Lukashenka’s Remark about Jews Echoes State Anti-Semitism of Late Soviet Period

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 20 – Speaking to a conference on corruption in Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka pointed out that “more than half” of those accused of this crime are Jews while insisting that he personally is “not an anti-Semite,” precisely the kind of remarks typical of state anti-Semitism in in Khrushchev’s times and more generally, Khaim Ben Yakov says.

            The general director of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress gives five examples from the 1960s to show how similar the Belarusian leader’s comments are to the ones Soviet officials and commentators made then (moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/18/aleksandr-lukashenko-i-istoriya-gosudarstvennogo-antisemitizma-a134279).

            At that time, such comments preceded and accompanied discrimination against and repression of Jews, Ben Yakov says; and that means that the international community must protest against the possibility that Lukashenka and then perhaps Putin will follow the same path Khrushchev and other Soviet officials did.

            If Lukashenka’s remarks pass without such protests, there every chance that he and other leaders in the region will conclude that they can get away with using anti-Semitism in order to divert the attention of their populations from the problems they are now facing. The Jews will be the first victims if that happens, but they won’t be the last.