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an asbestos factory in the Urals, Bulganin to the
Stavropol region economic council, and Molotov
to Ulan Bator as Soviet ambassador to Mongolia.
Observers remarked that the relatively lenient
treatment of the anti-Party group for its attempt
to take power was further sign of the move away
from the harshness of Stalin-era politics, when
they most likely would have been executed.
Jewish workman was unjustly accused of ritual
murder and barely acquitted, was the Russian
equivalent of the French Dreyfus affair. Anti-
Semitic violence flared up again during the
turbulent years of the Russian Revolution and
civil war at a time of general lawlessness, partic-
ularly in Ukraine, which witnessed some of the
heaviest fighting between revolutionaries and
Ukrainian nationalists.
While the new Soviet government con-
demned anti-Semitism as a leftover from the
czarist past, popular anti-Semitism continued
throughout the 1920s, focusing on what was per-
ceived as a large Jewish representation in the
COMMUNIST PARTY
. As discontent with the Com-
munist Party grew, so did anti-Semitism. Official
anti-Semitism, however, did not reemerge until
the mid-1930s, when most prominent Jewish
leaders disappeared from the party and govern-
ment apparatus. Yiddish language schools, which
had flourished after the revolution, were closed
in 1938 as part of a Russifying tendency that also
affected other non-Russian nationalities. Official
anti-Semitism increased in the period after World
War II through
STALIN
's death in 1953. The cam-
paign against “rootless cosmopolitans” launched
in 1949 was largely an anti-Semitic campaign,
during which prominent Jewish writers and
many scholars were arrested and subsequently
shot. The famous Jewish Theater of Moscow and
all Yiddish newspapers but one were suppressed.
This anti-Semitic policy culminated in the so-
called
DOCTORS
'
PLOT
of January 1953, when
rumors surfaced of the impending deportation to
Siberia of all Soviet Jews. Stalin's death in March
1953 brought about a relaxation and Jewish
intellectuals were posthumously rehabilitated,
but both official and popular anti-Semitism con-
tinued. In the
BREZHNEV
years, Soviet Jews began
to press for the right to emigrate, and the issue of
Jewish emigration became tied to Soviet-Ameri-
can relations. Only in the late 1980s did the
Soviet government relax restrictions on travel
and large numbers of Soviet Jews emigrated to
Israel and the United States. With the demise of
the Soviet Union, the 1990s also witnessed a
anti-Semitism
Discrimination against Jews on a popular and
official level became a more distinctive feature of
Russian life after the annexation of former Polish
territories in the late 18th century as a result of
the
POLISH PARTITIONS
. In these former Polish
provinces, now located to the west and south-
west of the Russian Empire, also known as the
PALE OF SETTLEMENT
, to which Jewish residents
were restricted, anti-Semitism had deep popular
roots. In most places it was an urban phe-
nomenon, but in Ukraine it also had strong rural
roots. Under Russian rule, there was official dis-
crimination against Jews with regard to place of
residence (they were limited to the Pale of Set-
tlement), landownership, education, and state
service. The implementation of these policies var-
ied, with some relaxation under the reformist era
of
ALEXANDER II
. During more reactionary peri-
ods, especially the reigns of
ALEXANDER III
and
NICHOLAS II
, the government was not reluctant to
divert popular discontent toward anti-Semitism.
After 1881, the government tolerated and some-
times encouraged the waves of anti-Semitic riots
known as
POGROM
s that were a frequent feature
of life in the Pale of Settlement up through the
1905 Revolution. Russian Jews responded
through massive emigration, and large numbers
of them moved to the United States and, in lesser
numbers, to Argentina. The infamous forgery
known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
composed in semiofficial Russian circles, belongs
to this dark period. Similarly, the imperial court
saw the formation of anti-Semitic thug groups
such as the
BLACK HUNDREDS
as a positive devel-
opment. The
BEILIS AFFAIR
of 1911-13, in which a
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