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Nationalists Obsess Over
Medvedev's Roots
Nikolai Bondarik fears that there will be dire
consequences for Russia if the heavily favored front-runner in the presidential
election, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, wins as expected on
March 2.
With Medvedev in power, Russia's natural resources will
be plundered by foreign investors, Moscow will alienate its traditional Arab
allies, and tens of thousands of Israelis will become managers at key Russian
institutions, "including the police, army and secret services,"
Bondarik said by telephone from St. Petersburg.
The reason for Bondarik's alarm: He is firmly convinced
that Medvedev is Jewish.
"We are categorically against him because he is an
ethnic Jew and does not conceal his sympathies toward Judaism," said
Bondarik, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Party, an unregistered
nationalist organization.
The conspiracy theory that Jews are plotting to seize
power has always enjoyed an illustrious place in the history of Russian nationalism
-- and it surfaced again when Medvedev, a candidate whose perceived Western
leanings are distasteful to many nationalists, became the prohibitive favorite
to succeed President Vladimir Putin.
There is no hard evidence that Medvedev has Jewish
roots, and a spokeswoman for his campaign declined to answer a question about
the subject.
Medvedev himself told Itogi
magazine this week that he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church at age
23. He has never made any public comments about whether or not he has
ethnically Jewish ancestors....”
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