501.BD Human Rights/8–2647
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary of State
No. 1575
The Ambassador has the honor to refer to the Department’s infotel of August 191 requesting information concerning any outstanding incidents of discrimination in the USSR for use of the US representative on the sub-Commission for Minorities and Discrimination of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
To obtain a full and documented answer to the questions set forth in this telegram would require investigations and research of a type and scope not possible to foreign diplomats in the USSR, for any outstanding incidents of discrimination fall automatically into that large body of knowledge which the Soviet government makes strongest and generally successful attempts to conceal from the rest of the world outside its borders. It is one of the Soviet regime’s most widely emphasized propaganda claims that it has eliminated racial discrimination in territory under its authority, and it may be assumed as fundamental that that regime will bend every effort to prevent the escape of facts which would contradict this claim and lessen the appeal of its propaganda.
However, reports of discrimination of several types do reach the Embassy or the outside world despite attempts of the Soviet government to conceal information and becloud the issues involved.
In the first place, despite claims to the contrary, racial discrimination by individuals and groups does still exist in the USSR. Embassy personnel constantly hear stories of discrimination and actual mistreatment by Russians of people of minority groups, especially Jews. For example, it seems clear that the number of Jews admitted to most higher educational institutions is tacitly restricted, and children of a Jewish employee of the Embassy have been threatened and actually [Page 585] physically harmed by anti-Semitic groups. (This example, of course, should not be used in discussion with Soviet representatives for fear of retaliation against the persons involved.) It is thus clear that, although Soviet practice does represent important advances over discrimination practiced in Tsarist times and, indeed, is one of the best features of the Soviet system, it is far from as perfect as Soviet propaganda would have one believe, and certainly no better than racial toleration practiced in many of the western democracies.
Secondly, official and semi-official attitudes towards non-Slav minority races, particularly in Central Asia, contain many elements of discrimination. The Soviet government’s formulation of the situation is an “older brother” theory whereby “more advanced” Russians lead upward and onward less advanced minor peoples of the USSR. In practice, Russian officials control almost all activity in the subordinate Soviet republics (see airgram 606 of June 92 for statistics regarding Russian control in Kazakhstan), and the Russian group in the population lives and behaves toward the native much like the ruling class in a colonial area. Soviet nationality policy does provide considerable cultural autonomy, but gains of this nature have been made at the price of political freedom.
Thirdly, the Soviet government, despite the constitutional provision of religious freedom, itself carries on active campaigns of persecution against religious believers. The intensity of this campaign and the measures used have varied over the years in response to different political considerations, and some sects have suffered more than others, but the whole history constitutes a black picture of religious persecution and suppression of free thought.
Finally, the whole system of Soviet political control provides constant examples of most terrible discrimination against minorities and suppression of basic human rights. For example, mass arrests and transportations have been continuing constantly in the Baltic States and other western border areas since their absorption into the USSR. Some of the stories of the mistreatment of helpless and innocent people which reach the Embassy from these areas compare with the worst of fascist practice. Similar examples of official persecution of helpless minorities, even more particularly racial in character, occurred in 1937 when all Chinese and Koreans were forcibly removed from Vladivostok and the Maritime Territory, and during or since the war when the Volga Germans, the Chechen–Ingush, and the Crimean Autonomous Republics were abolished, their populations transported, and their cultures destroyed.