{
  "id": 19964275,
  "title": "Antisemitism endures in Putin’s Russia, where tsarist myths and Soviet anti-Zionism meet - analysis",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/14/antisemitism-endures-in-putins-russia-where-tsarist-myths-and-soviet",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-11-14T10:48:51.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Jerusalem Post",
    "slug": "jerusalem-post",
    "url": "https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-914855"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a boat trip where he watched three flags being raised over the Gulf of Finland. These flags represented the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and Russian Federation. The empire overthrown by the Bolsheviks and the state they established coexist harmoniously in Putin's Russia, even sharing the same height of the flagpoles erected by Gazprom.\n\nIn Rostov-on-Don, acknowledging the Jewish victims of a major Holocaust massacre site posed a challenge. In 2011, municipal authorities altered the inscription at the Zmiyovskaya Balka memorial, originally stating \"Jews\" and \"Holocaust.\" They replaced it with \"Soviet civilians and prisoners of war.\" Following years of disputes and protests by Jewish organizations, the plaque was reinstated, but without the words \"Holocaust.\"\n\nContemporary Russia sees a convergence of Soviet anti-Zionism and Orthodox monarchist mythology. While the state officially commemorates the Holocaust, its history is also weaponized in political conflicts. Soviet anti-Zionism coexists with the glorification of Russian tsarist and imperial myths.\n\nDuring the Russian Empire, Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement, accused of ritual murder, and subjected to pogroms. The pervasive \"Protocols of the Elders of Zion\" conspiracy theory fueled blood libels and religious hostility. Even conversion to Christianity did not shield Jews from suspicion.\n\nSociologist Klaus Holz elucidates this phenomenon through the concept of the Jew as a \"third party.\" Jews were perceived as operating across national boundaries, infiltrating societies, and controlling them from within, serving as a perceived threat to national order. The \"Protocols of the Elders of Zion\" perpetuated these ideas in the form of a global conspiracy.\n\nThe Bolsheviks abolished tsarist restrictions and denounced antisemitism, yet Stalin's regime launched a campaign against \"rootless cosmopolitans,\" targeting Jewish intellectuals and orchestrating the fabricated Doctors' Plot. Discrimination persisted, with Jews Russifying their names in some cases.\n\nHistorian Thomas Haury explores the mechanism of Soviet anti-Zionism, where Stalinist and left-wing propaganda reinterpreted old notions of a Jewish conspiracy within the context of the struggle against imperialism. However, the ethnic character of persecution was not acknowledged.\n\nAfter 1991, Jewish communities gained freedom of religious and cultural life, with the Holocaust Research and Education Center established in 1992. Moscow's Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in 2012. Historians, museums, and Jewish organizations worked to restore Holocaust memory, but the state incorporated Soviet and imperial symbols into its historical narrative, rekindling old monarchist legends.",
  "summary": "Russia officially commemorates the Holocaust, yet tsarist blood libels, Soviet anti-Zionism, and remarks by Putin and Lavrov keep old antisemitic tropes alive.",
  "key_points": [
    "Putin's Russia blends tsarist myths with Soviet anti-Zionism",
    "Holocaust memorial inscription altered, omitting \"Holocaust\"",
    "Jews historically persecuted as \"third party\" across borders"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}