Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
European Review of History
Angaben zur Quelle:
17,3 (2010) 445-472
Keywords:
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Antisemitism
;
Anti-Zionism
;
Jews History 1800-2000
;
Jews
Abstract:
Argues that from the late 19th century, through the last years of the Stalinist era (1948-53), and up to post-communist Russia there has been an almost unchanged pattern of discourse that can be called anti-cosmopolitan paradigma. In all the versions of this paradigma - pre-1917, Stalinist, and post-1991 - the "cosmopolitan" is seen as the sum of all characteristics that are highly foreign to "Russian nature". This type of discourse has always been closely related to antisemitism - the Jew was conceptualized as an antipode to the Russian, standing beyond the framework of the Russian and/or Soviet people, a foreigner, and ultimately an enemy. If for the Russian Right of the tsarist era the "cosmopolitan Jew" was an "unpatriotic companion", under Stalin he became a Zionist, part of an international conspiracy against the USSR, as manifested in the Doctors' Plot in 1953. In all these periods, the cosmopolitan paradigma served to isolate Russia/the USSR from the West. Its antisemitic component was both a means of integration of the Russian nation and of mobilization against a real or supposed enemy.
DOI:
10.1080/13507486.2010.481943
URL:
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