Putin Says ‘Ethnic Jews Tearing Apart Russian Orthodox Church,’ Reviving Theme of Stalin’s Campaign Against ‘Rootless Cosmopolitans’

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Of the many untrue and disturbing comments Vladimir Putin made during his “direct line” show, the following was perhaps the worst and most fateful: He accused “ethnic Jews” not part of their own religion of working to tear apart the Russian Orthodox Church (youtube.com/watch?v=-BUW37AuG4E).
    The Kremlin leader blamed the Jews for “tearing apart the church” not because they are “atheists” but because “these are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so” (jta.org/2024/12/19/global/vladimir-putin-accuses-ethnic-jews-of-tearing-apart-the-russian-orthodox-church).
    Many are horrified. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who left Russia after Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine, suggested that what Putin said “echoes the Stalinist anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Doctors’ Plot era (1948-1953)” and called on people of good will to condemn this (x.com/ChiefRabbiPG/status/1869783979169050836).
    Many Russian nationalists around Putin, including the increasingly powerful and influential “Russian Community,” have been openly anti-Semitic for some time; and Putin himself has fanned anti-Semitism by attacking Ukraine as a country needing what he calls “de-Nazification” even though it has a Jewish president.
    But the Kremlin leader’s words this week are his clearest and most noxious so far and will undoubtedly be taken as a sign that his regime will not oppose and may even openly support attacks on Jews, thus repeating the long and sad history of Russia in which attacks on Jews may not come first but almost inevitably come when the regime launches attacks on other groups.