THE JEWS OF RUSSIA
by Rabbi Sherwin Wine
I took that summer trip to Russia.
Why?
I was curious about a country and culture which were officially dedicated to the principles of a Marxist socialism. As the avowed “enemy of my country” in the Cold War game, Russia was an intriguing mystery.
I wanted to see the land from which my family had come. Russia was the setting of my father’s bitter nostalgia.
I wanted to see the homeland of Yiddish culture. The language of my childhood was not Hebrew. It had nothing at all to do with Jerusalem, Haifa, or Tel Aviv. The sounds of my childhood were a sing-song German, which went together with names like Grodno, Vilna, Minsk, and Pinsk.
Above all, I wanted to find out whether the “reports” were true. I had read story after story about the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union. I was told by the “experts” that the Russian government singled out the Jewish religion for special persecution; suppressed Yiddish culture, forbade Hebrew studies, published antisemitic literature, refused exit visas to Israel, and harassed the Jews through discrimination in the universities and in the professions. The Soviet rulers, the accusers said, were engaged in a campaign of cultural genocide and physical terror.
Was the “accusation” true? I was eager to know.
Although I spent only three weeks in the Soviet Union, and although I was confined to using English, German, Yiddish, and one hundred words of basic Russian, I found many people (primarily students and professionals) who were eager to speak in private about their beliefs and fears. Most of the Jews I spoke to were under 40. In addition to visiting the synagogues (which was a waste of time, since they were badly attended old folks homes) I frequented restaurants, book stores, theaters, and the public parks near universities. Of the five cities I visited (Leningrad, Moscow, Volgograd, Yalta, and Kiev) Kiev was the most Jewish.
Throughout my trip, I was continually impressed by certain characteristics of the Soviet people. The Jewish situation exists within the framwork of these conditions.
I was impressed by how deeply religious the Russian people are. When I arrived in Leningrad, the first road sign I saw had the following inscription: “Lenin lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin will live.” Wherever I travelled statues and busts of Lenin were omnipresent. I could not enter any museum, visit any school, or open any periodical without being confronted with the words of the Bolshevik founder. Just as the Bible ‘koshers’ every Christian decision, so do the writings of Lenin legitimize every Soviet action. No child in a nursery can recite a poem without first invoking the spirit of Lenin. And no wedding in a so-called secular wedding palace can proceed without the blessing of Leninist principles. The Russians may have ceased to be Christians. But they have found a new patriotic religion.
I was impressed by the materialism of the Russian people. Although most citizens I encountered were adequately dressed and adequately fed (only building interiors were hopelessly drab), few individuals seemed to be concerned about politics or personal freedom. The anxieties were directed to better housing, more comfortable jobs, longer vacations, and the ecstasy of owning an automobile. It seemed to me that as long as the Soviet government continues to raise the standard of living, the issue of totalitarian repression of free politics and free speech will be irrelevant to the vast majority of the people. In this respect the Russian people are like every other people. Comfortable survival is the ultimate value.
I was impressed by the elitist character of Russian society. Even though gross distinctions in wealth and status have been eliminated, the “middle class” remains. The new bourgeoisie is the class of educated professionals who have less status and less wealth than party leaders but more status and more personal income than factory workers and farm laborers. While city workers never complained to me about the absence of intellectual freedom, students and young professionals, the children of the middle class, did. The new bourgeoisie is like the old bourgeoisie. Unlike the working class, it is less concerned with equality, and more concerned with freedom.
I was especially impressed by the passivity of the Soviet masses, in particular, the middle class. While many university students objected privately to the repressiveness of the regime and desired a more humanistic face for Soviet socialism, they had no concept of taking individual action to achieve this end. Conditioned by the system to work through state institutions alone, they were emotionally unable to organize in a private way. It was more than fear. It was the inability to conceive of private action as being legitimate.
Within this context the aged bureaucracy of the Soviet system maintains its power. It now allows discontented intellectuals to vent their frustration in private conversation with no real fear that these complaints will lead to any effective public protest.
The Jewish situation mirrors the general Russian one. Although less addicted to Leninism than the working class, the Jews are equally materialistic in their striving, elitist in their social climbing, and passive in their approach to problems.
They have other characteristics as well.
The Jews are primarily urbanized. Just as in America the majority of the Jews live in the biggest cities. Moscow has 600,000, Leningrad has 300,000, Kiev has 300,000, and Odessa has 200,000 (out of a total Jewish population of 3,000,000). Wherever I travelled through the large urban centers, I was overwhelmed by the large number of Jews I encountered. In Kiev it seemed to me that a quarter of all the Soviet people were Jews. I felt like the untravelled New Yorker who imagines that one-third of all America is Jewish.
The Jews I encountered were primarily middle-class professionals. While older Jews over 50 seemed to have more proletarian jobs, those under thirty were an array of engineers, physicians, teachers, and accountants. Being ‘bourgeois’ the younger Jews were finacially better off than the average Russian. And being residents of the big cities, they lived where most Russians preferred to live and count not live. (The Government seems to be discouraging the overwhelming drift to the metropolis.)
Almost all the Jews I encountered under 50 were irreligious. They had no interest in prayer, religion, or going to synagogue. Young Jews, like young Russians, are the product of their state school indoctrination. Even if they are amused by the Lenin cult, their objection is not that Leninism is antireligious. The objection is rather that Leninism is too religious. It seemed quite clear to me that, if the Soviet Union were to allow freedom of religious propaganda and the establishment of religious schools, very few young Jews would take advantage of this new opportunity.
The Jews were overwhelmingly Russified. At one time the Jews of the Soviet Union were more than a religious group. They were a distinct nationality with a distinct national language called Yiddish. Even though the internal passport which every Soviet citizen must carry still labels the Jews as Jewish by nationality, very few under 40 either understand or speak Yiddish. Only in Kiev did I encounter Yiddish on the streets. But those who spoke the language were either middle-aged or old. As far as I could perceive, Yiddish has no future in the Soviet Union. On a linguistic and cultural level, the Jews have ceased to be a distinct nation. As in America, only Yiddish last names survive as a relic of a unique national past.
The Jews are rapidly being assimilated. In addition to Russification, intermarriage was the fashion. Almost half the young Jews I spent time with were either married to non-Jews or were dating them. While older Jews expressed concern about intermarriage, the young showed no apprehension. Having no strong Jewish attachments, they felt no traditional guilt in doing what they did. It seemed as though Lenin’s plan was being fulfilled. Since the Jews occupied no distinct Soviet territory, Lenin refused to see the Jews as a real nation. He maintained that they were an economic caste whose economic role had been superseded by socialism. Assimilation to a Russian proletarian culture seemed to him the most feasible solution to the Jewish problem. Lenin was assisted in his solution by two factors. The first was the Jewish penchant for bureaucratic social climbing. The second was the Jewish preference for big city living. Career professionals and urban intellectuals have very little need for Yiddish. As in America, it has negative ‘social’ value. Had the Jews settled for farm life or shtetl living, Yiddish might have survived in spite of state hostility. But not in Moscow or Leningrad.
The Jews of Russia who wish to remain Jewish suffer disabilities. There are no religious schools (this is not a uniquely Jewish problem). There are no Yiddish schools. There are no Hebrew schools. There are no Soviet-Israel cultured ocieties. And there are no exit visas for young people.
In addition, the Russian press sponsors daily denunciations of the ‘Zionist fascist imperialists’ who are, in the popular mind, hardly distinguishable from Jews. However, for the Jew who does not desire to remain Jewish and who prefers assimilation, there are few disabilities. The Jew who does not care about religion, Yiddish or Zionist culture (and a high percentage of young Jews do not), experiences no material or physical threat to his well-being. While he cannot presently change the nationality designation on his internal passport, he is no more disabled by this situation than the Russified Ukrainian or Armenian who is unable to change his label. Jewish students told me that while antisemitism is still strong among people over 40, among their contemporaries it has greatly diminished. Within twenty years, they predicted, the present bigoted leadership will have died out. And total assimilation will be smoother. Right now, they said, top political positions are closed to Jews. But then, they are now closed to non-Russian nationalities as well (with the exception of a few Russified Ukrainians). The days of a Georgian Stalin, an Armenian Mikoyan, and a Jewish Kaganovich running the show are over. Russian nationalism does not dislike only Jews. It doesn’t really care for most other Soviet peoples as well.
The major disability suffered by the Jews of Russia is not uniquely Jewish. It is the trauma of belonging to the educated middle-class in a totalitarian state. Yuli Daniel, Pavel Litvinov and Alexander Ginzburg did not protest government repression in the arts and literature because they are Jews. They protested because they are Russian intellectuals who desire freedom. Over and over again, young Jews complained to me about intellectual persecution. It was a far more important issue in their world than antisemitism. As middle-class professionals who wish to remain in Russia, freedom of expression is a far more significant problem than Yiddish schools and exit visas to Israel. As middle-class intellectuals they share their major agony with millions of non- Russians.
What then do the Jews of Russia want?
If they want to remain Jewish, then neither religious freedom nor Yiddish freedom are particularly relevant (except for some of the old). The one thing they articulate with great fervor is a strong attachment to the state of Israel. A relevant Jewish institution in Russia would be a school in which modern Israeli Hebrew could be taught either as a primary or as a secondary language, and which could maintain cultural ties to the Hebrew state.
The Jews who want to remain Jews also want the right to emigrate to Israel if they desire to leave. They are asking for a privilege that is granted no other Soviet citizen, the right to depart the “socialist paradise.” In this regard, the Jews are demanding special consideration.
However, these demands have an air of fantasy about them. As long as the foreign policy of the Soviet Union requires the friendship and alliance of the Arab nations, allowing either Israeli culture or exit visas is as probable as the marriage of Nasser and Golda Meir. Protest committees on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the United States are, therefore, ineffective. They only provide an excuse for another Jewish activity in America.
As for those Jews in Russia who are not interested in remaining Jewish (and a high percentage of young people, if not a large majority, could care less) then foreign rantings and ravings about racial antisemitism are irrelevant. Lectures about why they should remain Jewish are particularly ludicrous when they come from American Jews who have not yet figured out how to persuade their own young people to reject assimilation.
The major anxiety of Russian Jewry is the intellectual prison in which the middle class is forced to live. Intellectual freedom cannot be brought about by Jewish protesters in New York. It can only be brought about by Soviet professionals and students, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who reject their traditional passivity and challenge a tired bureaucracy with the courage of a Daniel, a Litvinov, and a Ginzburg.
The assimilated Russian Jew, who is the most typical of the young, is not asking for more Jewish opportunities. Like his counterpart in America, he is asking for more humanistic ones. The protesters for Soviet Jewry, if they are truly sensitive, ought not to ignore this desire.