Anti-Semitic Scares in Moscow Focus on Old Apartment House

Old-timers still know the cooperative apartment building at 19/8 Chasovaya St. as “the Jewish house,” which explains how it has been swept up in an anti-Semitism scare so widespread that it triggered an extraordinary public appeal for calm by the KGB on Saturday and expressions of concern by the visiting U.S. secretary of state.

One of the first Moscow cooperatives built after World War II, the Chasovaya building on the capital’s northwest side once had a clear majority of Jewish residents. “Many left, but the name has stuck to this place,” said a resident who asked that she be identified only as Olga.

Olga, a single Jewish mother, and other residents started to get worried a few weeks ago when young men began coming around to take pictures of the back of the building. When asked about their business, they would flee.

Then, late last month, someone claiming to be from a non-existent police unit telephoned the chairman of the cooperative seeking a complete list of the building’s residents.

Rumors of planned pogroms by anti-Semitic extremists of the Russian nationalist movement were already rife in Moscow and a number of other cities in this largest and most populous of the Soviet Union’s 15 constituent republics. In Leningrad, leaflets were circulated calling for attacks on Jews on May 5. And in a widely reported incident here two weeks ago, rightists shouting anti-Jewish slogans broke up a Writers’ Club meeting.

Suddenly--nobody seems quite sure how or why--word went around that an attack was planned at Chasovaya early last week. The chairman of the cooperative went door to door to all 106 apartments, warning Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike.

“There was a real panic here. It was frightening,” said Alexander Kirsanov, 47, an ethnic Russian.

The residents’ committee sent telegrams to the head of the KGB, the district’s representative in Parliament, and Moscow’s chief prosecutor. Vladimir, a Jewish lawyer who also asked that he not be further identified, filed a police complaint and then sent both his Russian wife and their 11-year-old daughter to stay with his in-laws.

“We asked that security be provided for residents,” Vladimir said in an interview. “We were thinking not only of Jewish residents but residents in general. They had no information on who lives where, so everyone could be in trouble,” the attorney added, referring to those he assumes planned a pogrom.

Almost immediately, a dozen police arrived, and a mixture of uniformed and plainclothes officers maintained a 24-hour guard for several days, according to the residents. Radio Moscow reported both the stepped-up patrols at Chasovaya Street and the reasons for them. While no guard was apparent when a foreign journalist arrived Saturday, a jeep with three officers quickly appeared after one concerned resident telephoned to report a stranger in the compound.

The rumored pogrom date passed without incident. Maybe it was because of the police and the publicity, say the residents, or maybe it was a false alarm all along.

“It’s possible there will be no pogroms--that it’s all simply psychological pressure on the Jewish population so more will emigrate,” said Vladimir.

But while the panic of a few days ago has passed, tension remains. “I don’t think it’s over,” said Olga. “We don’t feel safe--speaking for myself and my baby.”

And the young mother is clearly not alone. The popular Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper reported last week that it had been flooded with calls from concerned readers. “Excuse me, but will the pogroms be only in Moscow and Leningrad, or also in Kiev?” it quoted one caller as inquiring.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who left Moscow on Saturday after a three-day official visit, said that Washington has noted a recent rise in anti-Semitism here, a subject which he raised during talks with his Soviet counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

In a statement published in all the central newspapers Saturday, the KGB, this country’s internal and external security agency, said that it has no evidence to support rumors of impending attacks on Jews and other minorities.

“Nevertheless, the KGB is following the development of the situation and will take the necessary measures if the tension escalates,” the statement said. And it urged the public to contact the agency if it has information “about illegal actions or intentions to commit them.”

The statement itself was so unusual that it fueled more speculation.

There is a long history of anti-Semitism here, of course, including the “Black Hundreds” who beat and killed Jews at the turn of the century. The very word pogrom entered the English language from the Russian.

Today, the so-called Pamyat Society, which began as a movement to reassert Russian spiritual and cultural values, is increasingly dominated by anti-Semitism. Last December, about 60 jeering members jostled delegates to this country’s first nationwide conference of Soviet Jews in nearly 70 years, shouting “Zionists, go home!”

“To my mind it’s Pamyat that does this,” Chasovaya resident Kirsanov, the Russian engineer, said of various anti-Semitic manifestations here. “They’re a fascist organization,” he added. “Any fascist organization like that should be outlawed.” However, he said, “somebody supports this organization, and it’s somebody very high.”

Vladimir, the Jewish attorney, said it’s inevitable that traditional anti-Semitism comes into the open at a time of great change. He compared President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s perestroika reform program to a great storm, in whose wake “both wood and scum wash up on the shore.”

Relations between Jewish and non-Jewish residents at the Chasovaya cooperative are good, according to representatives of both groups. “We’re all used to living with one another,” commented Vladimir.

Still, he grows somber as he talks about the day that his daughter, when she turns 16, will have to declare her ethnic background for her mandatory internal passport. With a Russian mother and a Jewish father, she will have a choice.

And what will be her father’s advice? “I’ll be the first to say ‘pick Russian’ if, in five years, there is the same instability as there is now. I’m a father, after all. I just hope that in five years we’ll have a different type of society in which it won’t be an issue.”