Snapshot: Antisemitism and Religious Persecution in the Former Soviet Union -1998


(October 28, 1998)
Based on nearly 30 years of experience in the former Soviet Union (FSU), the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) has found that the extensive popular antisemitism and the failures of the governments of the FSU to respond to these dangers - a form of neglect that often borders on complicity - is a threat to FSU Jews, other minority religious communities, and democratic reform in the region. This appraisal is shared by many Russian intellectual and political leaders including President Boris Yeltsin, who in an unprecedented statement in May 1998, warned of rising levels of fascism in the Russian Federation.

Throughout the FSU, Jews continue to suffer attacks on their person, property and dignity. Although government-sponsored antisemitism exists at a lower level than during the Soviet period, the dramatic weakening of centralized control in some FSU countries presents Jews, and most of their fellow citizens, with new human rights problems. Particularly in Russia, power has mostly devolved to regional authorities, many of whom are largely unaccountable to the central government when it comes to human rights. Because of the severe economic crisis, the embittered and impoverished populace is searching for someone to blame and antisemitic, racist, or just plain opportunistic political and cultural elites are willing to exploit these negative attitudes towards vulnerable minority populations without regard for the possible consequences.

In Russia, antisemitic statements by Nikolai Kondratenko, the governor of Krasnodar Krai (region), are a cause of great concern. Governor Kondratenko referred to Jews as "Kikes" and "Kike-Masons" over 60 times in a February 1998 speech and has given Cossack organizations the right to form uniformed paramilitary units that patrol city streets. On July 23, 1998, two of these uniformed Cossacks whipped a Seventh-Day Adventist in the city of Anapa. The victim was singled out for this abuse simply because he was passing out bibles in public. These incidences, combined with blatant human rights abuses against people from the Caucasus region of the FSU living in Krasnodar, puts Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities there in extreme danger.

In Moscow, the Marina Roscha Synagogue was bombed in May 1998, the third time the synagogue has been attacked in the past five years. In Nizhny Novgorod, Rabbi Zalman Yoffe, the city's chief rabbi since 1996, was severely beaten by unknown assailants on October 15th. In May, another rabbi, Yitzhak Lifshitz, was badly beaten by skinheads at a subway station in Yaroslavl. The two assailants were subsequently arrested.

Through the enactment of the new religion law ("On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations") in 1997, the Russian government is now carrying out a policy of discrimination against religious minorities. Although the majority of congregations that have been negatively affected by the new religion law belong to Western Christian faiths, a Reform synagogue in Bryansk was denied permission to register as an official religious organization in October 1997, and continued to be denied registration into 1998. In Moscow, local Jehovah's Witnesses were put on trial. The charges against them are based partially on the new religion law and if the prosecution is successful, Jehovah's Witnesses may lose legal status in Moscow as a religious organization. Discrimination under new laws on religion are commonplace in many FSU countries.

Antisemitism in the relatively prosperous and stable Baltic nations demonstrates that this phenomena is not solely the product of economic turmoil. These countries are just now beginning the process of coming to terms with both the Soviet past and the history of the Holocaust on their territory. Disturbingly, investigations into their nations' role in the Holocaust has generated negative reactions including strong antisemitic rhetoric and actions.

In Riga, the city's only synagogue, which was bombed in 1995, was again bombed on April 2, 1998. Riga was also the site of a procession of veterans of the Latvian SS Brigade, men who were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Although the national government condemned the procession, several national-level politicians and high ranking military officers took part in the ceremony, including the head of the Latvian Armed Forces, who was later fired for participating. In addition, many articles in the Latvian press blame Jews for atrocities committed against Latvians by the Soviet regime and disavow any blame on the part of Latvians for the Holocaust.

In Lithuania, the Lubavitch-Chasidic community continues to be denied the status of a "traditional religion" and therefore is ineligible for property that belonged to its congregation before the Holocaust. The Lithuanian authorities have also allowed repeated delays of the war crimes trial of Alexander Lileikis, a Lithuanian who handed over Jews to the Nazis. Only on October 18, 1998 was Lileikis found medically fit to stand trial.

In Belarus, much of the tightly controlled state media continues to be a forum for antisemitic propaganda. In March, 1998, a program on Belarussian radio aired a reading of the century-old forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." This document is a czarist-era fabrication that details a supposed plan for Jewish control of the world.

Ukraine in 1998 witnessed extensive antisemitic propaganda during the parliamentary elections; one candidate actually urged voters not to let "Judeo-Masons" come to power. Ukrainian Jews continued to encounter numerous difficulties in attempting to get property that was confiscated by the Soviet government returned as well as stronger governmental protection for Jewish communal property. In a grave insult to the memory of Ukrainian Jews who perished in the Holocaust, a mass grave of tens of thousands of Jews in Kamenets-Podolsk was used as an unofficial soccer field and a vegetable garden. In addition, UCSJ's Ukrainian-American Bureau on Human Rights has documented rising antisemitism in the Ukrainian press. Articles in the Ukrainian right-wing press blame Jews for the extermination of millions of Ukrainians under the Soviet regime and for the country's current impoverishment. Many articles deny various aspects of the Holocaust, refer to Jews almost exclusively by the pejorative term "Yids," and viciously mock Jewish culture and religion.

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