "The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott"; ibid; p. 66;
or at: http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

But the unconcern of the leaders of the WZO with the anti-Nazi attitudes of many Jews continued even up to the 1935 Lucerne Congress. The leaders’ attitudes remained that Nazism assisted the formation of Israel:
"But by far the best example of the leadership’s unwillingness to resist the Nazis was Weizmann’s statement:
"The only dignified and really effective reply to all that is being inflicted upon the Jews of Germany is the edifice erected by our great and beautiful work in the Land of Israel... Something is being created that will transform the woe we all suffer into songs and legends for our grand-children.".... . . ..
(This cynicism was roundly condemned by Jews in Britain and in the USA -Editor Alliance].......
"Press criticism was immediate. London’s 'World Jewry', then the best Zionist magazine in the English language, excoriated their own World Congress:
'Dr Weizmann went as far as to state that the only dignified reply the Jews could give was a renewed effort for the upbuilding of Palestine. How terrifying the proclamation of the Congress President must have sounded in the ears of Herren Hitler, Streicher and Goebbels!"
In America the opposition to the Ha’avara was particularly intense in the garment industry trade unions, with their hundreds of thousands of Jewish workers. Most of the Jewish labour leaders had always looked upon Zionism with contempt. Many of them were from Russia and knew about the fateful Herzl-Plevhe meeting and how their old enemy Zubatov had backed the Poale Zionists against the Bund. As far as they were concerned the Ha’avara was just Zionism up to its old tricks, and in December 1935 Baruch Charney Vladeck, the Chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, and himself an ex-Bundist from Poland, debated Berl Locker, the organisational head of the Palestinian Poale Zion, before an overflow crowd in New York. Locker was compelled to take a defensive position, insisting that the agreement was purely in the interest of the German Jews."
Brenner Ibid Chapter 6; p. 71; 72; 73.
or at http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
But some wanted further manifestations of the 'apartheid" mentality of Herzl:
"If the majority of Jews did oppose the Ha’avara as treason, there was one at least who was willing to go on record as complaining that Weizmann and his friends were not going far enough. Gustav Krojanker.. one of the leaders of the Hitachdut Olei Germania (the German Immigrants Association in Palestine) in 1936 the association published.. "The Transfer: A Vital Question of the Zionist Movement". To him Zionism was stark calculation, nothing more, and he was more than willing to draw the logical conclusions already inherent in the Zionist-Nazi pact. He claimed to see Nazism and the opportunities it opened up for Zionism in the authentic Herzlian manner: ... he perceived two political factors --an organisation of the Jewish people on the one side, and the countries concerned on the other. They were to be partners in a pact."
Brenner Ibid Chapter 6; p. 74;
http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
The WZO extended the agreements that busted the boycott to other countries and goods:
"In March 1936, Siegfried Moses's negotiations had finally created the International Trade and Investment Agency (INTRIA) bank in London to organise sales of German products directly in Britain itself. The Nazis had to content themselves with the satisfaction of the further demoralisation of the boycott forces, as fear of Jewish and general British hostility to boycott--scabbing made it impossible for INTRIA to go so far as to allow British currency to come directly into German hands. Instead, the goods were bought in Germany for marks and their value was credited to Jewish capitalists needing the Pounds sterling 1,000 entry fee required of over-quota immigrants into Palestine. Zionist-Nazi trade relations continued to develop in other spheres as well. In 1937 200,000 crates of the 'Golden Oranges' were shipped to Germany, and 1/2 million more to the Low Countries under the swastika flag.[(50)] Even after Kristallnacht --11 November 1938.. the manager of Ha’avara Ltd, Werner Felchenfeld, continued to offer reduced rates to would-be users of Nazi boats."
Brenner Ibid Chapter 6; p. 75
http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html
The consequences of this episode were to assist the Nazis. As Eduard Benes said to a later "remorseful" Nahum Goldmann at:
"At a dramatic meeting he had with the Czech Foreign Minister, Eduard Benes, in 1935... had warned:
'Don’t you understand', he shouted, 'that by reacting with nothing but half-hearted gestures, by failing to arouse world public opinion and take vigorous action against the Germans, the Jews are endangering their future and their human rights all over the world?"
Brenner Ibid Chapter 6;
http://abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad.html

Molotov Warns Jews of the Killing Squads But the Zionists Do Not.

Amongst the fervid anti-Stalin accusations of Arkady Vaksberg, is the charge that the USSR was silent about the fate of the Jews behind the German lines.
In reality Vaksberg has to assert this, given the shocking attempts of Western leaders and leading Western Jewish individuals to silence the real news.
Brenner asks when it was that:

"The Western Jewish establishment and the Allies discover that Hitler was systematically killing Jews? Reports of slaughter in the Ukraine started reaching the Western press in October 1941."

It should be remembered that the USSR was then fighting for its’ very life. Yet the Molotov Announcement explicitly analysed the work of the Einsatzgruppen (the Nazi killing squads, especially instructed to kill Jews) in January 1942:

"The Soviets issued a detailed report, the Molotov Announcement’ which analysed the workings of the Einsatzgruppen. The memorandum was dismissed by the WZO in Palestine as Bolshevik propaganda."
Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24: p. 230; "The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; citing Gelber, Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry'‘ p. 190; at: http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html

It is instructive to follow in historical time, what happens next, and the various delays introduced at the highest levels of the self-appointed leaders of the international Jewish population.

It emerges that it was not until November (ie let us be clear: Our simple calculation is From January to November is 8 months exclusive of the whole months of January & February - How many died in those months?) - that an alarm was publicly given to the Jewish populations of those area by organisations such as the World Jewish Congress (WJC). These facts are verified as Brenner makes clear in his text, by independent Jewish sources:
"In February 1942 Bertrand Jacobson, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Hungary, held a press conference on his return to the USA and relayed information from Hungarian officers about the massacre of 250,000 Jews in the Ukraine. In May 1942 the Bund sent a radio message to London that 700,000 Jews had already been exterminated in Poland, and on 2 July the BBC broadcast the essence of the report in Europe. The Polish government in-exile used the Bund alarm in its own English-language press propaganda. Yet on 7 July 1942, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, then leading the Jewish Agency’s Vaad Hazalah (Rescue Committee), refused to believe similar accounts of massacres in Lithuania, because the numbers of the estimated dead were larger than the pre-war Jewish population in the country. On 15 August Richard Lichtheim in Switzerland sent a report to Jerusalem, which was based on German sources, about the scope and methods of extermination. He received a reply, dated 28 September:
'Frankly I am not inclined to accept everything in it literally... Just as one has to learn by experience to accept incredible tales as indisputable facts, so one has to learn by experience to distinguish between reality --however harsh it may be-- and imagination which has become distorted by justifiable fear."
Gruenbaum and his Rescue Committee acknowledged that terrible things were going on, but he kept minimising them as 'only’ pogroms. On 8 August Gerhart Riegner of the Geneva office of the WJC obtained detailed accounts of the gassing programme from reliable German sources, and he forwarded these to the WJC's London and New York offices via British and American diplomats. The WJC in London received the material, but Washington withheld the message from Rabbi Wise. On 28 August the British section of the WJC sent Wise another copy, and he called the State Department and discovered that they had kept back the information. They then asked him not to release the news to the public pending verification; he agreed and said nothing until 24 November --88 days later-- when the State Department finally confirmed the report. Only then did Wise make a public announcement of a Nazi plan to exterminate all the Jews in their grasp. On 2 December he wrote a letter to Dear Boss’, Franklin Roosevelt, asking for an emergency meeting and informing him that:
'I have had cables and underground advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeed, together with the heads of other Jewish organisations, in keeping them out of the press."
Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; p.230-231. or at
http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
The same delays were engineered by the Jewish Agency in Palestine that declared publicly that the Nazis were exterminating Jews, ONLY in November. Yet as Brenner shows, as early as April leaders of the Agency had known this to be the case:
"On 17 April 1942, even before the Bund broadcast, Moshe Shertok wrote General Claude Auchinleck, the commander of the Eighth Arm in North Africa. He was concerned with what might happen to Palestine's Jews, if the Afrika Korps broke through Egypt:
'The destruction of the Jewish race is fundamental tenet of the Nazi doctrine. The authoritative reports recently published show that that policy is being carried out with a ruthlessness which defies description... An even swifter destruction, it must be feared would overtake the Jews of Palestine".
Lenni Brenner: Chapter 24; p. 232 :"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html
Even after this the Jewish state in former Palestine remained the objective for these Zionists, and both the numbers killed and the effects of the Nazi killings were toned down:
"Dov Joseph, the acting director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, cautioned them against: APublishing data exaggerating the number of Jewish victims, for if we announce that millions of Jews have been slaughtered by the Nazis, we will justifiably be asked where the millions of Jews are, for whom we claim that we shall need to provide a home in Eretz Israel after the war ends."
Yoav Gelber tells us of the immediate effect of Dov Josephs’ intervention:
‘Vociferous protests were therefore toned down and instead, ways of responding more 'constructively, were sought."
Lenni Brenner: p.232; Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html

What sort of logic would impel these types of behaviour?
These were not "wicked"people, and they knew very well, what leaving the Jews of Europe to Hitler meant. The abiding logic appears to have been that the higher goal - that of Zion in Palestine - meant hard present sacrifices.

Indeed one Zionist leader put explicit words on the lines of "buying with blood" the right to Zionists Palestine, in reply to pleas sent to him by a Jewish volunteer agent for Aguda, in Slovakia. The story is told by the youth who later became famous for demanding of the Allies that they bomb Auschwitz; and who was later to be known as Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel.
In 1942 he twice contacted the Nazi agent for Eichmann - Dieter Wisliceny, asking him:

"How much money would be needed for all the European Jews to be saved?.. in early 1943 word came... For $2 million they could have all the Jews in Western Europe and the Balkans. Weissmandel sent a courier to Switzerland to try to get the money from the Jewish charities. Saly Mayer, a Zionist industrialist and the Joint Distribution Committee representative in Zurich, refused.... The courier who brought Mayer's reply had another.. from Nathan Schwalb, the HeChalutz (The Pioneer Centre, in charge of training youth for the kibbutz movement in Palestine- ed) representative in Switzerland. Weissmandel described the document:
'There was another letter in the envelope (saying).. 'We are writing to the group that they must constantly have before them that in the end the Allies will win. After their victory they will divide the world again between the nations... now, at the war’s end, we must do everything so that Eretz Yisroel will become the state of Israel, and important steps have already been taken in this direction.... all the Allied nations are spilling much of their blood, and if we do not sacrifice any blood, by what right shall we merit coming before the bargaining table when the nations and lands at the war’s end? Therefore it is silly, even impudent, on our part to ask these nations who are spilling their blood to permit their money into enemy countries in order to protect our blood --for only with blood shall we get the land. But in respect to you, my friends, atem taylu (escape to refuge-ed), and for this purpose I am sending you money".
Lenni Brenner: p.236-237; Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html

All this inaction on the part of empowered and rich Western Jewry had its’ reaction on both the left and the fascist right.
On the left, sections of both the Trotskyite wing, and the Marxist-Leninists - raised their voices and tried to propagate information on the Jewish extermination.
On the Jewish fascist right - the Irgun launched rallies in the West aiming to raise the public awareness of the need for action in the European theatre and also they promoted armed struggle inside Palestine against the British.
As regards the British - in this they were objectively with the aims of the Zionists and would ultimately they would win them over. They were known to be positively orientated towards fascism.
Brenner’s verdict is impossible to correct:
"Zionism had come full turn: instead of Zionism being the hope of the Jews, their blood was to be the political salvation of Zionism."
Lenni Brenner: p. 238; Chapter 24:"The Wartime Failure to Rescue"; http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad24.html

ESTABLISHING THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE OF JEWS IN PALESTINE

Brenner notes the increasing numbers of Jewish immigrants into Palestine were of necessity, "illegal" immigrants since the British had theoretically placed embargoes on the number of Jews entering Palestine, in order to placate the Arab Palestinian inhabitants. Nonetheless the numbers of "illegals" were high:

"It is not known exactly how many illegal immigrants were smuggled into Palestine before and during the Second World War. Yehuda Bauer estimates that approximately 15,000 illegal immigrants entered in the years 1936-9.. He breaks down this number to 5,300 brought in by Revisionist ships, 5,000 by the Labour Zionists and 5,200 by private vessels...The British listed 20,180 as having arrived prior to the end of the war. William Perl, the prime organiser of the Revisionist effort, doubles that figure to more than 40,000.. Yehuda Slutzky gives 52,000 as having reached Palestine during the war, but this number includes both legals and illegals."
Brenner Ibid; Chapter 23; p.220; :"Illegal Immigration"; On WWW; http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad23.html

Brenner points out that the Zionists claim credit for "saving European Jewry from Hitler", by aiding them to Palestine.
But he also points out that firstly they were bringing in specific, young "warriors" for a forthcoming war with the British and with the Arab possessors of the land:

"At the time neither the revisionists nor the WZO saw themselves as rescuing Jews per se; they were bringing in specially selected settlers to Palestine. The Revisionists returned to illegal immigration during the Arab revolt. The immigrants were mostly Betarim brought in as reinforcements for the Irgun, which was engaged in a terrorist campaign against the Arabs... All had been given weapon-training earlier at their camp at the Revisionist estate at Kottingbrunn.. for.. the final battle against the British occupiers."
Brenner Ibid; Chapter 23; p. 220:"Illegal Immigration"; On WWW; op cit. http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad23.html

As Brenner says the claims of an "unselfish rescue of all Jews irrespective of belief", was "simply untrue":
"The 1947 statement of Otto Seidmann, the former leader of the Viennese Betar, who wrote that:
"We had to save the lives of Jews - be they Communists or capitalists, members of Hashomer Hatzair or General Zionists’,
was simply untrue. Betarim were always preferred over any other Zionists, right Zionists over left Zionists, and any kind of Zionist over a non-Zionist."
Ibid; p. 222; or at:
http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad23.html
When the WZO also again began to sponsor illegal immigration, they held to the same selection criteria for young future warriors. It is true they were more circumspect than the Ultra-Zionists, but this was as they banked on future British cooperation:

"The revisionists were more daring in organising the illegal immigration, because they did not care what London thought. They had come to understand that they would have to fight Britain, if they were ever to realise their Zionist state; the WZO, however, still expected to get a Jewish state with the approval of the British at another Versailles Conference after the Second World War. They argued that Britain would only reward them if they accommodated to her plans during the war, and London most definitely did not want more refugees in Palestine."
Brenner Ibid; p. 223; Chapter 23:"Illegal Immigration"; On WWW; http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad23.html

During this period, the British intention to divide and rule in the Middle East - between the Arab land owners and the minority Zionist settlers is graphically shown by Brenner, who cites the first military Governor of Jerusalam, Sir Ronald Storrs, from his memoirs as saying:

"The Zionist’s enterprise was one that blessed him that gave as well as him that took, by forming for England 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster"in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism".(Ronald Storrs, Orientations, p. 405; cited Brenner). This was the spirit of the Peel Commission’s proposal in July 1937 that Palestine be divided into three parts. All of it would stay under British overlordship; Britain would directly retain a strip from Jerusalem to Jaffa, and would hold Haifa for ten years, after which it would be seconded to a Zionist statelet of two pieces with a combined area the size of the English county of Norfolk. The tiny Zionist entity would contain an enormous Arab minority, some of whom the Commission contemplated moving to the Arab state which would get the rest of the country."
Brenner Ibid; p. 95 Chapter 8; or at:
http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/engl/zad/zad8.html

The Goals of the Zionists had been achieved by the end of the Second World War, even though they had not wanted them to be attained in such horrific circumstances. Nonetheless, some real and new objective circumstances had been created by the end of the war. As cited by Strizhov, former US Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles said:

"When the Second World War broke out, the chances for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in the Holy Land seemed indeed to have vanished. Yet, the forces that the war had brought into being had a determining effect in arousing world public opinion to the imperative need of finding a solution for the Palestinian problem."
Iurii Strizhov:" The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel"; In "Jews & Jewish Life in Russia & The Soviet Union"; Editor: Yaacov Ro’i; London; 1995; p.303.

From the first days of the war, David Ben-Gurion, one of the Zionist leaders had noted:

"The question that absorbed us was Palestine’s future after the war. I was certain that we had to exert ourselves to set up a Jewish State."
Iurii Strizhov:" The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel"; In AJews & Jewish Life in Russia & The Soviet Union"; Editor: Yaacov Ro’i; London; 1995; p.303.

The new objective circumstances can be summarised as:

1. A substantial Jewish immigrant population in Palestine had taken place- many of them had been trained in warfare.
2. A world spotlight had been trained on the inhumanity of anti-Semitism.
3. A new re-division of the world’s territories was taking place following the war.

It is in this context that the relevance of the proposals put forward by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee - for an international Jewish Refuge - a socialist homeland - in the Crimea become of relevance.

This was the only possible, other "solution", (to the establishment of a Zionist state of Israel) for the displaced remnants of European Jewry.

BUT: For the imperialists and for the Zionists, this would unacceptably strengthen the state of the USSR.

It would require the joint efforts of the hidden revisionists within the Soviet Union and the combined imperialist forces within the newly formed United Nations to both:

a) destroy any plans for the Socialist Jewish Autonomous Republic in the Crimea, and;
b) to establish a pro-imperialist semi-fascist state of Israel, in hitherto Arab Palestine.

___________________________________________________________________________
"LEGALISING" THE FORMATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL BY THE UNITED NATIONS PARTITION & THE USSR RECOGNITION - 1947

At the early stages of the Comintern, the views of Lenin were still unchallenged by the later revisionist opposition, who would finally succeed in hi-jacking the Comintern, only by 1928.
Even when Stalin took over the leadership of the CPSU(B), until 1925 his views were not easily ignored. Matters within the Comintern, were however dominated by the succeeding revisionist factions - first of Zinoviev, and then those of Bukharin, and then by that of Dimitrov-Kuussinen-Manuilsky.
At the early stages then, policies were in general correctly Marxist-Leninist. For instance, article (11f), was passed at the Second Congress of Comintern (still attended by Lenin), that condemned the attempts of foreign imperialism to establish the divisive "Jewish" state of Israel; in Arab Palestine.

"(11 f) It is essential constantly to expose and to explain to the widest masses of the working people everywhere, and particularly in the backward countries, the deception practiced by the imperialist Powers with the help of the privileged classes in the oppressed countries in creating ostensibly politically independent States which are in reality completely dependent on them economically, financially, and militarily. A glaring example of the deception practiced on the working classes of an oppressed nation by the combined efforts of Entente imperialism and the bourgeoisie of that same nations is offered by the Zionists’ venture (And by Zionism as a whole, which under the pretense of creating a Jewish state in Palestine in fact surrenders the Arab working people of Palestine, where the Jewish workers form only a small minority to exploitation by England). In present international circumstances there is no salvation for dependent and weak nations except as an alliance of Soviet republics."
Theses 2nd Comintern Congress: AThe National & Colonial Question A; Ed J.Degras; Vol 1; p.144.

It must be asked then, why Andrey A. Gromyko, the UN representative of the USSR, and the Soviet ambassador to the USA, voted at the United Nations, to recognise the formation of the state of Israel in 1947? While the European Communist Parties were being ideologically re-educated by the Cominform, in the weakened state of the USSR it turned out that Andrei Gromyko was appointed to the United Nations. Gromyko’s later overt revisionism was clear. But at that time, he was not revealed as a revisionist.

The Palestine Communist Party had been agitating very publicly that there should be no division of the territory of Palestine between Jewish immigrants and the local indigenous Palestinians Arab population. However at the very first session of the UN in San Francisco, Gromyko voted for the division of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel. This policy went against the long history of Marxist-Leninists, who had argued that Jews should be assimilated in the country they lived, and should join the class struggle there.

The result was a temporary victory for the revisionist faction inside the leading echelons of the CPSU(B), led by Khrushchev.

As Walter Laquer, one of the most well known historians of the Zionist movement puts it, Gromyko was very much in the vanguard of the push for an independent Israel. Even propelling the hesitant President Truman and the USA into his wake:

"President Truman and his advisers were firmly resolved not to give any lead to the United Nations but to wait for the emergence of a consensus. Much to the surprise of the Zionists the Soviet attitude was much more positive. This first became evident when the Jewish Agency asked to be permitted (as a matter of simple justice’) to appear at the UN on behalf of the Jewish people since the Arabs were already represented there. They had the immediate support of the Soviet delegation, and on May 15 Gromyko spoke not without sympathy about the aspirations towards Palestine of a considerable part of the Jewish people, of the calamities and sufferings they had undergone throughout the last war, (which defy description’) and the grave conditions in which the masses of the Jewish population found themselves after the war. He mentioned partition as one of several possible solutions. This unexpected support continued throughout 1947 and led later that year to the Soviet decision to vote for partition. Traditionally the Soviet attitude to Zionism had been extremely hostile, and since Moscow reverted to is earlier position not long after the state of Israel came into being once can only conclude that the short-lived rapprochement came exactly at the right moment for the Zionists. Without it they would not have stood a chance... On 15 may 1947 the General Assembly approved the establishment of a committee of eleven to investigate the Palestine question to make proposals for a settlement...The UNSCOP committee (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) majority came out in favour of partition.. And were published on 31 August 1947. Both the majority and the minority reports were drafted by the same man - Dr Ralphe Bunche.... a hesitating President Truman gave his assent to the partition scheme on 9 October 1947... The vote was taken on 29 November and the motion carried by 33 to 13.... The state of Israel came into being at a meeting of the National Council at 4 pm on Friday 14 May 1948.. The first country to recognise the new state was the USA.. Within the next few days the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala Uruguay and other countries followed".
Laquer W; AA History of Zionism"; New York; 1976; p. 578; 582; 586.

It is clear that Gromyko was also fighting a propaganda war for an independent state of Israel based in Palestine, inside the USSR. Clearly even members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (see below) such as Solomon (or Shlomo) Mikhoels were influenced by this, as related by Teller:

"In a small and select group the conversation turned to Gromyko’s speech on the Palestine question. Actor-director Shlomo Mikhoels alluded to a passage in one of the Yiddish classics by Mendel Mocher Sefarim in which a Jew ask a Russian peasant to point him the way to the Land of Israel. "Gromyko", said Mikhoels in exaltation, "is that good Gentile who shows us the way to the Land of Israel".
Teller, Judd T: "The Kremlin, The Jews and the Middle East"; p.106; New York; 1957;
What seems to have happened is apparent from recent detailed memorandums that reveal that the USSR first did take a principled Marxist-Leninist line which was then subverted.

In order to be clear, we show this process below, citing both the primary and the secondary source.

The tremendous refugee problem after the war, obviously consisted of a huge Jewish population. The USSR government was already aware of proposals that this should be remedied by the formation of a state inside Germany:

"20 February 1945, the Third European Division of the USSR People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) sent a memorandum (from the Jewish Committee - dated 11.11.1944 - ed) to Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. G. Dekanozov. It informed him that the Soviet Embassy in Italy had forwarded two letters to the NKJD, one addressed to I. V. Stalin, the other to V. M. Molotov, from the Rome-based Jewish Committee of the International Union of Emigrants and Refugees. Enclosed with the letters was a proposal for creating an independent Jewish state on German territory and a map of Germany where the prospective state was delineated."
Strizhov I;:" The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel"; Op Cit; p.303

As will be discussed later, proposals were also made by the progressive Soviet Jews for the resolution of the problem in the Crimean republic of the USSR. However by now, the Zionists had already made Palestine their goal.

Initially the objective reality of a larger settler population - whether illegally arrived or not - inside Palestine was to be confronted by the remaining Marxist-Leninists within the CPSU(B), by the correct insistence that the mandate of Britain over Palestine should be lifted; and possibly replaced by a Mandate responsible to the entire UN.

It was rightly pointed out, by the CPSU(B) Marxist-Leninists, that the British had "failed" to peacefully resolve the situation.

This was articulated on 27 July 1945 in a memo signed by M.M.Litvinov in his post as, Chairman of the "Committee on Preparing Peace Treaties and the Postwar Order". Although Litvinov was at best a vacillating Marxist-Leninist, and at worst a concious enemy of the USSR state [as several sources can attest to] - nonetheless the key memo itself had been set up by the diplomats within the USSR People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID), who:
"Sent a memorandum entitled 'The Palestine Question'" to Stalin, Molotov and the Deputy Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Its conclusion read:
1. No matter how hard the British may try to prove that their present policy in Palestine conforms to the Balfour Declaration, it is obvious that they have failed to live up to the mandate entrusted to them. This was admitted in the.. statements by high-ranking British statesmen. This is sufficient justification for taking the Palestine mandate away from the British.
2.The Palestine question cannot be duly settled without impinging upon the wishes and rights of Jews or Arabs, or perhaps both. The British government is in equal measure subject to the influence of the Arab states and world Jewry. Hence its difficulties in choosing the correct means to settle the Palestine problem.
3. The US government is subject to the same influences. While British Palestine policy is necessarily affected mainly by orientation towards Arab interests, the American government is subject in the first place to the influence of the powerful US Jewry. It should be recalled that at the latest presidential elections both the Democratic and the Republican parties felt compelled to issue declarations on their attitude to Palestine, demanding unrestricted immigration of Jews and unrestricted rights for Jews to their own land. At the same time, the US government would hardly choose to quarrel with the Arabs, in view of the fact that the oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia in which they have a stake will run through hundreds of kilometres of Arab territory. That would put the US government in as difficult a position regarding Palestine as the British government.
4. The USSR, free from either Arab or Jewish influence, would be in a better position to tackle the Palestine issue. This at least entitles it to request a temporary trusteeship over Palestine until a more radical solution is found.
5. The British attach to Palestine, which guards the approaches to the Suez Canal and has an outlet for Iraqi oil on its territory, too much importance for us to expect them to consent even to a temporary transfer of Palestine to the hands of another state, particularly, the USSR.
6. In the event that the Soviet request is rejected the following solution suggests itself: transfer of Palestine to the collective trusteeship of three states - the USSR, USA and Britain. These three powers will be able to take the requisite decisions collectively, paying less tribute to the opinion of the Arab or the Jewish population than either the American or British government acting on its own would feel obliged to do.
7.The provisions of collective trusteeship shall be bound neither by the Balfour Declaration nor by any promises Britain has earlier given as the mandatary power, so that the new collective administration could tackle the Palestine problem in all fairness, in accordance with the interests of the entire population and the new imperatives of political realities and general security."
Strizhov I;:" The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel"; Op Cit; p.304-305; Citing 5.Arkhiv vneshnei politiki MID SSSR (AVP),fond (f.) . 07,opis' (op.) 12a, papka (pk.) 42, delo (d.) 6, pp. 36-8
This generally correct line, given the new circumstances, continued to hold until May 1946.

By then the British and the USA imperialists had continued the general policy of divide and rule. They had established the Anglo-American Committee, which had alienated both Jews and Arabs:

"In December 1945 an Anglo-American Committee was set up to investigate the situation in Palestine. It was entrusted with a wide range of tasks connected with the Palestine problem as a whole. The Committee’s report was made public in April 1946 and was met with an outburst of violent recriminations throughout the Arab states and with bitter disappointment on the part of the Jews".
Strizhov I;:" The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel"; Op Cit; p.305

The previous line of the USSR was brought up to date, in order to acknowledge that the Anglo-American Committee had attempted to continue the British imperialist mandate "jointly".

In the circumstances, the correct Marxist-Leninist line was taken - to use the UN to "reveal the aspirations" of the imperialists to "prevent the interference of other countries" in settling the issue.

It was correctly stated (and consistent with previous Marxist-Leninist views) that anti-racism and anti-Semitism was a reflection of larger forces and could not be dealt with simply by creating a state - that anyway could not "house" every one subject to racism.
Moreover it correctly noted that in the current situation unless the issue was brought up, the British and USA would succeed in enforcing their will - "our silence on the Palestine issue" .
The correct approach however was to allow the Arabs to raise the question at the UN. This was put in an up-dated memo to Dekanozov, Molotov’s Deputy:

"A memorandum entitled 'The Palestine Question', based on the results of the Litvinov Committee, was compiled by the Middle East Department of the USSR Foreign Ministry and on 15 May 1946 was sent to Dekanozov. It read: 'Attempts by Britain and the US jointly to continue the British mandate outside the framework of the UN reveal their aspiration to prevent the interference of other countries in the settlement of the Palestine question until Palestine is fully under the control of the US and Britain. Our silence on the Palestine issue might be interpreted by the US, Britain, Arabs and Jews as the Soviet Union’s partial approval of the proposals put forth by the committee. Bearing this in mind and in view of the fact that official and unofficial representatives of both Arab states and Jewish organizations are running to the Soviet Union in order to have the Palestine problem settled it would be expedient to set forth the Soviet point of view on the Palestine problem in two or three articles to be published in the press. Later our diplomatic representatives may refer to these articles in private conversations if they are approached by Arab or Jewish representatives in connection with the Palestine question."
Strizhov I;; Op Cit; p.305 citing: AVP, f. 06, op. 08, pk. 42, d. 694, pp. 2-4

After this preamble, the most likely Marxist-Leninist position advisable, was crystallised as being to reject the Anglo-American Committee’s position as "incompetent" and to insist upon abrogation of the British mandate in Palestine:

"Presumably, our position on the Palestine question should be as follows:
1.The Anglo-American committee set up to study the Palestine question without the participation of the UN was not competent to discuss. ..and tackle the Palestine problem without the participation of the parties directly concerned.
2.The Jewish question in Europe cannot be solved through Jewish immigration to Palestine, inasmuch as only complete eradication of racism and the democratization of European countries can create normal conditions for the existence of the Jewish masses.
3.The British mandate in Palestine should be abrogated since it is impeding a radical solution of the Palestine question and jeopardizing security in the Middle East. All foreign troops should be withdrawn from Palestine.
4. Palestine should be placed under the trusteeship of the UN which within a certain period of time will lay the groundwork for a sovereign and democratic Palestine. We must not submit the Palestine question for consideration by the UN. It should be raised by the Arab UN members themselves. We should only voice our opinion and uphold it. It would be expedient to postpone the publication of articles on the Palestine question until the session of the Council of Foreign Ministers has completed its deliberations."
Strizhov I; Op Cit; p.305 citing: AVP, f. 06, op. 08, pk. 42, d. 694, pp. 2-4

The best elements of the Jewish immigrants into the Palestine lands, were the left wing Poalei-Tsion (led by L.Levite and M.Erem) and the Hashomer-Hatsair Workers Party (led by Y.Barzilai), had participated in the Palestine-USSR Friendship League. They were already in contact with the Soviet Ambassador to Poland V.Z.Lebedev.

As he wrote to Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister A.Ia Vyshinskii, the Hasomer-Hatsair were in agreement with the principle of a federation of an Arab-Jewish state with two national chambers. This differed from the Poalei-Tsion. (Strizhov I; Op Cit; p.306).

The US Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles now showed the USA policy response, which was to accept the challenge of ensuring an imperialist led take-over of the United Nations.

Accordingly the British were persuaded to agree publicly to their failure:
"In mid-February 1947 the British government officially admitted that since it was unable to find a solution to the Palestine problem, it was going to ask the United Nations to recommend one."
Strizhov Op Cit; p.307; citing Sumner Welles, We Need Not Fail (Boston:1948), p.41.
Even as late as 5 March 1947, the Middle East Department of The USSR Foreign Ministry were pursuing a correct Marxist-Leninist line.
They sent Vyshinskii a memo entitled "The Palestine Problem" (October 1946-February 1947), which based itself upon the previously cited points 2 and 3 of the May memo.

But more public stands were shortly to be needed by the Soviet hidden revisionist representatives to the UN. By 6 March the UN Soviet delegate Boris Shtein had noted that although until then, the UN had "refrained from formulating its stand on the Palestine question", the fact that the discussion was now tabled would force a public stand by the USSR.

[RedAlert]

PART 4; For Other Parts: Go to Table of Contents:

___________________________________________________________________________
THE CHANGING LEADERSHIP OF THE SECRET SERVICE

It is accepted by most if not all Marxist-Leninists, that at various times, revisionists within the USSR Bolshevik party took control of the secret services.

Since that is the case, determining whether particular campaigns undertaken by the secret services - were really in the interests of the Marxist-Leninists, or the interests of the revisionists - needs to take into account several specific facts of the campaign as well as the personality of the chiefs of the secret service at the particular time in question.

In assessing the evidence regarding the alleged Zionist Plot, it is therefore necessary to understand those who made the allegations and effected the arrests.

The Case of Ezhov And the Appointment of Beria To The Secret Services

Stalin’s attempts at creating a trusted and close network of Marxist-Leninists around him in foreign policy (See Part Two of this article), matched a similar strategy in the secret service. In previous Alliance issues, we have discussed how, Stalin attempted to either root out, or at worst, to contain the counter-revolutionary terror, that was striking at the best of the Bolsheviks, as intended and organised by the hidden revisionists.

Firstly Yagoda was removed from heading the secret service after his Trotskyite affiliations became clear. His substitute was Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov, who became the head of the Secret Police the NKVD. But again it appears that this office had been infiltrated by hidden revisionists.
For example, Arch Getty has shown how Stalin obstructed Ezhov in his "mass" arrests and expulsions from the party. For example, this exchange shows the antagonism between the two:

"Ezhov: Comrades as a result of the verification of party documents we expelled more than 200,000 members of the party.
Stalin: [Interrupts] Very many.
Ezhov: Yes very many. I will speak about this..
Stalin:[Interrupts] If we explained 30,000..(inaudible remark) and 600 former Trotskyites and Zinoviev-ists it would be a bigger victory.
Ezhov: More than 200,000 members were expelled. Part of this number.. were arrested."
Cited from Stenographic Records. Cited In AStalinist Terror, New Perspectives."Ed. J.Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning. Cambridge University Press, 1993. p.51).

Zhdanov (a close comrade-in-arms of Stalin) tried to place further brakes upon Ezhov, as shown when:
"In a highly publicized attack Zhdanov accused the Saratov kraikom (party leadership-Ed) of "dictatorship" and "repression".. At the Feb 1937 Central Committee Plenum, Zhdanov gave the keynote speech on democratizing party organisations, ending bureaucratic repression of Alittle people," and replacing the co-option of party leaders with grass roots elections. Indeed under pressure of this line, contested secret ballot party elections were held in 1937."
Cited from Stenographic Records. Cited In AStalinist Terror, New Perspectives."Ed. J.Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning. Cambridge University Press, 1993. p.51).
In the case of Avel’ Enukidze, then Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets, Ezhov had wanted to expel him. But Stalin and Molotov defended Enukidze.

After further pressure from Ezhov, he was expelled.

But then Molotov and Stalin moved for him to be re-admitted. Though the plenum agreed with Stalin and Molotov, this re-admission never happened - having been arrested, he was shot in 1937. The record shows a clear pattern here - where Stalin was set versus Ezhov. (Arch Getty & Manning; Ibid; p.54).

Even in the case of the arch-Right revisionist Bukharin, (a leading ex-Bolshevik whose prominence and past service made him especially controversial - yet especially important to deal with. Precisely just in case he did become the focus of further organised opposition) - even his execution was controversial. Stalin wanted him expelled, and not even put on trial, let alone executed.

The opposition to Stalin on this matter were: Ezhov, Budennyi, Manuilskii, Shvernik, Kosarev and Iakir (who voted to shoot Bukharin without trial); and Litvinov, Postyshev, Shiriatov, and Petrovskii (Who voted to send Bukharin to an open trial).

The Plenum voted for Stalin’s line by a majority. But the documents of agreement were altered (in Mikoian’s handwriting) and Stalin’s advice was simply ignored. (Arch Getty & Manning; Ibid; p.58).

Even a very hostile Sudoplatov, records that Stalin’s attitude was surprisingly the opposite of the conventional portrait painted of a vindictive dictatorial individual. According to Sudoplatov, Stalin preferred private rebukes rather than prosecution , for example when dealing with instances of "corruption":
"I learnt from Malenkov’s deputy- Anna Tsukanova.. That the Central Committee did not always prosecute corruption reported by the Party Control Commission and security organs. Stalin & Malenkov preferred to reproach an errant high-ranking official rather than to prosecute him, but if the man landed in the wrong power group, then the incriminating evidence was used to demote or purge him."
Sudoplatov; Ibid; p. 319
It can only be reasonably concluded, that Stalin was trying hard to limit the damage being done by a revisionist taking cover behind a Left-ist and zealot position.

In this situation, Lavrentii Beria was put in this sensitive and critical job. Stalin himself put Beria into this job, after Ezhov had tried to prepare a case against Beria. Beria appealed to Stalin, who appointed Beria initially as Ezhov’s Aassistant". Beria became first deputy chairman of the USSR NKVD at the end of August 1938, having been relieved of his prior position as first secretary of the Georgian party organisation. (Amy Knight: "Beria-Stalin’s First Lieutenant"; Princeton New Jersey 1993; p. 87-88). On 17 November 1938, Sovnarkom and the Central Committee adopted a report issued by Beria’s investigation entitled: "On Arrests - Supervision By the Procuracy And the Conduct of Investigations", which passed a resolution. This was a:

"Strongly worded, lengthy resolution.. (it) Completely renounced the purges. Directed at party, Procuracy and NKVD officials in the republic it was highly critical of the "gross violations of legal norms" that had been committed during arrests and investigations in particular the reliance on confessions extracted from the accused and the failure to keep records.
Furthermore the resolutions stated ,
"The NKVD has gone so far in distorting the norms of the judicial process that very recently questions have arisen about giving it so called limits on the process of mass arrests". According to the resolution, Aenemies of the people" who had penetrated the NKVD and the Procuracy were falsifying documents and arresting innocent people". The resolution forbade these organs from continuing their policy of mass arrests and exile. Henceforth arrests were to be made only with the consent of the court or the Procurator; the noxious NKVD troikas which decided cases of the spot were to be abolished."
Amy Knight: ABeria-Stalin's First Lieutenant"; Princeton New Jersey 1993; p. 89.

Immediately after, in the words of Amy Knight, his biographer, Beria "cleansed" the NKVD. As far as he could, he tried to only place trusted Bolsheviks in the key positions. As he had personal knowledge from Georgia of who was reliable or not, many of the appointees were from Georgia. This has been labelled as a "Georgian mafia" controlled by Beria. But since the objective was to place trusted comrades in key positions, and Beria knew these people best - this derogatory term is un-justified. As Knight puts it, Beria:

"Set about "cleansing" the NKVD of undesirable elements, in other words he initiated a full-scale purge of the Ezhovites, executing or imprisoning hundreds of officials.... By early 1939 Beria had succeeded in arresting most of the top and middle level hierarchy of Ezhov’s apparatus, replacing these men with members of his Georgian group. It is possible to identify at least 12 Beria men.... appointed to key NKVD posts... Vsevold Merkulov.., Vladimir Dekanozov,... Bogdan Kobulov... Solomon Mil’shtein... Iuvelian Sumbatov-Topuridze.. Sardeon Nadaraia."
Amy Knight: ABeria-Stalin’s First Lieutenant"; Princeton New Jersey 1993; p. 90-91

It is accepted by even hostile and anti-Marxist-Leninist writers, that following Beria’s changes, thousands of prisoners in the camps were released:
"There was a general feeling that the NKVD would eschew the excesses of the Ezhov period and people began to talk about a "Beria thaw"."
Amy Knight: ABeria-Stalin’s First Lieutenant"; Princeton New Jersey 1993; p. 92
Many bourgeois reports and Khruschevite revisionists have labelled Beria as a man who was both a political evil and a sexual debauchee given to raping young girls. But these are dubious, as Knight herself acknowledges:
"It should be noted that the stories have been disputed by some who knew Beria. One former NKVD employee expressed strong doubts that Beria was raping young girls, noting that he was known in police circles as a man with exceptional self-control who worked extremely hard".
Amy Knight: ABeria-Stalin’s First Lieutenant"; Princeton New Jersey 1993; p. 97.
As an enemy of both bourgeois and Khruschevite revisionists, Beria is bound to attract negative and libellous comments. But Marxist-Leninists are aware that Beria effectively cleared the NKVD of revisionist practices and revisionist personnel. His later treatment at the hands of the revisionists led by Khrushchev, who were now in power, after the death of Stalin - lends credence to the view that Beria was a Marxist-Leninist. That case has been well summarised by W.B. Bland in an article published by the Stalin Society of London UK." (Bland: "The Doctors Case & The Death Of Stalin"; Stalin Society; London nd ca 1992. NB: soon to be placed on the web site of Alliance).

The Post-War Reshuffle That Removed Beria From Sole Control of the Secret Services- The Atomic Threat

Beria had proven himself capable of running the necessarily vigilant, but controlled secret service that a socialist state must have, faced by an imperialist combination.

However after the war, a new danger arose - the atomic bomb monopoly by the USA. It was essential to have in charge of the Russian Atomic Bomb project, someone who was an utterly reliable Bolshevik. Stalin ensured that Lavrentii Beria was given this mandate. This very serious and onerous task could not be done well with divided attention.

The future safety of the USSR critically depended upon its success. Therefore, Beria was duly relieved of his post as the sole Commissar of Internal Affairs which he had held from 1938 to December 1945. He ceased to be solely in charge of security and intelligence in the USSR and overseas - excepting for all security problems directly connected with his job as manager of the Special State Committee on Problem Number One - the creation of the atomic bomb. (Sudoplatov P, Ibid; p.315)

The secret services had already been divided into three arms in April 1943.

Probably this was likely to be because the work load was already too great to enable only one agency to entirely cover the work. Thus the former People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was split into three arms:

1) The NKVD - still under Beria but who was now no longer responsible for state security but only for economic security:

"The NKVD under the leadership of Beria, was thereby relieved of the heavy problems of state security and became more and more an "economic’ organisation".
B.Levytsky:"The Uses Of Terror: The Soviet State Security: 1917-1970"; London; 1971; p.160.

2) The Peoples Commissariat of State Security (NKGB) headed by Vsevolod Merkulov. He was known to be a close ally of Beria’s:
"He was one of Beria’s closest and trusted collaborators."
B.Levytsky:"The Uses Of Terror: The Soviet State Security: 1917-1970"; London; 1971; p.141.

3) The Counter-Espionage Department of the People’s Commissariat for Defence (SMERSH) headed by Victor Abakumov.
After the war in 1946, SMERSH was abolished, and the NKVD was re-named the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and was headed by Sergey Kruglov who was later openly revisionist. The NKGB was renamed the Ministry of State Security (MGB) and remained under Abakumov.

Today most Marxist-Leninists are in agreement on the class affiliations of Beria, Kruglov, and Merkulov.

It is true that some Indian Marxist-Leninists (of Revolutionary Democracy) have recently raised questions about Beria, but these have not been to date, substantiated in print. We therefore will not deal with these purely verbal allegations.

But there still remains some significant queries about whether Abakumov was a Marxist-Leninist, or whether he was a revisionist.

We are forced to consider this matter for the correct interpretation of several later events - including the matter of Stalin's death. Also, at least in part, the correct interpretation of the alleged Zionist Plot - hinges on this matter. We msut examine the question:

Was Victor Abakumov A Marxist-Leninist?

The Case for Abakumov Being a Marxist-Leninist:
Essentially as far as Alliance can discern, the case on behalf of Abakumov rests on two matters as follows:

i) An Alleged Friendship with Beria:

As the British Marxist-Leninist W.B.Bland views it, Beria and Abakumov were associated as close comrades. By this reasoning, Abakumov must have been a Marxist-Leninist. Bland cites the following views of historians of the Soviet secret services- Levytsky and Wolin & Slusser:

"Beria’s adversaries in the Party (i.e. the opponents of M-L-ism-Ed).. Achieved a notable victory in late 1951, with the replacement of V.S.Abakumov, an associate of Beria’s by S.P.Ignatiev a Party official, as head of the MVD".
S.Wolin & R.Slusser :"The Soviet Secret Police"; London; 1957; p.20.
"Abakumov, Beria’s intimate friend was removed from his post and replaced by S.D.Ignatiev.."
Levytsky op cit p.204

In corroboration of Bland’s point of view, it is also alleged by Sudoplatov that Abakumov was an ally of Beria ( Sudoplatov; Ibid; p.324). However this view is contested by Amy Knight- who is undoubtedly the most extensive biographer of Beria (albeit a bourgeois historian), available in the English language. Knight claims that:

"Beria’s loyal deputy Merkulov was replaced by Victor Abakumov as head of the MGB late in the summer of 1946. This change was not instigated by Beria who was distressed to lose Merkulov."
Knight Ibid; p.141.

Knight maintains that Stalin placed Abakumov in charge of the MGB. This is very possible as the pressures on Beria had to be relieved somehow. But it is most unlikely that it was done for the purpose, as Knight maintains, that Stalin wanted to:

"Limit Beria’s pervasive influence on the security organs."
(Knight Ibid; p.141).

The pressures dictating that Beria should be freed for the work on the nuclear bomb, meant that several loop-holes had opened, for the revisionists to squeeze themselves back into the security apparatus with a view to renewing disruption. As the changes took place, several opportunities arose:

"The following months witnessed numerous changes in both the MVD and MGB as several new deputies arrived, apparently under the auspices of Abakumov and Kruglov. These changes may also have been influenced by the arrival of a new CC secretary A.A.Kuznetsov, who took over party supervision of the police. With the exception of Stepan Mamulov, a longtime Beria crony who became a deputy minister in the MVD, none of the new men were part of Beria’s "Georgian Mafia", although most had been in the security or internal affairs organs for a long time."
(Knight Ibid; p.141).
ii) Khrushchev ordered the execution of Abakumov

Abakumov was arrested while Stalin was still alive.
It is thus highly plausible that the arrest itself, coming under Stalin’s life time, might have been a part of the revisionist strategy or the Marxist-Leninist strategy.
However, there is no doubt that Abakumov was tried, after Stalin’s death, in Leningrad before the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court presided over by Lieutenant-Colonel E.L. Zeidin. He was charged with "committing the same crimes as Beria", and also with having:

"Fabricated the so-called Leningrad Case’, in which many Party and Soviet officials were arrested without grounds and falsely accused of very grave state crimes".
In Bland: "The Doctors Case & The Death Of Stalin"; Stalin Society; London nd ca 1992; p.66.

Thus Abakumov was then sentenced to death by shooting, by the revisionists. This pro-Abakumov evidence seems to Alliance fragmentary at best.
If Stalin was still alive while Abakumov was imprisoned, it suggests that Stalin did not try to obtain his release. One suspects that were Beria to be imprisoned, Stalin would have moved heaven and earth to get him out.
What evidence is there against Abakumov?

The Case Against Abakumov
i) Abakumov’s other Allegiances

In 1947, Abakumov revealed the responsibility of Malenkov for some defects in aviation production that were apparently concealed from the state. (Sudoplatov; Ibid; p.315).
Malenkov was given a party reprimand, demotion & a temporary exile to Kazakhstan and removed from the CC secretariat. However Malenkov’s duties were then taken by Aleksei A. Kuznetsov. Sudoplatov claims that: "Kuznetsov & Abakumov soon became friends".

But if this is truly so, this must shed some doubt and suspicion upon Abakumov’s identity as a Marxist-Leninist, since Kuznetsov was well known to be a close ally of the revisionists Vosnosenky and Khrushchev. As Bland has pointed out in the Marxist-Leninist Research Bureau Report no 2 (reprinted as Alliance Number 17) the Politburo of the CC of the CPSU(B):

"adopted a resolution "On the Anti-Party Actions of the Comrades Aleksey A. Kuznetsov, Mikhail I Rodionov and Pyotr S Popkov".
Bland ML Research Bureau; Report No.2; London; nd circa 1992; p. 25

Also, as W.B.Bland had previously made clear in the now classic "Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR", Kuznetsov was an ally of the arch-revisionists Vosnosenky and Khrushchev:

"Party leaders confide that ... Vosnosensky and Kuznetsov ... (were) in 1949... trying to establish a separate Communist organisation in the Russian Soviet Republic .. With headquarters in Leningrad instead of Moscow".
C.L.Sulzberger:"The Big Thaw"; New York; 1956;
Also See Bland In "Restoration"; Wembley 1988; reprinted Alliance Number 14; p.342.
(NOTE: This was originally on the Alliance web-site; & currently is still available at a mirror site at: http://www.virtue.nu/allianceml/
We are in the process of re-loading all our documents at this current site i.e. at Brinkster.].
Also find Appendix 3 "The Leningrad Plot" at: http://www.virtue.nu/allianceml/

But Stalin is said to have fought for Malenkov’s reinstatement from Sudoplatov’s testimony:

"Stalin however allowed Malenkov to return to Moscow after two months & appointed him deputy prime minster. Beria in this period strongly supported Malenkov." (Ibid).

Malenkov was a later vacillator and not a firm Marxist-Leninist. But Stalin had clearly recognised the anti-Marxist-Leninist behaviurs of Kuznetsov.

(ii) The General Zhukov Affair

Abakumov was apparently behind various attempts to destroy the career of General Zhukov, and his efforts resulted in the dismissal of Zhukov from the Bolshevik party CC. Using evidence from the imprisoned General Nivikov, Zhukov was charged with conspiracy. In these charges, Novikov had described Zhukov as being of a man of:

"Exceptional ambition" and.. A man "namoured with himself", who loved glory and honour. He was officious and would not tolerate opposition."
Chaney, Preston: "Zhukov"; 1976; Norman Oklahoma; p. 371.

But as Zhukov’s biographer makes clear, Stalin only reluctantly agreed to an enforced and temporary retreat for Zhukov, pending full investigation saying:

"Nonetheless Comrade Zhukov, you will have to leave Moscow for a while."
Chaney Ibid; p. 373.


Zhukov was sent to Odessa to run the Military District from June 13th to December 1947.
He was reprimanded in June 1947 for the only single objective negative fact that had emerged on him. What was this? Zhukov had in peacetime awarded an actress with a medal. He was therefore reprimanded then for:

"Improperly rewarding artists in his district. The right to reward reverted in peacetime to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR".
Chaney Ibid; p. 374.

In December 1947 Zhukov was summoned to the Central committee Plenum where he heard his charges read out. Upon hearing that no new facts were stated he refused to argue, and when he saw that the ensuing vote had expelled him from the Central Committee, he simply marched out. All other allegations, against Zhukov remained un-proven. But as Chaney says, Stalin remained unconvinced of Zhukov’s "error":

"Despite their relentless effort to have Zhukov arrested, Beria and Abakumov failed to convince Stalin of the Marshall’s guilt. As Khrushchev told Zhukov later, Stalin said to Beria:
"I don’t believe anyone that Zhukov would agree to this. I know him well. He is a straightforward person; he is sharp and can say unpleasant things to anyone bluntly, but he will never be against the Central Committee".
Another version was that Stalin said:
"No, I won’t arrest Zhukov. I know him well. For four years of war, I knew him better that my own self."
Chaney Ibid; p. 375.

Thus it was Stalin who resisted the attacks on Zhukov, in which to a large extent Abakumov was involved. Naturally, others were also involved in the complex battles, and the inter-relationships become important, to attempt to systematically work out.
From 1947 General Rukhadze was placed in the Ministership of state security of Georgia, having been in the war years, the head of SMERSH in the Caucasus. According to Sudoplatov his anti-Beria inclinations were well known. (Sudoplatov; Ibid; p.321.)
He was assisted by Ryumin, who later becomes a key figure in the subsequent anti-Marxist-Leninist plots, that became known to the world at large as the "Anti-Zionist Plot" and the "Doctors’ Plot".

We will return to Abakumov below, when we examine his testimony on the murder of Mikhoels and the Doctor’s Plot (See below).

But at least some evidence cited to this point in this report, continues to identify Abakumov as an honest Marxist-Leninist.

Given the obvious truth that the revisionists were responsible for his death, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that as Bland has it, Abakumov was an honest Marxist-Leninist.

THE JEWISH ANTI-FASCIST COMMITTEE AND THE ANTI-JEWISH PLOT

The Effects of The War Upon the Jews of the Soviet Union

As the Nazis entered the USSR in their war of aggression, they organised killing squads against the Jews of the former Pale of Settlement, within the USSR:

"The former "Pale of Settlement" - fell under German occupation. In the territories annexed by the Soviet Union after September 1939 - the Baltic, eastern Poland, Bessarabia and the Bukovina - live 1,910,000 Jews; in the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Crimea and other areas of the RSFSR overrun by the German forces are 2,160,000 Jews. Of these, 1.5 million manage to flee before the German troops arrive. More than 2.5 million are trapped, 90 percent of which live concentrated in less than 50 towns. In the months before the attack, the Nazi leadership has designed a method for these particular circumstances: the mobile killing units.. "Einsatzgruppen,"..of SS men, German police and local helpers... Outside cities with large Jewish populations, mass killings of unprecedented scope and speed take place - in Babi Yar outside Kiev, in Ponar outside Vilna, in the VII.Fort outside Kaunas. In the first five months of operation, the "Einsatzgruppen" shoot 100,000 Jews per month... about 2 million Jews are still alive after the first sweep in November 1941.. Jews are forced into "ghettos" and the population Aselected" for immediate killing, deportation or for forced labor. From 1942 onward, these ghettos are Aliquidated" and the remaining population shot. By the end of 1943, another 900,000 Jews are killed".
WWW Site: "Beyond the Pale"; Op Cit; at:
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/53.html

During the war anti-Semitic chauvinism continued to be expressed against the Jews despite high involvement of the Soviet Jews in the resistance:

"The Jews of the Soviet Union took an active part in the fight against Nazi Germany. About half a million served in the Red Army, and many volunteered for service at the front. Jewish soldiers ran an extra risk: when taken prisoner, they were bound to be shot immediately. An estimated 200,000 Soviet Jews died on the battlefield. During the war, the old anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as cowardly soldiers was resurrected. Rumours circulated that Jews are "draft dodgers.." http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/53.html

The Soviet state took action to organise the Jewish partisans and fighters, and to publicise their actions in the West. This took the concrete from within the Soviet Union of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC). Its’ organisation was approved of, and supported by both Stalin and Beria.

"The Soviet authorities in April 1942 allow the establishment of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Its aim is to organize political and material support for the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany from the Jewish communities in the West." (See Web site at "Beyond the Pale"; Op Cit p.61: http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/61.html ).
"One should bear in mind that attempts to organise an international Jewish committee in the Soviet Union during the first months of the War were sponsored by Beria, head of the Soviet Security Police. Individuals connected with the security apparatus also preformed a significant role within the Soviet Antifascist Committee which emerged in Spring 1942."
Redlich Shimon:"Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia-The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, 1941-1948"; 1982; USA; p.11.

There is some dispute as to the origin of the idea of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

Two members of the "Bund", from Poland, were imprisoned by the Soviets after the annexation of Eastern Poland under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in 1939. These two men were Henrych Erlich and Wiktor Alter.
They proposed to set up an international Jewish Committee in the USSR. Upon the arrest of the two, international pressure mounted to release them. This included Polish socialists such as Wanda Wasilwska and the American Federation of Labor, and the British government. As a letter written from the Foreign Office explained, this would strengthen the hand of the "moderate Poles" led by General Sikorski:

"A letter from the British Foreign Office to the British Embassy in Moscow listed Erlich and Alter among eight outstanding Polish specialists whose release was sought by the British "to strengthen General Sikorski’s hand with his people", ie to bolster the moderate Poles."
Redlich Shimon: "Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia-The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, 1941-1948"; 1982; USA; p.14.

But when Beria became involved in their case, the previously announced death sentences were lifted and they were released. They were then allowed to assist in the formation of the Committee. As Redlich points out, the Soviet Government was actively thinking about such steps, and a parallel Slav Committee, had already been created "within a few weeks after Hitler’s attack". (Redlich Ibid; p. 11. )
Claims that Alter and Erlych were primarily responsible for a similar idea in respect of the Jews, are impossible to verify. It is however, certainly the case that both were then later executed.

Who would gain from their executions?
Although both of them were Bundists, and thus anti-Bolshevik, both were working towards the ridding of Poland from Nazi rule and the establishment of a democratic and social-democratic state in Poland. Their contacts with the Polish ambassador in Moscow, Professor Stanlsilaw Kot had assured their allegiance to:

"The New Plan.. Which will shape the fate of the future Europe in the spirit of political freedom social justice and national equality... Kot subsequently reported to his superiors in London that the "Bund delegates told me that the Soviet Government (NKVD) asked their assistance in spreading propaganda especially in America. They promised their help on condition that they would conduct the propaganda themselves, not as figure heads, and that it would be under the control of the (Polish) ambassador."
Redlich Ibid; p. 24,

Despite evidence that is acknowledged, that they had established links with visiting social democrats such as Water Citrine of the British Trades Union Congress and members of the Soviet - British Trade Union Committee, it appears that Alter and Erlych were genuinely interested in the liberation of Poland.

They therefore objectively assisted the Soviet struggle.

It is clear then, that their murder did not objectively help the USSR.
Yet they were suddenly re-arrested on December 4th 1941.

Even Shimon Redlich, the anti-Marxist-Leninist historian of the JAFC, finds the arrests inexplicable, from the point of view of both Stalin and the desperate struggle of the USSR state against Hitlerism.
In the absence of further data, Alliance is forced to interpret this as another attempted sabotage (See above for other documented war time sabotage).

However the decision had been taken, somehow the fact of their executions; had subsequently to be explained to the world.
Vyshinsky accused them of : "working on behalf of Germany". Redlich Ibid; p. 30.
This seemed to many to be a rather un-convincing allegation.
There was considerable negative international response to their re-arrest. Workers circles in the USA especially, were split by the news of these two executions. However, the executions were indeed confirmed by Litvinov in early 1943, who stated that both of them had argued for a Peace with Germany. (Redlich Ibid; p. 33).
Further documentary data on this matter is still awaited.
However by the time the arrests of the Bund-ists, had occurred, a Jewish Anti-fascist Committee had been established.

Information provided in an internal party document, "Pursuant to the inquiry of Comrade Shumeiko" upon the JAFC, confirms that the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee in the USSR (JAFC) was formed soon after a rally organised in Moscow of the representatives of Athe Jewish people" Vaksberg A, Ibid, p. 107. It occurred after the:

"First antifascist radio broadcast political rally of representatives of the Jewish people, which was held in Moscow in August 1941. The Committee consists of 70 members .. and its executive committee has 19 members.."
From Library of Congress site WWW: "The Jewish Antifascist Committee Jewish in the USSR"; Find at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/jewi.html

In a memo of 21 June 1946: "To Comrade M.A.Suslov"; the members were itemised. The leading elements were in the main, long standing party members:

"1. Secretary of the Committee, whose duties (following the death of Comrade Shakhno Epshtein) are carried out by the writer I. Fefer, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)] since 1919.
2. Deputy Secretary of the Committee, Comrade S.M. Shpige’glias, VKP(b) member since 1919 and formerly a party worker."
Memorandum of JAFC ; 21 June 1946; To "Comrade M. A. SUSLOV, Director Section For Foreign Policy of the Central Committee Of the Communist Party"; At Library of Congress site on web: http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/m2antfac.html

But, as a leading representative of the politburo, Solomon Lozovsky was the political representative. He was then Deputy Commissar of Political Affairs, and deputy chief of Sovinformburo. It was he who officially announced the formation of the committee, talking to foreign correspondents in Kuibyshev in April 1942:
"All the anti-fascist committees arose in connection with Hitler’s treacherous attack on the USSR.. The Jews have created an anti-fascist committee to help the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the USA."
Redlich Op Cit; p. 40.
The JAFC published a paper- "Eynikayt", from the summer of 1942, until late 1948. The key members of the JAFC included, Solomon Mikhoels (the Jewish actor, and Director of the Moscow Jewish State Art Theatre), Shakhne Epstein, the executive secretary, and Itzik Feffer was a poet as well as a Red Army Colonel; Ilya Ehrenburg the noted writer; David Bergelson the writer; Perets Markish the Soviet-Yiddish poet.
Of all these, undoubtedly the most popular figure in the JAFC was Solomon Mikhoels, famous for his stage roles and this Theatre. It is said that Stalin had nick-named him as "The Wise Solomon", (Teller, Judd L: "The Kremlin, The Jews & The Middle East"; New York; 1957; p.41.") though this is specifically repudiated by other sources. Rapport; Ibid).
After the victory of Stalingrad, in 1943, a tension erupted over a dual potential role for the JAFC:
Firstly, to defend Jewish refugees and provide assistance and rehabilitation to Jewish expatriates; and
Secondly to "activate" foreign Jewry for the defence of the USSR. (Redlich Ibid; p. 43-44).

The latter view predominated, and Mikhoels and Feffer were sent on a speaking tour of the West. They succeeded in convincing Jewish people in the West to support and donate to the Russian anti-war efforts:

"The Jewish Anti-fascist Committee in the USSR has sent during its entire existence one delegation, composed of Comrades Mikhoels and Fefer, to the United States, England, Canada, and Mexico. This delegations’s trip report has been published in the book: "The Jewish People against Fascism."
Memorandum to Comrade Suslov; Ibid; AT:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/m2antfac.html

The leading lights of the Western Jewish intelligentsia met them such as those of the American Committee of Jewish Writers & Scientists, with Albert Einstein, Sholom Asch, Lion Feuchtwangler, Howard Fast, Lilian Hellmann and others. The trip succeeded in raising funds for at Aleast one thousand aeroplanes and five hundred tanks and uniforms and food etc. Vaksberg Ibid; p.118

There is little doubt that Mikhoels and Feffer made a significant impact upon world Jewry, and garnered respect and enthusiasm for the USSR.
"In 1943 Solomon Mikhoels and the writer Itzik Feffer embark on a seven-month official tour to the USA, Mexico, Canada and Great Britain. They are received everywhere with great enthusiasm: for a long time, no official contact with one of the largest Jewish communities of the world had been possible. Especially in the United States, where many Jews have not forgotten their ties with Russia, the tour is a great success, and many millions of dollars are raised for the Russian war effort. The JAFC becomes the focal point of a national awakening for Soviet Jewry at a time when its very survival is in danger. Many Jews turn to the JAFC with requests for help, among them survivors from the Nazi camps who find their houses occupied upon their return." WWW Site Beyond the pale:
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/61.html
One important achievement of the JAFC was that several prominent Jews from all over the world came to the USSR as guests of the committee:
"Over two years, representatives of a series of foreign Jewish antifascist organizations have visited the Committee: Deputy Chairman of the Jewish Antifascist Committee of Bulgaria, Mr. Zhak Vradzhali; one of the leaders of the Union of Jews of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Rozenberg; representatives of Jewish organizations of France, Poland, et al. Recently Mr. Ben Zion Goldberg (Waife), the son-in-law of Sholem Aleichem, visited the Soviet Union. He is a prominent public figure in the United States, a member of the executive committee of the Soviet-American Friendship Society (headed by Lamont), chairman of the Committee of Jewish Scientists, Writers, and Artists of the United States (Albert Einstein is president of the Committee), vice-president of Ambidjan, the All-American Society for Aid to Birobidzhan (president of Ambidzhan-- Steffenson). Mr. Goldberg is also a major American journalist.. Mr. Goldberg was received in Moscow by M. I. Kalinin and S. A. Lozovskii.. Met Soviet writers .. representatives of the Soviet Jewish community (at the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR headquarters), with leaders of the State Jewish Theatre, with the chief rabbi of the Moscow Jewish congregation, Shliffer, and with leaders of the Red Cross, among others... During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg dispatched via the Soviet Information Bureau 33 articles to the American, Canadian, English, Palestinian, Polish, and Yiddish press. The articles were extremely friendly toward the Soviet Union. Before his departure, Mr. Goldberg began to write a book in English entitled England, the Opponent of Peace, and a book in Yiddish entitled Jewish Culture in the Soviet Union."
Memorandum to Comrade Suslov; Ibid; AT:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/m2antfac.html
Further requests were being received by the USSR from prominent Jews in "several countries":
"Such requests were received from: N. Goldman, the chairman of the executive committee of the World Jewish Congress; Dr. Stephen Wise, chairman of the American Jewish Congress; Louis Levine, chairman of the Jewish Union for Soviet Aid under Russian War Relief; Mr. Raiskii, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Presse Nouvelle in Paris; et al."
Memorandum to Comrade Suslov; Ibid; AT:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/m2antfac.html
At this stage, the Jewish AFC proposed a detailed plan to make the Crimea the site of a Homeland for oppressed Jewish people from all over the world, including all the refugees from the war.
This was proposed by the JAFC in a letter to Stalin dated February 15, 1944.
It seems that only part of this letter has been made public to date. That fragment reads:
"The creation of a Jewish Soviet Republic will once and forever, in a Bolshevik manner, within the spirit of Leninist -Stalinists national policy, settle the problem of the state legal position of the Jewish people and further development of their multi century culture. This is a problem that no one has been capable of settling in the course of many centuries. It can be solved only in our great socialist country."
Cited From Literatunaya Gazeta July 7th; 1933.; By Sudoplatov Ibid; p. 286.
As mentioned above, Stalin had approved the formation of the committee. Even the virulently anti-Stalin figure Vaksberg notes that Stalin had written to the JAFC the following note:

"Please convey to the working Jews of the Soviet Union who collected an additional 33,294,823 rubles for the construction of air force squadron Stalin’s Friendship of the Peoples and tank column Soviet Birobidzhan my fraternal greetings and the gratitude of the Red Army J.Stalin".
Vaksberg A; AStalin Against the Jews"; New York; 1994; p. 116.

Why therefore, as various Zionists state, should Stalin have turned against the JAFC? They allege "anti-Semitism".

Was Stalin himself known to hold anti-Semitic views?

The major allegations made on a personal level about this charge are frankly ludicrous. Thus for instance, reliance upon Khrushchev and moreover upon an unclear source reveals this:
"The first symptoms of Stalin’s anti-Semitic policy are rooted in his personality and may be traced to the pre-revolutionary period. Many people who knew him well, such as Khrushchev, suggested that his Judaeophobia was pathological. Stalin's struggle against Trotsky and his numerous Jewish supporters fuelled the anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin dictator’s policy. ‘Anti-Semitism and anti-Trotskyism reared their heads simultaneously’, Trotsky wrote."
Iakov EtingerAThe Doctors' Plot: Stalin's Solution to the Jewish Question"; in Editor: Yaacov Ro'i:"Jews & Jewish Life in Russia & the Soviet Union"; Ibid; p.103.
It is remarkable that Trotsky then, himself a Jew never commented that this was the reason for his "persecutions" in a more visible and public forum. Nor indeed do Trotsky’s followers including Isaac Deutscher his primary biographer use this charge. What else does Professor I. Etinger have for us?

"Stalin’s secretary, Boris Bazhanov, recollects that Stalin made crude anti-Semitic outbursts even when Lenin was still alive. In 1907 Stalin wrote a letter in which he referred to the Mensheviks as a ‘Jewish faction’ and to the Bolsheviks as a ‘truly Russian’ one.’ It would do no harm to us Bolsheviks if we staged a pogrom inside the party’, he suggested."
EtingerAThe Doctors' Plot: Ibid; p. 104; citing V.Solov'ev, E. Klepikov, op cit p.216.

Other comments from Vaksberg, indicate the same source for other various anecdotes. But interestingly, the most virulent anti-Stalin Vaksberg records other facts that show Stalin was not anti-Semitic. So Vaksberg, although interspersed with sly digs and innuendoes throughout, must note that Stalin was vociferous against anti-semitism:
"The composer Dmitri Rogal-Levitsky... was in 1944 commissioned to orchestrate the new state anthem.. His notebooks .. Record the conversation (of a banquet)...
"Stalin asked how many conductors there were at the Bolshoi Theatre. They told him seven of whom three were Jews...
"Do you have Nikolai Golovanov there? Stalin asked....
"We were planning to entrust two or three productions to him began Tsazoksky.... "And?" Interrupted Stalin.
"He refused".
"Good thing!" Stalin said, striking a match.
"I don’t like him... He’s an anti-Semite. Yes a real anti-Semite. A crude anti-Semite. He should not be allowed into the Bolshoi Theatre.. It’s like letting a goat into the cabbage patch," he said laughing"..
Then the conversation turned. But a while later without any obvious connection, Stalin returned to the first theme:
"But that Golovanov is an anti-Semite"..
"I’ve not dealt with him in that sense".
"Don’t worry you will, if you let him into the Bolshoi Theatre... Golovanov is a real anti-Semite, a dangerous, principled anti-Semite.. You cannot let Golovanov into the Bolshoi Theatre. That anti-Semite will turn everything upside down."
Vaksberg A; "Stalin Against the Jews"; New York; 1994; p. 29-30.
Yet ultimately, Vasberg dismisses this all, as an elaborate facade behind which Stalin’s own "anti-Semitism" could be hidden. Vaksberg refers to Stalin’s daughter having "destroyed" Svetlana Alliluyeva’s first marriage because it had been to a Jew - Grigory Morozov (Moroz). Such personal testimony is liable to selective "filtering". But even Svetlana’s own words are somewhat self-contradictory. She states that Stalin did not stand in her way regarding her marriage, but he refused to allow her husband to visit him. Perhaps the real reason that Stalin disliked him, was not that he was a Jew, but lies in what he told her:

"He’s too calculating, that young man of yours.. Just think it’s terrible at the front. People are getting shot. And look at him. He’s sitting it out at home."
Alliluyeva, Svetlana, "Twenty Letters to a Friend"; New York; 1967; p.187.

It is true that Svetlana says later on, that Stalin told her that the "Zionists had thrown the first husband" into her way. (Alliluyeva, Svetlana, "Twenty Letters to a Friend"; Ibid; p.196).
However the marriage appears to have failed of its’ own accord, Svetlana is quite clear on this.

The net definite "evidence" to prove the racism of Stalin must be in doubt by an open mind.
The real "proof" for the accusers, who convict Stalin of "anti-Semitism"- appears to lie in the matter of the so called "Zionists’ Plot" and the "Doctor’s Plot".

Was Beria Personally an anti-Semite?

The same general problem is faced by Zionists, who although they accuse Beria of being an anti-Semite, confront and cannot explain data that in reality shows the opposite:

"There is also the mystery of Beria’s comportment towards Jews in Georgia. The New York Times correspondent Salisbury discovered in Tiflis Georgia in 1951, a Jewish ethnological Museum which featured painting depicting Jewish religious rites reconstructions of early Georgian synagogues, and a record of Jewish Soviet heroes in World War II. That the museum should have survived the liquidation of Jewish culture everywhere else in the USSR was curious; the information that Beria had inspired it was even more curious". He had also sponsored in the 1920's an occupational rehabilitation programme for Georgian Jewry. This programme included Jewish trade schools and farms."
Teller Ibid; p. 91-92. "There is also reason to believe that (Beria) was helpful to Jews in Georgia. The American journalist Harrison Salisbury who visited Georgia after the war, discovered that Beria as Georgian party leader, had instigated the establishment of a program for rehabilitating Georgian Jews. The program included a Jewish charitable society and a Jewish ethnological museum in Tbilisi. It might be added that Beria’s sisters’ husband was a Jew and that Beria had several Jews in his retinue: Mil’stein, Raikhmna, Mamulov, Sumbatov-Topuridze and N.I.Eitington to name a few. Although many Jews lost their jobs in the late 1940's as a result of the anti-Semitic campaign, these men survived." Knight A; Ibid; p.147

Furthermore, it must be noted firstly that it was Beria, who after Stalin’s death - first repudiated the "Doctor’s Plot", as being a sham :
"Beria’s position as chief of the security services and the police place him in an invidious position as the likeliest candidate for indictment and castigation for all persecutions that has taken place .. Stalin’s successors have fingered him as the author of the so-called Doctor’s Plot... Yet after Stalin’s death it was Beria who exposed the indictment which in itself, disputes his executioners’ contention that he was its author. The Minister of State Security the real boss of the secret police at the time that this evidence was manufactured, was Semyon D.Ignatiev, Beria’s political enemy. Although publicly pilloried for his central role in concocting the indictment, Ignatiev was restored to favour at the Kremlin immediately after Beri had been purged. The post-Beria Kremlin significantly had maintained that there was not anti-Semitic intent behind the doctor’s indictment.. Which in turn invites speculation that the charge might not have been dismissed had not Beria exposed them in his life time."
Teller Ibid; p. 90-91.

"Not only did Beria denounce the Doctor’s Plot was a hoax after Stalin’s death, he also took it upon himself to attempt a revival of Jewish culture immediately after Stalin died."
Knight A; Ibid; p.148.
Following this Pravda ran an editorial that stated:

"Every Soviet worker kolkhoz members and intellectual is under the protection of Soviet law. The citizens of the great Soviet state may be certain that all the rights guaranteed them by the Soviet Constitution are sacred and will be guarded by the Soviet Government.... Careful investigation had ascertained the fact that members of Riumin’s clique (responsible for the doctors libel -ed) had slandered the People’s Artist Mikhoels who was an upright communal worker."
Teller Ibid; p. 125-126.
To Summarise:
Data does not support that the Marxist-Leninists Stalin and Beria were personally anti-Semitic. What of the revisionist politicans?
Khrushchev’s Attitude to the Jews

Khrushchev by several accounts, was well known to be an anti-Semite. Amy Knight puts it as follows:

"Khrushchev... first secretary in the Ukraine, favoured the dissolution of the Union of Jewish Writers Kiev, and the closure of Jewish literary journal."
Knight M; Ibid; p.148.

That Stalin ensured that Khrushchev was in effect repudiated upon the issue of anti-Semitic pogromists was clear, when Malenkov was sent to the Ukraine to correct the "blindness" of Khrushchev to anti-Semitic abuses:
"Khrushchev’s case is different. Even before his name was generally known outside the USSR, he had acquired notoriety in the Jewish press... for an episode in Kiev when the war ended. He was then boss of the Ukraine. Jewish wartime refugees, braving the local populations; anti-Jewish animus and the Kremlin’s bruited displeasure, trickled back to their devastated homes in the Ukraine. One day in a scuffle over an anti-Semitic remark, two Red Army officers one Jewish and the other Ukrainian, fired their guns at each other. The Ukrainian died, and the result was a pogrom in Kiev. The Ukrainian was buried with military honours and Khrushchev marched in the funeral procession. The pogromists went unpunished until Malenkov arrived to restore order."
Teller Ibid; p. 92.
This view is substantiated more recently by Knight’s biography of Beria:

"In May 1944 Mikhoels wrote a letter to Molotov complaining about discrimination against Jews in liberated Ukraine. On receiving a copy of the letter, Beria issued instructions to Ukrainian Party Chief Khrushchev to "take the necessary measures to improve the living and working conditions of Jews in the newly liberated areas."
Knight M; Ibid; p.147

Mikhoels would pay a price for his request for intervention, addressed to the Marxist-Leninist Molotov. But who was it that wrote his bill?

The Murder of Solomon Mikhoels

As discussed above, Stalin had supported the JAFC and sent it congratulatory telegrams.
It seems though, that the general attitude inside the USSR to the JAFC changed after the war.
One of the signs of this change was that the previous plan to publish a book - the so called "Black Book" - cataloguing the Nazi genocide of the Jews, and the Jewish partisan struggles, was only brought to fruition in the USA but not in Russia:

"The contacts with American-Jewish organizations result in the plan to publish a Black Book simultaneously in the USA and the Soviet Union, documenting the anti-Jewish crimes of the Nazis and the Jewish part in the fighting and resistance. In 1944, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg sends a collection of letters, diaries, photos and witness accounts to the USA to be used in the book. The Black Book is published in New York in 1946. But no Russian edition appears. The typefaces are finally broken up in the printing press in 1948, a year in which the situation of Soviet Jews has once more deteriorated sharply."
See WWW site: "Beyond the Pale"; page 61 at:
http://www.friends-partners.org/partner ... sh/61.html

But the death of Mikhoels - allegedly in a murder committed at the direct order of Stalin, is the event that is usually cited as the beginning of the alleged anti-Semitic campaigns of the Soviet USSR.
It is alleged by many, including Sudoplatov, that Stalin feared the potential power that Mikhoels would have, and had him assassinated in January 1948:

"Mikhoels .. had been at the heart of the discussions to establish a Jewish Crimean republic. Stalin feared that Mikhoels would unleash forces that could not be controlled and would lead to unpredictable political consequences. Stalin feared a truly independent Jewish homeland. Mikhoels had the stature of a leader with world recognition, and Stalin could not risk his developing his own power base. Mikhoels was murdered in January 1948, under the direct order of Stalin."
Pavel & A Sudoplatov; with JL &LP Schecter:"Special Tasks"; Boston; 1995; p. 296.

But as noted in the foreword, Sudoplatov’s memoirs have been seriously discredited.
It is true that other sources also refer to the death of Mikhoels and all assume that Stalin "ordered the murder of Mikhoels".

In fact, the mysterious death of Solomon Mikhoels in Minsk on January 13, 1948, served to rob the USSR of a valuable and respected figure. For all these other sources, this contradiction, is not apparently a difficult issue - since they all pre-judge Stalin as variously, mad, irrational, capricious.. etc.
However this line of reasoning is countered by the facts previously adduced.
(See Previous issues of Alliance on Personality Cult :(1) The Cult of
Personality (Talk at The Stalin Society (UK) May 1991) AT: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/ST ... 1991.html2) Stalin - Myths and Reality: Talk intended for the Third ISML Conference Paris October 1999: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/ST ... S1999.html

The most detailed source, of the actual last days of Mikhoels life, is found in Arkady Vaksberg. (ibid pp159-170). As Amy Knight points out, the assumption is usually made that Beria performed the killing:

"Many had assumed that Beria as responsible for the murder, since he oversaw the police apparatus."
Knight A; Ibid; p.147.

However it seems that Beria related the facts of the case, in a letter to Malenkov, after the death of Stalin.
According to this letter, Beria questioned Abakumov in prison, where Abakumov had remained following Stalin's death. Beria learnt that the key players were Ogol’tsev and Tsanava. Knight insists that Stalin "ordered" the killing:

"Stalin had ordered Abakumov to have Mikhoels killed, a task carried out by Deputy Minister of State Security S.I.Ogol’tsev and Belorussian MGB chief Tsanava. Mikhoels and his companion were lured into a car and taken to Tsanava’s dacha outside Minsk, where they were murdered. Their bodies were then dumped on the side of the road. When Beria learned of Tsanava’s complicity, he ordered his arrest along with that of Ogol’tsev."
Knight A; Ibid; p.147.

In fact Knight reminds us that Beria had:

"Supported the idea in 1942 of creating the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee in order to harness the war efforts of Soviet Jews at home and abroad and had maintained direct contacts with JAFC leaders after that. Indeed he seems to be have been sympathetic to their cause."
Knight A; Ibid; p.147.

But, she fails to remind us that Stalin had also supported Mikhoels and the JAFC.

So was ultimately responsible for the murder of Mikhoels?
It seems that the revisionist S.D.Ignat’ev (or Ignatiev) was heavily involved:

"It may not be a coincidence that in addition to First Secretary Gusarov... who was in the Belorussian CC Secretariat at the time of the Mikhoels murder: S.D.Ignatiev, who was to replace Abakumov as USSR MBG chief in mid-1951. Ignatiev later helped to fabricate the case against the doctors."
Knight A; Ibid; p.148.

Who was pushing for action on the "anti-Zionist plot"?

Vaksberg claims that Abakumov was supported by Malenkov and Mikhail Suslov. We would argue that of these, Suslov was an out and out revisionist and at best, Malenkov was a vacillator.

On October 12, 1946 Abakumov (after having taken over from Vsevolod Merkulov, the Ministry of State Security) wrote a memorandum entitled: "On Nationalistic Manifestations of Some Workers of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee", accusing them of :

"Forgetting the class approach which has been replaced by an approach on national lines," and of "establishing foreign contacts on the same national principles". Also in foreign editions about the life of the Soviet Jews, it "exaggerated their contribution to the achievements of the Soviet Union in science, technology, and culture." And finally a special section of the memo.. Noted that the committee "has taken on the function of the chief representative of the affairs of the Jewish population and intermediary between that populations and the Party-Soviet organs. The summary conclusion to the memo was that the Afurther activity of this committee is politically harmful and intolerable".. The Minister was supported by one of the new members of the hierarchy.. Mikhail Suslov. In his appeal to Stalin on November 26th 1946, he also called for liquidation of the committee".
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.195

It was finally on March 1948 that Abakumov forwarded a report to the Central Committee arguing that JAFC leaders and Mikhoels had:

"conducted anti-Soviet nationalist activities".
Knight A; Ibid; p.148.

This report went to the Central Committee and was copied to Stalin, Molotov, Zhdanov, and Kuznetsov.

By 20 November 1948, the Politburo adopted the resolution approving a decision of the Council Of Ministers to disband the JAFC.
This resolution was adopted after the sudden death of Zhdanov in August 1948, and thereafter the correct anti-cosmopolitanism campaign, was crudely transformed into the incorrect anti-Semitic campaign.
(For Bland's article on the anti-cosmopolitanism article see: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/Co ... 1-1998.HTM

Abakumov continued to send memos to Stalin over this issue, calling the JAFC a "hot-bed of Zionism" in a memo of the March 1, 1948. (Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.196. )

It was after September 3rd, 1948 that action was finally taken against the JAFC. On that date, it is alleged by Vaksberg and other bourgeois commentators that the "mass rallies" greeting Golda Myerson (later to be known as Golda Meir) in her post as the first Israeli ambassador, "frightened" Stalin.

Yet as Vaksberg himself states, in the spring of 1945 Stalin had allowed open and massive Jewish rallies to commemorate the Jewish dead of the war:
"On the recommendation of the World Council of Rabbis meeting in Jerusalem, Stalin permitted Moscow Jews to organise a memorial service for the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis.... Major governmental figures marshals, and generals and celebrated artists attended – over 20,000 people.. Raising over half a million rubles for the postwar restoration of the country. The solemn Kadish was repeated in 1946. In 1947 it was banned."
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.185.
By March 26th 1948, Abakumov had sent a memo to Stalin, Molotov and CC Secretaries Zhdanov and Kuznetsov entitled "On the Espionage and Nationalistic Activity of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee", stating that Mikhoels was:

"Known long before the war as an active nationalist, he was a kind of banner for nationalistic Jewish circles".
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.197-198.

On November 20th 1948, item no.81 on the agenda of the Politburo of the CC stated:

"On the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee: Confirm the following resolution of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the SSR: "The Bureau of the Council of ministers of the USSR instructs the MGB USSR to disband the JAFC immediately, because as the facts show, this Committee is the center of anti-Soviet propaganda and regularly provides anti-Soviet information to organs of foreign intelligence. In conjunction with this, the publishing organs of the Committee are to be shut down and the Committee’s files confiscated. For the time being no one is to be arrested."
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.198-199.

Thus far at any rate, the "facts" are not quite so obvious as made out by the Zionists who attack Stalin as anti-Semitic. There is a clear implication from Vaksberg, that a compromise decision had been made, with the final statement just cited, regarding an explicit counter-manding of further arrests.
Nonetheless, David Goldstein had already been arrested in September, and on December 24th Fefer was arrested. Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.200-201. Lozovsky was arrested on January 16th. Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.202.

A little complicating, but true, is that Salmon Lozovsky was also a hidden revisionist (partially discussed previously by Alliance - See Alliance issue Number 15); who had subverted correct trade union tactics in the Comintern and the trade union international Profintern (led by Lozovsky).

However, Alliance argues, until further evidence can be adduced, that the net effect of these arrests, was once more to alienate the Marxist-Leninist wing of the Bolsheviks Party from a section of the working class.

Moreover it served to strengthen the hand of international support for Israel, and to serve as an instrument of propaganda against the USSR.

It was the Writers Union under Alexander Fadeyev who pushed for a resolution that called for closing associations of Jewish writers and closing Yiddish almanacs. That the hand of the revisionists was heavy in making these decisions is made clear by Shimon Redlich in his history of the JAFC. He points out that another key revisionist involved was Boris Ponomorarev:

"Sources suggest that Boris N. Ponomorarev was personally active in the liquidation of the Committee. Ponomorarev, an ex-functionary of the Comintern, and Deputy Director of the prestigious Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute after the War, was appointed Deputy Director of the Sovinformuro in late 1948 or early 19489. When Lozovskii was arrested in late 1948 to early 1949, Ponomorarev became Head of the Bureau for a short while."
Redlich Shimon: "Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia-The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, 1941-1948"; 1982; USA; p.167-8.

As Redlich points out, various hypotheses linking the affair with an alleged Malenkov-Zhdanov hostility; or to an attempt to discredit Beria; simply do not make any sense.
He is left only to explain it as Stalin’s fear of the international contacts that Soviet Jewry had built with overseas Jews. He himself acknowledges Stalin's previous support of these contacts:

"Although encouraged and supported by Stalin at the time, these contacts were regarded in retrospect as dangerous and treacherous."
Redlich S; Ibid; p.169.

Another potential "reason" leading Stalin to take this step, is cited by Redlich as the following:

"It is well known to Soviet official circles and to Stalin himself that the Committee had attempted to perform functions and took upon itself responsibilities far beyond the initial purpose of its establishment. Mikhoels and other top personalities of the JAFC approached various Soviet authorities both on matters concerning individual Jews and on Jewish cultural and national issues.... The JAFC was apparently regarded by Stalin as a structure which organised and expressed Jewish national interests and since he viewed such interests as a security risk to the regime, and to himself it seemed to him a matter of prime importance to wipe out this potentially dangerous organisation."
Redlich S; Ibid; p.169-70.

Alliance finds that the evidence to date, suggests that Mikhoels was murdered, and was not the victim of an accident.

This is dealt with directly below, in a citation from Beria.
As to who was responsible, there continues to be disagreement.

Only one piece of evidence links Stalin to this directly.
That is evidence provided by the cross examination of Abakumov while he was imprisoned.

This was referred to above, from the biography of Beria by Knight (see page above). The full cited is the following, and is drawn from a document upon Abakumov, available in Russian only. Significant sections are cited from the English text of a piece by Iakov Ettinger, based on reports in Russian cited by Stoliarov:

"Col.-Gen. V. S. Abakumov, Minister of State Security from 1945-1...Russian researcher Kirill Stoliarov summed up the results of his painstaking and profound study of the materials in the case of State Security Minister Abakumov in his book "Golgofa" (Calvary)."
Iakov Etinger:"The Doctors' Plot: Stalin's Solution to the Jewish Question"; in Editor: Yaacov Ro'i: "Jews & Jewish Life in Russia & the Soviet Union"; citing Storilaov; Ibid.

After Stalin’s death, Beria investigated the Mikhoels events further. It emerged again from Abakumov’s testimony, still being in jail, that Abakumov had asserted not only that Mikhoels had been killed, but that Stalin had ordered him to perform this murder :

"Meanwhile Beria made another move. On 2 April 1953 he sent a letter to the party Presidium addressed to Malenkov stating:
"An examination of the materials in the Mikhoels case has revealed that in February 1948, in Minsk, former USSR MGB Deputy Minister Ogol’tsov and former Belorussian MGB Minister Tsanava carried out an illegal operation to liquidate Mikhoels on orders from USSR MGB Minister Abakumov.. In this connection Abakumov has been interrogated at the MVD and explanations have been received from Ogol’tsov and Tsanava. Abakumov gave the following evidence...
"As far as I can remember, in 1948, the head of the Soviet government I. V. Stalin gave me an urgent assignment - to promptly organize the liquidation of Mikhoels by MGB personnel and charge specially selected people with the task. Then it came to our knowledge that Mikhoels and his friend, whose name I do not remember, had gone to Minsk. When this was reported to Stalin he immediately ordered us to carry out the liquidation in Minsk...After Mikhoels was liquidated Stalin highly praised the operation and ordered that the people who had performed it be decorated, which was carried out."
Etinger I: Ibid; p. 120-121; Citing :'Argumenty i Fakty 2'; 1992.

Beria’s letter then outlines that the murder of Mikhoels was disguised by crudely staging a motor vehicle accident:
"The letter goes on to describe in detail how Mikhoels was "liquidated". There were several options for eliminating Mikhoels: a) a car accident, b) running him over with a lorry in a deserted street. Since neither gave a 100 per cent guarantee the following course was decided upon: to invite Mikhoels, through one of our agents, to visit an acquaintance of his late at night, provide a car from the hotel he was staying in, allegedly to drive him there, take him to Tsanava's dacha and liquidate him. Then the body was to be put in an out-of-the-way deserted street and run over by a lorry. And that is how it was done. To keep the matter secret, agent Golubov, who accompanied Mikhoels on this fatal visit, was also done away with (they were run over by a lorry near the dacha). At the end of the letter Beria declared:
The MVD deems it necessary:
a) to arrest and initiate proceedings against former USSR Deputy MGB Minister S. I. Ogol’'tsov and former State Security Minister of Belorussia L. F. Tsanava,
b) to repeal the Supreme Soviet decree conferring honours on the participants in the murder of Mikhoels and Golubov."
Etinger I: Ibid; p. 120-121; Citing: 'Argumenty i Fakty 2'; 1992.
In Conclusion: Alliance argues the following:

1. If it is agreed that Beria was a Marxist-Leninist, his letter indicates the primary responsibility for the attacks on the JAFC are laid on the door of low level operatives
S. I. Ogol'tsov and L. F. Tsanava.

2. Backing up these individuals but at a higher level were the revisionists Malenkov and Suslov and Ponomoranev. Of these the first, was possibly a "vacillator" but the other two were definitely revisionists.

3. There remains the matter of Stalin. We argue that Stalin had nothing to gain by the murder of Mikhoels, that his "ego" definitely did not require this as bourgeois sources claim; and that it was not in his interests. However Abakumov’s testimony "fingers" Stalin. What then? Barring a "mistake" upon Stalin’s part, we suggest the following two possibilities:

i)Abakumov’s testimony cannot be simply discounted. We argue, that his testimony on the so called "Doctor’s Plots" shows him to be a basically honest individual (see below);
We further argue that if this is the case, then on the earlier issue of the JAFC, he was mis-led on the matter of Stalin’s orders;
Beria's 'testimony' was 'extracted' by Khrushchev who of course went on to kill Beria.

OR:
ii) Another possibility exists: That Beria for some reason lied about Abakumov’s testimony. If so two possible reasons for this can be adduced:
Either Beria was NOT a Marxist-Leninist;
OR Beria decided that as a Marxist-Leninist - what was critical was that as far as possible the security apparatus be purged of revisionists in order to fight on for Marxism-Leninism. He may have reasoned that Stalin was dead and Abakumov was virtually dead anyway.

We believe the data thus far shows that Beria was a consistent Marxist-Leninist.
We believe therefore that the most likely conclusion is that Abakhumov was tricked by the revisionists into effecting Mikhoels murder.

It is very remarkable that the newer generation of revisionist leaders of the USSR - those who actually dissolved the state- held a Politburo Commission and declared the direct responsibility to lie with Malenkov.

It is pretty inconceivable that these individuals who hated Stalin, would not publicise evidence linking Stalin with this issue if it in truth existed:

"A Politburo Commission created by Mikhail Gorbachev and chaired by Alexander Yakovlev came to the conclusion on late 1988 that the "direct responsibility for the illegal repression of people arrested in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case was borne by G.M.Malenkov, who was directly involved in the investigation and trial." Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.202-3.

The Case of Polinya

The wife of Molotov - Polina Zhemchuzhina - was Jewish. She had held high ranking posts for the Bolsheviks such as People’s Commissar of the Fish Industry, head of the State Perfume Trust, as well as being on the Bolshevik Central Committee. It is alleged that she incurred Stalin’s’ wrath as she had been the last person to see Nadezdha Allilueva alive before she committed suicide. This according to Vaksberg was the reason for her removal from the Central Committee for "failure in work". Previously she had received a reprimand for neglect and, for allowing in 1939, some German spies to penetrate her area. According to Golda Meir’s testimony, Polinya "wished the Zionists in Palestine well" saying:

"If things go well for you, then things will be good for the Jews the whole world over".
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.188.

This conversation was monitored and the Central Committee was informed. According to Vaksberg, Stalin reportedly told Molotov:

"It is time for you to divorce your wife."
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.189.

It is important to recognise that as so often, the primary source for this conversational tit-bit of information is the revisionist Khrushchev.

In late 1948 the Molotovs were divorced, and in February 1949 Zhemchuzhina was arrested.
Prior to this, some bizzare personal charges including one of an extraordinary adultery involving a juniro employee, and espionage were laid at a meeting of the Politburo.
However even Vaksberg, is in agreement that various documents were indeed missing, from the Ministry of Light Industry textile branch, then being run by Zhemchuzhina.

Nonetheless the various charges against Zhemchuzhina also included:
"Being present at the memorial service at the synagogue on March 14th, 1945; enjoying the nationalistic play Freileks produced by the Jewish bourgeois nationalists Mikhoels at the Jewish Theatre; and of attending the funeral of Mikhoels."
Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.192.
It is likely that some of these latter minor charges are true. Whether that made her an enemy of the state is debateable in the view of Alliance currently. But it is notable that Zhemchuzhina never repudiated Stalin, even after years in prison (Vaksberg; Op Cit; p.192).

It seems most likely that both she and Molotov were aware that there were inner-party battles going on that explained the turn of events.
In fact although Stalin is blamed for these events, it is most unclear why Molotov should have been targeted. For not only did his wife suffer imprisonment, but observers agree that he himself was demoted in rank although he remained within the Politburo. (Knight M; Ibid; p.147).

Alliance argues then, that the general aim of the revisionists to take over leading positions of state power was assisted by the direct and in-direct attack upon Molotov - as far as we know a reliable Marxist-Leninist, while Stalin was alive.

[Charlotte]

This is a very good read.

Should be put into pdf format as I'm not keen reading a huge amount on the forum!

[Gemini]

very enjoyable read thank you