FINDS ANTI-SEMITIC PAMPHLET DISTASTEFUL
ROME ~- Giuseppe. Boffa, the Moscow correspondent of L'Unita, the daily newspaper of the Italian -Gommunist party, wrote two articles for his paper [March 28-29] concerning the anti-Semitic brochure Unvarnished Judaism which was published in Kiev under the auspices of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. [See World Outlook April 3.] Boffa states that copies of the pamphlet cannot be found in Moscow. His opinion of it is based-on what he read in the European press and a Ukrainian newspaper Radianska Kultura which carried a critical re~ view, The correspondent of LTUnit& takes a clear position: much harsher words should have been-used in condemning the anti-Semitic piece of propaganda,
The: publication of this "Kiev libel". provides Boffa with the ‘opportunity. to give the readers of L'Unita.a short review of the Jewish question in the Soviet Union. In his second article, "Does Anti=Semitism Exist in the USSR?" he cites some facts. According to the last Soviet census, 2,300,000 Jews live in the USSR (a littlemore.than one per cent. of the total population), Soviet law gives: _ them national status on equal footing with other nationalities, Freed from Czarist oppression, the Jews were able to make valuable contributions, especially in the field of scientific. research,
When we run across a typical instance of anti-Semitism, like the "Kiev libel," in a society like that of the USSR whose very nature is alien to anti-Semitism, we are impelled to ask -- without thereby falling into anti-Sovietism ~- what the source of such manifestations might be. The fact that the case is confined to a certain area should not lead one to ignore the phenomenon or. underestimate its importance.
After describing the intensity of anti-Semitism in Czarist Russia and the measures taken by the Soviet power to root it out, the correspondent of L!UnitA concludes that "before the. war the traces of anti-Semitism had alI but disappeared,"' He then tries to analyze the reasons for a rebirth of anti-Semitism, The Nazi occupation of the Ukraine reintroduced the poison of racist prejudice, which sould arouse dormant prejudices. The situation -- still according to Boffa =- was later worsened by Stalin's wrong policies. On the assumption that entire nationalities were guilty of collaboration, he had whole populations deported. He would have deported all the Ikrainians, had there not been so many of them,
in this context, Boffa continues, Stalin launched an anti-~ Semitic oampaign. This was the substance of the propaganda against the so-called “scosmopolitans," a quite transparent euphism, since the press stressed the Jewish names of victims,
Stalin was convinced that all Jews had links with the West, a grave offense in his eyes. He therefore struck at the best expressions of Hebrew culture, including the theater. This offensive culminated in the well~known "doctors! plot" on the eve of Stalin's death, o. : .
aw Zu
"The faults of Stalin's national policy," continues Boffa, "were vigorously denounced during and after the Twentieth Congress, Much has been done to redress its wrongs, Much has been done to fight not only the 'cult,! but its aftereffects, Still, we cannot say that these aftereffects have been fully overcome. Among these are some that especially involve the delicate field of national relations, since Stalin, particularly in the last years of his rule, fostered a certain nationalist and hence anti-Semitic spirit among the popula tion in general but also -- and this was a weightier matter -- among groups of intellectuals, officials, and even party cadres. The consequences are still to be felt. This is the explanation for certain anti-Semitic jokes one hears or, worse, certain manifestations like the recently published. brochure, or the reception given by certain mediocre literati to the poem Babi Yar by Yevtushenko,"
Boffa'ts conclusion is that these phenomena are purely individual, Nevertheless, he declares, it would be wrong not to fight against them, or to fight without sufficient vigor, since this could "arouse serious questions -- about the USSR --~ in the minds of the interna tional proletariat and the democratic masses of the world,"
To fight anti-Semitism, Boffa conoludes, "nothing is more effective than Lenin's ideas,
WORK VACATION IN CUBA FOR CANADIAN