Zionology

Zionology (Russian language: сионология sionologiya) was a doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the course of the Cold War, and intensified after 1967 Six Day War. It was officially sponsored by the Department of Propaganda of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and by the KGB.

It was presented as a socio-political science, but there is little if any evidence that the Zionologists ever complied with the scientific method. In line with the official Soviet anti-Israel and anti-West policies, they frequently recycled anti-Semitic libels in the Marxist context.

Zionism, the "national movement for the return of the Jewish people to Zion", was redefined according to the Communist Party policies. In his 1969 book Beware! Zionism, leading Zionologist Yuri Ivanov defined it as the "ideology of loosely linked organizations and political practice of Jewish bourgeoisie, fused with monopolistic spheres in the USA. Zionism sets off militant chauvinism and anti-Communism."

Some Zionology books, "exposing" Zionism and Judaism, were included in the mandatory reading list for military and police personnel, students, teachers and Communist Party members and were mass published.

Several notable Zionologists were ethnic Jews who were supposed to represent an "expert opinion". Often their works consider any expression of Jewishness as Zionist and therefore subject to being stamped out.

In November 1975, the leading Soviet historian and academic M. Korostovtsev wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee, Mikhail Suslov, regarding the book The Encroaching Counter Revolution by Vladimir Begun: "...it perceptibly stirs up anti-Semitism under the flag of anti-Zionism."

Cover of the book "Judaism Without Embellishments" by Trofim Kichko, published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1963

In 1972, the Soviet Embassy journal in Paris partly reproduced an antisemitic pamphlet put out in 1906 by the Black Hundreds (also known as the "Union of the Russian People"), an ultra-nationalist organization which organized pre-1914 pogroms in Russian Empire. The French court took an action and the publisher, a prominent member of French Communist Party was found guilty of incitement of racial violence. (E. Litvinov, Soviet Antisemitism: The Paris Trial, London, 1984)

Zionology sources

[1] (http://www.ukar.org/kichko01.htm) Judaism Without Embellishments by Trofim K. Kichko, published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1963

Quote: "It is in the teachings of Judaism, in the Old Testament, and in the Talmud, that the Israeli militarists find inspiration for their inhuman deeds, racist theories, and expansionist designs..."

A worldwide outcry forced the Communist Party's Ideological Commission to acknowledge in April 1964 that the book "might be interpreted in the spirit of antisemitism." But on January 20, 1968, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) Pravda Ukrainy gave notice that the Supreme Council of the CPU has awarded Kichko with a diploma of honor. His other book, Judaism and Zionism (1968), spoke of "chauvinistic idea of God chosenness of the Jewish people... and the idea of ruling over other people of the world"

The Encroaching Counter Revolution by Vladimir Begun, Minsk, 1974

Alleges that the Torah is an "unsurpassed textbook of bloodthirstiness and hypocrisy, treachery, perfidy and vile licentiousness"

Zionism in the service of Anti-Communism by V.V. Bolshakov

Contains accusations of Zionists of having "served Hitler’s Fifth Column in order to establish Nazi German domination of the world."

Beware! Zionism, by Yury Ivanov, Evgeniy Evseev, 1969.

The text in Russian (http://libereya.ru/biblus/sionism/sionism.html) on a Russian ultra-nationalist website.

References

Portraits of Infamy: A Study of Soviet Antisemitic Caricatures and Their Roots in Nazi Ideology by Abraham Cooper. L.A. Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1986.

Presented to the Helsinki-process discussions on security and cooperation in Europe, Berne, May 1986. Contains illustrations of Soviet antisemitic caricatures, sometimes almost identical to Nazi caricatures, especially those from Der Stürmer. Compares Soviet and Nazi use of classical antisemitic themes such as dehumanization of Jews, the Jew as warmonger and greedy manipulator, the world Jewish conspiracy, etc. Points to the Soviet identification of Israelis with Nazis.

The Nazification of Russia: Antisemitism in the Post-Soviet Era by Semyon Reznik. Wash., DC: Challenge Publications, 1996.

Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism by William Korey. Chur (Switzerland): Harwood Academic Publishers for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995.

Zionology

Zionology sources

References

See also