Why did the Soviet Jews hate the Soviet Union?
07.06.2025 08:53
"Well," said Father, after reading a resolution about the Zionist organization "Joint," which had extended its tentacles into socialist countries, about recruited killer doctors, and about young but vigilant patriot Lydia Timashuk, who had exposed her teachers, the old professors, "well," he said, "now it’s close."
"Well, because... and Karl Marx..."
Cosmopolites were arrested; those who spoke about the cosmopolites, Mikhoels, or the Jewish Theater were also arrested; people were arrested for jokes, Jews were fired from jobs everywhere, and their children weren’t accepted into universities—what on earth was happening? Did it mean something or not?
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I observed it all, shrugging in bewilderment, as I realized that nothing truly becomes the past, that this world of yesterday could suddenly and irresistibly break into today—decades after the death of Stefan Zweig and the writing of his prophetic words, which I believe must be repeated again and again:
A term was introduced: "national treason." And the main criminals were revealed—doctors.
Some gullible people decided it had already begun, burning some Jewish dachas and killing an elderly man. "Have the Russians grown unaccustomed to victory or are we few in number?" as a great poet once wrote.
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Even though neither deportation nor pogroms didn’t happen, Jews remembered that it was possible. And antisemites also remembered the same. Antisemitism in the USSR took its hold in 1953 and never let it go to the very end. Once sneaked into the Soviet system it persisted as an underlying infection.
No surprise, most of the Soviet Jews left for Israel soon after the USSR collapsed.
There is a funny piece from the memoirs of Gennady Cohen, translator, now about the sixties:
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But on the other hand, they argued—didn’t they kill Mikhoels? They did. Didn’t they shut down the Jewish Theater? That, too, was undeniable.
But no, the Krivichs rejected them. They didn’t want hook-nosed people.
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The pogrom hung in the air like a black cloud of smoke. With each passing day, it became harder to breathe. Hatred oozed from the eyes of passersby—men, women, the elderly. As they passed by, they hissed, "Jewess!" and continued walking, without quickening their pace. "Hey, Sara!" the boys shouted, cursing, and they wouldn't stop following for a long time.
"Why not?" answered those seasoned with experience (if they answered at all, as such conversations were only held with trusted people, and even then, there was still a risk to life).
Yes, the cheerful little pogrom was ripening in the year 1953 AD, and Orthodox Christians in Moscow were quietly preparing. Of course, much had been forgotten from earlier times, skills lost—how and what to do; plus, there was this Soviet entourage. But the holiday was approaching—you could feel it. With vodka flowing like rivers, with looting, with freedom. Freedom was what they really wanted, even if just the freedom to beat Jews. Swing wide the shoulders, let the arm take its mighty fly!
A man was thrown out of a passing tram. He rolled right at my feet. I helped him to his feet. He was a young man my age. I asked what had happened. He looked at me: "Oh, nothing." But then, when he came to his senses and noticed my concern, he said that he had been mistaken for a Jew with all the ensuing consequences. "That's all," he spread his arms guiltily.
"There is nothing more mystical than when something you believed long gone and buried suddenly reappears before you—and in the exact same guise."
Because in 1953 Stalin had planned his own Final Solution to the Jewish Question with the deportation of all the Jews to Siberia and only his death stopped him.
The killer doctors who treated the leaders confessed to everything in prison immediately, and two of them died during confession.
The Soviet press confidently guided the people along a slippery path—ensuring no early excesses but also keeping the mood alive. Every day, a satirical column appeared—about Rabinovich, Shapiro, or Bukhman. At the end of the column about Bukhman, the term "bukhmans" (with a lowercase "b") was introduced, with a demand to fight them.
Occasionally, a lady—from the Russian intelligentsia, known for its traditions—would turn red with blotches and cry out, "Stop this disgrace!". "Fck you.", they would reply. The lady, shocked by their bluntness, would freeze. The speakers, rumor had it, carried knives.
"But how a pogrom could happen in Soviet times?" asked those clinging to Kaganovich.
I thought about the increasing number of desecrations of Jewish graves in Leningrad cemeteries and about the drunken thugs shouting beneath my windows, “Jews, get out to your damn Israel!” Then they threw a stone at my window. Although they only broke the small ventilation pane, wasn’t it often the case—here and elsewhere—that so many terrible things in the past began with something as small as a broken window?
Here I should make one clarification. This happened during the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, and Soviet propaganda greatly contributed to the next explosion of anti-Semitism. Therefore, when he was mistaken for "the wrong guy," they told him: "Get back to your fcking Israel!" - and for starters threw him out of the tram.
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The worst was on buses, trams, and trolleybuses—closed moving spaces, where there was no escape if something happened. The only topic of conversation there was about "Yids". In general, the consensus was that Hitler had cut them down, but not enough—and what a pity. Usually, two or three people did the talking, while the rest, including those with long noses (Jews) present, remained painfully silent. Men in military uniforms—colonels and majors—gave all their attention to reading. Passing by a harassed Jewish woman, they looked down or to the side.
Yes, Karl Marx came from a Jewish family, and this inconvenient fact couldn’t be erased. In one school, boys argued about whether Marx was Jewish or not. Some simply couldn’t believe it. As an experimentum crucis, they decided to ask the teacher. The boldest one stood up and put the question bluntly—yes or no? The teacher, still young, sighed heavily. "Yes, children," she admitted. And sorrowfully lowered her head.
I still vividly remember those feverish days, filled with rumors and fears. Stories of oppressive moods and helplessness on the eve of pogroms came to mind—tales I had heard as a boy from my grandmothers and later from my wife’s relatives. And over and over again, episodes from the books I had read by Isaac Babel, Joseph Roth, and other German writers resurfaced in my memory.
"You’re good, even though you’re a Jewess," Russian friends would say to their favorites. The favorites would smile crookedly: what kind of comfort was it to be "good"? They wanted to be allowed to become Russian! They wished the fifth line in their passports could be erased, and they’d take an oath right then and there—to marry or wed only Russians, to tell their children and grandchildren to do the same! To merge into the Mordvins, the Krivichs, the Dregovichs, the Cheremis, the Tatars—to assimilate!
So after the establishment of the state of Israel, Soviet Jews fought for the right to leave the USSR. Some as Refusniks got to such lengths of protests that ended up in Soviet prisons.
Some boys hanged themselves after finding out they were Jewish. The very sound of the word was soaked in shame.
In the late years of the USSR, it became only worse. One more piece from Cohen's book, now about the eighties.
That's how I met Robert Petrosyan, an Armenian who looked like a Jew, for which he was punished.
A more aggressive form of anti-Semitism than before was spreading through society: slowly, tentatively, as if testing the waters, it started appearing in newspapers and magazines, in radio and television broadcasts and became increasingly visible in the streets and squares of the city. If one wanted, it was still possible to ignore it, to avoid running into the black-shirted members of the "Memory" organization. But pretending not to hear their frenzied calls to "deal with the Jews" had become impossible.
Jews sat in their apartments, clutching their heads and moaning. When they met, they quietly asked one another, "Have you read it already?" Terror was visible in their eyes.
Many placed their last hope in Joseph Vissarionovich. It was believed that if it weren’t for him, they would have been slaughtered long ago. After all, he kept Kaganovich close to him and allowed to name the Moscow metro "Kaganovich Metro." Did that mean something or not? It did.
This is how the events are pictured by the writer Julia Shmukler:
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