By Amie Ferris-Rotman
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Allegations by nationalists thatVladimir Putin's chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, has Jewishroots have brought anti-Semitism to the surface on the marginsof Russia's presidential election campaign.
The first deputy prime minister, who is all but assured ofvictory on Sunday because he has Putin's support, has said hebelongs to the Russian Orthodox faith.
But some nationalist groups say his mother's maiden name,Shaposhnikova, is Jewish, and that he is unfit to be presidentbecause of this.
Medvedev's campaign staff declined to confirm or deny hehas Jewish roots. The Kremlin condemns all forms ofanti-Semitism.
Medvedev's faith has not been raised by mainstream mediabut has been widely discussed on far-right Internet discussiongroups in postings that are a reminder of the discriminationand persecution Jews in Russia have faced for hundreds ofyears.
"It's common knowledge. Medvedev never hid his sympathytowards Judaism," Nikolai Bondarik, who heads the nationalistRussian Party in Medvedev's home town of St Petersburg, toldReuters.
"A president ought to be related by blood with his people.Imagine if Japan was run by a Chinese president," he said.
Moscow's chief rabbi said the suggestions that Medvedev hasJewish roots offered a new take on a well-worn theme amongRussian nationalists.
"In the '90s groups said (President Boris) Yeltsin wasJewish. The same has been said of (U.S. President) GeorgeBush," said Pinchas Goldschmidt, who is also Chairman of theEuropean Conference of Rabbis.
"Anyone who is against xenophobia and racism is seen bysome circles as 'internationalist', or 3somewhat Jewish", hesaid.
Other political figures have been targeted by far-rightgroups. A video montage on the www.youtube.com Internet siteshows a photograph of one election rival, Andrei Bogdanov,covered with a large Star of David.
Anti-Kremlin campaigner Garry Kasparov, a former worldchess champion, is part-Jewish. One far-right website said hewas not qualified to criticise a pro-Kremlin politician becauseof his origins.
HISTORY OF DISCRIMINATION
Leaders of Russia's Jewish community say there are aboutone million Jews living in the country, a quarter of them inMoscow. They are no strangers to discrimination.
Under empress Catherine the Great, Jews were confined tothe Pale of Settlement in western Russia. In 19th centurypogroms in such western provinces, Jews were beaten, raped andhad their villages burnt down, forcing many to flee.
Russia's Soviet rulers were suspicious of the Jewishcommunity's links to the West through the world Jewishmovement. Thousands of Jews had to conceal their identity andabout one million fled to the West and Israel in the 1970s and80s.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of theanti-Semitism focused on the "oligarchs" -- businessmen whomade huge fortunes almost overnight from the privatisation ofstate property. Many of them are Jewish.
One far-right group, the Movement Against IllegalImmigration, has a forum on its Internet site where dozens ofusers debate Medvedev's roots, many using pejorative slangwords for Jews.
One viewer posted pictures of two Russian Jewish oligarchs,Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, asking surfers tocompare facial features with Medvedev.
There were about 20 recorded attacks last year on Jewishpeople and property in Russia, according to the NationalConference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), a U.S. non-governmentalorganisation.
They included graffiti on Jewish gravestones saying"Holocaust 2007", a vandalised synagogue in the far easternport of Vladivostok and an assault on a visiting rabbi fromCanada.
But thousands of Jews who left the Soviet Union and movedto the West are coming back to Russia, many of them attractedby jobs and opportunities in the country's booming economy.
(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk in St Petersburg;Editing by Timothy Heritage)
