Russian liberals are no friends of Israel
When they call Jews “sovoks” and insects, believe them—not their branding
The “Palestinian nation” was invented by the Soviet KGB. What used to be a bombshell revelation by Romanian defector Ion Mihai Pacepa has since become common knowledge among Russian-speaking Jews and Jewish history buffs. The USSR created, abetted, and promoted the baseless notion of a separate “Palestinian identity”—unheard of before 1964, when the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow—and remained the main force behind anti-Zionism ever since. Russia’s stance towards Israel mellowed following the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Still, its growing alliance with Iran and the frequent visits of Hamas and Hezbollah delegations to Moscow leave no doubt that the two countries remain in opposite camps.
Against that background, it may be tempting to assume the anti-Putin Russian liberals would be natural allies of Israel. Many are Jewish and have family ties with the older generation of Soviet refuseniks and dissidents; some have even moved to Israel after 2022. Yet, this assumption collapses on contact with facts.
The year is 2025, and New York has just elected Zohran Mamdani—an open BDS supporter, sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime” bill, and DSA standard-bearer. Mamdani has a record of praising the Muslim Brotherhood and happens to have received his largest donation from the Council on American-Islamic Relations—a Muslim Brotherhood front proscribed by the UAE as a terrorist organization. None of that is disguised: it is his calling card.
The Russian liberal commentariat, which nowadays acts less as a Russian political force and more as the Russian-speaking chapter of the US Democratic Party, reacted instantaneously: by applauding Mamdani and smearing the dissenters. Alexei Navalny’s former strategist Leonid Volkov mocked Russian-speaking critics who preferred Andrew Cuomo, claiming without evidence that those same people preferred Putin loyalist Sergey Sobyanin as the mayor of Moscow in 2013; therefore, their objections are now illegitimate.
Katia Margolis, the self-appointed conscience of the anti-Putin émigrés known for lengthy Facebook rants and BLM-style ritualized self-flagellation over the war in Ukraine, touted Mamdani as her “litmus test,” tagging Russian-speaking Jews who balk at a BDS mayor as bigots mired in “Islamophobia” and “trauma politics.” In her latest post, she goes further and boasts of an “entomological” interest—fellow Jews reduced to insects under glass—while fawning over Mamdani’s pedigree and writing off Russian-speaking Jews as provincial sovoks with a Brighton Beach worldview who supposedly can’t read English or parse “decolonial” catechisms. The irony blares: a Jewish surname reviving Europe’s ugliest metaphor—the one a certain Austrian demagogue rode to power. It reads like self-parody. Preach anti-racism, bark “shut up, Soviet bumpkins,” strike a righteous pose, then anoint yourself “decolonized” while everyone else with the same background is written off as sovok riffraff.
The tone policing extends to open ridicule. Writer Alexei Belyakov published a mini-play in which a Muscovite, shattered by Mamdani’s win, scolds birds on the balcony and warns neighbors not to shop because “the end is here.” The point is blunt: Russian-speaking Jews have no standing in American politics unless they applaud the approved result. Disagree with the progressive line and you are a sovok, a Soviet-minded bumpkin who should shut up and know his place.
Meanwhile, the same diaspora machine that tells others to “stay in your lane” eagerly wades into US politics when it suits the tribe. Daria (Dasha) Navalnaya literally worked on Kamala Harris’s 2024 Pennsylvania operation—celebrated by friendly outlets as a feel-good symbol of liberal internationalism. Kremlin interference is rightly scrutinized; Russian liberal influence gets a free pass because it flatters the right constituencies.
There’s another detail their sermons miss: most Jewish New Yorkers who reliably vote blue opposed Mamdani, and Israeli Jews in the city—many with no connection to the Russian-speaking community—are overwhelmingly hostile to his politics. The sovok smear serves but one purpose: to delegitimize an electorate that doesn’t consent.
That is the core hypocrisy. The same circles that spit sovok at Russian-speaking Jews for resisting a BDS platform are laundering, endorsing, and mainstreaming a political project with Soviet fingerprints all over it—an export that began in Lubyanka offices and UN subcommittees and now runs through city-hall talking points, campus chants, and NGO press releases. They posture as surgeons of “de-Sovietization” while advancing the USSR’s most successful narrative: delegitimizing Jewish sovereignty under the sanitized label of “Palestine.”
Yes, the Kremlin’s ties to Tehran, Hamas, and Hezbollah are real. Condemn them. But stop issuing moral vouchers to its liberal opponents as if “anti-Putin” equals “pro-Israel.” New York just ran the experiment in public. A BDS-aligned mayor won, prominent Russian liberals applauded, and Russian-speaking Jews who protested were told to sit down and accept their sovok status.
Judge by the Israel record, not the anti-Kremlin brand. When a movement cheers a BDS mayor and meets Jewish alarm with slurs—and with “entomological” language from Hitler’s playbook that reduces Jews to insects—the message is unmistakable. The USSR taught generations to hate the Jewish state; a loud slice of the Russian opposition never unlearned it. They just carried the old script—still in Russian—straight into New York politics.
