Despite his belief in ‘redemption’ and ‘Christian love’, Fyodor
Dostoevsky developed fervent antisemitic views that were
explicitly revealed in his popular diary but also in his later
masterpieces such as the House of the Dead and The Brothers
Karamazov. These works draw upon negative stereotypes of Jews as
moneylenders, opportunists and deceivers: Old Karamazov ‘made
the acquaintance at first, in his own words, of a lot of low
Jews, Jewesses and Jewkins… and developed a peculiar faculty for
making and hoarding money.’ He also promoted the myth of Jewish
blood rituals. Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic, The Master and
Margarita, plays on a number of fantasies of clandestine Jewish
power, conspiracy and treachery. Such themes were a major
current of Russian mystical literature from the early 20th
century, coinciding with the publication of the Czarist hoax,
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The
Prioress’ Tale, one of the celebrated Canterbury Tales, indulges
in rhapsodic Jew-hatred in its retell