QUOTE(radek @ Fri 24th February 2012, 8:54pm)
QUOTE(Mister Die @ Fri 24th February 2012, 7:44am)
I don't see how Trotsky was said to be involved in a "Jewish conspiracy." The Great Purges were about how Trots and the Right (Bukharinites, etc.) were said to have "collaborated" with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Poland, the British via Persia and such, and so on. There was no talk of bankers or what have you.
I think somebody got their Stalinist purges mixed up. Trotsky was one thing, and yeah, that didn't have much to do with anti-semitism. The anti-semitic purge was the Doctor's Plot.
Yes, the "plot" and the campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" definitely had some anti-semitic undertones.
Erik Van Ree in his book
The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin notes that, although Stalin was not free of prejudice
vis-Ã -vis Jews, he actually did criticize open anti-semitism, and gives examples for instance of Stalin criticizing those who, in newspapers during the late 40's, would put down someone's original Jewish surnames in brackets next to their present surnames while criticizing them. Stalin's daughter also noted that her father probably didn't believe the charges against the doctors. Both were still odious events, though.
Soviet anti-semitism became widespread in the 70's and 80's. At that point you had some people who were basically just writing about traditional Jewish conspiracy theories (
Protocols-type stuff) while employing Soviet terminology and quoting Marx, Engels and Lenin a few times to evade censors.