Tragedy Of The Soviet Jewish Anti-fascist Committee

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC) in the USSR was a semi-official Jewish anti-Fascist organization founded in April 1942 in Kuibyshev, the wartime capital city of the USSR, for the purpose of mobilizing the world's Jewish into action to positively participate in the struggle against Fascism. Under the leadership of the Soviet Information Bureau and by means of publishing a Jewish newspaper entitled Eynikayt (Unification), organizing Jewish Anti-Fascist rallies, mailing publicity materials to news agencies abroad, and sending delegations to visit other countries, JAFC not only won wide sympathy and moral support for the USSR from its western allies, but also obtained substantial material and financial assistance for the Red Army and the Soviet people as well, thus making indelible contribution to the victory of the Patriotic War in the USSR.However, after the end of the Second World War and with the outbreak of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR, JAFC began to receive constant blows in the USSR. Though it was loyal to the Soviet Union and often had to stoop to compromise, JAFC was eventually ordered by the Soviet authorities to be dissolved in November in 1948 on the charges of conducting anti-Soviet publicity and providing anti-Soviet information for intelligence agencies abroad. Before long, JAFC's leaders were arrested and imprisoned one after another, and then in August 1952, having suffered all kinds of tortures, they were executed by shooting, thus causing a big tragedy in the history of the USSR. Based on the latest declassified documents about JAFC and drawing on the research findings available in and outside China, this paper attempts to make a thorough study of this issue in the hope of finding out the historic truth of this tragedy.This paper falls into six chapters, in addition to Introduction and Conclusion. The introduction mainly presents the reasons for choosing the topic, the literature review, the methodology adopted in this paper, and the problems to be tackled.Chapter One traces back to the Jewish's historical conditions in the period of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet government's policy toward the Jewish until the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in June 1941, in order to find out the historical roots of JAFC's tragedy. This paper reveals that, as a reflection of the Jewish's patriotism, JAFC was founded when the Soviet Union suffered serious defeats in the early days of the Patriotic War and the anti-Fascist enthusiasm of the Soviet masses ran high after the Soviet government's mobilization. JAFC members included the celebrities among the Jewish in the USSR such as famous writers, poets, scientists, and actors. On the surface, JAFC was a non-governmental body, but from its inception, all its activities were under the tight control of the Soviet government.Chapters Two & Three review JAFC's main activities. Chapter Two focuses on the great contribution JAFC made to the Soviet Union's anti-Fascist War by means of organizing three Jewish anti-Fascist rallies, holding JAFC's three plenary sessions, and sending JAFC's delegations to visit America, Britain, Mexico, and Canada. It was the heyday of JAFC and it is also one of the main contents of this paper. Chapter Three centers around JAFC's concern for the fate of the Jewish in the forms of assisting Jewish compatriots, reviving the Jewish culture, proposing to set up Crimea Jewish Republic, receiving Jewish visitors from abroad, and fighting anti-Semitism at home.Chapter Four explores the influence of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR on the fate of the JAFC. After the end of WWII, with the changes of the situation at home and abroad, anti-Semitism began to be the USSR's official policy. The Soviet authorities became more and more intolerant of the nationalist elements in JAFC's publicity and its intervention in the Jewish affairs at home. JAFC's international activities were also brought under tight control and its whole work was actually in the state of semi-paralysis. The proposal of foundingCrimea Jewish Republic was abandoned and it later turned out to be one of the major proofs for the charge against JAFC. After the outbreak of the Cold War, S.M.Mikhoels, chairman of JAFC, was secretly murdered by Stalin on a fabricated charge. In May 1948, when the state of Israel was founded, the nationalist sentiment of the Jewish in the USSR surged up to an unprecedented height so that JAFC was pushed on the crest' of the wave. The Soviet authorities were greatly shocked and they finally ordered to dissolve the only organization representative of the Jewish in the USSR.Chapter Five describes the process of compiling and then aborting The Black Book. As one of the important projects JAFC cooperated with its overseas counterparts, The Black Book was intended to stimulate overseas Jewish anti-Fascist enthusiasm by exposing the atrocities that Nazis were slaughtering the Jewish. Nevertheless, after the end of WWII and with the changes of the situation at home and abroad, the contents of The Black Book failed to suit the taste of the Soviet authorities so that it was banned and destroyed shortly before it was published.Chapter Six focuses on "the case of JAFC". This case was carefully planned by KGB with long-time preparation at Stalin's suggestion. It was the best expression of the anti-Jewish policy pursued by the Soviet authorities when the Cold War reached its first climax. The purpose was to wipe out the intellectual elite and core leaders of the Jewish in the USSR. This tragedy came to its climax when JAFC's leaders were shot to death. "The case of JAFC" can be said to be a critical one, among other anti-Jewish cases fabricated by the Soviet authorities in the same period, as it is directly or indirectly related to many other cases. For example, the world-shocked Doctor's Plot is, in fact, the extension and escalation of this case. Stalin's intention was to banish the whole Jewish nation in the USSR so as to destroy the so-called "the Fifth Column" before the outbreak of the war with the USA.For various reasons, the redressing of "the case of JAFC" has followed a long course. It was not until 1988 that the Soviet Communist Party eventually decided to rehabilitate the reputation of the victims of this unjust case. Looking back on this historical tragedy, we can find that it resulted from the Stalinist system, the anti-Jewish tradition in the USSR, and Stalin's abnormal mentality. It not only led tens of thousands of Jewish people to emigrate overseas and thus deteriorated the Soviet-Israeli relations, but also produced extremely unfavorable influence on international socialist movement and buried hidden perils for the collapse of the USSR. The tragedy of JAFC warns us that, in a multi-ethnic country, this kind of tragedy can only be avoided when the rights of each ethnic group are respected and protected by law.