Deportation and Soviet labor camps (the Jewish Gulag)

Under the Soviet regime, Jews suffered successive waves of repression that struck both their religious and cultural institutions and numerous individuals. Stalinist policy combined the liquidation of traditional communal structures, the persecution of intellectuals, and the prohibition of emigration. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the campaign against "cosmopolitanism," the assassination of the actor Solomon Mikhoels, and the execution of members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee marked an intensification of repression. The "Doctors' Plot" of 1952–1953, accusing predominantly Jewish physicians, was its culminating point, interrupted by the death of Stalin in 1953. Many Jews were also deported or sent into the concentration camp system of the Gulag in the course of purges and population displacements.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan