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Rootless Cosmopolitan
"Rootless cosmopolitan" ( ) was a pejorative epithet that was mostly applied to intellectuals and Jews with ties to the West during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. It became especially prevalent during the country's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, which began in 1948 and continued until Stalin's death in 1953, as part of a post-1946 assault on " bourgeois Western influences" that widely targeted writers and other intellectuals, culminating in the doctors' plot against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the Communist Party's discourse, rootless cosmopolitans were defined as unpatriotic Soviet citizens, chiefly Jewish intellectuals with ties to the West, who disseminated foreign influence favouring the socio-political atmosphere or aesthetics of Western Europe or the United States. The term is considered to be an antisemitic trope. Origin The expression was coined in the 19th century by Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky to describe writers who lacked ...
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Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and Human self-reflection, reflection about the nature of reality, especially the nature of society and proposed solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by either rejecting, producing or extending an ideology, and by defending a system of value theory, values. Etymological background "Man of letters" The term "man of letters" derives from the French term ''Belles-lettres, belletrist'' or ''homme de lettres'' but is not synonymous with "an academic". A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society in a time when literacy was rare. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term ''Belletrist(s)'' came to be applied to the ''literati'': the French particip ...
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Chabad
Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (; ; ), is a dynasty in Hasidic Judaism. Belonging to the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) branch of Orthodox Judaism, it is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, as well as one of the largest Jewish religious organizations. Unlike most Haredi groups, which are self-segregating, Chabad mainly operates in the wider world and caters to nonobservant Jews. Founded in 1775 by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812) in the city of Liozno in the Russian Empire, the name "Chabad" () is an acronym formed from the three Hebrew words— Chokmah, Binah, Da'at— for the first three sefirot of the kabbalistic Tree of Life after Keter: , "Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge"—which represent the intellectual and kabbalistic underpinnings of the movement. The name Lubavitch derives from the town in which the now-dominant line of leaders resided from 1813 to 1915. Other, non-Lubavitch scions of Chabad either disappear ...
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Tablet (magazine)
''Tablet'' is a conservative American magazine focused on Jewish news and culture, featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, and essays. It was founded in 2009 by editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse and is supported by the Nextbook foundation. Tablet’s website, print edition, and logo were all designed by Pentagram. History ''Tablet'' was founded as a web magazine in June 2009 by Alana Newhouse, former culture editor at '' The Forward'', with the support of the Nextbook foundation as a rebranded and news-focused version of the Jewish literary journal ''Nextbook.'' In the three years after its founding, ''New York Magazine'' described ''Tablet'' as a "must-read for young politically and culturally engaged Jews". Its reporting has largely focused on Jewish news and culture. In June 2025, ''Tablet'' debuted its print edition. It had launched and then halted publication of a glossy print edition previously; that iteration was also designed bPentagram In February 2015, '' ...
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Antisemitism In The Soviet Union
The February Revolution in Russia officially ended a centuries-old regime of antisemitism in the Russian Empire, legally abolishing the Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued and furthered by the Soviet state, especially under Joseph Stalin. After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed. This campaign culminated in the so-called doctors' plot, in which a group of doctors (almost all of whom were Jewish) were subjected to a show trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate Stalin. Although repression eased after Stalin's death, persecution of Jews would continue until the late 1980s (see: refuseniks). History Before the revolution Under the Tsars, Jews – who numbered approximately 5 million in the Russian Empire in the 1880s, and mostly lived in poverty – had bee ...
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Night Of The Murdered Poets
Night, or nighttime, is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. Sunlight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. The opposite of nighttime is daytime. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of sunrise and sunset. Moonlight, airglow, starlight, and light pollution dimly illuminate night. The duration of day, night, and twilight varies depending on the time of year and the latitude. Night on other celestial bodies is affected by their rotation and orbital periods. The planets Mercury and Venus have much longer nights than Earth. On Venus, night lasts about 58 Earth days. The Moon's rotation is tidally locked, rotating so that one of the sides of the Moon always faces Earth. Nightfall across portions of the near side of the Moon results in lunar phases visible from Earth. Organisms respond to the changes brought by nightfall: darkness, increased humidity, and lower temperatures. Their responses include direct reactions a ...
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Person Of Jewish Ethnicity
Person of Jewish ethnicity () is а Russian circumlocution used as an euphemism for "Jew". The word "Jew" was occasionally avoided in the Soviet Union as it perceived as pejorative due to antisemitism in the Soviet Union. Benedikt Sarnov, ''Our Soviet Newspeak: A Short Encyclopedia of Real Socialism'', Moscow: 2002, (Наш советский новояз. Маленькая энциклопедия реального социализма.), "Persons of Jewish ethnicity", pp. 287–293.Person of Jewish ethnicity
Writer described this perception as ...
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Great Patriotic War
The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies of World War II, Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Polish Armed Forces in the East, Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltic states, Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated World War II casualties, 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of World War II, European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis ...
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Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen () is a Russian and American journalist, author, and translator who has written extensively on LGBT rights. Gessen writes primarily in English but also in Russian. In addition to authoring several nonfiction books, Gessen has contributed to ''The New York Times'', ''The New York Review of Books'', ''The Washington Post'', the ''Los Angeles Times'', ''The New Republic'', ''New Statesman'', ''Granta'', ''Slate'', '' Vanity Fair'', ''Harper's Magazine'', ''The New Yorker'', and '' U.S. News & World Report''. They have been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 2017 and an opinion columnist at ''The New York Times'', under the byline M. Gessen, since May 2024. Early life and education Gessen was born into a Jewish family in Moscow to Alexander and Yelena Gessen. Gessen's paternal grandmother Ester Goldberg, the daughter of a socialist mother and a Zionist father, was born in Białystok, Poland, in 1923 and emigrated to Moscow in 1940. Ester's grandfather Jaku ...
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Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the list of largest empires, third-largest empire in history, behind only the British Empire, British and Mongol Empire, Mongol empires. It also Russian colonization of North America, colonized Alaska between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity. From the 10th to 17th centuries, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as the boyars, above whom was the tsar, an absolute monarch. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid by Ivan III (), who greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russian national state, and secured inde ...
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Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky (; Pre-reform spelling: Виссаріонъ Григорьевичъ Бѣлинскій. – ) was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. Belinsky played one of the key roles in the career of poet and publisher Nikolay Nekrasov and his popular magazine '' Sovremennik''. He was the most influential of the Westernizers, especially among the younger generation. He worked primarily as a literary critic, because that area was less heavily censored than political pamphlets. He agreed with Slavophiles that society had precedence over individualism, but he insisted the society had to allow the expression of individual ideas and rights. He strongly opposed Slavophiles on the role of Orthodoxy, which he considered a retrograde force. He emphasized reason and knowledge, and attacked autocracy and theocracy. Biography Born in Sveaborg, part of Helsinki, Vissarion Belinsky lived in the town of Chembar (now Belinsky in Belinsky District o ...
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New Statesman
''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. The longest-serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–1960), and the most recent editor was Jason Cowley (journalist), Jason Cowley, who assumed the post in 2008 and left in 2024. Today, the magazine is a print–digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a modern Liberalism in the United Kingdom, liberal and Independent progressive, progressive political position. Jason Cowley (journalist), Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the ''New Statesman'' as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magaz ...
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Antisemitic Trope
Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are " sensational reports, misrepresentations or fabrications" about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion. Since the 2nd century, malicious allegations of Jewish guilt have become a recurring motif in antisemitic tropes, which take the form of libels, stereotypes or conspiracy theories. They typically present Jews as cruel, powerful or controlling, some of which also feature the denial or trivialization of historical atrocities against Jews. These tropes have led to pogroms, genocides, persecutions and systemic racism for Jews throughout history. Antisemitic tropes mainly evolved in monotheistic societies, whose religions were derived from Judaism, many of which were traceable to Christianity's early days. These tropes were mirrored by 7th-century Quranic claims that Jews were "visited with wrath from Allah" due to their supposed practice of usury and disbelief in his revelations. In medieva ...
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