In this 11-page undated draft letter by journalist B.Z. Goldberg to the editor of The New Palestine, we have a glimpse into a broader ideological clash—in this case, between two Jewish émigrés from Eastern Europe—regarding the nature of Soviet Communism and its treatment of Jews in the very early stages of the Cold War. Goldberg accuses renowned demographer Jacob Lestschinsky, in his article "Soviet Jews or Soviet Jewry," of drastically inflating Jewish casualties on Soviet territory during World War II and of groundlessly attributing these deaths to the policies of the Soviet government. He also takes Lestschinsky to task for misquoting Goldberg's own journalistic reports made during a tour of the USSR in 1946. Characterizing Lestschinsky as a "Soviet baiter," Goldberg argues that Soviet policies towards its Jewish population are in fact remarkably progressive: antisemitism has been virtually eradicated; Yiddish language and culture enjoys far greater prestige in the USSR than in the United States; Jews have been granted their own autonomous region in Birobidzhan; and they were given priority status for evacuation to Soviet Central Asia during the war.

Goldberg's letter also offers insight into the highly politicized nature of "counting Jews" in both life and death. In dismissing Lestschinsky as a "weeper," Goldberg's rhetoric closely parallels that of Soviet Jewish demographers in the early 1930s who mocked Lestschinsky for allegedly inflating the number of anti-Jewish pogrom casualties during the Russian Civil War. In challenging Lestschinsky's arithmetic, Goldberg contests the pessimism underlying prevailing conceptions of Jewish identity: "Does being Jewish consist only of fighting discrimination?" he queries. His answer: "There is an active and vigorous Jewish life in the USSR, but it is a confident, positive Jewish life, not a fearful and defensive one." Events transpiring between 1948 and 1953—the Anticosmopolitan Campaign, the arrest and execution of Soviet Yiddish cultural figures, and the Doctor's Plot—would ultimately force Goldberg to acknowledge that late Stalinism had destroyed this brave new model of Soviet Jewishness. His 1961 book The Jewish Problem in the Soviet Union: Analysis and Solution offers a long-term reflection on why the vision outlined in his letter to the editor proved illusory.