Person of Jewish ethnicity (Russian: Лицо еврейской национальности) is а Russian circumlocution used as an euphemism for "Jew".
The word "Jew" was occasionally avoided in the Soviet Union as it perceived as pejorative due to antisemitism in the Soviet Union.[1][2][3] Writer Vladimir Voinovich described this perception as follows:
The word "Jew" is not censored, but it is used in a scientific sense, like the Latin "penis". Sometimes it is necessary to say this word, but when pronouncing it there is a hesitation, the speaker tries to pass it inconspicuously through and immediately move on. A person calls himself Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar as simply as a mechanic, a baker, an engineer, but everyone who says "I’m a Jew" somehow tenses up and either squeezes it out as a confession, or says with a challenge: "yes, I Jew, so what?"[2]
Notable Soviet antisemitic campaigns included the Doctor's Plot, the struggle against the "rootless cosmopolitans" and the crackdown on the movement of refuseniks. However, the entire Jewish population was never openly and officially declared the enemy of the people.[2] Instead, several dog whistles were used, such as Zionists, rootless cosmopolitans and "persons of Jewish ethnicity". There was an important distinction between these words: zionist and rootless cosmopolitans served as a label for "bad Jews" as enemies of the state, whereas "persons of Jewish ethnicity" was a politically correct expression for "good", loyal Jews, who were called by some ordinary folks as trained Jews ("дрессированные евреи").[2] Regardless, most people realized that all these euphemisms denoted all Jews. A dean of the Marxism-Leninism department at one of the Soviet universities explained the policy to his students:[2]
One of you asked if our current political campaign can be regarded as antisemitic. Comrade Stalin said: "We hate Nazi[s] not because they are Germans, but because they brought enormous suffering to our land". Same can be said about the Jews.
The similar circumlocution "person of Caucasian ethnicity" (Russian: лицо кавказской национальности) is a term used in modern Russia to refer to persons who look like peoples of the Caucasus, such as Georgians, Armenians or Chechens, despite it perceived as offensive. In fact, unlike Jewish ethnicity, there is no ethnological term "Caucasian ethnicity".[1]
Other terms with the pattern "person of X ethnicity" include "person of southern ethnicity", person of Slavic ethnicity", and "persons of nonindigenous ethnicities".[4]
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language describes the usage of similar expressions in English as follows:
It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.[5]
Michael Dorfman reports the same attitude to the word "Jew" in the United States: both in the establishment, and among ordinary people, including the Jews themselves. He wrote:
Other presidents, from Reagan to Obama, also found it difficult to pronounce the word “Jew” and “Jews,” preferring to use American equivalents of “persons of Jewish ethnicity.” In eight years of Passover greetings, Obama never once said the word “Jew.”[6]