Despite the intensification of anti-Semitic activity in Russia, including anti-Semitic
declarations in the parliament and at political meetings, the authorities
have remained indifferent, failing to detain perpetrators of anti-Semitic
violence (17 acts in 1998/ early 1999), anti-Semitic demonstrators
and distributors of anti-Semitic material.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
At the beginning of 1999 the Jewish population of the Russian Federation
numbered 435,000, of which 240,000 were concentrated in Moscow and St.
Petersburg. The Jewish population is decreasing at the rate of about 35,000
a year: in 1998 some 15,000 went to Israel, 14,000 emigrated to Western
countries, and about 8,000 were lost to the negative birth rate. Since the mass
emigration began in 1989, the Russian Jewish population has decreased by
458,000, with about 232,000 going to Israel.
There are about 196 Jewish organizations, institutions and religious
communities in 75 cities and towns, including 46 in Moscow and 25 in St.
Petersburg. One hundred and fifteen educational institutions serve 7,200
youngsters. Russian Jewish organizations publish 18 newspapers and
journals. The principal roof organization for these groups is the Russian
Jewish Congress (REK), founded in January 1996, which coordinates Jewish
activities and acts as representative of the Jewish community to the local
authorities and to Jewish organizations in the West.

EXTREME NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS
As of the beginning of 1999, there are 83 parties and organizations in the
Russian nationalist camp, most of them very small. The larger ones, such as
Russian National Unity (RNE), have branches in the cities of central Russia,
in the Urals, Siberia, southern Russia, and close to the northern Caucasus, as
well as in Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic republics. Sixteen groups are
blatantly fascist, incorporating Nazi symbols, dress, mannerisms and racist
ideology, with the swastika as their official symbol, and celebrating dates of
importance in the Third Reich.
These groups publish and distribute about 190 regular publications, with
a circulation of about 980,000 copies. They also publish books, pamphlets
and leaflets, often with Nazi content: Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion, translations of German Nazi material and current Western neo-Nazi
publications. The latter appear in hundreds of thousands of copies throughout
Russia and in the Russian-speaking areas of the former Soviet Union.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES
Anti-Semitism has become one of the chief political and ideological weapons
of the nationalist and communist opposition in the struggle for power in
Russia; in comparison, the varied and open activities of ultra-nationalist
groups, including Russian Nazis, seem relatively secondary. The indecisive
reaction of the Russian authorities, the government, the parliament and law
enforcement officers to this intensification of anti-Semitism appears to signify
that, for the first time in the history of modern Russia, anti-Semitism has
become an integral component of the political life of the country (see
General Analysis).
During 1998 and the beginning of 1999 there were 17 anti-Semitic
incidents, involving violence or threats of violence, in eight Russian cities,
the most serious of which was the bombing of a synagogue in the Maryina
Roshcha section of Moscow on 14 May 1998. On 14 March 1999, there were
threats to bomb the building again. On 1 May 1999 these threats were
realized when bombs were detonated near the Maryina Roshcha synagogue
and the Central Synagogue in Moscow. In Krasnodar placards were posted
in December 1998 calling on the local population to burn and destroy Jewish
homes in order to convince the Jews to leave the city. There were four
cemetery desecrations, in March and May in Irkutsk, and in June and July in
Moscow. Moreover, the synagogue in Novosibirsk was destroyed and the
prayer house at a Jewish cemetery in Irkutsk was set alight, both in March
1999; and on 2 and 3 May 1999 the synagogue in Birobidzhan was
desecrated. Rabbis were attacked by ruffians in Nizhni Novgorod and
Rostow-on-Don in September and October 1998 and an Israeli teacher was
attacked in Moscow in November. There were attempts to damage a Jewish
school in Nalchik in January 1998 and students were threatened in Moscow
in March 1999.
In all of these incidents, except in the case of the torching of a rabbi's
automobile on 16 May, beside a synagogue in Moscow, the perpetrators
were never identified. Moreover, activists in twenty Russian cities who
demonstrated throughout the year, employing anti-Semitic slogans in support
of General Albert Makashov (see General Analysis) and against the allegedly
Jewish-controlled authorities, were not detained; nor were the distributors of
anti-Semitic material throughout Russia, which amounted to thousands of
articles per month in newspapers and periodicals, ever prosecuted.
Prime Minister Evgenii Primakov and the administration were apathetic to
the problem of racism, even in the face of a direct request from President
Yeltsin to confront it. The Russian government has sufficient legal means to
combat manifestations of racism and anti-Semitism (see ASW 1996/ 7) but
seems reluctant to use them. In recent years the Attorney General's Office
opened 40 investigations of infringement of the law against incitement to
race, religious or national hatred. Nine came to trial; in only one case was a
sentence of two years imprisonment handed down; several received
suspended sentences, were pardoned or found innocent. In 1998 there were
nine criminal investigations of illegal racist activity (article 282 of the Russian
Criminal Code). Three cases came to trial, none involving anti-Semitism.