PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies by Ken Kalfus Page B

overcomes
national differences—that is where their salvation lies, as internationalists. Jews are the original internationalists.”
    “But isn’t that the end of Jewish identity? Doesn’t that mean the Jews will eventually assimilate into nonexistence?”
    “Neither Marx nor Lenin ever wrote anything contrary to assimilation; they foresaw it as a historical consequence of industrialization. And it’s already happening. Do I really live any differently than a Russian student? I speak and write Russian, I obey no dietary laws, my holidays are the Soviet ones, it’s no difference to me whether the girl I marry is Jewish or Gentile. So what?”
    That was a misstep—she thought they had agreed he would marry a Jewish girl, herself—but Ilya was pleased with himself, even as he felt the wind shift. By the time he finished his speech the probability that they would make love again that night had declined to something less than even. Yet he didn’t regret his stand. In the forceful assertion of doctrine lay a satisfaction that could not be found in lovemaking.
    “Ilya, self-determination has been promised to more than a hundred nationalities. The Kalmyks, the Tatars—they all have homelands. Why shouldn’t the Jews?”
    “Because Jews are not Kalmyks or Tatars. Lenin was very explicit about this: the Jews have no scientific claim to nationhood because they have no territorial ties. It’s living in Kalmykia and Tatarstan that defines what it means to be a Kalmyk or a Tatar. What do the Jews have to do with Birobidzhan? Why would they want to live there? Do you want to live there?”

    It was a rhetorical question, but it startled Larissa. She realized it was not the first time since the evening on the Arbat that she had imagined living in Birobidzhan.
    She didn’t repeat Ilya’s objections to Israel. But the next time he came to call on her, she declared that she already had a beau. Standing in the corridor under the righteous gaze of the dormitory guard, she said she was willing to continue her comradely friendship with Israel, but would understand if he did not. Her statement emerged flat and metallic, without conviction—though she meant every rehearsed word. By the time she had finished, she was annoyed at Israel for forcing her to deliver the speech. A more considerate man would have promptly interrupted her, said a few words in polite acknowledgment and saved her the discomfort.
    Israel waited for her to finish but didn’t appear to hear her. He proposed that they attend a film. He had already invited Rachel. Larissa didn’t want to go, she needed to study, but she agreed anyway, weighted by the obligation to cement the friendship she had just proposed.
    The film was something forgettably Bolshevik. Coming from the cinema, they walked along Hertsen Street and Israel performed feats of clairvoyance, anticipating his rival’s objections.
    “We had no territory, so we couldn’t develop as a normal people, but now we have a territory. Everything that has plagued the Jewish people for two thousand years—their divorce from the land, their insularity, the ghettos and the shtetls, the blood libels, the pogroms, the dependency on exploitative capital—will be finished. We will
witness—in our lifetime!—the evolution of an entire race. The Jews will develop a relationship with the land, work it with their own muscle and intelligence, and in the process develop a proletarian culture. And this will happen outside the historical conditions that developed anti-Semitism in Europe, specifically, capitalism. Birobidzhan has already won support from the Soviet government, and it will also draw assistance from the international proletariat and progressive world Jewry. Even the American Jewish capitalists have promised us money! This is a country where we can raise our children as Jews, teach them Jewish culture, speak Yiddish—and at the same time serve the Soviet state!”
    And so on, into the night and the