In Russia, Anti-Semitism Has Long Been the Opiate of the Intellectuals

In his 1938 article “Christianity and Anti-Semitism,” the Russian Orthodox philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev observed that “for us Christians, the Jewish question does not consist in knowing whether the Jews are good or bad, but whether we are good or bad.” Berdyaev, a fervent believer in what he called “the Russian idea,” here acknowledged a stain on the Russian conscience. In his view, the Russian psyche harbored a deep-seated hatred of Jews that has had disastrous consequences not only for the Jews but also for the Russian soul.

As Berdyaev knew, Jews had suffered endless persecutions in the century preceding the revolution. The blood libel—the myth that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in making Passover matzah—was used to justify persecution and led to brutal pogroms. In the second decade of the 20th century, this accusation was leveled against a Russian Jew named Menaḥem Mendel Beilis, who was eventually acquitted after a very public trial (1911-1913). That trial, as Elissa Bemporad observes in her new study Legacy of Blood, left a lasting impression on Russian Jewry.

How did such an absurd myth persist so long?