Russian Orthodox‐Jewish relations: A literary review

Abstract

... I should express my bewilderment at the anti-Semitic feeling which exists in several contemporary Russian nationalist circles in the Soviet Union. I would have thought that when they talk about slander suffered by the Russian people, they would understand the even greater slander borne by the Jewish people with the enforced substitution of the original Jewish culture by the Yevsektsii I •.. Even worse, if the Russian identity was destroyed by communists and komsomol' members of all nationalities, those who destroyed the Jewish identity were exclusively Jewish communists, that is to say, Jewish traitors, and this must have led to even greater demoralisation among the Jewish people. But amazingly, the vast majority of Russian nationalists take no account of the tragedy of the Jewish people: instead of mutual sympathy between these two persecuted peoples, unhappily we see more often mutual antipathy and distrust. 2