RUSSIA AND THE JEWS

As a very special type of Russia’s relationship with the foreigners, stands out her relationship with the Jews. In the light (or should I say in the darkness?) of the West’s grotesque misconceptions about the role that the Jews have played in Russian society, the subject acquires a definite and poignant relevance, which goes well beyond any general issues previously discussed. This is why a separate entry is so very much in order.

Seen from a non-specific angle, Russia has looked upon Russian Jews just the same as she has looked upon the other minorities. Those Jews who wished to become fully Russified were always welcome to baptism in the Russian Orthodox Church, but those who did not wish to be assimilated, formed a legitimate minority within the Russian society, and only the loyalty to the State criterion was expected to be met in their case. Insofar as religion is concerned, Judaism has been one of the four recognized religions in Russia, but should a Jew wish to identify himself or herself as an atheist, no eyebrows would be raised.

It is important to understand that historically cultured Russians had contact primarily with cultured Jews, treating them with respect, as members of the same enlightened class as they themselves belonged to. (One shouldn't however seek a parallel here with what I have jokingly referred to as a "doctors without borders" situation of the earlier ages, when the well-educated Latin-speaking intellectuals, the “doctors,” identified themselves more with their learned kind across the European Continent, than with their blood brethren back “home.” Nationality, for the Russians, since the early times, tied them all around their common Russianness, hence the unique Russian concept of Svyataya Rus [Saint Rus], that makes adherence to one’s Russianness a religious duty, and its renunciation, a blasphemy.)

It is also notable that rural Russians had no contact at all with large Jewish populations, but welcomed Jews as primarily physicians and teachers, that is, as members of highly respected professions, thus always seeing them in the best possible light. It was only among certain minorities of the old Russian Empire, such as the Ukrainians, the Poles, etc., who used to be neighbors with the Jewish shtetls scattered all over their territory, where the notorious intense historical antipathy toward the Jews had developed, and could be unpleasantly referred to as group anti-Semitism.

There is, however, yet another dimension to the question of Russia and the Jews. It is a very delicate matter to discuss, but without understanding it a key piece of the global strategic jigsaw puzzle will be missing, and the whole picture will be necessarily distorted beyond recognition.

After World War II, the attitude of Russian and European Jewry (many of whom have since come to Israel, and now constitute a probable majority of the Israeli population) toward Russia (and the Soviet Union) was extremely positive. It was generally recognized among Soviet Jews that the Soviet State had been treating them fairly, as a legitimate minority, without any trace of nation-sponsored anti-Semitism, so characteristic of so many other nations. Of all those sent to the Gulag, none were sent there for being Jewish. Moreover, Stalin himself was held in high esteem, and even referred to as a “righteous Gentile” (the same honor had also been bestowed on Napoleon!), for having saved close to two million Jews from the Holocaust, by relocating them eastward, from the Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland and Western Russia, prior to Hitler’s attack on Russia in June 1941. Eventually, many of these Jews would settle in Israel, in the early years of its existence as an independent State, none of them ever forgetting to whom they owed their survival at the time when the ships carrying Jewish refugees from Europe were being turned back by the Western Powers, thus condemning the passengers to eventual extermination in the Nazi death camps.

On the other hand, there was always, among the Russian Jews, a bitter animus toward the West (much worse than it ever was among the Russian Gentiles) for the deliberate procrastination in opening the Second Front against Germany in World War II. Had it been opened in 1942, or even in 1943, my Jewish acquaintances would argue, six million Jews would not have died in the Holocaust!

Not surprisingly then, the Russians have looked upon the Jews of the world as their ace in the hole, and they have also regarded the American Jews, attaining an increasing, and these days overwhelming, control in the American political life, and in the formulation of American foreign policy, as ‘the fifth column’ of American society. I have told this story before, but its key point cannot be overstated, that my former boss at the USA Institute in Moscow Georgi Arbatov (who was himself Jewish) personally recommended to the Kremlin that Moscow’s secret weapon against the United States ought to be the Jewish Card, and that the naturally patriotic Soviet Jews were to be more frequently and decisively put on the frontlines of the Soviet side of the Cold War.

“When an American Jew sees an [ethnic] Russian," Arbatov insisted, "he sees him as his Soviet adversary. But when he sees a Russian [ethnic] Jew, he treats him as a fellow Jew, and opens up to him more than he would ever do to his Gentile American compatriots.”

…I know that the common impression in America regarding the attitude of Russian Jews toward Russia and the West is quite different from what I have just described, and I do realize that this fact is rather hard to take, but this is what I know to be the truth, and I feel that this knowledge is of considerable importance.

(As I noted in the above discussion, the question of Russia and the Jews has indeed been much broader than its ordinary implications, and its geopolitical consequences are colossal, which subject I will be returning to again and again.)