It is an established fact that the so-called "Southern" (mainly Odessabased) school of writers enriched Soviet literature of the 1920s with a number of "European" dimensions neglected by the then dominant Russian realist tradition, such as (to name but a few) intertextuality, a focus on language and style, and a sharpened sensitivity to plot and composition. It can be said that in Babel' criticism some of these aspects are just beginning to receive the full measure of attention that they merit. However, the rich fabric of Russian and western cultural subtexts in Babel''s prose and its intricate relationships with various literary and mythological prototypes remain largely unexplored. Among recent studies that begin to fill this gap, the forthcoming monograph in Russian by Yampolsky and Zholkovsky deserves special mention as one of the most comprehensive to date.

The sage of Yasnaya Polyana haunted Babel'‘s imagination as a paragon of professional greatness: "What Tolstoy knows and may do–may we do that? You read Tolstoy and it seems: one more…page and you'll finally understand the secret of life…After you know what Tolstoy thinks of death, there is no reason to know what a Fedor Sologub thinks on this issue." In an early story ("Inspiration," 1917) the young narrator says to his friend, a would-be literary genius: "Well, Leo Tolstoy [Lev Nikolaevich], when you write your autobiography, remember me" (1966: 32). Living at one time near a stud farm in Molodenovo, Babel' cultivated the acquaintance of an aged local horseman.

To begin, three encounters, and then some ruminations about two deaths, the veiling of identity and the expression of kinship. The encounters are from the diary Isaac Babel' kept during his service with Budenny's First Cavalry Army in the Polish campaign of 1920; the deaths are those that frame the work of fiction he drew from this experience, Red Cavalry. That book begins and ends with the narrator contemplating a corpse–in each instance, the body of a Jewish man whose passing leads the narrator to confront the meanings of kinship and loss. In the first case, he witnesses bereavement; in the second, he experiences it. On one important level, the narrator's trajectory in Red Cavalry is captured in the contrast between his links to the first death and to the last. Reading the story cycle against the background of the diary, one can see this feature of the cycle's design in terms of the central dilemma for Babel' (bearing papers in the name of Kirill Vasilievich Liutov, the name he bequeathes to his narrator) in his dealings with the civilians of the heavily Jewish towns through which his division passed: whether or not to reveal that he was himself a Jew.

Most analyses of the consequences of the December 1993 elections have focused on the State Duma that was elected and its likely role in the Russian political process at the national level. The purpose of this study is to go beyond the more obvious impact of the elections to examine underlying patterns and tendencies that could be significant for Russia's future as a federal, multiethnic state. Data on voting for the parliament by party list permit for the first time a systematic, multidimensional comparison of political tendencies in Russia's regions.

Politics in postcommunist societies is in large measure a politics of identity. Central to it seem to be two mutually reinforcing moments through which national communities recreate themselves. One involves the "positive" expression of nation and concerns the recovery of those identity markers—symbols, rituals, anthems, history, literature and so forth—that had been suspended and suppressed during the communist epoch. The other moment is "negative." It appears in the act of purging the nation of like markers associated with the period of communist rule that are now openly regarded as alien. The multitude of images projected from the countries of east Europe and the former USSR at the moment of communism's collapse capture these two moments in concentrated fashion. In the crowds chanting national slogans and waving the national flag, while chiseling communist emblems from the facades of public buildings and toppling statues erected to some member of the communist pantheon, we observe a distilled version of this duplex signification: "We are not communist/communism is not us."

On a wintry early April day, far out in the Lena River basin to the north of Lake Baikal, a file of workers some three thousand strong marched determinedly out of the deforested hills along a road toward a company settlement on the Bodaibo River. Most walked three or four abreast on a road narrowed by the previous night's snow fall, as others trudged along a parallel railroad track a few meters away; within the sparse township, a small figure in the distance waved his arms and shouted but his voice faded in the chill late afternoon air. As the miners proceeded along lengthy stables and stacks of firewood, a uniformed guard hurried forward to persuade them to turn off onto another road. As they rounded the stables, the road curved somewhat bringing them into full view of a substantial building; only a wooden bridge over a small stream and perhaps two hundred meters stood between the workers and their goal. A company of soldiers stood in formation beyond the bridge. The workers' lines faltered uncertainly but people pushed forward from behind.

In my paper critiquing the analysis of Brym and Degtyarev, I argued that little could be gained from their analysis and indeed that their paper contributed mainly to misunderstanding anti-Semitism in Russia. In this article, I present some new survey results on anti-Semitism as a means of advancing our knowledge on this important topic. In particular, I address four questions: 1) is anti-Semitism in Russia particularly widespread? 2) are prejudiced attitudes focused specifically on Jews or are they more diffuse? 3) does a "don't know" response to survey questions mask anti-Semitic attitudes? and 4) most importantly, what are the political implications of anti-Semitism for Russian Jews?

With the rise of ultranationalist organizations throughout Europe, the issue of attitudes and orientations held toward designated "out-groups" has become a critical concern of anxious observers. In Russia the strength registered by Vladimir Zhirinovskii's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party during the parliamentary elections of 1993 has been interpreted as a sign of intolerance among the Russian populace. In fact, the success of candidates associated with the Liberal Democratic Party was not only based upon appeals to strengthen the Russian nation against perceived enemies, but also upon promises of a return to price stability and upon Zhirinovskii's anti-establishment, populist program. Nonetheless, Zhirinovskii's success in the 1991 presidential elections (he attracted 7.8% of the electorate) does serve to reaffirm the importance of tracking how attitudes toward groups that have often been targeted as scapegoats in times of social or economic upheaval have evolved in the late Soviet and immediate post-Soviet period. Two major questions concern us here: first, how pervasive among Russians and Ukrainians are perceptions of significant "social distance" between themselves and designated out-groups, most notably the Jewish population; and second, to what extent do these perceptions of distance form part of a cohesive ideology of ultranationalism? Understanding the basis of sentiments toward Jewish populations is particularly important for interpreting the workings of the complex mosaic of the post-Soviet political culture.

In a recent article in this journal Brym and Degtyarev made a number of claims about the dangers of anti-Semitism in Moscow. On the basis of a telephone survey conducted in 1992, they concluded their analysis with these ominous admonishments: "The evidence thus suggests that some large categories of Moscow's population hold attitudes that are authoritarian, xenophobic, illiberal on social issues and, of course, anti-Semitic. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes in the city, Moscow's 150,000 Jews and the 300,000 in the rest of Russia have reason to be anxious." These are serious and important findings, suffused with both theoretical and policy implications. It is therefore important to have a careful look at their data, analysis and substantive conclusions.

Brym and Degtyarev argue that in the "volatile" post-Soviet context, the potential for anti-Semitism is high. On the basis of responses drawn from 988 interviews conducted in Moscow in 1992 they conclude that the number of anti-Semites in Moscow is much higher than in the United States or Canada, and they also conclude that anti-Semitic orientations are part of a broader authoritarian, xenophobic and illiberal set of attitudes.

My dispute with Gibson and Hesli et al. rests on fundamental methodological differences. They do not fully appreciate the historical and political context from which Russian survey data derive. As a result, they engage in a series of statistical misapplications which undermine the soundness of their critique of my article with Degtyarev and of their views concerning the nature and consequences of anti-Semitism in Russia.