Vladimir Kabo, an ethnographer and expert in primordial culture and religion, was born in Moscow in 1925. His father Rafail, a native of Berdiansk, was a professor of economic geography and department head at the Pedagogical Institute in Moscow. Vladimir would later write about his father:
“He grew up in a traditional Jewish family. He remembers how proud he was while undergoing a coming-of-age ceremony, reading the Torah for the first time in the synagogue, the adult men listening to him. It was one of the most significant days of his life”
Vladimir Kabo. The Road to Australia
Rafail eventually threw in his lot with the Revolution – but, in the last years of his life, he remained deeply concerned about Jewish history and religion. While Vladimir grew up as an idealistic communist, he would always remember his childhood visit to his grandfather's home in Berdiansk:
“It's getting dark, it's Friday, and here's Grandpa, with his gray beard, in a clean shirt with a tie and a vest, lighting candles in a metal shandal on the table, pouring weak grape wine into my stemware of darkened glass and saying a prayer as ancient as the world, praising the coming Saturday. I will remember this evening, this ancient rite, for the rest of my life, and many years later I will realize that it was one of the most important evenings in my life...”
Vladimir Kabo. The Road to Australia
Vladimir's mother, Elena, was a statistician. She was born in Taganrog, and grew up in an assimilated Jewish family that produced many highly educated intellectuals, including the famous music critic and composer Julius Engel. From his school years, Vladimir was interested in the peoples of Africa
In October 1941, following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Vladimir, still a schoolboy, was evacuated to the Altai region with his family. There, he passed his matriculation exams without attending classes. After finishing school, he enrolled in the History Faculty of the Pedagogical Institute. In 1943, Kabo was drafted into the Red Army and sent to the Artillery School in Tomsk, which he did not finish (having failed the final exam). He was then dispatched to the front lines, fell ill with severe pneumonia and pleurisy, and spent several months recuperating at a hospital. There, he held long discussions with his wardmate Sedykh about Stalin's policies and the war. Sedykh denounced him to the authorities, and Kabo was arrested, but soon released. He was then assigned to an artillery division of the 1st Belorussian Front, and took part in the Battle of Berlin and the liberation of Prague. In his memoirs about the war, Kabo often writes about antisemitism in the Red Army:
“Fetid clouds of antisemitism swirled around. I encountered Judeophobia in the army at every step; I constantly felt it in the soldier's environment; the same thing was among the officers”
Vladimir Kabo. The Road to Australia
During his military service, Kabo even changed his last name to the Russian-sounding Morozov. However, his parents were very upset at this decision, and after returning from the front he restored his original name. Kabo ended the war in the rank of lieutenant. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star.
In 1945, Vladimir entered the Department of Soviet History of Moscow State University. There, he closely interacted with a fellow Jewish student named Sergei Khmelnitsky, who turned out to be an informant:
“In the late forties, with the beginning of the anti-Jewish campaign, he sought to expand the circle of his Jewish acquaintances. The psychological calculation of the state security agencies is clear: who better than a Jew is able to gather the information they need in this environment, who will they trust more quickly?”
Vladimir Kabo. The Road to Australia
Many years later, Khmelnitsky would serve as a "witness" for the KGB in the world-famous political trial of Andrei Siniavsky and Yuly Daniel (1965-1966). In the autumn of 1949, Kabo was arrested and charged with establishing an anti-Soviet organization. He was soon sentenced to ten years in a labor camp, and served his sentence in the Gulag (Kargopollag near Arkhangelsk) until August 1954, when he was released under amnesty. He was rehabilitated in August 1956.
In 1954, Kabo was reinstated at Moscow State University, and switched to the Ethnography Department. His thesis was based on a description of the collection of the Anthropology and Ethnography Museum.
From 1957, he was a researcher at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1962, he defended a candidate thesis on “The Stone Labor Tools of the Australians.” In 1970, he defended his PhD thesis on “The Origin and Early History of the Aboriginal People of Australia” (1969). In 1977, he returned to Moscow and found a job at the Moscow Department of the Institute of Ethnography.
In 1978, the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences awarded Kabo the Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay Prize for his books, and he was also made an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
In 1990, Kabo left the USSR for Australia, where he continued his work in Canberra. He died in Australia in 2009.
Related Resources
Kabo's recollections of antisemitism in the Red Army
My fellow passengers in the heated freight car were young soldiers from Siberia. All their conversations exuded a mingled feeling of hatred and envy toward those who had managed to hole up in the rear, find a cushy job far from the fighting, and avoid getting sent to the front. Needless to say, Jews made up the bulk of this crafty and cunning category of people. My companions quickly realized that there was a Jew in their midst, and I became an outlet for their hatred – even though I was being shipped to the front together with them.
- Shlomo from Berdichev... Give him a crooked gun – he will be shooting from behind the corner.... Have you heard the story of how Ivan and Abram were caught by a wolf? "Comrade Wolf knows whom to eat first," - says Abram....
This is what I kept hearing throughout the journey, which lasted many days. Falling asleep at night or waking up in the morning:
- Zhid... Zhid...
The only person in the car to whom I could unburden myself was a thickset, ruddy schoolteacher named Ivanenko; he tried to appear friendly, polite, and educated, unlike all the others, and the two of us would discourse at length about literature and other lofty subjects, sitting near the open door of the car. I told him that I had parents in Moscow, and that I might be able to meet them. <…>
For several weeks, we lived somewhere in the Kalinin Oblast, in a village inhabited by Tver Karelians. The walls of my house were decorated with paintings depicting stories from the Gospels, and there was a cradle with a baby hanging from the ceiling. I then found myself in a company that was being trained to carry and fire antitank guns. Then, I boarded another troop train. We alighted at some station and began the long, arduous trek to the front lines.
It was then that I ran into Ivanenko for the second time, having parted from him for a while. I did not recognize him at once: Having grown plumper, puffed up with self-importance, he stood with a large ladle next to a huge field cauldron that was emitting steam, ladling out soup into the soldiers' mess kits. While I was running about, sagging under the weight of the antitank gun, he had found a job as a cook, and this raised him to an unattainable height, far above the perennially hungry soldiers. I approached him and thrust my mess kit forward. I was very hungry, and hoped that he would give me more, and thicker, soup, recalling how I shared with him everything packed for me by my parents for the road. However, the Ivanenko whom I knew had seemingly been replaced with a total stranger, and he chased me away with vicious anger. Upon becoming a cook, he had turned into a beast – or, more likely, he had been a beast all along, hiding his bestial nature under a mask of politeness and civility. I was now just a penniless soldier with an empty knapsack, so why should he give a damn about me?
From: Vladimir Kabo. The road to Australia
