Boris Paramonov
THE CULTURE OF SOVIET ANTI-SEMITISM
With the ascendancy of
glasnost
in the Soviet Union, a certain
phenomenon has come into existence, which might have been foreseen ear–
lier, yet whose emergence now is an unpleasant surprise to the supporters of
the new cultural lifestyle. Let us
call
that phenomenon an enormous hetero–
geneity in Soviet public opinion. Suddenly, not only the liberals have started
talking but the conservatives as well - and the latter have proved them–
selves to be as aggressive and noisy as the former. I am not talking about
the official conservatives - the bureaucrats within the Party and the
administrative ranks - who are keeping quiet, preferring action to words,
putting the brakes on
perestroika
in any way they can. I am talking about
Soviet public opinion on all levels.
It
is shocking to discover that there is an
overall Stalinist orientation in public consciousness, that the Stalinist myth
seems to have survived tenaciously in the psyche of the masses.
It
is even
more significant to find retrograde leanings in people who are regarded
highly on the cultural scene. Often, they are those who cannot be suspected
simply of plotting for any sort of personal gain. They are the most sincere
kind of idealists, if, of course, that is how one chooses to define a complex
array of sentiments, sympathies, and resentments whose most outstanding
quality happens to be anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism was never a trait of the Russian intelligentsia. Moreover,
anti-Semitic tendencies were considered a disgrace among the intellectuals.
One can talk about the state-imposed anti-Semitism in old Russia - the so–
called "Pale of Settlement," a limiting percentage quota on university admis–
sions, and so on - but in the first years of the Bolshevik rule the situation
changed drastically. Not only did Jews acquire full legal status, many of them
also found themselves in the avant garde of "socialist construction." The next
wave of state anti-Semitism was the legacy of Stalin's last few years in
power - the anticosmopolitanism campaign, the doctors' trial. Yet the perse–
cutors of the Jews did not include the most respected representatives of the
cultural elite. Today, however, in the epoch of
glasnost
and
perestroika,
there
is an alarming unofficial cultural anti-Semitism. The membership of the
notorious ultranationalistic organization Pamyat (Memory) includes not only
loud-mouthed demagogues but also many people who hold advanced de–
grees.
In the city of Sverdlovsk the local opera house recently put on a pro–
duction of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Golden Cockerel." The Sverdlovsk members
of Pamyat discovered that the snowflakes falling on stage during the perfor–
mance were designed in the shape of the Star of David, which, according to
Pamyat's statements, did not surprise them at all, since the director of the
