Early years No aspect of Stalin's upbringing in
Gori, Georgia, his education at an
Orthodox seminary in
Tiflis, or his political activities up to 1906 stands out as a motive to later antisemitism. Interactions with Jews were infrequent and unlikely to concern him as such. He began meeting Jews more frequently with the
Stockholm Congress, including zealous revolutionaries whose competition he might have resented. Stalin's earliest antisemitic rhetoric appears in relation to the rivalry between the
Bolshevik and
Menshevik political factions. Jews were active in both groups, but more prominent among the Mensheviks. Stalin took note of the ethnic proportions represented on each side, as seen from a 1907 report on the Congress published in the
Bakinsky rabochy (
Baku Workman), which quoted a coarse joke about "a small
pogrom" (погромчик) Stalin attributed to then-Bolshevik
Grigory Aleksinsky: Not less interesting is the composition of the congress from the standpoint of nationalities. Statistics showed that the majority of the Menshevik faction consists of Jewsand this of course without counting the
Bundistsafter which came Georgians and then Russians. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik faction consists of Russians, after which come Jewsnot counting of course the
Poles and
Lettsand then Georgians, etc. For this reason one of the Bolsheviks observed in jest (it seems Comrade Aleksinsky) that the Mensheviks are a Jewish faction and the Bolsheviks a genuine Russian faction, so it would not be a bad idea for us Bolsheviks to arrange a small pogrom in the party. Lenin continued to speak out against antisemitism. Information campaigns against antisemitism were conducted in the
Red Army and in the workplaces, and a provision forbidding the incitement of propaganda against any ethnicity became part of Soviet law. Eventually made public as part of
Lenin's Testament—which recommended that the party remove Stalin from his post as General Secretary—the 1922 letters and the recommendation were both withheld from public circulation by Stalin and his supporters in the party: these materials were not published in the Soviet Union until
de-Stalinization in 1956. After the incapacitated Lenin's death on 21 January 1924, the party officially maintained the principle of collective leadership, but Stalin soon outmaneuvered his rivals in the Central Committee's
Politburo. At first collaborating with Jewish and half-Jewish Politburo members
Grigory Zinoviev and
Lev Kamenev against Jewish arch-rival
Leon Trotsky, Stalin succeeded in marginalizing Trotsky. By 1929, Stalin had also effectively marginalized Zinoviev and Kamenev as well, compelling both to submit to his authority. The intransigent Trotsky was forced into exile. According to Polish historian,
Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, Kamenev was denied the position of
Chairman of the Soviet Union on Stalin's suggestion due to his Jewish origins. Stalin favoured
Alexei Rykov and placed him in the position due to his Russian, peasant background. When
Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's personal secretary who had defected to France in 1928, produced a memoir critical of Stalin in 1930, he alleged that Stalin made crude antisemitic outbursts even before Lenin's death. At the
15th Party Congress in December 1927, Stalin publicly condemned growing anti-semitism among workers, calling it an “evil” that “must be combated with utmost ruthlessness.”
1930s to 1940s Stalin's 1931 condemnation of antisemitism On 12 January 1931, Stalin gave the following answer to an inquiry on the subject of the Soviet attitude toward antisemitism from the
Jewish News Agency in the United States: National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of
cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a
lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.
Establishment of Jewish Autonomous Oblast To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of
Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin's nationality policy, an alternative to the
Land of Israel was established with the help of
Komzet and
OZET in 1928. The
Jewish Autonomous Oblast with the center in
Birobidzhan in the
Russian Far East was to become a "Soviet Zion".
Yiddish, rather than "reactionary"
Hebrew, would be the
national language, and
proletarian socialist literature and arts would replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture. Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, the Jewish population there never reached 30% (as of 2003 it was only about 1.2%). The experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges, as local leaders were not spared during the purges.
Great Purge Stalin's harshest period of mass repression, the
Great Purge (or Great Terror), was launched in 1936–1937 and involved the execution of over a half-million Soviet citizens accused of treason, terrorism, and other
anti-Soviet crimes. The campaign of purges prominently targeted Stalin's former opponents and other
Old Bolsheviks, and included a large-scale
purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of the
kulak peasants,
Red Army leaders, and ordinary citizens accused of conspiring against Stalin's administration. Although many of Great Purge victims were ethnic or religious Jews, they were not specifically targeted as an ethnic group during this campaign according to Mikhail Baitalsky,
Gennady Kostyrchenko,
David Priestland,
Jeffrey Veidlinger,
Roy Medvedev, and
Edvard Radzinsky.
Antony Polonsky argued that Jews suffered significantly during the 1936 phase of the Purge because they were overrepresented among Soviet officials.
German–Soviet rapprochement and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact According to
glasnost leader Alexander Yakolev, during his meeting with Nazi Germany's foreign minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Stalin promised him to get rid of the "Jewish domination", especially among the intelligentsia. After dismissing
Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939, Stalin immediately directed incoming Foreign Minister
Vyacheslav Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews", to appease Hitler and to signal Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks. When recalling this statement, however, Molotov said Stalin probably didn’t have antisemitic intent, for he was concerned more with bringing more ethnic Russians into top positions. Many Jewish figures such as
Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski and
Fritz Houtermans were arrested in 1937 by the NKVD and turned over to the German Gestapo. Antisemitic trends in Stalin's policies were fueled by his struggle against
Leon Trotsky and his global base of support. In the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s far fewer Jews were appointed to positions of power in the state apparatus than previously, with a sharp drop in Jewish representation in senior positions evident from around the time of the beginning of the late 1930s rapprochement with Nazi Germany. The percentage of Jews in positions of power dropped to 6% in 1938, and to 5% in 1940.
Relocation and deportation of Jews during the war Following the Soviet invasion of Poland, Stalin began a policy of deporting Jews to the
Jewish Autonomous Oblast and other parts of Siberia. Throughout the war, similar movements were executed in regions considered vulnerable to Nazi invasion with the various target ethnic groups of the Nazi genocide. When these populations reached their destinations, work was oftentimes arduous and they were subjected to poor conditions due to lack of resources caused by the war effort.
World War II and Zionism Stalin wanted a Jewish state in Palestine friendly to the Soviet Union and even remarked to
Franklin D. Roosevelt at the sidelines of the
Yalta Conference that he was a Zionist "in principle" when Roosevelt probed him on the issue. However, when Roosevelt quipped that he was going to send six million American Jews as a "gift" to
King Ibn Saud of
Saudi Arabia in their upcoming meeting, Stalin complained about the lack of cooperation from Soviet Jews in his plan in establishing an autonomous Jewish region in
Birobidzhan and noted that Jews were "middlemen, profiteers and
parasites."
After World War II The experience of the
Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of approximately six million Jews in
Europe under Nazi occupation, and left millions more
homeless and displaced, contributed to growing concern about the situation of the Jewish people worldwide. However, the trauma breathed new life into the traditional idea of a common
Jewish peoplehood and became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist idea of creating a Jewish state in the
Middle East. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast experienced a revival as the Soviet government sponsored the migration of as many as 10,000 Eastern European Jews to Birobidzhan in 1946–1948. In early 1946, the
Council of Ministers of the USSR announced a plan to build new infrastructure, and
Mikhail Kalinin, a champion of the Birobidzhan project since the late 1920s, stated that he still considered the region to be a "Jewish national state" that could be revived through "creative toil." Accordingly, in November 1947, the
Soviet Union, together with the other
Soviet bloc countries voted in favor of the
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel. On May 17, 1948, three days after
Israel declared its independence, the Soviet Union became the first state to officially recognize Israel. In the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Soviet Union supported Israel with weaponry supplied via
Czechoslovakia. Nonetheless, Stalin began a new purge by repressing his wartime allies, the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In January 1948,
Solomon Mikhoels was assassinated on Stalin's personal orders in
Minsk. His murder was disguised as a hit-and-run car accident. Mikhoels was taken to an MGB
dacha and killed, along with his non-Jewish colleague Golubov-Potapov, under supervision of Stalin's Deputy Minister of State Security
Sergei Ogoltsov. Golubov-Potapov, who was an agent of the MGB, was used to lure Mikhoels to the dacha and both were forced to drink alcohol. Both were killed and their bodies were then dumped by the side of a road in Minsk. Despite Stalin's initial willingness to support Israel, various historians speculate that antisemitism in the late 1940s and early 1950s was motivated by Stalin's possible perception of Jews as a potential "
fifth column" in light of a pro-Western Israel in the Middle East.
Orlando Figes suggests that "After the foundation of Israel in May 1948, and its alignment with the USA in the Cold War, the 2 million Soviet Jews, who had always remained loyal to the Soviet system, were portrayed by the Stalinist regime as a potential fifth column. Despite his personal dislike of Jews, Stalin had been an early supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine, which he had hoped to turn into a Soviet satellite in the Middle East. But as the leadership of the emerging state proved hostile to approaches from the Soviet Union, Stalin became increasingly afraid of pro-Israeli feeling among Soviet Jews. His fears intensified as a result of
Golda Meir's arrival in Moscow in the autumn of 1948 as the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR. On her visit to a Moscow synagogue on
Yom Kippur (13 October), thousands of people lined the streets, many of them shouting
Am Yisroel Chai! (The People of Israel Live!)a traditional affirmation of national renewal to Jews throughout the world but to Stalin a dangerous sign of 'bourgeois Jewish nationalism' that subverted the authority of the Soviet state." Historians Albert S. Lindemann and Richard S. Levy observe: "When, in October 1948, during the high holy days, thousands of Jews rallied around Moscow's central synagogue to honor Golda Meir, the first Israeli ambassador, the authorities became especially alarmed at the signs of Jewish disaffection. Jeffrey Veidlinger writes: "By October 1948, it was obvious that Mikhoels was by no means the sole advocate of Zionism among Soviet Jews. The revival of Jewish cultural expression during the war had fostered a general sense of boldness among the Jewish masses. Many Jews remained oblivious to the growing
Zhdanovshchina and the threat to Soviet Zionist Jews that the brewing campaign against "
rootless cosmopolitans" signaled. Indeed, official attitudes toward Jewish culture were ambivalent during this period. On the surface, Jewish culture seemed to be supported by the state: public efforts had been made to sustain the Yiddish theater after Mikhoels's death,
Eynikayt was still publishing on schedule, and, most important, the Soviet Union recognized the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. To most Moscow Jews, the state of Soviet Jewry had never been better."
Purges In November 1948, Soviet authorities launched a campaign to liquidate what was left of Jewish culture. The leading members of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. They were charged with treason,
bourgeois nationalism, and planning to set up a Jewish republic in
Crimea to serve American interests. The Museum of Environmental Knowledge of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (established in November 1944) and The Jewish Museum in Vilnius (established at the end of the war) were closed in 1948. The Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Georgian Jewry, established in 1933, was shut down at the end of 1951. The same happened to Yiddish theaters all over the Soviet Union, beginning with the Odessa Yiddish Theater and including the Moscow State Jewish Theater. In early February 1949, the
Stalin Prize-winning
microbiologist Nikolay Gamaleya, a pioneer of
bacteriology and member of the
Academy of Sciences, wrote a personal letter to Stalin, protesting the growing antisemitism: "Judging by absolutely indisputable and obvious indications, the reappearance of antisemitism is not coming from below, not from the masses. . . but is directed from above, by someone's invisible hand. Antisemitism is coming from some high-placed persons who have taken up posts in the leading party organs." The ninety-year-old scientist wrote to Stalin again in mid-February, again mentioning the growing antisemitism. In March, Gamaleya died, still having received no answer. During the night of 12–13 August 1952, remembered as the "
Night of the Murdered Poets" (Ночь казнённых поэтов), thirteen of the most prominent
Yiddish writers of the
Soviet Union were executed on the orders of Stalin. Among the victims were
Peretz Markish,
David Bergelson and
Itzik Fefer. In a 1 December 1952 Politburo session, Stalin announced: "Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA. . . They think they are indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists." He also quoted
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "eat the rich" in this speech.. A notable campaign to quietly remove Jews from positions of authority within the state security services was carried out in 1952–1953. The Russian historians
Zhores and
Roy Medvedev wrote that according to
MVD General Sudoplatov, "simultaneously all Jews were removed from the leadership of the security services, even those in very senior positions. In February the anti-Jewish expulsions were extended to regional branches of the MGB. A secret directive was distributed to all regional directorates of the MGB on 22 February, ordering that all Jewish employees of the MGB be dismissed immediately, regardless of rank, age or service record. . . ." The outside world was not ignorant of these developments, and even the leading members of the
Communist Party USA complained about the situation. In the memoir
Being Red, the American writer and prominent Communist
Howard Fast recalls a meeting with Soviet writer and
World Peace Congress delegate
Alexander Fadeyev during this time. Fadeyev insisted that "There is no anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union", despite the evidence "that at least eight leading Jewish figures in the Red Army and in government had been arrested on what appeared to be trumped-up charges. Yiddish-language newspapers had been suppressed. Schools that taught Hebrew had been closed."
Doctors' plot In secondary evidence and memoirs, there is a view that the Doctors' plot case was intended to trigger mass repressions and deportations of the Jews, similar to the
population transfer in the Soviet Union of many other ethnic minorities, but the plan was not accomplished because of the sudden death of Stalin.
Zhores Medvedev wrote that there are no documents found in support of the deportation plan, and
Gennady Kostyrchenko writes the same. Nevertheless, the question remains open. According to
Louis Rapoport, the genocide was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors, and then the "following incidents would follow", such as "attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police, the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews, and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken. A three-stage program of genocide would be followed. First, almost all Soviet Jews ... would be shipped to camps east of the Urals ... Second, the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another ... Also the MGB [Secret Police] would start killing the elites in the camps, just as they had killed the Yiddish writers ... the previous year. The ... final stage would be to 'get rid of the rest.'" Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, and there were rumors that they were for Jews. A special Deportation Commission to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created. Nikolay Poliakov, the secretary of the Deportation Commission, stated years later that according to Stalin's initial plan the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental task of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed. There are further statements that describe some aspects of such a planned deportation. It has also been said that at the time of Stalin's death, "no Jew in Russia could feel safe." Throughout this time, the Soviet media avoided overt antisemitism and continued to report the punishment of officials for antisemitic behavior. ==Associates and family==