How Kyiv Became the Capital of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union

• In Event: Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union after the Second World War

Abstract

In the interwar period Kyiv had the second largest urban Jewish population in the Soviet Union. Before World War II, 224,236 Jews (26.5 percent of the city population) lived in Kyiv. My paper analyzes how Kyiv, which was one of the two centers of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union in the interwar period, was transformed into the capital of Soviet anti-Semitism. My work is based on recently declassified archival documents, scholarly literature, memoirs and oral histories. I argue that rabid anti-Semitism in Kyiv after the Second World War appeared as a result of a combination of various factors. Among them was the revival of the imperial Russian Black hundred ideology, which was suppressed in the interwar period, but reappeared with the rise of Russian nationalism in the Soviet Union during the war. Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda during the occupation of Kyiv poisoned the mind of a significant part of the non-Jewish inhabitants. The severe apartment shortage in the heavily damaged city provoked bitter conflicts between the local non-Jewish population, who occupied empty apartments during the war, and Jews returning from the front and evacuation. Such a conflict resulted in a Jewish pogrom in Kyiv in September 1945.
Soviet state anti-Semitism unleashed even more rabid and violent public anti-Semitism in Kyiv. During the “Doctor’s Plot” campaign, anti-Semites openly called for the execution of the “doctor-wreckers,” but also for the exile or extermination of all Jews. Kyivan Jews lived in constant fear of a pogrom and possible expulsion during the “Doctors’ Plot.” Rumors appeared in the city that all Jews would soon be expelled to Siberia. During Stalin’s funeral radio broadcast in Kyiv on March 9, 1953, Jews avoided coming to the crowded streets, because they were afraid of being beaten by anti-Semites. Jews either stayed home or sought protection by gathering at the only open synagogue in Kyiv in Podil.
After Stalin’s death, the level of state and popular anti-Semitism decreased in the Soviet Union, as well as in Kyiv. However, covert anti-Semitism persisted in the USSR until the collapse of communism.

Author

• Victoria Khiterer, Millersville University