A joint study by the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Jewish Congress finds many Russian textbooks to be antisemitic, according to a February 13, 2008 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. Aleksandr Lokshin, the lead author of the study, reported that many school history textbooks completely avoid the subject of the Holocaust, despite the fact that the Nazis and their collaborators killed millions of Soviet Jews. When the subject is mentioned, it is not treated as, "probably the only event in history during which a state tried to completely eliminate a single people," Lakshin said. Not one textbook mentioned the "doctor's plot" which Stalin planned to use as a pretext for massive repression against Jews, who were most likely spared that fate only by the dictator's death before he could put his plans into action. Nor were pogroms during the Russian Civil War mentioned.

One textbook reportedly dramatically under-counted the number of Jews in the Russian empire in the 19th century, putting their number at a mere 175,000. Another textbook accuses Jews of having hostile attitudes towards other residents of the Tsarist empire. The researchers were unable to find a single textbook that adequately assesses the role of Jews in Russian history, and they plan to ask the Ministry of Education to review their recommendations.

[HOME] [ACT] [CONNECT] [JOIN] [ABOUT] [SEARCH]