worst of all, a review of the main academic mini-Stalins (every discipline was supposed to have its own) revealed that the deans of Soviet philosophers (M. B. Mitin), economists (E. S. Varga), historians (I. I. Mints), and legal scholars (I. P. Trainin) were all ethnic Jews. (Varga had come from Budapest, the others from Russia’s old Pale.) Finally—and most disconcertingly—B. I. Zbarsky, the man who had embalmed Lenin’s body and was still the keeper of Communism’s most sacred relics, was not only a Jew from the Pale of Settlement but also, according to the obligingly efficient secret police, a wrecker and a spy. 137 And what about those other pillars of official ideology—Russian patriotism and high culture? A group of concerned scholars informed the Central Committee of the Party that 80 percent of the members of the academic council at the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Literature (the “Pushkin House”) were Jews. (The Central Committee confirmed the report and ordered swift action.) The secretaries of the Writers’ Union—A. Fadeev, K. Simonov, and A. Surkov— promised mass firings in response to the revelation that Jews made up 29.8 percent of the organization’s Moscow branch. The head of Agitprop, G. F. Aleksandrov, wrote to the secretaries of the Central Committee about the “extremely grave situation” on the musical front: almost all of the leading lights at the Bolshoi (“the center and pinnacle of Russian musical culture”), the Moscow Conservatory, Moscow Philharmony, and Leningrad Conservatory were “non-Russians”—as were the music critics who praised their work and the heads of the arts sections of the central newspapers, who abetted the critics. Why was the History of Russian Music edited by a non-Russian? Why were there so many Jews among the directors of Moscow theaters (42 percent, according to the Central Committee’s personnel data); art exhibits (40 percent); and popular music shows (39 percent)? Why did the 87 Soviet circus directors and administrators include 44 Jews, 38 Russians, and 4 Ukrainians? And what about the number one Russian patriot among journalists—the one whose mother’s name was Hannah? And, speaking of journalists, who was instilling Marxism- Leninism, Russian patriotism, and high culture in the Soviet masses? Pravda had to be purged mercilessly, as did the government’s Izvestiya and the army’s Krasnaia Zvezda . The official organs of the Young Communist League and the Writers’ Union were found to be dominated by Jews; the main sports newspaper was ordered (by the Central Committee’s personnel boss, G. M. Malenkov) to fire 12 journalists; and at the Trade Union Council’s Trud , the proportion of Jewish employees was first reduced to 50 percent and then, after 40 more firings, to a more acceptable 23 percent. The agency that organized the delivery of all 4,638 Soviet newspapers to retailers and subscribers around the country was run