Żydokomuna

Żydokomuna (ʐɨdɔkɔˈmuna, Polish for "Judeo-Communism") is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, or a pejorative stereotype, suggesting that most Jews collaborated with the Soviet Union in importing communism into Poland, or that there was an exclusively Jewish conspiracy to do so.Krajewski, Stanislaw (2000). "Jews, Communism, and the Jewish Communists" . In András Kovács (ed.). Jewish Studies at the CEU: Yearbook 1996–1999. Central European University. A Polish language term for "Jewish Bolshevism", or more literally "Jewish communism", Żydokomuna is related to the "Jewish world conspiracy" myth. The idea originated as anti-communist propaganda at the time of the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1920), and continued through the interwar period. It was based on longstanding antisemitic attitudes, coupled with a historical fear of Russia. Most of Poland's Jews supported Józef Piłsudski's controlled government; after his death in 1935, rising levels of popular and state antisemitism pushed a small minority, several thousand at most, into participating in, or supporting, communist politics, which were relatively more welcoming to Jews. This was seized upon and inflated by antisemites. With the Soviet invasion of Poland and Stalin's 1939 occupation in eastern Poland, the Soviets used privileges and punishments to encourage ethnic and religious differences between Jews and Poles, characterized by Jan Gross as "the institutionalization of resentment". The stereotype was also reinforced because, as noted by Jaff Schatz, "people of Jewish origin constituted a substantial part of the Polish communist movement", even though "Communist ideals and the movement itself enjoyed only very limited support" among Polish Jews. A growing Polish embrace of the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as communist traitors erupted into mass murder when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet eastern Poland in July 1941.