History, memory and politics: the Holocaust in the Soviet Union

Writing during the late 1980s' period of glasnost and perestroika, the author examines the ambivalent treatment of the Holocaust in Soviet historiography, the general tendency being either to downplay or ignore it. Reasons for this include traditional Russian anti-Semitism, the official Soviet view that the Holocaust was merely part of a larger phenomenon, and that its roots lay not in racism but in capitalism. One consequence of this was the Soviet equation of fascism with Zionism. Altogether, Soviet historians portrayed Jews and their role in World War II with a high degree of inconsistency.