Zhyd

[1][5] On December 4, 1762 Empress Catherine II issued a manifesto permitting all foreigners to travel and to settle in Russia, adding kromye zhydov ("except the Jews").

[6] In the legislative enactments of the last decade of Catherine's reign the term zhyd was replaced by еврей yevrey, "Hebrew".

[8][9][10] Nikita Khrushchev commented on the term in his memoirs:[11] "I remember that once we invited Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles...to a meeting at the Lvov [sic] opera house.

It struck me as very strange to hear the Jewish speakers at the meeting refer to themselves as 'yids'.… "We yids hereby declare ourselves in favor of such-and-such."

[12][13][nb 1] The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice declared that Miroshnichenko's use of the word was legal because it is an archaic term for Jew and not necessarily a slur.

[12] In a letter of protest directed to then-Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov, the term Zhydovka was described by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center as an "insidious slur invoked by the Nazis and their collaborators as they rounded up the Jews to murder them at Babi Yar and in the death camps.