Paul Goldberg - The Yid

“Kima Yefimovna, this is our comrade, Moisey Semyonovich Rabinovich.” Kogan makes his usual formal introduction as Kima stands uncomfortably by the door.

The balding, middle-aged man with a measured, procuratorial demeanor has silently extinguished the enthusiasm of the young woman excited by her role as the bearer of urgent news.

Moisey Semyonovich slowly sets down his glass of tea, raises himself briefly out of a chair, and nods in Kima’s direction, a probing elder asserting rank over a young comrade.

“Your last name?” he asks.

“Petrova.”

“And your real name?”

“Her name really is Petrova,” says Kogan.

“That would have to be her mother’s name. What about her father’s?”

“What is this? An interrogation?” asks Kima, retreating into the tense demeanor that for her is never far away.

“Her father’s last name was Zeitlin,” says Kogan. “You knew him. Yefimchik.”

“That’s why I ask. They look alike.”

“Let me guess, you think he was a traitor, too,” says Levinson, seizing the opportunity to stick in a needle.

Moisey Semyonovich nods.

“Because he went with the Bolsheviks in 1906, when your Bund took a turn with the Mensheviks?” asks Kogan. “So how does this make him a traitor? He did in 1906 what a lot of others have done since. You, for example, don’t go around advertising your belonging to the Bund.”

“He doesn’t?” says Levinson. “Why, just the other day I saw him in the Bund parade, marching on Gorky Street.”

Levinson is now in the middle of the room, goose-stepping in place, pretending to catch imaginary bouquets of flowers, blowing kisses to the adoring crowd.

“The Bund saves Mother Russia from her legendary, monumental idiocy! And, listen here, Lewis, the loudspeakers on rooftops are blaring ‘ Di Shvue, ’ the anthem of the Bund. Let’s see if I can…”

Continuing his march, Levinson belts out:

“Brider un shvester fun arbet un noyt,

ale vos zaynen tsezeyt un tseshpreyt,

tsuzamen, tsuzamen, di fon iz greyt.”

(Brothers and sisters in labor and fight,

Those scattered far and wide,

Assemble, assemble — the banner stands poised.)

“Shut up, komandir !” shouts Kogan as Kima turns around and starts to open the door.

Alas, Levinson seems unable to stop short of completing the verse:

“Zi flatert fun tsorn, fun blut iz zi royt.

A shvue, a shvue af lebn un toyt.”

(It flutters with woe, with blood it is red!

We swear. A life-and-death oath we swear.)

“Kimochka didn’t come here to watch your Bundist parade, you idiot!” shouts Kogan as Kima closes the door from the outside. “Now I have to convince her to come back.”

As Kogan leaves coatless to try to convince Kima to return, Moisey Semyonovich takes a sip of tea and, without a trace of either insult or amusement, says to Levinson, “Solomonchik, you of all people should know that I don’t respond to provocations.”

* * *

After she is convinced to return, Kima reports that earlier that morning, one Nadezhda Andreyevna Khromova had stopped by the GORPO cellar to redeem the bottles emptied by herself and her husband, a regional militia commander, Lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Khromov.

The number of bottles — seventeen — strikes Kima as unusual. It suggests that the lieutenant has spent nearly his entire monthly salary on vodka.

“Rodnya s’yekhalas’,” Nadezhda Andreyevna volunteered an explanation. Family came to visit.

Then, without a pause, her breath still smelling of alcohol, she whispered: “Zhidov to nashikh skoro ne budet. Tyu-tyu. A v domakh ikh budet zhit’ Russkiy narod.” Our Jews will soon be gone. Bye-bye. And their houses will be occupied by Russian people.

“Chto, nachalos’?” asked Kima. Has it begun?

“Pochti chto,” replied Nadezhda Andreyevna. Almost.

With the understanding that the young Russian woman employed in bottle redemption could be trusted with such information, she proceeded to explain that Lieutenant Khromov was having a difficult time preparing the lists of Jews and half-bloods.

It’s not hard to see why half-bloods would be a problem. In their identity papers, nationality can be listed as, say, Russian.

Even in the case of half-bloods whose fathers have Jewish names, the situation is far from clear. What if their fathers are half-bloods as well? Should quarter-bloods be on the list? Should octoroons be given a pass? And what about half-bloods listed as Russian under Russian names? They can evade detection, unless other criteria for ascertaining nationality are introduced. Are such criteria possible? Can such criteria be sensitive, specific, and reproducible?

These questions are so vexing that Nadezhda Andreyevna apparently doesn’t consider that the Slavic-looking woman before her could be, in fact, a half-blood.

* * *

Also, Kima reports that two days ago, the night guard Oleg Butusov fell into the path of an oncoming train; an unlocked, empty Black Maria is permanently parked near the kolkhoz market; and two elderly Jewish women were murdered over the previous two nights. The victims were tortured with hot metal and hanged.

“This is a grim picture, overall,” says Kogan. “But, remember, these events can be unconnected. I have doubts about the significance of the lists. This may be an unfounded rumor. The Black Maria at the kolkhoz market probably holds no special meaning. What if it broke down? Butusov’s death was accidental, and the two murders, though tragic, were most likely the result of simple robbery.”

“Kimochka, you needn’t worry,” says Kogan.

Kimochka, you needn’t worry … “They are trying to protect her, the old goats,” Lewis thinks. “Do they not realize that if the plot is uncovered, which it surely will be, everyone with even the most cursory connection to the plotters will face the firing squad?”

Lewis realizes that by comparison with the Doctors’ Plot, an international Jewish conspiracy that is currently the top-priority state security case on Lubyanka, the Levinson plot may seem insignificant.

Yet, even before they conspired to assassinate Comrade Stalin, the participants of the Levinson plot spilled more blood than the doctors, who spilled none.

The murder of Lieutenant Sadykov and his men constitutes a terrorist act, as defined in Article 58-8 of the USSR Criminal Code: “The perpetration of terrorist acts, directed against representatives of Soviet authority or activists of revolutionary workers and peasants organizations, and participation in the performance of such acts, even by persons not belonging to a counterrevolutionary organization…”

Since Levinson, Kogan, and Lewis act as a group organized for the purpose of carrying out said plot, theirs is, in fact, a “counterrevolutionary organization,” defined in Article 58–11 as “any type of organizational activity, directed toward the preparation or carrying out of crimes indicated in this Article, and likewise participation in an organization, formed for the preparation or carrying out of one of the crimes indicated…” The appearance of the American citizen Friederich Robertovich Lewis and the Bundist-Menshevik Moisey Semyonovich Rabinovich in their midst gives the conspiracy a more ominous politico-historical sweep.

Since members of the conspiracy carried out an armed attack on officers of the organs of state security, their plot constitutes “an armed uprising” under Article 58-2: “armed uprising or incursion with counterrevolutionary purposes on Soviet territory by armed bands…”

Even Kent and Tarzan can be regarded as individuals who are aware of the group’s counterrevolutionary activities and therefore subject to prosecution under Article 58–12: “failure to denounce a counterrevolutionary crime…”