The Soviet Union and Israel in the Global Cold War: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Ideology of Soviet Foreign Policy (1967-1991)

SOVILASAZION is an interdisciplinary historical project dedicated to studying Soviet anti-Zionism as an element of Soviet foreign policy’s ideology. Using previously unavailable recently declassified archival sources, the project will be set out to analyze the interconnections of Soviet anti-Zionism with the practices of Soviet foreign policymaking in the circumstances of the Global Cold War and will discuss them in relation to the domestic antisemitic discriminatory practices in the USSR. By doing so, SOVILASAZION will broaden our understanding of the ideological legacy left from the Cold War era for our times, when the discussion about the difference between antisemitism and the permitted criticism of Zionism is even hotter than 40-60 years ago. Addressing Soviet anti-Zionism as an element of Soviet foreign policy’s ideology, SOVILASAZION will investigate the history of the post-1967 relations between the USSR and Israel. It will address the attempts of the more pragmatically oriented wing of Soviet bureaucracy to lobby the restoration of the official diplomatic relations that had been broken off after the 1967 Six-Day War and study how the ideological limitations prevented such restoration. SOVILASAZION will also address the functioning of the Soviet bureaucracy in the sphere of foreign policy, it will highlight the heterogeneity of Soviet bureaucratic apparatus and, overall, will broaden our understanding of this underresearched part of the Cold War history.