Stalin's grandson is forming an antisemitic party. The chief
veterinarian of Russia explains in a scientific lecture that
nearly all cases of "mad cow" disease are connected to Jews,
who are "eaters of lamb brains."
According to Ha'aretz correspondent E. Salpeter, the
Russian Communist party's newspaper discloses that arms from
Israel are being used to help Muslim separatists in
Chechnya.
It is, therefore, hardly surprising that a member of a
delegation from the American Jewish Committee visiting
Moscow recently was told while in the bookstore of the Duma,
the Russian parliament, that the store had run out of copies
of the Russian translation of the antisemitic book by
American Ku Klux Klan racist David Duke, but the second
edition was on the way.
The deputy chairman of the Duma's foreign affairs committee,
Alexander Shabanov, explained to the visiting American
Jewish delegation that in Russia there is no censorship and
there is no way to ban a store from distributing a given
book.
The delegation, which visited Russia en route to a meeting
of the AJC's Board of Governors Institute in collaboration
with Jerusalem-based Mishkenot Sha'ananim, also met
in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who
often stressed Russia's desire to help in the Middle East
peace process.
However, the delegation was unable to get a promise out of
him that the new government would renew the residency permit
of Moscow's chief rabbi, Pinhas Goldschmidt, who is a
foreign citizen and close to the Russian Jewish Congress
headed by Vladimir Gouzinsky.
According to Ha'aretz, the Kremlin is trying to take
over Gouzinsky's Media-Most group, which still controls the
only independent (and Kremlin- critical) television station
left in Russia.
It seems that, along with Gouzinsky, the Kremlin is also
taking aim at the Russian Jewish Congress. Only after a
considerable effort, was the Congress' license to continue
its operations renewed.
During the AJC delegation's meeting with the foreign
minister, Andrew Baker, director of AJC's European affairs
division, complained that the Russian authorities "actively
play one faction against another" among Russian Jewry.
Russian Jewry and its institutions are now involved, against
their will, in political battles that are not theirs.
One of them is President Vladimir Putin's declared war
against the oligarchs, who include several Jewish
millionaires. The war, however, is primarily against
Gouzinsky and his former competitor, Boris Berezovsky (who
last week offered the Media-Most group a $50 million loan to
free it from the pressures being exerted by its political
creditors).
The confrontation took an unexpected turn when two weeks ago
both houses of the Duma passed a bill that substantially
reduces the immunity of presidents after they leave
office.
The law will now also limit the immunity that Putin granted
his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who is accused of various
acts of corruption, mostly with the alleged help of the
oligarchs.
The law will indeed facilitate the war against the
oligarchs. But on the other hand, it will entangle Putin in
a clash between his policies and his obligation to his
former patron.
If a confrontation over this issue breaks out, the Russian
public's attention will again focus on the speed with which
"associates" got rich during the accelerated wave of
privatizations, from which the Jewish oligarchs also
benefited considerably.
The scale of antisemitism in Russia is apparent in a report
for 2000 released by the U.S.-based Union of Councils for
Soviet Jews, which continues to monitor the situation of
Jews in the CIS:
"While in 2000, the number of more violent incidents
dropped, the Jews continue to face an infrastructure of
official and grassroots anti- Semitism, which has gained
strength in some districts where the local bureaucracy made
pacts with neo-Nazi organizations, Cossacks, Russian-
Orthodox and other antisemites.
"These groups are almost immune to any punishment, which
sends the message that neither the local authorities nor the
central government will sufficiently protect the Jews of
Russia," the report stated.
Further on, it stresses that, while President Putin is
making positive gestures to the Jewish community and even
sharply denounced the antisemitism, the brutal war in
Chechnya, the racist campaign against environmental -- and
human rights organizations and the persecution of the head
of the Russian Jewish Congress, Vladimir Gouzinsky -- "all
occurred during Putin's watch."
The depth of the roots of Russian antisemitism that remains
in ruling circles was also stressed in the AJC delegation's
meetings with the deputy chairman of the Duma's foreign
affairs committee, Alexander Shabanov.
When the delegation complained to him about antisemitic
declarations by Duma members, Shabanov responded that it
would be better to call them, "anti-Jewish."
Prejudices of this type are "marginal" in Russian society,
he said, "explaining" that the Jews are known as bankers and
businessmen because it is "part of the national character of
the Jewish people."
Thus, one can understand, he continued, that when this is
taken along with the worsening economic situation of the
Russian people, there will be some who are bound to focus
their anger on the Jews.
As further proof of this "marginality" of antisemitism,
Shabanov noted that, during the 70 years of Communist rule,
"There was an attitude of brotherliness toward various
ethnic groups."
The Russian public is welcoming Putin's battle against the
oligarchs. But among large sectors of the population
(including many bureaucrats) no distinction is made between
oligarchs as a phenomenon identified with the hasty economic
privatization process, and the Gouzinskys, Berezovskys and
Abramoviches identified with "the national character of the
Jewish people."
