<\/p>\n
Nobel laureate under fire for new book on the role of Jews in Soviet-era repression<\/b><\/p>\n
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow<\/b><\/p>\n
Sat 25 Jan 2003 10.32 GMT<\/b><\/p>\n
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who first exposed the horrors of the Stalinist gulag, is now attempting to tackle one of the most sensitive topics of his writing career – the role of the Jews in the Bolshevik revolution and Soviet purges.<\/b><\/p>\n
In his latest book Solzhenitsyn, 84, deals with one of the last taboos of the communist revolution: that Jews were as much perpetrators of the repression as its victims.\u00a0Two Hundred Years Together –<\/u>\u00a0a reference to the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population – contains three chapters discussing the Jewish role in the revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia.<\/b><\/p>\n
But Jewish leaders and some historians have reacted furiously to the book, and questioned Solzhenitsyn’s motives in writing it, accusing him of factual inaccuracies and of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism in Russia.<\/b><\/p>\n
Solzhenitsyn argues that some Jewish satire of the revolutionary period\u00a0“consciously or unconsciously descends on the Russians”<\/i>\u00a0as being behind the genocide. But he states that all the nation’s ethnic groups must share the blame, and that people shy away from speaking the truth about the Jewish experience.<\/b><\/p>\n
In one remark which infuriated Russian Jews, he wrote:<\/b><\/p>\n
“If I would care to generalise, and to say that the life of the Jews in the camps was especially hard, I could, and would not face reproach for an unjust national generalisation. But in the camps where I was kept, it was different. The Jews whose experience I saw – their life was softer than that of others.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Yet he added:<\/b><\/p>\n
“But it is impossible to find the answer to the eternal question: who is to be blamed, who led us to our death? To explain the actions of the Kiev cheka [secret police] only by the fact that two thirds were Jews is certainly incorrect.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, spent much of his life in Soviet prison camps, enduring persecution when he wrote about his experiences. He is currently in frail health, but in an interview given last month he said that Russia must come to terms with the Stalinist and revolutionary genocides – and that its Jewish population should be as offended at their own role in the purges as they are at the Soviet power that also persecuted them.<\/b><\/p>\n
“My book was directed to empathise with the thoughts, feelings and the psychology of the Jews – their spiritual component,” he said. “I have never made general conclusions about a people. I will always differentiate between layers of Jews. One layer rushed headfirst to the revolution. Another, to the contrary, was trying to stand back. The Jewish subject for a long time was considered prohibited. Zhabotinsky [a Jewish writer] once said that the best service our Russian friends give to us is never to speak aloud about us.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
But Solzhenitsyn’s book has caused controversy in Russia, where one Jewish leader said it was\u00a0“not of any merit”.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
“This is a mistake, but even geniuses make mistakes,”<\/i><\/b>\u00a0said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress.<\/b><\/p>\n
“Richard Wagner did not like the Jews, but was a great composer. Dostoyevsky was a great Russian writer, but had a very sceptical attitude towards the Jews.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
“This is not a book about how the Jews and Russians lived together for 200 years, but one about how they lived apart after finding themselves on the same territory. This book is a weak one professionally. Factually, it is so bad as to be beyond criticism. As literature, it is not of any merit.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
But DM Thomas, one of Solzhenitsyn’s biographers, said that he did not think the book was fuelled by anti-Semitism.<\/b><\/p>\n
“I would not doubt his sincerity. He says that he firmly supports the state of Israel. In his fiction and factual writing there are Jewish characters that he writes about who are bright, decent, anti-Stalinist people.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Professor Robert Service of Oxford University, an expert on 20th century Russian history, said that from what he had read about the book, Solzhenitsyn was\u00a0“absolutely right”.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Researching a book on Lenin, Prof Service came across details of how Trotsky, who was of Jewish origin, asked the politburo in 1919 to ensure that Jews were enrolled in the Red army. Trotsky said that Jews were disproportionately represented in the Soviet civil bureaucracy, including the cheka.<\/b><\/p>\n
“Trotsky’s idea was that the spread of anti-Semitism was [partly down to] objections about their entrance into the civil service. There is something in this; that they were not just passive spectators of the revolution. They were part-victims and part-perpetrators.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
“It is not a question that anyone can write about without a huge amount of bravery, and [it] needs doing in Russia because the Jews are quite often written about by fanatics. Mr Solzhenitsyn’s book seems much more measured than that.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Yet others failed to see the need for Solzhenitsyn’s pursuit of this particular subject at present. Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB), said:<\/b><\/p>\n
“The question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD and cheka were serving ideas of social change.<\/i><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
“If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it will increase the passions of anti-Semitism, which has deep roots in Russian history. I think it is better not to discuss such a question now.”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Solzhenitsyn\u2019s Damning History of the Jews in Russia \u2013 a\u00a0Review<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThe Jews accumulated wealth by cooperating with each other<\/i><\/b>. (p. 31).\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThey made profits by taking the peasants\u2019 grain to the point of impoverishing them (and causing famine), turning it into brandy, and then encouraging drunkenness.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0(p. 21, 24).\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cJews forced peasants into lifelong debt and crushing poverty by requiring payment, in cattle and tools, for liquor<\/i><\/b>. (p. 31).\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n MORE:\u00a0History<\/a>\u00a0The Jewish Question<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n The translation of Solzhenitsyn\u2019s book appears to have been done without permission from his family, and this might be why this lengthy and detailed review is no longer available on\u00a0<\/i><\/b>the page of the book on Amazon.com<\/i><\/a>, where it originally appeared.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n The book might disappear altogether from Amazon, so if you want to get your Kindle copy, act now. Otherwise you can find it on many sources on the internet.<\/i><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Jews had enormous influence in the English and American media at the turn of the century \u2013 this is what most people in America and UK were told about Russian Jews<\/b><\/p>\n The translator, Columbus Falco, describes the censorship of this book when it appeared in 2002:<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cPublished in the original Russian in 2002, the book was received with a firestorm of rage and denunciation from the literary and media world, from the Jews, and from almost the entire intelligentsia of the established order in the West\u2026<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Immense efforts have been made by the Russian authorities and also by the Western liberal democratic power structure to ignore 200 YEARS TOGETHER, to suppress it as much as possible, and above all to prevent and interdict the book\u2019s translation into foreign languages, most especially into English, which has become essentially the worldwide language of our epoch\u2026<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n The Russian authorities have to this date refused to allow any official English translation of the book to be published\u201d.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/b>(p. 2).<\/b><\/p>\n Most of it consists of unremarkable information that can be found in standard, non-censored texts.<\/b><\/p>\n Agree with author Solzhenitsyn or not, but recognize the fact that he is no lightweight. Solzhenitsyn goes into considerable detail about many different historical epochs, and clearly has a deep knowledge of the issues that he raises. His approach is balanced. He is sympathetic towards Jews as well as critical of Jews.<\/b><\/p>\n The latter evidently does not sit well with many, because it does not comply with the standard Judeocentric narrative, in which Jews are just victims and can do no wrong. Worse yet, a famous writer is bringing sometimes-unflattering information about Jews to light, and this is threatening. Hence the censorship.<\/b><\/p>\n Consider the PROPINACJA. The Jews accumulated wealth by cooperating with each other. (p. 31). They made profits by taking the peasants\u2019 grain to the point of impoverishing them (and causing famine), turning it into brandy, and then encouraging drunkenness. (p. 21, 24). Jews forced peasants into lifelong debt and crushing poverty by requiring payment, in cattle and tools, for liquor. (p. 31).<\/b><\/p>\n In addition, a system of bribery protected this arrangement. Thus, the Polish magnates were on the\u00a0\u201ctake\u201d<\/i>\u00a0of part of the wealth squeezed by Jews out of the peasantry, and, without the Jews and their inventiveness, this system of exploitation could not have functioned, and would have ended. (p. 22). Solzhenitsyn adds that,\u00a0\u201c\u2026the Jewish business class derived enormous benefit from the helplessness, wastefulness, and impracticality of landowners\u2026\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(p. 54).<\/b><\/p>\n The Jews kept moving around in order to prevent an accurate count of their numbers\u2014in order to evade taxes. (p. 25). A delegation of Jews travelled to St. Petersburg to try to bribe Russian officials to suppress Derzhavin\u2019s report. (p. 28). In 1824, Tsar Alexander I noticed that Jews were corrupting local inhabitants to the detriment of the treasury and private investors. (p. 32).<\/b><\/p>\n Jews were not forced into\u00a0\u201cparasitic\u201d<\/i>\u00a0occupations:\u00a0 Jewish resistance to assimilation is usually framed in terms of the GOY excluding the Jew.\u00a0It was the other way around<\/i>. For the first half of the 19th century, rabbis and kahals strenuously resisted enlightenment, including the proffered Russian education to Jews. (p. 38).<\/b><\/p>\n Jews have always tended to exaggerate the wrongs they have experienced from others. (p. 42). This applies to such things as double taxation, forced military service, expulsion from villages, etc. (p. 42, 46, 50).<\/b><\/p>\n The Jews of the Vilnius (Wilno), Kaunas, and Grodno regions sided with the Russians during the Poles\u2019 ill-fated January 1863 Insurrection. (p. 69). This confirms Polish sources.<\/b><\/p>\n We often hear that Communist Jews were\u00a0\u201cnot real Jews\u201d.<\/i>\u00a0This nonsense is equivalent to saying that Lenin and other Russian Communists were\u00a0\u201cnot real Russians\u201d\u2014<\/i>a contrived distinction that Solzhenitsyn refuses to make. (p. 11<\/b><\/p>\n One common exculpation for Jews supporting revolutionary movements, and then Communism, is that of the tsarist system preventing Jews from improving their lot.\u00a0This is nonsense.\u00a0Once the Jews accepted the Russian education system, their numbers increased, to such a spectacular extent (by about 1870: p. 63, 71), in Russian higher education, that quotas (numerus clausus) had to be imposed upon them. This nowadays-called affirmative action became necessary because Jews were wealthier and thus unfairly advantaged in schooling-related matters. (p. 88).<\/b><\/p>\n Hungary is instructive. There, Jewish grievances were the least valid. Hungarian Jews had enjoyed atypical freedoms and a high standard of living, and there had been no pogroms. Yet the 1919 Hungarian Communism was especially dominated by Jews, and was odiously cruel. (pp. 153-154).<\/b><\/p>\n One can easily make lists of Jews in high positions in the Soviet Union. Influential Jews commonly occurred at a rate 10 or more times the abundance of Jews in the USSR. (e. g, pp. 143-on, 225-on). [For more, see comments]. Whether or not motivated by\u00a0\u201cethnic solidarity\u201d,<\/i>\u00a0Jews in authority tended to promote other Jews to high positions. (p. 138).<\/b><\/p>\n However, the Jewish role in Communism goes far beyond what is apparent in any such\u00a0\u201cgrocery list\u201d.<\/i>\u00a0For instance, consider what some call the Judaization of academia, and its impact on the bloody events of 1917.<\/b><\/p>\n Solzhenitsyn comments,\u00a0\u201cThe February Revolution was carried out by Russian hands and Russian foolishness. Yet at the same time, its ideology was permeated and dominated by the intransigent hostility to the historical Russian state that ordinary Russians didn\u2019t have, but the Jews had. So the Russian intelligentsia too had adopted this view.\u201d\u00a0<\/i>(p. 98).<\/b><\/p>\n Now consider the October Revolution. Lenin contended that the Bolshevik success in the revolution had been made possible by the role of the large Jewish intelligentsia in several Russian cities. (p. 119). Furthermore, according to Lenin, the October Revolution was preserved by the actions of Jews against the attempted sabotage by government officials. (p. 128).<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0The energy and high intelligence of the Jews made them indispensable. (p. 129, 189). In fact, Solzhenitsyn suggests that Soviet Communism lost its ideological fervor, and began slowly to die of\u00a0\u201cRussian laziness\u201d,<\/i>\u00a0already in the late 1960s, all because the Jews were largely gone. (p. 317).SOME<\/b><\/p>\n INTERESTING FACTS<\/u><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Dekulakization was not just an economic measure. It was a tool to uproot peoples and destroy their traditions and culture. For this reason, Stalin\u2019s dictatorship can in no sense be accepted as a nationalist (Russian) phenomenon. (p. 221).<\/b><\/p>\n Religious Judaism was never persecuted as intensely by the Communists, in the 1920s and 1930s, as was Russian Orthodox Christianity. (p. 306). High-level Jew Lazar Kaganovich directed the destruction of the Church of the Redeemer. He also wanted to destroy St. Basil\u2019s Cathedral. (p. 223).<\/b><\/p>\n The famous mobile gas chambers were not invented by the Nazis. They were developed, in 1937, by Isai Davidovich Berg, a leading Jew in the NKVD. (p. 237).<\/b><\/p>\n COMMUNISM IS OK\u2014UNTIL IT NO LONGER SERVES JEWISH INTERESTS<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Solzhenitsyn notes the irony that, in the West, there was little effective concern about the victims of Communism until it turned on the Jews. He quips,<\/b><\/p>\n \u201c15 million peasants were destroyed in the \u2018dekulakisation\u2019, 6 million peasants were starved to death in 1932, not even to mention the mass executions and millions who died in the camps, and at the same time it was fine to politely sign agreements with Soviet leaders, to lend them money, to shake their \u2018honest hands\u2019, to seek their support, and to boast of all this in front of your parliaments.<\/i><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n But once it was specifically JEWS that became the target, then a spark of sympathy ran through the West and it became clear what sort of regime this was.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u00a0(p. 346;).<\/b><\/p>\n NOWADAYS JEWS DODGE THEIR RESPONSIBILITY AND BLAME THE RUSSIANS<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes the standard double-standard (one which Poles are all too familiar with), as he describes current Jewish attitudes,<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many such confident voices ready to judge Russia\u2019s many crimes and failings, her inexhaustible guilt towards the Jews\u2014and they so sincerely believe this guilt to be inexhaustible almost all of them believe it! Meanwhile, their own people are coyly cleared of any responsibility for their participation in Cheka shootings, for sinking the barges and their doomed human cargo in the White and Caspian seas, for their role in collectivization, the Ukrainian famine and in all the abominations of the Soviet administration, for their talented zeal in brainwashing the \u2018natives\u2019. This is not contrition.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/b>(p. 33<\/b><\/p>\n Of course, Solzhenitsyn is not insinuating that Jews are collectively guilty for Communism. However, Jews should accept collective liability for Communism and its crimes in much the same way that Germans accept collective liability for Nazism and its crimes. (p. 141, 321). Until they do so, this issue of the Zydokomuna (Judeo-Bolshevism) will not go away.<\/b><\/p>\n JEWISH INFLUENCE IN COMMUNISM WAS FAR GREATER THAN ANY \u201cGROCERY LIST\u201d OF JEWISH COMMUNISTS<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n We keep hearing that Jews at no time constituted a majority of the leadership in Communism. This is technically true, but it does not tell the whole story.<\/b><\/p>\n Refer to:\u00a0Esau\u2019s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews<\/a>, by Albert S. Lindemann:<\/b><\/p>\n To begin with, Jewish Communists were noted for their high intelligence, verbal skills, assertiveness, ideological fervor, etc. (p. 429).<\/b><\/p>\n Not surprisingly, few non-Jewish Communist leaders approached the caliber of the Jewish Communist leaders. For example, Lindemann reminds us that,\u00a0\u201cJewish or gentilized, Trotsky was a man of unusual talents.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(p. 447). In addition,\u00a0\u201cTrotsky\u2019s paramount role in the revolution cannot be denied\u2026\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(p. 448). This can be generalized,\u00a0\u201cOther non-Jews might be mentioned but almost certainly do not quite measure up to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yoffe, Sverdlov, Uritsky, or Radek in visibility inside Russia and abroad, especially not in the crucial years from 1917 to 1921.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(p. 432).<\/b><\/p>\n Finally, influential Jews did not have to act alone. In fact, Jews had the skill of influencing non-Jews to think in Jewish ways. Lenin can validly be understood as a\u00a0\u201cJewified gentile\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 432-433).\u00a0The same can be said for the renegade-Pole Dzerzhinsky (p. 442, 446), as well as the Russian Kalinin, who was called by Jewish Bolsheviks\u00a0\u201cmore Jewish than the Jews\u201d.<\/i>\u00a0(p. 433).<\/b><\/p>\n I. JEWISH COMMUNISTS INFLUENCED NON-JEWS TO GO ALONG WITH THEIR THINKING<\/u><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Let us elaborate on Feliks Dzerzhinsky. Refer to:\u00a0The Cheka: Lenin\u2019s Political Police<\/a>:<\/b><\/p>\n Author Leggett describes how Dzerzhinsky grew up in Vilna [Wilno, Vilnius], which he describes as a cosmopolitan city with a strong Jewish element and a focal point of socialist ferment in Tsarist Russia. (p. 34). He adds that,\u00a0\u201cDzerzhinsky came under the influence of Martov, future leader of the Menshevik Party, by whom he was introduced into Jewish circles, both proletarian and of the intelligentsia; he made many Jewish friends and zealously learned Yiddish. The Bund\u2014Jewish social democratic workers\u2019 organization in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, founded in 1897\u2014helped Dzerzhinsky in his political activity, for instance in late 1899. Dzerzhinsky\u2019s close friend and schoolmate in Vilna was Mikhail Goldman\u2026<\/i>\u201d (pp. 24-25).<\/b><\/p>\n The strong Jewish influence very much extended to Dzerzhinsky\u2019s personal life. Leggett continues,\u00a0\u201cGoldman\u2019s sister, Julia, was for several years Dzerzhinsky\u2019s romantic love\u2026formed a deeply romantic attachment, lasting from 1905 to early 1910, for another Jewish woman, Sabina Feinstein, sister of a prominent SDKPiL member. Very soon afterwards, in November 1910, Dzerzhinsky married Sofia Sigizmundovna nee Mushkat, who was likewise Jewish\u2026\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(p. 25).<\/b><\/p>\n As if to underscore the fact that Jewish influence in Communism is much greater than just the\u00a0\u201cgrocery list\u201d<\/i>\u00a0of Jewish Communists, Leggett writes of\u00a0\u201cRosa Luxemburg [Luksemburg], celebrated for her intellectual brilliance and her political passion.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(p. 24). So intoxicated had \u201cBloody Feliks\u201d (\u201cKRWAWE FELEK\u201d) Dzierzinski become of Luksemburg\u2019s ideas that he actually clashed with Lenin on the resurrection of the Polish state. Only that it was the non-Pole Lenin supporting the restoration of the Polish nation and renegade-Pole Dzerzhinsky opposing it, in accordance with Luxemburg. (pp. 23-24).<\/b><\/p>\n The foregoing can be generalized. Refer to:\u00a0The Crucifixion of Russia: A History of the Russians and the Jews A new English translation of Solzhenitsyn\u2019s 200 Years Together<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n Alexander Solzhenitsyn comments,<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThe February Revolution was carried out by Russian hands and Russian foolishness. Yet at the same time, its ideology was permeated and dominated by the intransigent hostility to the historical Russian state that ordinary Russians didn\u2019t have, but the Jews had. So the Russian intelligentsia too had adopted this view.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u00a0(p. 98).<\/b><\/p>\n II. JEWS AS THE \u201cBRAINS\u201d BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE EARLY SOVIET UNION<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWS IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AS NOTED BY SOME JEWS<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n IV. DECADES BEFORE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, JEWS HAD PLAYED AN INDISPENSABLE ROLE IN KEEPING REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS GOING IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY, AND IN MAKING RADICAL MOVEMENTS EVEN MORE RADICAL:<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n V. COMMUNISM PERMEATED MUCH OF PRE-WWII JEWISH THINKING, NOTABLY IN POLAND<\/u><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
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