Following the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, all legal restrictions on Russian Jews were lifted. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued and furthered by the Soviet state, often associated with Joseph Stalin. After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed. This campaign culminated in the so-called doctors' plot, in which a group of doctors (almost all of whom were Jewish) were subjected to a show trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate Stalin. (See column 144) Although repression eased after Stalin's death, persecution of Jews would continue until the late 1980s (see: refuseniks).Государственный антисемитизм в СССР (цикл статей)

History

Before the revolution

Under the rule of the tsars, Russian Jews were classified as inorodtsy, although Judaism was recognized as a legitimate religion. Most Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement, and by the end of the 19th century, they numbered roughly five million. Within the Pale, they experienced prejudice and persecution, often in the form of discriminatory laws, such as restrictions on property rights and occupations. Despite a relaxation of some constraints in the 1860s as a result of the government reforms of Alexander II, by the end of the decade, antisemitism had acquired a systematic form. The conservative press blamed increasing radicalism on the Jews. Following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, widespread pogroms targeted Jews in the Pale. Local officials enabled the pogroms or failed to stop them, and some of the perpetrators and victims believed that the pogroms were sanctioned at the highest level of government. Although the new tsar, Alexander III, viewed the pogroms as justified, he did not endorse popular violence. On the other hand, the right-wing press contributed to an atmosphere of sanctioned antisemitism.

In response to this oppression, many Jews either emigrated from the Russian Empire or joined radical political parties, such as the Jewish Bund, the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Mensheviks. There were also numerous antisemitic publications of the era which gained widespread circulation.

After the revolution

February Revolution and Provisional Government The Russian Provisional Government cancelled all restrictions imposed on the Jews by the tsarist government, in a move parallel to the Jewish emancipation in Western Europe that had taken place during the 19th century abolishing Jewish disabilities.

The Bolsheviks

The October Revolution saw the Bolsheviks take power. The breakdown of other Jewish groups after the revolution gave the Yevsektsiya more sway over Jewish communities which has been described by historian Nora Levin as facilitating the destruction of traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture.The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917, New York, 1988: "While the Jewish Sections were struggling to define themselves, recruit new personnel, and bring the Communist message to "the Jewish street," the Bund and socialist Zionists were undergoing severe internal crises and external pressures which eventually destroyed their unity and independence.36 Their breakdown gave the Evsektsiya control over Jewish communities and cleared the way for the destruction of traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture." In 1918, the Yevsektsiya was established to promote Marxism, secularism and Jewish assimilation into Soviet society, and supposedly bringing communism to the Jewish masses.

In March 1919, Lenin delivered a speech "On Anti-Jewish Pogroms"Lenin's March 1919 speech "On Anti-Jewish Pogroms" (text, ) where he denounced antisemitism as an "attempt to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants from the exploiters toward the Jews". The speech was in line with the previous condemnation of the antisemitic pogroms perpetrated by anti-Bolshevik forces (White Army, Ukrainian People's Army and others) during the Russian Civil War.Benjamin Pinkus. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge University Press, 1988.Naomi Blank. "Redefining the Jewish Question from Lenin to Gorbachev: Terminology or Ideology". In: Yaacov Ro'i, editor. Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union. Routledge, 1995.William Korey. Russian Anti-semitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism. Routledge, 1995. In 1914, Lenin had said "No nationality in Russia is as oppressed and persecuted as the Jews".

However, pogroms continued during 1918-1920, carried out by both the Red and White armies. The Red Guard participation shocked Bolshevik leadership and tempered the expectations of a reduction of antisemitism. Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonov wrote that Lenin, despite his rhetoric, did not see antisemitic incidents in the Red Army as a major concern and did not call for the perpetrators to be punished.Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography, Free Press, 1994; pg 202-204.

In August 1919, Jewish properties, including synagogues, were seized by the Soviet government and many Jewish communities were dissolved. The anti-religious laws against all expressions of religion and religious education were being taken out on all religious groups, including the Jewish communities. Many rabbis and other religious officials were forced to resign from their posts under the threat of violent persecution. This type of persecution continued on into the 1920s.

Under Stalin

Joseph Stalin was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Union and a subsequent power struggle with Leon Trotsky ensued after Lenin's death. Those who knew Stalin, such as Nikita Khrushchev, suggest that Stalin had long harbored negative sentiments toward Jews that had manifested themselves before the 1917 Revolution. As early as 1907, Stalin wrote a letter differentiating between a "Jewish faction" and a "true Russian faction" in Bolshevism. Stalin has been described as resorting to antisemitism in some of his arguments against Trotsky, who was a Russian of Jewish descent. Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov stated that Stalin made crude antisemitic outbursts even before Lenin's death.

The official stance of the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin in 1934 was to oppose antisemitism "anywhere in the world" and claimed to express "fraternal feelings to the Jewish people", praising the Jewish contributions towards international socialism. Stalin adopted antisemitic policies which were reinforced with his anti-Westernism.Konstantin Azadovskii, an editorial board member of the cultural journal Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, and Boris Egorov, a research fellow at Saint Petersburg State University, in an article titled From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism published in the Journal of Cold War Studies writes "Stalin's policies of anti- Westernism and anti-Semitism reinforced one another and joined together in the notion of cosmopolitanism." Antisemitism, as historian and anthropologist Raphael Patai and geneticist Jennifer Patai Wing put it in their book The Myth of the Jewish Race, was "couched in the language of opposition to Zionism". Since 1936, in the show trial of "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center", the suspects, prominent Bolshevik leaders, were accused of hiding their Jewish origins under Slavic names.

On 3 May 1939, Stalin fired foreign minister Maxim Litvinov, who was closely identified with the anti-Nazi position. The move opened Stalin's way to close ties with the Nazi state, as well as a quiet campaign removing Jews in high Soviet positions.Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2006) p 56

After World War II, antisemitism escalated openly as a campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (a euphemism for "Jew"). In his speech titled "On Several Reasons for the Lag in Soviet Dramaturgy" at a plenary session of the board of the Soviet Writers' Union in December 1948, Alexander Fadeyev equated the cosmopolitans with the Jews.Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov in an article titled From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism published in the Journal of Cold War Studies writes "In 1949, however, the attacks on cosmopolitans (kosmopolity) acquired a markedly anti-Semitic character. The very term cosmopolitan, which began to appear ever more frequently in newspaper headlines, was increasingly paired in the lexicon of the time with the word rootless (bezrodnye). The practice of equating cosmopolitans with Jews was heralded by a speech delivered in late December 1948 by Anatolii Fadeev at a plenary session of the board of the Soviet Writers' Union. His speech, titled "On Several Reasons for the Lag in Soviet Dramaturgy," was followed a month later by a prominent editorial in Pravda, "On an Anti-Patriotic Group of Theater Critics." The "anti- patriotic group of theater critics" consisted of Aleksandr Borshchagovskii, Abram Gurvich, Efim Kholodov, Yulii Yuzovskii, and a few others also of Jewish origin. In all subsequent articles and speeches the anti-patriotism of theater and literary critics (and later of literary scholars) was unequivocally connected with their Jewish nationality." In this anti-cosmopolitan campaign, many leading Jewish writers and artists were killed. Terms like "rootless cosmopolitans", "bourgeois cosmopolitans", and "individuals devoid of nation or tribe" appeared in newspapers.Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov in an article titled From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism published in the Journal of Cold War Studies writes "Terms such as rootless cosmopolitans, bourgeois cosmopolitans, and individuals devoid of nation or tribe continually appeared in newspaper articles. All of these were codewords for Jews and were understood as such by people at that time." The Soviet press accused cosmopolitans of "groveling before the West", helping "American imperialism", "slavish imitation of bourgeois culture" and "bourgeois aestheticism".Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov in an article titled From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism published in the Journal of Cold War Studies writes "Of the many crimes attributed to Jews/cosmopolitans in the Soviet press, the most malevolent were "groveling before the West," aiding "American imperialism," "slavish imitation of bourgeois culture," and the catch-all misdeed of "bourgeois aestheticism." Victimization of Jews in the USSR at the hands of the Nazis was denied, Jewish scholars were removed from the sciences, and emigration rights were denied to Jews. Stalin's antisemitic campaign ultimately culminated in the Doctors' plot in 1953. According to Patai and Patai, the Doctors' plot was "clearly aimed at the total liquidation of Jewish cultural life". Communist antisemitism under Stalin shared a common characteristic with Nazi and fascist antisemitism in its belief in a "Jewish world conspiracy".

Soviet Moldovan dissident Mikhail Makarenko, who left Fascist Romania in 1939 due to rising antisemitism, said that antisemitism in the USSR was strong, despite the Soviet propaganda efforts to portray the Union as a country with no racism.

Soviet antisemitism extended to policy in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. As described by the historian Norman Naimark, officials in the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG) by 1947–48 displayed a "growing obsession" with the presence of Jews in the military administration, particularly in the Cadres Department's Propaganda Administration. Jews in German universities who resisted Sovietisation were characterized as having "non-Aryan background" and being "lined up with the bourgeois parties".Naimark (1994), p.444