Kennan Institute - 02.17.2004

“Russian Anti-Semitism and the Scape-goating of Jews: The Dog that Didn't Bark?”

Speakers:
James Gibson, Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government, Department of Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis
Marc Morjé Howard, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University


The speakers presented data gathered from 1992-2000 (with an emphasis on 1996-2000) that counters their original hypothesis that Jews were a scapegoat for Russia in the 1990s: i.e., the harder life gets in Russia, the more Russians displace their dissatisfaction on Jews. 

Gibson and Howard collected data by interviewing a representative sample of 1400 Russians in 1996, 1998, and 2000 on their attitudes toward Jews. The 2000 survey included a number of provocative, more detailed questions concerning stereotypes of Jews. The researchers found that, given this “broad and shallow” sampling of attitudes, there was a less than 2% point change in general Russian attitudes toward Jews through the mid-late 1990s, and, given the results of a 1992 survey by Mr. Gibson (same questions, different survey sample but still posed to a ‘representative sample’), that there was negligible change in attitudes through the 1990s toward Jews. 

The lack of change in attitudes toward Jews, despite the great economic, political, and social turmoil following the breakup of the Soviet Union, disproves the scapegoat theory posited by the researchers. It instead demonstrates a correlation between three key personal attitudes and attitudes toward Jews – a correlation found in the United States as well as Western European nations such as France or Germany. These three traits, dogmatism, authoritarianism/social conservatism, and xenophobia, are the primary determinants of a person’s like or dislike of an ethnic or political group, in this survey. To prove this, the researchers included a fictional ethnic group as a control – the “Mishlente” – and found that those who disliked Jews, Believers (Old Believers), Nationalists and Communists tended to claim that they disliked the Mishlente. The same has occurred in similar surveys in the United States and other Western nations. 

The majority of the survey group expressed positive or neutral feelings toward Jews. The speakers stressed that the study is limited, and that it cannot be said that anti-Semitism is not a problem in Russia anymore. They also stressed that any anti-Semitism is too much, and that attitudes of Jews in Russia – fear of persecution, for example – may not reflect the reality of the 1990s as studied in this study, but that this doesn’t mean that it is not legitimate, or that it in itself is not a cause for concern. Gibson made a distinction between political prejudices and personal (perhaps closer to ethnic) prejudices – although one can argue that there is a connection between recent anti-Semitic occurrences and larger national events, such as prosecution of the oligarchs (many of whom are Jewish), it is not completely clear that, despite the inflammatory remarks of certain members of the elite, the general population accepts this link and adjusts their personal prejudices accordingly. Audience members asked about the link between the victory of nationalist parties in the last Duma elections; the researches pointed out that their data stops at 2000, but conjectured that the anti-Semitism spouted by some Duma members on the campaign trail, such as Duma member Albert Makashov (Communist Party), is not accepted by all of their constituents – that it’s a “hard sell” and probably does not connect as readily as one might think with any personal prejudices held by the voter.

One audience member, for example, suggested that Russians react to Putin as if he is the ‘good czar’ – the speakers also said Putin has done a good job showing support for the Jewish community on a public level -- but that this sort of influence can work to the detriment of any one group. It may be that the “scapegoating” did not occur in the 1990s for Jews, but for Chechens instead. The researchers conjectured that this is not the case, on the grounds that a strong political link is not found between personal dislike of Chechens and the sort of blame assigned to Chechens as a group by members of the political elite in Russia. 

The implications of the study are necessarily limited – the data collected preceded the renewed turmoil in Israel in 2000, for example, but the researchers also based their survey on the premise that attitudes toward Israel are a separate quantifiable variable from general attitudes toward Jews (particularly given some of the very primitive stereotype questions used in the 2000 survey).


- Prepared by Sarah Hutchison, NCSJ