Assessing the Grim Legacy of Soviet Communism
by Mark Weber
In the night
of July 16-17, 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police murdered Russia's last
emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his wife, Tsaritsa Alexandra, their
14-year-old son, Tsarevich Alexis, and their four daughters. They were cut down
in a hail of gunfire in a half-cellar room of the house in Ekaterinburg, a city
in the Ural mountain region, where they were being held prisoner. The daughters
were finished off with bayonets. To prevent a cult for the dead Tsar, the
bodies were carted away to the countryside and hastily buried in a secret
grave.
Bolshevik authorities at first
reported that the Romanov emperor had been shot after the discovery of a plot
to liberate him. For some time the deaths of the Empress and the children were
kept secret. Soviet historians claimed for many years that local Bolsheviks had
acted on their own in carrying out the killings, and that Lenin, founder of the
Soviet state, had nothing to do with the crime.
In 1990, Moscow playwright and
historian Edvard Radzinsky announced the result of his detailed investigation
into the murders. He unearthed the reminiscences of Lenin's bodyguard, Alexei
Akimov, who recounted how he personally delivered Lenin's execution order to
the telegraph office. The telegram was also signed by Soviet government chief
Yakov Sverdlov. Akimov had saved the original telegraph tape as a record of the
secret order.1
Radzinsky's research confirmed
what earlier evidence had already indicated. Leon Trotsky -- one of Lenin's
closest colleagues -- had revealed years earlier that Lenin and Sverdlov had
together made the decision to put the Tsar and his family to death. Recalling a
conversation in 1918, Trotsky wrote:2
My next visit to Moscow took
place after the [temporary] fall of Ekaterinburg [to anti-Communist forces].
Speaking with Sverdlov, I asked in passing: „Oh yes, and where is the Tsar?“
„Finished,“ he replied. „He
has been shot.“
„And where is the family?“
„The family along with him.“
„All of them?,“ I asked,
apparently with a trace of surprise.
„All of them,“ replied
Sverdlov. „What about it?“ He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply.
„And who made the decision?,“
I asked.
„We decided it here. Ilyich
[Lenin] believed that we shouldn't leave the Whites a live banner to rally
around, especially under the present difficult circumstances.“
I asked no further questions
and considered the matter closed.
Recent research and
investigation by Radzinsky and others also corroborates the account provided
years earlier by Robert Wilton, correspondent of the London Times in Russia for
17 years. His account, The Last Days of the Romanovs - originally
published in 1920, and reissued in 1993 by the Institute for Historical Review
-- is based in large part on the findings of a detailed investigation carried
out in 1919 by Nikolai Sokolov under the authority of „White“ (anti-Communist)
leader Alexander Kolchak. Wilton's book remains one of the most accurate and
complete accounts of the murder of Russia's imperial family.3
A solid understanding of
history has long been the best guide to comprehending the present and
anticipating the future. Accordingly, people are most interested in historical
questions during times of crisis, when the future seems most uncertain. With
the collapse of Communist rule in the Soviet Union, 1989-1991, and as Russians
struggle to build a new order on the ruins of the old, historical issues have
become very topical. For example, many ask: How did the Bolsheviks, a small
movement guided by the teachings of German-Jewish social philosopher Karl Marx,
succeed in taking control of Russia and imposing a cruel and despotic regime on
its people?
In recent years, Jews around
the world have been voicing anxious concern over the specter of anti-Semitism
in the lands of the former Soviet Union. In this new and uncertain era, we are
told, suppressed feelings of hatred and rage against Jews are once again being
expressed. According to one public opinion survey conducted in 1991, for
example, most Russians wanted all Jews to leave the country.4 But
precisely why is anti-Jewish sentiment so widespread among the peoples of the
former Soviet Union? Why do so many Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and
others blame „the Jews“ for so much misfortune?
A Taboo Subject
Although officially Jews have
never made up more than five percent of the country's total population,5
they played a highly disproportionate and probably decisive role in the infant
Bolshevik regime, effectively dominating the Soviet government during its early
years. Soviet historians, along with most of their colleagues in the West, for
decades preferred to ignore this subject. The facts, though, cannot be denied.
With the notable exception of
Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov), most of the leading Communists who took control of
Russia in 1917-20 were Jews. Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) headed the Red Army
and, for a time, was chief of Soviet foreign affairs. Yakov Sverdlov (Solomon)
was both the Bolshevik party's executive secretary and -- as chairman of the
Central Executive Committee -- head of the Soviet government. Grigori Zinoviev
(Radomyslsky) headed the Communist International (Comintern), the central
agency for spreading revolution in foreign countries. Other prominent Jews
included press commissar Karl Radek (Sobelsohn), foreign affairs commissar
Maxim Litvinov (Wallach), Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and Moisei Uritsky.6
Lenin himself was of mostly
Russian and Kalmuck ancestry, but he was also one-quarter Jewish. His maternal
grandfather, Israel (Alexander) Blank, was a Ukrainian Jew who was later
baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church.7
A thorough-going
internationalist, Lenin viewed ethnic or cultural loyalties with contempt. He
had little regard for his own countrymen. „An intelligent Russian,“ he once
remarked, „is almost always a Jew or someone with Jewish blood in his veins.“8
Critical Meetings
In the Communist seizure of
power in Russia, the Jewish role was probably critical.
Two weeks prior to the
Bolshevik „October Revolution“ of 1917, Lenin convened a top secret meeting in
St. Petersburg (Petrograd) at which the key leaders of the Bolshevik party's
Central Committee made the fateful decision to seize power in a violent
takeover. Of the twelve persons who took part in this decisive gathering, there
were four Russians (including Lenin), one Georgian (Stalin), one Pole
(Dzerzhinsky), and six Jews.9
To direct the takeover, a
seven-man „Political Bureau“ was chosen. It consisted of two Russians (Lenin
and Bubnov), one Georgian (Stalin), and four Jews (Trotsky, Sokolnikov,
Zinoviev, and Kamenev).10 Meanwhile, the Petersburg (Petrograd)
Soviet -- whose chairman was Trotsky -- established an 18-member „Military
Revolutionary Committee“ to actually carry out the seizure of power. It
included eight (or nine) Russians, one Ukrainian, one Pole, one Caucasian, and
six Jews.11 Finally, to supervise the organization of the uprising,
the Bolshevik Central Committee established a five-man „Revolutionary Military
Center“ as the Party's operations command. It consisted of one Russian
(Bubnov), one Georgian (Stalin), one Pole (Dzerzhinsky), and two Jews (Sverdlov
and Uritsky).12
Contemporary Voices of Warning
Well-informed observers, both
inside and outside of Russia, took note at the time of the crucial Jewish role
in Bolshevism. Winston Churchill, for one, warned in an article published in
the February 8, 1920, issue of the London Illustrated Sunday Herald that
Bolshevism is a „worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for
the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious
malevolence, and impossible equality.“ The eminent British political leader and
historian went on to write:13
There is no need to exaggerate
the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about
of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part
atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all
others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading
figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes
from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his
nominal subordinate, Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or
Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the
Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In
the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And
the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism
applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combatting Counter-Revolution [the
Cheka] has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses
Needless to say, the most
intense passions of revenge have been excited in the breasts of the Russian
people.
David R. Francis, United
States ambassador in Russia, warned in a January 1918 dispatch to Washington: „The
Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are
returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are
internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution.“14
The Netherlands' ambassador in
Russia, Oudendyke, made much the same point a few months later: „Unless
Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form
or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by Jews
who have no nationality, and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends
the existing order of things.“15
„The Bolshevik Revolution,“
declared a leading American Jewish community paper in 1920, „was largely the
product of Jewish thinking, Jewish discontent, Jewish effort to reconstruct.“16
As an expression of its
radically anti-nationalist character, the fledgling Soviet government issued a
decree a few months after taking power that made anti-Semitism a crime in
Russia. The new Communist regime thus became the first in the world to severely
punish all expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment.17 Soviet officials
apparently regarded such measures as indispensable. Based on careful
observation during a lengthy stay in Russia, American-Jewish scholar Frank
Golder reported in 1925 that „because so many of the Soviet leaders are Jews
anti-Semitism is gaining [in Russia], particularly in the army [and] among the
old and new intelligentsia who are being crowded for positions by the sons of
Israel.“18
Historians' Views
Summing up the situation at
that time, Israeli historian Louis Rapoport writes:19
Immediately after the
[Bolshevik] Revolution, many Jews were euphoric over their high representation
in the new government. Lenin's first Politburo was dominated by men of Jewish
origins
Under Lenin, Jews became
involved in all aspects of the Revolution, including its dirtiest work. Despite
the Communists' vows to eradicate anti-Semitism, it spread rapidly after the
Revolution -- partly because of the prominence of so many Jews in the Soviet
administration, as well as in the traumatic, inhuman Sovietization drives that
followed. Historian Salo Baron has noted that an immensely disproportionate
number of Jews joined the new Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka And many of
those who fell afoul of the Cheka would be shot by Jewish investigators.
The collective leadership that
emerged in Lenin's dying days was headed by the Jew Zinoviev, a loquacious,
mean-spirited, curly-haired Adonis whose vanity knew no bounds.
„Anyone who had the misfortune
to fall into the hands of the Cheka,“ wrote Jewish historian Leonard Schapiro, „stood
a very good chance of finding himself confronted with, and possibly shot by, a
Jewish investigator.“20 In Ukraine, „Jews made up nearly 80 percent
of the rank-and-file Cheka agents,“ reports W. Bruce Lincoln, an American
professor of Russian history.21 (Beginning as the Cheka, or Vecheka)
the Soviet secret police was later known as the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MVD and KGB.)
In light of all this, it
should not be surprising that Yakov M. Yurovksy, the leader of the Bolshevik
squad that carried out the murder of the Tsar and his family, was Jewish, as
was Sverdlov, the Soviet chief who co-signed Lenin's execution order.22
Igor Shafarevich, a Russian
mathematician of world stature, has sharply criticized the Jewish role in
bringing down the Romanov monarchy and establishing Communist rule in his
country. Shafarevich was a leading dissident during the final decades of Soviet
rule. A prominent human rights activist, he was a founding member of the
Committee on the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR.
In Russophobia, a book
written ten years before the collapse of Communist rule, he noted that Jews
were „amazingly“ numerous among the personnel of the Bolshevik secret police.
The characteristic Jewishness of the Bolshevik executioners, Shafarevich went
on, is most conspicuous in the execution of Nicholas II:23
This ritual action symbolized
the end of centuries of Russian history, so that it can be compared only to the
execution of Charles I in England or Louis XVI in France. It would seem that
representatives of an insignificant ethnic minority should keep as far as
possible from this painful action, which would reverberate in all history. Yet
what names do we meet? The execution was personally overseen by Yakov Yurovsky
who shot the Tsar; the president of the local Soviet was Beloborodov
(Vaisbart); the person responsible for the general administration in
Ekaterinburg was Shaya Goloshchekin. To round out the picture, on the wall of
the room where the execution took place was a distich from a poem by Heine
(written in German) about King Balthazar, who offended Jehovah and was killed
for the offense.
In his 1920 book, British
veteran journalist Robert Wilton offered a similarly harsh assessment:24
The whole record of Bolshevism
in Russia is indelibly impressed with the stamp of alien invasion. The murder
of the Tsar, deliberately planned by the Jew Sverdlov (who came to Russia as a
paid agent of Germany) and carried out by the Jews Goloshchekin, Syromolotov,
Safarov, Voikov and Yurovsky, is the act not of the Russian people, but of this
hostile invader.
In the struggle for power that
followed Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin emerged victorious over his rivals,
eventually succeeding in putting to death nearly every one of the most
prominent early Bolsheviks leaders - including Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek, and
Kamenev. With the passage of time, and particularly after 1928, the Jewish role
in the top leadership of the Soviet state and its Communist party diminished
markedly.
Put To Death Without Trial
For a few months after taking
power, Bolshevik leaders considered bringing „Nicholas Romanov“ before a „Revolutionary
Tribunal“ that would publicize his „crimes against the people“ before sentencing
him to death. Historical precedent existed for this. Two European monarchs had
lost their lives as a consequence of revolutionary upheaval: England's Charles
I was beheaded in 1649, and France's Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793.
In these cases, the king was
put to death after a lengthy public trial, during which he was allowed to
present arguments in his defense. Nicholas II, though, was neither charged nor
tried. He was secretly put to death - along with his family and staff -- in the
dead of night, in an act that resembled more a gangster-style massacre than a
formal execution.
Why did Lenin and Sverdlov
abandon plans for a show trial of the former Tsar? In Wilton's view, Nicholas
and his family were murdered because the Bolshevik rulers knew quite well that
they lacked genuine popular support, and rightly feared that the Russian people
would never approve killing the Tsar, regardless of pretexts and legalistic
formalities.
For his part, Trotsky defended
the massacre as a useful and even necesssary measure. He wrote:25
The decision [to kill the
imperial family] was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this
punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly,
stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in
order to frighten, horrify, and instill a sense of hopelessness in the enemy
but also to shake up our own ranks, to show that there was no turning back,
that ahead lay either total victory or total doom This Lenin sensed well.
Historical Context
In the years leading up to the
1917 revolution, Jews were disproportionately represented in all of Russia's
subversive leftist parties.26 Jewish hatred of the Tsarist regime
had a basis in objective conditions. Of the leading European powers of the day,
imperial Russia was the most institutionally conser-vative and anti-Jewish. For
example, Jews were normally not permitted to reside outside a large area in the
west of the Empire known as the „Pale of Settlement.“27
However understandable, and perhaps
even defensible, Jewish hostility toward the imperial regime may have been, the
remarkable Jewish role in the vastly more despotic Soviet regime is less easy
to justify. In a recently published book about the Jews in Russia during the
20th century, Russian-born Jewish writer Sonya Margolina goes so far as to call
the Jewish role in supporting the Bolshevik regime the „historic sin of the
Jews.“28 She points, for example, to the prominent role of Jews as
commandants of Soviet Gulag concentration and labor camps, and the role
of Jewish Communists in the systematic destruction of Russian churches.
Moreover, she goes on, „The Jews of the entire world supported Soviet power,
and remained silent in the face of any criticism from the opposition.“ In light
of this record, Margolina offers a grim prediction:
The exaggeratedly enthusiastic
participation of the Jewish Bolsheviks in the subjugation and destruction of
Russia is a sin that will be avenged Soviet power will be equated with Jewish
power, and the furious hatred against the Bolsheviks will become hatred against
Jews.
If the past is any indication,
it is unlikely that many Russians will seek the revenge that Margolina
prophecies. Anyway, to blame „the Jews“ for the horrors of Communism seems no
more justifiable than to blame „white people“ for Negro slavery, or „the
Germans“ for the Second World War or „the Holocaust.“
Words of Grim Portent
Nicholas and his family are
only the best known of countless victims of a regime that openly proclaimed its
ruthless purpose. A few weeks after the Ekaterinburg massacre, the newspaper of
the fledgling Red Army declared:29
Without mercy, without
sparing, we will kill our enemies by the scores of hundreds, let them be thousands,
let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and
Uritskii let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie -- more blood, as much
as possible.
Grigori Zinoviev, speaking at
a meeting of Communists in September 1918, effectively pronounced a death
sentence on ten million human beings: „We must carry along with us 90 million
out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's inhabitants. As for the rest, we have
nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.“30
'The Twenty Million'
As it turned out, the Soviet
toll in human lives and suffering proved to be much higher than Zinoviev's
murderous rhetoric suggested. Rarely, if ever, has a regime taken the lives of
so many of its own people.31
Citing newly-available Soviet
KGB documents, historian Dmitri Volkogonov, head of a special Russian
parliamentary commission, recently concluded that „from 1929 to 1952 21.5
million [Soviet] people were repressed. Of these a third were shot, the rest
sentenced to imprisonment, where many also died.“32
Olga Shatunovskaya, a member
of the Soviet Commission of Party Control, and head of a special commission
during the 1960s appointed by premier Khrushchev, has similarly concluded: „From
January 1, 1935 to June 22, 1941, 19,840,000 enemies of the people were arrested.
Of these, seven million were shot in prison, and a majority of the others died
in camp.“ These figures were also found in the papers of Politburo member
Anastas Mikoyan.
Robert Conquest, the
distinguished specialist of Soviet history, recently summed up the grim record
of Soviet „repression“ of it own people:34
It is hard to avoid the
conclusion that the post-1934 death toll was well over ten million. To this
should be added the victims of the 1930-1933 famine, the kulak deportations,
and other anti-peasant campaigns, amounting to another ten million plus. The
total is thus in the range of what the Russians now refer to as 'The Twenty
Million'.“
A few other scholars have
given significantly higher estimates.35
The Tsarist Era in Retrospect
With the dramatic collapse of
Soviet rule, many Russians are taking a new and more respectful look at their
country's pre-Communist history, including the era of the last Romanov emperor.
While the Soviets -- along with many in the West -- have stereotypically portrayed
this era as little more than an age of arbitrary despotism, cruel suppression
and mass poverty, the reality is rather different. While it is true that the
power of the Tsar was absolute, that only a small minority had any significant
political voice, and that the mass of the empire's citizens were peasants, it
is worth noting that Russians during the reign of Nicholas II had freedom of
press, religion, assembly and association, protection of private property, and
free labor unions. Sworn enemies of the regime, such as Lenin, were treated
with remarkable leniency.36
During the decades prior to
the outbreak of the First World War, the Russian economy was booming. In fact,
between 1890 and 1913, it was the fastest growing in the world. New rail lines
were opened at an annual rate double that of the Soviet years. Between 1900 and
1913, iron production increased by 58 percent, while coal production more than
doubled.37 Exported Russian grain fed all of Europe. Finally, the
last decades of Tsarist Russia witnessed a magnificent flowering of cultural
life.
Everything changed with the
First World War, a catastrophe not only for Russia, but for the entire West.
Monarchist Sentiment
In spite of (or perhaps
because of) the relentless official campaign during the entire Soviet era to
stamp out every uncritical memory of the Romanovs and imperial Russia, a
virtual cult of popular veneration for Nicholas II has been sweeping Russia in
recent years.
People have been eagerly
paying the equivalent of several hours' wages to purchase portraits of Nicholas
from street vendors in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities. His
portrait now hangs in countless Russian homes and apartments. In late 1990, all
200,000 copies of a first printing of a 30-page pamphlet on the Romanovs
quickly sold out. Said one street vendor: „I personally sold four thousand
copies in no time at all. It's like a nuclear explosion. People really want to
know about their Tsar and his family.“ Grass roots pro-Tsarist and monarchist
organizations have sprung up in many cities.
A public opinion poll
conducted in 1990 found that three out of four Soviet citizens surveyed regard
the killing of the Tsar and his family as a despicable crime.38 Many
Russian Orthodox believers regard Nicholas as a martyr. The independent „Orthodox
Church Abroad“ canonized the imperial family in 1981, and the Moscow-based
Russian Orthodox Church has been under popular pressure to take the same step,
in spite of its long-standing reluctance to touch this official taboo. The Russian
Orthodox Archbishop of Ekaterinburg announced plans in 1990 to build a grand
church at the site of the killings. „The people loved Emperor Nicholas,“ he
said. „His memory lives with the people, not as a saint but as someone executed
without court verdict, unjustly, as a sufferer for his faith and for orthodoxy.“39
On the 75th anniversary of the
massacre (in July 1993), Russians recalled the life, death and legacy of their
last Emperor. In Ekaterinburg, where a large white cross festooned with flowers
now marks the spot where the family was killed, mourners wept as hymns were
sung and prayers were said for the victims.40
Reflecting both popular
sentiment and new social-political realities, the white, blue and red
horizontal tricolor flag of Tsarist Russia was officially adopted in 1991,
replacing the red Soviet banner. And in 1993, the imperial two-headed eagle was
restored as the nation's official emblem, replacing the Soviet hammer and
sickle. Cities that had been re-named to honor Communist figures -- such as
Leningrad, Kuibyshev, Frunze, Kalinin, and Gorky -- have re-acquired their
Tsarist-era names. Ekaterinburg, which had been named Sverdlovsk by the Soviets
in 1924 in honor of the Soviet-Jewish chief, in September 1991 restored its
pre-Communist name, which honors Empress Catherine I.
Symbolic Meaning
In view of the millions that
would be put to death by the Soviet rulers in the years to follow, the murder
of the Romanov family might not seem of extraordinary importance. And yet, the
event has deep symbolic meaning. In the apt words of Harvard University
historian Richard Pipes:41
The manner in which the
massacre was prepared and carried out, at first denied and then justified, has
something uniquely odious about it, something that radically distinguishes it
from previous acts of regicide and brands it as a prelude to twentieth-century
mass murder.
Another historian, Ivor
Benson, characterized the killing of the Romanov family as symbolic of the
tragic fate of Russia and, indeed, of the entire West, in this century of
unprecedented agony and conflict.
The murder of the Tsar and his
family is all the more deplorable because, whatever his failings as a monarch,
Nicholas II was, by all accounts, a personally decent, generous, humane and
honorable man.
The Massacre's Place in
History
The mass slaughter and chaos
of the First World War, and the revolutionary upheavals that swept Europe in
1917-1918, brought an end not only to the ancient Romanov dynasty in Russia,
but to an entire continental social order. Swept away as well was the
Hohenzollern dynasty in Germany, with its stable constitutional monarchy, and
the ancient Habsburg dynasty of Austria-Hungary with its multinational central
European empire. Europe's leading states shared not only the same Christian and
Western cultural foundations, but most of the continent's reigning monarchs
were related by blood. England's King George was, through his mother, a first
cousin of Tsar Nicholas, and, through his father, a first cousin of Empress
Alexandra. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm was a first cousin of the German-born
Alexandra, and a distant cousin of Nicholas.
More than was the case with
the monarchies of western Europe, Russia's Tsar personally symbolized his land
and nation. Thus, the murder of the last emperor of a dynasty that had ruled
Russia for three centuries not only symbolically presaged the Communist mass
slaughter that would claim so many Russian lives in the decades that followed,
but was symbolic of the Communist effort to kill the soul and spirit of Russia
itself.
Notes
1. Edvard Radzinksy, The Last
Tsar (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 327, 344-346.; Bill Keller, „Cult of
the Last Czar,“ The New York Times, Nov. 21, 1990.
2. From an April 1935 entry in „Trotsky's
Diary in Exile.“ Quoted in: Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New
York: Knopf, 1990), pp. 770, 787.; Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra
(New York: 1976), pp. 496-497.; E. Radzinksy, The Last Tsar (New York:
Doubleday, 1992), pp. 325-326.; Ronald W. Clark, Lenin (New York: 1988),
pp. 349-350.
3. On Wilton and his career in
Russia, see: Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976), pp. 141-142, 144-146, 151-152, 159, 162, 169, and, Anthony
Summers and Tom Mangold, The File on the Tsar (New York: Harper and Row,
1976), pp. 102-104, 176.
4. AP dispatch from Moscow, Toronto
Star, Sept. 26, 1991, p. A2.; Similarly, a 1992 survey found that
one-fourth of people in the republics of Belarus (White Russia) and Uzbekistan
favored deporting all Jews to a special Jewish region in Russian Siberia. „Survey
Finds Anti-Semitism on Rise in Ex-Soviet Lands,“ Los Angeles Times, June
12, 1992, p. A4.
5. At the turn of the century,
Jews made up 4.2 percent of the population of the Russian Empire. Richard
Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: 1990), p. 55 (fn.).
By comparison, in the United States today, Jews make up less than three percent of the total population (according to the most authoritative estimates).
By comparison, in the United States today, Jews make up less than three percent of the total population (according to the most authoritative estimates).
6. See individual entries in: H.
Shukman, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution
(Oxford: 1988), and in: G. Wigoder, ed., Dictionary of Jewish Biography
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991).
The prominent Jewish role in Russia's pre-1914 revolutionary underground, and in the early Soviet regime, is likewise confirmed in: Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Roots of Radicalism (New York: Oxford, 1982), pp. 92-94.
In 1918, the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee had 15 members. German scholar Herman Fehst -- citing published Soviet records -- reported in his useful 1934 study that of six of these 15 were Jews. Herman Fehst, Bolschewismus und Judentum: Das jüdische Element in der Führerschaft des Bolschewismus (Berlin: 1934), pp. 68-72.; Robert Wilton, though, reported that in 1918 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party had twelve members, of whom nine were of Jewish origin and three were of Russian ancestry. R. Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs (IHR, 1993), p. 185.
The prominent Jewish role in Russia's pre-1914 revolutionary underground, and in the early Soviet regime, is likewise confirmed in: Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Roots of Radicalism (New York: Oxford, 1982), pp. 92-94.
In 1918, the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee had 15 members. German scholar Herman Fehst -- citing published Soviet records -- reported in his useful 1934 study that of six of these 15 were Jews. Herman Fehst, Bolschewismus und Judentum: Das jüdische Element in der Führerschaft des Bolschewismus (Berlin: 1934), pp. 68-72.; Robert Wilton, though, reported that in 1918 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party had twelve members, of whom nine were of Jewish origin and three were of Russian ancestry. R. Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs (IHR, 1993), p. 185.
7. After years of official
suppression, this fact was acknowledged in 1991 in the Moscow weekly Ogonyok.
See: Jewish Chronicle (London), July 16, 1991.; See also: Letter by L.
Horwitz in The New York Times, Aug. 5, 1992, which cites information
from the Russian journal „Native Land Archives.“; „Lenin's Lineage?“'Jewish,'
Claims Moscow News,“ Forward (New York City), Feb. 28, 1992, pp. 1, 3.;
M. Checinski, Jerusalem Post (weekly international edition), Jan. 26,
1991, p. 9.
8. Richard Pipes, The Russian
Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1990), p. 352.
9. Harrison E. Salisbury, Black
Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions, 1905-1917 (Doubleday, 1978), p.
475.; William H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution (Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), vol. 1, pp.
291-292.; Herman Fehst, Bolschewismus und Judentum: Das jüdische Element in
der Führerschaft des Bolschewismus (Berlin: 1934), pp. 42-43.; P. N.
Pospelov, ed., Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: A Biography (Moscow: Progress,
1966), pp. 318-319.
This meeting was held on October 10 (old style, Julian calendar), and on October 23 (new style). The six Jews who took part were: Uritsky, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Sverdlov and Soklonikov.
The Bolsheviks seized power in Petersburg on October 25 (old style) -- hence the reference to the „Great October Revolution“ -- which is November 7 (new style).
This meeting was held on October 10 (old style, Julian calendar), and on October 23 (new style). The six Jews who took part were: Uritsky, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Sverdlov and Soklonikov.
The Bolsheviks seized power in Petersburg on October 25 (old style) -- hence the reference to the „Great October Revolution“ -- which is November 7 (new style).
10. William H. Chamberlin, The
Russian Revolution (1987), vol. 1, p. 292.; H. E. Salisbury, Black
Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions, 1905-1917 (1978), p. 475.
11. W. H. Chamberlin, The
Russian Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 274, 299, 302, 306.; Alan Moorehead, The
Russian Revolution (New York: 1965), pp. 235, 238, 242, 243, 245.; H.
Fehst, Bolschewismus und Judentum (Berlin: 1934), pp. 44, 45.
12. H. E. Salisbury, Black
Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions, 1905-1917 (1978), p. 479-480.;
Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1991), pp. 27-28, 32.; P. N. Pospelov, ed., Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin: A Biography (Moscow: Progress, 1966), pp. 319-320.
13. „Zionism versus Bolshevism: A
struggle for the soul of the Jewish people,“ Illustrated Sunday Herald
(London), February 8, 1920. Facsimile reprint in: William Grimstad, The Six
Million Reconsidered (1979), p. 124. (At the time this essay was published,
Churchill was serving as minister of war and air.)
14. David R. Francis, Russia
from the American Embassy (New York: 1921), p. 214.
15. Foreign Relations of the
United States -- 1918 -- Russia, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: 1931), pp. 678-679.
16. American Hebrew (New York), Sept. 1920.
Quoted in: Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot
(Cambridge, Mass.: 1963), p. 268.
17. C. Jacobson, „Jews in the USSR“
in: American Review on the Soviet Union, August 1945, p. 52.; Avtandil
Rukhadze, Jews in the USSR: Figures, Facts, Comment (Moscow: Novosti,
1978), pp. 10-11.
18. T. Emmons and B. M. Patenaude,
eds., War, Revolution and Peace in Russia: The Passages of Frank Golder,
1913-1927 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1992), pp. 320, 139, 317.
19. Louis Rapoport, Stalin's
War Against the Jews (New York: Free Press, 1990), pp. 30, 31, 37. See also
pp. 43, 44, 45, 49, 50.
20. Quoted in: Salo Baron, The
Russian Jews Under Tsars and Soviets (New York: 1976), pp. 170, 392 (n. 4).
21. The Atlantic, Sept. 1991, p. 14.;
In 1919, three-quarters of the Cheka staff in Kiev were Jews, who were careful to spare fellow Jews. By order, the Cheka took few Jewish hostages. R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution (1990), p. 824.; Israeli historian Louis Rapoport also confirms the dominant role played by Jews in the Soviet secret police throughout the 1920s and 1930s. L. Rapoport, Stalin's War Against the Jews (New York: 1990), pp. 30-31, 43-45, 49-50.
In 1919, three-quarters of the Cheka staff in Kiev were Jews, who were careful to spare fellow Jews. By order, the Cheka took few Jewish hostages. R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution (1990), p. 824.; Israeli historian Louis Rapoport also confirms the dominant role played by Jews in the Soviet secret police throughout the 1920s and 1930s. L. Rapoport, Stalin's War Against the Jews (New York: 1990), pp. 30-31, 43-45, 49-50.
22. E. Radzinsky, The Last Tsar
(1992), pp. 244, 303-304.; Bill Keller, „Cult of the Last Czar,“ The New
York Times, Nov. 21, 1990.; See also: W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian
Revolution, vol. 2, p. 90.
23. Quoted in: The New Republic,
Feb. 5, 1990, pp. 30 ff.; Because of the alleged anti-Semitism of Russophobia,
in July 1992 Shafarevich was asked by the National Academy of Sciences
(Washington, DC) to resign as an associate member of that prestigious body.
24. R. Wilton, The Last Days of
the Romanovs (1993), p. 148.
25. Richard Pipes, The Russian
Revolution (1990), p. 787.; Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra
(New York: 1976), pp. 496-497.
26. An article in a 1907 issue of
the respected American journal National Geographic reported on the
revolutionary situation brewing in Russia in the years before the First World
War: „ The revolutionary leaders nearly all belong to the Jewish race, and the
most effective revolutionary agency is the Jewish Bund „ W. E. Curtis, „The
Revolution in Russia,“ The National Geographic Magazine, May 1907, pp.
313-314.
Piotr Stolypin, probably imperial Russia's greatest statesman, was murdered in 1911 by a Jewish assassin. In 1907, Jews made up about ten percent of Bolshevik party membership. In the Menshevik party, another faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the Jewish proportion was twice as high. R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution (1990), p. 365.; See also: R. Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs (1993), pp. 185-186.
Piotr Stolypin, probably imperial Russia's greatest statesman, was murdered in 1911 by a Jewish assassin. In 1907, Jews made up about ten percent of Bolshevik party membership. In the Menshevik party, another faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the Jewish proportion was twice as high. R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution (1990), p. 365.; See also: R. Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs (1993), pp. 185-186.
27. Martin Gilbert, Atlas of
Jewish History (1977), pp. 71, 74.; In spite of the restrictive „Pale“
policy, in 1897 about 315,000 Jews were living outside the Pale, most of them
illegally. In 1900 more than 20,000 were living in the capital of St.
Petersburg, and another 9,000 in Moscow.
28. Sonja Margolina, Das Ende der
Lügen: Russland und die Juden im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: 1992). Quoted in:
„Ein ganz heisses Eisen angefasst,“ Deutsche National-Zeitung (Munich),
July 21, 1992, p. 12.
29. Krasnaia Gazetta („Red Gazette“), September
1, 1918. Quoted in:
Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (1990), pp. 820, 912 (n. 88).
30. Richard Pipes, The Russian
Revolution (New York: 1990), p. 820.
31. Contrary to what a number of
western historians have for years suggested, Soviet terror and the Gulag camp
system did not begin with Stalin. At the end of 1920, Soviet Russia already had
84 concentration camps with approximately 50,000 prisoners. By October 1923 the
number had increased to 315 camps with 70,000 inmates. R. Pipes, The Russian
Revolution (1990), p. 836.
32. Cited by historian Robert
Conquest in a review/ article in The New York Review of Books, Sept. 23,
1993, p. 27.
33. The New York Review of Books, Sept. 23, 1993, p. 27.
34. Review/article by Robert
Conquest in The New York Review of Books, Sept. 23, 1993, p. 27.; In the
„Great Terror“ years of 1937-1938 alone, Conquest has calculated, approximately
one million were shot by the Soviet secret police, and another two million
perished in Soviet camps. R. Conquest, The Great Terror (New York:
Oxford, 1990), pp. 485-486.;
Conquest has estimated that 13.5 to 14 million people perished in the collectivization („dekulakization“) campaign and forced famine of 1929-1933. R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (New York: Oxford, 1986), pp. 301-307.
Conquest has estimated that 13.5 to 14 million people perished in the collectivization („dekulakization“) campaign and forced famine of 1929-1933. R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (New York: Oxford, 1986), pp. 301-307.
35. Russian professor Igor
Bestuzhev-Lada, writing in a 1988 issue of the Moscow weekly Nedelya,
suggested that during the Stalin era alone (1935-1953), as many as 50 million
people were killed, condemned to camps from which they never emerged, or lost
their lives as a direct result of the brutal „dekulakization“ campaign against
the peasantry. „Soviets admit Stalin killed 50 million,“ The Sunday Times,
London, April 17, 1988.;
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, has recently calculated that 61.9 million people were systematically killed by the Soviet Communist regime from 1917 to 1987. R. J. Rummel, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 (Transaction, 1990).
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, has recently calculated that 61.9 million people were systematically killed by the Soviet Communist regime from 1917 to 1987. R. J. Rummel, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 (Transaction, 1990).
36. Because of his revolutionary
activities, Lenin was sentenced in 1897 to three years exile in Siberia. During
this period of „punishment,“ he got married, wrote some 30 works, made
extensive use of a well-stocked local library, subscribed to numerous foreign
periodicals, kept up a voluminous correspondence with supporters across Europe,
and enjoyed numerous sport hunting and ice skating excursions, while all the
time receiving a state stipend. See: Ronald W. Clark, Lenin (New York:
1988), pp. 42-57.; P. N. Pospelov, ed., Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: A Biography
(Moscow: Progress, 1966), pp. 55-75.
37. R. Pipes, The Russian
Revolution (1990), pp. 187-188.;
38. The Nation, June 24, 1991, p. 838.
39. Bill Keller, „Cult of the Last
Czar,“ The New York Times, Nov. 21, 1990.
40. „Nostalgic for Nicholas,
Russians Honor Their Last Czar,“ Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1993.; „Ceremony
marks Russian czar's death,“ Orange County Register, July 17, 1993.
41. R. Pipes, The Russian Revolution
(1990), p. 787.
From The Journal of Historical Review,
Jan.-Feb. 1994 (Vol. 14, No. 1), pages 4-22.
About the Author
Mark Weber was born and raised in Portland,
Oregon. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the
University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A.,
1977).
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