A Look at Soviet Antisemitism

“We consider the Soviet Union to be the most dangerous source of antisemitism in the world today,” said Burton Joseph, the moderator of the National Conference on Soviet Anti-Semitism, in his opening remarks. William Korey, the Director of International Policy Research for B’nai B’rith, then undertook to show why. The current Soviet campaign began in August 1967, two months after the Six Day War, with an article appearing in all the major provincial papers entitled “What is Zionism?” “A wide network of Zionist organizations,” the article declared, “with a common center, a common program, and funds exceeding by far the funds of the Mafia ‘Cosa Nostra,’ is active behind the scenes of the international theater.”

Soviet writers, at least at first, professed to distinguish between Zionists and Jews. But over the years, the distinction has blurred, until now it is fairly commonly asserted that the noxious elements of Zionism spring directly from Jewish beliefs. Trofim Kichko’s Judaism and Zionism, published in 1968 in an edition of sixty thousand copies, declared that “the ‘Holy’ Scriptures teach the observant Jews to hate people of another faith and even destroy them”; while Vladimir Begun’s book The Creeping Counter-Revolution (1974, 25,000 copies) branded the Torah “an unsurpassed textbook of bloodthirstiness, hypocrisy, . . . and moral degeneracy.”

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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“We consider the Soviet Union to be the most dangerous source of antisemitism in the world today,” said Burton Joseph, the moderator of the National Conference on Soviet Anti-Semitism, in his opening remarks. William Korey, the Director of International Policy Research for B’nai B’rith, then undertook to show why. The current Soviet campaign began in August 1967, two months after the Six Day War, with an article appearing in all the major provincial papers entitled “What is Zionism?” “A wide network of Zionist organizations,” the article declared, “with a common center, a common program, and funds exceeding by far the funds of the Mafia ‘Cosa Nostra,’ is active behind the scenes of the international theater.”

Soviet writers, at least at first, professed to distinguish between Zionists and Jews. But over the years, the distinction has blurred, until now it is fairly commonly asserted that the noxious elements of Zionism spring directly from Jewish beliefs. Trofim Kichko’s Judaism and Zionism, published in 1968 in an edition of sixty thousand copies, declared that “the ‘Holy’ Scriptures teach the observant Jews to hate people of another faith and even destroy them”; while Vladimir Begun’s book The Creeping Counter-Revolution (1974, 25,000 copies) branded the Torah “an unsurpassed textbook of bloodthirstiness, hypocrisy, . . . and moral degeneracy.”