Stalinist persecution · Russia · 1948–1953
Stalin’s campaigns cast Jewish culture and professionals as signs of foreign disloyalty.
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1948–1953
Stalinist persecution · The state invents an enemy among its own citizens
Stalin’s campaigns cast Jewish culture and professionals as signs of foreign disloyalty.
The earlier promise of equality
The revolution ended tsarist legal discrimination, and Soviet ideology formally condemned antisemitism. That break with the old regime mattered. It also makes later persecution a reversal to explain, rather than a timeless feature of every communist belief or every period of Soviet rule.
Rootless cosmopolitans
Stalin’s late campaigns targeted Jewish cultural figures and professionals through accusations of foreign attachment and disloyalty. Jewish institutions were suppressed and Jewish writers executed. The language often avoided saying simply that Jews were the enemy, while making Jewish origin central to the selection of suspects.
The Doctors’ Plot collapses
In January 1953, the regime accused a group of doctors, many Jewish, of conspiring to murder Soviet leaders. The case was fabricated. After Stalin’s death that March, the charges were repudiated. State authority had created the supposed danger; its announcement was never proof that the plot existed.