The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict since 2022 and the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have triggered a wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories across the post-Soviet space regarding Jewish resettlement. These narratives claim that Israel is on the verge of destruction and that Israeli refugees will soon be forced to seek a new territory to establish their own state, with Ukraine or the North Caucasus commonly cited as prime locations. In Dagestan, these stories served as a catalyst for outbreaks of violence during anti-Israel demonstrations. Such narratives are organically linked to "Crimean California"—a theory popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, which claimed that American Jews, under the leadership of the Joint Distribution Committee, intended to purchase Crimea from the USSR in the 1920s-1940s to establish an alternative Jewish state under US protectorate. Analysis demonstrates that this insinuation, while partially based on historical facts, was unrelated to the local Jewish community in Crimea. Rather, it was a byproduct of political tensions on the peninsula, specifically the debate surrounding the status and ownership of the autonomous republic in the 1990s and the repatriation of deported Crimean Tatars. This myth is prevalent to varying degrees in Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar narratives about Crimea, where American Jewish philanthropy has been used to explain virtually every controversial episode of the peninsula's twentieth-century history.  The resurgence of these theories points to a rise in antisemitic sentiments fueled by war and the societal regression toward archaic mindsets. The further propagation of such theories poses a significant threat to the security and well-being of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and the North Caucasus.

The "Jewish question," although virtually defunct as an active political factor, continues to persist in the public consciousness of post-Soviet nations, particularly in contemporary Russia. As noted by Russian ethnographer Valery Dymshits, "Antisemitism... is a dormant element of consciousness"[1]. Despite the efforts made during the 1990s and the early 2000s, antisemitism has not disappeared in Russia. Furthermore, there is reason to believe it will manifest more prominently, fueled by the country's anti-Israel foreign policy stance following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, as well as the increasing societal and state regression amid sanctions and war.

On October 28, 2023, an aggressive crowd gathered at the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt (Republic of Dagestan, Russian Federation) following rumors that "refugees from Israel" were staying there. The following day, rioters carrying Palestinian flags breached the Makhachkala airport, searching for Jewish passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The violence was triggered by rumors that Israelis were arriving in the Republic to colonize Dagestan and seize land from locals, "just as they did in Palestine."  Naturally, there were no settlers, and the rumors merely served as a trigger, whereas the unrest itself stems from far more complex socio-political and economic issues.

The October 7 invasion represented one of the most severe challenges for the Jewish State in the past half-century, comparable only to the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  This event revived speculation that the State of Israel or the Yishuv is destined to collapse, forcing Jews into another migration. The narrative of Jews arriving to seize "our" land is by no means new; it dates back at least a century and has appeared under various names and iterations. In the Eastern European context, two primary variations can be identified: "Crimean California" and "New Khazaria."

These two theories differ in their historical timelines and levels of mainstream acceptance. While "New Khazaria" remains a rather marginal narrative, "Crimean California"—the alleged attempt by Jews to establish a state in Crimea using American funding—was presented as a credible historical thesis and even found its way into academic publications[2]. They appeal to different historical events and feature distinct geographical settings. "Crimean California," in its modern iteration, was part of the mythology that fueled the pro-Hamas rioters in Dagestan. For instance, Georgy Filin, a journalist for the Russian newspaper *Versiya*, speculated that the passengers of the ill-fated Tel Aviv-Makhachkala flight were Israeli Jews arriving to resettle the Crimean Peninsula[3].

The intersection of antisemitism and conspiracy theories is well-documented. According to a recent study by British sociologists led by Daniel Allington, antisemitic views frequently correlate with conspiracy beliefs, support for authoritarianism, or totalitarianism on both the left and right political spectrums[4]. However, one must avoid the opposite extreme of dismissing all conspiratorial claims as absolute fabrication. Conspiracy theories are rarely built on pure invention; most are constructed on a distorted perception of reality, blending facts and fiction[5]. The notion that a Jewish state, or at least a self-governing territory, could be established outside of Palestine/Eretz Yisrael has legitimate historical precedents.

"Not a holy land, but our own land must be the object of our endeavors," wrote Leon (Lev) Pinsker, leader of the Hibbat Zion movement, in his landmark 1882 essay *Auto-Emancipation*. It was for this specific quote that territorialists—advocates for a Jewish homeland outside the historic land of Israel—would later honor him as the spiritual founding father of their movement.

Throughout the history of the movement, territorialists proposed various political solutions to the "Jewish question," including the establishment of autonomous territories in Uganda, Angola, Texas, Suriname, and elsewhere.  In the 1920s, territorialist ideas were adopted by the Bolsheviks, as they aligned with Soviet nationality policy, which recognized as fully-fledged only those ethnic groups that possessed their own territory within the USSR. Several projects emerged: the "Belorussian" project of 1923, which existed only as a rumor; the controversial "Crimean" project (1923–1927); and the most successful one, the Far Eastern or Birobidzhan project (1927–1934), which resulted in the creation of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in 1934[6].

The most enigmatic of these initiatives remains the Crimean project. A precursor to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and closely linked to American Jewish philanthropy, this highly controversial and partially classified Soviet initiative spawned what became perhaps the region's central conspiracy theory in the 1990s. Known as "Crimean California," this theory became the focal point of the twentieth-century historical narrative of Crimea.

"Crimean California" is arguably the most famous conspiracy theory associated with the modern history of the peninsula. It essentially became an encyclopedia of Crimean socio-political life in the 1990s and 2000s, reflecting prevailing perceptions of political history, primarily—though not exclusively—among Russian nationalists.

This idea is featured in a vast body of literature, ranging from sensationalist journalism to seemingly academic publications. Given the complexity, secrecy, and controversial nature of the "Crimean Project" and early Soviet Jewish history, alongside the tragic twentieth-century history of the peninsula and its political conflicts in the 1990s, the emergence of conspiracy theories was predictable. While variations existed, the core premise was that in the early 1920s, the leadership of the Joint Distribution Committee, in collusion with Jewish communists and with the consent of Vladimir Lenin, planned to establish a Jewish republic on the peninsula using the territory as collateral. According to this narrative, this agreement explains both the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 and the transfer of the Crimean Oblast to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954.

The etymology of the name "Crimean California" deserves particular attention. What, indeed, is the connection between California, Crimea, and the Jewish population?

One of the primary sources underpinning this theory is the memoirs of Soviet intelligence officer Pavel Sudoplatov, published in 1997. He refers to the initiative as "Crimean California" or "California in Crimea."  This is likely a distorted interpretation of a quote by Elias Tobenkin, the Moscow correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, who wrote: "Geographically, the Crimea is the California of the Soviet Union"[7]. Tobenkin actively supported Soviet initiatives and favored Jewish agricultural colonization in the 1920s and 1930s. Sudoplatov was likely familiar with Tobenkin's memoirs about his time in the Soviet Union and "creatively reinterpreted" the concept.

The term became firmly associated with the project in the late 1990s, following publications by Sevastopol-based writers linked to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sergey Usov and Sergey Gorbachev. Notably, the peak of this myth's popularity occurred in the late 1990s, after the collapse of the separatist agenda of Crimean President Yuri Meshkov and the resolution of the "Crimean Crisis" of the early-to-mid 1990s, when it became clear that the peninsula would remain part of Ukraine. The primary driver of the "Californists" (a term coined by historian and publicist Serhiy Hromenko[8]) was frustration over the peninsula remaining outside the Russian Federation. In this myth, a special role was assigned to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, as the concept of "Crimean California" was deemed incompatible with the presence of Soviet warships in Sevastopol.

The myth of the Crimean project saw another resurgence in 2008, when Mikhail Poltoranin, a journalist and former Russian Minister of Press and Information, asserted on the television show "Moment of Truth" that Crimea had been transferred to Ukraine to prevent its transfer to the United States and subsequent Jewish settlement. Furthermore, Poltoranin claimed that during a 1943 meeting between Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin (an meeting that could not have historically occurred), Stalin complained that the US was refusing to continue Lend-Lease deliveries and that he could not open a second front because the Jewish lobby was demanding the continuation of the "Crimean California" project[9].

In some variations, the "Crimean California" narrative acquires peculiar details. For instance, journalist Ruslan Aisin draws a parallel between the sale of Alaska and the mythical sale of Crimea[10].

As early as 2008, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, predicted that the myth of the Crimean project could be weaponized in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. He warned that Russian nationalists might employ their classic strategy of playing the antisemitic card, scapegoating a "Jewish financial and industrial lobby"[11].  August 2008 was marked by the five-day war between Russia and Georgia, which resulted in Russia establishing a protectorate over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Many analysts correctly anticipated that the Autonomous Republic of Crimea could become the next flashpoint.

Intriguingly, in certain instances, the prospective relocation of Jews to Crimea was framed as a positive development that could boost the economic growth of the peninsula after 2014. In 2015, Leonid Grach, a prominent Crimean politician, claimed that 40,000 Israelis wished to return to Crimea. He argued that this would benefit the "new authorities" of the peninsula, as Israeli Jews could assist in developing medicine and agriculture while helping to "break the international isolation"[12].

What is striking about the "Crimean California" myth is that narratives originally crafted by Russian imperial nationalists were later adopted by certain Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar nationalist groups.

Sergey Gorbachev's article was reprinted anonymously in the Ukrainian journal *Personnel*, alongside other antisemitic pieces[13]. In another instance, the material was translated into Ukrainian and published on a website posing as a resource of the UNA-UNSO[14], a prominent Ukrainian nationalist organization in the 1990s, notably carrying pro-Russian undertones. The foreword asserted that "Crimean California" was the true underlying cause of the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars.

Another narrative promoted on the same website claimed that the 44th US President, Barack Obama, instructed Kyiv not to resist in Crimea during February-March 2014 because the "Crimean California" project was supposedly still active and that Russia was operating under instructions from Chabad.

Generally, "Californist" materials in Ukrainian are rare and mostly translated. However, the myth also found traction among certain factions of the Crimean Tatar movement. The 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars remains an extremely sensitive issue in interethnic relations, directly impacting local political processes.  Consequently, the specter of "Crimean California" has reemerged in this context as well.

Among the proponents of this conspiracy theory was Lentun Bezaziev, a former member of the Crimean parliament and a leader of "Milli Firka"[15], a pro-Russian Crimean Tatar organization opposed to the Mejlis. In his writings, Bezaziev posits that the repression of the national-communist elite (including Veli Ibraimov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Crimean ASSR) in the late 1920s, as well as the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, was solely driven by the plans of "US Jewish circles" to populate Crimea with Jews and establish a Jewish national autonomy. The late veteran of the national movement, Timur Dagci, went so far as to hold US President Franklin D. Roosevelt responsible for the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people[16].

The Crimean myth provided convenient answers tailored to different audiences: explaining why "Crimea is not ours" and was transferred to Ukraine in 1954, why the Crimean Tatars were deported in 1944 and why they returned in the 1980s and 1990s, and why the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was divided. Responsibility for these events was consistently shifted onto "Jewish financial and industrial circles in America." For Crimean Tatar activists from Milli Firka, the Crimean project served as a convenient tool to blame the "US Jewish lobby" rather than the Stalinist regime for the repression of the national-communist elite and the subsequent deportation.

The myth of Crimean California is intrinsically linked to other conspiracy theories regarding the "Jewish colonization" of Ukraine. A notable example is a recurring fake news story from 2018–2021 claiming that the Knesset, Israel's parliament, had voted to allocate 84 billion dollars for the purchase of Ukrainian land[17]. Following the outbreak of full-scale hostilities in 2022, narratives concerning "Jewish resettlement" became significantly more frequent.

On April 22, 2022, the Telegram channel "Glazyev for Thinking People," associated with Sergey Glazyev, an economic advisor to the Russian President, published an analysis of the geopolitical situation. Glazyev asserted that "Zelensky's strategy, executing the will of the Rothschilds, is to sacrifice the male population of Ukraine against Russian weapons in order to establish a new Promised Land on the banks of the Dnieper for the chosen people."

Conspiracy theories regarding "Jewish resettlement" reached their peak after October 7, 2023. For many conspiracy theorists, these events were seen as another step toward a prophecy foretelling the end of Israel and the beginning of Jewish relocation to Ukraine.

On October 14, 2023, the Telegram channel "Zov Krovi," belonging to former Ukrainian MP Ilya Kiva (OPZZh), shared a clip from a political talk show on the Russian television channel NTV. In the broadcast, Kiva claimed that Israel would lose its war against Hamas and its "powerful allies," forcing Israelis to undertake a "sacred migration" to Western Ukraine, a region allegedly "pointed out by the Tzadikim." The narrator of the video asserts that "Israel has always explored opportunities to find a new Promised Land."  According to Kiva, if he were to come to power, he would prefer to transfer these territories to the Jews rather than let them fall to the Poles.  He justified this as "restoring historical justice"—offering compensation for the destruction of the Jewish population in these areas. Concurrently, the channel featured posts containing harsh anti-Israel rhetoric and overtly antisemitic remarks. Kiva had a notorious reputation for making controversial and provocative statements long before he fled Ukraine in 2022.

A similar narrative, localized to Southern Ukraine, is even more common. In an interview with blogger Yuri Dud, Russian composer Vadim Tsyganov suggested that the fierce battles of the Russo-Ukrainian war are part of a plan by a "global shadow government" to "clear the territory" for Jewish colonization and the establishment of a "Heavenly Jerusalem" in the Northern Black Sea region, claiming that Israel "cannot fit within its current borders"[18].

Given the growing influence of conspiracy theories in public discourse amid active warfare, this myth could severely impact Jewish communities by inciting hostility. This threat is relevant to Ukraine (to a lesser extent) and particularly to Russia, where in several Muslim-majority republics of the North Caucasus, the conspiracy of "Jewish resettlement" has graduated from a marginal "historiographical myth" and foreign policy tool into a tangible force destabilizing interethnic relations and provoking violence. Conspiracy theories reveal a great deal about the societies in which they circulate, serving as an indicator of their stability.  Combating antisemitism and its accompanying myths remains a critical task, and efforts in this direction are vital to prevent a recurrence of the events in Dagestan.

[1] Dymshits, Valery. “A Dormant Element of Consciousness: Valery Dymshits on the Bacillus of Antisemitism.” SeverReal, [04.11.2023]. Accessed [27.02.2024].

[2] See, e.g., V.E. Vozgrin, The History of the Crimean Tatars: Essays on the Ethnic History of the Indigenous Population of Crimea in Four Volumes, 3rd ed. (Simferopol: Tezis, 2013), pp. 292–319.

[3] Filin, Georgy. “Whose Crimea Is It Anyway? – Jews from Israel Do Not Want Birobidzhan – They Want Yalta,” versia.ru, accessed November 17, 2023.

[4] Daniel Allington, David Hirsh, and Louise Katz. “Antisemitism Is Predicted by Anti-Hierarchical Aggression, Totalitarianism, and Belief in Malevolent Global Conspiracies.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10, no. 1 (April 10, 2023): 1–16.

[5] See, e.g., Ilya Yablokov, *Russian Culture of Conspiracy: Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet Space* (Moscow: Alpina Non-Fiction, 2020).

[6] K. Yu. Mogarichev, *“Our New Soviet Zion”: Projects and Attempts to Create a Jewish National-Territorial Unit in Crimea (1920s-1940s)* (Simferopol: Antikva, 2021).

[7] Elias Tobenkin, *Stalin’s Ladder: War and Peace in the Soviet Union* (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1933), 154.

[8] Hromenko, Serhiy. “The Myth of Crimean California: Did the USSR Intend to Sell Crimea? — Educational Fact-Check,” November 26, 2017.

[9] Crimean California, Poltoranin  Moment of Truth, 2022.

[10] Aisin, Ruslan. BUSINESS Online. “«Crimea Played a Significant Role in the Sale of Alaska to the US in the 19th Century»,” March 31, 2018. https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/377405.

[11] Jonathan Dekel‐Chen (2009) Crimea 2008: a lesson about uses and misuses of history, East European Jewish Affairs, 39:1, 101-105, DOI: 10.1080/13501670902750311

[12] “Crimea – The Promised Land – Argumenty Nedeli. Krym,” accessed November 17, 2023

[13] Project “Crimean California» – Personal, 2003, January,

[14] “The «Crimean California» Project UNA-UNSO | UNA-UNSO,” accessed November 18, 2023.

[15] Milli Firka. “Why the Crimean Tatars Were Repressed,” December 22, 2016.

[16] “Who Will Answer for the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People.” Milli Firka, November 14, 2015.

[17] Lavrenyuk, Yaroslava. “Fake: Israel's Knesset Allocated 84 Billion Dollars to Purchase Ukrainian Land.” StopFake (blog), February 3, 2021.

[18] Vika and Vadim Tsyganov / vDud, 2023