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Understandings of Anti-Semitism in Russia: An Analysis of the Politics of Anti-Jewish Attitudes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

James L. Gibson
James L. Gibson*
Affiliation:
University of Houston
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Extract

In my paper critiquing the analysis of Brym and Degtyarev, I argued that little could be gained from their analysis and indeed that their paper contributed mainly to misunderstanding anti-Semitism in Russia. In this article, I present some new survey results on anti-Semitism as a means of advancing our knowledge on this important topic. In particular, I address four questions: 1) is anti-Semitism in Russia particularly widespread? 2) are prejudiced attitudes focused specifically on Jews or are they more diffuse? 3) does a "don't know" response to survey questions mask anti-Semitic attitudes? and 4) most importantly, what are the political implications of anti-Semitism for Russian Jews?

Type
Research Notes
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Fall 1994 , pp. 796 - 806
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1994

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References

1. Robert J. Brym and Andrei Degtyarev, “Anti-Semitism in Moscow: Results of an October 1992 Survey,” Slavic Review 52, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 11.

2. James L. Gibson, “Misunderstandings of Anti-Semitism in Russia: An Analysis of the Politics of Anti-Jewish Attitudes,” Slavic Review 53, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 829-835.

3. The research team consisted of me, Raymond M. Duch, Gennady Denisovsky, Misha Matskovsky and Polina Kozyreva. I am not Jewish but some Russian members of this research team are. An extensive methodological report on the survey is available from the author.

4. I excluded 29 respondents (1.2% of the total sample) on the basis of whether they claimed Jewishness for themselves, their spouse or either of their parents.

5. I should note that virtually no proposition in survey research will ever be rejected by 100% of the respondents. Acquiescence bias alone invariably generates some supporters for any given statement.

6. In 1978, US figures for this question were: Agree—34%; Not Sure—24%; and Disagree—43% (Geraldine Rosenfield, “The Polls: Attitudes Toward American Jews,” Public Opinion Quarterly 46 [1982]: 441).

7. Anti-Defamation League, Highlights from an Anti-Defamation League Survey on Anti-Semitism and Prejudice in America (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1992), 3.

8. Our practice is generally to try to legitimize “don't know” responses from the respondents. For instance, on items using a Likert response set, the subjects are given a showcard listing the possible responses. “Uncertain” is shown as being between “agree” and “disagree.” In addition, respondents who volunteer that they “don't know” the answer to the question were separately coded. In all of our analyses we collapse the “uncertain” and “don't know” responses.

9. The format of the questions in the two surveys was very similar.

10. Tom Smith persuasively argues that we ought not treat these as stereotypes because we do not know whether these images are irrational, whether they are projections of psychological states or whether they have any of the other attributes commonly associated with stereotypes ( Smith, , What Do Americans Think about Jews! [New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1991], 5Google Scholar).

11. Consider one who is truly not anti-Semitic and who is completely naive about Jews and the politics of Jews. When presented with an empirical statement claiming that “When it comes to choosing between people and money, Jews will choose money,” how would this respondent answer? We might hope that the respondent would reject the very process of stereotyping and therefore disavow the statement. But it is also reasonable on at least some of the items that the respondents simply do not believe they have enough empirical information to answer the questions.

12. The table reports both bivariate and multivariate coefficients. The bivariate relationships that were not statistically significant were excluded from the multivariate analysis.

13. Note that we did not include the items in the 1992 survey.

14. James, L. Gibson and Raymond, M. Duch, “Attitudes toward Jews and the Soviet Political Culture,” Journal of the Soviet Nationalities 2 (1992); 77-117Google Scholar.

15. Ibid., 88.

16. Brym and Degtyarev, “Anti-Semitism in Moscow,” 2. They also assert that, in addition to a long tradition of anti-Semitism, Russia has “the largest combined number of Jews and anti-semites of any country in the world” (2). Since they do not cite the source of this assertion or any evidence in support of it, it is impossible to judge its veracity.

17. Smith, , What Do Americans Think about Jews?, 1 Google Scholar.