EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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Antisemitism in Russia is worsening at an increasing pace. The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) has amassed 3,000 pages documenting antisemitism across the Russian Federation since 1991, half of which have been collected in the past 18 months. This report is based on that monitoring effort, which offers a window into the grave deterioration of Russia's civil society since 1998. The consequent ability to examine systematically for the first time rising antisemitism, fascism, and the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities across the Russian Federation, especially in the 62 (of 89) regions covered by this report, is particularly important at this time of unprecedented governmental decentralization. We have observed with alarm the accelerating dispersion of governmental authority from the traditional center of power in Moscow to increasingly strong and independent provincial venues controlled by governors, mayors and local religious and nationalistic demagogues. Many of these officials, especially those who are members of the Communist party, openly collaborate with, including giving police power to, neo-Nazis, and work with the Russian Orthodox Church to persecute religious and ethnic minorities, including Jews, without fear of sanctions from Moscow.

In addition to documenting antisemitic hate crimes and corrosive political rhetoric and threats, through its 62 regional chapters and five synthesizing essays, this report lays out the interlocking official and grassroots infrastructure of today's antisemitism in the Russian Federation. The principal nation-wide purveyors of antisemitism are the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity (RNU) and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which the unreformed and corrupt Soviet-era police and justice systems fail to check. While the principal emphasis of this report documents the many faces of antisemitism, the trend is examined within a context of related issues, including government actions to marginalize and delegitimize Christian churches and human rights NGOs, and racist ethnic cleansing of dark-skinned peoples from the Caucasus and Central Asia.¹ Such an atmosphere is not reassuring to Jews who have learned that, even if they are not the immediate target of persecution, they are likely to be high on the list of targets. Nor should the atmosphere be reassuring to the mainstream Russian populace and reform-minded leaders.

The issue of Jew-hatred itself, on first glance, introduces a question of apparent cognitive dissonance because one must reckon with the indisputable fact that in many respects the plight of Russian Jews has changed for the better since the demise of the Soviet Union. While Jews then were imprisoned for teaching Hebrew, and lost their jobs and other civil rights merely for requesting permission to emigrate, today Jews enjoy comparative freedom of movement and are largely free to practice their religion and organize for the enhancement of Jewish heritage. Religious leaders of the more than one million Russian Jews point to a flourishing Jewish renaissance. A few nominally Jewish politicians and entrepreneurs have achieved wealth and influence. To the dismay of hard-core antisemitic nationalists, the mayor of Moscow has appeared at synagogues, and top Russian leaders, including President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Putin, have inveighed against antisemitism. (For instance, on November 25, 1999, Mr. Putin, in an extraordinary 40-minute meeting with Moscow rabbi Beril Lazar and other leaders of the 80-member newly formed Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, displayed a commendable understanding of Jewish religion and custom, and pledged to work with Jewish leadership to combat antisemitism.) And while, at the instigation of the Russian Orthodox Church, the parliament enacted in September 1997 a profoundly discriminatory law on religion that targets minority religions, so far with but one exception, synagogues have not suffered. The authorities, national and local, have concentrated their religious persecution on those Christian sects deemed most competitive with the Orthodox Church.

This report addresses this apparent paradox on two levels. In a period of Russia's socio-economic collapse often compared to Weimar Germany, the Holocaust-era formulation of Lutheran Pastor Niemuller remains pertinent. To paraphrase the pastor, if the persecutors come for Chechens and Jehovah's Witnesses today, they will come for the Jews tomorrow. Secondly, while the Soviets suppressed the Jews as dissidents, today Jews are subject to intimidation and terrorism simply because they are Jews.

Antisemitism in Russia is not just about Jews. It is the lingua franca of political discussion in which extreme nationalists villify reformers, democracy and America, all of which they argue are part of a Jewish conspiracy to control Russia. Just as "cosmopolitans," "aliens," "non-Russians," and "fifth column" are still code names for Jews, "Jews" and "kikes" have become code names for all reformers and for Americans. As one Jewish activist quoted in the Krasnodar chapter recently said, "As a result of the specific conditions that have developed in the Kuban [Krasnador], being Jewish is not a question of your nationality, but of your social function. Anyone can be declared a Yid." Hence we have also documented in many of the regional chapters the anti-American response to NATO's actions in Kosovo as being closely related to antisemitism. The authorities and grassroots nationalists need not oppress Jews as synagogue-goers; they simply subject Jews to intimidation through social and political antisemitism and hate crimes.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF)

As noted in the preamble to the KPRF essay, the Communist Party remains the largest faction in the national parliament, the State Duma, and the dominant party in many regions. Party head Gennady Zyuganov is a serious contender for the presidential election scheduled for June 2000 and the KPRF and its ideological allies are expected again to win the largest block of seats in the December 19, 1999 parliamentary elections.

In the mid-1990s, conventional wisdom falsely marginalized the virulence of Russian antisemitism on the theory that notwithstanding the grassroots antisemitism at the extremist fringes of society, the collapse of the USSR had all but ended "official" antisemitism. This report provides a comprehensive rebuttal. Beyond the synthesizing essay, the regional chapters document that many KPRF regional leaders, including governors who represent their regions in the upper house of the Federal parliament, are openly antisemitic, support antisemitic media (Bryansk, Oryol) or give direct or indirect support to neo-Nazi groups. Extremist antisemitic groups like the RNU and some Cossack organizations tend to be stronger in KPRF-dominated regions. (See especially the Krasnodar, Stavropol, Oryol, Volgograd, Voronezh and Vladimir chapters.)

On the national level, KPRF parliamentarians have incited hatred towards Jews through well publicized statements condemning Jews for "genocide" and even calling for the murder of Jews. As will be noted, the party's actions in the Duma in November 1998, when it blocked a motion to censure KPRF Parliamentarian General Albert Makashov, triggered an acceleration of antisemitism beginning in the Spring of 1999.

Russian National Unity (RNU) and Other Extremist Grassroots Organizations

There is a proliferation of grassroots neo-Nazi and other nationalistic extremist organizations that are developing slowly but steadily across Russia. The appendix summary of the smaller xenophobic groups and parties summarizes their activities and influence. Such groups include the Movement to Support the Army, headed by KPRF Duma deputies Viktor Ilyukhin and General Albert Makashov, who publicly threatened death to Jews; Edward Limonov's National Bolshevik Party; and Viktor Anpilov's Working Russia. The virulent antisemitism of these organizations is documented especially in the regional chapters for Omsk, Astrakhan and Novosibirsk. The so-called Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, headed by the notorious antisemite Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is an important player both because it controls a significant faction in the State Duma and because it has gained some respectability by often collaborating with the Yeltsin government against the majority Communist coalition in the nation's parliament. The inter-regional Russian People Union, founded in May 1997, publishes the infamous antisemitic newspaper Kolokol (the "Bell"), a 1998 issue of which asserted, "The history of mankind knows only two ways of struggling with the Jewish invasion: massacre and deportation." "Fatherland" unites the nationalists and Communists of Krasnodar Kray, which is ruled by the infamous antisemite Nikolai Kondratenko. (See the Krasnador chapter.)

But among the grassroots hate groups, Russia's largest and most dangerous neo-Nazi organization is Russian National Unity (RNU) led by Moscow-based Aleksandr Barkashov, one of many fascist leaders who got their start in Pamyat. Many of the Moscow-centered media and political analysts claim that the RNU is a spent force, in part because of the largely successful campaign against their public demonstrations in Moscow by Mayor Luzhkov. However, this report's regional coverage and the summary essay demonstrate that the RNU remains a serious threat that is growing in the provinces and has a special allure to Russian youth. The regional chapters show evidence of provincial and/or municipal governmental support for the RNU in 11 regions: Bryansk, Kostroma, Oryol, Tver, Yaroslavl, Voronezh, Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Stravropol, and Perm. The paradoxical fact that the RNU exists as a serious organization in a country that lost tens of millions of people in the struggle against Nazi Germany is a clear indication of the disorientation that many Russians feel as a result of the economic and societal breakdown which has followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and invites comparison to Weimar Germany. That RNU supporters can be found within the Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist Party is emblematic of the infrastructural and ideological overlap of the forces of antisemitism, whose strength is compounded by their extensive control of local government and media.

The Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchy (ROC)

The ROC is perhaps the most insidious purveyor of antisemitism and opponent of minority faiths because, as the de facto state religion, it claims to have broad moral force across the entire socio-economic and political spectrum of Russian citizens. Its constituency can certainly not be considered a fringe. The ROC's most influential antisemite was the late Metropolitan Ioann of St. Petersburg and Ladoga who died in 1996, but whose strong influence continues to this day. The church's ultimate leader, Patriarch Alexi II, is not known for making public antisemitic statements. However, he has chosen not to distance himself from, or discipline, the church hierarchy, national or local, for their statements and alliances with antisemitic groups. The ROC has also failed to take steps to distance itself from past antisemitic activity and rhetoric. Ioann and his minions, given their KGB affiliations, have flourished unrestrained, spreading hatred of Jews and other religious minorities.

The Patriarch is accountable for the abuses documented in this report because while he has exercised authority to discipline church leaders who embarrass the church or radically depart from church policy and doctrine in other respects, he has done little to restrain Church officials who spread antisemitism. In 1998, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, Ioann-follower Bishop Nikon gathered together the books of the previously assassinated priest Alexander Men and other well known liberal Orthodox theologians in a pile and publicly burned them. In July 1999, the Patriarch's Holy Synod removed him from his position and forced him into retirement at the Pechersky monastery in Pskov _ not for his blatant antisemitism and nationalistic extremism, but because of the public awareness of his homosexuality and reports of large-scale embezzlements. His security was provided by RNU members, who appeared in their Nazi regalia, with modified swastikas, for his farewell ceremony.

In addition to the special essay on Antisemitism in the Russian Orthodox Church, the report documents 20 examples of ROC-led incidents of antisemitism and attacks on Christian churches in the regional chapters. These include alliances with the RNU to be found in the chapters for Republic of Karelia, in Voronezh, and the city of Kotelnich in Kirov Oblast. The Volgograd RNU headquarters is reportedly located inside a Russian Orthodox church. The blatant antisemitism of ROC newspapers in St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Yaroslavl, Altay Kray and Kemerovo is described in their respective chapters. A typical example: on September 9, 1999, the ROC newspaper Pravoslavnie Vestie alleged that international Zionism controls the world and is leading it into the hands of the Anti-Christ.

Armed with the authority of the repressive national law on religion that it instigated, and even more discriminatory local versions of the law in many regions, the Russian Orthodox Church has been able to promote its goal of hegemony over Russian Christians. By joining forces with local authorities it delegitimizes the religious practices of minority Christian churches (even including securing within prisons exclusivity in the provision of religious service), corruptly seizes possession of their church buildings and utilizes both official and extremists forces to protect ROC property. Across Russia generally, church property confiscated by the Soviets is more likely to be returned to the ROC than to other confessions. The Krasnodar, Ivanovo, Ryazan, Oryol, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Samara and Kaluga chapters all provide examples.

Complicity of Officials in Fostering Antisemitism

Xenophobia and antisemitism, both grassroots and official, are endemic in the Russian regions and are largely unrestrained by the weak and somewhat complicit central government. The rhetorical commitment of the Federal government to combat antisemitism must be judged by its inability and/or unwillingness to control the problem on the ground. The regional chapters of this report provide a road map to identifying the appropriate targets for reform. For example:

• Two thousand Jews live in the central Russian province of Oryol. The regional government is openly tied to fascist activists, and the official newspaper of the regional administration, Orlovskaya Pravda, consistently runs antisemitic articles. After a flurry of well publicized antisemitic incidents involving local fascists, when the Russian government started its latest crackdown on extremist organizations in late 1998, the federal Ministry of Justice sent an inquiry to the Oryol Department of Justice asking for information on the existence of extremist and nationalistic organizations in the Oryol region. The Oryol Department of Justice had the audacity to assert that no such organizations exist in Oryol, and yet it suffered no apparent negative consequences at the hands of Moscow as a result of this false assertion.
  The level of impunity for hate groups is even more obvious in Stavropol Kray, a southern Russian region of 2.6 million people, including 20,000 Jews, bordering the war-torn republic of Chechnya. The neo-Nazi RNU has its strongest branch in this region and operates with the implicit support of the governor and local military units and the blatant support of the mayor of Stavropol, Mikhail Kuzmin. This past July, Minister of the Interior Vladimir Rushaylo, the top police official in Russia, paid a visit to Stavropol, where he saw RNU activists and posters in different parts of the city. He then asked Mayor Kuzmin if he was a supporter of the RNU, to which the mayor responded with an emphatic yes. As in Oryol, and despite the fact that the Russian government several times last year singled out the RNU as a major threat to Russian society which must be stamped out, Mayor Kuzmin's statements have so far prompted no response from the Kremlin, either substantive or rhetorical.
  • War, criminality and Islamic fundamentalism have mixed with Soviet era antisemitism to create enormous danger for the estimated 8,000 - 11,000 Jews who live in Dagestan. In Dagestan, parts of which were occupied by Chechen warlords in August and September, some Jews have been told to convert to Islam or die. A local Jewish source informed us that a few elderly people have literally died of fright as a result of being terrorized by thugs. In September 1999, two Jewish women were murdered by suffocation. Kidnappings of Jews have accelerated with ransom demands of between $20,000-$30,000 or more. One Jew from Makhachkala spent 15 months in captivity during which he was tortured by hunger, cold and beatings. Russian television reports that many hostages are kept in cages.

  • Krasnodar, a province in the Northern Caucasus, is the most extreme example of what happens when a hard-core antisemite and Communist Party member takes power. Governor Nikolai Kondratenko is one of Russia's most notorious antisemites. Ethnic minorities there, including 12,000 Jews, are terrorized by Cossack paramilitary units operating in cooperation with police, and Governor Kondratenko consistently blames "Zionists" for everything from breaking up the Soviet Union to inventing homosexuality. Kondratenko sits in the upper house of the Russian parliament.

  • Other regions, like Karelia and Novgorod, have strongly condemned the RNU, and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has taken the decisive step of banning the RNU (an example that has so far, unfortunately, only been followed by Primorsky Kray). Between these extremes lie the vast majority of regions, where more often than not, regional authorities are indifferent to the threats posed by fascist movements, frequently because the targets of these movements do not have enough influence to enlist the local authorities' protection. The federal government applies almost no pressure to stop this fascist activity.

  The Dangerous Rise of Antisemitic Incidents in 1999

  The appended Chronicle of Antisemitism in Russia _ May 1998 _ August 1999 lists the most well known antisemitic events of the period. The entries from December 1998 dealt with discussions about the ban on Barkashov's RNU demonstrations in Moscow and responses to the antisemitic incitement generated in the Duma by General Makashov's pogromist speeches in November. The Makashov speeches, the vote in the Duma to not censure him, and the December issuance by Communist Party chief, and presidential candidate, Gennady Zyuganov of an antisemitic party manifesto prompted UCSJ to warn that the genie of antisemitism was now out of the bottle, and that a signal had been issued from on high granting permission to normally passive Russian antisemites that they could become active and aggressive with little fear of reprisal. UCSJ's prediction that acts of antisemitism and hate crimes would soon accelerate sadly turned out to be correct.

  Between February and June 1999, the number of antisemitic incidents rose dramatically. These incidents included an escalation of pogromist political and intimidating grassroots rhetoric, cemetery and synagogue desecrations, and terrorists acts, including bombings and attempted bombings of synagogues and other Jewish cultural facilities and attempted arson and murder at a major Moscow synagogue. These anxiety-producing incidents and atmosphere are detailed throughout the regional chapters. The most thorough discussions appear in the Krasnador, Moscow and St. Petersburg chapters. For an especially chilling vignette, the Oryol Oblast chapter includes a description of the Semyonov trial, an RNU leader charged with conspiracy to murder a family to get their apartment. During the trial, a local ROC priest accused Hasidic Jews of the infamous blood libel, being members of a "totalitarian sect" that "kills children, gathers their blood, and uses it to make matzo."

  Most important is a fact that every Russian Jew understands: in virtually every case identified in this report, there has been no serious police investigation, and no prosecution or conviction of perpetrators of antisemitic hate crimes. And while such terrorist acts as synagogue bombings typically produce a one-day story filled with rhetorical commitments by governmental leaders, similar attacks against public buildings in Moscow produced a massive response. In the name of combating terrorism, war has been waged against the Chechen people and illegal efforts have been taken to deport dark-skinned internal refugees. Jews feel both edges of the sword _ persecuted by the Jew-hating perpetrators who are allowed to act with impunity; intimidated by the persecution of their neighbors.

  Antisemitism: The Undermining of Human Rights and Civil Society

  Clearly, the hopes and resources that America and the West have invested in President Yeltsin's ability to craft Russia into a pro-Western democracy are diminishing. Conventional wisdom and the media tend to focus on the so-called "big" issues: massive poverty, economic meltdown, universal corruption, theft and export of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations, nationalistic wars and, of course, Yeltsin's increasingly weak grip on the reins of power. Compared to such issues, the near total breakdown of the socio-political fabric of the country is more difficult to take into account in daily journalism or in the corridors of diplomacy. Beyond the so-called "big" issues, what makes Russia so dangerous is its inability to establish a civil society with rule of law, and the inability of the central government to maintain moral and political authority across the 11 time zones of provincial Russia.

  UCSJ and one of its partners in Russia _ the prestigious Moscow Helsinki Group _ have recently completed the first year of an ambitious USAID and NED-supported program to monitor human rights and democracy in the Russian provinces. A summary of its first annual report can be found in the essay, "Human Rights in Russia's Regions." The most important human rights problem documented is the indisputable fact that the general public fears, and has every reason to fear, the police, the prosecutors and the courts. Pervasive corruption, torture and unresponsive policing are the key culprits. The unreformed justice system of Russia continues to operate under Soviet-era codes and rules of procedure. Dark-skinned Moslems from the Caucasus are among the principal targets and scapegoats. Recognizing the direct anti-Jewish official acts and rhetoric of the State Duma, the Communist Party, the regional governments and mayors, unresponsive law enforcement's failure to combat hate crimes is an example of passive official antisemitism.

  Conclusion

  Accompanied by the near-total corruption of the nation's justice system, the forces that press economic and political decision making outward from the center threaten national cohesion and the ability of the federal government to impose uniform socio-economic as well as constitutional authority. They encourage repressive and anti-reformist trends toward a return to totalitarian and xenophobic responses to the perceived ills of the Russian society and the evident weaknesses of the government to cure these ills. Such top-to-bottom breakdown in civil society is seen in the failure of virtually all political leaders and candidates, in the run-up to parliamentary and presidential elections, even to identify let alone formulate an agenda of response in terms other than that of nationalistic scapegoating. These issues of democracy-building, human rights and rule of law -- of which antisemitism, fascism and the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities are integral components -- are convenient as well as useful indices to measure where the Russian Federation stands and where it is heading.

  The monitoring of antisemitism, fascism and religious persecution serves as a bellwether for judging not only human rights but the condition of the core civil society values of a country that the United States and the West hope to count on as a reliable international partner. The prospects for necessary and constructive collaboration between human rights and religious freedom advocates and reform-minded political leaders, including the president and prime minister, all committed to Russia's returning to a path toward civil society and pro-Western democracy, depend in large measure on such analysis, and implementing corrective responses.

  Micah H. Naftalin
  National Director
  December 16, 1999