Dr Izabella Tabarovsky

Topic: The Denial of Jewish Peoplehood and Jewish Connection to the Land of Israel in Late-Soviet Propaganda 

Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism. She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities, a Research Fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and ISGAP, and a contributing writer at Tablet Magazine. She has published widely. Follow her on X @IzaTabaro.

Transcript

The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Why talk about Soviet propaganda at all today? How is it relevant to the current moment? Conventional wisdom today holds claims about Israel, being a secular colonial project, as a product of the latest academic theories, such as critical theory. But that's not the case, or that's only partially the case. The idea on the Left, that the Zionist project in Palestine was colonialist in nature and put Zionists on par with imperialists, oppressors and oppressor nations, goes back many years.

We already see it in the 1920s among the Comintern, Communist International, or the Third International, which was formed in 1919, and existed until Stalin’s purges decimated it. There was very much a discussion there about Zionists as colonialists.

But most important for our purposes is that this argument was central to the Soviet anti-Zionist and anti-Israel propaganda campaign, which began in the wake of the Six-Day War. This campaign continued to the end of the Soviet Union for some 25 years, and it heavily targeted the Third World, as it was called back then, and the global Left, including the Western Left.

This late Soviet thinking about Zionists and Israel, and specifically the propaganda that Moscow put out about Zionism and Israel, had a profound influence on the global Left. Virtually everything we're hearing today, that is being said about Israel and Zionism can be traced to that propaganda. The wide scope, the width, the breadth of its reach, is why so many across the world believe that Israel is a colonialist, imperialist and apartheid state, that Israel is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany, that Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians, that Zionists are racists, fascists, etc.

All of this appears en masse in Soviet newspapers, books, and foreign propaganda that was put out in dozens of languages in the wake of the Six-Day War. The Soviets also worked hard to turn the Palestinian cause into a central issue, linked to every other cause to occupy the Left at the time; from anti-racist to the anti-Vietnam War movement to the anti-apartheid movement, they link the Palestinian cause to all of those causes. So when we see today's Left, make these improbable links between Israel and, for example, police brutality in the U.S., or between Israel and racism in the U.S., or between the Palestinian struggle and the Black struggle in America, which is, by the way, what we hear Ta-Nehisi Coates do in this latest bestseller, the mechanism was already there in Soviet propaganda 50 years ago. You can see it in the Left-wing press from that time. You can see just how widespread it became already in the late 60s and early 70s.

Just like what we see today on American campuses, for the Soviets, the anti-Israel demonization was part of the broader anti-American and anti-Western campaign. It was very much linked to the propaganda campaign that targeted the U.S. as an imperial state; that targeted the U.S. as a colonialist collectivity, or as a colonialist enterprise. All of that is linked to a particular geopolitical context.

As a summary of this introduction, these ideas have been part of radical Left-wing discourse across the world for decades, specifically the ideas that Israel is a colonial state and that Jews don't belong here, but also more broadly everything that we associate with Zionism today, the demonization of Zionism.

The one key thing that's changed over the last years, and particularly since October 7th, is that this discourse has now moved into the mainstream. It lived on the fringes of the political Left for years and decades, but now we hear it in the political mainstream. In order to understand it, it's not enough to read Fanon and "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. These highly popular books today that everybody points to as the culprits for what's happening, don't actually tell us anything about the specific anti-Zionist rhetoric that we're encountering.

If we want to understand how this vicious, conspiracist anti-Zionism penetrated the global Left, we need to examine Soviet propaganda. I'm going to give you a very quick outline of the evolution of Soviet anti-Israel propaganda. I will talk about how it relates to broader Soviet geopolitical interests and to what was going on in the world when they were being developed, and then we'll look at some specific examples. This will help us understand not only the tropes, but also some of the political logic behind their construction.

The first thing to know is that the Soviets, the Communists, the Bolsheviks, were anti-Zionists from the very beginning. As early as 1913, Stalin wrote a paper called "Marxis and the National Question," where he laid out his and Lenin's views on why Jews are not a nation, why Zionists are wrong to claim that Jews are a nation. He uses a Marxist framework, a Marxist definition of a nation. According to that definition, he concludes that Zionists are wrong because Jews don't have a shared territory; they don't engage in shared economic activity; they don't have a shared national culture; they don't even have a shared language, which in 1913 was all basically true. This is a theoretical argument the Bolsheviks use in their fight with Zionists.

Therefore, their fight with Zionists is multidimensional. There are theoretical fights, but there are also pragmatic practical considerations. Lenin is very worried that Zionists are competing for the loyalties and interests of the Jewish people of the Russian empire and he doesn't like it. At this point, the Jews are the most oppressed people of the Russian empire. He needs them for his socialist revolution. That's part of the reason behind the disagreements with Zionists, because Zionists are also nationalists, and the Bolsheviks are internationalists.

These things are important to understand because the undercurrents of these ideas are still flowing through the Left. It’s very natural for the far Left, if you go back to the roots, to be against Zionists. They go back to their original traditions.

The global Left’ needs also changed, ebbed and flowed, but this is where it goes back to. This is the beginning. Soviet views on Zionists changed and evolved over time. When you look at this early period, Lenin and Stalin are against Zionists, but they have sort of a theoretical foundation. They're being logical in their own way, and they view Zionists realistically rather than conspiratorially. They view it as a national movement that arose as a result and as a response to anti-Semitism. 

This begins to change as Stalin gains power, and by the time his post-war antisemitic campaigns happen, you have the “rootless cosmopolitan” campaign, you have the annihilation of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

Then there is the Doctors' Plot and the Slansky trial in Prague. By that point, Stalin is thinking about Jews in purely conspiratorial terms and the anti-Zionist themes are already there. And they're very much starting to sound like an evocation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except they are starting here and there to replace the word ‘Jews’ with the word ‘Zionists’ (sometimes they use the term ‘bourgeois-nationalists,’ which in the jargon of the time signifies ‘Zionists’ when applied to Jews).

At that point, they already view Zionism, or Zionists, as plotting against the Soviet Union, communism, socialists, and against Soviet leadership, and Stalin himself. So Zionism starts to get pegged as a universal evil, like it's the root of all the problems that socialists face. The demonization already begins. Zionism is being linked with imperialism, with Western powers. Zionists are viewed as joining in the [imperialist suppression]. Of course there are political components to all of this. At that point, Israel has shown that it plans to go with the United States as opposed to with the USSR and hence it becomes part of the enemy.

Stalin dies and Khrushchev comes to power in a world that's radically changing. This is a time of the rising Third World and the Non-Aligned Movement and the anti-colonial struggle. Khrushchev and the KGB stumbled upon the realization that this vast new territory that's now opening up, where new countries are being formed, is a massive opportunity for the USSR. Khrushchev travels to the UN, and he is fascinated to see the African leaders of new African nations speaking from the “belly of the beast” in New York, condemning imperialism, condemning colonialism, condemning racism, condemning the West, condemning the United States, and he completely sees it as an opportunity. The KGB developed a strategy which postulates that the Third World is going to become a platform for the USSR to defeat the imperialist world, to defeat the Soviet main Cold War enemy, the United States.

So they begin to do an outreach, and they start courting new African and Asian states. They start to support national liberation movements across the world. They establish really close relationships with the Arab world. They particularly seek to influence the rising, the leading countries in the Non-Aligned Movement—Egypt, India, Indonesia, Ghana, Algeria, Cuba—all of these countries are very prominent at the time. And they also begin to court the Western Left, which at this time is also becoming fascinated with the Third World. The Western Left has now turned all of their hopes and dreams of the revolution toward the Third World. They are disenchanted with classic communism; the USSR is a disappointment to them, as it's shown itself to be authoritarian. Now all of their hopes have shifted to the Third World. 

To court all these constituencies, the Soviets update their language; they update the language of their propaganda. They are no longer preaching communism and communist revolution to the developing countries. They don't do it in such a heavy-handed way as they had before. They recognize that all these new African nations and new Asian nations, all the newly liberated post-colonial states, they are not necessarily looking to have a communist revolution; they are not looking to be on the path of socialism. And that's OK, because the Soviets need them. They need this block in this Cold War environment. So they say, “you know, it's okay you're not going to be communist. We want to work with you anyway.” As long as they support the main overarching idea, as long as they are anti-American and anti-Western. To court them, the Soviets also introduce prominently into the language of their propaganda, the ideas of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism and anti-racism. These concerns are very critical for these post-colonial nations.

So there is this merging happening. It's a language that's geared toward as broad an audience as possible and they begin to bring these constituencies together through meetings, conferences, fairs and youth festivals, where the American New Left, British New Left, members of the Black Power Movement, the PLO, ANC and the Che Guevaras of this world, can all meet together and imbibe this new language. At this point, this is when the language of Soviet propaganda really becomes a measure of belonging; a measure where any self-respecting Leftist at that time, has to be affirming that they are anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and pro-national liberation. This is relevant because a lot of the people that are still active today in the anti-Israel movement came out of the ecosystem that the Soviets helped to build. This is where Angela Davis meets Yassir Arafat. She meets him at some youth festival that the Soviets organized in the GDR. This is where the British anti-apartheid activists meet the PLO and adopt the Palestinian cause, which they view as equal to the anti-apartheid cause. The British Leftists included some of the people who then became Jeremy Corbyn's closest comrades and future political advisors, people like George Galloway. So here's this ecosystem created by the 1960s; it's there, the Soviets work with it, they facilitate interactions within it.

And then comes the Six-Day War, which is a turning point in the Soviet approach to Israel and Zionism in many ways. Why is that? Because for the Soviets, the defeat of their Arab allies by tiny Israel was a real shock, it created a real political crisis in Moscow. They don't understand how it happens. They believe, they suspect that bigger forces were at play. And another thing that happens is that at home, (we’re going to hear from Natan Sharansky later today), but at home, the Refusenik movement begins—this is a movement of Soviet Jews, for their right to be Jews and for the right to immigrate to Israel. The Soviet regime refused them permission to immigrate, which is why they were called Refuseniks, and it persecuted the activists of the movement heavily.

And the whole movement begins, and the Soviets are really worried. They believe that they're directed from the outside, and of course from the outside there is a movement in support of the Refuseniks. So they connect all these dots and so many political cultures, they're paranoid anyway, and this is only 15 years after Stalin's death. They really believe that there is a Zionist conspiracy operating against the Soviet Union, globally, and also inside the country, so they begin to put in place a massive propaganda apparatus that they merge into their existing apparatus, to propagate the ideas of Zionists as the evil force that is against everything good in the world.

They already have connections in dozens of countries; they're putting out propaganda in dozens of languages. They are using their embassies, urging them to work on the diplomatic level as well as with local politicians.

Again, they're organizing all these conferences where they already have their ecosystem, and so they infuse the anti-Zionist ideas into it. And remember, what is one of the biggest concerns of the time? Anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism.

So they associate Zionism very heavily with colonialism, imperialism, and racism so that it becomes clear that for all of these Third World countries and the Left, the Western Left that supports them, it's clear that Zionists are the enemy.

Let's focus on a few specific points that they make and then some examples. So the one thing they do is they deny the idea of Jewish peoplehood. Why do they do it? Remember, Stalin already did it, it's not new, but now they do it with a new force.

Why do they do it? They do it because the Refuseniks, the Jews are claiming that “we are a Jewish people, we are here in the Soviet Union, we want to be with our people in Israel”. And the American Jews are saying the same thing— “Soviet Jews are our brothers and sisters, let them go”.

Remember the main slogan of that movement: "Let my people go." And so the Soviets have to confront it and reject it. Practically every piece of Soviet propaganda mocks the idea of Jewish peoplehood. They say Jews belong where they live; they are citizens of the countries where they live.

If you look at one of the articles from the PLO charter that has been provided for us, it's exactly what it says: Jews belong where they live; there's no such thing as a Jewish people. Of course, they do it in order to dissuade Soviet Jews from wanting to emigrate. They do it in order to put the brakes on the international movement in support of Soviet Jews. They also do it because it fits the interests of their Arab allies.

They have all kinds of reasons to do this. Because they now slot the demonization of Zionists into this echo chamber, they are also talking a lot about how Zionism is associated with imperialist states. Zionism is a tool of imperialists; it's in Palestine only in order to enforce colonialism. Everywhere where Zionism goes, where Israel goes, it's there on behalf of their neo-colonialists and imperialists. In this regard, what's really interesting for me is how they use this to target African states. There's a struggle that develops. The Soviets view Africa as their sphere of influence and whenever Israel reached out to African states to work with them, to build relationships, the Soviets viewed this as a breach of that territory. So they begin to talk about how Israel is there on behalf of colonialists and imperialists.

The Soviets heavily used scholars from their Academy of Sciences—that was another way in which they developed this propaganda to give it heft and make it look scientific. I'll give you a few examples from a magazine called The African Communist. This was an organ of the South African Communist Party. It, by extension, was also essentially an organ of the ANC because the ANC and the South African Communist Party were very closely entwined. But the magazine was financed by the USSR.

We know that whatever they say, they're reflecting the Soviet views. The Soviets gave them topics and sometimes even entire articles to publish. For example, in The African Communist, 1968, the fourth quarter, there's an article that creates an association between imperialists, Zionists, and South African fascists. So already we see the link between Zionists and imperialists, and South African apartheid. It talks about how the Zionist ideology and Zionist movement, which dominate the state of Israel, are the reflection and expression of the reactionary politics of the Jewish bourgeoisie and its collaboration with imperialism against the Arab peoples and their anti-imperialist fight.

So there's a positioning: here the Arabs are anti-imperialists, anti-colonialists, and Zionists are the opposite of that, they are understood to be on the side of colonialism. The same article talks about Zionism serving as a tool of imperialism in the global struggle against socialism.

In Asia, Africa, and Latin America—this is a direct quote—Zionism, it says, assists in the neo-colonialist activities of the US, West Germany, Britain, and other imperialist states. In another article in the same issue, the struggle of the Communist Party and the people of South Africa is inseparable from those other struggles for national liberation and social advancement all over Africa, and with the Arab countries which fight Israel, which is by nature, imperialist, colonialist, and racist, which is Zionism. For African audiences in particular, Soviet propaganda is presenting Israel as a country that pursues colonialist interests in Africa, and therefore, African countries should not work with Israel.

I'll give you another example from 1974, also The African Communist. [Quote]: The Israeli occupation of the Arab territories seized in the June War and the policy of annexation expressed in the establishment of colonial settlement there are liable to accelerate the tension between Israel and Africa. The fight against imperialism, neo-colonialism, and local reaction is growing and becoming dominant. Israel's close collusion with the US imperialists, with the racialist regime of South Africa and Indonesia, arouses the indignation of the peoples of Africa.[End quote.]

Another example, this is the declaration of the Sixth Pan-African Congress in 1975, and this is important because the Pan-African movement very much influenced the activists in the Black Power movement, so, some of the really prominent figures such as Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, were very much influenced by that movement and interacted with its leaders closely. And, today, Ta-Nehisi Coates—I speak about him because he's very much in the news, he's got a best-selling book where he talks about Israel—they are all influenced by that movement.

So, in 1975, this movement [quote] affirms the struggle of the Pan-African movement for national liberation in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World, against racial discrimination in Africa and the Americas and elsewhere, against colonialism, Zionism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism. The Pan-African movement views Zionism as its enemy because it's associated with colonialism and neo-colonialism and imperialism. [End quote.] It says the Pan-Africanist movement must consider the most radical methods of putting an end to foreign domination, imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, and Zionism. 

It says that it must consider the most radical methods to annihilate all of these evils—and Zionism. This is really radical language, and again, it's not left back in 1975. It very much correlates with what we're hearing today.

Another example I have here is from the Soviet Military Review, which was a Soviet military publication. This is just to show you that the Soviets really split their propaganda and adjusted the propaganda not only based on geography but also on the segments of the population that they targeted. In the Soviet Military Review, they make sure that the military also understood that Zionism was this great evil. They published in several foreign languages. There are for example in 1971, headlines such as “Israel's neo-colonialist designs in Africa”. This is in the English, and I'm sure in all other editions. 

Another headline, “Israel, a sharp detachment of imperialism and Zionism.” Again, the same language about associating Zionism with imperialism and colonialism, refers to Israel as the Trojan horse of the imperialists from Tel Aviv. 

It claims that the independent countries of Africa know from their own experience that though Israel pretends to be a friend of the Africans it is in effect the most dangerous and furious plunderer.

Here’s another example from Political Affairs, which was the political journal of CP USA, Communist Party of the United States, which received millions and millions of dollars in Soviet subsidies. The person that authored this article which came out in 1971 is Hyman Loomer. He was a very senior functionary in the American Communist Party. Angela Davis also became a very senior functionary later on in the American Communist Party, which also helps to explain her stance on Zionism. She's very active and is a star in the anti-Israel movement today. But Loomer, we know from some declassified Soviet memos that were declassified, that Loomer visited Moscow in around 1971-72 with a request. He turned to the people at the top of the Soviet Communist establishment that oversaw all of the Communist parties and says, “I'm coming to Moscow for an anti-Trotskyist theoretical symposium, but I want to also meet with you to discuss my upcoming project. I want to write a book about Zionism and why it's dangerous, and would you give me some materials to write this book, and would you organize some meetings for me so that I can write the book, the right way.” And they say "Yes, yes, of course." He has all the meetings, he gets all the materials, he comes back, he writes the book. The book is now available, in a scanned form on Marxist.com. It's easily available. Moreover, last year, November of 2023, one month after October 7th, one Leftist site took that book and serialized it, published it in a kind of excerpted form, addressing it to contemporary readers. This is direct Soviet propaganda that comes from the KGB that is being fed to today's generation. 

So here's just one paragraph:

The Zionist movement is not a national liberation movement, as it does not set itself the aim of liberating any people or country from foreign hold. It is a reactionary political movement of the Jewish bourgeoisie, as it collaborates with the colonial powers against the anti-imperialist national liberation movements in the Middle East and in other regions.

In summary, the Soviets didn't openly deny the right of Jews, per se, to live in Israel, but they expressed the same idea by branding Zionism as a movement that collaborated with the imperialist and colonialist powers and was itself colonialist by nature, as a movement that exploited the locals, meaning the oppressed Arabs, and for the benefit of the imperialist powers. At a time when anti-colonial and national liberation movements were gaining steam and prominence in the Third World, this branding held the power that equating Zionists with Nazis did for Westerners. 

This is really important to understand. Once you brand Zionism in that way, it's an evil. It resonated deeply. It played into profound historical grievances. It turns Zionism and Israel into pariah. The fact that dozens of African nations cut relations with Israel in the 1970s is among other things a function of this propaganda. And when you look at some of the leaders today who are leading the anti-Israel charge globally, from the ANC South Africa to Antonio Gutierrez at the U.N., to some heads of Latin American countries, many of them came out of that milieu that had been deeply influenced by Soviet propaganda about Israel and Zionism. In that ecosystem, this language and these ideas were a given. For them, the demonization of Israel became normalized in the 70s and 80s, and is one of the reasons why this old rhetoric continues to show up today. 

Thank you.