their happy present and are in the process of creating an even happier and more beautiful future. . . . The great Russian people find themselves in the forefront of the fight against the enemies of socialism. The great Russian people are at the head of the struggle of all the peoples of the Soviet land for the happiness of mankind, for communism. 101 At first, nothing seemed to suggest that the new role of the “Great Russian People” was incompatible with the continued openness of the Soviet cultural elite to the Jewish immigrants from the former Pale. Indeed, some of the leading ideologues of Russian patriotism (including Boris Volin, the jurist I. Trainin, the critic V. Kirpotin, and the historian E. Tarle) were ethnic Jews themselves. The young Lev Kopelev had not been alone in being impressed by Stalin’s “We do not want to be beaten” speech. “It was then that I, a convinced internationalist, a Soviet patriot, and a representative of the newly formed multinational Soviet people, began to feel an acute sense of hurt and injustice on behalf of Russia, Russian history, and the Russian word.” I was very pleased with this new turn in political propaganda and historical research, this decisive rejection of national nihilism. The Party confirmed and affirmed what I had felt since childhood and become conscious of in my youth. Such concepts as the “Motherland,” “patriotism,” the “people,” and “national” were being restored. And I mean restored —because previously they had been toppled, overthrown. . . . I enjoyed the films about Peter the Great, Alexander Nevsky, and Suvorov; I liked the patriotic poems by Simonov, the books by E. Tarle and the “Soviet Count,” Ignatiev; I reconciled myself to the return of officers’ ranks and epaulets. My childhood attachment to the historical tales of our land came back to life in an adult form. And the never forgotten sounds of “Poltava” and “Borodino” rang out with renewed force. 102 No one knew “Poltava” as thoroughly as Babel’s and Marshak’s Jewish boys —or their Soviet children. When the Great Patriotic War began, those children (Pavel Kogan’s “generation”) found themselves “amid the dust of battle” restaging both Poltava and the revolution. Boris Slutsky was a young political officer who spoke to the troops “on behalf of Russia”: