FORMER SOVIET UNION 2001-2

 

Overview

 

The Jewish Community

About 510,000 Jews remained in the former Soviet Union at the beginning of 2002. Some 445,000, 84.3 percent of the total, lived in Russia, Ukraine or Belarus, while 40,000 resided in the six Muslim states of the former Soviet Union, 20,000 in the three Baltic states and the rest in Moldova and Georgia.

            The population has diminished by about 1.8 million people since 1989: about 930,000 emigrated to Israel, 570,000 to Western countries, and the negative birth rate accounted for about 290,000.

Although there are significant differences from country to country, in all the republics of the former Soviet Union, Jews engage in organized activity and enjoy the right to emigrate.

            There are 430 Jewish organizations and religious foundations, which undertake a variety of activities, mostly supported by Israel and by Jewish organizations in the West. These include Jewish education (about 30,000 children and young people), aid to the needy, support for Jewish traditional and cultural activities and preserving the memory of the Holocaust. They publish about 35 newspapers and periodicals which are distributed among the Jewish population. However, no more than 10 percent of the entire Jewish population participates in these activities.

            The trend toward increasing involvement of local authorities in Jewish communal affairs, which began in 2000 with the encouragement from the government, continued into 2001 and 2002. The political objective is evident: to minimize the influence of Israel and the West on the local Jewish population, to curtail Zionist elements in Jewish activities, to bind the Jewish communities more closely to local authorities, and finally to reduce Jewish emigration, especially to Israel.

 

Antisemitic Activity – General Characteristics

No country of the former Soviet Union includes antisemitism in its official policy or state ideology. Jews continue to be prominent in economic, cultural and political life, some serving in leadership positions in Jewish organizations as well. There was, however, a trend toward diminished political involvement by Jews in 2001 and 2002, particularly in Russia, because of the change in government there. In Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and especially in Russia, widespread antisemitic activity, which differed according to the political configuration in each country, continued as in the recent past, but ceased to be used as a political tool, as it had been in the late 1990s in the Slavic countries in particular (for more on this theme, see Mathyl in ASW 1999/2000). Today antisemitism in those states is characteristic of extremist fringe groups, which in Russia engage in vandalism, hooliganism and propaganda on a much greater scale than in. the other countries of the former Soviet Union.

 

Islamic Movements

In most of the countries of the former Soviet Union the activity of extremist Islamic organizations increased between 2000 and 2002. These organizations were established and are funded by Islamic fundamentalists, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They promote an anti-Russian attitude, which has spread rapidly among the Muslim population (about 25 million people) in the context of the continuing hostilities in the northern Caucasus, and which is regarded as a Muslim-Christian struggle. They also foster an anti-Ukrainian stance, due to persecution of the Tatars in the Crimean peninsula. Economic difficulties and political repression in Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which have long been subject to the Taliban ideology from Afghanistan, facilitate dissemination of the Islamist doctrine in these countries.

            Islamist organizations include the Muslim Brotherhood (49 branches in Russia, and others in Central Asia and the Caucasus), the Muslim Committee of Asia (Russia and Central Asia), Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islamiyya (Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), Hamas (Russia, Central Asia), Center for Islamic Development (Kyrgyz), Adalat (Uzbekistan) and Tovba (Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan). These organizations reflect the anti Israel and anti Jewish attitudes of the parent organizations in the Middle East, which finance the dissemination of their propaganda. Although it is in their vital interest to prevent these organizations from allying themselves with the Chechen rebels in northern Caucasia, the authorities find it difficult to control them. The Jewish population, which often lives in close proximity to the Muslim population, suffered no violence at their hands in 2001/2, but the threat of future violence is present.

 

Central Asia

Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have long been subjected to pressure from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, under Juma Nomangani, which seeks to set up a caliphate, in the Fergana Valley, a meeting point of these three Central Asian countries. Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islamiyya, which has declared its intention of establishing an Islamic state in the whole of Central Asia, the Caucasus and in heavily Muslim-populated areas of Russia, is also active. There is still a sizable Jewish population in Central Asia, mainly Bucharans.

 

Transcaucasia

The trial of Mubariz Aliev, commander of Jeishullah (Army of God), and twelve members of his organization, ended on 22 September 2000 in Baku. They were found guilty of a long list of murders and acts of terror, including armed robbery of the European Development Bank in Baku, in December 1998, and planning a terrorist attack on the American embassy in Uzbekistan in August 1999. In Uzbekistan a branch of the World Conference of Muslim Youth still operates, under a Saudi Arabian citizen, Muhammad Salam ‘Abd al-Hamid, and a number of Somali and Yemeni citizens. This group also recruits and gives military training to those who will fight in Chechnya, and disseminates Islamic propaganda and virulent antisemitism. Baku is still home to a large number of Jews.