Here's the Point

Russian Jewish Elites and Anti-Semitism

by Lev Krichevsky

http://www.ajc.org/InTheMedia/PublicationsPrint.asp?did=131


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Forward
The remarkable upsurge in the strength of the Shas Party in the 1999 Israeli elections-an increase from ten to seventeen Knesset seats-may turn out to be as important for the future of Israel as the election of Prime Minister Barak. Long considered Israel’s outsiders, Sephardi Israelis clearly know how to practice a very effective form of ethnic politics. Once derided by the elite media for allegedly purchasing votes in exchange for magical blessings and incantations, Shas today is, in fact, a complex and sophisticated political phenomenon.

One dimension of Shas is the affirmation of the Sephardi cultural heritage. Former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual mentor of Shas, symbolizes for his followers-most of whom are not Orthodox in observance-a fierce pride in Sephardi historical memories and traditions. Long-simmering resentment at perceived anti-Sephardi bias in Israeli life goes a long way toward explaining the groundswell of support for former party leader Aryeh Deri even after his conviction on criminal charges: Shas voters perceive Deri as a victim of an Ashkenazi-dominated court system.



Rabbi Yosef and his inner circle by no means typify the Shas rank and file. While the leadership is flexible on territorial questions, the ordinary Shas voter tends to be hawkish. Indeed, for the bulk of the Shas constituency, issues of state seem to be less important than the party’s social service network, which encompasses kindergartens, schools, after-school programs, and drug-rehabilitation centers.

Of considerable interest to American Jews, Shas and its Sephardi backers do not take the same approach to issues of religion and state as do many Israeli Ashkenazim. There is considerable polarization among the latter, between the religious parties (United Torah Judaism and the National Religious Party), on the one hand, and the ideological ultrasecular parties (Meretz and Shinui), on the other. In Shas, however, the observant and nonobservant share a common reverence for the Judaic heritage and a determination that Israeli society must remain rooted in the Jewish tradition, broadly conceived. But the acceptance of a spectrum of patterns of observance does not translate into flexibility on the issue of religious pluralism. Shas has sided with the other Orthodox parties in support of legislation that, in effect, delegitimizes Conservative and Reform Judaism.

American Jews, then, have greeted the emergence of Shas with mixed emotions. On the one hand, the indication that Sephardi Israelis are participating as full partners in governance of the Jewish state is surely welcome news for all who seek to bridge the divides within Israeli society. On the other, the prospect that Shas may control key ministries that decide on questions of Jewish identification may well broaden the gulf between American and Israeli Jews.

To help demystify Shas for an American Jewish readership, the American Jewish Committee invited the well-known Israeli journalist Peter Hirschberg to write this analysis of the Shas phenomenon. By pointing out the many paradoxes within Shas and its diverse and conflicting currents, Mr. Hirschberg portrays a party that is far more multifaceted than most people assume.
Steven Bayme, Ph.D., Director
Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations

Russian Jewish Elites And Anti-Semitism
Twice in their history, Russian Jews have been associated in the public mind with the ruling elite. During the early period of Bolshevism, Jews played prominent roles in the ruling Communist Party and in the economic, cultural, and academic life of the young Soviet state. Then, after the collapse of communism in 1991, Jews again achieved influential positions in politics as well as in the private sector, especially the media.

The number of individuals of Jewish origin who have become prominent in Russian government and business in the past several years is a sore subject for two polarized segments of society.

On the one hand, it aggravates nationalist, antireform, and anti-Western groups of various political orientations-from hard-line Communists to monarchists to ultranationalist factions in the Orthodox Church to neo-Nazis. For these groups, anti-Semitism is an essential component of their programs. Russian anti-Semites traditionally equate Jews with Western influences, in particular with capitalism, which they consider alien and dangerous for Russia. And now, when Western culture seems triumphant in post-Soviet society, nationalists blame Jews for Russia’s economic and social ills. This point of view rarely meets with condemnation. Indeed, the fact that some of the people who have risen to prominence in post-Soviet times are Jewish causes irritation. Striving for success is alien to most Russians.

On the other hand, the presence of Jews in the Russian elite is cause for concern among Jews themselves, who fear a backlash of anti-Semitism. As one Russian Jewish leader has explained, “People here have quite bitter memories of the participation of Jews in the [Bolshevik] revolution.”1 Yet Jews themselves sometimes contribute to the idea that Jews exert disproportionate influence in Russian society. In fall 1996, an influential Moscow business magazine asked a dozen politicians, “Who runs the country?” Alexander Minkin, the most popular print journalist at the time and a Jew himself, gave the shortest answer: “Jews.”2 In an interview broadcast in October 1996 on Israeli TV, Vitaly Malkin, head of the Rossiyskiy Kredit Bank, said that “60 percent of Russian capital belongs to Jewish business”3-surely a gross exaggeration. Some analysts say that the notion of Jewish prominence in the elites is nothing but a myth created and supported by both nationalists and Jews. Vladimir Gurevich, editor in chief of the Moscow daily newspaper Vremya-MN, is among those who share this view: “At any given time, there have been many more non-Jews than Jews in business, government, parliament. To notice this prominence, one should have a desire to find it. More than other groups impressed by the Jewish presence in high echelons are Jews themselves.”

It is hard to say whether the presence of Jews in the post-Soviet Russian elites has intensified anti-Jewish feelings. Some opposition figures insist that it has. One recent example was the reaction of some nationalist and radical left politicians to the May 1998 bombing of a Lubavitch synagogue in Moscow. Several nationalist leaders said the attack, which seriously damaged the synagogue, could have been a reaction to the prominence of Jews in the Yeltsin government. Viktor Ilyukhin, a prominent Communist legislator who is chairman of the security committee in the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, said such attacks on the Jewish community may occur again as a reaction to the fact that the priority for appointments in the government “has been bestowed on one nationality: the Jews.”4

Who Are the Jewish Elites?
Ilyukhin did not name the targets of his criticism but they are well-known in Russia. Among figures then prominent in the government who were either Jewish or of Jewish extraction were Anatoly Chubais, Yeltsin’s former finance minister and an architect of free-market reforms; Sergey Kiriyenko and Yevgeny Primakov, the former and current prime ministers; Alexander Livshits, a former economics adviser to Yeltsin; Yakov Urinson, the former economics minister; Boris Nemtsov, governor of the Nizhni Novgorod Region; and several so-called oligarchs, key figures in the business and financial community. These include Boris Berezovsky, once a key Yeltsin supporter and probably the most controversial figure on Moscow’s political and business scene, and Vladimir Goussinsky, a prominent Jewish activist who owns Russia’s largest private media empire.

Some elected officials are also Jewish. In the Duma, to name a few, Grigory Yavlinsky, a leading democrat and chief of the Yabloko Party, is half Jewish, and even the flamboyant populist and apparently self-hating nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky is widely regarded as Jewish.

The list of influential Jewish entrepreneurs whom public opinion has associated with the ruling elite includes bankers Alexander Smolensky, Mikhail Fridman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vitaly Malkin, Boris Khait, and Pyotr Aven.

Only a few of Russia’s new elite of Jewish ancestry are open about their heritage. Boris Berezovsky and Grigory Yavlinsky speak openly about being Jewish, and Vladimir Goussinsky, along with fellow tycoons Boris Khait, Vitaly Malkin, and Mikhail Fridman, is at the helm of the Russian Jewish Congress. Many others are identified largely by Jewish-sounding names or sometimes ambiguous responses to inquiries about nationality. Thus, journalists generally call attention to Boris Nemtsov’s Jewish origin by giving his full name-his patronymic is Yefimovich, which sounds Jewish to many Russians-while ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky is often referred to as the son of a lawyer, exactly the way he once responded to a question about his father’s ethnicity. Yevgeny Primakov is widely rumored to be of Jewish origin, and Anatoly Chubais is reported to be half Jewish. Urinson’s and Livshits’s Jewish extraction has never been questioned. By contrast, in 1998, the 35-year-old prime minister nominee, Sergey Kiri-yenko, became the first high-ranking Russian minister to speak openly and casually about his Jewish background, a sign of the modern, post-Soviet outlook.

At the same time, no prominent Jews-except the group of tycoons who created the Russian Jewish Congress-have ever identified themselves with the organized Jewish community. Like the majority of Russian Jews, they are highly assimilated. Some of them have even converted to Christianity, a step that does not prevent them from being widely considered as Jews.

How do Russians perceive the apparent Jewish influence in Moscow politics? A new public opinion poll of non-Jewish Russians’ attitudes toward Jews produced a mixed picture. Conducted in late 1997, the poll suggested that a significant percentage of Russians are selectively anti-Semitic, fretting for example over the perceived increase of Jews’ influence in government. A more recent poll of Russian Jews that is yet to be published suggests that a significant proportion of the Jewish community also has uneasy feelings about the issue. Most Russian Jewish leaders do not seem to be as anxious about the matter as some foreign Jewish leaders.

Fearing to incur accusations of anti-Semitism, Russia’s intelligentsia and the mainstream press have avoided discussing the issue of Jewish participation in government circles. After a recent discussion of anti-Semitism in the Russian parliament, Sergey Markov, a political analyst and head of Moscow’s Institute of Political Studies, said deputies were afraid to take a clear stand against anti-Semitism because of fear that public opinion would be hostile to any discussion of the issue. “I would not say the public is all that anti-Semitic,” he said. In the eyes of the Russian public, “to attack Jews is not a good thing, but at the same time to talk about anti-Semitism is also a bad thing. The issue is very sensitive.”5

The situation is aggravated by the unwillingness of the authorities to enforce existing laws on hate crimes. Inciting racial and ethnic hatred-which is the case with many attacks on prominent Jews-is a crime according to the Russian Criminal Code. However, authorities generally are reluctant to combat anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

Jews in Soviet Elites, 1917-88
For nearly 150 years, from the time when huge masses of Polish and other East European Jews became Russian subjects until the revolutions of 1917, Russians never associated Jews with the ruling elite.

Confined to the Pale of Settlement-the fifteen western provinces that had been Poland and Lithuania-Jews played almost no role in Russian public life before the second half of the nineteenth century. Then some Jews slowly began to integrate into Russian society-mostly through Russian schools-while the majority continued to live isolated lives in their close religious communities.

To limit the number of Jews in Russian educational institutions, a numerus clausus was established in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, Jews were barred from owning land and totally excluded from the civil service and officer corps.

Nevertheless, as the traditionalist community began to disintegrate toward the end of the nineteenth century, Jews flooded into Russia’s economic, political, and cultural life. At the same time, in proportions quite exceeding their percentage in the general population of the Russian Empire, they played a highly visible role in various movements hostile to the existing order-as liberal critics of the autocratic regime, as Marxists, or as active exponents of revolutionary terrorism.

After the fall of czarism and the establishment of Bolshevik rule, legal discrimination against minorities was ended. Scores of Jews became prominently involved in the destruction of the old regime and the construction of the new society. Among the first echelon of leaders of the new Russia were a number of Jews and individuals of Jewish origin. Outstanding among these were Lev Trotsky (Bronstein), Grigory Zinovyev (Radomyslskiy), Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld), Yakov Sverdlov. There were also some Jews in the second echelon: Moisey Uritskiy, Adolf Yoffe, Karl Radek (Sobelson), Grigory Sokolnikov (Briliant), Yuri Steklov (Nekhamkes). These Jewish Bolsheviks were not especially interested in Jewish matters and in fact were Jewish only by accident of birth or because they were so identified in their papers.

While Jews were present among Bolshevik leaders, it cannot be said that there were many Jews among the Bolsheviks, or that this party was the political force most popular with Russian Jews in 1917. The vast majority of Russian Jews were far more sympathetic to various Zionist parties and groups. Even among the parties that subscribed to socialism, the Jewish Socialist Bund and the Mensheviks had larger Jewish memberships than the Bolshevik Party before the latter took power.6

Many Jews were driven to support the new regime by the pogroms conducted by the anti-Bolshevik forces in 1918-21. The Red Army was practically the only military force in the country that did not participate in the pogroms. The new regime gave Jews unprecedented educational and career opportunities. Because of their relatively higher level of literacy and education, Jews filled the posts that the Russian intelligentsia had filled under the old regime.

Many Jews who rose to the upper echelons of the Soviet apparatus were atypical assimilated Jews. Trotsky, for example, was raised in an assimilated family outside the Pale of Settlement and did not consider himself a Jew. When asked whether he was a Jew or a Russian, Trotsky replied that he was neither but an internationalist, a Social Democrat.7

To some Russians it appeared that Jews had taken over the country. Given the total absence of Jews in the bureaucracy before 1917, their presence among the state and party leadership and their prominence in the Soviet military and secret police during the first years of Bolshevik rule confirmed this impression.

Jewish participation in the Communist leadership, however, gradually diminished during the first two decades of the Soviet regime. While Jews constituted 16 percent of the delegates at the Sixth Party Congress in August 1917, they constituted 14 percent of the delegates at the Tenth Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party in 1921 and 7.4 percent at the Fifteenth Congress in 1927.

When in the mid-1920s Stalin mounted a campaign against his major opponents inside the party-a group that was labeled the “left opposition” and included such prominent Jewish Bolsheviks as Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinovyev-his propaganda was spiced with thinly veiled anti-Semitism. In October 1926 Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinovyev were deprived of all their posts in the party’s upper echelon, marking the beginning of the end of Jewish prominence within the Soviet political elite. During the purges of the 1930s, many-if not most-of the Jews in the military and secret police also lost their jobs and, in many instances, their lives.

Since 1917, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic propagandists in Russia and elsewhere have pointed to the names of Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinovyev to prove that the Jews were seeking to destroy Orthodox Christian Russia, using the Bolshevik revolution as a cover. (These propagandists, however, did not mention the substantial number of Jews among the anti-Bolshevik forces, some of whom even cooperated with the White armies, while many more chose to emigrate. The two best known attempts on the lives of Bolshevik leaders were made by Jews in 1918: Dora Kaplan, who wounded Lenin, and Leonid Kanegisser, who shot dead Uritskiy, then the head of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, in Petrograd.) This accusation was nothing new. It belongs to a long tradition of accusations that Jews and Judaism cause the disintegration of society, encourage the growth of revolutionary socialism, and carry on a war against Christian civilization. It was reinforced-though in a modified way-by the German occupiers during World War II. Nazi propagandists brought the message that the Germans had come to liberate the Russians from the “Judeo-Bolshevik” regime and that all the misfortunes of the war should therefore be blamed on the Soviet Jews.

Launched by Stalin in 1948, the infamous campaign against “cosmopolitans” accused Jews of disloyalty to the country and regime and put an end to Jewish participation in the higher echelons of power. After the death in 1953 of Lev Mekhlis, a long-time member of Stalin’s inner circle, and the removal of Lazar Kaganovich from the Communist Party’s Central Committee, no Jews were left in the top party leadership. The last Jewish member of the Communist leadership was Veniamin Dymshitz, the Communist Party Central Committee’s candidate in the 1970s who remained the only Jew among some 400 committee members and candidates during the Brezhnev period.

Jews were also barred from the directorship of important enterprises and research institutes, the foreign ministry, the ministry of foreign trade, the secret police, military academies, and other “sensitive” positions.8 Clearly motivated by a belief in Jewish disloyalty, Soviet leaders maintained secret quotas for Jews in higher education. Some prestigious schools-especially in Moscow-were closed to Jewish applicants. The limitations on Jewish entry into higher education were intensified following the 1967 Six-Day War and Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

The declining Jewish presence in the ruling elite stands in even bolder relief when viewed in the context of Jewish participation in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1990, on the eve of the party’s final disintegration, some 200,000 Jews constituted slightly more than 1 percent of CPSU membership while Jews represented less than 0.5 percent of the Soviet population. No less than 14.5 percent of the Jews of the USSR were party members. The remarkable fact is that one in seven Jews was a Communist as compared with one in sixteen of the general Soviet population.9

In the Soviet Union, Communist Party membership was essential for a successful career in any field. Some Jews tried to avoid career limitations by changing their Jewish-sounding last and first names and patronymics to Russian-sounding ones. Others listed nationalities other than Jewish in their passports. The example of Russia’s current prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, shows that sometimes such steps could help. Primakov is reportedly of Jewish extraction and as a child had a different, Jewish-sounding last name. By changing it as well as his “questionable” nationality, he, or his family, had obviously aimed to secure Primakov’s advancement. Indeed, Primakov carved a successful Soviet career as an Arabist, a journalist for Pravda, and apparently as a KGB agent in the Middle East. He later headed the prestigious Institute for World Economics and International Relations. Still, even the most accomplished Jews could not make it to the top of the party and state hierarchy. There is no trustworthy evidence that any of the prominent Soviet leaders were “hidden” Jews with biographies similar to Primakov’s.10

Throughout the seven decades of the Soviet Union, only membership in the Communist Party ruling circle meant belonging to the power elite. During the last three decades of the Communist regime, Jews were rarely found in the ruling circle, the nomenklatura.

1989: Emerging Opportunities
Ten years after the onset of perestroika and glasnost, Leonid Radzikhovsky, a Moscow Jewish journalist, described the paradox of the Russian Jewish situation in an article in Novoye Russkoye Slovo, America’s largest Russian-language newspaper: “Jews today in Russia, after 20 years of continuous emigration of the youngest and most energetic, turn out to be stronger than 20 years ago. Moreover, I venture to suggest that Jews enjoy a larger role in Russian politics and business than in the politics and business of any other Christian country. Despite all that, they feel themselves far less comfortable in Russia than in other Christian countries.”11

Gorbachev’s policies of openness, economic restructuring, and religious freedom opened the way for Jews to achieve prominence in politics and business while, at the same time, they lifted most of the emigration barriers. Emigration, which was negligible before 1989, peaked in 1991 and 1992 but has since slowed. At the same time, the state-sponsored discrimination of the Soviet era has been abolished, opening doors for Jews to the highest branches of academia, business, and government.

Russian Jews who took advantage of this situation were typically men in their mid-30s or early 40s, party members with university degrees in science, technology, or social sciences. In the Soviet era, they fell into several categories.

Young liberals, men with degrees in the social sciences, most commonly in economics. These people became imbued with liberalism at university. At the dawn of glasnost, they tried to apply their ideas in their fields of professional interest, becoming active in informal discussion groups advancing projects of reforming the Soviet state-planned economy. In 1989-90 they got government jobs with local and central authorities and since then have been in the orbit of decision-making. Among those representing this group are Russian privatization guru Anatoly Chubais, who held top posts during six years of President Boris Yeltsin’s rule, and Grigory Yavlinsky, a 1996 presidential contender, leader of the largest liberal faction in parliament and head of the proreform Yabloko Party.

Scientists and engineers, individuals holding degrees in science and engineering usually from a provincial or nonprestigious Moscow school. Like thousands of Soviet Jews, in the 1970s and 1980s these people were generally pursuing scientific careers in Moscow research institutes. At the dawn of Russian capitalism, some of these people were among pioneer entrepreneurs, creating cooperatives, Russia’s first privately owned enterprises that were allowed to set their own prices. In the 1990s, many got involved in banking, which paved their way to political prominence. Others have stepped onto the political scene. This group is well represented by the likes of Boris Berezovsky, a mathematician turned car dealer turned financier and politician, Boris Nemtsov, a physicist who was elected to parliament, became governor of a Central Russian region and later deputy prime minister, and Vitaly Malkin, a research fellow in physics at a Moscow institute who created a cooperative specializing in promoting computer technologies and cofounded the Rossiysky Kredit Bank, which he now heads.

Komsomol activists, the youngest faction of the present-day elite, people now in their mid-30s. They got started in business and politics through Komsomol, the Young Communist League, which supported youth business initiative as part of Gorbachev’s early perestroika. The powerful Menatep Bank, as one such instance, began as a scientific research center for youth in a Moscow Komsomol branch where Menatep president Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then a chemistry graduate student, worked as deputy chairman. Another example is former prime minister Sergey Kiriyenko, a shipbuilding engineer with a nine-year Communist Party record. He started his first business, which later became a bank, in his native Nizhni Novgorod while a full-time Komsomol leader there.

Soviet economists and financiers, people whose professional field, which was not more rewarding than any other white-collar jobs during the centrally controlled Soviet economy, turned out to be in great demand in postcommunist Russia. Alexander Livshitz, former finance minister and Yeltsin’s chief economic aide, had an eighteen-year stint as a university teacher of economics before he got a job as an expert with the presidential staff in 1992. Yakov Urinson, a former economics minister, had worked for twenty-one years at the Main Computer Center of the Gosplan, the Soviet agency charged with economic planning.

Born entrepreneurs, people with all types of backgrounds who had in common a desire to make money. Perhaps the real harbingers of modern Russian capitalism, they went into private business the earliest. The biographies of Vladimir Goussinsky and Alexander Smolensky are illustrative. Goussinsky, a theatrical producer, had a side job as a private taxi driver before he embarked on a business career in 1986. He now stands at the head of the Most media and banking empire. Smolensky, a typesetter in the Soviet Union, was accused of “theft of state property” and “individual commercial activity” and sentenced to two years’ work on a state construction brigade. Under perestroika, Smolensky became head of a construction cooperative that built country cottages in the Moscow area. He is now the chairman of SBS-Agro, one of Russia’s largest private banks.

Of course, none of the above categories is represented exclusively by people of Jewish origin. On the other hand, there are certain background categories not represented by Jews. Among these are former high-ranked industrial or banking managers who saw the tide turning from state planning to a more market-based economy and adapted to the new climate quickly.

Jews in the Russian Parliament
In 1993, Russia elected 450 deputies of the State Duma, parliament’s lower house, which replaced the Supreme Soviet, the old parliament that had lingered since Soviet times and was dissolved by Yeltsin.

The first Duma included seventeen legislators with clear Jewish identity. This number represented 4 percent of the members. Most of the Jews belonged to the Russia’s Choice Party, the largest liberal group, where they accounted for 16 percent of the deputies-twelve out of the group’s seventy-five members.12

The current Duma, whose four-year term expires in 1999, has fewer Jews that the previous one: nine legislators or 2 percent of the chamber. The largest liberal group, the forty-two-member Yabloko Party, has five deputies with known Jewish backgrounds-a 12-percent Jewish membership.

Most of the Jewish lawmakers won their seats through party slates.According to the Russian election law, half of the chamber’s composition is elected on party slates. The upper chamber, the Federation Council, consists of governors of Russia’s eighty-nine regions and mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg. There were no Jews among them as of 1998.

Only two of all Jewish members in the current Duma secured their seats in single-mandate constituencies-that is, were elected by direct voting. These are Yabloko’s Pyotr Shelisch of St. Petersburg, who is little known to the general public, and Iosif Kobzon, the “Russian Frank Sinatra,” a popular crooner who filled a vacant seat in last spring’s by-election in southern Siberia. Among the other Jewish Duma deputies the best known are Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the Yabloko group, his fellow party members Viktor Sheinis and Mikhail Yuryev, deputy speaker of the chamber, and independent deputy Konstantin Borovoy, a pioneer businessman.

Most of the Jewish lawmakers in both post-Soviet parliaments have been associated with reformist forces. Until late 1994, groups such as Yabloko and Russia’s Choice had been largely supportive of Yeltsin’s policies. The situation drastically changed after the Kremlin unleashed a war against Russia’s breakaway southern republic of Chechnya. Many formerly pro-Yeltsin lawmakers found themselves in opposition to the Kremlin, which testifies to the change in attitude toward the regime that democratically oriented intelligentsia have undergone since 1991. Critical of many presidential policies, traditionally proreform groups and their Jewish members continue to be regarded as the most consistent democrats in parliament. But their real influence rarely spreads beyond the walls of the Duma.

With rare exceptions, Jewish lawmakers have been associated with the liberal vein in Russian politics. One exception is the ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads the third largest party in the Duma and who has gained notoriety-especially in the West-for his anti-Semitism. Rumors have circulated for years that Zhirinovsky’s anti-Semitism is a response to his own Jewish background-his father had a Jewish-sounding name and he himself reportedly had the last name Edelstein until he changed it in his teens. Zhirinovsky repeatedly denies having Jewish roots.

Another exception was a high-profile Jewish lawmaker with a strong leaning toward Russian nationalism, Lev Rokhlin, who was elected on the slate of the Our Home Is Russia progovernment bloc in 1995. A Russian general who emerged as a hero during the war in Chechnya and later became known as a bitter critic of President Yeltsin, Rokhlin had made a unique career for a Soviet Jew. One of the few Jews to reach the top of the Russian military, he quickly rose through the ranks during and after the Soviet war in Afghanistan. In 1993, he became the head of Russia’s Eighth Army-the only Jew to reach such a rank in Russia since World War II.

During the war in Chechnya, Rokhlin was credited with taking the capital, Grozny, in January 1995. Frustrated with the bloodshed, he left the army a few weeks later. He then refused to accept a medal of honor for leading the Grozny offensive, saying he saw nothing glorious in “fighting a war on my own land.” Following his retirement, Rokhlin was elected to the Duma, where he chaired the Defense Committee until this spring.

During the past two years, Rokhlin, who formed his own movement called In Defense of the Army, consistently criticized Yeltsin for the war in Chechnya and for low morale in the military. More recently, Rokhlin moved closer to radicals in the parliament and lost much of his credibility as a serious politician. His closest friend and ally was Viktor Ilyukhin, a Communist lawmaker known as one of the most consistent nationalists and anti-Semites in the Duma.

Last July, Rokhlin, 51, was shot dead. His wife confessed to the crime.

Rokhlin never spoke much about his Jewish roots, but never denied them. He once told the author that he had refused to change his Jewish-sounding name to “make his life easier” although it certainly hindered his Soviet military career.

Sixty-year-old Iosif Kobzon, the favorite singer of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, is another Jewish lawmaker who is not considered part of the liberal wing in parliament. Kobzon’s political orientation is not clear. Having come to light as a politician less than a year ago, he does not seem to be interested in a full-time career as a lawmaker.

Kobzon has never hidden his Jewish roots and recently got involved with the Jewish community. During the 1998 High Holidays, he led the cantorial choir at services at Moscow’s Choral Synagogue.

Other Jewish members of the Duma have different attitudes toward their Judaism. Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the liberal Yabloko Party, is the only son of a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother. His mother, a retired chemistry teacher, lives in Lvov, Western Ukraine, where Yavlinsky was born in 1952. In the ninth grade, he quit high school and began to work in a factory. At 16, he won the Ukrainian youth boxing championship.

Yavlinsky graduated from the Plekhanov Institute for National Economy in Moscow and in 1978 defended a Ph.D. thesis in economics. For fourteen years he worked as a research fellow at a Moscow institute and later at the State Committee of Labor. In 1990, he was invited to fill the post of deputy chairman of the Russian government but resigned after six months when the Soviet parliament rejected “500 Days,” his program for liberalizing the state planned economy. In 1993, he formed a liberal election bloc, Yabloko, and won a parliamentary seat. He was reelected two years later at the head of Yabloko, which is now the only liberal group in the Duma. Yabloko then received 6.9 percent of the vote and forty-two seats in the chamber. In 1996, Yavlinsky, a young and attractive reformist who enjoyed the support of the liberal intelligentsia, placed fourth in the presidential elections with 7.4 percent of the vote. A bitter critic of Yeltsin, Yavlinsky has rejected offers to join the so-called party of power under three prime ministers. He has recently declared his presidential ambitions for the next election slated for 2000. Analysts say he has almost no chance to be elected, opinion polls suggesting that he trails at least three other politicians.

Yavlinsky was the first prominent Jew in Russian politics to discuss the issue of Jewish participation in the state apparatus. In 1995, when he was considered a serious candidate for the 1996 presidential elections, Yavlinsky referred to the Jewish role as scapegoats for all Russia’s problems. “If it’s true that people say that Jews are to blame for everything, then maybe it would take a Jew being in charge to get it all fixed,” Yavlinsky remarked sarcastically during the presidential campaign.13

Yavlinsky has only once admitted his Jewish background: at a 1995 news conference in response to a question about his ethnic background he said that his mother was Jewish. Clearly, Judaism has never played an important role in his life. Despite this, as well as the fact that he is one of the government’s most ardent liberal critics, in the eyes of the nationalist element of the Russian electorate Yavlinsky is a member of the “Jewish entourage” of President Yeltsin.

Several times Yavlinsky has been the object of anti-Semitic innuendoes by ultranationalists in the Duma. In 1995, Zhirinovsky named him among several Jewish politicians he called the leaders of a “fifth column” in Russia. “If we all join together, they will all run away, all this fifth column will leave Russia,” Zhirinovsky said.14 In late 1994, Nikolay Lysenko, head of the small nationalist National Republican Party, when speaking against a group of liberal deputies who criticized the war in Chechnya, said that “everyone sitting in this audience is sick of seeing . . . the earlocks of Yavlinsky.”15 Ultranationalist deputies have also accused Yavlinsky’s Yabloko Party of “hidden Judaism.” Developing his favorite conspiracy theory, Zhirinovsky once demanded that the Yabloko Party should leave the Duma since it is an agent of foreign influence: “The people does not want this faction anymore . . . They should leave, leave the State Duma, Moscow, Russia. . . . You remember, Moses led them for forty years. Let them do it again. . . .”16

While Jewish Duma deputies do not see themselves as representatives of the Jewish community per se, some of them have lobbied for bills that reflected their sensitivity to issues that concerned the Jewish community, in particular anti-Semitism. During the transitional period, Russian legislation developed to protect minority rights and directed against hate propaganda has not been strictly enforced, creating an environment conducive to the spread of slurs and canards insulting the national feelings of Jews. Nationalistic newspapers and magazines-though having a marginal influence on society-regularly publish anti-Semitic articles. While law-enforcement agencies have proven unable-and not always willing-to enforce the laws, the laws themselves, including the corresponding articles in the criminal code, are difficult to apply in practice.

With this in mind, some Jewish deputies of the first post-Soviet Duma initiated a discussion and parliamentary hearings on fascism and anti-Semitism. The debates took place in 1994 and 1995 when Alla Gerber and Yuliy Gusman, members of the Russia’s Choice Party, repeatedly drew the attention of their fellow lawmakers to the problem.17 The involvement of Jewish deputies in the debates added to the negative image of Jewish lawmakers in the eyes of their political opponents. Nationalist groups and legislators in the lower house began to view Jewish deputies not only as liberals and Westernizers but also as opponents of Russian patriotism.

The bill on fascism in four alternative versions-including one sponsored by several Jewish deputies-was rejected by the Duma in a first reading in the summer of 1995. A new Duma passed the bill in a first reading in July 1996 but then overwhelmingly rejected it in a second reading eight months later. Some opponents of the bill called any interest in such a measure “unhealthy,” citing the fact that its original version had been sponsored by Jewish deputies of the previous Duma.18

The debates around the bill in the first Duma made some Jewish deputies feel especially uncomfortable. Alla Gerber, a writer and literary critic who was a member of the Russia’s Choice Party in 1993-95, said thatwhile discussing the issue in the chamber she met with some disapproval even on the part of Jewish lawmakers. Their arguments, according to Gerber, were typical of the self-consciousness of the Russian Jewish intelligentsia. Afraid of accusations of being “partial” or of taking “too much” interest in a Jewish-related matter, some deputies advised her and other Jewish lawmakers not to heat up the discussion on anti-Semitism and ultranationalism. “They were telling me, ‘You don’t have to get into this. Let [ethnic] Russians debate about these problems,’” Gerber recalls.

Faced with this contradiction, Gerber said, she decided to take a step that seemed emotional and had little to do with political pragmatism. As she describes it herself, Gerber decided to become a “legitimate” Jew in parliament by running for the next Duma in the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East. “The [Russia’s Choice Party] leadership tried to discourage me from doing this. Politically they were probably right: we have not had substantial support in Birobidzhan, which has a strong Communist leaning. But if I won in a region which is formally called Jewish, I would have gotten a chance to speak more openly on the issue of anti-Semitism.” In December 1995, Gerber lost the election in Birobidzhan by a narrow margin to a Communist.

Pyotr Shelisch, a Jewish member of the current Duma, says that it is not only the anti-Semitism of some lawmakers that has prevented Jewish legislators from directly addressing issues of concern to the Jewish community; there are almost no legislators who see themselves as representing minority groups and who are willing to speak on behalf of their communities. It is not the tradition of the Duma for a deputy to speak on issues that are sensitive to his or her minority, unless a lawmaker represents a national autonomous region inside the Russian Federation-for example, Tatarstan or Dagestan, which have predominantly non-Russian populations. Shelisch tried to set up an informal group of lawmakers active in their ethnic communities. The venture ended when he found just one deputy, an ethnic Korean, who fit this criterion.

Until recently, Jewish Duma members have generally preferred to keep a low profile on the issue of anti-Semitism. In November 1998, however, a group of liberal deputies proposed a motion censuring anti-Semitic statements by Albert Makashov, a hard-line Communist deputy, who attacked Jews during antigovernment protests a month earlier. The measure was rejected by the Duma’s left majority.

While Jewish lawmakers are occasionally targets of anti-Semitism

inside the Duma, they are generally seen as a part of the liberal element in the Russian parliament and are more often scolded not as Jews but as “so-called democrats” along with other members of liberal parties and independent deputies with liberal leanings.

Jews in the Russian Government
Jews were members of every Russian cabinet and held high posts in the presidential administration from 1991 until the government reshuffle in August 1998. A former official of the Yeltsin administration who insisted on anonymity said that for the president himself ethnic background was never a consideration. “He has always considered whether a candidate was competent for the position. That is all that mattered.”

Some sources indicate, however, that at different periods certain positions in the Kremlin have been closed to Jews and some influential members of the presidential team have shown anti-Semitic prejudices. The presidential security service has always been out of reach for Jews, these sources say. A former chief of presidential security, Gen. Alexander Korzhakov, ousted in 1966, published a memoir, Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn Till Dusk, full of anti-Semitic invectives about Jews close to the president.

A list of Jewish members of Russian cabinets in this period indicates the governmental spheres in which ministers of Jewish extraction have worked.

Pyotr Aven, minister for foreign economic relations in 1991-92, since 1994 president of Alfa Bank.

Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the State Committee for State Property Management, the chief privatization agency, 1991-94; deputy prime minister, 1992-96; chief of presidential administration, 1996-97; first deputy prime minister, 1997-98; finance minister, 1997; presidential envoy to international financial institutions, 1998; chairman of the energy monopoly Unified Energy Systems of Russia since spring 1998.

Sergey Kiriyenko, deputy fuel and energy minister, 1997; fuel and energy minister, 1997-98; prime minister, March-August 1998.

Alexander Livshits, chief presidential aide on economic affairs, 1994-96 and 1997-98; deputy prime minister and finance minister, 1996-97; deputy chief of presidential administration, 1997-98.

Boris Nemtsov, governor of Nizhni Novgorod Region, 1991-97; first deputy prime minister, 1997-98; fuel and energy minister, 1997; deputy prime minister, April-August 1998.

Yevgeny Sapiro, chairman of the legislature of Perm Region, 1994-98; minister for nationalities and regional affairs, May-August 1998.

Yakov Urinson, first deputy economics minister, 1993-97; deputy prime minister and economics minister, 1997-98.

Yevgeny Yasin, economics minister, 1994-97.

Except for Yevgeny Sapiro, a little-known politician and a member of the short-lived cabinet of Sergey Kiriyenko, all the above headed ministries concerned with economics and finance or dealt with these spheres as deputy prime ministers.

The picture of the Jewish presence in government is complicated by persistent reports that Russia’s former foreign minister and current prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, is partly Jewish. According to the recently published Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, some press reports and numerous sources in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital where Primakov spent his childhood, Primakov is of Jewish descent and once had a different, Jewish-sounding last name. According to Foreign Ministry sources, Primakov, now 68, never spoke of his childhood and never acknowledged being Jewish.

This situation is problematic, according to Mikhail Chlenov, president of the Va’ad, an umbrella organization of Russian Jewish groups. “To have a Jew at the head of the government is a luxury in Russia. But having a Jew who is hiding his roots is even worse,” Chlenov said in a recent interview. Chlenov pointed out that Primakov will be forced to take unpopular measures to improve the failing economy and that this could eventually spark the ire of nationalists, who so far have supported Primakov for his championing of Russia as a country still to be reckoned with as a great world power. If the situation in Russia grows even worse, Chlenov said, those who supported Primakov may remember his hidden ancestry and again pin the blame for the country’s woes on Jews.19

While there are no Jews in the current cabinet, that may not be due to any special policy of Primakov or Yeltsin. “The authorities pursue a more cautious personnel policy now simply because [Primakov] is willing to work with people who are more or less familiar to him. Those are mostly politicians who made their careers relatively long ago. For comprehensible reasons, there are no Jews among these people,” Alexander Osovtsov, executive vice president of the Russian Jewish Congress, said in September 1998, when the government was being formed.

On the other hand, Primakov’s government may have no Jews for quite a different reason. His nomination as prime minister was overwhelmingly approved by the leftist majority in the Duma and perhaps he did not want to irritate the Communists and their political allies, to whom the issue of the ethnic composition of the government has been central. This could partially explain, for instance, why the economics minister in the previous cabinet, Yakov Urinson, did not retain his post under Primakov. Mikhail Zadornov, the non-Jewish finance minister who shares with Urinson the responsibility for the recent crisis, kept his office.

At the time of the extreme economic and social hardships that accompanied Russia’s movement to a free market, politicians of Jewish extraction were often among those Kremlin decision-makers who implemented unpopular measures. Anatoly Chubais is probably the most unpopular politician with a Jewish background.

Chief of Russia’s post-Soviet privatization program, Chubais was born in 1955 to a mixed couple. His non-Jewish father, a retired army colonel, taught Marxism at a university. Little is known about his 80-year-old Jewish mother, Raisa Sagal, who reportedly lives in St. Petersburg, the city where Chubais has spent most of his life.

In 1977, Chubais graduated from Leningrad Institute for Engineering and Economics with a degree in economics. In 1983, he defended a Ph.D. thesis on the methodology of management. From 1977 to 1990, he worked at his alma mater as a research engineer and was later promoted to associate professor. In 1984-87, Chubais was the leader of an informal group of young economists that produced a number of influential businessmen and politicians of the 1990s. In 1987, Chubais cofounded a political club, Perestroika, which engaged in promoting democratic ideas among the Leningrad intelligentsia. Chubais was a member of the Communist Party from 1980 to 1990.

His political career began in 1990 when he became deputy chairman of the Leningrad Soviet. In the first post-Soviet government of Russia, Chubais was given the post of chairman of the State Committee for State Property Management, the chief privatization agency, which he headed until 1994. He held top posts in every government during six years of Yeltsin’s rule. His privatization program remains today an object of harsh criticism from leftist and nationalist politicians.

While Chubais has never spoken about his Jewish roots, his origin has never been open to question. One 1997 issue of the Communist daily newspaper, Sovetskaya Rossiya, published a large cartoon of Yeltsin and Chubais together. Chubais was depicted as a snake, coiled around Yeltsin’s body and whispering in his ear as the president signs a decree. Stars of David are the scales along his reptilian tail.

Politicians in charge of economic policy within the government rarely appear in the public eye. Yet the names of Yakov Urinson, Alexander Livshits, and Yevgeny Yasin were frequently cited as leaders of a Jewish plot to undermine the government from within. The Jewish-sounding family names of Livshits and Urinson made them even easier targets for anti-Semites.

One formerly prominent member of the Russian government, Boris Nemtsov, has stressed that anti-Semitism was never a problem for him personally. The former governor of Nizhni Novgorod, a Volga River region, Nemtsov said he had been elected three times “by ordinary voters, 93 percent of whom are [ethnic] Russians. People tend to judge whether you are a thief or honest, competent or not.”20

Boris Nemtsov was born in 1959 in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. His parents divorced when Nemtsov was 5. His mother, Dina Eydman, a physician, raised her two children alone in her native Nizhni Novgorod, then called Gorky. Boris finished high school with honors and in 1981 graduated from Gorky University with a degree in physics. At the age of 26, he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. In 1981-90, he worked as a senior research fellow at the Gorky Institute of Radiophysics. After 1988, Nemtsov was active in the grassroots democratic organizations in Gorky. In 1990, he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation where he joined the largest liberal movement, Democratic Russia. In the wake of an attempted Communist coup in August 1991, Yeltsin appointed Nemtsov his representative in Nizhni Novgorod. Later Nemtsov explained this sudden twist in his career by the fact that he was the only politician from Nizhni Novgorod whom Yeltsin knew personally at the time. In the fall of 1991, the governing council of Nizhni Novgorod elected Nemtsov the regional governor. As governor, Nemtsov gained a reputation as a protagonist of small private business and one of the most consistent liberals. The region he headed long enjoyed a reputation as a playground of reformers. In 1994, the Russian government approved Nemtsov’s local agrarian program as a pattern for nationwide reforms in agriculture-a step never carried out. In 1995, he was reelected governor by popular vote. In March 1997, President Yeltsin appointed Nemtsov first deputy prime minister.

Often referred to as the golden boy of Russian reform, Nemtsov in 1997 was widely considered Yeltsin’s heir apparent, but another prominent Jew hinted that Nemtsov’s Jewish heritage would prevent this. In a personal attack on Nemtsov at the height of his own conflict with the government over the controversial sell-off of a telecommunications giant, tycoon and politician Boris Berezovsky said: “It seems to me that Mr. Nemtsov has a purely genetic problem: He is a Boris Yefimovich, at times he is a Boris Abramovich, but he wants to be Boris Nikolayevich. You don’t become a president, presidents are born.”21

Nemtsov’s relations with his own Judaism have been rather complicated. He says he never hid his Jewish background. “I never made it a secret that my mother is Jewish because I love my mother. I’m much indebted to my mother. She has also drawn me into politics, though now she is not happy about this.”22

In his 1997 150-page autobiography, The Provincial Man, Nemtsov disclosed that he had been secretly baptized by his grandmother at the age of 5. Although he considered himself Russian Orthodox, he admitted that he rarely went to church and that religion “plays an insignificant role” in his life.23 At the same time, Nemtsov found it important to stress that, compared to other faiths, “Russian Orthodoxy is much closer to us all.”24

Despite his personal attitude toward Christianity, Nemtsov is considered Jewish by the general public. (In secularized Russian society, which is divided along ethnic lines, a person of Jewish origin does not have to profess Judaism to be regarded as Jewish. Furthermore, the public rarely knows the religious affiliations of politicians and usually judges by their names or by rumors.) This, however, does not appear to have impeded his rapidly growing popularity. Nemtsov is perhaps the only influential Jew with a popular following. In 1997, he topped the annual list of Russia’s most-trusted politicians, leaving behind such key figures as former general Alexander Lebed and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.25 Although his popularity waned sometime before he finally lost his job in the August 1998 cabinet ouster, he is likely to resurface in the parliamentary elections slated for December 1999, when he plans to run for the State Duma at the head of a new liberal bloc.

Jews in the Business Elite
Previous Russian experience with capitalism-from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1917 revolution, and during the short-lived New Economic Policy, or NEP, period between 1921 and 1928-saw the rise of many Jews to success and prominence.

Jewish entrepreneurs during the short interval of NEP succeeded in achieving some economic independence. The high percentage of Jews among the “nepmen”-the category that incidentally provided abundant source material for many Soviet satirists-at times misled some contemporaries to believe that virtually all new Soviet capitalists were Jewish.26

Because of limitations on Jewish entry into some professions, before and after World War II many Jews found employment in the business departments of Soviet enterprises. In the 1960s, their presence was spotlighted by a Soviet campaign against economic crimes aimed at eradicating malfeasance and pilfering. Special legislation enacted under Nikita Khrushchev provided the death penalty for certain types of offenses, including theft and embezzlement of state property and currency violations. An analysis of the names of those sentenced to death in 1961-63 (the trials continued at least until 1966) indicates that more than 60 percent were Jews.27 The clearly anti-Jewish bias of the trials aroused great concern in the West, and some leading intellectuals like Bertrand Russell and Albert Schweitzer protested.

Some believe that it was the Jewish participation in formerly prohibited “shadow” activities-primarily commerce and finance-that prepared many Jews to step in and take charge of these long-ignored and suddenly crucial economic structures once Communism collapsed. “In the Soviet Union, Jews were forced to be shopkeepers and tradesmen and operate in a shadow economy. That economy later became the basis for the new political and economic infrastructure in modern Russia,” Andrei Piontkovsky, a leading Moscow political analyst, said.28

This view may be just as simplistic as the view that the alleged Jewish aptitude for business has been corroborated by the advancement of many Jews to leading positions in post-Soviet Russia’s business community. “There is a popular notion that Russians don’t know how to do business and generally don’t like it,” Vladimir Pribylovsky, director of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank said, referring to the ethnic category that would exclude Jews. “Once all restrictions on commercial activities and career limitations were lifted, people took up the occupations to which they were inclined.”

A 1993 survey of entrepreneurs shook the widespread belief that ethnic minorities constituted a disproportionately high percent-if not a majority-of new Russian capitalists. According to this survey, 84 percent of owners of small and medium businesses and 63 percent of major entrepreneurs were ethnic Russians.29

As of January 1995, more than 15 percent of members of the coordinating council of the Russian Business Roundtable were Jewish. The council consisted of 211 members, heads of leading businesses and banks, and included thirty-two Jews. Almost half of these were engaged in banking and finance.30

Russian capitalists came to prominence through various means. Like most of Russia’s nouveaux riches, Jewish businessmen and financiers made their money quickly and mysteriously, raising questions about the origin of their wealth and evoking numerous allegations about their ties with the underworld. But Jewish participation in the business elite would never have attracted such attention in Russia had it not been for the role a few Jewish tycoons have played in Russian politics in the last few years.

A Washington Post report from Moscow vividly describes the extent of this influence: “Viktor Chernomyrdin walked down the long carpeted corridor of the Russian White House. As he approached the doors leading into the office of the prime minister, to which he had just been reappointed, a short man with a wisp of black hair awaited him. Chernomyrdin paused. The short man crossed the threshold first. Then Chernomyrdin followed him.”31

This scene took place when Chernomyrdin made his brief comeback as prime minister in the wake of the financial crisis that hit Russia in August 1998. The short man in David Hoffman’s report was Boris Berezovsky, a wealthy young financier. Berezovsky was reported to have been instrumental in bringing Chernomyrdin back to power. (The latter, though, failed to win parliamentary approval.)

Berezovsky’s appearance at the door that morning was seen as confirmation that Russia was dominated by a group of business tycoons who sometimes had more influence than career politicians. Attention often focuses on Berezovsky as representative of these tycoons-largely because he is the most outspoken, but also because of allegations that he gives the Russian president money, directly or indirectly.

This group of business tycoons acquired their influence in the government by financing President Yeltsin’s come-from-behind reelection in 1996.

After the December 1995 elections for the Duma, the Communists became the largest party in parliament’s lower house with 132 out of 450 seats. Three months before Russia was slated to vote for president, their leader, Gennady Zyuganov, was ahead in voter-preference polls. Watching the rise of the Communist candidate to the top of the polls, a group of thirteen leading businessmen in April 1996 addressed Yeltsin and Zyuganov, urging them to agree on major policies before the June election to prevent Russia from falling into chaos. The group, which consisted of leading representatives of the financial community and the automobile, oil, and gas industries-many of whom were usually at odds with each other-included seven bankers, six of them Jews.32 This was the first time the tycoons publicly announced that their interests could not be ignored. Finally, the tycoons gave millions of dollars to Yeltsin’s reelection campaign and steered the media they owned or controlled to rescue Russia’s first democratically elected president.

After Yeltsin’s reelection, the group of seven bankers who bankrolled his campaign got free access to the Kremlin, gradually becoming an important part of Russia’s inner circle. Some were granted the right to use budget money, temporarily, for their own purposes. Others acquired large chunks of state-owned companies through insider deals. Although chiefly known for their banks, the group has extensive interests in oil, gas, metals, and the media.

In the second half of 1996, the tycoons’ circle became an informal power group, labeled an oligarchy by the Russian media. (The group was also nicknamed semibankirschina, the rule of seven bankers-a reference to semiboyarschina, the rule of seven influential boyars who took the reins in Russia during civil strife of the early sixteenth century.) The six Jewish members were Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Goussinsky of the Most Group, Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Menatep, Alexander Smolensky of SBS-Agro, Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, both of Alfa Bank.

Early on, fears were voiced that the prominence of Jews in this highly influential group could stir up anti-Semitic sentiment. At one meeting, the financiers themselves worried about a backlash against “Jewish bankers.”33 According to some sources, these fears resulted in the choice of Vladimir Potanin, head of the Uneximbank and the only non-Jewish member of the group, to become deputy prime minister for economics.34 (Potanin remained in office just eight months.)

The Jewish bankers had different attitudes toward their own Jewishness. A source close to Khodorkovsky indicated that the 35-year-old magnate has never paid attention to his heritage and was seemingly irritated when someone mentioned it. The 44-year-old Smolensky, who is at least half Jewish but considers himself an Orthodox Christian, has made generous donations to the Russian Orthodox Church. A few years ago, he asked the editorial board of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia not to list him in its three-volume biographical dictionary.

Of the Jewish oligarchs, Berezovsky and Goussinsky are most often cited to prove Jewish prominence in the business elite since both appear to be more connected to their Judaism. Their role in the media business, especially television, irritates the nationalists, who have almost no access to Russia’s national channels. Goussinsky owns the NTV station, and Berezovsky effectively controls the government-sponsored ORT television company, owning at least a third of its voting stock.

Berezovsky’s political clout has earned him foes among reformers and Communists alike. His influence in the Kremlin-which at times has seemed enormous-has made him the personification of the tycoons’ influence in Russian politics. He has also been dogged by rumors that he has close ties to organized crime, that he was involved in a contract murder, and that he has repeatedly engaged in shady business dealings, but none of these allegations was ever proved. In its December 30, 1996 issue, Forbes magazine ran a profile of Berezovsky titled “Is He the Godfather of the Kremlin?”

In the eyes of a majority of Russians-both non-Jewish and Jewish-this controversial figure has become a symbol of Jewish prominence in business and politics. For Russians, the soft-spoken, balding Berezovsky fits the stereotypical image of a Jew. His undeniably Jewish patronymic, Abramovich, together with his “typical” Jewish appearance and nervous and gesticulating manner of speech have made him an easy target for anti-Semitic attacks. One popular Moscow daily once called him a “dream of an anti-Semite.”

The only son of a nurse and a builder, Berezovsky was born in Moscow in 1946. His grandparents were observant Jews and some sources say he is of rabbinical descent. He graduated from two Moscow universities, including the Moscow State University in 1973, with degrees in mathe-matics. With a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, he spent twenty-five years doing research on decision-making theory at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He first appeared on the business scene in 1989, when he started his company Logovaz for the then leading automaker Avtovaz. The original purpose of his work for Avtovaz was to develop management software, but Berezovsky moved quickly into selling cars. Within four years he was the largest Avtovaz dealer in the country, accounting for more than 10 percent of its Russian sales. He also made large investments in the oil business and mass media and has a share in the Russian national airlines, Aeroflot. He has admitted that he is worth around $3 billion. His claim in 1996 that he and six other top businessmen control 50 percent of the Russian economy outraged anti-Semites.

Berezovsky rocketed to political influence through his ties with senior Kremlin officials, including Alexander Korzhakov, the long-time Yeltsin bodyguard who, between 1992 and 1996, was believed to have been the most influential figure in the presidential entourage. After he helped to bankroll Yeltsin’s successful reelection in 1996-an episode that he later called a “battle for our blood interests”-Berezovsky repeatedly stated his belief that big business should have a role in policy-making. This stand has put him at odds with the young reformers, Boris Nemtsov and Anatoly Chubais.

In the fall of 1996, Berezovsky was appointed deputy secretary of the Security Council, a vague body with almost no political weight. It was he who, in no small measure, made the council instrumental in Moscow’s relations with the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya. Berezovsky himself played a key role in sealing Moscow’s peace deal with the Chechen separatists.

Some commentators have suggested that Berezovsky, often described as a master of oil diplomacy, had taken a government job to expand his business interests, especially in the oil sphere. Following a bitter struggle with Chubais and Nemtsov, who made such accusations, Berezovsky was ousted from the Security Council in November 1997. Six months later, he resurfaced as secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose confederation of the twelve former Soviet republics.

Berezovsky’s close ties to members of Yeltsin’s inner circle, including the president’s daughter and image-maker, Tatyana Dyachenko, have prompted speculation that his influence reaches deep into the Kremlin and have earned him a reputation of a “contemporary Rasputin.”

While he is Russia’s most “visible” Jew, Berezovsky takes almost no part in organized Jewish life. According to Russia’s chief rabbi, Adolf Shayevich, his contribution to the Jewish community is limited to the support he provided one year to the Moscow Cantorial Choir, which tours extensively in Russia and abroad. In fact, Berezovsky was reported to have converted to Orthodox Christianity a few years ago.

During his recent stay in the city of Kazan, the capital of the predominantly Muslim Russian autonomous republic of Tatarstan, Berezovsky paid visits to an Orthodox church, a synagogue, and a mosque. He crossed himself in the church, listened to a small concert of Jewish music with tears in his eyes, and told Muslim clergy that he was also related to their faith since one of his former wives was a Muslim Tatar.35

His identity is indeed complicated. There is no question that, whatever his formal religious affiliation, he considers himself Jewish. Moreover, he said once that he never felt any complexes over his Jewish ethnicity. Berezovsky recently said that anti-Semitism prevented him from taking part in presidential elections slated for 2000. He asserted that if “one of contenders is Jewish this would allow forces oriented toward Russian nationalism to close ranks.” Referring to the biased attitudes of many Russians toward Jews and other minorities, Berezovsky said that a “Jew and only a Jew has no chance” to be elected to the top post in Russia.36

Discussing the phenomenon of Berezovsky, Mikhail Berger, editor in chief of Segodnya, a leading national daily, said: “Berezovsky’s negative popularity rivals only that of [now former] First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais. It seems that not liking Berezovsky is considered to be good form even among those who support the current government. What has been said and written about Berezovsky would be enough to ruin the reputations of scores of people. Berezovsky has managed, however, to keep his position in the highest echelons of power, and the authorities seem to have reconciled themselves to what is being said about one of the highest officials.”37

Unlike Berezovsky, media-shy Vladimir Goussinsky does not appear often on the news, and his face-which he said jokingly is the most important part of his Jewishness-is not familiar to most Russians. He was born in Moscow in 1952. His grandfather fell victim to Stalinist purges in 1937, and his grandmother spent nine years in a gulag. First attracted to a career in engineering, Goussinsky went to the Moscow Institute for Oil and Gas. He was drafted into the army and after two years of service entered a Mos-cow theatrical school and finished in 1981. In the early ’80s he worked as director in a provincial theater in central Russia. Later he returned to Moscow and found a job as arts director of mass festivals. Among other things, he directed the arts program for participants of the first Goodwill Games held in the Soviet capital in 1986. Simultaneously, he worked as a private taxi driver. He entered business during perestroika. From a modest start in 1986 with a small company specializing in metal work, he expanded his holdings to include a bank and, later, a financial-industrial group called Most. Today, his empire includes an influential television channel, a satellite television network, a radio station, and a company that provides programming and finances for some fifty regional television stations throughout Russia. Goussinsky’s media empire also includes a leading daily newspaper and a weekly magazine published in cooperation with Newsweek. Like many members of Russia’s business elite, Goussinsky is involved in politics. Experts credit much of Goussinsky’s meteoric financial rise to his close ties with Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

In 1996, Goussinsky cofounded the Russian Jewish Congress and became its president. As such, he is the public figurehead of Russian Jewry and the leading domestic sponsor of Jewish communal projects. Sources close to him say that he got involved in the Jewish cause in part because he had become convinced that the international community would care about his safety if he were known for supporting Jewish projects. (He had reason to care for his safety after he was targeted in 1994 by Boris Yeltsin’s security chief, Alexander Korzhakov, who, reportedly jealous of Goussinsky’s success, launched a raid on his offices.)

Goussinsky’s involvement in Jewish philanthropy has partially backfired. He says some of his rivals have used his involvement in the RJC against him. “My competitors don’t make it a secret that they have been and will be using Jewish themes in attacks on me,” he said.38 These attacks have intensified since Goussinsky adopted dual citizenship by obtaining an Israeli passport. In one interview, Goussinsky said that the Russian business and financial community is not free of anti-Semitism. “Even among us there are supporters of nationalist movements . . . I recall hearing talk about ‘Russian’ bankers and ‘non-Russian’ bankers,” he said.39

Goussinsky’s role in Kremlin politics was not as evident as that of Berezovsky after Yeltsin’s reelection in 1996. It was reported, however, that he once spent an hour and a half with Yeltsin discussing the composition of a new cabinet.40

How do the oligarchs themselves perceive their role?

Berezovsky, the most outspoken advocate of the idea that Russian politicians are indebted to the businessmen, said several months after Yeltsin’s reelection: “The influence of capital on politics is, undoubtedly, growing. Today’s authorities, unlike those who were elected in 1991, have deep moral obligations to business.”41

Responding to widespread anti-Semitic accusations that Jewish tycoons and politicians promote Jewish interests at the expense of ethnic Russians, another rich Jew, Vitaly Malkin of Rossiyskiy Kredit Bank, said: “Jews are an active nation. And many of them won leading financial positions [in Russia]. But to lobby for something . . . they think about their business and not about being Jewish.”42 Berezovsky agreed: “Of course, there is no Jewish lobby in Russia today.”43

Goussinsky, who is more involved with the Jewish community, disagreed: “I think that a Jewish lobby does exist today.”44 In the same interview, Goussinsky also expressed a view shared by many Jews in business: “[Henry] Ford once said: ‘What is good for Ford, is good for America.’ All that is good for business [in Russia] is good for Jews. I can say, what is good for Uneximbank, for Inkombank, for Most [Bank] is good for Russia.”45

Most analysts agree that the appointment of Yevgeny Primakov as prime minister marked a turning point in the role of the oligarchs. Primakov’s cabinet was the first appointed not as a result of bargaining with the oligarchs, but of bargaining between the president and the legislature.46 With their wealth diminished by Russia’s financial collapse in late summer of 1998, the oligarchs are now fighting for survival in a drastically changed political landscape dominated by Primakov and his left-wing allies in the government. They also lost politically when Yeltsin failed to win State Duma approval for Viktor Chernomyrdin as prime minister. The oligarchs, who flourished under Chernomyrdin’s six-year premiership, supported this bid. Some reports suggest that this group is no longer a united force, that since the onset of the economic crisis each has been fighting for the life of his own empire. Only Boris Berezovsky continues to make regular public appearances in the media.

Within the business community, however, Jewish magnates continue to play important roles. In a recent authoritative rating of Russia’s top financiers, seven Jews appeared on the list of twenty-two.47

While the oligarchs do not have any direct role in the current Russian cabinet, they seem to remain a powerful lobby because of their holdings in sectors like oil and the media. Yet it is unlikely that Jewish business tycoons will regain their former influence until at least the presidential elections of 2000, when their political future will depend on who is elected. Nevertheless, their lack of influence does not ease the tensions over the Jewish presence in government and business.

Manifestations of Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is not new in Russia. Jews were denied basic civil rights and widely persecuted in the czarist period. In Soviet times, Jews were often denied education and employment opportunities, but the official prohibition of anti-Semitism usually kept popular anti-Semitism suppressed. State-sponsored anti-Semitic propaganda took place from the late 1940s to the early 1950s and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

These periods of intense anti-Jewish propaganda were characterized by the use of “code” language that disguised the anti-Semitism of the ruling regime. The first campaign, which included the notorious “Doctors’ Plot” and the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans,” is well remembered in Russia today and undoubtedly formed the outlook of many of those Russians who now subscribe to anti-Semitic ideas. The Brezhnev-era campaign that began in the ’60s was formally targeted against Zionism. It did not involve repression on a mass scale and has certainly left a smaller mark in the memory of the Russian population. At the same time, the official Soviet anti-Zionism of the Brezhnev era has never been reexamined by the authorities. Many Russians are aware today of the 1975 United Nations’ resolution on “Zionism as racism” but very few know that this resolution was rescinded in 1991.48

Current Russian anti-Semitism is rooted in previously suppressed popular sentiments and in the language and ideology of Soviet anti-Jewish campaigns.

Overt anti-Semitism-mostly at the fringes of society-has been evident in Russia ever since the mid-’80s, when Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost unleashed grassroots chauvinism. The circles propagating anti-Semitic ideas in Gorbachev’s time ranged from relatively moderate Siberian writers and Russophile revivalists to more virulent purveyors such as Pamyat and other extreme nationalist groups.

Today, the Va’ad (Jewish Federation of Russia) group for monitoring anti-Semitism and the Anti-Defamation Committee of the Russian Jewish Congress classify from 100 to 200 periodicals as openly anti-Semitic. Most of these are newsletters with small readerships. Anti-Jewish slurs are displayed in the pages of three Moscow-based newspapers that enjoy wide distribution. Those are the pro-Communist daily newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, its more frankly nationalist ally, Zavtra, and the radical nationalist weekly Duel.

A wide spectrum of anti-Semitic ideas is evident in historical writings published in Russia. A recent example is the two-volume study by an obscure contemporary monarchist historian, Oleg Platonov, Russia’s Crown of Thorns: The History of the Russian People in the 20th Century (O.A. Platonov, Ternoviy Venets Rossii [Moscow: Rodnik, 1997]). This thousand-page book based on extensive archival materials presents Russian history as an ongoing struggle between Orthodox Slavs and the “world evil” embodied by Western civilization, anti-Christian and Judeo-Masonic in its essence. The author devotes dozens of pages to describing the role of contemporary Russian Jewish elites in destroying the Russian nation. Like ultranationalist newspapers and brochures, this book is widely available. Some of the largest bookstores in Moscow carry it.

Since the collapse of Communism, anti-Semitism has been a common feature of virtually all political extremist groups, from ultranationalists to neo-Stalinists to monarchists and other so-called national patriots. All share the same xenophobic, anti-Western, antiliberal, and anti-Semitic theories.

Bigotry has been an essential element of the public rantings of such politicians as ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, radical leftist Viktor Anpilov, and some Communist Party activists, most notably lawmakers Albert Makashov and Viktor Ilyukhin and the southern governor Nikolay Kondratenko. Gennady Zyuganov, the party leader, is also a regular contributor to the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Communists.

Of the forty-eight extremist groups that comprise the hard-line opposition to the Yeltsin regime, at least forty regularly exploit anti-Semitism.49 Most of them are fringe groups with memberships of a few dozen each. These organizations are always splitting up, forming and abandoning alliances, and are often hard to keep track of.

Potentially greater threats are those parties that are constant and influential players on the Moscow political scene. These are the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky. They are the largest and the third-largest groups in the current Duma. While Zhirinovsky has been less active in spreading anti-Semitic propaganda lately, the Communists, the largest and best organized party in Russia, are getting more actively engaged in propagating Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism.

Contemporary Russian anti-Semitism plays on several main themes: Jewish domination of the government, business, and media; Jews as major protagonists of the so-called “criminal antinational regime” that took over Russia in 1991 and is associated with President Yeltsin; Jews as major beneficiaries of the regime’s “predatory privatization” and thus responsible for Russia’s current economic and social problems; Jews as conduits of Western cultural influence and as “Russophobes,” people hostile to Russian culture, language, and spirituality; Jews as born capitalists and liberals; Jews as agents and coconspirators of Western imperialism (chiefly American and Israeli), which seeks to destroy Russian integrity and economic might; Jewish disloyalty to Russia and loyalty to Israel as exemplified by Jewish emigration and dual Russian and Israeli citizenship, which all or most Russian Jews are alleged to have by virtue of being Jewish.

Many if not most Russians share at least some of these ideas. While violent manifestations of anti-Semitism are rare in Russia, anti-Jewish slurs in the press and elsewhere are so numerous that Jewish sensitivity to them seems to have dulled.

While different anti-Semitic themes often overlap within one article or speech, I will try to single out some examples that exploit Jewish prominence in the new Russian elites.

One of the first public attacks on Jews as members of the elites dates back to the time of Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1988, Nina Andreeva, a Leningrad chemistry teacher, became famous overnight after the then-official Communist Party newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya published her article “Cannot Give Up My Principles.” The blunt neo-Stalinist article-one of the first overt attacks on perestroika-galvanized the liberal intelligentsia. The views of Andreeva undoubtedly reflected those of many others not happy with the changes in Soviet society. Especially interesting are Andreeva’s explicit observations on the Jews made in an interview with David Remnick of the Washington Post. “In our society there are less than one percent Jews. Just a few, fine, so then why is the Academy of Science . . . and all the prestigious professions and posts in music, culture, law, why are they almost all Jews?”50

The theme of Jewish domination was also used by others, such as Konstantin Smirnov-Ostashvili, who headed a splinter group of the hard-core nationalist Pamyat movement. The group was named the Union for National Proportional Representation. This small group, founded in 1989, asserted in its leaflets that Jews are “overrepresented in all areas of government and public life” and called for proportional representation of nationalities in all areas.51 (Smirnov-Ostashvili is the first and only person ever jailed in modern Russia for inciting ethnic strife. He allegedly committed suicide in prison in 1991.) This theme is also present-though in a veiled form-in the essay “Russophobia” by Igor Shafarevich, which was first published in 1989 and remains today the most prominent and sophisticated example of contemporary Russian anti-Semitism.

The idea of proportional representation of all ethnic groups appeared in the programmatic statements of a number of ultranationalist organizations: “In a fair pluralistic society all ethnic groups have equal rights. We want the interests of each ethnic group to be expressed by representatives of this group . . . We do not consider it right if, let’s say, a Russian speaks in the name of Japanese or a Jew in the name of Russians. It has been noticed, however, that Jews try to speak in the name of other ethnic groups, calling themselves representatives of these peoples.”52 This preamble of a document by the National Republican Party led by Yuri Belyaev was followed by a list of six ways to distinguish a “mimicking” Jew from a non-Jew.

A former émigré writer, Eduard Limonov, who set up the youth-oriented National Bolshevik Party, wrote in a letter to the State Duma in 1994: “Taking into account the fact that 87 percent of the population of the Russian Federation are [ethnic] Russians, and therefore the Russian people is the indisputable bearer of Russia’s sovereignty, we propose to defend its interests by introducing the following article in the Russian constitution: ‘Only a Russian or a citizen of other Russian Slavic nationality can be elected president of Russia.’”53

Russian National Unity, one of the best-organized ultranationalist groups, envisioned the “New Russian State” where, among other things, proportional representation of ethnic Russians in the government and “all spheres and structures of the state and society” would be protected by law.54

Sometimes, smaller but more violent groups urge active steps to liberate Russia from Jewish domination. The politically independent tabloid Narodnaya Zaschita, or People’s Defense, in a front-page article in 1995, called on the Russian people to do their best “to liberate from the Jews the mass media, the legislative and executive bodies, courts and the office of the public prosecutor, banks and financial organs, the army management, the police and the organs of intelligence and counterintelligence, all of which were conquered by them.”55

Resentment against Jews in high offices grew as Jewish participation in the government became more conspicuous after an attempted Communist coup in October 1993. Boris Mironov, a leading anti-Semitic publicist and chairman of the State Committee on the Press in 1993-94, draws a horrible picture of Jewish domination: “All major banks in Russia, all foundations and exchanges are completely under Jews. All means of mass media are also theirs. It is time to rename the State Duma the ‘Knesset,’ according to the number of Jews who have found a place for themselves there. And look at the government of Russia, you can’t say at once whether it is the government of Russia or the government of Israel.”56

The Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation stated in a 1998 resolution: “Russians are being forced out from essential spheres of the state. Things have got to the point where representatives of the Russian and other indigenous peoples find themselves a minority within the Russian government’s presidium.”57

The Russian privatization program led by Anatoly Chubais contributed to the growth of anti-Semitism among nationalists. Most often their attacks on the prominence of Jews in government, business, and the mass media are impersonal. Sometimes, however, anti-Semitic slander is targeted at specific people. An unnamed author explains in the pages of a recently published collection of anti-Semitic articles: “Jewish economists such as Chubais, Livshits, Yavlinsky and others present to us the cynical plunder of the Russian people as ‘economic reform.’”58

In a 1997 issue of the weekly Duel, one of the most widely read national patriotic newspapers, several prominent Jews were named as key beneficiaries of post-Soviet privatization. The author, Yuri Mukhin, claims that Bolsheviks killed the last czar, Nicholas II, so that “You, citizens Borovoy, Starovoitova, Berezovsky, Goussinsky, Aven, Smolensky and so on, could now privatize not only power in Russia but also its common property.”59 The independent Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova mentioned here was not Jewish but had been widely regarded as such. The same is true of the former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, former finance minister

Boris Fedorov, and a few other members of post-Soviet reform cabinets.

(Starovoitova was assassinated in November 1998, and it is not clear yet who was responsible for the crime.)

Some radical national patriots denounce Yeltsin as the head of a Jewish conspiracy. Apart from accusing him of selling Russia’s national interests to the West, he is often accused of being a secret Jew or at least of marrying a Jewish woman. Yeltsin’s wife, Naina, is not Jewish, but her Jewish-sounding patronymic, Iosifovna, sounds suspicious to a Russian ear. In his 1997 memoir Boris Yeltsin from Dawn till Dusk, Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s former security chief, asserts that Naina Yeltsin is Jewish.

During the October coup of 1993, the walls of the bombarded Moscow White House were covered with inscriptions claiming Yeltsin’s Jewish heritage. One of them, for example, proposed to “Send Benka Yeltsin to Israel,” making Yeltsin’s name sound Jewish. It should be noted, however, that the theme of Yeltsin’s allegedly Jewish background has been confined to the pages of the most marginal anti-Semitic newspapers.

Conspiracy theories abound in Russian politics. Until recently, no important political decision was viewed apart from speculation as to who could have been behind it. The mainstream press-which is represented in Russia by a dozen national newspapers with liberal leanings and controlled for the most part by oligarchs-presented Kremlin conflicts as struggles between business tycoons and young reformers.

For their part, hard-line nationalists see the contending forces inside the Kremlin in the light of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is widely regarded among the anti-Yeltsin opposition as an authentic document. Avoiding direct references to the Protocols, most of the opposition papers regularly make use of the ideas they contain. An example of such indirect reference is an article in the independent weekly Zavtra, which is generally supportive of the Communists: “Analysis of incoming information supports the conclusion that representatives of Jewish Russian finance capital exploit the political situation and economic hardships in pursuit of a consistent, clearly developed, and well-coordinated policy to take control of the strategic raw-materials branches of the country’s economy.”60

Besides numerous references to a vague anti-Russian conspiracy-Jewish or Western-some authors explain why Jews in high posts cannot by definition be loyal to Russian national interests. Addressing a 1995 regional conference of national patriots in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Boris Mironov made a reference to Yuri Baturin, then presidential national

security adviser, whom some ultranationalists consider Jewish: “However nice Baturin may be, he is a Jew by origin and when a choice must be made between the national security of Russia and the national security of Israel he, by virtue of genes, will take decisions in favor of Israel.”61

Another theme prominent in attacks on influential Jews, especially in the business elite, is the idea of Jewish dual citizenship. The expression “individuals with dual citizenship” is sometimes used as a code term for Jews, along with such traditional adjectives as “Zionists” and “cosmopolitans.” An example is a recent letter signed by thirteen Communist legislators in defense of their fellow lawmaker Albert Makashov, whom liberals and the mainstream press accused of anti-Semitism: “People are outraged by the anti-Russian invasion. They do not hide their bewilderment at seeing that organs of power, means of mass communication, are more and more in the hands of a nonindigenous nationality, individuals with dual citizenship, who enriched themselves unfairly at the expense of the people.”62

It is no secret that some Jewish businesspeople have acquired Israeli citizenship in recent years as a sort of insurance policy for them and their families in case the situation in Russia deteriorates. For instance, Vladimir Goussinsky recently told a closed meeting of the Russian Jewish Congress that he had an Israeli passport. At the same time, he acknowledged that this did not allow him to assume an active role as a public politician.

The current controversy around Jewish citizenship was created by Boris Berezovsky. A major scandal erupted in late 1996, following Yeltsin’s appointment of Berezovsky as deputy chief of Russia’s National Security Council, when it was revealed that he had acquired Israeli citizenship three years earlier. Russian law does not allow a person with more than one passport to hold public office, and Berezovsky eventually gave up his second citizenship.

Berezovsky fueled the controversy by sharing with reporters his understanding of the Israeli Law of Return: “Every Jew, regardless of where he is born or lives, is de facto a citizen of Israel. The fact that I have annulled my Israeli citizenship today in no way changes the fact that I am a Jew and can again become a citizen of Israel whenever I choose. Let there be no illusions about it, every Jew in Russia is a dual citizen.”63 Jewish activists later complained that Berezovsky’s explanation backfired against the tycoon himself and against the Jewish community.

Curiously, many people attribute the darkening of the reputations of prominent Jews to anti-Semitic bias in the mainstream liberal press, even though it is often Jews who are doing the reporting. One paper that has published some of the most negative material about prominent Jews is Moskovsky Komsomolets, the most popular Moscow daily, which employs many Jews as staff writers.

Moskovsky Komsomolets, controlled by political rivals of Berezovsky, is a long-time critic of the tycoon. Its criticism sometimes borders on anti-Semitism. In the wake of the scandal around Berezovsky’s dual citizenship, the newspaper consulted a high ranking KGB officer whom the daily introduced as an “experienced expert on the issues of security of our country.” Col. Igor Malkov emphasized that as an Israeli citizen Berezovsky was hardly fit for the security job in Russia: “The point is that as an Israeli citizen [Berezovsky], according to Israeli laws, was obliged to advocate strengthening of the security and national interests of that country. To work for the sake of Israel, that is. I emphasize, this is an absolute rule, because otherwise he would have had major troubles on all fronts. The Jewish clan of businessmen worldwide is penetrated with intelligence capillaries of Mossad, the Israeli secret service.”64 This interview, published eight months after Berezovsky annulled his second citizenship, could have easily appeared in any ultranationalist newspaper.

It is hard to say if the Kremlin has ever been sensitive to the anti-Semitic attacks of the anti-Yeltsin opposition. But at least once the left opposition in the Duma openly challenged a Yeltsin appointment, explaining its stand in part by the nominee’s Jewish heritage.

In the spring of 1998, Russia was kept on edge by the month-long political standoff between Yeltsin and the Duma over the nomination of a new prime minister. Sergey Kiriyenko, who is half Jewish, was twice rejected by the Duma left and the nationalist majority. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said then that nationality was a factor in his party’s opposition to the nominee. Zyuganov admitted during a live television interview that Communists would not approve Kiriyenko partially because of his Jewish roots. He referred to a situation where ethnic Russians make up 85 percent of the country’s population but the government is “dominated” by minorities.65

An undercurrent of resentment against Jews in powerful state and business positions has become widespread since 1991. Until recently it remained on the margins of society and in the background of the rhetoric of the left and nationalist opposition to the current regime. But recent controversy spurred by the anti-Semitic remarks of Communist Duma member Albert Makashov has put the issue in a national spotlight.

Makashov made his first controversial comment in early October 1998 when he said in a television interview that “it is time to expel all yids from Russia.” Then at mass rallies in Moscow and the Central Russian town of Samara, Makashov said Jews were to blame for the current economic crisis in Russia and that if he had to die he would take along to the other world “this dozen of yids,” a clear reference to Jews prominent in Russian politics.

These statements were not Makashov’s first public anti-Semitic attacks. But this time his anti-Semitism triggered an unprecedented reaction on the part of Jewish and liberal lawmakers, the mainstream press, and national television. The incident was brought into the media spotlight again when the Communist-dominated Duma voted not to censure Makashov for his insulting remarks.

The reaction was largely due to Russia’s complex internal situation in late 1998. An ailing president, a financial and economic crisis, and a strong Communist representation in the Duma were reminiscent of the situation in 1996 when a Communist comeback seemed imminent. As in 1996, when various proreform forces closed their ranks to prevent the Communist Party from regaining power, in 1998 liberals wanted to use Makashov’s anti-Semitism to discredit the party he represents.

The uproar in the mass media and among liberal lawmakers over Makashov’s statements prompted an anti-Semitic backlash among prominent members of the Communist Party. A group of thirteen Communist lawmakers published a letter (quoted above) in which they called Makashov a “patriot” and accused Jewish bankers and politicians of taking leading positions in the country and humiliating ethnic Russians.

When asked at a news conference about his attitude toward Makashov’s anti-Semitism, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov repeated his favorite point about the ethnic composition of the Russian population and the fact that Boris Yeltsin had “surrounded” himself over the years with Jewish cabinet members.66

On several occasions, Zyuganov emphasized that Jews in high posts were themselves responsible for stirring up anti-Semitic sentiments and that what Makashov had said was a natural reaction of a Russian patriot: “There is not a single audience today-I emphasize, not a single one-that does not ask questions about the subject of the Jews. And this subject should alarm all of us. It is no secret that the personnel policy pursued by Yeltsin violated the principle of national representation in all our country’s enforcement agencies, the economy, finances, and journalism. In a multinational country it is absolutely necessary to adhere to those principles whereby none of the peoples feels encroached upon. Today it is the Russian people themselves who feel encroached upon. . . . Let us get everything back to normal-and there will be no more statements like Makashov’s.”67

The accusation was repeated in the formally independent daily Sovetskaya Rossiya, which is regarded by Communists as their mouthpiece: “The press and television channels of the oligarchs are themselves responsible for existing spontaneous manifestations of anti-Semitism. The dominance of individuals of Jewish nationality in the Russian mass media, their Zionist propaganda explicitly hostile toward the Russian people, is inevitably giving rise to corresponding moods in the popular environment.”68

And Makashov himself struck back. The following lengthy extract from a recent article contains in concise form all the criticisms of contemporary Russian anti-Semites against Jewish prominence:



Life in our country is getting worse and worse. Never before has it been this bad in Russia. Even under the Mongol yoke. Who is to blame? The executive branch, the bankers, and the mass media are to blame. Usury, deceit, corruption, and thievery are flourishing in the country. That is why I call the reformers yids.

Who are these Jews? In English they are called Jews, in French-Juif, and in Yiddish-yid. Yid is not a nationality, yid is a profession. . . .

They drink the blood of the indigenous peoples of the state; they are destroying industry and agriculture. They are destroying the Russian army and navy and its strategic nuclear forces. They accept the population’s money to be kept in the banks and then give it away, leaving nothing for funerals, for rent, or for old age. Having taken over television, radio, and the press, they do not give a damn about the history and culture of the country that nurtured them, saved them from the furnaces and gas chambers of fascism, and took responsibility for educating them.

They grabbed whatever they could, and today they own 60 percent of Russia’s capital. . . .

We have figured out who is to blame. Now-what shall we do about it?. . . In the future or, better, now, we should establish proportional representation of each nationality in all branches of power.69



Amid the growing uproar, Communist leader Zyuganov tried to save his party from further embarrassment by supporting the idea of a “Russian-Jewish dialogue,” which found an enthusiastic welcome among some Communists and moderate nationalists. In a full-page interview published simultaneously in Sovetskaya Rossiya and Zavtra, Zyuganov for the first time spoke openly about an antagonism between Jews and ethnic Russians prompted by the role of Jews in the country’s elite: “The Russian-Jewish conflict is not a conflict between two peoples, is not a conflict between two religions and cultures. This is a conflict [prompted by] a very narrow group of oligarchs, that built their well-being on suppressing both the Russian and the Jewish peoples. . . . Equal and conscious representation of all nationalities in the country’s government, dignified development of all cultures, faiths and languages on the common background of Russian culture and Russian ideology-to form up this balance an open, honest and direct Russian-Jewish dialogue is essential.”70

What Zyuganov proposed in this interview is in fact his party’s program on the nationalities question.

Russian Attitudes Toward Jews in the Elites
Russian Jews now enjoy more freedom than at any time since 1917. They can go to synagogues and Jewish concerts, send their children to Jewish schools and summer camps. They can freely emigrate and return if they wish to. Israel, a pariah under the Soviets, is now a trade partner and a popular tourist destination for thousands of Russians. On the whole, the Jewish state receives positive coverage in the media.

A 1996 poll sponsored by the American Jewish Committee supported the impression that Russian anti-Semitism is declining. Caucasus ethnic groups such as Chechens or Azerbaijanis are now the main targets of prejudice. But the pollsters in 1996 warned that widespread ignorance about Jews, along with general intolerance toward minorities, could revive anti-Jewish sentiment if the situation in Russia continued to deteriorate.71

Since then, the internal situation in Russia has indeed seriously worsened. In the wake of the August 1998 crisis, Jewish officials voiced fears that, given the Jewish prominence in past governments, Jews might be a convenient scapegoat for the country’s current problems. Certainly in recent months anti-Semitism has become increasingly vocal among nationalists and hard-line Communists. The question is to what extent Russians are susceptible to this anti-Jewish bias.

A public opinion poll of Muscovites conducted in early November 1998 by VTsIOM, the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research,72 in connection with the public uproar around Albert Makashov resulted in a mixed picture. According to the poll of 1509 adult respondents, 51 percent had negative attitudes toward anti-Semitic remarks Makashov made at mass rallies, while 15 percent approved these statements.

Some 30 percent agreed that Makashov should be brought to justice for these remarks and 29 percent disagreed. Some findings of the survey suggested that anti-Semitic attitudes are most pronounced regarding Jewish participation in the Russian government. About 23 percent of those polled said that there are “very many Jews in the country’s leadership” and they don’t like it. Some 34 percent advocated limiting the number of Jews holding senior offices in Russia, 43 percent were against such limitations, and 23 percent would not give a definite answer. When asked how would they react if a Jew became Russian president, 21 percent said “positively” and 64 percent “negatively.”

Though it would be inaccurate to extrapolate these findings to all of Russia, most of the results of the survey are similar to those of a previous nationwide poll on Russian attitudes toward Jews conducted by VTsIOM in late 1997.

The Russian Jewish Congress-sponsored survey on “Attitudes of the Russian Population Toward Jews and the Problem of Anti-Semitism” is based on the responses of 1502 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. According to the still-unpublished survey, 6-10 percent of Russians harbor aggressive hatred toward Jews, while up to 15 percent more are passively anti-Semitic and 30 percent are selectively so. Lev Gudkov, the VTsIOM researcher in charge of the survey, said that these data more or less repeat the findings that emerged from similar surveys conducted in 1990, 1992, and 1996. However, Gudkov, who has been monitoring the level of anti-Jewish and xenophobic attitudes in Russia since 1988, says that anti-Semitic attitudes have become more prominent with regard to Jewish participation in politics.

When asked to describe their attitude toward Jews, 73 percent of therespondents said it was “overall positive,” 16 percent said it was “overall negative,” and 12 percent did not have a definite answer.

A higher-than-average anti-Jewish bias is clearly seen in responses to the questions that deal with the perceived increase of Jews’ influence in government. When asked about the level of influence Jews have over Russian society, 18 percent of the respondents answered “too much influence,” 26 percent said “too little influence,” and 21 percent said “the right amount.” Twenty-eight percent of those polled agreed with the statement “An [ethnic] non-Russian cannot be a real patriot of Russia.” Thirty-two percent of the respondents agreed that ethnic Russians should have “certain privileges over the rest” of citizens of Russia.

When asked about the current situation in Russia, 10 percent said that Jews are to blame for Russia’s current difficulties; 66 percent disagreed; 24 percent did not have a definite answer.

Jewish participation in Russia’s social and political life is even less welcomed by many Russians. About 23 percent of those polled said that there are “very many Jews in the country’s leadership, in circles close to government” and they don’t like it; 18 percent agreed with the statement but said they had nothing against it, 14 percent said it was not true, 28 percent said it does not matter, and 17 percent would not give a definite answer. When asked how they would react if a Jew became president of Russia, 21 percent said they had nothing against it, 64 percent said they considered it “undesirable,” and 15 percent found it difficult to answer.

More than a third of the respondents-34 percent-said that it was necessary to “keep track of and limit the number of Jews holding senior posts.” Forty-three percent said that this should not be done, and 23 percent did not give a definite answer.

When asked if there were Jews who “caused great harm to the Russian people,” only 6 percent gave names of current politicians-both Jewish and allegedly Jewish such as Yeltsin-or gave replies such as “current domestic politicians” and “current government.” Another 10 percent said there were no such Jews. There is cause for concern that 21 percent did not give a definite answer to this question and 50 percent found it difficult to reply.

While Gudkov says that anti-Semitism is gradually diminishing among Russians while other forms of xenophobia, including hatred of people from southern regions of Russia and the former Soviet Union, is rising, some segments of society are demonstrating more anti-Semitic feelings. According to Gudkov, these include the Soviet-era elite whose chagrin over losing authority has been amplified by feelings of national humiliation over Russia losing its superpower status. Another segment demonstrating a heightened bias toward Jews is what Gudkov terms the “generation of losers”-people between 40 and 55 who failed to move up during the Brezhnev era and have even less hope of realizing their potential today. These people tend to be dissatisfied with their lives and often channel their social envy into anti-Semitism.

Both these categories are among the most active supporters of the Communist Party.

Jewish Reactions
What does the prominence of Jews in the new Russian elites mean to the Jewish community? How does the ordinary Jew react to the increased number of individuals with at least some Jewish heritage who have made it to the top of the political and business worlds since the fall of communism?

Some answers to these questions can be found in a survey of Russian Jewry carried out by the Moscow-based Jewish Research Center affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. In conducting the survey, pollsters interviewed 1300 Jewish respondents in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains, whose Jewish communities, combined, account for 53.2 percent of Russian Jewry. The respondents constitute a representative sampling of the Russian Jewish population 16 years of age and older. The poll was conducted between the fall of 1997 and February 1998. The margin of error for the sample has not been reported.

The authors of the survey are Prof. Vladimir Shapiro and Dr. Valery Chervyakov of the Jewish Research Center, and Zvi Gitelman, head of the Frankel Center for Judaica Studies and professor of political science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The data reported here have not yet been published and are used with the kind permission of Professor Shapiro.

The subject of the survey is “National Self-Consciousness of Russian and Ukrainian Jewry.” We will review some of the findings that are relevant to the topic of this paper.

One group of questions was related to the possibility of a Jew becoming president or a high-level government official of Russia. Whenasked “What would be your attitude if a Jew became president of Russia?” 22 percent said “positive”; 47 percent “negative”; 25 percent “neutral”; and 6 percent found it difficult to answer. When asked “What would be your attitude if a Jew became prime minister of Russia?” 32 percent answered “positive” and 35 percent “negative.” Asked “What would be your attitude if a Jew became foreign minister of Russia?” 37 percent said “positive” and 28 percent “negative.” When asked “What would be your attitude if a Jew became defense minister of Russia?” 20 percent said “positive” and 43 percent “negative.” Asked “What would be your attitude if a Jew became finance minister of Russia?” 49 percent answered “positive,” 20 percent “negative.” Finally, when asked “What would be your attitude if a Jew became mayor of your city?” 36 percent said “positive” and 29 percent “negative.”

A comparison of the data highlights a special attitude of Russian Jews to what they perceive as traditional and nontraditional Jewish fields. The post of finance minister is seen by almost half of the Jewish respondents as the most appropriate for a Jew. Then follows foreign minister with 37 percent of positive responses. This distribution of answers has a twofold explanation. First, respondents consider the financial sphere as a traditional field of occupation for Jews. The post of foreign minister is regarded as relatively safe compared with other top positions. Also, both Russia and the Soviet Union have already had Jews at the head of these ministries: finance ministers Livshits and Chubais, Stalin’s foreign minister Maksim Litvinov, and Yevgeny Primakov, who was foreign minister when the poll was conducted.

The most negative attitudes among the Jewish respondents was to the possibility of a Jew becoming president (47 percent) or defense minister (43 percent). In the first case, Jews feared a possible backlash, considering the presidential post the most sensitive under current circumstances. Another explanation could be a widespread opinion in Russia that the leader of a multiethnic country such as Russia should represent its ethnic majority. While Soviet historical experience may seem to contradict this notion, it should be noted that Joseph Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, was widely perceived as an ethnic Russian. The high negative reaction to the possibility of having a Jew as head of the defense ministry can be attributed to the general Jewish attitude that the military is a nontypical Jewish field.

The survey findings suggest that at least 20 percent of Russian Jews do not welcome Jewish participation in government at all, as seen in the responses given to the question about finance minister. Such an attitude can be explained by the burden of responsibility imposed on politicians, especially during times of reform and crisis. If a Jewish politician succeeded, his success would not be attributed to the entire Jewish minority, while if he failed his failure might backfire against Jews in general. Respondents living in provincial Yekaterinburg were more likely that those living in Moscow and St. Petersburg to welcome Jewish participation in government.

An examination of other subgroup data reveals that older Jews were more likely to have a negative attitude toward Jewish participation in government. For example, older respondents reacted more negatively than younger ones to a Jew as president. Asked “What would be your attitude if a Jew becomes president of Russia?” the answer “negative” gave: 16-29 years, 30 percent; 30-39 years, 39 percent; 40-49 years, 46 percent; 50-59 years, 49 percent; 60-69 years, 52 percent; 70+ years, 55 percent.

The gap of about twenty-five percentage points between the youngest (16-29 years) and the oldest (70+ years) groups of respondents persists in the responses to other questions. Negative answers in these groups distributed the following way: prime minister, 19 percent and 41 percent; foreign minister, 17 percent and 30 percent; finance minister, 12 percent and 22 percent; defense minister, 22 percent and 52 percent; local mayor, 13 percent and 31 percent.

The data suggest that the younger generation of Jews is freer of stereotypes that hold sway over the older generation. The younger generation perceive Jewish participation in the country’s leadership as more natural. Finally, younger Jews may see this participation as a sign of the greater opportunities that the future holds for them.

The high visibility of leaders who are, to some degree, Jewish signals the relative opportunities for social mobility for Jews. This shift, which occurred after the collapse of Communism, signified an almost unprecedented level of acceptance of Jews on all levels of Russian society.

There are several types of Jewish reaction to Jews’ prominence in the elites, as seen in some thirty interviews with ordinary Jews conducted for this paper: “It is good and I take pride in it”; “It is normal and does not require any special attention”; “It is good as a sign that Jews are no longer discriminated against but it can lead to undesirable consequences for Jews”; “It is bad and dangerous for Jews, since we should keep a low profile and not attract too much public attention.”

The above sentiments appear to represent what most Russian Jews feel today about the problem.

The targets of the most negative reactions among the Jews are the so-called oligarchs, especially Boris Berezovsky, the most outspoken of them. As one Jewish leader who insisted on anonymity put it, “Berezovsky with his vanity, incautious remarks, infinite craving for power has done more damage to the Jews than [leader of the ultranationalist Russian National Unity group Alexander] Barkashov.”

A recent controversy stirred up by a famous Russian Jewish émigré writer has highlighted the issue of Jewish attitudes toward the tycoons. In a full-page letter published in September 1998 in the Moscow weekly Argumenty i Fakty, Edward Topol called on Russian Jewish bankers not to throw Russia into a “chaos of poverty and wars.” Topol, who emigrated to the United States twenty years ago, also urged Jewish tycoons to “chip in a billion or two” to help Russia’s economy.73 In his letter, Topol implied that a small group of Jewish business magnates who exert an enormous influence over the Kremlin led the country into the economic and financial crisis that began early in 1998. He also claimed that the prominence of Jews in Russia could lead to pogroms and even to a new Holocaust.

The letter’s effect on many Jews was especially sharp since Topol was the first Jew to touch upon the subject in the Russian press. It also seemed to many that Topol was right when he said that Jewish bankers played with fire by not paying attention to the sensitivities of both Jews and ethnic Russians. People said that the article made them feel very uneasy and even frightened. “Indeed, the letter touched Russian Jews in a sore place,” said Mikhail Chlenov, president of the Va’ad, the Jewish Federation of Russia. One Jewish leader described the letter as anti-Semitic.

Topol, who is 59, lives in New York. During the Soviet regime, his books were banned, but he gained international fame for a novel he published that focused on Soviet corruption.

The only addressee of Topol’s letter who later responded was Berezovsky. In a radio interview in October he called the letter a “provocation” but thanked the writer for raising an “important problem of anti-Semitism.”74

A more sophisticated Jewish reaction to oligarchs is seen in the words of Mikhail Berger, editor in chief of the daily Segodnya: “Berezovsky can be seen as a combined ‘inoculation’ in political life against intolerance toward Jews and capitalists in high office. For the time being, it is difficult to know if the Russian political body will endure this inoculation or whether it will lead to further complications.”75

Jewish leaders have generally expressed their concern over the possible growth of anti-Semitism because of the presence of some Jews in high offices. Tankred Golenpolsky, a leading Jewish activist and the founder of the weekly Jewish newspaper Mezhdunarodnaya Yevreyskaya Gazeta, said in an interview with the New York Times: “Nobody is hiding the fact that they are Jewish anymore, and that plays on the nerves of many people, particularly during this economic crisis. People want a scapegoat.”76

In an interview with the author, Golenpolsky made a reference to a specific Russian Jewish experience that seem to be shared by many Jewish leaders: “We are a small minority, but we can’t help missing a barricade. It is in our nature. We were on a barricade in 1917, and when a new Russia was emerging we were on that barricade as well. But when the gunpowder smoke disappears, we are usually to blame.”

Conclusion
The increased number of individuals of Jewish extraction who have achieved prominence in the new elites over the past several years has been a test for Russia’s young democracy and for a society with a long tradition of anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is alive and well in Russia and the state has not yet developed an effective system of combating it.

Anti-Semitism directed against certain individuals in the elites is not a problem only for them. Nor is it a problem only for the Jewish community. It is a problem first and foremost for the Russian government.

In the years following the collapse of Communism, reform-oriented forces at the helm of the country have failed to formulate a clear-cut, future-oriented vision to substitute for the old Communist ideology. They have not been able to explain to millions who have endured the hardships of the reform period why they had to suffer. This void is easily filled by simple-minded explanations, marginal ideologies, and myths of nationalism.

Russia’s current economic condition is fraught with serious political consequences. If the situation in Russia continues to deteriorate, a decade of reform can end in the electoral success of the Communist Party, which has not hesitated to exploit anti-Semitism for its own advantage.

The situation is even more alarming when organizations like the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity organization function unimpeded. The existence of such groups on the fringes of society makes the Communist Party look almost mainstream.

There is the real possibility of unofficial and even official quotas to limit Jewish participation in organs of power. This possibility is more real today than ever before in view of the weakness and uncertain political orientation of the present government.

Russian society has not yet developed mechanisms to deal with interethnic and interreligious relations. Although public opinion surveys suggest that younger Russians are more open-minded and less susceptible to xenophobic traditions than older generations, very little has been done to promote democracy and tolerance. School curricula offer little, if any, information on the history of Russian Jews and the Holocaust.

What does the future hold?

Much will depend on the ability of the Russian government to ease social tensions that often arouse deeply rooted anti-Semitic feelings.

Russia requires an effective system of combating extremism, anti-Semitism, and hate propaganda. This means a credible judicial system that will rigorously and impartially enforce existing laws against inciting ethnic and religious strife.

“Today, counter-anti-Semitism is present in the sphere of journalism but not in political action,” says Mikhail Chlenov, president of the Russia Va’ad.

Recent developments suggest an urgent need to bring the problem of extremism and anti-Semitism from the realm of political debate to the realm of political decision and action.

Notes
1. Quoted in The Forward (New York), Apr. 4, 1997.

2. Kommersant-Weekly (Moscow), Oct. 29, 1996.

3. A series of interviews with prominent Jewish businessmen, including Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Goussinsky, and Boris Khait, was shown on the Israeli television’s Second Channel on Oct. 3, 1996. The Russian-language transcript was published by the weekly RP-Russkaya Gazeta (Riga, Latvia), Jan. 18, 1997, and is also available on the newspaper’s site on the Internet at: http://lsolar.rtdutk. edu//valery/rusgazet/rgazeta. Html.

4. Interfax news agency (Moscow), “Russian MPs Have Mixed Feelings About Synagogue Blast,” May 14, 1998.

5. Quoted in Reuters, “Critics Slam Duma for Not Censuring Deputy,” Nov. 6, 1998.

6. In 1907, Joseph Stalin wrote that the statistics of a recent party congress showed that Jews made up the majority among the Mensheviks, while non-Jewish Russians were the vast majority of the Bolshevik faction. “In this connection, someone of the Bolsheviks jokingly noted . . . that Mensheviks is a Jewish faction, Bolsheviks-truly Russian.” Josef Stalin, “Londonsky Syezd RSDRP” [London Congress of RSDRP], in I.V. Stalin, Sochineniya [Works] (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1951), 2:51.

7. Joseph Nedava, Trotsky and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1972), p. 116.

8. Zvi Gitelman, “Glasnost, Perestroika and Anti-Semitism,” Foreign Affairs, Spring 1991, p. 142.

9. Theodore H. Friedgut, “Erosion of the Jewish Presence in the USSR: Some Recent Statistics,” Jews and Jewish Topics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 1:14 (Spring 1991): 10-12.

10. Various anti-Semitic and anti-Communist groups have tried to ascribe Jewish roots to some post-Soviet leaders. According to a propaganda leaflet distributed by the Front for National Salvation, a coalition of ultranationalist groupings active in the early 1990s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, for example, was originally Leopold Garpinsky, and the original last name of the 1970s Moscow party boss, Viktor Grishin, was Rappoport.

11. Leonid Radzikhovsky, “Yevreiskoye Schastye” [Jewish Luck], Novoye Russkoye Slovo (New York), Jan. 17, 1996.

12. Jews were also members of other proreform groups: three in Yabloko, one each in the Democratic Party and the Party for Russia’s Unity and Accord (PRES).

13. Quoted in Exile (Moscow), no. 10, 1997.

14. The State Duma, Session Transcripts, 1995, Spring Session, vol. 18, p. 545 (in Russian).

15. Ibid., 1994, Fall Session, vol. 12, p. 296.

16. Ibid., 1997, Spring Session, Bulletin no. 71, p. 20.

17. Alexander Verkhovsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Ekaterina Mikhailovskaya, Natsionalism i Ksenofobiya v Rossiyskom Obschestve [Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russian Society] (Moscow: Panorama, 1998), pp. 140-41.

18. Ibid., pp. 153-54.

19. See my report for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on “Pro-Arab tilt of new premier in Russia is cause for concern,” Sept. 15, 1998, available on the Internet at www.jta.org..

20. Alessandra Stanley, “Success May Be Bad for Russians as Old Russian Bias Surfaces,” New York Times, Apr. 14, 1997.

21. Christian Lowe, “Tycoon Lashes Back at Nemtsov,” Moscow Times, Aug. 21, 1997.

22. Kommersant-Daily (Moscow), Nov. 29, 1997.

23. Boris Nemtsov, Provintsial [The Provincial Man], (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), p. 17.

24. Ibid., p. 18.

25. Moscow Times, Apr. 10, 1997.

26. In 1925, the Moscow correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the Soviet authorities were carrying out a mass expulsion of Jews from the Soviet capital. It turned out that what the journalist had witnessed was the expulsion of scores of “nepmen” from Moscow about the time when Stalin began to put a curb on Lenin’s New Economic Policy. The JTA report and the reaction of the Soviet secret service to it is deposited in the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Modern History, Moscow, F. 76, op. 3, delo 82, list 10.

“Nepmen” were eventually included in the category of lishentsy-persons deprived of civil rights because of their nonproletarian background or field of occupation.

27. See Ilya Trotzky, ed., Russian Jewry, 1917-1967 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1969); Leon Shapiro, “An Outline of the History of Russian and Soviet Jewry 1912-1974,” in S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (New York: Ktav, 1975), 3:469.

28. Quoted in Exile (Moscow), no. 10, 1997.

29. Igor Bunin, “Novye Rossiyskie Predprinimateli i Mify Postkommunisticheskogo Soznaniya” [New Russian Entrepreneurs and Myths of Post-Communist Consciousness], Liberalizm v Rossii [Liberalism in Russia] (Moscow: PIK, 1993), pp. 120-22.

30. The unpublished list compiled by the Panorama Information and Expert Group think tank.

31. David Hoffman, “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” Washington Post, Aug. 28, 1998.

32. See my report for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on “Russian Jews Join Power Group Warning About Election Climate,” JTA Daily News Bulletin, May 2, 1996.

33. David Hoffman, “Russian Banker Reaches Pinnacle of Capitalism,” Washington Post, Oct. 17, 1997.

34. Some sources have indicated that the choice of Potanin had nothing to do with his non-Jewish extraction and was rather due to his bank’s role in operations with state budget money. But Boris Berezovsky has hinted on several occasions that Potanin had been selected because of his Russian ethnicity to evade a possible anti-Semitic backlash.

35. Kommersant-Daily (Moscow), Oct. 28, 1998.

36. Segodnya (Moscow), Sept. 3, 1998.

37. Mikhail Berger, “Why So Much Attention on Berezovsky?” Moscow Times, Apr. 22, 1997.

38. Vladimir Goussinsky, in an interview with the author featured in a JTA story on “Millionaire Vladimir Goussinsky Leading Revival of Russian Jewry,” JTA Daily News Bulletin, July 30, 1998.

39. Quoted in Kommersant-Daily (Moscow), July 14, 1998.

40. Expert (Moscow), Mar. 11, 1997.

41. Interview with the Israeli TV Second Channel, Oct. 3, 1996; quoted in RP-Russkaya Gazeta (Riga, Latvia), Jan. 18, 1997.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Sergey Rogov, director of the USA and Canada Institute think tank, in an interview with Reuters, “Russia’s Tycoons-Down but Not Yet Out?” Sept. 14, 1998.

47. Profil (Moscow), no. 38 (Oct. 19, 1998): 5.

48. An example is an unpublished letter of April 1998 sent by the General Public Prosecutor’s Office to Vladimir Goussinsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress, who had urged the prosecutors to launch an investigation of Nikolay Kondratenko, governor of Krasnodar Region, in connection with his many public attacks blaming Zionists for all Russia’s woes. In the letter available to the author, an aide to Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov cited the 1975 UN resolution on Zionism as grounds for refusal to investigate the case.

49. Based on materials by Vladimir Pribylovsky from Alexander Verkhovsky, Anatoly Papp, Vladimir Pribylovsky, eds., Polilichesky Extremism v Rossii [Political Extremism in Russia] (Moscow: Institut Eksperimentalnoy Sotsiologii, 1996), pp. 84-219.

50. David Remnick, “Gorbachev’s Biggest Detractor,” Washington Post, July 28, 1989.

51. Quoted in Gitelman, “Glasnost, Perestroika and Anti-Semitism,” p. 149.

52. Narodnoye Delo (Nizhni Novgorod), no. 3, 1992.

53. Quoted in Alexander Verkhovsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, Natsional-patrioticheskie orgatiizatsii v Rossii [National Patriotic Organizations in Russia] (Moscow: Institut Eksperimentalnoy Sotsiologii, 1996), p. 131.

54. Russkiy Poryadok (Moscow), no. 9/1, December 1994-January 1995.

55. Narodnaya Zaschita (Moscow), no. 6, 1995, translated in Anti-Semitism in the Former Soviet Union: Report 1995-1997 (Washington, D.C.: UCSJ, 1997), p. 111.

56. Boris Mironov, Komu v Rossii Meshayut Russkiye [Whom Do Russians Bother in Russia] (n.p., n.d.), p. 41.

57. Quoted in Mark Deich, “Russkiye Natsisty v Zakone” [Law-abiding Russian Nazis], Moskovsky Komsomolets (Moscow), June 23, 1998.

58. Yevreiskaya Okkupatsiya Rossii, 1998, p. 76.

59. Yu. I. Mukhin, “Pokaites, Yevrei-privatizatory” [Jews-Privatizers, Repent], Duel (Moscow), May 20, 1997.

60. Viktor Drobin, “Druzya NTV” [The Friends of NTV], Zavtra (Moscow), November 1998, no. 44.

61. Quoted in Yevreiskaya Okkupatsiya Rossii, p. 31.

62. Sovetskaya Rossiya (Moscow), Oct. 17, 1998.

63. Segodnya (Moscow), Nov. 14, 1996.

64. Moskovskiy Komsomolets (Moscow), July 31, 1997.

65. Interview with NTV television channel, Apr. 12, 1998.

66. Maksim Zhukov, “Zyuganov Podderzhal Makashova” [Zyuganov Backed Makashov], Kommersant-Daily (Moscow), Oct. 22, 1998.

67. Zyuganov in the television program “Akuly Politpera,” TV-6 television company, Oct. 19, 1998, quoted in Zavtra (Moscow), October 1998, no. 42.

68. Vasily Safronchuk, “Svistoplyaska” [The Fuss], Sovetskaya Rossiya (Moscow), Nov. 10, 1998.

69. Albert Makashov, “Rostovschiki Rossii” [Usurers of Russia], Zavtra (Moscow), October 1998, no. 42.

70. Sovetskaya Rossiya (Moscow), Nov. 3, 1998.

71. Current Russian Attitudes Toward Jews and the Holocaust (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1996), p. 18.

72. Kommersant-Daily (Moscow), Nov. 12, 1998.

73. Edward Topol, “Vozlyubite Rossiyu, Boris Abramovich” [Love Russia, Boris Abramovich], Argumenty i Fakty (Moscow), no. 38, 1998.

74. Radio Echo Moskvy (Moscow), Oct. 28, 1998.

75. Berger, “Why So Much Attention on Berezovsky?”

76. Stanley, “Success May Be Bad for Russians as Old Russian Bias Surfaces.”