From the Cold War to University Campuses Today: The USSR, the Third World, and Contemporary Antizionist Discourse

Background and Speaker Context

• Speaker grew up in USSR in 1970 and lived alongside 1.5 million Jews in around 1980.
• Soviet Jews faced anti-semetism in professional and academic settings.
• She immigrated to the US in 1990 and had not faced anti-semetism for about 23 years.

Modern Context on US Campuses

• 2018 on US campus, demonstrations on zionism occurred though not described as antisemitic, just anti-zionist.
• The speaker had heard of these slogans before and associated them with antisemitic meanings matching Soviet propaganda.

Core Argument of the Lecture

The talk focused on how contextualised Third World colonialism and a framework of slogans deliberately formed the spread of anti-zionism to the West.

Early Soviet Context and Propaganda Roots

• SU used state-funded anti-zionism.
• Protocols of the Elders of Zion was presented as a text containing the meaning of antisemitism and anti-zionist superstitions, presenting Jews as both sub-human and superhuman.

Bolshevik Period

• Lenin and the Bolsheviks came into power in 1917 and prohibited anti-semetic propaganda because it went against communism.
• The imagery cropped up again during a May Day festival in 1971, with the same crooked nose but this time marked with a 6-pointed star.

Stalin's Ideology and Policies

• Stalin wrote an article in 1913 called Marxism is the National Question, explaining why Jews were separate from society and why zionism was wrong.
• It also presented zionism as dragging away the Jewish poor from helping prepare for the revolution.
• The Bolsheviks greatly helped Jews but on the condition that they became atheist, or else they faced persecution.

Wartime and Post-War Shifts

• There was a resurgence of Russian nationalism during the war.
• Stalin only appreciated Israel for geopolitical reasons that benefitted the USSR.
• The “Doctor's Plot” was a conspiracy and also a plan to kill Stalin.
• Stalin's anti-zionism was mostly formed through anti-zionist conspiracies, such as the idea that zionists were enemies to socialism.

Cultural and Social Messaging

• Soviet Yiddish was purged.
• A popular conspiracy of Jews hiding behind a kind façade became widespread.

Khrushchev and After

• De-Stalinisation by Khrushchev also involved the isolation of anti-zionism.

1967 Turning Point

• The Six Days' War in 1967 shocked the USSR because Arab states were expected to win but Israel won instead.
• This encouraged another conspiracy, including claims that the victory depended on American aid.
• The idea that Jews controlled all major institutions became a very popular conspiracy theory, transforming “scientific antizionism” into a conspiracy science made to fight back against it.

Cultural Propaganda and Media

• Books, films and other forms of cultural entertainment adopted an anti-zionist approach that attempted to conceal itself to avoid openly mimicking the Nazis.
• Unearthed diary entries and letters suggested that extremely Russian far-right views were fed by books originally produced for the far-left.
• Much of this literature was then published worldwide in multiple languages as a catalyst for the battle against zionism.
• Soviet anti-zionist propaganda was blunt and direct.

Conspiracy Narratives

• These books and pieces of literature painted anti-zionism through conspiracy, leading to slogans such as zionism = nazism.
• One theory claimed that zionists collaborated with Nazis in the Holocaust as a demonstration of Nazi power.
• Another slogan was Israel = Apartheid South Africa.
• Different political messages aligned with different places.
• Zionism = Nazism worked for Europe.
• Israel = Apartheid South Africa worked for Africa.
• Other slogans included zionism = racism and zionism = terrorism.

Spread to the West

• Media transmission first occurred when journalist Spasnik Belgar wrote to the New York Times about the Soviet view on Jews, though it was quickly recognised as propaganda.
• Translated media was presented as the biggest contributor to the spread of anti-zionism to the West.
• Diplomatic channels encouraging anti-zionism also helped it spread, with the French doing so to the extent of being sued.

International Influence

• In 1975 the Soviets encouraged the UN to draft a bill stating zionism = racism.
• The American ambassador argued that the Soviets were inverting morality and human rights to shift geopolitics to their advantage.
• The USSR sponsored congresses, celebrations and gatherings around the world with the same ideological core that zionism = evil.

1973 East Berlin Festival

• The 1973 festival in East Berlin involved 700,000 young people.
• The Soviets linked ideas to emotional and contextual material to make them more relatable, believable and organisable.
• The international scale of the festival in socialist East Berlin was presented as impressive.
• Police mixing with hippies in “Red Woodstock” suggested looser restrictions for the event.

Student and Global Outreach

• The Soviets sent a student congress from Africa to march to festival organisers, stating that any spotted Israelis would result in a boycott of the event.
• The lecture raised the possibility that the festival itself may have been staged.

Later Effects and Developments

• Jews were utilised to condemn genocide.
• Israel's victory in 1967 encouraged a resurgence in Jewish identity, encouraged immigration and worldwide support, and helped give rise to the group of Refuseniks.
• Money was funnelled into several communist parties, helping keep these ideas intact, but in the 1990s, when the money flow became less, many parties began to change radically.

Evaluation

The lecture presents a strong argument that contemporary antizionist discourse is deeply rooted in Soviet propaganda structures, particularly through the repetition of slogans, tropes and ideological framing. The evidence drawn from cultural production, international diplomacy, and propaganda campaigns supports the idea of a deliberate and systematic spread.

However, the argument may place significant emphasis on continuity, potentially underestimating the role of independent developments within the postcolonial Third World and modern political contexts. While Soviet influence is clearly demonstrated, the extent to which contemporary discourse is directly derived from it could be debated.

Overall, the lecture is convincing in highlighting the mechanisms of ideological transmission, especially through media, education and international institutions, but would benefit from further consideration of alternative explanations and the agency of local actors in shaping modern narratives.