ABSTRACT
In the wake of the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Kremlin took another step away from the concept of equality among nations. This time the peoples of the USSR were overtly divided by the Kremlin into reliable and unreliable categories, with the latter subject to collective harsh treatment, including deportation (see part 2, chapter 1, on “punished peoples”). This departure from egalitarian principles, justified by accusations of collaboration with the Germans, set a precedent for later condemnation of the Jews (who could not, of course, be accused of such collaboration). The high point of Stalin’s anti-Jewish campaign was reached in 1952, just a year before his death, with the announcement of the so-called “doctors’ plot,” a charge that Jewish physicians had tried to kill Stalin. This was to be a prelude to a mass “voluntary” resettlement of Jews to Birobijan, a course arrested by Stalin’s own death.
