Russia 2008/9

 

As in previous years, the year 2008 in Russia was marked by numerous incidents of vandalism of Jewish sites and property, as well as a few assaults on Jewish individuals. Many right-wing extremists were tried and punished for antisemitic and racist offenses, indicating an improvement in the authorities’ response over previous years.

 

The Jewish Community

About 230,000 Jews were living in Russia in 2002, according to the census of that year, out of a total population of about 144 million. However, the World Jewish Congress estimates there are some 450,000 Jews, while the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress reckoned that 450,000-500,000 Jews are eligible to immigrate to Israel.

Jewish umbrella organizations in Russia are the Vaad of Russia (Federation of Jewish Organizations and Communities, FEOR) and the Russian Jewish Congress (REK). Communal religious organizations follow three trends: traditional Rabbinic Orthodoxy, Reform Judaism and Lubavitch Hasidim (Chabad). There is a Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia (KEROOR) and a World Congress of Russian Speaking Jewry, founded in 2002.

There are Jewish elementary schools, Sunday schools, pre-school education, religious high schools (yeshivas) 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 (which operates jointly with the Jewish Theological Seminary in NY), the Maimonides State Classical Academy, the S. Dubnov Higher School, the Department for Jewish Studies and Civilization at the 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 Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center and Holocaust Foundation. The Jewish international youth organization Hillel has branches in several cities. Some of the Jewish communities and organizations issue newspapers and operate Internet sites.

 

political background and extremist groups

Two main events affected the country in 2008: the war in Georgia (August) and the presidential elections (March). The accession of Dmitrii Medvedev as president meant continuation of the policies of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who became prime minister. Russia’s hard-line policies toward the West and toward rival states reached a peak with the war in Georgia (see Transcaucasia and Central Asia). Following the war, Russia became even more at odds with the West and there was even talk about a return of the Cold War.

            Russia was not immune to the effects of the global financial crisis in the second half of 2008; however, most of the damage was felt only in 2009.

 

Election Campaign

The presidential election campaign was marked by some antisemitic incitement in the media. The election committee of the Pskov region accused the Communist Party mouthpiece Pskovskaia Iskra, distributed in the city as part of the party's campaign, of inflaming ethnic hatred. The newspaper had published an article entitled "And Again the Eternal Yid,” blaming the Jews for all Russia's problems since 1917.

In February 2008 extreme right-wing Internet sites, such as that of the Movement against Illegal Immigration (MII), alleged that presidential candidate Dmitrii Medvedev was a clandestine Jew. Such claims were based mainly on his mother's maiden name (Shaposhnikova) and patronymic (Veniamin), which could indicate either Russian or Jewish roots.

           

The Extreme Right Scene

The year 2008 witnessed numerous manifestations of radical nationalism. The number of racially motivated crimes continued to be high. However, the public appeared to be losing interest in such crimes and the authorities preferred not to publicize incidents of racist violence. Extreme-right wingers use evasive tactics to avoid discovery, and a there is a wide network of neo-Nazi groups that cooperate with each other, at least in the larger cities, and which are very successful in attracting young supporters.

            Antisemitic slogans were reported at a number of anti-immigrant demonstrations. For example, on the eve of Hitler’s birthday, April 19, some 400 extreme right-wing activists from the National Great Power Party of Russia and the neo-Nazi Slavic Union (Slavianskii Soiuz − SS), among others, demonstrated in a central Moscow square. In addition to placards against "Jewish fascism" and the "Jewish mafia,” participants shouted "Russia for the Russians” and called on women to "guard the purity of your race." Olga Kasianenko (MII) urged Russians to arm themselves and defend their families. The police did not intervene.

In another such demonstration organized on May Day (May 1) by the MII, members of the Slavic Union and others shouted antisemitic and racist slogans, and distributed racist leaflets.

During a demonstration in Perm against illegal immigration held on November 30, participants shouted antisemitic insults such as "Glory to the Holocaust" and "Beat the Jews, save Russia.” Yevdokim Kniazev, leader of the local branch of the MII, claimed afterwards that he had not heard any antisemitic insults during the demonstration.

 

The Muslim Community

According to recent estimates, there are about 20 million Muslims in Russia and Islam is the second most widely professed religion in the country. The majority are Sunni Muslims and only about 10 percent are Shi'ites. In several regions, such as Chechnya, there is a tradition of Sunni Sufism. A growing number of Russians have converted to Islam, and many of them participated in hostilities against Russian forces in North Caucasus. The main organization of the Muslim community is the Union of Muslims of Russia, represented politically by the Nur All-Russia Muslim Public Movement. The party's main goal is to defend the political, economic, and cultural rights of Muslims in Russia. The Islamic Cultural Center of Russia, established in 1991, includes a madrassa (religious school). The city of Kazan has a large Muslim population (the second largest after Moscow) and a Russian Islam University, where teaching is conducted in the Russian and Tatar languages. Copies of the Qur'an are readily available throughout the country and many mosques are being built.

The rapidly growing Muslim population, terrorist attacks and the continuing decline in the ethnic Russian population have caused a rise in xenophobia and islamophobia in Russia, with violent attacks against Muslims by Russian neo-Nazi skinheads becoming more frequent.

Although Muslim leaders take part in inter-faith meetings with Jewish leaders, they frequently make anti-Zionist and anti-Israel statements.

During the launch of a book by Sergei Komkov, entitled Wahabit (about islamophobia in Russia), at the Moscow Independent Press Center held in March, invited speaker Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov, co-chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia and chief mufti of the Russian Muslim community in Siberia, claimed that Zionism was “a cancerous tumor because Zionism is fascism.” The statement was condemned by the Russian Jewish Congress, the Israeli ambassador to Russia, the Central Spiritual Muslim Board of Russia and others. Although FEOR announced it was suspending all contacts with the Council of Muftis, they were resumed after a meeting between representatives of the two bodies. In early April, Visam Ali Bardvil, mufti of Karelia, announced that he agreed with Mufti Ashirov's statement.

 

Antisemitic Manifestations

Violence and Vandalism

The level of antisemitic activity in 2008 was similar to that of the previous year. Attacks against Jews are just a very small part of a general atmosphere of intolerance in Russia. According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, there were at least 293 racist attacks during 2008, with 122 dead and at least 380 wounded. The most frequent targets of such attacks are people of Central Asian origin.

            Only in one of the four cases of assault on Jews recorded in Russia in 2008 were the perpetrators caught and tried. Mikhail Altshuler, a well known Jewish musician, was beaten and abused with antisemitic insults on November 22 by a three skinheads on the Moscow metro. Two of the attackers (16 and 17) were caught and in March 2009 a court gave them a warning and forbade them from appearing in public places for two years after 22:00 during the week and after 23:00 on weekends.

There were numerous, sometimes repeated, attacks on synagogues and Jewish centers, as well as desecrations of Jewish tombstones and Holocaust memorials. Some of the perpetrators were caught and tried. For example, on January 23, three 18-19-year-olds stormed into a synagogue in Nizhnii Novgorod, threw religious books out of the windows and beat the guard when he tried to stop them. Eight months later the windows of the same synagogue and those of the guard’s cabin were broken. In late January, a group of ten people painted swastikas, the slogan "Jews leave Russia" and "Russia for Russians" on the building housing the synagogue and Jewish community center in Ulianovsk. They also threw antisemitic leaflets and shouted antisemitic insults. Four of them were arrested and in September they were convicted of incitement of ethnic hatred; two received prison sentences and the other two community service. On April 11, a group of 20-22-year-olds with Nazi tattoos painted a swastika and antisemitic insults on a synagogue in Orenburg. They were arrested in July and the police found extremist leaflets and other objects proving they belonged to a skinhead group. On November 2, a home-made bomb was left at the gate of a synagogue in Omsk. The perpetrator, a 20-year-old, called the police to tell them about the bomb. He admitted his guilt and said he prepared the bomb according to instructions he had found on the Internet. He was given a suspended sentence in April 2009.

Among the many cemetery desecrations, during the first week of May Jewish gravestones were broken at the Mariina Roshcha cemetery in Nizhnii Novgorod. Several days later someone left a cell phone video at the local synagogue showing the culprits at work. The film was submitted to the police. Thirteen gravestones were again broken there later in the month. On May 14, dozens of Jewish gravestones were discovered broken at the Petrodvoretsk cemetery at the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The day after Jewish gravestones were smashed in June at the Krasnaya Etna cemetery in Nizhnii Novgorod, the police detained an 18-year-old male, two 14-year-olds and a 17-year-old female as suspects. The oldest, admitted that between May 25 and June 8 he had desecrated graves at the same cemetery several times. He had admitted that he did not like Jews and the prosecutors stressed that he desecrated only Jewish graves and ignored others. In August 21, Jewish gravestones were broken in the same cemetery. Jewish community leaders in Makhachkala also discovered more than 80 gravestones smashed in two Jewish cemeteries in the city.

Two cases of desecration of Holocaust memorials were recorded. On International Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, people attending a ceremony at the Holocaust memorial in Volgograd, erected only two months previously, discovered that graffiti insulting the dead had been painted on the obelisk and the word "Jews" on the marble board was damaged. The Holocaust memorial at the old Jewish cemetery in Kaliningrad was defaced with swastikas, antisemitic slogans and paint in October. In addition, on April 20 (Hitler's birthday), a portrait of Hitler, with "Hitler was right", was painted near a memorial plaque on the building in Moscow which housed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during 1942-1945

Many other Jewish facilities were vandalized in Russia during 2008 as well. For example: On May 9 (Victory Day), swastikas, "glory to Hitler,” "Death to the Yids,” "Yids to the oven,” "Russia for Russians" and the letters "SS,” were painted on the Jewish Culture and Charity Center in Tula. In another incident, swastikas were painted on the door of the apartment of Ervin Kirshtein, head of the Jewish community of Ivanovo, as well as at the entrance to the building. A few days earlier swastikas and antisemitic graffiti had appeared on many buildings in the city. Community leaders said the new incident may be a response to their complaints to the police about the previous incidents, although the police never caught the perpetrators.

 

Antisemitic Propaganda

As in previous years, virulently antisemitic expressions and neo-Nazi signs appeared in 2008 on the streets of various cities and towns. On the eve of Purim, March 19, for instance, dozens of antisemitic posters appeared on buildings in Novosibirsk, calling on parents to protect their children before the Jewish holiday of Passover because "these disgusting people still engage in ritual practice to their gods. They kidnap small children and remove some of their blood in order to prepare their holy food − matza − and eat it during their Passover and throw the bodies onto garbage dumps.” Similar posters reappeared on several buildings on April 14. In addition, an antisemitic poster was discovered in May at a bus station at the Shchukino region of Moscow, calling for the annihilation of the Jews and stating that all wealth was concentrated in Jewish hands and all problems were the fault of the Jews. A similar poster was reported in November at a bus station in Moscow.

In April, during a series of lectures for future teachers as part of the government-sponsored program "Basics of Religious Culture,” Svetlana Shestakova, assistant professor of sociology at Tyumen State Oil-Gas University, stated that matza was "a Jewish Eucharist that uses a small quantity of blood of [Christian] Orthodox people whom they [the Jews] martyr... They use a special method for killing an Orthodox child or a saint, such as when the tsar's family was killed... That's why children sometimes go missing, it's the Jews.”

            In addition, the Murmansk newspaper Poliarnaia Pravda (24 January) published a quiz entitled "Are You a Cultured Person?" One of the questions was "Were there Jews in your bloodline?" According to the compiler of the quiz, if the answer is positive, "You should not be upset. You are a complete nobody, but you are adored.” The local Jewish community sent a letter of protest to the newspaper and the deputy chief editor apologized.

            Tracts such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Why We Hate the Jewish Mafia and Xenophobia or Self-Defense were sold in central Moscow in July during an event commemorating Tsar Nicholas II and his family, who were murdered by the Bolsheviks 90 years earlier.

 

Attitudes toward the Holocaust

Evgenii Nikiforov, chairman of the Radonezh Orthodox Society of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserted in January that Russian students should not learn about the Holocaust of the Jews. Instead, he said, tolerance should be taught through the Russian tragedies of the 20th century, which he termed "the Russian Holocaust.”

 

Reactions to Operation Cast Lead

The Russian authorities were restrained in their reaction to the conflict in Gaza, perhaps because during the period attention was concentrated on the gas crisis with Ukraine. Several anti-Israel demonstrations were held, mostly by Muslim organizations, but also by the Communist Party. Islamic leaders compared the situation and events in Gaza with those of World War II, including the Holocaust and the siege of Leningrad (for further details, see General Analysis).

 

Responses to Antisemitism

Official Activity

As in previous years, antisemitism (and xenophobia in general) were publicly condemned by the country's leaders. For example, during a meeting at the Ministry of Internal Affairs on February 6, then President Vladimir Putin said that nationalism and xenophobia are a "a time bomb ticking beneath our government" and must be "cut off at the root.” Further, during a meeting with heads of diplomatic missions and Russian representatives abroad at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offices in Moscow, on July 15, President Dmitrii Medvedev promised to counter any manifestations of neo-fascism, racial discrimination, nationalism, antisemitism and xenophobia, as well as "attempts to rewrite history and use it for the purpose of provoking confrontations and revanchism in world politics, and of revising the treaties ending World War II.” On November 16, he sent a message to participants of a memorial event in Kaliningrad dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Reichskristallnacht, stating, among other things, that "we must not just remember the past, but also clearly realize what threats ethnic hatred and racist intolerance pose to the modern world.”

On being asked about inter-ethnic relations in Russia during a live TV broadcast on December 4, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin answered that Russia had become a great state only because of its “tolerant attitude toward the nations and ethnic groups of which it is composed. Russia will be able to stay a great state only if every nation and every small ethnic group feels at home in Russia. Those narrow minded, simply stupid, dull people who violate this principle, thinking they are acting in the interests of the Russian nation, are causing this nation irreparable harm."

On December 7, the Russian Jewish Congress initiated a Tolerance Day in Moscow, including a special evening attended by about 400 representatives of local student organizations of different nationalities. Viacheslav (Moshe) Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress, said that this day showed "how important it is to develop inter-ethnic consent in the society... Tolerance is not just training and education for mutual respect, notwithstanding skin color. It is also a harsh attitude toward any display of ethnic intolerance.”

 

Court Proceedings

Many perpetrators of antisemitic and racist incidents were caught and prosecuted, indicating an improvement in the authorities’ response over previous years. For example, Moscow police announced that nine youths, members of the skinhead Ryno's Gang, were arrested on charges of establishing skinhead groups, murdering 20 people of Central Asian and Caucasian origin, 12 attempted murders and incitement of ethnic hatred in August-October 2007. The attacks were video-taped and posted on the Internet. On December 2, the court convicted seven members of the gang, sentencing them from 6 to 20 years in prison.

            In April the prosecutor's office of Cherepovets opened an investigation into a library affiliated to the Russian Orthodox Church for screening several times during 2007 the film Russia with a Knife in Its Back – Jewish Fascism and the Genocide of the Russian People, which was banned by the Federal Registration Service for Extremism. In mid-April the librarian who screened the film, N. Yuganova, was fired. Her trial opened in September 2008 and in April 2009 she was sentenced by the Cherepovets City Court to 6 months community service and a fine. Dmitrii Kovaliov, owner of the Patriot store in Briansk, was fined 25,000 rubles for selling the film.

An Omsk Regional Court fined a local kiosk owner 2000 rubles for selling extremist materials, including CDs with the antisemitic movie Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), produced in 1939 in Nazi Germany. The movie was recognized by the court as extremist and added to the list of such materials banned in Russia.

A court in Chita convicted Alexander Yaromenko, editor of Russkoe Zabaiikale, the newspaper of the local branch of the patriotic, pro-Orthodox Union of Russian People, of extremism for publishing antisemitic articles, and for asking among other things "To whom and why should we lie about the Holocaust?" or "What is the Holocaust?” The court ruled to confiscate the newspaper's property.

In November a Regional Court in Moscow classified the Duel newspaper as extremist and ordered it to be closed for publishing antisemitic articles. For instance, on July 4, 2006 it stated that Russia was ruled by kikes who want to continue "their domination over their Russian slaves.” The newspaper's editor, Yurii Mukhin, was given a two year suspended sentence in mid-June 2009 for "publicly calling for extremist activity through the media.”

            The Novosibirsk regional court convicted Boris Mironov, former Russian minister of the press, of inciting ethnic hatred after he published two antisemitic articles in a 2003 election campaign newspaper (see ASW 2003/4). Mironov was released because of the statute of limitations.

Proceedings were also held against some inciters to extremism on the Internet. The Kemerovo police charged Vyacheslav Spitsyn with incitement of ethnic hatred for posting articles on his Internet blog calling for the killing of Jews and Muslims between June 2006 and February 2008. The police found antisemitic leaflets in his house. In February 2009 he was given a one year suspended sentence. Victor Rogozhin, member of the regional municipal committee of Akhtubinsk, Vladimir Naydanov, engineer, Valerii Salnikov, senior lecturer at an aviation university, and Sergeii Pospelov, a civilian military worker, were accused of operating an antisemitic organization since 2002 and of calling in public for the deportation or annihilation of the Jews. In October 2008 Pospelov was sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment, Salnikov − 3 years, and Rogozhin − 1 year. In addition, in December a regional court in Penza gave Mikhail Zinkin a 1½ years suspended sentence for incitement of ethnic hatred after he posted anti-Jewish, anti-Caucasian and anti-Afro-American comments on an Internet forum during 2006-2008 under the nickname "Fighter for the Truth.”