Until the last quarter of the 18th century, Jews were forbidden from settling in Russia. After the tsarist empire acquired a large Jewish population, it subjected it to discriminatory legislation until its final days. The Kremlin’s current attempt to shut down the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, to Ben Cohen, is a sign that it is reverting to form after a post-Soviet hiatus from official anti-Semitism:
The court where the case against the Jewish Agency was filed—the Basmanny District Court—has become the emblem, as far as Russian dissidents are concerned, of the politicization of the country’s judicial system. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s wealthiest man until Russian President Vladimir Putin came gunning for him in 2005, even coined the term “Basmanny justice” to describe the woefully compromised state of the Russian judiciary. And “Basmanny justice” is no doubt what lies in store for the Jewish Agency.
Since the onset of the Russian invasion [of central Ukraine], the regime in Moscow has been increasingly disappointed by the Israeli government’s diplomatic and humanitarian support for Ukraine, and it cannot fail to have noticed the large pro-Ukrainian demonstrations that have been staged in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. Anti-Semitism has also crept back into Russian discourse, most notably through Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s infamous statement that Hitler had “Jewish blood”—itself a cry of frustration that most Israelis regard Russia’s demonization of Ukraine’s elected government as “neo-Nazis” with the contempt it deserves.
Over the last year, anti-Semitism has reappeared in the statements of the Russian elite. An article published last October by the former Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, excoriated the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for masquerading as a Ukrainian when he is really an Ashkenazi Jew. Meanwhile, the ideologue of “Eurasianism”—Alexander Dugin, a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist known for his ultra-nationalist views [and his closeness to Putin]—is well-known for arguing that Jews can essentially be divided into “good” and “bad” categories. Observant Jews who live as quiet, loyal citizens are acceptable, in Dugin’s view. The rest are not.
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/basmanny-justice-and-the-jews-of-russia/