Mikhail Mitsel. Politics and Paranoia: The Communist Party of Ukraine against “International Zionism” (1953–1986)

The book examines a “vegetarian” period of Ukraine’s Soviet history when the regime had already stopped practising mass repressions, and yet the ideological pillars of late Stalinism, though slightly modified, remained the same. One element of propaganda was the so-called “fight against international Zionism.” The content of Party, state, and secret police documents impresses the reader with its ideological rhetoric and latent antisemitism as well as a combination of distorted reality and lies. Based on the archival collections of the Communist Party, the book shows that the methods of “anti-Zionist” propaganda were too distant from reality and could not influence the minds of those who did not find their place in the tight grip of the Soviet society.
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