Soviet Anti-Zionism: Origins, Forms and Development

  • Theodore H. Friedgut
Chapter

Abstract

The violent antipathy to all aspects of Zionism expressed in the Soviet media over many years has deep historical roots and numerous motivations. Opposition to Zionism originated before the Bolshevik revolution and has been a relative constant throughout all periods of Soviet history. At the same time, Soviet political practice, both domestic and external, with relation to Zionism, has varied greatly, subordinated to broader policy considerations. In addition, the saliency of each particular type of objection to Zionism has varied sharply over the years, as has the prominence of the entire question of Zionism. Even today it is not hard to distinguish very different depictions of Zionism in the Soviet press, leading to different conclusions regarding both Israel and Soviet Jews.

Keywords

Zionist Movement Soviet Regime Soviet Society Jewish Religion Ritual Murder 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    See Lenin’s article citing Kautsky in Iskra, no. 51, 22 October 1903, reprinted in V. I. Lenin, Complete Collected Works (5th edn.; Moscow: 1959), vol. 8, p. 74. For a discussion of Lenin’s views on nationalism see Demetrio Boersner, The Bolsheviks and the National and Colonial Question (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1957).Google Scholar
  2. 5.
    A detailed analysis of the rise and fall of the Evsektsiia and its activities against Zionism, will be found in Zvi Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: the Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
  3. 6.
    For an instance of nearly verbatim copying of Tsarist antisemitic material by Soviet sources in the 1970s, see G. Svirsky, Hostages (New York, Knopf, 1976).Google Scholar
  4. 7.
    For Stalin’s antisemitism see S. Allilueva, Only One Year (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), pp. 138–141, and N. S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970), pp. 259–69.Google Scholar
  5. 8.
    This entire period is analysed in detail in Yehoshua Gilboa, The Black Years of Soviet Jewry (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971). For a classic fictional account of the period see Ilya Ehrenburg, The Thaw (New York, Knopf, 1962).Google Scholar
  6. 10.
    For examples of public warnings that Jews should distinguish between Soviet support of Israel and a condoning of Zionism or Zionist sympathies within the USSR see Ilya Ehrenburg’s article in Pravda, 21 September 1948, and the account of Paul Robeson’s concert in Moscow, in Arieh L. Eliav, Between Hammer and Sickle (New York, Signet, 1969), pp. 40–3. See also Israel A. Genin’s public lectures on ‘The Palestine problem’, published later in Moscow as a brochure. In these 1948 lectures Genin denounces Zionism for its links with monopoly capital in the world.Google Scholar
  7. 17.
    Bol’shakov, ‘Criticism of Zionism….’ cycle’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol. 14, no. 1, 1984, pp. 18–20, and Theodore H. Friedgut, ‘Neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism: the Jews in the Soviet media during Chernenko’s first six months’, in D. Pri-Tal, (ed.) The Jews of the Soviet Union: Immigration and Struggle in the 1980s (Hebrew), vol. 8, no. 2, Jerusalem, 1984, pp. 27–36.Google Scholar
  8. 25.
    The bulk of Martynov’s extensive correspondence against Korneev reached the West and was translated into English. See Ivan F. Martynov, ‘Documentary evidence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union today’, Highland Park, Illinois, Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry, 1983.Google Scholar
  9. 27.
    See BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 1, USSR, SU/7885/A1/11, 17 January 1985. For the origins of the lie regarding alleged Jewish financing of Hitler, see C. C. Aronsfeld, ‘The myth of Zionist-Nazi collaboration: some sources of Soviet propaganda’, IJA Research Reports (London: Institute of Jewish Affairs), no. 2, April 1985.Google Scholar
  10. 37.
    I. Saltzman and G. Edel’gauz, ‘Recalling the Lessons of Tankograd’, Kommunist, no. 16, 1984, pp. 76–87.Google Scholar
  11. 40.
    Y. Borin, ‘Zionism: its roots and consequences’, New Times, no. 32, August 1985, pp. 18–21.Google Scholar
  12. 48.
    Y. Borin, ‘Zionism: its roots and objectives’, New Times, no. 32, August 1985, pp. 18–21.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Institute of Jewish Affairs 1990

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  • Theodore H. Friedgut

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