Rootless cosmopolitan

"Rootless cosmopolitan" (Russian: безродный космополит, romanizedbezródnyj kosmopolít) was a pejorative epithet that was mostly applied to creatives, intellectuals, and prominent political figures, particularly Jewish, during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union.

In the Communist Party's discourse, rootless cosmopolitans were defined as unpatriotic Soviet citizens who disseminated foreign influence and favoured the socio-political atmosphere or aesthetics of Western Europe or the United States.

It became especially prevalent during the country's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, which began in 1946 and continued until Stalin's death in 1953, as part of an assault on "bourgeois Western influences" that widely targeted writers and other intellectuals, culminating in the "exposure" of the non-existent "doctors' plot" against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The term is considered to be an antisemitic trope.