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  1. The black streak of Jewish pogroms in Ukraine ran through the whole of 1919 and the beginning of 1920. By their scope, scale and atrocity, these pogroms immeasurably exceeded all the previous historical instances discussed in this book — the pogroms of 1881-1882, 1903, and 1905. Yu. Larin, a high-placed Soviet functionary, wrote in the 1920s that during the Civil War Ukraine saw “a very large number of massive Jewish pogroms far exceeding anything from the past with respect to the number of victims and number of perpetrators.” Vynnychenko allegedly said that “the pogroms would stop only when the Jews would stop being communists.”2002 There is no precise estimate of the number of victims of those pogroms. Of course, no reliable count could be performed in that situation, neither during the events, nor immediately afterwards. In the book, Jewish Pogroms, we read: “The number of murdered in Ukraine and Byelorussia between 1917 and 1921 is approximately 180,000-200,000…. The number of orphans alone, 300,000, bespeaks of the enormous scale of the catastrophe.”2003 The first Soviet Encyclopedia proposes the same number.2004 The present-day Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that “by different estimates, from 70,000 to 180,000200,000 Jews were killed.”2005 Compiling data from different Jewish sources, a modern historian comes up with 900 mass pogroms, of which: 40% by Petliura’s Ukrainian Directorate troops ; 25% by the squads of the various Ukrainian “atamans”; 17% by Denikin’s White Army troops; and 8.5% by the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny and other Red Army troops.2006 Yet how many butchered lives are behind these figures! Already during the Civil War, national and socialist Jewish parties began merging with the Reds. The “Fareynikte” [the United Jewish Socialist Worker’s Party] turned into the “ComFareynikte” [Communist Jewish Socialist Worker’s Party] and “adopted the communist program and together with the communist wing of the Bund formed the [All-Russian] “ComBund” in June 1920; in Ukraine, associates and members of the Fareynikte together with the Ukrainian ComBund formed the “ComFarband” (the Jewish Communist Union) which later joined the All-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks.2007 In 1919 in Kiev, the official Soviet press provided texts in three languages — Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. “The Bolsheviks used these pogroms [in Ukraine] to their enormous advantage, they extremely skillfully exploited the pogroms in order to influence
  2. 2002Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР, с. 38. 2003Еврейские погромы, 1918-1921, с. 74. 2004Большая Советская Энциклопедия. 1-е изд. М., 1932. Т. 24, с. 148. 2005КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 569. 2006Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 56. 2007И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль // КРЕ-2, с. 321; КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 85; т. 1, с. 560.
  3. public opinion in Russia and abroad … in many Jewish and non-Jewish circles in Europe and America.”2008 Yet the Reds had the finger in the pie as well — and they were actually first ones. “In the spring of 1918, units of the Red Army, retreating from Ukraine, perpetrated pogroms using the slogan `Strike the Yids and the bourgeoisie ´”; “the most atrocious pogroms were carried out by the First Cavalry Army during its retreat from Poland in the end of August 1920.”2009 Yet historical awareness of the pogroms carried out by the Red Army during the Civil War has been rather glossed over. Only a few condemning voices have spoken on the topic. Pasmanik wrote: “During the first winter of Bolshevik rule, the Red troops fighting under the red banner carried out several bloody pogroms, most notable of which were pogroms in Glukhov and NovgorodSiverskiy. By number of victims, deliberate brutality, torture and abuse, those two had eclipsed even the Kalush massacre. Retreating before the advancing Germans, the Red troops were destroying Jewish settlements on their route.”2010 S. Maslov is also quite clear: “The march of the Budyonny’s Cavalry Army during its relocation from the Polish to the Crimean Front was marked by thousands of murdered Jews, thousands of raped women and dozens of utterly razed and looted Jewish settlements…. In Zhytomyr, each new authority inaugurated its rule with a pogrom, and often repeatedly after each time the city changed hands again. The feature of all those pogroms — by Petliura’s troops, the Poles, or the Soviets — was the large number of killed.”2011 The Bogunskiy and Taraschanskiy regiments stood out in particular (though those two having came over to Budyonny from the Directorate); allegedly, those regiments were disarmed because of the pogroms and the instigators were hanged. The above-cited socialist S. Schwartz concludes from his historical standpoint (1952): “During the revolutionary period, particularly during the Civil War, … anti-Semitism has grown extraordinarily … and, especially in the South, spread extensively in the broad masses of the urban and rural population.”2012 Alas, the resistance of the Russian population to the Bolsheviks (without which we wouldn’t have a right to call ourselves a people) had faltered and took wrong turns in many ways, including on the Jewish issue. Meanwhile the Bolshevik regime was touting the Jews and they were joining it, and the Civil War was more and more broadening that chasm between Reds and Whites. “If the revolution in general has cleared Jewry of suspicion in counterrevolutionary attitude, the counter-revolution has suspected all Jewry of being pro-revolutionary.” And thus, “the Civil War became an unbearable torment for Jewry, further consolidating them on the wrong revolutionary positions,” and so 2008И.О. Левин. Евреи в революции // РиЕ, с. 134. 2009КЕЭ, т. 6, 570, 574. 2010И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 63. 2011С.С. Маслов, с. 26. 2012С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм в Советском Союзе. Нью-Йорк: Изд-во им. Чехова, 1952, с. 14.
  4. “they failed to recognize the genuine redemptive essence of the White armies.”2013 Let’s not overlook the general situation during the Civil War. “It was literally a chaos which released unbridled anarchy across Russia…. Anybody who wanted and was able to rob and kill was robbing and killing whoever he wanted…. Officers of the Russian Army were massacred in the hundreds and thousands by bands of mutinous rabble. Entire families of landowners were murdered …, estates … were burned; valuable pieces of art were pilfered and destroyed … in some places in manors all living things including livestock were exterminated. Mob rule spread terror … on the streets of cities. Owners of plants and factories were driven out of their enterprises and dwellings…. Tens of thousands people all over Russia were shot for the glory of the proletarian revolution …; others … rotted in stinking and vermin-infested prisons as hostages…. It was not a crime or personal actions that put a man under the axe but his affiliation with a certain social stratum or class. It would be an absolute miracle if, under conditions when whole human groups were designated for extermination, the group named `Jews´ remained exempt…. The curse of the time was that … it was possible to declare an entire class or a tribe `evil´…. So, condemning an entire social class to destruction … is called revolution, yet to kill and rob Jews is called a pogrom? … The Jewish pogrom in the South of Russia was a component of the All-Russian pogrom.”2014 Such was the woeful acquisition of all the peoples of Russia, including the Jews, after the successful attainment of equal rights, after the splendid Revolution of March, 1917, that both the general sympathy of Russian Jews toward the Bolsheviks and the developed attitude of the White forces toward Jews eclipsed and erased the most important benefit of a possible White victory — the sane evolution of the Russian state.
  5. 2013Д.О. Линский. О национальном самосознании русского еврея // РиЕ, с. 147, 148, 149. 2014И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 58-60.
  6. Chapter 17. Emigration between the two World Wars
  7. As a result of the October coup and the subsequent Civil War, hundreds of thousands Russian citizens emigrated abroad, some retreating in battles, others simply fleeing. Among those emigrants were the entire surviving combat personnel of the White Army, and many Cossacks. They were joined by the old nobility, who were so strikingly passive during the fateful revolutionary years, although their wealth was precisely in land or estates. Many former landowners, who failed to take their valuables with them, upon arrival to Europe had to become taxi drivers or waiters. There were merchants, industrialists, financiers, quite a few of whom had money safely deposited abroad, and ordinary citizens too, of whom not all were well-educated, but who could not bear to stay under Bolshevism. Many emigrants were Russian Jews. “Of more than 2 million emigrants from the Soviet republics in 1918-1922 more than 200,000 were Jews. Most of them crossed the Polish and Romanian borders, and later emigrated to the USA, Canada, and the countries of South America and Western Europe. Many repatriated to Palestine.”2015 The newly formed independent Poland played an important role. It had a large Jewish population of its own before the revolution, and now a part of those who left Poland during the war were returning there too. “Poles estimate that after the Bolshevik revolution” 200-300 thousand Jews “arrived in Poland from Russia.”2016 (This figure could be explained not only by increased emigration, but also by the re-arrangement of the Russian-Polish border). However “the majority of the Jews who left Russia in the first years after the revolution settled in Western Europe. For example, around 100,000 Russian Jews had gathered in Germany by the end of World War I.”2017 “While Paris was, from the beginning, the political centre and unofficial capital of Russia-in-Exile., The second, so to say cultural capital of Russian emigration in Europe from the end of 1920 until the beginning of 1924, was Berlin (there was also an intense cultural life in the 1920s in the Russian 2015Kratkaja Evreiskaja Entsiklopedija [The Short Jewish Encyclopedia (henceforth—SJE)]. Jerusalem, 1996. v. 8, p. 294. 2016James Parkes. The Jew and his Neighbour: a Study of the Causes of Antisemitism. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1932, p. 44. 2017D. Kharuv. Evreiskaja emigratsija iz Rossiiskoj imperii i Sovetskogo Sojuza: statisticheskij aspect [Jewish Emigration from the Russian Empire and Soviet Union: statistical aspect] // Russkoe evreistvo v zarubezhje: Statji, publikatsii, memuary i esse [Russian Jewry in Exile: Articles, Publications, Memoires, and Essays]. Jerusalem, 1998, v. 1 (6), p. 352.
  8. quarters of Prague, which became … Russia-in-Exile’s main university city).”2018 It was “easier to settle” in Berlin because of inflation. “On the streets of Berlin” you could see “former major industrialists and merchants, bankers and manufacturers,”2019 and many émigrés had capital there. Compared to other emigrants from Russia, Jewish emigrants had fewer problems with integration into the Diaspora life, and felt more confident there. Jewish emigrants were more active than Russians and generally avoided humiliating jobs. Mihkail Levitov, the commander of the Kornilov Regiment who had experienced all sorts of unskilled labour after emigration, told me: “Who paid us decently in Paris? Jews. Russian multi-millionaires treated their own miserably.” Both in Berlin and in Paris “the Jewish intelligentsia was prominent – lawyers, book publishers, social and political activists, scholars, writers and journalists”2020; many of them were deeply assimilated, while Russian emigrants “from the capitals [Moscow and St. Petersburg]” mostly had liberal opinions which facilitated mutual amity between the two groups (unlike the feeling between Jews and the Russian monarchist emigrants). The influence of Russian Jews in the entire cultural atmosphere of Russia-in-Exile between the two world wars was more than palpable. (Here it is proper to mention a very interesting series of collections, Jews in the Culture of Russia-in-Exile, published in Israel in 1990s and still continuing.2021) Some Jewish families with a comfortable income opened Russian artistic salons, clearly demonstrating Jewish attachment to and immersion in Russian culture. There was a famously generous house of the Tsetlins in Paris. Many others, I. V. Gessen’s (in Berlin), I. I. FondaminskyBunakov (tireless in his “endless, selfless cares for Russian culture abroad”2022), Sofia Pregel, Sonya Delone, Alexander and Salomeia Galpern, were constantly engaged in the burdensome business of providing assistance for impoverished writers and artists. They helped many, and not just the famous, such as Bunin, Remizov, Balmont, Teffi, but also unknown young poets and painters. (However, this help did not extend to “White” and monarchist emigrants, with whom there was mutual antagonism). Overall, among all the emigrants, Russian Jews proved themselves the most active in all forms of cultural and social enterprise. This was so striking that it was reflected in Mihail Osorgin’s article,
  9. 2018Gleb Struve. Russkaja literatura v izgnanii [Russian Literature in Exile]. The 2nd edition. Paris, YMCA-Press, 1984, p. 24. 2019A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in the émigré Literature] // Kniga o russkom evrejstve: 1917-1967 [The Book of Russian Jewry: 19171967 (henceforth — BRJ-2)]. New York: Association of Russian Jews, 1968, p. 426-427. 2020Ibid., p. 426. 2021Evrei v culture Russkogo Zarubezhja: Statji, publikatsii, memuary i esse [Jews in the Culture of Russia-in-Exile: Articles, Publications, Memoires, and Essays]. In 5 volumes, Jerusalem, 1992-1996, complied by M. Parkhomovskij. See also Russkoe evreistvo v zarubezhje: Statji, publikatsii, memuary i esse [Russian Jewry in Exile: Articles, Publications, Memoires, and Essays]. Jerusalem, 1998, compiled and edited by M. Parkhomovskij. 2022Roman Gul. Ya unes Rossiju [I Have Carried Russia with Me]. New York, Most, 1984, v. 2: Russia in France, p. 99.
  10. Russian Loneliness, printed in the Russian Zionist magazine Rassvet [Dawn], re-established abroad by V. Jabotinsky. Osorgin wrote: “In Russia, there was not this ‘Russian loneliness’ neither in the social nor the revolutionary movement (I mean the depths and not just the surface); the most prominent figures who gave specific flavour to the whole movement … were Slavic Russians.” But after emigration “where there is a refined spirituality, where there is deep interest in thought and art, where the calibre of man is higher, there a Russian feels national loneliness; on the other hand, where there are more of his kin, he feels cultural solitude. I call this tragedy the Russian loneliness. I am not at all an anti-Semite, but I am primarily a Russian Slav… My people, Russians, are much closer to me in spirit, in language and speech, in their specific national strengths and weaknesses. For me, it is precious to have them as my fellow thinkers and peers, or perhaps it is just more comfortable and pleasant. Although I can respect the Jew, the Tatar, the Pole in the multi-ethnic and not at all “Russian” Russia, and recognise each as possessing the same right to Russia, our collective mother, as I have; yet I myself belong to the Russian group, to that spiritually influential group which has shaped the Russian culture.” But now “Russians abroad have faded and given up and surrendered the positions of power to another tribe’s energy. Jews adapt easier – and good for them! I am not envious, I am happy for them. I am equally willing to step aside and grant them the honour of leadership in various social movements and enterprises abroad…. But there is one area where this ‘Jewish empowerment’ strikes me at the heart – charity. I do not know who has more money and diamonds, rich Jews or rich Russians. But I know for certain that all large charitable organizations in Paris and Berlin can help poor Russian emigrants only because they collect the money needed from generous Jewry. My experience of organizing soireés, concerts, meetings with authors has proven that appealing to rich Russians is a pointless and humiliating waste of time…. Just to soften the tone of such an ‘anti-Semitic’ article, I will add that, in my opinion, the nationally-sensitive Jew can often mistake national sensitivity of a Slav for a spectre of anti-Semitism.”2023 Osorgin’s article was accompanied by the editorial (most likely written by the editor-in-chief Jabotinsky based on the ideas expressed and with a similar style) to the effect that M.A. Osorgin “has no reason to fear that the reader of Rassvet would find anti-Semitic tendencies [in his article]. There was once a generation that shuddered at the word ‘Jew’ on the lips of a non-Jew. One of the foreign leaders of that generation said: ‘The best favour the major press can give us is to not mention us.’ He was listened to, and for a long time in progressive circles in Russia and Europe the word ‘Jew’ was regarded as an unprintable obscenity. Thank God, that time is over.” We can assure Osorgin “of our understanding and sympathy…. However, we disagree with him on one
  11. 2023M. Osorgin. Russkoe odinochestvo [Russian Loneliness]. Publication of A. Razgon. // Jews in the Culture of Russia-in-Exile: Articles, Publications, Memoires, and Essays. V. 1, p. 1517. (Reprinted from Rassvet. Paris, January 15, 1925 (7)).
  12. point. He gives too much importance to the role of Jews in charity among refugees. First, this prominent role is natural. Unlike Russians, we were learning the art of living in Diaspora for a long time…. But there is a deeper explanation…. We have received much that is precious from the Russian culture; we will use it even in our future independent national art…. We, Russian Jews, are in debt to Russian culture; we have not come close to repaying that debt. Those of us that do what they can to help it survive during these hard times are doing what is right and, we hope, will continue doing so.”2024 However let us return to the years immediately after the revolution. “Political passions were still running high among Russian emigrants, and there was a desire to comprehend what had happened in Russia. Newspapers, magazines, book publishers sprung up.”2025 Some rich men, usually Jews, financed this new liberal and more left-of-center Russian emigrant press. There were many Jews among journalists, newspaper and magazine editors, book publishers. A detailed record of their contribution can be found in The Book of Russian Jewry (now also in Jews in the Culture of Russia-in-Exile). Of significant historical value among these are the twenty two volumes of I. V. Gessen’s Archive of the Russian Revolution. Gessen himself, along with A. I. Kaminkov and V. D. Nabokov (and G. A. Landau after the latter’s death), published a prominent Berlin newspaper Rul [Steering Wheel], “a kind of emigrant version of Rech [Speech],” but unlike Milyukov’s brainchild, Josef Gessen’s position was consistently patriotic. Rul often published articles by G. A. Landau and I. O. Levin, whom I have amply cited, and also articles by the famous literary critic U. I. Aikhenvald. The political spectrum of Berlin papers ranged from Rul on the right to the socialists on the left. A. F. Kerensky published Dni [Days], which provided a platform for such personalities as A. M. Kulisher-Yunius (author “of a number of sociological works” and a Zionist from Jabotinsky’s circle), S. M. Soloveichik, the famous former Socialist Revolutionary O. C. Minor (he also wrote for the Prague Volya Rossii [Russia’s Will]), and the former secretary of the Constituent Assembly M. V. Vishnyak. In 1921 U. O. Martov and R. A. Abramovich founded the Socialist Gerald in Berlin (it later moved to Paris and then New York). F. I. Dan, D. U. Dalin, P. A. Garvi, and G. Y. Aranson worked on it among others. V. E. Jabotinsky, whose arrival in Berlin (after three years in Jerusalem) coincided with the first wave of emigration, re-established Rassvet, first in Berlin and then in Paris, and also published his own novels. In addition “many Russian Jewish journalists lived in Berlin in 1920-1923, working in the local and international emigrant press.” There we could find I. M. Trotsky from the defunct Russkoe Slovo [Russian Word], N. M. Volkovyssky, P. I. Zvezdich (who
  13. 2024M. Osorgin. Russkoe odinochestvo [Russian Solitude]. // Jews in the Culture of Russia-inExile. V. 1, p. 18-19. 2025A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 427.
  14. died at the hands of Nazis during the World War II), the Menshevik S. O. Portugeis from the St. Petersburg Den [Day] (he wrote under the pseudonym S. Ivanovich), the playwriter Osip Dymov-Perelman, and the novelist V. Y. Iretsky.2026 Berlin also became the capital of Russian book publishing: “In 1922 all these Russian publishers released more Russian books and publications than there were German books published in the whole of Germany. Most of these publishers and booksellers were Jewish.”2027 Most notable were the publishing houses of I. P. Ladyzhnikov, owned since the war by B. N. Rubinstein (classical, modern and popular scientific literature), of Z. I. Grzhebin (which had links to the Soviets, and so sold some of his works in the USSR), the publishing house, Word, established as early as 1919 and run by I. V. Gessen and A. I. Kaminka (collections of Russian classics, emigrant writers and philosophers, valuable historical and biographical works), and the artistically superb issues of ZharPtitsa run by A. E. Kogan. Also there was Edges of A. Tsatskis, Petropolis of Y. N. Blokh, Obelisk of A. S. Kagan, Helicon of A.G. Vishnyak, and Scythians of I. Shteinberg. S. Dubnov’s World History of the Jewish People was also published in Berlin in ten German volumes, and during the 1930s in Russian in Riga. Riga and other cities in the once again independent Baltic countries (with their substantial Jewish populations) became major destinations of Jewish emigration. Moreover, “the only common language that Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians shared was Russian,” and so the Riga newspaper Segodnya [Today] (publishers Ya. I. Brams and B. Yu. Polyak) became “highly influential.” “A large number of Russian-Jewish journalists” worked there: the editor M. I. Ganfman, and after his death M. S. Milrud; Segodnya Vecherom [Today Evening] was edited by B. I. Khariton (the latter two were arrested by the NKVD in 1940 and died in Soviet camps). V. Ziv, an economist, and M. K. Aizenshtadt (under the pen names of first Zheleznov, then Argus) wrote for the newspaper. Gershon Svet wrote from Berlin. Andrei Sedykh (Y. M. Tsvibak) was its Paris correspondent, Volkovyssky reported from Berlin, and L. M. Nemanov from Geneva.2028 From the late 1920s, Berlin started to lose its position as the centre of emigrant culture because of the economic instability and the rise of Nazism. Rul had to close in 1931. Emigrants had dispersed with the “main wave going to France,” especially to Paris which was already a major centre of emigration. In Paris the main emigrant newspaper was Poslednie Novosti [Breaking News], founded “ at the beginning of 1920 by the St. Petersburg barrister M. L. Goldstein. It was financed by M. S. Zalshupin,” and in a year the newspaper was bought by “P. N. Milyukov…. While it was in a precarious position, the paper was significantly financially supported by M. M. Vinaver.” “Milyukov’s 2026Ibid., 429, 430. 2027I. Levitan. Russkie izdatelstva v 20-kh gg. v Berline [Russian Publishing Houses in Berlin in 1920s]. // BRJ-2, p. 448. 2028A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 431, 432.
  15. right hand” was A. A. Polyakov. Editorials and political articles were written by Kulisher-Yunius (who was arrested in 1942 in France and died in a concentration camp). The international news section was run by M. Yu. Berkhin-Benedictov, an acquaintance of Jabotinsky. The staff included the acerbic publicist S. L. Polyakov-Litovtsev (who had only learnt “to speak and write Russian at fifteen”), B. S. Mirkin-Getsevich (who wrote as Boris Mirsky), the noted Kadet [Constitutional Democrat] publicist Pyotr Ryss and others. Poslednie Novosti published the satirical articles of I. V. Dioneo-Shklovsky and the popular science of Yu. Delevsky (Ya. L. Yudelevsky). The best humorists were V. Azov (V. A. Ashkenazi), Sasha Cherny (A. M. Gliksberg), the “king of humour” Don-Aminado (Shpolyansky). Poslednie Novosti had the widest circulation of all emigrant newspapers.2029 Shulgin called it “the citadel of political Jewishness and philo-Semitic Russians.”2030 Sedykh regarded this opinion as an “obvious exaggeration.” The political tension around the paper also stemmed from the fact that immediately after the Civil War it was dedicated to “disclosure” and sometimes outright condemnation of the Volunteer Army. Sedykh noted that in Paris “there was not only a political divide, but also a national one”; “Milyukov’s editorial team included many Russian-Jewish journalists,” while “Jewish names virtually never appeared on the pages of the right-wing Vozrozhdenie [Rebirth] (with the exception of I. M. Bikerman).2031 (Vozrozhdenie was founded later than the other papers and ceased operation in 1927, when its benefactor Gukasov fired the main editor P. B. Struve.) The leading literary-political magazine Sovremennye Zapiski [Contemporary Notes], published in Paris from 1920 to 1940, was established and run by Socialist Revolutionaries, N. D. Avksentiev, I. I. FondaminskyBunakov, V. V. Rudnev, M. V. Vishnyak and A. I. Gukovsky. Sedykh noted that “out of [its] five editors … three were Jews. In 70 volumes of the Sovremennye Zapiski we see fiction, articles on various topics and the memoirs of a large number of Jewish authors.” Illyustrirovannaya Rossia [Illustrated Russia] was published by the St. Petersburg journalist M. P. Mironov, and later by B. A. Gordon (earlier the owner of Priazovsky Krai).2032 Its weekly supplement “gave the readers 52 pieces of classic or contemporary emigrant literature each year.” (The literary emigrant world also included many prominent Russian Jews, such as Mark Aldanov, Semyon Yushkevich, the already mentioned Jabotinsky and Yuly Aikhenvald, M. O. Tsetlin (Amari). However, the topic of Russian emigrant literature cannot be examined in any detail here due to its immenseness.)
  16. 2029Ibid., p. 431, 432-434. 2030V. V. Shulgin. “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsya…: ob antisemitizme v Rossii” [What we don’t like about them: on Anti-Semitism in Russia (henceforth – V. V. Shulgin]. Paris, 1929, p. 210. 2031A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 432, 434. 2032Ibid., p. 435-436.
  17. Here I would like to address the life of Ilya Fondaminsky (born in 1880). Himself from a prosperous merchant family and married in his youth to the granddaughter of the millionaire tea trader V. Y. Vysotsky, he nonetheless joined the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and “sacrificed a large part of his wealth and his wife’s inheritance to the revolution”2033 by buying weaponry. He worked towards the outbreak of the All-Russian political strike in 1905 and during the uprising he served in the headquarters of the SRs. He emigrated from Russia to Paris in 1906, where he became close to D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius and developed an interest in Christianity. He returned to St. Petersburg in April 1917. In the summer of 1917 he was the commissar of the Black Sea Fleet, and later a delegate in the Constituent Assembly, fleeing after it was disbanded. From 1919 he lived in Paris, France, during the period under discussion. He devoted much time and effort to Sovremennye Zapiski, including publication of a series of articles titled The Ways of Russia. He played an active role in emigrant cultural life and provided all possible support to Russian writers and poets. For a while he even managed to maintain a Russian theatre in Paris. “His passion, many-sidedness, energy and selflessness … were without parallel among emigrants.”2034 He estranged himself from the SRs and joined Christian Democrats. Along with the like-minded G. P. Fedotov and F. A. Stepun he began to publish the Christian Democratic Novy Grad [New City]. “He grew ever closer to Orthodoxy during these years.”2035 “In June 1940 he fled Paris from the advancing German forces,” but came back and was arrested in July1941and sent to Compiegne camp near Paris; “by some accounts, he converted to Christianity there. In 1942 he was deported to Auschwitz and killed.”2036 Between 1920 and 1924, the most important forum for purely Jewish issues was the Paris weekly, Jewish Tribune, published in both French and Russian with the prominent participation of M. M. Vinaver and S. B. Pozner. It published articles by many of the aforementioned journalists from other newspapers. Novoe Russkoe Slovo [New Russian Word] was founded in 1910 in the United States and added its voice from across the ocean. Its publisher from 1920 was V. I. Shimkin and the main editor (from 1922) was M. E. Veinbaum. Veinbaum remembered: “The newspaper was often criticised, and not without reason. But gradually it earned the reader’s confidence.”2037 (Its masthead now proudly boasts: “the oldest Russian newspaper in the world”; it is even two
  18. 2033SJE, v.9, p. 253. 2034Roman Gul. Ya unes Rossiju [I Have Carried Russia with Me]. New York, Most, 1984, v. 2: Russia in France, p. 100. 2035Gleb Struve. Russkaja literatura v izgnanii [Russian Literature in Exile]. The 2nd edition. Paris, YMCA-Press, 1984, p. 230. 2036SJE, v.9, p. 255. 2037A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 443.
  19. years older than Pravda. All the others have died out at various times, for various reasons.) Right-wing or nationalist Russian newspapers appeared in Sofia, Prague, and even Suvorin’s Novoe Vremya [New Times] continued in Belgrade as Vechernee Vremya [Evening Times], but they all either collapsed or withered away without leaving a lasting contribution. (The publisher of Rus in Sofia was killed.) The Paris Vozrozhdenie of Yu. Semenov “did not shirk from anti-Semitic outbursts”2038 (but not under Struve’s short reign).
  20. Those who left soon after the Bolshevik victory could not even imagine the scale of inferno that broke out in Russia. It was impossible to believe in rumours. Testimonies from the White camp were mostly ignored. This changed when several Russian democratic journalists (the Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) A. V. Tyrkova-Williams, the socialist E. D. Kuskova (exiled from the USSR in 1922), and the escaped SR S. S. Maslov began to inform the stunned emigrant public about rapid growth of grass-root anti-Semitism in Soviet Russia: “Judeophobia is one of the most acrid features of modern Russia. Perhaps even the most acrid. Judeophobia is everywhere: North, South, East, and West. It is shared regardless of intellect, party membership, tribe, age…. Even some Jews share it.”2039 These claims were at first met with suspicion by Jews who had emigrated earlier – what’s the reason for this anti-Semitism? The Jewish Tribune initially rejected these claims: “generally, Russian Jewry suffered from Bolshevism perhaps more than any other ethnic group in Russia”; as to the “familiar identification of Jews and commissars” – we all know that it is the work of the [anti-Semitic] “Black Hundreds.” The old view, that anti-Semitism resides not in the people but in Tsarism, began to transform into another, that the Russian people are themselves its carriers. Therefore, Bolsheviks should be credited for the suppression of popular “Black Hundred” attitudes in Russia. (Others began to excuse even their capitulation at Brest [at which Russia ceded large amounts of territory to the Kaiser’s German military]. The Jewish Tribune in 1924 dusted off even such argument: “the Russian revolution of 1917, when it reached Brest-Litovsk, prevented the much greater and more fateful betrayal planned by Tsarist Russia.”2040) Yet the information was gradually confirmed; moreover, anti-Jewish sentiments spread over a large segment of Russian emigration. The Union for Russian Salvation (dedicated to crown prince Nikolai Nikolaevich) produced 2038Ibid., p. 432. 2039S. S. Moslov. Rossija posle chetyrekh let revolutsii [Russia After Four Years of Revolution]. Paris: Russkaya Pechat [Russian Press], 1922, v. 2, p. 37. 2040B. Mirsky. Chernaja sotnya [The Black Hundred]. // Evreiskaja tribuna: Ezhenedelnik, posvyashchenny interesam russkikh evreev [The Jewish Tribune: A Weekly Dedicated to the Interests of Russian Jews]. Paris, February 1, 1924, p. 3.
  21. leaflets for distribution in the USSR in a manner like this: “To the Red Army. The Jews have ruled Great Russia for seven years….” “To Russian workers. You were assured that you would be the masters of the country; that it will be the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ Where is it then? Who is in power in all the cities of the republic?” Of course, these leaflets did not reach the USSR, but they scared and offended Jewish emigrants. S. Litovtsev wrote: “In the beginning of 1920s, anti-Semitism among emigrants became almost an illness, a sort of delirium tremens.”2041 But it was a broader attitude as many in Europe during the first years after the Bolshevik victory rejected and damned the Jews, so that “the identification of Bolshevism with Judaism became a widespread part of European thought. It is ridiculous to assert that it is only anti-Semites preach this social-political heresy.”2042 But could it be that the conclusions of Dr. Pasmanik were somehow premature? Yet this is what he wrote in 1922: “In the whole civilised world, among all nations and social classes and political parties, it is the established opinion now that Jews played the crucial role in the appearance and in all the manifestations of Bolshevism. Personal experience tells that this is the opinion not only of downright anti-Semites, but also … that representatives of the democratic public … reference these claims, i.e., to the role of Jews not only in Russian Bolshevism, but also in Hungary, Germany and everywhere else it has appeared. At the same time, the downright anti-Semites care little for truth. For them all Bolsheviks are Jews, and all Jews are Bolsheviks.”2043 Bikerman wrote a year later: “Waves of Judeophobia now roll over nations and peoples, with no end in sight”; “not just in Bavaria or Hungary … not only in the nations formed from the ruins of the once great Russia … but also in countries separated from Russia by continents and oceans and untouched by the turmoil…. Japanese academics came to Germany to get acquainted with antiSemitic literature: there is interest in us even on distant islands where almost no Jews live…. It is precisely Judeophobia – the fear of the Jew-destroyer. Russia’s miserable fate serves as the material evidence to frighten and enrage.”2044 In the collective declaration To the Jews of the World! the authors warn: “Never have so many clouds gathered above the Jewish people.”2045 Should we conclude that these authors exaggerated, that they were too sensitive? That they imagined a non-existent threat? Yet doesn’t the
  22. 2041S. Litovtsev. Disput ob antisemitizme [Debate on Anti-Semitism]. // Poslednie Novosti, May 29, 1928, p. 2. 2042D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 9. 2043Ibid. 2044I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // Rossiya i evrei: Otechestvennoe objedinenie russkikh evreev za granitsei [Russia and Jews: Expatriate Society of Russian Jews in Exile (henceforth—RJ)]. Paris, YMCA-Press, 1978, p. 11-12 [The 1st Edition: Berlin, Osnova, 1924]. 2045To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 6.
  23. abovementioned warning about “anti-Semitic literature in Germany” sound very scary – in retrospect, from our historical perspective? “The opinion that Jews created Bolshevism” was already so widespread in Europe (this was the “average opinion of French and English philistines,” Pasmanik notes) that it was supported even by Plekhanov’s son-in-law, George Bato, who claims in his book2046 that Jews are inherently revolutionaries: “as Judaism preaches an ideal of social justice on earth … it has to support revolution.” Pasmanik cites Bato: “Over the centuries … Jews have always been against the established order…. This does not mean that Jews carried out all revolutions, or that they were always the sole or even main instigators; they help the revolutions and participate in them”; “One can responsibly claim, as many Russian patriots, often from very progressive circles, do, that Russia now agonizes under the power of Jewish dictatorship and Jewish terror”; “Impartial analysis of the worldwide situation shows the rebirth of anti-Semitism, not so much against Jews as individuals, as against the manifestations of the Jewish spirit.”2047 The Englishman Hilaire Belloc2048 similarly wrote about “the Jewish character of Bolshevik revolution,” or simply: “the Jewish revolution in Russia.” Pasmanik adds that “anyone who has lived in England recently knows that Belloc’s opinion is not marginal.” The books of both authors (Bato and Belloc) “are enormously popular with the public”; “journalists all over the world argue that all the destructive ideas of the past hundred years are spread by Jews, through precisely Judaism.”2049 “We must defend ourselves,” Pasmanik writes, “because we cannot deny obvious facts…. We cannot just declare that the Jewish people are not to blame for the acts of this or that individual Jew…. Our goal … is not only an argument with anti-Semites, but also a struggle with Bolshevism … not only to parry blows, but to inflict them on those proclaiming the Kingdom of Ham…. To fight against Ham is the duty of Japheth and Shem, and of Helenes, and Hebrews.” Where should we look for the real roots of Bolshevism? “Bolshevism is primarily an anti-cultural force … it is both a Russian and a global problem, and not the machination of the notorious ‘Elders of Zion.’”2050 The Jews acutely realized the need to “defend themselves” in part because the post-war Europe and America were flooded with Protocols of the Elders of Zion, suddenly and virtually instantly. These were five editions in England in 1920, several editions in both Germany and France; half a million copies in America were printed by Henry Ford. “The unheard-of success of the Protocols, which were translated into several languages, showed how much the Bolshevik
  24. 2046Georges Batault. Leproblemejuif. Sedition, Paris, 1921. 2047D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 15-16, 95. 2048Hilaire Belloc. The Jews. London, 1922. 2049D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 16, 78. 2050Ibid., p. 11-13.
  25. revolution was believed to be Jewish.2051” English researcher Norman Cohn wrote: “in the years immediately after the World War I, when the Protocols entered mainstream and thundered across the world, many otherwise entirely sensible people took them completely seriously.”2052 The London Times and Morning Post of that time vouched for their authenticity, although by August 1921 the Times published a series of articles from its Istanbul correspondent, Philipp Greaves, who sensationally demonstrated the extensive borrowing of the text in the Protocols from Maurice Jolie’s anti-Napoleon III pamphlets (The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, 1864). At that time the French police managed to confiscate every single copy of the infamous pamphlet. The Protocols came to the West from a Russia overtaken by the Civil War. A journalistic fraud produced in the early 20th century (in 1900 or 1901), the Protocols were first published in 1903 in St. Petersburg. The mastermind behind them is thought to be P. I. Rachkovsky, the 1884-1902 head of the Foreign Intelligence unit of the Police Department; their production is attributed to Matvei Golovinsky, a secret agent from 1892 and son of V. A. Golovinsky, who was a member of Petrashevsky Circle. [The latter was a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded commoner-intellectuals in St. Petersburg organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Among the members were writers, teachers, students, minor government officials, army officers. While differing in political views, most of them were opponents of the Tsarist autocracy and the Russian serfdom. Among those connected to the circle were writers Dostoyevsky]. (Still, new theories about the origin of the Protocols appear all the time). Although the Protocols were published and re-published in 1905, 1906, 1911, they had little success in pre-revolutionary Russia: “they did not find broad support in Russian society…. The Court did not give support to distribution either.”2053 After many failed attempts, the Protocols were finally presented to Nicholas II in 1906 and he was very impressed. His notes on the margins of the book included: “What a foresight!’, ‘What precise execution!’, “It is definitely them who orchestrated the [revolutionary] events of 1905!’, ‘There can be no doubt about their authenticity.’ But when the right-wing activists suggested using the Protocols for the defence of the monarchy, Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin ordered a secret investigation into their origins. It showed they were a definite fabrication. The monarch was shocked by Stolypin’s report, but wrote firmly: “remove the Protocols from circulation. You cannot defend a noble cause with dirty means.”2054 And since then “Russia’s rulers’ dismissal of the Protocols of the
  26. 2051M. Daursky. Ideologiya national-bolshevizma [Ideology of National Bolshevism]. Paris. YMCA-Press, 1980, p. 195. 2052Norman Cohn. Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. Russian translation. Moscow, Progress, 1990, p. 24 2053SJE, v.6, p. 846. 2054This information was obtained by V. L. Burtsev in 1934 from General K. I. Globachev, the former head of St. Petersburg Guard Department (from February 1915 until March 1917).
  27. Elders of Zion came into force: no reference to the ‘Protocols’ was allowed … even during the Beilis Trial.”2055 However “1918 changed everything for the Protocols.2056” After the Bolsheviks seized power, after the murder of the royal family and the beginning of the Civil War, the popularity of the Protocols surged. They were printed and re-printed by the OsvAg [White Army counter-intelligence agency in the South of Russia] in Novocherkassk, Kharkov, Rostov-on-Don, Omsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and were widely circulated among both the Volunteer Army and the population (and later Russian emigrants, especially in Sofia and Belgrade). “After the Bolshevik victory the selling of Protocols was banned in Russia” and become a criminal offence, but “in Europe the Protocols brought in by the White emigration played an ominous role in the development of right-wing ideology, especially National Socialism in Germany.”2057 Exposure of the Protocols as forgery, and general denial of identity between Bolsheviks and Jews constituted a major share of liberal emigrant journalism of the 1920s and 1930s. We see several prominent Russians there: Milyukov, Rodichev, Burtsev and Kartashev. A.V. Kartashev, historian of religion, Orthodox theologian and at the same time, a public figure, wrote about the unacceptability of anti-Semitism for a Christian in the pre-revolutionary collection Shchit [Shield],2058 which I have often cited. In 1922, in emigration, he wrote the foreword to Yu. Delevsky’s book on the Protocols.2059 In 1937 Burtsev too asked him to write a foreword for his book. Kartashev wrote in it: “A man with common sense, good will and a little scientific discipline cannot even discuss the authenticity of this police and journalistic forgery, though certainly a talented forgery, able to infect the ignorant…. It’s unfair to continue supporting this obvious deceit after it has been so unambiguously exposed. Yet it is equally unfair to do the opposite, to exploit the easy victory over the Protocols authenticity to dismiss legitimate concerns…. A half-truth is a lie. The whole truth is that the Jewish question is posed before the world as one of the tragic questions of history. And it cannot be resolved either by savage pogroms, or by libel and lies, but only by honest and open efforts of all mankind. Pogroms and slander make a sensible and honest
  28. Burtsev published this information in 1938 in Paris in his study of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. See V. L. Burtsev. V pogone za provokatorami. “Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov” – dokazanny podlog [Chasing the Provocateurs. Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a proven forgery]. Foreword by Yu. V. Davydov, annotation by L. G. Aronov. Moscow, 1991. 2055SJE, v.6, p. 847. 2056Ibid. 2057SJE, v.6, p. 848. 2058A. V. Kartashev. Izbrannye i pomilovannye [The Chosen and the Pardoned]. // Sheet: Literaturny sbornik [Shield: Literary Collection]. Edited by L. Andreev, M. Gorky and F. Sologub. The 3rd Enlarged Edition. Moscow, Russian Society on Study of Jewish Life, 1916, p. 110-115. 2059Yu. Delevsky. Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov: istorija odnogo podloga [Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the History of a Forgery]. Berlin, 1923.
  29. raising of the question more difficult, degrading it to outright stupidity and absurdity. They confuse the Jews themselves, who constantly emphasize their ‘oppressed innocence’ and expect from everybody else nothing but sympathy and some sort of obligatory Judeophilia.” Kartashev certainly regarded debunking of this “sensational apocrypha” as a “moral duty,” but also thought that “in washing out the dust of Protocols from the eyes of the ignorant, it is unacceptable to impair their vision anew by pretending that this obliterates the Jewish question itself.”2060 Indeed, the “Jewish question” cannot be removed by either books or articles. Consider the new reality faced in the 1920s by Jews in the Baltic countries and Poland. In Baltics, although “Jews managed to maintain for a while their influential position in trade and industry”2061 they felt social pressure. “A good half of Russian Jewry lived in the newly independent states…. New states trumpet their nationalism all the louder the less secure they feel.”2062 There “Jews feel themselves besieged by a hostile, energetic and restless popular environment. One day, it is demanded that there be no more Jews percentage-wise in the institutions of higher learning than in the army … the next, the air of everyday life becomes so tense and stressful that Jews can no longer breathe…. In the self-determined nations, the war against Jews is waged by the society itself: by students, military, political parties, and ordinary people.” I. Bikerman concluded that “in leading the charge for selfdetermination, Jews were preparing the ground for their own oppression by virtue of higher dependence on the alien society.”2063 “The situation of Jews in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania is literally tragic. Yesterday’s oppressed are today’s oppressors, what is more – extremely uncouth oppressors, entirely unashamed of their lack of culture.”2064 So it transpired “that the breakup of Russia also meant the breakup of Russian Jewry” as the history paradoxically showed that the Jews were better off in the united Russian Empire despite all the oppression. So now in these splintered border countries “Jews became the faithful guardians of the Russian language, Russian culture, impatiently waiting for the restoration of the great Russia. Schools that still teach in Russian became filled with Jewish children,” to the exclusion of learning the languages of the newly-formed states. “In these
  30. 2060State Archive of the Russian Federation, fonds 5802, catalog 1, file 31, p. 417-421. The foreword by A. V. Kartashev was not published by V. L. Burtsev in 1938 but was preserved among his papers. We discovered the fact of existence of this foreword from the article of O. Budnitsky “Evreiskij vopros” v emigranskoj publitsistike 1920-1930-kh [“The Jewish Question” in Emigrant Journalism of 1920-1930s]. // Evrei i russkaja revolutsia: Materialy i issledovanija [Jews and the Russian Revolution: Materials and Studies]. Edited by O. V. Budnitsky; Moscow, Jerusalem. Gesharim, 1999. 2061I. Gar. Evrei v Pribaltijskikh stranakh pod nemetskoj okkupatsiej [Jews in the Baltic countries under German Occupation]. // BRJ-2, p. 95. 2062To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 6. 2063I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 87-89. 2064D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 219.
  31. tiny countries, the Russian Jew, accustomed to life in the open swathes of a great empire, feels uncomfortable, squeezed and diminished in his social status, despite all the civil rights and autonomy…. Indeed our people’s fate is bound up with the fate of the great Russia.”2065 Still, the position of Jewry in the circles of international post-war politics was strong, especially in Paris, and in particular regarding Zionism. “In July 1922 the League of Nations recognised the World Zionist Organization as the ‘Jewish Agency,’” which first and foremost represented the interests of Zionists, and secondly of non-Zionists, and also provided support to the European Jews.2066 Bikerman accused the Zionists of seeing a “fragmented Russia … as an ideal. This is why the organization of Russian Zionists calls itself not Russian, but Russo-Ukrainian. This is why the Zionists and related Jewish groups so assiduously fraternized with the Ukrainian separatists.”2067
  32. After the Civil War, Soviet Russia sank into a heavy silence. From this point and for decades to follow, all independent voices were squashed and only the official line could be heard. And the less was heard from Russia, the louder was the voice of emigration. All of them, from anarchists to monarchists, looked back in pain and argued intensely: who and to what extent was to blame for what had happened? Discussion developed within emigrant Jewry as well. In 1923 Bikerman noted: “Jews answer everything with a familiar gesture and familiar words: we know, we’re to blame; whenever something goes wrong, you’ll look for a Jew and find one. Ninety percents of what is written in the contemporary Jewish press about Jews in Russia is just a paraphrase of this stereotype. And because it’s impossible that we’re always to blame for everything, Jews take from this the flattering and at first glance quite convenient conclusion that we’re always and everywhere in the right.”2068 However, consider: “Before the revolution, the Jewish society passionately argued that a revolution would save the Jews, and we still ardently adhere to this position.” When the Jewish organizations gather resources in the West to aid their co-ethnics, suffering in the USSR, they “denounce, belittle, and slander everything about pre-revolutionary Russia, including the most positive and constructive things; See, “the Bolshevik Russia has now become the Promised Land,” egalitarian and socialist. Many Jews who emigrated from Russia settled in the United States, and “pro-Bolshevik attitudes spread quickly among them.”2069 The general Jewish mood was that Bolshevism was better than 2065I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 84, 89. 2066SJE, v.7, p. 890. 2067I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 40. 2068Ibid., p. 12. 2069Ibid., p. 47, 48, 72.
  33. restoration of monarchy. It was widely believed “that the fall of Bolshevism in Russia would inevitably engender a new wave of bloody Jewish pogroms and mass extermination…. And it is on this basis that Bolshevism is preferred as the lesser evil.”2070 Then, as if to confirm that Bolsheviks are changing for the better, that they can learn, the NEP came! They’ve loosened their suffocating grip on the economy, and that made them all the more acceptable. “First NEP, then some concessions – hopefully, it’ll all work out for us.”2071 We cannot call the entire Jewish emigration pro-Bolshevik. Yet they did not see the Bolshevik state as their main enemy, and many still sympathized with it. Yet a noteworthy incident, mockingly described in Izvestiya, happened to Goryansky, a Jewish emigrant writer.2072 In 1928, the already famous Babel (and already well-known for his links to the Cheka) was “temporarily residing” in Paris to muster creative inspiration. While in the Cafe Rotonda he noticed his “old acquaintance,” probably from Odessa, who magnanimously offered his hand to him: “Greetings, Goryansky.” But Goryansky stood up and contemptuously turned away from the offered hand. Rise of Hitlerism in Germany naturally and for a long time reinforced the preference for Bolshevism in the social mind of the European Jewry. The First International Jewish Congress took place in Vienna in August 1936. M. Vishnyak disapprovingly suggested that the collective attitude toward the Bolshevik regime was perfectly exemplified by the opinion of N. Goldman: if all sorts of freedom-loving governments and organizations “flatter and even fawn before the Bolsheviks … why shouldn’t supporters of Jewish ethnic and cultural independence follow the same path? … Only Moscow’s open support for anti-Jewish violence in Palestine slightly cooled the Congress leaders’ disposition toward the Soviet state. Even then … they only protested the banning of Hebrew … and the banning of emigration from the USSR to Palestine, and, finally, they objected to the continuing suffering of Zionists in political prisons and concentration camps. Here N. Goldman found both the necessary words and inspiration.”2073 In 1939 on the eve of the World War II, S. Ivanovich noted: “It cannot be denied that among emigrant Russian Jews” the mood was to “rely on the perseverance of the Soviet dictatorship” if only to prevent pogroms.2074 What of Jewish Bolsheviks? I. Bikerman: “Prowess doesn’t taint – that is our attitude to Bolsheviks who were raised among us and to their satanic evil. Or the modern version: Jews have the right to have their own Bolsheviks”; “I have heard this declaration a thousand times”; at a meeting of Jewish emigrants
  34. 2070Yu. Delevsky. Menshee li zlo bolsheviki? [Are Bolsheviks the Lesser Evil?] // The Jewish Tribune, September 19, 1922, p. 2. 2071D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 221. 2072G. Ryklin. Sluchai s babelem [An Incident with Babel]. // Izvestiya, March 16, 1928, p. 5. 2073Poslednie Novosti. August 13, 1936. 2074S. Ivanovich. Evrei i sovetskaya diktatura [Jews and the Soviet Dictatorship]. //
  35. in Berlin “one after the other, a respected Kadet, a Democrat, a Zionist ascended the podium” and each “proclaimed this right of Jews to have their own Bolsheviks … their right to monstrosity.”2075 “Here are the consequences of these words: Jewish opinion across the world turned away from Russia and accepted the Bolsheviks”; “when a famous, old, and well respected Jewish public figure – a white crow – suggested to a high Jewish dignitary in one of the European capitals organizing a protest against the executions of Orthodox priests in Russia [i.e. in the USSR], the latter, after reflecting on the idea, said that it would mean struggling against Bolshevism, which he considers an impossible thing to do because the collapse of Bolshevik regime would lead to anti-Jewish pogroms.”2076 But if they can live with Bolsheviks, what do they think of the White movement? When Josef Bikerman spoke in Berlin in November 1922 at the fifth anniversary of the founding of the White Army, Jewish society in general was offended and took this as a slight against them. Meanwhile, Dr. D. S. Pasmanik (who fought on the German front until February 1917, then in the White Army until May 1919, when he left Russia) had already finished and in 1923 published in Paris his book Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and Judaism (I cited it here), where he passionately argued against the commonplace explanation that Bolshevism originated from the Jewish religion. “The identification of Judaism with Bolshevism is a grave global danger.” In 1923, together with I. M. Bikerman, G. A. Landau, I. O. Levin, D. O. Linsky (also an ex-member of the White Army) and V. C. Mandel, Pasmanik founded the National Union of Russian Jews Abroad. This group published an appeal To the Jews of the World! in the same year, and soon after published a collection Russia and the Jews in Berlin. Here is how they describe the task they undertook and their feelings. Pasmanik said: “The unspeakable pain of the Jew and the unending sorrow of the Russian citizen” motivated this work. “Because of the dark events of the recent years, it was difficult to find a balanced point of view on both Russian and Jewish questions. We … attempted to merge the interests of the renewed Russia and of the afflicted Russian Jewry.”2077 Linsky: “Unfathomed sorrow” dwells in the souls of those who “realize their Jewishness while similarly identifying as Russians.” It is much easier when “one of the two streams of your national consciousness dries up, leaving you only a Jew or only a Russian, thus simplifying your position toward Russia’s tragic experience….The villainous years of the revolution killed … the shoots of hope” for rapprochement between Jews and Russians that had appeared just before the war; now “we witness active … Russo-Jewish divergence.”2078 Levin: “It is our duty to honestly and 2075I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 23-24. 2076Ibid., p. 54-55. 2077D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 7, 14. 2078D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 141, 144-145.
  36. objectively examine the causes of and the extent of Jewish involvement in the revolution. This … might have certain effect on future relations between Russians and Jews.”2079 The co-authors of the collection rightly warned Russians not to mix up the meaning of the February Revolution and Jewish involvement in it. Bikerman if anything minimised this involvement (the power balance between the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies and the Provisional Government was for the most part unclear to contemporaries). However he thought that after the October Bolshevik coup “the Jewish right to have their Bolsheviks implies a duty to have also their right-wingers and extreme right-wingers, the polar opposites of the Bolsheviks.”2080 Pasmanik: “In all its varieties and forms, Bolshevik communism … is an evil and true foe of Jewry, as it is first of all the enemy of personal identity in general and of cultural identity in particular.”2081 “Bound by a plethora of intimate connections to our motherland, to its political system, economy and culture, we cannot flourish while the country disintegrates around us.”2082 Obviously, these authors were fully aware of the significance of the Russian catastrophe. In describing those years, I heavily relied on the work of these people with the hope that their bitter, but not at all “self-hating,” reflections can finally be understood and comprehended in their entirety. Their 1923 Proclamation stated: “The National Union of Russian Jews Abroad firmly believes that the Bolsheviks epitomize the greatest evil for the Jews as well as for all other peoples of Russia…. It is time for the Jew to stop tremble at the thought of going against the revolution…. Rather, the Jew should fear going against his motherland [Russia] and his people [Jewish].”2083 However, the authors of Russia and the Jews saw the Jewish national consciousness of the early 1920s as something very different from what they’ve thought it should have been. “Almost all circles and classes of Russian society are now engaged in grievous self-reflections, trying to comprehend what has happened….Whether these self-accusations and admissions of guilt are fair or not, they at least reveal the work of thought, conscience, and aching hearts…. But it would be no exaggeration to claim that such spiritual work is the least noticeable among the Jewish intelligentsia, which is no doubt a symptom of certain morbidity…. For an outsider it appears that a typical Jewish intellectual has no concerns.”2084 For this intellectual “everyone else is to blame – the government, the generals, the peasants, etc. He has nothing to do with all this…. In no way did he forge his own destiny and the destinies of those around him;
  37. 2079I. O. Levin. Evrei v revolutsii [The Jews in the Revolution]. // RJ, p. 124. 2080I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 24. 2081D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 215. 2082To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 5. 2083Ibid., p. 7-8. 2084G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obshchestvennosti [Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society]. // RJ, p. 100.
  38. he is just a passersby, hit on the head by a falling brick”; “so they were complicit in destroying [the world around them], but after it was finished they became unaware of their role in it.”2085 Jewish Bolsheviks was a particular pain for the authors. “A sin that carries the seed of its own nemesis, … what greater affliction is there for a people than to see its sons debauched?”2086 “It is not just that the Russian upheaval needed people of a certain sort for its perpetuation, or that the Jewish society provided this sort of people; what is most important is that they were not rebuffed, did not meet enough opposition from within their own society.”2087 “It is our duty to shoulder the struggle specifically against the Jewish Bolsheviks, against all kinds of YevSeks [the ‘Jewish Section,’ the name given to officials appointed by the Soviets to deal with Jewish affairs], and against Jewish commissars in general.”2088 It should be noted that these authors were not alone in arguing that Russian (and now emigrant) Jews should fight against the Bolsheviks. From the pages of the Jewish Tribune: “If Bolshevism was swept from power in Russia by a wave of popular wrath, Jewry might be held, in the eyes of the masses, responsible for prolonging Bolshevism’s lifespan…. Only active participation in the struggle to liquidate Bolshevism can secure Jews a safe position in the common cause of saving Russia.”2089 Bikerman warned: if we support the Bolsheviks “on the principle that your own shirt is closer to the body” then “we should not forget that we thus allow the Russian to take care of his own shirt that is closer to his body; that it justifies the call, ‘Slaughter Yids, Save Russia.’”2090 What of the Jewish attitudes toward the White Army? “This unworthy attitude that Jews have towards people who have taken upon their shoulders the endlessly difficult task of fighting for Russia, for the millions of the sheepish and weak-willed, points out to the complete moral disintegration, to a sort of perversion of mind….” While “all of us, Jews and non-Jews alike, placed ourselves obediently under the communist yoke and our backs under the whip, there were some Russians, courageous and proud, who overcame all obstacles, gathered from what remained of the breached and ripped apart fronts [of World War I], consolidated and raised the banner of resistance…. Just that they were willing to fight under these circumstances alone immortalizes them for the history. And these people became an object for abuse” on the side of so many Jews, “libeled by every loquacious tongue”; so “instead of appreciation the
  39. 2085Ibid., p. 104. 2086To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 6. 2087G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obshchestvennosti [Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society]. // RJ, p. 118. 2088D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 225. 2089Yu. Delevsky. Menshee li zlo bolsheviki? [Are Bolsheviks the Lesser Evil?] // The Jewish Tribune, September 19, 1922, p. 3. 2090I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 78.
  40. tragedy, we see epidemic mindlessness, endless laxity of speech, and triumphant superficiality.” And yet “the Russia for which the Whites fought is not alien to us; it is ‘our shirt’ too.”2091 “Jewry should have fought for the White cause as for the cause of Jewish salvation, for … only in the restoration and swift rescue of Russian statehood can Jews find salvation from that death that has never been as close as in these days.”2092 (Death was indeed approaching, although from another direction). Who would deny these conclusions today, after decades of Soviet regime? But at that time, only few authors, Jewish or Russian, could see so far ahead. The Jewish emigrant community as a whole rejected these thoughts. And thus they had failed the test of history. It might be objected that it did not cause Jewry a noticeable, significant harm, and certainly it was not the Holocaust brought by Hitlerism. Yes, it did not bring commeasurable physical harm, but, historically, its spiritual harm was noticeable; take, for instance, the success of Bolshevism in the expulsion of the Jewish religion from the country where it had once deeply spread its sacred roots. And there was more – the Jews, by “betting on Bolshevism” influenced the overall course of events in Europe. The authors of the Russia and the Jews appealed in vain: “In the many centuries of Jewish dispersion … there has not been a political catastrophe as deeply threatening to our national existence as the breaking of the Russian Power, for never have the vital forces of the Jewish people been as united as in the bygone, living Russia. Even the breakup of the Caliphate can scarcely compare with the current disaster.”2093 “For the united Russian Jewry the breakup of Russia into separate sovereign states is a national calamity.”2094 “If there is no place for the Jews in the great spaces of the Russian land, in the boundlessness of the Russian soul, then there is no space [for Jews] anywhere in the world…. Woe to us, if we do not wise up.”2095 Of course, by the very end of the 20th century we can easily reject these grim prophecies, if only as a matter of fact – just as enough space has been found on earth for formerly Russian Jews, so a Jewish state has been founded and secured itself, while Russia still lies in ruin, so powerless and humiliated. The warnings of the authors on how Russia should be treated already appear a great exaggeration, a failed prophecy. And now we can reflect on these words only in regard of the spiritual chord that so unexpectedly bound the two our peoples together in History.
  41. 2091Ibid., p. 52, 53-54. 2092D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 149. 2093I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 92. 2094V. S. Mandel. Konservativnye i razrushitelnye elementy v evreisve [Conservative and Subversive Forces among Jewry]. // RJ, p. 202. 2095D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 153, 154.
  42. “If Russia is not our motherland, then we are foreigners and have no right to interfere in her national life.”2096 “Russia will survive; her renaissance must become our national concern, the concern of the entire … Russian Jewry.”2097 And in conclusion: “The fate of Russian Jewry is inextricably linked to the fate of Russia; we must save Russia, if we want to save Jewry …. The Jews must fight the molesters of the great country shoulder to shoulder with all other antiBolshevik forces; a consolidated struggle against the common enemy will heal the rifts and substantially reduce the current dramatic and ubiquitous growth of anti-Semitism; only by saving Russia, can we prevent a Jewish catastrophe.”2098 Catastrophe! – this was said ten years before Hitler’s ascension to power, eighteen years before his stunning sweep across the USSR and before the start of his program of Jewish extermination. Would it have been possible for Hitler to preach hatred of “Jews and communists” in Germany so easily and successfully, to claim Jews and communists are the same, if the Jews were among the most prominent and persistent opponents of the Soviet regime? The spiritual search of the authors of Russia and the Jews led them to prophetically sense the shadow of the impending Jewish Catastrophe, though erring in its geographical origin and failing to predict other fateful developments. Yet their dreadful warning remained unheard. I am not aware of anything else close to Russia and the Jews in the history of Russian-Jewish relations. It shook the Jewish emigration. Imagine how hurtful it was to hear such things coming from Jewish lips, from within Jewry itself. On the part of Russians, we must learn a lesson from this story as well. We should take Russia and the Jews as an example of how to love our own people and at the same time be able to speak about our mistakes, and to do so mercilessly if necessary. And in doing that, we should never alienate or separate ourselves from our people. The surest path to social truth is for each to admit their own mistakes, from each, from every side. Having devoted much time and thought to these authors (and having dragged the reader along with me), I would like here to leave a brief record of their lives. Josef Menassievich Bikerman (1867-1942) came from a poor petty bourgeois family. He attended a cheder, then a yeshiva, provided for himself from the age of fifteen; educated himself under difficult circumstances. In 1903 he graduated from the historical-philological faculty of the Imperial Novorossiya University (after a two-year-exclusion gap for participation in student unrest). He opposed Zionism as, in his opinion, an illusory and reactionary idea. He called on Jews to unite, without relinquishing their spiritual identity, with progressive forces in Russia to fight for the good of the common 2096D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 227-228. 2097I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 93. 2098D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 217-218.
  43. motherland. His first article was a large tract on Zionism published in the Russkoe Bogatstvo [Russian Treasure] (1902, issue 7), which was noticed and debated even abroad. In 1905 he was deeply involved into the Liberation movement. He worked in several periodicals: Syn Otechestva [Son of the Fatherland], Russkoe Bogatstvo, Nash Den [Our day], Bodroe Slovo [Buoyant Word]. As an emigrant he was printed in the Paris Vozrozhdenie, when it was run by P. B. Struve. Daniil Samoilovich Pasmanik (1869-1930) was a son of Melamed (a teacher in a cheder). In 1923 he graduated from the medical faculty of Zurich University and then practiced medicine in Bulgaria for seven years. In 18991905 he was the freelance lecturer in the medical faculty at Geneva University. He joined Zionist movement in 1900 and became one of its leading theorists and publicists. He returned to Russia in 1905 and passed the medical license exam. He participated in the struggle for civil rights for Jews; he opposed the Bund and worked on the program for Poale-Zion; in 1906-1917 he was a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Zionist organization. He was a member of editorial boards of Evreiskaya Zhizn [Jewish Life], and then of Rassvet. He wrote many articles for Evreisky Mir [Jewish World] and the Jewish Encyclopaedia. He published his medical works in specialized journals in German and French. Pasmanik was in Vienna when the WWI broke out in 1914, from where he with great difficulty managed to return to Russia; he joined the army and served in field hospitals until February 1917. He joined the Kadets after the February Revolution; he supported General Kornilov and the White movement; in 1918-1919 he was involved in the White government of the Crimea, was elected chairman of the Union of the Jewish Communities of the Crimea. In 1919 he emigrated from Russia to France. In 1920-1922 in Paris he together with V. L. Burtsev edited the White émigré newspaper Obshchee Delo [The Common Cause]. Overall, he authored hundreds of articles and tens of books; the most notable of them include Wandering Israel: The Psychology of Jewry in Dispersion (1910), Fates of the Jewish People: The Problems of Jewish Society (1917), The Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and Judaism (1923) The Revolutionary Years in Crimea (1926), What Is Judaism? (French edition, 1930). Isaak Osipovich Levin (1876-1944) was a historian and publicist. Before the revolution, he worked as a foreign affairs commentator for Russkie Vedomosti [Russian Journal] and for the P. B. Struve’s magazine, Russkaya Mysl [Russian Thought]. He emigrated first to Berlin. He was a member of the Russian Institute of Science, worked in the Rul, Russkie Zapiski and in the historical-literary almanac Na Chuzhoi Storone [In the Foreign Land]; he regularly gave presentations (in particular on the topic of the rise of German anti-Semitism). He moved to Paris in 1931 or 1932. He was widowed and lived in poverty. Among his works are Emigration during the French Revolution and a book in French about Mongolia. During the German occupation he registered according to his “racial origins” as was required by authorities; he was arrested
  44. in the early 1943, for a short time was held in a concentration camp near Paris, then deported; he died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944. Grigory (Gavriel) Adolfovich Landau (1877-1941) was son of the wellknown publicist and publisher A. E. Landau. He graduated from the law faculty of the St. Petersburg University in 1902. He wrote for periodicals from 1903 (the newspapers Voskhod [Sunrise], Nash Den, Evreiskoe Obozrenie [Jewish Observer], the magazines Bodroe Slovo, Evreisky Mir, Vestnik Evropy [European Herald], Sovremennik, Severnye Zapiski [Northern Notes], the yearly almanac Logos). He was one of the founders of the Jewish Democratic Group in 1904 and the Union for Equal Rights for Jews in Russia in 1905. He was an outstanding Kadet, member of the Central Committee of the Kadet Party. In August 1917 he participated in the Government Conference in Moscow; from December 1917 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Community of Petrograd. He emigrated to Germany in 1919; from 1922 to 1931he was I. V. Gessen’s deputy at Rul. Apart from Rul, he also wrote for the magazine, Russkaya Mysl, the weekly, Russia and the Slavs, the collection Chisla [Dates], etc. He often lectured at émigré evenings (in 1927 in the talk titled The Eurasian Delusion he criticised “eurasianism” as the movement contrary to the values of Russian history and leading to ideological Bolshevism). From Nazi Germany he fled for Latvia, where he worked for the Riga newspaper Segodnya [Today]. He was arrested by the NKVD in June 1941 and died in the Usollag camp (near Solikamsk) in November.2099 Among his works the most influential were Clownish Culture (in Nash Den, 1908), the article Twilight of Europe (Severnye Zapiski, 1914, issue 12), which antedated “much of what would later bestow worldwide fame on Oswald Spengler”2100 (and later a book with the same title (Berlin, 1923)), Polish-Jewish Relations (1915), On Overcoming Evil (in the collection book The Works of Russian Scholars Abroad, Berlin, 1923), The Byzantine and the Hebrew (Russkaya Mysl, 1923, issues 1 and 2), Theses Against Dostoevsky (Chisla, volume 6, Paris, 1932), Epigraphs (Berlin, 1927). Much of what he wrote was dismissed by contemporaries. He was too conservative in spirit to be accepted by progressive public. He was a sagacious thinker. We could not find any substantial information about D. O. Linsky (he served in the White Army during the Civil War) or V. C. Mandel (active participant in Russian political life 1907-1918, he emigrated to Berlin and died in 1931).
  45. 2099The information about G. A. Landau’s arrest and death was taken from V. Gessen. Iosif Gessen: jurist, politik i zhurnalist [Josef Gessen: an attorney, politician and journalist]. // Jews in the Culture of Russia-in-Exile: Articles, Publications, Memoires, and Essays. Jerusalem, 1993, v. 2, p. 543. 2100Fyodor Stepun. Byvshee i nesbyvsheesja [What Have Been and What Might-have-been]. The 2nd Edition. London, Overseas Publications, 1990, v. 1, p. 301.
  46. In Russia and the Jews the behavior of Jewish emigrants during 1920s was explicitly and harshly admonished. The authors called on their co-ethnics to “admit their own mistakes and not to judge the Great Russia in which they had lived and which they had made a home for hundreds of years”; “remember how they demanded justice for themselves and how upset they are when they are collectively accused for the acts of some individuals”2101; Jews should not be afraid “to acknowledge some responsibility for all that has happened.”2102 “First of all we must determine precisely our share of responsibility and so counter anti-Semitic slander….This is absolutely not about becoming accustomed to anti-Semitism, as claimed by some Jewish demagogues…. This admission is vital for us, it is our moral duty.”2103 “Jewry has to pick righteous path worthy of the great wisdom of our religious teachings which will lead us to brotherly reconciliation with the Russian people…. to build the Russian house and the Jewish home so they might stand for centuries to come.”2104 But “we spread storms and thunder and expect to be cradled by gentle zephyrs…. I know you will shriek that I am justifying pogroms! … I know how much these people are worth, who think themselves salt of the earth, the arbiters of fate, and at the very least the beacons of Israel…. They, whose every whisper is about Black Hundreds and Black Hundreders, they themselves are dark people, their essence is black, viri obscure indeed, they were never able to comprehend … the power of creativity in human history….” It is imperative for us “to make less of a display of our pain, to shout less about our losses. It is time we understood that crying and wailing … is mostly [evidence] of emotional infirmity, of a lack of culture of the soul…. You are not alone in this world, and your sorrow cannot fill the entire universe … when you put on a display only your own grief, only your own pain it shows … disrespect to others’ grief, to others’ sufferings.”2105 It could have been said today, and to all of us. These words cannot be obviated either by the millions lost in the prisons and camps of the GULag, nor by the millions exterminated in the Nazi death camps. The lectures of the authors of Russia and the Jews at that year’s National Union of Jews “were met with great indignation” on the part of emigrant Jewry. “Even when explicitly or tacitly accepting the truth of the facts and the analysis, many expressed indignation or surprise that anyone dared to bring these into the open. See, it was not the right time to speak of Jews, to criticise them, to determine their revolutionary misdeeds and responsibility, when Jewry has just
  47. 2101V. S. Mandel. Konservativnye i razrushitelnye elementy v evreisve [Conservative and Subversive Forces among Jewry]. // RJ, p. 204. 2102D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 210. 2103Ibid., p. 212, 213. 2104D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 152. 2105I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian Jewry]. // RJ, p. 74-75.
  48. suffered so much and may suffer even more in the future.”2106 The collection’s authors “were almost declared ‘enemies of the [Jewish] people,’ the abetters of reaction and allies of the pogromists.”2107 The Jewish Tribune replied them from Paris a few months later: “The question of ‘Jewish responsibility for the Russian revolution’ has hitherto only been posed by anti-Semites.” But now “there is a whole penitent and accusative movement,” apparently “we have to ‘not only blame others, but also admit our own faults’”; yet there is nothing new apart from “the same old boring ‘name counting’ [of Jews among Bolsheviks].” “Too late … did Mr. Landau come to love” “the old ‘statehood’”; “‘penitent’ Jews turned reactionaries”; their “words are incompatible with the dignity of the Jewish people … and are completely irresponsible.”2108 Especially offensive was this attempt to “separate the ‘popular’ anti-Semitism from the ‘official’ one”, attempting to prove that “the people, the society, the country – the entire populace hates the Jews and considers them the true culprit responsible for all national woes”; just like those who connived the pogroms, they repeat “the old canard about the ‘popular anger.’”2109 Sometimes it descended into the outright abuse: “this group of Berlin journalists and activists, which has nearly disappeared from the Jewish public life by now … craves to put themselves into limelight again … and for that they could think of no better way than to attack their own compatriots, Russian Jews”; this “tiny group of loyalists Jews … are blinded by a desire to turn the wheel of history backwards,” they write “indecencies,” give “comical advice,” take on themselves the “ridiculous role of healers to cure national wounds.” They should remember that “sometimes it is better to stay quiet.”2110 One sophisticated modern critic could find a better assessment for that collection than a “severe hysteria.” Both that attempt “and their later journey are genuine tragedies,” in his opinion, and he explains this tragedy as a “self-hatred complex.”2111 Yet was Bikerman hateful when he wrote, on his “later tragic journey,” that: “The Jewish people … is not a sect, not an order, but a whole people, dispersed over the world but united in itself; it has raised up the banner of peaceful labour and has gathered around this banner, as around the symbol of godly order”?2112
  49. 2106G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obshchestvennosti [Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society]. // RJ, p. 100-101. 2107D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 226. 2108A. Kulisher. Ob otvetstvennosti i bezotvetstvennosti [On Responsibility and Irresponsibility]. // The Jewish Tribune, April 6, 1923, p. 3-4. 2109B. Mirsky. “I6 punktov” [“16 Points”]. // The Jewish Tribune, April 7, 1924, p. 2. 2110S. Pozner. V chem zhe delo? [So What’s the problem?] // The Jewish Tribune, April 7, 1924, p. 1-2. 2111Sh. Markish. O evreiskoj nenavisti k Rossii [On the Jewish Hatred Toward Russia]. // “22”: Obshchestvenno-politichesky i literaturny zhurnal evreyskoj intelligentsii iz SSSR v Izraile [Social, Political and Literary Journal of the Jewish Intelligentsia from the USSR in Israel]. Tel-Aviv, 1984, (38), p. 218.
  50. However it is not true that European or émigré Jews did not at all hark to such explanations or warnings. A similar discussion had taken place a little earlier, in 1922. In the re-established Zionist publication Rassvet the nationalist G. I. Shekhtman expressed his incomprehension at how the intelligentsia of other nationalities could be anything other than nationalistic. An intelligentsia is invariably connected to its own nationality and feels its pains. A Jew cannot be a “Russian democrat”, but naturally a “Jewish democrat.” “I do not recognise dual national or democratic loyalties.” And if the Russian intelligentsia “does not identify with its nationality” (Herzen), it is simply because until now it “has not had the opportunity or need to feel sharp pains over its national identity, to worry about it. But that has changed now.” Now the Russian intelligentsia “has to cast aside its aspirations to be a universal All-Russian intelligentsia, and instead to regard itself as the Great Russian democracy.”2113 It was difficult to counter. The gauntlet was picked up by P. N. Milyukov, though not very confidently. We remember (see Chapter 11) that back in 1909 he had also expressed horror at the unveiling of this stinging, unpleasant national question “who benefits?” But now this new awkward situation (and not a change in Milyukov’s views), when so many Russian intellectuals in emigration suddenly realized that they lost their Russia, forced Milyukov to amend his previous position. He replied to Shekhtman, though in a rather ambiguous manner and not in his own (highly popular) Poslednie Novosti, but in the Jewish Tribune with much smaller circulation, to the effect that a Russian Jew could and had to be a “Russian democrat.” Milyukov treaded carefully: “but when this demand … is fulfilled, and there appears a ‘new national face’ of Russian Democracy (the Great Russian),” well, wouldn’t Shekhtman be first to get scared at the prospect of “empowerment of ethnically conscious Great Russian Democracy with imperial ambitions.” Do we then need these phantoms? Is this what we wish to ruin our relations over?2114 The émigrés lived in an atmosphere of not just verbal tension. There was a sensational murder trial in Paris in 1927 of a clock-maker Samuel Shvartsbard, who lost his whole family in the pogroms in Ukraine, and who killed Petliura with five bullets.2115 (Izvestiya sympathetically reported on the case and printed Shvartsbard’s portrait.2116) The defence raised the stakes claiming that the murder was a justified revenge for Petliura’s pogroms: “The defendant wished and felt a duty to raise the issue of anti-Semitism before the world’s conscience.”2117 The defence called many witnesses to testify that during the
  51. 2112I. M. Bikerman. K samopoznaniju evreya: chem. my byli, chem. my stali, chem. my dolzhny stat [On the Self-knowledge of the Jew: Who We Were, Who We Are, Who We Must Become]. Paris, 1939, p. 25. 2113P. N. Milyukov. Natsionalnost i natsia [Ethnicity and Nation]. // The Jewish Tribune, September 1, 1922, p. 1-2. 2114Ibid. 2115Poslednie Novosti. October 14, 1927, p. 2; October 19, 1927, p. 1-2. 2116Izvestiya, October 21, p. 3. 2117Izvestiya, October 22, p. 1.
  52. Civil War Petliura had been personally responsible for pogroms in Ukraine. The prosecution suggested that the murder had been ordered by Cheka. “Shvartsbard, agitated, called out from his place: ‘[the witness] doesn’t want to admit that I acted as a Jew, and so claims I’m a Bolshevik.’”2118 Shvartsbard was acquitted by the French court. Denikin [a leading White general during the Civil War] was mentioned at that trial, and Shvartsbard’s lawyer proclaimed: “If you wish to bring Denikin to trial, I am with you”; “I would have defended the one who would have taken revenge upon Denikin with the same passionate commitment as I am here defending the man who had taken revenge upon Petliura.”2119 And as Denikin lived in Paris without guards, anyone wishing to take revenge upon him had an open road. However Denikin was never put on trial. (A similar murder happened later in Moscow in 1929, when Lazar Kolenberg shot the former White general Slashchev, [who after the Civil War returned to Russia and served in Soviet military], for doing nothing to stop pogroms in Nikolayev. “During the investigation, the accused was found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial and released.”2120) During Shvartsbard’s trial the prosecutor drew a parallel to another notorious case (that of Boris Koverda): for Petliura had previously lived in Poland, but “you [speaking to Shvartsbard] did not attempt to kill him there, as you knew that in Poland you would be tried by military tribunal.”2121 In 1929, a young man, Boris Koverda, also “wishing to present a problem before the world’s conscience,” had killed the Bolshevik sadist Voikov; he was sentenced to ten years in jail and served his full term. A White émigré from Revolutionary Terrorist Boris Savinkov’s group, Captain V. F. Klementiev, told me that in Warsaw at that time former Russian officers were abused as “White-Guard rascals” and that they were not served in Jewish-owned shops. Such was the hostility, and not just in Warsaw. Russian émigrés all over Europe were flattened by scarcity, poverty, hardship, and they quickly tired of the showdown over “who is more to blame?” Anti-Jewish sentiments among them abated in the second half of the 1920s. During these years Vasily Shulgin wrote: “Are not our ‘visa ordeals’ remarkably similar to the oppression experienced by Jews in the Pale of Settlement? Aren’t our Nansen passports [internationally recognized identity cards first issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees], which are a sort of wolf ticket obstructing movement, reminiscent of the ‘Jewish religion’ label, which we stamped in Jewish passports in Russia, thereby closing many doors to them? Do we not resort to all kinds of middleman jobs when we are unable to attain, because of our peculiar position, a civil servant post or a certain profession? … Are we not gradually learning to ‘work around’ laws that are inconvenient for us, precisely as Jews did with our laws, and for which we criticized them?”2122 2118Izvestiya, October 23, p. 1. 2119Poslednie Novosti. October 25, 1927, p. 2; October 26, 1927, p. 1. 2120Russian Jewish Encyclopedia. The 2nd Revised and Enlarged Edition. Moscow, 1995, v. 2, p. 59. 2121Poslednie Novosti. October 23, 1927, p. 1. 2122V. V. Shulgin, p. 156.
  53. Yet during these same years anti-Jewish sentiments were on the rise in the USSR and were even reported in the Soviet press, causing distress among Jewish émigrés. So in May 1928 a public “debate on anti-Semitism” was organized in Paris among them. A report of it was placed in the Milyukov’s newspaper.2123 (Bikerman’s and Pasmanik’s group, already non-active, did not participate.) The formal reason for the debate was “a strong rise of Judeophobia in Russia, a phenomenon that periodically occurs there.” The Socialist Revolutionary N. D. Avksentiev chaired the debate, and there were “more Russians than Jews” among the public. Mark Slonim explained that “the long oppressed Russian Jewry, having finally attained freedom, has dashed to secure formerly prohibited positions,” and this annoys Russians. “In essence, the past fatefully determined the present.” “Bad things” of the past (Tsarist times) “resulted in bad consequences.” S. Ivanovich stated that Jews were now tormented in the USSR, because it has become impossible to torment “the bourgeois” thanks to the NEP. But what is worrying is that the Russian intelligentsia in the USSR, although neutral on the Jewish question, now takes the liberty to think: good, “it will begin with anti-Semitism, and lead to the Russian freedom. What a dangerous and foolish illusion.” Such apologetic ideas outraged the next orator, V. Grosman: “It is as if Jewry stands accused!” The question needs to be considered more deeply: “There is no reason to distinguish Soviet anti-Semitism from the anti-Semitism of old Russia,” that is to say there is still the same Black Hundredism so dear to Russian hearts. “This is not a Jewish question, but a Russian one, a question of Russian culture.” (But if it is so quintessentially Russian, entirely Russian, inherently Russian problem, then what can be done? What need then for a mutual dialogue?) The author of the debate report, S. Litovtsev, regretted post factum that it was necessary to find for the debate “several honest people, brave enough to acknowledge their anti-Semitism and frankly explain why they are anti-Semites … Who would say simply, without evasiveness: ‘I don’t like this and that about Jews…’ Alongside there should have been several equally candid Jews who would say: ‘and we don’t like this and that about you…’ Rest assured, such an honest and open exchange of opinions, with goodwill and a desire for mutual comprehension, would be really beneficial for both Jews and Russians – and for Russia….”2124 Shulgin replied to this: “Now, among Russian émigrés, surely one needs more bravery to declare oneself a philo-Semite.” He extended his answer into a whole book, inserting Litovtsev’s question into the title, What we don’t like about them.2125
  54. 2123Poslednie Novosti. May 29, 1928. 2124S. Litovtsev. Disput ob antisemitizme [Debate on Anti-Semitism]. // Poslednie Novosti, May 29, 1928, p. 2. 2125V. V. Shulgin, p. 11.
  55. Shulgin’s book was regarded as anti-Semitic, and the proposed “interexchange of views” never took place. Anyway, the impending Catastrophe, coming from Germany, soon took the issue of any debate off the table. A Union of Russian-Jewish Intelligentsia was created in Paris as if in the attempt to preserve a link between the two cultures. Yet it soon transpired that “life in exile had created a chasm between fathers and sons, and the latter no longer understand what a “Russian-Jewish intelligentsia” is.2126 So the fathers sadly acknowledged that “the Russian Jews, who used to lead global Jewry in spiritual art and in the nation building, now virtually quit the stage.”2127 Before the war, the Union had managed to publish only the first issue of collection Jewish world. During the war, those who could, fled across the ocean and untiringly created the Union of Russian Jews in New York City, and published the second issue of the Jewish World. In the 1960s, they published the Book of Russian Jewry in two volumes, about pre- and post-revolutionary Jewish life in Russia. The bygone life in the bygone Russia still attracted their minds. In this work I cite all these books with gratitude and respect.
  56. 2126S. M. Ginzburg. O russko-evreiskoi intelligentsia [On Russian Jewish Intelligentsia]. // JW1, p. 33. 2127Foreword // JW-1, p. 7.
  57. Chapter 18. In the 1920s
  58. The twenties in the Soviet Union was an epoch with a unique atmosphere – a grand social experiment which intoxicated world liberal opinion for decades. And in some places this intoxication still persists. However, almost no one remains of those who drank deeply of its poisonous spirit. The uniqueness of that spirit was manifested in the ferocity of class antagonism, in the promise of a never-before-seen new society, in the novelty of new forms of human relationships, in the breakdown of the nation’s economy, daily life and family structure. The social and demographic changes were, in fact, colossal. The “great exodus” of the Jewish population to the capitals began, for many reasons, during the first years of communist power. Some Jewish writers are categorical in their description: “Thousands of Jews left their settlements and a handful of southern towns for Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev to find ‘real life’.”2128 Beginning in 1917, “Jews flooded into Leningrad and Moscow”.2129 According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “hundreds of thousands of Jews moved to Moscow, Leningrad and other major centers”,2130 “in 1920, 28,000 Jews lived in Moscow – by 1923, about 86,000; according to 1926 USSR census, 131,000 and in 1933, 226,500.”2131 “Moscow became fashionable,” they used to say halfseriously in Odessa. Lurie-Larin, a fanatical and zealous Bolshevik leader during “War Communism” writes that in the first years not less than a million Jews left their settlements; in 1923 about half of Ukraine’s Jews lived in large cities, pouring as well into parts of Russia formerly off-limits to Jews (so called “prohibited provinces”) from Ukraine and Byelorussia, into Transcaucasia and Central Asia. The magnitude of this flow was half a million, and four-fifth of them settled in RSFSR. One in five of the Jewish migrants went to Moscow.2132
  59. 2128М. Поповский. О нас — со всей искренностью // Новый американец, Нью-Йорк, 1981, 20-26 сентября (№ 84), с. 7. 2129А. Львов. Где ты, Адам // Новая газета, Нью-Йорк, 1981, 28 ноября-4 декабря (№ 82), с. 4. 2130Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ). Иерусалим, 1976. Т. 1, с. 235. 2131Там же, т. 5, с. 477-478. 2132Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР (далее — Ю. Ларин). М.;Л.: ГИЗ, 1929, с. 58-60.
  60. M. Agursky considers Larin’s numbers to be substantially undercounted and points out that this demographic change affected interests important to the Russian population.2133 During “War Communism” with its ban on private trade and limitations on craftsmen and on those of certain “social origins” there arose a new social category – the “deprived” (deprived of civil rights). “Many Jews were deprived of civil rights and numbered among the “deprived” .” Still, the “migration of the Jewish population from Byelorussia into the interior of the USSR, mainly to Moscow and Leningrad” did not slow.2134 The new arrivals joined relatives or co-ethnics who offered communal support. According to the 1926 USSR census, 2,211,000 or 83% of the Jewish population lived in cities and towns. 467,000 lived in rural districts. Another 300,000 did not identify themselves as Jews and these were practically all city dwellers. About five out of six Jews in the USSR were urban dwellers, constituting up to 23% and 40% of the urban population in Ukraine and Byelorussia respectively.2135 Most striking in the provincial capitals and major cities was the flow of Jews into the apparatus of the Soviet government. Ordzhonikidze in 1927 at the 15th Communist Party Congress reported on the “national make up of our party”. By his statistics Jews constituted 11.8% of the Soviet government of Moscow; 22.6% in Ukraine (30.3% in Kharkov, the capital); 30.6% in Byelorussia (38.3% in Minsk).2136 If true, then the percentage of Jews in urban areas about equaled that of Jews in the government. Solomon Schwartz, using data from the work of Lev Singer maintained that the percentage of Jews in the Soviet government was about the same as their percentage of the urban population (and it was significantly lower in the Bolshevik party itself).2137 Using Ordzhonikidze’s data, Jews at 1.82% of the population by 1926 were represented in the Apparatus at about 6.5 times their proportion in the population at large. Its easy to underestimate the impact of the sudden freedom from prerevolutionary limits on civil rights: “Earlier, power was not accessible to Jews at all and now they had more access to power than anyone else” according to I. Bikerman.2138 This sudden change provoked a varied reaction in all strata of society. S. Schwartz writes “from the mid-twenties there arose a new wave of anti-Semitism” which was “not related to the old anti-Semitism, nor a legacy of 2133М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма. Париж: YMCA-Press, 1980, с. 265. 2134КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 326. 2135Ю. Ларин, с. 63-64, 74. 2136Izvestia, 1927, 11 déc.. p. 1. 2137С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм в Советском Союзе. Нью-Йорк: Изд-во им. Чехова, 1952, с. 44-46, 48-49 (со ссылкой на: Л. Зингер. Материалы и исследования Объединённой статистико-экономической комиссии при ЦК ОРТа. М., 1927. Вып. 1; Еврейское население в СССР (статистико-экономический обзор) М.; Л.: Соцэгиз, 1932). 2138И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // Россия и евреи: Сб. 1 (далее — РиЕ) / Отечественное объединение русских евреев заграницей. Париж: YMCA-Press, 1978, с. 28 [1-е изд. — Берлин: Основа, 1924].
  61. the past””. “It is an extreme exaggeration to explain it as originating with backwards workers from rural areas as anti-Semitism generally was not a fact of life in the Russian countryside.” No, “It was a much more dangerous phenomenon.” It arose in the middle strata of urban society and reached the highest levels of the working class which, before the revolution, had remained practically untouched by the phenomenon. “It reached students and members of the communist party and the Komsomol and, even earlier, local government in smaller provincial towns” where “an aggressive and active anti-Semitism took hold”.2139 The Jewish Encyclopedia writes that from the beginning of the 20th century “though official Soviet propaganda writes that anti-Semitism in the latter part of the 20?s was a “legacy of the past”, “the facts show that, it arose mainly as a result of colliding social forces in large cities.” It was fanned by the “widely held opinion that power in the country had been seized by Jews who formed the nucleus of the Bolsheviks.2140” Bikerman wrote with evident concern in 1923 that “the Jew is in all corners and on all levels of power.” “The Russian sees him as a ruler of Moscow, at the head of the capital on Neva [Petrograd], and at the head of the Red Army, a perfected death machine. He sees that St. Vladimir Prospect has been renamed Nakhimson Prospect… The Russian sees the Jew as judge and hangman; he sees Jews at every turn, not only among the communists, but among people like himself, everywhere doing the bidding of Soviet power” not surprising, the Russian, comparing present with past, is confirmed in his idea that power is Jewish power, that it exists for Jews and does the bidding of Jews”.2141 No less visible than Jewish participation in government was the suddenly created new order in culture and education. The new societal inequality was not so much along the lines of nationality as it was a matter of town versus country. The Russian reader needs no explanation of the advantages bestowed by Soviet power from the 20’s to the 80’s on capital cities when compared to the rest of the country. One of the main advantages was the level of education and range of opportunities for higher learning. Those established during the early years of Soviet power in capital cities assured for their children and grandchildren future decades of advantages, vis a vis those in the country. The enhanced opportunities in post-secondary education and graduate education meant increased access to the educated elite. Meanwhile, from 1918 the ethnic Russian intelligentsia was being pushed to the margins. In the 20’s students already enrolled in institutions of higher learning were expelled based on social origins policy. Children of the nobility, the clergy, government bureaucrats, military officers, merchants, even children of petty shop keepers were expelled. Applicants from these classes and children of the
  62. 2139С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 7, 17, 25, 29, 39. 2140PEJ. t. 8, pp. 161-162. 2141И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 22-23.
  63. intelligentsia were denied entry to institutions of higher learning in the years that followed. As a “nationality repressed by the Tsar’s regime,” Jews did not receive this treatment. Despite “bourgeois origin,” the Jewish youth was freely accepted in institutions of higher learning. Jews were forgiven for not being proletarian. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “with the absence of limitations based upon nationality for entry to institutions of higher learning, Jews came to make up 15.4% of all university students in the USSR, almost twice their proportion of the urban population at large”.2142 Further, Jews “owing to a high level of motivation” quickly bypassed the unprepared “proletarian” factory workers who had been pushed forward in the education system, and proceeded unhindered into graduate school. In the 20’s and 30’s and for a long time after, Jews were a disproportionately large part of the intelligentsia. According to G. Aronson, wide access to higher and specialized education led to the formation of cadres of doctors, teachers and particularly engineers and technical workers among Jews, which naturally led to university faculty posts in the expanding system of higher education2143 and in the widely proliferating research institutions. In the beginning of 1920’s, the post of “the State Chair of Science” was occupied not by a scientist but a Bolshevik official, MandelshtamLyadov.2144 Even sharper changes gripped the economic life of the country. Bukharin publicly announced at a Communist Party conference in 1927 that “during War Communism, we purged the Russian petty and middle bourgeoisie along with leading capitalists.” When the economy was later opened up to free trade “petty and middle Jewish bourgeoisie took the place of the Russian bourgeoisie… and roughly the same happened with our Russian intelligentsia which bucked and sabotaged our efforts… Its place has been taken in some areas by the Jewish intelligentsia”. Moreover, Jewish bourgeousie and intelligentsia are concentrated in our central regions and cities, where they moved in from western provinces and southern towns.” Here “even in the Party ranks one often encounters anti-Semitic tendencies.” “Comrades, we must wage a fierce battle against anti-Semitism”.2145 Bukharin described a situation that was obvious to all. Unlike Russian bourgeosie, the Jewish bourgeoisie was not destroyed. The Jewish merchant, much less likely to be damned as a “man of the past,” found defenders. Relatives or sympathizers in the Soviet Apparatus… warned about pending arrests or seizures. And if he lost anything – it was just capital, not life. Cooperation was quasi-official through the Jewish Commissariat at the
  64. 2142КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 186 2143Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // Книга о русском еврействе, 19171967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк: Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 137. 2144Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — РЕЭ). 2-е изд., испр. и доп. М., 1995. Т. 2, с. 218. 2145Н. Бухарин. [Доклад на XXIV Ленинградской губпартконференции] // Правда, 1927, 2 февраля, с. 4.
  65. Sovnarkom. The Jews until now had been “a repressed people” and that meant, naturally, they needed help. Larin explained the destruction of the “Russian bourgeoisie” as a “correction of the injustice that existed under the Tsars before the Revolution”.2146 When NEP (New Economic Policy) was crushed, the blow fell with less force against Jewish NEPmen owing to connections in Soviet ruling circles. Bukharin had been speaking in answer to a remarkable speech by Prof. Y.V. Klyutchnikov, a publicist and a former Kadet [Translator’s note: Constitutional Democrat]. In December 1926, the professor spoke at a “meeting on the Jewish question” at the Moscow Conservatory. “We have isolated expressions of hooliganism… Its source is the hurt national feelings of Russians. The February Revolution established the equality of all citizens of Russia, including Jews. The October Revolution went further with the Russian nation proclaiming self-renunciation. A certain imbalance has developed with respect to the proportion of the Jewish population in the country as a whole and the positions they have temporarily occupied in the cities. We are in our own cities and they arrive and squeeze us out. When Russians see Russian women, elders and children freezing on the street 9 to 11 hours a day, getting soaked by the rain in their tents at the market and when they see relatively warm covered Jewish kiosks with bread and sausage they are not happy. These phenomena are catastrophic… and must be considered… There is a terrible disproportion in the government structure, in daily life and in other areas… We have a housing crisis in Moscow – masses of people are crowding into areas not fit for habitation and at the same time people see others pouring in from other parts of the country taking up housing. These arrivals are Jews. A national dissatisfaction is rising and a defensiveness and fear of other nationalities. We must not close our eyes to that. A Russian speaking to a Russian will say things that he will not say to a Jew. Many are saying that there are too many Jews in Moscow. This must be dealt with, but don’t call it anti-Semitism”.2147 But Larin regarded Klyutchnikov’s speech as a manifestation of antiSemitism, saying “this speech serves as an example of the good nature of Soviet power in its battle against anti-Semitism because Klyutchnikov was roundly criticized by speakers who followed at the same meeting, but no “administrative measures” were taken against him”.2148 (Here it is, the frustration of the communist activist!) Agursky writes: “one would expect repression to swiftly follow for such a speech in the 20’s and 30’s,” but Klyutchnikov got off. Maybe he received secret support from some quarters?2149 (But why look for secret causes? It would have been too much of a scandal to punish such a famous publicist, who just returned from abroad and could have harmed a reverse migration that was so important for Soviet authorities [Translator’s note: 2146Ю. Ларин, с. 86. 2147Ю. Ларин*, с. 124-125 (со ссылкой на стенограмму речи Ключникова и указанием, что часть её была напечатана в «Рабочей Москве» 7 дек. 1926). 2148Там же, с. 127. 2149М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 223.
  66. “reverse migration” – return of people who emigrated from Russia during previous period of revolutions and Civil War].) The 20’s were spoken of as the “conquest” by the Jews of Russian capital cities and industrial centers where conditions were better. As well, there was a migration to the better areas within the cities. G. Fedotov describes Moscow at that time: “The revolution deformed its soul, turning it inside out, emptying out its mansions, and filling them with a foreign and alien people”.2150 A Jewish joke from the era: “Even from Berdichev and even the very old come to Moscow: they want to die in a Jewish city”.2151 In a private letter V.I. Vernadsky [Translator’s note: a prominent Russian polymath] in 1927 writes: “Moscow now is like Berdichev; the power of Jewry is enormous – and anti-Semitism (including in communist circles) is growing unabated”.2152 Larin: “We do not hide figures that demonstrate growth of the Jewish population in urban centers,” it is completely unavoidable and will continue into the future.” He forecasted the migration from Ukraine and Byelorussia of an additional 600,000 Jews. “We can’t look upon this as something shameful, that the party would silence… we must create a spirit in the working class so that anyone who gives a speech against the arrival of Jews in Moscow would be considered a counter-revolutionary”.2153 And for counter-revolutionaries there is nine grams of lead2154 – that much is clear. But, what to do about “anti-Semitic tendencies” even in “our party circles” was a concern in the upper levels of the party. According to official data reported in Pravda in 1922, Jews made up 5.2% of the party.2155 M. Agursky: “But their actual influence was considerably more. In that same year at the 11th Communist Party Congress Jews made up 14.6% of the voting delegates, 18.3% of the non-voting delegates and 26% of those elected to the Central Committee at the conference”.2156 (Sometimes one accidentally comes upon such data: a taciturn memoirist from Moscow opens Pravda in July, 1930 and notes: “The portrait of the 25-member Presidium of the Communist Party included 11 Russians, 8 Jews, 3 from the Caucasus, and 3 Latvians”.2157) In the large cities, close to areas of the former Pale of Settlement, the following data: In the early 20’s party organizations in Minsk, Gomel and Vitebsk in 1922 were, respectively, 35.8%, 21.1%, and 2150Г.П. Федотов. Лицо России: Сб. статей (1918-1931). Париж: YMCA-Press, 1967, с, 57. 2151Г. Симон. Евреи царствуют в России: Из воспоминаний американца. Париж: Родник, 1929, с. 50. 2152Письмо В.И. Вернадского И.И. Петрункевичу от 14 июня 1927 // Новый мир, 1989, № 12, с. 219. 2153Ю. Ларин, с. 61-63, 86. 2154Там же, с. 259. 2155E.С. О национальном составе РКП // Правда, 1923, 21 августа, с. 5. 2156М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 264. 2157И.И. Шитц. Дневник «Великого перелома» (март 1928 — август 1931). Париж: YMCA-Press, 1991, с. 202.
  67. 16.6% Jewish, respectively.2158 Larin notes: “Jewish revolutionaries play a bigger part than any others in revolutionary activity” thanks to their qualities, Jewish workers often find it easier to rise to positions of local leadership”.2159 In the same issue of Pravda, it is noted that Jews at 5.2% of the Party were in the third place after Russians (72%) and Ukrainians (5.9%), followed by Latvians (2.5%) and then Georgians, Tatars, Poles and Byelorussians. Jews had the highest rate of per capita party membership – 7.2% of Jews were in the party versus 3.8% for Great Russians.2160 M. Agursky correctly notes that in absolute numbers the majority of communists were, of course, Russians, but “the unusual role of Jews in leadership was dawning on the Russians”.2161 It was just too obvious. For instance, Zinoviev “gathered many Jews around himself in the Petersburg leadership.” (Agursky suggests this was what Larin was referring to in his discussion of the photograph of the Presidium of Petrograd Soviet in 1918 in his book2162). By 1921 the preponderance of Jews in Petrograd CP organization… “was apparently so odious that the Politburo, reflecting on the lessons of Kronshtadt and the anti-Semitic mood of Petrograd, decided to send several ethnic Russian communists to Petrograd, though entirely for publicity purposes.” So Uglanov took the place of Zorin-Homberg as head of Gubkom; Komarov replaced Trilisser and Semyonov went to the Cheka. But Zinoviev “objected to the decision of Politboro and fought the new group” – and as a result Uglanov was recalled from Petrograd and “a purely Russian opposition group formed spontaneously in the Petrograd organization,” a group, “forced to counter the rest of the organization whose tone was set by Jews”.2163 But not only in Petrograd – at the 12th Communist Party Congress (1923) three out of six Politburo members were Jewish. Three out of seven were Jews in the leadership of the Komsomol and in the Presidium of the all-Russia Conference in 1922.2164 This was not tolerable to other leading communists and, apparently, preparations were begun for an anti-Jewish revolt at the 13th Party Congress (May 1924).”There is evidence that a group of members of CK was planning to drive leading Jews from the Politburo, replacing them with Nogin, Troyanovsky and others and that only the death of Nogin interrupted the plot.” His death, “literally on the eve of the Congress”, resulted from an “unsuccessful and unnecessary operation for a stomach ulcer by the same surgeon who dispatched Frunze with an equally unneeded operation a year and a half later”.2165
  68. 2158Евреи в коммунистической партии // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 1 июня(№ 164). 2159Ю. Ларин, с. 257, 268. 2160Е.С. О национальном составе РКП // Правда, 1923, 21 августа, с. 5. 2161М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 303. 2162Ю. Ларин, с. 258. 2163М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 238-239. 2164Известия, 1922, 17 мая, с. 4. 2165Большевики: Документы по истории большевизма с 1903 по 1916 год бывш. Московского Охранного Отделения / Сост. М.А. Цявловский, с дополн. справками
  69. The Cheka-GPU had second place in terms of real power after the Party. A researcher of archival material, whom we quoted in Chapter 16, reports interesting statistics on the composition of the Cheka in 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925 and 1927.2166 He concludes that the proportion of national minorities in the apparatus gradually fell towards the mid-20’s. “In the OGPU as a whole, the proportion of personnel from a national minority fell to 30-35% and to 4045% for those in leadership.” (These figures contrast with 50% and 70% respectively during the “Red Terror.”) However, “we observe a decline in the percentage of Latvians and an increase in the percentage of Jews”. The 20’s was a period of significant influx of Jewish cadres into the organs of the OGPU”. The author explains this: “Jews strived to utilize capabilities not needed in the pre-revolutionary period. With the increasing professionalism and need for organization, Jews, better than others, were able to meet the needs of OGPU and the new conditions.” For example, three of Dzerzhinsky’s four assistants were Jews – G. Yagoda, V.L. Gerson, and M.M. Lutsky.2167 In the 20’s and 30’s, the leading Chekists circled over the land like birds of prey flying quickly from cliff to cliff. From the top ranks of the Central Asian GPU off to Byelorussia and from Western Siberia to the North Caucasus, from Kharkov to Orenburg and from Orel to Vinnitza – there was a perpetual whirlwind of movement and change. And the lonely voices of those surviving witnesses could only speak much later, without precise reference to time, of the executioners whose names flashed by them. The personnel, the deeds and the power of the Cheka were completely secret. For the 10th anniversary of the glorious Cheka we read in a newspaper a formal order signed by the omnipresent Unshlicht (from 1921 – deputy head of Cheka, from 1923 – member of Revvoensovet, from 1925 – Deputy Narkom of the Navy2168). In it, Yagoda was rewarded for “particularly valuable service… for sacrifice in the battle with counter revolution”; also given awards were M. Trilisser (distinguished for his “devotion to the revolution and untiring persecution of its enemies”) as well as 32 Chekists who had not been before the public until then. Each of them with the flick of a finger could destroy anyone of us! Among them were Jakov Agranov (for the work on all important political trials – and in the future he will orchestrate the trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev, the “Industrial Party Trial,” and others2169), Zinovy Katznelson, Matvey Berman (transferred from Central Asia to the Far East) and Lev Belsky (transferred from the Far East to Central Asia). There were several new names: Lev Zalin, Lev Meyer, Leonid Bull (dubbed “warden of Solovki”), Simeon Gendin, Karl Pauker. Some were already known
  70. A.M. Серебренникова. Нью-Йорк: Телекс, 1990, с. 316. 2166Л.Ю. Кричевский. Евреи в аппарате ВЧК-ОГПУ в 20-е годы // Евреи и русская революция: Материалы и исследования / Ред.-сост. О.В. Будницкий. Москва, Иерусалим: Гешарим, 1999, с. 330-336. 2167Там же, с. 340, 344-345. 2168РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 178. 2169РЕЭ, т.1. с. 21.
  71. to only a few, but now the people would get to know them. In this jubilee newspaper2170 issue we can find a large image of slick Menzhinsky with his faithful deputy Yagoda and a photograph of Trilisser. Shortly afterward, another twenty Chekists were awarded with the order of the Red Banner, and again we see a motley company of Russians, Latvians, and Jews, the latter in the same proportions – around one-third. Some of them were avoiding publicity. Simeon Schwartz was director of the Ukrainian Cheka. A colleague of his, Yevsei Shirvindt directed the transport of prisoners and convoys throughout the USSR. Naturally, such Chekists as Grimmeril Heifetz (a spy from the end of the Civil War to the end of WWII) and Sergei Spigelglas (a Chekist from 1917 who, through his work as a spy, rose to become director of the Foreign Department of the NKVD and a two-time recipient of the honorary title of “distinguished chekist”) worked out of the public eye. Careers of others, like Albert Stromin-Stroyev, were less impressive (he “conducted interrogations of scientists during the “Academy trial” in 192931″2171). David Azbel remembers the Nakhamkins, a family of Hasidic Jews from Gomel. (Azbel himself was imprisoned because of snitching by the younger family member, Lev.) “The revolution threw the Nakhamkins onto the crest of a wave. They thirsted for the revenge on everyone – aristocrats, the wealthy, Russians, few were left out. This was their path to self-realization. It was no accident that fate led the offspring of this glorious clan to the Cheka, GPU, NKVD and the prosecutor’s office. To fulfill their plans, the Bolsheviks needed “rabid” people and this is what they got with the Nakhamkins. One member of this family, Roginsky, achieved “brilliant heights” as Deputy Prosecutor for the USSR “but during the Stalinist purges was imprisoned, as were many, and became a cheap stool pigeon… the others were not so well known. They changed their last name to one more familiar to the Russian ear and occupied high places in the Organs”.2172 Unshlict did not change his name to one “more familiar to the Russian ear.” See, this Slavic brother became truly a “father of Russians”: a warplane built with funds of farmer mutual aid societies (that is, – on the last dabs of money extorted from peasants) was named after him. No doubt, farmers could not even pronounce his name and likely thought that this Pole was a Jew. Indeed, this reminds us that the Jewish issue does not explain the devastation of revolution, albeit it places a heavy hue on it. As it was also hued by many other unpronounceable names – from Polish Dzerzhinsky and Eismont to Latvian Vatsetis. And what if we looked into the Latvian issue? Apart from those soldiers who forced the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly and who later provided security for the Bolshevik leaders during the entire Civil
  72. 2170Известия, 1927, 18 дек., с. 1, 3, 4. 2171РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 115-116, 286, 374, 394, 414. 2172Д. Азбель. До, во время и после // Время и мы (далее — ВМ): Международный журнал литературы и общественных проблем. Нью-Йорк, 1989, № 105, с. 204-205.
  73. War, we find many high-placed Latvian Bolsheviks. Gekker suppressed the uprising in Yaroslavl Guberniya. Among others, there were Rudzutak, Eikhe, Eikhmans from Solovki, M. Karklin, A. Kaktyn, R. Kisis, V. Knorin, A. Skundre (one of those who suppressed the Tambov Uprising); Chekists Petere, Latsis, and an “honorary Chekist” Lithuanian I. Yusis. This thread can lead directly to 1991 (Pugo…) And what if we separate Ukrainians from Russians (as demanded by the Ukrainians these days)? We will find dozens of them at the highest posts of Bolshevik hierarchy, from its conception to the very end. No, power was not Jewish power then. Political power was internationalist – and its ranks were to the large extent Russian. But under its multi-hued internationalism it united in an anti-Russian front against a Russian state and Russian traditions. In view of the anti-Russian orientation of power and the multinational makeup of the executioners, why, in Ukraine, Central Asia and the Baltics did the people think it was Russians who had enslaved them? Because they were alien. A destroyer from one’s own nation is much closer than a destroyer from an alien tribe. And while it is a mistake to attribute the ruin and destruction to nationalist chauvinism, at the same time in Russia in the 20’s the inevitable question hanged in the air that was posed many year later by Leonard Schapiro: why was it “highly likely that anyone unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the Cheka would go before a Jewish interrogator or be shot by a Jew.”2173? Yet the majority of modern writers fail to even acknowledge these questions. Often Jewish authors thoughtlessly and meticulously comply and publish vast lists of Jewish leadership of the time. For example, see how proudly the article “Jews in Kremlin”,2174 published in journal Alef, provides a list of the highest Soviet officials – Jews for 1925. It listed eight out of twelve directors of Gosbank. The same level of Jewish representation was found among top trade union leaders. And it comments: “We do not fear accusations. Quite opposite – it is active Jewish participation in governing the state that helps to understand why state affairs were better then than now, when Jews at top positions are as rare as hen’s teeth. Unbelievably, that was written in 1989. Regarding the army, one Israeli scholar2175 painstakingly researched and proudly published a long list of Jewish commanders of the Red Army, during and after the Civil War. Another Israeli researcher published statistics obtained from the 1926 census to the effect that while Jews made up 1.7% of the male population in the USSR, they comprised 2.1% of the combat officers, 4.4% of the command staff, 10.3% of the political leadership and 18.6% of military doctors.2176
  74. 2173Leonard Schapiro. The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement // The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 40, London: Athlone Press, 1961-62, p. 165. 2174М. Зарубежный. Евреи в Кремле // Алеф, Тель-Авив, 1989, Февраль (№ 263), с. 24-28. 2175Арон Абрамович. В решающей войне: Участие и роль евреев СССР в войне против нацизма. 2-е изд. Тель-Авив, 1982. Т. 1. 2176Ицхак Арад. Холокауст: Катастрофа европейского еврейства (1933-1945). Иерусалим, 1990, с. 96.
  75. And what did the West see? If the government apparatus could operate in secret under the communist party, which maintained its conspiratorial secrecy even after coming to power, diplomats were on view everywhere in the world. At the first diplomatic conferences with Soviets in Geneva and the Hague in 1922, Europe could not help but notice that Soviet delegations and their staff were mostly Jewish.2177 Due to the injustice of history, a long and successful career of Boris Yefimovich Stern is now completely forgotten (he wasn’t even mentioned in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE) of 1971). Yet he was the second most important assistant to Chicherin during Genoa Conference, and later at Hague Conference, and still later he led Soviet delegation during longstanding demilitarization negotiations. He was also a member of Soviet delegation at League of Nations. Stern was ambassador in Italy and Finland and conducted delicate negotiations with the Finns before the Soviet-Finnish war. Finally, from 1946 to 1948 he was the head of the Soviet delegation at UN. And he used to be a longstanding lecturer at the High Diplomatic School (at one point during “anti-cosmopolitan” purges he was fired but in 1953 he was restored at that position). An associate of Chicherin, Leon Haikis worked for many years in the Narkomat of the Foreign Affairs (NKID). In 1937 he was sent to a warmer place as ambassador to the embattled Republican government of Spain (where he directed the Republican side during the Civil War), but was arrested and removed. Fyodor Rotshtein founded the communist party in Great Britain in 1920 and in that very year he was a member of the Soviet delegation in negotiations with England! Two years later he represented RSFSR at the Hague conference.2178 (As Litvinov’s right hand man he independently negotiated with ambassadors to Russia in important matters; until 1930 he was in the Presidium of NKID and for 30 years before his death, a professor at the Moscow State University.) And on the other side of the globe, in southern China, M. GruzenbergBorodin had served for 5 years when the December 1927 Canton Rebellion against the Kuomintang broke out. It is now recognized that the revolt was prepared by our Vice Consul, Abram Hassis, who, at age of 33 was killed by Chinese soldiers. Izvestia ran several articles with the obituaries and the photographs of “comrades in arms” under Kuibishev, comparing the fallen comrade with highly distinguished communists like Furmanov and Frunze.2179 In 1922 Gorky told the academic Ipatiev that 98% of the Soviet trade mission in Berlin was Jewish2180 and this probably was not much of an exaggeration. A similar picture would be found in other Western capitals where the Soviets were ensconced. The “work” that was performed in early Soviet
  76. 2177Об этом, в частности, см.: Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство: (Большевизм и иудаизм). Париж, 1923, с. 148. 2178РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 499-500, т. 3, с. 273, 422. 2179Известия, 1927, 22 декабря, с. 1. 2180Vladimir N. Ipatieff. The Life of a Chemist. Stanford, 1946, p. 377.
  77. trade missions is colorfully described in a book by G.A. Solomon,2181 the first Soviet trade representative in Tallinn, Estonia – the first European capital to recognize the Bolsheviks. There are simply no words to describe the boundless theft by the early Bolsheviks in Russia (along with covert actions against the West) and the corruption of soul these activities brought to their effecters. Shortly after Gorky’s conversation with Ipatiev he “was criticized in the Soviet press for an article where he reproached the Soviet government for its placement of so many Jews in positions of responsibility in government and industry. He had nothing against Jews per se, but, departing from views he expressed in 1918, he thought that Russians should be in charge”.2182 And Pravda‘s twin publication Dar Amos (Pravda in Yiddish) objected strongly: Do they (i.e. Gorky and Shalom Ash, the interviewer) really want for Jews to refuse to serve in any government position? For them to get out of the way? That kind of decision could only be made by counter-revolutionaries or cowards”.2183 In Jews in the Kremlin, the author, using the 1925 Annual Report of NKID, introduces leading figures and positions in the central apparatus. “In the publishing arm there is not one non-Jew” and further, with evident pride, the author “examines the staff in the Soviet consulates around the world and finds there is not one country in the world where the Kremlin has not placed a trusted Jew”.2184 If he was interested, the author of Alef could find no small number of Jews in the Supreme Court of RSFSR of 1920’s,2185 in the Procurator’s office and RKI. Here we can find already familiar A. Goikhbarg, who, after chairing the Lesser Sovnarcom, worked out the legal system for the NEP era, supervised development of Civil Code of RSFSR and was director of the Institute of Soviet Law.2186 It is much harder to examine lower, provincial level authorities, and not only because of their lower exposure to the press but also due to their rapid fluidity, and frequent turnover of cadres from post to post, from region to region. This amazing early Soviet shuffling of personnel might have been caused either by an acute deficit of reliable men as in in the Lenin’s era or by mistrust (and the “tearing” of a functionary from the developed connections) in Stalin’s times. Here are several such career “trajectories”. Lev Maryasin was Secretary of Gubkom of Orel Guberniya, later – chair of Sovnarkhoz of Tatar Republic, later – head of a department of CK of Ukraine, later – chair of board of directors of Gosbank of USSR, and later – Deputy Narkom of Finances of USSR. Moris Belotsky was head of Politotdel of the 2181Г.А. Соломон. Среди красных вождей. Париж: Мишень, 1930. 4.2. 2182Vladimir N. Ipatieff. The Life of a Chemist, p. 377. 2183Еврейская трибуна*, 1922, 6 июля (№ 130), с. 6. 2184М. Зарубежный. Евреи в Кремле // Алеф, 1989, Февраль, с. 26-27. 2185Izvestia. 1927, 25 août, p. 2. 2186РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 331.
  78. First Cavalry Army (a very powerful position), participated in suppression of the Kronshtadt Uprising, later – in NKID, then later – the First Secretary of North Ossetian Obkom, and even later was First Secretary of CK of Kyrgyzstan. A versatile functionary Grigory Kaminsky was Secretary of Gubkom of Tula Guberniya, later – Secretary of CK of Azerbaijan, later – chair of Kolkhozcenter, and later – Narkom of Health Care Service. Abram Kamensky was Narkom of State Control Commission of DonetskKrivoy Rog Republic, later – Deputy Narkom of Nationalities of RSFSR, later – Secretary of Gubkom of Donetsk, later served in Narkomat of Agriculture, then – director of Industrial Academy, and still later he served in the Narkomat of Finances.2187 There were many Jewish leaders of the Komsomol. Ascendant career of Efim Tzetlin began with the post of the First Chairman of CK RKSM (fall of 1918); after the Civil War he become Secretary of CK and Moscow Committee of RKSM, since 1922 – a member of executive committee of KIM (Young Communist International), in 1923-24 – a spy in Germany, later he worked in Secretariat of Executive Committee of Communist International, still later – in editorial office of Pravda, and even later he was head of Bukharin’s secretariat, where this latter post eventually proved fatal for him.2188 The career of Isaiah Khurgin was truly amazing. In 1917 he was a member of Ukrainian Rada [Parliament], served both in the Central and the Lesser chambers and worked on the draft of legislation on Jewish autonomy in Ukraine. Since 1920 we see him as a member VKPb, in 1921 – he was the Trade Commissioner of Ukraine in Poland, in 1923 he represented GermanAmerican Transport Society in USA, serving as a de facto Soviet plenipotentiary. He founded and chaired Amtorg (American Trading Corporation). His future seemed incredibly bright but alas at the age of 38 (in 1925) he was drowned in a lake in USA.2189 What a life he had! Let’s glance at the economy. Moses Rukhimovitch was Deputy Chair of Supreme Soviet of the National Economy. Ruvim Levin was a member of Presidium of Gosplan (Ministry of Economic Planning) of USSR and Chair of Gosplan of RSFSR (later – Deputy Narkom of Finances of USSR). Zakhary Katzenelenbaum was inventor of the governmental “Loan for Industrialization” in 1927 (and, therefore, of all subsequent “loans”). He also was one of the founders of Soviet Gosbank. Moses Frumkin was Deputy Narkom of Foreign Trade from 1922 but in fact he was in charge of the entire Narkomat. He and A. I. Vainstein were long-serving members of the panel of Narkomat of Finances of USSR. Vladimirov-Sheinfinkel was Narkom of Provand of Ukraine, later – Narkom of Agriculture of Ukraine, and even later he served as Narkom of Finances of RSFSR and Deputy Narkom of Finances of USSR.2190
  79. 2187Там же, с. 105, 536, 538, т. 2, с. 256. 2188РЕЭ. т. 3, с. 311-312. 2189РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 302. 2190РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 197-198, 234, 275-276, т. 2, с. 18, 140 518 т. 3, с. 260.
  80. If you are building a mill, you are responsible for possible flood. A newspaper article by Z. Zangvil describes celebratory jubilee meeting of the Gosbank board of directors in 1927 (five years after introduction of chervonets [a former currency of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union] and explains the importance of chervonets and displays a group photograph. The article lauds Sheinman, the chairman of the board, and Katzenelenbaum, a member of the board.2191 Sheinman’s signature was reproduced on every Soviet chervonets and he simultaneously held the post of Narkom of Domestic Commerce (from 1924). And hold your breath, my reader! He didn’t return from a foreign visit in 1929!2192 He preferred to live in bloody capitalism! Speaking of mid-level Soviet institutions, the well-known economist and professor B. D. Brutskus asks: “Did not the revolution open up new opportunities for the Jewish population?” Among these opportunities would be government service. “…more than anything it is obvious the large numbers of Jews in government, particularly in higher posts,” and “most of the Jewish government employees come from the higher classes not the Jewish masses.” But, upperclass Jews, required to serve the Soviet government did not gain, but lost in comparison with what they would have had in their own businesses or freely pursuing professions. As well, those who moved through the Soviet hierarchy had to display the utmost of tact to avoid arousing jealousy and dissatisfaction. A large number of Jewish public servants, regardless of talent and qualities, would not lessen anti-Semitism, but would strengthen it among other workers and among the intelligentsia.” He maintained “there are many Jewish public servants particularly in the commissariats devoted to economic functions”.2193 Larin put it more simply: “the Jewish intelligentsia in large numbers served the victorious revolution readily” realizing “access to previously denied government service”.2194 G. Pomerantz, speaking 50 years later justified this: “history dragged Jews into the government apparatus,” … Jews had nowhere else to go besides to government institutions,” including the Cheka2195 as we commented earlier. The Bolsheviks also “had no other place to go – the Jewish Tribune from Paris explains “there were so many Jews in various Soviet functions” because of the need for literate, sober bureaucrats”.2196 However one can read in Jewish World, a Parisian publication, that: “there is no denying that a large percentage of Jewish youth from lower social elements — some completely hopeless failures, were drawn to Bolshevism by
  81. 2191Известия, 1927, 27 ноября, с. 4. 2192РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 383. 2193Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической властью // Современные записки, Париж, 1928, кн. 36, с. 519-521. 2194Ю. Ларин, с. 73. 2195Г. Померанц. Сон о справедливом возмездии // Синтаксис: Публицистика, критика, полемика. Париж, 1980, № 6, с. 52-53, 68. 2196В. Мирский. Чёрная сотня // Еврейская трибуна, 1924, 1 февраля (№ 58), с. 3.
  82. the sudden prospect of power; for others it was the ‘world proletarian revolution’ and for still others it was a mixture of adventurous idealism and practical utilitarianism.2197 Of course not all were “drawn to Bolshevism.” There were large numbers of peaceful Jews whom the revolution crushed. However, the life in the towns of the former Pale of Settlement was not visible to ordinary non-Jewish person. Instead the average person saw, as described by M. Heifetz, “arrogant, selfconfident and self-satisfied adult Jews at ease on ‘red holidays’ and ‘red weddings’… ‘We now sit where Tsars and generals once sat, and they sit beneath us’”.2198 These were not unwaveringly ideological Bolsheviks. The invitation to power was extended to “millions of residents from rotting shtetls, to pawn brokers, tavern owners, contrabandists, seltzer water salesmen and those who sharpened their wills in the fight for survival and their minds in evening study of the Torah and the Talmud. The authorities invited them to Moscow, Petrograd and Kiev to take into their quick nervous hands that which was falling from the soft, pampered hands of the hereditary intelligentsia – everything from the finances of a great power, nuclear physics and the secret police. They couldn’t resist the temptation of Esau, the less so since, in addition to a bowl of potage, they were offered the chance to build the promised land, that is, communism”.2199 There was “a Jewish illusion that this was their country”.2200 Many Jews did not enter the whirlwind of revolution and didn’t automatically join the Bolsheviks, but the general national inclination was one of sympathy for the Bolshevik cause and a feeling that life would now be incomparably better. “The majority of Jews met the revolution, not with fear, but with welcome arms”.2201 In the early 20’s the Jews of Byelorussia and Ukraine were a “significant source of support for the centralization of power in Moscow over and against the influence of regional power”.2202 Evidence of Jewish attitudes in 1923 showed the overwhelming majority considered Bolshevism to be a lesser evil and that if the Bolsheviks lost power it would be worse for them.2203 “Now, a Jew can command an army!… These gifts alone were enough to bring Jewish support for the communists… The disorder of the Bolshevism 2197Ст. Иванович. Евреи и советская диктатура // Еврейский мир: Ежегодник на 1939г. (далее — ЕМ-1). Париж: Объединение русско-еврейской интеллигенции, с. 47. 2198Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки). Париж: Третья волна, 1978, с. 43. 2199Там же, с. 44-45. 2200В. Богуславский. В защиту Куняева // “22”: Общественно-политический и литературный журнал еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1980, № 16, с. 174. 2201R. Rutman. Solzhenitsyn and the Jewish Question // Soviet Jewish Affairs, 1974, Vol. 4, № 2, p. 7. 2202М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 150. 2203К евреям всех стран! // РиЕ, с. 7.
  83. seemed like a brilliant victory for justice and no one noticed the complete suppression of freedom”.2204 Large number of Jews who did not leave after the revolution failed to foresee the bloodthirstiness of the new government, though the persecution, even of socialists, was well underway. The Soviet government was as unjust and cruel then as it was to be in ’37 and in 1950. But in the 20’s it did not raise alarm or resistance in the wider Jewish population since its force was aimed not at Jewry.
  84. When Leskov, in a report for the Palensky Commission [Translator’s note: a pre-revolution government commission], one by one refuted all the presumed consequences for Russians from the removal of restrictions on Jewish settlement in Russia he couldn’t have foreseen the great degree to which Jews would be participating in governing the country and the economy in the 20’s. The revolution changed the entire course of events and we don’t know how things would have developed without it. When in 1920, Solomon Luria [Translator’s note: aka Lurie], a professor of ancient history in Petrograd, found that in Soviet, internationalist and communist Russia anti-Semitism was again on the rise, he was not surprised. On the contrary, “events substantiated the correctness of [his] earlier conclusions” that the “cause of anti-Semitism lies with the Jews themselves” and currently “with or in spite of the complete absence of legal restrictions on Jews, anti-Semitism has erupted with a new strength and reached a pitch that could never have been imagined in the old regime”.2205 Russian (more precisely Little Russian) anti-Semitism of past centuries and the early 20th century was blown away with its seeds by the winds of the October revolution. Those who joined the Union of the Russian People, those who marched with their religious standards to smash Jewish shops, those who demanded the execution of Beilis, those who defended the royal throne, the urban middle class and those who were with them or who resembled them or who were suspected to be like them were rounded up by the thousands and shot or imprisoned. Among Russian workers and peasants there was no anti-Semitism before the revolution – this is attested to by leaders of the revolution themselves. The Russian intelligentsia was actively sympathetic to the cause of the oppressed Jews and children of the post-revolution years were raised only in the internationalist spirit. Stripped of any strength, discredited and crushed completely, where did anti-Semitism come from?
  85. 2204И.М. Бикерман. К самопознанию еврея: Чем мы были, чем мы стали, чем мы должны быть. Париж, 1939, с. 70. 2205С.Я. Лурье. Антисемитизм в древнем мире. Тель-Авив: Сова, 1976, с. 8 [1-е изд. — Пг.: Былое, 1922].
  86. We already described how surprising it was for Jewish-Russian émigrés to learn that anti-Semitism had not died. They followed the phenomenon in writings of socialists E.D. Kuskova and S.S. Maslov, who came from Russia in 1922. In an article in the Jewish Tribune, Kuskova states that anti-Semitism in the USSR is not a figment of the imagination and that “in Russia, Bolshevism is now blending with Judaism — this cannot be doubted.” She even met highly cultured Jews who were anti-Semites of the new “Soviet type.” A Jewish doctor told her: “Jewish Bolshevik administrators ruined the excellent relations he had with the local population.” A teacher said “children tell me that I teach in a Jewish school” because we have “forbidden the teaching of The Ten Commandments and driven off the priest.” “There are only Jews in the Narkomat of Education. In high school circles (‘from radical families’) there is talk about the predominance of the Jews.” “Young people, in general are more anti-Semitic than the older generation… and one hears everywhere ‘they showed their true colors and tortured us’.” “Russian life is full of this stuff today. But if you ask me who they are, these anti-Semites, they are most of the society.” “So widespread is this thinking that the political administration distributed a proclamation explaining why there are so many Jews in it: ‘When the Russian proletariat needed its own new intelligentsia, mid-level intelligentsia, technical workers and administrative workers, not surprisingly, Jews, who, before had been in the opposition, came forward to meet them… the occupation by Jews of administrative posts in the new Russia is historically inevitable and would have been the natural outcome, regardless of whether the new Russia had become KD (Constitutional Democrat), SR (Socialist Revolutionary) or proletarian. Any problems with having Aaron Moiseevich Tankelevich sitting in the place of Ivan Petrovich Ivanov need to be ‘cured’.” Kuskova parries “in a Constitutional Democratic or SR Russia many administrative posts would have been occupied by Jews…. but neither the Kadets nor SR’s would have forbidden teaching the Ten Commandments and wouldn’t have chopped off heads… Stop Tankelevich from doing evil and there will be no microbe of anti-Semitism”.2206 The Jewish émigré community was chilled by Maslov’s findings. Here was a tested SR with an unassailable reputation who lived through the first four years of Soviet power. “Judeophobia is everywhere in Russia today. It has swept areas where Jews were never before seen and where the Jewish question never occurred to anyone. The same hatred for Jews is found in Vologda, Archangel, in the towns of Siberia and the Urals”.2207 He recounts several episodes affecting the perception of the simple Russian peasants such as the Tyumen Produce Commissar Indenbaum’s order to shear sheep for the second time in the season,
  87. 2206Е. Кускова. Кто они и как быть? // Еврейская трибуна, 1922, 19 октября (№ 144), с. 12. 2207С.С. Маслов. Россия после четырёх лет революции. Париж: Русская печать, 1922. Кн. 2, с. 41.
  88. “because the Republic needs wool.” (This was prior to collectivization, no less; these actions of this commissar caused the Ishim peasant uprising.) The problem arose because it was late in the fall and the sheep would die without their coats from the coming winter cold. Maslov does not name the commissars who ordered the planting of millet and fried sun-flower seeds or issued a prohibition on planting malt, but one can conclude they did not come from ordinary Russian folk or from the Russian aristocracy or from “yesterday’s men.” From all this, the peasantry could only conclude that the power over them was “Jewish.” So too did the workers. Several workers’ resolutions from the Urals in Feb and March of 1921 sent to the Kremlin “complained with outrage of the dominance of the Jews in central and local government.” “The intelligentsia, of course does not think that Soviet power is Jewish, but it has noted the vastly disproportionate role of Jews in authority” when compared to their numbers in the population. “And if a Jew approaches a group of non-Jews who are freely discussing Soviet reality, they almost always change the topic of conversation even if the new arrival is a personal acquaintance”.2208 Maslov tries to understand “the cause of the widespread and bitter hatred of Jews in modern Russia” and it seems to him to be the “identification throughout society of Soviet power and Jewish power.” ”The expression ‘Yid Power’ is often used in Russia and particularly in Ukraine and in the former Pale of Settlement not as a polemic, but as a completely objective definition of power, its content and its politics.” ”Soviet power in the first place answers the wishes and interests of Jews and they are its ardent supporters and in the second place, power resides in Jewish hands.” Among the causes of Judeophobia Maslov notes the “tightly welded ethnic cohesion they have formed as a result of their difficult thousands year old history”. “This is particularly noticeable when it comes to selecting staff at institutions – if the selection process is in the hands of Jews, you can bet that the entire staff of responsible positions will go to Jews, even if it means removing the existing staff.” And often that “preference for their own is displayed in a sharp, discourteous manner which is offensive to others.” In the Jewish bureaucrat, Soviet power manifests more obviously its negative features… the intoxicating wine of power is stronger for Jews and goes to their head… I don’t know where this comes from,” perhaps because of the low cultural level of the former pharmacists and shopkeepers. Maybe from living earlier without full civil rights?”.2209 The Parisian Zionist journal Sunrise wrote in 1922 that Gorky essentially said that “the growth of anti-Semitism is aided by the tactless behavior of the Jewish Bolsheviks themselves in many situations.” That is the blessed truth!
  89. 2208Там же, с. 41,42,43, 155, 176-177. 2209Там же, с. 42,44-45.
  90. And Gorky wasn’t speaking of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev – he was speaking of the typical Jewish communist who occupies a position in the collegia, presidia and petty and mid-level Soviet institutions where he comes into contact with large swaths of the population. Such individuals occupy leading front-line positions which naturally multiplies their number in the mind of the public.2210 D. Pasmanik comments: “we must admit that many Jews through their own actions provoke acute anti-Semitism… all the impudent Jews filling the communist ranks – these pharmacists, shopkeepers, peddlers, dropouts and pseudo intellectuals are indeed causing much evil to Russia and Jewry”.2211 “Hardly ever before inside of Russia or outside of Russia have Jews been the subject of such an active and concentrated hostility — it has never reached such an intensity nor been so widespread. This elemental hostility has been fed by the open and undeniable participation of Jews in destructive processes underway in Europe as well as by the tales and exaggerations about such participation”.2212 “A terrible anti-Semitic mood is taking hold, fed exclusively by Bolshevism which continues to be identified with Jewry”.2213 In 1927 Mikhail Kozakov (shot in 1930 after the “food workers’ trial”) wrote in a private letter to his brother overseas about the “Judeophobic mood of the masses (among non-party and party members)… it is no secret that the mass of workers do not love the Jews”.2214 And Shulgin, after his “secret” trip to the USSR in 1928 says: No one says anymore that anti-Semitism is propaganda planted by the “Tsar’s government” or an infection limited to the “dregs of society”… Geographically it spreads wider each day threatening to engulf all of Russia. The main center today seems to be Moscow… anti-Semitism is a new phenomenon in Great Russia,” but is much more serious than old anti-Semitism in the South (anti-Semitism of the South of Russia was traditionally humorous and mitigated by anecdotes about Jews2215). Larin brings up an anti-Jewish slogan allegedly used for propaganda purposes by the White Guards — “Russians are sent to Narym [Translator’s note: a locale in the far north] and Jews to the Crimea” [Translator’s note: a vacation spot].2216 The Soviet authorities eventually became seriously concerned with the rise of anti-Semitism. In 1923 the Jewish Tribunewrites, albeit with skepticism, “the
  91. 2210Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство*, с. 198-199. 2211Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 198, 200. 2212Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // РиЕ, с. 101. 2213Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 217. 2214М. Козаков. [Письмо] // Библиотека-фонд «Русское Зарубежье» (БФРЗ). Ф. 1, Е-60, с. 1. 2215В.В. Шульгин. «Что нам в них не нравится…»: Об Антисемитизме в России. Париж, 1929, с. 41-43. 2216Ю. Ларин, с. 254.
  92. Commissariat of Internal Affairs has established a commission to study the question of ‘protecting the Jews from dark forces’ ”.2217 In 1926 Kalinin (and other functionaries) received many questions about Jews in letters and at meetings. As a result, Larin undertook a study of the problem in a book Jews and anti-Semitism in the USSR. From his own reports, queries and interviews (taken, we can presume, from communists or communist sympathizers) he enumerates 66 questions from those the authorities received, recording them without editing the language. Among these questions:2218 Where are the Jews in Moscow coming from? Why is authority predominantly Jewish? How come Jews don’t wait in line? How do Jews arriving from Berdichev and other cities immediately receive apartments? (There is a joke that the last Jew left Berdichev and gave the keys to the city to Kalinin.) Why do Jews have money and own their own bakeries, etc? Why are Jews drawn to light work and not to physical labor? Why do Jews in government service and in professions stick together and help each other while Russians do not? They do not want to work at everyday jobs, but are concerned only with their careers. Why do they not farm even though it is now allowed them? Why are Jews given good land in the Crimea while Russians are given inferior land? Why is party opposition 76% Jewish? [Translator’s note: the opposition to the “general line of the party” within the party itself] Why did anti-Semitism develop only against Jews and not against other nationalities? What should a group agitprop leader do when he tries to counter antiSemitic tendencies in his group and no one supports him? Larin suspects that these questions were dreamed up and spread among the masses by an underground organization of counter-revolutionaries!2219 As we will see later, this is where some official explanations came from. But he fixates on the unexpected phenomenon and tries to address scientifically the question “How could anti-Semitism take hold in the USSR in those strata of society — [factory workers, students], where, before the revolution, it was little noted?”2220 His findings were: Anti-Semitism among the intelligentsia. “Among the intelligentsia anti-Semitism is more developed than in any other group.” However, he maintains that “dissatisfaction rises not from the
  93. 2217Г. Римский. Правительственный антисемитизм в Советской России // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 7 сент. (№ 170), с. 3. 2218Ю. Ларин, с. 240-244. 2219Ю. Ларин, с. 244. 2220Там же, с. 47.
  94. large number of Jews, but from the fact that Jews presumed to enter into competition with the Russian intelligentsia for government jobs.” “The obvious development of anti-Semitic attitudes among city clerks and workers by 1928 cannot be explained by excessive numbers of Jews claiming jobs”. “Among the intellectual professions, anti-Semitic tendencies are felt in the medical sphere and in engineering… The army has “good political training” and there is no anti-Semitism there, even though the command staff of the Red Army has a significantly higher percentage of Jews than are present in the country as a whole”.2221 Anti-Semitism among the urban bourgeoisie. “The root of anti-Semitism is found in urban bourgeois philistinism.” But, “the battle against anti-Semitism among the bourgeoisie…it is mixed in with the question of the destruction of the bourgeoisie in general… The antiSemitism of the bourgeoisie will disappear when the bourgeoisie disappears”.2222 Anti-Semitism in the countryside. “We have almost completely pushed out the private trader of the peasant’s grain, therefore among the peasant masses anti-Semitism is not showing itself and has even weakened against its pre-war levels.” Now it appears only in those areas where Jews have been resettled on the land, allegedly from Kulaks and former landowners.2223 Anti-Semitism among the working class. “Anti-Semitism among the workers has grown noticeably stronger in recent years.” By 1929 there could be no doubt of its existence. Now it occurs with more frequency and intensity than a few years ago. It is particularly strong among the “backwards parts of the working class” — women and seasonal workers. However, an anti-Semitic mood can be observed among a broad spectrum of workers,” not only among the “corrupted fringe.” And here economic competition is not a factor — it arises even where there is no such competition; Jews make up only make “only 2.7%” of the working class. In the lower level professional organizations they tried to paint over anti-Semitism. Difficulties arise because attempts to “hide anti-Semitism” come from the “active proletariat” itself; indeed, anti-Semitism originates from the “active proletariat.” “In many cases Party members and members of Komsomol demonstrate anti-Semitism. Talk of Jewish dominance is particularly widespread, and in meetings one hears complaints that the Soviet authority limits itself to battle with the Orthodox religion alone.” What savagery — anti-Semitism among the proletariat?!! How could this occur in the most progressive and politically aware class in the world?! Larin finds that it arose because “no other means remained for the White Guard to influence the masses besides anti-Semitism.” Its plan of action moves along
  95. 2221Там же, с. 35, 86, 102, 108-110, 120. 2222Там же, с. 121, 134, 135. 2223Там же, с. 144, 145, 148-149.
  96. “the rails of anti-Semitism”.2224 This was a theory that was to have frightening consequences. Larin’s views on the anti-Semitism of the time were to find echoes later in other authors. S. Shwartz provides his own variant on anti-Semitism as being the result of a “vulgar perception of Jews as the main carriers of the New Economic Policy (NEP).” But he agrees: “The Soviet government, not without basis, saw in antiSemitism a possible tool of the counter-revolution”.2225 In 1968 the author adds: “After the civil war, anti-Semitism began to spread, gripping layers of society which were free of this tendency before the revolution”.2226 Against this it was necessary to engage not in academic discussion but to act energetically and forcefully. In May, 1928 the CK of the VKPb issued an Agitprop communication about “measures to be taken in the battle with antiSemitism.” (As was often the case in implementation of party directives, related documents were not publicized, but circulated among party organizations.) The battle to create an atmosphere of intolerance of anti-Semitism was to be taken up in educational programs, public reports, lectures, the press, radio and school textbooks and finally, authorities were “to apply the strictest disciplinary measures to those found guilty of anti-Semitic practices”.2227 Sharp newspaper articles followed. In Pravda’sarticle by a highly connected Lev Sosnovsky, he incriminates all kinds of party and educational officials in anti-Semitism: an official in Kiev “openly fires Jews” with “the connivance of the local district party committee”; defamatory anti-Jewish graffiti is widespread etc. From a newspaper article: “with the growing battle against anti-Semitism there are demands to solve the problem by increasing repression on those carriers of antiSemitism and on those who protect them.” Clearly it was the GPU speaking through the language of a newspaper article.2228 After Larin’s report, the issue of anti-Semitism was included into various educational curricula, while Larin himself continued to research the ways to overcome anti-Semitism decisively. “Until now we were too soft… allowing propaganda to spread… Locally officials often do not deal with anti-Semitism as rigorously as they should.” Newspapers “should not fear to point attention to “the Jewish issue” (to avoid dissemination of anti-Semitism) as it only interferes with the fight against counter revolutionary sabotage.” ”AntiSemitism is a social pathology like alcoholism or vagrancy. Too often when dealing with communists we let them off with mere censure. If a person goes to church and gets married, then we exclude him without discussion — antiSemitism is no less an evil.”
  97. 2224Ю. Ларин, с. 238-240, 244-245, 247, 248. 2225С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 8, 39. 2226В. Александрова. Евреи в советской литературе // КРЕ-2, с. 290. 2227С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 83-84. 2228Л.С. На борьбу с пособниками контрреволюции // Правда, 1928, 17мая, с. 4.
  98. ”As the USSR develops towards socialism, the prognosis is good that ‘Soviet’ anti-Semitism and the legacy of pre-Soviet relationships will be torn out by the roots. Nevertheless, it is absolutely necessary to impose severe controls on intellectual anti-Semitism especially in the teaching profession and civil service”.2229 But the very spirit of the brave Twenties demands stronger language. “The nature of modern-day anti-Jewish agitation in the USSR is political and not nationalistic.” Agitation against the Jews is directed not just against Jews, but indirectly against the Soviet power.” Or maybe not so indirect: “anti-Semitism is a means of mobilization against Soviet power.” And “those against the position of Soviet authorities on the Jewish question are against the working class and for the capitalists.” Any talk of “ ‘Jewish dominance’ will be regarded as counterrevolutionary activity against the very foundation of the nationalities policy of the proletarian revolution… Parts of the intelligentsia, and sometimes the White Guards are using anti-Semitism to transmit bourgeois ideology.” Yes, that’s it – a White Guard whispering campaign, clearly there is “planned… agitation by secret White Guard organizations.” Behind “the philistine anti-Jewish agitation, secret monarchist organizations are leading a battle against Soviet power…” And from “the central organs of anti-Soviet emigration (including Jewish bankers and Tsarist generals) an ideology is transmitted right into our factories proving that anti-Jewish agitation in the USSR is class-based, not nationality-based… It is necessary to explain to the masses that encouragement of anti-Jewish feelings in essence is an attempt to lay the groundwork for counter-revolution. The masses must regard anyone who shows sympathy to anti-Semitism as a secret counter-revolutionary or the mouthpiece of a secret monarchist organization.” (There are conspiracies everywhere!) “The term ‘anti-Semite’ must take on the same meaning in the public mind as the term ‘counter-revolutionary’ ”.2230 The authorities had seen through everything and named everything for what it was: counter-revolution, White Guards, monarchists, White generals and “anyone suspected of being any of the above…” For the thickheaded, the revolutionary orator elaborates: “The methods to fight anti-Semitism are clear.” At a minimum, to conduct open investigations and sessions of “people’s tribunal against anti-Semitism” at local levels under the motto “explanations for the backward workers” and “repressions for the malicious.” “There is no reason why “Lenin’s decree” should not apply”)2231 Under “Lenin’s decree” (that from July 27, 1918) active anti-Semites were to be placed outside of the law — that is, to be shot even for agitating for a pogrom, not just for participating in one.2232 The law encouraged each Jew to register a complaint about any ethnic insult visited upon him.
  99. 2229Ю. Ларин, с. 9, 119-120, 269-270, 276-277, 280-282. 2230Ю. Ларин, с. 27, 45-46, 106, 116, 252, 254, 255, 257. 2231Там же, с. 138, 283, 288. 2232Там же, с. 259, 278.
  100. Now some later author will object that the “July 27 Act” was ultimately not included in the law and was not part of the criminal code of 1922. Though the criminal code of 1926 did include an article about the “instigation of ethnic hostility and dissension,” there were “no specific articles about acts of antiSemitism.” This is not convincing. Article 59-7 of the Criminal Code (“propaganda or agitation intended to incite national or religious hatred or dissension”) was sufficient to send one to prison and the article provided for confiscation of the property of perpetrators of “widespread disturbances” and, under aggravated circumstances (for instance, class origin) – death. Article 59-7 was based on the “RSFSR Penal Code” of Feb 26, 1927, which widened the definition of “instigation of national hatred” making it equal in seriousness to “dissemination or preparation and storing of literature”.2233 Storing books! How familiar is that proscription, contained in the related law 58-10! [Translator’s note: infamous Article 58 of the Penal Code of RSFSR dealt with so-called counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet activities.] Many brochures on anti-Semitism were published and “finally, Feb 19, 1929 Pravda devoted its lead article to the matter: ‘Attention to the battle with anti-Semitism’ ”.2234 A 1929 resolution of CK of Communist Party of Byelorussia stated that “counter-revolutionary nature of anti-Semitic incidents is often ignored” and that organs of justice should “intensify the fight, prosecuting both perpetrators of the law and those who inspire them”.2235 The secretary of the CK of Komsomol said “most dangerous in our conditions are secret anti-Semites who hide their anti-Semitic attitudes”.2236 Those who are familiar with Soviet language understand: it is necessary to cut off suspected ways of thinking. (This recalls Grigory Landau, speaking of Jewish opponents: “They suspect or accuse other groups around them of antiSemitism… Anyone who voices a negative opinion about Jews is accused of being an open anti-Semite and others are called secret anti-Semites”.2237 In 1929, a certain I. Zilberman in Daily Soviet Jurisprudence (no. 4) writes that there were too few court trials relating to anti-Semitism in Moscow Province. In the city of Moscow alone for the year there were only 34 cases (that is, every 10 days there was a trial for anti-Semitism somewhere in Moscow). The Journal of Narkomyust was read as an instruction manual for bringing such cases. Could the most evil anti-Semite have thought up a better way to identify Jews with Soviet power in the opinion of the people? It went so far that in 1930 the Supreme Court of RSFSR ruled that Article 59-7 “should not be used by members of national minorities seeking redress in
  101. 2233С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 72-73. 2234Там же*, с. 32. 2235С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм… *, с. 88-89. 2236Там же*, с. 90-91. 2237Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // РиЕ, с. 101.
  102. conflicts of a personal nature”.2238 In other words the judicial juggernaut had already been wound up and was running at full speed.
  103. If we look at life of regular, not “commanding”, Jewish folk, we see desolation and despair in formerly vibrant and thriving shtetls. Jewish Tribune reproduced report by a special official who inspected towns and shtetls in the south-west of Russia in 1923, indicating that as the most active inhabitants moved into cities, the remaining population of elders and families with many children lived to large extent by relying on humanitarian and financial aid from America.2239 Indeed, by the end of the period of “War Communism” (1918-1920) when all trade, or any buying and selling, were prohibited under threat of property confiscation and fines, the Jews were helped by Jewish charities like Joint through the all-Russian Public Committee for “assistance to victims of pogroms and destitute Jews”. Several other charities protected the Jewish population later at different times, such as the SC (Society of Craftsmen, which after the revolution moved abroad), EKOPO (the Jewish committee for assistance to victims of war) and EKO (the Jewish colonizing society). In 192122, Soviet-based Jewish charities functioned in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Despite intervention and obstacles from YevSeks (Jewish communist organizations), “Joint provided Soviet Jews with extensive financial and other assistance”, whereas SC “was dedicated to establishment and development of Jewish industry and agriculture in the south of Ukraine” during first half of 1920’s.2240 The first Soviet census provides insight into Jewish life during the liberalized NEP period. Forty percent of Jews were classified as “active” (not dependents). Of those, 28% were public servants, 21% – craftsmen, 19% – industry workers (including apprentices), 12% – merchants, 9% – peasants, 1% – military men, and 10% were classified as “others”. Among public servants, Jews were well represented in trade-related occupations. For instance, in Moscow business organizations 16% of the clerks were Jews, in credit and trade organizations – 13% (30% according to the Jewish Encyclopedia)2241, in public organizations – 19%, in fiscal organizations – 9%, in Sovdeps – 10%, with virtually no presence in police force. The percentages were correspondingly higher in the former Pale of Settlement areas, up to 62% in the state trade of Byelorussia, 44% – in Ukraine (77% in category of “private state servants”). The flow of Jewish workers into industry was much slower than government wished. There were almost no Jews among railroad men and miners’ they rather
  104. 2238С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…*, с. 73, 74. 2239НЭП и евреи // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 21 сентября (№ 171), с. 3-4. 2240КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 170,171. 2241КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 186.
  105. preferred the professions of tailor, tanner, typographer, woodworker and foodrelated specialties and other fields of consumer industry. To recruit Jewish workers into industry, special professional schools were created with predominantly foreign funding from Jewish organizations abroad.2242 It was the time of NEP, which “improved economic conditions of Jewish population within a new, Soviet framework”.2243 In 1924 Moscow 75% of the perfume and pharmaceutical trade was in Jewish hands, as well as 55% of the manufactured goods trade, 49% of the jewelry trade, 39% of the small ware trade, and 36% of the wood-depots. “Starting business in a new place, a Jew usually run down prices in private sector to attract clientele”.2244 The first and most prominent NEPmen often were Jews. To large extent, anger against them stemmed from the fact that they utilized the Soviet as well as the market systems: their commerce was routinely facilitated by their links and pulls in the Soviet apparatus. Sometimes such connections were exposed by authorities as in the case of famous “Paraffin Affair” (1922). During 1920’s, there were abundant opportunities to buy up belongings of oppressed and persecuted “former” people, especially high quality or rare furniture. S. Ettinger noted that Jews made a majority of NEPmen and new-riches,2245 which was supported by impressive list of individuals who “failed to pay state taxes and dues” in Izvestia in 1929.2246 However, at the end of NEP, authorities launched “anti-capitalist” assault against financiers, merchants and manufacturers, many of whom were Jewish. As a result, many Jews turned into “Soviet trade servants” and continued working in the same spheres of finance, credit and commerce. A steamroller of merchandise and property confiscations, outright state robbery and social ostracizing (outclassing people into disenfranchised “lishenets” category) was advancing on private commerce. “Some Jewish merchants, attempting to avoid discriminating and endlessly increasing taxation, declared themselves as having no occupation during the census”.2247 Nevertheless “virtually the entire Jewish male population in towns and shtetls… passed through the torture chambers of GPU” during the campaign of gold and jewelry extortion in the beginning of 1930’s.2248 Such things would be regarded as an impossible nightmare in Czar’s Russia. Many Jewish families, to avoid the stigma of being “lishenets”, moved into large cities. In the end, “only one-fifth of Soviet Jews lived in the traditional Jewish settlements by 1930’s”.2249
  106. 2242Ю. Ларин, с. 75, 77-80, 107. 2243Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, 2244Ю. Ларин* с. 121-122. 2245Samuel Ettinger. Russian Society and the Jews // Bulletin on Soviet and East European Jewish Affairs, 1970, № 5, p. 38-39. 2246Известия, 1928, 22 апреля, с. 7. 2247КЕЭ. т. 8, с. 187. 2248Там же, с. 161. 2249Там же, с. 188.
  107. “Socioeconomic experiments by the Soviet authorities including all kinds of nationalization and socialization had not only devastated the middle classes, but also hit badly the small merchants and craftsmen”.2250 “Due to general lack of merchandise and solvent customers as well as low liquidity and exorbitant taxes, many shtetl merchants had no other choice but to close down their shops” and while the “most active left for cities”, the remaining populace has nothing else to do but “aimlessly roam decrepit streets, loudly complaining about their fate, people and God”. It is apparent that Jewish masses have completely lost their economic foundations”.2251 It was really like that in many shtetls at that time. To address the problem, even special resolution of Sovnarkom was issued in 1929. G. Simon, a former emigrant, came to USSR in the end of 1920’s as an American businessman with a mission “to investigate shortages of Jewish craftsmen in tools”. Later, in Paris, he published a book with an emotional and ironic title Jews Rule Over Russia. Describing the situation with Jewish manufacturing and trade, its oppression and destruction by Soviets, he also shares his impressions. Quoting many conversations, the general mood of populace is pretty gloomy. “Many bad things, many crimes happen in Russia these days but it’s better to suppress that blinding hatred”; “they often fear that the revolution will inevitably end in the Russian manner, i.e. by mass-murder of Jews”. A local Bolshevik-Jew suggests that “it’s only the revolution that stands between the Jews and those wishing to aggrandize Russia by the rape of Jewish women and spilling the blood of Jewish children”.2252 A well-known economist B. D. Brutskus, who in 1920 provided a damning analysis of the socialist economy (he was expelled from the country in 1922 by Lenin), published an extensive article “Jewish population under Communist power” inContemporary Notes in 1928, chronicling the NEP in the former Pale of Settlement areas of Ukraine and Byelorussia. The relative importance of private enterprise was declining as even the smallest merchants were deprived of their political rights (they became disenfranchised “lishenets” and couldn’t vote in Soviet elections), and, thus, their civil rights. (In contrast, handcraftsmen still enjoyed a certain semblance of rights.) “The fight of Soviet authorities against private enterprise and entrepreneurs is in large part a fight against Jewish populace.” Because in those days “not only almost the entire private city enterprise in Ukraine and Byelorussia was represented by Jews, but the Jewish participation in the small capitalist upperclass in capital cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kharkov had also became very substantial”.2253 Brutskus distinguished three periods during the NEP: 1921-23, 1923-25 and 1925-27. “Development of private enterprise was least impeded by 2250Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 136. 2251НЭП и евреи // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 21 сентября (№ 171)-с. 3-4. 2252Г. Симон. Евреи царствуют в России, с. 22, 159, 192, 217, 237. 2253Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической властью // Современные записки, 1928, кн. 36, с. 511-512.
  108. communists during first two and half years when Bolsheviks were still overwhelmed by their economic debacles”. “The first communist reaction followed between the end of 1923 and the spring of 1925.” Wholesale and shop trade in the former Pale of Settlement was destroyed, with only small flea market trade still permitted.” Crafts were “burdened by taxation. Artisans lost their last tools and materials (the latter often belonged to their peasant customers) to confiscations.” “The concept of Jewish equality virtually turned into fiction as two-thirds of Jews lost their voting rights.” Because YevSek (Jewish section of the communist party) “inherited specific hatred toward petty Jewish bourgeoisie cultivated by earlier Jewish socialist parties and saw their own purpose in fighting it, its policy in the beginning of NEP was substantially different from the general party line”. During the second part of NEP, the “YevSek attempted to complete the dismantling of Jewish bourgeoisie, which began with “War Communism”. However, information about bleak life of Jewish population in USSR was leaking out into Jewish press abroad. “YevSeks attempted to blame that on the Czar’s regime which allegedly obstructed Jewish participation in productive labor, that is by communist definition, in physical labor. And since Jews still prefer “unproductive labor”, they inevitably suffer. Soviet authorities has nothing to do with it”. But Brutskus objected claiming that in reality it was opposite. “The class of Jewish craftsmen nearly disappeared with the annihilation of petty Jewish manufacture… Indeed, professional the Jewish classes grew and become diversified while excessive numbers of petty Jewish middlemen slowly decreased under the Tsar because of the gradual development of ethnic Russian enterprise and deepening business connections between the Pale of Settlement and inner Russia. But now the Jewish population again was turned into a mass of petty middlemen”. During the third period of NEP, from spring of 1925 to autumn of 1926, large tax remissions were made for craftsmen and street vendors and village fairs were relieved of taxation while activities of state financial inspectors supervising large businesses were brought “under the law”. The economy and well-being of the Jewish population started to recover rapidly. It was a boom for Jewish craftsmen and merchants specializing in agriculture. Petty manufacturing grew and “successfully competed for raw materials and resources with state manufacture in the western provinces”. At the same time, “a new decree granted political (and, therefore, certain civil) rights to many Jews”. The second communist assault on private enterprise, which eventually resulted in the dismantling of NEP, began at the end of 1926. “First, private grain trade was prohibited, followed by bans on raw skins, oil seeds and tobacco trade… Private mills, creameries, tanneries and tobacco houses were expropriated. Fixed prices on shop merchandise were introduced in the summer
  109. of 1927. Most craftsmen couldn’t work because of shortage of raw materials”.2254 The state of affairs in the shtetls of western Russia alarmed international Jewry. For instance, Pasmanik wrote in 1922 that Jews as people are doomed to disappear under Bolsheviks and that communists reduced all Russian Jewry into a crowd of paupers.2255 However, the Western public (including Jews) did not want to hear all this. The West saw the USSR in good light partly because of general left-leaning of European intelligentsia but mainly because the world and American Jewry were now confident in bright future and security of Russian Jews and skillful Soviet propaganda only deepened this impression. Benevolent public opinion was extremely instrumental for Soviet leaders in securing Western, and especially American, financial aid, which was indispensable for economical recovery after their brave “War Communism”. As Lenin said at the Party Congress in 1921, “as the revolution didn’t spread to other countries, we should do anything possible to secure assistance of big progressive capitalism and for that we are ready to pay hundreds of millions and even billions from our immense wealth, our vast resources, because otherwise our recovery would take decades”.2256 And the business went smoothly as progressive capitalism showed no scruples about acquiring Russian wealth. The first Soviet international bank, Roskombank, was founded in 1922. It was headed by the already mentioned Olof Aschberg (who was reliably delivering aid to Lenin during entire revolutionary period) and by former Russian private bankers (Shlezinger, Kalashkin and Ternovsky). There was also Max May of Morgan Guaranty Trust in the US who was of great assistance to Soviets. Now they developed a scheme allowing Roskombank to directly purchase goods in US, despite the futile protests from the Secretary of State Charles Hughes, who asserted that this kind of relations meant a de-facto recognition of Soviet regime. A Roskombank Swedish adviser, professor G. Kassel, said that it is reckless to leave Russia with all her resources alone.2257 Concessioners flocked into USSR where they were very welcome. Here we see Lenin’s favorite, Armand Hammer, who in 1921 decided “to help rebuild Ural industry” and procured a concession on asbestos mines at Alapayevsk. Lenin mentioned in 1921 that Hammer’s father will provide “two million stones of bread on very favorable terms (5%) in exchange for Ural jewelry to be sold in America”.2258 And Hammer shamelessly exported Russian art treasures in exchange for the development of pencil manufacturing. (Later, in the times of Stalin and Khrushchev, Hammer frequented Moscow, continuing to export
  110. 2254Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической властью // Современные записки, 1928, кн. 36, с. 513-518. 2255Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 194, 195. 2256В.И. Ленин. Доклад о замене развёрстки натуральным налогом. 15 марта 1921 // Сочинения: В 45 т. 4-е изд. Т. 32, с. 201. 2257Э. Саттон. Уолл-стрит и большевицкая революция / Пер. с англ. М., 1998, с. 64-66, 193. 2258В.И. Ленин. Полное собрание сочинений: В 55 т. 5-е изд. Т. 53, с. 267.
  111. Russian cultural treasures (e.g., church utensils, icons, paintings, china, etc. in huge volumes.) However, in 1921-22 large sums were donated by American Jewry and distributed in Russia by the American Relief Administration (ARA) for assistance to the victims of “bloody pogroms, for the rescue of towns in the South of Russia and for the peasantry of Volga Region”. Many ARA associates were Jews .2259
  112. Another novel idea from the 20’s – not so much an idea originating among Jews – as one dreamed up to appeal to them, was Jewish colonization of agricultural land. It is said their history of dispersion had denied them possibilities in agriculture and forced them to engage in money lending, commerce and trade. Now at last Jews could occupy the land and thereby renounce the harmful ways of the past to labor productively under Soviet skies, and thus putting to flight the unflattering myths which had grown up about them. Soviet authorities turned to the idea of colonization partially to improve productivity, but mostly for political reasons. This was sure to bring a swell of sympathy, but more important, financial aid. Brutskus writes: “the Soviet government, needing credits, searched for support among the foreign bourgeoisie and highly valued its relations with the foreign Jewish bourgeoisie.” However, towards 1924 the donations stopped pouring in and even “the Jewish American Charity (‘Joint Committee’) was forced to halt its work in Europe. To again collect large amounts of money (as they had through the American Relief Administration in 1921), they needed to create, as they say in the U.S., a ‘boom’. Colonization became the ‘boom’ for Jewish charities. The grandiose project for resettling 100,000 Jewish families on their own land was, apparently, mostly a public relations ploy.2260 The committee for the “State Land Trust for Jewish Laborers” (KomZET) was founded In 1924, followed by the “all-Soviet Volunteer Land Society of Jewish Laborers (OZET). (I remember as school children we were made to join and pay membership dues – by bringing money from home, to ODD (Society of Friends of the Children) and OZET. In many countries sister organizations to OZET sprung up. It was immediately clear that “the assistance of the Soviet government in the passage of poor Jews to the land” was “a matter of international significance… Through this the foreign proletariat could judge the “power and solidity of the Soviet government.” This development had the active participation and financial support of the powerful America Joint. The Jewish Chronicle of London, Oct 16,1925: “The Crimea has been offered as replacement for Palestine. Why send Jews to Palestine which is so
  113. 2259Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической властью // Современные записки, 1928, кн.36, с. 525. 2260Там же, с. 524-526.
  114. unproductive… and which will mean so much sacrifice and hard work… when the rich land of Ukraine and fruited fields of the Crimea are smiling upon suffering Jews. Moscow will be the benefactor and defender of Russian Jewry and will be able to seek moral support from Jews around the globe…” As well, “the plan will cost nothing, as American Jews are covering all expenses”.2261 [Translator’s note: find this quote in English] It didn’t take the Russian émigré press long to recognize the Soviet maneuver. P. Struve in the Parisian journal Renaissancewrote: “this entire undertaking serves to bind Jewry – both Russian and international – to communist power and definitively mark Jews with the brand of communism”.2262 In a lead editorial from the Berlin Rul: “It’s true… the world identifies the Bolsheviks with the Jews. There is a need to further connect them with shared responsibility for the fate of hundreds of thousands of poor. Then you can trick wealthy American Jews with a threat: the fall of Soviet power followed by a mass pogrom which sweeps away the Jewish societies they founded. Therefore they will support Soviet power at all costs”.2263 In a fateful irony, the Bolshevik bluff met American enterprise and the Americans fell for it, not knowing what was going on in the USSR.2264 Actually, the world Jewish community was excited by hope in the rehabilitation of Jewish agriculture. In September, 1925 at the all-German session… the Jewish bourgeoisie under the leadership of the Director of the German National Bank, Hialmar Schacht decided to support the project. Leon Blum founded the “Jewish Construction Fund” in France which sent tractors to the settlers. The “Society for Aid for Jewish Land Colonization” was founded in New York. In countries around the globe, all the way to South Africa, money was collected for the colonization plan from Social Democrats, anarchists, and, so they say, ordinary workers. The editors of the American magazine Morning Journal, posed the question – as did many others – “Is it ethical for Russian Jews to colonize land that was expropriated?” The Jewish Chronicle recalled that most of the former land owners were in prison, shot or exiled. They were answered by the leading American jurist Louis Marshall and chairman of the World Joint Committee who claimed the beneficent right of revolutionary expropriation.2265 Indeed, during the years 1919-1923 “more than 23,000 Jews had settled in former estates near the towns and villages in the former Pale of Settlement”. By spring 1923, no more of this land remained available and the first small groups of Jews
  115. 2261Ю. Ларин*, с. 293, 297-298. 2262П. Струве. Проект еврейской колонизации России // Возрождение, Париж, 1925, 25 октября (№ 145), с. 1. 2263Руль, Берлин, 1925, 1 октября (№ 1469), с. 1. 2264М. Бенедиктов. Еврейская колонизация в СССР // Последние новости, 1925, 6 ноября (№ 1699), с. 2. 2265Ю. Ларин, с. 295, 296, 300-302.
  116. started to form for resettlement to the free steppe land in Southern Ukraine.2266 This movement picked up speed after 1925. The international Jewish Agro-Joint was formed by Marshall with the banker Paul Warburg as the director. Here our chroniclers of the history of communism decline to issue a denunciation of class enemies, and instead, approve of their efforts. The Agro-Joint concluded an agreement with KomZET about the contribution of tractors, farm machinery, seed, the digging of artesian wells and professional training for Jewish youth. EKO assisted as well. At a 1926 session of OZET Kalinin spoke out forcefully against any plans for Jewish assimilation and, instead, proposed a wide-ranging program for Jewish autonomy known in the West as the “Kalinin Declaration.” The early plans called for resettlement to the south of Ukraine and northern Crimea of approximately 100,000 families or 20% of the entire Jewish population of the USSR. The plans contemplated separate Jewish national regions as well. (“Many remained jobless and nevertheless declined the opportunity to work” and “only half of all Jews who agreed to resettle actually took up residence in the villages they were supposed to resettle in”.)2267 However, American Zionists objected to the OZET plan and saw in the “propaganda for the project of widespread Jewish agricultural colonization in the Soviet Union a challenge to Zionism and its idea for the settlement of Eretz Israel.” OZET falsely claimed its plans did not contradict at all the idea of colonization of Palestine.2268 Great hope was placed on Crimea. There were 455,000 hectares given over to Jewish colonization in Ukraine and Byelorussia; 697,000 hectares set aside in Crimea for that purpose. According to the 10-Year Plan for the settlement of Jews in Crimea, the Jewish proportion of the population was to grow from 8% in 1929 to 25% in 1939. (It was assumed that the Jews would substantially outnumber the Tatars by that time.) “There shall be no obstacles to the creation in the Crimean ASSR a Northern Crimean Autonomous Jewish Republic or oblast”.2269 The settlement of the Jews in the Crimea provoked the hostility of the Tatars (“Are they giving Crimea to the Jews?”) and dissatisfaction of local landless peasants. Larin writes “evil and false rumors are circulating throughout the country about removal of land from non-Jews, the expulsion of non-Jews and the particularly strong support the authorities have given to the Jewish settlers”. It went so far that the chairman of the CIK of the Crimean ASSR, Veli Ibraimov published an interview in the Simferopol paper Red Crimea (Sept 26, 1926) which Larin does not quote from, but which he claims was a manifestation of “evil bourgeois chauvinism” and a call for a pogrom.
  117. 2266КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 184. 2267КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 185, 188. 2268КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 139-140. 2269Ю. Ларин, с. 74, 174, 175, 308.
  118. Ibraimov also promulgated a resolution and projects, which were “not yet ready for publication” (also not quoted by Larin). For this, Larin denounced Ibraimov to the Central Control Commission of CK of VKPb, recounting the incident with pride in his book. As a result Ibraimov was “removed and then shot”, after which the Jewish colonization of Crimea gained strength. As was typical for the communist regime, the closed trial of Ibraimov resulted in a political conviction for “connections with a Kulak bandit gang,” officially, for “banditry”.2270 A certain Mustafa, the assistant to the chair of the CIK, was also shot with Ibraimov as a bandit.2271 Rumors of the effective assistance given to the Jewish settlers did not die down. The authorities tried to counter them. A government newspaper in 1927 wrote “the generous assistance to Jewish settlers” is coming from “Jewish community organizations” (without mentioning they were Western organizations), and not from the government as is rumored. To refute the rumors, Shlikhter (that young brawler from Kiev’s Duma in October, 1905), now Narkom of Agriculture of Ukraine, toured over the South of Ukraine. Rumors that the Jews were not working the land given to them but were renting it out or hiring farm laborers, were met with: “we haven’t observed this behavior, but the Jewish settlers must be forbidden to rent out their land” and “the unhealthy atmosphere surrounding the Jewish resettlement must be countered with the widest possible education campaign”.2272 The article allows one to judge about the scale of events. It states that 630 Jewish households moved into Kherson Province between the end of 1925 and July of 1927.2273 In 1927, there were 48 Jewish agricultural settlements in Ukraine with a total population of 35,000. In Crimea, 4463 Jews lived in Jewish agricultural settlements in 1926.2274 Other sources implausibly claimed that “by 1928, 220,000 Jews lived in Jewish agricultural colonies”.2275 Similarly, Larin mentioned 200,000 by the beginning of 1929. Where does this order of magnitude discrepancy come from? Larin here contradicts himself, saying that in 1929 the share of Jews in agriculture was negligible, less than 0.2% (and almost 20% among merchants and 2% in population in general).2276 Mayakovsky saw it differently: “A hard toiling Jew Tills the rocky land” However, the program of Jewish land colonization, for all practical purposes, was a failure. For many of the settlers there was little motivation to stay. It didn’t help that the resettlement and the building project had come from on high and the money from western organizations. A lot of government
  119. 2270Там же, с. 150-152, 233-234. 2271Известия, 1928, 1 мая, с. 4. 2272Известия, 1927, 13 июля, с. 4. 2273Там же. 2274КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 552, т. 4, с. 599. 2275Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 137. 2276Ю. Ларин, с. 97-98, 236.
  120. assistance for Jewish settlers didn’t help. It is little known that tractors from neighboring collective farms were ordered to till Jewish land.2277 Despite the flow of 2-3 thousand resettling Jewish families, by the end of five year work “Jewish settlements in Crimea” listed only around 5 thousand families” instead of pre-planned 10 to 15 thousand. The reason was that settlers frequently returned to their place of origin or moved to the cities of Crimea or other parts of the country.2278 This mass departure of Jews from agriculture in the 1920’s and 30’s resembles similar Jewish withdrawal from agricultural colonies in the 19th century, albeit now there were many new occupations available in industry (and in administration, a prohibited field for Jews in Tsarist Russia).2279 Eventually, collectivization arrived. Suddenly in 1930 Semyon Dimanstein, for many years the head of the “Jewish Section of CK of VKPb,” a staunch communist who bravely put up with all Soviet programs in the 20’s, came out in the press against universal collectivization in the national regions. He was attempting to protect the Jewish colony from collectivization which he had been “warned about”.2280 However, collectivization came, not sparing the “fresh shoots of Jewish land stewardship”.2281 At almost the same time, the Jewish and non-Jewish Kolkhozes were combined under the banner of “internationalism”2282 and the program of Jewish settlement in Ukraine and Crimea was finally halted. The principal Soviet project of Jewish colonization was at Birobidzhan, a territory “nearly the size of Switzerland” between the 2 branches of the Amur river near the Chinese border. It has been described variously. In 1956 Khrushchev bragged in conversations with Canadian communists that the soil was rich, the climate was southern, there was “much sun and water” and “rivers filled with fish” and “vast forests.” The Socialist Vestnik described it as covered with “wild taiga… swampland made up a significant portion” of the territory.2283 According the Encyclopedia Britannica: ”a plain with swamps in places,” but a “fertile land along the Amur”.2284 The project came about in 1927 from the KomZET (a committee of the CIK) and was intended to: “turn a significant part of the Jewish population into a settled agricultural people in one location” (Kalinin). Also the Jewish Autonomous Republic was to serve as a counterweight to Zionism, creating a national homeland with at least half a million population.2285 (One possible
  121. 2277Там же, с. 206. 2278КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 600. 2279КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 554. 2280Там же, с. 354. 2281Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 137. 2282КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 554. 2283Хрущёв и миф о Биробиджане // Социалистический вестник, Нью-Йорк, 1958, № 7-8, с. 142-143. 2284Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., 1981, Vol. X., p. 817, clmn. 2. 2285КЕЭ*, T. 1, c. 445-446. 159 Ю. Ларин, с. 183-184.
  122. motive behind the plan which cannot be excluded: to wedge a loyal Soviet population into the hostile Cossack frontier.) OZET sent a scientific expedition to Birobidzhan in 1927 and, before large settlements of Jews began arriving, in 1928 started preparations and building for the settlement using laborers from the local populace and wandering work crews of Chinese and Koreans. Older residents of the area – Trans-Baikal Cossacks exiled there between the 1860’s and the 1880’s and already tested by the hardships of the frontier woods – remember being concerned about the Jewish settlement. The Cossacks needed vast tracts of land for their farming methods and feared they would be crowded out of lands they used for hunting and hay harvesting. The KomZET commission report was “a preliminary plan for the possible gradual resettlement of 35,000 families”. But reality was different. The CIK of VKPb in 1928 assigned Birobidzhan for Jewish colonization and preparation of first settler trains began immediately. “For the first time ever, city dwellers (from Ukraine and Byelorussia) without any preparation for agricultural labor were sent to farm the land.” (They were lured by the prospect of having the status of “lishenets” removed.).2286 The Komsomol published the “Monthly OZET” and Pioneer delegations traveled around the country collecting for the Birobidzhan resettlement. The hastily dispatched Jewish families were horrified by the conditions they met upon arrival. They moved into barracks at the Tikhonkaya railroad station, in the future town of Birobidzhan. ”Among the inhabitants… were some who never left the barracks for the land, living off the loans and credits they managed to obtain for making the move. Others less nimble, lived in abject poverty”.2287 ”During the first year of work at Birobidzhan only 25 huts were built, only 125 hectares were plowed and none were planted. Many did not remain in Birobidzhan; 1,000 workers arrived in the Spring of 1928 and by July, 25% of all those who arrived in 1928 had left. “By February 1929 more than half of the population had abandoned Birobidzhan”.2288 From 1928 to 1933 more than 18,000 arrived, yet the Jewish population grew only by 6,000. By some calculations “only 14% of those Jews who resettled remained in 1929”.2289 They returned either to their homes or moved to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Larin, who devotes no small number of reasoned and impassioned pages to the building of Jewish agriculture sniffs that “an unhealthy fuss… has been raised around Birobidzhan… a utopian settlement of a million Jews… Resettlement was practically presented as a national obligation of Soviet Jews, Zionism turned inside out… a kind of back-to-the-province movement”. While international Jewish organizations provided no finances for Birobidzhan, from
  123. 2286Larine, pp. 183-184. 2287Хрущёв и миф о Биробиджане // Социалистический вестник* 1958, №7-8, с. 144. 2288Ю. Ларин, с. 188, 189. 2289КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 448, т. 8, с. 188.
  124. the beginning “considering it too expensive and risky for them”.2290 More likely the western Jewish organizations, Agro-Joint, ORT and EKO could not support the distant project beyond the Urals.2291 It wasn’t a “Jewish plan,” but a scheme of Soviet authorities eager to tear down and build life anew in the country.
  125. From the October revolution to the end of the 20’s the lives of ordinary Jews were affected by the actions of Yevseks – members of the YevSek (The Jewish section of the CK of VKPb.) Besides the Jewish Commissariat, an active Jewish organization grew up in the VKPb. As well, from 1918, local organizations were formed in the guberniyas. They created an environment fanatically inspired with the idea and ideas of communism, even more so than was Soviet authority itself and at times these organizations even opposed Soviet projects. For example, “at the insistence of the YevSek, the Jewish Commissariat decreed Hebrew to be a language of ‘reaction and counter-revolution’ in early 1919, requiring Jewish schools to teach in Yiddish”.2292 The Central Bureau of the YevSek was part of the CK of VKPb and local YevSeks operated in the former Pale of Settlement. “The purpose of the YevSek was communist education and Sovietization of the Jewish population in their native language of Yiddish.” From 1924 to 1928 responsibility for “all Jewish education and culture” was under the Jewish Bureaus of the republic-level administrative bodies, but these were abolished for “excesses in forced Yiddishization” and more power accrued to the YevSek.2293 The activities of the YevSek in the 20’s were contradictory. “On one hand they carried out active agitprop work in communist education in Yiddish and mercilessly battled against Judaism, traditional Jewish education, Jewish social structures, independent Jewish organizations, political parties and movements, Zionism and Hebrew. On the other hand it opposed assimilation with its support of the Yiddish language and a Yiddish culture and organizations of Jewish education, Jewish scientific research and activity to improve the economic status of Soviet Jews. In this “the YevSek often held a more radical position than even the central party bodies”.2294 The anti-Zionist YevSek was made up “to a large degree” of “former Bundists and socialist-territorialists”2295 who were thought of as traitors or “neophyte communists” in VKPb. The purpose of the YevSek was to develop communist influence on Russian Jewry and to create a “Jewish Soviet nation” isolated from world Jewry. But at the same time its actions paradoxically turned it from a technical apparatus urging the Jewish population to build socialism 2290Ю. Ларин, с. 184, 186-189. 2291КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 188. 2292КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 146. 2293Там же, с. 165-166. 2294Там же, с. 166. 2295КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 947.
  126. into a focal point for Jewish life in the USSR. A split arose in the YevSek between supporters of “forced assimilation” and those who thought its work was a “necessary means of preservation of the Jewish people”.2296 The Book of Russian Jewry observes with sympathy that the activity of the YevSek “still carried a clear and expressly Jewish stamp under the banner of the Proletariat.” For instance in 1926 using the slogan “to the countryside!,” [meant to rouse interest in working in and propagandizing rural areas] the YevSek came up with “to the Shtetl!” ”…This activity resonated widely in Jewish circles in Poland and in the U.S.” The author further calls it “a many-faceted Jewish nationalism in communist form”.2297 But in 1926 the CP halted the activity of the YevSek and turned it into the Jewish Bureau. In 1930 the Jewish Bureau was closed along with all national sections of VKPb2298. After that the activity of the YevSeks continued under the banner of communism. “Russian Jewry lost all forms of self-expression, including communistic forms”.2299 The end of the YevSek symbolized the final dissolution of the Bund movement “to allow a separate nationalist existence, even if it went against strict social-democratic theory”.2300 However, after the YevSek was abolished, many of the former Yevseks and Jewish socialists did not come to their senses and put the “building of socialism” higher than the good of their own people or any other good, staying to serve the party-government apparatus. And that overflowing service was evident more than anything. Whether statistically or using a wealth of singular examples, it is obvious that Jews pervaded the Soviet power structure in those years. And all this happened in the state that persecuted freedom of speech, freedom of commerce and religion, not to mention its denigration of human worth.
  127. Bikerman and Pasmanik paint a very gloomy picture of the state of Jewish culture in the USSR in 1923: “all is torn up and trampled underfoot in the field of Jewish culture”.2301 “All foundations of a nationalist Jewish culture are shaken and all that is sacred is stomped into the mud”.2302 S. Dubnov saw something similar in 1922 and wrote about “rueful wreckage” and a picture “of ruin and the progress of dark savages, destroying the last remnants of a bygone culture”.2303
  128. 2296КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 465. 2297Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 137. 2298КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 465. 2299Б. Орлов. Россия без евреев // “22,” 1988, № 60, с. 161. 2300Leonard Schapiro. The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement // The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 40, 1961-62, p. 167. 2301К евреям всех стран! // РиЕ, с. 5. 2302Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 214. 2303Он же. Русская революция и еврейство*, с. 195.
  129. However, Jewish historiography did not suffer destruction in the first 10 years after the revolution, as is attested to by the range of allowed publications. Government archives, including those from the department of police, opened after the revolution have given Jewish scholars a view on Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement, pogroms, and “blood libel” trials. The Jewish Historical-Ethnographical Society was founded in 1920 and published the 2volume Material on theHistory of anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia. The Society later came under attack from the YevSek and it was abolished in 1929. The journals, The Jewish News and The Jewish Chronicle were shut down in the mid-twenties. S. Dubnov’s Jewish Antiquity remained in publication (even after he left the USSR in 1922) but was closed in 1930. The Jewish Ethnographical Museum functioned from 1916, but was closed in 1930.2304 In the 1920’s, Jewish culture had two divergent fates — one in Hebrew and one in Yiddish. Hebrew was strongly repressed and forbidden as authorities saw it as a carrier of religion and Zionism. Before the consolidation of Soviet power in the years 1917-1919 “there were more than 180 books, brochures, and journals in Hebrew” (mostly in Odessa, but also in Kiev and Moscow). The feeling that the fate of Hebrew was connected with the fate of the victorious communist revolution held in the early 20’s “among young people attempting to create a ‘revolutionary literary tribune, under whose banner they hoped to unite the creative youthful strength of world Jewry’”.2305 However at the insistence of the YevSek, Hebrew was declared a “reactionary language” and already in 1919 the People’s Commissariat of Education had “forbidden the teaching of Hebrew in all educational institutions. The removal of all Hebrew books from libraries had begun”.2306 Yiddish culture fared much better. Yiddish was the language of the Jewish masses. According to the 1926 census, 73% of Jews listed Yiddish as their mother tongue2307 (another source cites a figure of 66%2308) – that is the Jewish population could preserve its culture in Yiddish. Soviet authorities used this. If, in the early years of Soviet power and Bolshevism the opinion prevailed that Jews should discard their language and nationality, later the Jewish Commissariat at the Narkomat of Nationalities, the YevSek, and the Jewish sections of the republican narkomats of education began to build Soviet culture in Yiddish. In the 20’s Yiddish was declared one of the official languages of Byelorussia; In Odessa of the 20’s and even the 30’s it was a language of many government institutions, with “Jewish hours” on the radio and court proceedings in Yiddish.2309
  130. 2304КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 439, РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 432, Б. Орлов. Россия без евреев // “22,” 1988. № 60, с. 161. 2305И. Слуцкий. Судьба иврит в России // КРЕ-2, с. 241-242, 246. 2306КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 422. 2307С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй мировой войны (1939-1965). Нью-Йорк: Изд. Американского Еврейского Рабочего Комитета, 1966, с. 407. 2308Ю. Ларин, с. 56. 2309КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 326, т. 2, с. 465, т. 6, с. 125.
  131. “A rapid growth in Yiddish schools began in 1923 throughout the Soviet Union.” Beginning in 1923 and continuing through 1930 a program of systematic “Yiddishization” was carried out, even forced, upon Jewish schools in the former Pale of Settlement. Many schools were switched to Yiddish without considering the wishes of parents. In 1923 there were 495 Yiddish schools with 70,000 Jewish children, by 1928 there were 900 schools and in 1930 they had 160,000 children. (This can be partially explained by the fact that Ukrainians and Byelorussians at this time received full cultural autonomy and saw Jewish children as potential agents of Russification; Jewish parents didn’t want their children in Ukrainian or Byelorussian schools and there were no more Russian schools — they had no choice but to go to Yiddish schools. They did not study Jewish history in these schools; instead there was “class war and the Jews”.2310 (Just as in the Russian schools there was no study of Russian history, or of any history, only “social sciences”.) Throughout the 20’s “even those few elements of a specifically Jewish education were gradually driven out of Soviet Jewish schools.” By the early 30’s the autonomously functioning system of Soviet Jewish schools had been officially done away with.2311 From 1918 there were independent Jewish schools of higher education — ENU (Jewish People’s University) until 1922 in Moscow; PENU in Petrograd which became Petrograd IVEZ (Institute of Higher Jewish Learning, one of whose founders and later Rector was Semyon Lozinsky) boasting “a number of distinguished scholars among faculty and large number of Jewish graduates”. Supported by Joint, IVEZ functioned until 1925. Jewish divisions were established at educational science departments at Byelorussian University (1922) and at Second Moscow State University (1926). Central Jewish CP School teaching in Yiddish was established in 1921. Jewish educational system included special educational science technical colleges and more than 40 industrial and agricultural training schools.2312 Jewish culture continued to exist and even received no small encouragement — but on the terms of Soviet authorities. The depths of Jewish history were closed. This took place on a background of the destruction of Russian historical and philosophical sciences complete with arrests of scholars. Jewish culture of the 20’s could more accurately be called a Soviet “proletarian” culture in Yiddish. And for that kind of Jewish culture the government was ready to provide newspapers and theatre. Forty years later the Book of Russian Jewry gives a less than gloomy assessment of the cultural situation of Jews in the USSR in the early Soviet years. In Moscow the worldwide Jewish Telegraphic agency (ETA) continued to exist into the 40’s as an independent unit — the only such agency in the Soviet nation that did not come under TASS, sending communications abroad (of course, subject to Soviet censorship). Newspapers were published in Yiddish, the main one being
  132. 2310Ю. Марк. Еврейская школа в Советском Союзе // КРЕ-2, с. 235-238. 2311КЕЭ, т. 8, с.175. 2312Там же, с. 177-179, РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 195-196.
  133. the house organ of the YevSek, The Moscow Der Amos from 1920 to 1938. According to Dimanstein there were 34 Yiddish publishers in 1928. Yiddish literature was encouraged, but, naturally, with a purpose: to turn Jews away from an historical Jewish past; to show “before October” as a gloomy prologue to the epoch of happiness and a new dawn; to smear anything religious and find in the Soviet Jew the “new man.” Even with all this, it was so attractive to some prominent Jewish writers who had left the country that they started to return to the USSR: poets David Gofstein (“always suspected of harboring nationalist sentiment”) and Leib Kvitko (“easily accommodated to Soviet environment and become a prolific poet”) returned in 1925; Perez Markish (“easily understands the needs of the party”) — in 1926; Moses Kulbak and Der Nistor (the real name of the latter was Pinkhos Kaganovich, he later wrote novel Mashber Family characterized as the most “un-Soviet and liberal work of Jewish prose in Soviet Union”) — returned in 1928. David Bergelson returned in 1929, he “paid tribute to those in power: ‘the revolution has a right to cruelty’.2313 (Which he, Markish and Kvitko were to experience themselves in 1952.) The “bourgeois” Hebrew culture was suppressed. A group of writers headed by H.N. Byalik left for Palestine in 1921. Another group “of Hebrew writers existed until the mid-30’s, occasionally publishing in foreign journals. Some of these authors were arrested and disappeared without a trace while others managed to escape the Soviet Union”.2314 Regarding Jewish culture expressed in Russian language, Yevseks interpreted it as the “result of government-directed efforts to assimilate Jews in Tsarist Russia.” Among those writing in Yiddish, a split between “proletarian” writers and “companions” developed in mid-20’s, like in Soviet literature at large. Majority of mainstream authors then switched to Russian language.2315 The Jewish Chamber Theater in Yiddish in Moscow flowered since 1921 at a high artistic level with government aid (in 1925 it was transformed into the State Jewish Theater, GosET). It traveled through Europe and became an unexpected representative of Soviet power in the eyes of world Jewry. It made fun of pre-revolutionary ways and religious life of the shtetl. Mikhoels excelled as an actor and in 1928 became the director.2316 The history of the Hebrews theater “Gabima,” which began before the revolution was much more complicated. Originally supported by Lunacharsky, Gorky and Stanislavsky it was persecuted as a “Zionist nest” by the YevSek and it took a decision by Lenin to allow it to exist. “Gabima” became a government theatre. It remained the only outpost of Hebrew in the USSR, though it was clear it had no future.2317 (The theatre critic A. Kugel said it had departed from
  134. 2313Ю. Марк. Литература на идиш в Советской России // КРЕ-2, с. 224-229. 2314И. Слуцкий. Судьба иврит в России // КРЕ-2, с. 245, 247. 2315КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 174, 181-182. 2316Г. Свет. Еврейский театр в Советской России // КРЕ-2, с. 266-271. 2317КЕЭ, т. 9, с. 477.
  135. Jewish daily life and lost its Jewish spirit.2318) In 1926 the troupe went on a European tour and did not return, disappearing from history soon after.2319 By contrast, the government Yiddish theatre “was a real boon for Jewish theater arts in the USSR.” In the early 30’s there were 19 professional Yiddish theater groups… with a training school at GosET in Moscow, and Jewish dramatic arts studios in Kiev, Minsk and Moscow.2320 Here it is worth remembering the posthumous treatment of the ill-fated “Jewish Gogol” Semen Ushkevitch. His bookEpisodes, published in 1926 “satirizes revolution-era Jewish bourgeois”. He died in 1927 and in 1928 the Soviet censor banned his play Simka, The Rabbit Hearted based on his earlier book. As an anti- bourgeois work it should have been fine, but “taking place in a Jewish setting and making fun of the stupidity, cowardice and greed of its subjects, it was banned because of fears that it would cause Judeophobic feelings”.2321
  136. In the meantime what was the condition of Zionist organizations in the USSR? They were fundamentally incompatible with communist authority and were accused of “international imperialism” and collaboration with the Entente. Because of their international standing the Soviets had to deal carefully with them. In 1920 the YevSek declared a “civil war on the Jewish street” against the Zionist organizations. Repression of Zionism deepened with the ban on Hebrew. However “anti-Zionist pressure did not exist everywhere and was not sufficiently severe” — that is “long-term imprisonment and exile were relatively rare.” In spring 1920 right-wing Zionists were frightened with arrests, but on May 1 were amnestied. The dual policy of the Kremlin was apparent in its discussions with representatives of the World Zionist Organization. Chicherin did not dismiss out of hand it’s the latter’s solicitations as the Soviets were “not yet ready to denounce Zionism once and for all” as had the YevSek. The more so since “from the beginning of NEP, lessening government pressure gave Zionist groups a breathing space”.2322 Interestingly, Dzerzhinsky wrote in 1923 that “the program of the Zionists is not dangerous to us, on the contrary I consider it useful” and again in 1924 “principally, we can be friends with Zionists”.2323 The Central Zionist Bureau existed in Moscow from 1920 to 1924. In March of 1924 its members were arrested and only after much pleading from within the country and from overseas was exile to Central Asia replaced with exile
  137. 2318КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 616. 2319Г. Свет. Еврейский театр… // КРЕ-2, с. 273-278. 2320КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 183. 2321В. Левитина. Стоило ли сжигать свой храм… // “22,” 1984, № 34, с. 204. 2322И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль // КРЕ-2. 321-323. 2323КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 200.
  138. abroad.2324 In 1923 only two officially permitted Zionist organizations remained: Poale-Zion and the “legal” portion of the youth organization Gekhaluz, whose purpose was agricultural colonization of Palestine. They saw experience with collective farms in the USSR as preparation for this. They published a journal from 1924 to 1926.2325 Even the left-wing of the Zionist socialist party ZireiZion (‘Youth of Zion’) adopted a sharper tone vis a vis the Bolsheviks, and when the arrests in 1924, though short in duration, became more widespread they went underground. This underground movement was finally dispersed only in the late 20’s. “Jewish blood will not oil the wheels of revolution,” an organizational slogan of the movement, conveys the sense of the underground Zirei-Zion with its significant youth organizations in Kiev and Odessa. Regarding the government, “they formally recognized Soviet authority, but at the same time declared opposition to the dictatorship of the communist party.” Much of its work was directed against the YevSek. “In particular, they agitated against the Crimean resettlement plan, seeing it as disturbing their ‘national isolation’.” From 1926 the party weakened and then disappeared.2326 There was a wave of arrests of Zionists from September to October of 1924. Some of those arrested were tried in secret and given sentences of 3 to 10 years in the camps. But in 1925 Zionist delegates were assured by the CIK of VKPb (Smidovitch) and the Sovnarkom (Rykov) and the GPU that they had nothing against Zionists as long as they “did not arouse the Jewish population against Soviet power”.2327 D. Pasmanik suggested in 1924 that “Zionists, Orthodox and nationalist Jews should be in the front ranks of those fighting alongside Soviet power and the Bolshevik worldview”.2328 But there was no united front and no front rank. In the second half of the 20’s, persecution of the Zionists was renewed and the exchange of prison sentences for exile abroad was sharply curtailed. ”In 1928 authorities dissolved, the until then quasi-legal Poale-Zion and liquated the legal Gekhaluz, closing its farms… Almost all underground Zionist organizations were destroyed at that time.” Opportunities to leave declined sharply after 1926. Some of the Zionists remained in prison or were exiled.2329 The mass attraction of young urban Jews to communist and Soviet culture and programs was matched with a no less stubborn resistance from religious Jewry and older Jews from the former Pale. The party used the rock of the YevSek to crush and suppress this resistance. ”One only has to be in a Jewish city such as Minsk or Vitebsk to see how all that was once worthy in Judaism, respected and worthy of respect has been
  139. 2324Там же, с. 201. 2325КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 476, т. 7, с. 948. 2326Михаил Хейфец. Воспоминаний грустный свиток. Иерусалим, 1996, с. 74-79. 2327И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль // КРЕ-2, с. 324-325. 2328Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с, 214. 2329КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 948. И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль // КРЕ-2, с. 325-328.
  140. turned upside down, crushed with poverty, insult, and hopelessness and how those pushed into higher places are the dissolute, frivolous, arrogant and brazen”.2330 Bolshevik power “become the carrier of terrible ruin, material and moral… in our Jewish world”.2331 “The mass of Jewish Bolsheviks on one hand and of Jewish NEPmen on the other indicate the depth of the cultural collapse of Jewry. And if radical healing from Bolshevism among the Russian people is to come from a revival of religious, moral and nationalist life then the Jewish idea must work for that also in their lives”.2332 And work they did, but indicators vary as to degree of intensity and success. A near contemporary considered “Jewish society turned out either to have no rudder and no sail or was confused and in this confusion spiritually turned away from its sources” in contrast to Russian society where there was still some resistance, albeit “clumsy and unsuccessful”.2333 “From the end of the 20’s to the beginning of the 30’s the Jews abandoned their traditional way of life on a mass scale.”2334 “In the past 20 years Russian Jewry has gone further and further away from its historical past… killing the Jewish spirit and Jewish tradition”.2335 And a few years later on the very eve of WWII “with the ascension in Russia of the Bolshevik dictatorship, the fight between fathers and children in the Jewish street has taken a particularly bitter form”.2336 Taking stock a half-century later, M. Agursky reminisces in Israel, that the misfortunes that befell Jews after the revolution to a large degree were brought on by the renunciation by Jewish youth of its religion and national culture, “the singular, exclusive influence of communist ideology…” ”The mass penetration by Jews in all areas of Russian life” and of the Soviet leadership in the first 20 years after the revolution turned not to be constructive for Jews, but harmful.2337 Finally, an author in the 1990’s writes: “Jews were the elite of the revolution and on the winning side. That’s a peculiar fact of the Russian internationalist socialist revolution. In the course of modernizing, Jewry was politically Bolshevized and socially Sovietized: The Jewish community as an ethnic, religious and national structure disappeared without a trace”.2338 Jewish youth coming to Bolshevism were intoxicated by its new role and influence. For this, others too would have gladly given up their nationality. But this turning from the old ways to internationalism and atheism was not the same as assimilation into the surrounding majority, a centuries-old Jewish fear. This was leaving the old, along with all other youth, to come together and form a 2330И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 92. 2331Там же, с, 53. 2332И.О.Левин. Евреи в революции // РиЕ, с. 138. 2333Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // РиЕ, с. 118. 2334КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 199. 2335Г.Б. Слиозберг. Дела минувших дней: Записки русского еврея. Париж, 1934. Т. 3, с. 376. 2336Ст. Иванович. Евреи и советская диктатура // ЕМ-1, с. 47. 2337Jerusalem Post, 1973, April 13, 1979, October 7. 2338Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lugen: Rufiland und die Juden im20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag. 1992, S. 106.
  141. new Soviet people. “Only a small stream was truly assimilationalist in the old sense,” like those people who converted to Orthodox Christianity and wished their own dissolution in the Russian culture. We find one such example in attorney Y. Gurevich, legal defender of metropolitan Venamin during his fatal trial in 1922.2339 The Jewish Encyclopedia writes of Jewish workers in the “party and government apparatus of economic, scientific and even military organizations and institutions, that most did not hide their Jewish origins, but they and their families quickly absorbed Russian culture and language and being Jewish lost its cultural content”.2340 Yes, the culture which sustained them suffered, “Soviet Man” was created, but the decades which followed showed that a remnant of Jewish self-awareness was preserved and remained. Even in the flood of the internationalism of the 20’s, mixed marriages (between Jews and Russians or Jews and any non-Jew), as measured from 1924-1926, were only 6.3% of the total marriages for Jews in the USSR, including 16.8% in RSFSR, but only 2.8% in Byelorussia and 4.5% in Ukraine2341 (according to another source, on average in USSR, 8.5%; in RSFSR, 21%; in Byelorussia, 3.2%; and in Ukraine, 5%2342). Assimilation had only begun.
  142. And what was the status of the Jewish religion in the new conditions? Bolshevik power was hostile to all religions. During the years of the hardest blows against the Orthodox Church, Jewish religious practice was treated with restraint. “In March, 1922 Dar Amos noted that the department of agitprop of the Central Committee would not offend religious feelings… In the 20’s this tolerance did not extend to Russian Orthodoxy, which the authorities considered one of the main enemies of the Soviet order”.2343 Nevertheless, the confiscation of church valuables extended to synagogues as well. E. Yarolslavsky wrote in Izvestia an article titled “What Can be Taken from a Synagogue”: Often Rabbis will say there is nothing of value in a synagogue. Usually that is the case… The walls are usually bare. But menorahs are often made of silver. These must be confiscated.” Three weeks before that 16 silver objects were taken from Jewish preaching house on Spasso-Glinischevsky avenue and in the neighboring choral synagogue “57 silver objects and 2 of gold.” Yaroslavsky further proposes a progressive tax on those who buy costly seats in the synagogue.2344 (Apparently, this proposal went nowhere.) 2339М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 114. 2340КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 235. 2341С. Познер. Советская Россия* // ЕМ-1, с. 271. 2342Ю. Ларин*, с. 304. 2343КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 194. 2344Поход на синагоги в Советской России* // Еврейская трибуна, 1922, 21 апреля (№ 120), с. 7.
  143. However “functionaries from the YevSek demanded of authorities that the same policy applied towards Christianity be carried out towards Judaism”.2345 In the Jewish New Year, 1921 the YevSek orchestrated a “public trial of the Jewish religion” in Kiev. The Book of Russian Jewry describes this and other show trials in 1921-1922: there was a court proceeding against a Cheder (a traditional elementary school with instruction in Hebrew) in Vitebsk, against a Yeshiva (a Jewish school for study of the traditional, texts, the Talmud, the Torah, and the Rabbinical literature) in Rostov and even against Day of Atonement in Odessa. They were intentionally conducted in Yiddish, as the YeSsek explained, so that Jewish Bolsheviks would “judge” Judaism. Religious schools were closed by administrative order and in December 1920 the Jewish section of the Narkomat of Education issued a encyclical about the liquidation of Cheders and Yeshivas. “Nevetheless, large numbers of Cheders and Yeshivas continued teaching semi-legally or completely underground for a long time after that”.2346 “In spite of the ban on religious education, as a whole the 20’s were rather a liberal period for Jewish religious life in the USSR”.2347 “[A]t the request of Jewish laborers,” of course, there were several attempts to close synagogues, but this met with “bitter opposition from believers.” Still “during the 20’s the central synagogues were closed in Vitebsk, Minsk, Gomel, Kharkov, Bobruisk”.2348 The central Moscow synagogue on Maroseika managed stay open thanks to the efforts of Rabbi Maze in the face of Dzerzhinsky and Kalinin.2349 In 1926, the “choral synagogue in Kiev was closed” and children’s Yiddish theatre opened in its place .2350 But “the majority of synagogues continued to function. In 1927, 1034 synagogues and prayer halls were functioning in Ukraine and the number of synagogues towards the end of the 20s’ exceeded the number in 1917”.2351 Authorities attempted to institute “Living Synagogues” based on the model of the “Living Church” imposed upon the Russian Orthodox Church. A “portrait of Lenin was to be hung in a prominent place” of such a synagogue, the authorities brought in “red Rabbis” and “communized Rabbis.” However they “failed to bring about a split among the believers”2352 and the vast majority of religious Jews was decisively against the ‘Living Synagogue’, bringing the plan of Soviet authorities to naught.2353 At the end of 1930 a group of rabbis from Minsk was arrested. They were freed after two weeks and made to sign a document prepared by the GPU
  144. 2345КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 196. 2346Г. Свет. Еврейская религия в Советской России // КРЕ-2, с. 205-207. 2347КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 194. 2348Там же, с. 195. 2349Г. Свет. Еврейская религия… // КРЕ-2, с. 209. 2350КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 257. 2351КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 195. 2352Г. Свет. Еврейская религия… // КРЕ-2, с. 208. 2353КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 197.
  145. agreeing that: (1) the Jewish religion was not persecuted in the USSR and, (2) during the entire Soviet era not one rabbi had been shot.2354 Authorities tried to declare the day of rest to be Sunday or Monday in Jewish areas. School studies were held on the Sabbath by order of the YevSek. In 1929 authorities tried the five-day work week and the six-day work week with the day of rest upon the 5th or 6th day, respectively. Christians lost Sunday and Jews lost the Sabbath. Members of the YevSek rampaged in front of synagogues on holidays and “in Odessa broke into the Brodsky Synagogue and demonstratively ate bread in front of those fasting and praying.” They instituted “community service” days during sacred holidays like Yom Kippur. “during holidays, especially when the synagogue was closed, they requisitioned Talles, Torah scrolls, prayer shawls and religious books… import of matzoh from abroad was sometimes allowed and sometimes forbidden2355 … in 1929 they started taxing matzoh preparation.2356 Larin notes the “amazing permission” granted to bring matzoh from Königsberg to Moscow for Passover in 1929.2357 In the 20’s private presses still published Jewish religious literature. “In Leningrad, Hasids managed to print prayer books in several runs, a few thousands copies each” while Katzenelson, a rabbi from Leningrad, was able to use the printing-house “Red Agitator.” During 1920’s, the Jewish calendars were printed and distributed in tens of thousand copies.2358 The Jewish community was the only religious group in Moscow allowed to build religious buildings. A second synagogue was built on Visheslaviz alley nearby Sushchevsky Embankment and a third in Cherkizov. These three synagogues stayed open throughout the 30’s.2359 But “young Jewish writers and poets… gleefully wrote about the empty synagogues, the lonely rabbi who had no one to teach and about the boys from the villages who grew up to become the terrible red commissars”.2360 And we saw the Russian members of Komsomol rampaging on Easter Sunday, knocking candles and holy bread out of worshippers’ hands, tearing the crosses from the cupolas and we saw thousands of beautiful churches broken into a rubble of bricks and we remember the thousands of priests that were shot and the thousands of others who were sent to the camps. In those years, we all drove God out.
  146. 2354Там же, с. 198. 2355Г. Свет. Еврейская религия… // КРЕ-2, с. 208-209. 2356КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 199. 2357Ю. Ларин, с. 285. 2358И. Слуцкий. Судьба иврит в России // КРЕ-2, с. 246. 2359Сорок сороков: Альбом-указатель всех московских церквей: В 4 т. / Сост. С. Звонарёв [П. Паламарчук]. Париж, YMCA-Press, 1988. Т. 1, с. 13. С. Познер. Советская Россия // ЕМ-1, с. 271. 2360М. Поповский. О нас — со всей искренностью // Новый американец, 1981, 20-26 сентября (№ 84), с. 7.
  147. From the early Soviet years the path for Jewish intelligentsia and youth was open as wide as possible in science and culture, given Soviet restrictions. (Olga Kameneva, Trotsky’s sister, patronized high culture in the very early Soviet years.) Already in 1919 “a large number of Jewish youth” went into moviemaking — an art praised by Lenin for its ability to govern the psychology of the masses. Many of them took charge of movie studios, film schools and film crews. For example, B. Shumyatsky, one of the founders of the Mongolian Republic, and S. Dukelsky were heads of the main department of the movie industry at different times.2361 Impressive works of early Soviet motion cinematography were certainly a Jewish contribution. The Jewish Encyclopedia lists numerous administrators, producers, directors, actors, script writers and motion picture theorists. Producer Dziga Vertov is considered a classic figure in Soviet, cinema, mostly nonfiction. His works includeLenin’s Truth, Go Soviets, Symphony of Donbass [the Donetsk Basin], and The Three Songs about Lenin.2362 (It is less known that he also orchestrated desecration of the holy relics of St. Sergius of Radonezh.) In the documentary genre, Esther Shub, “by tendentious cutting and editing of fragments of old documentaries, produced full-length propaganda movies (The Fall of Romanovs (1927) and others), and later — glorifying ones.” Other famous Soviet names include S. Yutkevitch, G. Kozintsev and L. Trauberg (SVD, New Babel). F. Ermler organized the Experimental Movie Studio. Among notable others are G. Roshal (The Skotinins), Y. Raizman (Hard Labor Camps, Craving of Earth among others.). By far, the largest figure of Soviet cinematography was Sergei Eisenstein. He introduced “the epic spirit and grandeur of huge crowd scenes, tempo, new techniques of editing and emotionality” into the art of cinematography.2363 However he used his gifts as ordered. The worldwide fame of Battleship Potemkin was a battering ram for the purposes of the Soviets and in its irresponsibly falsified history encouraged the Soviet public to further curse Tsarist Russia. Made-up events, such as the “massacre on Odessa Steps” scene and the scene where a crowd of rebellious seamen is covered with tarpaulin for execution, entered the world’s consciousness as if they were facts. First it was necessary to serve Stalin’s totalitarian plans and then his nationalistic idea. Eisenstein was there to help. Though the Jewish Encyclopedia list names in the arts by nationality, I must repeat: not in the nationalism does one find the main key to the epoch of the early Soviet years, but in the destructive whirlwind of internationalism, estranged from any feeling of nationality or traditions. And here in theater but close to authorities we see the glorious figure of Meyerhold, who became the leading and most authoritarian star of the Soviet theater. He had numerous
  148. 2361КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 275, РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 439. 2362КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 653. 2363КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 276-277.
  149. impassioned admirers but wasn’t universally recognized. From late recollections of Tyrkova-Vyazemskaya, Meyerhold appears as a dictator subjugating both actors and playwrites alike to his will “by his dogmatism and dry formalism.” Komissarzhevskaya sensed “that his novelty lacks creative simplicity and ethical and esthetical clarity.” He “clipped actor’s wings… paid more attention to frame than to portrait”.2364 He was a steady adversary of Mikhail Bulgakov. Of course, the time was such that artists had to pay for their privileges. Many paid, including Kachalov, Nemirovitch-Danchenko and A. TairovKornblit, the talented producer of the Chamber Theater and a star of that unique early Soviet period. (In 1930, Tairov “denounced” ‘Prompartia’ in the party newspapers.) Artist Marc Chagall emigrated by 1923. The majority of artists in the 20’s were required to contribute to Soviet mass propaganda. There some Jewish artists distinguished themselves, beginning with A. Lisitsky who greeted the revolution as “a new beginning for humanity.” He joined a number of various committees and commissions, made first banner of all-Russian Central Executive Committee, which was displayed on the Red Square in 1918 by members of government.” He made famous poster “Strike Whites with the Red Wedge,” designed numerous Soviet expositions abroad (from 1927) and propaganda albums for the West (“USSR Builds Socialism” etc.).2365 A favorite with the authorities was Isaac Brodsky who drew portraits of Lenin, Trotsky and others including Voroshilov, Frunze and Budenny. “After completing his portrait of Stalin he became the leading official portrait artist of the USSR” in 1928 and in 1934 was named director of the all-Russian Academy of Arts.2366 During early years after revolution, Jewish musical life was particularly rich. At the start of century the first in the world Jewish national school of music in the entire world, which combined both traditional Jewish and contemporary European approaches, was established. The 1920’s saw a number of works inspired by traditional Jewish themes and stories, such asYouth of Abraham by M. Gnesin, The Song of Songs by A, Krein, and Jewish Rhapsody by his brother G. Krein. In that age of restrictions, the latter and his son Yulian were sent into eight-years studying trip to Vienna and Paris to “perfect Yulian’s performance”.2367 Jews were traditionally talented in music and many names of future stars were for the first time heard during that period. Many “administrators from music” appeared also, such as Matias SokolskyGreenberg, who was “chief inspector of music at Department of Arts of Ministry of Education” and a senior editor of ideological Music and Revolution.”Later in 1930’s Moses Greenberg, “a prominent organizer of musical performances,” was director of State Publishing House in music and
  150. 2364А. Тыркова-Вилъямс. Тени минувшего // ВМ, Нью-Йорк, 1990, № 111, с. 214-215. 2365КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 860-862. 2366КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 547. 2367КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 541-542; РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 86-87.
  151. chief editor of the Department of Music Broadcasting at the State Radio Studio.2368 There was Jewish Conservatory in Odessa as well.2369 Leonid Utesov (Lazar Vaysbeyn) thundered from the stage. Many of his songs were written by A. d’Aktil. A. P. German and Y. Hayt wrote the March of Soviet Aviation.2370 This was the origin of Soviet mass singing culture. Year after year, the stream of Soviet culture fell more and more under the hand of the government. A number of various state organizations were created such as the State Academic Council, the monopolistic State Publishing House (which choked off many private publishing firms and even had its own political commissar, certain David Chernomordnikov in 1922-23,2371 and the State Commission for Acquisition of Art Pieces (de facto power over artist livelihood). Political surveillance was established. (The case of A. K. Glazunov, Rector of the Leningrad Conservatory, will be reviewed below). Of course, Jews were only a part of the forward triumphal march of proletarian culture. In the heady atmosphere of the early Soviet epoch no one noticed the loss of Russian culture and that Soviet culture was driving Russian culture out along with its strangled and might-have-been names.
  152. A vicious battle for the dominance within the Party was waged between Trotsky and Stalin from 1923 to 1927. Later Zinoviev fought for first place equally confident of his chances. In 1926 Zinoviev and Kamenev, deceived by Stalin, united with Trotsky (“the United Opposition”) — that is, three of the most visible Jewish leaders turned out on one side. Not surprisingly, many of the lower rank Trotskyites were Jewish. (Agursky cites A. Chiliga, exiled with Trotskyites in the Urals: “indeed the Trotskyites were young Jewish intellectuals and technicians,” particularly from Left Bundists.2372 “The opposition was viewed as principally Jewish” and this greatly alarmed Trotsky. In March of 1924 he complained to Bukharin that among the workers it is openly stated: “The kikes are rebelling!” and he claimed to have received hundreds of letters on the topic. Bukharin dismissed it as trivial. Then “Trotsky tried to bring the question of anti-Semitism to a Politburo session but no one supported him.” More than anything, Trotsky feared that Stalin would use popular anti-Semitism against him in their battle for power. And such was partially the case according to Uglanov, then secretary of the Moscow Committee of the CP. “Anti-Semitic cries were heard” during Uglanov’s dispersal of a pro-Trotsky demonstration in Moscow November 7, 1927.2373
  153. 2368РЕЭ, т.1, с. 377. 2369РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 287. 2370РЕЭ, т.1, с. 288, 409. 2371РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 336. 2372М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 240. 2373Там же, с. 240-242, 244.
  154. Maybe Stalin considered playing the anti-Jewish card against the “United Opposition,” but his superior political instinct led him away from that. He understood that Jews were numerous in the party at that time and could be a powerful force against him if his actions were to unite them against him. They were also needed in order to maintain support from the West and would be of further use to him personally. He never parted from his beloved assistant Lev Mekhlis — and from the Civil War at Tsaritsyn, his faithful aid Moses Rukhimovitch. But as Stalin’s personal power grew towards the end of the 20’s the number of Jews in the Soviet Apparatus began to fall off. It was no accident that he sent Enukidze to take photographs “among the Jewish delegates” at a “workers and peasants” conference during the height of the struggle for party dominance.2374 Yaroslavsky writes in Pravda: “Incidents of anti-Semitism are the same whether they are used against the opposition or used by the opposition in its fight against the party.” They are an “attempt to use any weakness, any fissures in the dictatorship of the proletariat… there is “nothing more stupid or reactionary than to explain the roots of opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat as related to the nationality of this or that opposition group member”.2375 At the same Party Congress, the 25th, where the “united opposition” was decisively broken, Stalin directed Ordzhonikidze to specifically address the national question in his report to the Central Committee, as if in defense Jews. (Statistics from the report were discussed earlier in this chapter.) ”The majority of the apparatus is Russian, so any discussion of Jewish dominance has no basis whatever”.2376 At the 26th Party Congress in 1930 Stalin declared “Great Russian chauvinism” to be the “main danger of the national question.” Thus, at the end of the 20’s Stalin did not carry out his planned purge of the party and government apparatus of Jews, but encouraged their expansion in many fields, places and institutions. At the 25th Congress in December 1927, the time had come to address the looming “peasant question” — what to do with the presumptuous peasantry which had the temerity to ask for manufactured goods in exchange for their grain. Molotov delivered the main report on this topic and among the debaters were the murderers of the peasantry — Schlikhter and Yakovlev-Epstein.2377 A massive war against the peasantry lay ahead and Stalin could not afford to alienate any of his reliable allies and probably thought that in this campaign against a disproportionately Slavic population it would be better to rely on Jews than on Russians. He preserved the Jewish majority in the Gosplan. The commanding heights of collectivization and its theory included, of course, Larin. Lev Kritzman was director of the Agrarian Institute from 1928. As Assistant to the President of the Gosplan in 1931-33 he played a fateful role in
  155. 2374Известия, 1927, 13 октября, с. 2. 2375Ем. Ярославский. Против антисемитизма // Правда, 1927, 12 ноября, с. 2. 2376Известия, 1927, 11 декабря, с. 1. 2377Там же, 22 декабря, с. 2-4, 23 декабря, с. 4, 5.
  156. the persecution of Kondratev and Chayanov. Yakov Yakovlev-Epstein took charge of People’s Commissariat of Agriculture in 1929. (Before that he worked in propaganda field: he was in charge of Head Department of Political Education since 1921, later — in the agitprop division of Central Committee and in charge of press division of Central Committee. His career in agriculture began in 1923 when during the 13th Party Congress he drafted resolutions on agricultural affairs.2378 And thus he led the “Great Change,” the imposition of collectivization on millions of peasants with its zealous implementers on the ground. A contemporary writer reports: “for the first time ever a significant number of young Jewish communists arrived in rural communities as commanders and lords over life and death. Only during collectivization did the characterization of the Jew as the hated enemy of the peasant take hold — even in those places where Jews had never been seen before”.2379 Of course regardless of the percentage of Jews in the party and Soviet apparatus, it would be a mistake to explain the ferocious anti-peasant plan of communism as due to Jewish participation. A Russian could have been found in the place of Yakovlev-Epstein — that’s sufficiently clear from our post-October history. The cause and consequences of de-Kulakization and collectivization were not only social and economic: The millions of victims of these programs were not a faceless mass, but real people with traditions and culture, cut off from their roots and spiritually killed. In its essence, de-Kulakization was not a socioeconomic measure, but a measure taken against a nationality. The strategic blow against the Russian people, who were the main obstacle to the victory of communism, was conceived of by Lenin, but carried out after his death. In those years communism with all its cruelty was directed mostly against Russians. It is amazing that not everything has perished during those days. Collectivization, more than any other policy of the communists, gives the lie to the conception of Stalin’s dictatorship as nationalist, i.e., “Russian.” Regarding Jewish role in collectivization, it is necessary to remember that Jewish communists participated efficiently and diligently. From a third-wave immigrant who grew up in Ukraine. “I remember my father, my mother, aunts, uncles all worked on collectivization with great relish, completing 5-year plans in 4 years and writing novels about life in factories”2380 [Translator’s note: a mainstream Soviet literary genre in the 20’s]. In 1927 Izvestia declared “there is no Jewish question here. The October revolution gave a categorical answer long ago. All nationalities are equal – that was the answer”.2381 However when the dispossessors entering the peasant huts were not just commissars but Jewish commissars the question still glowered in the distance. 2378РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 93, т. 3, с. 497. 2379Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lugen: Rufiland und die Juden im 20. Jahrhundert. S. 84. 2380M. Поповский. О нас — со всей искренностью // Новый американец, 1981, 20-26 сентября (№ 84), с. 7. 2381Н. Семашко. Евреи на земле // Известия, 1927, 20 августа, с. 3.
  157. ”At the end of the 20’s” writes S. Ettinger, “in all the hardship of life in the USSR, to many it seemed that Jews were the only group which gained from the revolution. They were found in important government positions, they made up a large proportion of university students, it was rumored that they received the best land in the Crimea and have flooded into Moscow”.2382 Half a century later, June 1980, at a Columbia University conference about the situation of Soviet Jewry, I heard scholars describe the marginalized status of Jews in the USSR and in particular how Jews were offered the choice of either emigration or denying their roots, beliefs and culture in order to become part of a denationalized society. Bah! That was what was required of all peoples in the 20’s under the threat of the Solovki prison camp – and emigration was not an alternative. The “golden era” of the 20’s cries out for a sober appraisal. Those years were filled with the cruelest persecution based upon class distinction, including persecution of children on account of the former life of their parents – a life which the children did not even see. But Jews were not among thesechildren or parents. The clergy, part of the Russian character, centuries in the making, was hounded to death in the 20’s. Though not majority Jewish, too often the people saw Jews directing the special “ecclesiastical departments of the GPU” which worked in this area. A wave of trials of engineers took place from the end of the 20’s through the 30’s. An entire class of older engineers was eliminated. This group was overwhelmingly Russian with a small number of Germans. Study of Russian history, archeology, and folklore were suppressed — the Russians could not have a past. No one from the persecutors would be accused having their own national interest. (It must be noted that the commission which prepared the decree abolishing the history and the philology departments at Russian universities was made up Jews and non-Jews alike — Goykhbarg, Larin, Radek and Ropstein as well as Bukharin, M. Pokrovskii, SkvortsovStepanov and Fritche. It was signed into existence by Lenin in March, 1921.) The spirit of the decree was itself an example of nationalist hatred: It was the history and language of the Great Russians that was no longer needed. During the 20’s the very understanding of Russian history was changed — there was none! And the understanding of what a Great Russian is changed — there was no such thing. And what was most painful, we Russians ourselves walked along this suicidal path. The very period of the 20’s was considered the dawn of liberated culture, liberated from Tsarism and capitalism! Even the word “Russian,” such as “I am Russian” sounded like a counter-revolutionary cry which I well remember from my childhood. But without hesitation everywhere was heard and printed “Russopyati”! [Translator’s note: a disparaging term for ethnic Russians.]
  158. 2382S. Ettinger // Bulletin on Soviet and East European Jewish Affairs, 1970, № 5, p. 38-39.
  159. Pravda published the following in a prominent place in 1925 by V. Aleksandrovsky (not known for any other contribution): Rus! Have you rotted, fallen and died? Well… here’s to your eternal memory… … you shuffle, your crutches scraping along, Your lips smeared with soot from icons, over your vast expanses the raven caws, You have guarded your grave dream. Old woman — blind and stupid…2383 V. Bloom in Moscow Evening could brazenly demand the removal of “history’s garbage from [city] squares”: to remove Minin-Pozharsky monument from the Red Square, to remove the monument to Russia’s thousand-year anniversary in Novgorod and a statue of St. Vladimir on the hill in Kiev. “Those tons of metal are needed for raw material.” (The ethnic coloring of the new names has already been noted.) Swept to glory by the political changes and distinguished by personal shamelessness, David Zaslavsky demanded the destruction of the studios of Igor Graybar used to restore ancient Russian art, finding that “reverend artist fathers were trying again to fuse the church and art”.2384 Russia’s self-mortification reflected in the Russian language with the depth, beauty and richness of meaning were replaced by an iron stamp of Soviet conformity. We have not forgotten how it looked at the height of the decade: Russian patriotism was abolished forever. But the feelings of the people will not be forgotten. Not how it felt to see the Church of the Redeemer blown up by the engineer Dzhevalkin and that the main mover behind this was Kaganovich who wanted to destroy St. Basil’s cathedral as well. Russian Orthodoxy was publicly harassed by “warrior atheists” led by Gubelman-Yaroslavsky. It is truthfully noted: “That Jewish communists took part in the destruction of churches was particularly offensive… No matter how offensive the participation of sons of Russian peasants in the persecution of the church, the part played by each nonRussian was even more offensive”.2385 This went against the Russian saying: “if you managed to snatch a room in the house, don’t throw the God out”. In the words of A. Voronel, “The 20’s were perceived by the Jews as a positive opportunity while for the Russian people, it was a tragedy”.2386 True, the Western leftist intellectuals regarded Soviet reality even higher; their admiration was not based on nationality but upon ideas of socialism. Who remembers the lightening crack of the firing squad executing 48 “food workers” for having “caused the Great Famine” (i.e., rather than Stalin): the wreckers in the meat, fish, conserves and produce trade? Among these unfortunates were not 2383Правда, 1925, 13 августа, с. 3. 2384Сорок Сороков: Альбом-указатель всех московских церквей. Т. 1*, с. 15. 2385Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Ltigen: Rufiland und die Juden im 20. Jahrhundert. S. 79. 2386А. Воронель. Трепет иудейских забот. 2-е изд. Рамат-Ган: Москва-Иерусалим, 1981, с. 120.
  160. less than ten Jews.2387 What would it take to end the world’s enchantment with Soviet power? Dora Shturman attentively followed the efforts of B. Brutskus to raise a protest among Western intellectuals. He found some who would protest – Germans and “rightists.” Albert Einstein hotheadedly signed a protest, but then withdrew his signature without embarrassment because the “Soviet Union has achieved a great accomplishment” and “Western Europe… will soon envy you.” The recent execution by firing squad was an “isolated incident.” Also, “from this, one cannot exclude the possibility that they were guilty.” Romain Rolland maintained a “noble” silence. Arnold Zweig barely stood up to the communist rampage. At least he didn’t withdraw his signature, but said this settling of accounts was an “ancient Russian method.” And, if true, what then should be asked of the academic Ioffe in Russia who was prompting Einstein to remove his signature?2388 No, the West never envied us and from those “isolated incidents” millions of innocents died. We’ll never discover why this brutality was forgotten by Western opinion. It’s not very readily remembered today. Today a myth is being built about the past to the effect that under Soviet power Jews were always second class citizens. Or, one sometimes hears that “there was not the persecution in the 20’s, that was to come later.”2389 It’s very rare to hear an admission that not only did they take part, but there was a certain enthusiasm among Jews as they carried out the business of the barbaric young government. “The mixture of ignorance and arrogance which Hannah calls a typical characteristic of the Jewish parvenu filled the government, social and cultural elite. The brazenness and ardor with which all Bolshevik policies were carried out — whether confiscation of church property or persecution of ‘bourgeois intellectuals’ gave Bolshevik power in the 20’s a certain Jewish stamp”.2390 In the 90’s another Jewish public intellectual, writing of the 20’s said : “In university halls Jews often set the tone without noticing that their banquet was happening against the backdrop of the demise of the main nationality in the country… During the 20’s Jews were proud of fellow Jews who had brilliant careers in the revolution, but did not think much about how that career was connected to the real suffering of the Russian people… Most striking today is the unanimity with which my fellow Jews deny any guilt in the history of 20th century Russia”.2391 How healing it would be for both nations if such lonely voices were not drowned out… because it’s true, in the 20’s, Jews in many ways served the Bolshevik Moloch not thinking of the broken land and not foreseeing the
  161. 2387Известия, 1930, 22 сентября, с. 1, 3-4, 25 сентября, с. 1. 2388Д. Штурман. Они — ведали // “22,” 1990, № 73, с. 126-144. 2389И. Зунделевич. Восхождение // “22,” 1983, № 29, с. 54. 2390Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lugen: Rufiland und die Juden im20. Jahrhundert. S. 144145. 2391Г. Шурмак. Шульгин и его апологеты // Новый мир, 1994, № 11, с. 244.
  162. eventual consequences for themselves. Many leading Soviet Jews lost all sense of moderation during that time, all sense of when it was time to stop.
  163. Chapter 19. In the 1930s
  164. The 1930s were years of an intense industrialized spurt, which crushed the peasantry and altered the life of the entire country. Mere existence demanded adaptation and development of new skills. But through crippling sacrifices, and despite the many absurdities of the Soviet organizational system, the horrible epic somehow led to the creation of an industrialized power. Yet the first and second five-year plans came into existence and were carried out not through the miracle of spontaneous generation, nor as a result of the simple violent round-up of large masses of laborers. It demanded many technical provisions, advanced equipment, and the collaboration of specialists experienced in this technology. All this flowed plentifully from the capitalist West, and most of all from the United States; not in the form of a gift, of course, and not in the form of generous help. The Soviet communists paid for all of this abundantly with Russia’s mineral wealth and timber, with concessions for raw materials markets, with trade areas promised to the West, and with plundered goods from the Empire of the tsars. Such deals flowed with the help and approval of international financial magnates, most of all those on Wall Street, in a persistent continuation of the first commercial ties that the Soviet communists developed on the American stock exchanges as early as during the Civil War. The new partnership was strengthened by shiploads of tsarist gold and treasures from the Hermitage. But wait a second, were we not thoroughly taught by Marx that capitalists are the fierce enemies of proletarian socialism and that we should not expect help from them, but rather a destructive, bloody war? Well, it’s not that simple: despite the official diplomatic non-recognition, trade links were completely out in the open, and even written about in Izvestiya: “American merchants are interested in broadening of economic ties with the Soviet Union.”2392 American unions came out against such an expansion (defending their markets from the products of cheap and even slave Soviet labor). The “Russian-American Chamber of Commerce,” created at that time, simply did not want to hear about any political opposition to communism, or “to mix politics with business relations.”2393 Anthony Sutton, a modern American scholar, researched the recentlyopened diplomatic and financial archives and followed the connections of Wall 2392Izvestiya, January 22, 1928, p. 1. 2393Izvestiya, January 26, 1928, p. 3.
  165. Street with the Bolsheviks; he pointed to the amoral logic of this long and consistent relationship. From as early as the “Marburg” plan at the beginning of the 20th century, which was based on the vast capital of Carnegie, the idea was to strengthen the authority of international finance, through global “socialization,” “for control … and for the forced appeasement.” Sutton concluded that: “International financiers prefer to do business with central governments. The banking community least of all wants a free economy and decentralized authority.” “Revolution and international finance do not quite contradict each other, if the result of revolution should be to establish a more centralized authority,” and, therefore, to make the markets of these countries manageable. And there was a second line of agreement: “Bolsheviks and bankers shared an essential common platform — internationalism.”2394 In that light, the subsequent support of “collective enterprises and the mass destruction of individual rights by Morgan-Rockefeller” was not surprising. In justification of this support, they claimed in Senate hearings: “Why should a great industrial country, like America, desire the creation and subsequent competition of another great industrial rival?”2395 Well, they rightly believed that with such an obviously uncompetitive, centralized and totalitarian regime, Soviet Russia could not rival America. Another thing is that Wall Street could not predict further development of the Bolshevik system, nor its extraordinary ability to control people, working them to the very bone, which eventually led to the creation of a powerful, if misshapen, industry. But how does this tie in with our basic theme? Because as we have seen, American financiers completely refused loans to pre-revolutionary Russia due to the infringement of the rights of Jews there, even though Russia was always a profitable financial prospect. And clearly, if they were prepared to sacrifice profits at that time, then now, despite all their counting on the Soviet markets, the “Morgan-Rockefeller Empire” would not assist the Bolsheviks if the persecution of the Jews was looming on horizon in the USSR at the start of the 1930s. That’s just the point: for the West, the previously described Soviet oppression of the traditional Jewish culture and of Zionists easily disappeared under the contemporary general impression that the Soviet power would not oppress the Jews, but on the contrary, that many of them would remain at the levers of power. Certain pictures of the past have the ability to conveniently rearrange in our mind in order to soothe our consciousness. And today a perception has formed that in the 1930s the Jews were already forced out of the Soviet ruling elite and had nothing to do with the administration of the country. In the 1980s we see assertions like this: in the Soviet times, the Jews in the USSR were “practically
  166. 2394A. Sutton. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. Moscow, 1998; p. 210, 212. 2395Ibid, p. 214, 215.
  167. destroyed as a people; they had been turned into a social group, which was settled in the large cities “as a social stratum to serve the ruling class.”2396 No. Not only far from “serving”, the Jews were to the large extent members of the “ruling class.” And the “large cities,” the capitals of the constituent Soviet republics, were the very thing the authorities bought off through improved provisioning, furnishing and maintenance, while the rest of the country languished from oppression and poverty. And now, after the shock of the Civil War, after the War Communism, after the NEP and the first five-year plan, it was the peace-time life of the country that was increasingly managed by the government apparatus, in which the role of the Jews was quite conspicuous, at least until 1937-38. In 1936, at the 8th Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union, Molotov, on orders from Stalin (perhaps to differ from Hitler in the eyes of the West) delivered this tirade: “Our brotherly feelings toward the Jewish people are determined by the fact that they begat the genius and the creator of the ideas of the communist liberation of Mankind,” Karl Marx; “that the Jewish people, alongside the most developed nations, brought forth countless prominent scientists, engineers, and artists [that undoubtedly had already manifested itself in the Soviet 1930s, and will be even more manifest in the post-war years], and gave many glorious heroes to the revolutionary struggle … and in our country they gave and are still giving new, remarkable, and talented leaders and managers in all areas of development and defense of the Cause of Socialism.”2397 The italics are mine. No doubt, it was said for propaganda purposes. But Molotov’s declaration was appropriate. And the “defense of the Cause of Socialism” during all those years was in the hands of the GPU, the army, diplomacy, and the ideological front. The willing participation of so many Jews in these organs continued in the early and mid-1930s, until 1937-38. Here we will briefly review – according to contemporary newspapers, later publications, and modern Jewish encyclopedias – the most important posts and names that had emerged mainly in the 1930s. Of course, such a review, complicated by the fact that we know nothing about how our characters identified themselves in regard to nationality, may contain mistakes in individual cases and can in no way be considered comprehensive. After the destruction of the “Trotskyite opposition,” the Jewish representation in the party apparatus became noticeably reduced. But that purge of the supreme party apparatus was absolutely not anti-Jewish. Lazar Kaganovich retained his extremely prominent position in the Politburo; he was an ominously merciless individual and, at the same time, a man of notoriously low proffessional level. (Nevertheless, from the mid-1930s he was the Secretary
  168. 2396A. Voronel // “22”: Obshchestvenno-politicheskiy i literaturniy zhurnal evreyskoy intelligentsii iz SSSR v Izraile [Social, Political and Literary Journal of the Jewish Intelligentsia from the USSR in Israel (henceforth – “22”)]. Tel-Aviv, 1986, (50), p. 160. 2397Izvestiya, November 30, 1936, p. 2.
  169. of the Central Committee, and simultaneously a member of the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee — only Stalin himself held both these positions at the same time). And he placed three of his brothers in quite important posts. Mikhail Kaganovich was deputy chair of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy beginning in 1931; from 1937 he was narkom (narodny komissar, that is, “people’s commissar”) of the defense industry; later he simultaneously headed the aviation industry. Yuli Kaganovich, passing through the leading party posts in Nizhniy Novgorod (as all the brothers did), became deputy narkom of the foreign trade.2398 (Another, absolutely untalented brother, was a “big gun” in Rostov-on-Don. It reminds me of a story by Saltykov-Shchedrin, where one Vooz Oshmyanskiy tried to place his brother Lazar in a profitable post). However, both the ethnic Russian opposition factions, that of Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky, and that of Syrtsov, Ryutin, and Uglanov, were destroyed by Stalin in the beginning of the 1930s with support of the Jewish Bolsheviks — he drew necessary replacements from their ranks. Kaganovich was the principal and the most reliable of Stalin’s supporters in the Politburo: he demanded the execution of Ryutin (October 1932-January 1933) but even Stalin wasn’t able to manage it then.2399 The purge of 1930-1933 dealt with the Russian elements in the party. Out of 25 members in the Presidium of the Central Control Commission after the 16th Party Congress (1930), 10 were Jews: A. Solts, “the conscience of the Party” (in the bloodiest years from 1934 to 1938 was assistant to Vyshinsky, the General Prosecutor of the USSR2400); Z. Belenky (one of the three abovementioned Belenky brothers); A. Goltsman (who supported Trotsky in the debate on trade unions); ferocious Rozaliya Zemlyachka (Zalkind); M. Kaganovich, another of the brothers; the Chekist Trilisser; the “militant atheist” Yaroslavsky; B. Roizenman; and A.P. Rozengolts, the surviving assistant of Trotsky. If one compares the composition of the party’s Central Committee in the 1920s with that in the early 1930s, he would find that it was almost unchanged — both in 1925 as well as after the 16th Party Congress, Jews comprised around 1/6 of the membership.2401 In the upper echelons of the communist party after the 17th Congress (“the congress of the victors”) in 1934, Jews remained at 1/6 of the membership of the Central Committee; in the Party Control Commission — around 1/3, and a similar proportion in the Revision Commission of the Central Committee. (It was headed for quite a while by M. Vladimirsky. From 1934 Lazar Kaganovich took the reins of the Central Control Commission). Jews made up the same proportion (1/3) of the members of the Commission of the Soviet Control.2402
  170. 2398Rossiyskaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Russian Jewish Encyclopedia (henceforth— RJE)]. 2nd Ed. Moscow, 1994. v.1, p. 527-528. 2399Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror]. Firenze: Edizioni Aurora, 1974, p. 70, 73. 2400RJE, v. 3, p. 95. 2401Izvestiya, July 14, 1930, p. 1. 2402Izvestiya, February 11, 1934, p. 1-2.
  171. For five years filled with upheaval (1934-1939) the deputy General Prosecutor of the USSR was Grigory Leplevsky.2403 Occupants of many crucial party posts were not even announced in Pravda. For instance, in autumn 1936 the Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol (the Union of Communist Youth) was E. Fainberg.2404 The Department of the Press and Publishing of the Central Committee – the key ideological establishment – was managed by B. Tal. Previously, the department was headed by Lev Mekhlis, who had by then shifted to managing Pravda fulltime; from 1937 Mekhlis became deputy narkom of defense and the head of Political Administration of the Red Army. We see many Jews in the command posts in provinces: in the Central Asia Bureau, the Eastern Siberia Krai Party Committee (kraikom), in the posts of first secretaries of the obkoms [party committee of oblasts] of the Volga German Republic, the Tatar, Bashkir, Tomsk, Kalinin, and Voronezh oblasts and in many others. For example, Mendel Khatayevich (a member of the Central Committee from 1930) was consequently secretary of Gomel, Odessa, Tatar, and Dnepropetrovsk obkoms, secretary of the Middle Volga kraikom, and second secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Yakov Chubin was secretary of the Chernigov and Akmolinsk obkoms and of the Shakhtinsk district party committee; later he served in several commissions of the Party Control in Moscow, Crimea, Kursk, and Turkmenia, and from 1937 he was the first secretary of the Central Committee of Turkmenia.2405 There is no need to list all such names, but let’s not overlook the real contribution of these secretaries into the Bolshevik cause; also note their striking geographical mobility, as in the 1920s. Reliable cadres were still in much demand and indispensable. And there was no concern that they lacked knowledge of each new locality of which they took charge. Yet much more power was in the hands of the narkoms. In 1936 we see nine Jewish narkoms in the Government. Take the worldwide-famous narkom of foreign affairs Litvinov (in the friendly cartoons in Izvestiya, he was portrayed as a knight of peace with a spear and shield taking a stand against foreign filth); no less remarkable, but only within the limits of the USSR, was the narkom of internal affairs Yagoda; the ascending and all-glorious “Iron Narkom” of railroads, Lazar Kaganovich; foreign trade was headed by A. Rozengolts(before that we saw him in the Central Control Commission); I.Ya. Weitser was in charge of domestic trade; M. Kalmanovich was in charge of sovkhozes [state owned farms that paid wages] (he was the foods-commissar from the end of 1917); I.E. Lyubimov was narkom of light industry; G. Kaminskiy was narkom of healthcare, his instructive articles were often published in Izvestiya; and the above-mentioned Z. Belenky was the head of the
  172. 2403RJE, v. 2, p. 163. 2404RJE, v. 3, p. 189. 2405Ibid., p. 283, 344.
  173. Commission of the Soviet Control.2406 In the same Government we can find many Jewish names among the deputy narkoms in various people’s commissariats: finance, communications, railroad transport, water, agriculture, the timber industry, the foodstuffs industry, education, justice. Among the most important deputy narkoms were: Ya. Gamarnik (defense), A. Gurevich (“he made a significant contribution to the creation of the metallurgical industry in the country”2407); Semyon Ginzburg, he was deputy narkom of heavy industry, and later he became narkom of construction, and even later minister of construction of military enterprises.2408 The famous “Great Turning Point” took place place from the end of 1929 to the beginning of 1931. Murderous collectivization lay ahead, and at this decisive moment Stalin assigned Yakovlev-Epshtein as its sinister principal executive. His portraits and photos, and drawings by I. Brodsky, were prominently reproduced in newspapers then and later, from year to year.2409 Together with the already mentioned M. Kalmanovich, he was a member of the very top Soviet of Labor and Defense (there was hardly anyone apart from Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov in that organ).2410 In March of 1931, at the 6th Session of Soviets, Yakovlev reported on the progress of collectivization – about the development of sovkhozes and kolkhozes (that is, the destruction of the way of life of the people).2411 On this ‘glorious’ path to the ruination of Russia, among Yakovlev’s collaborators, we can see deputy narkom V.G. Feigin, members of the Board of the people’s commissariat of agriculture M.M. Volf, G.G. Roshal, and other ‘experts’. The important organization, the Grain Trust, was attached to the people’s commissariat of agriculture to pump out grain from peasants for the state; the chairman of the board of directors was M.G. Gerchikov, his portraits appeared in Izvestiya, and Stalin himself sent him a telegram of encouragement.2412 From 1932 the People’s Commissariat of Sovkhozes and Kolkhozes with M. Kalmanovich at the helm was separated from the people’s commissariat of agriculture.2413 From 1934 the chairman of the national Soviet of Kolkhozes was the same Yakovlev-Epshtein.2414 The chairman of the Commission of Purveyance was I. Kleiner (who was awarded the Order of Lenin). During the most terrible months of collectivization, M. Kalmanovich was deputy narkom of agriculture. But at the end of 1930 he was transferred into the People’s Commissariat of Finance as deputy narkom; he also became chairman of the board of the Gosbank [The State Bank], for in
  174. 2406Izvestiya, January 18, 1936, p. 1 and February 6, 1936, p. 3. 2407RJE, V. 1, p. 394. 2408Ibid., p. 313. 2409See, for example: Izvestiya, June 12, 1930; March 14 and 17, 1931; January 6, 1934; January 10 and February 21, 1936. 2410Izvestiya, December 25, 1930, p. 1. 2411Izvestiya, March 14, 1931, p. 3-4; March 17, p. 1-2. 2412Izvestiya, February 2, 1931, p. 4; May 30, p. 1. 2413Izvestiya, February 20, 1936, p. 4. 2414RJE, v. 3, p. 497.
  175. monetary matters a strong will was also much needed. In 1936, Lev Maryasin became chairman of the board of the Gosbank; he was replaced in that post by Solomon Krutikov in 1936.2415 In November 1930 the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade was created, and A.P. Rozengolts served for seven years as its head. Jews comprised one-third of its board members. Among them was Sh. Dvoylatsky, who simultaneously served in the Central Commissions on Concessions; in 19341936 he became the Soviet trade representative in France.2416 At the end of 1930 the People’s Commissariat of Supply was created with A. Mikoyan at the helm; on its board we see M. Belenky — that is another, actually the fifth, man with the surname “Belenky” encountered here; soon he himself became the narkom, replacing Mikoyan. In general, in the People’s Commisariats of Trade and Supply, the Jewish component was higher than in the upper party echelons — from a quarter to a half. Still let’s not overlook the Tsentrosoyuz (the bureaucratic center of Soviet pseudo-cooperation). After Lev Khichuk in the 1920s, it was managed from 1931 to 1937 by I.A. Zelensky, whom we met earlier as a member of the board of the people’s commissariat of foodstuffs.2417 Let me point it out once more: all these examples are for illustrative purposes only. They should not be taken to create the impression that there were no members of other nationalities on all those boards and in the presidiums; of course there were. Moreover, all the above-mentioned people occupied their posts only for a while; they were routinely transferred between various important positions. Let’s look at transport and communications. First, railroads were managed by M. Rukhimovich (his portraits could be found in the major newspapers of the time2418); later he became narkom of defense industry (with M. Kaganovich as his deputy), while the command over railroads was given to L. Kaganovich.2419 There were important changes in the Coal Trust: I. Schwartz was removed from the board and M. Deych was assigned to replace him.2420 T. Rozenoer managed Grozneft [Grozny Oil]. Yakov Gugel headed the construction of the Magnitogorsk metallurgical giant; Yakov Vesnik was the director of the Krivoy Rog Metallurgical industrial complex; and the hell of the Kuznetsk industrial complex with its 200,000 hungry and ragged workers was supervised by S. Frankfurt, and after him by I. Epshtein (the latter was arrested in 1938 but landed on his feet because he was sent to take command over the construction of the Norilsk industrial complex).2421
  176. 2415RJE, v. 2, p. 98, 256. 2416RJE, v. 1, p. 418. 2417Ibid., p. 483. 2418See, for example: Izvestiya, May 17, 1931, p. 3. 2419Izvestiya, December 9, 1936, p. 1. 2420Izvestiya, July 7, 1930, p. 2. 2421RJE, v.1, p. 222, 387; v. 3, p. 237, 464.
  177. The Supreme Soviet of the National Economy still existed, but its significance waned. After Unshlikht, it was headed by A. Rozengolts, and then by Ordzhonikidze, with Jews comprising the majority of its board.2422 At that time, the Gosplan [state planning ministry] gathered strength. In 1931, under the chairmanship of Kuibyshev, Jews comprised more than half of its 18-member board.2423 Let’s now examine the top posts in economy during the “last burgeoning year” of Stalin’s era, 1936. In 1936 Izvestiya published2424 the complete roster of the board of the people’s commissariat of domestic trade. Those 135 individuals had essentially ruled over the entire domestic trade in the USSR (and they were hardly disinterested men). Jews comprised almost 40% of this list, including two deputies to the narkom, several trade inspectors, numerous heads of food and manufactured goods trades in the oblasts, heads of consumer unions, restaurant trusts, cafeterias, food supplies and storage, heads of train dining cars and railroad buffets; and of course, the head of Gastronom No.1 in Moscow (“Eliseyevsky”) was also a Jew. Naturally, all this facilitated smooth running of the industry in those far from prosperous years. In the pages of Izvestiya one could read headlines like this: “The management of the Union’s Fishing Trust made major political mistakes.” As a result, Moisei Frumkin was relieved of his post at the board of the People’s Commissariat of Ddomestic Trade (we saw him in the 1920s as a deputy of the Narkom of Foreign Trade). Comrade Frumkin was punished with a stern reprimand and a warning; comrade Kleiman suffered the same punishment; and comrade Nepryakhin was expelled from the party.2425 Soon after that, Izvestiya published2426 an addendum to the roster of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry with 215 names in it. Those wishing to can delve into it as well. A present-day author thus writes about those people: by the 1930s “the children of the déclassé Jewish petty bourgeois succeeded … in becoming the ‘commanders’ of the “great construction projects.” And so it appeared to those who, putting in 16 hours a day for weeks and months, never leaving the foundation pits, the swamps, the deserts, and taiga …, that it was “their country.”2427 However, the author is wrong: it was the blackened hardworkers and yesterday’s peasants, who had no respite from toiling in foundation pits and swamps, while the directors only occasionally promenaded there; they mainly spent time in offices enjoying their special provision services (“the bronze foremen”). But undoubtedly, their harsh and strong-willed decisions helped to bring these construction projects to completion, building up the industrial potential of the USSR.
  178. 2422Izvestiya, November 14, 1930, p. 2; November 16, p. 4. 2423Izvestiya, February 13, 1931, p. 3. 2424Izvestiya, April 9, 1936, p. 2. 2425Izvestiya, November 5, 1930, p. 2; November 11, p. 5. 2426Izvestiya, June 11, 1936, p. 2. 2427V. Boguslavskiy. V zashchitu Kunyayeva [In Defense of Kunyayev] // “22”, 1980, (16), p. 174.
  179. Thus the Soviet Jews obtained a weighty share of state, industrial, and economic power at all levels of government in the USSR.
  180. The personality of B. Roizenman merits particular attention. See for yourself: he received the Order of Lenin “in recognition of his exceptional services” in the adjustment of the state apparatus “to the objectives of the large-scale offensive for Socialism.” What secrets, inscrutable to us, could be hidden behind this “offensive”? We can glance into some of them from the more direct wording: for carrying out “special missions of top state importance on the cleanup of state apparatus in the Soviet diplomatic missions abroad.”2428 Now let’s look at the state of affairs in diplomacy. The 1920s were examined in the preceding chapter. Now we encounter other important people. For example, in spring of 1930, Izvestiya reported on page 1 and under a separate heading that “F.A. Rotshtein, the board member of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, returned from vacation and resumed his duties.”2429 (Well, didn’t they only write this way about Stalin? To the best of my knowledge, neither Ordzhonikidze, nor Mikoyan – other very top functionaries – was honored in such a way?) Yet very soon Rotshtein made a slip and his career ended just two months later, in July 1930. With the designation of Litvinov as narkom, Rotshtein was removed from the board (even though, we may remember, he claimed credit for the creation of the British Communist Party). In the 1930s, at the peak of Litvinov’s power, a new generation appeared. The Jewish Encyclopedia writes: “there was a notion of ‘the Litvinov school of diplomacy’” that included the outstanding personalities of K. Umansky, Ya. Surits, B. Shtein (he was already successful by the beginning of the 1920s) and E. Gnedin (son of Parvus).2430 Ehrenburg added here the name of E. Rubinin. Just as in the 1920s diplomacy attracted a cadre of Jews, so it did through the early and mid-1930s. From the moment the USSR was accepted into the League of Nations, we see Litvinov, Shtein, Gnedin, and also Brenner, Stashevsky, Marcus, Rozenberg, and Svanidze (a Georgian) as the senior members of the Soviet delegation. It was these people who represented Soviet Russia at that forum of nations. There were Soviet plenipotentiaries in Europe of Jewish origin: in England — Maisky; in Germany (and later in France)—Ya. Surits; in Italy—B. Shtein (after Kamenev); we also see Jewish plenipotentiaries in Spain, Austria, Romania, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Belgium, Norway, and in Asia. For example, the above-mentioned Surits represented the Soviet Union in Afghanistan as early as the Russian Civil War; later, from 1936, B. Skvirsky served in Afghanistan; for many years he was was
  181. 2428Izvestiya, April 24, 1931, p. 2. 2429Izvestiya, May 18, 1930, p. 1. 2430Kratkaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Short Jewish Encyclopedia (henceforth—SJE)]. Jerusalem, 1976-2001. v. 4, p. 879.
  182. the unofficial Soviet representative in Washington.2431 In the early and mid1930s, a great number of Jews successfully continued to work in Soviet trade delegations. (Here we find another Belenky, already the sixth individual of that name, B.S.Belenky, who was the trade representative in Italy from 1934 to 1937).2432 Concerning the Red Army, the aforementioned Israeli researcher, Aron Abramovich, writes that in the 1930s “a significant number of Jewish officers served” in the army. “There were many of them, in particular in the Revolutionary Military Soviet, in the central administrations of the people’s commissariat of defense, in the general staff, and at lower levels – in the military districts, in the armies, corps, divisions, brigades, and all military units. The Jews still played a prominent role in the political organs.”2433 The entire Central Political Administration of the Red Army came under command of the trustworthy Mekhlis after the suicide of the trustworthy Gamarnik. Here are several names from the cream of the Political Administration: Mordukh Khorosh was the deputy director of the Political Administration of the Red Army in the 1930s, and later, until his arrest, he was in charge of the Political Administration of the Kiev military district. From 1929 through to 1937, Lazar Aronshtam headed the political administration of the Belorussian military district, then of the Special Far Eastern Army, and later – of the Moscow military district. Isaak Grinberg was the Senior Inspector of the Political Administration of the Red Army, and later the deputy director of the Political Administration of the Leningrad district. Boris Ippo (he participated in the pacification of Central Asia during the Civil War as the head of the Political Administration of the Turkestan Front and later of the Central-Asian district) was the head of the political administration of the Caucasus Red Army; and later the director of the Military Political Academy. The already-mentioned Mikhail Landa from 1930 to 1937 was the chief editor of Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red Star, the official newspaper of the Soviet military).Naum Rozovsky was a military prosecutor since the Civil War; by 1936 he was the chief military prosecutor of the Red Army.2434 Gamarnik remained the deputy to Voroshilov, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Soviet until 1934 (when the organization was disbanded). In the 1930s, in addition to those named in the previous chapter, among the heads of the central administrations of the Red Army, we encounter the following individuals: Abram Volp (the head of the Administrative Mobilization Administration; in the previous chapter he was identified as the chief of staff of the Moscow military district), Semyon Uritsky (of the Military Intelligence Administration, until 1937), Boris Feldman – the head of the 2431RJE, v. 3, p. 58. 2432RJE, v. 1, p. 101. 2433Aron Abramovich. V reshayushchey voyne: Uchastie i rol evreyev SSSR v voyne protiv natsizma [In the Deciding War: Participation and Role of Soviet Jews in the War against Nazism]. 2nd Edition. Tel-Aviv, 1982. v.1, p. 61. 2434RJE, v. 1, p. 63, 376, 515; v. 2, p. 120, 491; v. 3, p. 300-301.
  183. Central Personnel Administration, and Leontiy Kotlyar — the head of the Central Military Engineering Administration in the pre-war years. Among the commanders of the branches of the military we find A. Goltsman, the head of military aviation from 1932 (we already saw him in the Central Control Commission, and as a union activist; he died in a plane crash). Among the commanders of the military districts we again see Iona Yakir (Crimean district, and later the important Kiev District), and Lev Gordon (Turkestan district).2435 Although we have no data on Jewish representation in the lower ranks, there is little doubt that when a structure (be it a political administration of the army, a supply service, or a party or a commissariat apparatus) was headed by a Jew, it was accompanied, as a rule, by a quite noticeable Jewish presence among its staff. Yet service in the army is not a vice; it can be quite constructive. So what about our good old GPU-NKVD? A modern researcher, relying on archives, writes: “The first half of the 1930s was characterized by the increasingly important role of Jews in the state security apparatus.” And “on the eve of the most massive repressions … the ethnic composition of the supreme command of the NKVD … [can be understood with the help of] the list of decorated Chekists on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD. The list of 407 senior officials published in the central press contained 56 Jews (13.8%), and 7 Latvians (1.7%).”2436 When the GPU was reformed into the NKVD (1934) with Yagoda at the head, they twice published the names of the supreme commissars of the NKVD (what a rare chance to peek behind a usually impenetrable wall!2437): commissars of State Security of the 1st Rank Ya.S. Agranov (the first deputy to Yagoda), V.A. Balitsky, T.D. Deribas, G.E. Prokovev, S.F. Redens, L.M. Zakovsky; of the 2nd Rank: L.N. Belskiy, K.V. Pauker (they were already decorated in 1927 on the decennial of the Cheka), M.I. Gay, S.A. Goglidze, L.B. Zalin, Z.B. Katsnelson, K.M. Karlson, I.M. Leplevsky, G.A. Molchanov, L.G. Mironov, A.A. Slutsky, A.M. Shanin, and R.A. Pillyar. Of course, not all of them were Jews but a good half were. So, the Jewish Chekists were still there; they didn’t leave, nor were they forced out of the NKVD, the same NKVD which was devouring the country after the death of Kirov, and which later devoured itself. A.A. Slutsky was the director of the NKVD’s foreign section; that is, he was in charge of espionage abroad. “His deputies were Boris Berman and Sergey Shpigelglas.” Pauker was a barber from Budapest, who connected with
  184. 2435RJE, v. 1, p. 244, 350; v. 2, p. 78; v. 3, p. 179, 206-207, 493-494. See also Aron Abramovich. V reshayushchey voyne. [In the Deciding War], v. 1, p. 62. 2436L.Yu. Krichevsky. Evrei v apparate VChK-OGPU v 20-e gody [The Jews in the apparatus of the Cheka-OGPU in the 1920s] // Evrei i russkaya revolyutsia: Materiali i issledovaniya [Jews and the Russian Revolution: Materials and Research] Compiled by O.V. Budnitsky. Moscow; Jerusalem: Gesharim, 1999, p. 343-344; see also Izvestiya, December 20, 1937, p. 2. 2437Izvestiya, November 27, 1935, p. 1; November 29, p. 1.
  185. the communists while he was a Russian POW in 1916. Initially, he was in charge of the Kremlin security and later became the head of the operations section of the NKVD.2438 Of course, due to secrecy and the non-approachability of these highly placed individuals, it is difficult to judge them conclusively. Take, for instance, Naum (Leonid) Etingon, who orchestrated the murder of Trotsky and was the organizer of the “Cambridge Five” espionage ring and who oversaw the nuclear espionage after the war — a true ace of espionage.2439 Or take Lev Feldbin (he used a catchy pseudonym of ‘Aleksandr Orlov’). A prominent and long-serving Chekist, he headed the economic section of the foreign department of GPU, that is, he supervised all foreign trade of the USSR. He was a trusted agent, of those who were instructed in the shroud of full secrecy on how “to extract false confessions [from the victims].” “Many [of the NKVD investigators] ended up being subordinate to him.”2440 And yet he was completely hidden from the public and became famous only later, when he defected to the West. And how many such posts were there? Or take Mikhail Koltsov-Fridlyand (“the political advisor” to the Republican government of Spain)2441, who took part in some of the major GPU adventures. M. Berman was assigned as deputy to the Narkom of Internal Affairs Ezhov within three days after the latter was installed on September 27, 1936. Still, Berman remained the director of the GULag.2442 And along with Ezhov, came his handymen. Mikhail Litvin, his long-time associate in the Central Committee of the party, became the director of the personnel department of the NKVD; by May 1937 he rose to the unmatched rank of director of the Secret Political section of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. In 1931-36, Henrikh Lyushkov was the deputy director of that section; he deserted to Japan in 1938 and was then killed by a Japanese bullet in 1945 – by the end of the war the Japanese did not want to give him back and had no option but shoot him. In this way, we can extensively describe the careers of each of them. In the same section, Aleksandr Radzivilovsky was an “agent for special missions.” Another long-time Ezhov colleague, Isaak Shapiro, was Ezhov’s personal assistant from 1934, and then he became the director of the NKVD Secretariat, and later was the director of the infamous Special Section of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD.2443 In December 1936, among the heads of ten sections (for secrecy, designated only by number) of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, we see
  186. 2438Robert Conquest. Bolshoy terror [The Great Terror], p. 187. 2439RJE, v. 3, p. 473. 2440Aleksandr Orlov. From the introduction to the book Taynaya istoriya stalinskikh prestupleniy [The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes] // Vremya i my: Mezhdunarodny zhurnal literatury i obshchestvennykh problem [Epoch and We: International Journal of Literature and Social Problems (henceforth – EW)]. New York, 1982, No.67, p. 202. 2441RJE, v. 2, p. 62. 2442Izvestiya, September 27, 1936, p. 1; September 30, p. 3. See also RJE, v. 1, p. 124. 2443RJE, v. 2, p. 187, 218, 432; v. 3, p. 358.
  187. seven Jews: the Security section (section #1)—K. Pauker; Counter-Intelligence (3) — L. Mironov; Special section (5)—I. Leplevsky; Transport (6)—A. Shanin; Foreign section (7) — A. Slutsky; Records and Registration (8)—V. Tsesarsky; Prisons (10)—Ya. Veinshtok. Over the course of the meat-grinding year of 1937 several other Jews occupied posts of directors of those sections: A. Zalpeter—Operations section (2); Ya. Agranov, followed by M. Litvin—Secret Political section (4); A Minaev-Tsikanovsky—Counter-Intelligence (3); and I. Shapiro – Special section (9).2444 I named the leadership of the GULag in my book, GULag Archipelago. Yes, there was a large proportion of Jews among its command. (Portraits of the directors of construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which I reproduced from the Soviet commemorative corpus of 1936, caused outrage: they claimed that I have selected the Jews only on purpose. But I did not select them, I’ve just reproduced the photographs of all the High Directors of the BelBaltlag [White Sea – Baltic Canal camp administration] from that immortal book. Am I guilty that they had turned out to be Jews? Who had selected them for those posts? Who is guilty?) I will now add information about three prominent men, whom I did not know then. Before the BelBaltlag, one Lazar Kogan worked as the head of the GULag; Zinovy Katsnelson was the deputy head of the GULag from 1934 onward; Izrail Pliner was the head of the GULag from 1936, and later he oversaw the completion of construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal (1937).2445 It can’t be denied that History elevated many Soviet Jews into the ranks of the arbiters of the fate of all Russians.
  188. Never publicized information about events of different times flows from different sources: about the regional Plenipotentiaries of GPU-NKVD in the 1930s (before 1937). The names of their offices fully deserved to be written in capital letters, for it was precisely them and not the secretaries of the obkoms, who were the supreme masters of their oblasts, masters of the life and death of any inhabitant, who reported directly only to the central NKVD in Moscow. The full names of some of them are known, while only initials remain from others; and still of others, we know only their last names. They moved from post to post, between different provinces. (If we could only find the dates and details of their service! Alas, all this was done in secret). And in all of the 1930s, many Jews remained among those provincial lords. According to the recently published data, in the regional organs of State Security, not counting the Main Directorate of State Security, there were 1,776 Jews (7.4% of the total members serving).2446 2444A. Kokurin, N. Petrov. NKVD: struktura, funktsii, kadry [The NKVD: Organization, Functions, Cadres] // Svobodnaya mysl [Free Thought], 1997, (6), p. 113-116. 2445RJE, v. 2, p. 22, 51-52, 389. 2446A. Kokurin, N. Petrov. NKVD: struktura, funktsii, kadry [The NKVD: Organization, Functions, Cadres] // Svobodnaya mysl [Free Thought], 1997, (6), p. 118.
  189. A few Jewish plenipotentiaries are listed here: in Belorussia – Izrail Leplevsky (brother of the deputy General Prosecutor Grigory Leplevsky, we already saw him in the Cheka; later, he worked in a senior post in the GPU as a Commissar of State Security of 2nd Rank; and now we see him as the Narkom of Internal Affairs of Belorussia from 1934 to 1936); in the Western Oblast – I.M. Blat, he later worked in Chelyabinsk; in the Ukraine – Z. Katsnelson, we saw him in the Civil War all around the country, from the Caspian Sea to the White Sea. Now he was the deputy head of the GULag; later we see him as Deputy Narkom of Internal Affairs of Ukraine; in 1937 he was replaced by Leplevsky. We see D.M. Sokolinsky first In Donetsk Oblast and later in Vinnitsa Oblast; L.Ya. Faivilovich and Fridberg – in the Northern Caucasus; M.G. RaevKaminsky and Purnis – in Azerbaijan; G. Rappoport – in Stalingrad Oblast; P.Sh. Simanovsky – in Orlov Oblast; Livshits – in Tambov Oblast; G.Ya. Abrampolsky – in Gorkov Oblast; A.S. Shiyron, supervising the round-up of the dispossessed kulaks – in Arkhangel Oblast; I.Z. Ressin – in the German Volga Republic; Zelikman – in Bashkiriya; N. Raysky – in Orenburg Oblast; G.I. Shklyar – in Sverdlovsk Oblast; L.B. Zalin – in Kazakhstan; Krukovsky – in Central Asia; Trotsky – in Eastern Siberia, and Rutkovsky – in the Northern Krai. All these high placed NKVD officials were tossed from one oblast to another in exactly the same manner as the secretaries of obkoms. Take, for instance, Vladimir Tsesarsky: was plenipotentiary of the GPU-NKVD in Odessa, Kiev and in the Far East. By 1937 he had risen to the head of the Special section of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD (just before Shapiro). Or look at S. Mironov-Korol: in 1933-36 he was the head of the Dnepropetrovsk GPU-NKVD; in 1937 he was in charge of the Western Siberian NKVD; he also served in the central apparatus of the GPU-NKVD.2447 In the mid-1930s, we see L. Vul as the head of Moscow and later of Saratov Police. The plenipotentiary in Moscow was L. Belsky (after serving in Central Asia); later, he had risen to the head of the Internal Service Troops of the NKVD. In the 1930s we see many others: Foshan was in charge of the border troops; Meerson was the head of the Economic Planning section of the NKVD; L.I. Berenzon and later L.M. Abramson headed the finance department of the GULag; and Abram Flikser headed the personnel section of the GULag. All these are disconnected pieces of information, not amenable to methodical anal Moreover, there were special sections in each provincial office of the NKVD. Here is another isolated bit of information: Yakov Broverman was the head of Secretariat of the Special Section of the NKVD in Kiev; he later worked in the same capacity in the central NKVD apparatus.2448 Later, in 1940, when the Soviets occupied the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the head of the Dvinsk NKVD was one Kaplan. He dealt so harshly with the people there, that in 1941, when the Red Army had hardly left
  190. 2447RJE, v. 2, p. 293; v. 3, p. 311. 2448RJE, v. 1, p. 170
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