Blood and Soil of the Soviet Academy: Politically Institutionalized Anti-Semitism in the Moscow Academic Circles of the Brezhnev Era through the Life Stories of Russian Academic Emigrants

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Notes

Joyce, Ulysses, Book IX.

The idea of blood and soil has undergone evolution from German Romantic Nationalism to exclusive ethno-nationalism, infused with racism and anti-Semitism. See Golubovic, “National Conflicts”; Mankiewicz, “German Literature”; and Mosse, Toward the Final Solution.

Writing about elite competition and instrumentalism in the educational arena, Paul Brass observes that colleges, in particular, become “critical contact points in ethnic nationalistic confrontation for … they provide a source of high status employment for … elites and they are also an instrument of control over the ethnic group” (Ethnicity, 45).

See, for example, Gitelman et al., “Natzionalnoye Samosoznaniye … (Paper 1),” 67.

See Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed.

For information on intellectuals' self-identification and professionalism see, for example, Featherstone, “In Pursuit”; and Gross, “Becoming a Pragmatist.”

Gitelman, “Glasnost, Perestroika and Anti-Semitism.”

Ibid., 157–58.

My methodological approach is based on Alasuutari, Researching Culture; Czarniawska, Narratives; and Geertz, Interpretation. The narrative biographic analysis I use has its basis in interpretive anthropology, which involves “recording details and human events of small scale,” examining “layers of meaning” and producing “thick descriptions” (not addressed by other scientific methodologies). See Geertz, Interpretation, 3–30. The analytical strategy consistent with interpretive anthropology is that of “illustrative style” or illustrative analysis of data. See Alasuutari, Researching Culture, 50. Different from the inductive logic of larger scale and more rigidly structured research (leading to substantive generalizations and typifying conclusions), the illustrative/”abductive” logic suggests an initial examination of a social logic through literature review followed by identification of “subjective senses” and “interpretative explanation” of a general phenomenon “on the basis of the [informants'] clues and hints” (ibid., 2). This mode of enquiry is being widely used in sociology as applied to studies of national identity and its new spaces.

The data were collected through two-round narrative biographic interviews, initially unstructured and then semi-structured. For the list of questions see the Appendix.

In “The Origins” Korey stresses the end of the 1930s as the “erroneously under-estimated … watershed” in the development of Soviet anti-Semitism—the time shift when “slowly and unevenly, anti-Jewish discrimination became an integral part of official state policy” (116–17). See also Sawyer, The Jewish Minority.

Pinkus, The Soviet Government, 101.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

For this time shift see Friedgut, “Anti-Semitism”; and Low, Soviet Jewry.

Low, Soviet Jewry, 213.

Mitrokhin, Russkaia Partiia, 61–62. For information on the most popular Soviet anti-Semitic fables about “Kremlin wives,” “Tashkent front” or “Jewish pseudonyms,” see ibid., 61–74.

Slezkine, Jewish Century.

Ibid.

Ibid. Research, nevertheless, acknowledges that despite the state-sanctioned measures, not all Soviet Jews had lost their affiliation with traditional Jewish culture. See, for example, Levin, Jews in the Soviet Union; and Pinkus, The Soviet Government. In my study, however, I refer to those Soviet Jews—described by Slezkine in Jewish Century and represented by my informants—who were devoid of positive Jewishness under the impact of the Soviet regime.

Slezkine, Jewish Century, 230.

Ibid., 62.

The Russo-centrism of the Soviet Union is stressed in a variety of studies. See, for example, Brass, Ethnicity; Low, Soviet Jewry; and Mitrokhin, Russkaia.

For information on the mechanisms of post-Second World War Soviet national purification and Russia's role in it, see Low, Soviet Jewry; Slezkine, Jewish Century; and Weiner, Making Sense.

“Blood and soil” emerges as an ideology justifying national cleansing. See Low, Soviet Jewry; and Mosse, Toward the Final Solution. They show that this ideology may be either absolute exclusivity (“Germany is for Germans”) or selective exclusion (“Judenrein”—cleansing (purifying) from Jews and “Juden-Frei Deutchland”—Germany without Jews). Low (ibid.) observes that the Judenrein policy was nurtured by both Hitler and the Soviet regime—though in different ways.

Stalin as cited in Yanai, “Introduction,” 5.

In “Soviet Jewish Intellectuals,” Hoffman notes that although other national minorities also suffered from the GRC policy, Jews were its “greatest victims” (24). The same fact is recognized by Low, Soviet Jewry, 241. He (ibid., 63) also observes that the post-war purification drive was exacerbated by the “racial biological anti-Semitism” that the Nazis had “superimposed upon traditional Russian Jew-hatred.”

Khrushchev as cited in Low, Soviet Jewry, 581.

Ibid., 148.

Friedgut, “Anti-Semitism.”

Korey, “The Origins,” 111.

Gitelman, “Glasnost,” 144.

Hoffman, “Soviet Jewish,” 24.

Shapiro, “Soviet Union.”

See Sawyer, Jewish Minority; and Slezkine, Jewish Century.

Sawyer, Jewish Minority, 166.

Korey, “Quotas”; and Levin, Jews in the Soviet Union.

See Sawyer, Jewish Minority, 166–67. He notes that though the discrimination principle behind the so-called Jewish quotas “varied from city to city and from university to university,” this variability was still an essential part of the central politics eliminating Jews from elite universities and jobs.

Ibid.

Korey, “Quotas,” 56.

Ibid. See also Sawyer, Jewish Minority.

Ibid., 165.

Ibid.

Korey, “Origins.”

Gitelman, “Glasnost,” 144.

Sawyer, Jewish Minority, 163. He refers to the January 1970 meeting in the Science and HE Section of the Central Committee of the CPSU about “the removal of Jews from prominent positions in which they could affect the national security.” As further noted by Sawyer (ibid.) the outcome of this meeting was “a circular, issued by the USSR Council of Ministers concerning the undesirability of Jewish employment in institutions connected with defence, rocket, atomic, and other secret work,” as well as a seven-year estimate for completing the purification. Sawyer shows that as a consequence, Jews were denied employment in such governmental bodies as the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the Intelligence Services, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the Academy of Sciences.

Ibid., 163. See Sawyer's (ibid.) reference to the January 1970 meeting. He also observes that until the completion of the cleansing, constantly eliminated academic Jews were yet to leave the country. The Jewish emigration restrictions, as Sawyer (ibid.) concludes, were another part of the cleansing politics, as Jewish intellectuals were to cleanse the academy through their own efforts by finding substitutes among “indigenous national cadres.”

Friedgut, “Anti-Semitism.”

Gitelman et al., “Natzionalnoye … (Paper 3),” 233.

Friedgut, “Anti-Semitism.”

Markowitz, “If a Platypus,” 33.

See Gitelman et al., “Natzionalnoye … (Paper 1),” 76; and Chervyakov et al., “Ethnicity,” 10.

Nosenko, “To Leave,” 21.

Ibid., 23.

Gitelman et al., “Natzionalnoye … (Paper 3),” 67. For a phenomenology of Jewish identity as affected by Soviet anti-Semitism, see Gitelman et al., ibid.; and Chervyakov et al., “Ethnicity.”

Markowitz, “If a Platypus,” 30.

Gitelman, “Natzionalnoye … (Paper 2),” 236.

Friedgut, “Soviet Jewry,” 6–7.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Korey, “Quotas,” 57.

See Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed. See also Sawyer, who remarks in The Jewish Minority that the internal passport “had outgrown its original limited purpose of coping with a severe housing shortage in the major urban areas” (126) and became an official and state-sanctioned label for a Jew. As Korey explains, “In any contact with the authorities, ‘passport Jews’ could not escape their nationality” (Soviet Cage, 49).

Golubovic, “National Conflicts.”

Sawyer, in The Jewish Minority, shows that as a boomerang effect of Soviet anti-Semitism, people sometimes developed a strong Jewish identity—associated with Jewishness through cultural bonds and emigration projects. However, the prevailing Jews were known as the “silent majority,” according to Friedgut (“Soviet Jewry,” 3).

Brass, “Elite Competition,” 87.

See Brass, Ethnicity, 18. In this study I use his concept of identity, with emphasis on “political factors and upon the role of state authorities in influencing the development” of ethnic and national identities (ibid.). According to his theory of elite competition (ibid., 13), ethnic identity is thus “a variable,” dependent on “broader political and economic environments rather than on the cultural values of the ethnic groups.”

Chervyakov et al., “Ethnicity,” 4.

The interviews with M(X) took place in Scotland in June–August 2005. M(X)—age 48—is Professor of Mathematics in an established Canadian university. He experienced anti-Semitic discrimination during his early career work in the SAS in the early 1980s.

The word “selection” was mentioned by M(X), M(J), M(Y), F(Y) and F(Z). The interview with M(J)—63—took place in the USA, Midwest, in August 2005. He is Professor of Physics at an established US university. Having experienced folk anti-Semitism very frequently throughout his Soviet life, M(J)—who is himself a passport Jew—mostly refers to the elimination of his Russian wife—a scholar in biological sciences—from the SAS Moscow branch in the early 1980s. M(Y)—65—is an ethnic Russian, and Professor of Mathematics at an established UK university. The interview took place in England in July 2005. His wife F(Y)—61—was interviewed in Italy in August 2005. Having graduated together with her husband from MechMat in the early 1980s, she is now a housewife and M(Y)'s personal secretary. Both M(Y) and F(Y) describe the career hardships of their close Jewish friends during the late 1970s–mid-1980s. F(Z)—42—was interviewed in September 2005 in England, where she is an instructor at an Ivy League university. A passport Jew, F(Z) encountered various anti-Semitic practices in Moscow throughout the 1980s.

F(X)—63—was interviewed in June 2005 in the USA, where she is Instructor of Philology at an Ivy League university.

M(G)—half Jewish, half Russian, 68—was interviewed in September 2005 in the US, East, where he is Professor of Mathematics at an established university.

As Mitrokhin clarifies the essence of this fable in Russkaia, 66–67—though Stalin had “cleaned the apparatus of Jews,” bad—Jewish—politics was still facilitated by politicians' Jewish wives. The meaning is the inappropriateness of a Russian having a Jewish spouse.

Ibid., 89.

Ibid., 669.

Ibid.

Ibid., 72.

The term “specific package of anti-Semitic practices” was used by Russian informant M(E)—50—a scholar of biological sciences at an established UK university. The interview took place in Scotland in May 2005. My other informants—M(X) and M(B)—correspondingly refer to the “methodological system” of such practices and the “assembly of anti-Semitic tools.” M(B)—half Russian, half Jewish, MSU graduate, now Professor of Physics at an established US university, 42—was interviewed in the USA, Midwest, in August 2005. He was witness to anti-Semitic elimination in the MSU in the early 1980s.

F(W)—my ethnic Russian informant, a philologist from an established UK university, 45, interviewed in Scotland in September 2005—also describes a range of such “anti-Soviet behaviours,” used as formal criteria for elimination.

M(S)—an ethnic Russian, 63, Professor of Mathematics at an established US university—was interviewed in the USA, Midwest, in August 2005. Having graduated from and worked at MechMat in the 1970s–1980s, he told me a story of his Jewish mentor—a famous mathematician expelled from the MSU in the 1970s. This information, given by M(S), was confirmed by M(Y), F(Y) and M(G), who identified themselves as the mentor's students.

“Kerosinka” (Russian) is a nickname for a kerosene stove—a highly popular Soviet Union camp-stove that utilizes kerosene (a specific type of gas oil). Unless specified otherwise, the words in quotation marks are those of the informants.

F(E)—a passport Jew, 40—was interviewed in November–December 2005 in the USA, East Coast, where she is a mathematician at an established university.

“Dr. Iceberg” is a fictitious name for a real person.

See Mitrokhin, Russkaia, 72.

This expression is used by M(J), M(X), M(Z), F(Z) and F(E).

F(Z)'s term.

The interview with F(H)—a passport Jew, 40—took place in November 2005 in California, where she runs a private school. F(H) was eliminated from the MechMat entrance in the early 1980s and, as a result, graduated from a Teacher Training College in a Russian peripheral town, where she later became Instructor of Mathematics. She is my only informant who does not work as an emigrant academic.

The term used by F(X) and M(X).

The term used by Gitelman et al. in “Natzionalnoye Samosoznaniye … (Paper 3).”

See Ibid. for information on emotional victimization of Soviet Jews born before the Doctors' Plot and on identity among Soviet Jews born in mixed families.

In Racial and Cultural Minorities, Simpson and Yinger use the term “minority discovery” (131) in reference to the first experience of ethnic discrimination.

M(Q)—a passport Jew, 51—was interviewed in May 2005 in the UK, where he is senior researcher in biological sciences at an established university.

Sartre, Anti-Semite, 75.

F(Q)—34—was interviewed in May 2005 in the UK, where she works as a contract researcher in biological sciences at an established university.

Bialkin, “Foreword,” ix.

Here I refer to Gitetman et al., “Natzionalnoye Samosoznaniye … (Paper 3).”

The term used by F(Z) and paraphrased by others, including F(X), M(Q), M(J), F(E) and F(H).

See Sartre, Anti-Semite.

See Brass, Ethnicity. He (ibid., 45) and Mitrokhin (Russakaia) point to ethno-nationalistic networks functioning within various societal contexts.

To emphasize the central involvement of the state in the reproduction of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I borrow the idea of “licence” from Kallis (“License to Kill”), who uses the term “license to kill” in reference to the most ferocious form of anti-Semitism—that of Hitler's Holocaust.

Mitrokhin, Russkaia, 114.

Ibid., 80.

Ibid.

Voslensky, Nomenklatura, 290.

Brass, Ethnicity, 45.

Mitrokhin, Russkaia, 80.

The term used by Gitelman, “Glasnost,” 158.

See Mitrokhin, Russkaia, 101–14.

Ibid., 114.

Ibid., 101.

Ibid., 108–114.

Ibid., 40.

Brass, Ethnicity, 272.

Mitrokhin, Russkaia, 46.

Brass, Ethnicity, 272.

Ibid.

See Malkki, “National Geographic”; and Pattie, “New Homeland.”

See Golubovic, “National Conflicts”; and Markowitz, “If a Platypus.”

See Hoffman, “Soviet Jewish”; Low, Soviet Jewry; and Slezkine, Jewish Century.

Sarte, Anti-Semite, 13.

Carrere d'Encausse, End of the Soviet, x.

I do not examine anti-Semitism in the Soviet Russian periphery such as Yaroslavl' or Gor'ky. My study is about academic elite competition in elite places. In reference to the academic periphery, F(E), F(Z) and F(H) were correspondingly redirected to Kerosinka and a Teacher Training College in Moscow or Voronyezh. The lack of institutionalized anti-Semitism in such places was due to their lack of economic resources to struggle over. Secondly, their capacity to fully accommodate the Jewish talent and to compensate for previously denied opportunities was not adequate. Thirdly, research registers some institutional anti-Semitic practices even in such places—in addition to an extremely high level of folk anti-Semitism, which makes peripheral elites ready for participating in institutional cleansing if necessary. See, for example, Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals.

The term used in Brubaker, Nationalism; and Markowitz, “If a Platypus.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Irina L. Isaakyan

Irina L. Isaakyan, Ph.D. Research Fellow, Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh, St John's Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ, UK. Email: [email protected]