THE CURRENT POSITION OF JEWS IN THE USSR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00472A000800010034-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: September 22, 1965
• Content Type: MEMO

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CONFIDENTIAL
22 September 1965
MEMORANDUM
The Current Position of Jews in the USSR
Soviet Jews are still discriminated against, both
as representatives of an officially designated "nation-
ality" and as "believers" in a religion recognized by
Soviet laws.
Jews are still the only "national" minority in
the Soviet Union lacking their own schools and permanent
theaters. The 2,268,000 Soviets who claim Jewish "nation-
ality" on their passports still have no Yiddish language
newspaper. By contrast, the Marls, a Central Asian
minority numbering 504,000 people, have 17 newspapers.
In 1961 alone, 44 books were published in the Mari
language, whereas the publicatic3n of books in Yiddish,
which did not begin until 1959, has never been higher
than three a year. There are still no research institutes
devoted to preserving the history and culture of the
Jews in the Soviet Union despite the cultural research
done on other national minorities.
By comparison with other "religious cults" recognized
by Soviet laws, Judaism has been especially penalized
by the ban on the manufacture of religious ritual articles,
such as prayer shawls. Also, only one small printing
of the Jewish prayer book has been authorized. This
was an edition of 3,000 copies in 1958. In the same
year, the Baptists were authorized a Russian language
Protestant Bible in 10,000 copies and the Moslems in
Central Asia an edition of the Koran in 9,000 copies.
The Russian Orthodox Church which itself labors under
the difficulties encountered by all religions in the
Soviet Union, nevertheless is allowed to produce such
ritual objects as church vessels, vestments, beads,
crucifixes, candles and ikons. A printing in 50,000
copies of the Russian Orthodox version of the Bible
was authorized in 1957.
COQ', ENTIAL
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A more pervasive (but more difficult to prove) form
of discrimination appears in party and government appoint-
ments and in admissions to higher educational institutions.
Jews are admitted to the Communist Party youth organ-
ization and to membership in the Party itself, but few
hold office in these organizations.
One of the more obvious forms of discrimination
has been the regime's suppression of reference to Hitler's
special persecution of the Jews. The fiction that the
death camps of Nazi Germany were populated entirely by
prisoners of war is still maintained. Related to this
is the fact that the catalogue of Stalin's crimes com-
piled since 1956 contains no reference to the terror
he directed against Soviet Jews during the last four
years of his life.
Since 1961, various liberal Soviet writers have
tried to break through this ban, the most widely pub-
licized effort being that made in 1961 by the young
Soviet poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko (not Jewish), in his
poem "Babi Yar." (Babi Yar is a ravine outside Kiev
which was the site of a Nazi slaughter of about 100,000
persons, of whom 90 percent were Jews). The poet and
his poem were so harshly attacked for their insistence
that anti-Semitism persists in the USSR that infrequent
public presentations of the poem since have become a
temperature gauge for judging the Soviet cultural
climate.
There is considerable evidence of the regime's
sensitivity to world opinion, at least in terms of
protecting its public image. A particularly scurrilous
attack on Judaism, published in 1964 as part of the
continuing anti-religious campaign, was eventually
criticized in the Soviet press and withdrawn for "cor-
rection" after Western expressions of shock and dismay.
A Yiddish language magazine, intended as a bi-monthly,
was established in 1961 in response to Western criticism.
Each fall, it announces increasingly grandiose publishing
plans for !iddish language books, but its accomplish-
ments have thus far been limited to three books a year.
There have also been promises of improvement for
Judaism as a religion. For instance, Moscow Jews were
able this year to obtain matzoh for the celebration of
Passover after the difficulties they encountered last
year were given wide publicity in the Western press.
CONFIDENTIAL
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CONFIDENTIAL
Sensitivity to Western criticism is also seen in
an announcement last August by the Soviet Embassy here
in Washington of plans to build a memorial at Babi Yar.
Word of this was, however, released only to Washington
correspondents, and existence of the plan has not been
confirmed by Soviet officials elsewhere.
The most authoritative reaction to Western criticism
was contained in a July speech by Premier Aletsey Kosygin,
in which he called for friendship between the nation-
alities of the Soviet Union and specifically warned
against anti-Semitism. This theme was repeated in a
Pravda editorial in early September which has since
been reprinted in a number of provincial newspapers.
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