. . . The recovery of Christian values (in the Soviet Union) is accompanied by a renewal of Russian nationalism, which almost certainly has to create concern among Soviet Jews. The Soviet Union has a very spotty record with respect to its Jewish population. While some Jews, including Trotsky and the infamous head of the secret police under Stalin, Beria, played a prominent role in the Bolshevik Revolution and in the government of the Soviet Union, on the whole Jews have been badly treated there.
The resurgence of minority nationalism in the Soviet Union has been accompanied by a resurgence of ethnic Russian nationalism. After all, the Great Russians have been the guiding-or domineering-force in the development of imperial Russia and of the Soviet Union. . . . If the USSR`s smaller ethnic groups can gain a measure of freedom by reasserting their distinctiveness, it is only natural for the larger Great Russian group to do the same.