Antisemitism on the Soviet Home Front

During the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, around two million Jews were evacuated to the Soviet rear — Central Asia, the Urals, and Siberia. This led to a significant rise in antisemitic sentiment in these regions. The main causes were the sharp change in the ethnic composition of the population, the general instability of wartime life, and shortages of resources.

Antisemitism manifested itself in public insults, physical violence, and discrimination in employment. The Soviet authorities failed to take effective measures against it: there were no specific laws addressing the problem, incidents were handled behind closed doors, and the issue was silenced in the public sphere.

During the war, antisemitic tendencies also intensified within Soviet state policy. In 1942, Grigory Aleksandrov, head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), initiated a campaign against the alleged “Jewish predominance” in cultural institutions, calling for “purges” and accusing Jews of distorting Soviet nationalities policy.

By 1943, restrictions had been introduced on the admission of Jews to the diplomatic service. Similar unofficial quotas — in some cases amounting to a complete ban — appeared in the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade and other state institutions.

Here is one example of how anti-Jewish discrimination in the workplace began long before the campaign against “cosmopolitanism” and the subsequent “case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee,” the “Abakumov case,” and the “Doctors’ Plot.” Evidence of this can be found in a letter sent to the Central Committee by Anatoly Semyonovich Kabalkin, a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1919, asking that those responsible for discrimination against Jews be held accountable, including the party leadership of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

In his letter, Kabalkin wrote that in August 1943 large-scale dismissals had taken place within the system of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and that they had an openly antisemitic character. The formal pretext was the Academy’s relocation from Ufa to Moscow on Stalin’s orders.

This “personnel reorganisation” was conducted behind closed doors: no party meetings were held, no lists were published, and decisions were made without discussion. In total, 83 employees were slated for dismissal, most of them Jews. Among them were many qualified researchers with academic degrees, including corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR such as Krein, Akhiezer, and other major specialists.

At the same time, less qualified non-Jewish employees retained their positions, and new non-Jewish staff were hired. Local party bodies refused to intervene, claiming that matters concerning the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR fell under the authority of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine.

These events show how, as early as 1943, a system of unofficial discrimination on ethnic grounds was beginning to take shape in the USSR — one that would later lead to the large-scale antisemitic campaigns of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Kabalkin’s letter on discrimination against Jews at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR is available on our website.

Freddy Rotman