Being a third world politics course, the students were by self selection somewhat to the liberal left, and quite cosmopolitan. There were quite a few continental Europeans, a smattering of Trotskyists and other radicals, and quite a large group of north African and Pakistani students, mostly radical muslims. I was talking about liberalisation policies, and focused in on the example of Russia (which I had been paying some attention to). I talked about Russian anger at the way that the liberalisation had been experienced by most as a looting of public goods, and was about to say that the few high-profile Jews amongst the Oligarchs did lend itself to anti-Semitic prejudice, but unfortunately never got to make the point. No sooner did I say 'unfortunately, it just so happened that some of the oligarchs were Jews...' when the whole room made a knowing "uuhhh" sound, as in 'wouldn't you just know it'. My mistake, that took some undoing, was to assume that my radical audience would itself not be anti-Semitic, and so would be able to understand that these few high profile individuals had contributed to such an interpretation. As it turned out, the intelligentsia in central London was no different from the more backward sentiments expressed by Russians about Berezovsky from time to time.
An Die... takes issue with me, and Chris, rather violently, but I do not think he is really listening. My post was giving an example of blunt and unthinking race prejudice in the former eastern bloc. But though it is there, I think that Chris is right that it is not as systematically entrenched as race thinking has been in the west, say. I would make the distinction between casual, or backward-looking prejudice and social force.
What Andy does not take on board is that focussing on the prejudices in the east is part of a western repertoire of race prejudice itself. That is not to say that those prejudices are not there, it is just that it is an element of west Europe's anti-Slavic racism that east Europeans must be portrayed as endemically backward.
Still, Chris is wrong on potato blight. The issue was how did so many peasants become dependent on one crop - a factor of their economic marginalisation at the hands of the landlords, I suggest.