This is mostly a comment I made the other day that someone requested I post here. These are not really all my own words, bits and pieces bookmarked or stashed away that have been snipped and cut into a large post, mostly from now deleted reddit accounts so I couldn't credit them even if I tried.

Anti-semitism was illegal in the soviet union and punishable with the death penalty.

Anti-Semitism

January 12, 1931

Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States

In answer to your inquiry:

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

J. Stalin

January 12, 1931

The soviets took in millions of jewish refugees when the US, Brits and others were rejecting them. The Soviet Union under Stalin also even created a Jewish autonomous Oblast as an alternative to Zionism.

Stalin was fighting with Jewish culture

There are for sure claims that Stalin was antisemitic, but claims are not evidence.

Some cite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as evidence, but only an absolute and deliberate misunderstanding of the armistice could reach this conclusion.

Notable are the following:

Regarding the identification of Jewish persons in publication, as per Van Ree's The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin

Why Mal’tsev, and then Rovinskii between brackets? What’s the matter here? How long will this continue …? If a man chose a literary pseudonym for himself, it’s his right…. But apparently someone is glad to emphasise that this person has a double surname, to emphasise that he is a Jew…. Why create anti-Semitism?

At the 15th Congress he made clear

that any traces of anti-Semitism, even among workers and in the party is an ‘evil’ that ‘must be combated, comrades, with all ruthlessness’

The constitution, which Stalin oversaw, indicated that the punishment for any Antisemitism could be quite harsh and in any case the attitude is illegal.

Materially, the Soviets were second to none in the rescue of Jews from the wrath of the nazis.

Russia Helped 1,750,000 Jews to Escape Nazis

Here too are some passages from The Soviets Expected It by Anna Louise Strong:

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If that's not enough for you let's go through some others in my bookmarks:

• You should also listen to the podcast the Minyan. It’s a podcast of communist Jews. In this episode, they talk about the alleged antisemitism of Stalin. Using resources and cross referencing, they are able to debunk pretty much all of these accusations.

• Another option is to look into the story of David Dragunsky, a Soviet Jewish war hero who was revered throughout the post-war era of the USSR, seen as a symbol of Jewish Antifascism and a large anti-war voice.

• There’s also the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which ordered by Stalin was a group of Jewish cultural icons dedicated to bolstering anti-Nazi sentiment by raising the plague of antisemitism in Nazi Germany. For any comrades looking into this they should know in advance that this entity is usually spun in a really weird way by Western sources, so be weary of anti-communist biases around it. Sergei Eisenstein, Solomon Mikhoels, and other notable Soviet Jews were participants. The Western rhetoric around it was that it existed only to pretend that the USSR wasn’t antisemitic, but one, where else did this exist? And two, if the Communist Party didn’t want people to know about antisemitism, why make an organization that raises awareness of it?

• Stalin was revered among a significant amount of Jews at the time. Obviously the link is from an Israeli paper, so it has some lame takes.

• Most of the "soviet union is antisemitic" bullshit begins not in the 30s, not even in the 50s. The tension and campaign to spread this mostly began after 1967 and 1975. When Israel invaded the West Bank in 67, the USSR spoke out and officially condemned Zionism. It was at this point that Golda Meir started to decry antisemitism in the USSR. This furthered in 75 when the USSR passed a UN resolution that flatly said that Zionism is Racism, and Palestinians are engaging in a decolonial struggle. After this the “Free Soviet Jewry” campaign really took off. This is the same bullshit they still do today. You criticize Israel, you’re an antisemite. It's a disgusting smear tactic that started in 1967 with the USSR and has been used frequently ever since.

• Here’s a video of a Soviet Jew discussing how the USSR practiced “anti-antisemitism”.

Lastly, when Paul Robeson, a black american and Communist went to the USSR, he said it was the first time he felt like a full human being.

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It is extremely difficult to believe that the USSR somehow made him feel this, but was also terrorizing it’s own Jewish population. That somehow the whole country was absent of racism for Paul as a black man but was also carrying out a terror campaign against Jews? At a time pre-civil rights in the US.