Blood and Soil of the Soviet Academy: Politically Institutionalized Anti-Semitism in the Moscow Academic Circles of the Brezhnev Era through the Life Stories of Russian Academic Emigrants

Abstract

The blood-and-soil concept relates to nationalism tied to land that is tied to specific bloodlines—meaning reconsideration of national membership on the basis of ethnicity. Soil affiliation implies objective criteria of national membership, related to birthplace or residence and associated with providing roots (homeland attachments, friends, marriage, children, or citizenship). The idea of blood and soil is about rejecting a soil claim in those with different, “wrong,” blood. As part of national purification, blood-and-soil nationalism emerges as a political process using the “blood” concept as a mechanism to restrict national membership—to reconsider the soil benefits by not making them accessible to everybody. In this work I will use the term “blood and soil'” to stress the exclusive nature of Soviet Russian ethnonationalism in relation to Jews as its number one target and to show the controversy surrounding Soviet membership.