|
Despite
anti-Semitism, Russia lures back Jews
Tens of thousands of Jews who fled oppression in the former
Soviet Union are returning to Russia to make the most of an economic boom, even
though a new strain of anti-Semitism is emerging in their old homeland.
Around one million Jews fled during the Soviet era and the
post-communist chaos. Those returning now from Israel, the United States and
Europe hope to use their new skills and old knowledge to do business.
"Now there are services here, like in New York and
Paris, but the lifestyle is more interesting than in either of them -- it's
easy to understand why thousands are coming back," said Yevgeny
Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress.
Hard statistics on Jews returning to Russia do not exist,
said Satanovsky, but anecdotal evidence is there. He estimates 80,000-120,000
Russian Jews have returned, plus many more who originated in other Soviet
republics.
"If you look at industry or banking you'll find
thousands of families who have come back," he said.
The Israeli embassy in Moscow estimates around 90,000 of its
citizens live in Russia.
"New Russian corporations are now hunting for managers
from all over the world who have western experience and a Russian background.
These emigrants know the language, the lifestyle, so it's very easy for them to
integrate," Satanovsky said.
GRASSROOTS ANTI-SEMITISM
But the end of the Soviet Union also gave rise to a new
phenomenon for Russia's Jews: skinheads and far-right groups who daub swastikas
on walls and throw petrol bombs through synagogue windows.
In the 17 years since Soviet rule collapsed, attacks on
Russia's Jewish population of around one million and their property have been
increasing in both number and severity, say community leaders and human rights
organizations.
Last year, they included the vandalizing of a synagogue in
the far eastern port of Vladivostok, the spray-painting of "Holocaust
2007" on a Jewish centre in Arctic Murmansk, upturned gravestones in the
south and an assault on a visiting Canadian rabbi.
"In Russia there exists 'bytovoi' anti-Semitism,
literally meaning everyday or household, which is grassroots anti-Semitism,
which is the main problem," Pinchas Goldschmidt, Moscow's chief rabbi and
chairman of the European Conference of Rabbis, told Reuters.
"This is attacks on synagogues, spontaneous attacks on
cemeteries, etc ... In Russia, we fear the skinheads and neo-Nazis," said
Goldschmidt, a native of Switzerland who moved to Russia in 1989.
Anti-Semitism reared its head during Russian presidential
election campaigns earlier this year, when dozens of websites and forums
appeared saying candidates were Jewish.
The most severe attacks were directed at president-elect
Dmitry Medvedev, who was cast as having Jewish roots and therefore unfit to run
the country.
Sites used pejorative words to describe him, asked surfers
to compare his face to well-known Jewish billionaires and said Medvedev would
favor Israeli foreign policy in Russia's dealings with Iran and other Muslim
states.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been explicit in his
condemnation of anti-Semitism. On a 2005 visit to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz
and Polish city Krakow, he said he was "ashamed" of anti-Semitism in
his own country.
XENOPHOBIA
Rights campaigners link the new anti-Semitism to the social
turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"This is a country where the social safety net
disappeared overnight," said Mark Levin, executive director of the
National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), a U.S. group.
"A lot of young people didn't see a future, and these
(neo-Nazi) groups give them a sense of belonging and community in some ways and
a structure," he said.
SOVA, a Russian NGO that tracks racist crime, estimates
there were 632 racially motivated attacks and 67 murders in Russia in 2007.
Anti-Semitism is just one strand of that: most attacks are
on dark-skinned immigrants, many of them Muslims, from ex-Soviet republics in
the Caucasus and Central Asia.
"Race-hate violence is increasing in Russia. We have
noticed that 50 percent of people in Russia have xenophobic tendencies, and if
someone is a nationalist, he will naturally be an anti-Semite," said
SOVA's director, Alexander Verkhovsky.
While a law exists against inciting racism, it is rarely
applied, say anti-racism groups. Most hate crimes are classified only as
"hooliganism" by the authorities, say campaigners.
"What the community would like to see is the full
implementation and willingness of state authorities to go after these
(skinhead) elements which are a danger," Rabbi Goldschmidt said.
Russian Jews have experienced anti-Semitism for centuries.
Empress Catherine the Great attempted to remove Russia's
Jews to the Pale of Settlement, an area on the western fringes of the Russian
empire.
In 19th century pogroms Jews were killed, raped and robbed
and their villages razed. Many fled westwards.
Later, the Soviet leadership was suspicious of the Jewish
community because of its links to a world Jewish movement that was based in the
West. In the 1970s and 80s, there was a one million-strong exodus.
AN UNLIKELY RETURN
Ari Rozichner moved to Israel from Ukraine, then part of the
Soviet Union, with his parents as a boy in the early 1970s.
"The main difference between my immigration wave and
that of the 90s was conceptual," he says, adding that his parents had
believed in a Jewish state, while a later generation left "because
supermarket shelves were empty".
"Israel has a nice climate -- it's better than winter
in Moscow with the black snow," he said.
After working in Israel, the United States and Japan, he has
settled in Moscow as an associate vice president of sales with Gilat satellite
networks. His clients include state agencies which want to bring the Internet
to remote Siberian schools.
"I have one foot here, one foot there. My family is in
Israel, it's a different life for them, whereas Moscow is a huge megapolis, the
distances are huge, to get by is not easy and life is very expensive," he
said.
But "there are more opportunities here, Israel is like
a village," he said from his offices in a Moscow suburb.
Apart from the economic transformation, Rozichner says there
has been a dramatic change in the official attitude to Jews, who once had a letter
'J' marked in their internal Soviet passports.
"In Russia now, I feel very comfortable as a Jew."
Holocaust Day, January 27, was marked in Moscow schools for
the first time this year. Kremlin-friendly Russian billionaire and Jewish
European Congress President Moshe Kantor initiated the programme with the
Moscow government.
"We are already seeing concrete steps in the right
direction," added Rabbi Goldschmidt.
|