Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 10 – Anti-Westernism
and anti-liberalism have not displaced anti-Semitism in Russia as some have
argued but rather, along with widespread conspiracy thinking and eschatological
links between Russian nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy, have laid the
groundwork for a new recrudescence of this ancient evil, Aleksandr Verkhovsky
says.
The director of the SOVA Center makes
this argument in a Nezavisimaya gazeta
review of Viktor Shnirelman’s new book, The
Tribe of Dan: Eschatology and Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Russia (in
Russian, Moscow: BBI, 2017, 633 pp.) (ng.ru/ng_religii/2017-09-06/15_427_book.html).
Shnirelman, Verkhovsky points out,
is a proponent of “civilizational nationalism,” a notion that has attracted
many Russians and especially the Russian Orthodox Church. That idea holds that
identity does not emerge via ethnicity or language but “in the first instance
via a synthetic image of Russia as the nucleus of a special great culture or civilization
… inspired by high goals … and being in a global and long-term opposition to
the West.”
Those within the Church define these
goals in eschatological ways that are by their nature and for entirely
understandable reasons radical because they are about what the Church views as
the approaching Armageddon. As history
shows, Verkhovsky suggests, such ideas cannot exist “without anti-Semitism.”
The SOVA director recalls that he
recently heard one Orthodox priest in Moscow deliver a homily in which he said
Russians must prepare themselves for Armageddon and must be ready “to kill
their enemies, including Jews and Jewish children. This will be very difficult, he said, but it
has to be done because otherwise God’s will won’t be fulfilled.”
“It would be interesting to know how
important anti-Semitism is at the level of feelings” in a country where
conspiracy thinking is widespread “and how this is simply an old instrument for
the expression of eschatological emotions and corresponding political views,”
Verkhovsky continues.
Shnirelman cites the arguments of
those like Andrey Lesnitsky who assert that “anti-liberalism and
anti-Westernism are displacing anti-Semitism,” the SOVA analyst notes; but he
suggests this is an overly optimistic assumption. Indeed, those very values can
become a breeding ground for anti-Semitic attitudes and actions.
A major reason for concern,
Verkhovsky continues, is that the Moscow Patriarchate has failed to provide a
clear analysis of the Apocalypse and thus has allowed earlier anti-Semitic
readings of that to remain widespread and unchallenged – and especially the
most radical positions.
And it has failed to do so despite
the collection and widespread publication of openly anti-Semitic eschatological
texts from the Russian past and their promotion by leading commentators and
church hierarchs, texts that highlight the close links between eschatology and
anti-Semitic ideas.
Eschatology in the Russian tradition
has been important for both Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism, often
serving as the link between the two given the stress both place on defending
Russia as “the Third Rome” and thus “the last bastion in the struggle with
apostasy,” a struggle that over the last two decades has taken the form of what
one might call an Orthodox “jihad.”
As a result, anti-Semitism in Russia
has not lost its importance even though “in mass xenophobia it long ago moved
to a secondary or even tertiary level.” As Shnirelman shows, it could easily
re-emerge because the eschatological elements of Orthodoxy and Russian
nationalism are powerful influences in the minds of many.
Indeed, Verkhovsky concludes, “anti-Semitism
as part of this assemblage is in practice inevitable, but even the more
modernized forms of eschatological attitudes described in the book which avoid
basing themselves on anti-Semitism, all the same provoke one or another form of
xenophobia in general and anti-Semitism in particular.”
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