Was there a Jewish emancipation in Stalin’s Soviet Union? A reassessment of the activity and liquidation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, 1941–1952

It is commonly argued that the Jews of Soviet Russia and the USSR enjoyed full civic equality. However, this is an oversimplified claim. Under Stalin, the Soviet regime classified the population of the USSR according to a hierarchical system of national-group categories, based on the perceived level of advancement of different ethno-national groups along the Marxist historical timeline. At the top of this hierarchy stood territorial nations concentrated within their own “homelands,” while at its bottom were dispersed, non-territorial national groups. This hierarchy had tangible implications for the scope of the civic rights of Soviet citizens: for instance, members of extra-territorial groups such as the Jews faced discrimination in various spheres of life. This article focuses on a prominent Soviet Jewish body during World War II–the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee–and argues that the Committee recognized the Jews’ unequal status and sought to remedy it by initiating a political appeal to the Stalinist regime. Viewing the Committee’s activity as an effort to achieve full civic equality for Jews reveals the political dimension of its work, long overlooked by scholarship, and sheds new light on the reasons for its eventual liquidation by the Stalinist authorities.