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Abstract
The antisemitic campaign of the late 1940s and early 1950s in the Soviet Union has been widely studied both in Russia and abroad. However, its manifestations in school‐level education remain largely unresearched. This article, based on materials from the St Petersburg Archive of Historical–Political Documents, aims to contribute to such research. At its core is a description and analysis of materials from school Communist Party meetings, which allow us to see the everyday life of the school, including its usually unpublicised sides. The evidence shows that antisemitism in schools was both censured, as any infringement of discipline in Stalin‐era schools had to be, as well as encouraged in one way or another. The study of these materials is also useful for a broader analysis of the mechanisms and distinctive characteristics of the interaction between Soviet government and society during these years.
Notes
1. For example, Borschagovsky, Zapiski balovnia sud’by or Rappoport, Na rubezhe dvukh vekov.
2. For example, Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina; idem, Out of the Red Shadows; Vaksberg, Stalin protiv evreev.
3. Nadzhafarov, Stalin i kosmopolitizm; Kostyrchenko, Gosudarstvennyi antisemitizm v SSSR.
4. Konstantinov, “Higher Education”; idem, “Soviet Jewish Scientific Personnel.”
5. For example, Zubkova et al., Sovietskaia zhizn’; Zubkova, Russia after the War; Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism.
6. Fitzpatrick, “New Perspectives on Stalinism,” 358.
7. See Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse.
8. Ewing, Teachers of Stalinism.
9. Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia.
10. See for example Gurvits and Filichev, “Trebovaniia k pis’mennym rabotam po matematike,” 40–54.
11. Anweiler, “Monism and Pluralism in Soviet Education,” 169–79.
12. Ewing, in Teachers of Stalinism, discusses the problem of discipline in Soviet schools before the Second World War; the discipline did not improve after the war, particularly in boys’ schools.
13. Kelly, Children’s World, 93.
14. This occurred even in such seemingly apolitical spheres as mathematics education; see Karp, “The Cold War in the Soviet School,” 23–43.
15. Nadzhafarov, Stalin i kosmopolitizm.
16. For example, they are described in Grossman, Life and Fate.
17. See, for example, Lustiger, Stalin and the Jews; Gilboa, The Black Years of Soviet Jewry.
18. Nadzhafarov, Stalin i kosmopolitizm, 232–40.
19. Ibid., 239. All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted.
20. See Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows; or, as an example of a historical study of these events, Azadovskii, “From Anti‐Westernism to Antisemitism,” 66–80.
21. Ardamatsky, “Pinya iz Zhmerinki.”
22. Quoted in Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows, 290.
23. Ibid., 293.
24. Vaksberg, Stalin protiv evreev.
25. Quoted in Rappoport, Na rubezhe dvukh vekov, 184.
26. Pravda, 7 April 1953.
27. Konstantinov, “Higher Education.”
28. Ibid., 50.
29. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina, 591.
30. Ibid., 591–3.
31. Zubkova et al., Sovetskaia zhizn’, 468.
32. Kopelev, Utoli moi pechali, 233.
33. Rappoport, Na rubezhe dvukh vekov, 92.
34. Eidelman, Dnevniki Natana Eidelmana, 31.
35. Leder, My Life in Stalinist Russia, 302.
36. Solzhenitsyn, V kruge, 165.
37. “Itogi odnogo ekzamena” [The results of one exam], Uchitelskaia gazeta, 24 January 1953.
38. About Vygodsky, see, for example, Borodin and Bugai, Biografichesky slovar’ deyateley v oblasti matematiki.
39. Tsentralnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko‐politicheskikh dokumentov (Central Government Archive of Historical–Political Documents, St Petersburg; henceforth “TSGA IPD”), f. 24, op. 46, d. 77.
40. Ibid., 10, 77–9, 95.
41. Note that what was happening in this institute resembled what was happening in the country as a whole. See Konstantinov, “Higher Education.”
42. Mention should also be made of fiction, in which the topic of antisemitism in the schools during the 1950s has been addressed in considerable detail. See, for example, Shmukler, Ukhodim iz Rossii.
43. TSGA IPD, f. 3329, op. 3, d. 1, 36.
44. TSGA IPD, f. 3782, op. 4, d. 2, 45.
45. TSGA IPD, f. 4170, op. 3, d. 16, 7.
46. TSGA IPD, f. 3329, op. 4, d. 1, 24.
47. Ibid., 46.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 47.
50. TSGA IPD, f. 3329, op. 6, d. 1, 27.
51. Ibid., 27.
52. Ibid., 40.
53. TSGA IPD, f. 3001, op. 1, d. 8, 12.
54. Ibid., 12.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid., 13.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., 26.
59. Ibid.
60. TSGA IPD, f. 3001, op. 1, d. 10, 20.
61. Ibid., 21.
62. Ibid., 22.
63. TSGA IPD, f. 262, op. 3, d. 8, 40
64. TSGA IPD, f. 285, op. 4, d. 38, 19.
65. Ibid., 22.
66. Ibid., 46.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 49.
69. For example, Shifman, You Failed Your Math Test.
70. For example, Kara‐Murza, Evrei, Dissidenty, Evrokommunizm. One should also mention Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s controversial book, Dvesti let vmeste.
71. Arkady Gaidar is considered (or at any rate was considered) a classic writer of Soviet children’s literature. This short story went through numerous editions. For example, it may be found in Gaidar, Golubaia chashka.
72. Kostyrchenko, Gosudarstvennyi antisemitizm v SSSR, 14.
73. Changes in the attitude toward nationalistic questions in the USSR have been treated in the scholarly literature; e.g. see Martin, “Modernization or Neo‐traditionalism,” 348–67.
74. During and after the Second World War, some ethnic groups were accused of being traitors and deported en masse. See, for example, one of the first books devoted to this topic: Nekrich, The Punished Peoples.
75. The government felt freer when confronting cases in which the contradiction with the official ideology appeared weaker and, more importantly, that were expected to have a smaller public resonance. For example, in its resolution concerning V. Muradeli’s opera The Great Friendship, the Politburo did not hesitate to write that: “The Chechens and the Ingushes hindered the development of friendship among peoples … in the North Causcasus”: Nadzhafarov,Stalin i kosmopolitizm, 160.
76. Rappoport, Na rubezhe dvukh vekov, 92–3.
77. The surviving reports of top party officials show that open calls for violent action against Jews were seen as “incorrect manifestations and views” outside the schools as well; see Altshuler, “More about Public Reaction to the Doctors’ Plot,” 36.
78. See Fitzpatrick, “New Perspectives on Stalinism,” for a discussion of the structure of Stalin’s government which argues that the government had less actual control than it claimed.
79. Substantial evidence that certain major steps to this end were being prepared has survived, for example, Kaverin, Epilog.
80. The quotation is taken from a toast made by Stalin at a reception in the Kremlin on 24 May 1945: Stalin, O Velikoy Otechestvennoy voine Sovetskogo Soiuza.