This edited volume examines antisemitism within Soviet social and political life. Expert contributors based in eight countries define the characteristics of anti-Jewish prejudice in the USSR by foregrounding Jewish experiences and elucidating the ways in which antisemitism intersected with repression of non-Jewish groups.
Defining Soviet Antisemitism spans a variety of approaches, from empirically based case studies to methodological reflections and 'state of the field' retrospectives. Geographically, these analyses range from Riga, Vilnius, and Minsk through Moscow and Kharkiv to the Soviet Far East. In particular, the book grapples with received wisdom that tends to interpret anti-Jewish policies through a single explanatory lens. Intellectual siloing of Jewish, Soviet, and post-Soviet national studies has perpetuated existing gaps in knowledge. To challenge this status quo, the volume presents a mosaic that reveals what was specifically 'Soviet' about Soviet antisemitism, and how its diverse manifestations shaped the daily lives of ordinary Soviet Jews.
With the nature of antisemitism and its relation to anti-Israel sentiments increasingly hotly debated, Defining Soviet Antisemitism returns us to the notorious case of Soviet antisemitism and sheds new light on how to distinguish and understand both top-down and bottom-up prejudice that targets Jews as such.