In July 1969, six young Jews, Shimon Grillius, Yuri and Valery Vudka, Oleg frolov, Shimon Zaslavskyand Yevgeny Martimonov were arrested in Riazan in the Lithuanian soviet socialist Republic and charged under Articles 70 and 72 of the Soviet Criminal Code which deals with anti-soviet propaganda. The trial began on February 10 1970 behind closed doors. … Read more
The Brussels Conference was a strange affair. The organisers had the dubious task of bringing representatives of Jewish organisations to Brussels in order that they should say their piece about the fate of their brethren in the Soviet Union. WUJS had great reservations about attending this conference because it was in essence a huge public … Read more
A Nation or Not? The theoretical basis of the Marxist attitude to the Jewish Question lies in J.V. Stalin’s classical work, “Marxism and the National Question”, first ‘published in 1913. Stalin defined a nation as a “historically constituted stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common -language, territory, economic life and … Read more
In the third letter of her series (Tribune July 18), K. Y. Rintoul has attempted to create a ‘Zionist’ smokescreen in order to obscure the very real problem of soviet anti-Semitism. She implies that anti-Semitism has existed only since ‘American-trained General Dayan launched a six day war against the Arab countries’. This, as she should … Read more
K. Y. Rintoul now openly admits (Tribune June 27) not only that anti-Semitism exists in the Soviet Union today, but also that it has increased since the Middle East war of June 1967. This appears to conflict with her earlier assertion (Tribune May 30) that soviet Jews live in ‘a non-deistic humanist society’. Your correspondent … Read more
In his letter (Tribune June 13) Mr Efimov carefully evades or gives half-hearted explanations of the very concrete statistics quoted in our first letter (Tribune June 6). For example, one wonders how the decrease in the number of synagogues in the Soviet Union from 450 in 1956 to 55 in 1969 can be accounted for … Read more
K. Y. Rintoul (Tribune May 30) blindly defends anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union within the guise of the formation of a ‘non-deistic humanist society’. Certain facts seems to conflict with the tolerant doctrine of humanism. Since 1956 nearly 80% of all synagogues in the Soviet Union have been closed down, usually following an intensive press … Read more