Abstract
Soviet specialists who agreed on little else during the breakup of the USSR did reach one point of consensus: as the old system collapsed into political and social chaos, the Jews would certainly be assigned a major role as scapegoats. This outcome was inevitable, it was claimed, because of the resurgence of ‘traditional Russian anti-Semitism’. This prediction became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every anti-Semitic pronouncement that was made in Russian public life was given maximum publicity in the world media. Small right-wing political groups, such as the fissiparous Pamiat’ movement, were given prominence merited by neither their size nor influence.1 Amidst unfulfilled rumours of impending pogroms, Zionist groups did their utmost to persuade Jews in Eastern Europe to leave for Israel before it was too late. Monitoring groups, such as the London-based Institute of Jewish Affairs, which publishes a useful annual survey of anti-Semitism in the world, continually predicted the worst.2 Surveys purported to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was very strong in Russian public opinion.3
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References
For an example of some contemporary treatments of Pamiat ‘, see the special issue of Nationalities Papers devoted entirely to that movement, vol. 19, no. 2, 1991.
See, for example, the assessment for 1993: ‘In the Ukraine, Russia and Slovakia, political and economic instability prevail and may worsen, thereby opening the door to the intensification of Antisemitism which is already at high, or relatively high, levels.’ Institute of Jewish Affairs, Antisemitism World Report 1993, London, 1993, p. xvii.
Robert J. Brym and Andrei Degtyarev, ‘Anti-Semitism in Moscow: Results of an October 1992 Survey’, Slavic Review, vol. 52, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1–12. The authors conclude that ‘the evidence thus suggests that some large categories of Moscow’s population hold attitudes that are authoritarian, xenophobic, illiberal on social issues and, of course, anti-Semitic. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes in the city, Moscow’s 150,000 Jews and the 300,000 in the rest of Russia have reason to be anxious.’ (p. 11).
I base my characterization of Zhirinovskii on materials which were published at the time of his candidacy for president of the Russian Federation, and the subsequent parliamentary elections. especially his autobiography Poslednii brosok na iug, Moscow, 1993. Overtly anti-Semitic literature was not a feature of the Liberal Democratic Party in the course of either of these elections.
In a critique of the work of Brym and Degtyarev, James L. Gibson contends that ‘a proper analysis of available date suggests that their conclusions about the seriousness of the anti-Semitic problem in Russia are exaggerated and unnecessarily pessimistic.’ ‘Misunderstandings of Anti-Semitism in Russia: An Analysis of the Politics of Anti-Jewish Attitudes’, Slavic Review, vol. 53, no. 3, 1994, p. 830. Brym has responded to these criticisms in the same issue, pp. 842–55.
Throughout his classic study of the Jews in Russia and Poland, S. M. Dubnov persistently interpreted the Jewish policy of the Russian state as underlain by religious discrimination and prejudice. History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, 3 vols., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1916–20. But see my critique of this general interpretation in ‘Muscovite Faces and Petersburg Masks: The Problem of Religious Judeophobia in 18th Century Russia’, in R.P. Bartlett, et al., Russia and the World of the Eighteenth Century, Columbus, Ohio, 1988, pp. 125–39.
See my discussion of the population estimates for this area in Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Question’ in Russia, 1772–1825, DeKalb, Illinois, 1986, p. 56.
Ibid., pp. 67–74.
Artur Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780–1870, Oxford, 1991, pp. 19–112.
The best treatment of this general theme is Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews, New York, 1968.
Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews, pp. 81–115.
For the efforts of Alexander I, ibid., pp. 116–81; for the initiatives of Nicholas I, see Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1983, especially pp. 13–48, 155–82.
John D. Klier, ‘O russko-evreiskoi intelligentsii (k postanovke voprosa)’, in D.A. El’iashevich (ed.), Evrei v Rossii: Istoriia i Kul’tura, St. Petersburg, 1995.
John D. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855–1881, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 66–122.
John D. Klier, ‘Russification and the Polish Revolt of 1863: Bad for the Jews?’, Polin, vol. 1, 1986, pp. 91–106.
See Hans Rogger, ‘Reflections on Russian Conservatism: 1861–1905’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 14, 1966, pp. 195–212;
Richard Pipes, ‘Russian Conservatism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Slavic Review, vol. 30, no. 1, 1971, pp. 121–8.
For the association of the Jews with capitalism, see Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Antisemitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917, London, 1993, pp. 103–39; for the Jews as socialists, see Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, pp. 396–403.
For a survey of the development of racialism, and the manner in which it was presented, see Leon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, London, 1974.
There is also a good treatment of this theme scattered throughout Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980.
Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, pp. 42–44.
Michael Blacher, ‘Russian Conceptions of Jewish Origins, 1893–1932: An Encyclopedic Examination’, unpublished paper. Most of Blacher’s examples come from the famous publishing stable of Brokhaus and Efron, including the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, which also was willing to incorporate racialist assumptions into its articles. See the entry under ‘Antropologiia’ in vol. 2, St Petersburg, 1906–13, pp. 810–18
Zofia Borzyminska, ‘Government-Sponsored Schools for Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1864–1870’, Gal-Ed, vol. 13, Tel Aviv, 1993, p. 28.
Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right- Wing Politics in Imperial Russia, Oxford, 1986, pp. 35–6.
See the recent study by S.A. Stepanov, Chernaia sotnia v Rossii, 1905–1914 gg., Moscow, 1992.
Peter Kenez, ‘Pogroms and White Ideology in the Russian Civil War’, in J.D. Klier and S. Lambroza, Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 293–313.
Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917, vol. 1, New York/London, 1988, pp. 120–51.
Ibid., pp. 239–58; Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 89–98.
See Shimon Redlich, Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia: The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR, 1941–1948, Boulder, Colorado, 1982.
Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Government and the Jews, 1948–1967, Cambridge, 1984, pp. 147–201, 229–56.
See the introduction to the ‘Black Book’, a documentary history of the Holocaust on Soviet soil which was prepared by Vasilii Grossman and Il’ia Erenburg. It was not published in full until 1993, in part because of its depiction of widespread collaboration and complicity of other Soviet nationalities in the Holocaust. Chernaia kniga, Vilnius, 1993.
Pinkus, Soviet Government, pp. 227–56.
See W. Korey, The Soviet Cage: Anti-Semitism in Russia, New York, 1973.
For an account of this process, see Yaacov Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1948–1967, Cambridge, 1991.
Minton Goldman, ‘United States Policy and Soviet Jewish Emigration from Nixon to Bush’, in Yaacov Ro’i (ed.), Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, Ilford, Essex/Portland, Oregon, 1995, pp. 338–61.
See Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, New York, 1969, for the convoluted history of this manuscript.
For a recent journalistic overview of these trends, see Sergei Hackel, ‘Suffering and Insufferable’, Leading Light: Christian Faith and Contemporary Culture, vol. 2, no. 1, Winter, 1995, pp. 16–18.
This phenomenon is illustrated by the Church-linked periodical Tsar’-Kolokol, published in Moscow in 1990, which was obsessed with the theme of the ritual murder of the Emperor Nicholas II and his family.
Vladimir Solov’ev, ‘Ugolovnoe delo No. 18/123/666-93’, Izvestiia, 19 November 1994.
See the revealing work of Fran Markowitz, especially A Community in Spite of Itself: Soviet Jewish Emigres in New York, Washington, DC, 1993,
and ‘Russkaia Druzhba: Soviet Patterns of Friendship in American and Israeli Context’, Slavic Review, vol. 50, no. 3, 1991, pp. 637–45.
For the extent to which Jews speak Russian and not the language of the non-Russian republics, see Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry since the Second World War, New York, 1987, pp. 179–206.
John D. Klier, ‘Russian Jewry as the “Little Nation” of the Russian Revolution’, in Ro’i, Jews and Jewish Life, pp. 146–156.
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Klier, J.D. (1998). The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Anti-Semitism in Post-Communist Russia. In: Hosking, G., Service, R. (eds) Russian Nationalism Past and Present. Studies in Russia and East Europe . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26532-9_8
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