Zionist conspiracy theory in Stalinist propaganda

The Stalin era: from anti-cosmopolitanism to the "Joint-Zionist"

The prototype of this conspiracy theory was the world-Jewish-conspiracy narrative of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which originated in right-wing circles and was translated into the official language of the Soviet state. In November 1947 the USSR, together with the other Eastern Bloc countries, voted for the UN partition plan for Palestine, and on 17 May 1948 it became the first state to grant Israel de jure recognition. From August 1948, however, the Soviet line on Israel and Zionism hardened. In the 1948–1953 campaign against "cosmopolitans," cosmopolitanism was defined as "a tool of Zionism in the service of Anglo-American imperialism," and Soviet propaganda depicted the Zionist movement and the Joint as "the central link in the international conspiracy of American imperialism against the Soviet Union and the progressive forces."

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case (1948–1952) was the first large-scale suppression of this campaign. The MGB fabricated an "American-Zionist spy centre" operating under the committee's cover, and in August 1952 the committee's leaders were executed. Historians treat the case as the beginning of official antisemitic policy in the USSR. At the 1952 trial of Rudolf Slánský in Czechoslovakia, "Zionists" and "Jews" were used as virtual synonyms, and defendants were forced to admit links with "world Zionist centres."

The Doctors' Plot and its aftermath

On 13 January 1953 every Soviet newspaper reported the arrest of a "group of wrecking doctors," the central charge being their connection with "the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organisation Joint, created by American intelligence." From then on "Zionists," "Bundists," "Jewish bourgeois nationalists" and "wreckers" were used as synonyms. The theory rested on cultural rather than biological essentialisation, folding the Christian stereotype of the "cunning Jew" into an "anti-imperialist" ideology.

"Zionology" and the later Soviet decades

The 1967 Six-Day War became a new engine of propaganda. The USSR broke off relations with Israel, and in August 1967 regional newspapers carried editorials "exposing" the "world Zionist network." In the 1960s and 1970s the state fostered "Zionology," a quasi-academic field framed as the study of Zionism. Trofim Kichko's Judaism Without Embellishment (1963, Kyiv) and Yuri Ivanov's Beware! Zionism (1969) were typical products. In the "stagnation" era Zionism was equated with Jewry and declared the "new fascism," and a universalist version of the Protocols' ideas circulated again.

On 10 November 1975 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, defining Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination." The resolution was initiated by the USSR and is assessed as serving to mask Soviet antisemitism presented as "anti-Zionism." On 1 April 1983 Pravda ran a full front-page article denouncing Zionism, and around the same time an official propaganda body, the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, was set up. Resolution 3379 was revoked on 16 December 1991.