Medvedev, who recently picked by Vladimir Putin as Russia's official leader (Putin will of course be the real leader), told a Russian weekly that he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church at age 23. Russian Internet sites are full of reports that before that he was Jewish. The rumors are based in part on the fact that his maternal grandfather's first name was Veniamin - Benjamin - while his family name, Shaposhnikov, is a Jewish name. But beyond that, accusing an electoral rival of being Jewish is a tactic that nationalist parties have employed in the past, both in Russia and in other former communist countries. I could add that in Eastern Europe the elite has some remote Jewish roots, as did the aristocratic class in the past, so no one is above these accusations. In the case of Margret Albright and John Kerry, the facts were true. The internet is full of antisemite list showing people of Jewish origins, including Roosevelt and Eisenhower. What a nonsense.
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