In 1949 Alexandr Alexandrovich Fadeyev, then General Secretary and Chairman of the Board of the Writers' Union, appealed to Stalin with a proposal to close the Yiddish-language almanacs and dissolve the associations of Jewish writers

In 1949 Alexandr Alexandrovich Fadeyev, then General Secretary and Chairman of the Board of the Writers' Union, appealed to Stalin with a proposal to close the Yiddish-language almanacs and dissolve the associations of Jewish writers. The letter from the Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) refers directly to Fadeyev's opinion and contains remarkable passages to the effect that the sole task of Jewish literature in its present form is to depict nothing but Jews. As examples it cites such heroes of Jewish writers' works as the airwoman Gelman, the engineer Dymshits, the conductor Rakhlin and the Hero of Socialist Labour Baranbaum. The authors of the dispatch detected pernicious tendencies also in the story "Grandfather's Children" by the writer Stelmakh, "about the old Jewish intelligentsia", devoted to "showing the survivals of the past in the consciousness and behaviour of the people portrayed". "The story sharply reveals traits of shtetl narrow-mindedness", one can only marvel at such inventive lampooning! What, then, of the writer Der Nister, who dared to develop dreadful ideas of a Zionist character, writing: "how good that in the USSR there have already appeared little, brave Davids, who must increasingly arm themselves with the pride and dignity of David, his love for his people… so that no Goliaths should ever frighten them again". Worse still could only be the statement of the poet Velednitsky that Mount Ararat is dear to him because it is mentioned in the Bible. I think you can see for yourselves what weighty arguments moved the esteemed Comrade Fadeyev, who requested, in the name of the Writers' Union, the dissolution of the associations of Jewish writers in Moscow, Kyiv and Minsk. And Stalin? He merely ordered that Comrade Fadeyev's proposal be accepted. I always recall this touching story when I pass the stand of the distinguished residents of the Tverskoy District in the Sadovo-Triumfalny Square, where Fadeyev's portrait is proudly displayed. Deserved it, evidently