Reuben
12th July 2002, 01:43
a few of you may have seen my sig and though t as i would have thought it was not dissimilar to other anti-communist propaganda, however the events it relates to were part of a terrible indictment of stalinism. I apologizxe tht some of the info in this post i have posted previously in SvC though i feel it is of interest to many socialists many who do not visit that form.
Sub-Commandante
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ON the twelth of August 1952, 13 members of the JEwish Peoples anti-facist committee were executed. This commitee had originally been set up by stalin to try to enlist jewish efforts to fight Nazism and those from the committee who were executed included some of his most ardent supporters.
Those executed included yiddish poets itsik ffeffer, Leib Kvitko and Peretz Parkish. yiddish Writeres david Bergolson and Shmeul Halkin as well as r benjamin zuskin who was the leading actor at the moscow state jewish theatre.
Feffer one of the yiddish poets to be executed had toured the world during the war in his uniform as a red army Colonel raising millions of pounds from jewish audiences to support the soviet war effort.
After the war a big patriotic drive was taken up by the russian authorities who even began celebrating czarist expansionism. They had decided that all plays must celebrate russians in terms of scientific acheivement etc. Jewish novelist Ilya Ehrenberg was even to make the names of his characters 'more russian'.
It was in this atmosphere that a witch hunt ensued with jewish choirs and drama tgrous dissapearing. In the autonomous jewish region of Birziobizhan, a vast library of yiddish works was destroyed. The witch hunt was not dissimallar to mcarthyism, not least in the sense that many of those targetted in america shared the dsame ethnic background as those targetted in russia
These people were murdered by a government lening in the extreme towards nationalism, simply beause of their association with yiddish/jewish culture.
A a tragic episode which played a part in lessening what was extremely sigi=nificant jewish support for the ussr from outside, and was a terrible indictment of racist russia
Sub-Commandante
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON the twelth of August 1952, 13 members of the JEwish Peoples anti-facist committee were executed. This commitee had originally been set up by stalin to try to enlist jewish efforts to fight Nazism and those from the committee who were executed included some of his most ardent supporters.
Those executed included yiddish poets itsik ffeffer, Leib Kvitko and Peretz Parkish. yiddish Writeres david Bergolson and Shmeul Halkin as well as r benjamin zuskin who was the leading actor at the moscow state jewish theatre.
Feffer one of the yiddish poets to be executed had toured the world during the war in his uniform as a red army Colonel raising millions of pounds from jewish audiences to support the soviet war effort.
After the war a big patriotic drive was taken up by the russian authorities who even began celebrating czarist expansionism. They had decided that all plays must celebrate russians in terms of scientific acheivement etc. Jewish novelist Ilya Ehrenberg was even to make the names of his characters 'more russian'.
It was in this atmosphere that a witch hunt ensued with jewish choirs and drama tgrous dissapearing. In the autonomous jewish region of Birziobizhan, a vast library of yiddish works was destroyed. The witch hunt was not dissimallar to mcarthyism, not least in the sense that many of those targetted in america shared the dsame ethnic background as those targetted in russia
These people were murdered by a government lening in the extreme towards nationalism, simply beause of their association with yiddish/jewish culture.
A a tragic episode which played a part in lessening what was extremely sigi=nificant jewish support for the ussr from outside, and was a terrible indictment of racist russia