The study of Soviet Jews is a thriving area of historical research, and for good reason. After the opening of Soviet archives, a number of outstanding studies have greatly enriched our knowledge about various aspects of Jewish life in the Soviet state and, when read together, reveals an amazing story of a vibrant and ever-transforming community, which redefined its Jewishness to fit a complex Soviet reality.Footnote 1 This body of research has taught us not only about the diversity, triumphs, and tragedies of Jewish life in the long twentieth century, but also shed light on nationality policies and vicissitudes of life as a national group under the ever-changing Soviet state.
The immediate postwar decade is a domain where the historiography shows the least diversity in its choice of topics and approaches. Stalin's persecutions of Jews is the subject that looms heaviest, with the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Doctors’ Plot as the defining issues. Historians have probed these brutal crimes, while trying to understand the mechanisms behind them.Footnote 2 Stalin's personal antisemitism and his fear of Jews forming a potential “fifth column” in the context of a raging Cold War have been put forward as the primary explanations. The narrative that emerged from scholarly literature, and which is widely shared among the public, interprets the history of Soviet Jews during the late Stalinist era as one long phase described as the “Black Years.” In addition to its deadly character, this period is also viewed as a time of “excluding Jews from the state machinery,” when “managerial staff, from ministerial rank and down, and the artistic and humanities intelligentsia (journalists, university professors, and others) suffered the most.”Footnote 3 The beginning of such official antisemitism is located by scholars in the late 1930s and an intensification is interpreted to have taken place during WWII.Footnote 4
This article also examines the transformations from the postwar decade, yet it aims to shift the locus of attention from the Kremlin and issues of repression, to the Soviet periphery and the tangled circumstances that affected the position of Jews there. Previous efforts to move away from the Soviet center were undertaken by Elena Genina, who focused on southwestern Siberia, and Anna Kimerling, who studied two Ural regions during late Stalinism. Both scholars still concentrate on the issue of the state's repression of Jews, however.Footnote 5 Recently, Leonid Smilovitsky offered an analysis of Jewish life during the first post-WWII decade in Soviet Belorussia. Smilovitsky's study documented the ongoing suppression of Jewish religious and cultural life, but also indicated that Jews rose to form a significant and disproportionately-sized group in leading managerial positions in Belorussia's economic, educational, scientific, and cultural institutions between 1945 and 1950.Footnote 6 In many crucial ways this last observation signals trends differing from those found in the center. This puzzling matter requires further scholarly clarification and development, including responding to such questions as: was the “policy toward Jews” in the periphery of the Soviet state different from the one at the center during the first postwar decade? What does this tell us about official Soviet antisemitism and nationalities policies? How does this reflect upon our understanding of late Stalinism in general?
This research provides a new avenue for exploring the position and trajectory of Jewish life in the western periphery of the Soviet state during the late Stalinist period, by bringing to attention the case of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR). Specifically, it seeks to illuminate the professional situation of Jews while simultaneously exploring the specificity of the local context that influenced the relationship between Jews, state/party institutions, and non-Jews in this territory. Drawing on previously unused archival materials culled in Chișinău and Moscow, this investigation documents both the opportunities and limitations faced by Jews in the MSSR, while placing these phenomena inside the framework of both Soviet nationalities policies and its accompanying cadres policies. It links the intricate outcomes of the Soviet Union's “neo-indigenization” policies of the post-war period to Jewish socio-economic mobility (and eventual displacement). It also, more broadly, shows how divisive these policies were for the relationship between the various ethnic groups, and the latter's conflicting perceptions about ongoing transformations. Among this study's other contributions, it provides first-hand accounts of the legacy Romania's prior official antisemitism had on postwar MSSR society, while disaggregating various knotted roots of anti-Jewish sentiments in this newly Sovietizing territory. Importantly, this study intervenes in the larger debates about how various policies crafted at the center of the Soviet state translated into the periphery, arguing that local concerns shaped these policies in their own, unique ways.
The population of the territory that became the MSSR went through severe political and cultural fractures during the first half of the twentieth century. Initially part of the Russian Empire, it twice became part of Romania (1918–40, 1941–44) and was twice incorporated into the USSR (1940–41, and after 1944).Footnote 7 After it regained control of this area, Moscow continued the sweeping reorganizations it set in motion during 1940–41, which were similar to the policies it implemented across the Soviet Union during the interwar period.Footnote 8 During the first decade of the Soviet state's existence, a portion of Russia's Jews experienced the destruction of their livelihood and lifestyle while another portion benefitted from significant upward mobility; Bessarabian Jews experienced a similar fate when they came into the vortex of transformations occurring within the newly formed MSSR. Comparatively highly educated, with a better command of the Russian language, more urban, and politically trustworthy (ethnic Moldovans were perceived by the Soviet regime as being more loyal to the Romanian authorities), a part of Bessarabian Jews and the Jews who arrived there from other Soviet territories in the second half of the 1940s quickly advanced in numerous positions, becoming a noticeable presence in the republic.
The Jewish Cadres in Soviet Moldavia
Unfortunately, no population census is available to inform us of the Jewish share of Soviet Moldavia's population immediately after WWII. The first postwar Soviet census took place in 1959 and found 3.3 percent of the MSSR population (95,104) was Jewish; it was the Soviet republic with the highest percentage of Jews. This was less than half of the 7.2 percent (204,858) that Jews numbered according to the 1930 census in Bessarabia.Footnote 9 The decrease was primarily the result of the Holocaust, when tens of thousands of Bessarabian Jews were massacred or perished in Transnistrian camps.Footnote 10 Given the existing numbers, it would be sensible to assume that after WWII the share of Jews in the MSSR did not surpass four percent. Yet, similarly to what was attested by Smilovitsky in Soviet Belorussia during the second half of the 1940s, and in contrast to the exclusionary tendencies in the original Soviet territories described by scholars, in Soviet Moldavia Jews were propelled into positions of authority in significant numbers during this period. As local archival material demonstrates, in some professional areas Jews were significantly overrepresented relative to their share of the population.
According to the 1946 list of the leading cadres of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party (CP) of the MSSR and regional and city party councils, 22 percent of members were Jewish.Footnote 11 Concurrently, 14 percent of the leading personnel of the ministries and institutions of the MSSR were Jews.Footnote 12 In some ministries the numbers of Jews was more significant than others. For example, Jews were predominant among the people invited from other Soviet republics to work for the local Ministry of Food Industry.Footnote 13 In the Moldavian prosecutors’ offices, 17 percent of the nomenklatura were Jewish.Footnote 14 Even inside the Moldavian Ministry of Internal Affairs,Footnote 15 a sphere which during the interwar era was entirely outside the reach of Bessarabian Jews, by 1950 Jews comprised 5.6 percent of the nomenklatura list and 6.6 percent of the personnel at the level of the Ministry's departments.Footnote 16
The Jewish presence in Soviet Moldavia's leading cultural institutions was also significant throughout the entire period, even if it showed some fluctuation. In 1945, 33 percent of the membership of the MSSR's Union of Writers were of Jewish origin, and by 1949 this proportion increased to 43 percent; although it decreased back to 33 percent by 1953.Footnote 17 Jews were a significant group in the Union of Composers of the MSSR: in 1948 the Union's 18 members included eight Jews. Even more surprising, if one takes into account the climax of anti-Jewish sentiments in Moscow in the early 1950s, the proportion of Jewish members in the Union of Composers in the MSSR had increased further by 1953.Footnote 18 Among the members of the MSSR's Union of Artists, Jews comprised 16.6 percent for three consecutive years (1944–1946); their share dropped to 10.6 percent in 1948, yet grew again to 14–15 percent in the following years, and jumped to 20 percent by 1953.Footnote 19
This tendency for Jewish advancement was a novel phenomenon in the local context.Footnote 20 While some Jews in interwar Bessarabia enjoyed material wealth and its associated privileges, high state offices were basically unreachable for Jews. Correspondingly, many urban and educated Jews concentrated in commerce, banking, the medical sphere, and independent professions. In part, the professional distribution of Jews in postwar Soviet Moldavia reflected this inherited situation from the interwar period. For example, in 1946, 59 percent of lawyers within the membership of the MSSR's Collegium of Advocates were Jewish.Footnote 21 While lawyers’ nationality at the time did not seem to raise any open objections (at least in documents that described the situation), their educational background disquieted Soviet authorities. An informative note from 1946 raised great concern that from the 79 lawyers with higher education “only 18 were educated in the USSR, while the rest of them [were educated predominantly during the interwar period] in capitalist countries (Romania, Hungary, France, etc.).” Allegedly, these lawyers were prone to “break the law of juridical practice and allowed apolitical expressions into their work.”Footnote 22 Despite the regime's desire to hire both ideologically suitable and well-educated cadres, these two principles were working against each other. A shortage of trained and trusted professionals was the dominant reality in the MSSR, and Moscow was trying to fill the gap by sending cadres from the Soviet heartland. Cadres of Russian, Ukrainian, or Jewish ethnic backgrounds most often received such assignments.
The healthcare system of Soviet Moldavia was another sphere significantly staffed with professionals of Jewish nationality. Part of the medical cadres were native Bessarabians, while another part, especially those in leading positions, were Soviet Jews who arrived in the MSSR on professional assignments. A 1946 party report on healthcare in Chișinău identified 69 percent of the doctors employed in the city's medical institutions as Jewish.Footnote 23 In 1949, in the town of Bălți, 57 percent of doctors were Jewish.Footnote 24 Jews formed 28 percent of Bălți's medical assistant personnel in 1950.Footnote 25
Least welcomed by Soviet authorities were the thousands of Bessarabian Jews that earlier belonged to “bourgeois” professions, such as merchants, brokers, bankers, and industrialists. Over one thousand of these Jewish professionals had already lost their freedom, property, and livelihood in 1940–41.Footnote 26 After the war, those who escaped the first wave of Soviet deportations and the Romanian Holocaust were certain to encounter further difficulties in their attempts to integrate into the Soviet planned economy. Yet, small-scale private entrepreneurship was still possible during the initial post-war years, and many Jews tried to find available sources of income in this sphere, especially by organizing themselves in artels.Footnote 27 In spite of a certain leniency towards smaller segments of the economy, the authorities were committed to preventing the “penetration” of state enterprises and cooperatives by “private agents.” An order from April 14, 1948 asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the MSSR to tackle this issue.Footnote 28
With the establishment of the Soviet system and its concomitant easier access to higher education, numerous local Jews rushed to benefit from an opportunity hindered by the previous regime. Given free and equal access to Soviet Moldavia's universities, many Jewish candidates made formidable competitors. At the same time, the Moldovans, the biggest ethnic group, was predominantly rural and with a low level of education.Footnote 29 Given these circumstances, after WWII the number of Jewish students reached disproportionate heights in the MSSR.
In 1945 the Chișinău Pedagogical Institute, the first Soviet institution of higher education opened in the MSSR, numbered among its students: 44.8 percent Jews, 26.2 percent Russians, 18.6 percent Moldovans, and 10.2 percent Ukrainians. In this particular context the Ministry of Education of the MSSR noted with concern “the abnormal situation related to the national make-up of [students from] educational institutions.”Footnote 30 Obviously, the unease was created by the fact that the predominant ethnic group among the student body was Jewish, followed by Russians. Equally disquieting was the low number of Moldovans, which were both the Republic's most numerous ethnic group and had been expected to be the backbone of future local cadres. Less striking, but still disproportionate, was the Jewish presence among the students of Chișinău State University. In 1946, 15 percent of the student body enrolled in first year studies and 21 percent of students already in their second year were Jews.Footnote 31 Generally, the number of Jewish students enrolled in Moldavia's institutions of higher education kept growing steadily until 1953:
Number of Jewish Students in Institutions of Higher Education in the MSSR (1947–1953) Footnote 32
If put in percentages, the share of Jewish students oscillated during this period: the lowest point (16.3 percent) was recorded in 1949–50, and the highest (19.7 percent) was registered in 1947–48. The recorded fluctuation is not prone to straightforward analysis. For example, while the 1949–50 low point might be explained by the negative turn of official policies towards Jews, this explanation defies logic with the subsequent increase seen over the next two years to 17 and 18.2 percent. A meaningful pattern appears only when looking at numbers on a broader temporal canvas. The postwar Stalinist era is the only period in the MSSR's history when the share of enrolled Jewish students was above 15 percent, as well as the only time with some vacillations. From 1954 until 1989, the share of Jewish students in the MSSR represented an uninterrupted line downwards: it declined consistently every year, and reached 2.2 percent by 1989.Footnote 33
Additionally, Jews outnumbered other groups even in night schools. These specialized schools were opened by the Soviet regime in order to help prepare undereducated workers for university studies. A 1946 review of Chișinău's night schools pointed out that from 179 total student enrollment in the city's three schools, 54.7 percent were Jews and 38.5 percent were Russians.Footnote 34 Moldovans formed only 2.8 percent of the night school student body.
While the regime embarked on its course of preparing Moldavian national cadres, many local and Soviet Jews who arrived in the area watched such policies with concern, aware that they could damage their own positions and future professional advancement.Footnote 35 The regime's declared embrace of the principles of meritocracy and the promotion of cadres from “the titular nation” was clearly bound to create tensions. A 1946 review of the situation in the Chișinău Pedagogical Institute reported that, among its Jewish students, there existed an “incorrect understanding and interpretation of the nationality policy of the party regarding the promotion and raising of Moldavian national cadres.”Footnote 36 In particular, the students reacted “painfully” to the promotion of five Moldovan students to doctoral studies. Reportedly, conversations circulating among Jewish students questioned why the Moldovan students were sent to the doctoral school when there were better Jewish students at the same institution; they questioned whether “national or religious” principles were being deployed for students’ promotion; and they wondered about the prospects for Jewish students after graduation.Footnote 37 But if some Jews complained behind closed doors about the policies that disadvantaged them, other Jews launched bold accusations of antisemitism when faced with hindrances in their professional activity. The case of Leonid Kornfeld allows unique insights into the intricacies of such accusations.
The Case of Leonid Kornfeld and Accusations of Official Antisemitism
In 1946, Leonid Kornfeld, a Jewish poet, playwright, and folklorist (a native from the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist RepublicFootnote 38) had a working meeting with Andrei Gazun, the vice-head of the propaganda section of the MSSR's Communist Party Central Committee. Kornfeld was agitated: “Kishinev smells of antisemitism everywhere, and much to [my] regret, antisemitism has contaminated the apparatus of the CC of the CP of Moldavia.”Footnote 39 If the antisemitic attitudes of local gentiles could hardly be disputed, Gazun was clearly offended by the accusations directed personally at him. He wrote to his superiors about Kornfeld's “slanderous” statements, explaining that Kornfeld classified as antisemitism Gazun's “attitude towards him and comrade [David] Gershfeld, [expressed] in ignoring their opinions on a number of issues related to art and literature.”Footnote 40
The accusation of antisemitism among the CC members did not sit well with the Moldavian leadership and two days later a meeting was set up between Kornfeld and Nikita Salogor, the first secretary of the MSSR CP. The minutes of the conversation indicate that Salogor intended to make his guest think twice about the accusations of antisemitism inside the Moldavian CC. When talking to Salogor, Kornfeld acknowledged that “he probably made the wrong conclusion” when learning that the texts of his songs had not been accepted for publication in a planned collection of Moldavian songs. Kornfeld noted that he made his conclusions upon seeing a list of authors to be included in the upcoming volume, where the names Gershfeld and Semen Zlatov (both Jews) had been highlighted with blue pencil. When pressed further by Salogor to explain his accusation of antisemitism within the CC, an unnerved Kornfeld replied that he was witnessing an extremely negative development—some representatives of the CC had started to follow “principles of bad attitude towards Jews,” and he gave the example of Gazun, who “thinks that there is some new national policy,” especially when dealing with the promotion of national cadres.Footnote 41 On three separate occasions, Salogor asked Kornfeld to substantiate where exactly he saw antisemitism in the MSSR CP CC; if he was indeed accusing this body of antisemitism. Finally, Kornfeld gave up: “there was no direct accusation of antisemitism of the CC” from his side, and “there was none, and there could not be any;” nevertheless, he insisted he was bewildered by the fact that two other names had been underlined for an unknown purpose.Footnote 42
The first secretary was apparently not completely satisfied with the results of the meeting and asked Kornfeld to provide a detailed letter describing the incident with Gazun. In this letter Kornfeld was adamant that Gazun was making his decisions based on “special principles applied only to composers of Jewish nationality.”Footnote 43 Moreover, Kornfeld's forceful conclusion warned against allowing antisemitism at the top level of the Moldavian leadership.Footnote 44
Oral history puts Kornfeld's accusations in a more complex light. Andrei Gazun, it turns out, was married to a Jewish woman, Olga Portnaia. Moreover, after the war, Olga's teenage niece had been orphaned during the Holocaust and was sheltered in Gazun's house for over two years. According to the niece's recollections, during her time at the Gazuns, Andrei did not show any signs of antisemitism. In fact, among her recollections was Andrei's great respect for his Jewish in-laws.Footnote 45 While one might assume that Kornfeld may not have known about Gazun's personal life, further evidence contradicts this assumption: during the interwar period, before the Gazuns and Kornfelds came to Chișinău in 1940, both families had in fact lived in the same courtyard in Tiraspol, their children frequently playing together.Footnote 46
In light of the above-mentioned details suggesting both that Gazun may not have been antisemitic and that Kornfeld was aware of this fact, Kornfeld's irritation may in fact be more related to a professional feud. Unlike the young students from the Chișinău Pedagogical Institute who had limited experience with Soviet policies, Kornfeld, a seasoned Soviet citizen, might have understood how difficult it would have been to protest against the sidelining of Jews as part of the regime's policy of nurturing and promoting national cadres in the MSSR. Instead, to frame the protest in terms of a fight against antisemitic behavior on the part of Moldavian officials was potentially a safer and more rewarding approach; besides, antisemitism was indeed present among various social strata and, at least rhetorically, the regime pledged to fight it. As this example indicates, an accusation of antisemitism leveled against a high-ranking CP official brought the authorities’ attention to the case.
While some Jews directly or indirectly complained about the effect of Soviet “neo-indigenization” programs in the MSSR, the issue of nationalities policies sparked bitter complaints among ethnic Moldovans, who were underrepresented in most key spheres. In 1946, CP member Dmitry Kharitonov wrote an angry letter to Stalin, complaining about discriminatory attitudes toward Moldovans. As Kharitonov boldly put it, “an opinion has formed, as if the Moldovans are good for nothing. Based on this [opinion], a real persecution is being organized: Moldovans are humiliated, insulted, thrown into the street from work … [they are] now unemployed, thrown overboard.”Footnote 47 Kharitonov was defiant: “in the entire republic there are almost no Moldovans in positions of secretaries at the level of regional, district, or municipal party organs.”Footnote 48 Similar to Kornfeld's case, Kharitonov was invited to a meeting with the MSSR CP first secretary, Salogor, and with the CC member responsible for cadres. After a lengthy discussion, Kharitonov was offered the job of secretary of the party organization at the central telegraph in Chișinău.Footnote 49 Still, when Moldovans were promoted at the expense of other groups, resentful protests followed. An anonymous letter sent in 1949 to the newspaper Pravda presented warnings about the “dangerous deviations” of the secretary of the Otaci district CP organization, Berechet, who was allegedly “cleansing the party and the Soviet apparatus of Russians and Jews.”Footnote 50
According to some accounts, Soviet Jews with more modest ambitions who ended up working in Moldavia in the 1940s and early 1950s seemed not to be the primarily concerned with their Jewishness. Rather, other factors took priority when contemplating their relationship with state power. Maia Feldman, at the time a young woman and office assistant in the Chișinău municipal department of education, claimed not to have witnessed harassment or tensions towards Jews. She noted that back then numerous Soviet Jews were employed as teachers and directors of schools in Chișinău, and were doing well professionally. In Maia's opinion, the position of people (of various ethnicity) who had remained behind in territories under Axis control during WWII was far worse “than to be a Jew” in the eyes of Soviet power during the initial post-war years.Footnote 51 She herself, despite being a teenager while suffering through the Holocaust and having lost her entire family to a Nazi mass killing, was questioned on several occasions by security personnel about the circumstances of her survival in the occupied territories. Spending the war behind enemy lines was a gravely incriminating factor in the eyes of Soviet authorities, and shaped one's fate in dangerous ways.
For Jews with the “proper” biography, professional acclaim was possible in Soviet Moldavia even after the crucial year of 1948, viewed by historians as the point after which official antisemitism came into full swing. For example, in September 1949, Jews of various professions were decorated on the anniversary of the founding of the MSSR. Among those decorated were Baruch Shamis, the director of one of the departments of the Main Agency for the Administrative Service of Police; Sofia Shafir, praised for the rehabilitation of cultural institutions of Chișinău; Srul΄ Shor, commended for his “honest and disciplined work” as a cashier; captain Lev Shvartsman, the head of the Operations Department of the MSSR Ministry of State Security; Abram Shmurun, turner at the Tiraspol Mechanical Plant; Israil Shmurun, architect and honorary secretary of the MSSR Union of Architects board; and Osher Shnirelman, radiologist at the oncological hospital in Chișinău.Footnote 52 Except doctor Shnirelman, all of the above were Soviet Jews who were born and trained in pre-WWII Soviet territories.Footnote 53
Without doubt, like other Soviet Jews, Jews from Soviet Moldavia were distressed by the anti-cosmopolitan campaign and the Doctors’ Plot emanating from Moscow. For example, Yekhiel Shraybman, a Bessarabian writer of Yiddish prose and member of the MSSR Union of Writers, described being tormented by nightmares, fearful of an impending arrest following the prosecution and execution of major Jewish writers such as Dovid Bergelson, Perets Markish, Leib Kvitko.Footnote 54 At the same time, these events were perceived as less impactful on the lives of local Jews than on those at the center. Sarra Shpitalnik, a teacher in Florești school in the early 1950s, highlighted that, “[t]hough the general atmosphere was depressing, it was still not as severe as in Moscow and Leningrad.” She credited Leonid Brezhnev, the incumbent secretary of the Moldavian CP CC, for this situation, whom she viewed as “rather mild.”Footnote 55 Zlata Tcaci, a student at the Chișinău Conservatorium during the Doctors’ Plot (and a future famous composer), offered a different take on the situation. In Tcaci's words, local Jews were paying attention to these campaigns, “but we were more bothered about our hard life. There was a rationing system in the country and we were hungry.”Footnote 56
Grudges towards Jews: “A Moldavian Republic with a Jewish Dictatorship”
Given the long history of widespread antisemitism among Bessarabian elites and the general public, the postwar visibility of Jewish cadres and students in the MSSR was not received well by many gentiles. A note sent to Moscow about the preparation of the 1946 elections to the Moldavian Supreme Soviet, for example, mentioned “anti-Soviet discussions” held by locals in this regard. Reportedly, the villagers of Arionești anticipated that in the upcoming elections, “Yids with their leaders will again be elected, and we will be only forced to vote.”Footnote 57 The intertwined anti-Jewish and anti-Soviet spirits were not simply rhetorical statements, they sometimes took deadly turns. Some Jews were responsible for the implementation of despised socio-economic and anti-religious policies, which put them at risk due to the rage of fellow citizens.Footnote 58
In cities, many non-Jews were irked by the fact that Jews formed an important segment of Soviet specialists sent to the MSSR after WWII. Many local antisemites concurred that in the MSSR a “Jewish dominance” had been installed. An anonymous letter sent in 1948 to Stalin complained resentfully over the nationality policy implemented in the MSSR. According to this remonstration, the policy chased Moldovans away from cities and replaced them with Jews and Russians, resulting in “a Moldavian republic with a Jewish dictatorship.” As the anonymous correspondent formulated it, “these emigrants from Tashkent conquered everything: power, economy, commerce, and the market…. The Jews stroll in Kishinev, Bel΄tsy, Bender in select silks, wools, and fashionable shoes, ‘they won,’ while Moldovans [were] in rags, barefoot, hungry. They are destitute, they die…”Footnote 59 The letter also decried the lamentable shape of Moldovan culture, pointing out that a Moldavian play would attract at best some fifty “random people,” while for a Jewish play, no theater was big enough to accommodate the audience.Footnote 60 Presumably, the letter was produced by an antisemitic Bessarabian intellectual, given the author's peculiar concern over the audiences of local theaters and the freshness of his/her perception of the “Jews’ victory.”
Needless to say, the life of Jews in the MSSR was far from the luxury described in this letter. First of all, many of the specialists who arrived in Chișinău and other towns faced acute housing shortages, given that numerous residential buildings had been destroyed during the war.Footnote 61 Even N.I. Gekhtman, the vice-minister of the MSSR Health and Sanitary Inspectorate, could not obtain decent accommodation for his family. Driven to despair, Gekhtman asked to be dismissed from his job, on the grounds that he could not cope with the inadequate housing conditions in Chișinău, where he, his seventy-year-old mother, and two children were crammed in a small room with no bathroom. The offended vice-minister complained that “such an attitude to his elementary needs demonstrates that he doesn't present any value as a worker for the Republic.”Footnote 62 In spite of the serious nature of Gekhtman's hardship, it pales in comparison when placed on the broader canvas of developments in the postwar MSSR. In a society decimated by a famine (1946–48) that killed 150,000–200,000 people in Moldavia, the conditions of state officials’ lives, including Gekhtman's, were an obvious object of envy.Footnote 63
Predictably, many locals blamed the MSSR CP first secretary for most of the policies they loathed, including the promotion of Jews. A letter sent in September 1949—two months after the deportations from the MSSR of 35,050 “kulak” peasants and their family membersFootnote 64—to the representative of the CP CC of the USSR overseeing the MSSR, and forwarded to Georgii Malenkov, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, inquired how it was possible that during the deportation of kulaks, Nicolae Coval, the “son of a kulak,” was in the top position in Soviet Moldavia. The letter also harped on Coval's wife's ethnic and social background: “a Jewess [daughter] of a big manufacturer,” Sofia Coval was “acting as an empress, and was planting Jews everywhere.”Footnote 65 The letter's author asked the Moscow authorities to have a closer look at Coval, allegedly a Moldovan “nationalist” who chased Russians and Ukrainians from jobs while offering positions to Jews and “illiterates [Moldovans].”Footnote 66
In response to the letter, an investigation was launched. The investigative report checked Coval's social origins and the background of his wife, father, and sisters, and despite a number of issues (known to authorities before the investigation), it concluded that the background of the first secretary and his wife “does not leave any space for doubt,” and asked that the inspection of “similar statements, which do not provide any new circumstances” not be repeated in the future.Footnote 67 The particular grudge against Coval's supposed philosemitism was present even after his removal. In 1952, an anonymous letter sent to Leonid Brezhnev, then the first secretary of the MSSR CP, requested an investigation of the head of the “Moldavefirmaslo” enterprise, who allegedly “surrounded himself with Jews who are stealing socialist property without shame.” The sender highlighted that he put great hope in the new leader of Soviet Moldavia: “You [Brezhnev] are not the same as former secretary Coval, who was protecting thieves, especially Jews.”Footnote 68
The Authorities’ Fight with Expressions of Antisemitism among the Public
Bessarabians, as newly minted Soviet citizens, had to absorb the idea that in the USSR public expressions of antisemitism were punishable. Luckily, despite the simmering antisemitism, no outbursts of mass violence took place. Upon entering the territory of Bessarabia, the Soviet security services started investigating and arresting those who were involved in acts of “collaboration” with Axis authorities.Footnote 69 Among those investigated, hundreds were punished for deadly violence committed against Jews in 1941. Some of the perpetrators received death sentences, while others were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.Footnote 70
In 1947 a public trial took place in Chișinău. Former members of the German and Romanian militaries were accused of war crimes. Eight defendants were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison and two defendants to twenty year terms.Footnote 71 On this occasion, the Ministry of State Security of the MSSR sent an informative note to Nicolae Coval about local reactions to the trial. An example from the note quoted a law student named Shapiro. Allegedly, the latter warmly greeted the “revenge for spilled Jewish blood,” but expressed regret that such legal proceedings were not very frequent. Shapiro also wondered if it was only in Moldavia that so many criminals existed.Footnote 72
Moreover, despite occasional bending of the rules, openly antisemitic language was barred from public space, and slurs about Judeo-Bolsheviks were especially vigorously penalized. The latter, part of the earlier Romanian official discourse, was prone to be classified as “anti-Soviet” behavior in the MSSR. In 1946, the deputy head of the medical service of the Chișinău railway, Vitalii Dikun, was sentenced to seven years in prison for “anti-Soviet agitation, slander against Stalin, and hostile attitudes against the Jewish nation, expressed through terrorist dispositions.”Footnote 73 For a similar offense, in 1947 Mefodii Ivanov, a native of Chișinău and sexton in one of Chișinău's churches, was sentenced to ten years in prison. According to trial documents, Ivanov frequently vented his anti-Soviet sentiments in openly antisemitic forms. He used to grumble that the only people in the MSSR to “live well” are “Bolsheviks, and Jews who keep all the commerce in their hands,” and that the “Jews were not beaten enough [presumably in 1941–1944],” that “the Jews flew in [to Moldavia] like locusts, dragging everything to the market, while we have nothing.”Footnote 74 These and other vicious comments were classified in court as “slander of the leaders of the Soviet state” and “antisemitic attacks against people of Jewish nationality.”Footnote 75
Even during the height of Stalinist anti-Jewish campaigns, antisemitic assaults were not tolerated. The state had an exclusive monopoly on violence—including against Jews—and it rigorously guarded it. For example, in June 1949 a file on Raisa Golubenko's “hooligan activity” towards Khaia Gerber, her Jewish neighbor, was forwarded to the prosecutor of the MSSR.Footnote 76 The document stressed that Golubenko, a resident of Chișinău, was brazen towards everybody, but in particular expressed “dissatisfaction and contempt towards Jews, by calling them various vulgar words.”Footnote 77 An example of Golubenko's outlandish behavior was breaking into Gerber's apartment and punching her along with various other objects in the room. Similarly, Golubenko attacked another Jewish neighbor, whom she hit with a brush and threw a bucket of dirty water in her face, all accompanied by swearing.Footnote 78 In another case that occurred in 1950, an inhabitant of the town of Soroca and father of ten children, Ivan Trăistar, after excessive alcohol consumption in a local diner, shouted at other clients (several Jews and one member of the Komsomol) that “soon the Americans will come, and there will be another power, that will chase away communists and Jews.”Footnote 79 He ended up in a skirmish with some clients. During the investigation, Trăistar denied his guilt and insisted that he did not remember anything, since he was very drunk. Notwithstanding this drunken state, his actions were qualified as “anti-Soviet agitation and slander against the Soviet reality,” and Trăistar was sentenced to ten years in prison.Footnote 80
Communist party members were to follow the prescribed lines as well. In 1948, the Rezina district party organization sanctioned its member D.P. Ivanov for “systematic drinking, lack of discipline, and antisemitism,” and when his behavior showed no signs of improvement after several months, he was expelled from the party.Footnote 81
Antisemites Creeping into Soviet Power
Stamping out mass antisemitism in the MSSR was not an easy task. Importantly, the quashing of antisemitism may not have been helped by the fact that newly-appointed local officials were not exactly the embodiment of “Sovietness,” nor did they necessarily harbor good attitudes towards Jews. The Soviet authorities had much less information about Bessarabians compared to the other populations whom it had ruled since 1917, and therefore they were not able to quickly establish the full context of people's backgrounds. At times, the precarious nature of the administration's knowledge created highly problematic situations when power was delegated to individuals with a record of antisemitic behavior. Documents produced by the Moldavian security apparatus aptly illustrate the point. In 1945, such documents decried the complex political situation in the Republic and, among other issues, mentioned the presence of individuals who, in the summer of 1941 under Romanian rule, were involved in the killings, beatings, or robberies of Jews.Footnote 82 Documents from that period overflow with reports about “political mistakes” that were committed, such as entrusting leadership positions or CP membership to former members of the antisemitic Cuzist party (active in interwar Romania), former Romanian gendarmerie officials, or those who had participated in prior anti-Jewish violence.Footnote 83 Numerous such cases were confirmed in the districts of Ungheni, Sculeni, Taraclia, Kotovsk, Orhei, and Leova.Footnote 84 In one particularly striking case, an anonymous letter sent in 1949 to the MSSR CP first secretary revealed that a former Cuzist party member held the position of head of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda at the state radio broadcaster in Chișinău. An investigation that followed confirmed the veracity of the information, and the person was removed from his position.Footnote 85
A 1950 review of the Căușeni district's collective farms revealed an avalanche of similar poor choices: the chairman of the “Kutuzov” collective farm was a former Cuzist and organizer of Jewish pogroms; the accountant of the “Stalin” collective farm was a former Romanian secret policeman and Cuzist who “took active part in Jewish pogroms”; the storekeeper of the “Zhdanov” collective farm was a former Cuzist and an active participant in Jewish pogroms; the chairman of the “Frunze” collective farm was a former Cuzist and an “organizer of Jewish pogroms.” The report announced the dismissal of those officials and promised to closely review leading personnel of that district.Footnote 86 As late as 1952, when forced to respond to allegations voiced by a collective farmer in a letter (sent to Stalin) about irregularities occurring in the village of Constantinovca, the first secretary of the Edineț district CP lamented that it was “difficult to find a person who could be clean in all senses; [the person] was either a member of the Cuzist party, or has relatives abroad, or something else.”Footnote 87
Jews and the Cleansing of Cadres
The historian Gennadii Kostyrchenko argued that “Zhdanovism” and the fight against “cosmopolitism,” which primarily affected institutions and professionals associated with culture, including many Jews, has to be understood as a manifestation of official antisemitism.Footnote 88 At the same time, Juliane Fürst highlighted that, “since racism was officially denounced, the interpretation of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign rested largely with individuals in charge at any given place or time.”Footnote 89 Petru Negură, who studied the history of Moldavian writers under Stalinism, concluded that in Soviet Moldavia “the Zhdanovist campaign did not rise up to the level of its Moskovite archetype,” despite some criticisms voiced against some Jewish writers (and non-Jews as well).Footnote 90 According to his findings, none of the writers who received criticism were excluded from the MSSR Union of Writers, nor did they suffer sanctions to their professional activity. The local NKVD, however, arrested three writers for their alleged participation in a Zionist organization.Footnote 91
The broader challenges that Jews experienced in the USSR as the result of the Kremlin's increasing suspicion towards Jews were primarily felt by MSSR Jews in the framework of the postwar campaign for cadre “cleanliness.” The experience of war and occupation stirred the regime's anxiety. The leadership wondered if the right people had been entrusted with power across the vast Soviet land. Worries about the reliability of its nomenklatura were even more intense in areas outside the territories that had been controlled by Moscow before 1940, and such concerns continued to increase with the escalation of the Cold War.
The first category of Soviet people carefully scrutinized for reliability included members of the CP. Some Bessarabian Jews admitted to the USSR CP during the war or soon afterwards did not pass the additional screening filters put in place. Multiple potential reasons for mistrust and expulsion existed, including coming from the “wrong” socio-economic background, concealing relevant information during one's enrollment in the Party, and any foreign experience or relationships. Given the specificity of the region's history, Jews were prone to have, more than any other ethnic group in Soviet Moldavia, both a “wrong” background and relatives in other countries (including capitalist ones, deemed a particular threat). It is also not implausible that antisemitism seeped into the efforts of “cadres cleansing.”
A certain doctor Fridman, for example, had been a member of the Romanian CP during the interwar period and, from 1936, a member of the Spanish CP. The 1946 review of Fridman by the Party noted specifically that they did not appreciate that he had “visited almost all the countries of Europe,” and had three sisters and a brother living abroad. As a result of this review, the previous decision to transfer Fridman's membership from the Romanian CP to the USSR CP was classified as a mistake, and his membership card was revoked.Footnote 92 Vladimir Bubus (identified as Jewish) was expelled from the party for concealing the social status of his parents and his previous service in the Romanian army.Footnote 93 Boris Mandel was found guilty of concealing, when entering the party, his earlier professional activity (he sold fruits together with his father-in-law), and the fact that between 1921 and 1940 he was a member of a Zionist organization.Footnote 94 Naum Valitsky lost his party membership because of “his dishonesty regarding the conditions of losing his party membership card.”Footnote 95 In some cases, after careful review, local party organizations’ decisions were ultimately overruled by the MSSR CP CC. For example, the decision to expel Emil Bratt (identified as Jewish) for hiding his social origins (his father had a dry cleaning business) was reversed due to Bratt's “irreproachable service in the Red Army, for which he was decorated with a ‘Red Banner’ medal.”Footnote 96
As mentioned earlier, surviving the war in the occupied territories put a black mark on any individual, and party members who happened to be in the occupied territories during WWII came under special suspicion. Even though Jews were a minority in this category, given that those who failed to evacuate were imprisoned in ghettoes and concentration camps, they were not spared harsh accusations. In 1949, Mendel Vaisblat was expelled from the party for “concealing from the party that, while living in the occupied territories, he worked for a long time as the head of a camp ‘Ghetto’ and behaved immorally.”Footnote 97 A similar punishment was meted to Yuri Shteinberg after it was discovered that while in occupied territory, he “came monthly to the [Romanian] gendarmerie for registration.” Shteinberg was also chastised for not offering “any help to the population in their fight with the occupiers” and “for a pacifist attitude towards the German fascist occupiers.”Footnote 98 It is unnecessary to point out the absurdity of the latter accusations, given the catastrophic situation of Jews in territories under Axis control. Apparently, the party had its own standards for what was “proper communist behavior.”
Another category subjected to close scrutiny was management personnel and members of the civil service. Again, having a “wrong social background” had a devastating effect on Jewish employees. Only in rare cases could additional elements of one's biography (those perceived as “proof of loyalty” to the regime) counterbalance the weak spots that were discovered. We will further detail two relevant cases that highlight the situation of Jews in this peripheral territory on the eve of Stalin's death. Importantly, these cases took place at the height of Moscow's repressions against members of the former Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and during the Doctors’ Affair.
In 1952, a worker of the Rîbnița sugar plant, V.I. Mostepan, a member of the CP, sent a letter to the USSR CP CC regarding the serious shortcomings of the plant's leadership. In April 1952, an inspection team arrived and several months later at the Party's recommendation, the director of the plant was fired for “rude treatment of workers and littering the sugar plant's staff with untrustworthy people.”Footnote 99 In a revealing detail of the case, the plant's human resources officer claimed that, in preparation for the inspection, the director had ordered the removal of some Jewish names from the list of employees, highlighting that not only were they not in responsible positions but “besides, they are Jews, they will say that I gathered all the Jews here.”Footnote 100
In September 1952, an anonymous letter was sent to Malenkov about the “inappropriate behavior” of the inspector of the MSSR CC, A.F. Bukatina, during the Rîbnița inspection. The letter accused the inspector of no less than antisemitism and of meddling in the internal affairs of the plant by orchestrating the removal of the leader of the plant's party organization, Drozdov. In the round of investigations that followed, Bukatina refuted all accusations, claiming she did not ask Drozdov “why he married a Jew, she did not ask for an informative note about the presence of Jews at the plant, she did not participate at the party meeting, and she did not propose the candidacy of a new party secretary.”Footnote 101 When asked to present his version, Drozdov asserted that during a meeting with the inspectors, Vladimir Kartashev, the Moscow inspector, asked the following question: “You, yourself a Russian person, why did you marry a Jew?” According to the investigative documents, Drozdov responded that “in our state there is no difference between nations” and that nationality was not a factor in his marriage decision. Furthermore, Drozdov asked his own questions: “but did I do something wrong? I ask to be corrected, or maybe there are some indications regarding this issue?” Reportedly, Kartashev promised to “explain tomorrow,” indicating that “an exhaustive response” will be received from the CC; although this never happened.Footnote 102 An additional detail should not remain unnoticed: Drozdov's description of the interactions with Kartashev shows signs of an agitated state of mind. His explanatory note, written in standard literary Russian in the previous section, becomes full of grammatical errors afterward. Was it because the topic was very sensitive for the author? Could it be that Drozdov was fearful of making an accusation towards a highly-placed Soviet bureaucrat? Was Drozdov nervous because he was doctoring his account?
From the point of view of Bukatina, Drozdov was bending the truth. She admitted that the inspectors spoke several times with Drozdov, and one of the questions he was asked was “the whereabouts of his wife's father, since in the statement [complaint] was mentioned that the father-in-law of the sugar plant Party bureau secretary was convicted in 1951 for a period of ten years for abuse of office.” In that discussion, Drozdov confirmed the fact of his father-in-law's conviction.Footnote 103 Bukatina was hinting that the review of the case was looking for antisemites in the wrong place, and that the true antisemite was the former director of the plant. She reproduced her conversation with the human resources officer but with a different twist—the director swore at the officer for including “all Yids” in the list prepared for inspection.Footnote 104
The multiple strands of the Rîbnița affair are difficult to untie, but it is useful to see who was supposedly “littering” the plant. In general, the inspectors identified a mixed group of “untrustworthy individuals.” One was the head chemist, P.E. Khomchenko, who in 1937—Rîbnița was in the MASSR during the interwar years—was excluded from the CP because he forgot to mention his father's service in Semen Petliura's nationalist Ukrainian army.Footnote 105 He also served as an engineer at another sugar plant during the occupation.Footnote 106 Others included the chief mechanic, Evlampiev, who “worked for Germans” during the occupation, and an engineer named Zhorniak, who worked on the occupied territory at a sugar plant. Also deemed untrustworthy were other staff in “responsible positions” who also happened to have relatives that had been subject to state repression. The engineer for technical security, Brodskaia, had relatives on her mother's side who had been repressed; the main agronomist of the plant had a brother sentenced to ten years in prison; and Edelshtein, the deputy to the chief accountant, had a brother-in-law who had been prosecuted.Footnote 107 While Jews were present in this list, they were neither the exclusive nor main target of this campaign.
Another similar case took place in November 1952 in Chișinău. CP member S.V. Shcherbakov submitted a letter of complaint about “the wrong selection of cadres” by the Chișinău Construction and Assembly Trust, under the supervision of the MSSR Ministry of Civilian Construction. The letter avoided directly criticizing the hiring of a significant number of Jews, yet it did list Jewish names among the employees and posed the question: “how else would it be possible to explain, if not by nepotism [semeistvennost΄iu], the almost complete lack of Moldovans and Russians among the employees and workers of this association?”Footnote 108 In December 1952, after an inquiry started, the MSSR Minister of Civilian Construction, G. Skul΄skii, sent a detailed explanation to the MSSR CP CC. He refuted Shcherbakov's accusations and included detailed positive characteristics about the (many Jewish) individuals mentioned in the letter. The Minister also reported the Trust's ethnic make-up: out of 405 employees, 56 percent were Moldovans, 15 percent Russians, 17 percent Jews, 6.7 percent Ukrainians, and others.Footnote 109
Similar to the Rîbnița case, however, the inspection concluded that Shcherbakov's complaint “in a broad sense, was confirmed.” It highlighted that the Trust employed “the sons of former big merchants”: Boris Schneider, the head of the acquisitions department; Goldenberg, chief-accountant; Koza, accountant; and Mordukh Fremderman, shop assistant. It also acknowledged that the chief engineer, Boris Il΄in, and the chief foreman, Konstantin Slonevskii, were in captivity during the war, but admitted that they went through a corresponding filtration process and not only showed themselves to be good employees, but had been decorated with the orders “For Labor Valor.”Footnote 110 The inspection cleared chief engineer Il΄in and somebody named Demin from accusation of sabotage, yet instructed Skul΄skii to “fire the people who do not inspire political confidence and are incompetent.”Footnote 111
This paper suggests four contributions to the history of Soviet Jews in the late Stalinist era and, more widely, to the history of Soviet nationality policies and the center-periphery relationship. First, the evidence presented here questions the existence of a single, unitary “Jewish policy” in the Soviet state during the first postwar decade. While anti-Jewish patterns are visible throughout the broader Soviet space, details from the Moldavian SSR indicate that the regime's decision to include or exclude Jews from power structures in this republic were primarily determined by the specific challenges it faced in the MSSR. Placed in a wider context, this case study feeds into the ongoing discussions about the center-periphery relationship under late Stalinism, while simultaneously joining those studies that argue against the exclusive use of victimization, repression, and outward conformity as the main filters of analysis for the Soviet national peripheries.Footnote 112 Instead it suggests that, at the peripheries at least, there was a rearranging of Moscow's rules and priorities, where regional officials devoted to Stalinist policies and a socialist agenda often infused them with practical local considerations.
Second, this analysis highlights the pragmatic nature of the Soviet regime's promotion of Jews visible during certain periods of its history. Suggestively, the dynamics captured and described in this paper fit the pattern of the promotion of Jews that took place during the first post-revolutionary decade of the Soviet Union.Footnote 113 They indicate that the Soviet state's perceived vulnerability in a hostile environment, combined with an acute lack of national cadres consistently moved Jews on the path of upward mobility. Nevertheless, the intention both in the early 1920s Soviet state and in the late 1940s MSSR had always been to prioritize the advancement of the local titular group over Jews (except the Jewish Autonomous Region) and other minorities, and this began to occur as soon as sufficient numbers of the “indigenous group” had been trained and otherwise prepared. This observation connects the indigenization policies to the dislocation of Jews across multiple professions within the Soviet state. As this research has demonstrated, when Soviet officials crossed out Jewish names from lists of people to be promoted, they did so for a number of reasons, including antisemitism, but many understood they needed to systematically promote indigenous cadres, and in the MSSR this meant promoting Moldovans at the expense of Jews. These findings challenge the consensus view of a single, exclusionary antisemitic policy in the Soviet Union's postwar era.
This leads to the third consideration, which cautions against a blanket accusation of antisemitism directed at Soviet officials at a time when Moscow's policies were acquiring a distinctive anti-Jewish character. Clearly, the high visibility of Jews in postwar officialdom in Soviet Moldavia (as elsewhere in the Soviet Union two decades earlier) generated fresh sources of resentment among members of other ethnic groups, who expressed their dissatisfaction. Conversely, the drive to promote ethnic Moldovans upset some Jews who saw this policy as potentially disadvantaging them and suspected that some officials were all too ready to hide their antisemitic inclinations behind the rhetoric of indigenization. A number of Jews explicitly accused their wrongdoers of antisemitism. The true intentions behind officials’ decisions are frequently difficult to discern, especially given the confusing nature of the Kremlin's evolving policies, which contributed to an array of strategies being employed by local actors. Nevertheless, harsh punishment meted out post-1945 on the perpetrators of the 1941 anti-Jewish violence, as well as the demonstrable efforts by some Moldavian officials not to allow expressions of open antisemitism build on Mark Edele's observation that the negation of antisemitism by some Soviet representatives during late Stalinism “should be taken more seriously” and be regarded as reflections of a more complex position than just a cynical gesture.Footnote 114 Importantly, Jews within the Soviet Union were shielded from mass attacks by their neighbors at a time when, throughout parts of eastern Europe, antisemitism erupted in violent pogroms that killed hundreds of Jews and destroyed their possessions even after the Holocaust had ended.Footnote 115
Tangentially, this research hints at one of the core challenges faced by the Stalinist system: implementing unpopular policies while striving to maintain the regime's legitimacy. Thousands of party bureaucrats and managerial personnel had to walk a fine line whenever Soviet citizens felt that “today's reality contradicts what we were taught yesterday.”Footnote 116 As Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk demonstrated, Stalin's companions were aware of the system's multiple serious failures during late Stalinism, yet chose to behave “in a restrained and careful manner,” even if on the surface they were quick to show “their resoluteness, severity, and absolute intransigence before anything that smacked of ‘liberalism.’”Footnote 117 Although the nomenklatura from the periphery may not have experienced equal fear and anxiety with that of the Kremlin's inner circle after “the Leningrad Affair,” the former showed a comparably careful and pragmatic approach.
The last contribution of this paper is to the history of the western Soviet borderlands and their specificity within postwar society. The works of William Risch and Tarik Amar noted a new type of “Sovietness” that emerged on the western peripheries of the state. In particular, Risch argued that a specific and volatile form of Soviet identity was taking shape among the youth of the Baltic republics and western Ukraine, concluding that “the Soviet annexation of the western borderlands was a messy affair, leading to a different way of being Soviet than other regions of the pre-1939 Soviet Union.”Footnote 118 In Amar's account, in the postwar years L΄viv became the site where western and eastern Ukraine met and struggled over hegemony. In the eyes of some officials, if the Sovietizers would have failed to Sovietize the city, “it would de-Sovietize them.”Footnote 119 These observations of the unreliable and challenging character of the western borderland are amplified by the many Romanian legacies that persisted within the MSSR, including state-promoted antisemitism from the interwar period. In turn, these issues invite further inquiries into both the short and long-term impact of the inclusion of these western territories on the functionality of the Soviet system itself. Many scholars have investigated the effect of Sovietization on the occupied territories, but rarely do they ask questions in the opposite direction. Potentially, studying the encounter of east European and Soviet societies in this regard may offer new insights for the field.
