Stalin's grandson and the mad cow
By Eliahu Salpeter
Stalin's grandson is forming an anti-Semitic 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." 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 (AJC) visiting Moscow last week 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 anti-Semitic 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.
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.
Rabbi Berl Lazar, the head of the Chabad organization in Russia (which is clashing with the Russian Jewish Congress) sees the Kremlin's effort to set up a kosher kitchen to prepare a meal during the official state visit of President Moshe Katsav as a positive development. It demonstrates an "incredible amount of respect" for Jewish tradition, Rabbi Lazar declared.
During the AJC delegation's meeting with the foreign minister, Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of AJC's European affairs division, complained that the Russian authorities "actively play one faction against another" among Russian Jewry. Baker urged Ivanov to see to it that the government refrains from discriminating in its support of Jewish organizations and from intervening in the community's internal affairs.
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 anti-Semitism in Russia is apparent in a report for 2000 released last Friday 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 anti-Semites. 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 anti-Semitism, 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 anti-Semitism 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 anti-Semitic 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 anti-Semitism, 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." It is hard to imagine that Putin's fine statements criticizing anti-Semitism will be enough to alter the image of the Jew in Russia and the image of Russia in Western public opinion.
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