Why aren't you sharing your plenty with us?
@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."[39]
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. . . .[40]".
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. . . ."[41]
The Doctors' Plot
Main article: Doctors' plot
On 13 January 1953, the Soviet Union's TASS information agency announced the unmasking of a conspiracy of so-called "doctors-poisoners" who had covertly attempted to decapitate the Soviet leadership. The accused doctors were all senior physicians—most of them Jewish—who had allegedly confessed to planning and successfully carrying out heinous assassinations, including the covert murders of such high-profile Soviet citizens as writer Alexander Shcherbakov (died 1945) and politician Andrey Zhdanov (died 1948). The alleged conspirators were accused of acting on behalf of both the American and British intelligence services and an anti-Soviet international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization.[42]
As Western press accused the Soviet Union of antisemitism, the Central Committee of Communist Party decided to organise a propagandistic trick, a collective letter by Jewish public figures, condemning with fervour "the murderers in white overalls" and the agents of imperialism and Zionism, and to assure there was no antisemitism in the USSR. The letter was signed by well-known scientists and culture figures, who had been forced to do so by the NKVD.[15] However, the letter, initially planned to be published in February 1953, remained unpublished. Instead of the letter, a vehement feuilleton "The Simple-minded and the Swindlers" was published in Pravda, featuring numerous characters with J
ewish names, all of them swindlers, villains, saboteurs, whom the naïve Russian people trust, having lost vigilance. What followed was a new wave of antisemitic hysteria, and a plan by Stalin to send all of the Jews to Siberia,[43][44] similar to other ethnic groups. Only Stalin's death the same year relieved the fear.[15]
Similar purges against Jews were organised in Eastern Bloc countries (see Prague Trials).
During this time Soviet Jews were dubbed as persons of Jewish ethnicity. A dean of Marxism-Leninism department at one of Soviet Universities explained the policy to his students:[45]
One of you asked if our current political campaign can be regarded as antisemitic. Comrade Stalin said: "We hate Nazi not because they are Germans, but because they brought enormous suffering to our land". Same can be said about the Jews.
It has been claimed that: "
At the time of [Stalin's] death, no Jew in Russia could feel safe."[46] However, throughout this time, the Soviet media avoided overt antisemitism...
Stalin and antisemitism - Wikipedia