Staunton, November 17 – Anti-Semitism
has a long and horrific history in Russia, Olga Irisova writes, and every time Moscow
has “tightened the screws” and focused as now on the supposed existence of “a
fifth column,” Russians will focus on nationality – the notorious “fifth line”
in Soviet passports – and attacks on Jews will increase.
In “Moskovsky komsomolets,” the analyst
says that “the lists of ‘national traitors’” various activists and officials
are putting out contain “almost exclusively Jewish or ‘similar’ names,” noting “the
growth of anti-Semitism parallels the intensification of aggression against the
opposition” (mk.ru/social/2014/11/09/gde-pyataya-kolonna-tam-i-pyataya-grafa.html).
In Putin’s Russia, the “hurrah
patriots find ‘a Jew’ in each who criticizes the powers that be and even
equates the two.” A Kaliningrad said that Jews were to be found where the
opposition was, and Petersburg deputy Vitaly Milonov said that those
criticizing the authorities were simply following a “2000-year-old tradition
which he said “began with calls to crucify the Saviour…”
It
may be still “too early” to speak about state sponsorship of this trend,
although the failure of the authorities to condemn such comments speaks loudly
and has convinced 4500 Jews to seek to move to Israel over the last year. But
both the comments and the silence are evidence that Russian society is in
trouble and has already “gone beyond civilized limits.”
As Irisova notes, “anti-Semitism in
Russia has deep roots and every time the authorities ‘tighten the screws’ or
search for [enemies], the Jews always fall under its hot hand,” be that at the
end of the imperial period or at the end of Stalin’s time. Indeed, only his
death, she points out, saved the Jews from an even worse fate than they
suffered.
But what Jews had to endure even
after 1953 was bad enough: there were restrictions on how many could be in one
or another institution and in some places, they were banned outright or limited
in their activities as compared to other groups. Not surprisingly, when they
could, they left.
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Between 1968 and 1988, 294,000
Jews left the Soviet Union; and between 1989 and 2002, about 40 percent of
those who had remained left as well.
As a result, of the 875,000 Jews counted in the 1959 census, there
were only 156,800 left at the time of the last 2010 Russian enumeration.
Everyday anti-Semitism has
continued, but in recent times, anti-Semitic attitudes have been whipped up
by articles in the media and especially on the Internet, and anti-Semitic
outrages have followed, the Moscow analyst says. But Russian officials have
not responded and appear to be in denial.
Not long ago, she says, Russian
officials were claiming that there is less anti-Semitism in Russia than there
is in Western countries. But surveys
show that is not the case: in Russia about 30 percent of the population has
attitudes which can be classified as anti-Semitic while in the US only about
nine percent do and in Estonia 22 percent.
According to these surveys,
Irisov notes, 49 percent of Russians believe that “the Jews have too much
power in the business world, and 42 percent believe that “Jews consider
themselves better than other people.”
Older Russians are slightly but only slightly more anti-Semitic than
younger ones, 33 percent to 27 percent.
If officials and others do not
speak out and denounce those who make anti-Semitic remarks, the situation for
Jews in Russia is likely to be bleak indeed.
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