Volume 20, Number 12 · July 19, 1973
The Soviet Jews
By Leonard Schapiro
The Soviet Cage: Anti-Semitism in Russia
by William Korey
Viking, 369 pp., $12.50
Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930
by Zvi Y. Gitelman
Princeton, 488 pp., $20.00
Perhaps it is the natural order of things for Jews to be disliked by the members of the majority community among whom they live. A minority, and especially a minority with distinctive physical and social features, is always at risk in this respect: the vulgar masses will readily deride and insult anyone who is at all different, if only as a means to bolster their own sense of superiority and togetherness—unless restrained from doing so by education, social mores, or the law. In Russia there were some extra reasons which made the country particularly prone to widespread anti-Semitism—a superstitious and ignorant peasantry, a nationalistic church, the fact that Jews were by law and by custom maintained as a race apart and actively prevented from assimilating, their distinctive language, clothing, habits, and diet.
Review, 3725 words
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