ABSTRACT
The Soviet authorities insisted that their support of the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine had no pertinence to the Soviet Jewish population which was indifferent to a Jewish national solution beyond the confines of the USSR. In this context the Soviet Union created an organizational framework for the establishment and maintenance of contact between Soviet Jewish public figures and Jewry abroad. Even prior to the beginning of this anti-Jewish offensive and the decision to exclude the Jews from the family of Soviet national minorities, the political trends of the period had affected Jews. The attack against Jewish cosmopolitans, unlike the elimination of Soviet Jewish culture, was given wide-scale publicity. The contradiction in the Soviet attitude to Jews at home and abroad was felt most of all by the institution created to establish and maintain contact between Soviet and foreign Jewry and to bring the Soviet message to the Jewish world outside, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
