Khrushchev Criticizes Babii Yar

Nikita Khrushchev, From a Speech at a Meeting of Party and Government Leaders With Workers in Literature and the Arts. March 8, 1963

Original Source: Pravda and Izvestiia, 10 March 1963, pp. 1-4.

... Letters are being received in the Party Central Committee expressing concern over the fact that some works give a distorted view of the position of Jews in our country. The bourgeois press, as you know from the exchange of letters between the English philosopher Russell and myself, is even conducting a slanderous campaign against us.

At our meeting in December we already touched upon this question in connection with the poet Evtushenko's "Babii Yar." Circumstances require us to return to this question.

Why is this poem criticized? For the fact that its author did not succeed in truthfully showing and condemning the fascist, specifically fascist, criminals for the mass murders they committed in Babii Yar. The poem presents the matter as though only the Jewish population fell victim to the fascist crimes, whereas many Russians, Ukrainians and Soviet people of other nationalities died there at the hands of the Hitlerite executioners. It is evident from this poem that its author did not manifest political maturity and disclosed ignorance of the historical facts.

Who needed to present matters as though the population of Jewish nationality in our country is mistreated by someone, and why did they need to present them thus? This is untrue. From the days of the October Revolution the Jews in our country have had equality with all other peoples of the USSR in all respects. We do not have a Jewish question, and those who dream it up are singing a foreign tune.

As for the Russian working class, before the Revolution also it was the resolute foe of any national oppression, including anti-Semitism.

In pre-revolutionary times I lived among the miners. The workers stigmatized those who participated in the Jewish pogroms. The inspirers of the pogroms were the autocratic government, the capitalists, the landholders and the bourgeoisie. They needed the pogroms as a means of diverting the working people from revolutionary struggle. The organizers of the pogroms were the police, the gendarmerie, the Black Hundreds who recruited hoodlums from the dregs of society, from declassed elements. In the cities many janitors were their agents.

For example, the famous Bolshevik revolutionary Comrade Bauman, who was not a Jew, was killed in Moscow by a janitor at the assignment of the gendarmerie.

Gorky's wonderful novel "Mother" superbly showed the internationalism of the working class of Russia. In the ranks of the revolutionary workers are representatives of various nationalities. It is enough to recall the Russian worker Pavel Vlasov and the Ukrainian Andrei Nakhodka.

I spent my childhood and youth in Yuzovka, where many Jews lived at the time. For a while I worked at the factory as apprentice to the fitter Iakov Isaakovich Kutikov. He was a skilled worker. There were other Jews too among the workers at the factory. I remember that a Jew worked as a foundry man pouring copper, and this was then considered a very high skill. I often saw this foundry man; he was evidently a religious man and did not work Saturdays, but since all the Ukrainians, Russians and others worked on Saturdays, he used to come to the foundry and spend the whole day there, although he did not take part in the work.

Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Latvians, Estonians and others worked at the factory. Sometimes no one even knew the nationality of one or another worker. Relations were comradely among the workers of all nationalities.

This is class unity, proletarian internationalism.

When I was in the United States of America and was riding in a car in Los Angeles, a man sat down in the car and introduced himself as the deputy mayor of the city. He spoke Russian, not very pure Russian but quite fluent. I looked at him and asked:

How do you know Russian?

I lived in Rostov, my father was a merchant of the second guild.

Such persons lived in Petersburg and wherever they wished.

The Jew Kutikov, with whom I worked at the factory, could not live wherever he chose in tsarist times, you see but such a Jew as the father of the deputy mayor of Los Angeles could live where he wished.

That was how the tsarist government viewed the national question; it too treated it from a class point of view. Therefore Jews who were big merchants, capitalist, had the right to live everywhere, but the Jewish poor shared the same lot as the Russian, Ukrainian and other workers; they had to work, to live in hovels and carry the burden of forced labor, like all the peoples of tsarist Russia.

Different people behaved differently in the period of the Patriotic War against the fascist invaders also. In those days no little heroism was displayed, including heroism by Jews. Those of them who distinguished themselves were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, many were awarded orders and medals. I shall mention as an example Hero of the Soviet Union General Kreizer. He was deputy commander of the Second Guards Army during the great battle on the Volga, he took part in the fighting for liberation of the Donets Basin and the Crimea. General Kreizer is now in command of troops in the Far East

There were also instances of treason on the part of people of various nationalities. I can cite the following fact. When Paulus's grouping was surrounded and then crushed, the 64th Army, commanded by General Shumilov, took part in capturing Paulus's headquarters, and General Z. T. Serdiuk was a member of the Military Council. He telephoned me and said that among the prisoners taken at Paulus's headquarters was Kogan, formerly an instructor of the Kiev City Young Communist League Committee. I asked:

How could he get there? Aren't you mistaken?

No, I'm not mistaken," said Comrade Serdiuk. "This Kogan was interpreter at Paulus's headquarters.

A mechanized brigade commanded by Colonel Burmakov took part in capturing Paulus. The commissar of this brigade was Comrade Vinokur, a Jew by nationality. I knew Vinokur back in 1933, when I had worked as Secretary of the Bauman Borough Party Committee in Moscow and he had been secretary of the Party cell at the butter and milk plant.

It turns out thus: One Jew serves as interpreter at Paulus' headquarters, another in the ranks of our troops takes part in capturing Paulus and his interpreter.

People's acts are judged not from a national but from a class standpoint.

It is not in the interests of our cause to dig up out of the rubbish heaps of the past examples of discord among the working people of various nationalities. It is not they who bear the responsibility for inflaming national hatred and national oppression. This was the work of the exploiting classes. And as for the traitors to the interests of the revolution-the hirelings of tsarism, of the landowners and of the bourgeoisie recruited them everywhere and found venal souls among people of various nationalities....

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XV, No. 4 (1963), pp. 3-5.