Crimea 2008: a lesson about uses and misuses of history.

This essay considers a new, troubling development in the former Soviet Union. It calls for historians to be attentive and thereby perhaps to forestall or minimise potential damage to Jews and Jewish interests in the former Soviet Union which might result from the use and misuse of history. The essay assesses recent statements from a former minister in Russia regarding Jewish agricultural settlement in Crimea during the interwar period. These statements echo monstrous antisemitic fabrications from the High Stalinist years and suggest that Jews in the former Soviet Union may still be vulnerable to the effects of old Soviet-style habits of historical manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]