Anti-Semitism and the New Russian Idea : Walter Laqueur
http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/06/anti-semitism-and-the-new-russian-idea/
Walter Laqueur, born in 1921, is the author of, among other books, Weimar, A History of Terrorism, Fascism: Past, Present, Future, and The Dream that Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union. His newest book, Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, has just been released by Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s.
There’s a new national ideology forming in Russia—and “the Jews” play a big part in it.
Vladimir Putin’s steely nationalist rule has raised fears in the West of a return to Soviet-style dictatorship in Russia. But what many outsiders fail to understand is that the country is still in a period of ideological transition, with a new national idea gradually emerging from the Marxism-Leninism of old. Among the more noteworthy aspects of this new “Russian idea” is the explanation it provides for the upheavals of the 20th century and the country’s perceived current decline. Unfortunately, as is often the case with such overarching narratives, Jews play a disproportionately significant role.
Home to a prominent anti-Semitic tradition under the tsars, and again under the Communist regime that replaced them, Russia has long been seized by the “Jewish question.” During the Soviet Union’s first two decades, many among its key leaders were themselves Jewish—and Marx himself, of course, was of Jewish origin—but within the party apparatus, though less strong at the top than in the middle and lower echelons, there was a great deal of animosity toward Jews.
Today, thanks in part to still-lingering consciousness of the Holocaust, open anti-Semitism is démodé. It is unthinkable, for example, to regret publicly that Hitler killed too few Jews, or to deny that he killed any at all. But underlying anti-Jewish sentiments persist and have found alternate means of expression, notably through the simple replacement of “Jews” and “Judaism” with “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Yesterday’s accusations of bloodthirstiness, perfidy, and licentiousness have, for the most part, given way to revisionist accounts of the satanic “Zionist” influence on Russia’s historical path.
The content of these works ranges from the relatively sane to the utterly bizarre and lunatic. Their quantity, however, has lately reached an all-time high, even as the number of actual Jews living in Russia is at a historic low. (Émigré Jewish speakers of Russian in greater New York may now equal or outnumber Jews currently living in Russia itself.) What explains this recent surge?
One partial answer lies in the enduring Russian fascination with para- and metapolitics, especially conspiracy theories, the appetite for which has never been met by any homegrown tradition of detective fiction; there is no Russian Sherlock Holmes or Jules Maigret, for instance. Another answer lies in the more or less complicit attitude of Russia’s current political and intellectual elites, some of whom support the anti-Semitic campaign and would even see it intensified (though others caution against overdoing it). But really to understand the phenomenon’s sources and aims, one has to delve into its inner logic. That anti-Semitic paranoia should flourish under today’s circumstances speaks volumes about the contemporary Russian mindset, and demands attention.
To survey the vast recent output of “anti-Zionist” propaganda by Moscow publishing houses would be a heroic undertaking. Fortunately, given how repetitive such works have become, focusing briefly on just one work by one author will do the job before we move on to more formidable figures.
Vladimir Bolshakov is the author of Blue Star against Red Star: How the Zionists Became the Gravediggers of Communism (2014). This is the final installment of a trilogy, the first two volumes of which, With the Talmud and the Red Star and Khazaria and Hitler, were published in 2013. The latter titles alone are weird: the Talmud was never seen together with the Bolshevik red star, and what possible connection could link the medieval kingdom of Khazaria, which briefly adopted Judaism, and Adolf Hitler who in all probability never heard of it?
The trilogy’s third volume only deepens the mystery. Its back cover announces that, in the early 1970s, international Zionism, operating through the offices of Golda Meir—then Israel’s prime minister but originally, Bolshakov claims, an ally of Communism—launched a subversive campaign against the Soviet Union and eventually became its “gravedigger.” These are indeed sensational allegations, and one wonders how such remarkable facts and world-shaking events could have escaped notice by contemporaries and historians alike. Why on earth would Golda—around the time of the Yom Kippur war and at a time of terrible danger to the young state of Israel—have taken the reckless and politically suicidal step of declaring war on a superpower?
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