The big Menshevik trial now in progress in Moscow has been specially arranged in the first place to discredit the Second (Socialist) International, and in the second place to organise feeling against the Jewish Socialists, by demonstrating that they are enemies of the Soviet regime, it is suggested in Bundist circles here, pointing to the large proportion of Jews among the accused – six out of fourteen.
This, the Bundists say, is in accordance with the general attitude of Stalin, who is manoeuvring to get the Jews into such a position that if his five-year plan fails, he should be able to blame the Jews, by showing that the Jewish specialists have been wrecking the scheme, and making the Jews serve as a lightning-conductor for the wrath of the people.
Stalin is fighting against militant antisemitism, they admit, but he does not mind creating anti-Jewish feeling, and he has been active in removing Jews from high positions in the Soviet State.
Stalin last month gave a signed statement to the J.T.A. representative in Moscow on the question of antisemitism, in which he said: National and racial chauvinism is a relic of man-hating customs, characteristic of the era of cannibalism. Antisemitism is in extreme expression of racial chauvinism, and as such is the most dangerous survival of cannibalism. Antisemitism is useful to the exploiter, for it serves as a lightning conductor enabling capitalism to evade the blows of the toiling masses. Antisemitism is a danger to the working people, inasmuch as it is a false path leading them into the jungle away from the right road. Communists, therefore, as consistent internationalists cannot but be irreconcilable and avowed enemies of antisemisemitism.
In the Union of Soviet Republic, Stalin declared, antisemitism is nigidly persecuted as an appearance which is thoroughly hostile to the Soviet regime, and militant antisemites are under the laws of the Union of Soviet Republic punishable by death.
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