Theres a whole book "Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953" By Jonathan Brent on the affair. Essentially just before his death, Stalin was preparing for a purge of Jews on a scale that would surpass the Pogroms.
Thanks. Didn't know about that.
Now, as for what actually was done to the Jews, for example there was the fact that it was illegal to teach Hebrew, except for the Soviet foreign office. The percentage of synogogues closed under the soviets was much higher then Eastern Orthodox Churches and Mosques.
Besides Hebrew, all formal Judaic education was banned, but other groups suffered likewise in the U.S.S.R.
Jews were forcedm to live in Pales, which were effectively Jewish ghettos, where Jews were forced to concentrate.
This occured under tsarist rule before the Soviet Union.
It's also worth noting that right up until the fall of the USSR, Jews were refused the right to leave the country, and move to Israel, and they became known asd "Refuseniks"
They also emigrated to the U.K., U.S. or wherever else they could when they managed to leave the U.S.S.R.
I remember signing petitions requesting the freedom of refuseniks during the 80s. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, thousands of Jews left for Israel & elsewhere, but Russian Jewish communities are starting to rebound again.
Are you serious? Well maybe it's just because I'm German and Germans who adopt anything from the NSDAP-ideology (like this race-thing) are for the rest of the population so clear nazis like Osama Bin Laden is an islamist, but where I come from Jews being a race was always considered an invention of Hitler and underwriters, and that they are truly as much a race like Christans, Hindus and whoever else....
So if they are considers a real race now this would be very interesting ('cause it would offend everything I was told so far)
You were taught correctly. The Nazis saw the "superiority of the Aryan race" as central to their ideology. Anyone not "Aryan" was a threat in their view, Jews included. Hence, it was a racial issue to them.
I don't like to view humans as "races" at all. I prefer to think of it as the human race comprised of different ethnicities.
Because Jews are regarded to be an ethnicity, usually Semitic.
There are not very many Jews who are not also ethnically Semetic; Judaism doesn't have that "missionary" attribute that Christianity and Islam have, you just don't find many people converting to Judaism. Thus, the people mainly identified as being Jews are the Semites.
Arabs, Bedouins & others are also Semitic. In the West, the term, anti-Semitic has been used almost exclusively to describe anti-Jewish bigotry so the term, Semitic is often thought of as meaning Jewish. In fact, it does not. I guess anti-Jewish is a better term for what anti-Semitic is used for most often.
A couple of generations ago, there weren't that many non-Jewish Semites living in the West. Five years ago in Cairo, an Egyptian man bragged to me that there were more Egyptians living in the U.S. than in Egypt. I have no idea why he was so proud of it.
Religon is Opiate of the masses, easy as dat
Hey, we agree on something! The Soviet era was not a good time to be a religious person living in the U.S.S.R.
Quick, without looking: what does that mean?
Too funny!
Nobody tought me history, I have learned it myself.
Education is a wonderful thing. You should look into it.
I was speaking about WW1.
The Soviet Union came after WWI. This thread is clearly about the U.S.S.R.
I said that the British invented an incredibly effective propaganda machine during WWI.
Actually, you didn't mention WWI in your post. Since WWI was before the Soviet era, we could only assume you meant WWII.
Before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the media that spread the hype and thrill about the coming war, and acted as government's mouth piece, in fact some of them worked with the military.
Probably so to some extent, but the Bush administration is probably the most anti-press administration we've ever had.
And Jews ARE a race, which belongs to semitic group of races.
Many ruthless and brutal empires of our time and recent history, like Nazi Germany, British Empire, Soviet Union, Israel, had many achievements in technology and science, but with a terrible down-side, the suffering and deaths of millions.
Israel is about the size of the U.S. state of New Jersey. You can drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in about 45 minutes in heavy traffic. Not much of an "empire."
The other achievement of the Soviet Empire was how it managed to limit American power. Had United States been the sole super power from the very beginning, I fear the world would a much worse place to live for many.
Yeah! Freedom of religion, speech, thought, self government...those ideas suxxor!
Batista regime was never democratic. Back then, America tyranny over Cuba killed thousands, and it continues to today, with American terrorism and economic strangling.
Please, name the last American terrorist attack in Cuba...
Iraq war is just as bad as the soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
I don't know about that, but I agree it was a foolish move on our part.
It's certainly true that the US has had a pretty nasty record in certain elements of its foreign policy during the Cold War. The question is, though, whether it would have been better or worse without the Cold War. Wouldn't there be a good case for saying that without the Cold War, the US would have had much less of a motive to do some of these dodgy things? Without the perceived threat of the USSR there would have been less of a tendency to support extreme right-wing regimes throughout the world as bulwarks against communism. There would have been far less motive for Carter and Reagan to send money to the repressive government of El Salvador in the late 70s and early 80s, for example, since the rationale for that was that even an insanely murderous right-wing junta was preferable to communists. So without the USSR, perhaps the US would have had more international influence than it has actually done, but that influence might have been more benign. I also suspect that, without the perceived threat of the USSR, domestic US politics would have been a lot less right-wing. There would have been no McCarthyism in the 1950s, and the "religious right" would have had a more difficult time rising to prominence in the 1980s without the Cold War and the supposed threat of atheist communism.
All good points. Just think of the trillions of dollars spent on the Cold War by both sides. Those resources could have done allot of good otherwise.
How come the word "Jew" can't be mentioned on this forum without a "what is a Jew" debate occuring? Plotinus' answer is correct, BTW.
) And Napoleon was a dictator in a sense...
