Edition: U.S. / Global

Bomb Attack Shows That Russia Hasn't Rooted Out Anti-Semitism

Published: June 1, 2002

The sign was the size of a large poster, pounded into a green roadside about 20 miles southwest of here. It stated its ugly message in thick, block letters: ''Death to Yids.''

Although commuters streamed past it for a day, it was Tatyana Sapunova, a 27-year-old Muscovite, who stopped her tiny car to tear it down. But when she gave it a tug, it exploded, ripping wounds in her legs, hands and face.

Anti-Semitism has deep roots in Russian history and is still present among ordinary people and local authorities, far beyond any attempts by President Vladimir V. Putin to control or curb it. On Monday morning, that anti-Semitism lashed out at Ms. Sapunova, who was baptized as a Christian.

Doctors say she may not regain her sight in her left eye. Jewish organizations here, touched by a display of courage and civic concern all too rare in Russia, are offering to pay for treatment in Israel. Her family will probably agree but is firmly resisting any attempt to paint her act as extraordinary.

''My daughter is not a hero,'' said her mother, Yelena, who agreed to speak for her ailing daughter outside her hospital ward. ''She is just an ordinary person. Anyone would have done the same in her place.''

After suffering state-sponsored oppression for decades under the Soviets and before that under the czars, Judaism in Russia is enjoying a rebirth.

Not since the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution have there been so many prominent Jews in public life. Since 1990, seven Jewish day schools, three universities, two rabbinical schools and about 150 Jewish organizations have sprung up in Moscow.

Even the state has softened. Mr. Putin has aggressively courted Jewish community groups, reassuring people here that they are safe to practice their faith. But Mr. Putin's words do not mean that anti-Semitism has been eliminated.

''Today anti-Semitism is not coming from the very top,'' said Alexander Gelman, a Jewish playwright and social critic. ''That does not mean it does not exist. A Jew can't be as relaxed as a Russian. He expects insults and attacks more than a Russian does. That's a fact.''

The local police are particularly problematic. A study of extremist groups conducted in 1999 by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews found that in three cities, Bryansk, Voronezh and Yaroslavl, a fascist organization, Russian National Unity, was allowed to patrol train stations and local streets with the police to keep order.

As a result, few trust that they will be protected. For example, an American teenager, Yakov Vershubsky, the son of a rabbi currently working in central Russia, carries Mace and even a knife on the advice of his brother, who was attacked in Russia. Yakov has been attacked three times since first coming to Russia, most recently this week.

In another anti-Semitic attack in Moscow, slogans were spray-painted over a mural of the Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate Andrei D. Sakharov at a human rights museum, its director, Yuri Samodurov, told The Associated Press today.

''These acts always go unpunished,'' said Lyudmila Alekseyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group. ''They have the quiet support of the law enforcement authorities. Police say to themselves, 'Those Jews -- we've also had it with them.' ''

The offending sign had been up for at least a day and, the Russian daily Izvestia reported, was planted about 100 yards from a traffic police post. The newspaper quoted a local policeman, Nikolai Vagin, as saying the sign did not represent a call to ethnic violence, because ''everyone under the sun these days is called Jew.''

Despite that attitude, this incident shocked many Russians, gained broad publicity and is being actively investigated by the authorities, although so far they have not identified any suspects.

For more than a century, under the czars, most Jews were forced to live in a territory in what is now Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. An aging Stalin had plans to deport the entire Jewish population to a distant patch of land north of China, still referred to as the Jewish Autonomous Region.

Not even Yelena Sapunova, a passenger in the car that morning, knew why her daughter stopped the car. Tatyana does have Jewish roots, but they were never part of her life.

Her grandfather was a Jew from Belarus, whose first language was Yiddish. A doctor, he was jailed in the late 1930's. He survived, only to be sent to war. He was always restless, and moved his young family -- Yelena and her mother -- from Kiev to the Ural mountains, and finally to Tomsk, in Siberia.

''My father was a very contrarian man, always fighting for what was right,'' Mrs. Sapunova said. ''I think Tatyana has his character.''

Mrs. Sapunova said she had not felt her Jewishness for much of her life. She married a Russian atheist, and describes her daughter as a ''christened Russian girl.''

But several years ago Mrs. Sapunova began volunteering at a program for the blind at a synagogue in Moscow. She recalled borrowing books of songs from its library and being frustrated because she could not read them. Tatyana, she said, had no such regrets. But the sign bothered her.

''Tatyana said that when she saw that sign, she felt as if it had attacked her,'' said Rabbi Berl Lazar, a Moscow-based Lubavitcher who is one of Russia's two chief rabbis. ''It was an insult in her world, not just in the Jewish world.''

Many here say anti-Semitism has recently been eclipsed by a broader phenomenon: xenophobia and hatred of people from the Caucasus region.

The governor of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia has threatened to deport the region's Turks, Kurds and Armenians. Last November, Russian nationalist youths killed three people at a market in Moscow staffed mainly by Caucasians, Indians and Afghans.

This nationalism emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and, social workers and other experts say, it is particularly directed at the streams of migrants and refugees who have fled from the edges of empire to a marginal existence in Russia's cities.

Poor working-class Russians who mingle with these new arrivals ''feel inferior,'' said Andrei Babushkin, who runs a legal aid organization for Moscow's poor. ''They desperately need to know that there is someone else who is beneath them in the social order. At first it was Jews. Now it is Caucasians.''

Mr. Gelman dismisses the nationalism as politically marginal. Still, Mr. Putin seems to be concerned. In his address to the nation in April he called extremists ''a serious threat to the stability and public security.''

But Rabbi Lazar sees some changes for the better.

''A few years ago,'' he said, ''people would have said that Tatyana was crazy. Why would she do it, when it's a problem that will never be solved?

''Today there's a feeling that there is a reason to fight it, that we can get to the bottom of this.''

Mr. Gelman has his doubts.

''Even very little anti-Semitism -- in world measurements that still means a lot,'' he said. ''Less here means more than enough.''

Photo: This roadside sign, reading ''Death to Yids,'' was hooked up to an explosive device that wounded a woman who tried to tear it down. (Vladimir Velengurin)(pg. A8)