Anti-Semitism

I have always wanted to find a way to reduce the number of Jews in the Soviet Union. In 1926, I disbanded the Jewish Section of the Communist Party. That was a good way to get them out of government. I, just as Lenin had, told people that Jews had no large, compact, rural settlements and no agricultural population, so there was no reason to recognize them as their own national group. They were "not a living and active nation, but something mystical, intangible and supernatural. For, I repeat, what sort of nation, for instance, is a Jewish nation which consists of Georgian, Daghestanian, Russian, American and other Jews, the members of which do not understand each other (since they speak different languages), inhabit different parts of the globe, will never see each other, and will never act together, whether in time of peace or in time of war?"

In 1928, I was able to send them to the Far Eastern region of Birobirdzan, not a very desirable place to live, to colonize. While they were there, I was able to accuse Semyon Dimanstein, the secretary of the Communist Party in Birobirdzan, of Trotskyism. During the great purge, the same thing happened to many other prominent Jewish Communists.

During the 1930s, the first signs of national anti-Semitism could be seen. There was open discrimination in education and in important roles and positions, such as the Soviet Armed Forces, or any type of organization that had contact with foreign countries.

The doctor's plot was another attempt to rid the USSR of Jews. In 1953, a conspiracy was reported to get rid of leaders of the Soviet Union by having the Jewish doctors poison them. However, this case was fabricated, and did not amount to anything in the end.