The first book-length analysis of how the Bolsheviks responded to antisemitism during the Russian Revolution.

Anti-Semitism was a major feature of both late Tsarist and Stalinist as well as neo-Stalinist Russian politics. What does this legacy entail for the emergence of post-Soviet politics? What are the sources, ideologies, permutations, and expressions of anti-Semitism in recent Russian political life? Who are the main protagonists and what is their impact on society?This book shows that anti-Semitism is alive and well in contemporary Russia, in general, and in her political life, in particular. The study focuses on anti-Semitism in political groups, mass media and religious organizations from the break-up of the Soviet Union until shortly before the elections to the fourth post-Soviet State Duma which saw the entry of a major new nationalist grouping, Rodina (Motherland), into the Russian parliament. The author analyzes various “justifications” for anti-Semitism, its manifestations and its ups and downs during this period. The book chronicles Russian federal and regional elections, which served as a “reality check” for the ultra-nationalists. Several sections are devoted to the role of anti-Semitism in political associations, including marginal neo-Nazi groups, “mainstream” nationalist parties, and the successor organizations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A special section covers the financial sources for post-Soviet anti-Semitic publications. The author considers anti-Semitism within a wider context of religious and ethnic intolerance in Russian society. Likhachev, as a result, compiles a “Who is Who” of Russian political anti-Semitism. His book will serve as a reliable compendium and obligatory starting point for future research on post-Soviet xenophobia and ultra-nationalist politics.

Following the abolishment of state-sanctioned antisemitism under Gorbachev's Perestroika liberalization policy, Jewish life in the (F)SU ([former] Soviet Union) was dominated by two interrelated trends: large-scale emigration on the one hand, and attempts to re-establish a fully-organized local Jewish life on the other. Although many aspects of these trends have become the subjects of academic research, a few important developments in the recent decade have not been studied in depth. The authors of this volume trace these trends using various methods from the social sciences and humanities and focusing on issues pertaining to the physical, mental, legal, and cultural borders of the Jewish collective in the post-Soviet Eurasia; traditional and modern patterns of Jewish ethnic, national, religious, and cultural identities; the development of Jewish organizations and movements; contemporary Jewish religious and civil culture; and the general sociocultural and political context(s) of the FSU Jewish life. This volume will make a robust contribution to research on contemporary Jewish (and other) ethnicities and will enrich public discourses on ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities and their current situation in Europe and the FSU.

Since the end of the USSR, post-Soviet Jewry has evolved into an ethnically and culturally diverse Russian speaking community. This process is taking place against the gradual inflation of a collective identity among Russian-speaking Jews that survived the first post-Soviet decade. The infrastructure for this new entity is provided by new local (or ethno-civic) groups of East European Ashkenazi Jewry with specific communal, subcultural, and ethno-political identities (“Ukrainian,” “Moldavian,” or “Russian” Jews, e.g.). These communities demonstrate a changing balance of identification between their countries of residence and the “transnational Russian-Jewish community”, and they absorb a significant number of persons of non-Jewish and ethnically heterogeneous origins as well. This book discusses identity, community modes, migration dynamics, socioeconomic status, attitudes toward Israel, social and political environments, and other parameters framing these trends using the results of a comprehensive sociological study of the extended Jewish population conducted in 2019–2020 by this author in the five former-Soviet Union countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan).

The author discusses the level, nature and characteristics of antisemitism currently extant in the former Soviet Union -- specifically Russia and Ukraine, the only post-Soviet states with substantial Jewish populations. The author reviews phenomena including acts of violence committed against Jews (and perceived Jews), violence against other ethnic groups, government antisemitism, fascism, radical political parties, Church antisemitism, and the fragility of Jewish institutions.

A fully-documented and referenced exposé of the Zionist lie that the Soviet Union was "anti-Semitic." It conclusively proves that in fact the USSR was pro-Jewish, but anti-Zionist-particularly after Zionism became increasingly racist, and militarily aggressive towards Israel's neighbors, and, most importantly, after the Zionist-Jewish lobby became intertwined with and controlling of, the US government. Starting with an overview of the historical background of the Jewish nature of Communism (drawing upon the British Government's 1919 White Paper on Bolshevism and the May 1907 edition of National Geographic magazine-which both pointed out the Jewish role in fermenting revolution in Tsarist Russia), the book discusses the internal conflicts in Jewish Communist circles, and of the eventual break between the socialist Zionists and the Jewish Communists. Next it shows how the Soviet Union first attempted to deal with the Jewish demands for a homeland by creating one within the Soviet Union, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobidzhan-which still exists to the present-day. However, Israel's increasing racism, ultra-nationalism and aggression towards its neighbors reopened the old split between Zionist and Communist Jews. By the late 1960s, relations between Israel and the Soviet Union had broken down, and the Zionist-Jewish dominated western media launched its "antisemitism in Russia" campaign. The culmination of this clash came in 1983 when a large number of leading Communist Jews in the Soviet Union-including Army Generals, members of the Soviet parliament and others-created the "Anti-Zionist Committee of Soviet Public Opinion" (AZCSPO). This work contains the full text of all three AZCSPO information pieces distributed in the West.