Introduction: From Ideology to Infrastructure
By the mid-20th century, antizionism had moved beyond theory. What had existed as strands of ideological opposition to Jewish nationalism was transformed into something far more consequential: a coordinated international campaign.
This transformation did not occur spontaneously. Through propaganda networks, diplomatic alignment, political alliances, and cultural institutions, the Soviet Union and its partners helped convert antizionism into a global framework — one capable of shaping how Israel was understood far beyond its immediate geopolitical context.
What began as ideology became infrastructure.
1. The Soviet Turn: From Suspicion to System
In its early years, the Soviet Union’s position on Zionism was not fixed. Zionism could, in principle, be interpreted as a national movement of an oppressed minority. But this ambiguity ended rapidly after 1948.
Despite early recognition of Israel, Joseph Stalin soon recast Jewish identity as politically suspect. Jews were increasingly described as “cosmopolitans” and “Zionist agents,” accused of loyalties incompatible with socialist internationalism.1
This shift was institutional rather than rhetorical.
Jewish cultural institutions were dismantled. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was purged. In 1952, leading Yiddish writers were executed in what became known as the “Night of the Murdered Poets.” A year later, the Doctors’ Plot accused predominantly Jewish physicians of conspiring to assassinate Soviet leadership — a manufactured accusation that gave antisemitism the cover of national defence.2
As historians such as Benjamin Pinkus and Joshua Rubenstein have shown, this period marked a decisive transformation: antisemitism was not removed from Soviet political life, but reformulated. “Zionism” became the acceptable vocabulary through which it could be expressed.3
2. 1967: Defeat, Opportunity, and Narrative Shift
Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War reshaped more than borders. It altered the ideological terrain.
For Soviet-aligned Arab states, the defeat was destabilising. For Moscow, it presented an opportunity to reframe the conflict. Increasingly — and, as later archival research would confirm, systematically — Soviet institutions promoted a new interpretive framework: Israel as a colonial outpost, Zionism as racism, and Jewish political power as a concealed global network.4
These narratives drew on older tropes, but their presentation was new. Recast in the language of anti-imperialism, they became intelligible within global left-wing discourse and post-colonial political thought.
The effect was to relocate the conflict. It was no longer primarily geopolitical. It became moral.
3. The Transmission System: Soviet Infrastructure and the PLO
The decisive development of this period was not simply the production of ideas, but their transmission.
The Soviet Union worked through regional partners — most notably Egypt, Syria, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). As Jeffrey Herf documents, this was a coordinated environment in which Soviet framing and Arab political messaging reinforced one another.5
The PLO was central to this process. It translated Soviet antizionist language into a form that could be recognised globally as a national liberation struggle. When Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations in 1974 — shortly before the organisation granted the PLO observer status — he did more than advocate for Palestinian nationalism. He recast the conflict in terms aligned with the dominant anti-colonial discourse of the time.6
This was the moment antizionism acquired a moral grammar that audiences beyond the Soviet–Arab alliance could adopt as their own.
At the same time, Soviet infrastructure ensured global reach. Through agencies such as Novosti, publications were disseminated across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These included widely circulated pamphlets and translated materials equating Zionism with apartheid and colonialism, often tailored to local political contexts and distributed through diplomatic and media networks.7
For newly decolonised states, this framing resonated. Having emerged from colonial rule, many were predisposed to interpret conflicts through a colonial lens. The portrayal of Israel as a settler-colonial project was not merely imposed; it was politically intuitive.
The result was a convergence of supply and demand. Soviet systems provided the language and structure; post-colonial political environments provided a receptive audience. This process — often described in the literature as the “Palestinianisation” of antizionism — transformed a regional conflict into a universalised human-rights narrative.8
4. Institutionalisation: From Narrative to Legitimacy
The success of this framework became visible at the institutional level.
In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racism. As established in Part 1, this was a unique moment: a national movement was condemned not for its actions, but for its existence.9
Here we explain how this became possible.
The resolution reflected sustained diplomatic coordination between Soviet and Arab blocs, operating within an international environment already shaped by post-1967 ideological realignment.10 By the time it was introduced, the underlying narrative had been normalised across much of the Global South.
Its formal repeal in 1991 did not end its influence. At the 2001 Durban Conference, NGO forums revived the same language — and, in documented cases, distributed explicitly antisemitic materials — demonstrating that the framework had become embedded beyond the political structures that created it.11
5. Diffusion Without Direction: From Soviet Strategy to Western Discourse
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the centre of this system, but not its effects.
Some elements of Soviet influence continued through direct channels. Archival work by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin documents efforts to cultivate networks within Western political and intellectual institutions.12 These efforts were real, but they are not sufficient to explain the persistence of antizionist frameworks.
The more significant mechanism was convergence.
By the late 20th century, elements of the Western left had already adopted interpretive frameworks — particularly anti-imperialism and decolonisation theory — that aligned closely with Soviet narratives. The result was not simple transmission, but mutual reinforcement.
This explains why certain claims — that Israel is a colonial project, that Zionism is inherently racist — persist even in contexts entirely removed from Soviet influence. Their durability does not depend on their origin. It rests on their compatibility with broader ideological structures.
The continuity, therefore, is conceptual rather than conspiratorial.
Conclusion: The Propaganda That Outlived Its Source
Antizionism was not simply a feature of Soviet foreign policy. It was one of its most enduring legacies.
By reframing hostility toward Jewish statehood in the language of liberation, the Soviet system helped construct a framework capable of surviving its own collapse. When the political infrastructure disappeared, the conceptual structure remained.
It adapted.
The significance of this history is not that it invalidates all contemporary criticism of Israel. It does not. But it does impose a requirement: that the frameworks through which such criticism is expressed be understood historically, not treated as neutral or self-evident.
The terms of debate are not given. They are constructed.
To recognise that is not to end the argument. It is to begin it on more honest ground.
References
- Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
- Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001).
- Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union.
- Jeffrey Herf, Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and West German Far Left, 1967-1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
- Herf, Undeclared Wars with Israel.
- Yasser Arafat, Address to the UN General Assembly, 13 November 1974.
- Christopher Allen and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
- Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010).
- UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 (1975).
- Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession.
- Anne Bayefsky, “The UN World Conference Against Racism: A Rascist Anti-Racism Conference,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, Vol. 96 (2002).
- Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II.
