Ha'aretz - 12.13.2000

 

Ha'aretz

Russian Anti-Semitism in High Places?

By Eliahu Salpeter

Last month, a large majority of the members of the Russian parliament, the Duma, rejected a proposal by the deputy chair of the house's constitutional committee, Alex Fedulov, that President Vladimir Putin be called upon to denounce the many anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred over the past two months, particularly in the Kursk region. Even Russia's prosecutor-general has refused to comply with the demand that the persons responsible for the violent anti-Semitic acts in that region be prosecuted. Nor was it at all coincidental that the most vociferous opponents of any denouncement of the governor of the province of Kursk, Alexander Mikhailov, included members of the Communist Party faction in the Duma. Mikhailov is a senior member of the party, in which nationalistic tendencies have become increasingly prominent.In addition to strengthening their ties with the extreme right, the Communists have lately begun to support the Russian Orthodox Church and its anti-Semitic spokespersons. The support for the church has become so pronounced in the Communist party that its secretary-general, Gennady Zhuganov, published a long article in the party's newspaper in praise of the primate of the ecclesiastical province of St. Petersburg, Ioann, who died five years ago and who was the church's chief anti-Semitic ideologist. Zhuganov crowned him with laurel wreaths for having been a tireless warrior against "nihilism in the form of Russophobia and cosmopolitism." (The latter term was the code-word for Judaism during the Stalin era.)

Ever since the Soviet regime's collapse, the clout of the Russian Federation's provinces has increased. In an attempt to limit the independence of provincial governors, Putin has launched major administrative reforms. The events in Kursk, however, are raising fears that Putin's reforms have failed or that the war on anti-Semitism is not sufficiently important in his eyes to warrant his "wasting" valuable political assets.

The Kursk affair, which has unfolded over the past two months, began when, in a legal stratagem orchestrated by Moscow, the name of outgoing governor Alexander Rutskoy was erased at the last minute from the list of candidates for the post. Rutskoy had in the past expressed criticism of Kremlin policies: For example, he had said that as early as 1917, the authorities failed in their efforts to distract the attention of the starving masses by issuing calls such as "Beat the Jews, save Russia!" According to Rutskoy, his successor, Mikhailov, enjoys Putin's support, while Mikhailov has attacked Rutskoy with the claim that he was backed by a "notorious Jewish member of the business world," Boris Berezovsky, and by the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC).

After being installed in office, Mikhailov announced triumphantly, "We defeated them. This is a sign that Russia is finally beginning to liberate itself from the filth that has accumulated over the past ten years.... In case any of you are unaware of this fact, Rutskoy's mother, Zinaida Yosifovna, is Jewish." Rutskoy's assistant, whose father is Jewish, was attacked by anti-Semitic thugs and had to be hospitalized. Another group of anti-Semitic hooligans vandalized the provincial Jewish community building.

Putin's failure to openly condemn those acts is inspiring anxiety among Russian Jews that they may be on the brink of the renewal of the kind of establishment-sponsored anti-Semitism that was prevalent in the days of the now-defunct Soviet Union. "The Jews here are frightened, especially the elderly ones who are Holocaust survivors," says Igor Buchman, one of the leaders of Kursk's Jewish community. "Hearing anti-Semitic remarks on the bus is one thing, but it is an entirely different kettle of fish when you hear them coming from a provincial governor. It is only natural that we should feel afraid."

Jewish leaders in Moscow have called on Putin to take the initiative and to come out with the condemnation that the Duma has declined to demand of him. The executive director of the RJC, Alexander Osovtsev, has stated emphatically that "to maintain silence over this issue means, in fact, to take a stand," while the representative of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in Russia, Alexander Axelrod, has warned that a lack of response to these events could place Russia at the bottom of the list of the world's democratic nations.

Fedulov is similarly alarmed and feels that "the problems in the province of Kursk are symptomatic of the general malaise from which Russia suffers today in the area of inter-ethnic relations."

The storm of protest that the anti-Semitic acts in Kursk have generated among Jews in the former Soviet Union and in the United States did, in the final analysis, move Putin to publicize the fact that he had refused to meet with the province's new governor and that the Russian president's aides had demanded - and received - an apology from Mikhailov.

The events of the past few weeks in Russia indicate a blending of the usual components of anti-Semitism. At the level of the provincial government (and Kursk is not the only Russian Federation province to be tainted by anti-Semitic outbursts), there is evidence that anti-Semitism is unofficially backed by the establishment. Putin is waging a war against two Jews who are prominent in the federation's media empires, Berezovsky and Vladimir Goussinsky, and the ramifications of that war are fanning the flames of anti-Semitism at the grassroots level of Russian society.

Goussinsky is also president of the RJC and Putin's "war on oligarchs" is part and parcel of the confrontation between that organization and a new body, the Federation of Jewish Communities, which was founded by the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement and has received the blessing of the authorities in the Russian Federation. The head of the Lubavitcher movement in Russia, American-born Rabbi Berl Lazar, has been declared by his organization the chief rabbi of Russia and he is recognized as such by the Kremlin. Thus, the authorities have withdrawn their recognition of Rabbi Adolf Shayevich, who began serving in this capacity under the Soviets. Nonetheless, the RJC and more than a hundred local Jewish communities in the Russian Federation continue to consider Shayevich Russia's chief rabbi.

It would seem that Jewish organizations and Jewish public figures have become pawns in the power struggle within the Russian political system and that the authorities are meddling in the "wars of the Jews" in the Russian Federation. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the increase in the number of anti-Semitic occurrences and incidents is due to the actions of at least some establishment officials or whether these events reflect a growth in anti-Semitism in Russian society at large. It is quite possible that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Russian President Putin is now trying to restore the might of the Russian Federation by reintroducing the old Soviet anthem and the hammer-and-sickle red flag. There are those who are afraid that the return of the anthem and flag will be accompanied by the renewed appearance of Soviet attitudes toward Jews.