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January 22, 1999/5 Shevat 5759, Vol. 51, No. 17
Watch out for Mother Russia
When economy is down, anti-Semitism goes up
MARTY LATZ
Special to Jewish News
The overnight train sped through the Russian darkness while half our tour group coped with nausea and upset stomachs brought on by food poisoning in Novgorod. We're not sure what caused it - only that it hit a bunch of us.
The night finally ended and we arrived - far from fresh - in the next city on our carefully planned journey. This was during spring 1986, when the Soviet Union required most groups to travel with "guides," ready to spy on us if we strayed from our student tourist role.
Much has happened since then in the region, and much of the change has been positive - for Jews and for the rest of the world. Today, however, events in the republic of Russia are unsettling for Jews. While a recent study released by the Anti-Defamation League showed that the number of Americans with strongly anti-Semitic views has dropped significantly, the opposite is occurring there.
In fact, the Russian Jewish Congress recently requested that Russian police provide special security measures for Jewish institutions in the Moscow area. This request was granted by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
With Russian President Boris Yeltsin ailing and a new president a certainty in the near future, we as Americans and Jews need to take a closer look at the economic upheaval in the Russian republic and the rise of anti-Semitism and nationalism in the country with the second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world.
We must first look, however, to Russian history and the historic authoritarian tendencies of the Russian people and the way they've historically treated Jews.
In 1772, Jews in Russia were relegated to the geographic area known as the "Jewish Pale of Settlement" and forbidden to live any place else.
In the mid 19th Century, Czar Nicholas I drove even more Jews, those from villages on the shores of the Baltic and Black Seas and from many settlements in the Kiev region, into the pale. These refugees flooded the towns within the Jewish Pale, and Jewish life there became a pattern of persecution and harassment. Czar Nicholas II and the Russian Orthodox Church later gave anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire a "legitimacy" of a well-organized and respected movement.
The pogroms began in Odessa in 1871. Ten years later, in 1881, Czar Alexander III sought to keep "Russia for the Russians" and marked the Jews for liquidation, systematically engineering pogroms across the region. Czar Nicholas II continued the repression of his predecessors, which ultimately led to the Russian Revolution in 1917.
We all know of the more recent persecution of Soviet Jewry, Jews suffering decades of discrimination despite the facade of equality.
Russians have blamed Jews consistently for their economic troubles, and it's happening again now. Scapegoating is a familiar term in Russia. Russians have also historically relied upon strong, authoritarian rulers to govern them in times of trouble. It's a mind set we need to understand as we confront the challenges from across the ocean.
This mind set underlies the rising nationalist outrage and hostility to the West in today's Mother Russia. We must thus scrutinize Russia and its treatment of the Jews still there. For increasing anti-Semitism may be a warning sign of larger global problems to come.
Marty Latz is a Valley attorney and negotiation consultant. Send comments to mlatz@negot.com.
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