‘Russia's battle against the foreign’: the anti-cosmopolitanism paradigm in Russian and Soviet ideology

Is there “smoke without fire”? Applying the theory of values to the study of motivational aspects of ethnic stereotypes: The case of Jewish stereotypes in Russia

“…In Russia, as well as in some other European countries and in the USA, Jews have been repeatedly accused of rootlessness and cosmopolitanism (Gibson & Howard, 2007;Gitelman & Gitelman, 2001;Korey, 1972;Sznaider, 2007). When accused, of rootlessness, Jews were blamed of abandoning their own culture and culture of the country of their residence, and when accused of cosmopolitanism they were criticised for their over-involvement with other cultures (Grüner, 2010). In terms of Schwartz's value theory (Schwartz et al, 2012), the rootlessness/cosmopolitanism stereotype assumes a low motivation for maintaining and preserving cultural, family, or religious traditions and cultural norms.…”

The cosmopolitan subject and the question of cultural identity: The case of Crime and Punishment

“…To appreciate this consistency and to understand its underlying significance today – particularly in contemporary movements that oppose globalization as a hegemonic cultural and economic force bent on devouring plurality and sovereignty – it is necessary to go back in time and study the ways that a cosmopolitan was conceived in the xenophobic, anti-modern literature that began to take root with the rise of the nation-state. As Gruner (2010: 446) points out, “the emergence of anti-cosmopolitanism in late Tsarist Russia” saw Jews as the “agents of modernization and change … these anti-Jewish stereotypes had an important influence on the formation of modern anti-Semitism in Russia.” This paper argues that one of the key influences of this formation is found in the 19th century world renowned and greatly influential writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment , as well as other Dostoevsky texts, are said to function as ideological underpinnings for the anti-cosmopolitanisms of Stalinism and Nazism.…”

“…Under Stalin, there existed a deep mistrust for those who were deemed foreign, modern, and/or Western. The Russian intelligentsia were “on occasion referred to … contemptuously as ‘Jewish rationalists, venal and faceless cosmopolitans’” (Gruner, 2010: 447). While communist Russia and Nazi Germany might not have had much in common otherwise, this paper will highlight the ways in which the totalitarian regimes that were Nazism and late Stalinism engaged in anti-cosmopolitan rhetoric and lethal action against those accused of cosmopolitanism.…”

“…Following Arendt (1973: 389), while the origins of totalitarianism were vastly different in these two regimes, both aimed to achieve “total domination and global rule.” They worked toward this goal by engaging in a state of “permanent revolution” (Trotsky as cited in Arendt, 1973: 389). For the Soviets, this permanent revolution was carried out through constant purges culminating in removals of so-called anti-patriotic, “rootless cosmopolitans” (Azadovskii and Egorov, 2002; Gruner, 2010); for the Nazis, by engaging in a form of “racial ‘selection which can never stand still’” (Himmler as cited in Arendt, 1973: 391). While the Nazi program focused from the outset on ridding the world of Jews and other so-called racial inferiors, the Soviet purges became racialized in the late 1940s and 1950s when Stalin felt increasingly threatened by his country’s Jewry who he saw as “potential Zionists and ‘cosmopolitans’” (Pinkus as cited in Gruner, 2010: 455).…”

“…Indeed, “[e]verything possible was done to ‘expose’ them [and] remove them” (Azadovskii and Egorov, 2002: 69). These campaigns culminated several years later with Stalin’s alleged Doctor’s Plot, which accused a group of mostly Jewish Kremlin medical doctors of terrorism, conspiring with “the Jewish-American organization Joint” (see Gruner, 2010: 456) to assassinate Soviet officials. This case is of particular importance for understanding the ways in which anti-Semitism and anti-cosmopolitanism have been and can be conjoined in certain contexts, a point to be returned to later in this paper.…”