1 Some of the major recent works include, Sloin, Andrew, The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power (Bloomington, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shternshis, Anna, When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin (New York, 2017)Google Scholar; Gitelman, Zvi, ed., The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel, and Germany (New Brunswick, 2016)Google Scholar; Ro’i, Yaacov, ed., Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. (London, 2016)Google Scholar; Feferman, Kiril, The Holocaust in the Crimea and the North Caucasus (Jerusalem, 2016)Google Scholar; Walke, Anika, Pioneers and Partisans: An Oral History of Nazi Genocide in Belorussia (New York, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murav, Harriet, Estraikh, Gennady, eds., Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering (Brighton, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smilovitsky, Leonid, Jewish Life in Belarus: The Final Decade of the Stalin Regime (1944–1953) (Budapest, 2014)Google Scholar; Veidlinger, Jeffrey, In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine (Bloomington, 2013)Google Scholar; Bemporad, Elissa, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Bloomington, 2013)Google Scholar; Gershenson, Olga, The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (New Brunswick, 2013)Google Scholar; Lapidus, Rina, Jewish Women Writers in the Soviet Union (London, 2012)Google Scholar; Gitelman, Zvi, Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine: An Uncertain Ethnicity (New York, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ro’i, Yaacov, ed., The Jewish Movement in the Soviet Union (Baltimore, 2012)Google Scholar; Altshuler, Mordechai, Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941–1964, trans. Sternberg, Saadya (Lebanon, NH, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murav, Harriet, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (Stanford, 2011)Google Scholar; Shneer, David, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust (New Brunswick, 2011)Google Scholar; Gitelman, Zvi and Ro’i, Yaacov, eds., Revolution, Repression, and Revival: The Soviet Jewish Experience (Lanham, 2007)Google Scholar; Zeltser, Arkadi, Evrei sovetskoi provintsii: Vitebsk i mestechki, 1917–1941 (Moscow, 2006)Google Scholar; Dekel-Chen, Jonathan, Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924–1941 (New Haven, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Redlich, Shimon, War, Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Luxembourg, 1995)Google Scholar; Kostyrchenko, Gennadii, Tainaia politika Stalina: Vlast΄ i antisemitizm (Moscow, 2003)Google Scholar; Kostyrchenko, Gennadii, Stalin protiv “kosmopolitov.” Vlast΄ i evreiskaia intelligentsiia v SSSR (Moscow, 2009)Google Scholar; Kostyrchenko, Gennadii, V plenu u krasnogo faraona: politicheskie presledovaniia evreev v SSSR v poslednee stalinskoe desiatiletie. Dokumental΄noe issledovanie (Moscow, 1994)Google Scholar; Rubenstein, Joshua and Naumov, Vladimir, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Post-War Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, trans. Wolfson, Laura Esther (New Haven, 2001)Google Scholar; Brent, Jonathan, Naumov, Vladimir, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Lustiger, Arno, Stalin and the Jews: The Red Book: The Tragedy of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Soviet Jews (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

3 Gennadii Kostyrchenko, “The Genesis of Establishment Anti-Semitism in the USSR: The Black Years, 1948–1953,” in Revolution, Repression, and Revival, 187.

4 Yaacov Ro’i, “Introduction,” in Revolution, Repression, and Revival, 6.

5 Specifically, Genina focused on the persecutions at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant. Elena Genina, “Delo” KMK (1949–1952) (Krasnoiarsk, 2008); Genina, Elena, Kampaniia po bor΄be s kosmopolitizmom v Kuzbasse (konets 1940-kh—nachalo 1950-kh gg.) (Krasnoiarsk, 2003)Google Scholar; Kimerling, Anna, Terror na izlete. “Delo vrachei” v ural΄skoi provintsii (Perm΄, 2011)Google Scholar.

6 Smilovitsky, Jewish Life in Belarus, 199–207.

7 See more on Bessarabians’ identity in: Diana Dumitru and Petru Negură, “Moldova: A Borderland’s Fluid History,” Euxeinos. Governance and Culture in the Black Sea Region 15/16, December 2014.

8 King, Charles, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (Stanford, 2000), 91–119Google Scholar.

9 Livezeanu, Irina, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca, 1995)Google Scholar, page 92, table 8.

10 Friling, Tuvia, et al. , eds., International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (ICHR): Final Report (Iaşi, 2005), 381–82Google Scholar.

11 Arhiva Organizațiilor Social-Politice din Republica Moldova (the Archive of Social-Political Organizations from the Republic of Moldova, henceforth AOSPRM), F. 51, inv. 4, d. 186, f. 44–48 (Information about leading officials of the party apparatus). The list identified 348 Jews out of the total of 1,569 people. In further usage “f” stands for page (fila or “sheet” in Romanian, rather than “l” or list in Russian).

12 Ibid., f. 130–137. There were 1,667 Jews out of 11,720.

13 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 3, d. 87, f. 22.

14 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 7, d. 186, f. 19–36 (Statistical information about the employees of prosecutors’ offices). There were 46 Jews out of 269 employees in 1947.

15 The MIA should not be confused with the Ministry of State Security, which was the Soviet intelligence agency from 1946 to 1953. The MIA was assigned regular police functions and did not include departments concerned with secret political activity.

16 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 509, f. 26 (The composition of the nomenklatura of the MIA of the MSSR).

17 Negură, Petru, Nici eroi, nici trădători: Scriitorii moldoveni și puterea sovietică în epoca stalinistă (Chișinău, 2014), 309Google Scholar.

18 Ursu, Valentina, Politica culturală în RSS Moldovenească, 1944–1956 (Chișinău, 2013), 29–30Google Scholar, 92. By 1953, 47.6 percent were Jewish, up from 44 percent.

19 AOSPRM. F. 51, inv. 19, d. 255, f. 74–74a; F. P-2906, inv. 1, d. 90, f. 1a.

20 See more on the situation of Jews in interwar Romania in Dumitru, Diana, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union (New York, 2016), 53–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 168, f. 44–47. The later infusion of new cadres into the legal profession in the MSSR reduced the Jewish presence, yet in 1949 this presence still constituted a weighty 46 percent. We could not find the relevant data for subsequent years.

22 Ibid.

23 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 154, f. 192–199.

24 Gortolum, Inna, “Vklad evreev v razvitie meditsiny goroda Bel΄tsy,” in Anikin, Vladimir, ed., Evrei Moldovy i ikh vklad v razvitie moldavskogo gosudarstva (Chișinău, 2013), 166Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., 169.

26 Radu Ioanid examined the lists of deportees from the MSSR in 1940–41 and found that 1,178 (10.4 percent) were Jews. The latter were mostly accused of “membership in bourgeois parties [Zionist included],” or being “merchants,” or “proprietors.” Radu Ioanid, “‘Cartea memoriei.’ 80.000 de nume ale victimelor stalinismului din Republica Sovietică Moldova,” Adevărul, May 10, 2006, at adevarul.ro/news/societate/cartea-memoriei-80000-nume-victimelor-stalinismului-republica-sovietica-moldova-1_50ac26e47c42d5a6638551e6/index.html (accessed 10/16/2019).

27 The artels were cooperatives organized for the production of goods, or for purpose of trading. For an analysis of postwar Jewish artels see: Anna Kushkova, “An Essay on Jewish Ethnic Economy: The Case of Belz, Moldova,” East European Jewish Affairs 43, no. 1 (May 2013): 84–87.

28 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 5, d. 72, f. 186–194.

29 The 1930 census indicated a 61.9% illiteracy rate among ethnic Moldovans. See Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, 38.

30 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 3, d. 242, f. 3–8, 41–42.

31 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 186, f. 175–177.

32 Viacheslav Konstantinov, Evreiskoe naselenie byvshego SSSR v XX veke (sotsial΄no-demograficheskii analiz) (Jerusalem, 2007), 150.

33 Ibid., 151.

34 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 154, f. 160.

35 More on these policies in: Igor Caşu, Politica naţională în Moldova sovietică (1944–1989) (Chişinău, 2000); Valeriu Pasat, RSS Moldovenească în epoca stalinistă, 1940–1953 (Chişinău, 2011).

36 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 3, d. 267, f. 142.

37 Ibid.

38 The MASSR was an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR between 1924 and 1940 and included modern breakaway Transnistria and some territories that are today part of Ukraine.

39 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 57, f. 1.

40 Ibid. At the time, David Gershfeld was the head of the Union of Composers of the MSSR, the head of the Chișinău Conservatorium, and the artistic director of the MSSR Philharmonic.

41 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 57, f. 8.

42 Ibid, f. 9.

43 Gazun had to make the final decision on the volume, which was coordinated by Kornfeld and Gershfeld, who was responsible for the musical part. Gazun excluded Kornfeld’s texts, which formed the biggest number of songs.

44 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 57, f. 12.

45 Maia Feldman, Interview, Chișinău, April 4, 2017.

46 Ibid.

47 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 111, f. 16.

48 Ibid., f. 16–17.

49 Ibid., f. 35.

50 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 93, f. 41–55. The investigation launched by this petition concluded that most of the facts mentioned in the letter were untrue.

51 Maia Feldman, Interview, Chișinău, April 4, 2017.

52 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 184, f. 18–24, 50–52, 56, 100, 115, 288, 298, 300.

53 Shnirelman was a Bessarabian Jew. Importantly, in 1941 he evacuated to Krasnodar and later Bukhara, where he worked until 1944.

54 Katz, Elena M., “The Literary Developments of Yekhiel Shraybman: A Jewish Writer in Soviet Clothing,” East European Jewish Affairs, 38, no. 3 (December 2008): 290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Sarra Shpitalnik, interview with Centropa, Chișinău, June 2004.

56 Zlata Tcaci, interview with Centropa, Chișinău, March 2004.

57 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 41, f. 35–46.

58 For example, Sarra Burd, a Jewish resident and secretary of the local council and head of the Komsomol organization from the village of Hoginești, was killed in 1947. AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 5, d. 72, f. 141.

59 The Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (RGASPI), F. 573, op. 1, d. 19, l. 41–42.

60 Ibid.

61 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 114, f. 22–27.

62 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 5, d. 373, f. 47–49.

63 Pasat, Valeriu, Surovaia pravda istorii. Deportatsii s territorii Moldavskoi SSR, 40–50gg. (Chișinău, 1998)Google Scholar.

64 Igor Cașu, “Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940–1953,” in Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe, eds., Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression (Manchester, 2012), 49.

65 RGASPI, F. 573, op. 1, d. 19, l. 60.

66 The accompanying note to the forwarded letter (signed by Turkin, the plenipotentiary of the USSR CP CC in charge of the MSSR) paraphrased the complaint as ousting Russians and Ukrainians and replacing them with “Jews and illiterate Moldovans.” Ibid., l. 57.

67 Ibid.

68 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 11, d. 154, f. 41–45. The letter prompted an investigation into the activity of the head of the “Moldavefirmaslo,” but we did not find the investigation’s results.

69 More than 320,000 Soviet citizens were arrested as a result of this effort. Tanja Penter, “Collaboration on Trial: New Source Material on Soviet Postwar Trials against Collaborators,” Slavic Review 64, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 783.

70 The files related to the investigation of these cases were preserved in the KGB archive of the MSSR. Today they are inherited by the Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova.

71 “Iz zala suda. Prigovor proiznesen,” Izvestiia, December 14, 1947, p. 4.

72 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 5, d. 70, f. 26.

73 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 51, f. 69.

74 Arhiva Ministerului Afacerilor de Interne a Republicii Moldova (AMAIRM), the minutes no. 4 of the Commission of the MSSR for the review of the penal cases of those convicted for counterrevolutionary crimes, July 5, 1954, f. 134–139.

75 Ibid.

76 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 510, f. 32–33.

77 Ibid, f. 33.

78 Ibid. We do not know how Golubenko’s case ended.

79 AMAIRM, the minutes no. 1–2 of the Commission of the MSSR for review of the penal cases of those convicted for counterrevolutionary crimes, June 8–18, 1954, f. 105.

80 Ibid., f. 104–107.

81 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 7, d. 29 (I), f. 240–276.

82 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 3, d. 90, f. 185–186; d. 121, f. 8–20.

83 The official name of the party was Liga Apărării Național Creștine (National-Cristian Defense League). It was a far-right political party of Romania formed in 1923 by A.C. Cuza (hence the sobriquet “Cuzist”).

84 RGASPI, F. 573, op. 1, d. 29, l. 23.

85 The letter mentioned that the person’s father committed suicide in 1940, upon “the Bolsheviks’ arrival in Kishinev,” and that his mother flew to Bucharest in 1944. AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 358, f. 62.

86 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 9, d. 52, f. 8.

87 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 11, d. 110, f. 8.

88 Kostyrchenko, Stalin protiv “kosmopolitov.”

89 Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (New York, 2010), 82.

90 Negură, Nici eroi, nici trădători, 203–6.

91 Ibid., 204–5.

92 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 4, d. 154, f. 110.

93 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 30, f. 39.

94 Ibid., f. 49.

95 Ibid., f. 100. It was a widespread practice during WWII to destroy one’s party membership card, in order to avoid being identified as communist by the Nazi allies.

96 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 34, f. 64, 66.

97 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 8, d. 34, f. 155.

98 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 7, d. 31, f. 448.

99 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 11, d. 158, f. 7.

100 Ibid., f. 4.

101 Ibid., f. 6.

102 Ibid., f. 3.

103 Ibid., f. 8.

104 Ibid., f. 12.

105 During the Russian Civil War, Petliura’s army fought against the Red Army and was infamous for slaughtering Jews in Ukraine in 1918–19.

106 Ibid., f. 14.

107 Ibid., f. 14–16.

108 AOSPRM, F. 51, inv. 11, d. 127, f. 246.

109 Ibid., f. 247–250.

110 Ibid., f. 261.

111 Ibid., f. 262.

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