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PARTISAN REVIEW
soldier is beating the good young Palestinian boy, and it seems dif–
ficult to understand why. American Jews can do much to clarify the
situation, by providing a better understanding of what is happening
and influencing public opinion in the West.
RR:
Why does the Soviet Union prevent Soviet Jews from assimi–
lating by encouraging anti-Semitism? Also, someone said if people
get the government they deserve, are the Soviets worthy of a free
government? Is there some relation between the two? American
Jews try to walk a line between their religion and their country, to
find some roots and level of comfort in both. But the Soviet Union,
by your and others' depiction of it, makes that kind of compromise
impossible .
NS:
There is now in the Soviet Union an anti-Semitic organization,
called "Memory," and though its members speak not about Jews but
about Zionists, they hate assimilated Jews more than Zionists. They
try to marry our girls and our boys, thinking they will improve their
stock.
The state originally said that Jews were not a nation; it was
said by Lenin and then by Stalin. Of course, Jews could not be a
religion, because all religions were prohibited . In America, Jews are
a religion; in the Soviet Union they are a nation . Yet in spite of the
fact that they are not a nation, their identification cards carry the
words
nation: Jew.
In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, they con–
sidered using passports without such identification as Russian,
Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and so on, but it was not done because they
wanted to specify who were Jews. They don't trust us . And I think
this distrust is deeply rooted in distrust of the Jewish mentality.
As to whether people have the government they deserve, I don't
think it is racist to say that all people are not the same. Every nation
is different, every nation has its own type of mentality. Racism
begins when we say that one nation is better than another. The Rus–
sian people traditionally, if you look at their history, are different in
their mentality.
If
you look at their language, the government is a
parent: the same words are used for the government, for the good
tsar, as for the parents.
If
today there were free elections in Russia, it is clear that
Armenia and Lithuania would want to separate from Russia. And
there would
be
two candidates: Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. With all
my respect and love for Sakharov with whom I have worked so
closely, I am sure Solzhenitsyn would be chosen because he ad-
