Theorizing Soviet Antisemitism: Value, Crisis, and Stalinist “Modernity”

The Stalin Revolution of 1927–28 coincided with the outbreak of antisemitic violence across the Soviet Union. While frequently treated as incidental, this article argues that the recrudescence of antisemitism offers insight into the structural dynamics that drove the Stalin Revolution and the ensuing breakneck industrialization. Drawing on critical theories of antisemitism from the Frankfurt School, this article reframes Soviet antisemitism within the context of the pan-European antisemitic turn that erupted with the global crisis of the late 1920s. In doing so, it focuses on the relationship between antisemitism and the social rupture engendered by the massive effort to expand, productivize, and rationalize Soviet labor during the Stalin Revolution. Ultimately, the article argues that this eruption of antisemitism points to the persistence of key categories of capitalist social relations—most notably, value and wage labor—that remained at the heart of production within the world’s first “postcapitalist” society.