A top leader of Russia's Jewish community said on Wednesday President Vladimir Putin had sent out a clear signal against official anti-Semitism in a country with a long history of persecuting Jews.
Berl Lazar, one of the country's two competing chief rabbis, said Putin – who is heavily favoured to win a second term in office next year – had sent out a clear signal to officials by making high-profile visits to Jewish events. "It is clear that it was the president who launched this change of attitude by turning up at the opening of our community centre, then at the Jewish festival," Lazar said.
Lazar also brushed aside suggestions that legal troubles besetting some of Russia's powerful "oligarchs" – post-Soviet billionaires – were linked to their Jewish origins. "Never before have Jews in Russia felt so confident and been so optimistic about their future here," Lazar told reporters.
Good-humoured and affable in his traditional black brimmed hat, the Italian-born cleric said the situation had changed most noticeably over the past few months.
Anti-Semitism has a long history in Russia, dating back to tsarist times when Jews were confined to a "pale of settlement", banned from big cities and subjected to attacks by Cossack gangs – which gave the world the Russian word "pogrom".
In the Soviet era, Jews were viewed as suspect in their loyalties and frequently barred from universities or sensitive jobs. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, they began streaming out of Russia to Israel, Western Europe and the United States. The situation has changed for Russia's Jewish community, which is estimated to number just under a million and plays an important role in public and cultural life.
Though no firm statistics exist, Lazar said that up to 120,000 emigrants may have returned to Russia in recent years. Most come from Israel to try their luck in what has become a boom for some of Russia's entrepreneurial class.
Lazar, who only last year had urged authorities to do more to stamp out hate attacks on Jews, said Putin's message had been well received by ordinary Russian who had traditionally held less serious animosity towards Jews than others in Europe. The number of attacks on Jews has halved over the last nine months, he said.
Lazar, who spent many years in the United States, clearly has Putin's ear and receives invitations to the Kremlin – unlike Russia's other chief rabbi Adolf Shayevich, who has held his post since the Soviet era. Lazar said his conversations with Putin had led him to believe the Kremlin leader was genuinely interested in securing a future for Russian Jews.
"Yeltsin ignored the issue of anti-Semitism, it was a taboo word during his tenure," Lazar said of Putin's predecessor, Russia's first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin. "Today the president is ready to fight to eradicate it."
Lazar also rejected suggestions there was any anti-Semitic overtones to a row pitting the Kremlin against the head of Russia's oil major YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He said Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, had assured him his Jewish background had played no role in the affair.
Nor did Lazar see any such undertones in the misfortunes of two other Jewish "oligarchs", Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, who became wealthy in dubious post-Soviet selloffs of industry but later fell foul of the Kremlin and fled Russia. //Reuters
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