Russian Federation 2007

 

Although the main targets of racist violence in Russia are non-Slavic immigrants, two assaults on Jews were recorded in 2007, as well as numerous desecrations of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials. The year 2007 witnessed the complete integration of antisemitism into Russian nationalist ideology. The Jewish blood libel was a strong motif in the rhetoric and literature of antisemites. Law enforcement agencies were active prosecuting not only perpetrators of antisemitic incidents but also those who incited them.

 

The Jewish Community

According to the 2002 census, the Jewish population in Russia was 230,000, out of a total population of about 144 million; however, the number is probably higher since some Jews conceal their ethnicity/religion. Most Jews live in the larger cities.

Jewish umbrella organizations in Russia are the Vaad of Russia (also known as the Federation of Jewish Organizations and Communities, FEOR, founded in 1992) and the Russian Jewish Congress (REK, founded in 1996). Communal religious organizations follow three trends: traditional Rabbinic Orthodoxy, Reform Judaism and Lubavitch Hasidim (Chabad). There is also the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia (KEROOR, founded in 1993). In 2002 the Federation of Jewish Communities and the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (established by the Vaad of Russia and the Russian Jewish Congress) founded the World Congress of Russian Speaking Jewry.

There are Jewish elementary schools, Sunday schools, a small network of pre-school education, religious high schools (yeshiva) and pedagogic colleges. Most schools are financed by the national budget and/or community organizations, the Jewish Agency, ORT or international religious organizations.

Other institutions are the Russian-US Center for Bible and Jewish Studies attached to the Russian State Humanitarian University, the Maimonides State Classical Academy, the S. Dubnov Higher School (formerly, Jewish University in Moscow), the Department for Jewish Studies and Civilization at Moscow State University, the 21st Century University, St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies, and the Center for Bible and Jewish Studies at St. Petersburg State University. Holocaust studies are coordinated by the Holocaust Foundation, established in 1992. The Jewish international youth organization Hillel has branches in several cities. Some of the communities and organizations issue newspapers and operate Internet sites.

In June 2007, for the first time in Russia, about 1000 high ranking police officers participated at a seminar in Ufa organized by the Chief Rabbinate of Russia. The officers attended lectures on topics such as the history of the Jewish people in general and the Jews of Russia in particular. The day ended with a decision to institute collaboration between the police and the rabbinate, including a response to antisemitic incidents.

 

antisemitic activity

Nationalist Party Politics

The year 2007 witnessed the complete integration of antisemitism into Russian nationalist ideology. There were even several attempts to harness antisemitism to more popular kinds of racism such as islamophobia and hatred of people from the Caucasus. For example, the article “Kosovo and the Great Islamic Revolution in Europe,” posted in mid-December on several Russian nationalist websites (such as www.rustrana.ru (Russian Civilization)), by Dmitrii Savin, chairman of the Chita branch of the Union of the Russian Nation (SRN; the Black Hundreds), included classic motifs from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Savin claimed that the Chechens and the Albans in Kosovo were tools of “Jewish-Masonic behind-the-scenes manipulations,” which were preparing to de-Christianize the world in order to establish their own worldwide empire. On October 26, this same movement, which is headed by M. Nazarov and A. Turik, published a call to both Russians and non-Russians to support nationalists against "the mutual enemy," who is "trying to make us fight with each other in order to weaken Russia, to grind us down and turn us all into slaves of a global electronic concentration camp.”

Even speeches of nationalist leaders who up till then had shown more restraint in their attitude toward Jews were tainted with antisemitism in 2007. Aleksandr Potkin (Belov), leader of the Movement against Illegal Immigration, for instance, made several allegations of Jewish blood ritual and the “Jewish” character of the authorities (see also General Analysis).

Antisemitic slogans often appeared during demonstrations organized by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). During a demonstration in Moscow on June 28, participants held posters reading "Away with Kike-TV! Russian TV to Russia!" and "We demand the de-zionization of TV!" Leaflets with cartoons depicting TV journalists Andrei Karaulov and Nikolai Svanidze wearing skullcaps were scattered on the sidewalks.

Although the December 2007 parliamentary election passed with practically no use of xenophobic or antisemitic rhetoric, the same cannot be said about the presidential campaign (election: March 2008). Immediately after the official announcement in December that President Vladimir Putin supported Dmitrii Medvedev as his successor, nationalist websites (such as http://www.apn.ru/opinions/article18665.htm and http://www.rusidea.org/?a=2127) emphasized the supposedly Jewish origins of Medvedev and his wife. Some even alleged that prior to the announcement, Medvedev had visited the Jewish community center in Moscow in order to receive the blessing of the Jewish community before becoming president.

 

Violent Incidents

The main targets of racist violence in Russia are non-Slavic immigrants, who in most cases tend to be more recognizable than Jews. Two attacks on Jews were recorded in 2007. On February 18, a group of 18-25-year-olds attacked three Jewish students from the Torat Chaim Yeshiva who were standing at a suburban train station in the Moscow region. After asking the Jews for cigarettes, questioning them about their nationality and demanding to see their passports, they beat them up. As a result one victim, an Israeli citizen, was hospitalized with concussion. In early August, Yakov Petruashvili was severely beaten in Moscow and thrown into a pit by a group of skinheads, who probably noticed the chain with a Star of David on his neck. He was rescued by a passerby and hospitalized.

There were several attacks on synagogues in 2007, including a petrol bomb thrown at a synagogue in Saratov on the night of May 5, causing damage to the building. Among other incidents, on the eve of Purim, March 5, swastikas and antisemitic insults such as "Death to the Yids" were painted on the walls of the main synagogue in Vladivostok – the second desecration of the synagogue in six months. The Russian Jewish Congress condemned the incident and urged the Russian government to act against xenophobia. After antisemitic slogans and swastikas were painted on a synagogue in Voronezh on March 18, Anatolii Sherman, head of the local Jewish community, said that this might have been a response to the arrest of suspects in the desecration of the local Jewish cemetery a few days earlier (see below). In May a 20-year-old, who admitted painting the graffiti, was arrested. In October a group of youths shouted "Jews come out" and "Beat the Yids,” broke a window and tore down the sign at the entrance to the Jewish religious center and synagogue in Astrakhan. The synagogue was attacked again on December 28, when stones were thrown at it, breaking several windows.

Among Jewish cemeteries desecrated in 2007, the one in Voronezh was attacked twice, once in January when swastikas were painted on four tombs and again in March, when 20 gravestones were destroyed. On March 15 the police arrested two youths, who admitted desecrating the cemetery. They were convicted by a regional court on July 25. One of them was given a two-year suspended sentence; the other, who had a previous conviction for similar deeds, was sentenced to 25 months imprisonment. The court recognized racism and ethnic hatred as motives behind the crime. In mid-May, 40 tombs at the Jewish cemetery in Klintsy were broken. The police arrested seven youths from nearby villages. In mid-June the entrance to the Jewish cemetery in Petrozavodsk was painted with swastikas, the letters "SS" and other antisemitic insults. On August 19 several graves at the Jewish cemetery of Derbent were damaged. The police arrested a local 36-year-old male suspect. On October 7, 64 gravestones were broken at the Jewish cemetery in Krasnoyarsk. On October 18, the police arrested six suspects (16-19-year-old), who admitted breaking the gravestones. Four of them were convicted and punished in June 2008.

Holocaust memorials were also vandalized. For example, swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti were discovered on a Holocaust memorial plaque at the Jewish cemetery in Kaliningrad in late March. Participants at a ceremony in Taganrog marking the 66th anniversary of the Holocaust, on October 28, discovered that parts of the memorial, commemorating local inhabitants and fugitives from eastern Ukraine (mostly Jews) who were tortured and shot to death during the Nazi occupation, had been broken.

In addition, there were also many reports of antisemitic graffiti painted on Jewish community and private facilities. In early January "Holocaust 2007" with a swastika replacing the first letter and the phrase "Beat the kike" appeared on the building of a Jewish charity organization in Murmansk. In June, the word "Jew" with an arrow and the slogan "Death to the Jews" were painted near the door of an apartment owned by a Jewish woman who works at a local Jewish charity organization in Murmansk. A month later swastikas and a Star of David on fire were painted on the building in Moscow housing the offices of the Jewish Agency.

The Jewish Or Avner elementary school in Briansk was vandalized five times between late October and November. A group of youths shouting antisemitic insults broke the school sign as well as eight windows. In December the police arrested four suspects who admitted being members of a neo-Nazi group. During a search at the apartments of two of them, the police found symbols of the far right-wing Russian National Unity (RNE), as well as extremist propaganda on their computers and cell phones. The police also confiscated a chain which the youths admitted having used to break windows. In May 2008 the Briansk prosecutors dropped the hate crime charges against the suspects, who will now only face charges of hooliganism. In December Aleksandr Krinitsin (19) was arrested and admitted painting, on November 9, "Jude," "Yid," and "The Yid is infecting the nation" on the entrance to the Jewish community building in Izhevsk. He was convicted in early 2008 of inciting ethnic hatred and given a three-year suspended sentence.

 

Defamation and Blood Libel

Antisemitic graffiti and posters also sometimes appeared on non-Jewish facilities. For example, in March an antisemitic poster featuring pigs and reading "80% of Russia's wealth is in Jewish hands, 1,000,000 Russians die every year, 2,500,000 are homeless! This is Jewish fascism! Russians, let's free our native soil from Jewish fascism!" was glued to a Moscow trolley-bus station. In mid-May graffiti reading "Death to the Yids" accompanied by three swastikas was discovered on a fence in St. Petersburg, near a train station. Swastikas, accompanied by the slogans "The Jews are not natives,” "The Jews are ruling the country," and other antisemitic graffiti appeared on several buildings and fences in Ulianovsk.

The Jewish blood libel myth claiming that Jews use the blood of Christian children in their religious rituals was a recurring motif in the rhetoric and literature of antisemites in 2007. Much attention was centered on the Krasnoiarsk case from 2005 when the local Jewish community was accused by radical nationalist publicist Mikhail Nazarov of murdering several children (see ASW 2005). In April 2007 Duma Deputy A. Krutov, from the Rodina party, signed a document initiated by the above mentioned SRN stating that "the famous signs of Hassidic rituals" can be detected in the murder of the Krasnoiarsk children and if "a bloodless body" is discovered, the investigators should seek out the perpetrators in "synagogues, matzah bakeries and houses of their employees." The document also mentioned the alleged hatred of the Hassids for "Goys and especially Christians."

Nationalist groups held several meetings in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chita in early May and in July during which they propagated the myth that Jews conduct ritual murders. They also demanded that when children are killed, "first of all investigate the Chassidic sect,” and "feel no shame in searching the synagogues, matzah bakeries, and homes of synagogue workers."

Articles about ritual murders allegedly committed by Jews were published regularly, some even in the mainstream press, especially after yet another murder of a child in Krasnoiarsk in late March 2007. Although, in contrast to the fringe and nationalist press, articles in the mainstream press never mentioned Jews specifically in connection with the Krasnoiarsk murder, they spoke of "ritual murder" committed by a "sect of religious maniacs.”

 

Literature and the Mass Media

As part of their effort to recruit new supporters, nationalist organizations disseminate propaganda via the mass media, the Internet and the publication of literature. Since some of their antisemitic literature is published by seemingly respectable publication houses, such as Algorithm and Book World, it reaches the shelves of book stores and major book fairs in Moscow. The management of such book fairs usually claims that requests to ban the display of antisemitic books violate the Russian Federation constitution, as well as international norms, since they amount to censorship.

The situation did not change after the signing in August 2007 − on the initiative of the Federal Agency for Printing and Mass Communications − of an agreement to ban books that disseminate fascism, xenophobia, violence and cruelty, or incite ethnic hatred. For example, a Russian translation of Die Geschichte von Adolf Hitler (The history of Adolf Hitler) by Annemarie Stiehler (first published in Germany in 1940) aroused little criticism.

Although anti-Caucasian or anti-Chinese propaganda in the mass media is greater, the year 2007 witnessed a revival of antisemitic discussions on television and in the print media. Early in 2007, for instance, national TV channels screened the serial Stalin.Live and the movie Lev Trotsky. The Secret of Worldwide Revolution. Neither the former, which revives antisemitic myths about the last years of the Stalinist era nor the latter, which alleges cooperation between Trotsky and Jewish bankers in the United States, were accompanied by any critical analysis.

Virulently anti-Israel as well as antisemitic articles also appeared in Moskovskie Novosti (Moscow News). In March, May and December the newspaper published pieces by the chairman of the Chamber of Trade and Commerce and ex-premier of the Russian Federation, Yevgeny Primakov, who used clichés from Soviet propaganda to describe Israel (such as "Israel is guilty of everything,"; "its acts against the Palestinians are disproportional"). The newspaper also published articles by Duma member A. Fomenko, from the Rodina party, who wrote of the leading role of the Jews in the deterioration of relations between Russia and the US, Jews financing the 1917 revolution, and the influence of the Jewish lobby on US policy in the Middle East.

 

Attitudes toward the Holocaust and the nazi era

In early 2007 M. Nazarov, a leading ideologist of modern Russian antisemitism, posted an announcement on his website that World War II was the consequence of the goal of "Judeo-Masonic rulers of this world" to suppress "national-authoritative fascism,” using "the useful idiot Hitler,” even though in some countries it "was at an acceptable spiritual level.”

Praise of Nazis and Nazi-era leaders was often heard at public events of nationalists. On April 21, a day after Hitler’s birthday, a meeting dedicated to his memory was held in central Moscow, during which Hitler and Himmler were publicly extolled. Similar demonstrations, in which participants waved flags with swastikas and shouted Heil Hitler, took place on May 1 in Blagoveshchensk, on May 9 in Murmansk and Moscow, and on September 14 in Barnaul. Those in Blagoveshchensk and Murmansk were quickly halted by the police.

In April the website www.regions.ru published the findings of a survey among some members of the upper and lower chambers of the Russian Parliament. The majority believed it was unnecessary to introduce a law against Holocaust denial. They argued that the question of denial or recognition of the Holocaust was an ethnical one, and that all nations experienced tragedies. One respondent, V. Iliukhin, State Duma deputy from KPRF, even announced that the notion of prohibiting Holocaust denial "smells slightly of obscurantism.”

In August it was discovered that clothing with Nazi symbols, such as pants with an eagle holding a swastika, were on sale at a market in Vologda, even though the public display and distribution of Nazi symbols is illegal in Russia. A month later disks containing essays by Nazi ideologists, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and Nazi films were on sale in Kursk. Some had swastikas and portraits of Hitler on the cover. In October the website of the Russian Jewish Congress reported that bookshops in Tambov were selling Mein Kampf, essays by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, books on Nazi ideology, and CDs with films of Third Reich marches.

On the positive side, in September formerly secret files containing documents about Raul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, were handed over to Russia's Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar, for preservation at the Museum of Tolerance to be built in Moscow. Until 1991 the Soviets refused to admit officially that the files existed.

 

Responses to Antisemitism

As in previous years, top government officials condemned antisemitism and racism and stressed the necessity to combat them. As part of this effort, President Vladimir Putin granted a medal of honor to Itzhak Kogan, rabbi of the synagogue on Bolshaya Bronnaya Street in Moscow, and to Machon Ram Yeshiva student Chaim Josef Eliyahu, who in January 2006 stopped Aleksandr Koptsev after he attacked worshippers in the synagogue (see ASW 2006).

On December 5, during a meeting with representatives from FEOR in Moscow, then Deputy Prime Minister Dmitrii Medvedev said, "We must not turn a blind eye" in the face of Nazi, antisemitic and nationalist propaganda, which the authorities must fight ruthlessly.

Law enforcement agencies were active in 2007 in prosecuting not only perpetrators of antisemitic incidents but also those who incited them. Three publishers were convicted of printing antisemitic articles in their newspapers; two received prison terms. One, Igor Kolodezenko, editor and publisher of the local Rodnaia Sibir, was convicted in June by the Novosibirsk District Court of inciting ethnic hatred through the publication of antisemitic articles. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment after he had already received suspended sentences in the past for similar offenses (see ASW 2004). Kolodezenko’s appeal was rejected on August 22.

All in all, 30 people were convicted of antisemitic crimes in 2007: eleven received provisional sentences; five were fined; 5 received prison sentences of 5-10 years and four, of 1-5 years; two were sentenced to community service and three, to 1-2 years in a “settlement colony.” At least 30 others were on trial or under investigation, including K. Dushenov, editor of Rus' Pravoslavnaia, who published a letter in 2005 demanding a ban on all Jewish organizations in the country (see ASW 2005).

The Federal Service for Supervision of Compliance with Legislation on the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Gosokhrankultura) also played a part in combating racism and antisemitism by issuing warnings against the publication and distribution of such materials. (Gosokhrankultura can issue warnings to publishers, newspapers, TV and any other registered mass media against inciting ethnic hatred or insulting ethnic groups. Two such warnings within a year can cause closure by a court order.)

In 2007 the Russian Criminal Code and Code of Administrative Crimes underwent significant changes. In May and July amendments were introduced increasing the punishment for vandalism motivated by ideological, political, ethnic or religious hatred; for the possession of Nazi paraphernalia and symbols, and the manufacture and sale or purchase of such items for distribution; and for the production and distribution of materials specified in the Federal List of Extremist Materials. The list contains many antisemitic materials (including books, newspapers and movies).

The increased activity of law enforcement agencies and the changes in relevant laws, undoubtedly ordered from above, may indicate that the authorities are finally starting to understand the threat posed to the country by the growing popularity of extremism and racism. Another reason may be public, including Jewish, pressure. The 16-year imprisonment sentence imposed on Aleksandr Koptsev in 2006 may be considered a turning point in this direction.