history

There were anti-Semitic policies that took place under Stalin after the war and continued until his death in 1953, as part of the broader cultural doctrine under Zhdanov known as Zhdanovschina (the times of Zhdanov) to root out “foreign and cosmopolitan influence” (codeword for Jews) within the Soviet society.

A campaign was run from the late 1940s and early 1950s by liberal arts institutions, cultural organizations and educational organizations to mount a struggle against “cosmopolitanism” and “foreign influence” with direct orders from the higher authorities. As a result, Soviet officials with Jewish heritage were barred from promotion and these policies were kept in place until Stalin’s death.

Some high ranking officials like Lev Robertovich Gonor, who played a key role in the early phase of the Soviet space program and Hero of Socialist Labor, were amongst the victims of this campaign. He was dismissed in 1950 due to his Jewish ancestry.

The question of whether Stalin was anti-Semitic himself is much more murkier, with evidence showing that Stalin fought hard to retain some of his officials with Jewish heritage despite the ongoing wave of anti-Semitism that was latent within the Russian culture.

In other words, Stalin himself likely wasn’t anti-Semitic but he also did not stop (or found himself unable to stop) some of the anti-Semitic policies taking place under him, as the Russian culture was still steeped in anti-Semitism that had been going on for centuries.