The state anti-Semitism first sprouts appeared in the USSR in the second half of the 1930s in the 20 century. The slogan of building socialism independently replaced the calls for a permanent revolution. The real state ideology also transformed. Soviet patriotism replaced proletarian internationalism. Russian people, almost at the official level, were recognized as the basis of the Soviet one. It is evidenced by the mass appearance of such works as the novel “We, the Russian people” by Vsevolod Vyshnevsky. You can see it in the showcase on the right.

The so-called “Great Patriotic War” slogans that glorified the heroic past, especially Russia’s one, turned into great-power Russian chauvinism. There is only one step left before the beginning of the policy of state anti-Semitism.

In the late 1940s, an openly anti-Semitic state campaign began. In the fall of 1948, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was liquidated. Most of the leadership was arrested and shot in 1952. Jewish literary and scientific associations in Moscow, Kyiv, and Minsk were liquidated too. Again, most of their members were arrested. The end of 1949 saw the beginning of the struggle against “cosmopolitanism” and “kneeling before the West” in the USSR. Then, it acquired a significant scale. The victims of state repression were predominantly Jews.

Doctors’ Plot became the culmination of the anti-Semitic campaign. In late 1952 and early 1953, leading Soviet doctors (primarily of Jewish origin) treating the Soviet Union leaders, including Stalin, were arrested. They were accused of trying to kill the top leadership of the state.

In front of you, there are materials related to the Doctors’ Plot. These are the Kukriniksy’s caricature and report exposing the so-called "doctors-murderers" in the Dnipropetrovsk regional newspaper “Zorya.” Joseph Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, interrupted this campaign. At the bottom of the showcase, there is the obituary of the then Soviet leader. The first round of state anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union was over.

A new anti-Semitic wave in the USSR arose in the late 1960s. You can learn about it from the showcase on the left. Jewish religious and social life was persecuted. Informal schools for studying Hebrew, Judaism, Jewish history, and culture were banned. Anti-Zionist literature, often with an anti-Semitic flavor, was widely published. The most popular samples are presented at the bottom of the showcase. There was a movement among Jews to leave for Israel. However, the Soviet leadership strongly opposed it. In response to the repressive actions of the secret services, the number of Jewish dissidents increased. They defended their own national interests and joined the all-Soviet opposition movement and the dissident movements of national republics, including the Ukrainian one. The exhibit in the center of the showcase evidences it. It’s a caricature from the satirical weekly “Pepper” in 1981. It combines the images of a Jewish Zionist and a Ukrainian “Banderovets.” In the center of the exhibition, there is the installation “Dissident’s Table,” showing the main attributes of the “dissident.” These are a typewriter, samizdat materials, and a radio receiver used to get alternative political, cultural, and public information from abroad. The end of the second stage of Soviet state anti-Semitism came only in the mid-1980s with perestroika.

At the same time, despite the state's suspicious and openly discriminatory attitude towards the people of the "fifth paragraph," Jewish life in the USSR continued. It is reflected in other showcases of our exhibition. Some of them went to Eretz Israel. Others, as evidenced by a set of materials about mining engineer Yakov Stolyar, made a successful career in the USSR.

The competition between “memory and non-memory” of the Holocaust continued. The materials the showcase on the right show it. On the one hand, it was sometimes allowed to publish materials about the extermination of Jews during World War II. But at the same time, memorial plaques in the places where the Jews were killed had only “Peaceful Soviet citizens” inscribed on them.

Ukraine is the birthplace of outstanding musicians, doctors, athletes, and scientists. On the wall, under the Nobel Prize medal, on the right, you can see portraits of Jewish scholars and writers. These are people from Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages. Their names are forever inscribed in the list of creators of world civilization.