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October 29, 2004/Cheshvan 14 5765, Vol. 57, No. 9
Kabbalist takes over Russian Jewish group
LEV KRICHEVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
MOSCOW - A leadership change in a top Russian Jewish organization is likely to dramatically change the balance of power in the Russian Jewish community - and is raising questions about the degree of Kremlin involvement in Jewish communal affairs.
Leading donors to the Russian Jewish Congress approved the choice of Vladimir Slutsker as presi-dent at an Oct. 18 closed-door meeting. He was expected to be installed Oct. 27 after a vote by the group's board.
A banker, enthusiast of the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah and a member of the upper house of Russia's Parliament, Slutsker, 48, will replace Yevgeny Satanovsky, a longtime Jewish activist who has been RJC president since 2001.
Slutsker is little known to the public. He joined the RJC leadership only this month by making a financial con-tribution of $250,000, the minimum required to join the RJC's board.
Since its founding in 1996, the RJC has raised more than $70 million from domestic donors to support various Jewish projects. The group also aspires to represent Russian Jewry on political and social issues before the government, but its role has diminished in recent years.
Though Slutsker's previous involvement in public Jewish causes is not widely known, sources in the Federation of Jewish Communities, a rival organization run by Chabad that has become the largest Jewish group in Russia, said Slutsker was one of the biggest local donors to federation projects, including construction of the group's prime facility in Moscow, the Marina Roscha Synagogue and community center.
Satanovsky has become unpopular with many RJC leaders and supporters, mostly because of his leadership style - what one critic has described to JTA as his inability to make friends.
Just a month and a half ago, Satanovsky was re-elected as RJC president despite fierce criticism by some of the group's lay leaders, who made it clear they would try to replace him.
Some critics objected to the fact that under Satanovsky, the RJC stopped supporting religious programs and saw its presence in the Russian provinces wither under pressure from state officials who favored the federation.
Most recently, the Ameri-can Jewish Joint Distribution Committee backed out of its two-year-old agreement to build a multimillion-dollar Jewish community center in Moscow together with the RJC and a few other partners.
In a statement released earlier this month, the JDC cited unexpected growth in project costs. But some observers believe the JDC was unhappy with Satanov-sky, who oversaw the project.
For his part, Satanovsky told JTA he cared about the organization so he had agreed to help restructure it.
According to a preliminary agreement between Slutsker and main RJC donors, Satan-ovsky may remain within the RJC executive structure to focus on issues of Jewish college education and scientific research.
At the same time, the selection of Slutsker could indicate that the Kremlin has managed to defeat the remaining traces of indepen-dence among Jewish com-munity organizations in Russia, although the fed-eration steadfastly maintains that it is independent.
Since Vladimir Putin became Russia's president in 1999, he and his admini-stration have given pre-ferential treatment to the federation because the Kremlin wants the Jewish community to be represented by a single voice as part of its desire to control all political parties and religious com-munities, analysts believe.
The latest evidence of the Chabad-Putin alliance came Oct. 25, when Putin praised the federation for its activities on behalf of Russian Jewry.
In a message delivered by a Kremlin representative to delegates of the group's biannual conference, the Russian president said, "The activities of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia contributes to acquainting Russian Jews with national culture, serves the noble goals of reviving spiritual and moral values, of preserving the centuries-old traditions of mutual respect, neighborly relations and tolerance."
The federation became the Kremlin's favored Jewish entity in part because the RJC was headed by Vladimir Goussinsky, an influential Jewish media mogul who was outspoken in his criticism of Putin.
Goussinsky was later expelled from Russia on Kremlin-spearheaded charges of tax evasion.
To overcome this stigma of being linked to Goussinsky, Satanovsky lately had been trying to please the Kremlin, though he never succeeded at that, said Yevgeniya Albats, a liberal journalist and member of the RJC leader-ship who was one of the most vocal opponents of Satan-ovsky within the group.
She was referring to the fact that under Satanovsky, the RJC - like most other local Jewish organizations -avoided criticizing the authorities over the arrest of Jewish oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky or over Putin's recent initiative to revamp Russia's electoral system.
For its part, Chabad has used the Kremlin stamp of approval to help spread Judaism throughout Russia.
Slutsker is believed to be close to Vladimir Ressin, the Jewish deputy mayor of Moscow, who has sought to overcome the existing split between the RJC and the federation.
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