Per Anders Rudling
Organized Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Ukraine:
Structure, Influence and Ideology*
ABSTRACT: In the wake of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has witnessed a substantial
growth in organized anti-Semitism. Central to this development is an organization,
known as the Interregional Academy of Human Resources, better known by its Ukrainian
acronym MAUP. It operates a well-connected political network that reaches the very top
of the Ukrainian society. MAUP is the largest private university in Ukraine, with 57,000
students at 24 regional campuses. MAUP is connected to the KKK; David Duke is
teaching courses in history and international relations at the university. Funded by Saudi
Arabia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s printing house publishes about 85% of the anti-Semitic
literature in Ukraine. Until very recently, Ukrainian President Yushchenko and Foreign
Minister Tarasiuk served on its board; former President Kravchuk still does. This paper is
a study of anti-Semitism in Ukraine, of its intellectual roots, influence and strength. It
traces the Soviet, Christian, German and racist political traditions and outlines the
political ambitions of organized anti-Semitism in post-Orange Revolution Ukraine.
On August 28, 2005, a Jewish student in Kyiv was beaten and left for dead after
leaving his synagogue to buy food. Thirty-two-year-old Mordechai Molozhanov
was long in a coma, before being flown to Tel Aviv for brain surgery. At the
time of writing, it is not clear whether he will survive. 1 The small Jewish
community in Ukraine has been struggling to raise public awareness on the
sharp rise in anti-Semitic propaganda and violence in that country.2 Repeatedly,
the Jewish community has called on the leaders of Ukraine to disassociate
*
The author wishes to thank Stephanie Miller, graduate student at Harvard University,
Professors John-Paul Himka and David Marples at the University of Alberta for
inspiration, suggestions and encouragement. Special thanks also to Ilya Khineyko, Ph.D.
candidate, University of Alberta. This article was made possible thanks to a Summer
FLAS Scholarship from the U.S. State Department and the generous support of Professor
Jane Samson, University of Alberta.
1
“More anti-Semitism,” Editorial, Kyiv Post 31 Aug. 2005; “Yushchenko Condemns
Anti-Semitism but calls it No Problem,” Bigotry Monitor: A Weekly Human Rights
Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former
Communist World and Western Europe [published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews
in the Former Soviet Union] 5.37 (23 Sept. 2005).
2
“US Senate Repeals Trade Restrictions Linking Ukraine’s Treatment of Jews—Worries
Persist about Anti-Semitism,” European Jewish Congress 18 Nov. 2005.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
82 PER ANDERS RUDLING
themselves from, and crack down on anti-Semitic3 propaganda. Until now, the
response from the Ukrainian leadership has often been slow and half-hearted.
“Manifestations of anti-Semitism worry the authorities no more than last year’s
snow,” according to professor Oleksandr Naiman, who has specialized in anti-
Semitism in Ukraine.4 Anti-Semitism has been treated as if it is not a serious
problems but rather a marginal phenomenon at the fringes of society. “There is
no such problem as antisemitism or other manifestations of xenophobia in
Ukraine,” President Yushchenko stated on September 18, 2005, but added that
he would “treat the problem of antisemitism attentively and responsibly.”5
The aim here is to shed light on manifestations of contemporary anti-
Semitism in Ukraine. Contrary to claims often voiced by diaspora groups and
the Ukrainian government, this paper argues that anti-Semitism is more
widespread than officially acknowledged. Moreover, I argue that this is a
growing problem,6 and that aggressive anti-Semites constitute a well-organized
and influential lobby with connections and influences that reaches the very top
of society. My approach has been to analyze a number of writers, representative
of contemporary anti-Semitism in Ukraine and to give a general idea of the
arguments they promote. I will also discuss the centrality of the well-funded and
powerful organization to which many of them are connected. One aspect of this
anti-Semitic victimization is that it denies almost all Ukrainian agency. If the
reader is to believe the selection of anti-Semitic literature offered by the book
3
The word anti-Semitism is an ambiguous and problematic term. It is attributed to the
German politician Wilhelm Marr, who in 1878 started to use the term in an attempt to
distance himself from the Christian tradition of hostility towards Jews and instead
provide a “scientific”-sounding terminology for racial or cultural, often secular, anti-
Jewish sentiments. In this sense, even though this term is nonsensical, it has entered the
vocabulary as an established term for hostility towards Jews. Hence, it differs little from
the equally problematic word “racism.” Some scholars of anti-Semitism have argued that
the label anti-Semitism should be reserved for more “pronounced and irrational forms of
hostility, especially those that look to concerted legal actions against Jews. Such indeed
was the intent of many anti-Semites when the form was first coined.” Henrik Bacher,
Återkomsten: Antisemitism i Sverige efter 1945 [The Return: Anti-Semitism in Sweden
After 1945] (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2004) 26; and Albert S. Lindemann, Anti-
Semitism before the Holocaust (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2000) 10.
4
“Ukrainian Jewish Activist Accuses Government of Doing Little to Combat Anti-
Semitism,” Associated Press 7 Dec. 2005.
5
“Yushchenko Condemns Anti-Semitism but calls it No Problem,” Bigotry Monitor: A
Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious
Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe.
6
In doing so, I share the assessment of the Ukrainian Jewish community. “[L]ocal Jews
today seem to agree that Yushchenko’s government has not shown enough political will
or ability to implement economic and political reforms and combat anti-Semitism.” Ana
Shidler, “Myths and Truths about Ukrainian Anti-Semitism,” Ukraine Now 4 Apr. 2004.
http://www.ukrnow.com/content/view/31/2/ (accessed 3 Sept. 2005).
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 83
dealers on Prospekt Svobody in L'viv and Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv,
Ukrainians have never been anything but passive victims of Jewish evil.
Ukrainian agency would be limited to a few outbursts of anti-Semitic violence
under Khmel'nyts'kyi, the Black Hundreds and Petliura. From the perspective of
the anti-Semites, Jewish domination of Ukraine began in the Middle Ages and
have lasted until today. The Jews have ruled through “Jewish” tsars, Judeo-
Communists, Judeo-Nazis and the current, “a-national” Jewish oligarchs and
criminals, bent on destroying Ukraine and the Slavic world. The anti-Semites
weave together an overall picture where Ukrainian history during the past one
hundred years turns into something of a Dolchstoss legend: throughout the 20th
century, Ukrainians have been stabbed in the back repeatedly by Jews and/or
Zionists. The conclusion from this is that there was—and is—no Ukrainian
agency whatsoever.
Given the subject of this article—anti-Semitism in Ukraine—it should be
emphasized that the purpose of this paper is to shed light on an under-researched
topic that deserves more scholarly attention. My goal is to focus on an aspect of
territorial history, not to write a national one. Rather than a study of Ukrainians,
it is a study of anti-Semitism among the people who share its territory. Needless
to say, it is not my purpose to disgrace a culture, community, or ethnic group.
One of the central themes in the anti-Semitic literature I have analyzed is the
equating of communists, oligarchs, mass murderers and sexual predators with
Jews. My intention is to avoid this form of argumentation. The anti-Semites,
whose ideas are presented in this paper, are from Ukraine. This is not to say that
Ukrainians are anti-Semites.
What makes this prevalent public anti-Semitism so remarkable is that there
are hardly no Jews left in Ukraine. According to the 2001 Ukrainian census,
there are only 103,000 Jews in Ukraine, or 0.2% of the population. Out of 130
registered nationalities in Ukraine, that leaves the Jewish minority numerically
behind Bulgarians (204,000), Hungarians (156,000), Romanians (151,000) and
Poles (144,000).7 This is a sharp decline from the 1989 and 1996 figures of
487,000 and 180,000, respectively,8 and today this number has declined further
by an annual Jewish emigration of some 14,000 to 21,000 people.9 In fact, anti-
7
2001 Ukrainian Census, see <http://www.ukrcensus.Kyiv.ua/eng/results/general/
nationality/> (accessed 2 Sept. 2005).
8
M. Tolts, “Demographic Trends among the Jews in the Three Slavic Republics of the
Former USSR: A Comparative Analysis,” in Papers in Jewish Demography 1993, eds. S.
Della Pergola and J. Even (Jerusalem: n.p. 1997).
9
U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2004
Ukraine—September 2004, Released by the U.S. Department of State Bureau for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor on September 15, 2004, covers the period from
July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2004. See <http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rsd/print.html
?CATEGORY=RSDC OI&id=416ce9df7> (accessed 16 Oct. 2005).
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
84 PER ANDERS RUDLING
Semitic literature is printed in editions, considerably larger than the entire
Jewish population of Ukraine.10
According to a 1992 poll, 27 per cent of Ukrainians harbored anti-Semitic
views.11 A 2003 study was largely consistent with these findings: it showed that
18.7 per cent harbored strong “modern,” i.e. secular, racist anti-Semitic views
while 17.2 per cent harbored “traditional,” i.e. religious anti-Semitic attitudes.
An additional 21.7 per cent held moderate “modern” anti-Semitic views; 24.4%
held moderate religious anti-Semitic views.12 Both the numbers of “modern”
and “traditional” anti-Semites were significantly higher in Western Ukraine than
in the rest of the country (30.7% and 33.8%, respectively) while the lowest in
Kyiv (5.6% and 7.4%) and the South (14.9% and 6.9%).13 According to a 1996
survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 25 per cent of the
respondents did not want Jews to be citizens of Ukraine.14 This number has
remained largely stable through the 1990s, hovering around one quarter of the
population. 15 On February 26, 2004 the paper Pravda Ukrainy published a
survey by the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, finding that only 2.8%
of Ukrainians would allow a Jew to marry into their family.16 Thus, there is a
market for anti-Semitic publications.17 Many explanations have been given for
Ukrainian anti-Semitism. Betsy Gidwitz at the Jerusalem Center for Politic
Affairs attributes the recent growth in anti-Semitism to “continuing economic
10
In fact, the anti-Semitic publications available from MAUP’s online bookstore alone
are printed in volumes roughly in the same numbers as the Jewish population of Ukraine.
See <www.biblion.com.ua>, which lists over 20 MAUP books with anti-Semitic content,
each printed in editions of 5000 copies.
11
Robert J. Brym, Rozalina Ryvkina, Howard Spier, The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and
Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration (London: Macmillan, 1994) 47.
12
Ireneusza Krzemińska, ed., Antysemityzm w Polsce i na Ukrainie: raport z badań
(Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2004) 66.
13
Krzemińska, 68-9.
14
Rudol'f Ia. Myrs'kyi, Oleksandr Ia. Naiman, Iudofobiya proty Ukrainy: stari zabobony
i moderni vyhadky. Vydannya druhe [Judeophobia Against Ukraine: Old Myths and New
Inventions. Second Edition] (Kyiv: Akademiia istorii ta kul'tury ievreiv Ukrainy im.
Shimona Dubnova, 2000) 75.
15
The number of respondents opposed to Jews as residents of Ukraine was 21.9% in
1994; 24.2% in 1994; and 24.0% in 1998, according to nation-wide surveys. Natalia V.
Panina and Evhen I. Golovakha, Tendencies in the Development of the Ukrainian Society
(1994-1998). Sociological Indicators (Tables, Illustrations and Commentaries). (Kyiv:
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Sociology, 1999) 90-3.
16
Nikolai Butkevich “Chronicle of anti-Semitism in Ukraine: 2002-2004” (Washington,
DC: UCSJ—Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, Dec. 2004) 5.
<http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/121404ChronicleinUkraine.pdf> (accessed 7 Dec.
2005).
17
Myrs'kyi, Naiman, 67-9.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 85
distress, Ukrainian nationalism (particularly in western Ukraine), envy of
welfare assistance provided by the comparably well-organized and well-
financed Jewish community, and, in some cities, to propaganda efforts of Arabic
students enrolled at local universities and other post-secondary institutions.”18
Anti-Semitism sells. Out of 19 book vendors on the streets of central L'viv
during the summer of 2005, 16 were openly selling anti-Semitic literature.
Roughly speaking, the non-fiction books that appear to be particularly popular
among post-Soviet Western Ukrainian readers fall into three or four broad
categories. Perhaps the most popular genre seems to be health. Alternative
medicine, cookbooks and guides on how to improve your sex life sell well.
Another genre that seems to strike a chord with Ukrainian readers is literature of
religious or metaphysical nature, such as New Age and neo-paganism. This
literature, referred to as “esoteric,” is often racist in nature. A third category is
popular history and biographies, particularly books on Soviet history and Soviet
leaders. These three first categories of books are almost exclusively published in
Russian, the majority of them being printed in Russia. A fourth category, the
focus of this article, is anti-Semitic literature of various sorts. While self-help
guides, cookbooks, religious literature and biographies are staples of any
western European or American bookstore, anti-Semitic literature is not.
About 70% of the anti-Semitic publications sold in Ukraine is being
published by an educational institution called MAUP, Mizhrehional'na
Akademiia Upravlinnia Personalom, or the Inter-Regional Academy of
Personnel Management, which is linked to the journal Personal.19 MAUP is a
large, well-connected and increasingly powerful organization, partly funded by
18
Betsy Gidwitz, “Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part
One,” Jerusalem Letter 451 (1 Apr. 2001). Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 3.
<http://www.jcpa.org/jl/jl451.htm> (accessed 1 Sept. 2005). What influence Arab
students have on anti-Semitic attitudes in Ukraine can, of course, be discussed. Many of
these anti-Semitic attitudes appear to be home grown. It may indeed be questioned
whether local anti-Semites need encouragement from Arab students. Nevertheless,
students from the Middle East have given MAUP’s “struggle against the evil of world
Zionism” as the reason they have chosen that particular university. Vladimir Matveyev,
“Earning reputation for anti-Semitism, university asks U.N. to ‘close’ Israel,” Jewish
Telegraphic Agency 6 Dec. 2005 <http://www.ncsj.orh/AuxPages/120105MAUP.shtml>
(accessed 7 Dec. 2005).
19
“Ukrainian Jews Worried About New Party,” Jerusalem Post 6 Apr. 2005. See also
The Religious information Service of Ukraine, 24 Aug. 2005 <http://www.risu.org.ua
/eng/news/article;6978/>. According to other sources, by the fall of 2005 MAUP’s share
of the anti-Semitic publications produced in Ukraine had increased to a full 85%. “NCSJ
Backgrounder: The Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP, IAPM)”
NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia 1
Dec. 2005 <http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/ 120105MAUP.shtml#NCSJ> (accessed Dec.
6, 2005).
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
86 PER ANDERS RUDLING
money from Libya and Palestine, 20 but particularly from Saudi Arabia and
Iran.21 It is also closely connected with white supremacy groups in the United
States and to David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
MAUP presents itself as “the only Ukrainian institution of science and higher
education, dedicated to the studies of the thankless themes of the theory and
practice of Zionism in the modern world.”22 Its publications are sold openly on
the streets of Ukrainian cities as well as in major bookstore chains such as Bukva.
Moreover, some of these books are available in diaspora bookstores in North
America.23 Not all MAUP books are written by Ukrainians. MAUP also sells
Ukrainian and Russian translation of books such as David Duke’s The Jewish
Question Through the Eyes of an American: My Investigation of Zionism 24 and
translations of anti-Semitic tractates such as Werner Zombart’s 1912 Jews and
20
See “U.S. Department of State: Ukraine: International Religious Freedom Report,
2005, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.” Released 8
Nov. 2005 <http://www.state.Kyiv/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51588.htm> (Accessed 7 Dec.
2005).
21
Anatoly Podolsky, “Once More about the Banality of Evil,” Ukrains'kyi tsentr
vyvchennia istorii Holokostu <http://www.holocaust.kiev.ua/eng/research/
researchm.htm>. See also the Testimony of Mark B. Levin, Executive Director NCSJ:
Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia before the
United States House of Representatives Committee on International Relations 6 Oct.
2004. <http://wwwc.house.Kyiv/international_relations/108/lev100604.htm> and
Vladimir Matveyev, “Earning reputation for anti-Semitism, university asks U.N. to
‘close’ Israel,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency 6 Dec. 2005. NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of
Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia
<http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/120105MAUP. shtml#NCSJ> (accessed 6 Dec. 2005).
22
Vasyl' Iaremenko, Ievrei v Ukraini s'ohodni: real'nist' bez mifiv [Jews in Ukraine
Today: Reality without Myths] (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003) 52.
23
See, for instance <http://kolos.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=20
6&osCsid=4242763c764a4c6451c86bf1c4c8413c> (accessed 29 Aug. 2005), where
MAUP publications could be purchased during the summer of 2005. The internet-based
diaspora Ukrainian books store Kolos also sell some other of the racist books that were
frequently sold alongside MAUP’s publications on the streets of L'viv and Kyiv, such as
Ihor Kahanets' Ariis'kyi Standart [The Aryan Standard] (Kyiv: A.C.K, 2003). This book
is introduced thus: “By combining latest achievements in the fields of archaeology,
archeo-genetics, climatology, history, anthropology, psycho-informatics, and linguistics,
the author is looking for the answer to many questions, which bother many people in
Ukraine and outside her borders. Who was Jesus Christ—Aryan or Jew? How into Holly
(sic) Gospel got inserts from enemies? What is Judeo-Christian lies? When human races
appeared? Who were Slavs? To what kind of state we are moving—dictatorship,
democracy, or Hetmanat (sic)? To all of these questions one can find answers by reading
I. Kahanets book “Aryan Standard,” which is published by Kyiv publisher ‘A.C.K.’”
24
David Dyuk (Duke), Ievreyskii vopros glazami amerikantsa: moe issledovanie
sionizma (Kyiv: MAUP, 2002).
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 87
the Economic Life. 25 Other publications are dedicated to secret Jewish-
Freemasonry “collaboration,” such as G. G. Mets’ The World-Wide Societies of
Freemasons: Their Activities and Goals26 and Yakov Brafman’s The Book of the
Kahal: The World-Wide Jewish Question.27 Vasyl' Iaremenko has written the
preface to Matviy Shestopal’s The Jews of Ukraine: A Short Historical
Explanation. 28 In addition to open hate literature, MAUP textbooks on
supposedly apolitical subjects such as anthropology also contain anti-communist
and anti-Semitic content.29
25
Verner Zombart [Werner Sombart], Ievrei i khoziaistvennaia zhizn': Avtoriz. per. s
nem. pod red. G. Grosmana (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003). Summary: “In this work, first
published in St. Petersburg 1912, professor Werner Sombart examines the peculiar
conditions of Jewish influence on the economic life in Europe in the late 19th and early
20th centuries, their role in the birth and development of capitalism. Published as a
historical memory.” Sombart began as a Marxist but became increasingly conservative.
He developed into an anti-Semite and Nazi. Jews and Liberals found his 1911 Die Juden
und das Wirtschaftsleben to be crudely anti-Semitic. By and large, scholars have found
its sources (if given) questionable and without research merit. Nevertheless, Sombart’s
book was successful on the marketplace, having a strong impact on the political climate
in pre-World War I Germany. The book presents a stereotypical picture of the Jews,
which Sombart associates with crass materialism and soulless capitalism.
26
G. G. Mets, Vsemirnoe obshchestvo masonov: sushchnost' i tseli: iz kn. O. A.
Platonova “Ternovyi venets Rossii. Tainaia istoriia masonstva 1731-1996” s neznachit.
sokrashcheniiami (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003). Summary: “The book explores the history
behind the birth of freemasonry—a movement, which appeared in the countries of
Europe in the 18th century in form of a sect and secret societies with the pronounced goal
of accomplish world supremacy based upon the Jewish teachings of the chosen people.”
27
Iakov Brafman, Kniga Kagala: Vsemir. evr. vopros (Kyiv: MAUP, 2004). Summary:
“The book explores the insidiousness of the Jewish Kahala, which, aiming for the goal of
accomplishing world supremacy, guides the life of the Jews, particularly their interest and
the interest of the states in which they live.” Brafman had converted to Christianity and
become a rabid anti-Semite and wrote the Book of the Kahal in the 1860s. Russian anti-
Semitic publishers came to rely heavily on this work during the following decades. Y.
Tsigelman, “Anti-Semitism in Soviet Publications (Belles Lettres and Feature Stories)” in
Yakov Yanai (ed.), Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union: Its Roots and Consequences:
Proceedings of the Seminar on Soviet Anti-Semitism held in Jerusalem on April 7-8,
1978, Vol. I (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1979) 72.
28
Matvii Shestopal’s Ievrei na Ukraini: Istorychna dovidka [Jews in Ukraine: Historical
Information] (Kyiv: MAUP, 2002). Summary: “In this book the author tells about the
customs and traditions of Jewry from ancient times until today; out of a wide material of
historical facts, particularly aspects of Jewish-Ukrainian coexistence, reflecting on the
root causes of so-called anti-Semitism, gives his views on Zionism as a form of racism,
and crushes the myth that the Ukrainian people would harbour a zoological hatred
towards Jews. There was no such hatred in the past and there is not today.”
29
See for instance Iurii Alekseevich Shilov, Istoki slavianskoi tsivilizatsii (Kyiv: MAUP,
2004) 13-17, 633-6.
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Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
88 PER ANDERS RUDLING
MAUP is the largest private educational establishment (nederzhavnyi
uchbovyi zaklad) in Ukraine. “It has educated more government officials,
diplomats and administrators than any other university and has the highest
academic accreditation Ukraine provides as well as recognition from
UNESCO.”30 It operates a vast network of educational institutions. Recently, it
has seen rapid growth. In 2004, 35,000 students were studying at its 55 affiliates
and seven regional institutions across Ukraine. 31 By September 2005, the
number of students had grown to over 51,000,32 in November the same year to
57,000. 33 The university is well-connected, linked to several Ukrainian top
political figures. Until 2005, President Viktor Yushchenko himself served on
MAUP’s board of directors and on the supervisory board of their anti-Semitic
journal Personal.34 MAUP is headed by Heorhii Shchokin, who is also a co-
founder of the far-right Conservative Party. His party calls for the reintroduction
of the Soviet era “nationality” clause into Ukrainian passports, so that Jews can
be properly identified; it demands that all Ukrainian bodies of power should
consist of at least 80% ethnic Ukrainians, that only ethnic Ukrainians should be
eligible to become head of state and that Jews should be barred from top
positions.35 In addition to receiving funding from Arab dictatorships, Shchokin
30
Since it is accredited to issue even the highest academic degrees, MAUP is referred to
as a university in English. A more precise translation of the Ukrainian nederzhavnyi
uchobovyi zaklad would be private educational establishment. In any case, MAUP is an
accredited institution whose university degrees are accepted internationally. See White
Supremacist and MAUP professor David Duke’s site <www.davidduke.com>, “ADL
Seeks Closure of Largest University in Ukraine and imprisonment of hundreds of
Academics,” <http://www.davidduke.com/?p=468#more-468> (accessed 6 Dec. 2005)
and the Anti-Defamation League’s site “Ukraine University Schooling in Anti-Semitism”
<http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/maup_ukraine.htm> (accessed 9
Dec. 2005).
31
Anatoly Podolsky, “Once More About the Banality of Evil,” Ukrains'kyi tsentr
vyvchennia istorii Holokostu <http://www.holocaust.Kyiv.ua/eng/research/
researchm.htm>.
32
“David Duke Achieves Doctorate in Ukraine” <http://www.davidduke.com/index.php
?p=394>.
33
“Ukrainian Charge d’Affaires a.i. Summoned to Foreign Ministry Press Communiqué”
NCSJ, Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia, 14
Nov. 2005 <http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/120105MAUP.shtml#NCSJ> (accessed 6
Dec. 2005).
34
See the Anti-Defamation League’s site “Ukraine University Schooling in Anti-
Semitism” <http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/maup_ukraine.htm>
(accessed 9 Dec. 9 2005) and E. Morgan Williams, ed., “Ukraine President Yushchenko
Criticizes Magazine over ‘Anti-Semitism’,” The Action Ukraine Report—AUR, 612 (6
Dec. 2005).
35
Rainer Rupp, “Nationalheld entpuppt sich als Antisemit: Ukraine: Auf Konferenz wird
gegen Juden gehetzt—in Anwesenheit von Neonazis und ranghohen Politikern,” Junge
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 89
has addressed three conferences in Saudi Arabia and at least one “anti-Zionist”
conference in the United Arab Emirates, in October, 2002.36 He made some
headlines in the Ukrainian press when he claimed that Osama bin Laden really is
a Jew by the name of Benya Landau.37 MAUP is permeated with the political
views of its leadership and the Conservative Party, and all former and present
students receive free copies of the anti-Semitic journal Personal Plius.38 The
students at MAUP have been intimidated into signing up for Shchokin’s party.
Students and staff, who have been reluctant to do so, have been threatened with
violence or firing.39 In order to enlighten the public about the “practice of
Zionism in the modern world” MAUP has arranged a number of “scientific”
conferences. One of their more high profile conferences was the November 15,
2002 “All-Ukrainian scientific conference devoted to the memory of millions of
people who perished from the famine in 1932-33.”40
The MAUP leadership is convinced that “Jewish publicists are suppressing
the facts on who organized the Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933.”41 At the 2002
conference one anti-Semitic presentation followed another. These anti-Semites
are not marginal people at the fringes of society. Their circle includes
Welt 10 Jun. 2005 <http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/06-10/011.php.>; Anatoly Podolsky,
“Once More About the Banality of Evil,” Ukrains'kyi tsentr vyvchennya istorii Holokostu
<http://www.holocaust.Kyiv.ua/eng/research/researchm.htm> (all accessed 1 Dec. 2005).
Oleg Varfolomeyev, “Xenophobes to Contest Seats in Ukrainian Parliament,” Eurasia
Daily Monitor 9 Jan. 2006.
36
Vladimir Matveyev and Walter Ruby, “Anti-Semitism in Ukrainian media up, and its
acceptance is worrying Jews,” NCSJ, Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine,
the Baltic States & Eurasia, 21 Sept. 2004. His anti-Semitic speeches were later published
as Heorihii Shchokin, Kyl'turnoe raznoobrazie mira: puti i prepyatstviia (Kyiv: MAUP,
2003).
37
Alexander Muratov, “Jewish Question,” Jewish Observer, 15.58 (August 2003)
<http://www.jewukr.org/observer/eo2003/page_show_en.php?id=176> (accessed 3 Sept.
2005).
38
Vladimir Matveyev, “Kyiv University to UN: ‘Close’ Israel,” Jewish Times 7 Dec.
2005 <http://www.jewishtimes.com/News/5231.stm> (Accessed 7 Dec. 2005).
39
This happened in June, 2005 when the Kharkiv branch of MAUP, led by its rector
supported student demands not to be signed up for membership in the Conservative Party,
upon which Shchokin “journeyed to Kharkov with ‘a group of skinhead ‘back up’’ who
threatened [the Kharkov rector] with firing and violence.” “David Duke and Ukrainian
MP Attend Antisemitic Conference in Kiev,” UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the
Former Soviet Union, 10 Jun. 2005 <http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/061005
Ukraine.shtml>.
40
Holodomor 1932-33 rokiv iak velychezna trahediia ukrains'koho narodu: Mater.
Vseukr. Nauk. konferentsii. Kyiv, 15 lystop. 2002 r. (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003) 278.
41
Iaremenko, 96. In this Ukrainian Holocaust, “Not a single Jew died of hunger in 1933,”
97.
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90 PER ANDERS RUDLING
ambassadors and professors. The conference was even honoured by the presence
of Leonid Kravchuk, former leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party and the
first president of independent Ukraine. Kravchuk also serves on the board of
MAUP. So does Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasiuk.42
Among the participants were also well-established Ukrainian historian Yuri
Shapoval and nationalist historian Volodymyr Serhiichuk. 43 After Shchokin
opened the conference, Kravchuk took the floor. He expressed his support for
the conference, and encouraged the conference participants to “discuss [the
Famine] thoroughly and constructively.” The former president asked the
participants the rhetorical questions how the famine could have happened and
who was to blame for the death of seven to ten million people.44 The question of
who to blame for evils against Ukrainians is something MAUP has specialized
in. Moreover, they seem to know exactly whom to blame.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the question of blame became a leitmotif for many
of the participants. One of the first speakers to take the floor was Levko
Lukianenko, former prisoner of conscience, presidential candidate, member of
the Verkhovna Rada for the Yuliia Tymoshenko bloc and the first Ukrainian
ambassador to Canada (1992-3). Lukianenko holds an Honorary Doctorate in
Law from the University of Alberta.45 To Lukianenko, the question of blame
42
Matveyev and Ruby, “Anti-Semitism in Ukrainian media up, and its acceptance is
worrying Jews,” NCSJ, Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States
& Eurasia, 21 Sept. 2004.
43
It seems as if Shapoval was exploited by MAUP. Not only has he distanced himself
from MAUP since—in June, 2005, he was one of the signatories condemning the
activities of MAUP in the journal Krytyka. In January, 2006 MAUP sued him for
defamation. “Proty ksenofobiï, za evropeis'ku Ukrainu: Zaiava ukrainskoi inteligentsii,”
[“Against Xenophobia, for a European Ukraine: Appeal by the Ukrainian Intelligentsia”]
Krytyka, 9.6 (June 2005): 32. “MAUP podala do sudu na akademikiv Natsional'noi
akademii nauk” [“MAUP took academicians from the National Academy of Science to
court”], 5 Kanal <http://5tv.com.ua/newsline/184/0/20564/> (accessed 16 Mar. 2006).
44
L. M. Kravchuk, “Vstupne slovo,” [Introductory Words] in Holodomor (2003) 7-9.
Kravchuk’s personal background here is interesting. As the director of the Department of
Propaganda and Agitation at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine
under Brezhnev and Shcherbyts'kyi, he was orchestrating and organizing propaganda
against the “reactionary essence of Judaism and Zionism,” aimed against refusniks.
Vladimir Khanin, Documents on Ukrainian Jewish Identity and Emigration, 1944-1990.
(London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003) 293-5.
45
The University of Alberta convocation program for 1993 presents Lukianenko as
“instrumental in organizing the Ukrainian popular movement, Rukh, to promote
democratization and national rights.” Convocation 1993 (Edmonton: University of
Alberta Press, 1993) 30. The university policy regarding honorary degrees is “intended to
honor individuals whose significant community service, scholarly or artistic
achievements are worthy of the University’s highest honor. The awarding of honorary
degrees is intended to encourage a standard of excellence which is exemplary to students
and society. [...] By accepting an honorary degree, the recipient brings honor to the
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 91
had an easy answer: this evil was carried out by a “satanical” government
controlled by the Jews.46 The former ambassador claimed that even though Jews
made up only 2 per cent of the population of the Russian empire in 1917, they
controlled the Soviet government. According to Lukianenko, 19 out of 20
people’s commissars were Jews, 47 in the military commissariat 33 of 43
commissars were Jews and in the commissariat of Justice 20 of 21. “Thus out of
556 people who occupied the most important administrative positions in the
commissariats, the Communist Party and the punitive organs almost 450, or
80%, were Jews.”48 Lukianenko further informs the congress that both Lenin
and Stalin belonged to the house of David. “Lenin-Blank. Jew on the maternal
side, Kalmyk on the paternal side”; “Iosyp Stalin (full, correct name—Iosyp
David Vissarionovych Dzhuhashvili-Kokhba) Georgian Jew.” Lukianenko
continued in a similar fashion to list a number of other non-Jews as Jews.49 The
ambassador informed the ex-president and the conference that in the central
committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) 43 out of 59 people
were Jews. All in all, according to Lukianenko, 83% of the 500 most influential
people in the USSR were Jews.50 Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s merely caused
University of Alberta.” Honorary Degrees at the University of Alberta. Information flyer,
The Senate of the University of Alberta (n.p.: n.d). Lukianenko writes that the initiative
to award him an honorary degree came from Peter Savaryn, former chancellor of the
University of Alberta (1982-6), former president of the World Congress of Free
Ukrainians and former president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta.
Levko Lukianenko, Na zemli klenovoho lystka: Spohady i rozdumy posla, Vydannia
druhe, povnovlene i dopovnene [In the Land of the Maple Leaf: the Memoirs and
Thoughts of the Ambassador. Second Edition, Updated and Extended] (Kyiv: HART,
2002) 432-3. Oleh W. Gerus and Denis Hlynka, eds., The Honourable Member for
Vegreville: The Memoirs and Diary of Anthony Hlynka, MP (Calgary: University of
Calgary Press, 2005) 387. It should be emphasized that Lukianenko’s most vitriolic anti-
Semitic statements were made after he received his honorary doctorate. In the early
1990s, Lukianenko kept his anti-Semitism largely private. In Lukianenko’s pre-1993
writing, the communist government is referred to as “satanical,” and Marxism as
“cosmopolitan.” There are also appeals to avoid non-Christian political alternatives, but
few clearly anti-Semitic statements. “Do not vote … for lying communists and komsomol
members—people without a Christian conscience.” Levko Lukianenko, Ne dam zahynut'
Ukraini! [I Will Not Let Them Destroy Ukraine!] (Kyiv: Vydavnycho-kul'turolohichnyi
tsentr “Sofiia,” 1994) 395, 423, 505.
46
Levko Lukianenko, “U lystopadovi zhalobni dni,” in Holodomor (2002) 12.
47
Lukianenko (2002) 12.
48
Lukianenko (2002) 13. As source for these claims, he lists an anti-Semitic tract, B.
Bohoslov’s Sionizm proty ukraintsiv [Zionism against Ukrainians] (Odesa, 2001). This
was often sold next to Mein Kampf on the streets of L'viv and Kyiv in 2004 and 2005.
49
Lukianenko (2002) 12.
50
Lukianenko (2002) 13.
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92 PER ANDERS RUDLING
“a part of the ‘Leninist guard’ being thrown in concentration camps or
murdered.” Nevertheless, Jewish rule continued, and the apparatus of oppression
was based upon assimilated Jews who worked and lived alongside gentiles.51
Other speeches followed the same pattern. Professor I.A. Khyzhniak
claimed that Lenin’s government was 90% Jewish. Unlike even Lukianenko,
who gives seven references—primarily to his own writings or to other anti-
Semitic pamphlets—Professor Khyzhniak does not bother to add even a single
footnote to support his claim. However his article contains two quotes—in
Russian—from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This may be the first time at
a “scientific” conference that a professor of history treats the Protocols as an
authoritative primary source for his research. “In the west[ern world],” we learn,
“they are still regarded as the singular key to understanding the riddle of
Bolshevism.” 52 He cites protocol number one and ten, which spell out the
“Zionist” ambitions to achieve world domination through hypocrisy and fraud.53
Thus, the 1921 famine was orchestrated by “Zionists,” the second one in 1932-
33 by “Bolshevik Zionists animals.”54 Khyzhniak cites Congressional Records
of the U.S. Senate in his attempts to back up claims of Zionist control over
Bolshevism.
The index of the number of Bolshevik Zionists represented in the leadership of the
Soviet empire, beginning in 1917, speaks for itself. They held 85% of the most
powerful state positions. In the Congressional Records of the 65th session of the
United States Senate it is registered that in the government apparatus in Petrograd 16
ethnic Russians worked but 371 Jews, 265 of which who had arrived from New
York, a city which is considered the centre of world Zionism.55
MAUP has organized several similar pseudo-scientific conferences. The
most recent one was the June 2005 “Fourth World Wide Conference” titled “A
Dialogue of Civilizations: Zionism as the Biggest Threat to Contemporary
Civilization?” While ex-president Kravchuk did not attend this conference, it
was visited by some other high-profile guests. A guest of honour was David
Duke, attending his fourth MAUP conference.56 Other foreign guests included
51
Lukianenko (2002) 14. David Marples, “Ukrainians’ view of history lamentable:
Blaming famine on Jews bares anti-Semitic views: it doesn’t explain history,” Edmonton
Journal 22 Sept. 2003.
52
I. A. Khyzhniak, “Natsional'nyi vymir u peredumovi vynyknennia holodomoru 1932-
1933 rokiv v Ukraini,” Holodomor (2002) 62.
53
Khyzhniak 62, 64, citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion number 1 and 10.
54
“bil'shovots'ko-sionists'ki kreatury,” Khyzhniak, 62, 63.
55
However, Khyzhniak does not provide a footnote for this claim. Khyzhniak, 64.
56
Matveiev and Ruby. After MAUP awarded David Duke a Ph.D. in history he has been
teaching classes there in history and international relations. His dissertation, defended on
September 9, 2005 and titled “Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism” was
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 93
the ambassadors of Iran, Syria and Palestine. 57 Delegates at the conference
called for the deportation of Jews from Ukraine. 58 Former ambassador
Lukianenko was seated next to Duke and gave him a standing ovation.59
This was not the first time that Lukianenko figured in openly anti-Semitic
events. In July 2004, he published an anti-Semitic article in MAUP’s weekly
Personal Plius, where he among other things claimed that Jews reject physical
labour, again blamed Stalin’s terror on the Jews, claimed that “Zionists”
“traditionally” are opposed to Ukrainianhood and that “instead of installing love
of labour, the Jewish puppet masters who control mass media use their blood
money to install instead love for the beautiful and soulless life in order to
cultivate the animal instincts of our young.” In the same article he manages to
claim that there is no anti-Semitism in Ukraine, since
[I] have not met a single Ukrainian, who is opposed to all Semitic people. Therefore,
the term ‘anti-Semite’ is inadequate from a scientific point of view. We Ukrainians
base our attitudes to other nations and national groups, with whom we interact, on
their attitudes towards us, not on the base of ethnic characteristics.60
In this regard, Lukianenko’s argumentation differs little from other
contemporary anti-Semites. As Swedish scholar Henrik Bachner has pointed out:
the anti-anti-Zionism became an important part of European anti-Semitic
discourse after 1945.
Few, if any today admits an openly negative attitude to Jews. On the contrary […]
an explicit distancing from anti-Semitism has become an important component in
anti-Semitic argumentation.61
unanimously approved by the 10 member examining committee. One of the members on
the committee was professor I.A. Khyzhniak. This doctorate was Duke’s second from
MAUP. They had previously awarded him an honorary doctorate. “David Duke Achieves
Doctorate in Ukraine” <http://www.davidduke.com/index.php?p=394>. See also the
Anti-Defamation League’s site <http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/
maup_ukraine.htm> (all accessed 4 Oct. 2005).
57
“Sionizm—Zahroza Svitovii tsivilizatsii: U MAUP vidbulasia IV Vsesvitnia naukova
konferntsiia “Dialoh tsivilizatsii” Personal Plius 122.23 (8-14 Jun. 2005): 5-8.
58
“Tymoshenko: Toss out Lukyanenko,” editorial, Kyiv Post 9 Jun. 2005
<http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/editorial/22803/> (accessed 27 Aug. 2005).
59
The Religious information Service of Ukraine, 24 Aug. 2005 <http://www.risu.org.ua/
eng/news/article;6978/> (accessed 27 Aug. 2005).
60
Levko Lukianenko, “Do Evreis'koho pytannia, abo Chy isnuie v Ukraini anti-
Semitism?” [“On the Jewish Question, or does anti-Semitism exist in Ukraine?”]
Personal Plius 73.26 (2004): 4-5.
61
Bachner 30.
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94 PER ANDERS RUDLING
Despite calls in the English-language press of the Ukrainian capital for the
party leadership to distance themselves from Lukianenko, he was not rebuked,
either by then-prime minister Yuliia Tymoshenko or her party.62 Tymoshenko
and Yushchenko apparently consider Lukianenko one of theirs. On April 20,
2005, only a few weeks before the “anti-Zionist” conference, president
Yushchenko had awarded him the most prestigious order of the republic, Hero
of Ukraine, “in recognition of his civic valor, selfless dedication in championing
the ideals of freedom and democracy, and meritorious contribution to the
building and development of the Ukrainian state.”63 Shchokin interpreted this as
recognition of MAUP’s activities.64 Lukianenko responded to this honour by
delivering an anti-Semitic acceptance speech.65 On December 7, 2005 Yuliia
Tymoshenko presented her bloc’s top 10 candidates for the March 2006
elections. Lukianenko was one of them.66
The government of Ukraine may have done little in terms of combating
anti-Semitic attitudes, but there are important voices of dissent. Later that
summer, a group of 97 Ukrainian and diaspora intellectuals signed an open letter
which was published in the June 2005 edition of Krytyka, condemning the
activities of MAUP. They pointed to the bad publicity MAUP has caused
Ukraine and their communities.
62
“Tymoshenko: Toss out Lukyanenko,” editorial, Kyiv Post 9 Jun. 2005. For
Lukianenko’s credentials, see Iuliia Tymoshenko’s official site: <http://ww2.
tymoshenko.com.ua/eng/elections/partners/> (accessed 27 Aug. 2005). Incidentally,
MAUP professor Vasyl' Iaremenko singles out the editor of the English language
newspaper Kyiv Post as one of its enemies. Iaremenko knows to inform us about the
reason for Kyiv Post’s sensitivity to open racism: they are part of the conspiracy against
Ukraine. “[W]e are consuming the information and spiritual productions of the Jewish
ideological kitchen. Today we need to raise the question about creating a Ukrainian TV,
which instead of supporting the politics, ideology, cultural disinformation or information
of Zionist Jewish centers in the U.S., would promote our, Ukrainian [culture].” As an
example of this un-Ukrainian media outlets, Iaremenko lists “Jed Sandes, American
Zionist Jew, citizen of the United States, publishing the papers Korrespondent and Kyiv-
Post in Kyiv.” Iaremenko 83-4.
63
“Levko Lukyanenko: ‘Hero of Ukraine’,” Den' 26 Apr. 2005 <http://www.day.
Kyiv.ua/136386/> (accessed 27 Aug. 2005).
64
H. V. Shchokin, “Zirka heroia—bortsiu za derzhavnist'” [“The star of a hero [awarded
to] a fighter for statehood] Personal Plyus, 115.17 (27 Apr.-3 May 2005): 1.
65
“Levko Luk’ianenko—Heroi Ukrainy,” [“Levko Lukianenko—Hero of Ukraine”]
Personal: zhurnal intellektual'noi elity, 5 (2005): 3-4.
66
Oleg Varfolomeyev, “Tymoshenko Comes up with Election Strategy,” Eurasia Daily
Monitor 12 Dec. 2005 and JM, “Former Ukrainian Premier’s Bloc Drafts Parliamentary
Election List” RFE/RL Newsline 9.228 (8 Dec. 2005) <http://www.rferl.org/newsline/
2005/12/081205.asp> (accessed 9 Dec. 2005).
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 95
The [activities of MAUP] peaked into a most powerful KGB-style anti-Semitic
campaign under the banner of “anti-Zionism.” In an address to the president of
Ukraine, the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and the chief justice of the supreme
court, the leadership of MAUP, accompanied by a number of supposedly patriotic
organizations, two members of the Rada and almost one hundred “scientists, public
and political figures” demanded “an end to the criminal activities organized by
Ukrainian Jewry.” […] The root of the problem is not the existence of MAUP or the
statements and activities of this or that xenophobe, but in our inaction in the face of
open evil, in our lack of preparedness to ask our politicians, which we stood
shoulder to shoulder with on the streets during the days of the revolution: how long
will these professors at the MAUP institutions bring disgrace to respectable
professors by appearing alongside a mob of domestic semi-fascists/semi-chekists
and imported clansmen? Our question to the leaders of Ukraine is: who stands
behind this massive anti-Semitic campaign? Is this not a “fifth column” working
within our society who wishes to introduce a foreign ethnopolitical conflict on our
territory?67
Among the signers of this open letter were University of Alberta Professors
Oleh Ilnytzkyj and Natalia Pylypiuk, as well as well-known Ukrainian
intellectuals such as Mykola Riabchuk, Iaroslav Hrytsak and Iurii Shapoval, the
latter with personal experiences of having a respectable academic paper appear
alongside those of Lukianenko and Khyzhniak after participating in a MAUP
conference in 2002.68 Alongside this open letter were two similar open letters
from the Ukrainian American Congress and the Annual Scientific Conference on
Ukrainian studies at Illinois State University, both condemning the anti-
Semitism and pseudo-scientific activities of MAUP.69
However, a substantial part of the Ukrainian diaspora share President
Yushchenko’s view that there is no such problem as anti-Semitism in Ukraine. If
the consensus attitude towards Ukrainian collaboration and war crimes has been,
as John-Paul Himka argues, a “blind spot in the collective memory of the
diaspora,”70 Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk show how this “blind spot”
67
“Proty ksenofobii, za evropeis'ku Ukrainu: Zaiava ukrainskoi inteligentsii” [“Against
Xenophobia, for a European Ukraine: Appeal by the Ukrainian Intelligentsia”] Krytyka,
9.6 (June 2005): 32.
68
“Proty ksenofobii…”
69
“Ukraintsi SShA zasudzhuiut' antysemityzm,”[“The Ukrainians of the United States
condemn anti-Semitism”] Krytyka 9.6 (June 2005): 32.
70
John-Paul Himka, “War Criminality: A Blank Spot in the Collective Memory of the
Ukrainian Diaspora,” Spaces of Identity 5.1 (2005): 9-24.
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96 PER ANDERS RUDLING
was expanded to include the subject of Ukrainian anti-Semitism as well.71 In the
diaspora narrative, anti-Semitism has often been downplayed and its existence
even denied. While Bohdan Osadczuk claims that the integral nationalists in the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, “unlike almost all other groupings of
this type in all of Europe, did not have an anti-Jewish program,”72 Bohdan
Wytwycky in Encyclopedia of Ukraine goes even further to claim that “there has
never… been a Ukrainian anti-Semitic organization or political party.”73 This
highly questionable statement appears in an encyclopedia edited by the same
man who took the initiative to create the Waffen SS Galizien, published anti-
Semitic statements during the Holocaust, and in April 1941 called Hans Frank to
set up an ethnically pure Ukrainian enclave in the Generalgouvernment, free
from Jews and Poles.74
In 2003 Ukrainian professor Vasyl' Iaremenko, published an essay titled
Jews in Ukraine Today: Reality without Myths. This caused a judicial process
that temporarily forced one of the country’s largest papers to close down. The
article has since been re-published in a book by the same name. In 1989-90,
Iaremenko was a visiting professor at the University of Alberta.75 In his anti-
Semitic activities he actively associates himself with this Canadian university in
71
Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, “The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets'ko’s 1941 Zhyttiepys,” Harvard
Ukrainian Studies 23.3-4 (December 1999): 147-184.
72
Berkhoff and Carynnyk 152, quoting Bohdan Osadczuk, “Curesy i cumesy,” Zustriczi
9 (1995) 30.
73
Berkhoff and Carynnyk 152, quoting Bohdan Wytwycky. “Anti-Semitism,” in
Volodymyr Kubijovyč, ed., Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (Toronto: CIUS Press, 1984)
82. As for Bohdan Wytwycky’s own attitudes toward Jews, see Bohdan Vitvitsky, “The
real problem is Ukrainophobia,” Ukrainian Weekly 72.51 (19 Dec. 2004), cited below.
74
On Volodymyr Kubijovyč, see John-Paul Himka, “Ethnicity and the Reporting of Mass
Murder: Krakivs'ki visti, the NKVD Murders of 1941, and the Vinnitsia Exhumation,”
paper presented at the University of Alberta Holocaust Workshop 14 Jan. 2005, 19, citing
Volodymyr Kubijovyč, “Pered maiestatom neprovynnoi krovy,” Krakivs'ki Visti 8 Jul.
1941, and John-Paul Himka, “The Kuropas Affair: Further Discussion,” Brama 23 Mar.
2005. On Kubijovyč as initiator and first member of SS Galizien and ethnic cleansing see
Jan T. Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement,
1939-1944 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) 186, 190.
75
Iaremenko taught the history of Ukrainian pre-revolutionary journalism and publishing
for over thirty years and has a fairly impressive number of publications behind him. It is
often tempting to seek explanations for such a violent and extreme anti-Semitic hatred in
a person’s background. Little Iaremenko’s father was one of the victims of the terror. “In
1937 my father was arrested in the village Zahrunivka in the Zin'kivs'k rayon by two
Jewish commissars and three NKVD soldiers. My mother, along with her four sons, was
evicted from our house to live a wretched life as she could not find shelter in other
rayons. And there were millions of Ukrainians who shared these destinies. We have our
own Holocaust, there was a genocide aimed at the Ukrainian people that was carried out
by Jewish hands.” Iaremenko (2003) 27, 55 and 106.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 97
order to enhance his credibility. 76 The book’s afterword by I. Pyvyshyn
describes Iaremenko as “not only a famous scholar, but also a beloved professor
for generations of journalists and linguists.” As a disclaimer, Pyvyshyn states
that “there is nothing even close to [anti-Semitism] in professor Iaremenko’s
publications.”77
The first article in the book is titled “The Myth of Ukrainian anti-
Semitism.” Essentially the article is a collection of historical myths, on which
Iaremenko elaborates further. He subscribes to the idea that Bolshevism is a
creation by international Jewry. In Iaremenko’s reading of history, this
conspiracy is aimed particularly against ethnic Ukrainians, who figure in the role
of prime victims of Jewish conspiracies. In the introduction, Iaremenko states
that “Today, Zionists [...] are the largest and most dangerous threat to Ukraine,
to the rights of the Ukrainian people, its dignity, moral, spiritual and economic
sovereignty.” 78 Iaremenko claims that Jews hold a near-monopoly of the
political, economic, intellectual power in Ukraine.
What Ukrainian Jewry today is going through is not a period of renaissance, but a
process of legalization of its position as a political and ideological organization, not
a national minority. It is well organized, well structured and generously financed.
This so-called national minority distinguishes itself by its extraordinary aggression,
which constitutes an enormous danger to the national security of Ukraine. Therefore
it ought to be under a never relaxed governmental and public control. As an alien
political force, which de facto controls international trade, national capital, mass
media, the sphere of book publishing in Ukraine, it must be restrained and regulated
by strict government and state control.79
According to Iaremenko, a tiny national minority, which makes up less than
1/500th of the total population, dominates public life in Ukraine:
Jewry, as a political organization, rather than a national minority, demands state and
public control. While the Jewish population in Ukraine makes up less than one per
cent of the population of Ukraine, there are 136 (158 according to other sources)
deputies of Jewish nationality in the Verkhovna Rada (considerably more, than in
the Israeli Knesset). [...] [T]his gives rise to a number of questions. Who are they
representing? The Jewish population? The people of Ukraine or the Ukrainian
people? Who pays them? Whose money? 90% of Ukrainian banks are run by
“managers” of Jewish nationality. In other words, Ukrainian finances are in Jewish
76
“[Vasyl' Iaremenko] taught at the Universities of Bratislava (Slovakia) and Alberta
(Canada).” Vasyl' Iaremenko, Ievreii v Ukraini s'ohodni: realnist' bez mifiv (Kyiv:
MAUP, 2003), back cover.
77
I. Pyvyshyn, “Pisliamova” [“Afterword”] in Iaremenko 125.
78
Iaremenko 4.
79
Iaremenko 12-13.
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98 PER ANDERS RUDLING
hands. As a citizen of Ukraine and a member of the titular nationality, I am
concerned about this and feel compelled to speak out publicly and ask questions,
such as: is this is a normal situation? Without any accusations of “anti-
[Semitism].”80
The idea that the tiny Ukrainian Jewish community is manipulating or
controlling the political life in Ukraine is central to the anti-Semitic argument.
Similar ideas circulate in the organs of the Ukrainian diaspora as well.
Following this line of argumentation, a columnist, Dr. Myron B. Kuropas, in
The Ukrainian Weekly, the largest Ukrainian newspaper in the United States,
claimed that “Jews” were behind Yanukovych in the first round of the Ukrainian
elections in November 2004. This stirred up an emotional debate in the diaspora
press. While the arguments of Kuropas differed in tone, the content differed
little from the cruder anti-Semites at MAUP.81
80
Iaremenko 15. The same argument is repeated in other essays in the book, 33. If the
number of deputies seems extreme, there are publications circulating on the streets of
Kyiv listing the number as even higher. The nationalist journal Idealist No. 6 and 7, 2002
published two articles on supposed Jews in the Verkhovna Rada. The journal claimed that
there were “326 Jews [zhydiv] in the Verkhovna Rada.” Svitova spil'nota ta slov’ians'ki
narody neodminno vyluchat' iz vlasnoho ta zhittia planety zlochynnyi svitovyi sionizm,
yakyi ie formoiu rasysmu ta rasovoi dyskryminatsii [The World Community and the
Slavic Peoples have to uproot from the Power and the Life of the Planet the Criminal
World Zionism since it is a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination] (Ternopil': n.p.,
2003) 2.
81
Dr. Myron B. Kuropas wrote that “Jews were the tools of the Polish king; during
Soviet times, they began as loyal members of the Soviet ruling elite. Later, Jews were
especially well represented in the Soviet secret police. [...] This same phenomenon is
making a comeback. Jews are backing the Kuchma gang. [...] The age-old Jewish strategy
of clinging to those who rule. [...] Honest Jews have nothing to fear from honest
government. [...] What will happen to Jewish oligarchs should there be a Yushchenko
administration? Not to worry. Most will probably survive. They will simply do what their
predecessors have always done: quickly join the power structure” Myron B. Kuropas
“Jews for Yanukovych,” Ukrainian Weekly 72.44 (31 Oct. 2004). See also the replies:
“As for Dr. Kuropas and his odious stereotyping, his article neither advances
constructively the debate concerning Ukraine’s ongoing election, nor enhances the
perception of Ukrainians in the 21st century.” Bohdan S. Ozaruk, “Anti-Semitism Must
be Denounced,” Ukrainian Weekly 72.47 (21 Nov. 2004). “In his columns, Myron
Kuropas frequently writes against the Jews, and I find it offensive. [...] I personally am
ashamed to belong to a community were anti-Semitism is so blithely tolerated in its most
representative newspaper.” John-Paul Himka “Comments about Kuropas Column,”
Ukrainian Weekly 72.50 (12 Dec. 2004). See also the replies to Himka by Bohdan
Vitvitsky: “Leon Trotsky, one of the two founding fathers of the Soviet state, one of the
two most criminal states in the 20th century, was Jewish. As was one of Stalin’s two
closest henchmen during the bloody 1930s, Lazar Kaganovich. As were a
disproportionate number of those who built and ran the Soviet concentration camp
system. We’re not talking about perimeter guards at some camp, we’re talking about
people who created and managed this evil system. Again, how can the truth be anti-
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 99
Iaremenko lists SDPU(o)—the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine
(united)—as a particularly active force in the hands of the Zionists, a political
party led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who was the head of former President
Kuchma’s administration. In his condemnation of SDPU(o), Iaremenko resorts
to crude ethnic slurs, followed by the customary denial that this would be anti-
Semitic.
The SDPU(o) is a Bundist type party, the leadership of which is in Jewish hands,
and funded by Jewish money. [P]eople […] call the party not “united”
[“ob’iednannykh”] but “circumcised” [“obrizanykh”]. That is not phobia and in no
way “anti”.82
Iaremenko never explains why a Bundist party would be the tool of
“Zionists.” He claims that the agenda of the allegedly Jewish-controlled
SDPU(o) is to remove power from the Ukrainian people: to destroy their culture,
education, sports and carry out a Russification of unprecedented proportions in
Ukraine.83 He claims that a “Jewish lobby” has made it easier for Zionist Jews to
operate within Ukraine by removing the “nationality” category from the
Ukrainian passports, and demands its reintroduction.84 “Ukrainian Jewry live by
their own laws, and when these collide with Ukrainian laws, the Jews’ wins
out,” Iaremenko states.85 He also claims that the myth about Ukrainian anti-
Semitism is spread by mass media, which in its entirety is in Jewish hands.86 If
there indeed were outbursts of anti-Jewish violence in the past, this was not due
to Ukrainian anti-Semitism. Rather they were provoked by Jewish actions.
What are the root causes of so-called anti-Semitism? Why is the Ukrainian people
being accused of harbouring zoological hatred of the Jews? This has never been the
case and is not the case now. [...] Zionism finds ways to exploit the local populations:
anything? [...] Dear Prof. Himka, the problem today, as it has been for some time, is not
purported Ukrainian anti-Semitism but rather actual Jewish Ukrainophobia. What are
you, as a scholar in the humanities, doing to analyze and combat that?” Bohdan
Vitvitsky, “The Real Problem is Ukrainophobia,” Ukrainian Weekly 72.51 (19 Dec.
2004).
82
Iaremenko 15-16.
83
Iaremenko 17.
84
Iaremenko 24. Shchokin, the head of MAUP and the founder of the Conservative Party
of Ukraine, is running for a seat in the Verkhovna Rada on a platform to reinstate the
“nationality” category into Ukrainian passports. The party has close links with David
Duke and White Supremacy groups in the United States. V. Iaremenko, “Zaiava
Federatsii patriotychnykh vydan' Ukrainy Ministru iustitsii Ukrainy R. Zvarychu,” 7 Apr.
2005 <http://www.maup.com.ua/news/news.php?idn=139> (accessed 24 Aug. 2005).
85
Iaremenko 18.
86
Iaremenko 17.
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Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
100 PER ANDERS RUDLING
in the past through keeping people drunk in Jewish taverns and lending out money at
exaggerated interest rates (usury), through outright extortion (as lessees, foremen to
rich noblemen, or as managers, physicians, and lawyers), and in our times—through
trade, the finance-banking sphere, outright swindle, and various criminal activities to
the point of taking over mass media and culture, book publishing and distribution.
When the patience ended, the people responded adequately: they destroyed their
tormentors, their social and national enemies. The Ukrainians are not to blame for
these acts of revenge. The blame must fall upon those who are the cause of the
resentment.87
As an example of Jewish terror against Ukrainians, Iaremenko mentions the
famine of 1932-33 and Stalin’s political terror from 1935-39, for both of which
he holds the Jews responsible.88 In the 1920s and 1930s, Iaremenko claims, the
Ukrainian government, NKVD and all punitive organs were up to 90 per cent in
Jewish hands,89 only to have increased to 99 per cent at the time of the 1937-38
terror.90 He attributes the mass murder of Ukrainians during the Great Terror to
the “Zionist government of Ukraine.” 91 This government, he claims, was
responsible for a “Jewish Holocaust of Ukrainians in 1921-22, 1932-33 and the
genocide of 1937-38.”92 Accusations that the Jews were running the NKVD and
the Communist Party are not new. They have been staple arguments of anti-
Semites for a long time. Iaremenko does not give any sources for his claims, nor
does he provide a historiography of current research conducted in the field.93
87
Iaremenko 19-20.
88
Iaremenko 15.
89
Iaremenko 23-4.
90
Iaremenko 109.
91
Iaremenko 32.
92
Iaremenko 55, 109.
93
While exact numbers are still unavailable for the lower ranking cadres, there are
statistics available on the ethnic composition of the higher levels of NKVD personnel in
Ukraine during the 1930s. Not even the Nazis themselves produced numbers close to
those of Iaremenko. They estimated the numbers of Jews in the NKVD to a little over
50%. The available statistics for the higher echelons of the NKVD in the USSR on July 1,
1939 gives the number 3.92% for Jewish commissars while the number of Ukrainians
was 12.92%. Before the Iezhovshchina however, the number of Jews were considerably
higher. Jews, along with Latvians and Poles were heavily over-represented with 39.09,
8.18 and 4.55 per cent respectively on 1 Oct. 1936. J. Arch Getty, Gabor T. Rittersporn,
Viktor N. Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First
Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence” in The American Historical Review 98.4
(Oct. 1993): 1028. On January 1, 1945, 4.49% of the NKVD cadres in the Ukrainian SSR
were Jews, most of who worked in the censorship department. N.V Petrov and K.V.
Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD 1934-1941: Spravochnik, ed. N.G. Okhotin and A.B.
Roginskii (Moscow: Obshchestvo “Memorial,” 1999) 495. Amir Weiner, Making Sense
of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton:
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 101
If pogroms under Khmel'nyts'kyi and the tsars were provoked by the Jews
themselves, Iaremenko adds a new, interesting accusation: the Jews not only
provoked the Holocaust, they were its very architects. Not only were they the
financers of the Nazis: they also made up the bulk of the SS. Iaremenko claims
that Ukraine was “invaded by German fascists along with a 400,000-strong
horde of Jewish SS men.”94
Jewish historians suppress facts and deceive the citizens of the world that tens of
thousands of Jews from all over Europe served in the fascist SS. These were
distinguished by their particular cruelty towards Soviet Jews. Listen to what Iurii
Mukhin writes in his book Ubiistvo Stalina i Beriia [The Murder of Stalin and Beria]
(Moscow: Forum, 2002) based upon documental evidence: The poet and famous
Zionist Bialik wrote, that “Hitlerism is the rescue, but Bolshevism—the curse of the
Jewish people.” Further: “To the Zionists, the Jews of the USSR became the
enemies. And that, in turn, predetermined the particular cruelty of Hitler—the ally of
the Zionists, towards the Soviet Jews. Today, people keep quiet about this question,
but all over Europe historians are persecuted and locked up in jails for attempting to
find out the truth about the extermination of the Jews by the Hitlerites in the so-
called “Holocaust.”95
Iaremenko continues, relying on Mukhin:
The Soviet army annihilated thousands of Jewish SS men (let them bewail this scum
as well, if they so wish), and 10,173 Jews, soldiers of Hitler from the SS were taken
prisoners (Iu. Mukhin, 187). Out of 24 nationalities taken captive—the Jews were in
13th place. Maybe this is the reason why the Jewish question is “delicate.”96
When the article “Jews in Ukraine Today: Reality without Myths” was first
published in the opposition newspaper Sil's'ki Visti on November 30, 2003,
Iaremenko’s claim about 400,000 Jews in the SS caused a serious controversy
because the paper, the largest opposition newspaper in Ukraine with a
Princeton University Press, 2001), 269 n. 101. For a discussion on this controversy, see
Per Anders Rudling, “Bogdan Musial and the Question of Jewish Responsibility for the
Pogroms in Lviv in the Summer of 1941,” East European Jewish Affairs 35.1 (June
2005): 69-89. The Jewish representation in government declined sharply under Stalin and
his successors, to the point that by the late 1970s, the Jews were “relatively the most
under-represented nationality in the USSR.” Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora:
the Jews in Europe since 1945 (London, New York: Penguin Books, 1997) 198 citing
“Twenty-five Years of Destalinization and Soviet Jewry,” IJARR USSR/78/2 (March
1978).
94
Iaremenko 111.
95
Iaremenko 105
96
Iaremenko 105-6.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
102 PER ANDERS RUDLING
circulation of 520,000 copies, was forced to close.97 Sil's'ki Visti is aligned with
the Socialist Party of Ukraine and its leader Oleksandr Moroz, a key ally of
Yushchenko. In the controversy following the process, Moroz supported the
paper. “I have defended Silski Visti and will continue to do so,” Moroz said. “I
personally think the argument of the author of the article, Vasily Iaremenko,
citing 400,000 Jews in the S.S. is incorrect, but I am not in a position to know all
the facts.” 98 The editor of the paper, Vasyl' Hruzyn, made even stronger
apologetic claims about Iaremenko’s article: “Although we published the
Iaremenko article as a paid advertisement and not as a position we ourselves
endorsed, I happen to believe the figure of 400,000 Jews taking part in the
German invasion of the Ukraine is not far from the truth.” The affair
surrounding the paper was further complicated by the fact that Sil's'ki Visti had
failed to state that Iaremenko’s article was carried as an advertisement, paid for
by MAUP. Therefore, many readers got the impression that Iaremenko’s article
was editorial material, endorsed by the paper.99
Given Iaremenko’s Russophobe Ukrainian nationalism and anti-
communism it is interesting that he uncritically accepts claims made by a
Russian Stalinist such as Iurii Mukhin. 100 It illustrates the phenomenon of
Stalinists and Ukrainian nationalists finding common ground in Soviet-era anti-
97
Ana Shidler, “Myths and Truths about Ukrainian Anti-Semitism,” Ukraine Now 4 Apr.
2004 <http://www.ukrnow.com/content/view/31/2/>. Jan Maksymiuk, “Largest
Opposition Newspaper Closed on Charges of Anti-Semitism” <http://www.rferl.org/
reports/pbureport/2004/02/4-030204.asp> cites Iaremenko, Vasyl', “Evrei v Ukraini
s'ohodni: real'nist' bez mifiv,” Sil's'ki Visti 30 Nov. 2003. (Both accessed 26 Aug. 2005).
98
Matveyev and Ruby, “Anti-Semitism in Ukrainian media up, and its acceptance is
worrying Jews,” NCSJ, Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States
& Eurasia, 21 Sept. 2004. <http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/092104JTA_Ukraine.shtml>
(accessed 7 Oct. 2005).
99
Matveyev and Ruby, “Anti-Semitism…”
100
Iurii Mukhin is the main editor of the Russian anti-Semitic and Stalinist journal Duel'.
He has published a number of books, presenting an alternative version of the Holocaust
and World War II. He blames “Zionists” for the Holocaust, while romanticizing the
Soviet army and its leadership. He is a regular at Stalinist meetings. At a meeting in
Moscow to commemorate Stalin’s 122nd birthday on 21 Dec. 2001, Mukhin delivered an
address where he eulogized Stalin while blasting “democrats” and “Zionists.” See
Charles Fenyvesi (ed.) Bigotry Monitor: A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on
Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World
and Western Europe 1.25 <http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/122801 Russia.shtml>,
and <http://www.fsumonitor.com/russiabook2001/Russia_Book_2001_Main_v2_pt4.
pdf>. In addition to the cited Ubiistvo Stalina i Beriia (Moscow: Forum, 2002), Mukhin
has also published Otsy—komandiry: Zvezdy na pogonakh—zvezdy na mogilakh (with
Aleksandr Lebedintsev) (Moscow: Iauza, Presskom, 2005); Krestovii pokhod na vostok:
“Zhertvy” Vtoroi mirovoi (Moscow: Iauza, Presskom, 2003) and his most recent book
Tainy Izrailia: eto ot tebia skryvaiut! (Moscow: Iauza, Presskom, 2005). Mukhin (2005)
160.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 103
Semitic discourse. Despite his political preferences, Mukhin’s arguments appear
to have had a major impact on nationalist Ukrainian anti-Semites. In his recent
The Secrets of Israel: They are Hiding it From You! Mukhin presents his version
of the history of World War II. He is not a Holocaust denier per se, even though
he defends some prominent Holocaust deniers from what he sees as political
persecution at the hands of an international Zionist conspiracy.101 At the same
time, he denies or marginalizes the existence of anti-Semitism in Russia.102 He
also claims that Hitler’s nationalism was just a repeat of “Jewish racism.”
Hitler’s nationalism repeated Jewish racism. The Jews thinks that only they are the
chosen nation, and that all other nations are goys, Untermenschen. Hitler only
modified this: he also thought that the highest nation in the world was the Aryans
and the Germans in particular, and that all other nations were Untermenschen.103
While he concedes that the Holocaust took place, Mukhin claims that “the
Zionists” organized it. In doing so, he expands on the old Soviet propaganda line
of a Zionist-Nazi plot, a staple in Soviet and Arab anti-Zionist propaganda from
the time of the Eichmann trial onwards.104 Yet, Mukhin takes this argument one
step further, and argues that the Nazis simply were the agents of Zionism.
101
Mukhin finds it “strange” that so many western governments are afraid of
“revisionist” arguments, i.e., Holocaust denial. He cites the American “revisionist”
Richard Harwood, who complains that “revisionist” historians are suffering from political
and physical terror: Marcel Dupra was killed by a bomb put in his car. Ernst Zündel
received a bomb by mail, then had his house burnt down. Swiss historian Jürgen Graff
had his house burnt down. The same thing happened to a “Swedish researcher, who lived
in Denmark and to the storage space of an American revisionist publishing house. French
revisionist R. Faurisson was viciously beaten. “France, Germany, Austria, Portugal,
Spain, Denmark, Holland and Switzerland have all passed legislation against denying the
“fact” that six million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.” German
revisionist Germar Rudolf was sent to 18 month in prison for Holocaust denial. Iurii
Mukhin, Tainy Izrailia: eto ot tebia skryvaiut! (Moscow: Iauza, Presskom, 2005) 68-9.
102
“[T]he rumors that almost all Jews have emigrated from Russia (except the Russian
government and the Russian mass media) are clearly exaggerated. Since mass media
gives so much attention to “anti-Semitism” of the Russians and attempt to stir up hatred
for Russia, this means that there are still many Jews in Russia, and that there are still
cadres for Israeli settlements.” Mukhin 58-9.
103
Mukhin 11.
104
For an example of this kind of “anti-Zionist” propaganda, see Literaturna Ukraina 14
Dec. 1979: “From the taped conversations of the Jerusalem process [the Eichmann trial]
you can hear such sacramental expressions as: “Had I not been a German, but a Jew, I
would absolutely have become a Zionist!” Here is an eccentric paradox: this very
Eichmann was nothing less than... an agent of Zionist intelligence, the Mossad, recruited
long before the creation of the state of Israel! Does this seem unbelievable? A fact
remains a fact! The Soviet Russian author Iurii Kolesnikov convincingly tells the story of
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Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
104 PER ANDERS RUDLING
Once again I would like to remind the readers that the founding fathers of Zionism
were fanatics, i.e. people not thinking of the future of Jews, but Israelis. Those of the
Jews, who did not agree with Zionist objectives, were seen as worse than non-
Jews—they were nothing else than garbage and their lives were nothing in the eyes
of the Zionists. I have no doubts whatsoever, that during the course of World War II,
the Germans did not exterminate the Jews on their own initiative, but were instigated
to do so by the Zionists.105
Mukhin explains the fact that the Nazis lost the war by claiming “the
Zionists” soon changed sides in the conflict. During 1942 they switched their
allegiances from Hitler to Stalin, “when they realized that their main ally—
Hitler—would not be able to solve the problems of Zionism. Nevertheless, the
relations of the USSR towards Zionism was never more than a tactical one, since
in regards to their principal question the Zionists had to hate the USSR, and
particularly Soviet Jewry.”106
The idea of the Jews being responsible for the Holocaust appears to be a
new addition to the anti-Semitic discourse, even though its Soviet roots are
easily distinguished. Thus Soviet-era accusations of a Zionist-Nazi plot find
their way to Iaremenko through Mukhin.107 Iaremenko develops the argument of
a Jewish-organized Holocaust even further. Without listing any sources, he
this “small detail” in the biography of the SS bandit in his novel Zemlia obitovana [The
Promised Land]. He backs up this claim with documental evidence. [...] The ideologues
of “God’s chosen people” claim that every Jew, wherever he lives, ought to have dual
citizenship, i.e., also consider himself subjugated to Israel. No anti-Soviet henchmen,
who hypocritically defend murderous criminals and give material assistance to a bunch of
deplorable degenerates—dissidents, who blab about “human rights violations” in our
country are not in the position to teach us anything. Nor should they form a “fifth
column” within our society.” Hryhorii Plotkin, “Zmova pryrechenykh: rozdumy pislia
prochytannia romanu Iu. Kolesnykova “Zemlia obitovana” [“A Conspiracy of the
Doomed: Reflections after the Reading of Iu. Kolesnykov’s Novel ‘The Promised
Land’”] Literaturna Ukraina 14 Dec. 1979, 4. See also Judith Vogt, “When Nazism
Became Zionism: An Analysis of Political Cartoons,” in Ettinger, S., Anti-Semitism in the
Soviet Union: Its Roots and Consequences: Proceedings of the Seminar on Soviet Anti-
Semitism held in Jerusalem on April 7-8, 1978, Vol. III (Jerusalem: The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 1983) 159-96, and Robert Wistrich, Between Redemption and
Perdition: Modern Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity (London and New York:
Routledge, 1990) 225-35. For Arab proliferation of this argument, see David Matas,
Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism. (Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 2005) 32.
105
Mukhin 62-3.
106
Mukhin 61.
107
Iaremenko 72. The idea that the Zionists perceive themselves as Übermenschen is also
a frequent theme in Shchokin’s writings. However, for these claims Shchokin relies on
David Duke and Eduard Khodos. See Hryhorii Shchokin, “Sionizm: ideolohiia
Übermenschen,” Personal 3 (2002): 8, 11. Also cited in Stepan Ostroz'kyi, Zhydy:
Publitsystychni poemy, [Jews: Publistic Poems] (Stryi: Shchedryk, 2003) 186.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 105
claims that it was not Ukrainian auxiliary police that murdered the Jews at
Babyn Iar, but the Jews themselves. Writes Iaremenko: “If we are to be honest,
the Ukrainian police stood back, while the Jewish Polizei were brought to Babyn
Iar. And there were 15,000 of them! That is also a truth that the Zionists want to
conceal.”108
In addition to the Holodomor (famine), the terror, and the Holocaust,
Iaremenko holds the Jews responsible for organizing slavery and international
sex trade through the centuries.
[There is] evidence to support the claim that the Jews were already engaged in slave
trade during the antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Jews castrated Slavs and sold
them to harems of rich Muslims who needed eunuchs. Beautiful girls from Rus'
were sold to harems for depraved entertainment. In the past decade 500,000
Ukrainian girls have been sold to brothels in Europe, Africa and Asia. There are also
brothels in Kyiv. Who runs them? Who are these contemporary slave traders and
whoremasters? [...] If we babble about an open civic society, then I, as a citizen of
Ukraine, want to know who sold half a million of my fellow Ukrainians to brothels
around the world. I want to know the ethnic make-up of the Verkhovna Rada. I want
to know in whose hands the outdoor markets of Ukraine are, who controls the
Ukrainian TV channels and unlawfully privatized ‘strategic’ factories. The data
should be verified by an independent body. Then it will become clear whether the
issue of national security is pertinent now. The Jewish element is carrying out for
real the plans of international Zionism in regard to Ukraine. It tries to conceal them
under the disguise of a taboo on any discussion of the “Jewish issue.” It utilizes fear
mongering by attaching the label of anti-Semitism to it, a malicious Zionist
invention. Only when such data are obtained can we know whether the Jewish
element poses a threat to national security.109
Iaremenko also conveys to his readers and students that it is “Jewish
oligarchs, funded by international Zionist centers” who prevent a renaissance of
Ukrainian culture and instead flood Ukrainian TV channels with porn, rape,
murder and drugs.110 Julius Streicher developed this kind of argumentation into
an art already in the 1920s. The Jew as a pimp and sexual predator was a central
theme in Der Stürmer. Other than articulate details of lewd Jewish sexual
108
Iaremenko 106. Ironically, in the recent past, other extreme Ukrainian nationalists
have publicly found the Ukrainian participation in the mass murder at Babii Yar a source
of pride. For instance, in the Rivne city Rada in 1995 the extreme nationalist Shkuratiuk
stated: “I am proud of the fact that among 1,500 Polizei executioners in Babiy Yar there
were 1,200 OUN men but only 300 Germans.” Mirs'kyi, Naiman, 46, citing the
nationalist newspaper Neskorena natsiia 5 (1995).
109
Iaremenko 22-3. See also page 85-7.
110
Iaremenko 64.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
106 PER ANDERS RUDLING
exploitation of Slavs, there is little new in Iaremenko’s argumentation. Again, he
does not provide any references for his claims.111
Iaremenko is only one of many anti-Semitic writers. Another star on the
Ukrainian anti-Semitic publishing scene, whose writings are published by
MAUP, is Eduard Khodos. He claims to be a Jew himself, titling himself “the
first Baron of Kharkiv.”112 Ferociously anti-Semitic, Khodos leads an obscure
group in Kharkiv, called the “Kharkiv Jewish religious community of liberal
orientation.”113 If Iaremenko’s eye opener was the arrest of his father “by Jewish
commissars,” Khodos’ moment of truth supposedly came in 1991 when he was
invited to the Chabad headquarter in Brooklyn, New York as a representative of
one of six Jewish communities from the USSR. Here, Khodos claims he was
introduced to Chabad’s methods of infiltration and their plans to grab power all
across the Soviet Union.114 Since then, he has been dedicated to spreading the
word about a Jewish world conspiracy. Khodos is a productive writer. On
average, he has produced one book per year during the past decade. His books
have found distributors among mainstream book dealers and are readily
available across the country. Other Ukrainian anti-Semites make frequent use of
the “theories” developed in his publications.115 Khodos claim to fame is his
“theory of the three Khazarias,” articulated and developed in a series of books
called The Jewish Syndrome, of which there are four volumes to date.116 These
“theories” are widely circulated among other Ukrainian and Russian anti-
Semites, and Iaremenko utilizes these in his interpretation of the current
Ukrainian political situation.117
Khodos’ central argument or “historical theory” is that of Jewish
conspiracies finding concrete historical expressions in three so-called Khazarias.
I claim that during different times on the same territory, three Khazarias were
created:
The first Khazaria—the Great Khazarskii Kaganate (VII-X centuries)
111
Randall L. Bytwerk, Julius Streicher: The Man Who Persuaded a Nation to Hate Jews
(New York: Stein and Day, 1983) 143-59. Fred Hahn, Lieber Stürmer!: Leserbreife an
das NS-Kampfblatt 1924 bis 1945. Eine Dokementation aus dem Leo-Baeck-Institut, New
York. Bearbeitung der deutschen Ausgabe von Günter Wagenlehner (Stuttgart: Seewald
Verlag, 1978) 114, 117.
112
Eduard Khodos, Evreiskii sindrom—3: Zabavnie protokoly sionskikh murdovtsov
(Kyiv and Kharkiv: Intertekhnologiia, 2002) back cover.
113
Eduard Khodos. Kogda evrei marshiruiut...: Tri pis'ma k situatsii vokrug gazety
“Sil's'ki visti (Kyiv: MAUP, 2004) 5.
114
Khodos (2004) 11.
115
Iaremenko 50-1, citing Eduard D. Khodos “Tri Khazarii—tri ideologii,” Personal 7
(2002): 16-20.
116
Khodos (2002) 5.
117
Iaremenko 50-1.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 107
The second Khazaria—the Sovdepiia (1917-late 1920s)
The third Khazaria—The Commonwealth of Independent States (1991-?)
As a result of a number of unifying factors (territory, multi-ethnicity, economic
emphasis on the development of trade, the overwhelming majority of Jews in the
highest organs of state power), these three “kaganates” where by their nature based
upon different ideological foundations, all however, deriving from Khazaria. In
particular:
The first Khazaria was based upon the ideology of Judaism
The Second—on the ideology of atheism
The Third—on “the ideology of the desert.”118
Khodos’ books contain a mix of conspiracies, esoteric speculations on
Satanism and traditional anti-Semitic hatred in a particularly virulent form. His
books contain reproductions of anti-Semitic caricatures from the 1920s,
depicting Jewish communists, followed by their “real names” next to their
Bolshevik nom de guerre.119
Khodos is obsessed with the Hassidic Jewish sect Chabad.120 Their dress
code makes them stand out physically and thus easy to orientalize. They also
fulfill a role in that the Lubavitch Rabbis originated from the Chornobyl' area.
This is central to Khodos’ theories, as he links Chabad to the 1986 nuclear
catastrophe. Chabad is engaged in charity work and proselytizing among
Ukrainian Jews. Khodos links this to notions of monetary privileges,
exclusiveness and “Jewish racism.” Chabad is a somewhat unlikely candidate as
a representative for “Zionism.” Over the past century Chabad has moved from
moderate rejection of, to lukewarm embracing of, the Zionist ideology.121 Its
118
Khodos (2002) 7.
119
Khodos (2002) 8, 14-17, citing his own Evreyskiy sindrom—2: Prishestvie Iudy (Kyiv
and Kharkiv: Intertekhnolohiia, 2000) and 11, quoting Personal 2 (2002).
120
Khodos’ attitude is reflected in the official policy of MAUP and Shchokin’s Ukrainian
Conservative Party. In August 2005, Shchokin’s party called on Yushchenko to open
criminal proceedings against Jewish groups in Ukraine and demanded that the “Tanya” a
Hassidic text, written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad
Lubavitch be banned in Jewish schools.” Ukrainian Politicians Call to Ban Jewish
Ground—Jewish Leaders Respond,” European Jewish Congress 29 Aug. 2005.
121
“The [Chabad] movement as a whole, when it addressed the issue of the success of
Zionism, claimed that secular Zionism’s undermining of piety and religion had thwarted
Habad’s attempt to usher in the messianic age, and thus the Zionists were partly
responsible for the Holocaust.” M. Avrum Ehrlich, The Messiah of Brooklyn:
Understanding Lubavitch Hasidism Past and Present (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Publishing
House, 2004) 116. Moses M. Schneerson, the Lubavitch Rebbe himself “refused to set
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108 PER ANDERS RUDLING
presence is visible in Ukraine, and many of the Jewish community centres and
relief agencies in Ukraine are linked to, or organized by, Chabad, such as the
model Beit Baruch Assisted living facility in Dnipropetrovs'k. 122 Due to
Chabad’s active involvement in the region, Chabad today runs most synagogues
in the former Soviet Union. Of course, there are also many other Jewish
organizations in Ukraine, supporting the ageing and rapidly diminishing Jewish
community. The Jewish Agency for Israel focuses mainly on assisting people to
immigrate to Israel, while the American Joint Distribution Center funds Jewish
cultural and community activities.
Khodos’ “theories” are representative of the quasi-historical style of the
anti-Semitic discourse.123 The reader is confronted with a peculiar mix of facts
and fiction. A “first” Khazaria did indeed exist. Writes Khodos:
Of course, Jews, given their high level of civilization, energy, enterprising spirit,
craftsmanship, and, particularly, trading capital rose quickly and Judaized the local
leadership. Soon they were ruling the Khazaria, their nomad kingdom. Judaism
became the state religion of the Khazars.124
The Khazars have also been given particular attention in MAUP’s journal
Personal, and Khodos refers his readers to this paper for additional
information.125
Thus, Judaism became the founding, or rather, only ideological foundation upon
which the Khazarian state expanded and flourished. And, as you have already
understood, I am not the only one to speak about this.126
foot in Israel and declared that Jews living in the Holy Land were just as much in exile as
those who lived in the Diaspora.” Wasserstein 86, Ehrlich 119-21. Also, see Roman A.
Foxbrunner, Habad: The Hasidim of R. Schneur Zalman of Lyady (Tuscaloosa: The
University of Alabama Press, 1992) 91-2.
122
Betsy Gidwitz, “Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part
One,” The Jerusalem Letter 451 (1 Apr. 2001), Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
<http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/jcpa/gib02.html> (accessed 27 Aug. 2005).
123
For a discussion on the ahistoricity of anti-Semitic discourse, see Gavin I. Langmuir,
History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
124
Khodos (2002).
125
Khodos (2002) 8.
126
Khodos (2002) 11. However, historians such as Omeljan Pritsak have been reluctant
to call this system a Jewish national state: “My analysis of the Khazarian political system
shows that the empire of the Khazar kagan could not have been a Jewish national state in
any sense of the word. The Jews, both proselytes and those from the Jewish diaspora,
made up a significant but not total part of the Khazar ruling elite, the significant
exception being the military. [...] The Arab writers of the first half of the tenth century al-
Mascūdī and al-Istakhrī noted that the Khazar capital’s population consisted of four
religious groups, in the following proportions: 2/7 Jews, 2/7 Christians, 2/7 Muslims and
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 109
From an unorthodox interpretation of the Khazarian political system,
Khodos develops a “theory” that this was only the “first” in a number of
Khazarias, or Jewish states, on Ukrainian soil. After the fall of the “first”
Khazaria, a second, atheist, Khazaria was established in roughly the same area
in the 20th century.127
In this regard, Khodos follows in the steps of the Soviet archeologist and
philosopher Lev Gumilev. The bulk of Gumilev’s research on Khazaria was
conducted in the 1960s, during a period of increased anti-Jewish repression, and
the official Soviet policy of “anti-Zionism” is reflected in Gumilev’s work and
language. Gumilev portrays Khazarian Jews in a negative light. Gumilev is
particularly hostile to the Khazars in his Drevniaia Rus' i velikaia step', where
the Khazarian Jews are depicted as being involved in the Middle Eastern Slave
trade.128 Gumilev also put the main blame on these Jews for cooperating with
the Vikings and allowing them to exploit the local Slavic population. 129
Gumelev claimed that Khazarian Jewish influence rather than socio-political
reasons led the people of Rus' into military conquest of neighboring areas, in the
process of which a great deal of Rus'ian blood was spilled. Gumilev’s negative
account of Khazaria remained popular among Soviet and post-Soviet Russian
nationalists, such as the people around the often openly anti-Semitic journal
Nash sovremennik.130
Gumilev shows his colors both as a crude and sophisticated anti-Semite. He labels
the Jews as a parasite ethnos, which has ceased to exist as a separate ethnos. In fact,
according to this view, the Jews are not a nation at all, but a specific way of thinking
by a certain group of people having Jewish genetic heritage and/or sharing the moral
norms of Judaism. In Gumilev’s view, every time a parasite ethnos dominated an
indigenous ethnos, revolution, civil war, and the creation of what he calls a
1/7 ‘pagans’.” Omeljan Pritsak, “The Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation
to the Khazars, the Rus' and the Lithuanians,” Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj, eds.,
Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, Second Edition (Edmonton:
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1990) 6.
127
Khodos (2002) 11.
128
Lev Nikolaievich Gumilev, Drevniaia Rus' i velikaia step' (Moscow: Mysl', 1989)
153-4.
129
In much, he follows his colleague and teacher Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov, who
argued that the Jewish leadership of the Khazaria had been “parasiting” off their people.
M. I. Artamonov in L. N. Gumilev, ed., Istoriia khazar (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo
gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha, 1962) 457-8.
130
Mikhail Tripol'skii, “Ob izvrashchenii Istorii: khazarskii kaganat, evrei i sud'ba
Rossii,” Novoe Russkoe Slovo 9 Dec. 1994 <http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/debate/
Article10.htm> (accessed 5 Mar. 2006). For a discussion on the intellectual history of
Nash Sovremennik, see Walter Laqueur, Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in
Russia (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) 91-106.
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110 PER ANDERS RUDLING
“chimera” statehood, followed. […] He says [the Khanate] was a horrible, corrupt
entity that oppressed its neighbors. The source materials for Gumilev’s view of the
Khazar Khanate are not clear. Gumilev and his followers use the example of the
Khazar Khanate as a model for analyzing the history of the Soviet Union. According
to Gumilev, the Soviet Union was created by Jewish revolutionaries. Lenin and
Stalin bastardized the Russian People, turning them into Communist Untermenschen
(sovok).131
The idea of links between Khazaria, Masonry and Judeo-Communism is
further developed in the writing of Russian Stalinist Oleg Platonov. Khodos’
brand of anti-Semitism echoes Platonov’s line of argument.132
[I]nternational Jewry established a bloody connection with internationalist Jews and
atheist masonry, relying on their ideological closeness to the Bolsheviks. [...] It is
also worth noticing that the Bolshevik leadership at the time was following two
different political lines: Lenin’s cadres (who were financed by and returned to
Russia by the Germans in 1917) and Trotsky’s cadres (who were financed by and
returned to Russia by the Americans). What is central here is that in both cases the
money came from the Shiffs and the Warburgs—the Jewish financial elite. [...]
Trotsky and Lenin honestly believed that the bankers who were cosmopolitizing the
world would “subconsciously” bring about a world revolution. In reality, the latter
had calculated everything perfectly. By setting up conditions for the Bolsheviks,
they understood perfectly well that, as the revolutionaries ruined the world of
Christian values, they helped the world’s puppet masters in establishing world
domination.133
However, this second Khazaria was short-lived. Stalin ended it by throwing
Trotsky out of the country. Khodos cites Karl Radek:134 “Moses led the Jews out
of Egypt, and Stalin led them out of the Politburo.”135
131
Viktor Yasmann, “Red Religion: An Ideology of Neo-Messianic Russian
Fundamentalism,” Demokratizatsiya, Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 1.2
(Spring, 1993): 26 <http://www.demokratizatsiya.org/Dem%20Archives/DEM%2001-
02%20yasmann.pdf> (accessed 5 Mar. 2006).
132
Platonov is on the publishing committee of the publishing house of the Institute for
Historical Review, the world’s leading organization for Holocaust denial. While he
denies the Holocaust, he believes in the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion. Platonov (2003a) 4. Like Iaremenko, he insists that Lenin was a Jew by the name of
Blanke. He also claims that Brezhnev was “unclean” and Andropov was possessed by a
Jewish-Masonic Demon. Oleg A. Platonov, Bich Bozhiy: epokha Stalina (Moscow:
Algoritm, 2005) 4; Oleg A. Platonov, Ternovyi venets Rossii: Zagadka Sionskikh
protokolov (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003b); Johnson’s Russia List: <http://www.cdi.org/russia/
johnson/2479.html> (accessed 27 Sept. 2005), Center for Defence Information, 16.11.98.
133
Khodos (2002) 12-13, citing Khodos (2000).
134
Or, as he likes to point out: Radek (Sobelson). Khodos (2002) 17.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 111
According to Khodos, Stalin’s theological training at the Tbilisi theological
seminary meant that he was not only well oriented in questions of religion. He
was also aware of the how prince Sviatoslav had crushed the first Jewish
Khazaria. Thus, Stalin decided to personally end the Second, atheist Khazaria.136
He labeled Chabad a fascist sect and threw it out of the USSR in the early 1930s
along with its leader, the Lubavitch Rabbi.137 To Khodos’ dismay, the uprooting
of the Chabad conspiracy was not thorough enough. “[Stalin] could hardly
imagine that his great country, which had already suffered so much would be
returned to a bottomless Khazaria, and that the refined elders of Zion would
devise a new way to reanimate their ambitions—the ideology of the desert.”138
From the 1940s onward the central staff of the Chabad-Lubavitch [Rabbi] was
located in Brooklyn, New York. From 1950 to 1994 the sect was led by the seventh
and last Lubavitch Rabbi. During this period Chabad evolved into a powerful
political, financial and economic empire, whose goal was worldwide expansion.139
Chabad, according to Khodos, became instrumental in establishing a third
Khazaria prior to the collapse of the USSR. He argues that the beginning of the
end was the “hellish explosion” at the Chornobyl' nuclear power plant on April
26, 1986.140
For the first time in a long time, within the “united family [of Soviet peoples]” all
kinds of accusations and pretensions surfaced, and the “brotherly people” began
attacking one another. The Desert, which had turned the very center of the Slavic
world into “a dead zone” began transforming the hearts and souls of the “great
Soviet people” and pushed the Socialist Empire into the “black hole” of the Third
Khazaria. The reason for this Apocalypse was... an experiment! Well, sure, there
was “an unsuccessful unscheduled experiment” conducted (still unknown by whom)
in the night before the main religious holiday of the “great Khazarian architects.” Is
it possible to imagine that somebody purposely decided to appear in the role of
“experimenter” and risk the division that marked the beginning of the end of a giant
135
Khodos (2002) 18.
136
This idea is not new: the linking of Stalin to Christian tsars and Sviatoslav’s crushing
of Khazaria in the 10th century comes from Igor' Sychev, the leader of the Russian anti-
Semitic movement Pamiat'. Klas-Gőran Karlsson, Historia som vapen: Historiebruk och
Sovjetunionens upplősning 1985-1995 (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1999) 255. Thus
linking Stalin to the Orthodox tradition, presenting him as a good Christian ruler, follows
Platonov. Platonov (2005) 11-12.
137
Khodos (2002) 22, citing his own Evreiskii sindrom (Kyiv and Kharkiv:
Intertekhnolohiia, 1999) and 180-1.
138
Khodos (2002) 181.
139
Khodos (2002) 23.
140
Khodos (2002) 20.
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112 PER ANDERS RUDLING
superpower? Of course! No matter how strange it may sound... For a lot of money,
as we have seen, everything is possible (even to utilize several commercial airplanes
in the attack on the World Trade Center!).141
And the reason for this?
It is necessary to point out that to the members of the sect Chabad the Chornobyl'
catastrophe was always considered a holy punitive revenge. After all, it was Bohdan
Khmel'nyts'kyi who with “fire and sword” had severed the “Chornobyl' branch” of
the ancestors of Chabad. It is not a coincidence that the accident that took place at
the Chornobyl' nuclear power plant, of which the whole world exclusively refers to
in terms of “tragedy” or “catastrophe,” is referred to by the Lubavitch sectarians as
“the Chornobyl' miracle.” Neither is it a coincident that in the beginning of the
1990s, in the period of active construction of the Third Khazaria, the Chabadites
“opened a season” of ritual bacchanalias in Prypiat', the epicenter of the Chornobyl'
desert.142
Thus, the Chabadists, according to Khodos, embodied an ultimate,
irredeemable evil. Both their bodies and souls were corrupted beyond
redemption:
Chabad is a Judeo-Nazi sect, organized along the principle of a clan, at the head of
which there is a “godfather”—the Lubavitch Rabbi. The members of Chabad are
ultra-orthodox. Their men and women are easily distinguishable by their outer
physical attributes: the men are either too fat, either too skinny, always bearded, in
caftans and black hats. The women are skinny, with shaved heads and wigs.
Extremely few people are let into the sect. In the world today, there are only 20,000
followers of Chabad-Lubavitch. [...] Chabad is the only orientation within Judaism
with a Führer at its head—the Lubavitch Rabbi.143
Following in the anti-Semitic tradition of Wagner and Fichte, Khodos
claims that the Jews are degenerated beyond redemption. Much like Wagnerian
operatic characters such as the Flying Dutchman and Kundry, the “Wandering
Jews” can only be redeemed from the curse of “Jewishness” by self-destruction
or physical expulsion from the community.144 Yet Khodos’ theories of a Judeo-
141
Khodos (2002) 20-1.
142
Khodos (2002) 23.
143
Khodos (2002) 22, citing his own Evreyskii sindrom (Kyiv and Kharkiv:
Intertekhnolohiia, 1999). Khodos (2004) 10-11. Oleg A. Platonov, ed., 100 zakonov iz
talmuda (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003a) 85, citing Khodos “Tri Khazarii—tri ideologii,” Personal
7 (2002): 16-20.
144
German anti-Semites, in turn, were also inspired by anti-Semitism in Russia. In her
diary, Cosima Wagner described Richard Wagner's reaction to news about pogroms in
the Russian empire. “When news of Russian pogroms of the Jews reached Wagner in
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 113
Nazi alliance falls within the Soviet “anti-Zionist” tradition. He claims Jews
fanned ethnic hatred between formerly brotherly people. The “friendship of
people,” or druzhba narodov, which Terry Martin has described as the imagined
Soviet community, 145 came to an end due to outside influences—an
international conspiracy by a Jewish fifth column. It was replaced by an
“ideology of the desert,” a reference to the dead zone surrounding the now-
decommissioned Chornobyl' nuclear power plant. The new leaders, according to
Khodos, were Judaized aristocrats, who, if they are guided by any principles at
all, are guided by an “a-national” desert philosophy, lacking a “national idea”
for Ukraine.146 This “desert philosophy” found expression in radical, capitalist
reforms that resulted in genocide of Ukrainians. Khodos claims that the
Ukrainian population decreases by 50% every 25-30 years, meaning that in 50-
60 years there will no Ukrainians left in Ukraine. Khodos predicts that this void
will be filled by a massive immigration from Asia and Africa.147
Like professor Khyzhniak, Khodos is a true believer in the authenticity of
the Protocols. Khodos cites Metropolitan Ioann of St. Petersburg and Ladoga
who until his death in 1995 was one of the more infamous anti-Semites at the
top of the Russian Orthodox Church:
There are different points of views regarding the origins of the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion. But, as far as I am concerned, it is not important how they came
about, but rather, that the history of the Twentieth century with frightening clarity
played out according to the ambitions, expressed in that document.148
August 1881, he happily commented ‘That is the only way it can be done—by throwing
these fellows out and giving them a good thrashing.’ And a few days later: ‘Reports of
Jew-baiting in Russia ... Richard observes that this is all that is left, expression of a
people’s strength.’ The Russians were evincing a spontaneous racial anti-Semitism that
Wagner hoped the Germans would regain.” Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner: Race and
Revolution (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992) 163-4, 178-9.
145
Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet
Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001) 461. See also Lowell
Tillet, The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians on the non-Russian Nationalities (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969).
146
Khodos (2002) 26, 28.
147
Khodos (2002) 24, citing his own Evreiskii sindrom 2 1/2 (Kyiv and Kharkiv:
Intertekhnolohiia, 2001), in which he in turn cited an unnamed article from Argumenty i
Fakty 48 (November 2001). Specifically, Khodos predicts that Vietnamese, Afghans and
Africans will replace the “titular nation” in Ukraine after the leadership of the Third
Khazaria has all but annihilated the Ukrainians. These people, replacing the Ukrainians,
will be under Jewish rule. See also Iaremenko, citing Khodos, “Tri Khazarii—tri
ideologii,” Personal 7 (2002): 16-20.
148
Khodos (2002) 49. Other than metropolitan Ioann, Khodos cites Russian Stalinist and
Holocaust denier Oleg Platonov. Khodos (2002) 45, 48, citing Oleg A. Platonov,
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Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
114 PER ANDERS RUDLING
This way, Khodos attempts to circumvent the issue of authenticity. “The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion present the exact scenario for the subsequent
development of world events and what has been happening for the past 200
years until today,” he writes.149 In a 2004 publication, published by Khodos
through the MAUP publishing house in defense of Iaremenko, Khodos goes
further to predict a repeat of the Jewish Holocaust on Ukrainian soil:
I am afraid that the horrendous analogy with Germany will repeat itself [in Ukraine]
also in its final chord [i.e., the Holocaust]. Then no appeals to “tolerance,” such as
those the starving Ukrainian people hear today from the yids and Judaizers (zhido-
zhidovstvuyushchie) participants of today’s kosher banquet, will suffice. Neither
will any “lessons of the Holocaust” pacify the Ukrainian people, which during the
past 13 years have been turned into a multi-million victim of the Judeo-Nazi
butchers. [The Jews] will not receive any help from America and Israel—the
“strategic” sponsors of the construction of a Jewish temple of Ukrainian blood…
The horrendous hour of revenge will strike—revenge for the Purim feast which has
been there for all to see. The moment will come in a not too distant future.150
Khodos believes there is one Slavic leader who stands up to “the Zionists”
and bravely defied the Third Khazaria. Khodos admires Aliaksandr Lukashenka,
“the Slavic bat'ko, which the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the
Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Aleksii II calls nothing less than ‘the
defender of the Orthodox Faith.’ He singles out Lukashenka as the only
‘popularly elected president’ of a Slavic state, which does not work on behalf of
the ‘great architects’ of the Third Khazaria.”151
Khodos’ ideas are an amalgam of traditional anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories, Gumilev-esque historical generalizations, xenophobia and Brezhnev-
era “anti-Zionism.” It is curious that Khodos’ variety of anti-Semitism finds
adherents among anti-Soviet Russophobe nationalists such as Iaremenko. Again,
we are reminded that anti-Semitism transgresses ethnos, religion, class and
political orientation.
During the past fifteen years, a number of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
have been circulated. Two experts on Ukrainian anti-Semitism—Rudol'f
Ternovyi venets Rossii: Zagadka Sionskikh protokolov (Kyiv: MAUP, 2003b). Neither
Khodos, nor Iaremenko, seem to have any problems recycling anti-Semitic arguments
originating from people who are open enemies of Ukrainian independence, nor does
MAUP seem to have any problems publishing their works. This is somewhat peculiar, as
a central theme of the MAUP publications is to focus on threats to Ukrainian sovereignty
and independence.
149
Khodos (2004) 16.
150
Khodos (2004) 18.
151
Khodos (2002) 172.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 115
Myrs'kyi and Oleksandr Naiman, both from Ivan Franko National University in
L'viv—have listed some of these more outlandish claims in their book
Judeophobia Against Ukraine. They cite Iosyp Terelia, who in 1992 “revealed”
a number of grotesque historical “facts” about the Jews in Ukraine and Russia.
He let his readers know that the Russian Romanov dynasty were the descendents
of “the Jew Katz,” that both Lenin and the president of the Verkhovna Rada of
the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Valentyna Shevchenko were Jews and
that Lazar Kaganovich “until April 26 1991 was the emperor of the USSR and
the so-called socialist countries.”152
CONCLUSIONS
The majority of the anti-Semitic literature sold in L'viv and Kyiv, including
many of MAUP’s publications, is linked to nationalist, anti-communist and
Russophobe circles. Yet, their anti-Semitic arguments and rhetoric differs little
from that of greater Russian nationalists and Stalinists, such as Mukhin. While
the historical themes of Iaremenko’s and Lukianenko’s anti-Semitism are
specifically Ukrainian, Khodos fits solidly into a Stalinist and Russian/Soviet
“anti-Zionist” tradition. Remarkably, these two camps seem to co-exist rather
comfortably, sharing arguments and rely on one another. Thus, anti-Semitism
seems to be a factor, which transcends national narratives. Shchokin positions
himself somewhere in the middle, attempting to forge a coherent ideology out of
these trends, uniting west and east, Ukrainians and Russians against a common
enemy, “Zionism” or Jews.
Conspiracy theories, always central to anti-Semites, are a shared theme.
That the Jews are to blame for the misfortunes of Ukraine and the Soviet Union
is never in doubt. The issue seems to be rather what conspiracy to blame on the
Jews. Were they the Stalinist murderers, as in Iaremenko’s world, or the Nazi
murderers, as in Mukhin’s theories? Or were they, as Khodos claims, both the
pre-Stalin communist atheists and the oligarchs of the CIS “desert ideology”?
The irony is that despite their wildly different national and political narratives
and agendas, the anti-Semites of Ukraine have no problem borrowing freely
from one another. Agreement on the issue of the guilt of the Jews seems to be
more important than what they are actually guilty of. In some ways, this
resembles the situation in the Wilhelminian Germany in the 1880s, when anti-
Semitism became a uniting factor in German politics after Bismarck’s
152
Myrs'kyi and Naiman 50, citing Iosip Terelia, “Chomu zaboroneno khrystyianam
chytaty Talmud?” [Why are Christians Not Allowed to Read the Talmud?] Nova Ukraina
3 (1992): 42, 79, 83, and 99.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
116 PER ANDERS RUDLING
divisive—and largely unsuccessful—Kulturkampf. 153 Much as anti-Semitism
united Protestants and Catholic in Germany, MAUP now attempts to use it as a
tool to unite left and right, Ukrainophones and Russophones, and to heal the
factional Ukrainian society.
Another commonality is that these writers all have a pseudo-historical
perspective, and that they present their ideas as “thinkers” and “theoreticians.”
By elaborating their racism in terms of “theories” they seem to believe that they
are excused from backing up their claims with facts. Their anti-Semitism
becomes “philosophy” and “theory,” much like the invented “national
narratives” or the myth making associated with the appearing nation states in the
nineteenth century. It becomes a prism through which to view history. In this
sense they operate like theologians, rather than historians. Perhaps this ought not
surprise us, since in many ways anti-Semitism resembles religion with its moral
absolutes and articles of faith. Like a political virus, anti-Semitism mutates as it
moves from one political environment to another.
In the contemporary anti-Semitic discourse in Ukraine we recognize many
of the patterns of the German and Soviet anti-Semitic traditions: the Jew as a
pimp and sexual predator was a staple in Der Stürmer; the Zionist connection to
Nazism was a frequent theme in Soviet “anti-Zionist” propaganda following the
1961 Eichmann trial. The narratives by Lukianenko, Khyzhniak, Iaremenko, and
Khodos teach us little about Jews. However, it does shed lights on a previously
under-researched subject in post-Soviet Ukraine.
If one-fourth to one-fifth of the Ukrainian population really believes that
there is a Jewish or Zionist conspiracy against Ukraine (or Russia/Belarus),
which of these theories do they subscribe to? To what extent do the men and
women on the street find these theories credible? These questions are of course
hard to answer and unfortunately the academic interest in this subject has been
weak. Maybe there is a line that can be drawn between university professors on
one hand and self-proclaimed Barons of Kharkiv on the other. Perhaps some
arguments are more credible than others. MAUP’s ambition is to legitimize anti-
Semitism by bringing it into academia and thus giving it intellectual
respectability. Therefore, they purposely associate themselves with recognized
scholars. MAUP is assisted by powerful interests. Its connections and influence
reaches the very top of the Ukrainian government. The government, in return,
has been eager to keep the support of the anti-Semites. Yushchenko’s
government distanced itself from the radical anti-Semites only when they
became a political liability and the links to MAUP an embarrassment for the
state. It required substantial pressure by Western governments to make
Yushchenko act. In regards to Tymoshenko, her bloc re-nominated Lukianenko
153
Kristian Gerner and Klas-Göran Karlssson, Folkmordens historia: perspektiv på det
moderna samhällets skuggsida [The History of Genocide: Perspectives on the Dark Side
of Modernity] Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005) 148.
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 117
to key positions and went to the polls with him as a leading bloc candidate
despite his well-known and high-profile anti-Semitism.154
Despite the eccentric nature of many of these anti-Semitic arguments, they
need to be taken seriously. To keep denying or downplay their existence and
influence would be a mistake. These attitudes reflect a weak democratic
tradition. They are holdovers of a political culture in which open debate was not
allowed while anti-Semitic attitudes were largely tolerated. 155 Given the
circumstances, it could be argued that the democratic development that actually
took place in Ukraine during the past year is perhaps more remarkable than the
fact that a substantial minority harbours ethnic hatred towards Jews. Yet, anti-
Semitism remains a serious and growing problem in Ukraine. Hopefully this
essay can shed some light on political attitudes and a publishing industry that
until recently has been largely neglected by western scholars.
POSTSCRIPT
Since this article was written in August-September 2005, there have been some
important developments regarding MAUP. On November 4, Shchokin issued a
statement of solidarity with the new Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s threat to
wipe Israel off the map. This international attention led Tarasiuk to finally cut
his ties with MAUP in November 2005. Reportedly this happened after pressure
from Yushchenko, who had distanced himself from MAUP a few months earlier.
154
Varfolomeyev “Tymoshenko Comes up with Election Strategy,” Eurasia Daily
Monitor 12 Dec. 2005, and JM, “Former Ukrainian Premier’s Bloc Drafts Parliamentary
Election List” RFE/RL Newsline 9.228 (8 Dec. 2005) <http://www.rferl.org/newsline/
2005/12/081205.asp>; “Levko Lukyanenko: ‘Hero of Ukraine’,” Den' 26 Apr. 2005
<http://www.day.Kyiv.ua/136386/> (accessed 27 Sept. 2005).
155
At the same time, it should be remembered that the organizers of the pre-perestroika
“anti-Zionist” campaigns were aware of the dangers of anti-Semitism and issued
instructions to avoid overt racism in their campaign against the refuseniks. “In organizing
the struggle against pro-Zionist sentiment, one must keep an eye out for nationalistic
manifestations, including antisemitic ones. As was declared at the 26th CPSU Congress,
‘In our country national feelings and the national dignity of each person are respected.
The CPSU fought and will always fight against nationalist aberrations, whether, for
example, antisemitism or Zionism’.” Leonid Kravchuk, “Guidelines: Trends in
Subversive Anti-Soviet Propaganda by Foreign Zionist Centres and Measures to
Counteract It, 13 September 1984” in Khanin, 311. “Individual work is being carried out
with people who intend to leave for Israel or another capitalist country. Attention is paid
to avoiding any antisemitic remarks in the course of this work.” M. Kobyl'chak,
Kirovograd Obkom Secretary in secret letter to CPU CC “Manifestations of Pro-
Emigration Attitudes Among Individuals of Jewish Nationality, 16 April 1979,” Khanin
277.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
118 PER ANDERS RUDLING
On December 6, 2005, Yushchenko condemned MAUP for the first time,156 and
on January 23, a similar condemnation followed from Tarasiuk. “I think that all
positive forces in Ukraine must evaluate the activities of MAUP. There is no
place for anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Ukraine,” Tarasiuk stated.157 At the
same time, Tymoshenko presented her list of candidates for the March 2006
elections to the Rada. Lukianenko was re-nominated as one of her bloc’s top
candidates.158
Anti-Semitic violence is still on the rise. On September 11, 2005 a rabbi and
his teenage son were attacked by skinheads in Kyiv; on February 6, 2006 there
was an attack on the Central Brodsky Synagogue in Kyiv by a knife-yielding
man, shouting “Jews should be killed.”159 On December 13, 2005, the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency’s correspondent Vladimir Matveyev was severely beaten at
the entrance of his apartment building, a few days after reporting on the
activities of MAUP.160 A week later, on December 21, 2005, the Pecherskyi
district court of Kyiv ruled that two newspapers, Stolichnye novosti and
Stolichka had published “negative and non-factual” reports on MAUP. Not only
were the newspapers temporarily closed, they were forced to pay MAUP
$10,000 and Shchokin personally $5,000 in damages. This was interpreted as an
attempt by the government to silence media voices that criticize anti-Semitism
in Ukraine.161 Emboldened by this ruling, MAUP decided to sue a number of
well-established historians, who have signed a petition accusing MAUP of
xenophobia and causing “moral damage” to the reputation of Ukrainian
academia.162
At the same time, a long list of leading Ukrainian and diaspora intellectuals,
including most of the leading experts in Ukrainian studies, signed a letter in
156
Vladimir Matveyev, “Earning reputation for anti-Semitism, university asks U.N. to
‘close’ Israel,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency 6 Dec. 2005.
157
“Ukrainian Ministers Condemn “Anti-Semitic” University,” European Jewish
Congress 27 Jan. 2006. Oleg Varfolomeyev, “Xenophobes to Contest Seats in Ukrainian
Parliament,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 9 Jan. 2006.
158
“Former Ukrainian Premier’s Bloc Drafts Parliamentary Election List”
<www.rferl.org/newsline/2005/12/08/081205.aps> (accessed 9 Dec. 2005).
159
“Rabbi Attacked by Skinheads in Kiev,” European Jewish Congress 13 Sept. 2005.
“Knife Attack Stopped by Security Guards at Kiev Synagogue,” European Jewish
Congress 5 Feb. 2006.
160
“JTA correspondent beaten,” JTA Daily Briefing 14 Dec. 2005.
161
“Kiev Court Shuts Down Newspapers for Reporting on Antisemitism,” UCSJ: Union
of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union 23 Dec. 2005.
162
The academicians sued were Myroslav Popovych, Iaroslav Iatskiv, Nataliia
Iakovenko, Stanislav Kul'chytskyi, Oleksandr Maiboroda and Iurii Shapoval. “MAUP
podala do sudu na akademikiv Natsional'noi akademii nauk” [“MAUP took academicians
from the National Academy of Science to court”], 5 Kanal <http://5tv.com.ua/newsline/
184/0/20564/> (accessed 7 Mar. 2006).
ORGANIZED ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE 119
support of the sued academics and condemning MAUP’s anti-Semitism.163 In
addition, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta
made a strong, separate statement of solidarity with their Ukrainian colleagues,
condemning MAUP’s anti-Semitic statements “as an affront to academic
ethics.”164
163
“Proty ksenofobii, za evropeis'ku Ukrainu: borot'ba tryvaie,” Svoboda 6 (10 Feb.
2006): 9-10.
164
“CIUS expresses solidarity with scholars who oppose anti-Semitism,” Ukrainian
Weekly 74.4 (February 22 2006): 6.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes
Vol. XLVIII, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2006
