THE UNZ REVIEW – Many of the more prominent Neoconservatives descend from Russian Jews from the Pale of Settlement, whose memories go back to the pre-Communist days of persecution and pogroms under the Tsars. They originally welcomed Lenin and the Communist regime as liberators and formed some of its staunchest supporters and apparatchiks in the regime of terror that followed (especially in the Cheka and KGB) until Josef Stalin unleashed a wave of anti-semitism after World War II.
Putin, despite his strong support from native Russian Jews and from the Moscow Rabbinate, is a Russian nationalist and fervent supporter of the traditionalist Russian Orthodox Church, and those two factors bring up painful memories of the “bad old days” of discrimination and Jewish persecution for the Neocons. CONTINUE READING
