Abstract

My study focuses on the development of intellectual antisemitism in post-communist Russia which so far has been neglected by scholars in favor of popular and political antisemitism. I distinguish five schools in Russian intellectual antisemitism: neo-Eurasianism, neo-Slavophilism, National Bolshevism, National Orthodoxy, and Racism. The representatives of these schools advance different arguments in support of their antisemitic postures. I suggest that the preoccupation of these leaders with the "Jewish question" results from the need to compensate for the collapse of the old community of the Soviet people. The image of the enemy facilitates the process of construction of an imagined community, providing a new identity. I also demonstrate the influence of the legacy of the anti-liberal tradition on the formation of the new intellectual antisemitism and discuss some specific examples from intellectual history. I deconstruct the conventional distinction between the philosemites and Judeophobes in Russian religious philosophy of the Silver Age and demonstrate that they shared many assumptions . I also suggest the serious influence of the doctrines of theosophy on the ideology of the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In the philosophical part of my dissertation I demonstrate that the arguments of the ideologists of the five schools of Russian nationalism are based on a number of normative assumptions about the nature of human community, structure of history, assumptions about the relationship between cultural and political community, and the intrinsic value of certain occupations. I criticize these assumptions and historical speculations, and expose the mythological constructions which govern their social visions. I also argue that the liberal theoreticians can de-mystify the arguments of the ideologists of nationalism by addressing the questions which they raise