In Dagestan and Chechnya, war, criminality and Islamic fundamentalism have mixed with Soviet era antisemitism to create enormous danger for the 8,000 Jews who live in Dagestan and the unknown number of Jews who remain in Chechnya. In Dagestan, parts of which were occupied by Chechen warlords in August and September, some Jews have been told to convert to Islam or die. A local Jewish source informed us that a few elderly people have literally died of fright as a result of being terrorized by thugs. Earlier this month, two Jewish women were murdered by suffocation. One Jew from Makhachkala spent 15 months in captivity during which he was tortured by hunger, cold and beatings.
Russian television reports that many hostages are kept in cages.
Our soon to be released report on antisemitism, fascism and religious persecution in 61 of Russia's 89 regions clearly demonstrates that as the central government increasingly shifts the responsibility of dealing with social and political problems, including fascism and antisemitism, onto the shoulders of regional governments, a wide diversity of responses to these dangerous phenomena has emerged, largely dependent on local conditions and the personalities and priorities of local officials. Krasnodar, a province the size of Panama in the Northern Caucasus, of course, is the most extreme example of what happens when a hard core antisemite and Communist Party member takes power. Governor Nikolai Kondratenko is one of Russia's most notorious antisemites. Between these extremes lie the vast majority of regions, where more often than not, regional authorities are indifferent to the threats posed by fascist movements, either because the threat is minimal in their region or because the targets of these movements do not have enough influence to enlist the local authorities' protection. In contrast to Russia, in Ukraine the central government has taken some real steps to protect its Jewish citizens from antisemitic violence and its incitement.