View source for Rootless cosmopolitan

{{Short description|Soviet epithet used against Jewish intellectuals}}
{{For|the music album|Rootless Cosmopolitans}}
{{Use British English Oxford spelling|date=June 2018}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2020}}
{{Antisemitism|Canards}}

{{more citations needed|date=July 2025}}
"'''Rootless cosmopolitan'''" ({{Langx|ru|безродный космополит}} {{Transliteration|ru|bězródnïj kósmopólït}}) was a pejorative epithet that was mostly applied to creatives, intellectuals, and prominent political figures, particularly [[Jewish]], during the [[Stalinist era]] of the [[Soviet Union]]. 

In the Communist Party's discourse, rootless cosmopolitans were defined as [[Enemy of the people|unpatriotic]] Soviet citizens who disseminated foreign influence and favoured the socio-political atmosphere or aesthetics of [[Western Bloc|Western Europe]] or the [[Soviet Union–United States relations|United States]].

It became especially prevalent during the country's [[anti-cosmopolitan campaign]], which began in 1946 and continued until [[Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin|Stalin's death in 1953]], as part of an [[Zhdanov Doctrine|assault on "bourgeois Western influences"]] that widely [[Anti-intellectualism#Soviet Union|targeted writers and other intellectuals]],<ref name="Figes">{{cite book |last=Figes |first=Orlando |author-link=Orlando Figes |url=https://archive.org/details/whisperersprivat00fige |title=The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia |publisher=Metropolitan Books |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8050-7461-1 |location=New York City |page=[https://archive.org/details/whisperersprivat00fige/page/494 494] |url-access=registration}}</ref> culminating in the "exposure" of the non-existent "[[doctors' plot]]" against the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]].{{efn|<ref name="jcsw">{{cite journal |journal=[[Journal of Cold War Studies]] |year=2002 |last1=Azadovskii |first1=K. |last2=Egorov |first2=B. |title=From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=66–80 |doi=10.1162/152039702753344834 |s2cid=57565840}}</ref><ref name="greenfield">{{Cite magazine |first=Jeff |last=Greenfield |author-link=Jeff Greenfield |title=The Ugly History of Stephen Miller's 'Cosmopolitan' Epithet: Surprise, surprise—the insult has its roots in Soviet anti-Semitism |url=http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/the-ugly-history-of-stephen-millers-cosmopolitan-epithet-215454 |date=3 August 2017 |magazine=[[Politico]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0306/stalin.htm |title=Stalin on Art and Culture |website=[[International Association of Friends of the Soviet Union]] |access-date=5 December 2021 |quote=In 1946 Stalin met with Soviet intellectuals to discuss and analyze the trends developing in Soviet art, music, literature and theatre – after the Second World War. Here we give a shortened version of his replies to questions posed by the intellectuals. '[...] Frequently in the pages of Soviet literary journals works are found where Soviet people, builders of communism are shown in pathetic and ludicrous forms. The positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded. In the theater it seems that Soviet plays are pushed aside by plays from foreign bourgeois authors. The same thing is starting to happen in Soviet films.' |archive-date=7 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230307152330/https://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0306/stalin.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=[[World Jewish Congress]]|url=https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history--six-jewish-doctor-arrested-jumpstarting-doctors-plot-1-4-2021|title=Six Jewish doctors arrested, jumpstarting 'Doctors Plot'}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=The Article|url=https://www.thearticle.com/stalins-last-purge-the-doctors-plot|title=Stalin's last purge: the Doctors' Plot|date=23 May 2024 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Forward]]|url=https://forward.com/culture/575235/zionist-doctors-plot-soviet-antisemitic-conspiracy|title=A viral post demonizing Zionist doctors sounds eerily like a Soviet antisemitic conspiracy theory}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|work=[[Jewish News]]|url=https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/american-anti-racism-activist-condemned-over-terrified-about-zionist-doctors-claim|title=American 'anti-racism' activist condemned over 'terrified about Zionist doctors' claim}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=Publishers Weekly|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780060195243|title=STALIN'S LAST CRIME: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors 1948–1953 by Jonathan Brent}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=Modern Diplomacy|url=https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2017/01/19/state-anti-semitism-doctors-plot-as-an-abandoned-holocaust-amid-the-stalin-s-russia|title=State anti-semitism: Doctors' plot as an abandoned holocaust amid the Stalin's Russia|date=19 January 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=[[Tablet Magazine]]|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/surviving-stalins-purges|title=Why Couldn't Soviet Jews See Stalin for the Anti-Semitic Monster He Was?}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|website=[[Chabad]]|url=https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/5619816/jewish/Memo-to-Secret-Police-Chief-Reveals-Hunt-for-Chabads-Soviet-Underground.htm|title=Memo to Secret Police Chief Reveals Hunt for Chabad's Soviet Underground}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/16/archives/near-soviet-twists-on-antizionism-and-antisemitism.html|title=New Soviet Twists on Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism (Published 1970)}}</ref>}}

The term is considered to be an [[antisemitic trope]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/05/no-direction-home-tragedy-jewish-left| title=No direction home: the tragedy of the Jewish left |last=Glasman |first=Maurice |author-link=Maurice Glasman |date=22 May 2019 |website=[[New Statesman]] |quote=I knew that the phrase "rootless cosmopolitan" was minted by Stalin and his executioners in the show trials to exterminate Jews, particularly Trotskyists, for whom this became the standard expression. I cannot hear it without the dread fear of the knock on the door by the Cheka in the early hours.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Brook |first=Vincent |year=2006 |title=You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture |location=New Brunswick, NJ |publisher=Rutgers University Press |page=166 |isbn=0813538440 |quote=This outlook can be viewed positively as a condition that enhances Jews' and adaptability and empathy for others, or it can have a negative connotation, as in the recurring trope of the rootless cosmopolitan}}</ref>

== Origin ==
The expression "rootless cosmopolitan" was coined in the 19th century by Russian literary critic [[Vissarion Belinsky]] to describe writers who lacked [[Russian Empire|Russian national character]].<ref name="Figes2">{{cite book |last=Figes |first=Orlando |title=The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia |date=2007 |isbn=978-0805074611 |page=494|publisher=Macmillan }}</ref>

== Use under Stalin ==
{{main|Anti-cosmopolitan campaign}}
The term is associated with the anti-cosmopolitan campaigns of the Soviet Union following [[World War II]]. 

The campaign began when the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] under the leadership of [[Andrei Zhdanov]] passed a resolution targeting two state newspapers, Zvezda and Leningrad, for publishing material of satirist [[Mikhail Zoshchenko]] and the poet [[Anna Akhmatova]]. Both were denounced and expelled from the [[Union of Soviet Writers]]. This marked the beginning of the [[Zhdanov Doctrine]] in the Soviet Union.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Zhdanovshchina {{!}} Stalinism, Repression, Terror {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Zhdanovshchina |access-date=2025-07-05 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>

According to the doctrine, Soviet artists and writers were expected to support socialism and reject Western, particularly bourgeois or individualist, influences. All forms of creative expression had to follow the principles of socialist realism, glorifying the state, the working class, and communist values. The policy led to widespread censorship, suppression of artistic freedom, and condemnation of prominent figures in the arts and academia.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2015-06-19 |title=Zhdanov |url=https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1947-2/zhdanov/ |access-date=2025-07-05 |website=Seventeen Moments in Soviet History |language=en-US}}</ref>

The campaign continued after the death of Zhdanov. In 1948, his successor, [[Georgy Aleksandrov]], published an article denouncing early Soviet political figures as 'rootless cosmopolitans'. These included [[Pavel Milyukov]], [[Nikolai Bukharin]], [[Georgy Pyatakov]], and Alexander Yashchenko as well as [[Left Socialist-Revolutionaries|Left Socialist Revolutionaries]] and [[Left Communists (Soviet Russia)|Left Communists]].<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=«Низкопоклонники» и «космополиты» - Национальная идея - РУССКОЕ ВОСКРЕСЕНИЕ |trans-title="Cleavers" and "Cosmopolitans" - National Idea - RUSSIAN RESURRECTION |url=http://www.voskres.ru/idea/vdovin.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180309072630/http://www.voskres.ru/idea/vdovin.htm |archive-date=2018-03-09 |access-date=2025-07-06 |website=www.voskres.ru}}</ref>

Prominent Soviet figures denounced as 'cosmopolitans' during the campaign:

* [[Anna Akhmatova]],<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Russian writer
* [[Mikhail Zoshchenko]],<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Russian satirist
* [[Pavel Milyukov]],<ref name=":3" /> Russian historian and politician
* [[Nikolai Bukharin]],<ref name=":3" /> Russian revolutionary and politician
* [[Georgy Pyatakov]],<ref name=":3" /> Russian-Ukrainian revolutionary and politician
* [[Dmitri Shostakovich]],<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Braudel |first=Fernand |title=A history of civilizations |date=1994 |publisher=A. Lane |isbn=978-0-7139-9022-5 |location=New York, N.Y., U.S.A}}</ref> Russian pianist and composer
* [[Sergei Prokofiev]],<ref name=":2" /> Russian composer
* [[Aram Khachaturian]],<ref name=":2" /> Armenian composer
* [[Dmitri Klebanov]],<ref name=":2" /> Ukrainian composer
* [[Vano Muradeli]],<ref name=":2" /> Georgian opera composer
* [[Daniil Andreyev]], Russian writer and mystic
* [[Lydia Chukovskaya]], Russian writer and poet

== Definitions ==
Andrei Zhdanov's first mention of the term "rootless cosmopolitanism" was in a 1948 speech to the Central Committee of the CPSU. Zhdanov provides the following definition:<blockquote>
Internationalism is born where national art flourishes. To forget this truth means [...] to lose one's face, to become a rootless cosmopolitan.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Безродные космополиты |trans-title=Rootless Cosmopolitans |url=https://bibliotekar.ru/encSlov/2/33.htm |access-date=2025-07-06 |website=bibliotekar.ru}}</ref> </blockquote>
According to the journalist [[Masha Gessen]], a concise definition of rootless cosmopolitan appeared in an issue of ''Voprosy istorii'' (''The Issues of History'') in 1949: <blockquote>The rootless cosmopolitan [...] falsifies and misrepresents the worldwide historical role of the Russian people in the construction of socialist society and the victory over the enemies of humanity, over German fascism in the [[Great Patriotic War]].</blockquote>Gessen states that the term used for "Russian" is an exclusive term that means ethnic Russians only and so they conclude that "any historian who neglected to sing the praises of the heroic ethnic Russians [...] was a likely traitor".<ref>{{cite book |last=Gessen |first=Masha |author-link=Masha Gessen |title=Two Babushkas |location=London, UK |publisher=Bloomsbury |year=2005 |page=205 |isbn=978-0-7475-7080-6}}</ref> 
According to Cathy S. Gelbin:
<blockquote>From 1946 onwards, then, when Andrei Zhdanov became director of Soviet cultural policy, Soviet rhetoric increasingly highlighted the goal of a pure Soviet culture freed from Western degeneration. This became apparent, for example, in a piece in the Soviet weekly ''[[Literaturnaya Gazeta]]'' in 1947, which denounced the claimed expressions of rootless cosmopolitanism as inimical to Soviet culture. From 1949 onwards, then, a new series of openly antisemitic purges and executions began across the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, when Jews were charged explicitly with harbouring an international Zionist cosmopolitanist conspiracy.<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Cathy S. |last=Gelbin |title=Rootless Cosmopolitans: German-Jewish writers confront the Stalinist and National Socialist atrocities |journal=European Review of History |volume=23 |issue=5–6 |date=2016 |pages=863–879|doi=10.1080/13507486.2016.1203882 |s2cid=159505532 |url=https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/rootless-cosmopolitans-germanjewish-writers-confront-the-stalinist-and-national-socialist-atrocities(97803464-21be-4b83-a7a2-b630e7946d5a).html }} at p.865.</ref></blockquote>

According to Margarita Levantovskaya:
<blockquote>The campaign against cosmopolitanism of the 1940s and 1950s [...] defined rootless cosmopolitans as citizens who lacked patriotism and disseminated foreign influence within the USSR, including theater critics, Yiddish-speaking poets and doctors. They were accused of disseminating Western European philosophies of aesthetics, pro-American attitudes, Zionism, or inappropriate levels of concern for Jewry and its destruction during World War II. The phrase "rootless cosmopolitan" was synonymous with "persons without identity" and "passportless wanderers" when applied to Jews, thus emphasizing their status as strangers and outsiders.<ref>{{cite thesis |first=Margarita |last=Levantovskaya |title=Rootless Cosmopolitans: Literature of the Soviet-Jewish Diaspora |type=PhD |publisher=[[UC San Diego]] |date=2013 |url=https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt4jq507vn/qt4jq507vn.pdf |page=1}}</ref></blockquote>

== See also ==
* [[Mankurt]]
* [[Person of Jewish ethnicity]]
* [[Night of the Murdered Poets]]
* [[Antisemitism in the Soviet Union]]
* {{section link|Globalism|Usage in right-wing politics}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* {{cite magazine |url=https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/281575/dusan-makavejev-wr |title=The Rootless Cosmopolitan Who Mocked Totalitarian Consciousness |first=J. |last=Hoberman |date=18 March 2019 |magazine=[[Tablet (magazine)|Tablet]] |access-date=19 March 2020}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Miller |first1=Michael L. |last2=Ury |first2=Scott |title=Cosmopolitanism: the end of Jewishness? |journal=[[European Review of History]] |date=2010 |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=337–359 |doi=10.1080/13507486.2010.481923 |s2cid=144567082|doi-access=free |hdl=20.500.14018/10574 |hdl-access=free }}
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Miller |editor-first1=Michael L. |editor-last2=Ury |editor-first2=Scott |title=Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe |date=2014 |location=London |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-13801-852-5}}
* {{cite book |last=Pinkus |first=Benjamin |title=The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967: A Documented Study |date=1984 |pages=147–192 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-52124-713-9}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Spector |first1=Hannah |title=The cosmopolitan subject and the question of cultural identity: The case of 'Crime and Punishment' |journal=[[Crime, Media, Culture]] |date=10 March 2016 |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=21–40 |doi=10.1177/1741659016634813 |s2cid=146984216|doi-access=free }}

{{ethnic slurs}}
{{Joseph Stalin}}
{{Jews in the Soviet Union}}

[[Category:Antisemitism in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Euphemisms]]
[[Category:Jews and Judaism in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Political pejoratives for people]]
[[Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Soviet ethnic policy]]
[[Category:Soviet phraseology]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories involving Jews]]
[[Category:Antisemitic slurs]]
[[Category:Pejorative demonyms]]