Tainaia politika Stalina. Vlast' i Antisemitism by Gennadii. V. Kostyrchenko (review)

Abstract

356 SEER, 85, 2, 2007 for their own fate. Similarly, Cox discusses the danger of a retreat into a parochial slovenstvo which he defines as 'a stubborn or defensive adherence to the Slovene manner of doing things' (p. I87). He notes that the values of tolerance and pluralismmay now be under threat (citingas one example the mobilization in Ljubljana against the building of a Mosque) but, though he agrees that civil society has declined since the heady days of the I980S, he thinks that fears about its disappearance are exaggerated. Gow and Carmichael for their part conclude (p. 219) that 'the challenge is to make cosmopolitan openness a part of slovenstvo and so preserve it'. These politico-literarydebates about culture and identity, as both books show in some detail, are far from new. The tension in Slovenia (and other countries)between the desireto be recognizedby the restof the world and the fear of being swallowed up by it have marked an often tortured discussion since at least the late Habsburg Empire;from Ivan Cankar'splay, TheBailffl Jfernej (Hiapec Jern6y) to the workof one of Slovenia'sbest known current'public intellectuals',DragoJancar. Overall there is little to choose between these two studiesand both can be recommended as reliable sources of information on one of Europe's newest nation-states. Although it is clearly a drawback of Gow and Carmichael's book that it could not cover more recent events, includingthe 2002 presidential elections, theiraccount has hardlybeen invalidatedby more recent events, and several points, such as those about Slovene euroscepticism,have been confirmed(aftergo per cent voted in favourofjoining the EU in March 2003, the turn-outfor the European elections inJune 2004 was a mere 28 per cent). Lastbut not least, for anyone who is not a library,the huge differencein price (f i6.50 as compared to f65 for Cox) may well tip the balance in theirfavour. Loughborough University R. KNIGHT Kostyrchenko,Gennadii. V. Tainaja politika Stalina.Vlast'i Antisemitism. Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, Moscow, 2001. 779 pp. Notes. Index of names. Price unknown. G. V. KOSTYRCHENKO is best known for his study Vplenuu krasnogo faraona (translatedinto Englishas OutoftheRedShadows) publishedin Moscow in I994. It is a major study, resting on a wide foundation of archivalmaterial, of the antisemitic policies that marked the last years of Stalin's rule. The present volume is more ambitiousstill.Billedas 'a documentarystudy',it exploresthe entire historyof theJews in late-tsaristRussia and in the Soviet Union up to Stalin's death in I953. The archival base has expanded, and Kostyrchenko quotes a wide variety of materials from the former Central Archives of the Communist Party and the archives of the Ministryof InternalAffairs the NKVD. His stated goal is 'to reconstructthe historicalprocess of the birth, origin and development of state Antisemitismin the USSR' (p. 24). Despite these broader aims, the figure of Stalin remains omnipresent'. Reviewing Stalin'swritingson theJewish Question both immediately before and after the Revolution, Kostyrchenko disagreeswith those biographersof REVIEWS 357 Stalin who have seen antisemitism as an essential part of his intellectual makeup. Rather, Kostyrchenkoargues, he was willing to 'speculate'with the Jewish Question in his bid for political power, especiallyas he became aware of the anti-Jewishfeelingsthat pervaded the lower levels of the Party.Indeed, this theme of 'speculation'best characterizesthe author's reading of Stalin's Jewish policies. Although an 'internationalist'at heart, Stalin recognized in the 1930S that there were three ideologies that defined the age: liberalism,communism and nationalism(thelatter,of course, encapsulatingfascism).Of these, nationalism was the most potent, and had to be indulged if the Soviet experiment was to succeed. Thus, Stalinwas increasinglytolerantof the rise of 'GreatRussian chauvinism', which in turn provided fertile grounds for the growth of antisemitism. This trend became more marked as the Great Patriotic War neared its conclusion. Kostyrchenko records a significantnumber of appeals to the Central Committee of the Party protesting against the domination of nonRussiansin Soviet academic and culturalinstitutions.The listsof non-Russian ethnics provided to prove this point invariablyput Jews in first place. Such appealsappear to have been generatedby a combination of envy, the climate created by the Nazi occupation, and the pre-waremergence of Russianchauvinism . These appeals eventually resulted in the 'cleansing' of...