Jews and Communism in Moldova (June 1941 – May 1991)

Following on from my recent article covering the role of jews in Communism in the Moldova during its time as an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) subordinated to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR): (1) it is well to cover the rest of the history of the jews in relation to the Communist Party of Moldova/Moldavia.

In my original article I pointed out that from the 1920s to 1940s the representation of jews among the members of the Communist Party of Moldova/Moldavia was roughly double their representation in the population of Moldova/Moldavia. Furthermore I also illustrated the role of jews in the NKVD apparatus that was put in place - consisting as it did local communists of which jews were significantly over-represented - and then reprimanded by Stalin by the appointment of Georgian NKVD officer Sergo Goglidze to speed up the killing (who promptly managed to send 53,356 individuals to Gulags or have them shot as well as deport 32,423 individuals to other SSRs). (2)

This compares to a measly 4,913 individuals killed and a further 15,000 deported to Gulags during the 1930s. As well as 18,000 individuals who had been starved to death by the Soviet Union in the Holodomor, which also effected the Moldavian SSR (that remember was part of the Ukrainian SSR). (3)

During the Second World the amount of jews of Moldova/Moldavia who were killed is uncertain with little but educated guesses for totals with some as high as 60,000-70,000 while others as low as 30,000. Which estimate you believe really does depend what one believes about the treatment of jews under Romanian rule as well as the broader 'Holocaust' narrative.

However let us get back to the topic at hand by noting that a large number of jews in and around Moldova/Moldavia joined Soviet partisans units after the German invasion in June 1941. (4) One notable example local to Moldova/Moldavia is Sidor Kovpak's sizeable force, which contained a large number of jews. (5) This was - of course - predictable given the stridently anti-jewish nature of the Axis and also the stridently pro-Soviet attitude of many jews in Moldova/Moldavia prior to the invasion which was documented in the previous article.

After the re-occupation of Moldova/Moldavia by the Red Army in March 1944: the predictable purges began and although I have been unable to find solid data on the numbers involved. It seems as though in this small territory thousands of those identified as 'collaborators' (including many communists who had stayed behind and hidden themselves) were killed, sent to gulags or deported to other SSRs. While thousands of others identified as 'hunted' (aka 'class enemies') were similarly dealt with by the NKVD and SMERSH. (6)

What is unique however about Moldova/Moldavia in terms of the local infrastructure for the application of mass terror and political oppression is that unlike all other ASSRs and SSRs within the Soviet Union there was no purge of this organization conducted after the re-occupation. (7) This means then - as I have documented in my original article - that the local terror infrastructure was heavily jewish and the fact that large numbers of partisans in the area were jewish suggests that this organization may have got more jewish not less in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

The Soviet re-occupation also saw the synagogues re-opened as well as the resumption of Yiddish theatre in Moldova (which was then shut down in 1946 as part of the evolution of Stalin's nationalities policy). (8) Jewish life (and domination of the Moldavian Communist Party) resumed with full force and to give this some perspective by 1959: Moldova/Moldavia was one of the few ASSRs/SSRs which registered an increase in its jewish population (of 3 percent in this case between 1939 and 1959). (9)

Clearly then jewish life was flourishing in Moldova/Moldavia: this increase in itself is fairly astonishing considering that it occurred after the Second World War, the 'Holocaust' and the massive famine that gripped Moldova/Moldavia between 1946-1947 and continued in milder form till 1949. To give some perspective once again: the famine in Moldova/Moldavia in 1946-1947 alone killed some 150,000 – 200,000 people (and circa 2,000,000 in the USSR in total). (10)

In Moldova/Moldavia's case however this famine was not a natural one, but rather was artificial and was the direct responsibility of Moldova/Moldavia's disproportionately jewish Soviet authorities. (11) The artificiality of the famine was caused by the fact that the Moldavian Communist Party took far too much grain from its farmers meaning that they had enough to export to Russia (which was suffering its own famine) and to feed those who dwelt in urban areas (who were the backbone of Communist Party support), but the party's officials literally left the farmers with nothing. As one eyewitness pointed out: they literally swept up every bit of grain dust and searched every nook and cranny for hidden grain while leaving their farmers with nothing to sustain themselves or their families. (12)

That the farmers of Moldova/Moldavia starved and died in considerable numbers due to this artificial famine appears not to have worried the Moldavian Communist Party too much until Stalin got to hear about it and ordered an investigation in February 1947. In spite of the scale of the mistake made by the Moldavian Communist Party that caused the famine: Stalin rather surprisingly did not take any significant action in order to purge the SSR of those responsible. It is possible that Moldova/Moldavia was simply regarded as too small and insignificant at the time to merit the expenditure of finite resources to purge it especially in the light of the massive expenditure of Soviet security forces in fighting a miniature civil war in Poland.

This lack of a purge however once again informs us that the disproportionately jewish nature of the Moldavian Communist Party, which can further demonstrated by simply pointing out that in 1963 some 6.4 percent of all members of the Moldavian Communist Party were jewish (13) yet this was still approximately double the representation of jews in Moldova/Moldavia's population (3.3 percent) in the census of 1959. (14)

This clearly indicates then the Moldavian Communist Party - and necessarily its mass terror and political repression apparatus - were disproportionately jewish in the early 1960s much as they were in 1939/1940. Strongly suggesting that those who were responsible for the artificial famine in  Moldova/Moldavia between 1946-1947 were disproportionately jewish as well as the fact that jews were fed while Moldavian farmers and rural communities were allowed to starve to death. This can be further shown by pointing out that 95 percent of jews in the USSR lived in the same urban areas (15) that were both bastions of support for the relevant communist party and also those who were fed at the expense of the farmers and rural workers.

The fact that jews were disproportionately represented in the Moldavian Communist Party (who made the decisions which caused the artificial famine to occur), the Moldavian NKVD apparatus (who were the ones who supervised the collections and dealt with dissenters) and among those who were fed while the farmers and rural communities starved cannot be easily held to be coincidental.

Perhaps the jews of Moldavia sought to revenge themselves on the farmers and rural communities who were often perceived as having been supportive of the Axis powers (16) or perhaps it was not related to revenge, but rather of preservation of those regarded as more supportive of the Moldavian Communist Party (i.e., significantly jewish urban communities)?

Whichever way we wish to see it: it is difficult to see the significant growth of the jewish community from 1939 to 1959 as anything than confirmation that jews were kept alive due to dint of their being jewish (and thus more likely to be communists) in some way.

This genocidal persecution of the Moldavian farmers and rural communities reached its apogee between 1949 and 1952 when Soviet-style collectivization was imposed upon the SSR. In spite of the fact that according to Stalin's own criteria only 7,338 families were classed as kulaks (i.e., rich farmers aka rural capitalists thus class enemies) - which was less than 2 percent of all farmers in the SSR - (17) with 96.4 percent of all Moldavian farmers having less than 10 hectares of land to farm, (18) while only 61 peasants owned more than 3 cows. (19)

Between these years (starting on 28th June 1949) the disproportionately jewish Moldavian NKVD apparatus managed by 1950 to deport some 94,792 individuals from Moldavian farming communities as part of the collectivization process, (20) which was officially achieved by late 1951 with the report that 97 percent of Moldavian individual farmers had joined collective farms. (21)

This suggests then that between 1944 and 1953 the disproportionately jewish communist authorities and party of Moldova/Moldavia waged an unremitting campaign of terror, violence and repression against the Moldavian people.

After the death of Stalin in 1953: Communism in Moldavia was rather less genocidal, but no less jewish as we have already pointed out. It is also worth mentioning - before we continue - that the Moldavian SSR had long had the lowest intermarriage and assimilation rates among jews in the Soviet Union with an inter-marriage rate of 8.3 percent as late as 1958-1965 (22) with significantly more jewish women marrying out than jewish men. (23) This is important as we should remember that Judaism as well as jewish cultural norms broadly define jewishness by matrilineal descent not by patrilineal descent.

Also as late as 1970 - in spite of official disapproval of the language - some 45 percent of jews in the SSR spoke Yiddish as their first language having decreased from 50 percent in 1959. (24) By this time however a large amount of the jewish youth of Moldavia had turned to Zionism as their political/ethnic salvation as opposed to Marxism. (25) This was in part driven by an Israeli propaganda drive - often via the use of illegal radio broadcasts - to recruit the jews of the Soviet Union to the new 'promised land' and away from the assimilationist ideas of Marxism from the early 1960s onwards. (26)

Regardless of this fact: the jews of Moldova/Moldavia were represented in the Moldavian Communist Party in both 1963 and 1967 (6.4 and 5.7 percent of members respectively). Despite the fall off in the percentage membership: this is not representative of a decrease of jewish members of the Moldavia Communist Party, but rather a significant increase (27% or an increase of 1,199 jews) as part of a broadening of Communist Party membership. (27)

It is further worth remembering that at the time this data was taken: the number of jews in the USSR was decreasing given that the USSR required jews to self-identify as such in order to be counted as being jewish. (28) Thus the figure we are given by the official Soviet figures is actually the number of those jews who self-identified as being jewish not the actual number of jews regarded as such by halakhah (jewish religious law) or Israeli standards. 

We are thus being given a somewhat lower figure than the actual number concerned by the 1970s and we can accordingly see that the Moldavian Communist Party was - in official terms - disproportionately jewish, but that this represents only those jews who self-identified as such not those jews who identified as Moldavians or as Soviet citizens (i.e., the Moldavian Communist Party was certainly far more disproportionately jewish than the official figures indicate).

Realizing this issue with official statistics in the Soviet Union also puts pay to the argument - championed by Pinkus - that in the post-war period (especially from 1956 to 1970) jews were rarely involved at the higher or local echelons of the Soviet government (although still disproportionately represented among all communist party members), because few jews are listed in this capacity. (29)

What Pinkus omits to mention in relation to these statistics is that by this time overt jewishness had become a political liability in the USSR (30) due to the rise of Israel (although the USSR had originally been sympathetic). (31) This would necessarily mean that those jews in the Moldavian Communist Party - as well as the USSR's political and governmental establishment more broadly - would be likely to actively disassociate themselves from jewishness and instead become socialist 'new men'.

This is why official statistics oddly reveal so few jews in the Soviet government at this time and not because of 'official anti-Semitism' or 'anti-jewish discrimination' on the part of the Soviet government. Even if this were the case then I would argue that such discrimination would be justifiable on the simple grounds that Marxism was - in theory at least - a government of the people (i.e., the 'dictatorship of the proletariat') so accordingly the government should be representative of the people. This would mean that one small group of people (the jews) should not have at least double the amount of members of the communist party than other groups: thus because they were heavily over-represented then the Soviet government would be well within its political rights and fully in accordance with its ideological system in undertaking such action.

To give some further perspective to this point: in 1989 just before the fall of the Soviet Union the jews were 1.5 percent of the Moldavian population, but still almost twice as represented in the Moldavian Communist Party. (32) Indeed to this day the remaining jews of Moldavia are ardent voters for the Moldavian Communist Party! (33)

This then informs us that whatever the claims to the contrary: jews were closely involved in communism in Moldova/Moldavia till the bitter end and arguing that jews were 'persecuted' by the 'anti-Semitic' Soviet state is absurd. The simple reason for this is while many young jews were attracted to Zionism: their parents and some of the youth were still ardent Marxists and apparatchiks of the Soviet state.

Thus we can see that the idea of jews being persecuted in the Soviet Union is based on a false dichotomy as it assumes that Zionism in the Soviet Union represented all Soviet jews (which we should note in passing is not - and nor has it ever been - an accurate intellectual position to take) and that the Soviet Union as a state clamping down on Zionist activity was ispo facto non-jewish (as only non-jews according to most Zionist ideologues can be anti-Semitic per se) when it was in fact heavily jewish as we have shown in relation to Moldova/Moldavia.

In essence the battle between the Marxist state and Zionist underground in the USSR after Stalin was a struggle between the jewish establishment populated by the older generation (the Marxist state) and jewish nationalists revolutionaries populated by the younger generation (the Zionist underground). It was not a battle of anti-Semitic non-jewish communists versus radical jewish nationalists, but rather simply a battle between one jewish generation and another.

References

(1) This is available at the following address: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-communism-in-moldovamoldavia

(2) Igor Casu, 2010, 'Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940-1953', pp. 41-43 in Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe (Eds.), 2010, 'Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression', 1^st Edition, Manchester University Press: New York

(3) Ibid., p. 40

(4) Still one of the best works on the sheer scale of this participation is Moshe Kahanovich, 1954, 'Milhemet Hapartizanim Hayehoudim Bemizrah Europa', 1^st Edition, Ayanoth: Tel Aviv

(5) Lucien Steinberg,1978, 'Jews against Hitler', 2^nd Edition, Gordon & Cremonesi: New York, pp. 264-265

(6) Casu, Op. Cit., p. 43

(7) Ibid.

(8) Benjamin Pinkus, 1988, 'The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority', 1^st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 200

(9) Benjamin Pinkus, 2008, [1984], 'The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967', 1^st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 27

(10) C.asu, Op. Cit., p. 44

(11) Ibid, pp. 45-46

(12) Ibid., p. 46; also see Robert Gellately, 2013, 'Stalin's Curse: Battling Communism in War and Cold War', 1^st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 128-129

(13) Pinkus, 'Jews of the Soviet Union', Op. Cit., p. 235

(14) Pinkus, 'The Soviet Government', Op. Cit., p. 24; also William Korey, 1970, 'The Legal Position of Soviet Jewry', p. 80 in Lionel Kochan (Ed.), 1970, 'The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917', 1^st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York

(15) Ibid; while Pinkus, 'The Soviet Government' , Op. Cit., p. 342 suggests 87 percent.

(16) Casu, Op. Cit., pp. 48-52

(17) Ibid., p. 48

(18) Calculated from Table 1 in Ibid., p. 47

(19) Ibid.

(20) Nicolas Werth, 1999, 'A State Against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union', p. 237 in Stephane Courtois et al (Eds.), 1999, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression', 1^st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge

(21) Casu, Op. Cit., p. 50

(22) Pinkus, 'The Soviet Government', Op. Cit., p. 18

(23) Circa 20-30 percent calculated from Alec Nove, J. Newth, 1970, 'The Jewish Population: Demographic Trends and Occupational Patterns', p. 143 in Kochan, Op. Cit.

(24) Pinkus, 'The Soviet Government', Op. Cit., p. 26

(25) Zvi Gitelman,1988, 'A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present', 1^st Edition, Viking: New York, pp. 276-277

(26) Pinkus, 'Jews of the Soviet Union', Op. Cit., p. 311

(27) Ibid., p. 235

(28) Ibid., pp. 261-262

(29)  See Ibid., pp. 234-241; also Pinkus, 'The Soviet Government', Op. Cit., p. 343

(30) J. Schechtman, 1970, 'The U.S.S.R., Zionism and Israel', pp. 119-121 in Kochan, Op. Cit.

(31) Gellately, Op. Cit., p. 220

(32) William Crowther, 1990, 'Ethnicity and Participation in the Communist Party of Moldavia', Journal of Soviet Nationalities, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 148-149

(33) For example: http://www.jta.org/2001/02/28/archive/elderly-jews-in-moldova-election-help-restore-the-communist-party as well as being stridently Zionist (see http://www.jcpa.org/jl/jl390.htm)