Stalin's Anti-Semitism and Russian Nationalism Explained

Introduction: Stalin's Covert Reign and the Jewish Question

The era of Stalin's dominance in Russia is often marked by covert actions, as many of his decisions were shrouded in secrecy.^[1] Yet many years of open historical inquiry into his bloody reign have offered a range of ideas about the nature of his political thought as it played out upon the population of Russia — and in particular upon Russian nationalism. One issue that has attracted considerable scholarly attention is the persecution of Russian Jews and their organizations, which in retrospect bears a disturbing resemblance to the Nazi genocide of the Jews during World War II.^[2]

This paper addresses the question of Stalin's covert and overt hatred of the Jews as it transpired throughout his reign, seeking to answer the question: why did Stalin hate the Jews? Stalin's hatred for Jews, rooted in his own brand of nationalism, was an aspect of his belief that those who opposed him were frequently Jewish and therefore enemies of the state. Throughout his years of rule, there were extreme shifts in policy regarding anti-Semitism, but the overall actions were driven by political and ideological needs specific to each context.^[3] In other words, Stalin's anti-Semitic undercurrent was responsive to the shifting political need for control over any given people or region — a response to his overarching goals of social, cultural, political, and economic domination.^[4]

This dynamic was not lost on observers at the time. As Tucker notes, within National Socialism — itself a revolutionary movement — there existed a current of admiration for revolutionary Russia. Among the Nazis there were some Rechtsbolschewisten (Bolsheviks of the Right) who saw Stalin as a true man of power and an exponent of Russian nationalism, in opposition to the international Communism of figures like Trotsky, whom they despised as rootless cosmopolitan Jews. Even Alfred Rosenberg's organ Weltkampf spoke in 1929 of Stalin's anti-Semitism and declared that Russia could not be called a Jewish state, since Trotsky had been deposed and non-Jews like Stalin, Kalinin, and Rykov were on the rise.^[5]

Russian Nationalism and the Exclusion of Jews

Stalin's belief in the need to purge Russia of Jews was only slightly less extreme than that of Germany. His chosen enemies were often drawn from groups heavily populated by Jews, and in the treason and conspiracy trials of his final years, those arrested and tried were a decidedly Jewish majority — the proceedings openly anti-Semitic.^[6] His cultural policies of reeducation and cleansing were also decidedly anti-Semitic: he targeted the middle class and forcibly expelled its members from the cities in order to remake urban life with Stalinist-educated elites and workers.^[7]

Both Lenin and Stalin took an active stand against Zionism and the formation of Palestinian Jewish settlements in the Middle East — many believe as a result of their desire to maintain a stronger foothold in the region, but also as an expression of a broader anti-Semitic view. As Stalin articulated it, Zionism was unreasonable because Jews would not stay in one place, did not constitute a proper state, no longer had a homeland of their own, and were more inclined toward assimilation wherever they settled.^[8]

Stalin demonstrated his vision of Russian nationalism as an exclusive social order that did not include Jews. He stressed Russian independence and cultivated a popular image of Jews not only as internal enemies but as interlopers from other nations who had corrupted Russian Bolshevism. His Russian nationalism had a fundamentally exclusionary character: it was anti-Semitic. In the mid-1920s he made covert use of anti-Semitism in his struggle against a Left opposition whose major figures — Trotsky and afterward Zinoviev and Kamenev — were Jews (their original surnames were Bronstein, Radomylsky, and Rosenfeld, respectively). He encouraged the baiting of opposition leaders as Jews in meetings held in factory party cells, effectively identifying his own faction as the party's Russian faction and the Trotskyists as the Jewish one. That Jews, no matter how culturally Russified, could not be authentically Russian appears to have become an article of belief with him — revealed, for example, in the quotation marks with which he set off "Russian" when referring to "'Russian' Mensheviks of the type of Abramovich and Dan." To the party, the country, and himself, his message was that real Bolsheviks were real Russians, that Bolshevism was no Jewish phenomenon but a Russian national one, and that Lenin as the party's founder and he as Lenin's coming successor exemplified these truths.^[9]

Opportunistic Anti-Semitism and the Politics of Bolshevism

Stalin's anti-Semitic policies were for the most part demonstrative of the opportunistic use of an old European standard, combined with a long history of non-protection of Jews in Russia,^[10] and a widely held belief in Jewish conspiracy — the idea that Jews, as a disenfranchised people, sought to resolve their placelessness by creating a new home through Zionism. Many scholars argue that the Stalin regime was responding to years of complaints from the European community that Bolshevism was intrinsically Jewish, and that Lenin's revolution had been seeded with Jews and Jewish sympathizers who were themselves at the center of both the Revolution and a broader international conspiracy to dominate Europe.^[11]

Stalin, and Lenin before him, had opportunistically utilized the structure of Jewish organizations to further their own goals — and to the anti-Semitic European community, this was proof of their ideological leanings. One notable example is the use of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which according to Weinryb was asked to "appeal to world Jewry and to seek to influence Jewish opinion toward shaping public opinion at home and in the West in favor of Soviet Russia." This was in direct response to the Nazi invasion of Soviet territories.^[12]

To some degree, then, Stalin's animosity toward Jews was not purely an intrinsic anti-Semitic leaning but was also responsive to the perception that Russian Bolshevism was rooted in Jewish ideologies — an idea Stalin clearly felt was contrary to Russian National Bolshevism and its broader goals. Like any other faction of the Russian population, Jews — both organized and scattered — were used opportunistically to strengthen the Soviet position at any given time, despite the overall anti-Semitic climate of the nation, of Stalin himself, and to some degree of the broader European community. Some outside observers believed that the late shift toward apparent tolerance of Zionism represented a permanent change; yet as had been proven repeatedly, once the danger passed and the regime no longer needed Jewish support, the position was reversed — or possibly it had merely been a guise to placate American and other Western interests.^[13]

Conclusion: Homogenization as the Driving Force

Building a case that Stalin's character dominated the ideologies of early Soviet development is not difficult, nor is finding evidence that Stalin himself was inherently anti-Semitic in his ideology; but demonstrating that this sentiment was consistently applied to Russian Jews is more challenging. The particular brand of Russian nationalism that shaped Stalin's political, social, economic, and cultural identity — Russian National Bolshevism — was ultimately incompatible with any separatist identity, including that of the Jews. Stalin sought to homogenize the peoples of Soviet Russia through many means, and targeted all faiths that held significant sway over populations, including but not limited to Greek Orthodoxy, Islam, and Roman Catholicism, as well as those who practiced the Jewish faith through separatist organization.^[19]

Stalin and others wished to make socialism the national religion,^[20] seeking to unite all of Soviet Russia under one overarching cause. Though in the end some degree of separatism was permitted — such as through nominal independence for Soviet states — there was a gradual recognition that certain vestiges of faith and individual identity were essential to the strength of Soviet Russia.^[21]

Stalin's anti-Semitism was, in the final analysis, a reflection of his broader scheme to remake Russia as a homogeneous nation. His particular fear of Jews mirrored that of much of the Western world and was expressed through many examples of anti-Semitic policy. It was neither purely ideological nor purely personal, but an instrument wielded in service of a larger and unrelenting drive for total social and political control.

Works Cited

Barbusse, Henri. Stalin: A New World Seen through One Man. Translated by Vyvyan Holland. New York: Macmillan, 1935.

Brustein, William I. Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Byrnes, Robert F. "The Climax of Stalinism, 1950–1953." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 313 (May 1958): 8–11.

Kostyrchenko, Gennadi. Out of the Red Shadows: Anti-Semitism in Stalin's Russia. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995.

Lumer, Hyman. "3 Excerpts — Lenin on the Jewish Question, 1974, International Publishers, New York." In Anti-Semitism and Zionism: Selected Marxist Writings, edited by Daniel Rubin, 19–81. New York: International Publishers, 1987.

Mendes, Philip. "The Melbourne Jewish Left, Communism and the Cold War: Responses to Stalinist Anti-Semitism and the Rosenberg Spy Trial." The Australian Journal of Politics and History 49, no. 4 (2003): 501.

Thatcher, Ian. "Nazism and Stalinism: Ian Thatcher Argues That Surface Similarities between the Regimes of Hitler and Stalin Disguise Deep-Seated Differences." History Review (2003): 8.

Tucker, Robert C. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929–1941. New York: Norton, 1990.

Weinryb, Bernard D. "Stalin's Zionism." Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 46 (1979–1980): 555–572.