Moissaye J. Olgin 1939

The Anti-Red Hysteria in the Jewish Field


Source: M. J. Olgin: Leader and Teacher, compiled and edited by the staff of the Morning Freiheit. New York, Workers Library Publishers, 1939.
Transcribed: Mitch Abidor for the Marxists Internet Archive in 2005
HTML Markup: David Walters
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.


As soon as the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany was announced, a number of Jewish liberals reacted by coming out violently against the Soviet Union and against the Communists in the United States.

The reason advanced was that the pact endangered the lives of the Jews of Europe. So it was clearly stated, for instance, in a declaration of several Jewish writers explaining why they had quit the non-partisan Y.C.U.F. (World Alliance for Jewish Culture). The Stalin-Hitler alliance, they said, was placing the 3,500,000 Jews of Poland in danger of death. The writers did not hesitate to call the pact an “alliance.” They were certain that the Soviet Union had promised Hitler military aid. They were certain that, outside the clauses of the non-aggression pact as announced, there were also secret clauses that spelled the strengthening of the Nazis and the ruin of the Jews.

Events have proved that these writers and those who thought in the same vein were wrong. There is no military alliance between the USSR and Germany. There is no collaboration in any respect between the USSR and Germany except that which is natural when two states are on a footing of non-aggression. The Soviet Union is trading with Germany but it is also trading with England. The Soviet Union is insisting on a speedy termination of the war and it will certainly insist on a just peace in the interests of the peoples of all countries.

Of the greatest immediate importance for the Jews is the fact that the Soviet Union, basing itself on the non-aggression pact and utilizing the situation when Western Ukraine and Western Byelo-Russia remained no-man’s land after the collapse of the Polish government, marched into those territories and liberated from the yoke of fascism 13,000,000 people, among them two million Jews.

This introduced a radical change in the status of the Jews of Europe. It will have far-reaching consequences which cannot even be fully predicted today. For one thing, the number of the Jews in the USSR has increased from three million to five million, which means that the specific weight of the Jewish population in the USSR has become greater. Cultural activities among the Jews of the USSR will increase accordingly. Five million Jews under the free Soviet regime are something which only two short months ago one could not dream.

The prospect is that, horrible as is the situation of the Jews in Central Europe, a change to the better is imminent. In the Baltic states the change is taking place now. The Jews in Poland and in Germany will see a new day with the establishment of a European peace. That peace cannot be established without the cooperation of the Soviet Union. And where such a cooperation exists, there the rights of the small nations will be made a major issue.

That being the case, one would expect that some of the liberal Jews who foresaw dire consequences for the Jews from the non-aggression pact would change their stand. Unfortunately, this has not yet taken place. It is possible that some revision of opinions is going on among a few of the Jewish liberals. But it has not yet come into the open by way of public expression.

***

We are living in an atmosphere of anti-Red hysteria among the Jews. It so happens that three out of the four metropolitan Yiddish papers are playing a disproportionately large role in the public life of the Jews. From everyday experience we know that the Jewish population, organized and unorganized, is not in accord with those three papers. Yet it is they that seem to give the tone to Jewish public life. It is their opinions that pass as Jewish public opinion generally. And they keep on abusing the Soviet Union, slandering its leadership, distorting every bit of information about Soviet activities, concealing from the masses the significance of the liberation of two million Jews, picturing it as an event fraught with danger if not as a calamity, denouncing everyone who happens to agree with the peace policy of the Soviet Union, and conducting a red-baiting campaign of the most vociferous and unscrupulous kind.

Why is it so? What is back of this barrage? Is it conviction? There can be no question of adhering to honest convictions where falsification and distortion are the order of the day. Out paper has its hands full catching the journalists of these three papers red-handed. No words are strong enough to brand the ugly manipulations of these journalists, who keep mum about highly important events, present rumors as fact, and parade invention as news.

Do these people not realize that they are treading on dangerous ground? Why is it that this Red-baiting campaign is going one? Do they not understand that by doing the work of the worst reactionaries in the United States they are endangering civil liberties, and thereby the status of the Jews?