Apparently, Russians who emigrated to Israel are now returning to Russia in a steady stream. This is what they are going back to:

‘The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office has proclaimed that the infamous March petition demanding a ban on Jewish groups was not anti-Semitic, the Izvestia newspaper reported Friday. No complaints will be filed against the petition’s senders.

’In January 2005 a group of Russian MPs appealed to the state prosecution demanding a ban on all Jewish groups over claims of extremism. In March 500 well-known public figures joined the MPs, and the petition eventually received 5,000 signatures. However, prosecutors decided that the petition contained no essential elements of offence, Izvestia reports.

’After publishing the petition the Rus Pravoslavnaya (Orthodox Russia) and Za Russkoye Delo (For the Russian Cause) newspapers received a warning from prosecutors for extremism in March. One observer of the case, ethnographer and anthropologist Valentina Uzunova, told Izvestia that she could see ethnic hatred in the two papers’ publication.’

A journalist who travels frequently through eastern Europe told me recently that whenever he goes there, he is repeatedly asked: ‘What do you think we should do about the Jewish question?’ Now, he says, he wonders how long it will be before he is asked the same question in Britain.