Antisemitism in Russia: evaluating its decline and potential resurgence

Thomas Sherlock

Post-Soviet Affairs, 2022, vol. 38, issue 3, 175-205

Abstract: The treatment of Jews by the state and society in Russia is an important measure of Russia’s civic and political character. The evidence presented in this paper indicates that Russian Jews now enjoy the greatest freedom from antisemitism in modern Russian history. The explanation for the decline of antisemitism is found in two categories: the political and the societal. At the level of “high politics,” the post-Soviet Russian state has abandoned Soviet policies that promoted or condoned the persecution and discrimination of Jews. This development was preceded and reinforced by the bottom-up growth in Russian society of a more tolerant attitude toward Jews. The first two sections of the paper explain the decline in antisemitism at elite and mass levels in Russia, underscoring mutually supportive institutional, political, and socio-cultural changes. The final part of the paper suggests that public expressions of antisemitism may re-emerge due to the weakening of the factors that have thus far restrained this prejudice.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1060586X.2022.2035127 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rpsaxx:v:38:y:2022:i:3:p:175-205

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rpsa20

DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2022.2035127

Access Statistics for this article

Post-Soviet Affairs is currently edited by Timothy Frye

More articles in Post-Soviet Affairs from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().