North Caucasus: Rising Threat to Jewish Life

More than a year after the anti-Semitic riots, tensions in the Russian North Caucasus remain high. When an anti-Semitic mob targeted individuals of Jewish descent in Dagestan at the end of October 2023, amid the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Russian state watched passively and ineffectively. Despite allegedly increased security measures, the predominantly Muslim republic, which is plagued by internal unrest, is still not at peace in 2024. On 23 June, the Kele-Numaz synagogue in the city of Derbent, the only one left in the region, was set on fire. A total of 22 people were killed in connection with a shooting in front of a police station in the provincial capital of Makhachkala. Russian special forces quickly launched an ‘anti-terrorist operation’, which was declared over after 24 hours. From the outset, Vladimir Putin’s regime placed the blame for the anti-Semitic violence squarely on Ukraine and Western intelligence services. These foreign-controlled forces, it claimed, sought to incite hatred and discord within Russian society to weaken and divide the nation.

A longstanding Legacy of Hostility: From the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union

They describe themselves as Mountain Jews, a sub-ethnic group of the Jewish nation that speaks a Judeo-Tat language. They settled in the North Caucasus in the 19th century after the conquest of this region by the Russian Tsarist Empire. Over time, Jewish settlements developed in Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria), Grozny (Chechnya), Mozdok (North Ossetia) and last but not least in Dagestan, particularly in the towns of Kizlyar and Makhachkala. Anti-Jewish riots had already occurred in the Muslim-majority provinces of the North Caucasus during both the Caucasian War (1817-1864) and the Russian Civil War (1918-1920). Similarly, the current surge in anti-Jewish resentment is far from uncharted territory. In August 1960, the newspaper  ‘Buinaksk’ published an article entitled  ‘Without God the road is Wide’, in which it was claimed that Jews had bought 5 to 10 grams of Muslim blood to dilute in a bucket of water and sell on to other Jews.

During the 6-Day War in 1967, a meeting was held in a mosque in Derbent to condemn Israel. The chairmen of collective farms and factory directors appealed to the central government to ‘attack the aggressor’. The crowds in the streets saw this appeal as a license to attack Jews. Only intervention from above prevented the worst from happening at the last moment.

The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a harrowing period in the history of the North Caucasian Mountain Jews. In the years 1992-1994, there was a mass exodus of the remaining two to three thousand Jews from Chechnya. In Kabardino-Balkaria, but above all in Dagestan, threats, kidnappings, and murders became commonplace. In an atmosphere of excessive arbitrariness, lawlessness and a lack of security guarantees, most Jews fled to Israel, the major Russian cities and neighboring Azerbaijan. Within a few years, the Jewish communities in Kizlyar, Khasavyurt and Buinaksk ceased to exist. In Derbent, the number of Jews fell from 17 thousand in 1989 to two thousand in 1995. According to the last all-Russian census in 2021, just over 600 mountain Jews lived in Derbent.

Plagued by social problems and radical currents

The alarming incidents of October 2023 and June 2024 reflect a broader trend of increasing religious intolerance throughout the North Caucasus, fueled by socio-economic grievances and political instability. Dagestan, with its many ethnic groups, stands out in particular. Violence and religious conflict have been closely intertwined with the desire for independence and the rise of radical religious movements for many decades. The region is characterized by an encrusted economic infrastructure, extreme poverty and high unemployment. The state authorities suffer from a great loss of trust. This in turn creates a fertile breeding ground for increasing crime and the spread of extremist currents, and the interplay of numerous risk factors is shaking the centuries-long coexistence of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity in the region.

Russian state as the driving force behind anti-Jewish sentiment

The growing anti-Semitism in the North Caucasian republics is, in part, a reflection of the state’s failures. In the past 24 years of its rule, the Putin regime has never decisively countered hostility towards Jews. On the contrary, the aggressive war against Ukraine, launched in February 2022, exposed Putin’s anti-Semitic traits. The state-controlled media have employed anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to legitimize the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Kiev is ruled by ‘anti-Semitic Nazis’ and must therefore be ‘de-Nazified’, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is of Jewish origin. At the same time, Putin has fostered a strategic relationship with Hamas, with which Russia has maintained diplomatic ties since 2006. He also shares a close rapport with Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority. During their meeting in October 2022, both leaders reaffirmed their strong partnership.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas that flared up in October 2023 was both a curse and a blessing for Putin. On the one hand, he saw it as a welcome opportunity to divert the attention of the international community away from the war in Ukraine. On the other hand, Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip fueled hatred of Jews in the North Caucasus and exacerbated the already fragile security situation, which Russia’s president has been unable to control for over two decades. Putin has repeatedly criticized Israel’s actions in the Gaza conflict, garnering significant sympathy from the Muslim population in the North Caucasus. In doing so, however, he not only promotes state-led anti-Semitism, but also encourages the radical fundamentalists, who feel more vindicated than ever in their mission to glorify violence against the Jews. If this trend is not addressed promptly, it may only be a matter of time before the North Caucasus region is devoid of its Jewish community.