British Jew, lawyer, writer and Zionist
leader Harry Sacher (1882 - 1971)
Sacher wrote an article entitled Jews Under the Soviets which was published in June-August 1932 edition of The Jewish Review, a journal he co-edited. He wrote:The extent to which anti-Semitism exists among the mass of the urban population is very difficult to gauge. There is a tendency to exaggerate it. As the absorption of the Jews into the general economic life progresses, as intermarriage spreads, as the Communist philosophy becomes more and more the atmosphere of Russian life, and as the destruction and decay of specifically Jewish life advance, it is reasonable to assuem that anti-Semitism will become a declining emotion. The Government, as such, combats all overt manifestations. It has been said that Stalin has no love for the Jews, but aginst that must be set the fact that the part which Jews play in the Government of the country does not appear to be declining, although, of course, it never did reach the height which commonly imagined, and althought the most eminent of Jewish Communist personalities have either died or been removed from authority. They do not lead, direct or determine, and it need hardly be said that there is not trace of their influence as Jews or of Jewish purpose in their policy. For us Jews outside Russia the essential fact is that that cummunity is in disintegration which, for many decades, was the principal Jewish force maintaining Jewish learning and revivifying the Jewish spirit throughout the world.
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