Soviet Anti-Zionism was a doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the course of the Cold War, and intensified after the 1967 Six Day War. It was officially sponsored by the Department of propaganda of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and by the KGB. It alleged that Zionism was a form of racism and sometimes argued that Zionists were similar to Nazis. The Soviet Union was officially opposed to racism of any kind, and therefore Zionologists stated that they were not anti-Semitic or racist themselves.
Contents |
Zionology was presented as a socio-political science, but there is little if any evidence that the Zionologists ever complied with the scientific method. In line with the official Soviet anti-Israel and anti-Western policies (which were the result of the Cold War), they frequently recycled older anti-Semitic libels while attempting to place them in a Marxist-Leninist context.
Zionism, the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to Zion and their self-determination there, was misrepresented by Zionologists because Israel had allied itself with the United States in the Cold War. In his 1969 book Beware! Zionism, leading Zionologist Yuri Ivanov defined it as the "ideology of loosely linked organizations and political practice of Jewish bourgeoisie, fused with monopolistic spheres in the USA. Zionism sets off militant chauvinism and anti-Communism."
Soviet leaders insisted that Zionology was not anti-Semitic. As proof, they pointed to the fact that several notable Zionologists were ethnic Jews who were supposed to represent an expert opinion. Many - including some within the Soviet Union itself - argued that Zionology exhibited anti-Semitic themes. For example, In November 1975, the leading Soviet historian and academic M. Korostovtsev wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee, Mikhail Suslov, regarding the book The Encroaching Counter Revolution by Vladimir Begun: "...it perceptibly stirs up anti-Semitism under the flag of anti-Zionism."
Some Zionology books, "exposing" Zionism and Judaism, were included in the mandatory reading list for military and police personnel, students, teachers and Communist Party members and were mass published.
The third edition of the thirty-volume Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Большая Советская энциклопедия, БСЭ), published in 1969-1978, qualifies Zionism as racism and makes the following assertions:
In his book A History of the Jews in the Modern World, Howard Sachar describes the atmosphere of the Soviet "anti-Zionist" campaign in the wake of the Six-Day War:
"In late July 1967, Moscow launched an unprecedented propaganda campaign against Zionism as a "world threat." Defeat was attributed not to tiny Israel alone, but to an "all-powerful international force." ... In its flagrant vulgarity, the new propaganda assault soon achieved Nazi-era characteristics. The Soviet public was saturated with racist canards. Extracts from Trofim Kichko's notorious 1963 volume, Judaism Without Embellishment, were extensively republished in the Soviet media. Yuri Ivanov's Beware: Zionism, a book essentially replicated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was given nationwide coverage."[2]
Paul Johnson and other historians argue that November 10, 1975 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 that labelled "Zionism" as "racism" was orchestrated by the USSR. It was rescinded by the Resolution 4686 in December 1991.
Another recurring Zionology theme was the allegation of secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist leadership. The thesis of 1982 doctoral dissertation of Mahmoud Abbas, a co-founder of Fatah and one of the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization who earned his Ph.D. in history at the Oriental College in Moscow, was "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement".[3][4][5]