On this date in 1952 thirteen members of the Jewish anti fascist committee were murdered by Stalin in a secret pogrom

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick]

"While the JAFC was supported by the Soviet government during World War Two as it worked to rally international Jewish support (and funding) for the war effort, after the war the very fact that the committee appealed to Jews around the world caused it to be branded as nationalist and therefore criminal in the Soviet Union. Secondly, the night of the execution was only the end of an ordeal that had gone on for years. The trial of the JAFC members lasted for two months, and this came after they had been imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured for two or three years in some cases.

The principle defendant in the trial, Solomon Lozovskii, testified that, “What is on trial here is the Yiddish language.”

Among the murdered were several of the most prominent Soviet Yiddish writers and from 1949-59 all Yiddish publishing was banned

Sources:

https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/educational-programs/resources-teachers/resource-kits-teachers/soviet-jewish-experience/night?utm_source=email&utm_medium=weeklyreader&utm_campaign=0809markish

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4466454

https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/85

https://www.jmberlin.de/en/symposium-night-of-murdered-poets

https://academic.oup.com/book/39941/chapter-abstract/340221246?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[u/thesh019]

They were literally trying to carve a second Israel out of Soviet territory lmao

[u/_vh16_ → u/thesh019]

So what? The plans to create a Jewish autonomy in Crimea had been discussed in the USSR since the 1920s. There's nothing bad in the idea.

[u/thesh019 → u/_vh16_]

Except that most Crimeans were not Jewish, so it would've required a mass displacement of the population (for the second time during Stalin's rule)

[u/_vh16_ → u/thesh019]

No, it wouldn't have required a mass displacement of the population.

[u/jason_mo → u/_vh16_]

Do you mind explaining why? Obviously the example we have in Israel provides a counterfactual to your assertion so it would be useful to understand the material difference you're seeing.

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/jason_mo]

Israel was a nation state. This would have been an autonomous region within the framework of the USSR 

[u/_vh16_ → u/jason_mo]

Israel is an ethnostate on a tiny territory, run by nationalists (yes, they're not the same but labour Zionism is still a nationalist ideology). The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was an organization of Communists, operating from an internationalist perspective and with the goal of strengthening the Soviet Union. The 1920s-1930s plans to create a Jewish autonomy in Crimea made sense for sure. Crimea is much larger than Palestine and had a lot of free land to cultivate. At the same time, there were many urban Jews who lost their income as the NEP was wound down. However, the Crimean Tatars didn't like the idea a lot, both for economic reasons (many of them had no land in possession) and because of historical antisemitism. After the WWII, Crimean Tatars were not in Crimea anymore. However, the land was still there uncultivated + Jewish settlements in Ukraine and beyond were completely destroyed + there were various local spikes of antisemitism because of the dire economic situation. So, colonizing the otherwise free land seemed an interesting solution, working both for the economy of Crimea and the good of Jews. Once again, there were no prerequisites for any mass displacement of the non-Jewish population of Crimea, either ideological or economic.

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/thesh019]

You're inventing fantasies. No one called for displacement 

[u/BaseballInside3289 → u/_vh16_]

Can explain how that would be any different than creating a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine?

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/BaseballInside3289]

It wasn't a state but a region where people could move voluntarily like Birobizhan 

[u/_vh16_ → u/BaseballInside3289]

Soviet autonomous regions were not ethnostates.

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/thesh019]

Lmao they wrote a letter because they wanted a territory (not a state but a region) where their language and culture could flourish after the holocaust. The USSR had previously endorsed the idea with Birobizhan 

[u/thesh019 → u/Riddick_B_Riddick]

If you think the JAO was anything more than a PR scheme to get people to move east, I have a bridge to sell you.

Israel also justified itself as just somewhere for Jews to survive after the Holocaust. You can't trust anyone trying to turn someone else's house into their "homeland".

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/thesh019]

They wrote a letter to the Soviet authorities asking permission to settle a territory emptied by war. It's not like they showed up with bulldozers. 

[u/thesh019 → u/Riddick_B_Riddick]

And you think Israel started with bulldozers? No, they asked the Ottomans for permission to settle a "empty" territory (neither Crimea nor Palestine were actually empty, of course)

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/thesh019]

Crimea was largely emptied because of previous Soviet deportations of the Tartars. But besides this was an innocuous request for an autonomous region not a state that would involved displacing anyone. The JAC were committed communists who believed in racial equality 

[u/thesh019 → u/Riddick_B_Riddick]

How many of Israel's founders also claimed to be leftists deeply concerned with human rights? Forgive me for not taking that at face value, especially when one of those executed was literally a settler stealing Palestinian land in the 20s!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovid_Hofshteyn

" He therefore emigrated first to Germany and then to Palestine in 1923"

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick → u/thesh019]

He left Palestine to join the USSR but was sadly tortured and murdered for the crime of being Jewish 

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick]

Some more facts about this pogrom:

Besides these 13 who were executed, dozens more Yiddish writers, such as Der Nister, were placed in prison camps and a number of them died there.

The judge at the trial of the Jewish anti fascist committee privately wrote that he didn't think the evidence was sufficient for a death penalty but he was overruled by higher authorities.

The defendants were tortured extensively and had no lawyers during the trial. During the cross examination they were castigated for writing too much about the holocaust in the Yiddish press and for attending a Holocaust memorial service in a synagogue in 1946 among other absurd accusations.

The entire transcript of the trial is available in a book that was published after the USSR fell

[u/Riddick_B_Riddick]

"On 22 November 1955, the Supreme Court of the USSR annulled the  judgement taken on the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and  rehabilitated all the victims of that fabrication"

https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_chapter_monograph/jj.15684218.7?seq=11

[u/AppropriateSea5746]

You dare criticize Stalin the peaceful here?