Stalin Promotes Top Anti-Semite to Leading Post (20 June (original) (raw)
Labor Action, 20 June 1949
Daniel Davidson
From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 25, 20 June 1949, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
A year and a half ago many Russian Jews heaved sighs of relief when Georgi F. Alexandrov, director of the propaganda section of the Russian Communist Party, fell into disgrace and was demoted to a minor post. Alexandrov and Alexander Shcherbakoff (died in 1945) were considered the chief architects of the Russian anti-Jewish policy initiated during the period of the Russo-German Pact. With the two most prominent promoters of governmental anti-Semitism either dead or disgraced, it was no wonder that many Russian Jews entertained the illusion that the dangerous anti-Jewish trends would be reversed.
At that time Labor Action pointed out that to saddle minor bureaucrats with full responsibility for initiating and carrying through a governmental policy on their own reflected a dangerously naive misunderstanding of the dynamics of Stalinist totalitarianism.
Confirmation of the view that the policies of Alexandrov have Politbureau backing and that the current anti-Semitic drive in Russia is Politbureau inspired is now to be seen in a minor notice in a dispatch to the N.Y. Times, June 6, by C.L. Sulzberger. Under the head Quiet Soviet Purge Held Taking Place_, Sulzberger reports that “persons relegated to obscurity by Zhdanov are rehabilitating themselves. Typical of these is G.F. Alexandrov, one of the party’s propaganda chiefs, who is making a comeback with Mr. Malenkov’s aid.”_
In light of the recently renewed and intensified governmentally inspired anti-Semitic drive against the Jews of Russia, this parallel rehabilitation by the Politbureau of the best known and leading anti-Semitic is a fact of great significance.
Last updated on 9 June 2021