This issue of the magazine includes:

• History: Jews in the Soviet Secret Police—Myth and Reality

The article analyzes a new book, Jews in the KGB, issued in Moscow with a large print-run. The aim of this book is to expose the anti-Semitic myth about Jewish crimes against the Russian people and to present the real history of Jewish participation in Soviet security service and intelligence. The review is positive overall, but the reviewer believes that the book ignores some important historical episodes and lacks a deep analysis of the motivation and psychology of many Jews who worked in the Soviet secret police.

• Response: Be Careful! Strange Hobby!

The magazine criticizes the new photographic album Matzevot published by the Moscow-based Jewish Book House. The album includes the photographs of old Jewish tombstones in Ukraine and Moldova, taken by the prominent art scholar David Goberman and originally published in his famous monographs. The album’s creator cut and distorted Goberman’s photos according to his own ideas and published the collection of such “corrected” pictures under his own name. The magazine’s reviewer jokingly calls such an approach to other people’s works “a strange hobby” and sarcastically concludes: “Let’s hope that this publishing house is not going to issue in the same corrected way the photos by Roman Visniac, the drawings by Anatoly Kaplan or the paintings by Marc Chagall.”

• Looking Through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: September–October 2006

• Bibliography: 50 New Books