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THE CIS AND THE BALTIC STATES 2002-3

 

 

Overview

The Jewish Communities

About 415,000 Jews live in the CIS and the Baltic states: 365,000 in the Slavic states (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus); about 14,500 in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan); about 13,000 in Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan); 16,500 in the Baltic states, and 5,200 in Moldova. In addition, between 300,000 and 350,000 are members of mixed families and as such enjoy the right to immigrate to Israel. Thus the total Jewish population stands between 720,000 and 770,000 persons.

Organized Jewish activity continues in all countries of the CIS and the Baltic states, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, in the fields of education, mutual aid and preservation of traditions. It is gathered under several umbrella organizations: the Russian Jewish Congress (REK), led by Dr. Evgenii Satanovskii; the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia (FEOR), led by Habad Rabbi Berl Lazar; the Euro-Asia Jewish Congress, led by Aleksandr Mashkevich; the Union of Ukrainian Jewish Communities, led by Vadim Rabinovich; and the Ukrainian Jewish Federation, led by Rabbi Yaakov-Dov Blaich. The JDC (Joint), as well as Habad and wealthy Russian Jews, support these organizations, but it must be noted that the majority of the Jews do not participate in any organized Jewish life. Assimilation and immigration are steadily reducing the number of Jews. In 2002, emigration to Israel stood at 18,500, to Germany at 19,300, and to the US, 2,500, a total of 40,300.

 

Antisemitic Activity – General Characteristics

At the end of the 1990s antisemitism, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, was being used as a political weapon by the opposition. The leading antisemitic force was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which accused the government of selling out to the Jews. The government reaction was cautious, fearing that a campaign against antisemitism and racism would be unpopular. The picture changed with the accession of the more nationalist President Vladimir Putin’s administration, which usurped some of the nationalism of both left and right, and in which few Jews, potential targets for the opposition, served. Thus from 2000 to 2002, political antisemitism ceased to characterize life in this area, although it still exists to some extent. However, the depressed socio-economic situation, the continuing war in the northern Caucasus, and large internal migrations of Muslims and Caucasians created crises amongst ethnic Russians which resulted in increased chauvinism and racism, especially among youth. The response was the formation of new ultra-nationalist groups, principally in the large cities, some with notions of “reclaiming Russia from the foreigners [natives of the Caucasus, Asia, Africa and the Jews].” A Russian Jewish Congress report of 14 October 2002 said a poll showed 20 percent of youth were antisemitic. Despite their mutual hostility, Islamic fundamentalists and Russian neo-Nazis agree on all issues concerning the Jews and the State of Israel. For example, there is an unlikely political alliance between the Russian branch of the Islamic Council, led by Geidar Jemal, who lives in Moscow, Movladi Udugov, ideologue of the rebel Chechens, and extreme nationalist Russians such as Aleksandr Prokhanov, Aleksandr Dugin, and Viktor Iliukhin, based on a political platform of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

 

Islamist Groups

Islamic fundamentalism and the new antisemitism constitute a potential danger to Jewish security. The activity of Islamist organizations increased in most of the CIS from 2000 to 2002. These organizations are directed and financed by fundamentalists in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Kuwait. Among them 15 were declared by the Russian Justice Department as terror organizations and their activity was banned on 10 February 2003. Their popularity, which has increased because of their anti-Russian stance, has spread rapidly among Russia's 13 million Muslims in the wake of the continued warfare in the northern Caucasus – viewed as a Muslim-Christian conflict. Their growing strength among Muslims is also influenced by anti-Ukrainian feeling, which runs high because of the persecution of the Tatars in Crimea, as well as by failing economies and political oppression in Central Asia, specifically in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, areas long exposed to Taliban influence from Afghanistan. Local Islamist organizations have incorporated the anti-Zionism and antisemitism of their Middle Eastern mentors into the propaganda spread by local leaders and their press, and even express willingness to fight alongside of the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Palestine. At the end of March 2002 Aslan Maskhadov, head of the Chechen rebels, published a proclamation accusing the Israeli Mossad of cooperating with the Russians in the hostilities in northern Caucasus. The proclamation called for war against worldwide Zionism and announced the dispatch of volunteers to help the Palestinian Authority. While not yet translated into local violence against the Jews, the potential threat is feared. There were, however, many incidents in the northern Caucasus whereby Jews who planned to leave for Israel were robbed and even killed in the process. Although the motive was criminal, sometimes antisemitic slogans were left in order to mislead the police as to the real identity of the criminals. The local authorities both in Russia and Ukraine as well as in Central Asia and the Caucasus have not shown much success as yet in their efforts to restrain the activities of the Islamists, particularly their cooperation with the rebels in Chechnya.

 

Russia

Antisemitic Manifestations

The number of incidents of violence and vandalism with clear antisemitic motivation in Russia rose from 37 in 2001 to 73 in 2002. In four other incidents in which Jews were murdered the question of motivation, whether criminal or antisemitic or both, was not entirely clear. In addition to the usual antisemitic attacks on Jewish persons and property, the drawing of antisemitic signs and slogans on buildings and desecration of cemeteries, there were 18 incidents of booby traps, both real and false, planted by the roadside on signs or in public places. Attached to each of these explosives were antisemitic posters. For example, on 27 May 2002, Moscow resident Tatiana Sapunova was severely injured when she tried to pull down such a signboard. In most cases the culprits were not identified, although in July 2002, two suspects, a sister and brother, students at one of the schools in the city, were arrested in St. Petersburg.

The year 2002 saw a dramatic rise of more than 50 percent in violent assaults on Jewish individuals, including rabbis and children, as well as in arson attacks, shootings and attempts to blow up synagogues. Frequently, the ethnic and ideological identification of the perpetrators was not clear. It is possible that Islamist or Arab extremists were more active this year in perpetrating violence and vandalism against Jewish targets, causing the general increase in antisemitic incidents. It should be noted that in 2002 there was a rise in anti-Israel demonstrations and rallies organized by Arab students and other foreigners living in Russia. An indication of the terror threat posed by Islamists to the Jewish communities was given in 14 August when a 25-year-old member of an Islamist group was arrested in Nal’chik. He was found to possess an explosive device with which he intended to blow up a synagogue, as well as antisemitic leaflets. The extreme right, however, continued to be responsible for most of the physical attacks against Jewish individuals. One of the most serious incidents occurred in Moscow at the beginning of March when a group of skinheads attacked a Jewish youth, inflicting severe injuries, from which he later died. In another serious incident in early February in Kemerovo a group of RNE (Russian National Unity) members assaulted a 15-year-old Jewish boy, who had to be hospitalized. Similarly, at the end of May a group of skinheads attacked the son of Rabbi Vershuvskii from Voronezh in central Moscow.

 

The Response to Antisemitism

The government is well aware of the dangers of extremism and racism directed against all ethnic minorities, including the Jews. A law against political extremism passed the second round in the Duma Lower House of the Russian Federal Assembly. The bill includes a prohibition on Nazi propaganda and outlaws movements with racist ideologies. In March President Putin met with Jewish leaders of FEOR in the Kremlin, where he reiterated the need to deal with the problem of racism and antisemitism. In June Putin signed a directive granting the “Order of Courage” decoration to Tatiana Sapunova, who had tried to remove an antisemitic sign (see above). At the beginning of April, municipal authorities in Volgograd prevented the broadcast of a local television program, “Russian Hour,” because of its antisemitic content.

However, those bodies charged with implementing the law – the Interior Ministry, the law courts and federal security forces – are frequently loathe to prosecute, and when they do, (ten cases in 2002) the sentences are either light or suspended, or amnesty is granted because of a national holiday. For example in March the Prosecutor’s Office in Ekaterinburg closed a case against some newspapers and publishing houses of the Russian Orthodox Church, suspected of circulating antisemitic propaganda, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The case opened on 13 December 2001 following a complaint lodged by the local Jewish community’s rabbi, Mikhail Oshtark. At the beginning of April a magistrate’s court in Moscow gave Aleksandr Ivanov, leader of the NNP (People’s National Party), a three-year suspended sentence for racist activity in 1997. Immediately afterwards, the court granted him an amnesty because, it claimed, he had done nothing illegal in the past five years and he was ill.

The Jewish leadership, such as Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar of FEOR and Evgenii Satanovskii of REK, tend to minimize the extent of antisemitism in Russia. They emphasize that there is no official antisemitism and that the condition of the Jews in Russia has never been better than under the Putin administration. As stated clearly by Chief Rabbi Adolf Shayevich, of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations and Communities in Russia (KEROOR – which competes with FEOR), on 4 July 2002, it seems that one of the main reasons for minimizing the seriousness of antisemitism is that such an admission would spur emigration to Israel and other lands, although Putin and other high officials claim to be making every effort to stop Jews from leaving. However, in the face of a clear increase of violent incidents in Russia, both Satanovskii and Chief Rabbi Shayevich warned on 16 April of a further rise in antisemitism in Russia and urged the Russian president to take effective steps in order to curb this dangerous phenomenon. Two days later Chief Rabbi Lazar, who enjoys Putin’s support, called a press conference at which he declared that there had been a decrease in antisemitic incidents in Russia. However, he added, the “Jewish problem” had sharpened in Ukraine.

 

Ukraine

There were 31 incidents in 2002, compared to only 3 in the previous year, including an increased number of threats, attacks and drawings of Nazi symbols and antisemitic slogans on walls. One of the most serious incidents took place in Kiev in April, when a gang of about 50 people attacked the Central Synagogue (Brodsky), breaking windows and injuring Rabbi Zvi Kaplan as well as the son of Rabbi Moshe-Reuven Asman. The local authorities tried to blame the incident on rowdy football fans and thereby negate antisemitic motives. In August an identifiably Jewish emissary of the Jewish Agency in Dnepropetrovsk was attacked by three men. Jewish cemeteries and monuments to the memory of those murdered during the Holocaust were principal targets of antisemitic vandalism. In Vinogradovo, for example, the local Jewish cemetery was destroyed in March and in Kiev on 18 May. As in Russia it is difficult to determine the extent of Islamist and extreme Arab involvement in such incidents. In early April 300 Palestinians demonstrated in front of the offices of the Ukrainian Jewish Congress in Kiev, and in Dnepropetrovsk a Jewish women was attacked by young Jordanian students. In Slaviansk slogans such as “We'll help the Palestinians and annihilate the Jews” were drawn on the walls of several houses in late March. The slogans were in Russian and it is unclear whether the perpetrators were Arabs or extreme right-wingers.

 

Antisemitic Manifestations in Other CIS countries

Belarus, the Baltic states and Moldova followed Russia and Ukraine in levels of antisemitism. The numbers of antisemitic incidents in the other CIS states (the Transcaucasian and Central Asian republics) were relatively low, no more than few incidents in each country. Nonetheless, the activities of Islamist and extreme right groups, both of which use anti-Zionist slogans, are worrisome.

            In Minsk, capital of Belarus, about 50 skinheads joined some 700 participants, mostly Arabs, in an anti-Israel demonstration in the city’s central square. A group of skinheads was also involved in an attack in Minsk on several young Habad Jews from the US and France in August. The police intervened, but the attackers were not arrested. Jewish gravestones in Minsk cemeteries were desecrated several times in 2002, as well as in 2003. Seventy-nine graves were also desecrated in Borisov in early July 2002. A week before, in Gomel, the Jewish community was warned by the security services that a bomb had been placed in the community center. No bomb was found. Antisemitic slogans such as “Death to the Kikes” appeared in central Minsk and Vitebsk in summer 2002. Swastikas were scrawled in several cities, including in Pinsk, beside a memorial dedicated to the memory of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann.

            In Moldova 15 Jewish organizations from Kishinev sent an official complaint to the United Nations concerning the distribution of antisemitic propaganda by the Christian Democratic Party of Moldova. In Armenia during a meeting of local authors in Yerevan an antisemitic publication, The National Campaign, was distributed. It claims that Jews and Turks are the main enemies of the Armenians and denies the Holocaust as a Jewish invention.

Islamists were behind the dissemination of antisemitic propaganda and were involved in several antisemitic incidents in the Muslim republics of Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan the Kyrgyz newspaper Kyrgyz Ordo published an article in mid-August claiming that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had correctly predicted Kyrgyzstan’s current problems. Further, in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, anti-Israel and antisemitic calls were made at a sermon in the city’s central mosque in April. In Azerbaijan members of the Warriors of Allah desecrated the Jewish cemetery in Baku in early October. Four suspects were arrested. In Almaty, Kazakhstan, two members of the Hizb al-Tahrir organization were arrested after distributing antisemitic and anti-Israel leaflets in April.

 

The Baltic States

There were a few incidents in the Baltic states in 2002. In Elgava, Latvia, swastikas and fascist slogans were smeared on a memorial plaque for Holocaust victims. In Riga the local branch of the Russian Nazi movement RNE united with the Latvian Nazi movement LNDP (National Democratic Party). Both have an extremely antisemitic ideology. In March RNE began publishing a new newspaper, Novyi Poriadok (The New Order), whose principal theme is blaming the Jews for the conflict between Russians and Latvians in Latvia. About 1,000 people participated in the annual veterans rally of the Latvian SS division. Since 2000, when the government rescinded the official status of this day, it has refrained from sending representatives. It should be also noted that in Piarnu, Estonia a monument to the memory of the SS Estonian division was erected.

            Antisemitic slogans and Palestinian flags were displayed during a basketball match between Israel and Lithuania in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, at the end of March. In August, a local branch party leader of the nationalistic Liberty Alliance of Lithuania, Saulius Ozhialis, burned the Israeli flag in the center of the Lithuanian city of Taurage.