Soviet Society And Culture by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781000312720
Google: 1AeiDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11T15:56:20+00:00

This footnote supplies the shibboleth of brotherhood originally missing from the poem and temporarily supplied by the added stanzas. It also permits Evtushenko to qualify his poem, originally written in unqualified support of the Jews, so that it can serve as an attack on Israel, which Evtushenko equates with Nazi Germany (for its treatment of the Palestinians).

Is there in fact a strategy here, a change of policy? We can assume that this set of works sympathetic to the tragedy that befell the Jews during the war is no accident. The explanation may lie in the fact that the regime had become increasingly strident in its attacks on Zionism, culminating in the establishment of an Anti-Zionist Committee in May 1983. It remained difficult to articulate these attacks in a way that precluded the charge of antisemitism. By allowing the publication of these works, the regime provided some comfort to Soviet Jews and, at the same time, it showed the West that it harbors no ill will toward Jews as a race. The appearance of these works helped the regime make the claim that it differentiates between Jews and Zionists.

Borshchagovsky’s play, Kuznetsov’s novel, and Evtushenko’s poem all testify to the tragedy that the inscription on the monument mis-represents. Before the monument was built, the officials at Intourist and Sputnik did everything in their power to keep foreigners away from the site. Kiev was closed altogether to foreigners for several years after the war. When Edward Crankshaw was permitted to visit the city in 1955, he asked the local director of Intourist to take him to the site: “At first he pretended he had never heard of Babi Yar. But when I insisted, he said: ‘Why do you want to go look at a bunch of dead Jews? If you’re so interested in Jews, you’ll see more than enough live ones on the streets.’”

When Joseph Schectman was refused all assistance in 1959, he got to Babi Yar by bus.72 When Elie Wiesel was refused all assistance in 1965, he got to Babi Yar by taxi. The place was so desolate that he finally concluded that the surly driver had deliberately taken him to the wrong place, but his description makes it almost certain that he was indeed at Babi Yar:

We traversed the city, passing through the Podol quarter and stopping for a moment near the old cemetery. Then we continued for another two kilometers until we reached a broad, open area. In the distance were new housing developments. On my right a new highway, on my left a construction site. “Babi Yar,” the driver shrugged his shoulders, as if to explain, You can see with your own eyes there’s nothing here. He was right. You have to close your eyes to see the thousands falling into an open grave. You have to concentrate with all your energy to hear their cries in this silence which seems so restful and so natural. Where are the mass graves? Where is the blood? Does anything visible remain of that drama of horror? Nothing.

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