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Excerpts From Solzhenitsyn's New Book On The Jews
2 May 2003
A Russian friend recently sent the URL to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's new
book on the role of Jews in Communism, Dvesti let vmeste - Two Hundred
Years Together — available on the internet in Russian at
Using Altavista's Babelfish, we've translated some
of it into English, and then cleaned up the English somewhat, so as to
present to you the first English-language excerpts
from the book available anywhere.
Here are some excerpts from Chapter
15, "The Bolsheviks." This is our rough, and possibly in some places
imperfect, translation.
-- LSN Staff ( lsn@overthrow.com ), April 23, 2003
[ For more on this subject, see "The Jewish Role in the
Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's Early Soviet Regime":
http://64.143.9.197/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_Weber.html ]
PART II - In THE SOVIET TIME
Chapter 15 -- THE BOLSHEVIKS
This is not a new theme: the Jewish role in Bolshevism. On it, much has
already been written. Those who try to prove that the revolution was
non-Russian indicate the Jewish names and pseudonyms in an attempt to
remove from the Russian people the blame of the revolution of 1917. But
Jews, who began by similarly denying the role of Jews in positions Bolshevik
authority, have now been forced to admit participation, but claim that
those Jews were not Jews in spirit, but otshchepentsy [?].
Let us agree with this statement and admit we are unable to judge
people's spirits. Yes, these were otshchepentsy .
However, by that logic, the leading Russian Bolsheviks were also not
Russians in spirit, but were frequently both anti-Russian and
anti-Orthodox, and in their minds Russian culture was refracted through
the lenses of political doctrines and calculations.
But a question is raised: How much evidence must there be of the
participation of random otshchepentsev before acknowledges a pattern
that defies random distribution? What fraction of the Jewish nation is
required? We know about the Russian otshchepentsakh: the depressing
number that joined the Bolsheviks -- an unpardonable number. But how
widely and actively did Jews participate in strengthening Bolshevik authority?
And another question: what was the reaction of each group's people to
its otshchepentsam. The reactions of people to otshchepentsev can be
different -- they can curse them or praise them, ostracize them or join
them. And the manifestations of this -- the reactions of the masses of
the people, whether Russian, Jewish or Latvian -- have been given very
little consideration by historians.
The question is one of whether the people renounced their
otshchepentsev, and whether the renunciation that did occur reflected
the sense of the people. Did a people choose to remember or not to
remember it otshchepentsev? In answer to this question, there must not
be doubt: The Jews choose to remember. Not just to remember the
individual people, but to remember them as Jews, so that their names may
never disappear.
There is perhaps no more clear example of otshchepentsa than Lenin: one
cannot fail to recognize Lenin as Russian. To Lenin Russian antiquity was
disgusting and loathsome; in all of Russian History he seems only to have
mastered Chernishevsky and Saltykov-Schedrin. Yes, he frolicked with the
liberal views of Turgenev and Tolstoy. But in him there appeared no
attachment even to the Volga, where he passed his youth. To the
contrary, he pitilessly brought terrifying hunger there in 1921.
Everything with him was thus -- everything Russian among which he grew
generated inside him hatred. That Orthodox faith in which he could have
grown, he strove instead to weaken and destroy. Even in youth he was
otshchepenets. But nevertheless he was Russian, and we Russians must
accept criticism for it. But if we speak of the ethnic origin of Lenin,
we must not change our method of judgment, when we recognize that he
was a cross-breed of the most different bloodlines: his grandfather
according to the father, Nikolai Vasilyevich, was of the blood of a
Kalmik woman Anna Alekseyevna Smirnova; another grandfather Israel
[baptized Aleksandr] Davidovich was a Jew; another grandmother, Anna
Iogannovna (Ivanovna) Grosshopf, the daughter of a German and a Swede.
But all of this cross-breeding does not give us the right to reject him
as a Russian. We must accept him as a creation completely Russian since
his national character -- that which infused his spirit -- was
intertwined with the history of the Russian Empire. But to the creations
of Russia, that country which erected us, and its culture, his was a
spirit alienated and at times sharply anti-Russian, but nevertheless we
can in no way renounce him.
But the Jewish otshchepentsa? As we saw, in 1917, the Jews had not all
been drawn to Bolshevism. Instead, they had been drawn to a myriad of
revolutionary movements. at the last conference of the RSDRP -- the
RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WORKER'S PARTY (London 1907) -- the Mensheviks
-- of the 302-305 delegates the number of Jews exceeded 160, that is,
more than half. As a result of the April conference of 1917, among nine
members of the new Central Committee of the Bolsheviks we see G.
Zinoviev, L Kameneva, and Sverdlova. In the summer of the congress of
the rKPb (renamed from the RSDRP) to the TSCK there were eleven members,
among them Zinoviev, Sverdlov, Sokolniks, Trotsky, and Uritsky. Then, on
10 October 1917, in the apartment of Gimmera and Flakserman, where the
decision was made about the Bolshevik Revolution, among the 12
participants were Trotsky, Zinoviev, Sverdlov, Uritskiy, Sokolniks [and
one other Jewish name the translator won't give us properly]. And who
was chosen first for the Politburo? Of its seven members: Trotsky,
Zinoviev, [another Jewish name], Sokolniks. That is in no way a small
proportion. There can be no doubt -- Jewish otshchepentsy were present
in the Bolshevik leadership in great disproportion to their numbers in
the population -- and they comprised too many of the Bolshevik
commissars for a relationship to be denied.
It can be certain that the Jewish leadership of Bolshevism was not
completely monolithic. Even the Jews in the Politburo did not act as a
Bloc. Some were against the revolution, believing that it was not the
proper moment. Then, already, Trotsky was the autocratic genius of the
October revolution; he did not exaggerate his role in his writings on
the subject. Lenin hid himself in a cowardly manner and played no
essential role until after the revolution had been complete.
Generally, Lenin was guided by a spirit of internationalism, and even in
his dispute with the bund in 1903, he adhered to the view nationalism
did not exist and must not exist, and that the question of nationalism
divided revolutionary from reactionary socialism. (In harmony with this
view Stalin declared that the Jews were [not?] a nation and thus prophesied
their eventual assimilation.) Accordingly, Lenin considered
anti-Semitism to be a tactic of capitalism, and saw in it not an organic
expression of the will of the people but a convenient method of
counterrevolution. But Lenin also understood what a powerful mobilizing
force the Jewish question was in the ideological fight. He also saw to
it that the special bitterness of the Jews to the Tsar was prepared for
us in the Revolution.
However, from the first days of the revolution Lenin found it necessary
to consider how the Jewish question would eventually be addressed. Like
much he did not foresee in state questions, he did not see how the
formation of Jewish power within the Bolsheviks would lead the Jews, as
a result of war scattered throughout Russia, to take control of the
apparatus of the Russian state during the decisive months and years -- a
process that began with the replacements that occurred after the
Bolshevik mass strike against Russian clerks. That strike was organized
by the Jewish settlers in the Russian frontier and border regions, who
did not return to their relatives after the war.
But the liquidation of permanent residency in 1917 particularly resulted
in the great dispersion of Jews from the urban centers inside Russia, no
longer as refugees and settlers, but as migrants. Soviet information in
1920 states that to Samara alone ten thousands Jews has settled in
recent years, in Irkutsk, the Jewish population grew to fifteen
thousand. Large Jewish settlements were formed in central Russia and the
Urals. This was performed in large part by Jewish social security
agencies and philanthropic organizations.
A small pile of Bolsheviks having now come to power and taken authority,
their control was still brittle: Whom could they trust in the
government? Whom could they call to aid? The seeds of the answer lay in
the creation in January 1918 of a special people's commissariat from the
members of the Jewish commissariat, whose reason was expressed in
Lenin's thought: The Bolshevik service in the revolution was possible
because of the role of the large Jewish intelligentsia in several Russia
cities. These Jews engaged in general sabotage, which was directed
against Russians after the October Revolution and which has been
extremely effective. Jewish elements, though certainly not the entirety
of the Jewish people, saved the Bolshevik Revolution through these acts
of sabotage. Lenin took this into consideration, and emphasized it in
the press ... and he recognized that to master the state apparatus he
could succeed only because of this reserve of literate and more or less
intelligent, sober and new clerks.
Thus the Bolsheviks, from the first days of their authority, called upon
the Jews to assume the bureaucratic work of the Soviet apparatus -- and
many, many Jews answered that call. They, in fact, responded
immediately. The sharp need of the Bolsheviks for bureaucrats to
exercise their authority met great enthusiasm among young Jews,
pell-mell with the Slav and international brethren. And this was in no way
compulsory for these Jews, who were non-party members, and who had been previously
completely non revolutionary and apolitical. This phenomenon was not
ideological but a phenomenon of mass calculation by the Jews. And the
Jews in the previously forbidden and cherished rural provinces and their
capitals gushed out of their ghettos to join the Bolsheviks, seeing in
them the most decisive defenders of the revolution and the most reliable
internationalists, and these Jews flooded and abounded in the lower
layers of the party structure.
To every man who was not a member of the nobility, a priest or a Tsarist
bureaucrat the promises of the new clan were extended. And to encourage
Jewish participation, the Bolsheviks organized in St. Petersburg the
Jewish division of the nationalities commissariat. In 1918 it was
converted into a separate commissariat of its own. And in March 1919, in
the eighth congress of the rKPb, with the proclamation of the Communist
Union of Soviet Russia, it was made into an organic and special part of
the rKPb, in order to integrate it into the Communist International, and
it a special Jewish section was created in the Russian Telegraphic
Agency.
The statements made by Shub that Jewish young people joined the
communist party in response to anti-Semitic pogroms conducted in
White-controlled areas in 1919 has no basis in reality. The mass inflow
of Jews into the Soviet apparatus occurred in 1917 and 1918. There is no
doubt that the pogroms of 1919 strengthened the allegiance of Jews to
the communist party, but it in no way created it. ....
Rarely do authors deny the role of Jews in Bolshevism. While it is true
that the appearance of Bolshevism was the result of the special features
of Russian history the organization of Bolshevism was created through
the activity of Jewish commissars. The dynamic role of Jews in
Bolshevism was estimated by contemporary observers in America. The
transfer of the Russian Revolution from the destructive phase into the
building phase was seen as an expression of the ability of the Jews to
build elaborate systems based on their dissatisfactions. And after the
successes of October, how many Jews themselves spoke about their role in
Bolshevism with their heads held high!
Let us recall that how, before the revolution, revolutionaries and
radical-liberals were willing to oppose the restraints placed upon the
Jews not out of love for the Jews, but for political purposes. So in the
first months and years after the October Revolution the Bolsheviks made
a great effort to hunt down Jews for use in the state and party
apparati, not out of affinity for the Jewish people, but for the
abilities they combined with their alienation and hatred of the Russian
population. In this manner they also approached the Latvians, the
Hungarians and the Chinese.
Though the mass of the Jewish population initially viewed the Bolsheviks
with alarm, thought not hostility, after finding that the revolution
granted them complete freedom, and that it welcomed a bloom of Jewish
activity in the public, political and cultural spheres, the Jewish
population threw themselves into Bolshevism; and Bolshevik authority
particularly attracted those whose character held a surplus of cruelty.
The question then emerges of when Communist authority spread from
Russia, and came to engulf world Judaism. The stormy participation of
Jews in the Communist revolution drew cautious statements of concerns
about world Jewry that were quieted, their evidence concealed, by
communist and Jews worldwide, who attempted to silence it by denouncing
it as extreme anti-Semitism.
After 70 or 80 years has passed, and under the pressure of many facts
and discoveries, the view of Jewish involvement in the revolutionary
years had opened slightly. And already many Jewish voices have been to
discuss this publicly. For example, the Poet Naum Korzhavin has noted
that along as it is "taboo" to speak of the participation of the Jews in
Bolshevism, it will be impossible to properly discuss the revolutionary
period. There are even times now when Jews are proud of their
participation -- when Jews have said that they did participate in the
revolution, and in disproportionately large numbers. M Argusky has noted
that Jews involved in the revolution and the civil war was not limited
to the revolutionary period but also continued in their considerable and
widespread involvement in running the state apparatus. Israeli socialist
S. Tsiryul'nikov has stated that from the beginning of the revolution
Jews served as the basis of the new communist regime,
But most Jewish authors, today still deny the contribution of Jews to
Bolshevism, sweeping the evidence aside with anger, or, more frequently,
with reference to the pain such evidence causes them.
But despite their pain there is no doubt that these Jewish otshchepentsy
for several years after the revolution dominated Bolshevism, headed the
belligerent Red Army (Trotsky), the ALL-RUSSIAN CENTRAL EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE (Sverdlov), ran both capitals (Zinoviev), the Komintern
(Zinoviev), the Profintern / Red Trade Union International
(Dridzo-Lozovskiy) and the Komsomol (Oscar Ryvkin, after it Lazarus
Shatskin, the very same and in the chapter of the Communist
international of young people).
In the first council of People's Commissars there was, true, only one
Jew, but the influence of this one Jews, Trotsky, Lenin's second,
exceeded that of all the rest. And from November 1917 through 1918 the
real government was not the Council of Peoples' Commissars but the in
the so-called "Malyy"[?] Council of People's Commissars: Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin, Karelin, Prosh'yan. After October, of no less importance that
the Council of People's Commissars, was the presidium of VCTscIcK, the
ALL-RUSSIAN CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Among its six chairman:
Sverdlov, [unintelligible Jewish name], Volodarsky, and Glass.
M. Agursky correctly notes that in the country, where one was not
accustomed to seeing Jews, the ascension of the Jews to power was
particualrly striking: The President of the country, a Jew? The War
Minister, a Jew? There was something to this, so radical that the
population of Russia could not adjust to it -- not only because of their
Judaism, but because of what they as Jews stood for.
©-free 2003 Adelaide Institute