When the Communist Party finally took over, one of its platforms was a prohibition against the persecution of Jews. Ironically, however, the new regime also had an anti-religious policy, and it included opposition to the Jewish religion, Zionism, and Hebrew. Jews were considered complete citizens, but they weren't allowed to be different from other Soviets. The government systematically closed yeshivot (plural of yeshivah), synagogues, and schools. They fined rabbis and Hebrew teachers. Zionists were sent to labor camps. Despite this persecution, underground yeshivot sprang up, and most of the Zionists successfully fled the country. The Soviet government did permit Yiddish to be taught and written, and Yiddish theater continued.
Jews suffered economically, frequently depending on money from the American Jewish joint Distribution Committee and ORT to survive. The Soviets tried to resettle Jews into a single Russian territory, Birobidjan, and more than 300,000 Jews were transported there. At the same time, thousands of Jews assimilated into Soviet culture.
During World War II Soviet Jews suffered tremendously, killed by the Nazis and imprisoned by the Soviets. Latent Russian anti-Semitism rose to the surface; there were pogroms in areas far from the German front. Yiddish was suppressed. The Yiddish press and Yiddish schools were forced to close.
Under Stalin, the Jews continued to suffer. In 1953, with the arrest of a group of prominent doctors, most of whom were Jewish, a wave of anti-Semitism ran through the country. An inordinate number of Jews were arrested and either executed or sent to labor camps. Fortunately, with Stalin's death there was some relief from this persecution, but under Nikita Khrushchev's leadership there was a rise in anti-Semitism again. In 1963 more than 60 percent of all executions for black marketeering in the Soviet Union involved Jews.
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