Rootless cosmopolitan

Uncommon card · No. 175656

"Rootless cosmopolitan" (Russian: безродный космополит, romanized: bezródnyj kosmopolít) was a pejorative epithet that was mostly applied to creatives, intellectuals, and prominent political figures, particularly Jewish ones, during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. In the Communist Party's discourse, rootless cosmopolitans were defined as unpatriotic Soviet citizens who disseminated foreign influence and favoured the socio-political atmosphere or aesthetics of Western Europe or the United States. It became especially prevalent during the country's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, which began in 1946 and continued until Stalin's death in 1953, as part of an assault on "bourgeois Western influences" that widely targeted writers and other intellectuals. At first, this campaign was directed against anyone, regardless of nationality, who "groveled before the West", but by 1949, the campaign had taken an antisemitic turn, culminating in the "exposure" of the non-existent "doctors' plot" against...

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