“Time for hollow Promises has passed”: Soviet Contacts of American Jewish Press

The article restores Soviet contacts of the representatives of the left American Jewish press, resumed in 1956 when Khruschev “thaw” set in. Based on press materials and documents deposited in the Russian archives (RGALI and RGANI), we trace how the New York “Yiddishist” Jews like P. Novik and Ch. Suller tried to accomplish a non-trivial task: without breaking friendly ties, they delicately but decisively encouraged their Moscow colleagues to take more energetic actions aimed at reviving Jewish culture in the USSR. Hoping for a return to the 1930s, the Americans deemed necessary to open Jewish theaters, publishing houses, newspapers, literary journals. The contact group on this issue on the Soviet part was headed by the chairman of the Writers’ Union A. Surkov and included major Jewish writers under the leadership of A. Vergelis. In the article we reconstruct the year of intense negotiations, personal meetings, public statements and exchange of letters, and demonstrate that the restoration of Jewish literature during the early “thaw” was being delayed, and all proactive proposals of the American Jews were being sabotaged. Mindful of the fate that befell the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the last years of Stalin’s rule, representatives of the contact group coordinated every step with the higher leadership of the Central Committee, which inevitably led to lengthy delays. In the appendix to the article we publish a report by A. Vergelis to B. Polevoy, the Chairman of the Foreign Commission of the Writers’ Union, in which he signals a crisis in partnerships with the representatives of the Western left Jewish press.