In the 1960s, Soviet Jews began trying to escape their predicament by applying for exit permits to emigrate. Using “ anti-Zionism” as a dog whistle, Soviet propaganda resurrected classic antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish conspiracies for global domination. After Israel aligned with the West, however, the Soviet Union became patron of the Arab states and broke diplomatic ties with Israel in 1967.ĭuring the string of Arab-Israeli wars from the 1950s to the 1970s, the USSR accompanied military support for Egypt and Syria with anti-Jewish campaigns at home. When the country declared independence in 1948, the United States and the USSR each raced to secure its allegiance.
The Soviet government’s domestic persecutions of Jews were bound up in its foreign policy toward Israel.
called it “a kind of spiritual and cultural genocide.”Ĭold War politics made the predicament worse. In 1966, during a telephone address to Jewish Americans, Martin Luther King Jr. The government closed down Jewish schools and cultural institutions, criminalized the teaching of Hebrew, murdered Jewish leaders, orchestrated anti-Jewish campaigns in the press and in the courts, and created glass ceilings that blocked Jews’ ability to advance at school and in the workplace. In reality, it denied rights to minority populations, including Jews. On paper, the Soviet Union vowed to create an egalitarian society.
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