Lenin wrote in his Critical Remarks on the National Question (1913): "Whoever directly or indirectly puts forward the slogan of a Jewish "national culture" is (whatever his good intentions may be) an enemy of the proletariat, a supporter of the old and of the caste position of the Jews, an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeosie".

Persons of Jewish origin were over-represented in the Russian revolutionary leadership. However, most of them were hostile to traditional Jewish culture and Jewish political parties, and were eager to prove their loyalty to the Communist Party's atheism and "proletarian internationalism", and committed to stamp out any sign of "Jewish cultural particularism".

In 1919, Zionist parties' headquarters in Moscow and Petrograd were taken over, their membership arrested and their papers shut down. In April 1920, the All-Russian Zionist Congress was broken up by the Yevsektsiya and the Cheka. Seventy-five delegates were arrested on the spot, thousands more were sent to prison for "counter-revolutionary... collusion in the interests of the Anglo-French bourgeoisie... to restore the Palestine state." Hebrew was banned, since it was associated with religion and Zionism, but Yiddish was encouraged until Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign in 1948. (See Solomon Mikhoels)

Minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be "socialist by content and national by form", and were used as a means of state control.

The Yevsektsia was disbanded in 1929, after the creation of the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan. Many of its members perished in the Great Purge.

See also