Shafarevich was not alone. While many leading Russian writers spoke out against anti-Semitism, the Russian Writers’ Union leadership promoted a nationalist ideology steeped in hatred of Jews. In an open letter signed by seventy-two of its leading members and published in the house organ, Literaturnaya Rossiya, the union declared: “It is precisely Zionism that is responsible for many things, including Jewish pogroms, for cutting off dry branches of their own people in Auschwitz and Dachau.”
