Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union
Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union
It is ironic that the Soviet Union was painting the United States as hateful to its minority populations when the Soviet Union (and the Russian Empire before that) was anti-semitic. Interviews with Russian Jews in the late 1950s revealed limitations on religious instruction and of Jewish culture (Rubinstein 1959, 91). According to one author describing their encounter with members of a Synagogue on a trip to the USSR in 1959, " [...] it soon became clear that silence mean survival [...] official hostitlity made earning a living difficult [...] result[ing] in the virtual disappearance of Jewish cultural life" (Rubinstein 1959, 92). The author even includes a quote from one of the individuals he encountered in the Synagogue, " 'one never knows who is listening [...] government informants are an anticipated element in any congregation and an institutionalized aspect of Soviet society" (Rubinstein 1959, 92). This demonstrates how embedded anti-semitism was in the USSR because Jewish citizens feared expressing their culture and views in case a government official was spying on them waiting to punish them.
Every Soviet citizen was required to carry a passport on them, and if they were Jewish, it didn't matter their ethnic group or region of the USSR they came from, they were labeled "Jew" (Rubinstein 1959, 92). This left the Jewish population to feel isolated from their own neighbors and surrounding environment, preventing assimilation into the Soviet society. It made it more difficult for those affected by this prevelant anti-semitism to believe in the idyllic Communist society portrayed by the government. To the Jewish community under Soviet rule: "the passport [was] a badge of discrimination" (Rubinstein 1959, 92).
But, it is important to understand how USSR propaganda weaponized discrimination against its Jewish population. The government never explicitly launched attacks on Jews for being Jewish, but always painted them in euphemisms based on stereotypes, such as "cosmopolitan," "bourgeois-nationalists" or "Zionist" "war-mongers of Wall Street" (Rubinstein 1959, 93).
Examples of Soviet's anti-semitism in the 1970s, counteracting the image of equality portrayed in propaganda
The Israeli-Arab conflict sparked criticism from the Soviet Union who viewed Israel as imperialist and militant, like that of Nazi Germany:
