Judaism Without Embellishment was an anti-Semitic book published in 1963 by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The book was written by Trofim Kichko, who worked at the Academy. The book argued that a worldwide Jewish conspiracy existed, that the Jewish people were attempting to subvert the Soviet Union, and had played a role in the 1941 Nazi-German invasion of the country. The book was illustrated throughout with caricatures depicting Jewish people in a stereotypical and prejudicial manner, very similar to those that had been seen in Nazi antisemitic propaganda.
While the work was initially hailed as scientific work of distinction in analyzing the Jewish population of the Soviet Union and distributed for educational purposes across the nation, it was met with hostility from the international community. The work was condemned across Europe and the United States, leading to protests in Scandinavia when General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev toured the region. Communist parties in Europe and America also attacked the work and called for the Soviet government to withdraw its support for the work, and it from circulation. Under intense international pressure the Soviet government withdrew its support, and destroyed all copies. As a result, Kichko fell out of favor with the government. Although the book was destroyed, similar works continued to be published and several years later Kichko - having returned to grace - published a second antisemitic work.
Historians agree that Kichko was working under instructions of the central government, and that his work was the beginning of a new wave of government-sponsored anti-Semitism within the larger structure of the Soviet Union's attack on religion. Furthermore, historians see the work as a Soviet attempt to cause friction between its Jewish and Ukrainian populations, which backfired.
Background
Under the rule of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union exploited earlier traditions of antisemitism that existed in its territories. Official policy deemed Jews to be foreign and traitorous elements. During the Great Purge of the 1930s, leading Jewish figures and institutions were targeted. Between 1948 and 1953, antisemitism became official state policy. The murder of Solomon Mikhoels, the director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, was the start of a wave of antisemitism that aimed to destroy "all the Jewish cultural institutions that were left from the 1930s or that had been established during" the Second World War.
Following the death of Stalin, antisemitism waned allowing the Jewish population to live in fear no longer. However, antisemitism remained "invariably linked to the ideological and political concerns of the Kremlin and enjoyed strong roots in popular attitudes and behavior." From the mid-1950s onwards, a new wave of antisemitism permeated the Soviet Union inspired by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. This was further enhanced by Khrushchev's campaign against religion. The attack on Judaism, unlike those against other religions, "took on an antisemitic dimension." Soviet propaganda began to push the idea that Jewish people venerated capitalism and promoted the economic exploitation of non-Jewish people. Between 1959 and 1964, 1,847 anti-religious publications were printed. While only eight percent were focused solely on attacking Judaism, the vast majority included some form of attack. "The proportion of anti-Judaism titles was ... seven times larger than the proportion of Jews" in the Soviet Union. This was exacerbated by the number of copies of anti-Jewish work in circulation. On average 27,000 copies of any single piece of anti-Christian material were printed and 6,000 copies of anti-Islamic material, compared to the 46,000 copies of anti-Jewish publications. This amounted to 2.5 million anti-Jewish publications in print between 1959 and 1964. By the early 1960s, 85 percent of synagogues had been closed. No Yiddish schools were permitted within Russia, nor did any institutions within the Soviet Union provide courses in Yiddish, Hebrew or Jewish history. Of the 110 death sentences promulgated during that period for economic crimes, over 70 of them were imposed on Jewish defendants.
Content
In October 1963, the Kiev-based Ukrainian Academy of Sciences published an initial batch of 12,000 copies of Judaism without Embellishment. This work was written by Trofim Kichko, a former Nazi German collaborator during the Second World War, a member of the Communist Party and a protégé of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. According to newly found research, Trofim Kichko was involved in the anti-fascist resistance in German occupied Ukraine.