Word: pamyat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pamyat, a hodgepodge of rabid Russian nationalist groups, some operating in secret, spins out tales of a historic Jewish-Masonic conspiracy against Russia. The organization looks for Masonic symbols everywhere, even in the five-pointed red stars atop Kremlin towers. A "de-Zionization" program, attributed to Pamyat, urges that Jews and their relations not be allowed to acquire degrees, join the Communist Party or hold elective office until their numbers in the ruling elite are brought into proportional balance with the population at large...
What worries Jews and many non-Jewish Soviets is that such nationalistic ravings might gain support in a time of heightened ethnic tensions and economic uncertainty. In January a band of some 50 Pamyat supporters disrupted a meeting of liberal writers in Moscow, waving anti-Semitic banners and shouting racist slogans. One hooligan warned the crowd, "We have come this time with a megaphone -- but next time with a gun." On a video clip shown on state-run television, a protester shouted, "Neither the KGB nor the party can help you now. We will be masters of the country...
...healthy and vigorous democracy for more than 30 years. As former Chancellor Willy Brandt has said, while it is true that there are nationalistic, right- wing groups in Germany, such movements also exist in East European countries, and the Soviet Union is home to the rightist, anti-Semitic Pamyat organization...
...United Worker's Front who oppose a "return to capitalism"; military officials angered by plans to convert defense factories to civilian use; entrenched party apparatchiks who fear the loss of position and privileges; and Russian nationalists who hanker after the Czarist past, many of them aligned with the reactionary Pamyat (Memory) movement. Whatever their ideological differences, the conservatives are united by a concern that the reforms are moving too fast and bringing in alien Western ideas that are pushing the country toward a social breakdown...
...perhaps in conjunction with the KGB. Though many top Soviets -- including Yeltsin -- dismiss this scenario, Central Committee members voiced fears of a coup to Marshall Goldman, a leading American Sovietologist, last summer. The coup menace is exacerbated by the growing strength of Russian ultra-nationalist organizations. Extremist groups like Pamyat have targeted Jews (a paranoid Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theory), "intellectuals" and "Russophobes" as scapegoats for national decline. The nationalists are at heart anti-Communist, but their appeal overlaps with a growing blue-collar nostalgia for the despotic simplicities of the Stalinist...