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ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on anti-Semitic atrocities in the cities of Rubtsovsk on 4–5 July and Kiev in early September 1945. My intention is to look behind the anti-Semitic incidents (or the incidents which were interpreted as anti-Semitic ones in advance) to disclose inner frontlines within Soviet society that were constructed during and right after the war. Behind the incidents, one can discern grave social conflicts which endangered the public and social order of the Soviet Union during and after the war. The massive wave of migration, referred to as evacuation and re-evacuation, hit the liberated western territories of the USSR most heavily, and especially the Ukraine. The housing stock of the cities was heavily damaged in the liberated territories, which made the countless and endless conflicts over housing even tenser. This was true in the city of Kiev, from where many Jews had been evacuated at the beginning of the war, and where Jews who returned tried to assert their legal claims to their residences, which in the meantime had been occupied by migrants displaced within the territory of the Soviet Union by the upheavals of the war. Although the latent tensions and social-political conflicts during and right after the war within Soviet society sometimes took the form of anti-Semitic incidents, the characterization of the processes underway exclusively as manifestations of anti-Semitism seems reductive and simplistic, especially as part of a Geistesgeschichte. The possible conflicts caused by the massive evacuation and re-evacuation cannot be reduced to the revival of an allegedly traditional anti-Semitism. Even in the war-time and/or post-war Soviet Union, anti-Semitism was a ‘cultural code,’ i.e. a language through which certain taboos could be named. The allegedly unified Soviet society in fact was divided between the actual ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, the Haves and the Have Nots, the system and its critics.
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Notes
1. Klier, “The Pogrom Paradigm.”
2. E. g. Shvarts, “Antisemitizm”; Zhigulev, “O presledovaniyakh evreev.”; and Ol’shanskii, Poslevoennyi antisemitizm. Russkaya Mysl’.
3. Bauer, Inkeles, and Kluchkohn, How The Soviet System Works.
4. Chernin, “Making Soviet Jews.”
5. On the formation of this “fact of historiography” see Kende, “Jewish Communism.”
6. Arkhiv Mezhdunarodnogo Memoriala (AMM) Fond 2. Opis’ 1. Delo 77. Kuperman, Pyat’desyat.
7. See for example Pichkar’, Evrej v Rossii (manuscript, held at the library of the Moswcow MEMORIAl), 21–23.
8. Beilinson, Soevstko vremy, 420–32. Beilinson described a “pogrom” in late 1952, when he was thrown off of a tram in Moscow. Actually in his memoirs, which are partially based on his diaries, one can read about pogroms which were committed against Poles in the Ukraine in 1943–1944. Ibid., 236. Litvinova, Ocherki proshedshikh let, 251–2. Rapoport, To li byl’, to li nebyl’. 16. Rapoport mentions retrospectively contemporary rumours on preparing pogroms. Gessen, Belostok – Moskva. Gessen seemed to know that, in addition to bloody pogroms, public executions were also going to be held on Red Square to incite a nationwide anti-Semitic wave of pogroms. Gessen, like many others, retrospectively believed that Stalin made preparations for the deportation of Jews too. Ibid. 106–31. The old Zionist memoirist Joe Lerner also believed this. Lerner, Proshchaj Rossiya!, 295–6.
9. AMM Fond 1. Opis’ 2. Delo 54. Daskovskij, Vospominaniya, 53–58.
10. Shifrin, Chetvertoe izmerenie. 15.
11. Bergmann, “Pogroms.”
12. Grüner, Patrioten und Kosmopoliten. Grüner, “Did Anti-Semitic Mass Violence.”
13. Engel, “Away From a Definition of Antisemitism.” Engel’s essay is a response to Gavin Langmuir’s outstanding studies written mostly in the 1970s, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism. Langmuir’s studies of the medieval anti-Judaic popular movements (mostly blood libels) are still useful because of their attention to detail. At last since Engel’s essay, it is permissible to ignore the definition of anti-Semitism in a historical study like this one, which does not focus on this form of racism. On the difficulties of the definition of anti-Semitism, from Gregor von Rezzori to Natan Sznaider, most recently see Cȃrstocea and Kovács, “Introduction.”
14. This expression is from a critical reading of Volkov, “Readjusting Cultural Codes.” Anti-Semitism could be a “cultural code” for anti-communism in and outside the Soviet Union. Kende, “Jewish Communism.”
15. “Byvshie frontoviki-evrei.”
16. Ibid., 66.
17. Kostyrchenko, Tajnaya politika Stalina, 442.
18. Although the letter is partially published I refer to the complete original. RGASPI Fond 17. Opis’ 125. Delo 310. 47–48.
19. Ibid.
20. “Byvshie frontoviki-evrei,” 68–9.
21. Yad Vashem Archive (YVA) M.37/191 12.Originally TsGAOOU 1-23-1477.
22. YVA M.37/191 11-12.
23. Mitsel’: Evrei Ukrainy v 1945–1953 gg. 63–69; and Kostyrchenko, Tainaya politika Stalina. Ch. II. 119–25.
24. YVA TR 18/233. 267–273.
25. On the prehistory of the “so called Kiev pogrom” see Mitsel, Evrei Ukrainy, 36–41, 63–9; and Kostyrchenko, Tainaya politika Stalina, 117–23.
26. YVA TR 18/233 18-190.
27. YVA TR 18/233 267-269.
28. YVA TR 18/233 79-80.
29. YVA TR 18/233 169.
30. YVA TR 18/233 175-176.
31. YVA TR 18/233 47. (Originally: Arkhiv KGBUSSR Delo 148.468 Arkh. no. 10380).
32. YVA TR 18/233 48. 268.
33. YVA TR 18/233 52-53.
34. YVA TR 18/233 89-90.
35. Kumanev, “Perelom v razvitii ékonomiki.” 1942 was the most difficult year for the Soviet hinterland and economy. To ensure survival, the Soviets “used maximally their inner resources,” which in fact meant an exploitation of human resources too on a scale never seen before. Working hours increased while incomes and supplies decreased.
36. Ibid., 393.
37. Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 50.
38. Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned, 597. Mandelstam uses the metaphor of invading hordes, which is a strongly worded metaphor in Russian.
39. Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 32–41; and Stronski, Tashkent, 84–9.
40. Grinberg, Evrei v Al’ma-Ate, 82.
41. Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 229–30.
42. “Byvshie frontoviki-evrei,” 32–3.
43. Shikheeva-Gaister, Deti vragov naroda, 80–8.
44. Trakhtman-Palkhan, Vospominaniya, 201–8.
45. Ibid., 236.
46. See for example the Latvian Jew Rivka Rabinovich’s memoirs. Rabinovich, Skvoz’ tri stroya, 29–102. Gessen, Belostok – Moskva, 62–84. Gessen went from Uzbekistan to Siberia (the Altai-region) for better supplies of food. She could eat there properly only after getting a job thanks to a friend of the family in the local spirit factory, where she was able to obtain “funds” for market exchange. On the role of spirits and vodka in the hinterland marketplace see also Shabanova, Vospominaniya o sebe, 125.
47. Zimanenko, Moi vek, 134. The case was not exceptional. See also Gekhtman, Po tu storonu fronta, 168–79.
48. AMM Fond 2. Opis’ 1. Delo 65; and Zlenko, Vospominaniya o bylom, 63–74.
49. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’noi I Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI) Fond 17. Opis’ 121 Delo 210. 70–73.
50. RGASPI Fond 17. Opis’ 121 Delo 210. 76.
51. Manley, “Where should we Resettle the Comrades Next?”
52. Beilinson, Sovetskoe vremya, 140–72.
53. Ibid., 132.
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Tamás Kende
Tamás Kende has MA degrees in History and Russian from ELTE Budapest University and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Debrecen. His research focuses on the comparative history of modern Eastern Europe, particularly the social and cultural history of Jews and the communist parties of the region. Kende also has considerable experience in the organization of historical exhibitions highlighting the social and cultural aspects of everyday life in modern Eastern Europe.