In February 1943, speaking at the second plenum of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee, Ilya Ehrenburg remarked:
All of you have undoubtedly heard about the Jews whom ‘one cannot see on the front lines.’ Many of those who fought, until a certain time, did not feel that they were Jews. They felt that only when they began to receive from relatives and other people close to them who had been evacuated to the rear, letters that expressed perplexity in regard to widespread comments about Jews not being seen on the front lines, about Jews not being engaged in combat. And there the Jewish fighter reading such letters in a dugout or on the march became upset. Upset not for himself but for his relatives who were bearing such undeserved insults and such humiliation.1
These words of Ehrenburg contrasted sharply with what he had said on August 24, 1941 at the first radio meeting of representatives of the Jewish people in Moscow. Then, Ehrenburg claimed that Nazi antisemitism had increased his Jewish consciousness:
I grew up in a Russian city. My native language is Russian. I am a Russian writer. Now I, like all Russians, am defending my homeland. But the Nazis have reminded me of something else: my mother's name was Hannah. I am a Jew. I say this proudly. Hitler hates us more than anything, and this makes us special.2
In fact, Ehrenburg dared to say that in terms of their impact on the ethnic consciousness of Soviet Jews the words and acts of his fellow Soviet citizens were comparable to those of the Nazis. These remarks were not the sole hint in the Soviet press that German antisemites had sympathizers in the Soviet Union,3 but such ideas had never before been expressed so publicly and clearly.
The question arises of whether Ehrenburg's words reflected changes that took place during the war within the Soviet Union. One might also ask whether the increase in antisemitic attitudes was more noticeable in the Soviet rear than at the front. Furthermore, why did Jews serving in the Red Army react in such a pained manner to the antisemitic atmosphere in the Soviet rear. The question is: to what degree did the views of the non-Jewish population reflect the actual situation of Jewish fighting at the front?
Due to the lack of relevant statistical information it is difficult to arrive at qualitative conclusions relating to the ethnicity of Red Army personnel during the Soviet–German war of 1941–5. The estimated number of Jews in the army (which ranged from 300,000 to 500,000) is based either on the percentage of Jews in the total prewar Soviet population (corrected for a number of factors) or on data relating to the end of the war.4
It is even more difficult to determine the level of participation of Jews in combat. The sole relevant data, published in the USSR in 1975, relates to the ethnic composition of 200 infantry divisions. In January 1943, Jews comprised 1.50% of this group. In other words, their proportion was lower than the 1.78% proportion of Jews in the USSR within its 1939 borders.5 It is not clear whether this proportion reflects the fact that there was a significant disproportion in the sex of Soviet Jews, as noted by Mordechai Altshuler (there were fewer males),6 or whether the proportion of Jews in infantry divisions was not representative of their proportion in the Red Army as a whole. Due to their high educational level many Jews served in forces that utilized technology. They were often found in the artillery, tank forces, aviation, and submarine forces. One may also assume that, also due to their high educational level,7 Jews were often among those military personal who did not regularly take part in battle but rather served as translators, newspaper correspondents, logistics personnel, repairmen, physicians, political officers, etc.
Their educational level undoubtedly shifted their relative proportions in favor of officers relative to rank-and-file soldiers. Statistically sufficient data on January 1, 1945, regarding ethnic composition of the 60th Army on the First Ukrainian Front noted that the percentage of officers among Jews was 51%, while that among Russians was 18%, and among Ukrainians only 6%.8 In this context it is likely that the proportion of officers among Jews was higher than among other Soviet ethnic groups. The fact that educated people tended to be drafted to work in military industries also apparently led to a corresponding decrease in the number of Jews at the front.
Another complex question relates to the attitude of the Soviet authorities toward Jews, both in the army and in the rear. Fedor Sverdlov noted that Josef Stalin and Alexander Shcherbakov, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and the head of the Political Administration of the Red Army, discriminated against Jewish military personnel.9 As a matter of fact, after Stalin removed Lev Mekhlis as head of the Political Administration of the Red Army in 1942, there was not a single Jew left among the top command ranks. This contrasts with the situation in the prewar period, when these ranks included Iona Yakir, Yakov Smushkevich, and Grigorii Shtern.
However, this situation does not prove that there was anti-Jewish discrimination. Between 1940 and 1945, 297 Jews were promoted to posts with the rank of general.10 The distribution of Jews in the different parts of the army also affected this group and not all generals were directly connected with combat. They included 25 doctors, 10 veterinarians, directors of major military factories and of research institutes, high officials involved in propaganda work, and one inspector of military orchestras.11 Only if we were able to obtain information about the distribution of generals and high-level officers by nationality, the type of force they served in, and the years when they became generals would we be able to compare the promotion of Jews during the war years with that of other non-Russian ethnic groups (e.g., Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians).
Since direct surveys of the population were not carried out in the Soviet Union, one cannot reach unambiguous conclusions about the extent of anti-Jewish sentiments or about the reactions of Soviet Jews to them. In addition, no matter how many examples of inter-ethnic tensions during the war period we might be able to cite, these examples would not be sufficient to allow us to speak about dominant trends.
Furthermore, the majority of wartime letters from Jews available to us do not relate to ethnic issues.12 We do not know why Jewish letter writers at the front and their correspondents in the rear did not mention items of Jewish interest, including antisemitism. It may have been because they were not concerned about such problems, because they feared Soviet censorship, or because they had neither the need nor the intellectual energy to write about anything beyond their daily cares. In this regard the situation during the war was not unique: it is also difficult to draw conclusions about the extent of inter-ethnic tension in regard to other periods of Soviet history. Nevertheless, the examples we are aware of indicate that wartime inter-ethnic tension was a significant social phenomenon.
The present article is mainly based on wartime materials, a large proportion of which date from 1941–2, the early stage of the war. This enables us to examine the factors that affected the formation and growth of antisemitic attitudes: the war atmosphere, changes in Soviet policy, etc. The article does not relate to the territories that were liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army in 1943–4, areas where attitudes toward Jews were affected by such factors as Nazi propaganda, direct or indirect collaboration with the Nazis, or the distribution of property that had belonged to murdered Jews or Jews who had managed to escape.13
First, the article will consider the way the war affected the behavior of the Soviet population in general and the manifestation of anti-Jewish attitudes in particular. Then it will analyze the wartime transformation of prewar prejudices regarding the Jews and the role of Soviet ideology in such changes. In conclusion, the article will consider the influence of antisemitism in Soviet society on the self-identification of Jewish soldiers and officers of the Red Army.
1
In the chaotic conditions of the first months of war, the Soviet population could sense the weakening of control of the Soviet regime. This process has been referred to as “spontaneous de-Stalinization.”14 People began to express themselves more boldly and radically.15 In a journal entry for August 29, 1941, Lidia Osipova, who later became a collaborator of the Germans, openly expressed her views about Soviet reality: “How fine it is to finally write such things. It is true that it is like giving the finger in your pocket, but if there had been no war I would never have dared to do so. Moreover … vigilance [on the part of the authorities] has sharply declined.”16 People soon realized that the threat of punishment just for expressing themselves, including in manifestations of xenophobia, was not great.17 The 25 years of Soviet internationalist propaganda, which stressed the equality of all Soviet peoples, now appeared to be a thing of the past. What particularly bothered Jews, as well as some non-Jews, was the atmosphere of public indifference toward manifestations of xenophobia. This indifference was interpreted as silent support. A Russian named Oparin complained about something that happened during the October 1941 panic in the face of the threat that the Germans would occupy Moscow. When his wife protested against a vile antisemitic insult directed against a Jewish woman, no one – including some Red Army commanders – supported his wife.18 People apparently assumed that toleration of antisemitism was the new unofficial position. Lidia Osipova was surprised: “The most indicative thing is that these [antisemitic] remarks are not opposed either by the [government] authorities or by Party members. Neither group ‘takes notice of them.’”19 She was not the only one. In the Kirghiz city of Tokmak the local authorities reacted to antisemitic expressions and even violence against Jews only in late June 1942 after a group of Jewish women (evacuated there, whose husbands were fighting at the front) wrote a letter to Stalin with a copy to the Kirghiz Central Committee of the Communist Party. An investigation disclosed that the local party bodies had taken no action against manifestations of hostility toward Jews even though antisemitic attacks had already taken place in March of that year.20
However, it would be incorrect to attribute the lack of a consistent reaction from the local authorities to the increase in inter-ethnic tension solely to antisemitic attitudes of Soviet officialdom (although such attitudes definitely did exist). Most likely individual officials did not always know how they were supposed to react to such challenges. This was because the most obvious and effective means of influencing broad segments of the population – public propaganda directed against anti-Jewish manifestations – was not possible. The press was not allowed to refer to inter-ethnic tension at this time. In many ways this was a continuation of Soviet policy of the second half of the 1930s. From the beginning of the war the authorities had begun to stress that friendship among the Soviet peoples had only grown.
It is hardly surprising that the publication of Ehrenburg's remarks about the dissatisfaction of Jewish Red Army personnel with anti-Jewish manifestations in the Soviet rear provoked a negative reaction from the party functionaries supervising the activities of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee. In one of his reports Fridrich (the party pseudonym of Bedřich Geminder), head of the press department of the executive committee of the Comintern, a Czech Jew who had emigrated to the Soviet Union, noted:
It seems to us that in the report of the plenary session published in Eynikayt, there were also blatant politically harmful blunders: speeches were published which should not have been made public, like, for example, the speech by Comrade Ehrenburg citing the necessity of struggling against antisemitism.21
On the one hand, many members of local bureaucracies probably realized that antisemitism contradicted Soviet norms. Stalin himself, in a speech on November 6, 1941, had compared Hitler's policy to the antisemitic pogroms of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, it was not always clear how one should react to changes in popular attitudes in the Soviet rear. Furthermore, to many local authorities the aggravation of inter-ethnic problems was apparently perceived as a marginal phenomenon in the context of the complex problems they had to deal with during the war.
The lack of clear directives led to a situation in which some officials preferred not to pay attention to antisemitism (either due to inertia or to their own anti-Jewish prejudices). Other officials reacted to it within the framework of strict wartime regulations. In the latter case people who were accused of antisemitism were subjected to repression and arrest. The uncertainty about how to react to anti-Jewish utterances and acts disappeared when antisemitism coincided with anti-Soviet views, including a positive attitude toward the advancing Germans.22 In these cases, the Soviet authorities acted in a much more decisive manner against people they generally considered disloyal.
The communication between the front and the Soviet rear was quite intense. Thus, the views held by people in the rear could not avoid being known to fighters at the front. This reflected both the constant augmentation of the army by new people, who brought to the front attitudes from the rear, and the constant exchange of information between rear and front. For example, many wounded army personnel were taken to hospitals in the rear and some military personnel were able to get home on leave. Others succeeded in sending letters via other people to their relatives and to receive answers the same way, thus avoiding the censorship that affected letters sent via official channels. One has to take this into consideration when evaluating what was and what was not said in the letters. To some degree a more frank expression of views from the rear was facilitated by the fact that, in contrast to the situation at the front, in the rear Soviet wartime censorship was never total. Furthermore, it is possible that antisemitism was not included in the list of topics that the censor was assigned to excise from letters. To a large degree the strictness of censorship in regard to antisemitism was apparently set by the individual censor. As indicated by letters sent to Ehrenburg and to the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee, the Soviet mail did deliver letters that did reflect people's concern about inter-ethnic friction.
The views about Jews among soldiers and officers at the front and among the civilian population in the Soviet rear were not identical. However, both groups evidently agreed that a fight against antisemitism was not one of the main tasks of the Soviet leadership during the war.
2
During the first weeks of the war, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, and desperation prevailed in the USSR. To some degree this was a reaction to the lack of information in the press and on the radio about the real events at the front and in the country as a whole. The unease increased due to the gap between the shameful retreat of the Red Army and the previous assurances of Soviet propaganda about its invincibility. Promises had been made that the war would cost little blood and would be conducted on the territory of the aggressors.23 The social sphere was awash with rumors.24 Based on these rumors, people explained events in their own way. Paranoia about spies, due to a lack of sufficient information and largely based on a general suspicion of others (as was the case during World War I and in the second part of the 1930s), also aggravated the anxious state of Soviet society.
Even people who had demonstrated patriotism and loyalty, that is, did not consider the Germans to be preferable to the Bolsheviks, were often inclined to blame failures in the war on the local leadership, Soviet military commanders, and, sometimes, the regime as a whole. As had been the case earlier in Soviet history, in their negative perception of reality people opposed themselves both to the ruling elite and to the Jews, whom they considered the main beneficiaries of transformations in Soviet life.25 The similarity in the evaluations of these two alien groups was felt strongly, since both of them were accused of parasitism and immorality – for allegedly flourishing at the expense of the rest of the population.26 In peacetime the farmers and urban residents recently arrived from the country, who together comprised the majority of the country's citizens, considered all those occupations not connected with physical labor (this included commerce, the free professions, and work in the government or party bureaucracies) to be parasitic. During the war parasitism and immorality were contrasted with other values. For example, military prowess and readiness for self-sacrifice in combat were definitely positive. The “aliens” (like the Soviet ruling elite and other ethnic groups) were associated with unwillingness to shed their blood for the country.27 However, people did not always consider ethnic and social factors to be indivisible: sometimes the Soviet leadership was not identified as Jewish and sometimes the Jews who were accused of parasitism were not identified with the country's leadership.
The view that Jews were parasites in regard to army service had been popular previously. In the 1920s comments were recorded about Jews avoiding military service during World War I and the Russian Civil War and, instead, finding comfortable places for themselves far from the front. Some people believed that in the event of another war there would not be a single Jew at the front – all of them would supposedly be sick or exempt due to physical disability.28 In the comparatively recent Russian/early Soviet past such a view had led to what has been referred to as “draftee” or “mobilization” pogroms. Examples were the anti-Jewish riots in 1904 staged by drunken young men about to be sent to the front during the Russo-Japanese war, and in the first half of the 1920s in eastern Belorussia and in Smolensk Province during a mobilization for the Red Army.29
Fear of the hardships of upcoming army service, combined with the fear of being killed “for the benefit of Jews in the rear,” appeared again during the first weeks of the war against Nazi Germany.30 In August 1941, Lidia Osipova noted how new recruits claimed that they were being taken “to defend the kikes.”31 In 1942, similar dissatisfaction was expressed by new recruits in Tashkent, who asked, “Why don't they call the Jews up for the army and send them to the front?” and expressed “an antisemitic call of a pogromist nature.”32 Such attitudes hardly disappeared when such recruits arrived at the front. In the spring of 1942, a soldier on the Leningrad Front (where there existed a unique situation of constant personal contact between military and civilian personnel) complained, “The Communists and Jews are sitting in the rear in high positions while we are fighting for them.”33
For part of the population, the inclusion of Jews in the evacuation during the first weeks of the war34 was a further indication of their parasitism. Such a view was strengthened by the panic-stricken flight from the rapidly advancing German front by hundreds of thousands of people, including many party and government figures and their families.35 This hardly corresponded to the heroic behavior that had been touted by Soviet prewar propaganda. Hence, people tended to blame one ethnic target, the Jews, for the general disillusionment.
For example, in July 1941 the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, Panteleimon Ponomarenko, stated that, in contrast to the Belorussian farmers who remained to fight against the enemy, the Jews, those urban residents, were fleeing “to save their own skins,” since “they were overwhelmed by a visceral fear of Hitler and, instead of fighting, fled.”36 Ponomarenko was not alone in his negative view of the Jews’ “flight”. Dissatisfaction was also expressed by a Red Army soldier in October of the same year during the days of panic when many people were certain that Moscow was about to be captured by the Germans:
You won't find any Jews in Moscow. All of them, starting with the big bosses, have fled … But someone, the Jews first of all, should defend Moscow. After all the USSR is the only country that indulges them. 37
In the city, people were then speaking in an antisemitic vein about riots that broke out when people saw cars “with Jewish passengers with a luxurious load were fleeing Moscow in comfort.”38
The mass evacuation of Jews aroused a feeling of dismay even among some Jewish young people who had been educated in the framework of Soviet heroic discourse. In October 1941, the Moscow student Boris Tartakovskii expressed in his diary discomfort because he saw at Moscow's Kazan Railway Station many bundles labeled “Tekhnoeksport – Rabinovich.”39 Later, in 1943 and 1944, some Jewish soldiers expressed their feeling of guilt because not all the Jews were evacuated and thus they perished and the soldiers were not able to do anything to save them.40 However, in 1941 many soldiers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, viewed the panic-stricken flight east, in which the Jews were noticeable, as shameful – in contrast to the heroic westward movement toward the front.
In April 1942, the famous Soviet Ukrainian film director Alexander Dovzhenko, who was then serving in the Red Army, expressed his sentiments toward Jews who were being evacuated from front-line areas. In his diary, apparently referring to Ukrainians who were serving in the Red Army, he contrasted the positive moral values he attributed to members of his own ethnic group and those of the Jews, whom he viewed as basically escaping from the fighting: “You [Ukrainians] did not have suitcases wrapped in blankets and fastened with copper nails with which to flee eastward ‘due to Jewish fear' [a pun on John 19:38: ‘for fear of the Jews'].” Dovzhenko ironically referred to the evacuees as evrobegletsy or “Judeo-runaways.”41
The arrival of all the refugees that led to a lack of food and residential space decreased the already low standards of living in the Soviet rear.42 The general dissatisfaction of the local population increased suspicion of all the new arrivals, who represented an alien way of life. The refugees not only spoke and dressed differently but also had different ideas about daily norms and food. Furthermore, many of them were unfamiliar with the life and work of rural areas. This dissatisfaction of local residents of areas of the rear was often directed against the Jews, who in the formers' eyes were the incarnation of “the other.” Jews from the cities and shtetlekh of Ukraine and Belorussia dressed differently from the local residents. Many of them had heavy Yiddish accents and when they spoke in Russian their language also contained many expressions that were calques from Yiddish. Many local residents had heard about Jews but had never met any of them. Sometimes the locals referred to all the refugees, no matter their ethnic background, as Jews.43
It is not surprising that the anger that already existed in society further increased suspicion of, and sometimes also hostility toward, the “others” who were seen as parasites living at other people's expense:
There is nothing at the market. The kikes have come and nothing is left here … They are all young, they don't fight in combat and don't want to do so, but they all live quite well.44
In 1942, accusations that Jews were taking advantage of their position for selfish purposes also circulated in besieged Leningrad:
Particularly successful are the Jews, who have gotten themselves positions in stores and dining halls, where they not only gobble down and steal food. They also have the possibility to send thousands of rubles to family members in evacuation.45
This view was shared by a non-Jewish engineer who noted one type of “Jewish parasitism”: “All Jews without exception are speculators – they are a parasitic growth on the body of the state.”46
Such hostility to Jews was based on anti-Jewish prejudices that had previously become engrained among various groups of the population, such as farmers and urban-dwellers, residents of Moscow, Kuibyshev, and other cities, the old pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, the new Soviet party nomenclature, and the Soviet creative intelligentsia. It was natural that some anti-Jewish utterances heard on the territory of the USSR coincided with some of the allegations of Nazi antisemitic propaganda (e.g., that the Jews were the main beneficiaries of the Bolshevik regime, that there were no Jews in the Red Army, that only the Russians were fighting for the Jews, or that the Jews were cowards).47 However, it is not at all certain that this was a direct result of the impact of Nazi propaganda on the Soviet population in the rear (e.g., via evacuated wounded who had been subjected to such propaganda at the front). In fact, in many respects archetypical anti-Jewish prejudices played a role.
A joke (recorded in a diary in Leningrad in March 1944) that combined elements from the prewar past with those of the wartime present indicated the popularity in the USSR of the idea that it was hard to find Jews fighting on the front lines, while they were easily distinguished by their ability to find comfortable positions in the rear.
Another wartime joke placed this popular theme in a local Soviet Central Asian context. The joke went as follows: “Three Jewish divisions have captured the cities of Frunze, Tokmak, and Kant.”49 Since all three of those cities were located in Kirghizia, deep in the Soviet rear, the obvious implication was that Jews did not take part in combat at the front. In 1941 in Kuibyshev, today's Samara, where the Soviet government had set up its wartime center and where part of the Soviet intelligentsia had temporarily settled, the writer Mikhail Sholokhov stated, “You are fighting while Abram is doing business in Tashkent.”50
Thus, antisemitic attitudes during the war were largely based on the idea of Jews being parasites, as exemplified by their lack of desire to participate in combat. War conditions facilitated the strengthening in public consciousness of these views, which had existed previously, but had become of secondary importance in the 1930s. At this point one may well ask whether official Soviet propaganda of the prewar and war years encouraged such negative stereotypes of the Jews and, if this was so, how it came about.
3
In the Soviet Union during the war the ideas of Russo-centrism and statism assumed their final form, both being based on a narrative of Russian heroism. At that time in the press, in belles-lettres, in historical literature, and in feature films, one often found images of Russian military leaders and tsars in connection with heroic events of medieval Russia and the Russian Empire. During the war the Soviets also introduced the awarding to army commanders of military honors named after famous Russian military leaders of the past: Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov, and – for naval commanders – Pavel Nakhimov and Fedor Ushakov. The year 1944 saw the introduction of a new national hymn to replace “The Internationale.” The new hymn stressed the role of Great Russia (Velikaia Rus’) as the central force that united other nations around it. At the same time, when the new heroic propaganda model was followed, its use was scrutinized to make sure that the user did not deviate from the limits imposed on it. These changes led to a transformation in official propaganda – with “Russian” often replacing “Soviet.” Toward the end of the war such a tendency became a clearly expressed official policy that was supported by the Russian population, including by Russians in the army.51 Already in July 1941 the very patriotic young sergeant Nikolai Inozemtsev, later head of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow and a speech-writer for Brezhnev, wrote as follows in his diary: “Our homeland, our wonderful Russian homeland is above everything!”52
Emphasis on the ethnic factor during the war led to a strengthening of ethnic consciousness not only among Russians, but also among Ukrainians, Belorussians, Kazakhs, Jews, and others. Members of the various ethnically oriented intelligentsias followed the Russian model in an effort to create their own versions of Ukrainian, Belorussian, Kazakh, or Jewish heroism and martyrology.53 However, starting in 1943, there was a noticeable narrowing of the framework of permitted expression relating to the identity of ethnic minorities. The restrictive methods were quite rarely public; they were basically confined to mid-level party officials (although the inspiration for this policy sometimes emanated directly from the top level of the Soviet leadership). The creative intelligentsia was also involved in the political machinations of bureaucrats that were directed at removing well-known Jewish figures from their positions (especially in Soviet theater, film, and music). Some members of this intelligentsia espoused the encouragement of specifically Russian art by ethnic Russians, while others passively supported such an idea when they were invited to present their “expert” views to the Central Committee of the Communist Party.54
Although among broad segments of the population, antisemitism increased noticeably from the very first weeks of the war, it is not clear to what extent the growth of Russian nationalism affected the growth of xenophobia, including antisemitism.55 The connection between nationalism and xenophobia was not a simple one. A person who had nationalistic Russian (or Ukrainian, Belorussian, etc.) attitudes was not necessarily an active antisemite although the combination of nationalism and antisemitism was not uncommon. Nor did a person who had anti-Jewish prejudices necessarily project them onto all Jews that he or she happened to encounter either at work or in daily life. Sometimes he or she was prepared to make exceptions for individual Jews.
At the same time, the new trend in Soviet ideology created the preconditions for the manifestation of feelings of Russian (Slavic) superiority over the rest of the population. (It aggravated the inequality that had been created in the prewar years.) On the one hand, it was precisely then that propaganda began to stress the role of the Russians in the country, including by the use of the terms “first among equals” and “elder brother” in relation to the Russian ethnic group. For example, the policy of Russification increased in all schools where instruction was conducted in the languages of ethnic minorities. On the other hand, along with mass arrests among the non-Russian peoples whose ethnic territory was located outside the USSR – such as Poles or Koreans – and who were, consequently, viewed as potential opponents of the regime in the event of a future war in 1937 and 1938, all the cultural institutions of those ethnic groups were closed down.56 Mass curtailment of ethnic culture also affected other groups, including the Jews, but not in as total a manner.
During the war some Russians, evidently expecting an increase in ethnic inequality in their favor, were dissatisfied with the Soviet authorities' lack of decisiveness. Some proponents of such changes in ethnic policy themselves attempted to bring the changes to their logical conclusion, including by the use of violence. In this case violence directed against Jews was both physical (e.g. the beating of Jews, including of children by their schoolmates) and verbal (threats to hand over the Jews to the Germans when they arrived or to take care of them themselves). An example of the latter was graffiti, on the walls of houses and institutions, repeating calls for pogroms of tsarist times, for example, “Beat the Yids and save Russia.”57
The idea of the superiority of Russians in particular and Slavs in general over other ethnic groups was encouraged by the categorization of ethnic groups as either warrior peoples (in this case the Slavs) or merchant peoples (of whom the Jews were considered the most typical). In this juxtaposition the non-Slavic minorities were considered incapable of combat. One reflection of this view was the attribution to Jews of cowardice (the heroism that was hailed in Soviet propaganda was assumed to be foreign to them).58 Allegations of the non-fitness of Jews for combat had been heard in pre-revolutionary times (and not only in Russia).59 The fact that Jews were widely represented in the Red Army and that some of them occupied top posts in the military in the 1930s did not overcome prejudices about the alleged incompetence of Jews in regard to military service, much less their supposed lack of heroism.
In the mid-1980s, Vulf Vilensky recalled an experience he had during the war. In 1943 the Ukrainian Fedor Lysenko was appointed to head a regiment of the 16th Lithuanian Rifle Division. When Lysenko was informed that the majority of those in the sole battalion of his regiment that had emerged from combat intact were Jews, his reaction was clear: “You can't do much fighting with these kikes.”60 Furthermore, on the front line he acted in a demonstrative and not very intelligent way simply in order to show a Jewish officer that the Jews were cowards – in contrast to him, a Ukrainian.61 Sometimes the belief in the cowardice of Jews and their readiness to save their own skins was based on supposed comparisons of the behavior of Jews and non-Jews in extreme situations in which the Soviet heroic norm was expected to be exemplified. Illustrative of this trend was the story that circulated in various versions in besieged Leningrad about the behavior of Red Army men, Russians and Jews, who were taken prisoner by the German forces:
A group of Russian POWs was ordered by German soldiers to bury alive some Jewish Red Army men in a trench. The Russians refused to do so. Then the Germans soldiers immediately ordered the Jews to bury the Russians. The Jews picked up the shovels without hesitation.62
On the basis of such prejudices people constructed their own reality. Thus, the lack of Jews in the higher ranks of generals during the war (for example, on the level of commander of a front) was perceived as proof of the incapacity of Jews for military service. One woman from Leningrad expressed this point of view as follows: “There are no Jews at the top, there are no marshals among them or any real heroes.”63 The publication of official statistics of people given military awards categorized by ethnic group between 1942 and 1944 had no effect on such prejudices. (It was, thus, not without reason that Ehrenburg had noted that “statistics are not enough”).64 The view was widespread that if Jews were present at the front they were not in combat. People said, “The closest that Jews get to the front line are those who serve in the hospitals.”65
A further supposed indication of the “alien nature” of the Jews (along with their alleged parasitism and lack of fitness for combat) related to doubts about the genuineness of their patriotism. As was the case in regard to the other two prejudices, this was not totally new. Suspicion about the lack of patriotism among the Jews existed on the eve of and during World War I, and it had consequences. Accusations of their spying for Germany were heard broadly both among the civilian population and in the army. This led to mass deportations of Jews from front-line areas and to pogroms.66 During the second half of the 1930s, patriotism was certainly promoted, but it was really highlighted only during the war against the Nazis.
One reflection of the importance of this topic at the front was the joke recorded in the army in 1944 by the Jew Irina Dunaevskaia: “Do you love our Homeland?”
“Yes, I do!”
“So will you go to the front?”
“If I do and am killed, then who will love the Homeland?”67
It was important to note that when the object of this joke was identified as “Abram,” the satirized person who might have remained ethnically neutral was clearly being singled out for his Jewish identity.68
In contrast to World War I, during the war against Nazi Germany, accusations of Jews being sympathetic to the Germans were hardly widespread. Although wartime jokes have been reported that state or imply the idea of a Jewish international conspiracy or alleged Jewish cooperation with the Germans,69 these were more an echo of prewar stereotypes than indications of real wartime views, since the Nazis' antisemitism and mass murder of Jews were known both in the army and in the rear.
During the Soviet–German war the alleged lack of Soviet patriotism among the Jews was rather associated with their supposed indifference to the fate of the Soviet people. In June 1942, Dovzhenko wrote with considerable irony, “The Jews are clearly ‘saving Russia.’” He continued, “This undertaking is useful from all sides. When I look at people [Jews], listen to their conversations, their intonations, gaze into their empty predatory eyes, I see nothing but opportunism … What does the people mean to them?“70
The Russo-centric propaganda that espoused the existence of a special and profound link between the Soviet peoples and the land on which they lived, possibly more than anything else, increased people's concern with patriotism and the homeland. In the opinion of part of the population it was only pragmatic interests and not any idealistic motivations that connected the “alien Jews” with this land and that was what essentially distinguished them from the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and others. In December 1942, the prose writer Mikhail Prishvin noted:
It seems to me that in their souls all of the Jews have a confused, alarmed feeling of the lack of something basic – most likely they lack a direct feeling of the joy of life that comes from a closeness to the homeland, to nature, to this land … They try to make up for this lack with their dachas and little gardens.71
This view was shared by Liubov Shaporina, who wrote in her diary on October 16, 1941, “Like all other parvenus, the Jewish parvenus generally lack tact, but with these Jews in regard to Russia there is no feeling for the homeland.”72 The Russian cinematographer Anatolii Golovnia also expressed such a view about the Jews' lack of attachment to the land, saying at a public meeting:
Take the birch-tree. It may be a Russian birch, but it may be a non-Russian birch – a German one, for example. A person must possess a Russian soul to be able to distinguish between a Russian birch and a non-Russian birch.73
Several Red Army officers who signed their letter with the symbolical names Ivan and Stepan in order to stress their Russian ethnicity conveyed the same anti-Jewish idea in a letter written to Ehrenburg “at the request of their comrades”:
How can you write about Russia while, both previously and now, you feel about it like a Jew … After all, you do not appreciate the Russian earth, the smell and the feel of it, while for us Russians it is as familiar as the clothing on our backs. So you try to write in Krasnaia zvezda much about Russians and about Russia – stop that, it is not sincere, don't be a Jewish profiteer, a usurer. No one believes you or your words about Russia. You don't write about our land in Russian way. Only Russians are now fighting for and lamenting areas that we have retreated from that are [now] occupied by the German dogs, our eternal external enemy.74
The Russo-centric trend that flourished in Soviet propaganda may well have facilitated the strengthening in the country of ideas about the special connection between patriotic feeling, readiness for self-sacrifice, and ethnic identity. Such attitudes established the ideological basis for mass support of the ideas that became popular in the USSR later, during the postwar antisemitic campaign against “rootless cosmopolitanism.”
4
During the war years, Soviet Jews were concerned about manifestations of antisemitism. They were upset not only by the increasing occurrence of antisemitic attitudes but also by the lack of a public response on the part of the Soviet authorities. Information about anti-Jewish acts led to conclusions about the increase in antisemitism in the country in general. The overt support from segments of the Russian intelligentsia of the Russo-centric tendencies of the bureaucracy at times assumed a clearly anti-Jewish character, which could not but help provoke a reaction from the Jews.75
Most likely, the contradiction inherent in the pronounced official support of Russo-centrism and the simultaneous allowing of ethnic minorities to develop ethnocentric views aroused among the Jews a feeling of discontent. On the one hand, those Jews who had been accustomed to believe official propaganda were ready to accept the idea of the superiority of the Russians; as one Jewish officer noted: “many ethnic groups in our country have adopted the characteristics of the Soviet and Russian person.”76 Even more, this formulation apparently reflected the conviction that the official Soviet policy could not be mistaken. On the other hand, Jews at the front believed that by displaying military prowess they were not inferior to anyone, including the Russians.
The reaction of Jewish military personnel to the suffering of near and dear ones in the Soviet rear, about which they often learned via letters, was even more significant. In general, dissatisfaction of Jews with their life in the Soviet rear during the war years was not unusual. Family members of military personnel, Jews and non-Jews, frequently complained about their difficult material situation and the arbitrariness of local officials. This aroused concern on the part of many soldiers and officers on the front.77 Among Jewish military personnel this concern was magnified by specific experiences relating to views about their individual and collective behavior at the front and to the attitudes of their non-Jewish comrades-in-arms. One wounded Jew wrote as follows from his hospital bed:
Why does everyone hate the Jews? Everyone. Everywhere. Don't think that I am an antisemite or a nationalist. I am Jewish and therefore … the insult and pain are greater. Before the war I never encountered this and, therefore, didn't give any thought to such nonsense, to which I didn't attach any significance; how could I have acted any differently? After all, I grew up and was raised under the Soviet regime in a large city with culture. If some old person would say that a goy will always be a goy, I always lost my temper and grew angry at him, heatedly insisting that this was not correct. And right now it turns out that the old people were right. Please understand how painful it is to be friends with a person, to respect and admire him and, then to encounter from his side the most vulgar antisemitism.78
The Jews' general concern about the increase in antisemitic manifestations was reflected in a letter sent to Ehrenburg in November 1942 by Lev Katsnelson. Its author, the 22-year-old commander of an artillery intelligence unit, had been serving on the front lines from the very beginning of the war. He was moved to write Ehrenburg by a letter he received from a student from Frunze. She had complained about antisemitism in the Soviet rear. Following her, Katsnelson was upset by the practice of dividing people into “we/us” and “they/them” – Jews being allocated to the latter category. Evidently, the student was very upset at hearing people say that no Jews could be seen fighting at the front. Katsnelson was less upset. He admitted that there was not a large number of Jews in the Red Army but added in justification that “after all we are fewer in general,” apparently referring to the fact that the Jews constituted a small minority in the whole country. Katsnelson's main concern was the relation of Jews to heroism. As if wishing to stress his own objectivity, Katsnelson cited the story of a non-Jewish soldier who during the war “began to respect Jews.” Katsnelson expected that Ehrenburg would share his concern: “Tell me, are the Jews really cowards and ‘others’ or ‘aliens,’ while other peoples are considered [by Soviet people] as ‘our own,' or are they [the Jews] also fighters?”79
Katsnelson was not alone in his doubts. About the same time another Jewish officer also wrote to Ehrenburg:
I am a member of the Communist Party, an internationalist [i.e., someone who believes that all peoples are equal] and, furthermore, I became one much earlier than this idea was promulgated in an [officially] organized manner. For this reason I find it more painful and insulting now to hear expressions like ‘the Jews are cowards and don't know how or don't want to fight.’ And, unfortunately, this is not always the exception. I have experienced this, so to speak, in my own skin. I have had to expend more than a little effort and energy and sometimes to take an insane, unnecessary risk in order to personally prove the opposite [emphasis added]. And still, there is a ‘whiff’ [of antisemitism] in the air.80
Evidently, many Jews from different backgrounds were motivated “to prove the opposite.” The poet Alexander Gitovich, who was born in the Russian city of Smolensk in 1909 and during the war was a correspondent for the army newspaper V reshaiushchii boi (Into the decisive battle), was awarded the Medal for Courage. In 1942 Gitovich wrote, “I am very shamed if a Jew acts in a cowardly manner. Unfortunately, there are more than enough cowards in this war.”81 He stressed that “previously it didn't enter my head that I was a Jew. I don't speak Yiddish. But now – it's something else again.” 82 Furthermore, he unambiguously noted how important to him was information that challenged the common view of Jews as being cowards: “When I read the lists of those who were awarded military honors, I always look to see whether there are Jewish names there and I am very happy when there are.”83 Katsnelson for his part not only believed that Jews were fighting bravely at the front, but also considered his participation in the war as the basis for contradicting those who attempted to dispute this view: “We are defending our freedom and the right that no one dare come up to us, stick his finger in our faces and scream ‘Kike!’”84
Kiril Feferman believes that from the very first months of the war Jewish reactions to Nazi antisemitic propaganda were a principal factor in the increased patriotism of Soviet Jews. Jews realized that, unlike other Soviet citizens, they did not have the option of saving their lives by allowing themselves to be captured as prisoners of war.85
However, in addition to the recognition of the specific “external” threat posed by the Nazi enemy, the Jews had additional “internal” reasons for demonstrating patriotism. For Katsnelson, as for many other Jews, it was psychologically important to be included as an equal in the list of the peoples of the USSR, i.e. to be part of “us.” Most likely for him the idea of “we/us” was inseparably associated with the country of the Soviets, while the categorization of Jews as “you” or “others” indicated a weakening of his identity as a Soviet citizen: “If there is a battle, I – a Jew – will show others how to fight, how one should defend one's Homeland, one's honor, and freedom.” For some Jewish soldiers at the front, being recognized as fighters for the Soviet homeland was a riposte to those who wanted to deprive them of the right “to love the homeland.”
For such Jews it was important to stress that the category of Soviet patriots included not only Russians. That explains their frequent use of the word “Soviet” – in contrast to their Russian comrades-in-arms, who preferred to use the term “Russian.”86 Moreover, the issue of the equality of Jews to the other Soviet peoples affected the way Jews understood the concept of “homeland.” A Jewish engineer who was with a Red Army unit in the rear stated:
One has to make a person understand in a concrete and palpable way what Homeland means. It is not [merely] a piece of land on which a person uttered his first cries but a place where you are a person, where you are equal, where you are among your own, where people relate to you without ridiculous prejudices and presumptions, where your way of life, your worldview, your traditions, your moral and ethical ideas, and your human worth are respected. It is clear that where and when a person does not feel that, he begins to feel his link to the homeland weaken.87
5
Entries in wartime diaries indicate that a negative attitude toward Jews on the part of soldiers and officers in the Red Army was not uncommon. In referring to his experiences Boris Komsky noted that his direct superior was an antisemite. Komsky remarks how difficult it was for him to overcome the anger that this caused in him.88 In his diary of 1945 Komsky mentioned Ilya Cherepakha, who had fought with the partisans and then joined the Red Army. Cherepakha was quoted as saying, “Everywhere there is terrible antisemitism. At every step. Whether you are guilty or not, you are still blamed.”89 In 1944, the above-mentioned Shaporina, who could scarcely be suspected of having been sympathetic to Jews, stated apparently with satisfaction, “according to what one hears, there is very strong antisemitism in the army.”90
Despite her weak ethnic identity, the above-mentioned Dunaevskaia cites several examples of feeling insulted as a Jew. In one case she heard her direct superior pronounce in a particular way, as Dunaevskaia did, the “r” in the word kukuruza (corn). This word was used to determine whether a person was a Jew, since Jews tended to pronounce the letter in a guttural manner. Dunaevskaia had no doubt that her boss was expressing his antisemitism in this manner. In another case she described how at the very end of the war a drunken major insulted her as a Jewish woman.91 In his diary Gel'fand gives many examples of the negative attitude of Red Army soldiers to him personally and to other Jews as well.92
In interviews with many Soviet Jewish veterans of World War II in the early 2000s, Zvi Gitelman did not encounter any complaints about mass antisemitism in the army.93 Aron Shneer observed a similar phenomenon on the basis of interviews he conducted in the 1990s: out of 220 Soviet Jewish veterans of the Soviet–German war only 16 reported overt hostility or mockery directed against Jews on the part of their non-Jewish fellows-in-arms.94
However, these interviews do not warrant the conclusion that antisemitism in the Red Army was marginal. The question remains open as to whether – due to the impact of post-war conditions on life and Soviet propaganda – the interviewees understood the reality of Soviet antisemitism in a different way than they had done so during the war. This is a topic that requires a major study of its own. At this point I shall limit myself to several general observations.
Obviously inter-ethnic conflict was not the main challenge with which Jewish soldiers and officers had to deal at the front. There were many other problems that had to be coped with on a daily basis by Jews as well as their non-Jewish comrades. These included the ever-present danger of their own death or those of their comrades, or of being wounded, the lack of minimally decent living conditions, the monotony or even the lack of food, the cold, the filth, and physical exhaustion. Under such conditions, issues connected with ethnicity were not of primary concern. Even for those Jews who mentioned antisemitism in their letters, the latter was hardly a dominant factor in their lives on the front lines.
Perhaps equally important was the fact that Jewish soldiers and officers at the front did not take with the same degree of seriousness things that Jews in the rear perceived as clear indications of antisemitism. Most positive references by Jewish combatants to non-Jews who changed their view as a result of witnessing Jewish heroism indicated that these non-Jews had previously held anti-Jewish prejudices. However, such people were not remembered negatively by Jewish veterans who had served alongside them. In his memoirs Vulf Vilensky attempted to rationalize the “earlier” antisemitism of his commander Lysenko, attributing the latter's prejudices to his having grown up in a Ukrainian village: “Every one spoke negatively about them [the Jews].”95 Vilensky tried to generalize Lysenko's positive attitude toward him to suggest he had a new attitude toward all Jews.
In other words, both Vilensky in his memoirs and Katsnelson in his letter to Ehrenburg viewed the rejection by non-Jews of previously held antisemitic stereotypes as a significant victory. Many Jewish military personnel apparently believed that if a Jew demonstrated personal bravery and military prowess, it was possible for him to affect the general attitude toward Jews as a group – both in the army and among the Soviet population as a whole.
6
The war created its own rules of how events at the front and in the rear were to be interpreted. The spontaneous de-Stalinization felt by the people, the Soviet policy of statism, and the Russo-centrism, all of which led to the growth of national consciousness among the various groups of the population, led to an increase in the importance of ethnic problems in general and pertaining to Jews in particular. Antisemitic stereotypes that had existed in various forms in prerevolutionary times and, in a somewhat different form, in the Soviet period between the World Wars, especially ideas about the parasitism and amorality of the Jews, assumed new forms during the Soviet–German war.
Many Soviet Jews were upset at the growing antisemitism at the front and, especially, in the Soviet rear. Information about such antisemitism began to circulate in the USSR during the first months of the war. In May 1942, Ehrenburg, who was well informed due to the many letters he received, was already sufficiently aware to recognize the presence of antisemitic attitudes among some party workers. His notebook laconically stated, “antisemitism among Party officials.”96 The antisemitic attitudes among various segments of the population became more pronounced as the war proceeded.
Many Jews at the front were apparently very pained by being accused as members of their ethnic group of cowardice and lack of combat ability. Such accusations may well have affected even Jews who had stressed that previously they had felt themselves to be primarily members of the Soviet nation and only secondarily Jews. Zvi Gitleman arrived at the following conclusion about such Jews: “Perhaps we may think of the actions of Soviet Jewish combatants as resistance to the Nazi invasion by Soviet citizens who were Jews, rather than ‘Jewish resistance’ to the Nazi Holocaust.”97
Their identification of themselves as Soviet may have indicated the desire of these Jews, during the war, to see themselves as being equal to members of other Soviet ethnic groups. During the war, the Yiddish intelligentsia noted that the Jews were fighting “for their [Soviet] homeland and for the Jewish people.”98 Among other things, this phrase expressed the increased sensitivity of Jews to accusations that they lacked the patriotism that was attributed to the other ethnic groups of the USSR, in the first place to the Russians, and also the desire of Jews to challenge such accusations.
Daily life at the front – the bloodshed, the suffering, the death of comrades-in-arms, the likelihood of being killed at any moment, and, at the same time, the necessity of cooperating daily with non-Jews in carrying out dangerous combat missions – led to changes in ideas of normative behavior and shifted concern about ethnic prejudice to a subsidiary level. Encounters with antisemitism became a marginal matter.
However, information about negative attitudes toward near and dear ones in the Soviet rear and discrimination against them on ethnic grounds greatly upset Jewish soldiers and officers in the Red Army. Such a reaction to hostility toward Jews resulted from a natural concern about their loved ones in the rear and from the feeling that Jews at the front were risking their lives so that their loved ones could live without suffering any discrimination. For these Jewish fighters, conditions in the rear were supposed to be quite different from the harsh conditions at the front.
Anti-Jewish attitudes that had existed during the war among party officials and members of the creative intelligentsia who were close to the party, developed into a full-scale antisemitic policy only during the period of Stalinist state antisemitism in “the black years” of 1948–53. Then even those Jews who during the war had not perceived the increasingly negative attitudes in the society could not help but realizing they were facing a daunting new reality.
