Antisemitism endures in Putin’s Russia, where tsarist myths and Soviet anti-Zionism meet - analysis

Analysis tracing antisemitic tropes in Putin's Russia from tsarist blood libels through Soviet anti-Zionism to contemporary state rhetoric, including the 2011 Zmiyovskaya Balka memorial controversy, Bishop Tikhon's 2017 ritual murder theory, and state TV host Zakamskaya's 2014 victim-perpetrator reversal remark.

This analysis examines how antisemitic tropes persist in Putin's Russia, drawing on tsarist-era blood libels, Soviet anti-Zionism, and contemporary state rhetoric. The article opens with the 2011 controversy at the Zmiyovskaya Balka Holocaust memorial in Rostov-on-Don, where municipal authorities removed the words 'Jews' and 'Holocaust' from the inscription, replacing them with 'Soviet civilians and prisoners of war.' After protests, 'Jews' was restored but 'Holocaust' was not. The piece traces the historical arc from the Pale of Settlement and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion through Stalin's campaigns against 'rootless cosmopolitans' and the Doctors' Plot, to Soviet-era erasure of Jewish identity in Holocaust commemoration. It highlights two contemporary incidents: in 2017, Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov stated that a church commission took the theory of ritual murder of the Romanovs 'very seriously,' and in 2014, state TV host Evelina Zakamskaya suggested that Jewish organizations were bringing a second Holocaust upon themselves, a victim-perpetrator reversal. The analysis notes that Foreign Minister Lavrov in 2022 claimed Hitler had Jewish ancestry. The framing relies on historical scholarship and documented incidents without procedural sourcing from Russian officials.