The year 1999 witnessed a large increase in the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents, as well as in threats of violence against Jewish people and property. There were nine violent incidents in Moscow, compared with three in the previous year. The authorities’ policy of non-enforcement of the law against evident anti-Semitism continued.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The Jewish population of Russia at the beginning of 2000 was about 385,000, following a decrease of about 50,000 in 1999, of whom 31,300 went to Israel and the rest to Western countries or were lost through the negative birth rate. From the beginning of the wave of mass emigration in 1989 to the present, 263,600 Russian Jews have departed for Israel.

Organized Jewish activity continued, often with the increasing support of international Jewish groups such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Habad, which contributed tens of millions of dollars to this effort. Russian Jewish millionaires, many of whom have key positions in local communal affairs, have begun to contribute heavily to their charities.

A variety of Jewish organizations are active in most Russian cities with a large Jewish population. They are gathered under several umbrella organizations: the Russian Jewish Congress (REK), led by millionaire Vladimir Gusinskii, founded in January 1996; the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia (FEOR), led by Mikhail Gluz, founded in November 1999 on the initiative of Boris Berezovskii; and the Federation of Jewish Communal Organizations of Russia (Va’ad), founded in December 1989 and led by Mikhail Chlenov. These organizations compete for the representation of Russian Jewry. They are to some extent divided along political lines, as in the last election campaign when FEOR supported the incumbent regime, while REK came out for the opposition.

These organizations are involved in Jewish education, care for the elderly and preserving the memory of the Holocaust. It should be noted, however, that organized Jewish activity reaches only about 10 percent of the Russian Jewish population and is not a major factor in the life of much of Russian Jewry. Primarily, the Jews are concerned with the internal political, economic and security situation of the country, to which they have reacted by emigrating, principally to Israel.

ULTRA-NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS AND ANTI-SEMITISM

In recent years anti-Semitism has become an obvious and available weapon in the political life of post-communist Russia. During the campaign for the parliamentary elections in 1999 and the presidential elections in March 2000, political anti-Semitism reached new heights. The new president, Vladimir Putin, has yet to make any declarations to the nation or take any steps to curb the activities of extremist groups (see General Analysis, “Anti-Semitism and the Presidential Elections in Russia”).

In 1999, Russia’s plethora of chauvinist anti-Semitic organizations, which operate both legally and semi-legally, widened their sphere of activities. The ultra-national Russian National Unity (RNE), for example, has branches in all the main Russian cities, and in some regions such as Stavropol in southern Russia, is authorized by the local police to participate in the maintenance of public order (see The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Post-Soviet Russia, in this volume). In addition, the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist ideology of Islamist groups in Russia’s borderlands in the northern Caucasus, such as those led by the Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basaev, Aslan Maschadov and Arbi Baraev, appears to be spreading among Muslims in the heart of Russia, where, in 1999/early 2000 the extremist Russian Islamic Committee increased its following considerably. Thus, paradoxically, in spite of the war in the northern Caucasus, which the Russian government alleges is a battle against the Islamic threat, an ideological alliance may be forming between Russian extreme right intellectuals and Muslim fundamentalists. The rightists and the Muslims share the position that Zionism and Judaism incite conflict in that area of the world in order to further economic and political globalization.

The year 1999 witnessed a large increase in the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents, as well as in threats of violence against Jewish people and property, possibly provoked by the anti-Semitic invective of some Russian politicians in the previous year (see ASW 1998/9, and The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Post-Soviet Russia). There were nine violent incidents in Moscow in 1999 compared with three in the previous year. Among the most serious incidents were several attempts to blow up synagogues and an assassination attempt on the director of the Jewish Cultural Center next to the Moscow Great Synagogue. In addition, vandalism of Jewish property continued, mostly against synagogues and cemeteries in Smolensk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Nizhnii Novgorod.

Crude, inflammatory anti-Semitic propaganda continued to be disseminated in newspapers, periodicals and leaflets, such as Zavtra (Tomorrow), Russkii vestnik (Russian Newsletter), Duel, Russkii poriadok (The Russian Order) and Era Rossii (The Russian Era). These are published for distribution in millions of copies each month (see also The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Post-Soviet Russia). The Russian Orthodox Church has sharpened its anti-Semitic tone and generally supports ultra-nationalist movements. This stand is reflected in publications such as the newspaper Radonezh and the journal Russkii dom, which are sold in churches and in shops that distribute Russian Orthodox literature.

RESPONSES TO ANTI-SEMITISM

A policy of non-enforcement of the law against evident anti-Semitism continued, including reluctance to take effective legal steps against the dissemination of anti-Semitic and racist propaganda, except for the short period of the election campaign (see General Analysis, “Anti-Semitism and the Presidential Elections in Russia”). In most cases of vandalism of Jewish property, culprits were not found, and those who were caught in the act were often declared of unsound mind and proceedings against them dropped, as was the case in the attack on the director of the Cultural Center in July 1999, and in the attempted arson of the Otradnoe Synagogue in Moscow in May 1998.

The extent of the use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon, which might influence the increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents, will depend, in no small measure, on internal developments, including the determination of the administration to fulfill the undertakings it made before the elections, such as Vladimir Putin’s letter to the American Jewish Congress of 15 March 2000 concerning the fight against racism and anti-Semitism and enforcement of the law in general.

The failure to solve Russia’s fundamental problems could result in intensified activity of extreme nationalists among the frustrated and disappointed sector of the population, leading to increased expressions of violence and attacks against Jewish people and institutions