Zionology

Soviet anti-Zionism was a propaganda doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the course of the Cold War, which intensified after the 1967 Six Day War. It was officially sponsored by the department of propaganda of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and by the KGB. It alleged that Zionism was a form of racism, and argued that Zionists were similar to Nazis. The Soviet Union framed its anti-Zionist propaganda in terms of the ideological doctrine of Zionology, in the guise of a study of modern Zionism.

In his 1969 book Beware! Zionism, Yuri Ivanov, Soviet Union's leading Zionologist, defined modern Zionism as follows:

Soviet leaders insisted that Soviet anti-Zionism was not anti-Semitic. As proof, they pointed to the fact that several notable Zionologists were ethnic Jews representing an expert opinion. Many - including some within the Soviet Union itself - argued that Zionology exhibited anti-Semitic themes. For example, in November 1975, the leading Soviet historian and academic M. Korostovtsev wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee, of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Suslov, regarding the book The Encroaching Counter Revolution by Vladimir Begun: "...it perceptibly stirs up anti-Semitism under the flag of anti-Zionism."

Some Zionology books, "exposing" Zionism and Judaism, were included in the mandatory reading list for military and police personnel, students, teachers and Communist Party members and were mass published.

The third edition of the thirty-volume Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Большая Советская энциклопедия, БСЭ), published in 1969-1978, qualifies Zionism as racism and makes the following assertions:

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