anti-Semitism

one form of national and religious intolerance, expressed in hostility toward Jews. During the course of its history, anti-Semitism has adopted various forms—from religious and psychological prejudice and segregation, which are manifested primarily in the area of everyday relations, to policies of forced resettlement and even physical annihilation of Jews (genocide), which have been carried out by state organs. Anti-Semitism as a social phenomenon has been utilized by exploitative ruling classes toward various ends—for political and economic purposes, for inflaming nationalist feeling, for drawing workers away from the struggle to resolve fundamental social problems. Over the centuries the social discontent of the masses of people, who are entangled in religious and ethnic prejudice, has been deliberately channeled into anti-Semitism.

The historical roots of anti-Semitism go back to antiquity, when the Jews, as a result of the Diaspora, found themselves in the situation of being a national religious minority in the new countries in which they settled. By its practices in the areas of worship and everyday life, by the proclamation of the Jews as a people “chosen by God,” and for other reasons, Judaism—the religion of the Jews—marked them off sharply from the populations that surrounded them. During the course of many centuries, socioreligious anti-Semitism was the most clearly expressed form. Enmity toward the heterodox Jews was maintained in Christian countries by devices of every possible kind: churchmen charged Jews with the ritual murder of Christ, with murdering Christian children and using their blood to prepare the Passover matzoth, with defiling Christian sacred objects, and with other crimes. The social and economic motives of anti-Semitism grew out of the fact that Jews had concentrated economically on trade, usury, and handicrafts; as commodity-cash relations developed, Jews became serious rivals to the local (non-Jewish) commercial and handicraft population. In ancient times one of the best-known manifestations of anti-Semitism was the persecution of the Jews in Alexandria, Antioch, and other centers of the Roman Empire during the first century. During the Middle Ages, anti-Semitism began to increase sharply in Western Europe in the late 11th and 12th centuries as a result of increasing religious intolerance during the Crusades (on their way east the crusaders waged pogroms against the Jews); it assumed particular intensity from the 13th to the 14th centuries, as commodity-cash relations developed rapidly. Anti-Semitism was expressed not only in the segregation of Jews—prohibitions on marriages between Jews and Christians, restrictions on everyday contacts between them as expressed in special clothing or distinguishing badges Jews were forced to wear on their clothes, and special sections, later called ghettos, in which they were forced to live—and their legal inequality with the Christian population but also in the expulsion (complete or partial) of Jews from a number of Western European countries (from England in 1290, France in 1394, Spain in 1492, and other countries). Feudal lords and the church took advantage of the persecution of the Jews to seize their wealth.

Medieval legal restrictions on the Jews were abolished as a result of the bourgeois revolutions of the 16th—19th centuries. However, by the last third of the 19th century, amid the economic crises of the 1870’s to 1880’s and the ruin of the petite bourgeoisie on a mass scale, a new wave of anti-Semitism took shape, fortified by the myth of Jewish guilt for the economic and political instability of life. Petit bourgeois opposition to large-scale capitalism was diverted to anti-Semitism, which was accompanied by social dem-agoguery. The anti-Semitic movement became particularly strong in Germany and Austria-Hungary, where its heralds were the leaders of Christian Social parties (A. Stócker in Germany, K. Lüger in Austria-Hungary). The term “anti-Semitism” itself was first disseminated during this period (it emphasized hostility to Jews, who belonged to the so-called Semitic peoples).

The first international anti-Semitic congress was held in Dresden in 1882. Attempts to intensify anti-Semitism encountered resistance from progressive forces—for example, during the Dreyfus case in France. At the end of 19th century, the struggle against anti-Semitism was complicated by the spread of Zionism, which became ever more reactionary. Zionism today is an ideology , the ramified system of organizations and political practice of the large Jewish bourgeoisie, which is intertwined with the monopolistic circles of the USA and other imperialist powers. Contemporary Zionism ignores the real interests of the Jewish people; its essential content is violent chauvinism and malicious anti-communism. Zionist leaders, expounding ideas of the “age-old” nature of anti-Semitism, call for Jews to isolate themselves from other peoples; in this way they have in effect increased and continue to increase anti-Semitism and to utilize it in their own interests.

In Russia anti-Semitism was essentially a recognized state doctrine. Jews (unbaptized) were restricted in their place of residence (“the Jewish pale”), prohibited from purchasing land and engaging in farming, becoming officers, or working in the state service, railroads, or postal service; from the 1880’s there were admissions quotas for Jews in secondary schools, institutions of higher education, and other areas. Anti-Semitism was inflamed by trials of Jews for ritual murders (the Velizh Affair of the 1820’s-30’s, the Beilis Case of 1913, and others). The crudest form of anti-Semitism was the Jewish pogroms: the first wave (at the start of the 1880’s) was unleashed by reactionary circles after the killing of Alexander II, the second wave during the period of the Revolution of 1905–07. At the head of the pogrom forces were the Black Hundreds from the Union of the Russian People; behind their backs stood the tsarist Okhranka (secret political police). Later, as early as the Civil War, Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement was made the justification for massive pogroms, arranged by the followers of Petliura and Denikin, the bands of Makhno, and other “hetmans.” Russian social democracy, like the Marxist parties of other countries, had to struggle against both anti-Semitism and Jewish nationalism (which was manifested, in particular, by Jewish political parties like the Bund). Russian social democrats regarded the struggle against anti-Semitism as a constituent part of the general liberation struggle and the struggle for a democratic resolution of the national question. Pointing to the “... unquestionable connection of anti-Semitism to the interests of none other than the bourgeoisie, and not the workers’ strata of the population” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 7, p. 121), V. I. Lenin stressed that anti-Semitism is fanned by the exploiting classes, who take advantage of the ignorance of the masses; he noted the corrupting influence of anti-Semitism, which poisons the consciousness of the people. At the same time, Lenin emphasized that the struggle of the Jews themselves against anti-Semitism should not take the form of nationalism and thereby violate the revolutionary alliance of the Jewish proletariat with the proletariats of other nationalities. Representatives of the Russian progressive intelligentsia, M. Gorky and V. G. Korolenko among them, decisively opposed anti-Semitism.

The Great October Socialist Revolution laid the basis for the resolution of the national question in the USSR. In particular, it established the complete equality of Jews in all areas of life. The resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of July 25, 1918—signed by V. I. Lenin—declared anti-Semitism to be “ruin for the cause of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution” and ordered that all who engaged in pogroms and conducted pogrom agitation be placed outside the law.

During the 1930’s-40’s, fascist Germany became the center of anti-Semitism; there it was reinforced by racist theories and assumed the character of officially organized genocide. During this period, fascist groups and organizations in a number of other countries also intensified anti-Semitism sharply. During World War II, about 6 million Jews were exterminated (primarily in “death camps” constructed for this purpose) in Germany and the countries occupied by it, in accordance with plans expressly worked out by the fascist state. The destruction of Hitler’s Germany and the international condemnation of the Nazi government’s persecution of Jews (classified as a crime against humanity by the Nuremberg tribunal) were blows against anti-Semitism. However, it did not disappear in capitalist countries, although it began to assume milder forms (mainly in everyday segregation and discrimination against Jews); more rarely, it was expressed in violent forms (local pogroms as, for example, in Liverpool in 1947; burning of synagogues; and so on). The revival of anti-Semitism is usually coincident with the intensification of political reaction in a given country.

Imperialist and Zionist propaganda strives to represent the struggle of Arab peoples against the aggressive policies of the ruling circles of Israel as a manifestation of anti-Semitism.

All progressive forces of world public opinion condemn anti-Semitism. The International Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties of 1969 made an appeal to step up the struggle “. . . against race and national discrimination, Zionism, and anti-Semitism, which are inflamed by capitalist reactionary forces and exploited by them in order to confuse the masses politically” (International Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties, Dokumenty i materialy,1969, p. 323).

The socialist system creates the basis for full equality of people regardless of their race and national affiliation and consequently makes possible the complete elimination of anti-Semitism. In accordance with Article 123 of the Constitution of the USSR, all preaching of racial or national discrimination (consequently, anti-Semitism included) is punishable by law.