LATEST UPDATE: DECEMBER 1998
Despite many setbacks Russia has made considerable political, economic and social progress since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia's minorities, including the Jewish population, now face few, if any, obstacles to full participation either in Russian public life or in minority religious and cultural activities. The emigration of Jews to Israel has declined accordingly. At the same time, Russian society remains highly volatile and riddled with complex problems, including widespread corruption amongst officialdom, mass tax evasion, demoralization in the armed forces and virtually unchecked gangsterism. The health of President Yeltsin and uncertainty as to his successor continue to be matters of major concern.
An economic crisis, which began in mid-August 1998 and led to Russia's being unable to repay its debt to western creditors, developed into a political crisis as relations between President Yeltsin and the duma, the lower house of parliament dominated by the Communist Party, sharply deteriorated. Evgeny Primakov, a compromise candidate, was appointed prime minister in place of Viktor Chernomyrdin.
In November 1998 two developments caused shock waves among Russia's Jews and society at large. First, overtly antisemitic remarks were made by a Communist deputy, Albert Makashev, a veteran anti-Jewish activist. Second, Galina Starovoitova, a parliamentarian well known for her forthright criticism of human rights abuses, including antisemitism, and of corruption in official circles, was murdered by unknown assassins.
Russian Jewry's greatest concern is, as before, the inability and/or lack of will of the authorities to take adequate political and legal measures to deal with ultra-nationalist activists, particularly their publications, which are easily accessible in large population centres.
On the other hand the fact that the high visibility in public life of a number of politicians, bankers and industrialists of Jewish extraction has provoked few, if any, overt expressions of antisemitism in mainstream circles is a positive sign.
Total population: 147 million
Jewish population: 600,000-700,000 (mainly in Moscow and St Petersburg)
Other minority groups: some 100 nationalities comprise the population: ethnic Russians make up 82 per cent, the remaining 18 per cent being composed of Tartars (3.8 per cent), Ukrainians (3 per cent), Chuvash (1.2 per cent), Chechens and others; Muslims comprise some 10 per cent of the population
Political system: executive branch (comprising an elected president and a government headed by a prime minister), bi-cameral legislature (comprising the state duma and the federation council) and a judicial branch
Government: Nash dom Rossiya (NDR, Our Home Is Russia) heads the ruling coalition, under Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov and President Boris Yeltsin (NDR)
Other major parties: Kommunisticheskaya partiya Rossii (Communist Party of Russia) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberalno-demokraticheskaya partiya Rossii (LDPR, Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia)
Next presidential election: 2000
GDP December 1997: US$3,500 per capita (growth 3 per cent)
Inflation January-October 1998: 3 per cent (56.4 per cent) (State Committee for Statistics)
Unemployment December 1997: c. 10 per cent
Currency end 1997: 6,000 roubles=US$1
According to tradition the penetration of Jews into the territories which comprise Russia began in the border regions beyond the Caucasus mountains and the shores of the Black Sea in the seventh century BCE; ruins and inscriptions on tombstones testify to the existence of important Jewish communities in the Greek colonies on the Black Sea shores. Religious persecutions in the Byzantine empire caused many Jews to emigrate to these communities.
The invasion of the Mongols (1237) and their rule brought much suffering to the Jews of Russia. In the principality of Moscow, the nucleus of the future Russian empire, a negative attitude towards Jews was connected with a negative attitude towards foreigners in general, who were considered heretics and enemies of the state. In the 1470s the religious sect known as the 'Judaizers' was discovered in the city of Novgorod and at the court in Moscow: the Jews were accused of having initiated its establishment. When Tsar Ivan 'the Terrible' (1530-84) annexed the town of Pskov he ordered that all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity be drowned in the river.
In the following two centuries repeated decrees issued by Russian rulers prohibited the entry of Jewish merchants within their territories.
In 1738 the Jew Baruch b. Leib was arrested and accused of having converted the officer Aleksandr Voznitsyn to Judaism. Both were burned at the stake in St Petersburg. In 1742 Tsarina Elizaveta Petrovna ordered the expulsion of the few Jews living in her kingdom, stating: 'I do not want any [commercial] benefit from the enemies of Christ.'
At the close of the eighteenth century hundreds of thousands of Jews were placed under the domination of the tsars as a result of the three partitions of Poland. From the beginning of its annexation of the Polish territories the Russian government viewed the Jews there as the 'Jewish problem', to be solved ultimately by their assimilation or expulsion. The early nineteenth century saw the restriction of Russia's Jewish population to the Pale of Settlement, which extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
The promulgation of the first 'Jewish statute' in 1804 led to the beginning of the expulsion of Jews from the villages. Only in 1822 was this expulsion systematically resumed. In the 1840s Tsar Nikolay I divided the Jews into those who were 'useful' - wealthy merchants, craftsmen and agriculturalists - and 'non-useful' - small tradesmen and the poorer classes - an action which provoked the intervention of Western European Jews.
The appearance of Jews in economic, political and cultural life under the reformist Tsar Aleksandr II aroused a sharp reaction in Russian society. Leading opponents of the Jews included several of the country's most prominent intellectuals, such as the authors Ivan Aksakov and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Jews were accused of maintaining 'a state within a state', an accusation exemplified in the 1869 Kniga kagala (Book of the Kahal ) by the apostate Jacob Brafman. The blood libel charge was renewed by agitators (e.g. Kutais in 1878). The principal argument was that the Jews were an alien element, invading Russian life and gaining control of economic and cultural positions, and a destructive influence. The anti-Jewish movement gathered strength especially after the Balkan war of 1877-8, when a wave of Slavophile nationalism swept through Russian society.
The year 1881 was a turning point in the history of the Jews in Russia. In March revolutionaries assassinated Tsar Aleksandr II. The Russian government encouraged the notion that the Jews were responsible for the misfortunes of the nation. Pogroms broke out in southern Russia; similar pogroms were repeated in 1882-4. Commissions appointed by the government of Aleksandr III stated that they had been caused by 'Jewish exploitation'. In 1886 the number of Jewish students in secondary and tertiary institutions was limited by law to 10 per cent in the Pale of Settlement and to 3-5 per cent outside it. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the head of the Holy Synod, the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church, formulated the objectives of the government when he declared that 'one-third of the Jews will convert, one-third will die and one-third will leave the country'.
In 1903 many Jews were murdered in a pogrom in Kishinev. In subsequent years pogroms became a part of government policy. The establishment of the imperial duma brought no change to the situation of the Jews. There was indeed a limited Jewish representation in the duma but this representation was confronted by the Soyuz russkogo naroda (SRN, Union of the Russian People) and related parties whose principal weapon in the struggle against liberal and radical elements was a virulent antisemitism.
In 1913 Mendel Beilis was acquitted after a celebrated trial in Kiev involving the blood libel.
The pogroms, restrictive decrees and administrative pressure caused a mass emigration of Jews from Russia, especially to the United States. From 1881 to 1914 about 2 million Jews left Russia.
The October 1917 revolution brought to an end institutionalized antisemitism and accorded the Jewish minority equal rights.
In 1939-40 over 2 million Jews, residents of the territories that had been annexed by or incorporated into the Soviet Union, were added to the Soviet Jewish population. As a result of the annexations, on the eve of Hitler's invasion of the USSR, the Jewish population of Soviet Russia numbered over 5 million.
In the first few weeks following the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union in June 1941 the German invaders occupied most of the areas annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939-40, including all of Byelorussia and the greater part of western Ukraine. Vilna, Minsk, Riga, Vitebsk, Zhitomir and Kishinev were all taken by mid-July. The total Jewish population in the areas occupied by the Germans was 4 million. Of these, about 3 million were murdered.
In the late 1940s to early 1950s what remained of Jewish institutional life was virtually obliterated. The Jewish Anti-fascist Committee was dissolved and those associated with it were arrested. The Soviet media conducted a vicious campaign against 'cosmopolitans', directed principally against the Jewish intelligentsia. Stalin's anti-Jewish campaign culminated in the so-called 'doctors' plot', the supposed discovery of an assassination attempt on the Soviet dictator by a group of Jewish doctors. Rumours of the impending mass deportation of Jews to regions in the eastern USSR began to circulate. Stalin's death in March 1953 brought some relief.
Despite his policy of de-Stalinization Khrushchev's rule was not devoid of anti-Jewish elements. This was particularly demonstrated by the so-called economic trials, in which an apparently disproportionate number of defendants were Jews. Although officially proscribed in the Soviet Union antisemitism found expression in violent outbursts such as riots in Malakhovka in 1959, blood libels in Tashkent, Vilna and elsewhere, and literary controversies such as the reaction to Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem 'Baby Yar'. In 1963 Judaism bez prikras (Judaism without Embellishment), a book by the Soviet Ukrainian writer Trofim Kichko, provoked a worldwide protest, in particular over its Nazi-style cartoons. It was eventually withdrawn by the Soviet authorities. Jews continued to be barred from the higher echelons of the Communist Party, the foreign service and the senior military command.
In the Brezhnev era an anti-Zionist campaign aimed at countering the emigration sentiment of Soviet Jews was heavily influenced by propagandists who introduced antisemitic themes in a Marxist-Leninist guise.
During the Gorbachev period of liberalization of Communist rule antisemitism was a characteristic feature of ultra-nationalist and neo-Stalinist groups which emerged on the fringe of Russian politics, including Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberalno-demokraticheskaya partiya Rossii (LDPR, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), which subsequently penetrated mainstream politics.
Individuals from the Caucasus and Central Asia continue to face widespread popular discrimination, often reflected in official attitudes and actions. Since 1993 discrimination against such people has increased concurrently with new measures at both the federal and local levels to combat crime. Law enforcement authorities target people with dark complexions for harassment, arrest and deportation from urban centres. In Moscow such persons are subjected to far more frequent document checks than lighter-skinned persons, and are frequently detained or fined in excess of permissible penalties, often without formal documents of the offence being drawn up and presented by police. Reports also suggest a pattern, at least tacitly supported by city authorities, of extortion and beatings by law enforcement officials.
Muslims, who comprise approximately 10 per cent of Russia's population, continue to encounter societal discrimination and antagonism.
The city of Moscow is frequently cited for violating the rights of non-residents and ethnic minorities as well as the rights of those legitimately seeking asylum. The mainstream weekly Obshchaya gazeta reported on 21 May 1997 that Mayor Yury Luzhkov, in preparation for the 850th anniversary of the founding of the city, had ordered the city's migration service to 'cleanse' the city of all 'illegal migrants'. Luzhkov has been quoted in the past as calling for the expulsion of Chechens and other Caucasians from Moscow.
In a positive development President Yeltsin overturned two prior decrees (one presidential, the other by Mayor Luzhkov) permitting officials to detain certain individuals for up to thirty days without access to a lawyer and in some cases to expel them from Moscow.
On 23 June 1997 the duma adopted overwhelmingly a controversial law on freedom of conscience and religious association. The law, strongly backed by the Russian Orthodox Church, included government-backed provisions which would make it more difficult for foreign and some minority religious groups, including Catholics and most Protestant denominations, to operate in Russia. Only religious groups which had been active in the country for at least fifty years and had branches in at least half of Russia's eighty-nine regions could be granted the status of 'all-Russian organizations'. Religious groups which had operated in Russia for less than fifteen years would be denied the rights of legal entities, including property rights. The legislation would have sharply restricted the activities of foreign missionaries and religious faiths other than the 'traditional' religions of Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Following numerous protests from home and abroad, including the Pope, President Yeltsin vetoed the law. On 19 September 1997 the duma adopted a modified draft of the law submitted by the president. The law was duly approved by the federation council (the upper house) and signed by the president.
Mainstream political life
Members of the Russian Communist Party have recently made a number of explicit and implicit anti-Jewish statements. Writing in the pro-Communist daily newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya on 12 February 1998, Party chief Gennady Zyuganov, employing code words normally used by Russian ultra-nationalist and hard-left activists, claimed that ethnic minorities were the main beneficiaries of the Soviet nationalities policies of the 1920s and 1930s. He added that ethnic Russians were currently disadvantaged compared with other groups and were facing 'genocide'.
On 12 April 1998 Zyuganov said in a live television interview that, while ethnic Russians make up 85 per cent of the country's population, the government is 'dominated' by minorities. He called for proportional representation of nationalities in the government.
In early October 1998 General Albert Makashev, a parliamentary deputy and member of the Russian Communist Party's central committee, told a television interviewer that 'it is time to expel all yids from Russia'. At rallies subsequently held in Moscow and the central Russian town of Samara, Makashev said Jews were to blame for the current economic crisis and that if he had to die he would take 'a dozen yids' with him. Interviewd by the Moscow Jewish weekly Evreyskaya gazeta, Zyuganov said Makashev's remarks might well have been prompted by the fact that 'there are quite a lot of people of Jewish nationality among the so-called democratic journalists' who 'day and night are making a fool of the people'.
On 4 November 1998 a motion in the duma (lower house) censuring General Makashev for his 'harsh, abusive statements' and for inciting racial hatred was defeated by 121 votes to 107. Among the Communist MPs, 83 voted against censure and 43 abstained. On the same day, Zyuganov said: 'We took note of the impermissible form of his remarks and condemned his intemperance.'
President Yeltsin criticized the duma saying he was 'indignant' at the rejection of the motion to censure Makashev. Former deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais called for the Communist Party to be banned for its support of Makashev. Prime Minister Primakov said that a ban 'on a party that has a majority in the parliament may destabilize the situation'.
On 10 November 1998 Zyuganov said the ethnicity issue in Russia should not be limited to relations between just two ethnic groups. He said that the Communist group in the parliament had condemned the statements by Makashev, but some forces in society 'became hysterical' and tried to turn 'poorly-worded statements into an ethnic conflict'.
The next day it was reported that, in an interview with La Stampa, General Makashev had called for legislative measures to limit the number of Jews in public office. He said it was impossible to ban the Communist Party as a result of his earlier pronouncements. How can you forbid the sun and the moon from appearing in the sky, he asked.
As for the LDPR, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, since the December 1993 parliamentary elections, when it won the highest percentage of the party-preference votes and captured the second-largest number of seats in the duma, it has performed badly in local elections.
In the latest of these, the regional elections of 7 December 1997, Zhirinovsky's party did not win a single seat in the legislatures of the districts of Khabarovsk and Krasnoyarsk and in the Samara and Murmansk regions despite fielding numerous candidates in all these constituencies. In accordance with the diminution of his popularity Zhirinovsky has tended to tone down his inflammatory anti-minority rhetoric. With regard specifically to anti-Jewish statements he is certainly more circumspect, tending to reserve such statements for his party's press organs (see Publications and media).
Notwithstanding this approach, in April 1998 Zhirinovsky
told a press conference in Moscow that Jews had started the Second World
War, hence provoking the Holocaust, and had sparked the 1917 Bolshevik revolution,
which had been destroying the country ever since. 'The essence of the conflict
around the Jewish people', he is reported to have said, 'is that when their
number grows too great in a country, war breaks out.' He added: 'You will
always find Jews where war is raging because they realize that money flows
where blood is spilled.'
Ultra-nationalist parties
Approximately 100 organizations comprised the 'national-patriotic movement', i.e. groupings of an ultra-nationalist orientation. All of them, with the exception of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDPR (see above), operate on the fringe of Russian politics. Activists are constantly at odds with each other, whether for doctrinal or personal reasons, organizations frequently change their name, and repeated attempts are made to unify ultra-nationalist forces. To all indications the extremist groups are making little, if any, headway.
Antisemitism is an integral element of the ideology of most organizations of this type, typically ultra-nationalist and neo-Stalinist alike. The major themes of antisemitic (and anti-western) propaganda include attacks on 'Russophobia' (a euphemism for 'anti-patriotic' Jews), prominent Russian Jewish bankers, industrialists and high officials, including Boris Yeltsin, who are often described as being either of Jewish extraction or as 'Jewish puppets'. Antisemitic propaganda also repeatedly makes use of the following:
The most prominent ultra-nationalist group on the fringe of Russian politics continues to be the Russkoe natsionalnoe edintstvo (RNE, Russian National Unity), founded in Moscow in October 1990 when its members consisted mainly of former members of Dmitry Vasilev's Pamyat. Until March 1993 the RNE was a member of the Russky natsionalny sobor (RNS, Russian National Union, see below). Members of this group, led by Aleksandr Barkashev, wear black shirts and berets, and greet each other with a stiff-armed salute and the cry 'Glory to Russia!' Their symbol is a swastika combined with a cross. In contrast to most other ultra-nationalist activists in Russia, Barkashev does not hesitate to describe himself as a 'fascist'.
In 1994 Barkashev published a collection of his articles entitled Azbuk russkogo natsionalista (ABC of Russian Nationalism) in which he labelled as overt enemies liberals, democrats, Jews and Freemasons, and as covert enemies members of most of the other extremist parties. Each RNE member is given a copy of the book.
The RNE boasts 25,000 members, although independent observers place the true figure at closer to 5,000. The group, which claims to have branches in fifty-three cities, maintains positive relations with local authorities, army, police and state security officials. RNE activists continue to run paramilitary clubs where they prepare teenagers for military service. The organization publishes two national newspapers and a number of regional ones: Russky poryadok (Russian Order) has been published since October 1992 in Vladivostok, Moscow, Samara and Stavropol, and its print-run in 1996 was 5 million; Russky styag (Russian Banner) was revived in October 1995 and had a print-run of 55,000.
In Stavropol district the local branch of the RNE and its associate organization Russkiye vityazi (RV, Russian Knights) is apparently supported by local leaders, members of the armed services and law enforcement officials. The stated goal of the organization is to develop Russian youth to establish 'Russian order', a vision of a great Russia with Russian Orthodox values, a goal for which they claim to be ready to shed blood. The group runs kindergartens in Stavropol and trains Russian youths of various ages. It reportedly has several hundred followers.
The Natsionalno-bolshevistskaya partiya (NBP, National Bolshevik Party) is led by the eccentric former novelist Eduard Limonov, formerly internal affairs minister in the 'shadow cabinet' of Zhirinovsky's LDPR. The NBP came into being in May 1993 but, as a political organization, first became known in November 1994 with the appearance of its weekly newspaper Limonka. Previously only Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, a so-called 'metaphysician', were publicly known. (One example of Dugin's 'metaphysical' thought was provided in Limonka, no. 61, published in March 1997: 'The Indo-Europeans and Aryans labour while the Semites appropriate the results of their labour etc. For fascists it is of no importance to which class the Semites belong: they are guilty at all times and of everything, and if they speak out against anything really bad (in the eyes of fascists), then it is out of "vile deviousness" and for the sake of appearances.') Since February 1996 the NBP has been allied to the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist organizations UNA-UNSO and the PSE (see Ukraine). The party's ideology, determined by Dugin, supports centralized power on a hierarchical principle, a review of Russia's borders together with plebiscites in the former Soviet republics, the termination of western investment in Russia, and the total elimination of crime. Limonka, virtually alone among publications of its kind, often displays a humorous (and semi-pornographic) inclination.
The Soyuz russkogo naroda (SRN, Union of the Russian People), led by the teacher V. Birulin and the former KGB colonel I. Kuznetsov, regards itself as the successor to the reactionary and antisemitic party of that name that existed at the beginning of this century (see Antisemitic legacy). The SRN calls for the prohibition of marriage between people of different nationalities. In December 1996 its chairman condemned the so-called destruction wrought on his country by the 'Judeo-commissars', claimed that the 'real name' of the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was Moisei Solomonovich, and that in the year 2000 'Zionism' would prevail in Russia. The largest SRN branch, in Tsaritsin, is registered as the Union of the Russian People-Russian Community of the Volgograd area.
The Russkoe natsionalnoe-osvoboditelnoe dvizhenie (RNOD, Russian National Liberation Movement) was founded in October 1994 and comprised the group of readers and supporters of the Moscow-based paper Russkaya pravda (Russian Truth), which was registered in June 1994 and, in 1996, had a print-run of 10,000. Aleksandr Aratov, the paper's founder and publisher, had previously been a member of Viktor Korchagin's Russkaya partiya Rossii (RPR, Russian Party of Russia) and, in 1992-3, was the deputy chief editor of the antisemitic paper Russkoe voskresenie (Russian Resurrection). The chief editor of the Moscow edition of Russkaya pravda is Valery Emelyanov, a 'pagan' and veteran antisemite active during the Brezhnev era. The RNOD holds 'Zionism' responsible for usurping power in Russia in 1917, for the alleged mass genocide of the Russian people, and for inciting class and national enmity.
The 'initiative group' responsible for founding Russky natsionalny soyuz (RNS, Russian National Unity) emerged in early 1993 following its split from Dmitry Vasilev's ultra-nationalist Pamyat organization. The leaders of the 'initiative group' were Aleksey Vdovin and Konstantin Kasimovsky. They were supported by the editor of Chernaya sotnya (Black Hundreds), Aleksandr Shtilmark, who had quit Pamyat the previous year. In the spring of 1997 Vdovin was expelled from the party (he subsequently joined the RNE) and Kasimovsky became the sole leader. The RNS is a neo-Nazi organization which adheres to an ethnic concept of Russian Orthodoxy. It publishes one of the most extreme newspapers, Shturmovik (Storm Trooper), as well as the journal Natsiya (The Nation). Members of the RNS have repeatedly attacked disseminators of 'heretical' literature as well as (according to Shturmovik) dark-skinned people from the Caucasus and Blacks. The RNS cultivates links with neo-Nazi skinheads and similarly inclined youth organizations. The party operates a 'training room', use of which is mandatory for members of its 'storm trooper detachment'. The group sometimes holds joint meetings with the Soyuz 'Khristianskoe vozrozhdenie' (SKhV, Union of Christian Rebirth).
While no reliable figures are available for membership of NBP, SRN, RNOD and RNS, there are probably no more than 100-200 members in each case.
In Russia neo-Nazi skinheads first appeared in the early 1990s. Aaccording to a number of observers, there are already several thousand in some of the major cities (Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok) as well as smaller groupings - from a few dozen to a few hundred - in other big cities (St Petersburg, Voronezh, Yaroslavl and elsewhere). In Moscow there are two major neo-Nazi skinhead groups numbering several hundred people: the Moskovsky skinlegion (MS, Moscow Skin Legion) and the Russian branch of the international Blood and Honour (see United Kingdom) group. Over 100 neo-Nazi skinheads are members of the St Petersburg group Russky kulak (RK, Russian Fist). The journal Pod nol (Below Zero), the only exclusively neo-Nazi skinhead publication in Russia, is published in Moscow.
There is also evidence of anti-Jewish sentiment in some (perhaps unrepresentative) Cossack circles (see Publications and media).
In March 1997 the Russian Jewish Congress issued a statement concerning what it described as increased antisemitism in Russia in the previous year. The statement referred to 'explosions in the Moscow Marina Roshcha synagogue [see below] and the Yaroslavl cultural centre, and pogroms and desecrations of gravestones in the Kursk and Saratov Jewish cemeteries'. It continued: 'As previously, antisemitic publications remain on sale everywhere and such organizations as Russian National Unity (RNS), Pamyat and the Black Hundreds overtly disseminate their propaganda.' Pravda-5, the statement said, was one of a number of newspapers which specialized in publishing xenophobic material. The Russian Jewish Congress expressed dissatisfaction with the overall response of the authorities to those who disseminate racism and antisemitism, concluding that 'fascism is becoming a real threat in Russia. The impunity that the extremists enjoy encourages them to commit ever newer acts of vandalism, and both the government and society are incapable not only of protecting themselves but even of publicly condemning such manifestations.'
A new act of vandalism at the Preobrazhensky Jewish cemetery in St Petersburg was reported in January 1997 when an arson attack was carried out on the building which houses handwashing facilities. During the same month a Holocaust memorial in Nizhny Novgorod was defaced, and antisemitic leaflets were stuck on portraits of Sergey Levitan who (unsuccessfully) stood in the election for governor of Perm.
In April 1997 ten gravestones in the Rybinsk city cemetery were reportedly defiled with anti-Jewish graffiti.
On 27 April 1997, during the festival of Passover, fifty-three gravestones were desecrated in the Smolensk Jewish cemetery.
On 26 July 1997 a group of youths entered the synagogue in Perm shouting anti-Jewish abuse and causing damage to property.
On 20 August 1997 a number of tombstones in Arkhangelsk's central memorial cemetery were defaced with anti-Jewish graffiti.
In September 1997 eighteen gravestones were reportedly desecrated with anti-Jewish graffiti in the Jewish cemetery in Malakhovka, near Moscow, as were fourteen Jewish graves in the Kurgan city cemetery.
On 7 November 1997 the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, pro-Communist marchers in central Moscow carried antisemitic slogans.
On 24 and 25 November 1997 members of Dmitry Vasilev's Pamyat group shouted antisemitic slogans outside branches of the Moscow-based Alpha Bank. Police arrested several of the demonstrators. The bank is headed by Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Fridman (see also Countering antisemitism); Fridman also serves as vice-president of the Russian Jewish Congress.
On 4 March 1998 the liberal daily newspaper Izvestiya published a report by Vladimir Serdyukov claiming that Nikolay Kondratenko, since 1996 the governor of Krasnodar Territory, had recently told a youth conference about an alleged Jewish conspiracy to subvert Russia. Kondratenko is said to have close connections with the Communists and nationalists who dominate Russia's parliament. In his speech Kondratenko is said to have spoken of Russia's history of combatting Jewish domination in media and government, and to have blamed Jews for the war in Chechnya, the downfall of the Communist system and homosexuality in Russia. He spoke of 'yids', 'yiddisher-masons', 'Zionists' and 'cosmopolitans' - epithets said to have occurred sixty-one times in his speech. He is reported also to have said: '[The Jews] have taken Russian names and their strategy is to become pseudo-Russians. This is a strategy of infiltration into Russian families that is practised whenever a young Jewish woman who is subject to this villainous political tendency links up with a young Russian lad and they [the Jews] know very well that "the children will be ours".' Izvestiya noted that in 1991 Kondratenko had written a virulently anti-Zionist report which had been distributed in the region in tens of thousands of copies, and that in each one of his television appearances he had spoken of searching for, and exposing, Zionists and Freemasons.
On 18 June 1998, in an interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda, Kondratenko said: 'More and more Russians have recently been joining the ranks of the Zionists. I could not have suspected that our nation had so many traitors in its midst. I had thought that at least 80 per cent of the people support the Russian national idea and are ready to go through thick and thin for their country. But in fact there are fewer such people. The others are our traitors - the people the CIA is counting on. A propaganda barrage of Zionist ideas is sweeping the country. They have bought the newspapers, the television, the cinemas, the theatre. There is almost no counter-propaganda. We have told our tele-Zionists: if you continue your pernicious activities, we are going to burn you. I have summoned people and explained to them: Legally, I can't do anything myself. But you, women out there, come along, start the fires, and pour the gasoline over those vipers!'
In May 1998 it was reported that Yitzhak Lifshitz, a local rabbi, had been beaten by two skinheads in a subway station in Yaroslavl. The assailants, aged twenty-one and twenty-three, were immediately arrested by police, who had Lifshitz taken to a nearby hospital.
On 20 May 1998 the Marina Roshcha synagogue in Moscow was badly damaged in a bomb attack. Two people were slightly injured. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. The synagogue's rabbi said the congregation had received 'numerous letters from various nationalist and antisemitic groups containing strong threats against Jews'. He said that a week earlier an anonymous caller had made a bomb threat to the synagogue but police had inspected the building and found nothing. The synagogue was the target of a bombing in August 1996 and an arson attack in 1993, which demolished it. Both cases remain unsolved (see also Countering antisemitism).
Also on 20 May 1998 a Jewish cemetery in the Siberian city of Irkutsk was desecrated. Jewish leaders reported that 149 headstones were destroyed, damaged or daubed with antisemitic slogans.
On the night of 14-15 July 1998 thirty graves were desecrated in the Jewish section of Moscow's Vostryakovskyoe cemetery. Eight tombstones were damaged beyond repair.
On 4 November 1998 a journalist attached to the antisemitic paper Russkaya pravda was questioned after a car exploded outside a gate to the Kremlin, badly injuring a presidential guardsman.
Although the official Russian Orthodox leadership has condemned anti-Jewish activities on occasion (see Countering antisemitism), there is often a Russian Orthodox element in far-right ideology (see Parties, organizations, movements) and individual members of the clergy have been involved in anti-Jewish activities (see Legal matters).
Among specifically antisemitic religious papers are Rus pravoslavnaya - a self-styled 'independent Orthodox-patriotic newspaper' published in St Petersburg - and Slavyanin - a self-styled 'newspaper of the Minin and Pozharsky All-Slavic Synod' published in Vologda.
On 17 July 1998 the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian royal family were buried at a ceremony in Moscow attended by President Yeltsin. On the eve of the ceremony Aleksandr Rakov, the editor of a Russian Orthodox newspaper in St Petersburg, reportedly said: 'Regardless of the fuss made by the government and the Jew Nemtsov, for Orthodox people the funeral will virtually not exist.' Rakov was referring to Boris Nemtsov, the Russian deputy prime minister who headed a government commission that used historical and forensic arguments to dispel the version of the deaths that holds Jews responsible. A placard at a monarchist and Christian rally held two days before the burial read 'Satanic regime-satanic rituals' - an attack on an imagined Jewish plot against the Tsar and the Church.
Holocaust-denial propaganda is appearing more frequently in antisemitic publications. The weekly Moscow-based Duel (nos 17-22) and the Novosibirsk-based Pamyat newspaper (no. 1) published extracts from 'The Myth of the Holocaust' by the 'Swiss scholar' Jürgen Graf (see Publications and media and Switzerland). The St Petersburg-based, ultra-nationalist paper Nashe otechestvo (no. 74) provided publication details of a Russian translation of Graf's book, Velikaya lozh XX veka: Mif o genotside evreyev v period II mirovoy voyny (The Great Lie of the Twentieth Century: The Myth of the Genocide of the Jews during the Second World War), a paperback version of which was said to be published by Senezh in St Petersburg.
In April 1998 it was reported that the Holocaust Centre
in Moscow claimed that rising antisemitism was bringing many Holocaust-deniers
to the forefront. There was, it said, an increasing number of Russian-language
books supporting denial of the Holocaust, while the growing number of Holocaust-deniers
now included even scholars.
For more information about antisemitic publications, see also Parties, organizations, movements, Religious antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
In Russia there are now several million copies of some 200-300 extremist periodical publications in circulation, considerably more than at any time during the tsarist period. Many of these publications are not registered with the authorities. Most are antisemitic. Prominent examples include the newspapers Russky vzglyad (Russian View), Za russkoe delo (For the Russian Cause), Zavtra (Tomorrow), Kolokol (The Bell), Nashe otechestvo (Our Fatherland, see Holocaust denial), Shturmovik (Storm Trooper), Chernaya sotnya (Black Hundreds), Russkiye vedomosti (Russian News), Russky vestnik (Russian Messenger), Veche Roda (Council of the Race) and Krasnoyarskaya gazeta (Krasnoyarsk Gazette), and the journals Kuban, Molodaya gvardiya (Young Guard), Nash sovremennik (Our Contemporary), Rusich and Ataka.
These publications generally make use of the typical antisemitic themes already mentioned. The allegation of Jewish control of Russian politics and society was evident in Russky sobor, no. 26, 1997: '. . . 70 per cent of Russian property you [President Yeltsin] have handed over to the Jewish community. This diaspora already controls over 90 per cent of the banks, while destroying our industry and ruining the Russian producer . . . You are actively helping the yids [zhidam] get control of Russia once again and once again to turn the Russian people into a dumb, cheap labour force . . .'
The supposed Jewish conspiracy to subordinate Russia to Jewish domination was attacked in Za Rus! (For Russia!), no. 2, 1997: 'Russia is already becoming a colony of Israel even under the current president, a member of the yid-masonic order . . . Who should we hang without a trial for the genocide of the Russian people? In Poland they told the Jews openly: "You are guests in our country." In Russia they are the bosses.'
Russky vzglyad (no. 5/6, 1997) reported the alleged Jewish control of the media: 'Pretend you are submitting to the laws of Jewish democracy. Ignore the new mass media as they are all imbued with yid domination. Learn from the experience of the National Socialist Party of Germany. There are those who are deceived and seduced by the symbiosis of Jews and Christians. For such people there is no room among Aryans and other oppressed races.'
Numerous antisemitic books continue to be sold openly in Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg and other large cities. In addition to classic antisemitic texts like Hitler's Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they include Ivan Ignatev's Pyataya kolonna (Fifth Column) and Pyataya kolonna v Rossii (The Fifth Column in Russia) by Valery Dyakonov et al. The Vityaz publishing house continues to publish the 'Collection of a Russian Patriot', comprising twenty-five ultra-nationalist and antisemitic books and booklets.
Among recently published antisemitic books are: A. Boykov, Tretya vlast v Rossii. Ocherki o pravosudii, zakonnosti i sudebnoy reforme 1990-1996 gg (Moscow 1997) (The Third Power in Russia: Essays on Justice, Legality and Judicial Reform, 1990-1996); Oktavian Stampas (transliterated), Tampliery (1997), a historical detective novel in seven volumes; Sergey Alekseyev, Sokrovishcha valkiry (1997) (Treasures of the Valkyrie), a historical detective novel; a Russian translation of Jürgen Graf's book (see Holocaust denial and Switzerland), Mif o kholokoste: Pravda o sudbe evreyev vo Vtoroy mirovoy voyne (The Myth of the Holocaust: The Truth about the Fate of the Jews in the Second World War), 5,000 copies printed in Moscow under the aegis of the newspaper Russky vestnik; Yury Vorobevsky, Put k Apokalipsu: Stuk v zolotye vorota (1997) (The Road to the Apocalypse: Knocking on the Golden Gates), 5,000 copies published in Moscow by TKV.
The anti-Jewish utterances of ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky have recently been confined to the pages of his party organs. In an article entitled 'An open letter to US President Bill Clinton: a subjugated people and the policy of the West', which appeared in LDPR (no. 12, 1997), Zhirinovsky wrote, inter alia: 'Why do people of Jewish nationality predominate in the government and among the big bankers? Nobody would deny that this people is talented. But it is not necessary to be so insolent that, while the population of the country is 80 per cent Russian, 80 per cent of the government and leading bankers are Jews. This question is often hushed up shamelessly. But it exists and the people talk about it. And when this government introduces reforms which worsen the life of the majority of people, why should we be surprised if antisemitism exists?'
An article in issue no. 8 (1997) of the Cossack newspaper Kazachy spas (the self-styled 'Organ of the Central Cossack Forces') states: 'The Cossacks of Taman [Tamani] are filled with indignation at the interference of the Zionists in Russia's internal affairs. Coming to power in 1917 they imposed on us what they call equality, communism, internationalism . . . Those who sold Christ, who crucified Christ on the Cross, do not wish to live by His commandments and are inventing new "commandments" for us. But we do not want to know about them! . . . Let the "chosen ones" be in command of Israel.'
A poll conducted in early June 1998 by the Institute for the Sociology of Parliamentarism among 6,000 people in 62 regions (about 250 towns and villages) showed that 5 per cent of Russians regard the activities of pro-fascist organizations in the country in a 'more or less positive' way.
Another 1 per cent of those polled said they were 'very positive' about such organizations and 2 per cent were 'positive'. About 6 per cent of respondents said they were 'indifferent' to this problem. Another 6 per cent said they were 'somewhat wary' of the activities of pro-fascist groups.
Some 45 per cent said they felt 'negative' about pro-fascist organizations and 26 per cent were 'very negative'. Another 12 per cent of those polled were undecided.
Nuzgar Betaneli, the director of the institute, said a positive attitude towards pro-fascist organizations in Russia among a part of the country's population was 'not a disease affecting only teenagers': 5 per cent of respondents in the 16-17 age-group positively assessed such organizations; 9 per cent (18-19); 8 per cent (20-4); 6 per cent (25-9); 7 per cent (30-4); 4 per cent (35-9); 6 per cent (40-9); 3 per cent (50-9); 2 per cent (60-9); 1 per cent (70 and older).
A survey conducted in November 1998 by a leading polling
agency focused on Muscovites' attitudes towards Jews and antisemitism. Of
1,509 people surveyed 51 per cent were opposed to the anti-Jewish remarks
made by General Albert Makashev (see Parties, organizations, movements),
while 15 per cent approved of them. Thirty per cent said they thought Makashev
should face legal action for his remarks, while 29 per cent disagreed. On
issues relating to Jewish participation in government, however, the survey
found signs of significant prejudice. Some 34 per cent of respondents supported
the idea of limiting the number of Jews holding senior offices, and 64 per
cent said they would not want a Jew to be Russia's president.
In March 1997 the duma (lower house of parliament) rejected a bill to prohibit fascist propaganda. Some of the opponents of the measure (Communists and ultra-nationalists make up over half the composition of the duma) described the bill as 'Zionist'. The draft law included a new definition of 'fascism' which would have made it easier to prosecute extremists.
On 11 November 1997, following the formation of the new presidential commission to combat political extremism (see Countering antisemitism), it was reported that the office of the prosecutor-general, the justice ministry and the federal security service would set up an interdepartmental group to combat hate crimes. Prosecutor-General Yuri Skuratov told the Russian Jewish Congress that during the previous two years his office had initiated forty-nine criminal cases on charges of inciting ethnic, racial or religious hatred, but that law enforcement agencies had found it difficult to investigate such crimes, partly because Russia lacked a precise definition of 'fascism'.
On 29 October 1997 the duma rejected a proposed amendment to the criminal code that would have banned 'the public justification, approval, extolling, or denial of crimes committed by national-socialist or fascist regimes'. Representatives of the Communist, agrarian and popular power factions voted against the amendment.
On 30 July 1998 the Russian federation government approved a draft law on banning Nazi literature in any shape or form. Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko said that the law 'should be presented to the state duma as soon as possible', adding that 'the majority of the duma deputies supports this draft law'.
On 16 November 1998 Russian Justice Minister Pavel Krashennikov
said that his ministry was drafting a law against political extremism. He
stressed that amendments concerning anti-extremism measures would be introduced
in the criminal and administrative codes.
On 30 January 1997 twenty-nine-year-old unemployed Aleksey Sypin of Petrozavodsk was sentenced in Yaroslavl to three years' deprivation of liberty and a fine of 90 million roubles (US$15,000) for damage he had caused by blowing up the Yaroslavl synagogue in April 1996. Sypin was charged under three articles, including one prohibiting 'malicious hooliganism', of the Russian criminal code. The Yaroslavl Jewish community was reported to hold the view that the trial was 'to a great degree a show trial' and that not Sypin but an individual named Belova, a former militia major who gave evidence as a witness, was the main culprit.
In the trial of Igor Semyonov (the head of the local branch of RNE), which began in Orel in September 1997, Vladimir Gusev, a local Russian Orthodox priest, gave evidence on behalf of Semyonov. Gusev said that Judaism was an 'aggressive' and 'destructive' religion and repeated the blood libel charge, claiming that Hasidic Jews 'kill children and gather blood' in order to make matzot. Semyonov was on trial for allegedly arranging the murder of an elderly Orel woman so that his relative could acquire her apartment, and was also charged with inciting racial and ethnic hatred.
On 6 October 1997 the Moscow city court acquitted Nikolay Lysenko, leader of the far-right National Republican Party of Russia and a former member of the duma, and his aide, Mikhail Rogozin, of several charges including terrorism. Lysenko was accused of staging a bomb attack in his office in the duma in December 1995 and was convicted of stealing a computer from the duma. He was sentenced to sixteen months' imprisonment but was released immediately on the grounds that he had already spent over sixteen months in custody.
In November 1997 it was reported that the procurator in Nizhny Novgorod had instigated proceedings against the publishers of the local issue of the newspaper LDPR for publishing extracts from the anti-Jewish brochure Pyataya kolonna (Fifth Column, see Publications and media).
The major democratic press organs, including Izvestiya, Moskovskiye novosti, Literaturnaya gazeta, the journal Novoe vremya and others repeatedly publish condemnations of anti-Jewish activities and propaganda.
In February 1997 dozens of Jewish leaders, Russian Orthodox clergymen and Russian and foreign intellectuals participated in an academic interfaith conference in St Petersburg. The meeting was organized by the St Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy in co-operation with a number of local and international institutions.
In May 1997 the Russian Jewish Congress launched a magazine, Diagnoz, to counter fascist tendencies in Russian society. Diagnoz's first issue focused on prejudice against Caucasians in southern Russia.
On 28 October 1997 President Yeltsin signed a decree setting up a special commission to deal with 'political extremism'. The aim of the commission is to enforce a ban on organizations which seek to change the constitutional structure through violence, to violate Russia's territorial integrity or to incite social, racial, ethnic or religious hatred. Justice Minister Sergey Stepashin was appointed chairman of the commission, which also includes the federal security service director, Nikolay Kovalev, and the interior minister, Anatoly Kulikov. The Russian press published 'black lists' featuring about fifty organizations whose activities are likely to be examined by the commission. They include radical communists, ultra-nationalists, separatists and criminal groups. On 7 November 1997 Stepashin told correspondents that the commission would be a consultative body which would develop general proposals for fighting extremism. On 31 October, on the eve of the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, he called on leaders and members of political groups to show restraint.
On 23 November 1997 representatives of three youth organizations held an anti-fascist rally in the centre of Volgograd.
On 4 December 1997 a conference entitled 'The spreading of ultra-nationalism in Russia', organized by the Anti-fascist Public Foundation, the Glasnost Protection Foundation and the Civil Society Human Rights Foundation, took place in Orel's historical library. A high proportion of anti-fascist activists from Russia's regions took part. According to a press report of the conference, many speakers commented on 'the frequent alliance of fascist groups and local authorities and religious organizations'.
At the beginning of June 1998 President Yeltsin met ten of Russia's most prominent industrialists and bankers, including Vitaly Malkin, Vladimir Gusinsky and Mikhail Fridman (for the latter, see also Antisemitic incidents), to discuss ways of combatting neo-Nazism and ultra-nationalism as part of the country's efforts to tackle its financial problems. Malkin is reported to have raised the issue of Russia's negative image abroad, saying that solving this problem alone would attract more foreign investment and contribute to economic improvement. After the meeting, Yeltsin's spokesman, Sergey Yastrzhembsky, told reporters: 'The struggle against nationalism, Nazism and xenophobia is absolutely timely.'
On 22 June 1998, in a nationwide radio address to mark the fifty-seventh anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, President Yeltsin warned that 'Nazism is surging in Russia and poisoning its youth'. He criticized those who were 'crazed with ideas of national supremacy and antisemitism' and asked whether Russians would 'allow the worst ideology humanity has known to take root in this soil'.
In June 1998 Vladimir Zhirinovsky made a surprise appearance at a benefit concert for the Marina Roshcha synagogue bombed on 20 May 1998 (see Antisemitic incidents). He said he was outraged by the bombing and would support any anti-vandalism bill brought before Russia's parliament.
On 25 August 1998 concern about rising religious extremism
in Russia, as well as manifestations of Nazism and political extremism,
was voiced at an interdepartmental conference on combatting fascism and
political extremism which was held in the office of the Russian procurator-general.
Institute for Jewish Policy Research
© JPR 1999
