"For the first time, ordinary
Soviet Jews were touched by the
sympathetic side of Israel
and
by real Jewish soul."

the Soviet Union are not in
opposition. Rather they are
two sides of the same coin —
a coin called Jewish sur-
vival." He said the fact that
so many emigrating Soviet
Jews are bypassing Israel
for the West was "a
catastrophic phenomenon,"
and that "the only way to
build the high level of na-
- tional consciousness neces-
sary to lead Soviet Jews to
make aliyah, is to build
Jewish culture in the Soviet
Union."
Despite these gains, Jew-
ish cultural and religious ac-
tivists face some difficult
challenges in the coming
months. For while most of
the cultural groups and sev-
eral of the religious groups
are united in support of the
JCA as the central commun-
ity forum, the newly opened
Solomon Mikhoels Center,
and not the JCA, will serve
as the venue in which most
organized Jewish activity
will take place. The head of
the Mikhoels Center is Mik-
hail Gluz, the longtime head
of the Jewish Musical Thea-
ter, and a figure who is
suspected by many cultural
activists as being under the
thumb of Soviet authorities.
Gluz's leadership of the
Jewish Musical Theater
hardly inspires confidence in
many activists; since he be-
came director two year ago,
it has performed a steady
stream of nostalgic Yiddish
song and dance productions,
which have given little in-
sight into Jewish history —
and have had even less to
say about present day issues
confronting Soviet Jewry.

According to Roman
Spektor, it will soon become
clear whether Gluz follows
through on promises made
to foreign Jewish leaders to
turn the center into a full
service community center
with Hebrew and Jewish his-
tory classes, a Jewish book-
store and a panoply of other
programs stressing Soviet
Jewry's connection to Israel
and world Jewry. Or whether
he will follow the lead of the
Anti-Zionist Committee in
seeking to keep the Center as
the showpiece of an ersatz
Jewish culture minimizing
any connection to Israel and
Zionism.

The Anti-Zionist Commit-
tee, long notorious for its
role in parroting extreme
Soviet attacks on Israel and
on refusenik leaders, is ex-
pected to intensify its efforts
to influence the direction of
the Jewish cultural move-
ment.

Anti SemitisM Lives
Are Soviet Jews paranoid in
their perception that anti-
Semitism among the masses
may be growing?
I had an insight into the
feelings of non-Jews about
Jews during an encounter
with two young street poets
at the Old Arbat pedestrian
mall, a Greenwich Village
type locale, where, in the
new atmosphere of peres-
troika, artists sell their pain-
tings and would-be saviors
of the nation earnestly ad-
dress fascinated passersby.
Standing on soapboxes
the two young men shouted
out poems denouncing the
Soviet role in Afghanistan,
and demanding that peres-
troika be expanded into
"real freedom in which
everyone would be free to do
what he wants."
But when I asked the two
men their opinion of Pam-
yat, the allegedly anti-
Semitic organization, I was
startled to hear quite a dif-
ferent line. "Pamyat is a
very fine organization,
which has good aims,
although I do not agree with
all of their methods, "said
one. "Not all Jews are bad.
There are good Jews who do
not exploit, rob, or kill us, or
send us to Afghanistan. But
there are many bad Jews
who are following in the
footsteps of the Jews who
were the main force behind
the 1917 (Russian) Revolu-
tion...Their purpose is to
achieve supreme world
power."
His companion nodded in
avid agreement, arguing
that there is a secret coterie
of Jews who make the key
decisions behind the scene in
the Kremlin. Many of the
several hundred bystanders
watching the exchange ap- •
peared to be nodding their
heads, and shouting agree-
ment with the ideas being
expressed.
The following day I inter-
viewed Dmitri Vasiliyev, the

-

unofficial leader of the main
branch of the Pamyat move-
ment, in the ramshackle pre-
revolutionary apartment he
shares communally with his
stepson and other Pamyat
devotees. The walls in Vasili-
yev's study are covered with
traditional Russian icons of
Jesus and Mary, and with
paintings of the last Czar
Nicholas II and members of
his family. Over Vasiliyev's
desk is a huge map of the
pre-1914 Russian empire.

Vasiliyev, 43, a part time
photographer who has
played bit parts in Soviet
films, is a stout and rather
gregarious man who looks a
bit like Lech Walesa.
Vasiliyev vehemently insists
that he is not anti-Semitic.
"In fact, we are struggling
against political Zionism
and not. against Jews...It is
the Zionists who are ar-
tificially creating the prob-
lem of anti- Semitism. And it
is the Jews, first and
foremost, who suffer from
their activities."
Vasiliyev then laid out an
astonishing theory based on
the notion that there are two
kinds of Zionism: a nation-
alist Zionism fathered by
Theodore Herzl that focused
on the creation of a Jewish
state, and a more "aggres-
sive" internationalist variety
aiming at Jewish world dom-
ination. This latter brand was
fathered by, of all people, the
early philosopher of Labor
Zionism, Ahad Ha'am, ac-
cording to Vasiliyev.

Arguing that Ahad
Ha'am's Zionism was par-
ticularly insidious beccause
it based itself on "biblical
notions" — such as the Jews
being a chosen people —
Vasiliyev said, "We have
nothing against Herzl. The
Jewish people, like other
people, have the right to a
state, culture and language.
But the notion that the Jews
are the chosen people, which
is alive in Zionism today, is
the essence of racism."
He asserted that Zionists
control not only the Soviet
press, including Pravda, but
the foreign press as well.
Vasiliyev expressed hatred
of the Soviet regime, which he
claims is carrying out a cam-
paign of "terror" against

Pamyat. "Pamyat is the peo-
ple, and no one can struggle
against the people...Truth,
God and Orthodox Christian-
ity will be victorious. We are
struggling every day to awak-
en the national consciousness.
Despite all of the actions
against us by the authorities,
we are succeeding in bringing
our message to the people,
awakening national pride in
people and respect for their
culture."

Assimilated Jews
Despite the positive — and
negative — factors seeming
to dictate a sharp growth in
the numbers of Jews involv-
ing themselves in the Jewish
cultural movement, there
are at present, only about
2,000 Moscow JeWs actively
involved in Jewish cultural
and religious activities; a
tiny proportion of the city's
estimated quarter of a
million Jews.
According to Jewish ac-
tivist leader Mikhail Chlen-
ov, "our aim is to reach the
silent Jews, but we have to
be realistic...There are many
Jews who see the Soviet
Union as their motherland.
They speak Russian, are
educated in Russian culture,
and know nothing Jewish
beyond Tumb alalaika. '
Hpw can they be expected to
feel otherwise?"

Mira lbdorovsky, a promi-
nent documentary filmmaker
in her 50's, seems an unlikely
person to play an assertive
role on behalf of a Jewish
cause. She is married to a
non-Jew (Peter lbdorovsky,
one of the Soviet Union's lead-
ing feature filmmakers), and
as she readily concedes, has
until now been totally unin-
volved in Jewish activities. "I
am typical of the majority of
Soviet Jews who are assimi-
lated," she says. "Not only
do I not know Yiddish, but
my parents also did not
speak the language. Of Jews
like myself it can be said
that if someone does not re-
mind us that we are Jewish,
we are likely to forget."
Yet it was Mira, who took
up the cause of having the
Simon Wiesenthal Center's
documentary, "Genocide,"
screened in the Soviet
Union, successfully pressing

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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