From the author

This book is based on research conducted by the author in 2000-2002. in collaboration with several organizations. Most of the materials were written by order of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. Some of the texts were prepared within the framework of the project "Antisemitism and xenophobia in the Russian Federation", which the author carried out by order of the Moscow office of the Anti-Defamation League, the Russian Jewish Congress and the Tolerance Foundation; part - read in the form of reports at various conferences and published in scientific journals and collections of reports. Most of the reports that formed the basis for further research (taking into account the valuable comments made during the discussion) were read in the framework of interdisciplinary conferences on Jewish studies, organized by the Center for Researchers and Teachers of Jewish Studies at the Sefer Universities. All texts are based on information that the author has been collecting and processing for many years as part of the work of the Information and Research Center "Panorama". I am sincerely grateful to the mentioned organizations for supporting my research projects. In a revised form, these materials formed the backbone of the book offered to the attention of readers.

The publication of this book became possible thanks to the help of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights and Alexander Brod personally.

I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues who have helped me in my work over the past years. It is impossible to mention everyone with whom I collaborated during my research; I will list only those without whose help this book would hardly have seen the light of day. I am deeply grateful to Viktor Aleksandrovich Shnirelman, my first teacher and supervisor. His advice and demanding style of work greatly helped me in my first steps in research in the field of ideological anti-Semitism. I am grateful to Vladimir Valerianovich Pribylovsky, from whom I studied the methodology of research in the field of the latest political history of Russia. His contribution to shaping me as a researcher cannot be overestimated; I am proud of my acquaintance with this, perhaps, the greatest specialist in the political history of post-Soviet Russia.

I am grateful to my family and friends, whose support and understanding made my work possible. I would like to express my special gratitude to my wife, Anna Nekrasova, whose love and friendship help me to live.

I am indebted to all those who have read this work in manuscript, and whose remarks and friendly criticism have undoubtedly made the book much better. Naturally, all errors and inaccuracies remain only on the conscience of the author.

As part of my specialty, I was primarily interested in anti-Semitism in the political life of modern Russia. Actually, anti-Semitism in the strict sense of the word is precisely a political ideology, and then the prejudices of the mass consciousness, etc. Questions of religion are touched upon insofar as the latter is part of the political context. However, it is impossible to talk about political anti-Semitism without considering the problems of the popularity of anti-Semitic prejudices in the mass consciousness. Not being a specialist in the field of sociology, in the introduction I summarize the results of special studies and refer the reader for details to the special literature that I used myself.

The main text of the book is divided into three parts.

The first is devoted to the consideration of anti-Semitism in the context of party-political life in the modern Russian Federation. The issue is considered in two planes: moderate anti-Semitism in the ideology of "solid" parties belonging to the political "mainstream", and the situation with marginal right-wing radical (ultra-nationalist and religious-fundamentalist) groups. Separately, the issue of state policy in relation to such movements is considered.

The second part of the book is devoted to anti-Semitic propaganda. The question of what the anti-Semite press is and what funds such newspapers receive is considered in detail. Further, in the most general terms, the structure and content of anti-Semitic propaganda on the pages of periodicals are disassembled and analyzed.

Finally, the subject of the third part of the book lies at the intersection of political science and religious studies. This part is devoted to the analysis of the place of anti-Semitism in Islam and Orthodoxy in modern Russia. The last chapter of the third part is devoted to the analysis of the Russian radical right movement as a whole as a "religious" movement.

Each part and each chapter of the book can be considered both in a general context and as an independent article devoted to a specific problem.