OpEd: The ‘Music’ of Socialism

By Alex Gordon

HAIFA, Israel — The title of this story sounds almost romantic. I have met and continue to meet many people, including in the US, who believe that socialism is a just and noble doctrine, and if it is also musical, that combination is wonderful.

However, I am writing about the Soviet socialism and I am also reminded of the history of my relationship with music. Not everything is noble, fair and musical in the interpretation of this word combination, and the given title rather highlights the reason why I did not become either a socialist or a musician.

Like former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, I was born in Kiev. Unlike Golda Meir, who left Russia at the age of eight, I left Kiev at the age of 32. In her autobiography, My Life, Golda Meir notes: “Kiev was famous for its antisemitism.” I was in agreement with her. Kiev’s antisemitic fame reached and haunted me all the years of my life in the USSR.

As in tsarist Russia during Golda Meir’s life there, antisemitism in the USSR of my time was state-sponsored. But because the Soviet Union was different from the Russian Empire, its antisemitism was somewhat different: there were no pogroms typical of the Russian Empire, there was the case of the “rootless cosmopolitans” (1949) against Jews in art and culture; the “poison doctors” (1953) who were Jews; restrictions and limitations on admission to universities and jobs and a strong sense of being second class.

I did not fight for the eradication of antisemitism in the USSR, Russia and Ukraine, but repatriated to Israel. Like Golda Meir, I was a Zionist. Unlike Golda Meir, I was not a socialist. After living in the socialist country of the USSR, I did not believe in socialism. How was it possible not to believe in the advanced and just doctrine of socialism?

Life under socialism is characterized by the fact that its builder, the resident of the USSR, builds socialism throughout the world, not only in his own country, but also everywhere where bad capitalism rules. He is responsible for all mankind, because of the unjust capitalist life for which his soul hurts. Life under Zionism is much poorer, because the Zionist is not worried about all of humanity, but only about one people, the Jewish people.

When I was in Soviet school, I was taught not to be selfish, but to take care of all hard-living humanity and try to export the socialist revolution to other countries suffering from capitalism. From a young age, the Soviet man was entrusted with the difficult task of transforming humanity, because he was taught that the Soviet people were better and fairer than other nations. Soviet people were convinced from a young age that they had to free other peoples from the burden of capitalism, and therefore their country’s interference in the affairs of foreign peoples could not be called imperialism.

This “music” played in Soviet socialism was carried over into the modern Russian Empire, which calls itself the Russian Federation and is, according to its constitution, “the legal successor of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Since the Russian Federation is the legal successor of the USSR, it, like its predecessor, has the right to correct the lives of the peoples of the surrounding countries, including the seizure of former Soviet territories.

In Soviet times, beautiful, melodious, revolutionary, Soviet, socialist songs called for the responsible task of improving the life of mankind. And I was inspired by these melodies because I have a musical ear. I lived in a musical apartment building built in the late 19th century. What is a musical house? It’s a house inhabited by families of musicians, teachers of the Kiev Academy of Music and a High Music School. But I am not a musician.

What was I doing in this musical house? I got into this house from birth, for my aunt, my mother’s sister, a professor at the Kiev Academy of Music, head of the department of the history of Russian music and dean of the vocal department, got an apartment in it. But in March 1949 the Soviet government decided that my aunt could not be a professor at the Kiev Academy, head of the department of Russian music, as she was Jewish and had to be replaced in her posts by Russians or Ukrainians, and expelled from Kiev.

The same fate of being fired from his job at the same time befell my father, who was a professor at Kiev University and editor of a Ukrainian literary magazine. The Soviet government decided that a Jew could not be a professor at Kiev University and editor of a Ukrainian literary journal and, in general, live and work in Kiev. These repressions destroyed the family life of my relatives.

Why didn’t I become a socialist? Soviet socialism destroyed my family and I could not love it. But it turned out that I disliked socialism for the same reason I did not become a musician: my aunt’s piano also left Kiev.  Instead of using my absolute musical ear for music, I had to use it to listen to the atonal music of wailing, to the unmelodic moans and gloomy chords of the lamentations of the Soviet Jews.

Jewish melodies did not resound in me with songs in Yiddish, as they did for my wife, but with the sobs of the Jews being kicked and the discontent of the natives with the Jews. Jewish life was not harmonious. Jewish life in the USSR was banned.

Jewish sentiments came to me in a completely wrong way: I did not receive a Jewish upbringing, did not become religious, did not turn into a renunciate, a prisoner of Zionism, a leader of Zionism. I was born with absolute hearing and could hear antisemitic attitudes well.  Some Jews said they did not experience antisemitism, but I heard it, picked it up with an innate device tuned to look for Judophobic notes. This ugly music was my Jewish melody.

I studied the history of the Jewish people not only with my eyes, reading its volumes, but also with my ears, to which came the cries from the rivers of Babylon and from other sad places. Since my childhood, I was strongly advised not to stand out and to be like everyone else. This was the red line of the “Jewish” upbringing I received. Over time, I learned a different lesson from this advice: I left for Israel so that I would not have to hear such advice.

My answer to the Jewish question was that I was a “terrible child,” an “enfant terrible” in French. That’s what my socialist grandmother, my father’s mother, called me when I was young.  She called me that in French, because she spoke French. My grandmother loved to speak French, in spite of France’s membership in the hostile world of capitalism. French was dearer to her heart than the languages of “Jewish bourgeois nationalism,” Hebrew and Yiddish, which she had learned as a child. I earned the title “enfant terrible” for not being a socialist, for being caught up in anti-Soviet sentiments, for studying Hebrew and Jewish history underground.

To my ear, French is melodic and musical, but in my grandmother’s voice it sounded like a court sentence to me. My grandmother made accusatory speeches toward me like “I accuse!” of Emil Zola, who criticized French President Felix Faure for his antisemitism toward Alfred Dreyfus. Antisemitism in the USSR did not bother my grandmother very much, although the persecution of her son, my father, a “rootless cosmopolitan,” was antisemitic and would have incurred Zola’s wrath.

My grandmother and I perceived socialism differently: she was its supporter and I was its opponent. Grandmother did not have a musical ear. Therefore, she did not catch the disharmony of Soviet-style socialism. It demanded the distribution of wealth: take from the rich and give to the poor, “plunder what you loot!” The leitmotif of this socialism was envy. The socialist revolution is an explosion of accumulated black envy. Therefore, to me, unlike my grandmother, the red flag of socialism seemed like a black flag. I was repulsed by aggressive black envy.

Grandmother saw socialism as the embodiment of the internationalism dear to her heart. For me, socialism was not a doctrine of the equality of peoples, but a doctrine of the inequality of the Jews: all the numerous peoples of the USSR were respectable and socialist, only the Jews were outcasts.  My grandmother accused me of loving false and reactionary Zionism. I, on the other hand, picked up with my musical ear the false melodies of nationalism in my grandmother’s international-socialist music. Thus, my grandmother and I disagreed about socialism and its music.

Already living in Israel, I heard the sound of the funeral march to Soviet socialism: the USSR had ceased to exist.

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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the academic college of education, and the author of 10 books.