The February Revolution in Russia officially ended a centuries-old regime of antisemitism in the Russian Empire, legally abolishing the Pale of Settlement.
After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed.
[5] Under the Tsars, Jews – who numbered approximately 5 million in the Russian Empire in the 1880s, and mostly lived in poverty – had been confined to a Pale of Settlement, where they experienced prejudice and persecution,[6] often in the form of discriminatory laws, and they had often been the victims of pogroms,[1] many of which were either organized or tacitly approved of by the Tsarist authorities.
[11] In March 1919, Lenin delivered a speech "On Anti-Jewish Pogroms"[12] where he denounced antisemitism as an "attempt to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants from the exploiters toward the Jews".
[16] Information campaigns against antisemitism were conducted in the Red Army and in the workplaces, and a provision forbidding the incitement of propaganda against any ethnicity became part of Soviet law.
[18] Joseph Stalin was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Union following a power struggle with Leon Trotsky after Lenin's death.
[23] Since 1936, in the show trial of "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center", the suspects, prominent Bolshevik leaders, were accused of hiding their Jewish origins under Slavic names.
The move opened Stalin's way to close ties with the Nazi state, as well as a quiet campaign removing Jews in high Soviet positions.
Despite this, some historians have cast doubt on the historicity of this plot in many ways including pointing to the lack of written sources in documents from Stalin's time which were declassified.
[34] Jewish emigration to Israel and the United States, which had been allowed in limited amounts under the rule of Khrushchev, once more became heavily restricted, primarily due to concerns that Jews were a security liability or treasonous.
[35] Would-be emigrants, or refuseniks, often required a vyzov, or special invitation from a relative living abroad, for their application to be even considered by the Soviet authorities.
[38] Immediately following the Six-Day War in 1967, the antisemitic conditions started causing desire to emigrate to Israel for many Soviet Jews.
[39]Within the week he was called in to the KGB bureau and without questioning, was taken to a mental institution in his hometown of Kiev (for more information, see: Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union).
[41] The article contained traces of deep-rooted antisemitism in which the anonymous author, a member of the Russian Liberation Organization, set out ways to identify Zionists; these included "hairy chest and arms", "shifty eyes", and a "hook-like nose".
[42] A major stride was made in the United States in regards to helping the Soviet Jews on 18 October 1974, when Senator Henry M. Jackson, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Senator Jacob Javits and Congressman Charles Vanik met to discuss the finalization of the "Jackson–Vanik amendment" which had been in limbo in the United States Congress for nearly a year.
[43] After the meeting, Jackson told reporters that a "historic understanding in the area of human rights" had been met and while he did not "comment on what the Russians have done [...] there [had] been a complete turnaround here on the basic points".
[44] For decades, people of different ethnic, or religious backgrounds were assimilated into Soviet society and denied the ability or resources to get the education or practice their religion as they had previously done.
[44] Brezhnev made it official Soviet Policy to provide these ethnic groups with these "requirements" and cited a fear of the "emergence of inter-ethnic tensions" as the reason.
[45] At this time the Soviet Union was feeling pressure from around the world to solve many human rights violations that were taking place within their borders, and the statement responded to the inquiries of countries such as Australia and Belgium.
[47] Mikhail Savitsky's 1979 painting, Summer Theatre, depicted a Nazi extermination camp guard and Jewish prisoner grinning between a pile of Russian corpses.
In some cases, the participants were attracted primarily by the aesthetics of Nazism (rituals, parades, uniforms, the cult of physical fitness, architecture).
In the 1970s, Yemelyanov wrote the book Dezionization, first published in 1979 in Arabic in Syria in the Al-Baʽath newspaper at the behest of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.
Yemelyanov began to accuse a wide range of people of "Zionism", including the ruling elite, headed by Leonid Brezhnev.
To maintain order and fight crime, authoritarian power must rely on "people's druzhinas" (analogue of the "Black Hundreds") beyond the jurisdiction of any law.
The author put forward demands to combat the "infringement of the rights of the Russian people" and "Jewish monopoly in science and culture", "biological degeneration of the white race" due to the spread of "democratic cosmopolitan ideas", "accidental hybridization" of races, a call for a "national revolution", after which "real Russians by blood and spirit" should become the ruling nation.
At the end of 1971, a text entitled "Letter to Solzhenitsyn" signed in the name of "Ivan Samolvin", but written by Yemelyanov, was also distributed in samizdat.
He revered Hitler and Heinrich Himmler and propagated racial and antisemitic theories in a narrow circle of his students, calling for the deliverance of mankind from "inferior offspring", allegedly arising from interracial marriages.
He called such "inferior people" "bastards", referred to them as "Zhyds, Indians or gypsies and mulattoes" and believed that they prevent society from achieving social justice.
Bezverkhy developed the theory of "Vedism", according to which, in particular: "all peoples will be sifted through a sieve of racial identity, the Aryans will be united, Asian, African and Indian elements will be put in their place, and the mulattoes will be eliminated as unnecessary.