The Rekindled Evil of Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union survives and may even be flourishing. For centuries under the czars, Jews were the objects of special mistreatment. For nearly the whole of its existence, the Communist regime took pains to deny that Jews were any longer subject to discrimination or disabilities. Now, in the new atmosphere of openness, official sources have been forced to concede that anti-Semitism is in fact a growing social and political problem, and that Soviet Jews are increasingly coming under open attack.

Pravda, the Communist Party paper, soberly warns that the eruption of overt anti-Semitism is a danger not just to those against whom it is immediately directed but to the entire process of liberal reform. It’s a remarkable acknowledgement, not only because it finally admits a long-suppressed truth but more because of its warning that the country’s nearly2 million Jews are tangibly and perhaps even imminently threatened.

The anti-Semitism coming from right-wing and other ultra-nationalistic groups springs from deep historical roots. What shouldn’t be forgotten is that from at least the 1930s to the mid-1980s, successive Communist regimes made sure that those roots were amply nourished.

Officially fostered anti-Semitism and the brutal persecutions that often accompanied it now seem to have ended, although President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has raised concerns by inviting into his inner circle of advisers at least one unmistakable anti-Semite, the nationalistic writer Valentin Rasputin. For the most part--though not exclusively--the banner of anti-Semitism is now being held high by Pamyat and other quasi-fascist groups. Old anti-Semitic canards are again being trotted out, among them some first given prominence in that infamous 19th-Century forgery by the czarist secret police “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The raucous trial of a prominent ultra-nationalist anti-Semite that opened in Moscow this week could provide a signpost to the future. Konstantin Smirnov-Ostashvili is charged with inciting ethnic strife, a crime under Soviet law. Conviction and appropriate punishment under what has become a considerably more independent judicial system would be taken as a sign of official disapproval of bigots and bullies. Acquittal or leniency could conversely be seen as encouraging even more flagrant anti-Semitic activities.

Soviet Jews, meanwhile, have applied by the hundreds of thousands to emigrate, with no end to the applications in sight. “The fear of pogroms,” writes Pravda, “is acquiring the scale of a panic.” That fear may be exaggerated. But in the light of czarist and Soviet history, and of the Jewish experience, there is no way that it can be dismissed as illusory.