Panelist traces modern weaponization of antisemitism to Russian and Soviet propaganda campaigns

Izabella Tabarovsky, a fellow at the Wilson Center and a scholar of Soviet Jewish history, told a U.S. Helsinki Commission briefing that Russia and the Soviet Union have played outsized roles in manufacturing and propagating antisemitic conspiracy narratives used for foreign-policy influence.

Tabarovsky said the czarist-era forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion “were born in Russia in 1903” and that Soviet and later Russian state actors amplified similar tropes to discredit Western democracies and to cement alliances with Arab states. She cited the Soviet campaign after the 1967 Six-Day War as the point when Kremlin antisemitic propaganda “went completely conspiratorial and went global.”

She also tied that history to contemporary Russian practice. Tabarovsky described how officials and state media have weaponized tropes about Jewish power in the context of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, singling out attacks on President Volodymyr Zelensky that leveraged his Jewish identity to paint him as a “neo-Nazi.” She said the Kremlin’s messages are designed to appeal to a range of audiences—domestic nationalist constituencies, far-right groups abroad and anti-Western audiences in the developing world—and to erode support for U.S. allies.

Tabarovsky noted earlier Soviet-era actions, such as campaigns that equated Zionism with disloyalty, and cited the 1975 U.N. resolution that labeled Zionism as racism as an example of how Soviet-era influence reached international forums. She argued that current Russian leaders, trained in Soviet-era foreign-policy institutions, have inherited those methods and continue to exploit antisemitic tropes for geopolitical advantage.

Tabarovsky concluded by urging attention to the Kremlin’s long-term investment in these messaging strategies and said addressing the threat requires international cooperation to protect pluralistic institutions and inoculate publics against manipulated narratives.

Ending: Her testimony framed antisemitism not only as a domestic social problem but as a tool of foreign influence, linking historical forgeries and Cold War campaigns to modern information operations that target democratic resilience.