Two Hundred Years Together

On Russian-Jewish Relations, 1795-1995

by

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

2017

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 Two Hundred Years Together
On Russian-Jewish Relations, 1795-1995

Copyright © 2017 Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

First English Edition

Published by The Incorrect Library (2017)
Version: 1.0

Language: English

Published in Russian (2002)

Published in French (2002)
Published in German (2003)

Translation (2010-2017):
https://200yearstogether.wordpress.com/
https://twohundredyearstogether.wordpress.com/
 
Two Hundred Years Together (Rus. Двести лет вместе, Dvesti let vmeste) is a two-
volume historical essay by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was written as a
comprehensive history of Jews in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and
modern Russia between the years 1795 and 1995, especially with regard to
government attitudes toward Jews.
 Contents
Introduction to this Translation
Introduction to the Material
On the perimeter of this study
Abridged Mentions of the Main Sources Cited in Notes by the Author

Volume 1
Chapter 1. Before the 19th century
Chapter 2. During the Reign of Alexander 1st
Chapter 3. During the Reign of Nicholas 1
Chapter 4. In the Age of Reforms
Chapter 5. After the Murder of Alexander II
Chapter 6. In the Russian Revolutionary Movement
Chapter 7. The Birth of Zionism
Chapter 8. At the Turn of the 20th Century
Chapter 9. During the Revolution of 1905
Chapter 10. The Period of the Duma
Chapter 11. Jews and Russians before the First World War: The Growing
Awareness
Chapter 12. During the War (1914‒1916)

Volume 2
Chapter 13. The February Revolution
Chapter 14. During 1917
Chapter 15. Alongside the Bolsheviks
Chapter 16. During the Civil War
Chapter 17. Emigration between the two World Wars
Chapter 18. In the 1920s
Chapter 19. In the 1930s
Chapter 20. In the camps of GULag
Chapter 21. During the Soviet-German War
Chapter 22. From the end of the war to Stalin’s death
Chapter 23. Before the Six-Day War
Chapter 24. Breaking away from Bolshevism
Chapter 25. Accusing Russia
Chapter 26. The beginning of Exodus
Chapter 27. About the assimilation
Author’s afterword
 Introduction to this Translation

Two Hundred Years Together is a two-volume historical essay by

Nobel Price winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dealing
with the Russian-Jewish relations from 1795, leading up to the
Communist revolution (Vol. 1) and then through the
Communist era to 1995 (Vol. 2). The original Russian volumes
were rst published in 2001 and 2002 respectively. French
(Fayard, 2002) and German (HERBIG, 2003) translations were
published soon after, but until now only a partial English
translation of this remarkable work was available in The
Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings (Lanham,
2006).
The importance of a complete English translation has been
discussed online ever since the books were rst published, and
in October 2010 the rst chapters were posted online on a
wordpress site called Adam’s Blog, however the owner of that
site received a warning by the copyright-holders in August
2011 and the translation process stopped in its tracks.
It wasn’t until January 2017 that voices showing the public
interest in a full English translation became loud enough that
pseudonymous people took it upon themselves to nish what
had been started nearly a decade earlier.

This translation has been a combined effort by several

people.
Chapters 4 and 5 from Volume 1, as well as Chapters 13, 14 and
16-27 were translated pseudonymously by multiple people and
posted online in 2010 at
https://200yearstogether.wordpress.com/. Some of these
chapters did not have English footnotes.
Chapters 2,3 and 6 through 12, as well as Chapter 15 have
been translated between February and March of the year 2017.
They were made available pseudonymously by David and
Davina Davison at
https://twohundredyearstogether.wordpress.com. These
chapters were translated from French.
Chapter 1 is of unknown origin, it was posted on 8chan in
pdf format. Some footnotes from the French edition have been
edited in. The translation for this chapter is not complete and a
better version will likely be made and included in future
editions of this work.
Other translations of some of these chapters can be found
online. There exists an alternative partial translation of
chapters 2,3 and 6 from the original Russian. I decided to use
the one made by the Davisons because the writing was of
superior quality and no di erence in the content was found.

If you nd any errors in this publication, look for my contact

details at The Incorrect Library.

Shadilay, March 2017

 Introduction to the Material

Having worked with the history of the Russian revolution for

fty years, I have encountered many times the problems
between the Russians and the Jews. Again and again these
worked themselves into the happenings, drove a wedge into
the human psyche and whipped up passions.
I did not lose hope that an author would beat me to the
punch and bring forth, with the necessary amplitude and
equilibrium, this bright spear. But we are dealing more often
with one-sided reproaches: either the Russians are guilty
against the Jews, worse, guilty of perpetual depravity, and
rightly so; or, on the other hand, the Russians who have treated
this problem rationally have done so for the most part
excessively harsh, without giving the other party even the
slightest merit.
It cannot be said that there is a lack of publishers; notably
among the Russian Jewry, there they are far more numerous
than amongst the Russians. Nevertheless, despite the
abundance of brilliant minds and decorated pens, we still have
not had a up-to-date analysis of our mutual history that can
satisfy both parties.
We must learn not to tighten the rope when it is already so
tense.
I would have liked to apply my e orts to a subject less
thorny. But I believe this history – or at least the e ort to
penetrate it – should not remain ‘forbidden’.
The history of the ‘Jewish Problem’ in Russia (and Russia
only?) is above all else exceptionally rich. Talking about it
means listening to new voices and passing them on to the
reader. (In this book, the Jewish voices will be heard more often
than those of the Russians.)
But the whirlwinds of the social climate force us towards the
razor’s edge. You can feel the weight of both sides, all the
grievances and accusations, plausible as well as improbably,
which grow as they go.
The purpose that guides me throughout this work on the life
common the Russians and the Jews consists of looking for all
the points necessary for a mutual understanding, all the
possible voices which, once we get rid of the bitterness of the
past, can lead us towards the future.
Like all other people, like all of us, the Jewish people is at the
same time an active and passive element of History; more than
once they have accomplished, be it unconsciously, important
works that History has o ered them. The ‘Jewish Problem’ has
been observed from diverse angles, but always with passion
and often in self-delusion. Yet the events which have a ected
this or that people in the course of History have not always, far
from, been determined by this one people, but by all those who
surrounded it.
An attitude that is too passionately for one party or the
other is humiliating to them. Nevertheless, there cannot be
problems that man can’t approach with reason. Speaking
openly, amply, is more honest, and, in our case precise,
speaking about it is essential. Alas, mutual wounds have piled
up in popular memory. But if we look at the past, when will the
memory heal? As long as popular opinion does not nd a pen to
shed light thereupon, it will stay a vague rumour, worse:
menacing.
We cannot cut ourselves o from the past centuries
permanently. Our world has shrunk, and, whatever are the
dividing lines, we nd ourselves neighbours again.
 For many years I have delayed writing this book; I would’ve
been glad not to take this burden upon me, but the delays of my
life have neared exhaustion, and here I am.
I have never been able to acknowledge anyone’s right to
conceal any of what has been. Neither can I accept any
agreement founded on bringing false light on the past. I call
both parties – Russian and Jewish – to look for mutual
understanding, to recognize each others’ share of the sin,
because it is easy to look away: surely this is not us… I sincerely
strive to comprehend the two parties in the presence of this
long historical con ict. I plunge myself into the events, not the
polemics. I want to show. I won’t enter into the discussions
except for those extreme cases where fairness is covered by
layers upon layers of lies. I dare hope that this book will not be
received by the extremists and the fanatics, that, on the
contrary, it will favour mutual understanding. I hope to nd
caring people amongst the Jews as well as the Russians.
Here is how the author envisaged his task and ultimate goal:
to try and foresee, in the future of Russo-Jewish relations,
accessible ways that could lead to the good of all.
1995

I wrote this book by bending myself only on what the historical

materials told and looking for charitable issues for the future.
But let’s face it: in recent years the situation in Russia has
evolved in such a drastic fashion that the problems studied
herein have found themselves relegated to the background and
don’t have the acuteness today of Russias other problem’s.
2000
 On the perimeter of this study

What could be the limits of this book?

I am fully aware of the complexity and breadth of the subject
matter. I understand that it also has a metphysical aspect. It is
even said that the Jewish Problem can be rigorously
understood only from a mystical and religious point of view. Of
course I recognize the reality from this point of view, but,
although many books have already touched the subject, I think
it remains inaccessible to men, that it is by nature out of scope,
even for the experts.
Yet all the important purposes of human history contain
mystical in uences, this does not prevent us from examining
them on a concrete historical plane. I doubt whether we should
necessarily call upon superior considerations to analyze
phenomena which our within our immediate reach. Within
the limits of our earthly existence, we can make judgments on
the Russians, as well as on the Jews, starting from lowly
criteria. As for those above, let’s leave them to God!
I want to clarify this problem only in the categories of
History, politics and everyday life and culture, and almost
exclusively within the limits of the two centuries of Russians
and Jews living together in one state. Never would I have dared
to approach the depths of the Jewish History, tri- or quadri-
millenniar, su ciently represented in numerous works and in
meticulous encyclopedias. Neither do I intend to examine the
History of the Jews in the countries nearest to us: Poland,
Germany, Astria-Hungary. I concentrate myself on Russian-
Jewish relations, insisting on the twentieth century, so crucial
and so catastrophic in the destiny of our two peoples. Based on
the hard experience of our coexistence, I try to dispel the
misunderstandings, false accusations, while recalling the
legitimate grievances. The works published in the rst decades
of the twentieth century have had little time to embrace this
experience in its totality.
Of course, a contemporary author cannot overlook their
existence, despite half a century and the state of Israel as well
as it’s enormous in uence on the lives of the Jews and other
peoples over the globe. He cannot, if only if he wants a
extensive comprehension on the internal life of Israel and it’s
spiritual orientations – also through incidental re ections, this
must shine through in this book. But it would be an outrageous
claim on the part of the author not to introduce here an
analysis of the problems inherent to Zionism and the life of
Israel. I nevertheless give special attention to the writings
published in our day by the learned Russian Jews who lived for
decades in the Soviet Union before emigrating to Israel, and
who have therefore had the opportunity to re ect, from their
own experience, on a number Jewish Problems.
Abridged Mentions of the Main Sources Cited
in Notes by the Author

“22”: Social, political and literary review of the Jewish

intelligentsia from the USSR in Israel, Tel Aviv. The
bibliographic notes called by a number are from the
author. Of these, those marked with an asterisk refer to
a second-hand reference. The explanatory notes marked
with an asterisk are translators.
ARR: Archives of the Russian Revolution, edited by J.
Guessen, Berlin, ed. Slovo, 1922-1937.
BJWR-1: Kriga o rousskom cvreïstve: ot 1860 godov do
Revolioutsii 1917 g. [Book on the Jewish World of
Russia: from the 1860s to the Revolution of 1917], New
York, ed. Of the Union of Russian Jews, 1960.
BJWR-2: Kriza o rousskom evreïstve, 1917-1967 [The
Book on the Jewish World of Russia, 1917-1967], New
York, ed. Of the Union of Russian Jews, 1968.
JE: Jewish Encyclopædia in 16 volumes, St. Petersburg,
Society for the Promotion of Jewish Scienti c Publishing
and Ed. Brokhaus and Efron, 1906-1913.
JW: Evreïskii mir [The Jewish World], Paris, Union of
Russo-Jewish intellectuals.
RaJ: Rossia i evrei [Russia and the Jews], Paris, YMCA
Press, 1978 (original ed., Berlin, 1924).
RHC: Istoriko-revolutsionnyi sbornik [Revolutionary
Historical Collection], edited by V. I. Nevski, 3 vols., M. L.,
GIZ, 1924-1926.
RJE: Rossiskaia Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia [Russian
Jewish Encyclopedia], M. 1994, 2nd edition currently
being published, corrected and expanded. Izvestia: News
from the Soviet of Workers ‘and Soldiers’ Deputies of
Petrograd.
SJE: Small Jewish Encyclopedia, Jerusalem, 1976, ed. Of
the Society for the Study of Jewish Communities.
TW: Vremia i my [The Time and We], international
review of literature and social problems, Tel Aviv.
 Volume 1

The Jews before the Revolution

 Chapter 1. Before the 19th century

From the Beginnings in Khazaria

In this book the presence of the Jews prior to 1772 will not be
discussed in detail. However, for a few pages, we will go over
the older epochs.
One could say that the paths of Russians and Jews rst
crossed in the wars between the Kiev Rus and the Khazars
[Ancient people of the Turkish race established in the region of
the Low Volga since long. In the 6th century they founded a
vast empire stretching from the Oural to Dniepr, which fell in
the 10th century after their defait by the prince of Kiev,
Sviatoslav (966)], but that isn’t completely right, since only the
upper class of the Khazars were of Hebraic descent, the tribe
itself consisted of Turcs who converted to Judaism.
If one follows the presentation of J.D. Bruzkus, respected
Jewish author of the mid-20th century, a certain part of the
Jews from Persia moved across the Derbent Pass to lower Volga
where Atil on the west coast of Caspian on the Volga delta, the
capital city of the Khazarian Khanate[1], rose up starting 724
AD. The tribal princes of the Turkish Khazars (at the time still
idol-worshippers), did not want to accept the Muslim faith, lest
they should be subordinated to the caliph of Baghdad, nor
Christianity, lest they come under vassalage to the Byzantine
emperor; and so the clan went over to the Jewish faith in 732.
But there was also a Jewish colony in the Bosporan
Kingdom[2] on the Taman Peninsula at east end of the Crimea,
separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov, to which
Hadrian had Jewish captives brought in 137, after the victory
over Bar-Kokhba [Founded in 480BC by the greek, conquered by
Mithridate in 107BC, remained under Roman protectorate
until the 4th century]. Later a Jewish settlement sustained
itself without break under the Goths and Huns in the Crimea.
Ka a (Feodosia) especially remained Jewish. In 933 Prince Igor
[Grand Prince of Kiev 912-945, successor of Oleg the wise]
temporarily possessed Kerch, and his son Sviatoslav [Grand
Prince 960-972] wrested the Don region from the Khazars.
The Kiev Rus already ruled the entire Volga region including
Atil in 909, and Russian ships appeared at Samander, south of
Atil on the west coast of the Caspian. The Kumyks [Turkish
speaking people; independent state in the 15th century,
annexed to Russia in 1784] in the Caucasus were descendants
of the Khazars. In the Crimea, on the other hand, they
combined with the Polovtsy [Turkish speaking people from
Asia that occupied the southern steppes of Russia 11th
century], a nomadic Turkish people from central Asia who had
lived in the northern Black Sea area and the Caucasus since the
10th century, called Cuman by western historians. This
admixture formed the Crimean Tatars. But unlike the Tatars
the Karaim [Turkish speaking people professing a belief similar
to Judaism, but without recognizing the Talmud (11th to 12th
century)], a Jewish sect that does not follow the Talmud, and
Jewish residents of the Crimea did not go over to the Muslim
faith. The Khazars were nally overrun much later by
Tamerlane or Timur, the 14th century conqueror.
A few researchers, however hypothesize (exact proof is
absent) that the Hebrews had wandered to some extent
through the south Russian region in a westward and
northwesterly direction. Thus the Orientalist and Semitist
Abraham Harkavy, for example writes that the Jewish
congregation in the future Russia “emerge from Jews that came
from the Black Sea coast and from the Caucasus, where their
ancestors had lived since the Assyrian and Babylonian
captivity.”[3] J. D. Bruzkus also leans to this perspective.
Another opinion suggests these were the remnant of the Ten
Lost Tribes of Israel [after the death of Salomon, under the rule
of Roboam, ten of the twelth tribes of Israel separated from the
House of David, formed the Kingdom of Israel and then were
punished and dispersed].
This migration presumably ended after the conquest in 1097
of Timutarakans on the eastern shore of the Kerch straits,
overlooking the eastern end of the Crimean Peninsula; the
eastern ank of the old Bosporan Kingdom, by the Polovtsy.
According to Harkavy’s opinion the vernacular of these Jews at
least since the ninth century was Slavic, and only in the 17th
century, when the Ukrainian Jews ed from the pogroms of the
Ukrainian Cossack warlord Bogdan Chmelnitzki [Hetman.
Ukrainian leader (1593-1657), victoriously led the Ukrainian
Cossacks against Poland with the aid of the Crimean Tatars. In
1654 he received the protection of Moscow and became the
vasal of tsar Alexis Mikhaïlovitch], who led a successful
Cossack rebellion against Poland with help from the Crimean
Tatars, did Yiddish become the language of Jews in Poland.
In various manners the Jews also came to Kiev and settled
there. Already under Igor, the lower part of the city was called
Kosary; in 933 Igor brought in Jews that had been taken captive
in Kerch. Then in 965 Jews taken captive in the Crimea were
brought there; in 969 Kosaren from Atil and Samander, in 989
from Cherson and in 1017 from Timutarakan. In Kiev western
or Ashkenazi Jews also emerged in connection with the caravan
tra c from west to east, and starting at the end of the eleventh
century, perhaps on account of the persecution in Europe
during the rst Crusade.[4]
Later researchers con rm likewise that in the 11th century,
the Jewish element in Kiev was derived from the Khazars. Still
earlier, at the turn of the 10th century the presence of “a
Khazar force and a Khazar garrison” was chronicled in Kiev…
And “already in the rst half of the 11th century the Jewish-
Khazar element in Kiev played a signi cant role.”[5] In the 9th
and 10th century, Kiev was multinational and tolerant towards
di erent ethnicities.
At the end of the 10th century, in the time when Prince
Vladimir I. Svyatoslavich [Saint Vladimir (956-1015), son of
Sviatoslav, became sole sovereign of the Kievian Russia of
which he’s considered the founder. Converted to Byzantian
Christianity which he established in the whole country in
988AD] was choosing a new faith for the Russians, there were
not a few Jews in Kiev, and among them were found educated
men who suggested taking on the Jewish faith. The choice fell
out otherwise than it had 250 hears earlier in the Khazar
Kingdom. The Russian historian Karamsin relates it like this:
“After he (Vladimir) had listened to the Jews, he asked where
their homeland was. ‘In Jerusalem,’ answered the delegates,
‘but God has chastised us in his anger and sent us into a foreign
land.’ ‘And you, whom God has punished, dare to teach others?’
said Vladimir. ‘We do not want to lose our fatherland like you
have.’”[6]
After the Christianization of the Rus, according to Bruzkus, a
portion of the Khazar Jews in Kiev also went over to
Christianity and afterwards in Novgorod perhaps one of them,
Luka Zhidyata,[7] was even one of the rst bishops and
spiritual writers. Christianity and Judaism being side-by-side
in Kiev inevitably led to the learned zealously contrasting
them. From that emerged the work signi cant to Russian
literature, Sermon on Law and Grace by Hilarion, rst Russian
Metropolitan in the middle 11th century, which contributed to
the settling of a Christian consciousness for the Russians that
lasted for centuries. The polemic here is as fresh and lively as in
the letters of the apostles.[8] In any case, it was the rst century
of Christianity in Russia. For the Russian neophytes of that
time, the Jews were interesting, especially in connection to
their religious presentation, and even in Kiev there were
opportunities for contact with them. The interest was greater
than later in the 18th century, when they again were physically
close.
Then, for more than a century, the Jews took part in the
expanded commerce of Kiev. “In the new city wall completed in
1037 there was the Jews’ Gate, which closed in the Jewish
quarter.”[9] The Kiev Jews were not subjected to any
limitations, and the princes did not handle themselves with
hostility, but rather indeed vouchsafed to them protection,
especially Sviatopluk Iziaslavich, Prince of Novgorod (r. 1078-
1087) and Grand Prince of Kiev from 1093 until 1113, since the
trade and enterprising spirit of the Jews brought the princes
nancial advantage.
In 1113 A.D., Vladimir Monomakh, out of qualms of
conscience, even after the death of Sviatopluk, hesitated to
ascend the Kiev throne prior to one of the Svyatoslaviches, and
“rioters, exploiting the anarchy, plundered the house of the
regimental commander Putiata and all Jews that had stood
under the special protection of the greedy Sviatopluk in the
capital city. One reason for the Kiev revolt was apparently the
usury of the Jews. Exploiting the shortage of money of the
time, they enslaved the debtors with exorbitant interest.”[10]
(For example there are indications in the statute of Vladimir
Monomakh that Kiev money-lenders received interest up to 50
percent per annum.) Karamsin therein appeals to the
Chronicles and an extrapolation by Basil Tatistche (1686-
1750), student of Peter the Great, and the rst Russian
historian. In Tatistche we nd moreover:
“Afterwards they clubbed down many Jews and plundered
their houses, because they had brought about many sicknesses
to Christians and commerce with them had brought about
great damage. Many of them, who had gathered in their
synagogue seeking protection, defended themselves as well as
they could, and gained time until Vladimir could arrive.” But
when he came, “the Kievites pleaded with him for retribution
toward the Jews, because they had taken all the trades from
Christians and under Sviatopluk had had much freedom and
power. … They had also brought many over to their faith.”[11]
According to M. N. Pokrovski, the Kiev Pogrom of 1113 was
of a social and not national character. However the leaning of
this class-conscious historian toward social interpretations is
well-known. After he ascended to the Kiev throne, Vladimir
answered the complainants, “Since many Jews everywhere
have received access to the various princely courts and have
migrated there, it is not appropriate for me, without the advice
of the princes, and moreover contrary to right, to permit
killing and plundering them. Hence I will without delay call
the princes to assemble, to give counsel.”[12] In the Council a
law limiting interest was established, which Vladimir attached
to Yaroslav’s statute. Karamsin reports, appealing to
Tatistche , that Vladimir “banned all Jews” upon the
conclusion of the Council, “and from that time forth there were
none left in our fatherland.” But at the same time he quali es:
“In the chronicles in contrast it says that in 1124 the Jews in
Kiev died in a great re; consequently, they had not been
banned.”[13] Bruzkus explains, that it “was a whole quarter in
the best part of the city... at the Jew’s Gate next to the Golden
Gate.”[14]
At least one Jew enjoyed the trust of Andrei Bogoliubsky in
Vladimir. Among the con dants of Andrei was a certain
Ephraim Moisich, whose patronymic Moisich or Moisievich
indicates his Jewish derivation, and who according to the
words of the Chronicle was among the instigators of the
treason by which Andrei was murdered.[15] However there is
also a notation that says that under Andrei Bogoliubsky “many
Bulgarians and Jews from the Volga territory came and had
themselves baptized” and that after the murder of Andrei his
son Georgi ed to a Jewish prince in Dagestan.[16]
In any case the information on the Jews in the time of the
Suzdal Rus is scanty, as their numbers were obviously small.
The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that in the Russian heroic
songs (Bylinen) the “Jewish Czar” – e.g. the warrior Shidowin in
the old Bylina about Ilya and Dobrinia – is “a favorite general
moniker for an enemy of the Christian faith.”[17] At the same
time it could also be a trace of memories of the struggle against
the Khazars. Here, the religious basis of this hostility and
exclusion is made clear. On this basis, the Jews were not
permitted to settle in the Muscovy Rus.
The invasion of the Tatars portended the end of the lively
commerce of the Kiev Rus, and many Jews apparently went to
Poland. (Also the Jewish colonization into Volhynia and Galicia
continued, where they had scarcely su ered from the Tatar
invasion.) The Encyclopedia explains: “During the invasion of
the Tatars (1239) which destroyed Kiev, the Jews also su ered,
but in the second half of the 13th century they were invited by
the Grand Princes to resettle in Kiev, which found itself under
the domination of the Tatars. On account of the special rights,
which were also granted the Jews in other possessions of the
Tatars, envy was stirred up in the town residents against the
Kiev Jews.”[18]
Something similar happened not only in Kiev, but also in the
cities of North Russia, which “under the Tatar rule, were
accessible for many merchants from Khoresm or Khiva, who
were long since experienced in trade and the tricks of pro t-
seeking. These people bought from the Tatars the principality’s
right to levy tribute, they demanded excessive interest from
poor people and, in case of their failure to pay, declared the
debtors to be their slaves, and took away their freedom. The
residents of Vladimir, Suzdal, and Rostov nally lost their
patience and rose up together at the pealing of the bells against
these usurers; a few were killed and the rest chased o .”[19] A
punitive expedition of the Khan against the mutineers was
threatened, which however was hindered via the mediation of
Alexander Nevsky. Lastly, “in the documents of the 15th
century, Kievite Jewish tax-leasers are mentioned, who
possessed a signi cant fortune.”[20]

The Judaizing Heresy

A migration of Jews from Poland to the East, including White
Russia [Belarus], should also be noted in the 15th century:
there were leasers of tolls and other assessments in Minsk,
Polotsk, and in Smolensk, although no settled congregations
were formed there. After the short-lived banishment of Jews
from Lithuania (1496) the “eastward movement went forth
with particular energy at the beginning of the 16th
century.”[21]
The number of Jews that migrated into the Muscovy Rus was
insigni cant although “in uential Jews at that time had no
di culties going to Moscow.”[22] Toward the end of the 15th
century in the very center of the spiritual and administrative
power of the Rus, a change took place that, though barely
noticed, could have drawn an ominous unrest in its wake, and
had far-reaching consequences in the spiritual domain. It had
to do with the “Judaizing Heresy.” Saint Joseph of Volokolamsk
(1439-1515) who resisted it, observed: “Since the time of Olga
[Saint Olga (?-969), princess of Kiev, wife of prince Igor of
whom she became widow in 945; exercised rule until her son
Sviatoslav became of age. Converted in 954, she did however
not succeed in spreading Christianity throughout the whole
country] and Vladimir, the God-fearing Russian world has
never experienced such a seduction.”[23]
According to Kramsin it began thus: the Jew Zechariah, who
in 1470 had arrived in Novgorod from Kiev, “ gured out how to
lead astray two spirituals, Dionis and Aleksei; he assured them
that only the Law of Moses was divine; the history of the
Redeemer was invented; the Messiah was not yet born; one
should not pray to icons, etc. Thus began the Judaizing
heresy.”[24] The renowned Russian historian Sergey Solovyov
(1820–79) expands on this, that Zechariah accomplished it
“with the aid of ve accomplices, who also were Jewish,” and
that this heresy “obviously was a mixture of Judaism and
Christian rationalism that denied the mystery of the holy
Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ.”[25] “The Orthodox
Priest Aleksei called himself Abraham, his wife he called Sarah
and along with Dionis corrupted many spirituals and laymen.
But it is hard to understand how Zechariah was able so easily to
increase the number of his Novgorod pupils, since his wisdom
consisted entirely and only in the rejection of Christianity and
the glori cation of Judaism. Probably, Zechariah seduced the
Russians with the Jewish cabbala, a teaching that captured
curious ignoramuses and in the 15th century was well-known,
when many educated men sought in it the solution to all
important riddles of the human spirit. The cabbalists extolled
themselves ..., they were able... to discern all secrets of nature,
explain dreams, prophecy the future, and conjure spirits.”[26]
J. Gessen, a Jewish historian of the 20th century, presents in
contrast the opinion: “It is certain that Jews participated
neither in the introduction of the heresy... nor its spread.”[27]
(But with no indication of his sources). The encyclopedia of
Brockhaus and Efron [1890-1906, Czarist Russian equivalent to
the Encyclopedia Britannica] explains: “Apparently the
genuinely Jewish element played no outstanding role, limiting
its contribution to a few rituals.”[28] The Jewish Encyclopedia,
which appeared about the same time, writes on the other hand:
“today, since the publication of the ‘Psalter of the Judaizers’ and
other memorials, the contested question of the Jewish
in uence on the sects must... be seen as settled in a positive
sense.”[29]
“The Novgorod heretics presented an orderly exterior,
appeared to fast humbly and zealously ful lled all the duties of
piety.”[30] They made themselves noticed by the people and
contributed to the rapid spreading of the heresy.[31] When
after the fall of Novgorod Ivan Vasilievich III (1440-1505)
Grand Prince of Moscovy, united the greater Russian territory
under Moscow’s rule visited the city, he was impressed by their
piety and took both of the rst heretics, Aleksei and Dionis, to
Moscow in 1480 and promoted them as high priests of the
Assumption of Mary and the Archangel cathedrals of the
Kremlin. With them also the schism was brought over, the
roots of which remained in Novgorod. Aleksei found special
favor with the ruler and had free access to him, and with his
secret teaching enticed not only several high spirituals and
o cials, but moved the Grand Prince to appoint the
archimandrite (head abbot in Eastern Orthodoxy) Zossima as
Metropolitan, that is, the head of the entire Russian church – a
man from the very circle of the those he had enticed with the
heresy. In addition, he enticed Helena to the heresy —
daughter-in-law of the Grand Prince, widow of Ivan the
Younger and mother of the heir to the throne, the “blessed
nephew Dimitri.”[32]
The rapid success of this movement and the ease with which
it spread is astonishing. This is obviously to be explained
through mutual interests. When the ‘Psalter of the Judaizing’
and other works — which could mislead the inexperienced
Russian reader and were sometimes unambiguously anti-
Christian – were translated from Hebrew into Russian, one
could have assumed that only Jews and Judaism would have
been interested in them. But also the Russian reader was
interested in the translations of Jewish religious texts. This
explains the success which the propaganda of the ‘Judaizing’
had in various classes of society.[33] The sharpness and
liveliness of this contact is reminiscent of that which had
emerged in Kiev in the 11th century.
The Novgorod Archbishop Gennadi uncovered the heresy in
1487, sent irrefutable proofs of it to Moscow, hunted the heresy
out and unmasked it, until in 1490 a church Council assembled
to discuss the matter under leadership of the just-promoted
Metropolitan Sossima. “With horror they heard the complaint
of Gennadi, ... that these apostates insult Christ and the mother
of God, spit on the cross, call the icons idolatrous images, bite
on them with their teeth and throw them into impure places,
believe in neither the kingdom of Heaven nor the resurrection
of the dead, and entice the weak, while remaining quiet in the
presence of zealous Christians.”[34] From the judgment of the
Council it is apparent, that the Judaizers did not recognize Jesus
Christ as the Son of God, that they taught the Messiah had not
yet appeared, that they observed the Old Testament Sabbath
day rather then the Christian Sunday.[35] It was suggested to
the Council to execute the heretics but, in accordance with the
will of Ivan III, they were sentenced instead to imprisonment
and the heresy was anathematized. “In view of the coarseness
of the time and the seriousness of the moral corruption, such a
punishment was extraordinarily mild.”[36]
The historians unanimously explain this hesitation of Ivan
in that the heresy had already spread widely under his own
roof and was practiced by well-known, in uential people,
among whom was Feodor Kuritsyn, Ivan’s plenipotentiary
Secretary, “famous on account of his education and his
capabilities”[37]. The noteworthy liberalism of Moscow owed
from the temporary ‘Dictator of the Heart’ F. Kuritsyn. The
magic of his secret salon was enjoyed even by the Grand Prince
and his daughter-in-law. The heresy was by no means in
abatement, but rather prospered magni cently and spread
itself out. At the Moscow court astrology and magic along with
the attractions of a pseudo-scienti c revision of the entire
medieval worldview were solidly propagated, which was “free-
thinking and carried by the appeal of enlightenment, and the
power of fashion.”[38]
The Jewish Encyclopedia sets forth moreover that Ivan III “out
of political motivations did not stand against the heresy. With
Zechariah’s help, he hoped to strengthen his in uence in
Lithuania,” and besides that he wanted to secure the favor of
in uential Jews from the Crimea: “of the princes and rulers of
Taman Peninsula, Zacharias de Ghisol ,” and of the Jew Chozi
Kokos, a con dant of the Khan Mengli Giray or Girai.[39]
After the Council of 1490 Sossima continued to sponsor a
secret society for several years, but then was himself
discovered, and in 1494 the Grand Prince commanded him to
depose himself without process and to withdraw into a
cloister, without throwing up dust and to all appearances
willingly. “The heresy however did not abate. For a time (1498)
its votaries in Moscow seized almost all the power, and their
charge Dmitri, the son of the Princess Helena, was coronated as
Czar.”[40] Soon Ivan III reconciled himself with his wife Sophia
Paleologos, and in 1502 his son Vassili inherited the throne.
(Kurizyn by this time was dead.) Of the heretics, after the
Council of 1504, one part was burned, a second part thrown in
prison, and a third ed to Lithuania, “where they formally
adopted the Mosaic faith”[41].
 It must be added that the overcoming of the Judaizing
heresy gave the spiritual life of the Muscovy Rus at turn of the
16th century a new impetus, and contributed to recognizing
the need for spiritual education, for schools for the spiritual;
and the name of Archbishop Gennadi is associated with the
collecting and publication of the rst church-Slavic Bible, of
which there had not to that point been a consolidated text
corpus in the Christian East. The printing press was invented,
and “after 80 years this Gennadi Bible was printed in Ostrog
(1580-82); with its appearance, it took over the entire orthodox
East”[42]. Even academy member S. F. Platonov gives a
generalizing judgment about the phenomenon: “The
movement of Judaizing no doubt contained elements of the
West European rationalism... The heresy was condemned; its
advocates had to su er, but the attitude of critique and
skepticism produced by them over against dogma and church
order remained.”[43]
Today’s Jewish Encyclopedia remembers “the thesis that an
extremely negative posture toward Judaism and the Jews was
unknown in the Muskovy Rus up to the beginning of the 16th
century,” and derives it from this struggle against the
“Judaizers”[44]. Judging by the spiritual and civil measures of
the circumstances, that is thoroughly probable. J. Gessen
however contends: “it is signi cant, that such a speci c
coloring of the heresy as Judaizing did not lessen the success of
the sects and in no way led to the development of a hostile
stance toward the Jews.”[45]
Judging by its stable manner of life, it was in neighboring
Poland that the biggest Jewish community emerged, expanded
and became strong from the 13th to the 18th century. It
formed the basis of the future Russian Jewry, which became
the most important part of world Jewry until the 20th century.
Starting in the 16th century a signi cant number of Polish and
Czech Jews emigrated into the Ukraine, White Russia and
Lithuania[46]. In the 15th century Jewish merchants traveled
still unhindered from the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom to
Moscow. But that changed under Ivan IV the Terrible: Jewish
merchants were forbidden entry.
When in 1550 the Polish King Sigismund August desired to
permit them free entry into Russia, this was denied by Ivan
with these words: “We absolutely do not permit the entry of
the Jew into my lands, because we do not wish to see evil in our
lands, but rather may God grant that the people in my land may
have rest from that irritation. And you, our brother, should not
write us on account of the Jews again,”[47] for they had
“alienated the Russians from Christianity, brought poisonous
plants into our lands and done much evil to our lands.”[48]
According to a legend Ivan the Terrible, upon the annexation
of Polotsk in 1563, ordered all Jews to be baptized in response
to complaints of Russian residents “against evil things and
bullying” by Jews, leasers and others empowered by Polish
magnates. Those that refused, apparently about 300 persons,
are supposed to have been drowned in his presence in the
Dvina. But careful historians, as e.g. J. I. Gessen, do not con rm
this version even in moderated form and do not mention it
once.
Instead of that, Gessen writes that under the False Dimitri I
(1605-06) both Jews and other foreigners “in relatively large
number” were baptized in Moscow. The story goes according to
In the Time of Troubles by Sergey Ivanov, regarding the 15-year
period of confusion following the failed Rurik Dynasty in
1598-1613 that the False Dimitri II, aka the “Thief of Tushino”,
was “born a Jew.”[49] The sources give contradictory
information regarding the ancestry of the Thief of Tushino.
Some assert that he was born Matthieu Vercvkinc, the son of an
Ukrainian priest; “or a Jew, as is said in the o cial documents;
if one believes a foreign historian, he knew Hebrew, read the
Talmud, the books of the rabbis… Sigismond sent a Jew who
passed himself for the Tsarevitch Dimitri.”[50] The Jewish
Encyclopedia says: “Jews made up part of the imposters
following and su ered after his fall. According to some sources
… the False Dimitri II was a baptised Jew who had served under
False Dimitri I.”[51]
Polish-Lithuanians, who had arrived in numerously in
Russia during the Time of Troubles, were, at the start of this
period, limited in their rights and “the Jews who came from
those countries partook in the fate of their compatriots” for
whom it had been forbidden to take their merchandise to
Moscow and the neighbouring cities.[52] The Moscow-Polish
agreement on the accession to the throne of Vladislav [Polish
king (1595-1648)] stipulated: “one must not be forced to
embrace the Roman belief, nor other confessions, and the Jews
should not be allowed to enter the state of Moscow to
trade.”[53] But others sources point out that the Jewish
merchants had access to Moscow, even after the Time of
Troubles.[54] “The contradictory decrees show that the
government of Michel Feodorovitch [First Czar of the Romanov
dynasty (1596-1645), elected by the Assembly of the people in
1613] was not pursuing any speci c policy concerning the
Jews… but he was rather tolerant towards them.”[55]
“Under the rule of Alexis Mikhaïlovitch [Son of the previous,
Czar of Russia from 1645 to 1676], signs can be found of Jewish
presence in Russia – the Code does no contain any restriction
when it comes to the Jews… they had then acces to all Russian
cities, including Moscow.”[56] Hessen asserts that the
population taken during the Russian o ensive in Lithuania in
the 30’s of the 17th century contained a fair number of Jews,
and “their arrangements were the same as that of the others.”
Following the military actions of the 1650-1660’s, “the Jewish
prisoners found themselves in the state of Moscow again, and
their treatment was not worse than that of the other
prisoners.”
After the signing of the treaty of Androussiv in 1667 in
which Smolensk, Kiev and the whole eastern bank of the
Dniper River remained Russian, “it was proposed that the Jews
should stay in the country. Many of them pro ted from the
situation, some embraced Christianity and amongst the
prisoners were some of the founders of the later Russian
nobility.”[57] (Certain baptised Jews settled in the the 17th
century along the Don, in the Cossack village of
Starotcherkassk, and about a dozen Cossack families are
descended from them.) Around the same year of 1667, the
Englishman Samuel Collins, residing in Moscow at the time,
wrote that “in a short time, the Jews have spread remarkably
through the city and in the court,” apparently under the
protection of a Jewish surgeon of the court.[58]
Under Czar Feodor III, a decree was tried that “if Jews
clandestinely arrive in Moscow with merchandise,” they are
not to be assessed toll, because “with or without wares, they
are forbidden entry to Smolensk.”[59] But “the practice did not
correspond to the theory.”[60]
In the rst year of Peter the Great (1702), doors were opened
to talented foreigners, but not Jews: “I would rather see
Mohammedans and pagans than Jews come here. They are
rogues and deceivers. I root out evil, I do not spread it; there is
no place, nor work for them in Russia, in spite of all of their
e orts to bribe my entourage.”[61]
Yet there is no evidence of limitations imposed on them
under Peter the Great, nor special laws. To the contrary, due to
the general benevolence given to all foreigners, they became
involved in a wide range of activities, and even positions close
to the Emperor:
 Vice-chancellor Baron Peter Sha rov, he was later found
guilty of embezzlement and disordedly conduct, for
which received capital punishment, later commuted to
banishment. After the death of Peter his punishments
were lifted and he was commissioned write down the
life of his late master.[62]
His cousins Abram Veselovsky, and
Isaac Veselovsky, close con dants of Peter
Anton de Vieira, general police master of Petersburg
Vivière, head of secret police
Acosta, the jester

and others. To A. Veselovsky, Peter wrote that “what matters is

competence and honesty, not baptism or circumcision.”[63]
Jewish mercantile houses in Germany inquired whether Russia
would guarantee their commerce with Persia, but never
received an answer.[64]
At start of the 18th century there was increased Jewish trade
activity in Little Russia and Ukraine, a year before Russian
merchants got the right to engage in such commerce. The
Ukrainian Hetman Skoropadski gave order several times for
their expulsion, but this was not obeyed and Jewish presence
actually increased.[65] In 1727, Catherine I, giving in to
Menchikov shortly before her death, decreed the removal of
Jews from Ukraine and Russian cities (in this case, “the large
share taken by the Jews in the productionn and trading of
brandy may have played a part”), but this only lasted one year.
[66]
In 1728, Peter II “permitted Jews into Little Russia,” rst as
“temporary visitors” on the ground of their usefulness for
trade, then “more and more reasons were found to make it
permanent.” Under Anna this right was extended to Smolensk
in 1731 and Slobodsky in 1734. Permission was given to Jews
to lease land and to distil brandy, and, after 1736, to supply
Polish vodka to any public drinking places, including those in
Greater Russia.[67]
It is important to mention Baltic nancier Levy Lipman.
While czarina Anna Iwanowna was still living in Courland she
was in dire need of money “and it is probable that Lipman was
on occasions of use to her.” Under Peter I, he had already settled
in St Petersburg. Under Peter II, he “became a nancial agent or
Juweler at the Russian court.” After Anna Iwanowna ascended
to the throne, he “accrued important relations at the court,”
and achieved the rank of High Commissar. “Due to his direct
contact with the czarina, he also had close ties to her favourite,
Biron … His contemporaries assert that … Biron came to him
for council on the vital problems of the Russian state. One of
the ambassadors at the court wrote: “… One could say that it is
Lipman who is truly ruling Russia.” Through time these
accusations became milder.[68] Nevertheless, Biron “had
transferred nearly all of the nancial administration and
several commercial monopolies.”[69] (“Lipman retained his
functions at the court, even after Anna Leopoldowna … had
exiled Biron.”[70])
Anna Iwanownas had also been in uenced by Lipman in her
general attitude towards the Jews. Even if, around the time of
her ascension to the throne in 1730, she expressed in a letter to
her ambassador to the Ukrainian Hetman, her concerns that
“only a tiny part of the Small Russians engage in commerce,
and that it is mainly the Greek, the Turks and the Jews who are
involved in trading,”[71] (from which we can conclude that the
alleged expulsion from 1727 never occurred, and that the
aforementioned decrees had never gone beyond letters on a
page). In 1739, Jews were banned from leasing land in Small
Russia; and in 1740 about 600 Jews were expelled from the
country.[72] (In opposition to which stood also the interests of
the landlords.)
One year after her ascension to the throne, Elisabeth III
signed a Ukase [an imperial Russian decree] (December 1742):
“It is forbidden for a Jew to live anywhere within our empire;
now it has been made known to us, that these Jews still nd
themselves in our realm and, under various pretexts, especially
in Little Russia. They prolong their stay, which is in no way
bene cial; but as we must expect only great injuries to our
loyal subjects from such haters of the name of our Savior Jesus
Christ, we order all Jews, male and female, along with their
entire possession, to be sent without delay from our realm,
over the border, and in the future not allowed back in, unless it
should be that one of them should confess our Christian
religion.”[73]
This was the same religious intolerance that shook Europe
for centuries. The way of thinking of that time was not unique
in any special Russian way, nor was it an exclusively Jew-
hostile attitude. Among Christians the religious intolerance
was not practiced with any less cruelty. Thus, the Old Believers,
i.e. men of the same orthodox faith, were persecuted with re
and sword.
This ukase of Elisabeth was made known throughout the
realm, but immediately attempts were made to move the ruler
to relent. The military chancellor reported to the Senate from
the Ukraine that already 140 people were evicted, but that “the
prohibition against Jews to bring goods in would lead to a
reduction in state income.”[74] The Senate reported to the
Czarina that “trade had su ered great damage in Little Russia
as well as the Baltic provinces by the ukase of the previous year
to not allow Jews into the realm, and also the state purse would
su er by the reduction of income from tolls.” The Czarina
answered with the resolution: “I desire no pro t from the
enemies of Christ.”[75]
Gessen concluded that “Russia remained, under Elisabeth,
without Jews.”[76] The Jewish historian S. Doubnov proposes
that under Elisabeth “according to contemporary historians…,
towards 1753 … 35,000 Jews had been chased from the
country.”[77] But this gure is in stark contrast to the
arrangement made three years earlier by Anna Iwanow – and
which had not been followed, namely to expel 600 Jews from
the whole of Ukraine, too far as well from the 142 expelled Jews
mentioned in the report from the Senate to Elisabeth.[78] V.I.
Telnikov suggests[79] that the “contemporary historian”, from
whom these numbers stem, never existed. That this
“contemporary historian” of whom Doubnov cites neither the
name, nor the title of the work, is no other than E. Herrmann,
who published this number, not at that time, but exactly one
century later, in 1853, and also with no reference as to the
source… but with a strange extension[80], namely that the
Jews “were commanded to leave the land under penalty of
death,” which shows that this historian was ignorant of the
fact that Elisabeth had been the one who abolished capital
punishment in Russia (for religious reasons) at the time of her
ascension to the throne. Telnikov remarks that one of the great
Jewish historians, Heinrich Graertz, does not speak a word on
the execution of these decrees by Elizabeth. For comparison,
let’s state here that according to G. Sliosberg “attempts were
made to chase the Jews from Ukraine.”[81]
It is more likely that, having encountered strong resistance,
not just from the Jews, but also the landowners and the state
apparatus, the decree of Elisabeth was not put into practice,
much like the numerous preceding similars.
Under Elisabeth, Jews occupied important positions. The
diplomat Isaak Wesselowskij was entrusted with governance
responsibilities and overwhelmed “with favours from the
empress”; he also pressed chancellor A. Bestushew-Ryumin to
block the expulsion of the Jews. (Later he gave Russian
language classes to the heir, later Peter III. And his brother
Feodor was curator of Moscow University.[82]) Of note also is
the rise of the Saxon merchant Grunstein, a Lutheran, who
converted to the Orthodox faith, after an unsuccessful trade
with Persia ended with him being taken captive. He enlisted in
the Preobrashensker Regiment, was among the active
participants in the coup which brought Elizabeth to the throne,
received the rank of adjutant as a reward, was inducted into the
hereditary and was presented 927 serfs, no more and no less.
(How generously they handed out these serfs, our Orthodox
czars!) But after that, “the success of his career clouded his
mind.” Sometimes he threatened to murder the Prosecutor
General. One time, on the nocturnal streets, without knowing
who it was, he beat up a relative of the Empress’ favoured
Alexej Rasumowskij. The “Brawl on the Road” “did not go
unpunished, and he was exiled to Ustyug.”[83]
Peter III, who ruled for no more than six months, had barely
had time to take a position on the Jewish Problem. (Although
he probably carried with him a scar, due to a certain “Jew
Mussa who, during Peter’s youth in Holstein,” had been an
intermediary for the lending of money, which had ruined the
treasury of Holstein; “Mussa went into hiding as soon as it
was announced that the Grand Prince had come of age.”[84])
[The footnotes for the rest of this chapter are missing]
But the latter gure having questionable origins; strong
resistance to the edict by Jews, land proprietors and the state
apparati meant it was enforced almost as little as previous
attempts had been. Catherine II, who became Czarina 1762 in
consequence of a coup, also being a neophyte to Eastern
Orthodoxy herself, was unwilling to start her reign opening
things up for Jews, though the Senate advised it. Jews pressed
for it and had spokesmen in Petersburg, Riga, and Ukraine. She
found a way around her own law in permitting their entry for
colonization into “New Russia,” the area between Crimea and
Moldavia, which was still a wasteland. This was organized
secretly from Riga, and the nationality of the Jews was kept
more or less secret. Jews went there from Poland and
Lithuania. In the rst Partition of Poland, 1772, Russia
reacquired White Russia (Belarus) along with her 100,000
Jews.
After the 11th century more and more Jews came into
Poland because princes and later kings encouraged “all active,
industrious people” from western Europe to settle there. Jews
actually received special rights, e.g. in the 13th century from
Boleslav the Pious; in the 14th century, from Kasimir the Great;
in the 16th century from Sigismund I and Stephan Bathory;
though this sometimes alternated with repression, e.g. in the
15th century by Vladislav Yagiello and Alexander, son of
Kasimir. Tthere were two pogroms in Krakow. In the 16th
century several ghettos were constructed partly to protect the
Jews. The Roman Catholic spirituals were the most continuous
source of hostility to the Jewish presence. Nevertheless, on
balance it must have been a favorable environment, since in
rst half of the 16th century the Jewish population increased
substantially. There was a big role for Jews in the business
activity of landlords, in that they became leasers of brandy-
distilling operations.
After the Tatar devastation, Kiev in the 14th century came
under Lithuania and/or Poland, and with this arrangement
more and more Jews wandered from Podolia and Volhynia into
the Ukraine, in the regions of Kiev, Poltava, and Chernigov. This
process accelerated when a large part of Ukraine came directly
under Poland in the Union of Lublin, 1569. The main
population consisted of Orthodox peasants, who for a long
time had had special rights and were free of tolls. Now began
an intensive colonization of the Ukraine by the Szlachta (Polish
nobility) with conjoint action by the Jews. The Cossacks were
forced into immobility, and obligated to perform drudgery and
pay taxes. The Catholic lords burdened the Orthodox peasants
with various taxes and service duties, and in this exploitation
the Jews also partly played a sad role. They leased from the
lords the “propination,” i.e. the right to distil vodka and sell it,
as well as other trades. The Jewish leaser, who represented the
Polish lord, received – of course only to a certain degree – the
power that the landholder had over the peasants; and since the
Jewish leasers strove to wring from the peasants a maximum
pro t, the rage of the peasants rose not only against the
Catholic landlords but also against the Jewish leasers. When
from this situation a bloody uprising of the Cossacks arose in
1648 under leadership of Chmelnitsky, Jews as well as Poles
were the victims. An estimated 10,000 Jews died.
The Jews were lured in by the natural riches of the Ukraine
and by Polish magnates that were colonizing the land, and thus
assumed an important economic role. Since they served the
interests of the landlords and the régime the Jews brought on
themselves the hatred of the residents. N. I. Kostomarov adds
that the Jews leased not only various branches of the privileged
industries but even the Orthodox churches, gaining the right to
levy a fee for baptisms.
After the uprising, the Jews, on the basis of the Treaty of
Belaia Tserkov (1651) were again given the right to resettle in
the Ukraine. As before, the Jews were residents and leasers of
the royal industries and the industries of the Szlachta, and so it
was to remain. Going into the 18th century, brandy distilling
was practically the main profession of Jews. This trade often
led to con icts with the peasants, who sometimes were drawn
into the taverns not so much because they were well-to-do, but
on account of their poverty and misery.
Included among the restrictions placed on the Polish Jews in
response to demands of the Catholic Church was the
prohibition against Jews having Christian house-servants.
Because of the recruitment coupled with the state tax increases
in neighboring Russia, not a few refugees came to Poland,
where they had no rights. In the debates of Catherine’s
commission for reworking a new Law code (1767/68), one
could hear that in Poland “already a number of Russian
refugees are servants to Jews.”

The Kahal And Civil Rights

The Jews of Poland maintained a vigorous economic relation to
the surrounding population, yet in the ve centuries that they
lived there, did not permit any in uence from outside
themselves. One century after another rolled by in post-
medieval European development, while the Polish Jews
remained con ned to themselves and became increasingly
anachronistic in appearance. They had a xed order within
themselves. Here it is granted, that these conditions, which
later remained intact also in Russia until the middle of the
19th century, were favorable for the religious and national
preservation of the Jews from the very beginning of their
Diaspora. The whole of Jewish life was guided by the Kahal,
which had developed from the communal life of the Jews. The
Kahal, pl. Kehilot was the autonomous organization of the
leadership of the Jewish congregations in Poland.
The Kahal was a bu er between Polish authorities and the
Jewish people; it collected taxes, for example. It took care of the
needy and also regulated Jewish commerce, approved resales,
purchases, and leases. It adjudicated disputes between Jews,
which could not be appealed to the secular legal system
without incurring the ban (herem). What may have started as a
democratic institution took on the qualities of an oligarchy
bent on maintaining its own power. In turn, the rabbis and
Kahal had a mutually exploitative relationship, in that the
rabbis were the executive enforcement arm of the Kahal, and
owed their position to appointment by the Kahal. Likewise, the
Kahal owed the maintenance of its power more to the secular
régime than to its own people.
Toward end of 17th century and through 18th century, the
country was torn by strife; the magnates’ arbitrariness
increased further. Jews became poor and demoralized, and
hardened in early medieval forms of life. They became child-
like, or better childish oldsters. 16th century Jewish spiritual
rulers were concentrated in German and Polish Jewry. They put
barriers up against contact with outsiders. The rabbinate held
the Jews in rm bondage to the past.
The fact that the Jewish people have held themselves
together in their diaspora for 2,000 years inspires wonder and
admiration. But when one examines certain periods more
closely, as e.g. the Polish/Russian one in the 16th and into the
middle of the 17th century, and how this unity was only won
by means of methods of suppression exercised by the Kehilot,
then one no longer knows if it can be evaluated merely as an
aspect of religious tradition. If the slightest trace of such
isolationism were detected amongst us Russians, we would be
severely faulted.
When Jewry came under the rule of the Russian state, this
indigenous system remained, in which the hierarchy of the
Kahal had a self-interest. According to J. I. Gessen, all the anger
that enlightened Jews felt against the ossifying Talmudic
tradition became stronger in the middle of the 19th century:
“The representatives of the ruling class of Jewry staked
everything on persuading the [Russian] administration of the
necessity to maintain this centuries-old institution, which
re ected the interests both of the Russian power and of the
ruling Jewish class; the Kahal in connection with the rabbis
held all the power and not seldom abused it: it misappropriated
public funds, trampled the rights of the poor, arbitrarily
increased taxes and wreaked vengeance on personal enemies.”
At the end of the 18th century the gvernor of one the
administrative regions attached to Russia wrote in his report:
“The rabbis, the spiritual Council and the Kahal, which are
knitted closely together, hold all things in their hand and lord
it over the conscience of the Jews, and in complete isolation
rule over them, without any relation to the civil order.”
In 18th century Eastern European Jewry two movements
developed: the religious one of the Hassidim [or Hasidim, or
Chasidim] and the enlightening one favoring secular culture,
spearheaded by Moses Mendelsohn; but the Kehiloth
suppressed both with all its might. In 1781 the Rabbinate of
[Lithuanian] Vilna placed the ban over the Hasidim and in
1784 the Assembly of Rabbis in [White Russian] Mogilev
declared them as “outlaws and their property as without
owner.” hereafter mobs laid waste to the houses of Hasidim in
several cities, .e. it was an intra-Jewish pogrom. The Hasidim
were persecuted in the most cruel and unfair manner; their
rivals did not even feel embarrassed to denounce them before
the Russian authorities with false political charges. In turn, in
1799 the o cials arrested members of the Kehilot of Vilna for
embezzlement of tax money, based on the complaints of
Hasidics. The Hasidim movement expanded, being especially
successful in certain provinces. The rabbis had Hasidic books
publicly burned and the Hasidim emerged as defenders of the
people against abuses of the Kehilot. It is apparent that in those
times the religious war between Jews overshadowed other
questions of religious life.
The part of White Russia that fell to Russia in 1772 consisted
of the Provinces of Polotsk (later Vitebsk) and Mogilev. In a
communiqué to those governments in the name of Catherine it
was explained that their residents “of whichever sex and
standing they might be” would from now on have the right to
public exercise of faith and to own property in addition to “all
rights, freedoms and privileges which their subjects previously
enjoyed.” The Jews were thus legally set as equals to Christians,
which had not been the case in Poland. As to the Jews, it was
added that their businesses “stay and remain intact with all
those rights that they today...enjoy” – i.e. nothing would be
taken away from Polish rights either. Through this, the
previous power of the Kehilot survived: the Jews with their
Kahal system remained isolated from the rest of the population
and were not immediately taken into the class of traders and
businessmen that corresponded to their predominant
occupations.
In the beginning, Catherine was on her guard not only
against any hostile reaction of the Polish nobility, from whom
power threatened to slip away, but also against giving an
unfavorable impression to her Orthodox subjects. But she did
extend wider rights to the Jews, whom she wished well and
promised herself of their economic utility to the nation.
Already in 1778 the most recent general Russian regulation
was extended to White Russia: those holding up to 500 rubles
belonged to the class of trade-plying townsmen; those with
more capital, to the class of merchant, endowed into one of
three guilds according to possession: both classes were free of
the poll tax and paid 1% of their capital which was “declared
according to conscience.”
 This regulation was of particularly great signi cance: it set
aside the national isolation of Jews up to that time – Catherine
wanted to end that. Further, she subverted the traditional
Polish perspective on Jews as an element standing outside the
state. Moreover, she weakened the Kahal system, the capability
of the Kahal to compel. The process began of pressing Jews into
the civil organism. The Jews availed themselves to a great
extent of the right to be registered as merchants – so that e.g.
10% of the Jewish population in the Mogilev Province declared
themselves as merchants (but only 5.5% of the Christians.) The
Jewish merchants were now freed from the tax obligation to
the Kahal and did not have to apply to the Kahal any more for
permission to be temporarily absent – they had only to deal
with the cognizant magistrate. In 1780 the Jews in Mogilev and
Shklov greeted Catherine upon her arrival with odes.
With this advance of Jewish merchants the civil category
“Jew” ceased to exist. All other Jews had now likewise to be
assigned to a status, and obviously the only one left for them
was “townsmen.” But at rst, few wanted to be reclassi ed as
such, since the annual poll tax for townsmen at that time was
60 kopecks but only 50 kopecks for “Jews.” However, there was
no other option. From 1783, neither the Jewish townsmen nor
merchants needed to pay their taxes to the Kahal, but instead,
to the magistrate, each according to his class, and from him
they also received their travel passes.
The new order had consequences for the cities, which only
took status into consideration, not nationality. According to
this arrangement, all townsmen and thus also all Jews had the
right to participate in the local class governance and occupy
o cial posts. Corresponding to the conditions of that time this
meant that the Jews became citizens with equal rights.
The entry of Jews as citizens with equal right into the
merchant guilds and townsmen class was an event of great
social signi cance. It was supposed to transform the Jews into
an economic power that would have to be reckoned with, and
raise their morale. It also made the practical protection of their
life-interests easier. At that time the classes of traders and
tradesmen just like the municipal commonwealth had a broad
self-determination. Thus, a certain administrative and judicial
power was placed into the hands of Jews just like Christians,
through which the Jewish population held a commercial and
civil in uence and signi cance. Jews could now not only
become mayors but also advisory delegates and judges.
At rst limitations were enacted in the larger cities to ensure
that no more Jews occupied electable positions than Christians.
In 1786 however Catherine sent to the Governor General of
White Russia a command written by her own hand: to
actualize the equality of Jews “in the municipal-class self-
governance unconditionally and without any hesitation” and
to “impose an appropriate penalty upon anyone that should
hinder this equality.” It should be pointed out that the Jews
thus were given equal rights not only in contrast to Poland, but
also earlier than in France or the German states. (Under
Frederick the Great the Jews su ered great limitations.) Indeed:
the Jews in Russia had from the beginning the personal
freedom that the Russian peasants were only granted 80 years
later. Paradoxically, the Jews gained greater freedom than even
the Russian merchants and tradesmen. The latter had to live
exclusively in the cities, while in contrast the Jewish
population could live in colonies in the country and distill
liquor.
Although the Jews dwelled in clusters not only in the city but
also in the villages, they were accounted as part of the city
contingent inclusive of merchant and townsmen classes.
According to the manner of their activity and surrounded by
unfree peasantry they played an important economic roll.
Rural trade was concentrated in their hands, and they leased
various posts belonging to the landowners’ privilege –
speci cally, the sale of vodka in taverns – and therewith
fostered the expansion of drunkenness. The White-Russian
powers reported: “The presence of Jews in the villages acts with
harm upon the economic and moral condition of the rural
population, because the Jews encourage drunkenness among
the local population.” In the stance taken by the powers-that-
be, it was indicated among other things that the Jews led the
peasants astray with drunkenness, idleness and poverty, that
they had given them vodka on credit, received pledges in pawn
for vodka, etc. But the brandy operations were an attractive
source of income for both the Polish landowners and the
Jewish commissioners.
Granted, the gift of citizenship that the Jews received
brought a danger with it: obviously the Jews were also
supposed to acquiesce to the general rule to cease the brandy
business in the villages and move out. In 1783 the following
decree was published: “The general rule requires every citizen
to apply himself in a respectable trade and business, but not
the distilling of schnapps as that is not a tting business,” and
whenever the proprietor “permits the merchant, townsman or
Jew to distill vodka, he will be held as a law-breaker.” And thus
it happened: they began to transfer the Jews from the villages
to the cities to de ect them from their centuries-old
occupation, the leasing of distilleries and taverns.”
To the Jews the threat of a complete removal from the
villages naturally appeared not as a uniform civil measure, but
rather as one that was set up specially to oppose their national
religion. The Jewish townsmen that were supposed to be
resettled into the city and unambiguously were to be robbed of
a very lucrative business in the country, fell into an inner-city
and inner-Jewish competition. Indignation grew among the
Jews, and in 1784 a commission of the Kehilot traveled to St
Petersburg to seek the cancellation of these measures. (At the
same time the Kehilot reasoned that they should, with the help
of the administration, regain their lost power in its full extent
over the Jewish population.) But the answer of the Czarina
read: “As soon as the people yoked to the Jewish law have
arrived at the condition of equality, the Order must be upheld
in every case, so that each according to his rank and status
enjoys the bene ts and rights, without distinction of belief or
national origin.”
But the clenched power of the Polish proprietors also had to
be reckoned with. Although the administration of White
Russia forbad them in 1783 to lease the schnapps distilling to
unauthorized person, especially Jews, the landlords continued
to lease this industry to Jews. That was their right, an
inheritance of centuries-old Polish custom. The Senate did not
venture to apply force against the landholders and in 1786
removed their jurisdiction to relocate Jews into cities. For this a
compromise was found: The Jews would be regarded as people
that had relocated to the cities, but would retain the right to
temporary visits to the villages. That meant that those that
were living in the villages continued to live there. The Senate
permission of 1786 permitted the Jews to live in villages and
Jews were allowed to lease from the landholders the right to
produce and sell alcoholic beverages, while Christian
merchants and townsmen did not obtain these rights.
Even the e orts of the delegation of Kehilot in St Petersburg
was not wholly without success. They did not get what they
came for – the establishment of a separate Jewish court for all
contentions between Jews – but in 1786 a signi cant part of
their supervisory right was given back: the supervision of
Jewish townsmen i.e. the majority of the Jewish population.
This included not only the division of public bene ts but also
the levying of poll tax and adjudicating the right to separate
from the congregation. Thus, the administration recognized its
interest in not weakening the power of the Kahal.
In all Russia, the status of traders and businessmen
(merchants and townsmen) did not have the right to choose
their residences. Their members were bound to that locality in
which they were registered, in order that the nancial position
of their localities would not be weakened. However, the Senate
made an exception in 1782 for White Russia: the merchants
could move “as the case might be, as it was propitious for
commerce” from one city to another. The ruling favored
especially the Jewish merchants.
However, they began to exploit this right in a greater extent
than had been foreseen: Jewish merchants began to be
registered in Moscow and Smolensk. Jews began soon after the
annexation of White Russia in 1782 to settle in Moscow. By the
end of the 18th century the number of Jews in Moscow was
considerable. Some Jews that had entered the ranks of the
Moscow merchant class began to practice wholesaling. Other
Jews in contrast sold foreign goods from their apartments or in
the courts, or began peddling, though this was at the time
forbidden. In 1790 the Moscow merchants submitted a
complaint to the government: “In Moscow has emerged a not
insigni cant number of Jews from foreign countries and from
White Russia who as opportunity a orded joined the Moscow
merchant guilds and then utilized forbidden methods of
business, which brought about very hurtful damage, and the
cheapness of their goods indicates that it involves smuggling,
but moreover as is well-known they cut coins: it is possible,
that they will also do this in Moscow.” As a response to their
thoroughly cagey ndings, the Moscow merchants demanded
their removal from Moscow. The Jewish merchants appealed
with a counter-complaint that they were not accepted into the
Smolensk and Moscow merchant guilds.
The Council of Her Majesty heard the complaints. In
accordance with the Uni ed Russian Order, she rmly
established that the Jews did not have the right to be registered
in the Russian trading towns and harbors, but only in White
Russia. “By no means is usefulness to be expected” from the
migration of Jews into Moscow. In December 1791 she
promulgated a highest-order ukase, which prohibited Jews
from joining the merchant guilds of the inner provinces, but
permitted them for a limited time for trade reasons to enter
Moscow. Jews were allowed to utilize the rights of the
merchant guild and townsman class only in White Russia. The
right to permanent residency and membership in the
townsman class, Catherine continued, was granted in New
Russia, now accessible in the viceregencies of Yekaterinoslav
(“Glory of Catherine the Great”, later changed to
Dnepropetrovsk) and Taurida; that is, Catherine allowed Jews
to migrate into the new, expansive territories, into which
Christian merchants and townsmen from the provinces of
interior Russia generally were not permitted to emigrate.
When in 1796 it was made known that groups of Jews had
already immigrated into the Kiev, Chernigov and Novgorod-
Syeversk Provinces, it was likewise granted there to utilize the
right of the merchant guild and the townsman class. The pre-
Revolution Jewish Encyclopedia writes: “The ukase of 1791
laid the groundwork for setting up the Pale of Settlement,”
even if it wasn’t so intended. Under the conditions of the then-
obtaining social and civic order in general, and of Jewish life in
particular, the administration could not consider bringing
about a particularly onerous situation and conclude for them
exceptional laws, which among other things would restrict the
right of residency. In the context of its time, this ukase did not
contain that which in this respect would have brought the Jews
into a less favorable condition than the Christians. The ukase of
1791 in no way limited the rights of Jews in the choice of
residency, created no special borders, and for Jews the way was
opened into new regions, into which in general people could
not emigrate. The main point of the decree was not concerned
with their Jewishness, but that they were traders; the question
was not considered from the national or religious point of
view, but only from the viewpoint of usefulness.
This ukase of 1791, which actually granted privileges to
Jewish merchants in comparison to Christian ones, was in the
course of time the basis for the future Pale of Settlement,
which almost until the Revolution cast as it were a dark
shadow over Russia. By itself, however, the ukase of 1791 was
not so oppressive as to prevent a small Jewish colony from
emerging in St Petersburg by the end of the reign of Catherine
II. Here lived the famous tax-leaser Abram Peretz and some of
the merchants close to him, and also, while the religious
struggle was in full swing, the rabbi Avigdor Chaimovitch and
his opponent, the famous hassidic Tzadik Zalman
Boruchovitch.
In 1793 and 1795 the second and third Partition of Poland
took place, and the Jewish population from Lithuania, Poldolia,
and Volhynia, numbering almost a million, came under
Russia’s jurisdiction. This increase in population was a very
signi cant event, though for a long time not recognized as
such. It later in uenced the fate of both Russia and the Jewry of
East Europe. After centuries-long wandering Jewry came under
one roof, in a single great congregation.

   
In the now vastly-expanded region of Jewish settlement, the
same questions came up as before. The Jews obtained rights of
merchant guilds and townsmen, which they had not possessed
in Poland, and they got the right to equal participation in the
class-municipal self-government, then had to accept the
restrictions of this status: they could not migrate into the cities
of the inner-Russian provinces, and were liable to be moved out
of the villages.
With the now huge extent of the Jewish population, the
Russian regime no longer had a way to veil the fact that the
Jews continued to live in the villages simply by modeling it as a
“temporary visit.” A burning question was whether the
economic condition could tolerate so many tradesmen and
traders living amongst the peasants. In order to defuse the
problem, many shtetl were made equal to cities. Thus, the legal
possibility came about for Jews to continue living there. But
with the large number of Jews in the country and the high
population density in the cities, that was no solution.
It seemed to be a natural way out that the Jews would take
advantage of the possibility o ered by Catherine to settle in the
huge, scarcely-occupied New Russia. The new settlers were
o ered inducements, but this did not succeed in setting a
colonization movement into motion. Even the freedom of the
new settlers from taxes appeared not to be attractive enough to
induce such a migration. Thus Catherine decided in 1794 to
induce the Jews to emigrate with contrary measures: the Jews
were relocated out of the villages. At the same time, she
decided to assess the entire Jewish population with a tax that
was double that paid by the Christians. Such a tax had already
been paid for a long time by the Old Believers, but applied to
the Jews, this law proved to be neither e ective nor of long
duration.
 Those were the last regulations of Catherine. From the end
of 1796 Paul I reigned. The Jewish Encyclopedia evaluates him in
this way: “The time of the angry rule of Paul I passed well for
the Jews... All edicts of Paul I concerning the Jews indicate that
the monarch was tolerant and benevolent toward the Jewish
population.” When the interest of Jews con icted with
Christians, Paul I by no means automatically sided with the
Christian. Even when in 1797 he ordered measures to reduce
the power of the Jews and the spirituals over the peasants, that
was actually directed against the Jews: the point was the
protection of the peasants. Paul recognized also the right of the
Hasidim not to have to live in secrecy. He extended the right of
Jews to belong to the merchant-and townsmen-class even to
the Courland Province which was no Polish inheritance, and
later, it also did not belong to the Pale of Settlement. Consistent
with that policy, he denied the respective petitions of the
parishes of Kovno, Kamenez-Podolsk, Kiev and Vilna, to be
permitted to move the Jews out of their cities.
Paul had inherited the stubborn resistance of the Polish
landholders against any changing of their rights; among these
was the right over the Jews and the right to hold court over
them. They misused these rights often. Thus the Complaint of
the Jews of Berdychiv [Ukraine] against the princes of Radziwill
stated: “in order to hold our religious services, we must rst
pay gold to those to whom the prince has leased our faith,” and
against Catherine’s former favorite Simon Zorich: “one ought
not to have to pay him for the air one breathes.” In Poland
many shtetl and cities were the possession of nobles, and the
landowners assessed arbitrary and opportunistic levies that
the residents had to pay.

Derzhavin And The Belarus Famine

Since the start of the reign of Paul I there was a great famine in
White Russia, especially in the province of Minsk. The poet
Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, then serving as Senator, was
commissioned to go there and determine its cause and seek a
solution — for which task he received no money to buy grain,
but instead had the right to con scate possessions of negligent
landowners, sell their stockpile and distribute them.
Derzhavin was not just a great poet, but also an outstanding
statesman who left behind unique proofs of his e ectiveness
which merits examination. The famine, as Derzhavin
con rmed, was unimaginable. He writes “when I arrived in
White Russia, I personally convinced myself of the great
scarcity of grain among the villagers. Due to the very serious
hunger — virtually all nourished themselves from fermented
grass, mixed with a tiny portion of meal or pearl barley. The
peasants were malnourished and sallow like dead people. In
order to remedy this, I found out which of the rich landowners
had grain in their storehouses, took it to the town center and
distributed it to the poor; and I commanded the goods of a
Polish Count in view of such pitiless greed to be yielded to a
trustee. After the nobleman was made aware of the dire
situation he awoke from his slumber or better, from his
shocking indi erence toward humanity: he used every means
to feed the peasants by acquiring grain from neighboring
provinces and when after two months the harvest time arrived
and the famine ended.” When Derzhavin visited the provincial
government, he so pursued the noble rulers and district police
captains that the nobility banded together and sent the Czar a
scurrilous complaint against him.
Derzhavin discovered that the Jewish schnapps distillers
exploited the alcoholism of the peasants: “After I had
discovered that the Jews from pro t-seeking use the lure of
drink to beguile grain from the peasants, convert it into brandy
and therewith cause a famine. I commanded that they should
close their distilleries in the village Liosno. I informed myself
from sensible inhabitants as well as nobles, merchants, and
villagers about the manner of life of the Jews, their
occupations, their deceptions and all their pettifogging with
which they a ict the poor dumb villages with hunger; and on
the other hand, by what means one could protect them from
the common pack and how to facilitate for them an honorable
and respectable way out to enable them to become useful
citizens.”
Afterwards, in the autumn months, Derzhavin described
many evil practices of the Polish landlords and Jewish leasers
in his “Memorandum on the mitigation of famine in White
Russia and on the lifestyles of the Jews, which he also made
known to the czar and the highest o cials of state. This
Memorandum is a very comprehensive document that evaluates
the conditions inherited from the Poles as well as the
possibilities for overcoming the poverty of the peasants,
describing the peculiarities of the Jewish way of life of that
time and includes a proposal for reform in comparison to
Prussia and Austria.
The very explicit practical presentation of the recommended
measures makes this the rst work of an enlightened Russian
citizen concerning Jewish life in Russia, in those rst years in
which Russia acquired Jews in a large mass. That makes it a
work of special interest. The Memorandum consists of two
parts: (1) on the residence of White Russian in general (in
reviews of the Memorandum we usually nd no mention of
this important part) and (2) on the Jews.
In part one, Derzhavin begins by establishing that the
agricultural economy was in shambles. The peasants there
were “lazy on the job, not clever, they procrastinate every small
task and are sluggish in eld work.” Year in, year out “they eat
unwinnowed corn: in the spring, Kolotucha or Bolotucha from
eggs and rye meal. In summer they content themselves with a
mixture of a small amount of some grain or other with
chopped and cooked grass. They are so weakened, that they
stagger around.”
The local Polish landlords “are not good proprietors. They do
not manage the property themselves, but lease it out, a Polish
custom. But for the lease there are no universal rules protecting
the peasants from overbearing or to keep the business aspect
from falling apart. Many greedy leasers, by imposing hard work
and oppressive taxes bring the people into a bad way and
transform the into poor, homeless peasants.’ This lease is all
the worst for being short-term, made for 1-3 years at a time so
that the leaser hastens to get his advantage from it without
regard to the exhausting of the estate.”
The emaciation of the peasants was sometimes even worse:
“several landlords that lease the tra c in spirits in their
villages to the Jews, sign stipulations that the peasants may
only buy their necessities from these leasers [at triple price];
likewise the peasants may not sell their product to anyone
except the Jewish lease holder, cheaper than the market price.”
Thus “they plunge the villagers into misery, and especially
when they distribute again their hoarded grain they must
nally give a double portion; whoever does not do it is
punished. The villagers are robbed of every possibility to
prosper and be full.”
Then he develops in more detail the problem of the liquor
distilling. Schnapps was distilled by the landlords, the landed
nobility [Szlachta] of the region, the priests, monks, and Jews.
Of the almost million Jews, two to three thousand lived in the
villages and lived mainly from the liquor tra c. The peasants,
“after bringing in the harvest, are sweaty and careless in what
they spend; they drink, eat, enjoy themselves, pay the Jews for
their old debts and then, whatever they ask for drinks. For this
reason the shortage is already manifest by winter... In every
settlement there is at least one, and in several settlements quite
a few taverns built by the landlords, where for their advantage
and that of the Jewish lease-holders, liquor is sold day and
night... There the Jews trick them out of not only the life-
sustaining grain, but that which is sown in the eld, eld
implements, household items, health and even their life.” And
all that is sharpened by the mores of the koleda “... Jews travel
especially during the harvest in autumn through the villages,
and after they have made the farmer along with his whole
family drunk, drive them into debt and take from them every
last thing needed to survive.... In that they box the drunkard’s
ears and plunder him, the villager is plunged into the deepest
misery.” He lists also other reasons for the impoverishing of
the peasants.
Doubtless behind these fateful distilleries stand the Polish
landlords. Proprietor and leaser acted in behalf of the owner
and attend to making a pro t: “To this class” Gessen asserts
“belonged not just Jews but also Christians” especially priests.
But the Jews were an irreplaceable, active and very inventive
link in the chain of exploitation of these illiterate emaciated
peasants that had no rights of their own. If the White Russian
settlement had not been injected with Jewish tavern managers
and leasers, then the wide-spread system of exploitation would
not have functioned, and removing the Jewish links in the
chain would have ended it.
After this Derzhavin recommended energetic measures, as
for example for the expurgation of these burdens of peasant
life. The landlords would need to attend to this problem. Only
they alone who are responsible for the peasants should be
allowed to distill liquor “under their own... supervision and not
from far-removed places,” and to see to it, that “every year a
supply of grain for themselves and the peasants” would be on
hand, and indeed as much as would be needed for good
nutrition. “If the danger arises that this is not done, then the
property is to be con scated for the state co ers. The schnapps
distilling is to begin no sooner than the middle of September
and end middle of April, i.e. the whole time of land cultivation
is to be free of liquor consumption. In addition, liquor is not to
be sold during worship services or at night. Liquor stores
should only be permitted in the main streets, near the markets,
mills and establishments where foreigners gather.”
But all the super uous and newly-built liquor stores, “whose
number has greatly increased since the annexation of White
Russia are immediately to cease use for that purpose: the sale
of liquor in them to be forbidden. In villages and out-of-the-
way places there should not be any, that the peasant not sink
into drunkenness.” Jews however should “not be permitted to
sell liquor either by the glass or the keg... nor should they be
the brew masters in the distilleries,” and “they should not be
allowed to lease the liquor stores.” Koledas are also to be
forbidden; as well as the short-term leasing of operations. By
means of exacting stipulations “the leaser is to be prevented
from working an operation into the ground.” Market abuse to
be forbidden under threat of punishment, by which the
landlords do not permit their peasants to buy what they need
somewhere else, or to sell their surplus somewhere other than
to their proprietor. There were still other economic proposals:
“in this manner the scarcity of food can in the future be
prevented in the White Russian Province.”
In the second part of the Memorandum, Derzhavin, going out
from the task given by the Senate, submitted a suggestion for
the transformation of the life of the Jews in the Russian
Kingdom– not in isolation, but rather in the context of the
misery of White Russia and with the goal to improve the
situation. But here he set himself the assignment to give a brief
overview of Jewish history, especially the Polish period in order
to explain the current customs of the Jews. Among others, he
used his conversations with the Berlin-educated enlightened
Jew, physician Ilya Frank, who put his thoughts down in
writing.
“The Jewish popular teachers mingle mystic-Talmudic
pseudo-exegesis of the Bible with the true spirit of the
teachings... They expound strict laws with the goal of isolating
the Jews from other peoples and to instill a deep hatred against
every other religion... Instead of cultivating a universal virtue,
they contrive... an empty ceremony of honoring God... The
moral character of the Jews has changed in the last century to
their disadvantage, and in consequence they have become
pernicious subjects... In order to renew the Jews morally and
politically, they have to be brought to the point of returning to
the original purity of their religion... The Jewish reform in
Russia must begin with the foundation of public schools, in
which the Russian, German and Jewish languages would be
taught.”
What kind of prejudice is it to believe that the assimilation
of secular knowledge is tantamount to a betrayal of religion
and folk and that working the land is not suitable for a Jew?
Derzhavin declined in his Memorandum a suggestion by Nota
Chaimovitsh Notkin, a major merchant from Shklov, whom he
had also met. Although Notkin demurred from the most
important conclusions and suggestions of Derzhavin that had
to do with Jews, he was at the same time in favor, if possible, of
excluding the Jews from the production of liquor; and saw it as
needful for them to get an education and pursue a productive
career, preferably working with their hands, whereby he also
held out the possibility of emigration “into the fruitful steppe
for the purpose of raising sheep and crops.”
 Following the explanation of Frank who rejected the power
of the Kehilot, Derzhavin proceeded from the same general
consequences: “The original principles of pure worship and
ethics” of the Jews had been transformed into “false concepts,”
by which the simple Jewish people “is misled, and constantly is
so led, so much so that between them and those of other faiths
a wall has been built that cannot be broken through, which has
been made rm, a wall that rmly binds the Jews together and,
surrounded by darkness, separates them from their fellow
citizens.” Thus in raising their children “they pay plenty for
Talmud instruction – and that without time limit ... As long as
the students continue in their current conditions, there is no
prospect for a change in their ways.... They believe themselves
to be the true worshippers of God, and despise everyone of a
di erent faith... There the people are brought to a constant
expectation of the Messiah... They believe their Messiah, by
overthrowing all earthly things will rule over them in esh and
blood and restore to them their former kingdom, fame and
glory.”
Of the youths he wrote: “they marry all too young,
sometimes before they reach ten years old, and though nubile,
they are not strong enough.” Regarding the Kahal system: the
inner-Jewish collection of levies provides “to the Kehilot every
year an enviable sum of income that is incomparably higher
than the state taxes that are raised from individuals in the
census lists. The Kahal elders do not excuse anyone from the
accounting. As a result, their poor masses nd themselves in
the condition of severe emaciation and great poverty, and there
are many of them... In contrast, the members of the kahal are
rich, and live in super uity; by ruling over both levers of
power, the spiritual and secular,... they have a great power over
the people. In this way they hold.them ... in great poverty and
fear.” The Kehilot “issues to the people every possible
command... which must be performed with such exactitude
and speed, that one can only wonder.”
Derzhavin identi ed the nub of the problem thusly: “the
Jews’ great number in White Russia ... is itself a heavy burden
for the land on account of the disproportion to that of the crop
farmers... This disproportion is the outstanding one of several
important reasons that produces here a shortage of grain and
other edible stores... Not one of them was a crop farmer at that
time, yet each possessed and gobbled up more grain than the
peasant with his large family, who had harvested it by the
sweat of his brow... Above all, in the villages they ... are
occupied in giving the peasant all their necessities on credit, at
an extraordinary rate of interest; and thus the peasant, who at
some time or other became a debtor to them, can no longer get
free of it.” Arching over this are the “frivolous landlords that
put their villages into Jewish hands, not just temporarily but
permanently.” The landowners however are happy to be able to
shift everything on to the Jews: “according to their own words,
they regard the Jews as the sole reason for the wasting of the
peasants” and the landlord only rarely acknowledges “that he,
if they were removed from his holdings, would su er no small
loss, since he receives from them no small income from the
lease.”
Thus Derzhavin did not neglect to examine the matter from
a variety of angles: “In fairness to the Jews we must point out
also that during this grain shortage they have taken care to
feed not a few hungry villagers—though everyone also knows
that that came with a bill: upon the harvest being brought in,
they will get it back 100-fold.” In a private report to the
Attorney General, Derzhavin wrote, “It is hard not to err by
putting all the blame on one side. The peasants booze away
their grain with the Jews and su er under its shortage. The
landholders cannot forbid drunkenness, for they owe almost
all their income to the distilling of liquor. And all the blame
cannot be placed even on the Jews, that they take the last
morsel of bread away from the peasant to earn their own life
sustenance.”
To Ilya Frank, Derzhavin once said, “since the providence of
this tiny scattered people has preserved them until the present,
we too must take care for their protection.” And in his report he
wrote with the uprightness of that time, “if the Most High
Providence, to the end of some unknown purpose, leaves on
account of His purposes this dangerous people to live on the
earth, then governments under whose scepter they have
sought protection must bear it... They are thus obligated
extend their protection to the Jews, so that they may be useful
both to themselves and to the society in which they dwell.”
Because of all his observations in White Russia, and of his
conclusion, and of all he wrote in the Memorandum, and
especially because of all these lines, and probably also because
he “praised the keen vision of the great Russian monarchs
which forbade the immigration and travel of these clever
robbers into their realm,” Derzhavin is spoken of as a fanatical
enemy of Jews, a great Anti-Semite. He is accused – though
unjustly, as we have seen – of imputing the drunkenness and
poverty of the White Russian peasant exclusively to the Jews,
and his positive measures were characterized as given without
evidence, to serve his personal ambition. But that he was in no
wise prejudiced against the Jews, is indicated in that (1) his
whole Memorandum emerged in 1800 in response to the actual
misery and hunger of the peasants, (2) the goal was to do well
by both the White Russian peasant and the Jews, (3) he
distinguished them economically and (4) his desire was to
orient the Jews toward a real productive activity, of whom, as
Catherine planned, a part rst and foremost was supposed to
have been relocated in territories that were not closed.
 As a critical di culty Derzhavin saw the instability and
transientness of the Jewish population, of which scarcely 1/6
was included in the census. “Without a special, extraordinary
e ort it is di cult to count them accurately, because, being in
cities, shtetl, manor courts, villages, and taverns, they
constantly move back and forth, they do not identify
themselves as local residents, but as guests that are here from
another district or colony.” Moreover, “they all look alike... and
have the same name,” and have no surname; and “not only
that, all wear the same black garments: one cannot distinguish
them and misidenti es them when they are registered or
identi ed, especially in connection with judicial complaints
and investigations.” Therein the Kehilot takes care not “to
disclose the real number, in order not unduly to burden their
wealthy with taxes for the number registered.”
Derzhavin sought however a comprehensive solution “to
reduce the number of Jews in the White Russian villages...
without causing damage to anyone and thus to ease the feeding
of the original residents; yet at the same time, for those that
should remain, to provide better and less degrading
possibilities for earning their sustenance.” In addition, he
probed how to “reduce their fanaticism and, without retreating
in the slightest from the rule of toleration toward di erent
religions, to lead them by a barely-noticed way to
enlightenment; and after expunging their hatred of people of
other faiths, above all to bring them to give up their besetting
intention of stealing foreign goods.” The goal was to nd a way
to separate the freedom of religious conscience from freedom from
punishment of evil deeds.
Thereafter he laid out by layers and explicitly the measures
to be recommended, and in doing so gave proof of his economic
and statesmanlike competence. First, “that the Jews should
have no occasion for any kind of irritation, to send them into
 ight or even to murmur quietly,” they are to be reassured of
protection and favor by a manifest of the Czar, in which should
be strengthened the principle of tolerance toward their faith
and the maintenance of the privileges granted by Catherine,
“only with one small change to the previous principles.” (But
those “that will not submit to these principles shall be given
the freedom to emigrate” – a demand that far exceeded in point
of freedom the 20th century Soviet Union).
Immediately thereafter it states: after a speci c time
interval, after which all new credit is temporarily forbidden, all
claims of debt between Jews and Christians to be ordered,
documented, and cleared “in order to restore the earlier
relation of trust so that in the future not the slightest
obstruction should be found for the transformation of the Jews
to a di erent way of life... for the relocation into other
districts” or in the old places, “for the assignment of a new life
conditions.”
Free of debt, the Jews are thus to be made as soon as possible
into freemen. All reforms “for the equalization of debt of poor
people” is to be applied to poor Jews, to de ect the payment of
Kahal debts or for the furnishings for migrants. From the one
group, no tax is to be levied for three years — from the other,
for six years. Instead, that money is to be dedicated to the
setting up of factories and work places for these Jews.
Landowners must abandon obligating Jews in their shtetls to
set up various factories, and instead begin on their estates to
cultivate grain, “in order that they may earn their bread with
their own hands,” but “under no circumstance is liquor to be
sold anywhere, secretly or openly,” or these landholders would
themselves lose their rights to the production of liquor.
It was also non-negotiable to carry out a universal, exact
census of the population under responsibility of the Kahal
elders. For those that had no property to declare as merchant or
townsman, two new classes were to be created with smaller
income Jews: village burgher and “colonist” (where the
denotation “krestyanin” or farmer would not be used because
of its similarity to the word ‘Christian’.) The Jewish settlers
would have to be regarded as free and not as serfs, but “under
no condition or pretext may they dare to take Christian man-or
maid-servants, they may not own a single Christian peasant,
nor to expand themselves into the domain of magistrates and
town fathers, so that they not gain any special rights over
Christians. After they have declared their wish to be enrolled in
a particular status, then must “the necessary number of young
men” be sent to Petersburg, Moscow, or Riga – one group “to
learn the keeping of merchant books,” second to learn a trade,
the third to attend schools for agriculture and land
management.
Meanwhile “some energetic and precise Jews should be
selected as deputies... for all these areas where land is
designated for colonization.” (There follows minutiae on the
arrangements of plans, surveying the land, housing
construction, the order to release di erent groups of settlers,
their rights in transit, the grace-period in which they would
remain tax-free – all these details that Derzhavin laid out so
carefully we pass by.) On the inner ordering of the Jewish
congregation: “in order to place the Jews ...under the secular
authorities ... just the same as everyone else, the Kehilot may
not continue in any form.” Together with the abolishment of
the Kehilot is “likewise abolished all previous pro teering
assessments, which the Kehilot raised from the Jewish people...
and at the same time, the secular taxes are to be assessed... as
with the other subjects” (i.e. not doubled), and the schools and
synagogues must be protected by law. “The males may not
marry younger than 17 nor the females than 15 years.”
 Then there is a section on education and enlightenment of
the Jews. The Jewish schools to the 12th year, and thereafter
the general schools, are to become more like those of other
religions; “those however that have achieved distinction in the
high sciences are to be received in the academies and
universities as honorary associates, doctors, professors” – but
“they are not… to be taken into the rank of o cers and sta
o cers,” because “although they may also be taken into the
military service, they will not take up arms against the enemy
on Saturday, which in fact often does happen.” Presses for
Jewish books are to be constructed. Along with synagogues are
to be constructed Jewish hospitals, poor houses, and
orphanages.
Thus Derzhavin concluded quite self-consciously: “thus, this
cross-grained [scattered] people known as Jews... in this its sad
condition will observe an example of order.” Especially
regarding enlightenment: “This rst point will bear fruit — if
not today and immediately, de nitely in the coming times, or
at worst after several generations, in unnoticed way,” and then
the Jews would become “genuine subjects of the Russian
throne.” While Derzhavin was composing his Memorandum, he
also made it known what the Kehilot thought about it, and
made it clear that he was by no means making himself their
friend.
In the o cial answers their rejection was formulated
cautiously. It stated, “the Jews are not competent for
cultivating grain nor accustomed to it, and their faith is an
obstacle... They see no other possibilities than their current
occupations, which serve their sustenance, and they do not
need such, but would like to remain in their current condition.”
The Kehilot saw moreover, that the report entailed their own
obsolescence, the end of their source of income, and so began,
quietly, but stubbornly and tenaciously, to work against
Derzhavin’s whole proposal.
This opposition expressed itself, according to Derzhavin, by
means of a complaint led by a Jewess from Liosno to the Czar,
in which she alleged that, in a liquor distillery, Derzhavin
“horri cally beat her with a club, until she, being pregnant,
gave birth to a dead infant.” The Senate launched an
investigation. Derzhavin answered: “As I was a quarter hour
long in this factory, I not only did not strike any Jewess, but
indeed did not even see one.” He sought a personal reception by
the Czar. “Let me be imprisoned, but I will reveal the idiocy of
the man that has made such claims... How can your Highness...
believe such a foolish and untrue complaint?” (The Jew that
had taken the lying complaint was condemned to one year in
the penitentiary, but after 2 or 3 months Derzhavin
“accomplished” his being set free, this being now under the
reign of Alexander I.)
The Czar Paul I was murdered in May 1801 and was unable to
come to any resolution in connection with Derzhavin’s
Memorandum. It led at the time to small practical results, as one
could have expected, since Derzhavin lost his position in the
change of court.
Not until the end of 1802 was the “Committee for the
Assimilation of the Jews” established to examine Derzhavin’s
detailed Memorandum and prepare corresponding
recommendations. The committee consisted of two Polish
magnates close to Alexander I: Prince Adam [Jerzy] Czartoryski
and Count (Graf) Severin Potocki as well as Count Valerian
Subov. Derzhavin observed regarding all three, that they too
had great holdings in Poland, and would notice a signi cant
loss of income if the Jews were to be removed, and that “the
private interests of the above-mentioned Worthies would
outweigh those of the state.”)
 Also on the committee were Interior Minister Count
Kotshubey and the already-mentioned Justice Minister, the
rst in Russian history—Derzhavin himself. Michael Speransky
also worked with the committee. The committee was charged
to invite Jewish delegates from the Kehiloth of every province
and these – mostly merchants of the First Guild – did come.
Besides that the committee members had the right to call
enlightened and well-meaning Jews of their acquaintance. The
already-known Nota Notkin, who had moved from White
Russia to Moscow and then St Petersburg; the Petersburg tax-
leaser Abram Perets, who was a close friend of Speransky;
Yehuda Leib Nevachovich and Mendel Satanaver, — both
friends of Perets – and others. Not all took part in the hearings,
but they exercised a signi cant in uence on the committee
members. Worthy of mention: Abram Perets’ son Gregory was
condemned in the Decembrist trial and exiled – probably only
because he had discussed the Jewish Question with Pavel
Pestel, but without suspecting anything of the Decembrist
conspiracy – and because his grandson was the Russian
Secretary of State, a very high position. Nevachovich, a
humanist (but no cosmopolitan) who was deeply tied to
Russian cultural life – then a rarity among Jews – published in
Russian The Crying Voice of the Daughter of Judah (1803) in
which he urged Russian society to re ect on the restrictions of
Jewish rights, and admonished the Russians to regard Jews as
their countrymen, and take the Jews among them into Russian
society.
The committee came to an overwhelmingly-supported
resolution: “The Jews are to be guided into the general civil life
and education... To steer them toward productive work” it
should be made easier for them to become employed in trades
and commerce, the constriction of the right of free mobility
should be lessened; they must become accustomed to wearing
ordinary apparel, for “the custom of wearing clothes that are
despised strengthens the custom to be despised.” But the most
acute problem was the fact that Jews, on account of the liquor
trade, dwelled in the villages at all. Notkin strove to win the
committee to the view of letting the Jews continue to live there,
and only to take measures against possible abuses on their
part.
“The charter of the committee led to tumult in the Kehiloth,”
Gessen wrote. A special convocation of their deputies in 1803
in Minsk resolved “to petition our Czar, may his fame become
still greater, that they (the Worthies) assume no innovations
for us.” They decided to send certain delegates to Petersburg,
explained, that an assembly had been held for that purpose,
and even called for a three-day Jewish fast. Unrest gripped the
whole Pale of Settlement. Quite apart from the threatened
expulsion of Jews from the villages, the Kehiloth took a
negative stance toward the cultural question out of concern to
preserve their own way of life. As answer to the main points of
the Recommendation the Kehiloth explained that the Reform
must in any case be postponed 15-20 years.
Derzhavin wrote “there were from their side various
rebuttals aimed to leave everything as it was.” In addition,
Gurko, a White Russian landowner sent Derzhavin a letter he
had received: a Jew in White Russia had written him regarding
one of his plenipotentiaries in Petersburg. It said that they had,
in the name of all Kehilot of the world, put the cherem or
herem, (i.e. the ban) on Derzhavin as a Persecutor, and had
gathered a million to be used as gifts (bribes) for this situation
and had forwarded it to St Petersburg. They appealed for all
e orts to be applied to the removal of Derzhavin as Attorney
General, and if that were not possible to seek his life. However
the thing they wanted to achieve was not to be forbidden to sell
liquor in the village tavern, and in order to make it easier to
advance this business, they would put together opinions from
foreign regions, from di erent places and peoples, on how the
situation of the Jews could be improved. In fact such opinions,
sometimes in French, sometimes, in German, began to be sent
to the Committee.
Besides this, Nota Notkin became the central gure that
organized the little Jewish congregation of Petersburg. In 1803
he submitted a brief to the Committee in which he sought to
paralyze the e ect of the proposal submitted by Derzhavin.
Derzhavin writes that Notkin came to him one day and asked,
with “feigned well-wishing,” that he, Derzhavin, should not
take a stand all alone against his colleagues on the Committee,
who all are on the side of the Jews; whether he would not
accept 100,000 or, if that was too little, 200,000 rubles, “only
so that he could be of one mind with all his colleagues on the
committee.” Derzhavin decided to disclose this attempt at
bribery to the Czar and prove it to him with Gurko’s letter. He
thought such strong proofs prove e ective and the Czar would
start to be wary of the people that surrounded him and
protected the Jews. Speransky also informed the Czar of it, but
Speransky was fully committed to the Jews, and from the rst
meeting of the Jewish Committee it became apparent that all
members represented the view that the liquor distilling should
continue in the hands of Jews as before.
Derzhavin opposed it. Alexander bore himself ever more
coldly toward him and dismissed his Justice Minister shortly
thereafter (1803). Beside this, Derzhavin’s papers indicate that
whether in military or civil service he had come into disfavor.
He retired from public life in 1805.
Derzhavin foresaw much that developed in the problematic
Russo-Judaic relationship throughout the entire 19th century,
even if not in the exact and unexpected form that it took in the
event. He expressed himself coarsely, as was customary then,
but he did not intend to oppress the Jews; on the contrary, he
wanted to open to the Jews paths to a more free and productive
life.
Chapter 2. During the Reign of Alexander 1st

At the end of 1804, the Committee in charge of the

Organisation of the Jews concluded its work by drafting a
“Regulation on Jews” (known as the “Regulation of 1804”), the
rst collection of laws in Russia concerning Jews. The
Committee explained that its aim was to improve the
condition of the Jews, to direct them towards a useful activity
“by opening this path exclusively for their own good… and by
discarding anything that might divert them from it, without
calling for coercive measures.”[85] The Regulation established
the principle of equal civil rights for Jews (Article 42): “All Jews
who live in Russia, who have recently settled there, or who
have come from foreign countries for their commercial a airs,
are free and are under the strict protection of the laws in the
same way other Russian subjects are.” (In the eyes of Professor
Gradovsky, “We can not but see in this article the desire to
assimilate this people to the whole population of Russia.”[86])
The Regulation gave the Jews greater opportunities than
Derzhavin’s original proposals; thus, in order to create textile
or leather factories, or to move to agricultural economy on
virgin lands, it proposed that a government subsidy be directly
paid. Jews were given the right to acquire land without serfs,
but with the possibility of hiring Christian workers. Jews who
owned factories, merchants, and craftsmen had the right to
leave the Pale of Settlement “for a time, for business purposes,”
thus easing the borders of this newly established area. (All that
was promised for the current of the coming year was the
abrogation of double royalties[87], but it soon disappeared.) All
the rights of the Jews were rea rmed: the inviolability of their
property, individual liberty, the profession of their religion,
their community organisation – in other words, the Kehalim
system was left without signi cant changes (which, in fact,
undermined the idea of a fusion of the Jewish world within the
Russian state): the Kehalim retained their old right to collect
royalties, which conferred on them a great authority, but
without the ability of increasing them; Religious punishments
and anathemas (Herem) were forbidden, which assured liberty
to the Hassidim. In accordance with the wishes of the Kehalim,
the project of establishing Jewish schools of general education
was abandoned, but “all Jewish children are allowed to study
with other children without discrimination in all schools,
colleges, and all Russian universities,” and in these
establishments no child “shall be under any pretext deviated
from his religion or forced to study what might be contrary or
opposed to him.” Jews “who, through their abilities, will attain
a meritorious level in universities in medicine, surgery,
physics, mathematics, and other disciplines, will be recognised
as such and promoted to university degrees.” It was considered
essential that the Jews learn the language of their region,
change their external appearance and adopt family names. In
conclusion, the Committee pointed out that in other countries
“nowhere were used means so liberal, so measured, and so
appropriate to the needs of the Jews.” J. Hessen agrees that the
Regulation of 1804 imposed fewer restrictions on Jews than
the Prussian Regulations of 1797. Especially since the Jews
possessed and retained their individual liberty, which a mass of
several million Russian peasants subjected to serfdom did not
enjoy.[88] “The Regulation of 1804 belongs to the number of
acts imbued with the spirit of tolerance.”[89]
The Messenger of Europe, one of the most read journals of the
times wrote: “Alexander knows that the vices we attribute to
the Jewish nation are the inevitable consequences of
oppression that has burdened it for many centuries. The goal of
the new law is to give the State useful citizens, and to Jews a
homeland.”[90]
However, the Regulation did not resolve the most acute
problem in accordance with the wishes of all Jews, namely the
Jewish population, the Kehalim deputies, and the Jewish
collaborators of the Committee. The Regulation stipulated
that: “No one among the Jews… in any village or town, can own
any form of stewardship of inns or cabarets, under their name
nor under the name of a third party, nor are they allowed to sell
alcohol or live in such places”[91] and proposed that the entire
Jewish population leave the countryside within three years, by
the beginning of 1808. (We recall that such a measure had
already been advocated under Paul in 1797, even before the
Derzhavin project appeared: not that all Jews without
exception were to be distanced from the villages, but in order
that “by its mass, the Jewish population in the villages would
not exceed the economic possibilities of the peasants as a
productive class, it is proposed to reduce the number of them
in the agglomerations of the districts.”[92] This time it was
proposed to direct the majority of the Jews to agricultural
labour in the virgin lands of the Pale of Settlement, New Russia,
but also the provinces of Astrakhan and the Caucasus,
exonerating them for ten years of the royalties they up to then
had to pay, “with the right to receive a loan from the Treasury
for their enterprises” to be reimbursed progressively after ten
years of franchise; to the most fortunate, it was proposed to
acquire land in personal and hereditary ownership with the
possibility of having them exploited by agricultural
workers.”[93]
In its refusal to allow distillation, the Committee explained:
“As long as this profession remains accessible to them… which,
in the end, exposes them to the recriminations, contempt, and
even hatred of inhabitants, the general outcry towards them
will not cease.”[94] Moreover, “Can we consider this measure
[of removing the Jews from villages] as repressive when they
are o ered so many other means not only to live in ease, but
also to enrich themselves in agriculture, industry, crafts; and
that they are also given the possibility of possessing land in full
ownership? How could this people be regarded as oppressed by
the abolition of a single branch of activity in a State in which
they are o ered a thousand other activities in fertile,
uninhabited areas suitable for the cultivation of cereals and
other agricultural production…?”[95]
These are compelling arguments. However, Hessen nds
that the text of the Committee testi es to “a naive look… on
the nature of the economic life of a people [consisting in]
believing that economic phenomena can be changed in a
purely mechanical way, by decree.”[96] From the Jewish side,
the projected relocation of the Jews from villages and the ban
imposed on them on making alcohol, the “secular occupation”
of the Jews[97], was perceived as a terribly cruel decision. (And
it was in these terms that it was condemned by Jewish
historiography fty and even a hundred years later.)
Given the liberal opinions of Alexander I, his benevolence
towards the Jews, his perturbed character, his weak will
(without a doubt forever broken by his accession to the throne
at the cost of his father’s violent death), it is unlikely that the
announced deportation of the Jews would have been
energetically conducted; even if the reign had followed a
peaceful course, it would have undoubtedly been spread out
over time.
But soon after the adoption of the 1804 Regulations, the
threat of war in Europe was outlined, followed by the
application of measures favouring the Jews by Napoleon, who
united a Sanhedrin of Jewish deputies in Paris. “The whole
Jewish problem then took an unexpected turn. Bonaparte
organised in Paris a meeting of the Jews whose main aim was
to o er the Jewish nation various advantages and to create a
link between the Jews scattered throughout Europe. Thus, in
1806, Alexander I ordered a new committee to be convened to
“examine whether special steps should be taken, and postpone
the relocation of the Jews.”[98]
As announced in 1804, the Jews were supposed to abandon
the villages by 1808. But practical di culties arose, and as
early as 1807 Alexander I received several reports highlighting
the necessity of postponing the relocation. An imperial decree
was then made public, “requiring all Jewish societies… to elect
deputies and to propose through them the means which they
consider most suitable for successfully putting into practice
the measures contained in the Regulation of December 9th,
1804.” The election of these Jewish deputies took place in the
western provinces, and their views were transmitted to St.
Petersburg. “Of course, these deputies expressed the opinion
that the departure of the Jews residing in the villages had to be
postponed to a much later time. (One of the reasons given was
that, in the villages, the innkeepers had free housing, whereas
in towns and cities, they would have to pay for them). The
Minister of Internal A airs wrote in his report that “the
relocation of Jews currently residing in villages to land
belonging to the State will take several decades, given their
overwhelming number.”[99] Towards the end of 1808, the
Emperor gave orders to suspend the article prohibiting the Jews
from renting and producing alcohol, and to leave the Jews
where they lived, “until a subsequent ruling.”[100]
Immediately afterwards (1809) a new committee, said “of the
Senator Popov”, was instituted for the study of all problems
and the examination of the petitions formulated by the Jewish
deputies. This Committee “considered it indispensable” to put
an “energetic” end to the relocation of the Jews and to retain
the right to the production and trade of vodka.[101] The
Committee worked for three years and presented its report to
the Emperor in 1812. Alexander I did not endorse this report:
he did not wish to undermine the importance of the previous
decision and had in no way lost his desire to act in favour of the
peasants: “He was ready to soften the measure of expulsion,
but not to renounce it.”[102] Thereupon the Great War broke
out with Napoleon, followed by the European war, and
Alexander’s concerns changed purpose. Since then,
displacement out of the villages never was initiated as a
comprehensive measure in the entire Pale of Settlement, but at
most in the form of speci c decisions in certain places.[103]
During the war, according to a certain source, the Jews were
the only inhabitants not to ee before the French army, neither
in the forests nor inland; in the neighbourhood of Vilnius, they
refused to obey Napoleon’s order to join his army, but supplied
him forage and provisions without a murmur; nevertheless, in
certain places it was necessary to resort to requisitions.[104]
Another source reports that “the Jewish population su ered
greatly from the abuses committed by Napoleon’s soldiers,” and
that “many synagogues were set on re,” but goes even further
by stating that “Russian troops were greatly helped by what
was called the “Jewish post,” set up by Jewish merchants, which
transmitted the information with a celerity unknown at the
time (inns serving as ‘relay’)”; they even “used Jews as couriers
for the connections between the various detachments of the
Russian army.” When the Russian army reassumed possession
of the land, “the Jews welcomed the Russian troops with
admiration, bringing bread and alcohol to the soldiers.” The
future Nicholas I, Grand Duke at that time, noted in his diary:
“It is astonishing that they [Jews] remained surprisingly
faithful to us in 1812 and even helped us where they could, at
the risk of their lives.”[105] At the most critical point of the
retreat of the French at the passage of Berezina, the local Jews
communicated to the Russian command the presumed
crossing point; this episode is well known. But it was in fact a
successful ruse of General Laurançay: he was persuaded that
the Jews would communicate this information to the Russians,
and the French, of course, chose another crossing point.[106]
After 1814, the reuni cation of central Poland brought
together more than 400,000 Jews. The Jewish problem was
then presented to the Russian government with more
acuteness and complexity. In 1816, the Government Council of
the Kingdom of Poland, which in many areas enjoyed a
separate state existence, ordered the Jews to be expelled from
their villages—they could also remain there, but only to work
the land, and this without the help of Christian workers. But at
the request of the Kahal of Warsaw, as soon as it was
transmitted to the Emperor, Alexander gave orders to leave the
Jews in place by allowing them to engage in the trade of vodka,
on the sole condition that they should not sell it on credit.[107]
It is true that in the Regulations published by the Senate in
1818, the following provisions are again found: “To put an end
to the coercive measures of proprietors, which are ruinous for
the peasants, for non-repayment of their debts to the Jews,
which forces them to sell their last possessions… Regarding the
Jews who run inns, it is necessary to forbid them to lend money
at interest, to serve vodka on credit, to then deprive the
peasants of their livestock or any other things that are
indispensable to them.”[108] Characteristic trait of the entirety
of Alexander’s reign: no spirit of continuation in the measures
taken; the regulations were promulgated but there was no
e ective control to monitor their implementation. Same goes
with the statute of 1817 with regard to the tax on alcohol: in
the provinces of Great Russia, distillation was prohibited to the
Jews; however, as early as 1819, this prohibition was lifted
“until Russian artisans have su ciently perfected themselves
in this trade.”[109]
Of course, Polish owners who were too concerned by their
pro ts opposed the eradication of Jewish distilleries in the
rural areas of the western provinces; and, at that time, the
Russian Government did not dare act against them. However,
in the Chernigov province where their establishment was still
recent, the successful removal of the distilleries in the hands of
owners and Jews was undertaken in 1821, after the governor
reported following a bad harvest that “the Jews hold in hard
bondage the peasants of the Crown and Cossacks.”[110] A
similar measure was taken in 1822 in the province of Poltava;
in 1823 it was partially extended to the provinces of Mogilev
and Vitebsk. But its expansion was halted by the pressing
e orts of the Kehalim.
Thus, the struggle led over the twenty- ve year reign of
Alexander against the production of alcohol by the
transplantation of the Jews out of villages gave little results.
But distilling was not the only type of production in the Pale
of Settlement. Owners leased out various assets in di erent
sectors of the economy, here a mill, there shing, elsewhere
bridges, sometimes a whole property, and in this way not only
peasant serfs were leased (such cases multiplied from the end
of the eighteenth century onwards[111]), but also the “serfs”
churches, that is to say orthodox churches, as several authors
point out: N. I. Kostomarov, M. N. Katkov, V. V. Choulguine.
These churches, being an integral part of an estate, were
considered as belonging to the Catholic proprietor, and in their
capacity as operators, the Jews considered themselves entitled
to levy money on those who frequented these churches and on
those who celebrated private o ces. For baptism, marriage, or
funeral, it was necessary to receive the authorisation of “a Jew
for a fee”; “the epic songs of Little Russia bursts with bitter
complaints against the ‘Jewish farmers’ who oppress the
inhabitants.”[112]
The Russian governments had long perceived this danger:
the rights of the farmers were likely to extend to the peasant
himself and directly to his work, and “the Jews should not
dispose of the personal labour of the peasants, and by means of
a lease, although not being Christians, become owners of
peasant serfs”—which was prohibited on several occasions
both by the decree of 1784 and by the ordinances of the Senate
of 1801 and 1813: “the Jews cannot possess villages or
peasants, nor dispose of them under any name
whatsoever.”[113]
However, the ingenuity of the Jews and the owners managed
to circumvent what was forbidden. In 1816, the Senate
discovered that “the Jews had found a means of exercising the
rights of owners under the name of krestentsia, that is to say,
after agreement with the owners, they harvest the wheat and
barley sown by the peasants, these same peasants must rst
thresh and then deliver to the distilleries leased to these same
Jews; they must also watch over the oxen that are brought to
graze in their elds, provide the Jews with workers and
wagons… Thus the Jews dispose of all these areas… while the
landlords, receiving from them substantial rent referred to as
krestentsia, sell to the Jews all the harvest to come that are
sown on their lands: one can conclude from this that they
condemn their peasants to famine.”[114]
It is not the peasants who are, so to speak, claimed as such,
but only the krestentsia, which does not prevent the result from
being the same.
Despite all the prohibitions, the practice of the krestentsia
continued its crooked ways. Its extreme intricacy resulted from
the fact that many landowners fell into debt with their Jewish
farmers, receiving money from them on their estate, which
enabled the Jews to dispose of the estate and the labour of the
serfs. But when, in 1816, the Senate decreed that it was
appropriate “to take the domains back from the Jews,” he
charged them to recover on their own the sums they had lent.
The deputies of the Kehalim immediately sent a humble
petition to his Majesty, asking him to annul this decree: the
general administrator in charge of foreign faith a airs, the
Prince N.N. Golitsyn, convinced the Emperor that “in icting
punishment on only one category of o enders with the
exception” of owners and o cials. The landlords “could still
gain if they refuse to return the capital received for the
krestentsia and furthermore keep the krestentsia for their
pro t”; if they have abandoned their lands to the Jews in spite
of the law, they must now return the money to them.[115]
The future Decembrist P. I. Pestel, at that time an o cer in
the western provinces, was by no means a defender of the
autocracy, but an ardent republican; he recorded some of his
observations on the Jews of this region, which were partially
included in the preamble to his government programme
(“Recommendations for the Provisional Supreme
Government”): “Awaiting the Messiah, the Jews consider
themselves temporary inhabitants of the country in which
they nd themselves, and so they never, on any account, want
to take care of agriculture, they tend to despise even the
craftsmen, and only practice commerce.” “The spiritual leaders
of the Jews, who are called rabbis, keep the people in an
incredible dependence by forbidding them, in the name of
faith, any reading other than that of the Talmud… A people
that does not seek to educate itself will always remain a
prisoner of prejudice”; “the dependence of the Jews in relation
to the rabbis goes so far that any order given by the latter is
executed piously, without a murmur.” “The close ties between
the Jews give them the means to raise large sums of money…
for their common needs, in particular to incite di erent
authorities to concession and to all sorts of embezzlements
which are useful to them, the Jews.” That they readily accede to
the condition of possessors, “one can see it ostensibly in the
provinces where they have elected domicile. All commerce is in
their hands, and few peasants are not, by means of debts, in
their power; this is why they terribly ruin the regions where
they reside.” “The previous government [that of Catherine] has
given them outstanding rights and privileges which accentuate
the evil they are doing,” for example the right not to provide
recruits, the right not to announce deaths, the right to distinct
judicial proceedings subject to the decisions of the rabbis, and
“they also enjoy all the other rights accorded to other Christian
ethnic groups”; “Thus, it can be clearly seen that the Jews form
within the State, a separate State, and enjoy more extensive
rights than Christians themselves.” “Such a situation cannot be
perpetuated further, for it has led the Jews to show a hostile
attitude towards Christians and has placed them in a situation
contrary to the public order that must prevail in the
State[116].”
In the nal years of Alexander I’s reign, economic and other
type of prohibitions against Jewish activities were reinforced.
In 1818, a Senate decree now forbade that “never may
Christians be placed in the service of Jews for debts.”[117] In
1819, another decree called for an end to “the works and
services that peasants and servants perform on behalf of
Jews.”[118] Golitsyn, always him, told the Council of Ministers
“those who dwell in the houses of the Jews not only forget and
no longer ful l the obligations of the Christian faith, but adopt
Jewish customs and rites.”[119] It was then decided that “Jews
should no longer employ Christians for their domestic
service.”[120] It was believed that “this would also bene t the
needy Jews who could very well replace Christian
servants.”[121] But this decision was not applied. (This is not
surprising: among the urban Jewish masses there was poverty
and misery, “for the most part, they were wretched people who
could scarcely feed themselves,”[122] but the opposite
phenomenon has never been observed: the Jews would hardly
work in the service of Christians. Undoubtedly some factors
opposed it, but they also apparently had means of subsistence
coming from communities between which solidarity reigned.)
However, as early as 1823, Jewish farmers were allowed to
hire Christians. In fact, “the strict observance of the decision
prohibiting” Christians from working on Jewish lands “was too
di cult to put into practice.”[123]
During these same years, to respond to the rapid
development of the sect of the soubbotniki[124] in the
provinces of Voronezh, Samara, Tula, and others, measures
were taken for the Pale of Settlement to be more severely
respected. Thus, “in 1821, Jews accused of ‘heavily exploiting’
the peasants and Cossacks were expelled from the rural areas of
the Chernigov province and in 1822 from the villages of
Poltava province.”[125]
In 1824, during his journey in the Ural Mountains,
Alexander I noticed that a large number of Jews in factories,
“by clandestinely buying quantities of precious metals, bribed
the inhabitants to the detriment of the Treasury and the
manufacturers”, and ordered “that the Jews be no longer
tolerated in the private or public factories of the mining
industry.”[126]
The Treasury also su ered from smuggling all along the
western frontier of Russia, goods and commodities being
transported and sold in both capitals without passing through
customs. The governors reported that smuggling was mainly
practised by Jews, particularly numerous in the border area. In
1816, the order was given to expel all the Jews from a strip
sixty kilometres wide from the frontier and that it be done in
the space of three weeks. The expulsion lasted ve years, was
only partial and, as early as 1821, the new government
authorised the Jews to return to their former place of
residence. In 1825 a more comprehensive but much more
moderate decision was taken: The only Jews liable to
deportation were those not attached to the local Kehalim or
who did not have property in the border area.[127] In other
words, it was proposed to expel only intruders. Moreover, this
measure was not systematically applied.

   
The Regulation of 1804 and its article stipulating the expulsion
of the Jews from the villages of the western provinces naturally
posed a serious problem to the government: where were they to
be transferred? Towns and villages were densely populated,
and this density was accentuated by the competition
prevailing in small businesses, given the very low development
of productive labour. However, in southern Ukraine stretched
New Russia, vast, fertile, and sparsely populated.
Obviously, the interest of the state was to incite the mass of
non-productive Jews expelled from the villages to go work the
land in New Russia. Ten years earlier, Catherine had tried to
ensure the success of this incentive by striking the Jews with a
double royalty, while totally exempting those who would
accept to be grafted to New Russia. But this double taxation
(Jewish historians mention it often) was not real, as the Jewish
population was not censused, and only the Kahal knew the
manpower, while concealing the numbers to the authorities in
a proportion that possibly reached a good half. (As early as
1808, the royalty ceased to be demanded, and the exemption
granted by Catherine no longer encouraged any Jews to
migrate).
This time, and for Jews alone, more than 30,000 hectares of
hereditary (but non-private) land was allocated in New Russia,
with 40 hectares of State land per family (in Russia the average
lot of the peasants was a few hectares, rarely more than ten),
cash loans for the transfer and settlement (purchase of
livestock, equipment, etc, which had to be repaid after a period
of six years, within the following ten years); the prior
construction of an izba log house was o ered to the settlers (in
this region, not only the peasants but even some owners lived
in mud houses), to exempt them of royalties for ten years with
maintenance of individual freedom (in these times of serfdom)
and the protection of the authorities.[128] (The 1804
Regulations having exempted Jews from military service, the
cash compensation was included in the royalty fee.)
The enlightened Jews, few at the time (Notkine, Levinson),
supported the governmental initiative—“but this result must
be achieved through incentives, in no way coercive”—and
understood very well the need for their people to move on to
productive work.
The eighty years of the di cult saga of Jewish agriculture in
Russia are described in the voluminous and meticulous work of
the Jew V. N. Nikitin (as a child, he had been entrusted to the
cantonists, where he had received his name), who devoted
many years to the study of the archives of the enormous
unpublished o cial correspondence between St. Petersburg
and New Russia. An abundant presentation interspersed with
documents and statistical tables, with tireless repetitions,
possible contradictions in the reports made at sometimes very
distant times by inspectors of divergent opinions, all
accompanied by detailed and yet incomplete tables—none of
this has been put in order, and it o ers, for our brief exposition,
much too dense material. Let us try, however, by condensing
the citations, to draw a panorama that is simultaneously broad
and clear.
The government’s objective, Nikitin admits, in addition to
the colonisation programme of unoccupied lands, was to give
the Jews more space than they had, to accustom them to
productive physical labour, to help guard them from “harmful
occupations” by which, “whether they liked it or not, many of
them made the life of the peasant serfs even more di cult than
it already was.” “The government… bearing in mind the
improvement of their living conditions, proposed to them to
turn to agriculture…; The government… did not seek to attract
Jews by promises; on the contrary, it endeavoured that there
should be no more than three hundred families transferred
each year”[129]; it deferred the transfer so long as the houses
were not built on the spot, and invited the Jews, meanwhile, to
send some of their men as scouts. Initially, the idea was not
bad, but it had not su ciently taken into account the
mentality of the Jewish settlers nor the weak capacities of the
Russian administration. The project was doomed in advance by
the fact that the work of the earth is an art that demands
generations to learn: one cannot attach successfully to the
earth people who do not wish it or who are indi erent to it.
The 30,000 hectares allocated to Jews in New Russia
remained inalienable for decades. A posteriori, the journalist
I.G. Orchansky considered that Jewish agriculture could have
been a success, but only if Jews had been transferred to the
nearby Crown lands of Belarus where the peasant way of life
was under their control, before their eyes.[130] Unfortunately,
there was scarcely any land there (for example, in the province
of Grodno there were only 200 hectares, marginal and infertile
lands “where the entire population su ered from poor
harvests.”[131] At rst there were only three dozen families
willing to emigrate. The Jews hoped that the expulsion
measures from the western provinces would be reported; it had
been foreseen in 1804 that its application would extend on
three years, but it was slow to begin. The fateful deadline of
January 1st, 1808 approaching, they began to leave the villages
under escort; from 1806 onwards, there was also a movement
in favour of emigration among the Jews, the more so as the
rumour indicated the advantages which were connected with
it. The demands for emigration then ooded en masse: “They
rushed there… as it were the Promised Land… ; like their
ancestors who left Chaldea in Canaan, entire groups left
surreptitiously, without authorisation, and some even without
a passport. Some resold the passport they had obtained from
other departing groups, and then demanded that they be
replaced under the pretext that they had lost it. The candidates
for departure “were day by day more numerous,” and all
“insistently demanded land, housing and subsistence.”[132]
The in ux exceeded the possibilities of reception of the
Support O ce of the Jews created in the province of Kherson:
time was lacking to build houses, dig wells, and the
organisation su ered from the great distances in this region of
the steppes, the lack of craftsmen, doctors, and veterinarians.
The government was indiscriminate of the money, the good
provisions, and sympathy towards the migrants, but the
Governor Richelieu demanded in 1807 that the entrances be
limited to 200, 300 families per year, while receiving without
limitation those who wished to settle on their own account. “In
case of a bad harvest, all these people will have to be fed for
several years in a row.” (The poorest settlers were paid daily
allowances.) However, the governors of the provinces allowed
those over-quota who wished to leave—without knowing the
exact number of those who were leaving; hence many
vicissitudes along the way, due to misery, sickness, death.[133]
Some quite simply disappeared during the trip.
Distances across the steppe (between one hundred and three
hundred kilometres between a colony and the O ce), the
inability of the administration to keep an accurate count and
establish a fair distribution, meant that some of the migrants
were more helped than others; some complained that they did
not receive any compensation or loans. The colony inspectors,
too few in numbers, did not have time to take a closer look
(they received a miserable wage, had no horses, and walked on
foot). After a period of two years of stay, some settlers still had
no farm, no seeds, nor bread. The poorest were allowed to leave
wherever they pleased, and “those who renounced their
condition as farmers recovered their former status as
bourgeois.” But only a fth of them returned to their country of
origin, and the others wandered (the loans granted to those
who had been scratched o the list of settlers were to be
considered de nitively lost). Some reappeared for a time in the
colonies, others disappeared “without looking back or leaving a
trace,” the others pounded the pavement in the neighbouring
towns “by trading, according to their old habit.”[134]
The many reports of the O ce and inspectors provide
insight into how the new settlers were operating. To train the
settlers who did not know where to start or how to nish, the
services of peasants of the Crown were requested; the rst
ploughing is done for the most part through hired Russians.
The habit is taken of “correcting defects by a hired labour.”
They sow only a negligible portion of the plot allocated to
them, and use poor-quality seeds; one has received speci c
seeds but does not plough or sow; another, when sowing, loses
a lot of seeds, and same goes during harvest. Due to lack of
experience, they break tools, or simply resell them. They do not
know how to keep the livestock. “They kill cattle for food, then
complain that they no longer have any”; they sell cattle to buy
cereals; they do not make provision for dried dung, so their
izbas, insu ciently heated, become damp; they do not x their
houses, so they fall apart; they do not cultivate vegetable
gardens; they heat the houses with straw stored to feed the
cattle. Not knowing how to harvest, neither to mow nor to
thresh, the colonists cannot be hired in the neighbouring
hamlets: no one wants them. They do not maintain the good
hygiene of their homes, which favours diseases. They
“absolutely did not expect to be personally occupied with
agricultural labour, doubtlessly they thought that the
cultivation of the land would be assured by other hands; that
once in possession of great herds, they would go and sell them
at the fairs.” The settlers “hope to continue receiving public
aid.” They complain “of being reduced to a pitiable condition,”
and it is really so; of having “worn their clothes up to the rope,”
and that is the case; but the inspection administration replies:
“If they have no more clothes, it is out of idleness, for they do
not raise sheep, and sow neither linen nor hemp,” and their
wives “neither spin nor weave.” Of course, an inspector
concluded in his report, if the Jews cannot handle their
operations, it is “by habit of a relaxed life, because of their
reluctance to engage in agricultural work and their
inexperience,” but he thought it fair to add: “agriculture must
be prepared from earliest youth, and the Jews, having lived
indolently until 45 to 50 years, are not in a position of
transforming themselves into farmers in such a short
time.”[135] The Treasury was obliged to spend two to three
times more on the settlers than expected, and extensions kept
on being demanded. Richelieu maintained that “the
complaints come from the lazy Jews, not from the good
farmers”; However, another report notes that “unluckily for
them, since their arrival, they have never been comforted by an
even remotely substantial harvest.”[136]
“In response to the many fragments communicated to St.
Petersburg to signal how the Jews deliberately renounced all
agricultural work,” the ministry responded in the following
way: “The government has given them public aid in the hope
that they will become farmers not only in name, but in fact.
Many immigrants are at risk, if not incited to work, to remain
debtors to the state for a long time.”[137] The arrival of Jewish
settlers in New Russia at the expense of the state, uncontrolled
and ill-supported by an equipment programme, was suspended
in 1810. In 1811 the Senate gave the Jews the right to lease the
production of alcohol in the localities belonging to the Crown,
but within the limits of the Pale of Settlement. As soon as the
news was known in New Russia, the will to remain in
agriculture was shaken for many settlers: although they were
forbidden to leave the country, some left without any identity
papers to become innkeepers in villages dependent on the
Crown, as well as in those belonging to landowners. In 1812, it
appeared that of the 848 families settled there were in fact only
538; 88 were considered to be on leave (parties earning their
living in Kherson, Nikolayev, Odessa, or even Poland); as for the
others, they had simply disappeared. This entire programme
—“the authoritative installation of families on land”—was
something unprecedented not only in Russia but in the whole of
Europe.”[138]
The Government now considered that “in view of the Jews’
now proven disgust for the work of the land, seeing that they
do not know how to go about it, given the negligence of the
inspectors”, it appears that the migration has given rise to
major disturbances; therefore “the Jews should be judged
indulgently.” On the other hand, “how can we guarantee the
repayment of public loans by those who will be allowed to leave
their status as farmers, how to palliate, without injuring the
Treasury, the inadequacies of those who will remain to
cultivate the land, how to alleviate the fate of those people who
endured so many misfortunes and are living on the edge?[139]
As for the inspectors, they su ered not only from
understa ng, a lack of means, and various other
shortcomings, but also from their negligence, absenteeism,
and delays in the delivery of grain and funds; they saw with
indi erence the Jews selling their property; there were also
abuses: in exchange of payment, they granted permits for long-
term absences, including for the most reliable workers in a
family, which could quickly lead to the ruin of the farm.
Even after 1810-1812, the situation of the Jewish colonies
showed no sign of improvement: “tools lost, broken, or
mortgaged by the Jews”; “Oxen, again, slaughtered, stolen, or
resold”; “Fields sown too late while awaiting warmth”; use of
“bad seeds” and in too close proximity to houses, always on the
one and same plot; no groundwork, “sowing for ve
consecutive years on elds that had only been ploughed once,”
without alternating the sowing of wheat and potatoes;
insu cient harvest from one year to another, “yet again,
without harvesting seeds.” (But the bad harvests also bene t
the immigrants: they are then entitled to time o .) Livestock
left uncared for, oxen given for hire or “assigned as carriages…
they wore them down, did not nourish them, bartered or
slaughtered them to feed themselves, only to say later that they
had died of disease.” The authorities either provided them with
others or let them leave in search of a livelihood. “They did not
care to build safe pens to prevent livestock from being stolen
during the night; they themselves spent their nights sound
asleep; for shepherds, they took children or idlers who did not
care for the integrity of the herds”; on feast days or on
Saturdays, they left them out to graze without any supervision
(moreover, on Saturday, it is forbidden to catch the thieves!).
They resented their rare co-religionists, who, with the sweat of
their brow, obtained remarkable harvests. The latter incurred
the Old Testament curse, the Herem, “for if they show the
authorities that the Jews are capable of working the land, they
will eventually force them to do so.” “Few were assiduous in
working the land… they had the intent, while pretending to
work, to prove to the authorities, by their continual needs,
their overall incapacity.” They wanted “ rst and foremost to
return to the trade of alcohol, which was re-authorised to their
co-religionists.” Livestock, instruments, seeds, were supplied to
them several times, and new loans for their subsistence were
relentlessly granted to them. “Many, after receiving a loan to
establish themselves, came to the colonies only at the time of
the distribution of funds, only to leave again… with this
money to neighbouring towns and localities, in search for
other work”; “they resold the plot that had been allocated to
them, roamed, lived several months in Russian agglomerations
at the most intense moments of agricultural labour, and
earned their living… by deceiving the peasants.” The
inspectors’ tables show that half of the families were absent
with or without authorisation, and that some had disappeared
forever. (An example was the disorder prevailing in the village
of Izrae-levka in the province of Kherson, where “the
inhabitants, who had come to their own account, considered
themselves entitled to practice other trades: they were there
only to take advantage of the privileges; only 13 of the 32
families were permanent residents, and again they only sowed
to make it seem legitimate, while the others worked as tavern-
keepers in neighbouring districts.”[140]
The numerous reports of the inspectors note in particular
and on several occasions that “the disgust of Jewish women for
agriculture… was a major impediment to the success of the
settlers.” The Jewish women who seemed to have put
themselves to work in the elds subsequently diverted from it.
“At the occasion of marriages, the parents of Jewish women
agreed with their future sons-in-law for them not to compel
their wives to carry out di cult agricultural labour, but rather
hire workers”; “They agreed to prepare ornaments, fox and
hare furs, bracelets, head-dresses, and even pearls, for days of
celebrations.” These conditions led young men to satisfy the
whims of their wives “to the point of ruining their farming”;
they go so far as “to indulge in possessing luxurious e ects,
silks, objects of silver or gold,” while other immigrants do not
even have clothing for the wintertime. Excessively early
marriages make “the Jews multiply signi cantly faster than the
other inhabitants.” Then, by the exodus of the young, the
families become too little provided for and are incapable of
ensuring the work. The overcrowding of several families in
houses too scarce generates uncleanliness and favours scurvy.
(Some women take bourgeois husbands and then leave colonies
forever.[141])
Judging from the reports of the Control O ce, the Jews of
the various colonies continually complained about the land of
the steppes, “so hard it must be ploughed with four pairs of
oxen.” Complaints included bad harvests, water scarcity, lack of
fuel, bad weather, disease generation, hail, grasshoppers. They
also complained about the inspectors, but unduly, seeing that
upon examination the complaints were deemed unfounded.
Immigrants “complain shamelessly of their slightest
annoyances,” They “ceaselessly increase their
demands”—“when it is justi ed, they are provided for via the
O ce.” On the other hand, they had little reason to complain
about limitations to the exercise of their piety or of the number
of schools open in the agglomerations (in 1829, for eight
colonies, there were forty teachers[142]).
 However, as pointed out by Nikitin, in the same steppe,
during the same period, in the same virgin lands, threatened by
the same locusts, cultivations by German colonists,
Mennonites, and Bulgarians had been established. They also
su ered from the same bad harvests, the same diseases, but
however, most of them always had enough bread and livestock,
and they lived in beautiful houses with outbuildings, their
vegetable gardens were abundant, and their dwellings
surrounded by greenery. (The di erence was obvious,
especially when the German settlers, at the request of the
authorities, came to live in the Jewish settlements to convey
their experience and set an example: even from a distance,
their properties could be distinguished.)
In the Russian colonies the houses were also better than
those of the Jews. (However, Russians had managed to get into
debt with some Jews who were richer than them and paid their
debts while working in their elds.) The Russian peasants,
Nikitin explains, “under the oppression of serfdom, were
accustomed to everything… and stoically endured all
misfortunes.” That is how the Jewish settlers who had su ered
losses following various indignities were assisted “by the vast
spaces of the steppe that attracted fugitives serfs from all
regions… Chased by sedentary settlers, the latter replied by the
looting, the theft of cattle, the burning of houses; well received,
however, they o ered their work and know-how. As re ective
and practical men, and by instinct of self-preservation, the
Jewish cultivators preferred receiving these fugitives with
kindness and eagerness; in return, the latter willingly helped
them in ploughing, sowing, and harvesting”; Some of them, to
hide better, embraced the Jewish religion. “These cases came to
light,” in 1820 the government forbade Jews to use Christian
labour.[143]
 Meanwhile, in 1817, the ten years during which the Jewish
settlers were exempt from royalties had passed, and they were
now to pay, like the peasants of the Crown. Collective petitions
emanating not only from the colonists, but also from public
o cials, demanded that the privilege should be extended for a
further fteen years.
A personal friend of Alexander I, Prince Golitsyn, Minister of
Education and Religious A airs, also responsible for all
problems concerning the Jews, took the decision to exempt
them from paying royalties for another ve years and to
postpone the full repayment of loans up to thirty years. “It is
important to note, on the honour of the authorities of St.
Petersburg, that no request of the Jews, before and now, has
ever been ignored.”[144]
Among the demands of the Jewish settlers, Nikitin found
one which seemed to him to be particularly characteristic:
“Experience has proven, in as much as agriculture is
indispensable to humanity, it is considered the most basic of
occupations, which demands more physical exertion than
ingenuity and intelligence; and, all over the world, those
a ected to this occupation are those incapable of more serious
professions, such as industrialists and merchants; it is the
latter category, inasmuch as it demands more talent and
education, which contributes more than all others the
prosperity of nations, and in all periods it has been accorded
far more esteem and respect than that of agricultors. The
slanderous representations of the Jews to the government
resulted in depriving the Jews of the freedom to exercise their
favourite trade—that of commerce—and to force them to
change their status by becoming farmers, the so-called plebs.
Between 1807 and 1809, more than 120,000 people were
driven out of villages [where most lived on the alcohol trade],
and were forced to settle in uninhabited places.” Hence their
claim to: “return to them the status of bourgeois with the
right, attested in the passport, to be able to leave without
hindrances, according to the wishes of each individual.”[145]
These are well-weighed and unambiguous formulas. From
1814 to 1823, the farming of Jews did not prosper. The
statistical tables show that each registered individual
cultivated less than two-thirds of a hectare. As “they tried to
cut o the harshest work” (in the eyes of the inspectors), they
found compensation in commerce and other miscellaneous
trades.[146]
Half a century later, the Jewish journalist I.G. Orchansky
proposed the following interpretation: “What could be more
natural for the Jews transplanted here to devote themselves to
agriculture to have seen a vast eld of virgin economic activity,
and to have precipitated themselves there with their
customary and favourite occupations, which promised in the
towns a harvest more abundant than that which they could
expect as farmers. Why, then, demand of them that they
should necessarily occupy themselves with agricultural labour,
which undoubtedly, would not turn out well for them,”
considering “the bubbling activity that attracts the Jews in the
cities in formation.”[147]
The Russian authorities at that time saw things di erently:
in time, the Jews “could become useful cultivators,” if they
resumed “their status as bourgeois, they would only increase
the number of parasites in the cities.”[148] On record: 300,000
rubles spent on nine Jewish settlements, a colossal sum
considering the value of the currency at the time.
In 1822 the additional ve years of royalty exemption had
elapsed, but the condition of the Jewish farms still required
new franchises and new subsidies: “the state of extreme poverty
of the settlers” was noted, linked “to their inveterate laziness,
disease, mortality, crop failures, and ignorance of agricultural
work.”[149]
Nevertheless, the young Jewish generation was gradually
gaining experience in agriculture. Recognising that good
regular harvests were not in the realm of the impossible, the
settlers invited their compatriots from Belarus and Lithuania
to join them, all the more since there had been bad harvests
there; the Jewish families ocked en masse, with or without
authorisation, as in 1824, they feared the threat of general
expulsion in the western part of the country; In 1821, as we
have already mentioned, measures had been taken to put an
end to the Jewish distilleries in the province of Chernigov,
followed by two or three other regions. The governors of the
western provinces let all the volunteers go without much
inquiry as to how much land was left in New Russia for the
Jews.
From there, it was announced that the possibilities of
reception did not exceed 200 families per year, but 1,800
families had already started the journey (some strayed in
nature, others settled along the way). From then on, the
colonists were refused all state aid (but with ten years
exemption of royalties); however, the Kehalim were interested
in getting the poorest to leave in order to have less royalties to
pay, and to a certain extent, they provided those who left with
funds from the community. (They encouraged the departure of
the elderly, the sick, and large families with few able-bodied
adults useful to agriculture; and when the authorities
demanded a written agreement from the leavers, they were
provided with a list of signatures devoid of any meaning.[150]
Of the 453 families who arrived in the neighbourhood of
Ekaterinoslav in 1823, only two were able to settle at their own
expense. What had pushed them there was the mad hope of
receiving public aid, which might have dispensed the
newcomers from work. In 1822, 1,016 families ocked to New
Russia from Belarus: the colonies were rapidly lled with
immigrants to whom provisional hospitality was o ered;
con nement and uncleanliness engendered diseases.[151]
Also, in 1825, Alexander I prohibited the relocation of the
Jews. In 1824 and 1825, following further bad harvests, the
Jews were supported by loans (but, in order not to give them
too much hope, their origin was concealed: they supposedly
came from the personal decision of an inspector, or as a reward
for some work). Passports were again issued so that the Jews
could settle in towns. As for paying royalties, even for those
settled there for eighteen years, it was no longer discussed.
[152]

   
At the same time, in 1823, “a decree of His Majesty orders…
that in the provinces of Byelorussia the Jews shall cease all
their distillery activities in 1824, abandon farmhouses and
relay stations” and settle permanently “in the towns and
agglomerations.” The transfer was implemented. By January
1824, some 20,000 people had already been displaced. The
Emperor demanded to see to it that the Jews were “provided
with activities and subsistence” during this displacement, “so
that, without home base, they would not su er, under these
conditions, of more pressing needs such as that of food.”[153]
The creation of a committee composed of four ministers (the
fourth “ministerial cabinet” created for Jewish a airs)
produced no tangible results either in terms of funding, nor in
administrative capacities, nor in the social structure of the
Jewish community, which was impossible to rebuild from the
outside.
 In this, as before in many other domains, the emperor
Alexander I appears to us to be weak-willed in his impulses,
inconstant and inconsistent with his resolves (as we can see
him passive in the face of strengthening secret societies which
were preparing to overthrow the throne). But in no case should
his decisions be attributed to a lack of respect for the Jews. On
the contrary, he was listening to their needs and, even during
the war of 1812-14, he had kept at Headquarters the Jewish
delegates Zindel Sonnenberg and Leisen Dillon who “defended
the interests of the Jews.” (Dillon, it is true, was soon to be
judged for having appropriated 250,000 rubles of public
money and for having extorted funds from landowners.)
Sonnenberg, on the other hand, remained for a long time one
of Alexander’s close friends. On the orders of the Tsar, (1814) a
permanent Jewish deputation functioned for a number of
years in St. Petersburg, for which the Jews had themselves
raised funds, “for there were plans for major secret
expenditures within government departments.” These
deputies demanded that “throughout Russia, the Jews should
have the right to engage in the trade, farming, and distillation
of spirits”, that they be granted “privileges in matters of
taxation,” that “the backlogs be handed over,” that “the number
of Jews admitted to be members of the magistrate no longer be
limited.” The Emperor benevolently listened to them, made
promises, but no concrete measures were taken.[154]
In 1817 the English Missionary Society sent the lawyer Louis
Weil, an equal rights activist for the Jews, to Russia for the
speci c purpose of acquainting himself with the situation of
the Jews of Russia: he had an interview with Alexander I to
whom he handed a note. “Deeply convinced that the Jews
represented a sovereign nation, Weil a rmed that all Christian
peoples, since they had received salvation of the Jews, were to
render to them the highest homage and to show them their
gratitude by bene ts.” In this last period of his life, marked by
mystical dispositions, Alexander had to be sensitive to such
arguments. Both he and his government were afraid of
“touching with an imprudent hand the religious rules” of the
Jews. Alexander had great respect for the venerable people of
the Old Covenant and was sympathetic to their present
situation. Hence his utopian quest to make this people access
the New Testament. To this end, in 1817, with the help of the
Emperor, the Society of Christians of Israel was created,
meaning Jews who converted to Christianity (not necessarily
orthodoxy), and because of this enjoyed considerable
privileges: they had the right, everywhere in Russia, “to trade
and to carry on various trades without belonging to guilds or
workshops,” and they were “freed, they and their descendants,
forever, of any civil and military service.” Nevertheless, this
society experienced no in ux of converted Jews and soon
ceased to exist.[155]
The good dispositions of Alexander I in regards to the Jews
made him express his conviction to put an end to the
accusations of ritual murders which arose against them.
(These accusations were unknown in Russia until the division
of Poland, from where they came. In Poland they appeared in
the sixteenth century, transmitted from Europe where they
were born in England in 1144 before resurfacing in the
twelfth-thirteenth century in Spain, France, Germany, and
Great Britain. Popes and Monarchs fought o these accusations
without them disappearing in the fourteenth nor fteenth
century. The rst trial in Russia took place in Senno, near
Vitebsk, in 1816, was not only stopped “by Her Majesty’s
decision”, but incited the Minister of Religious A airs, Golitsyn,
to send the authorities of all provinces the following
injunction: henceforth, not to accuse the Jews “of having put to
death Christian children, solely supported by prejudices and
without proof.”[156] In 1822-1823 another a air of this kind
broke out in Velije, also in the province of Vitebsk. However,
the court decreed in 1824: “The Jews accused in many
uncertain Christian testimonies of having killed this boy,
supposedly to collect his blood, must be exonerated of all
suspicion.”[157]
Nevertheless, in the twenty- ve years of his reign, Alexander
I did not su ciently study the question to conceive and put
into practice a methodical solution satisfactory to all,
regarding the Jewish problem as it was in Russia at the time.
How to act, what to do with this separated people who has
not yet grafted onto Russia, and which continues to grow in
number, is also the question to which the Decembrist Pestel
who opposed the Emperor, sought an answer for the Russia of
the future, which he proposed to direct. In The Truth of Russia
he proposed two solutions. Either make the Jews merge for
good in the Christian population of Russia: “Above all, it is
necessary to de ect the e ect, harmful to Christians, of the
close link that unites the Jews amongst themselves or which is
directed against Christians, which completely isolates the Jews
from all other citizens… Convene the most knowledgeable
rabbis and Jewish personalities, listen to their proposals and
then take action… If Russia does not expel the Jews, all the
more they shouldn’t adopt unfriendly attitudes towards
Christians.” The second solution “would consist in helping the
Jews create a separate state in one of the regions of Asia Minor.
To this end, it is necessary to establish a gathering point for the
Jewish people and to send several armies to support it” (we are
not very far from the future Zionist idea). The Russian and
Polish Jews together will form a people of more than two
million souls. “Such a mass of men in search of a country will
have no di culty in overcoming obstacles such as the
opposition of the Turks. Crossing Turkey from Europe, they
will pass into Asiatic Turkey and occupy there enough place
and land to create a speci cally Jewish state. However, Pestel
acknowledges that “such an enormous undertaking requires
special circumstances and an entrepreneurial spirit of
genius.”[158]
Nikita Muravyov, another Decembrist, stipulated in his
proposed Constitution that “Jews can enjoy civil rights in the
places where they live, but that the freedom to settle in other
places will depend on the particular decisions of the People’s
Supreme Assembly.”[159]
Nevertheless, the instances proper to the Jewish population,
the Kehalim, opposed with all their might the interference of
state power and all external in uence. On this subject,
opinions di er. From the religious point of view, as many
Jewish writers explain, living in the diaspora is a historical
punishment that weighs on Israel for its former sins.
Scattering must be assumed to merit God’s forgiveness and the
return to Palestine. For this it is necessary to live without
failing according to the Law and not to mingle with the
surrounding peoples: that is the ordeal. But for a liberal Jewish
historian of the early twentieth century, “the dominant class,
incapable of any creative work, deaf to the in uences of its
time, devoted all its energies to preserving from the attacks of
time, both external and internal, a petri ed national and
religious life.” The Kahal drastically sti ed the protests of the
weakest. “The cultural and educational reform of 1804
con ned itself to illusorily blurring the distinctive and foreign
character of the Jews, without having recourse to coercion,” or
even “taking mercy on prejudices”; “these decisions sowed a
great disturbance within the Kahal… in that they harboured a
threat to the power it exercised over the population”; in the
Regulation, the most sensitive point for the Kahal “was the
prohibition of delivering the unruly to the Herem,” or, even
more severe, the observation that “to keep the population in
servile submission to a social order, as it had been for
centuries, it was forbidden to change garb.”[160] But it can not
be denied that the Kehalim also had reasonable regulative
requirements for the life of the Jews, such as the Khasaki rule
allowing or forbidding the members of the community from
taking on a particular type of farming or occupation, which
put an end to excessive competition between Jews.[161] “Thou
shalt not move the bounds of thy neighbour” (Deuteronomy,
XIX, 14).
In 1808, an unidenti ed Jew transmitted an anonymous
note (fearing reprisals from the Kahal) to the Minister of
Internal A airs, entitled “Some remarks concerning the
management of the life of the Jews.” He wrote: “Many do not
regard as sacred the innumerable rites and rules… which divert
attention from all that is useful, enslave the people to
prejudices, take by their multiplication an enormous amount
of time, and deprive the Jews of ‘the advantage of being good
citizens’.” He noted that “the rabbis, pursuing only their
interest, have enclosed life in an intertwining of rules”, have
concentrated in their hands all the police, legal, and spiritual
authority; “more precisely, the study of the Talmud and the
observance of rites as a unique means of distinguishing oneself
and acquiring a uence have become ‘the rst dream and
aspiration of the Jews’”; And although the governmental
Regulation “limits the prerogatives of the rabbis and Kelahim,
“the spirit of the people remained the same.” The author of this
note considered “the rabbis and the Kahal as the main culprits
of the ignorance and misery of the people.”[162]
Another Jewish public man, Guiller Markevich, a native of
Prussia, wrote that the members of the Vilnius Kahal, with the
help of the local administration, exerted a severe repression
against all those who denounced their illegal acts; now
deprived of the right to the Herem, they kept their accusers for
long years in prison, and if one of them succeeded in getting a
message from his cell to the higher authorities, “they sent him
without any other form of trials to the next world.” When this
kind of crime was revealed, “the Kahal spent large sums to sti e
the a air.”[163] Other Jewish historians give examples of
assassinations directly commissioned by the Jewish Kahal.
In their opposition to governmental measures, the Kehalim
relied essentially on the religious sense of their action; thus
“the union of the Kahal and the rabbis, desirous of maintaining
their power over the masses, made the government believe that
every act of a Jew was subject to such and such a religious
prescription; the role of religion was thereby increased. As a
result, the people of the administration saw in the Jews not
members of di erent social groups, but a single entity closely
knit together; the vices and infractions of the Jews were
explained not by individual motives, but by ‘the alleged land
amorality of the Jewish religion’.”[164]
“The union of Kehalim and rabbis did not want to see or hear
anything. It extended its leaden cover over the masses. The
power of the Kahal only increased while the rights of the elders
and rabbis were limited by the Regulation of 1804. “This loss is
o set by the fact that the Kahal acquired—it is true, only in a
certain measure—the role of a representative administration
which it had enjoyed in Poland. The Kahal owed this
strengthening of its authority to the institution of deputies.”
This deputation of the Jewish communities established in the
western provinces, in charge of debating at leisure with the
government the problems of Jewish life, was elected in 1807
and sat intermittently for eighteen years. These deputies
endeavoured, above all, to restore to the rabbis the right to the
Herem; They declared that to deprive the rabbis of the right to
chastise the disobedient is contrary to the religious respect
which the Jews are obliged by law to have for the rabbis.” These
deputies succeeded in persuading the members of the
Committee (of Senator Popov, 1809) that the authority of the
rabbis was a support for the Russian governmental power. “The
members of the Committee did not resist in front of the threat
that the Jews would escape the authority of the rabbis to delve
into depravity”; the Committee was “prepared to maintain in
its integrity all this archaic structure to avoid the terrible
consequences evoked by the deputies… Its members did not
seek to know who the deputies considered to be ‘violators of
the spiritual law’; they did not suspect that they were those
who aspired to education”; the deputies “exerted all their
e orts to strengthen the authority of the Kahal and to dry at
the source the movement towards culture.”[165] They
succeeded in deferring the limitations previously taken to the
wearing of traditional Jewish garb, which dated back to the
Middle Ages and so blatantly separated the Jews from the
surrounding world. Even in Riga, “the law that ordered the
Jews to wear another garment was not applied anywhere”, and
it was reported by the Emperor himself—while awaiting new
legislation[166]…
All requests of the deputies were not satis ed, far from it.
They needed money and “to get it, the deputies frightened
their communities by ominously announcing the intentions of
the government and by amplifying the rumours of the capital.”
In 1820, Markevitch accused the deputies “of intentionally
spreading false news… to force the population to pay to the
Kahal the sums demanded.”[167]
In 1825, the institution of the Jewish deputies was
suppressed.
One of the sources of tension between the authorities and
Kehalim resided in the fact that the latter, the only ones
authorised to levy the capitation on the Jewish population,
“hid the ‘souls’ during the censuses” and concealed a large
quantity of them. “The government thought that it knew the
exact numbers of the Jewish population in order to demand the
corresponding amount of the capitation,” but it was very
di cult to establish it.[168] For example, in Berdichev, “the
unrecorded Jewish population… regularly accounted for nearly
half the actual number of Jewish inhabitants.”[169] (According
to the o cial data that the Government had succeeded in
establishing for 1818, the Jews were 677,000, an already
important number, for example, by comparison with the data
of 1812, the number of male individuals had suddenly
doubled…—but it was still an undervalued gure, for there
were about 40,000 Jews from the kingdom of Poland to add.)
Even with reduced gures of the Kehalim, there were
unrecovered taxes every year; and not only were they not
recuperated but they augmented from year to year. Alexander I
personally told the Jewish representatives of his discontent at
seeing so many concealments and arrears (not to mention the
smuggling industry). In 1817 the remission of all nes and
surcharges, penalties, and arrears was decreed, and a pardon
was granted to all those who had been punished for not
correctly recording ‘souls’, but on the condition that the
Kehalim provide honest data from then on.”[170] But “no
improvement ensued. In 1820, the Minister of Finance
announced that all measures aimed at improving the economic
situation of the Jews were unsuccessful… Many Jews were
wandering without identity papers; a new census reported a
number of souls two to three times greater (if not more) than
those previously provided by Jewish societies.”[171]
However, the Jewish population was constantly increasing.
Most researchers see one of the main reasons for this growth as
being the custom of early marriages prevalent at that time
among the Jews: as early as 13 years old for boys, and from 12
years old onwards for girls. In the anonymous note of 1808
quoted above, the unknown Jewish author writes that this
custom of early unions “is at the root of innumerable evils” and
prevents the Jews from getting rid “of inveterate customs and
activities that draw upon them the general public’s
indignation, and harms them as well as others.” Tradition
among the Jews is that “those who are not married at a young
age are held in contempt and even the most destitute draw on
their last resources to marry their children as soon as possible,
even though these newlyweds incur the vicissitudes of a
miserable existence. Early marriages were introduced by the
rabbis who took advantage of them. And one will be better able
to contract a pro table marriage by devoting himself to the
study of the Talmud and the strict observance of the rites.
Those who married early were indeed only occupied with
studying the Talmud, and when nally came the time to lead
an autonomous existence, these fathers, ill-prepared for labour,
ignorant of the working life, turn to the manufacture of
alcohol and petty trading.” The same goes for crafts: “By
marrying, the fteen-year-old apprentice no longer learns his
trade, but becomes his own boss and only ruins the work.”[172]
In the mid-1920s, “in the provinces of Grodno and Vilnius,
there was a rumour that it would be forbidden to enter into
marriage before reaching the age of majority”, which is why
“there was a hasty conclusion of marriages between children
who were little more than 9 years old.”[173]
These early marriages debilitated the life of the Jews. How
could such a swarming, such a densi cation of the population,
such competition in similar occupations, lead to any thing else
than misery? The policy of the Kehalim contributed to “the
worsening of the material conditions of the Jews.”[174]
Menashe Ilier, a distinguished Talmudist but also a
supporter of the rationalism of the age of Enlightenment,
published in 1807 a book, which he sent to the rabbis (it was
quickly withdrawn from circulation by the rabbinate, and his
second book was to be destined to a massive book burning). He
addressed “the dark aspects of Jewish life.” He stated: “Misery is
inhumanly great, but can it be otherwise when the Jews have
more mouths to feed than hands to work? It is important to
make the masses understand that it is necessary to earn a
living by the sweat of their brow… Young people, who have no
income, contract marriage by counting on the mercy of God
and on the purse of their father, and when this support is
lacking, laden with family, they throw themselves on the rst
occupation come, even if it is dishonest. In droves they devote
themselves to commerce, but as the latter cannot feed them all,
they are obliged to resort to deceit. This is why it is desirable
that the Jews turn to agriculture. An army of idlers, under the
appearance of ‘educated people’, live by charity and at the
expense of the community. No one cures the people: the rich
only think of enriching themselves, the rabbis think only of the
disputes between Hassidim and Minagdes (Jewish Orthodox),
and the only concern of the Jewish activists is to short-circuit
‘the misfortune presented in the form of governmental
decrees, even if they contribute to the good of the people’.”[175]
Thus “the great majority of the Jews in Russia lived on small
trade, crafts, and small industries, or served as intermediaries”;
“they have inundated the cities of factories and retail
shops.”[176] How could the economic life of the Jewish people
be healthy under these conditions?
However, a much later Jewish author of the mid-twentieth
century was able to write, recalling this time: “It is true that the
Jewish mass lived cheaply and poorly. But the Jewish
community as a whole was not miserable.”[177]
There is no lack of interest in the rather unexpected
testimonies of the life of the Jews in the western provinces,
seen by the participants in the Napoleonic expedition of 1812
who passed through this region. On the outskirts of Dochitsa,
the Jews “are rich and wealthy, they trade intensively with
Russian Poland and even go to the Leipzig fair.” At Gloubokie,
“the Jews had the right to distil alcohol and make vodka and
mead,” they “established or owned cabarets, inns, and relays
located on highways.” The Jews of Mogilev are well-o ,
undertake large-scale trading (although “a terrible misery
reigns around that area”). “Almost all the Jews in those places
had a license to sell spirits. Financial transactions were largely
developed there.” Here again is the testimony of an impartial
observer: “In Kiev, the Jews are no longer counted. The general
characteristic of Jewish life is ease, although it is not the lot of
all.”[178]
On the level of psychology and everyday life, the Russian
Jews have the following ‘speci c traits’: “a constant concern
about… their fate, their identity… how to ght, defend
themselves…” “cohesion stems from established customs: the
existence of an authoritarian and powerful social structure
charged with preserving… the uniqueness of the way of life”;
“adaptation to new conditions is to a very large extent
collective” and not individual.[179]
We must do justice to this organic unity of land, which in the
rst half of the nineteenth century “gave the Jewish people of
Russia its original aspect. This world was compact, organic,
subject to vexations, not spared of su ering and deprivation,
but it was a world in itself. Man was not sti ed within it. In this
world, one could experience joie de vivre, one could nd one’s
food… one could build one’s life to one’s taste and in one’s own
way, both materially and spiritually… Central fact: the spiritual
dimension of the community was linked to traditional
knowledge and the Hebrew language.”[180]
 But in the same book devoted to the Russian Jewish world,
another writer notes that “the lack of rights, material misery,
and social humiliation hardly allowed self-respect to develop
among the people.”[181]

   
The picture we have presented of these years is complex, as is
almost any problem related to the Jewish world. Henceforth,
throughout our development, we must not lose sight of this
complexity, but must constantly bear it in mind, without being
disturbed by the apparent contradictions between various
authors.
“Long ago, before being expelled from Spain, the Jews [of
Eastern Europe] marched at the head of other nations; today [in
the rst half of the seventeenth century], their cultural
impoverishment is total. Deprived of rights, cut o from the
surrounding world, they retreated into themselves. The
Renaissance passed by without concern for them, as did the
intellectual movement of the eighteenth century in Europe.
But this Jewish world was strong in itself. Hindered by
countless religious commandments and prohibitions, the Jew
not only did not su er from them, but rather saw in them the
source of in nite joys. In them, the intellect found satisfaction
in the subtle dialectic of the Talmud, the feeling in the
mysticism of the Kabbalah. Even the study of the Bible was
sidelined, and knowledge of grammar was considered almost a
crime.”[182]
The strong attraction of the Jews to the Enlightenment
began in Prussia during the second half of the eighteenth
century and received the name of Haskala (Age of
Enlightenment). This intellectual awakening translated their
desire to initiate themselves in European culture, to enhance
the prestige of Judaism, which had been humiliated by other
peoples. In parallel with the critical study of the Jewish past,
Haskala militants (the Maskilim; the “enlightened”, “educated”)
wanted to harmoniously unite Jewish culture with European
knowledge.[183] At rst, “they intended to remain faithful to
traditional Judaism, but in their tracks they began to sacri ce
the Jewish tradition and take the side of assimilation by
showing increasing contempt… for the language of their
people”[184] (Yiddish, that is). In Prussia this movement lasted
the time of a generation, but it quickly reached the Slavic
provinces of the empire, Bohemia, and Galicia. In Galicia,
supporters of Haskala, who were even more inclined to
assimilation, were already ready to introduce the
Enlightenment by force, and even “often enough had recourse
to it”[185] with the help of authorities. The border between
Galicia and the western provinces of Russia was permeable to
individuals as well as to in uences. With a delay of a century,
the movement eventually penetrated into Russia.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Russia, the
government “endeavoured precisely to overcome Jewish
‘particularism’ outside of religion and worship”, as a Jewish
author euphemistically speci es[186], con rming that this
government did not interfere with the religion or religious life
of the Jews. We have already seen that the Regulation of 1804
opened the doors of primary schools, secondary schools, and
universities to all Jewish children, without any limitations or
reservations. However,—“the aim of all the e orts of the Jewish
ruling class was to nip in the bud this educational and cultural
reform”[187]; “The Kahal endeavoured to extinguish the
slightest light of the Enlightenment.”[188] To “preserve in its
integrity the established religious and social order… the
rabbinate and Hasidism were endeavouring to eradicate the
seedlings of secular education.”[189]
Thus, “the great masses of the Pale of Settlement felt horror
and suspicion for Russian schooling and did not want to hear
about it.”[190] In 1817, and again in 1821, in various
provinces, there were cases where the Kehalim prevented
Jewish children from learning the Russian language in any
school, whichever it was. The Jewish deputies in St. Petersburg
repeated insistently that “they did not consider it necessary to
open Jewish schools” where languages other than Hebrew
would be taught.[191] They recognised only the Heder
(elementary school of Jewish language) and the Yeshiva
(graduate school intended to deepen the knowledge of the
Talmud); “almost every important community” had its Yeshiva.
[192]
The Jewish body in Russia was thus hindered and could not
free itself on its own.
But the rst cultural protagonists also emerged from it,
unable to move things without the help of Russian authorities.
In the rst place Isaac-Ber Levinson, a scholar who had lived in
Galicia, where he had been in contact with the militants of
Haskala, regarded not only the rabbinate but also the Hasidim
as responsible for many popular misfortunes. Basing himself
on the Talmud itself and on rabbinical literature, he
demonstrated in his book Instructions to Israel that Jews were
not forbidden to know foreign languages, especially not the
o cial language of the country where they lived, if necessary
in private as well as in public life; that knowledge of the secular
sciences does not pose a threat to national and religious
sentiment; nally, that the predominance of commercial
occupations is in contradiction with the Torah as with reason,
and that it is important to develop productive work. But to
publish his book, Levinson had to use a subsidy from the
Ministry of Education; he himself was convinced that cultural
reform within Judaism could only be achieved with the
support of the higher authorities.[193]
Later, it was Guesanovsky, a teacher in Warsaw, who, in a
note to the authorities, without relying on the Talmud, but on
the contrary, by opposing it, imputed to the Kahal and the
rabbinate “the spiritual stagnation which had petri ed the
people”; he stated that solely the weakening of their power
would make it possible to introduce secular schooling; that it
was necessary to control the Melamed (primary school
teachers) and to admit as teachers only those deemed
pedagogically and morally suitable; that the Kahal had to be
dismissed from the nancial administration; and that the age
of nuptial contracts had to be raised. Long before them, in his
note to the Minister of Finance, Guiller Markevitch, already
quoted, wrote that in order to save the Jewish people from
spiritual and economic decline, it was necessary to abolish the
Kehalim, to teach the Jews languages, to organise work for them
in factories, but also to allow them to freely engage in
commerce throughout the country and use the services of
Christians.
Later, in the 1930s, Litman Feiguine, a Chernigov merchant
and a major supplier, took up most of these arguments with
even greater insistence, and through Benkendor [194] his note
ended up in the hands of Nicolas I (Feiguine bene ted from the
support of bureaucratic circles). He defended the Talmud but
reproached the Melamed for being “the lowest of the
incompetents”… who taught a theology “founded on
fanaticism”, inculcated in children “the contempt of other
disciplines as well as the hatred of the Heterodox.” He also
considered it essential to suppress the Kehalim. (Hessen, the
sworn enemy of the Kahal system, a rms that the latter, “by
its despotism”, aroused among the Jews “an obscure
resentment.”)[195]
Long, very long, was the path that enabled secular education
to penetrate into Jewish circles. Meanwhile, the only exceptions
were in Vilnius, where, under the in uence of relations with
Germany, the Maksilim intellectual group had gained strength,
and in Odessa, the new capital of New Russia, home to many
Jews from Galicia (due to the permeability of frontiers),
populated by various nationalities and in the throes of intense
commercial activity,—hence the Kahal did not feel itself
powerful there. The intelligentsia, on the contrary, had the
feeling of its independence and blended culturally (by the way
of dressing, by all external aspects) in the surrounding
population.[196] Even though “the majority of the Odessite
Jews were opposed to the establishment of a general
educational establishment”[197] principally due to the e orts
of the local administration, in the 30s, in Odessa as in Kishinev
were created secular schools of the private type which were
successful.”[198]
Then, in the course of the nineteenth century, this
breakthrough of the Russian Jews towards education
irresistibly intensi ed and would have historical consequences
for Russia as for all mankind during the twentieth century.
Thanks to a great e ort of will, Russian Judaism managed to
free itself from the state of threatening stagnation in which it
found itself and to fully accede to a rich and diversi ed life. By
the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a clear
discernment of the signs of a revival and development in
Russian Judaism, a movement of high historical signi cance,
which no one had yet foreseen.
 Chapter 3. During the Reign of Nicholas 1

With regard to the Jews, Nicholas I was very resolute. It was

during his reign, according to sources, that more than half of
all legal acts relating to Jews, from Alexis Mikhailovich to the
death of Alexander II[199], were published, and the Emperor
personally examined this legislative work to direct it.[200]
Jewish historiography has judged that his policy was
exceptionally cruel and gloomy. However, the personal
interventions of Nicholas I did not necessarily prejudice the
Jews, far from it. For example, one of the rst les he received
as an inheritance from Alexander I was the reopening, on the
eve of his death (while on his way to Taganrog), of the “Velije
a air”—the accusation against the Jews for having perpetrated
a ritual murder on the person of a child. The Jewish Encyclopedia
writes that “to a large extent, the Jews are indebted to the
verdict of acquittal to the Emperor who sought to know the
truth despite the obstruction on the part of the people he
trusted.” In another well‐known case, linked to accusations
against the Jews (the “assassination of Mstislavl”), the Emperor
willingly turned to the truth: after having, in a moment of
anger, in icted sanctions against the local Jewish population,
he did not refuse to acknowledge his error.[201] By signing the
verdict of acquittal in the Velije case, Nicolas wrote that “the
vagueness of the requisitions had not made it possible to take
another decision”, adding nevertheless: “I do not have the
moral certainty that Jews could have committed such a crime,
or that they could not have done it.” “Repeated examples of this
kind of assassination, with the same clues,” but always without
su cient evidence, suggest to him that there might be a
fanatical sect among the Jews, but “unfortunately, even among
us Christians, there also exists sects just as terrifying and
incomprehensible.”[202] “Nicholas I and his close collaborators
continued to believe that certain Jewish groups practised ritual
murders.”[203] For several years, the Emperor was under the
severe grip of a calumny that smelled of blood… therefore his
prejudice that Jewish religious doctrine was supposed to
present a danger to the Christian population was
reinforced.”[204]
This danger was understood by Nicolas in the fact that the
Jews could convert Christians to Judaism. Since the eighteenth
century, the high pro le conversion to the Judaism of
Voznitsyn, a captain of the Imperial army, had been kept in
mind. “In Russia, from the second half of the seventeenth
century onwards, groups of ‘Judaisers’ multiplied. In 1823, the
Minister of Internal A airs announced in a report “the wide‐
spread of the heresy of ‘Judaisers’ in Russia, and estimated the
number of its followers at 20,000 people.” Persecutions began,
after which “many members of the sect pretended to return to
the bosom of the Orthodox Church while continuing to observe
in secret the rites of their sect.”[205]
“A consequence of all this was that the legislation on the
Jews took, at the time of Nicholas I… a religious spin.”[206] The
decisions and actions of Nicholas I with regard to the Jews were
a ected, such as his insistence on prohibiting them from
having recourse to Christian servants, especially Christian
nurses, for “work among the Jews undermines and weakens
the Christian faith in women.” In fact, notwithstanding
repeated prohibitions, this provision “never was fully applied…
and Christians continued to serve” amongst the Jews.[207]
The rst measure against the Jews, which Nicolas considered
from the very beginning of his reign, was to put them on an
equal footing with the Russian population with regard to the
subjugation to compulsory service to the State, and in
particular, requiring them to participate physically in
conscription, which they had not been subjected to since their
attachment to Russia. The bourgeois Jews did not supply
recruits, but acquitted 500 rubles per head.[208] This measure
was not dictated solely by governmental considerations to
standardise the obligations of the population (the Jewish
communities were in any case very slow to pay the royalties,
and moreover, Russia received many Jews from Galicia where
they were already required to perform military service); nor by
the fact that the obligation to provide recruits “would reduce
the number of Jews not engaged in productive work”—rather,
the idea was that the Jewish recruit, isolated from his closed
environment, would be better placed to join the lifestyle of the
nation as a whole, and perhaps even orthodoxy.[209] Taken
into account, these considerations considerably tightened the
conditions of the conscription applied to the Jews, leading to a
gradual increase in the number of recruits and the lowering of
the age of the conscripts.
It cannot be said that Nicolas succeeded in enforcing the
decree on the military service of the Jews without
encountering resistance. On the contrary, all instances of
execution proceeded slowly. The Council of Ministers discussed
at length whether it was ethically defensible to take such a
measure “in order to limit Jewish overcrowding”; as stated by
Minister of Finance Georg von Cancrin, “all recognise that it is
inappropriate to collect humans rather than money.” The
Kehalim did not spare their e orts to remove this threat from
the Jews or to postpone it. When, exasperated by such slow
progress, Nicholas ordered a nal report to be presented to him
in the shortest delays, “this order, it seems, only incited the
Kehalim to intensify their action behind the scenes to delay the
advancement of the matter. And they apparently succeeded in
winning over to their cause one of the high o cials,” whereby
“the report never reached its destination”! At the very top of
the Imperial apparatus, “this mysterious episode,” concludes J.
Hessen, “could not have occurred without the participation of
the Kahal.” A subsequent retrieval of the report was also
unful lled, and Nicolas, without waiting any longer,
introduced the conscription for the Jews by decree in
1827[210] (then, in 1836, equality in obtaining medals for the
Jewish soldiers who had distinguished themselves[211]).
Totally exempted from recruitment were “the merchants of
all guilds, inhabitants of the agricultural colonies, workshop
leaders, mechanics in factories, rabbis and all Jews having a
secondary or higher education.”[212] Hence the desire of many
Jewish bourgeois to try to make it into the class of merchants,
bourgeois society railing to see its members required to be
drafted for military service, “undermining the forces of the
community, be it under the e ect of taxation or recruitment.”
The merchants, on the other hand, sought to reduce their
visible “exposure” to leave the payment of taxes to the
bourgeois. Relations between Jewish merchants and bourgeois
were strained, for “at that time, the Jewish merchants, who had
become more numerous and wealthier, had established strong
relations in governmental spheres.” The Kahal of Grodno
appealed to Saint Petersburg to demand that the Jewish
population be divided into four “classes”—merchants,
bourgeois, artisans, and cultivators—and that each should not
have to answer for the others[213]. (In this idea proposed in the
early 30s by the Kehalim themselves, one can see the rst step
towards the future “categorisation” carried out by Nicolas in
1840, which was so badly received by the Jews.)
The Kehalim were also charged with the task of recruiting
among the Jewish mass, of which the government had neither
recorded numbers nor pro les. The Kahal “put all the weight of
this levy on the backs of the poor”, for “it seemed preferable for
the most deprived to leave the community, whereas a
reduction in the number of its wealthy members could lead to
general ruin.” The Kehalim asked the provincial authorities (but
they were denied) the right to disregard the turnover “in order
to be able to deliver to recruitment the ‘tramps’, those who did
not pay taxes, the insu erable troublemakers”, so that “the
owners… who assume all the obligations of society should not
have to provide recruits belonging to their families”; and in
this way the Kehalim were given the opportunity to act against
certain members of the community.[214]
However, with the introduction of military service among
the Jews, the men who were subject to it began to shirk and the
full count was never reached. The cash taxation on Jewish
communities had been considerably diminished, but it was
noticed that this did by no means prevent it from continuing to
be refunded only very partially. Thus, in 1829, Nicholas I
granted Grodno’s request that in certain provinces Jewish
recruits should be levied in addition to the tari imposed in
order to cover tax arrears. “In 1830 a Senate decree stipulated
that the appeal of an additional recruit reduced the sums owed
by the Kahal of 1,000 rubles in the case of an adult, 500 rubles
in the case of a minor.”[215] It is true that following the
untimely zeal of the governors this measure was soon reported,
while “Jewish communities themselves asked the government
to enlist recruits to cover their arrears.” In government circles
“this proposal was welcomed coldly, for it was easy to foresee
that it would open new possibilities of abuse for the
Kehalim.”[216] However, as we can see, the idea matured on one
side as well as on the other. Evoking these increased
stringencies in the recruitment of Jews by comparison with the
rest of the population, Hessen writes that this was a “glaring
anomaly” in Russian law, for in general, in Russia, “the
legislation applicable to the Jews did not tend to impose more
obligations than that of other citizens.”[217]
Nicholas I’s keen intelligence, inclined to draw clearly legible
perspectives (legend has it that the Saint Petersburg ‒ Moscow
railway was, as a result, mapped out with a ruler!), in his
tenacious determination to transform the particularist Jews
into ordinary Russian subjects, and, if possible, into Orthodox
Christians, went from the idea of military recruitment to that
of Jewish cantonists. The cantonists (the name goes back to
1805) was an institution sheltering the children of the soldiers
(lightening in favour of the fathers the burden of a service
which lasted… twenty‐ ve years!); it was supposed to extend
the “sections for military orphans” created under Peter the
Great, a kind of school for the government which provided the
students with technical knowledge useful for their subsequent
service in the army (which, in the eyes of civil servants, now
seems quite appropriate for young Jewish children, or even
highly desirable to keep them from a young age and for long
years cut o from their environment. In preparation to the
cantonist institution, an 1827 decree granted “Jewish
communities the right to recruit a minor instead of an adult”,
from the age of 12 (that is, before the age of nuptiality among
the Jews). The New Jewish Encyclopedia believes that this
measure was “a very hard blow.” But this faculty in no way
meant the obligation to call a soldier at the age of 12[218], it
had nothing to do with “the introduction of compulsory
conscription for Jewish children,”[219] as wrote erroneously
the Encyclopedia, and as it ended up being accredited in the
literature devoted to the Jews of Russia, then in the collective
memory. The Kehalim even found this a pro table substitution
and used it by recruiting “the orphans, the children of widows
(sometimes bypassing the law protecting only children)”, often
“for the bene t of the progeny of a rich man.”[220] Then, from
the age of 18, the cantonists performed the usual military
service, so long at the time—but let us not forget that it was
not limited to barracks life; the soldiers married, lived with
their families, learned to practice other trades; they received
the right to establish themselves in the interior provinces of
the empire, where they completed their service. But,
unquestionably, the Jewish soldiers who remained faithful to
the Jewish religion and its ritual su ered from being unable to
observe the Sabbath or contravene the rules on food.
Minors placed with cantonists, separated from their family
environment, naturally found it di cult to resist the pressure
of their educators (who were encouraged by rewards to
successfully convert their pupils) during lessons of Russian,
arithmetic, but above all, of catechism; they were also
rewarded for their conversion, moreover, it was facilitated by
their resentment towards a community that had given them
up to recruitment. But, conversely, the tenacity of the Jewish
character, the faithfulness to the religion inculcated at an early
age, made many of them hold their grounds. Needless to say,
these methods of conversion to Christianity were not Christian
and did not achieve their purpose. On the other hand, the
accounts of conversions obtained by cruelty, or by death
threats against the cantonists, supposedly collective
drownings in the rivers for those who refused baptism (such
stories received public attention in the decades that followed),
fall within the domain of pure ction. As the Jewish
Encyclopedia published before the Revolution the “popular
legend” of the few hundred cantonists allegedly killed by
drowning was born from the information published in a
German newspaper, according to which “eight hundred
cantonists were taken away one ne day to be baptised in the
water of a river, two of them perished by drowning…”[221]
 The statistical data from the Military Inspection Archives to
the General Sta [222] for the years 1847‒1854, when the
recruitment of Jewish cantonists was particularly high,
showed that they represented on average only 2.4% of the
many cantonists in Russia, in other words, that their
proportion did not exceed that of the Jewish population in the
country, even taking into account the undervalued data
provided by the Kehalim during the censuses.
Doubtlessly the baptised had an interest in exculpating
themselves from their compatriots in exaggerating the degree
of coercion they had to undergo in their conversion to
Christianity, especially since as part of this conversion they
enjoyed certain advantages in the accomplishment of their
service. Moreover, “many converted cantonists remained
secretly faithful to their original religion, and some of them
later returned to Judaism.”[223]

   
In the last years of the reign of Alexander I, after a new wave of
famine in Belarus (1822), a new senator had been sent on
mission: he had come back with the same conclusions as
Derzhavin a quarter of a century before. The “Jewish
Committee” established in 1823, composed of four ministers,
had proposed to study “on what grounds it would be expedient
and pro table to organise the participation of the Jews in the
State” and to “put down in writing all that could contribute to
the improvement of the civil situation of this people.” They
soon realised that the problem thus posed was beyond their
strength, and in 1825 this “Jewish Committee” at the
ministerial level had been replaced by a “Directors Committee”
(the fth), composed of the directors of their ministries, who
devoted themselves to studying the problem for another eight
years.[224]
In his eagerness, Nicholas preceded the work of this
committee with his decisions. Thus, as we have seen, he
introduced conscription for the Jews. This is how he set a
deadline of three years to expel the Jews from all the villages of
the western provinces and put an end to their activity of
alcohol manufacturing, but, as under his predecessors, this
measure experienced slowdowns, stoppages, and was
ultimately reported. Subsequently, he prohibited Jews from
holding taverns and diners, from living in such places, and
ensuring the retail sale of alcohol in person, but this measure
was not applied either.[225]
Another attempt was made to deny the Jews one of their
favourite jobs: the maintenance of post houses (with their inns
and taverns), but again in vain because, apart from the Jews,
there was not enough candidates to occupy them.[226]
In 1827, a leasing system of the distilling activities was
introduced throughout the empire, but there was a
considerable fall in the prices obtained at the auctions when
the Jews were discarded and “it happened that there was no
other candidate to take these operations,” so that they had to
be allowed to the Jews, whether in the towns or in the
countryside, even beyond the area of residence. The
government was, in fact, relieving the Jews of the
responsibility of organising the collection of taxes on liquor
and thus receiving a regular return.[227] “Long before the
merchants of the rst guild were allowed to reside in any part
of the empire, all farmers enjoyed the freedom to move and
resided in capitals and other cities outside the Pale of
Settlement… From the midst of the farmers came prominent
Jewish public men” like Litman Feiguine, already mentioned,
and Evsel Günzburg (“he had held an alcohol manufacturing
tenancy in a besieged Sevastopol”); “In 1859 he founded in
Saint Petersburg a banking establishment… one of the most
important in Russia”; later, “he participated in the placement
of Russian Treasury bonds in Europe”; he was the founder of
the dynasty of the Günzburg barons[228]). Beginning in 1848,
all “Jewish merchants of the rst guild were allowed to lease
drinking places even where Jews had no right to reside
permanently.”[229]
The Jews also received a more extensive right with respect to
the distillation of alcohol. As we remember, in 1819, they were
allowed to distil it in the provinces of Great Russia “until
Russian artisans acquire su cient competence.” In 1826
Nicolas decided to repatriate them to the Pale of Settlement,
but in 1827 he conceded to several speci c requests to keep
distillers in place, for example in the state factories in Irkutsk.
[230]
Vladimir Solvoyov quotes the following thoughts from Mr.
Katkov: “In the western provinces it is the Jew who deals with
alcohol, but is the situation better in the other provinces of
Russia? … The Jewish innkeepers who get the people drunk,
ruin the peasants and cause their doom, are they present
throughout Russia? What is happening elsewhere in Russia,
where Jews are not admitted and where the ow of liquor is
held by an Orthodox bartender or a kulak?”[231] Let us listen
to Leskov, the great connoisseur of Russian popular life: “In the
provinces of Greater Russia where Jews do not reside, the
number of those accused of drunkenness, or crimes committed
under the in uence, are regularly and signi cantly higher than
within the Pale of Settlement. The same applies to the number
of deaths due to alcoholism… And this is not a new
phenomenon: it has been so since ancient times.”[232]
However, it is true, statistics tell us that in the western and
southern provinces of the empire there was one drinking place
per 297 inhabitants, whereas in the eastern provinces there
was only one for 585. The newspaper The Voice, which was not
without in uence at the time, was able to say that the trade of
alcohol of the Jews was “the wound of this area”—namely the
western region—“and an intractable wound” at that. In his
theoretical considerations, I.G. Orchansky tries to show that
the stronger the density in drinking places, the less alcoholism
there was (we must understand that, according to him, the
peasant will succumb less to temptation if the ow of drinks is
found under his nose and solicits him 24 hours a day—
remember Derzhavin: the bartenders trade night and day; but
will the peasant be tempted by a distant cabaret, when he will
have to cross several muddy elds to reach it? No, we know
only too well that alcoholism is sustained not only by demand,
but also by the supply of vodka. Orchansky nevertheless
pursues his demonstration: when the Jew is interposed
between the distiller and the drunken peasant, he acts
objectively in favour of the peasant because he sells vodka at a
lower price, but it is true that he does so by pawning the e ects
of the peasant. Certainly, he writes, some believe nevertheless
that Jewish tenants have “a poor in uence on the condition of
the peasants”, but it is because, “in the trade of bartending, as
in all the other occupations, they di er by their know‐how,
skill and dynamism.”[233] It is true that elsewhere, in another
essay of the same collection, he recognises the existence of
“fraudulent transactions with the peasants”; “it is right to
point out that the Jewish trade is grossly deceitful and that the
Jewish dealer, tavern‐keeper and usurer exploit a miserable
population, especially in the countryside”; “faced with an
owner, the peasant holds on rmly to his prices, but he is
amazingly supple and con dent when dealing with a Jew,
especially if the latter holds a bottle of vodka in reserve… the
peasant is often brought to sell his wheat dirt cheap to the
Jew.”[234] Nevertheless, to this crude, glaring, arresting truth,
Orchansky seeks attenuating circumstances. But this evil that
eats away the will of the peasants, how to justify it?…

   
Due to his insistent energy, Nicholas I, throughout his reign,
did not only face failures in his e orts to transform Jewish life
in its di erent aspects.
This was the case with Jewish agriculture.
The “Regulation on the obligations of recruitment and
military service of the Jews”, dated 1827, stipulated that Jewish
farmers “transferred…” on private plots were released, as well
as their children, from the obligation to provide recruits for a
period of fty years (exemption incurring from the moment
they actually began to “engage in agricultural work”). As soon
as this regulation was made public, more Jews returned to the
colonies than those who had absented themselves on their own
initiative, that had been signalled absent.[235]
In 1829 a more elaborate and detailed regulation concerning
Jewish cultivators was published: it envisaged their access to
the bourgeois class provided that all their debts were paid;
authorisation to absent themselves for up to three months to
seek a livelihood during periods when the land did not require
their physical work; sanctions against those who absent
themselves without authorisation, and rewards for
distinguished agricultural leaders. V. Nikitin admits: “To
compare the severe constraints imposed on Jewish farmers,
‘but with rights and privileges exclusively granted to the Jews’,
with those of the other taxable classes, it must be observed that
the government treated the Jews with great benevolence.”[236]
 And, from 1829 to 1833, “the Jews labour the land with zeal,
fate rewards them with good harvests, they are satis ed with
the authorities, and vice versa, and general prosperity is
tainted only by fortuitous incidents, without great
importance.” After the war with Turkey—1829—“the arrears
of taxes are entirely handed over to the Jewish residents as to
all the settlers… for ‘having su ered from the passage of
years’.” But according to the report of the supervisory
committee, “the bad harvest of 1833 made it impossible to
retain [the Jews] in the colonies, it allowed many who had
neither the desire nor the courage to devote themselves to the
agricultural work of sowing nothing, or almost nothing, of
getting rid of the cattle, going away from here and there, of
demanding subsidies and not paying royalties.” In 1834, more
than once, they saw “the sale of the grain which they had
received, and the slaughter of the cattle”, which was also done
by those who were not driven to do so by necessity; The Jews
received bad harvests more often than other peasants, for, with
the exception of insu cient seedlings, they worked the land
haphazardly, at the wrong time, which was due to the “the
habit, transmitted from generation to generation, of practising
easy trades, of mismanaging, and neglecting the surveillance
of livestock.”[237]
One might have thought that three decades of unfortunate
experiences in the implementation of Jewish agriculture
(compared to universal experience) would su ce for the
government to renounce these vain and expensive attempts.
But no! Did the reiterative reports not reach Nicholas I? Or were
they embellished by the ministers? Or did the inexhaustible
energy and irrefragable hope of the sovereign impel him to
renew these incessant attempts?
In any case, Jewish agriculture, in the new Jewish Regulation
dated 1835 and approved by the Emperor (the result of the
work of the “Directors Committee”), is not at all excluded, but
on the contrary, enhanced: “to organise the lives of the Jews
according to rules which would enable them to earn a decent
living by practising agriculture and industry, gradually
dispensing instruction to their youth, which would prevent
them from engaging in idleness or unlawful occupations.” If
the Jewish community were previously required to pay 400
rubles per household, now “every Jew was allowed to become a
farmer at any time, all tax arrears were immediately handed
over to him, and to his community”; They were given the right
to receive land from the state in usufruct without time limit
(but within the Pale of Settlement), to acquire plots of land, to
sell them, to rent them. Those who became farmers were
exempt from taxation for twenty‐ ve years, property tax for
ten years, recruitment for fty years. In reverse, no Jew “could
be forced to become a farmer”. “The industries and trades
practised in the context of village life were also allowed to
them.”[238] (One hundred and fty years have passed.
Forgetful of the past, an eminent and most enlightened Jewish
physicist formulates his vision of Jewish life in those days: “A
Pale of Settlement coupled with the prohibition (!) of practicing
agriculture.”[239] “The historian and thinker M. Guerchenson
uses a more general formulation: “Agriculture is forbidden to
the Jew by the spirit of his people because, by attaching to the
land, man takes root more easily in a given place.”[240])
The in uential Minister of Finance, Cancrin, proposed to
place the deserted lands of Siberia at the disposal of Jewish
agriculture; Nicolas gave his approval to this project at the end
of the same year 1835. It was proposed to attribute to Jewish
settlers “up to 15 hectares of good land per male individual”,
with tools and workhorses billed to the Treasury, and paid
transportation costs, including food. It seems that poor Jews,
laden with large families, were tempted to undertake this
journey to Siberia. But this time the Kehalim were divided in
their calculations: these poor Jews were indeed necessary to
satisfy the needs of recruitment (instead of wealthy families);
it was concealed from them that the arrears were all handed
over to them and they were required to carry them out
beforehand. But the government changed its mind, fearing the
di culties of a transfer so far away, and that the Jews, on the
spot, lacking examples of know‐how and love of work, and
would resume their “sterile trade, which rested essentially on
dishonest operations that have already done so much harm in
the western provinces of the empire”, their “innkeeper
occupations of ruining inhabitants by satisfying their
inclination for drinking,” and so on. In 1837, therefore, the
transfer to Siberia was stopped without the reasons being
publicised.[241] In the same year, the Inspectorate estimated
that in New Russia “the plots of land reserved for Jewish
settlers contained a black potting soil of the highest quality,
that they were ‘perfectly suited to the cultivation of cereals,
that the steppes were excellent for the production of hay and
livestock farming’.” (local authorities, however, disputed this
assessment).[242]
Also in the same year of 1837, a Ministry of Public Goods
was established, headed by Count P. Kiselyov, who was
entrusted with the transition measure intended to prepare the
abolition of serfdom, the task of “protecting the free
cultivators” (the peasants of the Crown)—there were seven and
a half million of them registered—including the Jewish
farmers—but they were only 3,000 to 5,000 families, or “a drop
of water in the sea, relative to the number of peasants of the
Crown.” Nevertheless, as soon as it was created, this ministry
received numerous petitions and recriminations of all kinds
coming from Jews. “Six months later it became clear that it
would be necessary to give the Jews so much attention that the
main tasks of the ministry would su er.”[243] In 1840,
however, Kiselyov was also appointed president of a newly
created committee (the sixth one[244]) “to determine the
measures to be taken to reorganise the lives of the Jews in
Russia”, meaning he also was to tackle the Jewish problem.
In 1839, Kiselyov had a law passed by the State Council
authorising the Jews on the waiting lists for recruitment to
become cultivators (provided that they were doing so with
their whole family), which signi ed that they would bene t
from the major advantage of being dispensed with military
service. In 1844, “a still more detailed settlement concerning
Jewish farmers” gave them—even in the Pale of Settlement—
the right to employ for three years Christians who were
supposed to teach them how to properly manage a farm. In
1840, “many Jews came to New Russia supposedly at their own
expense (they produced on the spot ‘attestations’ that they had
the means to do so), in fact, they had nothing and made it
known from their very rst days that their resources were
exhausted”; “there were up to 1,800 families of which several
hundred possessed neither papers nor any proof whatsoever of
where they came from and how they found themselves in New
Russia”; and “they never ceased to come running, begging not
to be left to rot in their misery.” Kiselyov ordered to receive
them by levying the spendings to the “settlers in general,
without distinction of ethnic group.” In other words, he
assisted them well beyond the amounts provided for. In 1847,
“additional ordinances” were enacted to make it easier for Jews
to become farmers.[245]
Through his ministry, Kiselyov had the ambition to establish
model colonies and then “to eventually settle this people on a
large scale”: for this purpose, he set up one after the other
colonies in the province of Ekaterinoslav, on fertile soils, well
irrigated by rivers and streams, with excellent pastures and
hay elds, hoping very much that the new settlers would
bene t from the remarkable experience already gained by the
German settlers, (but as it was di cult to nd volunteers
among them to settle in the midst of the Jewish settlements, it
was decided to employ them as wage earners). New credits
were constantly granted to these future model colonies; all
arrears were remitted to them. In the second year of their
settlement, Jewish families were required to have at least one
vegetable garden and one seeded hectare, and to ensure a slow
increase in the area sown over the years. Insofar as they had no
experience in the selection of livestock, this task was entrusted
to the curators. Kiselyov sought to facilitate the travelling
conditions of families (accompanied by a small number of day
labourers) and to nd ways to provide specialised agricultural
training to a certain contingent of settlers. But in some families
there was still very little to worry about agronomy: in extreme
cold, people did not even go out to feed the beasts—so they had
to equip them with long hooded coats![246]
In the meantime, the ow of Jews migrating to agriculture
did not dry up, especially since the western provinces su ered
from bad harvests. Families that did not include the necessary
number of able‐bodied men were often dispatched, “the
Kehalim sent by force the destitute and invalid, retaining the
rich and healthy to have the possibility of better responding to
collections, to pay royalties and thereby maintain their
institutions.” “In order to prevent the in ux of a large number
of needy destitutes,” the ministry had to demand that the
governors of the western provinces have strict control over the
departures—but, on site, departures of contingents were
hastened without even waiting to know whether lodging was
ready; moreover, the credits allocated to the starters were
retained, which sometimes compromised a whole year of
agricultural work. In the province of Ekaterinoslav, there was
not even time to distribute the land to the volunteers: 250
families left on their own to settle in Odessa.[247]
However, the reports of various inspectors from di erent
places blended as one: “By submitting to this end, [the Jews]
could make good, or even excellent, farmers, but they take
advantage of the rst occasion to abandon the plough, to
sacri ce their farms, and to return to horse‐trading and their
favourite occupations.” “For the Jew, the number one job is the
industry, even the most humble, of total insigni cance, but on
condition that it provides the greatest pro t margin… Their
fundamentally industrious mindset found no satisfaction in
the peaceful life of the cultivator”, “did not create in them the
slightest desire to devote themselves to agriculture; what
attracted them there was rst and foremost the abundance of
land, the scarcity of the Jewish population, the proximity of
borders, trade and lucrative industry, not to mention the
franchises which exempted them from royalties and
conscription.” They thought they would only be compelled to
organise their houses; as to lands, they hoped to “lease them at
an appreciable rate, in order to occupy themselves, as in the
past, with commerce and industry.” (This is what they declared
naively to the inspectors.) And “it was with total disgust that
they tackled the work of the earth.” Moreover, “religious
rules… did not favour the Jewish cultivators”, they forced them
to long periods of inactivity, as, for example, during the spring
plantings, the long Passover holiday; In September, that of the
Tabernacles lasted fourteen days “at the time when intensive
agricultural work, such as soil preparation and sowing, is
needed, although, according to the opinion of Jews who
deserve all trust, Scripture requires strict observance during
the rst and last two days of the celebrations.” On the other
hand, the spiritual leaders of Jewish settlements (there were
sometimes as many as two prayer houses, one for the Orthodox
—or Mitnagdes—, another for the Hasidim) entertained the idea
that as a chosen people they were not destined for the hard
work of the farmer, which is the bitter lot of the goyim.” “They
rose late, devoted an entire hour to prayer, and went away to
work when the sun was already high in the sky”—to which was
added the Sabbath, resting from Friday night until Sunday
morning.[248]
From a Jewish point of view, I. Orchansky actually arrives at
conclusions similar to those of the inspectors: “Leasing a farm
and employing wage‐earners… encounters more sympathy
among the Jews than the passage, in all regards di cult, to
agricultural labour… We note a growing tendency for Jews
engaged in rural activity to exercise it rst and foremost by
leasing land and using it through the assistance of wage‐
earners. In New Russia, the failures of Jewish agriculture stem
from “their lack of accustomed to physical labour and the
pro ts they derive from urban trades in southern Russia.” But
also to emphasise the fact that in a given colony the Jews “had
built a synagogue with their own hands,” and that in others
maintained vegetable gardens “with their own hands.”[249]
Nevertheless, the numerous reports of the inspectors agreed
that in the 40s and in these “model” colonies, as in the past,
“the standard of living of the settlers, their activities and their
enterprises were well behind those of the peasants of the
Crown or landowners.” In the province of Kherson, in 1845,
among the Jewish settlers, “The farms are in a very
unsatisfactory state, most of these settlers are very poor: they
dread the work of the land, and few cultivate it properly; also,
even in years of good harvest, they obtain only low yields”; “In
the plots, the soil is hardly stirred,” women and children hardly
work the land and “a lot of 30 hectares is barely enough for
their daily subsistence.” “The example of the German settlers is
followed only by a very small number of Jewish residents; most
of them ‘show a clear aversion’ to agriculture and they ‘comply
with the demands of the authorities only to receive a passport
that allows them to go…’ They leave a lot of land in fallow,
work the land only in certain places, according to the goodwill
of each one… they treat the cattle with too much negligence…
harass the horses until they die, nourish them little, especially
on the days of the Sabbath”; they milk delicate cows of the
German race at any hour of the day, so that they no longer give
milk. “Jews were provided free fruit trees, ‘but they did not
plant orchards.’ Houses had been built in advance for them—
some were ‘elegant, very dry and warm, solid’; in other places,
they had been poorly constructed and expensive, but even
where they had been built reliably, with good quality
materials… the negligence of the Jews, their inability to keep
their lodgings in good condition… had led them to such a state
of degradation that they could no longer be inhabited without
urgent repairs”; they were invaded by humidity which led to
their decay and favoured diseases; many houses were
abandoned, others were occupied by several families at the
same time ‘without there being any kinship between them,
and, in view of the impetuous character of these people and
their propensity to quarrels’, such cohabitation gave rise to
endless complaints.”[250]
Responsibility for unpreparedness for this large migration is
evident to both parties: poor coordination and delays in the
administration’s actions; here and there, the development of
the houses, poorly guarded, left much to be desired, giving rise
to many abuses and waste. (This led to the transfer of several
o cials and trials for some of them.) But in the Jewish villages,
the elders also reluctantly controlled the careless ones whose
farm and equipment deteriorated; hence the appointment of
supervisors chosen among retired non‐commissioned o cers
whom the Jews got drunk and coaxed with bribes. Hence also
the impossibility of levying royalties on the settlers, either on
account of indigence—“in every community there were only
about ten farmers who were barely capable of paying for
themselves”— or because of the “natural inclination of the Jews
to evade their payment”; over the years, arrears only increased
and they were given again and again without requiring any
reimbursement. For each day of absence without
authorisation, the settler paid only 1 kopeck, which hardly
weighed on him, and he easily compensated for it with the
gains he made in the city. (By way of comparison: in the
villages the Melamed received from 3,000 to 10,000 rubles per
year, and in parallel to the Melamed there had been an attempt
to introduce into the colonies, in addition to the use of the
Jewish language, a general education based on Russian and
arithmetic, but “simple people” had little “con dence in the
educational institutions founded by the government.”[251])
“It became more and more indisputable that the ‘model
colonies’ so ardently desired by Kiselyov were just a dream”;
but, while curbing (1849) the sending of new families, he did
not lose hope and a rmed again in 1852 in one of his
resolutions: “The more arduous an a air, the more one must be
rm and not to be discouraged by the rst lack of successes.”
Until then, the curator was not the true leader of the colony,
“he sometimes has to put up with the mockery and insolence
of the settlers who understood very well that he had no power
over them”; he was entitled only to advise them. More than
once, due to the exasperation provoked by failures, projects had
been proposed which would have consisted in giving the
settlers compulsory lessons in such a way that they would have
to put them into practice within a period of two or three days,
with a veri cation of results; to deprive them of the free
disposal of their land; to radically eliminate leave of absence;
and even to introduce punishments: up to thirty lashes the rst
time, double in case of recidivism, then prison, and, depending
on the seriousness of the o ense, enlistment in the army.
(Nikitin asserts that this project of instruction, as soon as it
was known, “exerted such terror upon the Jewish cultivators,
that they redoubled their e orts, and hastened to procure
cattle, to furnish themselves with agricultural tools… and
showed an astonishing zeal in the work of the elds and the
care taken to their house.” But Kiselyov gave his approval to a
watered‐down project (1853): “The lessons must correspond
perfectly to the capacities and experience of those for whom
they are intended”, the instructor responsible for organising
agricultural work can deviate from it only in the sense of a
reduction in tasks, and for the rst o ense, no punishment, for
the second and third, ten to twenty lashes, no more.
(Enlistment in the army was never applied, “no one… has ever
been made a soldier for his failings at work,” and in 1860, the
act was de nitively repealed.[252])
Let us not forget that we were still in the age of serfdom. But
half a century after the conscientious attempts of the
government to entice the Jews to provide productive labour on
virgin lands, the outlines of the villages of Arakcheyev[253]
began to appear.
It is astonishing that the imperial power did not understand,
at this stage, the sterility of the measures taken, the desperate
character of this whole enterprise of returning to the land.
Furthermore, the process was not over…

   
After the introduction of compulsory military service,
alarming rumours spread among the Jewish population,
announcing a new and terrible legislation prepared especially
by the “Jewish Committee”. But in 1835, a General Regulation
concerning the Jews was nally promulgated (intended to
replace that of 1804), and, as the Jewish Encyclopædia discreetly
notes, “it imposed no new limitations on the Jews.”[254] If we
want to know more: this new regulation “preserved for Jews
the right to acquire all kinds of immovable property excluding
inhabited areas, to conduct all kinds of commerce on an equal
footing with other subjects, but only within the Pale of
Settlement.”[255] These Regulations of 1835 con rmed the
protection of all the rights recognised to the Jewish faith,
introduced distinctions for the rabbis, conferring on them the
rights granted to the merchants of the rst guild; established a
reasonable age to marry (18 and 16 years old); adopted
measures to ensure that the Jewish attire did not di er too
much and did not cut o the Jews from the surrounding
population; oriented the Jews towards means of earning their
livelihood through productive labour (which prohibited only
the sale of spirits on credit or secured on domestic e ects),
authorised all kinds of industrial activities (including the
renting of distilleries). To have Christians in their service was
forbidden only for regular employment but authorised “for
short‐term work” (without the time limits being speci ed) and
“for work in factories and factories”, as well as “as an aide in
the work of the elds, gardens and vegetable gardens”[256]
which sounded like a mockery of the very idea of “Jewish
agriculture”. The Regulations of 1835 called upon Jewish youth
to educate itself; it did not restrict Jewish enrolment to
secondary schools or university.[257] Jews who had received
the rank of doctor in any discipline, once recognised (not
without formalities) of their distinguished qualities, were
entitled to enter in the service of the State. (Jewish doctors
already enjoyed this right.) With regard to local government,
the Regulation abrogated the previous limitations: from now
on, Jews could hold o ce in local councils, magistrates and
municipalities “under the same conditions as if members of
other faiths had been elected to o ce.” (It is true that some
local authorities, particularly in Lithuania, objected to this
provision: in certain circumstances, the mayor has to lead his
citizens to church—how could a Jew do it? Also, can a Jew sit
among the judges when the oath is sworn on the cross? In the
face of these strong reservations, a decree in 1836 stipulated
that in the western provinces the Jews could occupy in the
magistracy and the municipalities only one third of the
positions.[258]) Finally, with regard to the thorny economic
problem inherent in cross‐border smuggling, which was so
detrimental to the interests of the State, the Regulation
permitted the Jews already residing there to remain there, but
prohibited any new installations.[259]
For a State that still maintained millions of its subjects in
serfdom, all that has just been mentioned might not appear as
a system of cruel constraints.
During the examination of the Regulation before the Council
of State, the discussions concerned the possibility of allowing
the Jews free access to the internal provinces of Great Russia,
and the opinions expressed on this subject were as numerous
as they were varied. Some argued that “to admit the Jews to
settle in the central provinces, they had to be able to justify
certain moral qualities and a su cient level of education”;
others replied that “Jews can be of great use because of their
commercial and industrial activity, and that competition
cannot be prevented by prohibiting anybody from residing and
practising commerce”; “it is necessary to raise the problem…
plainly put: can the Jews be tolerated in this country? If one
considers that they cannot be so, then all must be cast out,”
rather than “leave this category in the midst of the nation in a
situation likely to engender in them continuous discontent
and grumbles.” And “if it is necessary to tolerate their presence
in this country, then it is important to free them from any
limitations placed on their rights.”[260]
Moreover, the “archaic Polish privileges (abandoned by the
Russian State since the reign of Catherine) which granted
urban communities the power to introduce restrictions on the
right of residence for the Jews” reappeared with further
acuteness in Vilnius rst, then in Kiev. In Vilnius, the Jews were
forbidden to settle in certain parts of the city. In Kiev, the local
merchants were indignant that “the Jews, to the great
displeasure of every one, engage in commerce and business
between the walls of the monasteries of Pechersk[261]… that
they take over all commercial establishments in Pechersk” and
exclude “trade Christians”; they urged the Governor‐General to
obtain a ban (1827) “on the Jews to live permanently in Kiev…
Only a few categories of individuals would be able to go there
for a determined period of time.” “As always in such
circumstances, the Government was obliged to postpone on
several occasions the deadline set for their expulsion.” The
discussions went back to the “Directorial Committee”, divided
the Council of State into two equal camps, but under the terms
of the Regulation of 1835 Nicolas con rmed the expulsion of
the Jews from Kiev. However, shortly after, “certain categories
of Jews were again allowed to reside temporarily in Kiev.” (But
why were Jews so lucky in commercial competition? Often,
they sold at lower prices than Christians, contenting
themselves with a “lesser pro t” than the Christians
demanded; but in some cases, their merchandise was deemed
to have come from smuggling, and the governor of Kiev, who
had taken the defense of the Jews, remarked that “if the
Christians were willing to take the trouble, they could oust the
Jews without these coercive measures.”[262]) Thus, “in Belarus,
the Jews had the right to reside only in the towns; In Little
Russia, they could live everywhere, with the exception of Kiev
and certain villages; In New Russia, in all inhabited places with
the exception of Nikolayev and Sevastopol,”[263] military ports
from which the Jews had been banned for reasons related with
the security of the State.
“The 1835 Regulations allowed merchants and [Jewish]
manufacturers to participate in the main fairs of the interior
provinces in order to temporarily trade there, and granted
them the right to sell certain goods outside the Pale of
Settlement.”[264] In the same way, artisans were not entirely
deprived of access to the central provinces, even if only
temporarily. According to the Regulation of 1827, “the
authorities of the provinces outside the Pale of Settlement had
the right to authorise the Jews to remain there for six
months.”[265] Hessen points out that the 1835 Regulations
“and subsequent laws extended somewhat for the Jews the
possibility of temporarily living outside the Pale of
Settlement”, especially since the local authorities turned a
blind eye “when the Jews bypassed the prohibitions.”[266]
Leskov con rms in a note he wrote at the request of the
governmental committee: “In the 40s”, the Jews “appeared in
the villages of Great Russia belonging to the great landowners
in order to o er their services… Throughout the year, they
rendered timely visits ‘to the lords of their acquaintance’” in
the neighbouring provinces of Great Russia, and everywhere
they traded and tackled work. “Not only were the Jews not
driven out, they were retained.” “Usually, people welcomed and
gave refuge to Jewish artisans…; everywhere the local
authorities treated them with kindness, for, as for the other
inhabitants, the Jews provided important advantages.”[267]
“With the help of interested Christians, the Jews violated the
limiting decrees. And the authorities were in their turn incited
to derogate from the laws… In the provinces of Central Russia,
it was decided to x nes to be imposed on the owners who let
the Jews settle in their home.”[268]
This is how, led by conservative (more speci cally religious)
considerations of not wanting fusion between Christians and
Jews, the authorities of the Russian state, faced with the
economic push that attracted Jews beyond the Pale of
Settlement, were unable either to make a clear decision or to
clearly apply it in practice. As for the dynamic and enterprising
character of the Jews, it su ered from too much territorial
concentration and too strong internal competition; it was
natural for them to over ow as widely as possible. As I.
Orchansky observed: “The more the Jews are scattered among
the Christian population, the higher is their standard of
living.”[269]
But it would be hard to deny that, even in its o cial
perimeter, the Pale of Settlement for Jews in Russia was very
large: in addition to what had been inherited from the dense
Jewish grouping in Poland, the provinces of Vilnius, Grodno,
Kaunas, Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Volhynia, Podolsk and Kiev
(in addition to Poland and Courland) were added the vast and
fertile provinces of Poltava, Ikaterinoslav, Chernigov, Tauride,
Kherson and Bessarabia, all together larger than any state, or
even group of European states. (A short time later, from 1804
to the mid‐30s, the rich provinces of Astrakhan and the
Caucasus were added, but the Jews hardly settled there; again
in 1824, in Astrakhan, “no Jew was registered as taxable.”[270]
This made fteen provinces within the Pale of Settlement,
compared with thirty‐one for “Deep Russia”. And few were
more populous than the provinces of central Russia. As for the
Jews’ share of the population, it did not exceed that of the
Moslems in the provinces of the Urals or the Volga. Thus the
density of Jews in the Pale of Settlement did not result from
their number, but rather from the uniformity of their
occupations. It was only in the immensity of Russia that such
an area might seem cramped.
It is objected that the extent of this area was illusory: it
excluded all zones outside cities and other agglomerations. But
these spaces were agricultural areas or intended for
agriculture, and it was understood that this domain, accessible
to the Jews, did not attract them; their whole problem was
rather how to use these spaces for alcohol trade. Which was a
deviation.
And if the large Jewish mass had not moved from narrow
Poland to vast Russia, the very concept of the Pale of
Settlement would never have been born. In narrow Poland, the
Jews would have lived densely piled up, with greater poverty,
growing rapidly without carrying out any productive work,
80% of the population practising petty trade and the dealing of
intermediaries.
In any case, nowhere in Russian cities were implemented
obligatory ghettos for the Jews, as was still known here and
there in Europe. (If not the suburb of Glebovo, in Moscow, for
those who went there as visitors.)
Let us remember once more that this Pale of Settlement
coexisted for three quarters of a century with the serfdom of
the majority of the Russian rural population, and so, by
comparison, the weight of these limitations to the freedom of
coming and going was somewhat lifted. In the Russian Empire,
many peoples lived by millions in high density areas within
their respective regions. Within the borders of a multinational
state, peoples often lived compactly more or less as separate
entities. So it was with the example of the Karaites and the Jews
“of the mountains”, the latter having the freedom to choose
their place of residence but which they hardly used. No
comparison is possible with the territorial limits, the
“reserves” imposed on the native populations of conquered
countries by colonisers (Anglo‐Saxons or Spanish) who came
from elsewhere.
It is precisely the absence of a national territory among the
Jews, given the dynamism they displayed in their movements,
their highly practical sense, their zeal in the economic sphere,
which promised to become imminently an important factor
in uencing the life of the country as a whole. We can say that it
is on the one hand, the Jewish Diaspora’s need to access all the
existing functions, and on the other, the fear of an over ow of
their activity which fuelled the limiting measures taken by the
Russian government.
Yes, as a whole, the Jews of Russia turned away from
agriculture. In crafts, they were preferably tailors, shoemakers,
watchmakers, jewellers. However, despite the constraints
imposed by the Pale, their productive activity was not limited
to these small trades.
The Jewish Encyclopædia published before the Revolution
writes that for the Jews, before the development of heavy
industry, “what was most important was the trade of money;
irrespective of whether the Jew intervened as a pawnbroker or
money changer, as a farmer of public or private income, as
tenant or tenant—he was primarily involved in nancial
transactions.” For even in the period of rural economy in
Russia, “the demand for money was already felt in ever‐
increasing proportions.”[271] Thence, the transfer of Jewish
capital into this industry for them to participate in it. Already,
under Alexander I, energetic arrangements had been made to
encourage the participation of Jews in industry, especially in
drapery. “It subsequently played an important part in the
accumulation of capital in the hands of the Jews,” and then
“they did not fail to use this capital successively in factories
and plants, mining, transportation and banking. Thus began
the formation of a lower and upper Jewish bourgeoisie.[272]
The Regulations of 1835 “also provided privileges for Jewish
manufacturers.”[273]
By the 40s of the nineteenth century, the sugar industry had
grown considerably in the south‐western provinces. First, The
Jewish capitalists began by granting subsidies to the re neries
belonging to the landowners, then by assuming their
administration, followed by becoming owners, and nally
building their own factories. In Ukraine and New Russia,
powerful “sugar kings”, among others Lazare and Lev Brodski.
“Most of these Jewish sugar producers had begun in the
distillery of alcohol… or as tenants of cabarets.” This situation
also took place in our‐milling.[274]
At the time, no contemporary understood or bothered to
foresee what power was being accumulated there, material
rst, then spiritual. Of course, Nicholas I was the rst not to
see, nor understand. He had too high an opinion of the
omnipotence of the imperial power and of the e ciency of
military‐type administrative methods.
But he obstinately desired success in the education of the
Jews so that the Jews could overcome their extraneousness in
relation to the rest of the population, situation in which he saw
a major danger. As early as 1831, he pointed out to the
“Directors Committee” that “among the measures likely to
improve the situation of the Jews, special attention should be
given to raising them via education… by the creation of
factories, the prohibition of precocious marriages, a better
organisation of the Kehalim…, a change in clothing
customs.”[275] And in 1840, when the “Committee in charge of
identifying measures for a radical transformation of the life of
Jews in Russia” was founded, one of the rst aims envisaged by
this committee was “to promote the moral development of the
new generation by the creation of Jewish schools in a spirit
contrary to the Talmudic teaching currently in force.”[276]
 All the progressive Jews of that time also wanted general
education (they were only divided on whether to totally
exclude the Talmud from the program or to study it in the
upper grades, “with the illumination of a scienti c approach,
thus relieved from undesirable additions”[277]). A newly
established general education school in Riga was headed by a
young graduate of the University of Munich, Max Lilienthal,
who aspired to invest himself in the “spread of education
among Russian Jews.” In 1840, he was cordially received in
Saint Petersburg by the ministers of the interior and education,
and wrote to the “Committee for the Transformation of the
Life of the Jews” proposing the project of a consistory and
theology seminary with the aim of training rabbis and teachers
“according to pure ethical foundations”, as opposed to
“calci ed talmudists”; However, “before acquiring the essential
principles of faith, it would not be permissible to study profane
matters.” Thus the ministerial project was modi ed: the
number of hours devoted to the teaching of Jewish matters was
increased.[278] Lilienthal also sought to persuade the
government to take preventive measures against the Hasidim,
but without success: government power “wanted a front
unifying the various Jewish social milieux who waged
war.”[279] Lilienthal, who had developed his school in Riga
“with amazing success”, was invited by the Ministry to visit the
provinces of the Pale of Settlement in order to contribute to the
work of education, through public meetings and conferences
with Jewish personalities. His journey, at least externally, was a
great success; as a general rule, he met with little open hostility
and seemed to have succeeded in convincing the in uential
circles of the Jewish world. “The enemies… of the reform… had
to express their approval outwardly.” But the hidden
opposition was, of course, very important. And when school
reform was nally applied, Lilienthal renounced his mission.
In 1844, he left unexpectedly for the United States, never to
return. “His departure from Russia—perhaps a way of escape—
remains shrouded in mystery.”[280]
Thus, under Nicholas I, not only did the authorities not
oppose the assimilation of the Jews, but rather they called for
it; however, the Jewish masses who remained under the
in uence of the Kahal, feared constraining measures in the
religious sphere, and so did not lend themselves to it.
Nevertheless, school reform did begin in 1844, despite the
extreme resistance of the leaders of the Kehalim. (And although
“in creating these Jewish schools there was no attempt to
reduce the number of Jews in general schools, on the contrary,
it was pointed out that they should, as before, be open to the
Jews.”[281]) Two kinds of Jewish public schools were created
(“modelled on Jewish elementary schools in Austria”[282]): two
years, corresponding to Russian parish schools, and four years,
corresponding to district schools. Only Jewish disciplines were
taught by Jewish (and Hebrew) teachers; the others were given
by Russian teachers. (As Lev Deitch, a frenzied revolutionary,
admits, “The crowned monster ordered them [Jewish children]
to learn Russian.”[283]) For many years, these schools were led
by Christians, and were only led by Jews much later.
“Faithful to traditional Judaism, having learned or
overshadowed the secret objective of Uvarov [Minister of
Education], the majority of the Jewish population saw in these
government measures of education a means of persecution like
the others.”[284] (Said Uvarov, who, for his part, sought to
bring the Jews closer to the Christian population by eradicating
“prejudices inspired by the precepts of the Talmud”, wanted to
exclude the latter entirely from the education system,
considering it as an anti‐Christian compendium[285]).
Continuing for many years to distrust the Russian authorities,
the Jewish population turned away from these schools and
fuelling a real phobia of them: “Just as the population sought to
escape conscription, it distrusted these schools, fearing to leave
their children in these homes of “free‐thinking”. Well‐o
Jewish families often sent to public schools not their own
o spring, but those of the poor.[286] Thus was entrusted to a
public school P. B. Axelrod[287]; He then went on to college,
and then obtained broad political notoriety as Plekhanov and
Deitch’s companion in the struggle within the Liberation of
Labour[288]). If in 1855 only the duly registered Heder had
70,000 Jewish children, the public schools of both types
received only 3,200.[289]
This fear of public education was perpetuated for a long time
in Jewish circles. In this way, Deitch remembers the 60s, not
the middle of nowhere, but in Kiev: “I remember the time when
my countrymen considered it a sin to learn Russian” and only
tolerated its use “in relations with the goyim.”[290] A. G.
Sliozberg remembers that, until the 70s, entering college was
regarded as a betrayal of the essence of Jewishness, the college
uniform being a sign of apostasy. “Between Jews and Christians
there was an abyss which only a few Jews could cross, and only
in the great cities where Jewish public opinion did not paralyse
the will of all.”[291] Young people attached to Jewish traditions
did not aspire to study in Russian universities, although the
nal diploma, according to the Recruitment Law of 1827,
dispensed one of military service for life. However, Hessen
points out that among Russian Jews belonging to “the most
a uent circles”, “the spontaneous desire to integrate… the
public schools was growing.”[292]
He adds that in Jewish public schools “not only the Christian
superintendents but the majority of Jewish teachers who
taught the Jewish disciplines in the German language were far
from the required level.” Thus, “in parallel with the
establishment of these public schools, it was decided to
organise a graduate school intended for the training of
teachers, to form better educated rabbis capable of acting
progressively on the Jewish masses. Rabbinic schools of this
type were founded in Vilnius and Zhytomir (1847).” “Despite
their shortcomings, these schools were of some use,” according
to the testimony of the liberal J. Hessen, “the rising generation
was familiarising itself with the Russian language and its
grammar.”[293] The revolutionary Mr. Krol was of the same
opinion, but he also condemned the government unreservedly:
“The laws of Nicholas I instituting primary public schools and
rabbinic schools were reactionary and hostile to the Jews;
schools, willingly or unwillingly, allowed a small number of
Jewish children to learn secular education. As for the
“enlightened” intellectuals (the Maskilim) and those who now
despised the “superstitions of the masses”, they “had no place
to go”, according to Krol, and remained strangers amongst
their own. “Nevertheless, this evolution played an enormous
role in the spiritual awakening of Russian Jews during the
second half of the nineteenth century,” even if the Maskilim,
who wanted to enlighten the Jewish masses, met with “the
erce opposition of fanatical Jewish believers who saw in
profane science an alienation of the devil.”[294]
In 1850 a kind of superstructure was created: an institute of
“Jewish scholars”, as well as a consulting inspectorate among
the heads of academies.
Those who came from the newly created rabbinical schools
occupied in 1857 the functions of “public rabbis”; Elected
unwillingly by their community, their designation was subject
to the approval of the authorities of their province. But their
responsibility remained purely administrative: the Jewish
communities regarded them as ignoramuses in the Hebrew
sciences, and the traditional rabbis were maintained as
genuine “spiritual rabbis.”[295] (Numerous graduates of
rabbinic schools, “found no positions, neither as rabbis nor
teachers”, pursued their studies at university[296], then
became doctors or lawyers.)
Nicholas I did not release his pressure to regulate the
internal life of the Jewish community. The Kahal, who already
possessed an immense power over the community, grew even
stronger from the moment conscription was introduced: it was
given the right to “give for recruitment at any moment every
Jew who did not pay his royalties, who had no xed abode or
committed intolerable misdemeanors in Jewish society,” and it
used this right for the bene t of the rich. “All this nourished
the indignation of the masses towards the rulers of the Kehalim
and became one of the causes of the irremediable decline of the
Kahal.” Thus, in 1844, the Kehalim “were dissolved everywhere,
and their functions were transmitted to municipalities and
town halls”[297]; In other words, urban Jewish communities
found themselves subject to the uniform legislation of the
state. But this reform was not completed either: the collection
of the arduous and evanescent arrears and the lifting of the
recruits were again entrusted to the Jewish community, whose
“recruiters” and tax collectors were substituted for the ancients
of the Kehalim. As for the registry of births, and thus the
counting of the population, they remained in the hands of the
rabbis.
The government of Nicolas also took a position on the
inextricable problem of the internal tax collection of Jewish
communities, rst of all on the so‐called “casket” (indirect tax
on the consumption of kosher meat). A provision of 1844
speci ed that part of the proceeds should be used to cover
public arrears in the community, to nance the organisation of
Jewish schools and to distribute subsidies to Jews who devoted
themselves to agriculture.[298] But there was also an
unexpected imbroglio: although the Jews “were subject to the
capitation on the same basis as the Christian bourgeois”, that is,
to a direct tax, “the Jewish population, thanks to the amount of
the “casket”, were, it is to say, in a privileged position to pay the
royalty”; in fact, from then on “Jews, including the wealthiest,
covered by personal payments only an insigni cant part of the
taxes owed to the tax authorities, turning the balance into
arrears,” and these never ceased to accumulate: by the mid‐50s,
they exceeded 8 million rubles. There followed a new imperial
decree dictated by exasperation: “for every 2,000 rubles” of
new arrears, “an adult had to be provided as recruit.”[299]
In 1844 a new and energetic attempt was made—again
aborted—to expel the Jews from the villages.
Hessen pictorially writes that “in Russian laws designed to
normalise the lives of Jews, one hears as a cry of despair: in
spite of all its authority, the government fails to extirpate the
existence of the Jews from the depths of Russian life.”[300]
No, the leaders of Russia had not yet realised the full weight
and even the “unassimilability” of the immense Jewish legacy
received as a gift under the successive divisions of Poland: what
to do with this intrinsically resistant and rapidly expanding
group in the Russian national body? They could not nd
reliable rulings and were all the more incapable of foreseeing
the future. The energetic measures of Nicholas I surged one
after the other, but the situation was apparently only getting
more complicated.
A similar failure, which was escalating, followed Nicholas I
in his struggle against the Jewish contrabands at the frontiers.
In 1843 he categorically ordered the expulsion of all Jews from
a bu er zone of fty kilometres deep adjacent to Austria and
Prussia, in spite of the fact that “at some frontier customs the
merchants who traded were practically all Jews.”[301] The
measure was immediately corrected by numerous exemptions:
rst, a two‐year period was allowed for the sale of the goods,
and then the duration was extended, and material assistance
was o ered to the expellees for their new settlement;
furthermore, they were exempted for ve years from all
royalties. For several years the transfer was not even initiated,
and soon “the government of Nicholas I stopped insisting on
the expulsion of the Jews from this border strip of fty
kilometres, which allowed some of them to stay where they
lived.”[302]
It was on this occasion that Nicolas received a new warning
of which he did not measure the extent and the consequences
for the whole of Russia: this formidable but very partially
enforced measure, intended to expel the Jews from the frontier
zone, motivated by a contraband which had assumed an
extension dangerous to the State, had aroused in Europe such
indignation that it may be asked whether it was not this
measure that drastically confused European public opinion
with Russia. It may be said that this particular decree of 1843
must date from the very beginning of the era when the
Western Jewish world, in the defense of its co‐religionists in
Russia, began to exert a decisive in uence, which, from then
on, would never fall again.
One of the manifestations of this new attention was the
arrival in Russia in 1846 of Sir Moses Monte ore, the bearer of
a letter of recommendation from Queen Victoria instructing
him to obtain the “improvement of the fate of the Jewish
population” of Russia. He went to several cities of high Jewish
density; then, from England, sent a long letter to the emperor
recommending the emancipation of the Jews from all limiting
legislation, to grant them “equal rights with all other subjects”
(with the exception, of course, of the serfs), “in the short term:
to abolish all constraints in the exercise of the right to settle
and to circulate between the boundaries of the Pale of
Settlement”, to allow merchants and craftsmen to visit the
provinces, “to allow Christians to be employed in the service of
the Jews…, to restore the Kahal…”[303]
But, on the contrary, Nicolas did not relinquish his
determination to bring order to the lives of the Jews of Russia.
He resembled Peter the Great in his resolution to structure by
decree the whole State and the whole of society according to
his plan, and to reduce the complexity of society to simple,
easily understood categories, as Peter had formerly “trimmed”
all that disturbed the clear con guration of the taxable classes.
This time it was a question of di erentiating the Jewish
population from the towns—the bourgeois. This project began
in 1840; when the intention was to go beyond the national and
religious singularity of the Jews (the opinions of Levinson,
Feiguine, and Gueseanovsky were then examined), they
endeavoured to “study the root of their obstinate isolation” in
relation to “the absence of any productive work in them”, their
“harmful practice of small trades, accompanied by all sorts of
frauds and tricks.” Regarding the “idleness” of many Jews, the
government circles blamed it on “inveterate habits”; they
considered that “the Jewish mass might have been able to nd
livelihoods, but traditionally refused to exercise certain types
of employment.”[304]
Count Kiselyov proposed to the Emperor the following
measure: without a ecting the Jewish merchants, perfectly
well‐settled, to worry about the so‐called bourgeois Jews, more
precisely to divide them into two categories: to count in the
rst those who bene t from goods and a solid sedentary
lifestyle, and include in the second those who are devoid of
these factors and set a period of ve years for them to be made
craftsmen in workshops, or farmers. (One regarded as an
artisan the one who enrolled forever in a workshop: as a
sedentary bourgeois, one who had enrolled in a workshop for a
certain time.[305]) As for those who did not ful l these
conditions at the end of the period of ve years and remained
con ned to their former state, they would be considered
“useless” and subjected to military service and a period of work
of a particular type: they would be enrolled in the army (those
20 years old and onwards) in number three times higher than
the standard required, not for the usual twenty‐ ve years of
military service, but for only ten. And, meanwhile, “they would
be used in the army or the navy by instilling in them, above all,
di erent trades and then, with their consent, they would make
craftsmen or farmers”. In other words, they would be forcibly
given vocational education. But the government did not have
the funds to do so and was considering using the “casket” tax,
as Jewish society could only be interested in this e ort to
rehabilitate its members through labour.[306]
In 1840, Nicholas I gave his approval to the project. (The
phrase “unnecessary Jews” was replaced by “not performing
productive work.”) All measures to transform the lives of the
Jews were reduced to a single decree providing for the
following steps: 1) “regularisation of the collection of the
‘casket’ and suppression of the Kahal”; 2) creation of general
education schools for Jews; 3) institution of “parochial rabbis”;
4) “establishment of the Jews on land belonging to the State”
for agricultural purposes; 5) categorisation; 6) prohibition to
wear the long garment. Kiselyov thought of introducing social
categorisation in a fairly distant future; Nicholas placed it
before agriculture, which, for a quarter of a century, had not
ceased to be a failure.[307]
However, the categorisation provided for a period of ve
years for the choice of occupations, and the measure itself was
not announced until 1846, meaning it could not turn into a
reality until January 1852. (In 1843 the Governor‐General of
New Russia, Count Vorontsov, rose up against this measure: he
wrote that the occupations “of this numerous class of
merchants and intermediaries were ‘vili ed’ and that [80%] of
the Jewish population was counted as ‘useless’ elements,”
which meant that 80% of the Jews were mainly engaged in
trade, and Vorontsov hoped that, given the vast economic
potential of New Russia, “any form of constraint could be
limited”, he did not think it necessary to expel the Jews from
the villages, but thought that it was enough to intensify their
education. He warned that the categorisation would probably
arouse indignation in Europe.[308])
Scalded by the way Europe had reacted to the attempt to
expel the Jews from the border area, the Russian government
drew up a detailed statement on the new measure in 1846: in
Poland, Jews had neither citizenship nor the right to own
immovable property, and was therefore restricted to petty
trading and the sale of alcohol; incorporated in Russia, they
saw the limits of their residence extended, they received civil
rights, access to the class of merchants in the cities, the right to
own real estate, to enter the category of farmers, the right to
education, including access to universities and academies.[309]
It must be admitted that the Jews did receive all these rights
from the rst decades of their presence in the famous “prison
of the peoples”. Nevertheless, a century later, in a collection
written by Jewish authors, one nds the following assessment:
“When the annexation to Russia of the Polish provinces with
their Jewish population, promises were made concerning
Rights, and attempts to realise them [italics are mine, A. S.; said
promises were kept, and the attempts were not without
success]. But at the same time, mass expulsions outside villages
had begun (indeed, they had been outlined, but were never
e ective), double taxation was implemented [which was not
levied in a systematic way, and eventually abandoned] and to
the institution of the Pale of Settlement was undertaken”[310]
[we have seen that the borders of this area were originally a
geographical heritage]. If one thinks that this way of exposing
history is objective, then one will never reach the truth.
Unfortunately, however, the government communiqué of
1846 pointed out that the Jews did not take advantage of many
of these measures: “Constantly defying integration with the
civil society in which they live, most kept their old way of life,
taking advantage of the work of others, which, on all sides,
legitimately entails the complaints of the inhabitants.” “For the
purpose [of raising the standard of living of the Jews], it is
important to free them from their dependence on the elders of
the community, the heirs of the former leaders of the Kahal, to
spread education and practical knowledge in the Jewish
population, to create Jewish schools of general education, to
provide means for their passage to agriculture, to blur the
di erences of clothing which are unfair to many Jews. As for
the government, “it esteems itself entitled to hope that the
Jews will abandon all their reprehensible ways of living and
turn to a truly productive and useful work.” Only those who
refuse to do so will be subject to “incentivised measures for
parasitic members a ecting society and harming it.”[311]
In his reply to this text, Monte ore condemned the
categorisation by insisting that all the misfortune came from
the limitations imposed on the free circulation of the Jews and
their trade. Nicolas retorted that if the passage of the Jews to
productive work was successful, time, “of itself, would
gradually mitigate these limitations.”[312] He was counting on
the possibility of re‐education through work… Being held in
check here and there, and elsewhere in his e orts to transform
the way of life of the Jews, he had the ambition to break the
Jews’ tendency to close in on themselves and to solve the
problem of their integration with the surrounding population
through labour, and the problem of labour by drastically
reinforced conscription. The reduction of the length of
military service for the Jews (from 25 to ten years) and the
intention of providing them with vocational training was
scarcely clear; what was perceived concretely was the levying
of recruits, now proportionately three times more numerous
than among Christians: “Ten recruits per year per thousand
male inhabitants, and for Christians seven recruits per
thousand once every two years.”[313]
Faced with this increase in recruitment, more people sought
to escape. Those who were designated for conscription went
into hiding. In retaliation, at the end of 1850, a decree
stipulated that all recruits not delivered on time should be
compensated by three additional recruits in addition to the
defaulter! Now Jewish communities were interested in
capturing the fugitives or replacing them with innocent people.
(In 1853 a decree was issued enabling Jewish communities and
private individuals to present as a recruit any person taken
without papers.) The Jewish communities were seen to have
paid “takers” or “snatchers” who captured their “catch”[314];
they received from the community a receipt attesting that the
community had used their services when handing over those
who did not respond to the call, or who carried expired
passports—even if they were from another province—or
teenagers without a family.
But that was not enough to compensate for the missing
recruits. In 1852 two new decrees were added: the rst
provided for each recruit provided in excess of the quota
imposed, to relieve the community of 300 rubles of
arrears[315]; the second “prohibited the concealment of Jews
who evaded military service and demanded severe punishment
for those who had ed conscription, imposed nes on the
communities that had hidden them, and, instead of the
missing recruits, to enlist their relatives or the community
leaders responsible for the delivery of the recruits within the
prescribed time limits. Seeking by all means to escape
recruitment, many Jews ed abroad or went to other
provinces.”[316]
From then on, the recruitment gave rise to a real bacchanale:
the “snatchers” became more and more erce; on the contrary,
men in good health and capable of working scurried o , went
into hiding, and the backlogs of the communities grew. The
sedentary and productive part uttered protests and demands: if
recruitment began to strike to an equal extent the “useful
elements” and those which do not exercise productive work,
then the vagabonds will always nd means of hiding and all
the weight of the recruitment would fall on the “useful”, which
would spread among them disorder and the ruin.”[317]
The administrative over ows made the absurdity of the
situation clear because of the di culties that ensued;
questions were raised, for example, about the di erent types of
activity: are they “useful” or not? This red up the Saint
Petersburg ministries.[318] The Council of State demanded
that the social categorisation be delayed so long as the
regulations of the workshops were not elaborated. The
Emperor, however, did not want to wait. In 1851, the
“Provisional Rules for the Categorisation of Jews”, and “Special
Rules for Jewish Workshops” were published. The Jewish
population was deeply concerned, but according to the
testimony of the Governor General of the South‐West, it no
longer believed that this categorisation would enter into
force.”[319]
And, in fact, “… it did not take place; the Jewish population
was not divided into categories.”[320] In 1855, Nicholas I died
suddenly, and categorisation was abandoned forever.
Throughout the years 1850‒1855, the sovereign had, on the
whole, displayed a limitless sense of pride and self‐con dence,
accumulating gross blunders which stupidly led us into the
Crimean war against a coalition of States, before suddenly
dying while the con ict was raging.
The sudden death of the Emperor saved the Jews from a
di cult situation, just as they were to be saved a century later
by the death of Stalin.
Thus ended the rst six decades of massive presence of Jews
in Russia. It must be acknowledged that neither their level nor
their lack of clarity prepared the Russian authorities at that
time to face such an ingrained, gnarled and complex problem.
But to put on these Russian leaders the stamp “persecutors of
the Jews” amounts to distorting their intentions and
compounding their abilities.
 Chapter 4. In the Age of Reforms

At the moment of the ascension of Alexander II to the throne,

the Peasant Question in Russia had been overripe for a century
and demanded immediate resolution. Then suddenly, the
Jewish Question surfaced and demanded a no less urgent
solution  as well. In Russia, the Jewish Question was not as
ancient as the deep-rooted and barbaric institution of serfdom
and up to this time it did not seem to loom so large in the
country. Yet henceforth, for the rest of 19th century, and right
to the very year of 1917 in the State Duma, the Jewish and the
Peasant questions would cross over and over again; they would
contend with each other and thus become intertwined in their
competing destiny.
Alexander II had taken the throne during the di cult
impasse of the Crimean War against a united Europe. This
situation demanded  a di cult decision, whether to hold out or
to surrender.
Upon his ascension, “voices were immediately raised in
defense of the Jewish population.”— After several weeks, His
Majesty gave orders “to make the Jews equal with the rest of
population in respect to military duty, and to end acceptance of
underage recruits.” (Soon after, the “skill-category” draft of
Jewish philistines was cancelled; this meant that “all classes of
the Jewish population were made equal with respect to
compulsory military service.”[321]) This decision was
con rmed in the Coronation Manifesto of 1856: “Jewish
recruits of the same age and qualities which are de ned for
recruits from other population groups are to be admitted while
acceptance of underage Jewish recruits was to be
abolished.”[322] Right then the institution of military
cantonists was also completely abolished; Jewish cantonists
who were younger than 20 years of age were returned to their
parents even if they already had been turned into soldiers.
[Cantonists were the sons of Russian conscripts who, from
1721, were educated in special “canton (garrison) schools” for
future military service].
The lower ranks who had served out their full term (and
their descendents) received the right to live anywhere on the
territory of the Russian Empire. (They usually settled where
they terminated their service. They could settle permanently
and had often become the founders of new Jewish
communities.[323] In a twist of fate and as a historical
punishment, Russia and the Romanov Dynasty got Yakov
Sverdlov from the descendents of one such cantonist settler.
[324])
By the same manifesto the Jewish population “was forgiven
all [considerable] back taxes” from previous years. (“Yet already
in the course of the next ve years new tax liabilities
accumulated amounting to 22% of the total expected tax sum.
[325])
More broadly, Alexander II expressed his intention to resolve
the Jewish Question — and in the most favorable manner. For
this, the approach to the question was changed drastically. If
during the reign of Nicholas I the government saw its task as
rst reforming the Jewish inner life, gradually clearing it out
through productive work and education with consequent
removal of administrative restrictions, then during the reign of
Alexander II the policy was the opposite: to begin “with the
intention of integrating this population with the native
inhabitants of the country” as stated in the Imperial Decree of
1856.[326] So the government had began quick removal of
external constraints and restrictions not looking for possible
inner causes of Jewish seclusion and morbidity; it thereby
hoped that all the remaining problems would then solve
themselves.
To this end, still another Committee for Arranging the
Jewish Way of Life was established in 1856. (This was already
the seventh committee on Jewish a airs, but by no means the
last). Its chairman, the above-mentioned Count Kiselyov,
reported to His Majesty that “the goal of integrating Jews with
the general population” “is hindered by various temporary
restrictions, which, when considered in the context of general
laws, contain many contradictions and beget bewilderment.”
In response, His Majesty ordered “a revision of all existing
statutes on Jews to harmonize them with the general strategy
directed toward integration of this people with the native
inhabitants, to the extent a orded by the moral condition of
Jews”; that is, “the fanaticism and economic harmfulness
ascribed to them.”[327]
No, not for nothing had Herzen struggled with his Kolokol,
or Belinsky and Granovsky, or Gogol! (For although not having
such goals, the latter acted in the same direction as the former
three did.) Under the shell of the austere reign of Nicholas I, the
demand for decisive reforms and the will for them and the
people to implement them were building up, and,
astonishingly, new projects were taken by the educated high
governmental dignitaries more enthusiastically than by
educated public in general. And this immediately impacted the
Jewish Question. Time after time, the ministers of Internal
A airs ( rst Lanskoi and then Valuev) and the Governors
General of the Western and Southwestern Krais
[administrative divisions of Tsarist Russia] shared their
suggestions with His Majesty who was quite interested in
them. “Partial improvements in the legal situation of the Jews
were enacted by the government on its own initiative, yet
under direct supervision by His Majesty.”[328] These changes
went along with the general liberating reforms which a ected
Jews as well as the rest of population.
In 1858, Novorossiysk Governor General Stroganov
suggested immediate, instant, and complete equalization of
the Jews in all rights — but the Committee, now under the
chairmanship of Bludov, stopped short, nding itself
unprepared for such a measure. In 1859 it pointed out, for
comparison, that “while the Western-European Jews began
sending their children to public schools at the rst invitation of
the government, more or less turning themselves to useful
occupations, the Russian government has to wrestle with
Jewish prejudices and fanaticism”; therefore, “making Jews
equal in rights with the native inhabitants cannot happen in
any other way than a gradual change, following the spread of
true enlightenment among them, changes in their inner life,
and turning their activity toward useful occupations.”[329]
The Committee also developed arguments against equal
rights. It suggested that the question being considered was not
so much a Jewish question, as it was a Russian one; that it
would be precipitous to grant equal rights to Jews before
raising the educational and cultural level of Russian population
whose dark masses would not be able to defend themselves in
the face of the economic pressure of Jewish solidarity; that the
Jews hardly aspire toward integration with the rest of the
citizens of the country, that they strive toward achieving all
civil rights while retaining their isolation and cohesion which
Russians do not possess among themselves.
However, these voices did not attain in uence. One after
another, restrictions had been removed. In 1859 the
Prohibition of 1835 was removed: it had forbidden the Jews to
take a lease or manage populated landowner’s lands. (And thus,
the right to rule over the peasants; though that prohibition was
“in some cases … secretly violated.” Although after 1861 lands
remaining in the property of landowners were not formally
“populated.”) The new changes were aimed “to make it easier
for landowners to turn for help to Jews if necessary” in case of
deterioration of in the manorial economy, but also “in order to
somewhat widen the restricted eld of economic activity of the
Jews.” Now the Jews could lease these lands and settle on them
though they could not buy them.[330] Meanwhile in the
Southwestern Krai “capital that could be turned to the
purchase of land was concentrated in the hands of some Jews
… yet the Jews refused to credit landowners against security of
the estate because estates could not be purchased by Jews.”
Soon afterwards Jews were granted the right to buy land from
landowners inside the Pale of Settlement.[331]
With development of railroads and steamships, Jewish
businesses such as keeping of inns and postal stations had
declined. In addition, because of new liberal customs tari s
introduced in1857 and 1868, which lowered customs duties on
goods imported into Russia, “pro ts on contraband trade” had
immediately and sharply decreased.[332]
In 1861 the prohibition on Jews to acquire exclusive rights to
some sources of revenue from estates was abolished. In the
same year the systems of tax farming and ‘wine farming’
[translator’s note: concessions from the state to private
entrepreneurs to sell vodka to the populace in particular
regions] were abolished. This was a huge blow to a major
Jewish enterprise. “Among Jews, ‘tax collector’ and ‘contractor’
were synonyms for wealth”; now Orshansky writes, they could
just dream about “the time of the Crimean War, when
contractors made millions, thanks to the exible conscience
and peculiar view of the Treasury in certain circles”;
“thousands of Jews lived and got rich under the bene cial wing
of tax farming.” Now the interests of the state had begun to be
enforced and contracts had become much less pro table. And
“trading in spirits” had become “far less pro table than …
under … the tax farming system.”[333] However, as the excise
was introduced in the wine industry in place of the wine
farming system, no special restrictions were laid on Jews and
so now they could sell and rent  distillation factories on a
common basis in the Pale of Settlement provinces.[334] And
they had so successfully exercised this right to rent and
purchase over next two decades that by the 1880s between 32
% and 76 % of all distillation factories in the Jewish Pale of
Settlement belonged to Jews, and almost all of them fell under
category of a ‘major enterprise’.[335] By 1872, 89 % of
distillation factories in the Southwestern Krai were rented by
Jews.[336] From 1863 Jews were permitted to run distillation
in Western and Eastern Siberia (for “the most remarkable
specialists in the distillation industry almost exclusively came
from among the Jews”), and from 1865 the Jewish distillers
were permitted to reside everywhere.[337]
Regarding the spirits trade in the villages, about one-third of
the whole Jewish population of the Pale lived in villages at the
start of 1880s, with two or three families in each village,[338]
as remnants of the korchemstvo [from “tavern” — the state-
regulated business of retail spirits sale]. An o cial government
report of 1870 stated that “the drinking business in the
Western Krai is almost exclusively concentrated in the hands
of Jews, and the abuses encountered in these institutions
exceed any bounds of tolerance.”[339] Thus it was demanded of
Jews to carry on the drinking business only from their own
homes. The logic of this demand was explained by G. B.
Sliozberg: in the villages of Little Russia [Ukraine], that is,
outside of the legal limits of the Polish autonomy, the
landowners did not have the right to carry on trade in spirits —
and this meant that the Jews could not buy spirits from
landowners for resale. Yet at the same time the Jews might not
buy even a small plot of peasant land; therefore, the Jews
rented peasant homes and conducted the drinking business
from them. When such trade was also prohibited — the
prohibition was often evaded by using a ‘front’ business: a
dummy patent on a spirits business was issued to a Christian
to which a Jew supposedly only served as an ‘attendant.’[340]
Also, the ‘punitive clause’ (as it is worded in the Jewish
Encyclopedia), that is, a punishment accompanying the
prohibition against Jews hiring a Christian as a personal
servant, was repealed in 1865 as “incompatible with the
general spirit of the  o cial policy of tolerance.” And so “from
the end of the 1860s many Jewish families began to hire
Christian servants.”[341]
Unfortunately, it is so typical for many scholars studying the
history of Jewry in Russia to disregard  hard-won victories: if
yesterday all strength and attention were focused on the ght
for some civil right and today that right is attained — then very
quickly afterwards that victory is considered a tri e. There was
so much said about the “double tax” on the Jews as though it
existed for centuries and not for very few short years, and even
then it was never really enforced in practice. The law of 1835,
which was at the time greeted by Jews with a sense of relief,
was, at the threshold of 20th century dubbed by S. Dubnov as a
‘Charter of Arbitrariness.’ To the future revolutionary Leo
Deutsch, who in the 1860s was a young and still faithful
subject, it looked like the administration “did not strictly
[enforce] some essential … restrictions on … the rights” of
Jews, “they turned a blind eye to … violations”; “in general, the
life of Jews in Russia in the sixties was not bad…. Among my
Jewish peers I did not see anyone su ering from depression,
despondence, or estrangement as a result of oppression” by
their Christian mates.[342] But then he suddenly recollects his
revolutionary duty and calls everything given to the Jews
during the reign of Alexander I as, “in essence, insigni cant
alleviations” and, without losing a beat, mentions “the crimes
of Alexander II”— although, in his opinion, the Tsar shouldn’t
have been killed.[343] And from the middle of the 20th century
it already looks like for the whole of 19th century that various
committees and commissions were being created for review of
Jewish legal restrictions “and they came to the conclusion that
the existing legal restrictions did not achieve their aims and
should be … abolished…. Yet not a single one of the projects
worked out by the Committees … was implemented.”[344]
It’s rid of, forgotten, and no toasts made.
After the rst Jewish reforms by Alexander II, the existence
of the Pale of Settlement had become the most painful issue.
“Once a hope about a possibility of future state reforms had
emerged, and rst harbingers of expected renewal of public life
had barely appeared, the Jewish intelligentsia began
contemplating the daring step of raising the question of
abolishing the Jewish Pale of Settlement altogether.”[345] Yet
still fresh in the Jewish memory was the idea of ‘selectivity’: to
impose additional obligations on not-permanently-settled and
unproductive Jews. And so in 1856 an idea to petition His
Majesty appeared in the social strata of “Jewish merchants,
citizens of St. Petersburg, and out-of-towners,” who “by their
social standing and by the nature of their activity, more closely
interacted with the central authorities.”[346] The petition
asked His Majesty “not to give privileges to the whole Jewish
population, but only to certain categories,” to the young
generation “raised in the spirit and under the supervision of
the government,” “to the upper merchant class,” and “to the
good craftsmen, who earn their bread by sweat of their brow”;
so that they would be “distinguished by the government with
more rights than those who still exhibited nothing special
about their good intentions, usefulness, and
industriousness…. Our petition is so that the Merciful
Monarch, distinguishing wheat from cha , would be kindly
disposed to grant several, however modest privileges to the
worthy and cultivated among us, thus encouraging good and
praiseworthy actions.”[347] (Even in all their excited hopes
they could not even imagine how quickly the changes in the
position of the Jews would be implemented in practice —
already in 1862 some of the authors of this petition would ask
“about extending equal rights to all who graduate from
secondary educational institutions,” for the grammar school
graduates “of course, must be considered people with a
European education.”[348]
And yes, “in principle, the Tsar did not mind violations of
the laws concerning the Jewish Pale of Settlement in favor of
individual groups of the Jewish population.” In 1859 Jewish
merchants of the 1st Guild were granted the right of residency
in all of Russia (and the 2nd Guild in Kiev from 1861; and also
for all three guilds in Nikolayev, Sevastopol, and Yalta)[349]
with the right of arranging manufacturing businesses,
contracts, and acquiring real estate. Earlier, doctors and
holders of masters degrees in science had already enjoyed the
right of universal residency (including the right to occupy
posts in government service; here we should note a professor
of medicine G.A. Zakharyin, who in the future would
pronounce the fatal judgment about the illness of Alexander
III). From 1861 this right was granted to “candidates of
universities,” that is, simply to university graduates,[350] and
also “to persons of free professions.”[351] The Pale of
Settlement restrictions were now lifted even from the
“persons, desiring to obtain higher education … namely to
persons, entering medical academies, universities, and
technical institutes.”[352] Then, as a result of petitions from
individual ministers, governors, and in uential Jewish
merchants (e.g., Evzel Ginzburg), from 1865 the whole
territory of Russia including St. Petersburg was opened to
Jewish artisans, though only for the period of actual
professional activity. (The notion of artisans was then widened
to include all kinds of technicians such as typesetters and
typographic workers.)[353]
Here it is worth keeping in mind that merchants relocated
with their clerks, o ce workers, various assistants, and Jewish
service personnel, craftsmen, and also with apprentices and
pupils. Taken altogether, this already made up a notable
stream. Thus, a Jew with a right of residency outside of the Pale
was free to move from the Pale, and not only with his family.
Yet new relaxations were outpaced by new petitions. In
1861, immediately after granting privileges for the “candidates
of universities,” the Governor General of the Southwestern Krai
had asked to allow exit from the Pale to those who completed
state professional schools for the Jews, that is, incomplete high
school-level establishments. He had vividly described the
condition of such graduates: “Young people graduating from
such schools nd themselves completely cut o from Jewish
society…. If they do not nd occupations according to their
quali cations within their own circles, they get accustomed to
idleness and thus, by being unworthy representatives of their
profession, they often discredit the prestige of education in the
eyes of people they live among.”[354]
In that same year, the Ministers of Internal A airs and
Education declared in unison “that a paramount cause of the
disastrous condition of Jews is hidden in the abnormal share of
Jews occupied in commerce and industry versus the rest
engaged in agriculture”; and because of this “the peasant is
unavoidably preyed upon by Jews as if he is obligated to
surrender a part of his income to their maintenance.” Yet the
internal competition between the Jews creates a “nearly
impossible situation of providing for themselves by legal
means.” And therefore, it is necessary to “grant the right of
universal residence to merchants” of the 2nd and 3rd Guilds,
and also to graduates of high or equivalent schools.[355]
In 1862 the Novorossiysk Governor General again called for
“complete abolition of the Jewish Pale of Settlement” by asking
“to grant the right of universal residency to the entire [Jewish]
people.”[356]
Targeted permissions for universal residency of certain
Jewish groups were being issued at a slower but constant rate.
From 1865 acceptance of Jews as military doctors was
permitted, and right after that (1866-1867), Jewish doctors
were allowed to work in the ministries of Education and
Interior.[357] From 1879 they were permitted to serve as
pharmacists and veterinarians; permission was also granted
“to those preparing for the corresponding type of
activity,”[358] and also to midwives and feldshers, and “those
desiring to study medical assistant arts.”[359]
Finally, a decree by the Minister of Internal A airs Makov
was issued allowing residence outside the Pale to all those Jews
who had already illegally settled there.[360]
Here it is appropriate to add that in the 1860s “Jewish
lawyers … in the absence of the o cial Bar College during that
period were able to get jobs in government service without any
di culties.”[361]
Relaxations had also a ected the Jews living in border
regions. In 1856, when, according to the Treaty of Paris, the
Russian state boundary retreated close to Kishinev and
Akkerman, the Jews were not forced out of this newly-formed
frontier zone. And in 1858 “the decrees of Nicholas I, which
directed Jews to abandon the fty versts [an obsolete Russian
measure, a verst is slightly more than a kilometer] boundary
zone, were conclusively repealed.”[362] And from 1868
movement of Jews between the western provinces of Russia
and Polish Kingdom was allowed (where previously it was
formally prohibited).[363]
Alongside o cial relaxations to the legal restrictions, there
were also exceptions and loopholes in regulations. For
example, in the capital city of St. Petersburg “despite …
prohibitions, the Jews all the same settled in for extended
times”; and “with the ascension of Alexander II … the number
of Jews in St. Petersburg began to grow quickly. Jewish
capitalists emerged who began dedicating signi cant attention
to the organization of the Jewish community” there; “Baron
Goratsy Ginzburg, for example … L. Rozental, A Varshavsky,
and others.”[364] Toward the end of Alexander II’s reign, E. A.
Peretz (the son of the tax farmer Abram Peretz) became the
Russian Secretary of State. In the 1860s “St. Petersburg started
to attract quite a few members of the commercial, industrial
and intellectual [circles] of Jewry.”[365]
According to the data of the Commission for Arranging the
Jewish Way of Life, in 1880-81, 6,290 Jews were o cially
registered in St. Petersburg,[366] while according to other
o cial gures, 8,993; and according to a local census from
1881, there were 16,826 Jews in St. Petersburg, i.e., around 2%
of the total city population.[367]
In Moscow in 1856 the obligation of arriving Jewish
merchants to exclusively reside in the Glebovsky Quarter was
repealed; “the Jews were allowed to stay in any part of the city.
During the reign of Alexander II … the Jewish population of
Moscow grew quickly”; by 1880 it was around 16,000.”[368]
It was a similar situation in Kiev. After 1861, “a quick
growth of the Jewish population of Kiev had began” (from
1,500 in 1862, to 81,000 by 1913). From the 1880s there was
an in ux of Jews to Kiev. “Despite frequent police round-ups,
which Kiev was famous for, the numbers of Jews there
considerably exceeded the o cial gures…. By the end of the
19th century, the Jews accounted for 44% of Kiev
merchants.”[369]
Yu. I. Hessen calls “the granting of the right of universal
residency (1865) to artisans” most important. Yet Jews
apparently did not hurry to move out of the Pale. Well, if it was
so overcrowded in there, so constraining, and so deprived with
respect to markets and earnings, why then did they make
“almost no use of the right to leave the Pale of Settlement?” By
1881, in thirty-one of the interior provinces, Jewish artisans
numbered 28,000 altogether (and Jews in general numbered
34,000). Hessen explains this paradox in the following way:
prosperous artisans did not need to seek new places while the
destitute did not have the means for the move, and the middle
group, “which somehow managed from day to day without
enduring any particular poverty,” feared that after their
departure the elders of their community would refuse to
extend an annual passport to them for tax considerations, or
even “demand that the outgoing parties return home.”[370]
But one can strongly doubt all this statistics. We have just
read that in St. Petersburg alone there were at least twice as
many Jews than according to o cial data. Could the slow
Russian state apparatus really account for the mercury-quick
Jewish population within a de nite time and in all places?
And the growth of Jewish population of Russia was rapid
and con dent. In 1864 it amounted to 1,500,000 without
counting Jews in Poland.[371] And together with Poland in
1850 it was 2,350,000; and in 1860 it was already 3,980,000.
From the initial population of around 1,000,000 at the time of
the rst partitions of Poland, to 5,175,000 by the census of
1897 — that is, after a century, it grew more than ve times. (At
the start of the 19th century Russian Jewry amounted to 30%
of the world’s Jewish population, while in 1880 it was already
51%).[372]
This was a major historical event.At the time, its
signi cance was grasped neither by Russian society, nor by
Russian administration.
This fast numerical growth alone, without all other
peculiarities of the Jewish Question, had already put a huge
state problem for Russia. And here it is necessary, as always in
any question, to try to understand both points of view. With
such an enormous growth of Russian Jewry, two national
needs were clashing ever more strongly. On one hand was the
need of Jews (and a distinct feature of their dynamic 3,000-year
existence) to spread and settle as wide as possible among non-
Jews, so that a greater number of Jews would be able to engage
in manufacturing, commerce, and serve as intermediaries (and
to get involved into the culture of the surrounding population).
On the other was the need of Russians, as the government
understood it, to have control over their economic (and then
cultural) life, and develop it themselves at their own pace.
Let’s not forget that simultaneously with all these relief
measures for the Jews, the universal liberating reforms of
Alexander II were implemented one after another, and so
bene ting Jews as well as all other peoples of Russia. For
example, in 1863 the capitation [i.e., poll or head] tax from the
urban population was repealed, which meant the tax relief for
the main part of Jewish masses; only land taxes remained after
that, which were paid from the collected kosher tax.[373]
Yet precisely the most important of these Alexandrian
reforms, the most historically signi cant turning point in the
Russian history — the liberation of peasants and the abolition
of the Serfdom in 1861 — turned out to be highly unpro table
for Russian Jews, and indeed ruinous for many. “The general
social and economic changes resulting from the abolition of
peasant servitude … had signi cantly worsened the material
situation of broad Jewish masses during that transitional
period.”[374] The social change was such that the multi-million
disenfranchised and immobile peasant class ceased to exist,
reducing the relative advantage of Jewish personal freedom.
And the economic change was such that “the peasant, liberated
from the servitude, … was less in the need of services by the
Jew”; that is, the peasant was now at liberty from the strict
prohibition against trading his products and purchasing goods
himself — that is, through anyone other than a pre-assigned
middleman (in the western provinces, almost always a Jew).
And now, as the landowners were deprived of free serf labor, in
order not to be ruined, “they were compelled to get personally
engaged in the economy of their estates — an occupation
where earlier Jews played a conspicuous role as renters and
middlemen in all kinds of commercial and manufacturing
deals.”[375]
It’s noteworthy that the land credit introduced in those
years was displacing the Jew “as the nancial manager of the
manorial economy.”[376] The development of consumer and
credit associations led to “the liberation of people from the
tyranny of usury.”[377]
An intelligent contemporary conveys to us the Jewish mood
of the time. Although access to government service and free
professions was open to the Jews and although “the industrial
rights of the Jews were broadened” and there were “more
opportunities for education” and “on every … corner” the
“rapprochement  between the Jewish and Christian
populations was visible” and although the remaining
“restrictions … were far from being strictly enforced” and “the
o cials now treated the Jewish population with far more
respect than before,” yet the situation of Jews in Russia “at the
present time … is very dismal.” “Not without reason,” Jews
“express regret … for good old times.” Everywhere in the Pale of
Settlement one could hear “the Jewish lamentations about the
past.” For under serfdom an “extraordinary development of
mediation” took place; the lazy landowner could not take a step
without the “Jewish trader or agent,” and the browbeaten
peasant also could not manage without him; he could only sell
the harvest through him, and borrowed from him also. Before,
the Jewish business class “derived enormous bene t from the
helplessness, wastefulness, and impracticality of landowners,”
but now the landowner had to do everything himself. Also, the
peasant became “less pliant and timid”; now he often
establishes contacts with wholesale traders himself and he
drinks less; and this “naturally has a harmful e ect on the
trade in spirits, which an enormous number of Jews lives on.”
The author concludes with the wish that the Jews, as happened
in Europe, “would side with the productive classes and would
not become redundant in the national economy.”[378]
Now Jews had begun renting and purchasing land. The
Novorossiysk Governor General (1869) requested in a sta
report to forbid Jews in his region to buy land as was already
prohibited in nine western provinces. Then in 1872 there was a
memorandum by the Governor General of the Southwestern
Krai stating that “Jews rent land not for agricultural
occupations but only for industrial aims; they hand over the
rented land to peasants, not for money but for a certain
amount of work, which exceeds the value of the usual rent on
that land, and thereby they “establish a sort of their own form
of servitude.” And though “they undoubtedly reinvigorate the
countryside with their capital and commerce,” the Governor
General “considered concentration of manufacture and
agriculture in the same hands un-conducive, since only under
free competition can peasant farms and businesses avoid the
“burdensome subordination of their work and land to Jewish
capital, which is tantamount to their inevitable and impending
material and moral perdition.” However, thinking to limit the
renting of land to Jews in his Krai, he proposed to “give the Jews
an opportunity to settle in all of the Greater Russian
provinces.”[379]
The memorandum was put forward to the just-created
Commission for Arranging the Jewish Way of Life (the eighth
of the ‘Jewish Commissions’, according to count), which was
then highly sympathetic to the situation of the Jews. It received
a negative review which was later con rmed by the
government: to forbid the Jewish rent of land would be “a
complete violation of rights” of … landowners. Moreover, the
interests of the major Jewish renter “merge completely with
those of other landowners…. Well, it is true, that the Jewish
proletarians group around the major [Jewish] renters and live
o the work and means of the rural population. But the same
also happens in the estates managed by the landowners
themselves who to this time cannot manage without the help
of the Jews.”[380]
However, in the areas inhabited by the Don Cossacks, the
energetic economic advancement of the Jews was restricted by
the prohibition of 1880 to own or rent the real estate. The
provincial government found that “in view of the exclusive
situation of the Don Province, the Cossack population  which is
obligated to military service to a man, [this] is the only reliable
way to save the Cossack economy from ruin, to secure the
nascent manufacturing and commerce in the area.” For “a too
hasty exploitation of a region’s wealth and quick development
of industry … are usually accompanied by an extremely
uneven distribution of capital, and the swift enrichment of
some and the   impoverishment of others. Meanwhile, the
Cossacks must prosper, since they carry out their military
service on their own horses and with their own
equipment.”[381] And thus they had prevented a possible
Cossack explosion.
So what happened with the conscription of Jews into
military service after all those Alexandrian relief measures of
1856? For the 1860s, this was the picture: “When Jews manage
to nd out about the impending Imperial Manifest about
recruit enrollment before it is o cially published … all
members of Jewish families t for military service ee from
their homes in all directions….” Because of the peculiarities of
their faith and “lack of comradeship and the perpetual
isolation of the Jewish soldier … the military service for the
Jews was the most threatening, the most ruinous, and the most
burdensome of duties.”[382] Although from 1860 the Jewish
service in the Guards was permitted, and from
1861promotions to petty o cer ranks and service as clerks,
[383] there was still no access to o cer ranks.
I. G. Orshansky, a witness to the 1860s, certi es: “It is true,
there is much data supporting the opinion that in the recent
years the Jews in fact had not ful lled their conscription
obligations number-wise. They purchase old recruit discharges
and present them to the authorities”; peasants sometimes keep
them without knowing their value as far back as from 1812; so
now Jewish resourcefulness puts them to use. Or, they “hire
volunteers” in place of themselves and “pay a certain sum to
the treasury.” “Also they try to divide their families into
smaller units,” and by this each family claims the privilege of
“the only son,” (the only son was exempt from the military
service). Yet, he notes “all the tricks for avoiding recruitment …
are similarly encountered among the ‘pure-blooded’ Russians”
and provides comparative gures for Ekaterinoslav Guberniya.
I. G. Orshansky had even expressed surprise that Russian
peasants prefer “to return to the favorite occupation of the
Russian people, farming,” instead of wanting to remain in the
highly-paid military service.[384]
In 1874 a uni ed regulation about universal military service
had replaced the old recruit conscription obligation giving the
Jews a “signi cant relief.” “The text of the regulation did not
contain any articles that discriminated against Jews.”[385]
However, now Jews were not permitted to remain in residence
in the interior provinces after completion of military service.
Also, special regulations aimed “to specify the gure of male
Jewish population” were introduced, for to that day it largely
remained undetermined and unaccounted.” The governors
received “information about abuses of law by Jews wishing to
evade military service”[386]. In 1876 the rst “measures for
ensuring the proper ful llment of military duty by Jews”[387]
were adopted. The Jewish Encyclopedia saw “a heavy net of
repressive measures” in them. “Regulations were issued about
the registration of Jews at conscription districts and about the
replacement of Jews not t for service by Jews who were t”;
and about veri cation of the validity of exemptions for family
conditions: for violation of these regulations “conscription …
of only sons was permitted.”[388]
A contemporary and then in uential St. Petersburg
newspaper, Golos [The Voice] cites quite amazing gures from
the o cial governmental “Report on the Results of
Conscription in 1880…. For all [of the Russian Empire] the
shortfall of recruits was 3,309; out of this, the shortfall of Jews
was 3,054, which amounts to 92%.”[389]
Shmakov, a prominent attorney, not well-disposed toward
Jews, cites such statistics from the reference, Pravitelstvenniy
Vestnik [The Government Bulletin]: for the period 1876-1883:
“out of 282,466 Jews subject to conscription, 89,105 — that is,
31.6% — did not show up.” (The general shortfall for the whole
Empire was 0.19%.) The Administration could not help but
notice this, and a number of “steps toward the elimination of
such abuse” were introduced. This had an e ect, but only
short-term. In 1889 46,190 Jews were subjected to call-up, and
4,255 did not appear, that is 9.2%. But in 1891 “from a general
number of 51,248 Jews recorded on the draft list, 7,658, or
14.94%, failed to report; at that time the percentage of
Christians not reporting was barely 2.67%. In 1892, 16.38% of
Jews failed to report as compared with 3.18% of Christians. In
1894 6,289 Jews did not report for the draft, that is, 13.6%.
Compare this to the Russian average of 2.6%.[390]
However, the same document on the 1894 draft states that
“in total, 873,143 Christians, 45,801 Jews, 27,424
Mohammedans, and 1,311 Pagans” were to be drafted. These
are striking gures — in Russia, there were 8.7% Muslims
(according to the 1870 count) but their share in the draft was
only 2.9%! The Jews were in an unfavorable position not only
in comparison with the Mohammedans but with the general
population too: their share of the draft was assigned 4.8%
though they constituted only 3.2% of Russian population (in
1870). (The Christian share in the draft was 92% (87% of
Russian population).[391]
From everything said here one should not conclude that at
the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Jewish
soldiers did not display courage and resourcefulness during
combat. In the journal Russkiy Evrei [The Russian Jew] we can
nd convincing examples of both virtues.[392] Yet during that
war much irritation against Jews arose in the army, mainly
because of dishonest contractor-quartermasters — and “such
were almost exclusively Jews, starting with the main
contractors of the Horovits, Greger, and Kagan Company.”[393]
The quartermasters supplied (undoubtedly under protection of
higher circles) overpriced poor-quality equipment including
the famous “cardboard soles”, due to which the feet of Russian
soldiers ghting in the Shipka Pass were frostbitten.

   
In the Age of Alexander II, the half-century-old o cial drive to
accustom the Jews to agriculture was ending in failure.
After the repeal of disproportionate Jewish recruitment,
farming had “immediately lost all its appeal” for Jews, or, in
words of one government o cial, a “false interpretation of the
Manifest by them” had occurred, “according to which they now
considered themselves free of the obligation to engage in
farming,” and that they could now migrate freely. “The
petitions from the Jews about resettling with the intent to
work in agriculture had ended almost completely.”[394]
Conditions in the existing colonies remained the same if not
worse: “ elds … were plowed and sowed pathetically, just for a
laugh, or for appearance’s sake only.” For instance, in 1859 “the
grain yield in several colonies was even smaller than the
amount sown.” In the new ‘paradigmatic’ colonies, not only
barns were lacking, there was even no overhangs or pens for
livestock. The Jewish colonists leased most of their land to
others, to local peasants or German colonists. Many asked
permission to hire Christians as workers, otherwise
threatening to cut back on sowing even further — and they
were granted such a right, regardless of the size of the actual
crop.[395]
Of course, there were a uent Jewish farmers among the
colonists. Arrival of German colonists was very helpful too as
their experience could now be adopted by Jews. And the young
generation born there was already more accepting toward
agriculture and German experience; they were more
“convinced in the advantageousness of farming in comparison
to their previous life in the congestion and exasperating
competition of shtetls and towns.”[396]
Yet the incomparably larger majority was trying to get away
from agriculture. Gradually, inspectors’ reports became
invariably monotonic: “What strikes most is the general Jewish
dislike for farm work and their regrets about their former
artisan occupations, trade, and business”; they displayed
“tireless zeal in any business opportunity,” for example, “at the
very high point of eld work … they could leave the elds if
they discovered that they could pro tably buy or sell a horse,
an ox, or something else, in the vicinity.” [They had] a
predilection for penny-wise trade,” demanding, according to
their “conviction, less work and giving more means for living.”
“Making money was easier for Jews in nearby German, Russian,
or Greek villages, where the Jewish colonist would engage in
tavern-keeping and small trade.” Yet more damaging for the
arable land were long absences of the workers who left the area
for distant places, leaving only one or two family members at
home in the colonies, while the rest went to earn money in
brokerages. In the 1860s (a half-century after the founding of
colonies) such departure was permitted for the entire families
or many family members simultaneously; in the colonies quite
a few people were listed who had never lived there. After
leaving the colonies, they often evaded registering with their
trade guild in the new place, and “many stayed there for several
consecutive years, with family, unregistered to any guild, and
thus not subject to any kind of tax or obligation.” And in the
colonies, the houses built for them stood empty, and fell into
disrepair. In 1861, Jews were permitted to maintain drinking
houses in the colonies.[397]
Finally, the situation regarding Jewish agriculture had
dawned on the St. Petersburg authorities in all its stark and
dismal reality. Back taxes (forgiven on numerous occasions,
such as an imperial marriage) grew, and each amnesty had
encouraged Jews not to pay taxes or repay loans from now on.
(In 1857, when the ten years granted to collect past due taxes
had expired, ve additional years were added. But even in 1863
the debt was still not collected.) So what was all that resettling,
privileges and loans for? On the one hand, the whole 60-year
epic project had temporarily provided Jews with means “of
avoiding their duties before the state” while at the same time
failing to instill love for agriculture among the colonists.” “The
ends were not worthy of the means.” On the other hand,
“simply a permission to live outside of the Pale, even without
any privileges, attracted a huge number of Jewish farmers”
who stopped at nothing to get there.[398]
If in 1858 there were o cially 64,000 Jewish colonists, that
is, eight to ten thousand families, then by 1880 the Ministry
had found only 14,000, that is, less than two thousand
families.[399] For example, in the whole Southwestern Krai in
1872 the commission responsible for verifying whether or not
the land is in use or lay unattended had found fewer than 800
families of Jewish colonists.[400]
Russian authorities had clearly seen now that the entire
a air of turning Jews into farmers had failed. They no longer
believed that “their cherished hope for the prosperity of
colonies could be realized.” It was particularly di cult for the
Minister Kiselyov to part with this dream, but he retired in
1856. O cial documents admitted failure, one after another:
“resettlement of the Jews for agricultural occupation ‘has not
been accompanied by favorable results’.” Meanwhile “enormous
areas of rich productive black topsoil remain in the hands of
the Jews unexploited.” After all, the best soil was selected and
reserved for Jewish colonization. That portion, which was
temporarily rented to those willing, gave a large income
(Jewish colonies lived o it) as the population in the South
grew and everyone asked for land. And now even the worst
land from the reserve, beyond that allotted for Jewish
colonization, had also quickly risen in value.[401] The
Novorossiysk Krai had already absorbed many active settlers
and “no longer needed any state-promoted colonization.”[402]
So the Jewish colonization had become irrelevant for state
purposes.
And in 1866 Alexander II had ordered and end to the
enforcement of several laws aimed at turning Jews into
farmers. Now the task was to equalize Jewish farmers with the
rest of the farmers of the Empire. Everywhere, Jewish colonies
turned out to be incapable of independent existence in the new
free situation. So now it was necessary to provide legal means
for Jews to abandon agriculture, even individually and not in
whole families (1868), so they could become artisans and
merchants. They had been permitted to redeem their parcels of
land; and so they redeemed and resold their land at a pro t.
[403]
However, in the dispute over various projects in the Ministry
of State Property, the question about the reform of Jewish
colonies dragged out and even stopped altogether by 1880. In
the meantime with a new recruit statute of 1874, Jews were
stripped of their recruiting privileges, and with that any
vestiges of their interest in farming were conclusively lost. By
1881 “in the colonies ‘there was a preponderance of farmsteads
with only one apartment house, around which there were no
signs of settlement; that is, no fence, no housing for livestock,
no farm buildings, no beds for vegetables, nor even a single tree
or shrub; there were very few exceptions.’”[404]
The state councilor Ivashintsev, an o cial with 40 years
experience in agriculture, was sent in 1880 to investigate the
situation with the colonies. He had reported that in all of
Russia “no other peasant community enjoyed such generous
bene ts as had been given [to Jews]” and “these bene ts were
not a secret from other peasants, and could not help but arouse
hostile feelings in them.” Peasants adjacent to the Jewish
colonies “‘were indignant … because due to a shortage of land
they had to rent the land from Jews for an expensive price, the
land which was given cheaply to the Jews by the state in
amounts in fact exceeding the actual Jewish needs.’ It was
namely this circumstance which in part explained …   ‘the
hostility of peasants toward Jewish farmers, which manifested
itself in the destruction of several Jewish settlements’” (in
1881-82).[405]
In those years, there were commissions allotting land to
peasants from the excess land of the Jewish settlements.
Unused or neglected sectors were taken back by the
government. “In Volynsk, Podolsk, and Kiev guberniyas, out of
39,000 desyatins [one desyatin = 2.7 acres] only 4,082
remained [under Jewish cultivation].”[406] Yet several quite
extensive Jewish farming settlements remained: Yakshitsa in
the Minsk Guberniya, not known for its rich land, had 740
desyatins for 46 [Jewish] families;[407] that is, an average of 16
desyatins per family, something you will rarely nd among
peasants in Central Russia; in 1848 in Annengof of Mogilyov
Guberniya, also not vast in land, twenty Jewish families
received 20 desyatins of state land each, but by 1872 it was
discovered that there were only ten families remaining, and a
large part of the land was not cultivated and was choked with
weeds.[408] In Vishenki of Mogilyov Guberniya, they had 16
desyatins per family;[409] and in Ordynovshchina of Grodno
Guberniya 12 desyatins per [Jewish] family. In the more
spacious southern guberniyas in the original settlements there
remained: 17 desyatins per [Jewish] family in Bolshoi Nagartav;
16 desyatins per [Jewish] family in Seidemenukh; and 17
desyatins per family in Novo-Berislav. In the settlement of
Roskoshnaya in Ekaterinoslav Guberniya they had 15 desyatins
per family, but if total colony land is considered, then 42
desyatins per family.[410] In Veselaya (by 1897) there were 28
desyatins per family. In Sagaidak, there were 9 desyatins,
which was considered a small allotment.[411] And in Kiev
Province’s Elyuvka, there were 6 Jewish families with 400
desyatins among them, or 67 desyatins per family! And land
was rented to the Germans.”[412]
Yet from a Soviet author of the 1920s we read a categorical
statement that “Tsarism had almost completely forbidden the
Jews to engage in agriculture.”[413]
On the pages which summarize his painstaking work, the
researcher of Jewish agriculture V. N. Nikitin concludes: “The
reproaches against the Jews for having poor diligence in
farming, for leaving without o cial permission for the cities
to engage in commercial and artisan occupations, are entirely
justi ed ….We by no means deny the Jewish responsibility for
such a small number of them actually working in agriculture
after the last 80 years.” Yet he puts forward several excuses for
them: “[The authorities] had no faith in Jews; the rules of the
colonization were changed repeatedly”; sometimes “o cials
who knew nothing about agriculture or who were completely
indi erent to Jews were sent to regulate their lives….  Jews who
used to be independent city dwellers were transformed into
villagers without any preparation for life in the country.”[414]
At around the same time, in 1884, N. S. Leskov, in a
memorandum intended for yet another governmental
commission on Jewish a airs headed by Palen, had suggested
that the Jewish “lack of habituation to agricultural living had
developed over generations” and that it is “so strong, that it is
equal to the loss of ability in farming,” and that the Jew would
not become a plowman again unless the habit is revived
gradually.[415]
(Lev Tolstoy had allegedly pondered: who are those
“con ning the entire nation to the squeeze of city life, and not
giving it a chance to settle on the land and begin to do the only
natural man’s occupation, farming. After all, it’s the same as
not to give the people air to breathe. … What’s wrong with … 
Jews settling in villages and starting to live a pure working life,
which, probably, this ancient, intelligent, and wonderful people
has already yearned for?…”[416] — On what planet was he
living? What did he know about the 80 years of practical
experience with [Jewish] agricultural colonization?)
And yet the experience of the development of Palestine
where the Jewish settlers felt themselves at home had showed
their excellent ability to work the land; moreover, they did it in
conditions much more unfavorable than in Novorossiya. Still,
all the attempts to persuade or compel the Jews toward arable
farming in Russia (and afterwards in the USSR) had failed (and
from that came the degrading legend that the Jews in general
are incapable of farming).
And thus, after 80 years of e ort by the Russian government
it turned out that all that agricultural colonization was a
grandiose but empty a air; all the e ort, all the massive
expenditures, the delay of the development of Novorossiya —
all were for nothing. The resulting experience shows that it
shouldn’t have been undertaken at all.

   
Generally examining Jewish commercial and industrial
entrepreneurship, I. G. Orshansky justly wrote at the start of
the 1870s that the question about Jewish business activity is
“the essence of the Jewish Question,” on which “fate of Jewish
people in any country depends.” “[An entrepreneur] from the
quick, mercantile, resourceful Jewish tribe” turns over a ruble
ve times “while a Russian turns it two times.” There is
stagnation, drowsiness, and monopoly among the Russian
merchants. (For example, after the expulsion of the Jews from
Kiev, life there had become more expensive). The strong side of
Jewish participation in commercial life lies in the acceleration
of capital turnover, even of the most insigni cant working
capital. Debunking the opinion, that so-called Jewish corporate
spirit gives them a crucial advantage in any competition, that
“Jewish [merchants] always support each other, having their
bankers, contractors, and carriers,” Orshansky attributed the
Jewish corporate spirit only to social and religious matters, and
not to commerce, where, he claimed, Jews ercely compete
against each other (which is in contradiction with the Hazaka
prescribing separation of spheres of activity, which, according
to him, “had gradually disappeared following the change in
legal standing of Jews”[417]). He had also contested the opinion
that any Jewish trade does not enrich the country, that “it
exclusively consists of exploitation of the productive and
working classes,” and that “the pro t of the Jews is a pure loss
for the nation.” He disagreed, suggesting that Jews constantly
look for and nd new sales markets and thereby “open new
sources of earnings for the poor Christian population as
well.”[418]
Jewish commercial and industrial entrepreneurship in
Russia had quickly recovered from the two noticeable blows of
1861, the abolition of serfdom and the abolition of wine
farming. “The nancial role of Jews had become particularly
signi cant by the 1860s, when previous activities amassed
capital in their hands, while liberation of peasants and the
associated impoverishment of landowners created a huge
demand for money on the part of landowners statewide.
Jewish capitalists played a prominent role in organization of
land banks.”[419] The whole economic life of the country
quickly changed in many directions and the invariable Jewish
determination, inventiveness, and capital were keeping pace
with the changes and were even ahead of them. Jewish capital
owed, for example, to the sugar industry of the Southwest (so
that in 1872 one fourth of all sugar factories had a Jewish
owner, as well as one third of joint-stock sugar companies),
[420] and to the our-milling and other factory industries both
in the Pale of Settlement and outside. After the Crimean War
“an intensive construction of railroads” was underway; “all
kinds of industrial and commercial enterprises, joint stock
companies and banks arose” and “many Jews … found wide
application for their strengths and talents in those
undertakings … with a few of them getting very rich incredibly
fast.”[421]
“Jews were involved in the grain business for a long time but
their role had become particularly signi cant after the peasant
liberation and from the beginning of large-scale railroad
construction.” “Already in 1878, 60% of grain export was in the
hands of Jews and afterwards it was almost completely
controlled by Jews.” And “thanks to Jewish industrialists,
lumber had become the second most important article of
Russian export (after grain).” Woodcutting contracts and the
acquisition of forest estates by Jews were not prohibited since
1835. “The lumber industry and timber trade were developed
by Jews. Also, Jews had established timber export.” “The timber
trade is a major aspect of Jewish commerce, and, at the same
time, a major area of concentration of capital…. Intensive
growth of the Jewish timber trade began in the 1860-1870s,
when as a result of the abolition of serfdom, landowners
unloaded a great number of estates and forests on the market.”
“The 1870s were the years of the rst massive surge of Jews
into industries” such as manufacturing, ax, foodstu , leather,
cabinetry, and furniture industries, while “tobacco industry
had long since been concentrated in the hands of Jews.”[422]
In the words of Jewish authors: “In the epoch of Alexander II,
the wealthy Jewish bourgeoisie was … completely loyal … to
the monarchy. The great wealth of the Gintsburgs, the
Polyakovs, the Brodskys, the Zaitsevs, the Balakhovskys, and
the Ashkenazis was amassed exactly at that time.” As already
mentioned, “the tax-farmer Evzel Gintsburg had founded his
own bank in St. Petersburg.” Samuil Polyakov had built six
railroad lines; the three Polyakov brothers were granted
hereditary nobility titles.[423] “Thanks to railroad
construction, which was guaranteed and to a large extent
subsidized by the government, the prominent capital of the
Polyakovs, I. Bliokh, A. Varshavsky and others were created.”
Needless to say, many more smaller fortunes were made as
well, such as that of  A. I. Zaks, the former assistant to E.
Gintsburg in tax-farming, who had moved to St. Petersburg and
created the Savings and Loan Bank there; “he arranged jobs for
his and his wife’s many relatives at the enterprises he was in
charge of.”[424]
Not just the economy, the entire public life had been
transformed in the course of Alexandrian reforms, opening
new opportunities for mercurial Jewry. “In the government
resolutions permitting certain groups of Jews with higher
education to enter government service, there was no
restriction in regard to movement up the job ladder. With the
attainment of the Full State Advisor rank, a Jew could be
elevated to the status of hereditary nobility on common
grounds.”[425]
In 1864 the land reform began. It “a ected all social classes
and strata. Its statute … did not in any way restrict the
eligibility of Jews to vote in country administrative elections or
occupy elected country o ces. In the course of twenty-six
years of the statute being in e ect, Jews could be seen in many
places among town councilors and in the municipal executive
councils.”[426]
Similarly, the judicial statutes of 1864 stipulated no
restrictions for Jews. As a result of the judicial reform, an
independent judicial authority was created, and in place of
private mediators the legal bar guild was established as an
independent class with a special corporate structure (and
notably, even with the un-appealable right to refuse legal
assistance to an applicant “on the basis of moral evaluation of
his person,” including evaluation of his political views). And
there were no restrictions on Jews entering this class. Gessen
wrote: “Apart from the legal profession, in which Jews had
come to prominence, we begin noticing them in court
registries among investigative o cials and in the ranks of
public prosecutors; in some places we already see Jews in the
magistrate and district court o ces”; they also served as
jurors”[427] without any quota restrictions (during the rst
decades after the reform). (Remarkably, during civil trials the
Jews were taking conventional juror’s oath without any
provision made for the Jewish religion).
At the same time municipal reform was being implemented.
Initially it was proposed to restrict Jewish representation
among town councilors and in the municipal executive
councils by fty percent, but because of objections by the
Minister of Internal A airs, the City Statute of 1870 had
reduced the maximal share to one third; further, Jews were
forbidden from occupying the post of mayor.[428] It was feared
“that otherwise Jewish internal cohesion and self-segregation
would allow them to obtain a leading role in town institutions
and give them an advantage in resolution of public
issues.”[429] On the other hand, Jews were equalized in
electoral rights (earlier they could vote only as a faction),
which led to “the increased in uence of Jews in all city
governing matters (though in the free city of Odessa these
rules were in place from the very beginning; later, it was
adopted in Kishinev too. “Generally speaking, in the south of
Russia the social atmosphere was not permeated by contempt
toward Jews, unlike in Poland where it was diligently
cultivated.”[430])
Thus “perhaps … the best period in Russian history for Jews”
went on. “An access to civil service was opened for Jews…. The
easing of legal restrictions and the general atmosphere of ‘the
Age of Great Reforms’ had a ected the spirit of the Jewish
people bene cially.”[431] It appeared that under the in uence
of the Age of Great Reforms “the traditional daily life of the
Jewish populace had turned toward the surrounding world”
and that Jewry “had begun participating as far as possible in
the struggle for rights and liberty…. There was not a single area
in the economic, public and spiritual life of Russia una ected
by the creative energies of Russian Jews.”[432]
And remember that from the beginning of the century the
doors of Russian general education were opened wide for Jews,
though it took a long time for the unwilling Jews to enter.
Later, a well-known lawyer and public gure, Ya. L. Teytel
thus recalled the Mozyr grammar school of the 1860s: “The
director of the school … often … appealed to the Jews of Mozyr,
telling them about the bene ts of education and about the
desire of government to see more Jews in grammar schools.
Unfortunately, such pleas had fallen on deaf ears.”[433] So they
were not enthusiastic to enroll during the rst years after the
reform, even when they were o ered free education paid for by
state and when school charters (1864) declared that schools are
open to everyone regardless confession.[434] “The Ministry of
National Education … tried to make admission of Jews into
general education institutions easier”; it exhibited
“benevolence toward young Jewish students.”[435] (Here L.
Deutsch had particularly distinguished the famous surgeon N.
I. Pirogov, then a trustee of the Novorossiysk school district,
suggesting that he had “strongly contributed to the alleviation
of hostility among my tribesmen toward ‘goyish’ schools and
sciences.”[436]) Soon after the ascension of Alexander II, the
Minister of Education thus formulated the government plan:
“It is necessary to spread, by any means, the teaching of
subjects of general education, while avoiding interference with
the religious education of children, allowing parents to take
care of it without any restrictions or hindrances on the part of
government.”[437] Education in state public schools was made
mandatory for children of Jewish merchants and honorary
citizens.[438]
Yet all these measures, privileges and invitations, did not
lead to a drastic increase in Jewish admissions. By 1863 the
share of Jewish students in Russian schools reached 3.2%,[439]
that is, equal to their percentage in the population of the
empire. Apart from the rejection of Russian education by the
Jewry, there was a certain in uence from Jewish public leaders
who now saw their task di erently: “With the advent of the
Age of Great Reforms, ‘the friends of enlightenment’ had
merged the question of mass education with the question of
the legal situation of Jews,”[440] that is, they began struggling
for the immediate removal of all remaining restrictions. After
the shock of the Crimean War, such a liberal possibility seemed
quite realistic.
But after 1874, following enactment of the new military
statute which “granted military service privileges to educated
individuals,” almost a magical change happened with Jewish
education. Jews began entering public schools in mass.[441]
“After the military reform of 1874, even Orthodox Jewish
families started sending their sons into high schools and
institutions of higher learning to reduce their term of military
service.”[442] Among these privileges were not only draft
deferral and easement of service but also, according to the
recollections of Mark Aldanov, the possibility of taking the
o cer’s examination “and receiving o cer rank.” “Sometimes
they attained titles of nobility.”[443]
In the 1870s “an enormous increase in the number of Jewish
students in public education institutions” occurred, leading to
creation of numerous degreed Jewish intelligentsia.” In 1881
Jews composed around 9% of all university students; by 1887,
their share increased to 13.5%, i.e., one out of every seven
students. In some universities Jewish representation was much
higher: in the Department of Medicine of Kharkov University
Jews comprised 42% of student body; in the Department of
Medicine of Odessa University — 31%, and in the School of Law
— 41%.[444] In all schools of the country, the percentage of
Jews doubled to 12% from 1870 to 1880 (and compared to
1865, it had quadrupled). In the Odessa school district it
reached 32% by 1886, and in some schools it was 75% and
even more.[445] (When D. A. Tolstoy, the Minister of Education
from 1866, had begun  school reforms in 1871 by introducing
the Classical education standard with emphasis on antiquity,
the ethnic Russian intelligentsia boiled over, while Jews did not
mind).
However, for a while, these educational developments
a ected only “the Jewish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The
wide masses remained faithful … to their cheders and
yeshivas,” as the Russian elementary school o ered nothing in
the way of privileges.”[446] “The Jewish masses remained in
isolation as before due to speci c conditions of their internal
and outside life.”[447] Propagation of modern universal culture
was extremely slow and new things took root with great
di culty among the masses of people living in shtetls and
towns of the Pale of Settlement in the atmosphere of very strict
religious traditions and discipline.”[448] “Concentrated within
the Pale of Settlement, the Jewish masses felt no need for the
Russian language in their daily lives…. As before, the masses
were still con ned to the familiar hold of the primitive cheder
education.”[449] And whoever had just learned how to read
had to immediately proceed to reading the Bible in Hebrew.
[450]
From the government’s point of view, opening up general
education to Jews rendered state Jewish schools unnecessary.
From 1862 Jews were permitted to take posts of senior
supervisors in such schools and so “the personnel in these
schools was being gradually replenished with committed
Jewish pedagogues, who, acting in the spirit of the time,
worked to improve mastery of Russian language and reduce
teaching of speci cally Jewish subjects.”[451] In 1873 these
specialized schools were partially abolished and partially
transformed, some into primary specialized Jewish schools of
general standard, with 3 or 6 years study courses, and two
specialized rabbinical schools in Vilna and Zhitomir were
transformed into teacher training colleges.[452] The
government … sought to overcome Jewish alienation through
integrated education; however, the Commission for Arranging
the Jewish Way of Life was receiving reports both from Jewish
advocates, often high-ranked, and from the opponents of
reform who insisted that “Jews must never be treated … in the
same way as other ethnic groups of the Empire, that they
should not be permitted unrestricted residence all over the
country; it might be allowed only after all possible measures
were tried to turn Jews into useful productive citizens in the
places where they live now and when these measures would
prove their success beyond any doubt.”[453]
Meanwhile, through the shock of ongoing reforms,
especially of the abolition of the burdensome recruiting
obligation in 1856 (and through it the negation of the
corresponding power of Jewish leaders over their
communities), and then of the repeal of the associated special
taxation in 1863, “the administrative power of the community
leaders was signi cantly weakened in comparison to their
almost unrestricted authority in the past” inherited from the
Qahal (abolished in 1844), that omnipotent arbiter of the
Jewish life.[454]
It was then, at the end of 1850s and during the 1860s, when
the baptized Jew, Yakov Brafman, appeared before the
government and later came out publicly in an energetic
attempt at radical reformation of the Jewish way of life. He had
petitioned the Tsar with a memorandum and was summoned
to St. Petersburg for consultations in the Synod. He set about
exposing and explaining the Qahal system (though a little bit
late, since the Qahal had already been abolished). For that
purpose he had translated into Russian the resolutions of the
Minsk Qahal issued in the period between the end of the 18th
and the beginning of the 19th centuries. Initially he published
the documents in parts and later (in 1869 and 1875) as a
compilation, The Book of Qahal, which revealed the all-
encompassing absoluteness of the personal and material
powerlessness of the community member. The book “had
acquired exceptional weight in the eyes of the authorities and
was accepted as an o cial guidebook; it won recognition (often
by hearsay) in wide circles of Russian society”; it was referred
to as the “Brafman’s triumph” and lauded as an “extraordinary
success.”[455] (Later the book was translated into French,
German, and Polish.)[456] The Book of Qahal managed to instill
in a great number of individuals a fanatical hatred toward Jews
as the ‘worldwide enemy of Christians’; it had succeeded in
spreading misconceptions about Jewish way of life.”[457]
The ‘mission’ of Brafman, the collection and translation of
the acts issued by the Qahal had “alarmed the Jewish
community”; At their demand, a government commission
which included the participation of Jewish community
representatives was created to verify Brafman’s work. Some
“Jewish writers were quick to come forward with evidence that
Brafman distorted some of the Qahal documents and wrongly
interpreted others”; one detractor had even had doubts about
their authenticity.”[458] (A century later in 1976, The Short
Jewish Encyclopedia con rmed the authenticity of Brafman’s
documents and the good quality of his translation but blamed
him for false interpretation.[459] The Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia (1994) pointed out that “the documents published
by Brafman are a valuable source for studying the history of
Jews in Russia at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the
19th centuries.”[460] (Apropos, the poet Khodasevich was the
grand-nephew of Brafman).
Brafman claimed “that governmental laws cannot destroy
the malicious force lurking in the Jewish self-administration …
According to him, Jewish self-rule is not limited to Qahals …
but allegedly involves the entire Jewish people all over the
world … and because of that the Christian peoples cannot get
rid of Jewish exploitation until everything that enables Jewish
self-segregation is eliminated.” Further, Brafman  “view[ed] the
Talmud not as a national and religious code but as a ‘civil and
political code’ going ‘against the political and moral
development of Christian nations’”[461] and creating a
‘Talmudic republic’. He insisted that “Jews form a nation
within a nation”; that they “do not consider themselves subject
to national laws”;[462] that one of the main goals of the Jewish
community is to confuse the Christians to turn the latter into
no more than ctitious owners of their property.”[463] On a
larger scale, he “accused the Society for the Advancement of
Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia and the Alliance
Israélite Universelle for their role in the ‘Jewish world
conspiracy’.”[464] According to Yu. Gessen’s opinion, “the only
demand of The Book of Qahal … was the radical extermination
of Jewish self-governance” regardless of all their civil
powerlessness.[465]
The State Council, “having mitigated the uncompromised
style of The Book of Qahal, declared that even if administrative
measures would succeed in erasing the outward di erences
between Jews and the rest of population, “it will not in the least
eliminate the attitudes of seclusion and nearly the outright
hostility toward Christians which thrive in Jewish
communities. This Jewish separation, harmful for the country,
can be destroyed, on one hand, through the weakening of social
connections between the Jews and reduction of the abusive
power of Jewish elders to the extent possible, and, on the other
hand, through spreading of education among Jews, which is
actually more important.”[466]
And precisely the latter process — education — was already
underway in the Jewish community. A previous Jewish
Enlightenment, the Haskalah Movement of the 1840s, was
predominantly based on German culture; they were completely
ignorant of Russian culture (they were familiar with Goethe
and Schiller but did not know Pushkin and Lermontov).[467]
“Until the mid-19th century, even educated Jews, with rare
exceptions, having mastered the German language, at the same
time did not know the Russian language and literature.”[468]
However, as those Maskilim sought self-enlightenment and not
the mass education of the Jewish people, the movement died
out by the 1860s.[469] “In the 1860s, Russian in uences burst
into the Jewish society. Until then Jews were not living but
rather residing in Russia,[470] perceiving their problems as
completely unconnected to the surrounding Russian life.
Before the Crimean War the Jewish intelligentsia in Russia
acknowledged German culture exclusively but after the
reforms it began gravitating toward Russian culture. Mastery
of the Russian language “increases … self-esteem.”[471] From
now on the Jewish Enlightenment developed under the strong
in uence of the Russian culture. “The best … Russian Jewish
intellectuals abandoned their people no longer”; they did not
depart into the “area of exclusively personal interests”, but
cared “about making their people’s lot easier.” Well, after all,
Russian literature taught that the strong should devote
themselves to the weak.[472]
However, this new enlightenment of the Jewish masses was
greatly complicated by the strong religiosity of said masses,
which in the eyes of progressives was doubtlessly a regressive
factor,[473] whereas the emerging Jewish Enlightenment
movement was quite secular for that time. Secularization of
the Jewish public consciousness “was particularly di cult
because of the exceptional role religion played in the Diaspora
as the foundation of Jewish national consciousness over the
course of the many centuries.” And so “the wide development
of secular Jewish national consciousness” began, in essence,
only at the end of the century.[474] “It was not because of
inertia but due to a completely deliberate stance as the Jew did
not want risking separation from his God.”[475]
So the Russian Jewish intelligentsia met the Russian culture
at the moment of birth. Moreover, it happened at the time
when the Russian intelligentsia was also developing
expansively and at the time when Western culture gushed into
Russian life (Buckle, Hegel, Heine, Hugo, Comte, and Spencer).
It was pointed out that several prominent gures of the rst
generation of Russian Jewish intelligentsia (S. Dubnov, M. Krol,
G. Sliozberg, O. Gruzenberg, and Saul Ginzburg) were born in
that period, 1860-1866[476] (though their equally
distinguished Jewish revolutionary peers — M. Gots, G.
Gershuni, F. Dan, Azef, and L. Akselrod — were also born during
those years and many other Jewish revolutionaries, such as P.
Akselrod and L. Deych, were born still earlier, in the 1850s).
In St. Petersburg in 1863 the authorities permitted
establishment of the Society for the Spreading of
Enlightenment among the Jews in Russia (SSE) supported by
the wealthy Evzel Gintsburg and A. M. Brodsky. Initially, during
the rst decade of its existence, its membership and activities
were limited; the Society was preoccupied with publishing
activities and not with school education; yet still its activities
caused a violent reaction on the part of Jewish
conservatives[477] (who also protested against publication of
the Pentateuch in Russian as a blasphemous encroachment on
the holiness of the Torah). From the 1870s, the SSE provided
nancial support to Jewish schools. Their cultural work was
conducted in Russian, with a concession for Hebrew, but not
Yiddish, which was then universally recognized as a ‘jargon’.
[478] In the opinion of Osip Rabinovich, a belletrist, the
“‘spoiled jargon’ used by Jews in Russia cannot ‘facilitate
enlightenment, because it is not only impossible to express
abstract notions in it, but one cannot even express a decent
thought with it’.”[479] “Instead of mastering the wonderful
Russian language, we Jews in Russia stick to our spoiled,
cacophonous, erratic, and poor jargon.”[480] (In their day, the
German Maskilim ridiculed the jargon even more sharply.)
And so “a new social force arose in Russian Jewry, which did
not hesitate entering the struggle against the union … of
capital and synagogue”, as expressed by the liberal Yu. I.
Gessen. That force, nascent and for the time being weak, was
the Jewish periodical press in the Russian language.[481]
Its rst-born was the Odessa magazine Rassvet [Dawn],
published for two years from 1859 to 1861 by the above-
mentioned O. Rabinovich. The magazine was positioned to
serve “as a medium for dissemination of ‘useful knowledge,
true religiousness, rules of communal life and morality’; it was
supposed to predispose Jews to learn the Russian language and
to ‘become friends with the national scholarship’”[482] Rassvet
also reported on politics, expressing “love for the Fatherland”
and the intention to promote “the government’s views”[483]
with the goal “of communal living with other peoples,
participating in their education and sharing their successes,
while at the same time preserving, developing, and perfecting
our distinct national heritage.”[484] The leading
Rassvetpublicist, L. Levanda, de ned the goal of the magazine
as twofold: “to act defensively and o ensively: defensively
against attacks from the outside, when our human rights and
confessional (religious) interests must be defended, and
o ensively against our internal enemy: obscurantism,
everydayness, social life troubles, and our tribal vices and
weaknesses.”[485]
This last direction, “to reveal the ill places of the inner
Jewish life,” aroused a fear in Jewish circles that it “might lead
to new legislative repressions.” So the existing Jewish
newspapers (in Yiddish) “saw the Rassvet’s direction as
extremely radical.” Yet these same moderate newspapers by
their mere appearance had already shaken “‘the patriarchal
structure’ of [Jewish] community life maintained by the silence
of the people.”[486] Needless to say, the struggle between the
rabbinate and Hasidic Judaism went on unabated during that
period and this new 1860s’ struggle of the leading publicists
against the stagnant foundations of daily life had added to it.
Gessen noted that “in the 1860s, the system of repressive
measures against ideological opponents did not seem o ensive
even for the conscience of intelligent people.” For example,
publicist A. Kovner, ‘the Jewish Pisarev’ [a
radical Russian writer and social critic], could not refrain from
tipping o a Jewish newspaper to the Governor General of
Novorossiysk.[487] (In the 1870s Pisarev “was extremely
popular among Jewish intellectuals.”)[488]
M. Aldanov thinks that Jewish participation in Russian
cultural and political life had e ectively begun at the end of the
1870s (and possibly a decade earlier in the revolutionary
movement).[489]
In the 1870s new Jewish publicists (L. Levanda, the critic S.
Vengerov, the poet N. Minsky) began working with the general
Russian press. (According to G. Aronson, Minsky expressed his
desire to go to the Russo-Turkish War to ght for his brothers
Slavs). The Minister of Education Count Ignatiev then
expressed his faith in Jewish loyalty to Russia. After the Russo-
Turkish War of 1877-1878, rumors about major auspicious
reforms began circulating among the Jews. In the meantime,
the center of Jewish intellectual life shifted from Odessa to St.
Petersburg, where new writers and attorneys gained
prominence as leaders of public opinion. In that hopeful
atmosphere, publication of Rassvet was resumed in St.
Petersburg in 1879. In the opening editorial, M. I. Kulisher
wrote: “Our mission is to be an organ of expression of the
necessities of Russian Jews … for promoting the awakening of
the huge mass of Russian Jews from mental hibernation … it is
also in the interests of Russia…. In that goal the Russian Jewish
intelligentsia does not separate itself from the rest of Russian
citizens.”[490]
Alongside the development of the Jewish press, Jewish
literature could not help but advance — rst in Hebrew, then in
Yiddish, and then in Russian, inspired by the best of Russian
literature.[491] Under Alexander II, “there were quite a few
Jewish authors who persuaded their co-religionists to study the
Russian language and look at Russia as their homeland.”[492]
Naturally, in the conditions of the 1860s-1870s, the Jewish
educators, still few in numbers and immersed in Russian
culture, could not avoid moving toward assimilation, in the
same direction “which under analogous conditions led the
intelligent Jews of Western Europe to unilateral assimilation
with the dominant people.”[493] However, there was a
di erence: in Europe the general cultural level of the native
peoples was consistently higher and so in Russia these Jews
could not assimilate with the Russian people, still weakly
touched by culture, nor with the Russian ruling class (who
rejected them); they could only assimilate with the Russian
intelligentsia, which was then very small in number but
already completely secular, rejecting, among other things, their
God. Now Jewish educators also tore away from Jewish
religiosity and, “being unable to nd an alternative bond with
their people, they were becoming completely estranged from
them and spiritually considered themselves solely as Russian
citizens.”[494]
“A worldly rapprochement between the Russian and Jewish
intelligentsias” was developing.[495] It was facilitated by the
general revitalization of Jewish life with several categories of
Jews now allowed to live outside the Pale of Settlement.
Development of railroad communications and possibilities of
travel abroad — “all this contributed to a closer contact of the
Jewish ghetto with the surrounding world.”[496] Moreover, by
the 1860s “up to one-third … of Odessa’s Jews could speak
Russian.”[497] The population there grew quickly, “because of
massive resettlement to Odessa of both Russian and foreign
Jews, the latter primarily from Germany and Galicia.”[498] The
blossoming of Odessa by the middle of the 19th century
presaged the prosperity of all Russian Jewry toward the end of
the 19th – to the beginning of 20th century. Free Odessa
developed according to its own special laws, di ering from the
All-Russian statutes since the beginning of the 19th century. It
used to be a free port and was even open to Turkish ships
during the war with Turkey. “The main occupation of Odessa’s
Jews in this period was the grain trade. Many Jews were small
traders and middlemen (mainly between the landowners and
the exporters), as well as agents of prominent foreign and local
(mainly Greek) wheat trading companies. At the grain
exchange, Jews worked as stockbrokers, appraisers, cashiers,
scalers, and loaders”; “the Jews were in a dominant position in
grain commerce: by 1870 most of grain export was in their
hands. In 1910 … 89.2% of grain exports was under their
control.”[499] In comparison with other cities in the Pale of
Settlement, more Jews of the independent professions lived in
Odessa and they had better relations with educated Russian
circles, and were favorably looked upon and protected by the
high administration of the city…. N. Pirogov [a prominent
Russian scientist and surgeon], the Trustee of the Odessa
School District from 1856-1858, particularly patronized the
Jews.”[500] A contemporary observer had vividly described this
Odessa’s clutter with erce competition between Jewish and
Greek merchants, where “in some years half the city, from the
major bread bigwigs, to the thrift store owners, lived o the
sale of grain products.” In Odessa, with her non-stop business
commotion bonded by the Russian language, “it was
impossible to draw a line, to separate clearly a ‘wheat’
merchant or a banker from a man of an intellectual
profession.”[501]
Thus in general “among the educated Jews … the process of
adopting all things Russian … had accelerated.”[502]
“European education and knowledge of the Russian language
had become necessities”; “everyone hurried to learn the
Russian language and Russian literature; they thought only
about hastening integration and complete blending with their
social surroundings”; they aspired not only for the mastery of
the Russian language but for “for the complete Russi cation
and adoption of ‘the Russian spirit’, so that “the Jew would not
di er from the rest of citizens in anything but religion.” The
contemporary observer M. G. Morgulis wrote: “Everybody had
begun thinking of themselves as citizens of their homeland;
everybody now had a new Fatherland.”[503] “Members of the
Jewish intelligentsia believed that ‘for the state and public good
they had to get rid of their ethnic traits and … to merge with
the dominant nationality.’ A contemporary Jewish progressive
wrote, that ‘Jews, as a nation, do not exist’, that they ‘consider
themselves Russians of the Mosaic faith…’‘Jews recognize that
their salvation lies in the merging with the Russian
people’.”[504]
It is perhaps worth naming here Veniamin Portugalov, a
doctor and publicist. In his youth he harbored revolutionary
sentiments and because of that he even spent some time as a
prisoner in the Peter and Paul Fortress. From 1871 he lived in
Samara. He “played a prominent role in development of rural
health service and public health science. He was one of the
pioneers of therapy for alcoholism and the struggle against
alcohol abuse in Russia.” He also organized public lectures.
“From a young age he shared the ideas of Narodniks [a segment
of the Ruslsian intelligentsia, who left the cities and went to the
people (‘narod’) in the villages, preaching on the moral right to
revolt against the established order] about the pernicious role
of Jews in the economic life of the Russian peasantry. These
ideas laid the foundation for the dogmas of the Judeo-Christian
movement of the 1880s” (The Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood).
Portugalov deemed it necessary to free Jewish life from
ritualism, and believed that “Jewry could exist and develop a
culture and civilization only after being dissolved in European
peoples” (he had meant the Russian [people]).[505]
A substantial reduction in the number of Jewish conversions
to Christianity was observed during the reign of Alexander II as
it became unnecessary after the abolishment of the institution
of military cantonists and the widening of Jewish rights.[506]
And from now on the sect of Skhariya the Jew began to be
professed openly too.[507]
Such an attitude on the part of a uent Jews, especially those
living outside the Pale of Settlement and those with Russian
education, toward Russia as undeniably a homeland is
noteworthy. And so it had to be noticed and was. “In view of
the great reforms, all responsible Russian Jews were, without
exaggeration, patriots and monarchists and adored Alexander
II. M. N. Muravyov, then Governor General of the Northwest
Krai famous for his ruthlessness toward the Poles [who
rebelled in 1863], patronized Jews in the pursuit of the sound
objective of winning the loyalty of a signi cant portion of the
Jewish population to the Russian state.”[508] Though during
the Polish uprising of 1863 Polish Jewry was mainly on the side
of the Poles;[509] “a healthy national instinct prompted” the
Jews of the Vilnius, Kaunas, and Grodno Guberniyas “to side
with Russia because they expected more justice and humane
treatment from Russians than from the Poles, who, though
historically tolerating the Jews, had always treated them as a
lower race.”[510] (This is how Ya. Teitel described it: “The
Polish Jews were always detached from the Russian Jews”; they
looked at Russian Jews from the Polish perspective. On the
other hand, the Poles in private shared their opinion on the
Russian Jews in Poland: “The best of these Jews are our real
enemy.  Russian Jews, who had infested Warsaw, Lodz, and
other major centers of Poland, brought with them Russian
culture, which we do not like.”)[511]
In those years, the Russi cation of Jews on its territory was
“highly desirable” for the Tsarist government.[512] Russian
authorities recognized “socialization with Russian youth … as
a sure method of re-education of the Jewish youth to eradicate
their ‘hostility toward Christians’.”[513]
Still, this newborn Russian patriotism among Jews had clear
limits. The lawyer and publicist I. G. Orshansky speci ed that
to accelerate the process “it was necessary to create conditions
for the Jews such that they could consider themselves as free
citizens of a free civilized country.”[514] The above-mentioned
Lev Levanda, ‘a Jewish scholar’ living under the jurisdiction of
the Governor of Vilnius, then wrote: “I will become a Russian
patriot only when the Jewish Question is resolved conclusively
and satisfactory.” A modern Jewish author who experienced
the long and bitter 20th century and then had nally
emigrated to Israel, replied to him looking back across the
chasm of a century: “Levanda does not notice that one cannot
lay down conditions to Motherland. She must be loved
unconditionally, without conditions or pre-conditions; she is
loved simply because she is the Mother. This stipulation — love
under conditions — was extremely consistently maintained by
the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia for one hundred years,
though in all other respects they were ideal Russians”[515]
And yet in the described period “only small and isolated
groups of Jewry became integrated into ‘Russian civil society;
moreover, it was happening in the larger commercial and
industrial centers … leading to the appearance of an
exaggerated notion about victorious advance of the Russian
language deep into Jewish life,” all the while “the wide Jewish
masses were untouched by the new trends … isolated not only
from the Russian society but from the Jewish intelligentsia as
well.”[516] In the 1860s and 1870s, the Jewish people en masse
were still una ected by assimilation, and the danger of the
Jewish intelligentsia breaking away from the Jewish masses
was real. (In Germany, Jewish assimilation went smoother as
there were no “Jewish popular masses” there — the Jews were
better o socially and did not historically live in such crowded
enclaves).[517]
However, as early as the end of the 1860s, some members of
the Jewish intelligentsia began voicing opposition to such a
conversion of Jewish intellectuals into simple Russian patriots.
Perets Smolensky was the rst to speak of this in 1868: that
assimilation with the Russian character is fraught with
‘national danger’ for the Jews; that although education should
not be feared, it is necessary to hold on to the Jewish historical
past; that acceptance of the surrounding national culture still
requires perservation of the Jewish national character[518];
and that the Jews are not a religious sect, but a nation.”[519] So
if the Jewish intelligentsia withdraws from its people, the latter
would never liberate itself from administrative oppression and
spiritual stupor. (The poet I. Gordon had put it this way: “Be a
man on the street and a Jew at home.”)
The St. Petersburg journals Rassvet (1879-1882) and Russkiy
Evrei [Russian Jew] had already followed this direction.[520]
They successfully promoted the study of Jewish history and
contemporary life among Jewish youth. At the end of the
1870s and the beginning of the 1880s, cosmopolitan and
national directions in Russian Jewry became distinct.[521] “In
essence, the owners of Rassvet had already abandoned the
belief in the truth of assimilation…. Rassvet unconsciously
went by the path … of the awakening of ethnic identity … it
was clearly expressing aJewish national bias…. The illusions of
Russi cation … were disappearing.”[522]
 The general European situation of the latter half of the 19th
century facilitated development of national identity. There was
a violent Polish uprising, the war for the uni cation of Italy,
and then of Germany, and later of the Balkan Slavs. The
national idea blazed and triumphed everywhere. Obviously,
these developments would continue among the Jewish
intelligentsia even without the events of 1881-1882.
Meanwhile, in the 1870s, the generally favorable attitudes of
Russians toward Jews, which had developed during the
Alexandrian reforms, began to change. Russian society was
concerned with Brafman’s publications, which were taken
quite seriously.
All this coincided with the loud creation of the Alliance
Israélite Universelle in Paris in 1860; its goal was “to defend the
interests of Jewry” all over the world; its Central Committee
was headed by Adolphe Cremieux.[523] “Insu ciently well-
informed … about the situation of Jews in Russia,” the Alliance
“took interest in Russian Jewry” and soon “began consistently
working on behalf of Russian Jews.” The Alliance did not have
Russian branches and did not function within Russia. Apart
from charitable and educational work, the Alliance, in
defending Russian Jews, several times addressed Russian
government directly, though often inappropriately. (For
example, in 1866 the Alliance appealed to prevent the
execution of Itska Borodai who was convicted of politically
motivated arson. However, he was not sentenced to death at
all, and other Jews implicated in the a air were acquitted even
without the petition. In another case, Cremieux protested
against the resettlement of Jews to the Caucasus and the Amur
region — although there was no such Russian government plan
whatsoever. In 1869 he again protested, this time against the
nonexistent persecution of Jews in St. Petersburg.[524] 
Cremieux had also complained to the President of the United
States about similarly nonexistent persecutions against the
Jewish religion by the Russian government). Nevertheless,
according to the report of the Russian ambassador in Paris, the
newly-formed Alliance (with the Mosaic Tablets over the Earth
on its emblem) had already enjoyed “extraordinary in uence
on Jewish societies in all countries.” All this alarmed the
Russian government as well as Russian public. Yakov Brafman
actively campaigned against the Universal Jewish Alliance. He
claimed that the Alliance, “like all Jewish societies, is double-
faced (its o cial documents proclaim one thing while the
secret ones say another)” and that the task of the Alliance is “to
shield the Jewry from the perilous in uence of Christian
civilization.”[525] As a result, the Society for the Spreading of
Enlightenment among the Jews in Russia was also accused of
having a mission “to achieve and foster universal Jewish
solidarity and caste-like seclusion.”[526])
Fears of the Alliance were also nurtured by the very
emotional opening proclamation of its founders “to the Jews of
all nations” and by the dissemination of false Alliance
documents. Regarding Jewish unity the proclamation
contained the following wording: “Jews! … If you believe that
the Alliance is good for you, that while being the parts of
di erent nations you nevertheless can have common feelings,
desires, and hopes … if you think that your disparate e orts,
good aspirations and individual ambitions could become a
major force when united and moving in one direction and
toward one goal … then please support us with your sympathy
and assistance.”[527]
Later in France a document surfaced containing an alleged
proclamation “To Jews of the Universe” by Aldolphe Cremieux
himself. It was very likely a forgery. Perhaps it was one of the
drafts of the opening proclamation not accepted by the
Alliance founders. However it had resonated well with
Brafman’s accusations of the Alliance having hidden goals: “We
live in alien lands and we cannot take an interest in the variable
concerns of those nations until our own moral and material
interests are endangered … the Jewish teachings must ll the
entire world….” Heated arguments were exchanged in this
regard in Russian press. I. S. Aksakov concluded in his
newspaper Rus that “the question of the document under
discussion being … a falsehood is rather irrelevant in this case
because of veracity of the expressed herein Jewish views and
aspirations.”[528]
The pre-revolutionary Jewish Encyclopedia writes that from
the 1870s “fewer voices were heard in defense of Jews” in the
Russian press. “The notion of Jews allegedly united under the
aegis of a powerful political organization administered by the
Alliance Israélite Universelle was taking root in Russian
society.”[529] Thus the foundation of the Alliance produced in
Russia (and possibly not only in Russia) a reaction
counterproductive to the goals that the Alliance had speci ed.
If the founders of the Alliance could have foreseen the sheer
scale of condemnations against the idea of worldwide Jewish
solidarity and even the accusations of conspiracy which had
erupted after the creation of the organization, they might have
refrained from following that route, especially considering
that the Alliance did not alter the course of Jewish history.
After 1874, when a new military charter introducing the
universal military service obligation in Russia came into force,
“numerous news article on draft evasion by Jews began fueling
resentment against the Jews in the Russian society .”[530] The
Alliance Israélite Universelle was accused of intending “to care
about young Jews leaving Russia to escape conscription
enforced by the new law” so that “using support from abroad,
the Jews would have more opportunities than other subjects to
move out of the country.” (This question would arise once
again precisely a century later in the 1970s.) Cremieux replied
that the mission of the Alliance was “the struggle against
religious persecution” and that the Alliance had decided
“henceforth not to assist Jews trying to evade military
obligation in Russia.” Rather it would issue “an appeal to our
co-religionists in Russia in order to motivate them to comply
with all the requirements of the new law.”[531]
Besides crossing the border, another way to evade military
service was self-mutilation. General Denikin (who was quite a
liberal before and even during the revolution) described
hundreds of bitter cases of the self-mutilation he personally
saw during several years of service at the military medical
examination board in Volyn Guberniya. Such numerous and
desperate self-injuries are all the more striking considering
that it was already the beginning of the 20th century.[532]
As previously mentioned, the in ux of Jews into public
schools, professional schools and institutions of higher
learning had sharply increased after 1874 when a new military
charter stipulating educational privileges came into force. This
increase was dramatic. While calls to restrict Jewish
enrollment in public education institutions were heard from
the Northwestern Krai even before, in 1875, the Ministry of
Public Education informed the government that it was
impossible to admit all Jews trying to enter public educational
institutions without constraining the Christian
population.”[533]
It is worth mentioning here the G. Aronson’s regretful note
that even D. Mendeleev of St. Petersburg University “showed
anti-Semitism.”[534] The Jewish Encyclopedia summarizes all of
the 1870s period as “a turnaround in the attitudes of a part of
Russian intelligentsia … which rejected the ideals of the
previous decade especially in regard to … the Jewish
Question.”[535]
 An interesting feature of that time was that it was the press
(the rightist one, of course) and not governmental circles that
was highly skeptical (and in no way hostile) towards the
project of full legal emancipation of the Jews. The following
quotes are typical. How can “all the citizenship rights be
granted to this … stubbornly fanatical tribe, allowing them to
occupy the highest administrative posts? … Only education …
and social progress can truly bring together Jews and
Christians…. Introduce them into the universal family of
civilization, and we will be the rst to say words of love and
reconciliation to them.” “ Civilization will generally bene t
from such a rapprochement as the intelligent and energetic
tribe will contribute much to it. The Jews … will realize that
time is ripe to throw o the yoke of intolerance which
originates in the overly strict interpretations of the Talmud.”
“Until education brings the Jews to the thought that it is
necessary to live not only at the expense of Russian society but
also for the good of this society, no discussion could be held
about granting them more rights than those they have now.”
“Even if it is possible to grant the Jews all civil rights, then in
any case they cannot be allowed into any o cial positions
‘where Christians would be subject to their authority and
where they could have in uence on the administration and
legislation of a Christian country.’”[536]
The attitude of the Russian press of that time is well
re ected in the words of the prominent St. Petersburg
newspaper Golos: “Russian Jews have no right to complain that
the Russian press is biased against their interests. Most Russian
periodicals favor equal civil rights for Jews;” it is
understandable “that Jews strive to expand their rights toward
equality with the rest of Russian citizens”; yet … ”some dark
forces drive Jewish youth into the craziness of political
agitation. Why is that only a few political trials do not list Jews
among defendants, and, importantly, among the most
prominent defendants? … That and the common Jewish
practice of evading military service are counterproductive for
the cause of expanding the civil rights of Jews”; “one aspiring to
achieve rights must prove beforehand his ability to ful ll the
duties which come with those rights” and “avoid putting
himself into an extremely unfavorable and dismal position
with respect to the interests of state and society.”[537]
Yet, the Encyclopedia notes, “despite all this propaganda,
bureaucratic circles were dominated by the idea that the Jewish
Question could only be resolved through emancipation. For
instance, in March 1881 a majority of the members of the
Commission for Arranging the Jewish Way of Life tended to
think that it was necessary to equalize the Jews in rights with
the rest of the population.”[538] Raised during the two decades
of Alexandrian reforms, the bureaucrats of that period were in
many respects taken by the reforms’ triumphant advances.
And so proposals quite radical and favorable to Jews were put
forward on several occasions by Governors General of the
regions constituting the Pale of Settlement.
Let’s not overlook the new initiatives of the in uential Sir
Moses Monte ore, who paid another visit to Russia in 1872;
and the pressure of both Benjamin Disraeli and Bismarck on
Russian State Chancellor Gorchakov at the Berlin Congress of
1878. Gorchakov had to uneasily explain that Russia was not in
the least against religious freedom and did grant it fully, but
“religious freedom should not be confused with Jews having
equal political and civil rights.”[539]
Yet the situation in Russia developed toward emancipation.
And when in 1880 the Count Loris-Melikov was made the
Minister of the Interior with exceptional powers, the hopes of
Russian Jews for emancipation had become really great and
well-founded. Emancipation seemed impending and
inevitable.
And at this very moment the members of Narodnaya Volya
assassinated Alexander II, thus destroying in the bud many
liberal developments in Russia, among them the hopes for full
Jewish civil equality.
Sliozberg noted that the Tsar was killed on the eve of Purim.
After a series of attempts, the Jews were not surprised at this
coincidence, but they became restless about the future.[540]
 Chapter 5. After the Murder of Alexander II

The murder of the Tsar-Liberator, Alexander II, shocked the

people’s consciousness – something the Narodovol’tsi intended,
but that has been intentionally or unintentionally ignored by
historians with the passing of decades. The deaths of heirs or
tsars of the previous century – Aleksei Petrovich, Ivan
Antonovich, Peter III, and Paul – were violent, but that was
unknown to the people. The murder of March 1st, 1881, caused
a panic in minds nationwide. For the common people, and
particularly for the peasant masses it was as if the very
foundations of their lives were shaken. Again, as the
Narodovol’tsi calculated, this could not help but invite some
explosion.
And an explosion did occur, but an unpredictable one:
Jewish pogroms in Novorossiya and Ukraine.
Six weeks after the regicide, the pogroms of Jewish shops,
institutions, and homes “suddenly engulfed a vast territory,
with tremendous, epidemic force.”[541] “Indeed, it was rather
spontaneous. … Local people, who, for the most di erent
reasons desired to get even with the Jews, posted incendiary
posters and organized basic cadres of pogromists, which were
quickly joined by hundreds of volunteers, who joined without
any exhortation, caught up in the generally wild atmosphere
and promise of easy money. In this there was something
spontaneous. However, …  even the crowds, fueled by alcohol,
while committing theft and violence, directed their blows in
one direction only: in the direction of the Jews – the unruliness 
only stopping at the thresholds of Christian homes.”[542]
The rst pogrom occurred in Elizavetgrad, on 15 April.
“Disorder intensi ed, when peasants from the neighboring
settlements arrived, in order to pro t o the goods of the Jews.”
At rst the military did not act, because of uncertainty; nally
“signi cant cavalry forces succeeded in ending the
pogrom.”[543] “The arrival of fresh forces put an end to the
pogrom.”[544] “There was no rape and murder in this
pogrom.”[545] According to other sources: “one Jew was killed.
The pogrom was put down on 17 April by troops, who red
into the crowd of thugs.”[546] However, “from Elizavetgrad the
stirring spread to neighboring settlements; in the majority of
cases, the disorders were con ned to plundering of taverns.”
And after a week, a pogrom occurred in the Anan’evskiy Uezd
[district] of Odessa Guberniya [province], then in Anan’ev itself,
“where it was caused by some petty bourgeois, who spread a
rumor that the Tsar was killed by Jews, and that there was an
o cial order for the massacre of Jews, but the authorities were
hiding this.”[547] On 23 April there was a brief pogrom in Kiev,
but it was soon stopped with military forces. However, in Kiev
on 26 April a new pogrom broke out, and by the following day
it had spread to the Kiev suburbs – and this was the largest
pogrom in the whole chain of them; but they ended without
human fatalities.”[548] (Another tome of the same
Encyclopedia reports the opposite, that “several Jews were
killed.”[549])
After Kiev, pogroms took place again in approximately fty
settlements in the Kiev Guberniya, during which “property of
the Jews was subjected to plunder, and in isolated cases battery
occurred.” At the end of the same April a pogrom took place in
Konotop, “caused mainly by workers and railroad hands,
accompanied by one human fatality; in Konotop there were
instances of self-defense from the Jewish side.” There was still
an echo of the Kiev Pogrom in Zhmerinka, in “several
settlements of Chernigov Guberniya;” at the start of May, in the
small town of Smel, where “it was suppressed with arriving
troops the next day” (“an apparel store was plundered”). With
echoes in the course of May, at the start of summer pogroms
still broke out in separate areas in Ekaterinoslav and Poltava
guberniyas (Aleksandrovsk, Romni, Nezhin, Pereyaslavl, and
Borisov). Insigni cant disorders took place somewhere in
Melitopol Uezd. There were cases, when peasants immediately
compensated Jews for their losses.”[550]
“The pogrom movement in Kishinev, which began on 20
April, was nipped in the bud.”[551] There were no pogroms in
all of Byelorussia – not in that year, nor in the following years,
[552] although in Minsk a panic started among the Jews during
rumors about pogroms in the Southwestern Krai – on account
of a completely unexpected occurrence.[553]
And next in Odessa. Only Odessa already knew Jewish
pogroms in the 19th Century – in 1821, 1859, and 1871.
“Those were sporadic events, caused mainly by unfriendliness
toward Jews on the part of the local Greek population,”[554]
that is, on account of the commercial competition of the Jews
and Greeks; in 1871 there was a three-day pogrom of hundreds
of Jewish taverns, shops, and homes, but without human
fatalities.
I.G. Orshanskiy writes in more detail about this pogrom, and
states, that Jewish property was being intentionally destroyed:
heaps of watches from the jewelers – they did not steal them,
but carried them out to the roadway and smashed them. He
agrees that the “nerve center” of the pogrom was hostility
toward the Jews on the part of the Greek merchants,
particularly owing to the fact, that after the Crimean War the
Odessa Jews took the grocery trade and colonial commodities
from the Greeks. But there was “a general dislike toward the
Jews on the part of the Christian population of Odessa. … This
hostility manifested far more consciously and prominently
among the intelligent and a uent class than among the
common working people.” You see, however, that di erent
peoples get along in Odessa; “why then did only Jews arouse
general dislike toward themselves, which sometimes turns into
severe hatred?” One high school teacher explained to his class:
“The Jews are engaged in incorrect economic relations with the
rest of population.” Orshanskiy objects that such an
explanation removes “the heavy burden of moral
responsibility.” He sees the same reason in the psychological
in uence of Russian legislation, which singles out the Jews,
namely and only to place restrictions on them. And in the
attempt of Jews to break free from restrictions, people see
“impudence, insatiableness, and grabbing.”[555]
As a result, in 1881 the Odessa administration, already
having experience with pogroms – which other local
authorities did not have – immediately put down disorders
which were reignited several times, and “the masses of thugs
were placed in vessels and dragged away from the shore”[556] –
a highly resourceful method. (In contradiction to the pre-
revolutionary, the modern Encyclopedia writes, that this time
the pogrom in Odessa continued for three days).[557]
The pre-revolutionary Encyclopedia recognizes, that “the
government considered it necessary to decisively put down
violent attempts against the Jews”;[558] so it was the new
Minister of Interior A airs, Count N.P. Ignatiev, (who replaced
Loris-Melikov in May, 1881), who rmly suppressed the
pogroms; although it was not easy to cope with rising
disturbances of “epidemic strength” – in view of the complete
unexpectedness of events, the extremely small number of
Russian police at that time (Russia’s police force was then
incomparably smaller than the police forces in the West
European states, much less than those in the Soviet Union),
and the rare stationing of military garrisons in those areas.
“Firearms were used for defense of the Jews against
pogromists.”[559] There was ring in the crowd, and [people]
were shot dead. For example, in Borisov “soldiers shot and
killed several peasants.”[560] Also, in Nezhin “troops stopped a
pogrom, by opening re at the crowd of peasant pogromists;
several people were killed and wounded.”[561] In Kiev 1,400
people were arrested.[562]
All this together indicates a highly energetic picture of
enforcement. But the government acknowledged its
insu cient preparedness. An o cial statement said that
during the Kiev pogrom “the measures to restrain the crowds
were not taken with su cient timeliness and energy.”[563] In a
report to His Majesty in June 1881 the Director of the Police
Department, V.K. Plehve, named the fact that courts martial
“treated the accused extremely leniently and in general dealt
with the matter quite super cially” as “one of the reasons for
the development and insu ciently quick suppression of the
disorders’” Alexander III made a note in the report: “This is
inexcusable.”[564]
But forthwith and later it did not end without accusations,
that the pogroms were arranged by the government itself – a
completely unsubstantiated accusation, much less absurd,
since in April 1881 the same liberal reformer Loris Melikov
headed the government, and all his people were in power in the
upper administration. After 1917, a group of researchers – S.
Dubnov, G. Krasniy-Admoni, and S. Lozinskiy – thoroughly
searched for the proof in all the opened government archives –
and only found the opposite, beginning with the fact that,
Alexander III himself demanded an energetic investigation.
(But to utterly ruin Tsar Alexander III’s reputation a nameless
someone invented the malicious slander: that the Tsar –
unknown to anyone, when, and under what circumstances –
said: “And I admit, that I myself am happy, when they beat
Jews!” And this was accepted and printed in émigré liberation
brochures, it went into liberal folklore, and even until now,
after 100 years, it has turned up in publications as historically
reliable.[565] And even in the Short Jewish Encyclopedia: “The
authorities acted in close contact with the arrivals,”[566] that
is, with outsiders. And it was ‘clear’ to Tolstoy in Yasnaya
Polyana that it was “obvious”: all matters were in the hands of
the authorities. If “they wanted one – they could bring on a
pogrom; if they didn’t want one – there would be no pogrom.”)
[567]
As a matter of fact, not only was there no incitement on the
part of the government, but as Gessen points out: “the rise of
numerous pogrom brigades in a short time in a vast area and
the very character of their actions, eliminates the thought of
the presence of a single organizational center.”[568]
And here is another contemporary, living testimony from a
pretty much unexpected quarter – from The Black Repartition’s
Worker’s Lea et; that is, a proclamation to the people, in June
1881. The revolutionary lea et thus described the picture: “Not
only all the governors, but all other o cials, police, troops,
priests, zemstvo [elected district councils], and journalists –
stood up for the Kulak-Jews…The government protects the
person and property of the Jews”; threats are announced by the
governors “that the perpetrators of the riots will be dealt with
according to the full extent of the law…The police looked for
people who were in the crowd [of pogromists], arrested them,
dragged them to the police station…Soldiers and Cossacks used
the ri e butt and the whip…they beat the people with ri es and
whips…some were prosecuted and locked up in jail or sent to
do hard labor, and others were thrashed with birches on the
spot by the police.”[569]
Next year, in the spring of 1881, “pogroms renewed but
already not in the same numbers and not in the same scale as
in the previous year.”[570] “The Jews of the city of Balta
experienced a particularly heavy pogrom,” riots also occurred
in the Baltskiy Uezd and still in a few others. “However,
according to the number of incidents, and according to their
character, the riots of 1882 were signi cantly inferior to the
movement of 1881 – the destruction of the property of Jews
was not so frequent a phenomenon.”[571] The pre-
revolutionary Jewish Encyclopedia reports, that at the time of
the pogrom in Balta, one Jew was killed.[572]
A famous Jewish contemporary wrote: in the pogroms of the
1880s, “they robbed unlucky Jews, and they beat them, but
they did not kill them.”[573] (According to other sources, 6 – 7
deaths were recorded.) At the time of the 1880 – 1890s, no one
remembered mass killings and rapes. However, more than a
half-century passed – and many publicists, not having the need
to delve into the ancient [o cial] Russian facts, but then
having an extensive and credulous audience, now began to
write about massive and premeditated atrocities. For example,
we read in Max Raisin’s frequently published book: that the
pogroms of 1881 led to the “rape of women, murder, and
maiming of thousands of men, women, and children. It was
later revealed, that these riots were inspired and thought out
by the very government, which had incited the pogromists and
hindered the Jews in their self-defense.”[574]
A G.B. Sliozberg, so rationally familiar with the workings of
the Russian state apparatus – suddenly declared out-of-country
in 1933, that the pogroms of 1881 originated not from below,
but from above, with Minister Ignatiev (who at that time was
still not Minister – the old man’s memory failed him), and
“there was no…doubt, that threads of the work of the pogrom
could be found in the Department of Police”[575] – thus the
experienced jurist a orded himself dangerous and ugly
groundlessness.
 And yes, here in a serious present-day Jewish journal – from
a modern Jewish author we nd that, contrary to all the facts
and without bringing in new documents: that in Odessa in
1881 a “three-day pogrom” took place; and that in the Balta
pogrom there was “direct participation of soldiers and police”;
“40 Jews were killed and seriously wounded, 170 lightly
wounded.”[576] (We just read in the old Jewish Encyclopedia:
in Balta one Jew was killed, and wounded – several. But in the
new Jewish Encyclopedia, after a century from the events, we
read: in Balta “soldiers joined the pogromists…Several Jews
were killed, hundreds wounded, many women were
raped.”[577]) Pogroms are too savage and horrible a form of
reprisal, for one to so lightly manipulate casualty gures.
There – spattered, basted – is it necessary to begin
excavations again?
The causes of those rst pogroms were persistently
examined and discussed by contemporaries. As early as 1872,
after the Odessa pogrom, the General-Governor of the
Southwestern Krai warned in a report, that similar events
could happen in his Krai also, for “here the hatred and hostility
toward Jews has an historical basis, and only the material
dependence of the peasants upon Jews together with the
measures of the administration currently holds back an
indignant explosion of the Russian population against the
Jewish tribe.” The General-Governor reduced the essence of the
matter to economics, as he “reckoned and evaluated the
business and manufacturing property in Jewish hands in the
Southwestern Krai, and pointed to the fact, that, being
increasingly engaged in the rent of landed estates, the Jews
have re-rented and shifted this land to the peasants on very
di cult terms.” And such a causation “received wide
recognition in 1881 which was full of pogroms.”[578]
 In the spring of 1881, Loris-Melikov also reported to His
Majesty: “The deep hatred of the local population toward the
Jews who enslave it lies at the foundation of the present
disorders, but ill-intentioned people have undoubtedly
exploited this opportunity.”[579]
And thus explained the newspapers of the time: “Examining
the causes which provoked the pogroms, only a few organs of
the periodical press refer to the tribal and religious hatred; the
rest think that the pogrom movement arose on economic
grounds; in so doing, some see a protest in the unruly
behaviors directed specially against the Jews, in light of their
economic dominance over the Russian population”. Yet others
maintained that the mass of the people, in general squeezed
economically, “looked for someone to vent their anger out on”
and the Jews t this purpose because of their having little
rights.[580] A contemporary of these pogroms, the cited
educator, V. Portugalov, also said “In the Jewish pogroms of the
1880s, I saw an expression of protest by the peasants and the
urban poor against social injustice.”[581]
Ten years later, Yu. I. Gessen emphasized, that “the Jewish
population of the southern Guberniyas” in general was able to
“ nd sources of livelihood among the Jewish capitalists, while
the local peasantry went through extremely di cult times” as
it did not have enough land, “to which the wealthy Jews
contributed in part, by re-renting the landowner’s lands and
raising the rental fee beyond the ability of the peasants.”[582]
Let us not leave out still another witness, known for his
impartiality and thoughtfulness, whom no one accused of
being “reactionary” or of “anti-Semitism” – Gleb Uspenskiy. At
the beginning of the 1980s, he wrote: “The Jews were beaten
up, namely because they amassed a fortune on other people’s
needs, other people’s work, and did not make bread with their
own hands”; “under canes and lashes…you see, the people
endured the rule of the Tatar and the German but when the Yid
began to harass the people for a ruble – they did not take
it!”[583]
But we should note that when soon after the pogroms a
deputation of prominent Jews from the capital, headed by
Baron G. Gintsburg, came to Alexander III at the beginning of
May 1881, His Majesty con dently estimated that “in the
criminal disorders in the south of Russia, the Jews served only
as a pretext, that this business was the hand of the
anarchists.”[584] And in those same days, the brother of the
Tsar, the Grand Prince Vladimir Alexandrovich, announced to
the same Gintsburg, that: “the disorders, as is now known by
the government, have their sources not exclusively agitation
against the Jews, but an aspiration to the work of sedition in
general.” And the General-Governor of the Southwestern Krai
also reported, that “the general excited condition of the
population is the responsibility of propagandists.”[585] And in
this the authorities turned out to be well-informed. Such quick
statements from them reveal that the authorities did not waste
time in the investigation. But because of the usual
misunderstanding of the Russian administration of that time,
and its incomprehension of the role of publicity, they did not
report the results of the investigation to the public. Sliozberg
blames that on the central authority in that it did not even
make “attempts to vindicate itself of accusations of permitting
the pogroms.”[586] (True, but after all, it accused the
government, as we saw, of deliberate instigation and guidance
of the pogroms. It is absurd to start with proof that you are not
a criminal.)
Yet not everyone wanted to believe that the incitements
came from the revolutionaries. Here a Jewish memoirist from
Minsk recalls: for Jews, Alexander II was not a “Liberator” – he
did not do away with the Jewish Pale of Settlement, and
although the Jews sincerely mourned his death, they did not
say a single bad word against the revolutionaries; they spoke
with respect about them, that they were driven by heroism and
purity of thought. And during the spring and summer
pogroms of 1881, they did not in any way believe that the
socialists incited toward them: it was all because of the new
Tsar and his government. “The government wished for the
pogroms, it had to have a scapegoat.” And now, when reliable
witnesses from the South later indeed con rmed that the
socialists engineered them, they continued to believe that it
was the fault of the government.[587]
However, toward the start of the 20th Century, thorough
authors admitted: “In the press there is information about the
participation of separate members of the party, Narodnaya
Vol’ya [People’s Will] in the pogroms; but the extent of this
participation is still not clear. … Judging by the party organ,
members of the party considered the pogroms as a sort of
revolutionary activity, suggesting that the pogroms were
training the people for revolutionary action”;[588] “that the
action which was easiest of all to direct against the Jews now,
could, in its further development, come down on the nobles
and o cials. Accordingly, proclamations calling for an attack
on the Jews were prepared.”[589] Today, it is only super cially
talked about, like something generally known: “the active
propaganda of the Narodniks (both members of Narodnaya
Vol’ya and the Black Repartition was prepared to stir rebellion
to any fertile soil, including anti-Semitism.”[590]
From emigration, Tkachev, irrepressible predecessor of
Lenin in conspiratorial tactics, welcomed the broadening
pogrom movement.
Indeed, the Narodovol’tsi (and the weaker Chernoperedel’tsi
[members of Black Repartition) could not wait much longer
after the murder of the Tsar which did not cause instantaneous
mass revolution which had been predicted and expected by
them. With such a state of general bewilderment of minds
after the murder of the Tsar-Liberator, only a slight push was
needed for the reeling minds to re-incline into any direction.
In that generally unenlightened time, that re-inclination
could probably have happened in di erent ways. (For example,
there was then such a popular conception, that the Tsar was
killed by nobles, in revenge for the liberation of the peasants.)
In Ukraine, anti-Jewish motives existed. Still, it is possible the
rst movements of spring 1881 anticipated the plot of the
Narodovol’tsi – but right then and there they suggested which
way the wind would blow: it went against the Jews – never lose
touch with the people! A movement from the heart of the
masses – Of course! Why not use it? Beat the Jews, and later we
will get to the landowners! And now the unsuccessful pogroms
in Odessa and Ekaterinoslav were most likely exaggerated by
the Narodniks. And the movement of the pogromists along the
railroads, and participation of the railroad workers in the
pogroms  –  everything points to the instigation of pogroms by
easily mobile agitators, especially with that particularly
inciting rumor that “they are hiding the order of the Tsar,”
namely to beat the Jews for the murder of his father. (The
public prosecutor of the Odessa Judicial Bureau thus
emphasized, “that, in perpetrating the Jewish pogroms, the
people were completely convinced of the legality of their
actions, rmly believing in the existence of a Tsar’s decree,
allowing and even authorizing the destruction of Jewish
property.”[591] And according to Gessen, “the realization that
had taken root in the people, that the Jews stood outside of the
law, and that the authorities defending the Jews could not
come out against the people”[592] – had now taken e ect. The
Narodovol’tsi wanted to use this imaginary notion.)
 A few such revolutionary lea ets are preserved for history.
Such a lea et from 30 August 1881 is signed by the Executive
Committee of the Narodnaya Vol’ya and reads straight away in
Ukrainian: “Who seized the land, forests, and taverns? – The
Yid – From whom, muzhik [peasant], do you have to ask for
access to your land, at times hiding tears?…From Yids. –
Wherever you look, wherever you ask – the Yids are
everywhere. The Yid insults people and cheats them; drinks
their blood”…and it concludes with the appeal: “Honest
working people! Free yourselves!…”[593] And later, in the
newspaper, Narodnaya Vol’ya, No. 6: “All attention of the
defending people is now concentrated, hastily and
passionately, on the merchants, tavern keepers, and
moneylenders; in a word, on the Jews, on this local
“bourgeoisie,” who avariciously rob working people like
nowhere else.” And after, in a forward to a lea et of the
Narodnaya Vol’ya (already in 1883), some “corrections”: “the
pogroms began as a nationwide movement, ‘but not against
the Jews as Jews, but against Yids; that is, exploiter
peoples.’”[594] And in the said lea et, Zerno, the
Chernoperedel’tsi: “The working people cannot withstand the
Jewish robbery anymore. Wherever one goes, almost
everywhere he runs into the Jew-Kulak. The Jew owns the
taverns and pubs; the Jew rents land from the landowners, and
then re-rents it at three times higher to the peasant; he buys
the wholesale yields of crop and engages in usury, and in the
process charges such interest rates, that the people outright
call them “Yiddish [rates]”…”This is our blood!” said the
peasants to the police o cials, who came to seize the Jewish
property back from them.” But the same “correction” is in
Zerno: “…and far from all among the Jews are wealthy…not all
of them are kulaks…Discard with the hostility toward di ering
peoples and di ering faiths” – and unite with them “against
the common enemy”: the Tsar, the police, the landowners, and
the capitalists.[595]
However these “corrections” already came late. Such lea ets
were later reproduced in Elizavetgrad and other cities of the
South; and in the “South Russian Worker’s Soviet” in Kiev,
where the pogroms were already over, the Narodniks tried to
stir them up again in 1883, hoping to renew, and through them
– to spread the Russian-wide revolution.
Of course, the pogrom wave in the South was extensively
covered in the contemporary press in the capital. In the
“reactionary” Moskovskiye Vedomosti, M.N. Katkov, who always
defended the Jews, branded the pogroms as originating with
“malicious intriguers,” “who intentionally darkened the
popular consciousness, forcing people to solve the Jewish
Question, albeit not by a path of thorough study, but with the
help of “raised sts.”[596]
The articles by prominent writers stand out. I.S. Aksakov, a
steadfast opponent of complete civil liberty for the Jews,
attempted to warn the government “against too daring steps”
on this path, as early as the end of the 1850s. When a law came
out allowing Jews with higher degrees to be employed in the
administration, he objected (1862) saying that the Jews are “a
bunch of people, who completely reject Christian teachings, the
Christian ideal and code of morality (and, therefore, the entire
foundation of Russian society), and practice a hostile and
antagonistic faith.” He was against political emancipation of
the Jews, though he did not reject their equalization in purely
civil rights, in order that the Jewish people could be provided
complete freedom in daily life, self-management,
development, enlightenment, commerce, and even allowing
them to reside in all of Russia.” In 1867 he wrote, that
economically speaking “we should talk not about
emancipation for Jews, but rather about the emancipation of
Russians from Jews.” He noted the blank indi erence of the
liberal press to the conditions of peasant’s life and their needs.
And now Aksakov explained the wave of pogroms in 1881 as a
manifestation of the popular anger against “Jewish yoke over
the Russian local people”; that’s why during the pogroms, there
was “an absence of theft,” only the destruction of property and
“a kind of simple-hearted conviction in the justness of their
actions”; and he repeated, that it was worth putting the
question “not about Jews enjoying equal rights with Christians,
but about the equal rights of Christians with Jews, about
abolishing factual inequality of the Russian population in the
face of the Jews.”[597]
On the other hand, an article by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
was full of indignation: “The history has never drawn on its
pages a question more di cult, more devoid of humanity, and
more tortuous, than the Jewish Question…There is not a more
inhumane and mad legend than that coming out from the dark
ravines of the distant past…carrying the mark of disgrace,
alienation, and hatred…Whatever the Jew undertakes, he
always remains stigmatized.”[598] Shchedrin did not deny,
“that a signi cant contingent of moneylenders and exploiters
of various kinds are enlisted from the Jews,” but he asked, can
we really place blame on the whole Jewish tribe, on account of
one type?[599]
Examining the whole discussion of that time, a present-day
Jewish author writes: “the liberal, and conditionally speaking,
progressive press was defending the thugs.”[600] And the pre-
revolutionary Jewish Encyclopedia comes to a similar
conclusion: “Yet in the progressive circles, sympathies toward
the woes of the Jewish people were not displayed su ciently …
they looked at this catastrophe from the viewpoint of the
aggressor, presenting him as destitute peasant, and completely
ignoring the moral su erings and material situation of the
mobbed Jewish people.” And even the radical Patriotic Notes
evaluated it thus: the people rose up against the Jews because
“they took upon themselves the role of pioneers of Capitalism,
because they live according to the new truth and con dently
draw their own comfortable prosperity from that new source
at the expense of the surrounding community,” and therefore,
“it was necessary that ‘the people are protected from the Jew,
and the Jew from the people’, and for this the condition of the
peasant needs to be improved.”[601]
In A Letter from a Christian on the Jewish Question, published
in the Jewish magazine Rassvet, D. Mordovtsev, a writer
sympathetic to the Jews, pessimistically urged the Jews “to
emigrate to Palestine and America, seeing only in this a
solution to the Jewish Question in Russia.”[602]
Jewish social-political journalism and the memoirs of this
period expressed grievance because the printed publications
against the Jews, both from the right and from the
revolutionary left, followed immediately after the pogroms.
Soon (and all the more energetically because of the pogroms)
the government would strengthen restrictive measures against
the Jews. It is necessary to take note of and understand this
insult.
It is necessary to thoroughly examine the position of the
government. The general solutions to the problem were being
sought in discussions in government and administrative
spheres. In a report to His Majesty, N.P. Ignatiev, the new
Minister of Internal A airs, outlined the scope of the problem
for the entire previous reign: “Recognizing the harm to the
Christian population from the Jewish economic activity, their
tribal exclusivity and religious fanaticism, in the last 20 years
the government has tried to blend the Jews with the rest of the
population using a whole row of initiatives, and has almost
made the Jews equal in rights with the native inhabitants.”
However, the present anti-Jewish movement “incontrovertibly
proves, that despite all the e orts of the government, the
relations between the Jews and the native population of these
regions remain abnormal as in the past,” because of the
economic issues: after the easing of civil restrictions, the Jews
have not only seized commerce and trade, but they have
acquired signi cant landed property. “Moreover, because of
their cohesion and solidarity, they have, with few exceptions,
directed all their e orts not toward the increase of the
productive strength of the state, but primarily toward the
exploitation of the poorest classes of the surrounding
population.” And now, after we have crushed the disorders and
defended the Jews from violence, “it seems ‘just and urgent to
adopt no less energetic measures for the elimination of these
abnormal conditions…between the native inhabitants and the
Jews, and to protect the population from that harmful activity
of the Jews.’”[603]
And in accordance with that, in November 1881, the
governmental commissions, comprised of “representatives of
all social strata and groups (including Jewish), were established
in 15 guberniyas of the Jewish Pale of Settlement, and also in
Kharkov Guberniya.[604] The commissions ought to examine
the Jewish Question and propose their ideas on its
resolution.”[605] It was expected that the commissions will
provide answers on many factual questions, such as: “In
general, which aspects of Jewish economic activity are most
harmful for the way of life of the native population in the
region?” Which di culties hinder the enforcement of laws
regulating the purchase and rental of land, trade in spirits, and
usury by Jews? Which changes are necessary to eliminate
evasion of these laws by Jews? “Which legislative and
administrative measures in general are necessary to negate the
harmful in uence of the Jews” in various kinds of economic
activity?[606] The liberal “Palenskaya” inter-ministerial “High
Commission” established two years later for the revision of
laws on the Jews, noted that “the harm from the Jews, their bad
qualities, and traits” were  somewhat recognized a priori in the
program that was given to the provincial commissions.[607]
Yet many administrators in those commissions were pretty
much liberal as they were brought up in the stormy epoch of
Tsar Alexander II’s reforms, and moreover, public delegates
participated also. And Ignatiev’s ministry received rather
inconsistent answers. Several commissions were in favor of
abolishing the Jewish Pale of Settlement. “Individual members
[of the commissions] – and they were not few” – declared that
the only just solution to the Jewish Question was the general
repeal of all restrictions.[608] On the other hand, the Vilnius
Commission stated that “because of mistakenly understood
notion of universal human equality wrongly applied to
Judaism to the detriment of the native people, the Jews
managed to “seize economic supremacy”; that the Jewish law
permits [them] “to pro t from any weakness and gullibility of
gentile.” “Let the Jews renounce their seclusion and isolation,
let them reveal the secrets of their social organization allowing
light where only darkness appeared to outsiders; and only then
can one think about opening new spheres of activity to the
Jews, without fear that Jews wish to use the bene ts of the
nation, [while] not being members of the nation, and not
taking upon themselves a share of the national burden.”[609]
“Regarding residence in the villages and hamlets, the
commissions found it necessary to restrict the rights of the
Jews”: to forbid them to live there altogether or to make it
conditional upon the agreement of the village communities.
Some commissions recommended completely depriving the
Jews of the right to possess real estate outside of the cities and
small towns, and others proposed establishing restrictions.
The commissions showed the most unanimity in prohibiting
any Jewish monopoly on alcohol sales in villages. The Ministry
gathered the opinions of the governors, and “with rare
exceptions, comments from the regional authorities were not
favorable to the Jews”: to protect the Christian population
“from so haughty a tribe as the Jews”; “one can never expect the
Jewish tribe to dedicate its talents…to the bene t of the
homeland”; “Talmudic morals do not place any obstacles before
the Jews if it is a question of making money at the expense of
someone outside of the tribe.” Yet the Kharkov General-
Governor did not consider it possible to take restrictive
measures against the whole Jewish population, “without
distinguishing the lawful from the guilty”; he proposed to
“expand the right of movement for Jews and spread
enlightenment among them.”[610]
That same autumn, by Ignatiev’s initiative, a special
“Committee on the Jews” was established (the ninth by count
already, with three permanent members, two of them
professors), with the task of analyzing the materials of the
provincial commissions and in order to draft a legislative bill.
[611] (The previous “Commission for the Organization of the
Life of the Jews” – that is, the eighth committee on Jews, which
existed since 1872 – was soon abolished, “due to mismatch
between its purpose and the present state of the Jewish
Question.”) The new Committee proceeded with the conviction
that the goal of integrating the Jews with the rest of the
population, toward which the government had striven for the
last 25 years, had turned out to be unattainable.[612]
Therefore, “the di culty of resolving the complicated Jewish
Question compels [us] to turn for the instruction to the old
times, when various novelties did not yet penetrate neither
ours, nor foreign legislations, and did not bring with them the
regrettable consequences, which usually appear upon adoption
of new things that are contrary to the national spirit of the
country.” From time immemorial the Jews were considered
aliens, and should be considered as such.[613]
Gessen comments: “the reactionary could not go further”.
And if you were so concerned about the national foundations
then why you didn’t worry about genuine emancipation of the
peasantry during the past 20 years?
And it was also true that Tsar Alexander II’s emancipation of
the peasants proceeded in a confused, unwholesome and
corrupt environment.
However: “in government circles there were still people, who
did not consider it possible, in general, to change the policy of
the preceding reign”[614] – and they were in important posts
and strong. And some ministers opposed Ignatiev’s proposals.
Seeing resistance, he divided the proposed measures into
fundamental (for which passing in the regular way required
moving through the government and the State Council) and
provisional, which could by law be adopted through an
accelerated and simpli ed process. “To convince the rural
population that the government protects them from the
exploitation by Jews, the permanent residence of Jews outside
of their towns and shtetls (and the “government was powerless
to protect them from pogroms in the scattered villages”), and
buying and renting real estate there, and also trading in spirits
was prohibited. And regarding the Jews already living there: it
granted to the rural communities the right “to evict the Jews
from the villages, based upon a verdict of the village meeting.”
But other ministers – particularly the Minister of Finance, N.
Kh. Bunge, and the Minister of Justice, D.N. Nabokov, did not let
Ignatiev implement these measures: they rejected the bill,
claiming that it was impossible to adopt such extensive
prohibitive measures, “without debating them within the
usual legislative process.”[615]
 So much for the boundless and malicious arbitrariness of the
Russian autocracy.
Ignatiev’s fundamental measures did not pass, and the
provisional ones passed only in a greatly truncated form.
Rejected were the provisions to evict the Jews already living in
the villages, to forbid their trade in alcohol or their renting and
buying land in villages. And only because of the fear that the
pogroms might happen again around Easter of 1882, a
temporary measure (until passing of comprehensive
legislation about the Jews) was passed which prohibited the
Jews again, henceforth to take residence and enter into
ownership, or make use of real estate property outside of their
towns and shtetls (that is, in the villages), and also forbade
them “to trade on Sundays and Christian holidays.”[616]
Concerning the Jewish ownership of local real estate, the
government acted “to suspend temporarily the completion of
sales and purchase agreements and loans in the name of the
Jews…the notarization…of real estate rental agreements … and
the proxy management and disposal of property by them”.
[617] This mere relic of Ignatiev’s proposed measures was
approved on 3 May 1882, under title of Temporary Regulations
(known as the May Regulations). And Ignatiev himself went
into retirement after a month and his “Committee on the Jews”
ceased its brief existence, and a new Minister of Internal
A airs, Count D.A. Tolstoy, issued a stern directive against
possible new pogroms, placing full responsibility on the
provincial authorities for the timely prevention of disorders.
[618]
Thus, according to the Temporary Regulations of 1882, the
Jews who had settled in rural regions before the 3rd of May,
were not evicted; their economic activity there was essentially
unrestricted. Moreover, these regulations only applied to the
“guberniyas of permanent Jewish settlement,” not to the
guberniyas of the Russian interior. And these restrictions did
not extend to doctors, attorneys, and engineers – i.e.,
individuals with “the right of universal residence according to
educational requirement.” These restrictions also did not a ect
any “existing Jewish colonies engaged in agriculture”; and
there was still a considerable (and later growing) list of rural
settlements, according to which, “in exception” to the
Temporary Regulations, Jews were permitted to settle.[619]
After issuance of the “Regulations,” inquiries began owing
from the regions and Senate explanations were issued in
response. For example: that “journeys through rural regions,
temporary stops and even temporary stays of individuals
without the right of permanent residence are not prohibited by
the Law of 3 May 1882”; that “only the rent of real estates and
agrarian lands is prohibited, while rent of all other types of real
estate property, such as distillation plants, … buildings for
trade and industry, and living quarters is not prohibited.” Also,
“the Senate deems permissible the notarization of lumbering
agreements with the Jews, even if the clearing of a forest was
scheduled for a prolonged period, and even if the buyer of the
forest was allowed use of the underbrush land”; and nally,
that violations of the Law of 3rd May would not be subjected to
criminal prosecution.[620]
It is necessary to recognize these Senate clari cations as
mitigating, and in many respects, good-natured; “in the 1880s
the Senate wrestled with … the arbitrary interpretation of the
laws.”[621] However, the regulations forbidding the Jews to
settle “outside the towns and shtetls” and/or to own “real
estate”… “extremely restricted alcohol distillation business by
Jews,” as “Jewish participation in distillation before the 3rd
May Regulations was very signi cant.”[622]
It was exactly this measure to restrict the Jews in the rural
wine trade ( rst proposed as early as 1804) that stirred
universal indignation at the “extraordinary severity” “of the
May Regulations,” even though it was only implemented, and
incompletely at that, in 1882. The government stood before a
di cult choice: to expand the wine industry in the face of
peasant proneness [to drunkeness] and thus to deepen the
peasant poverty, or to restrict the free growth of this trade by
letting the Jews already living in the villages to remain while
stopping others from coming. And that choice – restriction –
was deemed cruel.
Yet how many Jews lived in rural regions in 1882? We have
already come across post-revolutionary estimates from the
state archives: one third of the entire Jewish population of “the
Pale” lived in villages, another third lived in shtetls, 29% lived
in mid-size cities, and 5% in the major cities.[623] So the
Regulations now prevented the “village” third from further
growth?
Today these May Regulations are portrayed as a decisive and
irrevocably repressive boundary of Russian history. A Jewish
author writes: this was the rst push toward emigration! – rst
“internal” migration, then massive overseas migration.[624] –
The rst cause of Jewish emigration was the “Ignatiev
Temporary Regulations, which violently threw around one
million Jews out of the hamlets and villages, and into the
towns and shtetls of the Jewish Pale.”[625]
Wait a second, how did they throw the Jews out and an entire
million at that? Didn’t they apparently only prevent new
arrivals? No, no! It was already picked up and sent rolling: that
from 1882 the Jews were not only forbidden to live in the villages
everywhere, but in all the cities, too, except in the 13 guberniyas;
that they were moved back to the shtetls of “the Pale” – that is
why the mass emigration of Jews from Russia began![626]
Well, set the record straight. The rst time the idea about
Jewish emigration from Russia to America voiced was as early
as in 1869 at the Conference of the Alliance (of the World
Jewish Union) – with the thought that the rst who settled
there with the help of the Alliance and local Jews “would
become a magnet for their Russian co-religionists.”[627]
Moreover, “the beginning of the emigration [of Jews from
Russia] dates back to the mid-19th Century and gains
signi cant momentum… after the pogroms of 1881. But only
since the mid-1890s does emigration become a major
phenomenon of Jewish economic life, assuming a massive
scale”[628] –  note that it says economic life, not political life.
From a global viewpoint Jewish immigration into the United
States in the 19th Century was part of an enormous century-
long and worldwide historical process. There were three
successive waves of Jewish emigration to America: rst the
Spanish-Portuguese (Sephardic) wave, then the German wave
(from Germany and Austria-Hungary), and only then from
Eastern Europe and Russia (Ashkenazik).[629] For reasons not
addressed here, a major historical movement of Jewish
emigration to the U.S. took place in the 19th Century, and not 
only from Russia. In light of the very lengthy Jewish history, it
is di cult to overestimate the signi cance of this emigration.
And from the Russian Empire “a river of Jewish emigration
went from all the guberniyas that made up the Jewish Pale of
Settlement; but Poland, Lithuania, and Byelorussia gave the
greatest number of emigrants”;[630] meaning they did not
come from Ukraine, which was just experiencing the pogroms.
The reason for this was this emigration was the same
throughout  –  overcrowding, which created inter-Jewish
economic competition. Moreover, relying on Russian state
statistics, V. Tel’nikov turns our attention to the last two
decades of the 19th Century; just after the pogroms of 1881 –
1882, comparing the resettlement of Jews from the Western
Krai, where there were no pogroms, to the Southwest, where
they were. The latter was numerically not less and was possibly
more than the Jewish departure out of Russia.[631] In addition,
in 1880, according to o cial data, 34,000 Jews lived in the
internal guberniyas, while seventeen years later (according to
the census of 1897) there were already 315,000 – a nine-fold
increase.[632]
Of course, the pogroms of 1881 – 1882 caused a shock but
was it really a shock for the whole of Ukraine? For example,
Sliozberg writes: “The 1881 pogroms did not alarm the Jews in
Poltava, and soon they forgot about them.” In the 1880s in
Poltava “the Jewish youth did not know about the existence of
the Jewish Question, and in general, did not feel isolated from
the Russian youth.”[633] The pogroms of 1881 – 82, in their
complete suddenness, could have seemed unrepeatable, and
the unchanging Jewish economic pull was prevailing: go settle
hither, where less Jews live.
But undoubtedly and inarguably, a decisive turn of
progressive and educated Jewry away from the hopes of a
complete integration with the nation of “Russia” and the
Russian population began in 1881. G. Aronson even concluded
hastily, that “the 1871 Odessa Pogrom” “shattered the illusions
of assimilation.”[634] No, it wasn’t that way yet! But if, for
example, we follow the biographies of prominent and educated
Russian Jews, then around 1881 – 1882 we will note in many of
them a drastic change in their attitudes toward Russia and
about possibilities of complete assimilation. By then it was
already clear and not contested that the pogrom wave was
indubitably spontaneous without any evidence for the
complicity of the authorities. On the contrary, the involvement
of the revolutionary narodniks was proven. However, the Jews
did not forgive the Russian Government for these pogroms  – 
and never have since. And although the pogroms originated
mainly with the Ukrainian population, the Russians have not
been forgiven and the pogroms have always been tied with the
name of Russia.
“The pogroms of the 1880s … sobered many [of the
advocates] of assimilation” (but not all: the idea of assimilation
still remained alive). And here, other Jewish publicists moved
to the other extreme: in general it was impossible for Jews to
live among other peoples, [for] they will always be looked upon
as alien. And the “Palestinian Movement… began…’to grow
quickly.’”[635]
It was under the in uence of the 1881 pogroms that the
Odessa doctor, Lev Pinsker, published his brochure, Auto-
Emancipation. The Appeal of a Russian Jew to his Fellow
Tribesmen (in Berlin in 1882, and anonymously). “It made a
huge impression on Russian and West European Jewry.” It was
an appeal about the ineradicable foreignness of Jews in eyes of
surrounding peoples.[636] We will discuss this further in
Chapter 7.
P. Aksel’rod claims that it was then that radical Jewish
youths discovered that Russian society would not accept them
as their own and thus they began to depart from the
revolutionary movement. However, this assertion appears to
be too far-fetched. In the revolutionary circles, except the
Narodnaya Vol’ya, they did always thnik of the Jews as their
own.
However, despite the cooling of attitudes of the Jewish
intelligentsia toward assimilation, the government, as a result
of inertia from Alexander II’s reign, for a while maintained a
sympathetic attitude toward the Jewish problem and did not
yet fully replace it by a harshly-restrictive approach. After the
year-long ministerial activities of Count Ignatiev, who
experienced such persistent opposition on the Jewish Question
from liberal forces in the upper governmental spheres, an
Imperial “High Commission for Revision of the Active Laws
about the Jews in the Empire” was established in the beginning
of 1883 – or as it was named for its chairman, Count Palen –
“The Palenskaya Commission” (so that by then, it became the
tenth such ‘Jewish Committee’). It consisted of fteen to
twenty individuals from the upper administration, members
of ministerial councils, department directors (some were
members of great families, such as Bestuzhev-Ryumin,
Golytsin, and Speranskiy), and it also included seven “Jewish
experts” – in uential nanciers, including Baron Goratsiy
Gintsburg and Samuil Polyakov, and prominent public gures,
such as Ya. Gal’pern, physiologist and publicist N. Bakst (“it is
highly likely that the favorable attitude of the majority of the
members of the Commission toward resolution of the Jewish
Question was caused, to certain degree, by the in uence” of
Bakst), and Rabbi A. Drabkin.[637] In large part, it was these
Jewish experts who prepared the materials for the
Commission’s consideration.
The majority of the Palenskaya Commission expressed the
conviction, that “the nal goal of legislation concerning the
Jews [should be] nothing other than its abolition,” that “there is
only one outcome and only one path: the path of liberation and
uni cation of the Jews with the whole population, under the
protection of the same laws.”[638] (Indeed, rarely in Russian
legislation did such complicated and contradictory laws pile up
as the laws about Jews that accumulated over the decades: 626
statutes by 1885! And they were still added later and in the
Senate they constantly researched and interpreted their
wording…). And even if the Jews did not perform their duties
as citizens in equal measure with others, nevertheless it was
impossible to “deprive the Jew of those fundamentals, on
which his existence was based – his equal rights as a subject.”
Agreeing “that several aspects of internal Jewish life require
reforming and that certain Jewish activities constituted
exploitation of the surrounding population,” the majority of
the Commission condemned the system of “repressive and
exclusionary measures.” The Commission set as the legislative
goal “to equalize the rights of Jews, with those of all other
subjects,” although it recommended “the utmost caution and
gradualness” with this.[639]
Practically, however, the Commission only succeeded in
carrying out a partial mitigation of the restrictive laws. Its
greatest e orts were directed of the Temporary Regulations of
1882, particularly in regard to the renting of land by Jews. The
Commission made the argument as if in the defense of the
landowners, not the Jews: prohibiting Jews to rent manorial
lands not only impedes the development of agriculture, but
also leads to a situation when certain types of agriculture
remain in complete idleness in the Western Krai – to the loss of
the landowners as there is nobody to whom they could lease
them. However, the Minister of Interior A airs, D.A. Tolstoy,
agreed with the minority of the Commission: the prohibition
against new land-leasing transactions would not be repealed.
[640]
The Palenskaya Commission lasted for ve years, until 1888,
and in its work the liberal majority always clashed with the
conservative minority. From the beginning, “Count Tolstoy
certainly had no intention to revise the laws to increase the
repressive measures,” and the 5-year existence of the
Palenskaya Commission con rms this. At that moment “His
Majesty [also] did not wish to in uence the decisions of his
government on the matter of the increase of repressions
against Jews.” Ascending to the throne at such a dramatic
moment, Alexander III did not hasten either  to replace liberal
o cials, nor to choose a harsh political course: for long time he
carefully examined things. “In the course of the entire reign of
Alexander III, the question about a general revision of the
legislation about the Jews remained open.”[641] But by 1886-
87, His Majesty’s view already leaned toward hardening of the
partial restrictions on the Jews and so the work of the
Commission did not produce any visible result.
One of the rst motivations for stricter control or more
constraint on the Jews than during his father’s reign was the
constant shortfall of Jewish conscripts for military service; it
was particularly noticeable when compared to conscription of
Christians. According to the Charter of 1874, which abolished
recruiting, compulsory military service was now laid on all
citizens, without any di erence in social standing, but with the
stipulation that those un t for service would be replaced:
Christians with Christians, and Jews with Jews. In the case of
Jews there were di culties in implementation of that rule as
there were both straightforward emigration of conscripts and
their evasion which all bene ted from great confusion and
negligence in the o cial records on Jewish population, in the
keeping of vital statistics, in the reliability of information
about the family situation and exact place of residence of
conscripts. (The tradition of all these uncertainties stretched
back to the times of the Qahals (a theocratic organizational
structure that originated in ancient Israelite society), and was
consciously maintained for easing the tax burden.) “In 1883
and 1884, there were many occasions when Jewish recruits,
contrary to the law, were arrested simply upon suspicion that
they might disappear.”[642] (This method was rst applied to
Christian recruits, but sporadically). In some places they began
to demand photographs from the Jewish recruits  –  a very
unusual requirement for that time. And in 1886 a “highly
constraining” law was issued, “about several measures for
providing for regular ful llment of military conscription by
Jews,” which established a “300-ruble ne from the relatives of
each Jew who evaded military call-up.”[643] “From 1887 they
stopped allowing Jews to apply for the examination for o cer
rank [educated soldiers had privileges in choosing military
specialty in the course of service].”[644] (During the reign of
Alexander II, the Jews could serve in the o cers’ ranks.) But
o cer positions in military medicine always remained open to
Jews.
Yet if we consider that in the same period up to 20 million
other “aliens” of the Empire were completely freed from
compulsory military service, then wouldn’t it be better to free
the Jews of it altogether, thus o setting their other constraints
with such a privilege? … Or was it the legacy of the idea of
Nicholas I continuing here – to graft the Jews into Russian
society through military service? To occupy the idle?”
At the same time, Jews on the whole ocked into institutions
of learning. From 1876 to 1883, the number of Jews in
gymnasiums and gymnasium preparatory schools almost
doubled, and from 1878 to 1886 – for an 8-year period – the
number of Jewish students in the universities increased six
times and reached 14.5%.[645] By the end of the reign of
Alexander II they were receiving alarming complaints from the
regional authorities about this. Thus, in 1878 the Governor of
the Minsk Guberniya reported, “that being wealthier, the Jews
can bring up their children better than the Russians; that the
material condition of the Jewish pupils is better than that of
Christians, and therefore in order that the Jewish element does
not overwhelm the remaining population, it is necessary to
introduce a quota system for the admission of Jews into
secondary schools.”[646] Next, after disturbances in several
southern gymnasiums in 1880, the Trustee of the Odessa
School District publicly came out with a similar idea. And in
1883 and 1885 two successive Novorossiysk (Odessa) General-
Governors stated that an “over- lling of learning institutions
with Jews” was taking place there, and it is either necessary “to
limit the number of Jews in the gymnasiums and gymnasium
preparatory schools” to 15% “of the general number of pupils,”
or “to a fairer norm, equal to the proportion of the Jewish
population to the whole.”[647] (By 1881, Jews made up 75% of
the general number of pupils in several gymnasiums of the
Odessa District.[648]) In 1886, a report was made by the
Governor of Kharkov Guberniya, “complaining about the in ux
of Jews to the common schools.”[649]
In all these instances, the ministers did not deem it possible
to adopt general restrictive solutions, and only directed the
reports for consideration to the Palenskaya Commission,
where they did not receive support.
From the 1870s students become primary participants in
the revolutionary excitement. After the assassination of
Alexander II, the general intention to put down the
revolutionary movement could not avoid student
“revolutionary nests” (and the senior classes of the
gymnasiums were already supplying them). Within the
government there arose the alarming connection that together
with the increase of Jews among the students, the participation
of students in the revolutionary movement noticeably
increased. Among the higher institutions of learning, the
Medical-Surgical Academy (later the Military-Medical
Academy) was particularly revolutionized. Jews were very
eager to enter it and the names of Jewish students of this
academy began already appearing in the court trials of the
1870s.
And so the rst special restrictive measure of 1882 restricted
Jewish admissions to the Military-Medical Academy to an
upper limit of 5%.
In 1883, a similar order followed with respect to the Mining
Institute; and in 1884 a similar quota was established at the
Institute of Communications.[650] In 1885, the admission of
Jews to the Kharkov Technological Institute was limited to
10%, and in 1886 their admission to the Kharkov Veterinary
Institute was completely discontinued, since “the city of
Kharkov was always a center of political agitation, and the
residence of Jews there in more or less signi cant numbers is
generally undesirable and even dangerous.”[651]
Thus, they thought to weaken the crescendo of
revolutionary waves.
 Chapter 6. In the Russian Revolutionary
Movement

In the Russia of the 60‒70s of the nineteenth century, when

reforms moved rapidly, there were no economic or social
motives for a far‐reaching revolutionary movement. Yet it was
indeed under Alexander II, from the beginning of his
reforming work, that this movement was born, as the
prematurely‐ripened fruit of ideology: in 1861 there were
student demonstrations in Saint Petersburg; in 1862, violent
res of criminal origin in Saint Petersburg as well, and the
sanguinary proclamation of Young Russia[652] (Molodaia
Rossiia); in 1866, Karakozov’s[653] gunshot, the prodromes of
the terrorist era, half a century in advance.
And it was also under Alexander II, when the restrictions on
the rights of the Jews were so relaxed, that Jewish names
appeared among the revolutionaries. Neither in the circles of
Stankyevich[654], Herzen[655] and Ogariov[656] nor in that of
Petrachevsky, there had been only one Jew. (We do not speak
here of Poland.) But at the student demonstrations of 1861
Mikhoels, Outine[657] and Guen will participate. And we shall
nd Outine in the circle of Nechayev[658].
The participation of the Jews in the Russian revolutionary
movement must get our attention; indeed, radical
revolutionary action became a more and more widespread
form of activity among Jewish youth. The Jewish revolutionary
movement is a qualitatively important component of the
Russian revolutionary movement in general. As for the ratio of
Jewish and Russian revolutionaries over the years, it surprises
us. Of course, if in the following pages we speak mainly of Jews,
this in no way implies that there was not a large number of
in uential revolutionaries among the Russians: our focus is
warranted by the subject of our study.
In fact, until the early 70s, only a very small number of Jews
had joined the revolutionary movement, and in secondary
roles at that. (In part, no doubt, because there were still very
few Jews among the students.) One learns, for example, that
Leon Deutsch at the age of ten was outraged about Karakozov’s
gunshot because he felt “patriotic”. Similarly, few Jews adhered
to the Russian nihilism of the 60s that, nevertheless, by their
rationalism, they assimilated easily. “Nihilism has played an
even more bene cial role in Jewish student youth than in
Christian youth.”[659]
However, as early as the early 70s, the circle of young Jews of
the rabbinical school in Vilnius began to play an important
role. (Among them, V. Yokhelson, whom we mention later, and
the well‐known terrorist A. Zundelevich—both brilliant pupils,
destined to be excellent rabbis, A. Liebermann, future editor of
La Pravda of Vienna, and Anna Einstein, Maxim Romm,
Finkelstein.) This circle was in uential because it was in close
contact with the “smugglers”[660] and permitted clandestine
literature, as well as illegal immigrants themselves, to cross the
border.[661]
It was in 1868, after high school, that Mark Natanson
entered the Academy of Medicine and Surgery (which would
become the Academy of Military Medicine). He will be an
organiser and a leading gure in the revolutionary movement.
Soon, with the young student Olga Schleisner, his future wife
(whom Tikhomirov calls “the second Sophia Perovskaya”,
although at the time she was rather the rst **), he laid the
foundations of a system of so‐called “pedagogical” circles, that
is to say of propaganda (“preparatory, cultural and
revolutionary work with intellectual youth”[662]) in several
large cities. (These circles were wrongly dubbed
“Tchaikovskyists”, named after one of their less in uential
members, N.V. Tchaikovsky.) Natanson distinguished himself
very quickly and resolutely from the circle of Nechayev (and he
did not hesitate, subsequently, to present his views to the
examining magistrate). In 1872 he went to Zurich with Pierre
Lavrov, the principal representative of the “current of paci c
propaganda”[663], which rejected the rebellion; Natanson
wanted to establish a permanent revolutionary organ there. In
the same year he was sent to Shenkursk in close exile and,
through the intercession of his father‐in‐law, the father of Olga
Schleiser, he was transferred to Voronezh, then Finland, and
nally released to Saint Petersburg. He found there nothing but
discouragement, dilapidation, inertia. He endeavoured to visit
the disunited groups, to connect them, to weld them, and thus
founded the rst Land and Freedom organisation and spending
hundreds of thousands of Rubles.
Among the principal organisers of Russian populism,
Natanson is the most eminent revolutionary. It was in his wake
that the famous Leon Deutsch appeared; As for the ironclad
populist Alexander Mikhailov, he was a disciple of “Mark the
Wise”. Natanson knew many revolutionaries personally.
Neither an orator nor a writer, he was a born organiser,
endowed with an astonishing quality: he did not regard
opinions and ideology, he did not enter into any theoretical
discussions with anyone, he was in accord with all tendencies
(with the exception of the extremist positions of Tkachev,
Lenin’s predecessor), placed each and everyone where they
could be useful. In those years when Bakunin supporters and
Lavrov supporters were irreconcilable, Natanson proposed to
put an end to “discussions about the music of the future” and
to focus instead on the real needs of the cause. It was he who, in
the summer of 1876, organised the sensational escape of Piotr
Kropotkin * on the “Barbarian”, that half‐blood who would
often be spoken of. In December of the same year, he conceived
and set up the rst public meeting in front of the Cathedral of
Our Lady of Kazan, at the end of the Mass, on the day of Saint
Nicholas: all the revolutionaries gathered there and for the rst
time, the red ag of Land and Liberty was displayed. Natanson
was arrested in 1877, sentenced to three years’ detention, then
relegated to Yakutia and dismissed from revolutionary action
until 1890.[664]
There were a number of Jews in the circle of
“Tchaikovskyists” in Saint Petersburg as well as in its branches
in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa. (In Kiev, notably, P.B. Axelrod, whom
we have already mentioned, the future Danish publisher and
diplomat Grigori Gurevitch, future teachers Semion Lourie and
Leiser Lœwenthal, his brother Nahman Lœwenthal, and the
two Kaminer sisters.) As for the rst Nihilist circle of Leon
Deutsch in Kiev, it was “constituted exclusively of young
Jewish students”[665]. After the demonstration in front of the
Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, three Jews were tried, but not
Natanson himself. At the trial of the “ fty”[666] which took
place in the summer of 1877 in Moscow, several Jews were
charged for spreading propaganda among factory workers. At
the trial of the “one hundred and ninety‐three[667]”, there were
thirteen Jews accused. Among the early populists, we can also
cite Lossif Aptekman and Alexander Khotinsky, who were
highly in uential.[668]
Natanson’s idea was that revolutionaries should involve the
people (peasants) and be for them like lay spiritual guides. This
“march to the people”, which has become so famous since then,
began in 1873 in the “dolgushinian” circle (Dolgushin,
Dmokhovsky, Gamov, etc.) where no Jews were counted. Later,
the Jews also “went to the people.” (The opposite also
happened: in Odessa, P. Axelrod tried to attract Jeliabov[669] in
a secret revolutionary organisation, but he refused: at the time,
he was still a Kulturtrasser.) In the mid‐70s, there were only
about twenty of these “populists”, all or almost all Lavrov and
not Bakunin. (Only the most extreme were listening to calls for
the insurrection of Bakunin, such as Deutsch, who, with the
help of Stefanovitch, had raised the “Tchiguirine revolt[670]”
by having pushed the peasants into thinking that the tsar,
surrounded by the enemy, had the people saying: turn back all
these authorities, seize the land, and establish a regime of
freedom!)
It is interesting to note that almost no Jewish revolutionary
launched into the revolution because of poverty, but most of
them came from wealthy families. (In the three volumes of the
Russian Jewish Encyclopædia there is no shortage of examples.)
Only Paul Axelrod came from a very poor family, and, as we
have already said, he had been sent by the Kahal to an
institution solely to supplement the established quota. (From
there, very naturally, he entered the gymnasium of Mogilev,
then the high school of Nejine.) Came from wealthy merchant
environments: Natanson, Deutsch, Aptekman (whose family
had many Talmudists, doctors of the law—including all his
uncles. Khotinsky, Gurevitch, Semion Lourie (whose family,
even in this milieu, was considered “aristocratic”, “little Simon
was also destined to be a rabbi”, but under the in uence of the
Enlightenment, his father, Gerts Lourie, had entrusted his son
to college to become a professor); the rst Italian Marxist, Anne
Rosenstein (surrounded from childhood by governesses
speaking several languages), the tragic gures of Moses
Rabinovitch and Betty Kaminskaya, Felicie Cheftel, Joseph
Guetsov, member of the Black Repartition, among many
others. And then again Khrystyna (Khasia) Grinberg, “of a
wealthy traditionalist merchant family”, who in 1880 joined
the Will of the People: her dwelling housed clandestine
meetings, she was an accomplice in the attacks on Alexander II,
and even became in 1882 the owner of a clandestine dynamite
factory—then was condemned to deportation.[671] Neither did
Fanny Moreinis come from a poor family; she also “participated
in the preparations of attacks against the Emperor Alexander
II”, and spent two years in the prison of Kara.[672] Some came
from families of rabbis, such as the future doctor of philosophy
Lioubov Axelrod or Ida Axelrod. There were also families of the
petty bourgeoisie, but wealthy enough to put their children
through college, such as Aizik Aronchik (after college, he
entered the School of Engineers of Saint Petersburg, which he
soon abandoned to embark in revolutionary activities),
Alexander Bibergal, Vladimir Bogoraz, Lazarus Goldenberg, the
Lœwenthal brothers. Often, mention is made in the
biographies of the aforementioned, of the Academy of Military
Medicine, notably in those of Natanson, Bibergal, Isaac
Pavlovsky (future counterrevolutionary[673]), M. Rabinovitch,
A. Khotinsky, Solomon Chudnovsky, Solomon Aronson (who
happened to be involved in these circles), among others.[674]
Therefore it was not material need that drove them, but the
strength of their convictions.
It is not without interest to note that in these Jewish
families the adhesion of young people to the revolution has
rarely—or not at all—provoked a break between “fathers and
sons”, between parents and their children. “The ‘fathers’ did
not go after the ‘sons’ very much, as was then the case in
Christian families. (Although Gesya Gelfman had to leave her
family, a traditional Old Alliance family, in secret.) The
“fathers” were often very far from opposing their children.
Thus Guerz Lourie, as well as Isaac Kaminer, a doctor from
Kiev: the whole family participated in the revolutionary
movement of the 70s, and himself, as a “sympathiser…,
rendered great service” to the revolutionaries; three of them
became the husbands of his daughters. (In the 1990s, he joined
the Zionist movement and became the friend of Achad‐Haam.
[675] [676])
Neither can we attribute anti‐Russian motivations to these
early Jewish revolutionaries, as some do in Russia today. In no
way!
It all began with the same “nihilism” of the 60s. “Having
initiated itself to Russian education and to ‘goy’ culture”,
having been imbued with Russian literature, “Jewish youth
was quick to join the most progressive movement of the time”,
nihilism, and with an ease all the greater as it broke with the
prescriptions of the past. Even “the most fanatical of the
students of a yeshiva, immersed in the study of the Talmud,”
after “two or three minutes of conversation with a nihilist”,
broke with the “patriarchal mode of thought”. “He [the Jew,
even pious] had only barely grazed the surface of ‘goy’ culture,
he had only carried out a breach in his vision of the traditional
world, but already he was able to go far, very far, to the
extremes.” These young men were suddenly gripped by the
great universal ideals, dreaming of seeing all men become
brothers and all enjoying the same prosperity. The task was
sublime: to liberate mankind from misery and slavery![677]
And there played the role of Russian literature. Pavel
Axelrod, in high school, had as his teachers Turgenev,
Bielinsky, Dobrolyubov (and later Lassalle[678] who would
make him turn to the revolution). Aptekman was fond of
Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pissarev (and also Bukle). Lazare
Goldenberg, too, had read and re‐read Dobrolyubov,
Chernyshevsky, Pissarev, Nekrasov—and Rudin[679], who died
on the barricades, was his hero. Solomon Tchudnovsky, a great
admirer of Pissarev, wept when he died. The nihilism of
Semion Lourie was born of Russian literature, he had fed on it.
This was the case for a very large number—the list would be
too long.
But today, a century later, there are few who remember the
atmosphere of those years. No serious political action was
taking place in the “street of the Jews”, as it was then called,
while, in the “Street of the Russians”, populism was rising. It
was quite simple: it was enough to “sink, and merge into the
movement of Russian liberation”[680]! Now this fusion was
more easily facilitated, accelerated by Russian literature and
the writings of radical publicists.
By turning to the Russian world, these young people turned
away from the Jewish world. “Many of them conceived hostility
and disdain to the Judaism of their fathers, just like towards a
parasitic anomaly.”[681] In the 70s “there were small groups of
radical Jewish youths who, in the name of the ideals of
populism, moved more and more away from their people…,
began to assimilate vigorously and to appropriate the Russian
national spirit.”[682] Until the mid‐70s, the socialist Jews did
not consider it necessary to do political work with their fellow
men, because, they thought, the Jews have never possessed
land and thus cannot assimilate socialist ideas. The Jews never
had peasants of their own. “None of the Jewish revolutionaries
of the 70s could conceive of the idea of acting for one’s own
nation alone.” It was clear that one only acted in the dominant
language and only for the Russian peasants. “For us… there
were no Jewish workers. We looked at them with the eyes of
russi ers: the Jew must assimilate completely with the native
population”; even artisans were regarded as potential
exploiters, since they had apprentices and employees. In fact,
Russian workers and craftsmen were not accorded any
importance as an autonomous class: they existed only as
future socialists who would facilitate work in the peasant
world.[683]
 Assimilation once accepted, these young people, by their
situation, naturally tended towards radicalism, having lost on
this new soil the solid conservative roots of their former
environment.
“We were preparing to go to the people and, of course, to the
Russian people. We deny the Jewish religion, like any other
religion; we considered our jargon an arti cial language, and
Hebrew a dead language… We were sincere assimilators and
we saw in the Russian education and culture salvation for the
Jews… Why then did we seek to act among the Russian people,
not the Jewish people? It comes from the fact that we had
become strangers to the spiritual culture of the Jews of Russia
and that we rejected their thinkers who belonged to a
traditionalist bourgeoisie… from the ranks of which we had left
ourselves… We thought that, when the Russian people would
be freed from the despotism and yoke of the ruling classes, the
economic and political freedom of all the peoples of Russia,
including the Jewish people, would arise. And it must be
admitted that Russian literature has also somewhat inculcated
the idea that the Jewish people were not a people but a parasitic
class.”[684]
Also came into play the feeling of debt owed to the people of
Great Russia, as well as “the faith of the populist rebels in the
imminence of a popular insurrection.”[685] In the 70s, “the
Jewish intellectual youth… ‘went to the people’ in the hope of
launching, with its feeble hands, the peasant revolution in
Russia.”[686] As Aptekman writes, Natanson, “like the hero of
the Mtsyri of Lermontov,
Knew the hold of only one thought,
lived only one, but burning passion.
This thought was the happiness of the people; this passion,
the struggle for liberation.”[687] Aptekman himself, as
depicted by Deutsch, was “emaciated, of small stature, pale
complexion,” “with very pronounced national features”;
having become a village nurse, he announced socialism to the
peasants through the Gospel.[688]
It was a little under the in uence of their predecessors, the
members of the Dolgouchin circle, whom inscribed on the
branches of the cruci x: “In the name of Christ, Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity,” and almost all preached the Gospel, that
the rst Jewish populists turned to Christianity, which they
used as a support point and as an instrument. Aptekman
writes about himself: “I have converted to Christianity by a
movement from the heart and love for Christ.”[689] (Not to be
confused with the motives of Tan Bogoraz, who in the 80s had
converted to Christianity “to escape the vexations of his Jewish
origin.”[690] Nor with the feint of Deutsch who went to preach
the molokanes[691] by presenting himself as a ‘good
orthodox’.”) But, adds Aptekman, “in order to give oneself to
the people, there is no need to repent”: with regard to the
Russian people, “I had no trace of repentance. Moreover, where
could it have come from? Is it not rather for me, the descendant
of an oppressed nation, to demand the settlement of this
dealing, instead of paying the repayment of some, I am not
sure which, fantastic loan? Nor have I observed this feeling of
repentance among my comrades of the nobility who were
walking with me on the same path.”[692]
Let us note in this connection that the idea of a
rapprochement between the desired socialism and historical
Christianity was not unconnected with many Russian
revolutionaries at the time, and as justi cation for their action,
and as a convenient tactical procedure. V. V. Flerovsky[693]
wrote: “I always had in mind the comparison between this
youth who was preparing for action and the rst Christians.”
And, immediately after, the next step: “By constantly turning
this idea into my head, I have come to the conviction that we
will reach our goal only by one means—by creating a new
religion… It is necessary to teach the people to devote all their
forces to oneself exclusively… I wanted to create the religion of
brotherhood”— and the young disciples of Flerovsky tried to
“lead the experiment by wondering how a religion that would
have neither God nor saints would be received by the people.”
His disciple Gamov, from the circle of Dolgouchine, wrote
even more crudely: “We must invent a religion that would be
against the tsar and the government… We must write a
catechism and prayers in this spirit.”[694]
The revolutionary action of the Jews in Russia is also
explained in another way. We nd it exposed and then refuted
by A. Srebrennikov: “There is a view that if, through the
reforms of the years 1860‒1863, the ‘Pale of Settlement’ had
been abolished, our whole history would have unfolded
otherwise… If Alexander II had abolished the ‘Pale of
Settlement’, there would have been neither the Bund[695] nor
Trotskyism!” Then he mentioned the internationalist and
socialist ideas that owed from the West, and wrote: “If the
suppression of the Pale of Settlement had been of capital
importance to them, all their struggle would have stretched
towards it. Now they were occupied with everything else: they
dreamed of overthrowing tsarism!”[696]
And, one after the other, driven by the same passion, they
abandoned their studies (notably the Academy of Military
Medicine) to “go to the people”. Every diploma was marked
with the seal of infamy as a means of exploitation of the
people. They renounced any career, and some broke with their
families. For them, “every day not put to good use [constitutes]
an irreparable loss, criminal for the realisation of the well‐
being and happiness of the disinherited masses.”[697]
But in order to “go to the people”, it was necessary to “make
oneself simple”, both internally, for oneself, and practically, “to
inspire con dence to the masses of the people, one had to
in ltrate it under the guise of a workman or a moujik.”[698]
However, writes Deutsch, how can you go to the people, be
heard and be believed, when you are betrayed by your
language, your appearance and your manners? And still, to
seduce the listeners, you must throw jokes and good words in
popular language! And we must also be skilful in the work of
the elds, so painful to townspeople. For this reason,
Khotinsky worked on the farm with his brother, and worked
there as a ploughman. The Lœwenthal brothers learned
shoemaking and carpentry. Betty Kamenskaya entered as a
worker in a spinning mill to a very hard position. Many became
caregivers. (Deutsch writes that, on the whole, other activities
were better suited to these revolutionary Jews: work within
factions, conspiracy, communications, typography, border‐
crossing.)[699]
The “march to the people” began with short visits, stays of a
few months—a “ uid” march. At rst, they relied only on the
work of agitation. It was imagined that it would su ce to
convince the peasants to open their eyes to the regime in power
and the exploitation of the masses, and to promise that the
land and the instruments of production would become the
property of all.
In fact, this whole “march to the people” of the populists
ended in failure. And not only because of some inadvertent
gunshot directed against the Tsar (Solovyov, 1879), which
obliged them all to ee the country and to hide very far from
the cities. But above all because the peasants, perfectly deaf to
their preaching, were even sometimes ready to hand them over
to the authorities. The populists, the Russians (hardly more
fortunate) like the Jews, lost “the faith… in a spontaneous
revolutionary will and in the socialist instincts of the
peasantry”, and “transformed into impenitent
pessimists.”[700]
Clandestine action, however, worked better. Three residents
of Minsk, Lossif Guetsov, Saul Levkov, and Saul Grinfest,
succeeded in setting up a clandestine press in their city that
would serve the country as a whole. It survived until 1881. It
was there that was printed in gold letters the lea et on “the
execution of Alexander II”. It printed the newspaper The Black
Repartition[701], and then the proclamations of The Will of the
People. Deutsche referred to them as “peaceful propagandists”.
Apparently, the term “peaceful” embraced everything that was
not bombing—smuggling, illegal border‐crossing, and even the
call to avoid paying taxes (appeal to the peasants of Lazare
Goldenberg).
Many of these Jewish revolutionaries were heavily
condemned (heavily, even by the measures of our time). Some
bene ted from a reduction of their punishment—like Semion
Lourie, thanks to his father who obtained for him a less severe
regime in prison. There was also public opinion, which leaned
towards indulgence. Aptekman tells us that in 1881—after the
assassination of Alexander II—“they lived relatively freely in
the prison of Krasnoyarsk” where “the director of the prison, a
real wild beast, was suddenly tamed and gave us all kinds of
permissions to contact the deportees and our friends.” Then
“we were received in transit prisons not as detainees, but as
noble captives”; “the prison director came in, accompanied by
soldiers carrying trays with tea, biscuits, jam for everyone, and,
as a bonus, a small glass of vodka. Was it not idyllic? We were
touched.”[702]
The biographies of these early populists reveal a certain
exaltation, a certain lack of mental equilibrium. Leo Deutsch
testi es: Leon Zlatopolsky, a terrorist, “was not a mentally
balanced person”. Aptekman himself, in his cell, after his
arrest, “was not far from madness, as his nerves were shaken.”
Betty Kamenskaya, “… from the second month of detention…
lost her mind”; she was transferred to the hospital, then her
father, a merchant, took her back on bail. Having read in the
indictment that she would not be brought before the court, she
wanted to tell the prosecutor that she was in good health and
could appear, but soon after, she swallowed poison and died.
[703] Moses Rabinovitch, in his cell, “had hallucinations… his
nerves were exhausted”; he resolved to feign repentance, to
name those whom the instruction was surely already
acquainted with, in order to be liberated. He drew up a
declaration promising to say everything he knew and even,
upon his release from prison, to seek and transmit
information. The result was that he confessed everything
without being released and that he was sent to the province of
Irkutsk where he went mad and died “barely over the age of
20.” Examples of this kind are not lacking. Leiser Tsukerman,
immigrated to New York, and put an end to his life. Nahman
Lœwenthal, after having immigrated to Berlin, “was sent into
the dizzying downward spiral of a nervous breakdown,” to
which was added an unhappy love; “he swallowed sulphuric
acid and threw himself into the river”—at the age of about 19.
[704] These young individuals had thrown themselves away by
overestimating their strength and the resistance of their
nerves.
And even Grigori Goldenberg, who, in cold blood, had
defeated the governor of Kharkov and asked his comrades, as a
supreme honor, to kill by his own hand the Tsar (but his
comrades, fearing popular anger, had apparently dismissed
him as a Jew; apparently, this argument often prompted
populists to designate most often Russians, to perpetrate
attacks): after being arrested while carrying a charge of
dynamite, he was seized by unbearable anguish in his cell of
the Troubetskoy bastion, his spirit was broken, he made a full
confession that a ected the whole movement, petitioned that
Aaron Zundelevich come share his cell (who showed more
indulgence than others towards his actions). When it was
refused, he committed suicide.[705]
Others, who were not directly involved, su ered, such as
Moses Edelstein, who was by no means an ideologist, who had
“slipped”, for a price, clandestine literature; he su ered much
in prison, prayed to Yahweh for himself and his family: he
repented during the judgment: “I did not imagine that there
could be such bad books.” Or S. Aronson who, after the trial of
the “one hundred and ninety‐three”, disappeared completely
from the revolutionary scene.[706]
Another point is worthy of noting; it was the facility with
which many of them left that Russia which they had long ago
intended to save. In fact, in the 70s emigration was regarded as
desertion in revolutionary circles: even if the police seek you,
go underground, but do not run away![707]—Tan Bogoraz left
to live twenty years in New York.—Lazar Goldenberg‐
Getroitman also “left to New York in 1885, where he gave
classes on the history of the revolutionary movement in
Russia”; he returned to Russia in 1906, after the amnesty, to
leave again rather quickly to Britain, where he remained until
his death.”[708]—In London, one of the Vayner brothers
became the owner of a furniture workshop and Mr. Aronson
and Mr. Romm became Clinical Doctors in New York.—After a
few years in Switzerland, I. Guetsov went to live in America,
having radically broken with the Socialist movement.—Leiser
Lœwenthal, emigrated to Switzerland, completed his medical
studies in Geneva, became the assistant of a great physiologist
before obtaining a chair of histology in Lausanne.—Semion
Lourie also nished his studies in a faculty of medicine in Italy,
but died shortly after.—Liubov Axelrod (“the Orthodox”[709])
remained for a long time in immigration, where he received the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Berlin
(later he inculcated dialectical materialism to students of
Soviet graduate schools.) A. Khotinsky also entered the Faculty
of Medicine of Bern (but died the following year from a
galloping consumption). Grigory Gurayev made a ne career in
Denmark; he returned to Russia as the country’s ambassador in
Kiev, where he stayed until 1918.[710]
All this also shows how many talented men there were
among these revolutionaries. Men such as these, endowed with
such lively intelligence, when they found themselves in Siberia,
far from wasting or losing their reason, they opened their eyes
to the tribes which surrounded them, studied their languages
and their customs, and wrote ethnographic studies about
them: Leon Sternberg on the Ghiliaks,[711] Tan‐Bogoraz on the
Tchouktches,[712] Vladimir Yokhelson on the Yukaghirs,[713]
and Naoum Guekker on the physical type of the lakuts.[714]
[715] Some studies on the Buryats[716] are due to Moses Krohl.
Some of these Jewish revolutionaries willingly joined the
socialist movement in the West. Thus V. Yokhelson and A.
Zundelevich, during the Reichstag elections in Germany,
campaigned on the side of the Social Democrats. Zundelevich
was even arrested for having used fraudulent methods. Anne
Rosenstein, in France, was convicted for organising a street
demonstration in de ance of the regulations governing tra c
on the street; Turgenev intervened for her and she was
expelled to Italy where she was twice condemned for anarchist
agitation (she later married F. Turati,[717] converted him to
socialism and became herself the rst Marxist of Italy). Abram
Valt‐Lessine, a native of Minsk, published articles for seventeen
years in New York in the socialist organ of America Vorwarts
and exerted a great in uence on the formation of the American
labour movement.[718] (That road was going to be taken by
many others of our Socialists…)
It sometimes happened that revolutionary emigrants were
disappointed by the revolution. Thus Moses Veller, having
distanced himself from the movement, succeeded, thanks to
Turgenev’s intervention with Loris‐Melikov, to return to
Russia. More extravagant was the journey of Isaac Pavlovsky:
living in Paris, as “illustrious revolutionary”, he had
connections with Turgenev, who made him know Emile Zola
and Alphonse Daudet; he wrote a novel about the Russian
nihilists that Turgenev published in the Vestnik Evropy[719]
(The Messenger of Europe), and then he became the
correspondent in Paris of Novoye Vremia[720] “the New Times”
under the pseudonym of I. Iakovlev—and even, as Deutsch
writes, he portrayed himself as “anti‐Semite”, sent a petition in
high places, was pardoned and returned to Russia.[721]
That said, the majority of the Jewish revolutionaries blended
in, just like the Russians, and their track was lost. “With the
exception of two or three prominent gures… all my other
compatriots were minor players,” writes Deutsch.[722] A
Soviet collection, published the day after the revolution under
the title of “Historical and Revolutionary Collection”,[723]
quotes many names of humble soldiers unknown to the
revolution. We nd there dozens, even hundreds of Jewish
names. Who remembers them now? However, all have taken
action, all have brought their contribution, all have shaken
more or less strongly the edi ce of the State.
Let us add: this very rst contingent of Jewish
revolutionaries did not fully join the ranks of the Russian
revolution, all did not deny their Judaism. A. Liebermann, a
great connoisseur of the Talmud, a little older than his populist
fellow students, proposed in 1875 to carry out a speci c
campaign in favour of socialism among the Jewish population.
With the help of G. Gurevich, he published a socialist magazine
in Yiddish called Emes (Pravda = Truth) in Vienna in 1877.
Shortly before, in the 70s, A. Zundelevich “undertook a
publication in the Hebrew language”, also entitled Truth. (L.
Shapiro hypothesises that this publication was “the distant
ancestor of Trotsky’s The Pravda.[724] The tradition of this
appellation was durable.) Some, like Valt‐Lessine, insisted on
the convergence of internationalism with Judaic nationalism.
“In his improvised conferences and sermons, the prophet
Isaiah and Karl Marx gured as authorities of equal
importance.”[725] In Geneva was founded the Jewish Free
Typography,[726] intended to print lea ets addressed to the
Jewish working‐class population.
Speci cally Jewish circles were formed in some cities. A
“Statute for the Organisation of a Social‐Revolutionary Union
of the Jews of Russia”, formulated at the beginning of 1876,
showed the need for propaganda in the Hebrew language and
even to organise between Jews of the western region “a
network of social‐revolutionary sections, federated with each
other and with other sections of the same type found abroad”.
“The Socialists of the whole world formed a single
brotherhood,” and this organisation was to be called the Jewish
Section of the Russian Social‐Revolutionary Party.[727]
Hessen comments: the action of this Union among the
Jewish masses “has not met with su cient sympathies”, and
that is why these Jewish socialists, in their majority, “lent a
hand to the common cause”, that is to say, to the Russian cause.
[728] In fact, circles were created in Vilnius, Grodno, Minsk,
Dvinsk, Odessa, but also, for example, in Elts, Saratov, Rostov‐
on‐Don.
In the very detailed founding act of this “Social‐
Revolutionary Union of all Jews in Russia”, one can read
surprising ideas, statements such as: “Nothing ordinary has the
right to exist if it has no rational justi cation”[729] (!)
By the end of the 70s, the Russian revolutionary movement
was already sliding towards terrorism. The appeal to the revolt
of Bakunin had de nitely prevailed over the concern for
instruction of the masses of Lavrov. Beginning in 1879, the
idea of populist presence among the peasants had no e ect—
the idea that dominated in The Will of the People—gained the
upper hand over the rejection of terror by The Black
Repartition. Terror, nothing but terror!!—much more: a
systematic terror! (That the people did not have a voice in the
matter, that the ranks of the intelligentsia were so sparse, did
not disturb them.) Terrorist acts—including against the Tsar in
person!—thus succeeded one another.
According to Leo Deutsch’s assessment, only ten to twelve
Jews took part in this growing terror, beginning with Aron
Gobst (executed), Solomon Wittenberg (prepared an attack on
Alexander II in 1878, executed in 1879), Aizik Aronchik (was
involved in the explosion of the imperial train, condemned to a
penal colony for life) and Gregory Goldenberg, already named.
Like Goldenberg, A. Zundelevich—brilliant organiser of terror,
but who was not given the time to participate in the
assassination of the Tsar—was arrested very early. There was
also another quite active terrorist: Mlodetsky. As for Rosa
Grossman, Krystyna Grinberg and the brothers Leo and Saveli
Zlatopolsky, they played a secondary role. (In fact, Saveli, as of
March 1st, 1881[730], was a member of the Executive
Committee); As for Gesya Gelfman, she was part of the basic
group of the “actors of March 1st.”[731]
Then it was the 80s that saw the decline and dissolution of
populism. Government power took over; belonging to a
revolutionary organisation cost a rm eight to ten years of
imprisonment. But if the revolutionary movement was caught
by inertia, its members continued to exist. One can quote here
So a Ginzburg: she did not engage in revolutionary action until
1877; she tried to restore the Will of the People, which had
been decimated by arrests; she prepared, just after the Ulyanov
group[732], an attack on Alexander III.[733] So‐and‐so was
forgotten in deportation, another was coming back from it, a
third was only leaving for it—but they continued the battle.
Thusly was a famous de agration described by the
memorialists: the rebellion in the prison of Yakutsk in 1889.
An important contingent of political prisoners had been told
that they were going to be transferred to Verkhoyansk and,
from there, even further, to Srednie‐Kolymsk, which they
wanted to avoid at all costs. The majority of the group were
Jewish inmates. In addition, they were informed that the
amount of baggage allowed was reduced: instead of ve
poods[734] of books, clothes, linen, ve poods also of bread and
our, two poods of meat, plus oil, sugar and tea (the whole, of
course, loaded on horses or reindeer), a reduction of ve poods
in all. The deportees decided to resist. In fact, it had already
been six months that they had been walking freely in the city
of Yakutsk, and some had obtained weapons from the
inhabitants. “While you’re at it, might as well perish like this,
and may the people discover all the abomination of the Russian
government—perishing so that the spirit of combat is revived
among the living!” When they were picked up to be taken to the
police station, they rst opened re on the o cers, and the
soldiers answered with a salvo. Condemned to death, together
with N. Zotov, were those who red the rst shots at the vice‐
governor: L. Kogan‐Bernstein and A. Gausman. Condemned to
forced labour in perpetuity were: the memorialist himself, O.
Minor, the celebrated M. Gotz[735], and also “A. Gurevitch and
M. Orlov, Mr. Bramson, Mr. Braguinsky, Mr. Fundaminsky, Mr.
U and, S. Ratine, O. Estrovitch, So a Gurevitch, Vera Gotz,
Pauline Perly, A. Bolotina, N. Kogan‐Bernstein.” The Jewish
Encyclopædia informs us that for this mutiny twenty‐six Jews
and six Russians were tried.[736]
That same year, 1889, Mark Natanson returned from exile
and undertook to forge, in place of the old dismantled populist
organisations, a new organisation called The Right of the
People (Narodnoie Pravo). Natanson had already witnessed the
emergence of Marxism in Russia, imported from Europe, and
its competition with populism. He made every e ort to save
the revolutionary movement from decadence and to maintain
ties with the Liberals (‘the best liberals are also semi‐
socialists”). Not more than before did he look at nuances of
convictions: what mattered to him was that all should unite to
overthrow the autocracy, and when Russia was democratic,
then it would be gured out. But the organisation he set up this
time proved to be amorphous, apathetic and ephemeral.
Besides, respecting the rules of the conspiracy was no longer
necessary. As Isaac Gurvitch very eloquently pointed out,
“because of the absence of conspiracy, a mass of people fall into
the clutches of the police, but the revolutionaries are now so
numerous that these losses do not count—trees are knocked
down, and chips go ying!”[737]
The fracture that had occurred in the Jewish consciousness
after 1881‒1882 could not but be re ected somewhat in the
consciousness of Jewish revolutionaries in Russia. These young
men had begun by drifting away from Judaism, and many had
returned to it. They had “left the ‘street of the Jews’ and then
returned to their people”: “Our entire historical destiny is
linked to the Jewish ghetto, it is from it that our national
essence is forged.”[738] Until the pogroms of 1881‒1882,
“absolutely none of us revolutionaries thought for a moment”
that we should publicly explain the participation of the Jews in
the revolutionary movement. But then came the pogroms,
which caused “among… the majority of our countrymen an
explosion of indignation.” And now “it was not only the
cultivated Jews, but some Jewish revolutionaries who had no
a nity with their nation, who suddenly felt obliged to devote
their strength and talents to their unjustly persecuted
brothers.”[739] “The pogroms have awakened sleeping feelings,
they have made young people more susceptible to the
su erings of their people, and the people more receptive to
revolutionary ideas. Let this serve as a basis for an autonomous
action of the Jewish mass”: “We are obstinately pursuing our
goal: the destruction of the current political regime.”[740]
But behold, the unexpected support to the anti‐Jewish
pogroms brought by the lea ets of The Will of the People! Leo
Deutsch expresses his perplexity in a letter to Axelrod, who
also wonders: “The Jewish question is now, in practice, really
insoluble for a revolutionary. What would one do, for example,
in Balta, where the Jews are being attacked? To defend them is
tantamount to “arousing hatred against the revolutionaries
who not only killed the Tsar, but also support the Jews”…
Reconciliation propaganda is now extremely di cult for the
party.”[741]
This perplexity, P. L. Lavrov himself, the venerated chief,
expresses it in his turn: “I recognise that the Jewish question is
extremely complex, and for the party, which intends to draw
itself closer to the people and raise it against the government, it
is di cult in the highest degree… because of the passionate
state in which the people nd themselves and the need to have
it on our side.”[742] He was not the only one of the Russian
revolutionaries to reason this way.
In the 80s, a current reappeared among the socialists,
advocating directing attention and propaganda to speci cally
Jewish circles, and preferably the ones of workers. But, as
proletariat, there were not many people among the Jews—some
carpenters, binders, shoemakers. The easiest was certainly to
act among the most educated printers. Isaac Gurvitch
recounts: with Moses Khourguine, Leon Rogaller, Joseph
Reznik, “in Minsk we had set ourselves the task of creating a
nucleus of educated workers.” But if we take, for example,
Belostok or Grodno, “we found no working class”: the
recruitment was too weak.
The creation of these circles was not done openly; it was
necessary to conspire either to organise the meeting outside
the city, or to hold it in a private apartment in the city, but then
systematically beginning with lessons of Russian grammar or
natural sciences… and then only by recruiting volunteers to
preach socialism to them. As I. Martar explains: it was these
preliminary lessons that attracted people to the revolutionary
circles. “Skilled and wise,” capable of becoming their own
masters, “those who had attended our meetings had received
instruction there, and especially mastery of Russian, for
language is a precious weapon in the competitive struggle of
petty commerce and industry”; After that, our “lucky guys”,
freed from the role of hired labourers and swearing to their
great gods that they themselves would never employ hired
labour, had to have recourse to it, due to the requirements of
the market.”[743] Or, once formed in these circles, “the worker
abandoned his trade and went away to take examinations
‘externally’.”[744]
The local Jewish bourgeoisie disliked the participation of
young people in the revolutionary circles, for it had understood
—faster and better than the police—where all of this would
lead.[745]
Here and there, however, things advanced; with the aid of
socialist pamphlets and proclamations provided by the
printing press in London, the young revolutionaries
themselves drafted “social‐democrat formulations on all
programmatic questions”. Thus, for ten years, a slow
propaganda led little by little to the creation of the Bund.
But, “even more than police persecution, it was the emerging
immigration to America that hampered our work. In fact, we
trained socialist workers for America.” The concise
recollections of Isaac Gurvitch on the rst Jewish workers’
circles are enamelled by obiter dicta such as: Schwartz, a
student who participated in revolutionary agitation,
“subsequently immigrated to America; he lives in New York”.—
as well, at a meeting in Joseph Reznik’s apartment: “There were
two workers present, a carpenter and a joiner: both are now in
America.” And, two pages later, we learn that Reznik himself,
after his return from exile, “went to live in America.”
Conversely, a young man named Guirchfeld, who came from
America to do revolutionary work, “is currently a doctor in
Minneapolis” and was a Socialist candidate for the post of
governor.—“One of the most active members of the rst
Abramovich circle, a certain Jacob Zvirine…, after serving his
twelve months in the Kresty prison… immigrated to America
and now lives in New York.”—“Shmulevich (“Kivel”)… in
1889… was forced to ee from Russia; he lived until 1896 in
Switzerland where he was an active member of the social
democratic organisations”, then “he moved to America… and
lives in Chicago”. Finally, the narrator himself: “In 1890 I
myself left Russia,” although a few years earlier “we were
considering things di erently. To lead a socialist propaganda
among the workers is the obligation of every honest educated
man: it is our way of paying our “historical debt” to the people.
And since I have the obligation to make propaganda, it follows
very obviously that I have the right to demand that I be given
the opportunity to ful l this obligation.” Arriving in New York
in 1890, Gurvich found there a “Russian workers’ association
of self‐development,” consisting almost exclusively of artisans
from Minsk, and in order to celebrate the Russian New Year
they organised in New York “The Ball of the Socialists of
Minsk.”[746] In New York, “the local socialist movement…
predominantly was Jewish.”[747]
As we can see, from that time the ocean did not constitute a
major obstacle to the cohesion and the pursuit of the
revolutionary action carried out by the Jews. This living link
would have oh so striking e ects in Russia.
Yet all Jewish young people had not abandoned the Russian
revolutionary tradition, far from it; many even stood there in
the 80s and 90s. As D. Schub shows, the pogroms and the
restrictive measures of Alexander III only excited them even
more strongly for combat.
Then it became necessary to explain as well as possible to
the little Russian people why so many Jews participated in the
revolutionary movement. Addressing uneducated people, the
popular pamphlets gradually forged a whole phraseology that
had its e ects until 1917—including 1917. It is a booklet of
this kind that allows us to reconstruct their arguments.
Hard is the fate of the Russian, the subject of the Tsar; the
government holds him in his iron st. But “still more bitter is
the lot of the indigent Jew”: “the government makes fun of
him, pressures him to death. His existence is only a life of
famine, a long agony”, and “his brothers of misery and toil, the
peasants and the Russian workers…, as long as they are in
ignorance, treat him as a foreigner.” There followed, one after
the other, didactic questions: “Are Jewish capitalists enemies of
the working people of Russia?” The enemies are all capitalists
without distinction, and it is of little importance to the
working people to be plundered by such and such: one should
not concentrate their anger on those who are Jews.—“The Jew
has no land… he has no means to prosper. If the Jews do not
devote themselves to the labour of the land, it is because “the
Russian government has not allowed them to reside in the
countryside”; but in their colonies they are “excellent
cultivators.” The elds are superbly enhanced… by the work of
their arms. They do not use any outside labour, and do not
practice any extra trade… they like the hard work of the
land.”—“Are destitute Jews harming the economic interests of
Russian workers? If the Jews do business, “it is out of necessity,
not out of taste; all other ways are closed to them, and one has
to live”; “they would cease with joy to trade if they were
allowed to leave their cage.” And if there are thieves among
them, we must accuse the Tsarist government. “The Jewish
workers began the struggle for the improvement of their
condition at the time when the Russian working people were
subjected. The Jewish workers “before all the others have lost
patience”; “And even now tens of thousands of Jews are
members of Russian Socialist parties. They spread the hatred of
the capitalist system and the tsarist government through the
country”; they have rendered “a proud service to the Russian
working people”, and that is why Russian capitalists hate them.
The government, through the police, assisted in the
preparation of the pogroms; it sent the police and the army to
lend a helping hand to the looters”; “Fortunately, very few
workers and peasants were among them.”—“Yes, the Jewish
masses hate this irresponsible tsarist government”, because “it
was the will of the government that the skull of Jewish
children be smashed against walls… that Jewish women,
elderly and children alike, be raped in the streets. And yet, “He
lies boldly, the one who treats the Jews as enemies of the
Russian people… And besides, how could they hate Russia?
Could they have another country?”[748]
There are amazing resurgences in the revolutionary
tradition. In 1876, A. Biebergal had been convicted for taking
part in the demonstration on the square in front of Our Lady of
Kazan. And it was there that his eldest daughter, a student of
graduate studies of Saint Petersburg, was apprehended on the
same spot in Kazan on the anniversary of this demonstration,
twenty‐ ve years later, in 1901. (In 1908, Member of a group S.‐
R.[749], she was condemned to the penal colonies for the attack
on the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich.[750])
In fact, over the years, Russian revolutionaries increasingly
needed the input of the Jews; they understood more and more
what advantage they derived from them—of their dual
struggle: against the vexations on the plane of nationality, and
against those of an economic order—as a detonator for the
revolution.
In 1883, in Geneva, appears what can be considered as the
head of the emerging social democracy: the “Liberation of
Labour” group. Its founders were, along with Plekhanov and
Vera Zasulich, L. Deutsch and P. Axelrod.[751] (When Ignatov
died in 1885, he was replaced by Ingerman.)
In Russia comes to life a current that supports them.
Constituted of former members of the dismantled Black
Repartition (they considerably exceeded those of the Will of
the People), they will be called “liberationists” (osvobojdentsy).
Among them are a number of young Jews, among whom we
can name the two best known: Israel Guelfand (the future and
famous Parvus) and Raphael Soloveitchik. In 1889
Soloveitchik, who had travelled through Russia to set up
revolutionary action in several cities, was arrested and tried
with other members of the Liberation of Labour group, which
included several Jewish names.[752] Others who belonged to
this social revolutionary trend were David Goldendach, the
future, well‐known Bolshevik “Riazanov” (who had ed Odessa
in 1889 and had taken refuge abroad to escape military
service[753]).
 Nevertheless, what remained of the Will of the People after
its collapse was a fairly large group. Among them were Dembo,
Rudevitch, Mandelstam, Boris Reinchtein, Ludwig Nagel, Bek,
So a Chentsis, Filippeo, Leventis, Cheftel, Barnekhovsky, etc.
[754]
Thus a certain amount of energy had been preserved to fuel
the rivalries between small groups—The Will of the People, The
Black Repartition, Liberation of Labour—and theoretical
debates. The three volumes of the “Historical and
Revolutionary Collection” published in the (Soviet) 20s, which
we use here, o er us, in an interminable and tedious logorrhea,
an account of the cut and thrust, allegedly much more
important and sublime than all the questions of universal
thought and history. The detail of these debates constitute a
deadly material on the spiritual fabric of the Russian
revolutionaries of the years 80‒90, and it still awaits its
historian.
But from the thirties of the Soviet era onwards, it was no
longer possible to enumerate with pride and detail all those
who had had their share in the revolution; a sort of taboo
settled in historical and political publications, the role and
name of the Jews in the Russian revolutionary movement
ceased to be evoked—and even now, this kind of evocation
creates uneasiness. Now, nothing is more immoral and
dangerous than to silence anything when History is being
written: it only creates a distortion of opposite meaning.
If, as can be read in the Jewish Encyclopædia, “to account for
the genuine importance of the Jewish component in the
Russian liberation movement, to express it in precise gures,
does not seem possible,”[755] one can nevertheless, based on
various sources, give an approximate picture.
Hessen informs us that “of the 376 defendants, accused of
crimes against the State in the rst half of 1879, there were
only 4% Jews,” and “out of the 1,054 persons tried before the
Senate during the year 1880…, there were 6.5% of Jews.”[756]
Similar estimates are found among other authors.
However, from decade to decade, the number of Jews
participating in the revolutionary movement increases, their
role becomes more in uential, more recognised. In the early
years of Soviet rule, when it was still a matter of pride, a
prominent communist, Lourie‐Larine, said: “In tsarist prisons
and in exile, Jews usually constituted nearly a quarter of all
prisoners and exiles.”[757] Marxist historian M. N. Pokrovsky,
basing himself on the workforce of the various congresses,
concludes that “the Jews represent between a quarter and a
third of the organisations of all the revolutionary parties.”[758]
(The modern Jewish Encyclopædia has some reservations about
this estimate).
In 1903, in a meeting with Herzl, Witte endeavoured to
show that, while representing only 5% of the population of
Russia, i.e. 6 million out of 136 million, the Jews had in their
midst no less than 50% of revolutionaries.[759]
General N. Sukhotin, commander‐in‐chief of the Siberian
region, compiled statistics on January 1st, 1905 of political
prisoners under surveillance for all of Siberia and by
nationality. This resulted in 1,898 Russians (42%), 1,678 Jews
(37%), 624 Poles (14%), 167 Caucasians, 85 Baltic and 94 of
other nationalities. (Only the exiles are counted there, prisons
and penal colony convicts are not taken into account, and the
gures are only valid for the year 1904, but this, however, gives
a certain overview.) There is, moreover, an interesting
precision in connection with those who “went into hiding”:
17% of Russians, 64% of Jews, 19% of other nationalities.[760]
Here is the testimony of V. Choulguine: in 1889, the news
relating to the student demonstrations of Saint Petersburg
reached Kiev. “The long corridors of the university were
teeming with a crowd of young people in e ervescence. I was
struck by the predominance of the Jews. Were they more or less
numerous than the Russians, I could not say, but they
‘predominated’ incontestably, for it was they who were in
charge of this tumultuous melee in jackets. Some time later, the
professors and the non‐striking students began to be chased
out of lecture halls. Then this ‘pure and holy youth’ took false
photographs of the Cossacks beating the students; these
photographs were said to have been taken ‘on the y’ when
they were made from drawings: “Not all Jewish students are
left‐wingers, some were on our side, but those ones su ered a
lot afterwards, they were harassed by society.” Choulguine
adds: “The role of the Jews in the revolutionary e ervescence
within universities was notorious and unrelated to their
number across the country.”[761]
Milyukov described all this as “legends about the
revolutionary spirit of the Jews… They [government o cials]
need legends, just like the primitive man needs rhymed
prose.”[762] Conversely, G. P. Fedotov wrote: “The Jewish
nation, morally liberated from the 80s onwards, like the
Russian intelligentsia under Peter the Great, is in the highest
degree uprooted, internationalist and active… It immediately
assumed the leading role in the Russian revolution… It marked
the moral pro le of the Russian revolutionary with its incisive
and sombre character.”[763] From the 80s onwards, the
Russian and Jewish elites merged not only in a common
revolutionary action, but also in all spiritual fads, and
especially in the passion for non‐rootedness.
In the eyes of a contemporary, simple witness to the facts
(Zinaida Altanskaya, who corresponded from the town of Orel
with Fyodor Kryukov[764]), this Jewish youth of the beginning
of the century appeared as follows: “… with them, there is the
art and the love of ghting. And what projects!—vast, bold!
They have something of their own, a halo of su ering,
something precious. We envy them, we are vexed” (that the
Russian youth is not the same).
M. Agursky states the following hypothesis: “Participation in
the revolutionary movement was, so to speak, a form of
assimilation [more] ‘suitable’ than the common assimilation
through baptism”; and it appears all the more worthy because
it also meant a sort of revolt against one’s own Jewish
bourgeoisie[765]—and against one’s own religion, which
counted for nothing for the revolutionaries.
However, this “proper” assimilation was neither complete
nor even real: many of these young men, in their haste, tore
themselves from their own soil without really taking root in
Russian soil, and remained outside these two nations and two
cultures, to be nothing more than this material of which
internationalism is so fond of.
But as the equal rights of the Jews remained one of the major
demands of the Russian revolutionary movement, these young
people, by embarking in the revolution, kept in their hearts and
minds, the idea they were still serving the interests of their
people. This was the thesis that Parvus had adopted as a course
of action during his entire life, which he had formulated,
defended and inculcated to the young people: the liberation of
the Jews from Russia can only be done by overthrowing the
Tsarist regime.
This thesis found signi cant support for a particular layer of
Jewish society—middle‐aged people, well‐o , set, incredibly
estranged from the spirit of adventure, but who, since the end
of the nineteenth century, fed a permanent irritation against
the Russian mode of government. It was in this ideological eld
that their children grew up before they even received the sap of
Judaism to subsist from. An in uential member of the Bund,
Mr. Raies, points out that at the turn of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries “the Jewish bourgeoisie did not hide the
hopes and expectations it placed in the progress of the
revolutionary movement… it, which it once rejected, now had
the bourgeoisie’s favours.”[766]
G. Gershuni explained to his judges: “It is your persecutions
that have driven us to the revolution.” In fact, the explanation
is to be found both in Jewish history and in Russian history—at
their intersection.
Let us listen to G. A. Landau, a renowned Jewish publicist. He
wrote after 1917: “There were many Jewish families, both
small and middle‐class, in which the parents, bourgeois
themselves, saw with their benevolent eyes, sometimes proud,
always quiet, their o spring being marked by the seal in
fashion of one of the social‐revolutionary ideologies in vogue.”
They also, in fact, “leaned vaguely in favour of this ideology
which protested against the persecutors, but without asking
what was the nature of this protest or what were these
persecutions.” And it was thus that “little by little, the
hegemony of socialism took root in Jewish society…”—the
negation of civil society and of the State, contempt for
bourgeois culture, and of the inheritance of past centuries, an
inheritance from which the Jews had less di culty to tear
themselves away from since they already had, by
Europeanising themselves, renounced their own inheritance.”
The revolutionary ideas “in the Jewish milieu… were… doubly
destructive,” and for Russia and for themselves. But they
penetrated the Jewish milieu much more deeply than the
Russian milieu.”[767]
A jeweller from Kiev, Marchak (who even created some
pieces to decorate the churches of the city), testi es that “while
I was frequenting the bourgeoisie, I was contaminated [by the
revolutionary spirit].”[768] Moreover, this is what we see with
the young Bogrov[769]: that energy, that passion which grows
in him during his youth spent in the bosom of a very rich
family. His father, a wealthy liberal, gave full liberty to his
young terrorist son.—And the Gotz brothers, also terrorists,
had for grandfathers two Muscovites rich as Croesus, Gotz on
the one hand, and on the other, Vyssotsky, a multi‐millionaire
tea maker, and these, far from retaining their grandchildren,
paid to the S.‐R. hundreds of thousands of rubles.
“Many Jews have come to swell the ranks of the Socialists,”
continues Landau.[770] In one of his speeches in the Duma
(1909), A. I. Guchkov quotes the testimony of a young S.‐R.:
among other causes of her disenchantment, “she said that the
revolutionary movement was entirely monopolised by the Jews
and that they saw in the triumph of the revolution their own
triumph.”[771]
The enthusiasm for the revolution has seized Jewish society
from the bottom to the top, says I. O. Levin: “It is not only the
lower strata of the Jewish population of Russia that have
devoted themselves to the revolutionary passion,” but this
movement “could not fail to catch a large part of the
intellectuals and semi‐intellectuals of the Jewish people”
(semi‐intellectuals who, in the 20s, constituted the active
executives of the Soviet regime). “They were even more
numerous among the liberal professions, from dentists to
university teachers—those who could settle outside the Pale of
Settlement. Having lost the cultural heritage of traditional
Judaism, these people were nonetheless foreign to Russian
culture and any other national culture. This spiritual vacuum,
hidden under a super cially assimilated European culture,
made the Jews, already inclined to materialism, by their trades
as tradesmen or craftsmen, very receptive to materialistic
political theories… The rationalist mode of thought peculiar to
the Jews… predisposes them to adhere to doctrines such as that
of revolutionary Marxism.”[772]
 The co‐author of this collection, V. S. Mandel, remarks:
“Russian Marxism in its purest state, copied from the original
German, was never a Russian national movement, and Jews in
Russia, who were animated by a revolutionary spirit, for which
nothing could be easier than assimilating a doctrine exhibited
in books in German, were naturally led to take an important
part in the work of transplanting this foreign fruit on Russian
soil.”[773] F. A. Stepun expressed it thus: “The Jewish youth
boldly discussed, quoting Marx in support, the question of the
form in which the Russian moujik should possess the land. The
Marxist movement began in Russia with the Jewish youth
inside the Pale of Settlement.”
Developing this idea, V. S. Mandel recalls “The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion”…, this stupid and hateful falsity.” Well,
“these Jews see in the delusions of the ‘Protocols’ the malicious
intention of the anti‐Semites to eradicate Judaism,” but they
themselves are “ready, in varying degrees, to organise the
world on new principles, and believe that the revolution marks
a step forward towards the establishment of the heavenly
Kingdom on earth, and attribute to the Jewish people, for its
greatest glory, the role of leader of the popular movements for
freedom, equality and justice—a leader who, of course, does
not hesitate to break down the existing political and social
regime.” And he gives as an example a quotation from the book
of Fritz Kahn, The Hebrews as a Race and People of Culture:
“Moses, one thousand two hundred and fty years before Jesus
Christ, proclaimed the rights of man… Christ paid with his life
the preaching of Communist manifestos in a capitalist state”,
then “in 1848, the star of Bethlehem rose for the second time…
and it rose again above the roofs of Judea: Marx.”[774]
Thus, “of this common veneration for the revolution emerge
and distinguish certain currents of opinion in Jewish society—
all desperately unrealistic, childishly pretentious, thereby
irresistibly aspiring to a troubled era, and not in Russia alone,
but encompassing the entire century.”[775]
With what casualness and what gravity at the same time,
with what beautiful promises Marxism penetrates into the
consciousness of cultivated Russia! Finally, the revolution has
found its scienti c foundation with its cortège of infallible
deductions and inevitable predictions!
Among the young Marxists, there is Julius Tsederbaum;
Martov, the future great leader of the Mensheviks, who,
together with his best friend Lenin, will rst found the “Union
for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” (of all
Russia)—only he will not enjoy the same protection as Lenin,
exiled in the merciful country of Minousine: he will have to
serve his three years in the tough region of Tourukhan. It was
he, too, who, together with Lenin, designed the Iskra[776] and
set up a whole network for its dissemination.
But even before collaborating with Lenin to found the All‐
Russian Social‐Democratic Party, Martov, then exiled to
Vilnius, had set up the ideological and organisational
foundations of a “Jewish Joint Labour Union for Lithuania,
Poland and Russia”. Martov’s idea was that, from now on,
propaganda within the masses should be favoured as work
within the circles, and, for this, make it “more speci cally
Jewish”, and, in particular, translate it into Yiddish. In his
lecture, Martov described the principles of the new Union: “We
expected everything from the movement of the Russian
working class and considered ourselves as an appendix of the
pan‐Russian workers’ movement… we had forgotten to
maintain the link with the Jewish mass who does not know
Russian. But at the same time, “without suspecting it, we
hoisted the Jewish movement to a height unmatched by the
Russians.” Now is the time to free the Jewish movement “from
the mental oppression to which the [Jewish] bourgeoisie has
subjected it,” which is “the lowest and lowest bourgeoisie in the
world”, “to create a speci cally Jewish workers’ organisation,
which will serve as guide and instructor for the Jewish
proletariat.” In the “national character of the movement,”
Martov saw a victory over the bourgeoisie, and with this “we are
perfectly safe… from nationalism.”[777] In the following year,
Plekhanov, at the Congress of the International Socialist,
described the Jewish Social‐Democratic movement as “the
vanguard of the working‐class army in Russia.”[778] It was the
latter which became the Bund (Vilnius, 1897), six months
before the creation of the Social‐Democratic Party of Russia.
The next stage is the First Congress of the Russian Social‐
Democratic Party, which takes place in Minsk (where the
Central Committee of the Bund was located) in 1898. The
Jewish Encyclopædia tells us that “out of eight delegates, ve
were Jewish: the envoys of a Kiev newspaper, The Workers’
Gazette, B. Eidelman, N. Vigdorchik, and those of the Bund: A.
Kremer, A. Mutnik, S. Katz [were also present Radchenko,
Petruyvitch and Vannovsky] . Within the Central Committee of
the party (of three members) which was constituted at this
Congress entered A. Kremer and B. Eidelman.”[779] Thus was
born the Social‐Democratic Labour Party of Russia, in a close
relationship with the Bund. (Let us add: even before the
creation of Iskra, it was to Lenin that the direction of the
newspaper of the Bund had been proposed.[780])
The fact that the Bund was created in Vilnius is not
surprising: Vilnius was “the Lithuanian Jerusalem”, a city
inhabited by a whole cultivated Jewish elite, and through
which transited, in provenance of the West, all the illegal
literature heading to Saint Petersburg and Moscow.[781]
But the Bund, despite its internationalist ideology, “became a
factor of national unity of Jewish life,” even though “its leaders
were guarding against nationalism as if it were the plague”
(like the Russian Social‐Democrats who succeeded in watching
out for it until the end). While subsidies owed from abroad,
consented by the wealthy Jewish milieus, the Bund advocated
the principle that there is not a single Jewish people, and
rejected the idea of a “universal Jewish nation,”[782] claiming
on the contrary, that there are exist two antagonistic classes
within the Jewish people (the Bund feared that nationalistic
dispositions might “obscure the class consciousness of the
proletariat”).
However, there was hardly any Jewish proletariat in the
strict sense of the term: the Jews seldom entered factories, as F.
Kohn explains, “they considered it disgraceful not to be their
own master”, albeit very modestly—as an artisan or even an
apprentice, when one can nurture the hope of opening one’s
own workshop. “To be hired in a factory was to lose all illusions
as to the possibility of becoming one day one’s own master, and
that is why working in a factory was a humiliation, a
disgrace.”[783] (Another obstacle was the reluctance of
employers to hire workers whose day of rest was Saturday and
not Sunday.) As a result, the Bund declared “Jewish proletariat”
both the artisans, and small traders, and clerks (was not every
employed worker a proletarian, according to Marx?), and even
commercial intermediaries. To all these individuals the
revolutionary spirit could be inculcated, and they had be joined
to the struggle against the autocracy. The Bund even declared
that the Jews “are the best proletariat in the world.”[784] (The
Bund never renounced the idea of “strengthening its work
among Christian workers.”)
Not suspected of sympathy for socialism, G. B. Sliosberg
writes in this regard that the enormous propaganda deployed
by the Bund and some of its interventions “have done harm,
and in particular an immediate damage to Jewish trade and
their start‐up industries.” The Bund was turning against the
employing instructors the very young apprentices, kids of 14‒
15 years old; its members broke the tiles of “more or less
opulent Jewish houses.” In addition, “on Yom‐Kippur, young
people from the Bund went into the great synagogue [in
Vilnius], interrupted the prayer and started an incredible party,
with beer owing abundantly…”[785]
But, in spite of its class fanaticism, the Bund was
increasingly based on a universal current equally characteristic
of bourgeois liberalism: “It was increasingly understood in the
cultivated world that the national idea plays an essential role in
the awakening of self‐consciousness in every man, which
obliged the theoreticians of the proletarian circles themselves
to raise more broadly the national question”; thus, in the Bund,
“assimilationist tendencies were gradually supplanted by
national tendencies.”[786]—This, Jabotinsky con rms: “As it
grows, the Bund replaces a national ideology with
cosmopolitanism.”[787] Abram Amsterdam, “one of the rst
important leaders of the Bund”, who died prematurely, “tried to
reconcile the Marxist doctrine with the ideas of
nationalism.”[788]—In 1901, at a congress of the Bund, one of
the future leaders of the year Seventeen, Mark Lieber (M. I.
Goldman), who was then a young man of 20, declared: “so far
we have been cosmopolitan believers. We must become
national. Do not be afraid of the word. National does not mean
nationalist.” (May we understand it, even if it is ninety years
late!) And, although this congress had endorsed a resolution
against “the exaltation of the national sentiment which leads
to chauvinism”, he also pronounced himself for the national
autonomy of the Jews “regardless of the territory inhabited by
them.”[789]
This slogan of national autonomy, the Bund developed it for
a few years, both in its propaganda and its campaign of
political banquets of 1904… although nobody knew exactly
what could mean autonomy without territory. Thus, every
Jewish person was given the right to use only his own language
in his dealings with the local administration and the organs of
the State… but how? (For should not this right also be granted
to the nationals of other nations?)
It should also be noted that, in spite of its socialist
tendencies, the Bund, “in its social‐democratic programme”,
pronounced itself “against the demand for the restoration of
Poland… and against constituent assemblies for the marches
of Russia.”[790] Nationalism, yes—but for oneself alone?
Thus, the Bund admitted only Jews in its midst. And once
this orientation was taken, and although it was radically
anticlerical, it did not accept the Jews who had denied their
religion. The parallel Russian Social‐Democratic organisations,
the Bund, call them “Christian”—and, moreover, how could
they be represented di erently? But what a cruel o ence for
Lenin[791] to be so catalogued among the “Christians”!
The Bund thus embodies the attempt to defend Jewish
interests, in particular against Russian interests. Here too,
Sliosberg acknowledges: “The Bund’s action has resulted in a
sense of dignity and awareness of the rights of Jewish
workers.”[792]
Subsequently, the Bund’s relations with the Russian Social‐
Democratic Party were not easy. As with the Polish Socialist
Party, which at the time of the birth of the Bund had an
“extremely suspicious” attitude towards it and declared that
“the isolationism of the Bund places it in an adversarial
position in relation to us.”[793] Given its increasingly
nationalistic tendencies, the Bund could only have con icting
relations with the other branches of Russian Social‐Democracy.
Lenin thus describes the discussion he and Martov had with
Plekhanov in Geneva in September 1900: “G. V.[794] shows a
phenomenal intolerance by declaring that [i.e. the Bund] is in
no way a social‐democratic organisation, but that it is simply
an exploiting organisation that takes advantage of the
Russians; he says that our aim is to drive this Bund out of the
Party, that the Jews are all without exception chauvinists and
nationalists, that the Russian party must be Russian and not
turn itself in “bound hand and foot” to the tribe of Gad[795]…
G. V. has stuck to his positions without wanting to reconsider
them, saying that we simply lack knowledge of the Jewish
world and experience in dealing with it.”[796] (From what ear
Martov, the rst initiator of the Bund, must have heard this
diatribe?!)
In 1898 the Bund, despite its greater seniority, agreed to join
the Russian Social‐Democratic Party, but as a whole, with full
autonomy over Jewish a airs. It therefore agreed to be a
member of the Russian party, but on condition that it did not
interfere in its a airs. Such was the agreement between them.
However, at the beginning of 1902, the Bund considered that
autonomy, so easily obtained at the 1st Congress of the Social
Democratic Party, was no longer enough for it and that it now
wanted to join the party on a federal basis, bene ting of full
independence, even in programme matters. Regarding this it
published a pamphlet against the Iskra.[797] The central
argument, Lenin explains, was that the Jewish proletariat “is a
part of the Jewish people, which occupies a special place among
the nations.”[798]
At this stage, Lenin sees red and feels obliged to clash with
the Bund himself. He no longer calls only “to maintain pressure
[against autocracy] by avoiding a fragmentation of the party
into several independent formations,”[799] but he embarks on
a passionate argument to prove (following, admittedly,
Kautsky) that Jews are by no means a nation: they have neither
common language nor territory (a atly materialistic
judgement: the Jews are one of the most authentic nations, the
most united found on earth. United, it is in spirit. In his
super cial and vulgar internationalism, Lenin could not
understand the depth or historical roots of the Jewish
question.) “The idea of a separate Jewish people is politically
reactionary,”[800] it justi es Jewish particularism. (And all the
more “reactionary” were Zionists to him!) Lenin saw a solution
for the Jews only in their total assimilation—which amounts to
saying, in fact, to cease outright being Jewish.
In the summer of 1903, at the 2nd Congress of the Social‐
Democratic Party of Russia in Brussels, out of 43 delegates,
there were only ve of the Bund (however, “many Jews
participated”). And Martov, “supported by twelve Jews” (among
them Trotsky, Deutsch, Martynov, Liadov, to name but a few),
spoke on behalf of the party against the “federal” principle
demanded by the Bund. The members of the Bund then left the
Congress (which permitted Lenin’s proposed statutes in
paragraph 1 to prevail), and then also left the party.[801] (After
the split of the Social Democratic Party into Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks, “the leaders of the Mensheviks were A. Axelrod, A.
Deutsch, L. Martov, M. Lieber, L. Trotsky,”[802] as well as F. Dan,
R. Abramovich—Plekhanov remaining on the sidelines.)
On the “Street of the Jews,” as it was then called, the Bund
quickly became a powerful and active organisation. “Until the
eve of the events of 1905, the Bund was the most powerful
social‐democratic organisation in Russia, with a well‐
established apparatus, good discipline, united members,
exibility and great experience in conspiring.” Nowhere else is
there a discipline like in the Bund. The “bastion” of the Bund
was the North‐West region.[803]
However, formidable competition arose with the
“Independent Jewish Workers’ Party” which was created in
1901 under the in uence and the exhortations of
Zubatov[804]: it persuaded the Jewish workers and all who
would listen that it was not the social democratic ideology they
needed but struggle against the bourgeoisie defending their
economic interests to them—the government was interested in
their success, they could act legally, their authority would a
benevolent referee. The head of this movement was the
daughter of a miller, the intrepid Maria Vilbouchevitch. “The
supporters of Zubatov… enjoyed great success in Minsk with
the (Jewish) workers”; they were passionately opposed to the
members of the Bund and obtained much by organising
economic strikes. They also acted, not without success, in
Odessa (Khuna Shayevich). But just as, throughout the country,
the frightened government (and Plehve[805]) foiled Zubatov’s
project , likewise with the “independents”: Shayevich was
arrested in 1903, sentenced to a fairly short sentence—but
then came the news of the Kishinev pogrom, and the
“independents” had their hands tied.[806]
Meanwhile, “the Bund was receiving help from foreign
groups” from Switzerland rst and then from Paris, London,
the United States where “action groups… had reached sizeable
proportions.” Organised “clubs, Rotarian action groups,
associations of aid to the work of the Bund in Russia. This aid
was mainly nancial.”[807]
From 1901, the Bund renounced “economic terror” (lashing
out on employers, monitoring factories), because it “obscured
the social‐democratic consciousness of the workers”, and they
pretended equally of condemning political terror.”[808] This
did not prevent Guirsh Lekkert, a cobbler who was a member of
the Bund, from shooting at the governor of Vilnius—and to be
hanged for it. The young Mendel Deutsch, still a minor, also
red shots whose signi cance marked “the apogee of the
movement of the Jewish masses.”[809] And already the Bund
was wondering if it should not go back to terror. In 1902, the
Berdichev Conference endorsed a resolution on “organised
revenge”. But a debate broke out in the Bund, and the following
year the Congress formally annulled this decision of the
Conference.[810] According to Lenin, the Bund, in 1903, went
through “terrorist temptations, which it then got over.”[811]
Terror, which had already manifested itself more than once
in Russia, enjoyed a general indulgence, an indulgence which
was in the air of the time, and which, with the increasingly
widespread custom of holding, “just in case,” a rearm (and it
was easy to obtain one via smuggling) could not fail to arouse,
in the minds of the youth of the Pale of Settlement, the idea of
forming their own combat regiments.
But the Bund had active and dangerous competitors. Is it a
historical coincidence, or the time had simply come for the
Jewish national consciousness to be reborn, in any case, it is in
1897, the year of the creation of the Bund, just a month prior,
the First Universal Congress of Zionism took place. And it was
in the early 1900s that young Jews pioneered a new path, “a
public service path… at the crossroads between Iskra and Bne
Moshe” (“the sons of Moses”), some turning right, the others
heading left.”[812] “In the programmes of all our groupings
which appeared between 1904 and 1906, the national theme
held its proper place.”[813] We have seen that the Socialist
Bund had not cut it o , and it now only had to condemn
Zionism all the more rmly in order to excite national
sentiment to the detriment of class consciousness.
It is true that “the numbers of the Zionist circles among the
youth gave way to the number of young people adhering to the
revolutionary socialist parties.”[814] (Although there were
counter‐examples: thus the publisher of the Jewish Socialist La
Pravda of Geneva, G. Gurevitch, had re‐converted to devote
himself entirely to the issue of the Jews’ settlement in
Palestine.) The ditch dug between Zionism and the Bund was
gradually lled by such and such a new party, then another,
then a third—Poalei‐Tsion, Zeirei‐Tsion, the “Zionist‐
Socialists”, the serpovtsy (seimovtsy)—, each combining in its
own way Zionism and socialism.
It is understandable that between parties so close to one
other a erce struggle developed, and this did not facilitate the
task of the Bund. Nor did the emigration of the Jews from
Russia into Israel, which gained momentum in those years:
why emigrate? What sense does this have when the Jewish
proletariat must ght for socialism side by side with the
working class of all countries…, which would automatically
solve the Jewish question everywhere?
The Jews have often been criticised in the course of history
for the fact that many of them were usurers, bankers,
merchants. Yes, the Jews formed a signi cant detachment,
creator of the world of capital—and mainly in its nancial
forms. This, the great political economist Werner Sombart
described it with a vigorous and convincing pen. In the rst
years of the Revolution this circumstance was, on the contrary,
attributed to the Jews, as an inevitable formation on the road to
socialism. And in one of his indictments, in 1919, Krylenko
found it necessary to emphasise that “the Jewish people, since
the Middle Ages, has taken out of their ranks the holders of a
new in uence, that of capital… they precipitated… the
dissolution of economic forms of another age.”[815] Yes, of
course, the capitalist system in the economic and commercial
eld, the democratic system in the political eld are largely
indebted to the constructive contribution of the Jews, and
these systems in turn are the most favourable to the
development of Jewish life and culture.
But—and this is an unfathomable historical enigma—these
systems were not the only ones that the Jews favoured.
As V. S. Mandel reminds us, if we refer to the Bible, we
discover that “the very idea of a monarchy was invented by no
other people but the Hebrews, and they transmitted it to the
Christian world. The monarch is not chosen by the people, he is
the chosen by God. Hence the rite which the Christian peoples
have inherited from the coronation and anointing of the
kings.”[816] (One might rectify by recalling that the Pharaohs
long ago were also anointed, and also bearers of the divine
will.) For his part, the former Russian revolutionary A. Valt‐
Lessine remembers: “The Jews did not accord great importance
to the revolutionary movement. They put all their hopes in the
petitions addressed to Saint Petersburg, or even in the bribes
paid to the o cials of the ministries—but not at all in the
revolution.”[817] This kind of approach to the in uential
spheres received, on the part of the impatient Jewish youth, the
sobriquet, known since the Middle Ages and now infamous, of
chtadlan. Someone like G. B. Sliosberg, who worked for many
years in the Senate and the Ministry of the Interior, and who
patiently had to solve Jewish problems of a private nature,
thought that this avenue was the safest, with the richest future
for the Jews, and he was ulcerated to note the impatience of
these young people.
Yes, it was perfectly unreasonable, on the part of the Jews, to
join the revolutionary movement, which had ruined the course
of normal life in Russia and, consequently, that of the Jews of
Russia. Yet, in the destruction of the monarchy and in the
destruction of the bourgeois order—as, some time before, in the
reinforcement of it—the Jews found themselves in the
vanguard. Such is the innate mobility of the Jewish character,
its extreme sensitivity to social trends and the advancement of
the future.
It will not be the rst time in the history of mankind that the
most natural impulses of men will suddenly lead to
monstrosities most contrary to their nature.
 Chapter 7. The Birth of Zionism

How did the Jewish conscience evolve in Russia during the

second half of the nineteenth century? Towards 1910,
Vladimir Jabotinsky describes this evolution in his somewhat
passionate manner: at rst, the mass of Jews opposed the
Enlightenment, “the fanatic prejudice of an overvalued
speci city.” But time did its work, and “as much Jews,
historically, ed humanist culture, as much they aspire to it
now… and this thirst for knowledge is so widespread that it
perhaps makes us, Jews of Russia, the rst nation in the world.”
However, “running towards the goal, we passed it. Our goal
was to form a Jew who, by staying Jewish, could live a life that
would be that of the universal man”, and “now we have totally
forgotten that we must remain Jewish”, “we stopped attaching
a price to our Jewish essence, and it began to weigh on us.” We
must “extirpate this mentality from self‐contempt and revive
the mentality of self‐respect… We complain that we are
despised, but we are not far from despising ourselves.”[818]
This description re ects the general trend towards
assimilation, but not all aspects of the picture. As we have
already seen (chapter 4), in the late sixties of the nineteenth
century, the publicist and man of letters Smolenskin had
spoken out vigorously against the tendency to assimilate
Jewish intellectuals, as he had observed it in Odessa or as it had
spread in Germany. And he at once declared war on both
“bigots and false devotees who want to drive out all knowledge
of the house of Israel.” No! One must not be ashamed of their
origins, one must cherish their national language and dignity;
however, national culture can only be preserved through
language, the ancient Hebrew. This is all the more important
because “Judaism deprived of territory” is a particular
phenomenon, “a spiritual nation”.[819] The Jews are indeed a
nation, not a religious congregation. Smolenskin advanced the
doctrine of “progressive Jewish nationalism.”[820]
Throughout the 70s, Smolenskin’s voice remained
practically unheard of. At the end of this period, however, the
liberation of the Slavs from the Balkans contributed to the
national awakening of the Jews of Russia themselves. But the
pogroms of 1881‒1882 caused the ideals of Haskala to collapse;
“The conviction that civilisation was going to put an end to the
persecutions of another age against the Jews and that these,
thanks to the Enlightenment, would be able to approach the
European peoples, this conviction was considerably
shaken.”[821] (The experience of the pogroms in the south of
Ukraine is thus extrapolated to all the Jews of Europe?) Among
the Jews of Russia “there appeared the type of the ‘repentant
intellectual’, of those who aspired to return to traditional
Judaism.”[822]
It was then that Lev Pinsker, a well‐known doctor and
publicist, already sixty years of age, gave the Jews of Russia and
Germany a vigorous appeal to self‐emancipation.[823] Pinsker
wrote that faith in emancipation had collapsed, that it was
now necessary to sti e every ounce of hope in brotherhood
among peoples. Today, “the Jews do not constitute a living
nation; they are strangers everywhere; they endure oppression
and contempt on the part of the peoples who surround them.”
The Jewish people is “the spectre of a dead wandering among
the living”. “One must be blind not to see that the Jews are the
‘chosen people’ of universal hatred. The Jews cannot
“assimilate to any nation and consequently cannot be tolerated
by any nation.” “By wanting to mingle with other peoples, they
have frivolously sacri ced their own nationality,” but
“nowhere have they obtained that the others recognise them as
native‐born inhabitants equal to them.” The destiny of the
Jewish people cannot depend on the benevolence of other
peoples. The practical conclusion thus lies in the creation of “a
people on its own territory”. What is needed, therefore, is to
nd an appropriate territory, “no matter where, in what part of
the world,”[824] and that the Jews come to populate it.
Moreover, the creation in 1860 of the Alliance [Israelite
Universal] was nothing but the rst sign of Jewish refusal of a
single option—assimilation.
There already existed among the Jews of Russia a movement
of Palestinophilia, the aspiration to return to Palestine.
(Conforming, in essence, to traditional religious salutation:
“Next year in Jerusalem.”) This movement gained momentum
after 1881‒1882. “Stretching out its e orts to colonise
Palestine… so that within a century the Jews can nally leave
the inhospitable land of Europe”… The slogans that the
Enlightenment had previously broadcasted, inciting to ght
“traditionalism, Hasidism and religious prejudices, gave way to
a call for reconciliation and the union of all layers of Jewish
society for the realisation of the ideals” of Palestine, “for the
return to the Judaism of our fathers.” “In many cities of Russia,
circles were formed, called circles of the ‘Lovers of Zion’—
Khovevei‐Tsion.[825][826]
And it was thus that an idea joined another to rectify it.
Going to settle elsewhere, yes, but not anywhere: in Palestine.
But what had happened in Palestine? “The rst crusade
resulted in the virtual disappearance of the few Hebrews who
remained in Palestine.” Nevertheless, “a tiny Jewish religious
community had succeeded in surviving and the collapse of the
Crusader State, and the conquest of the country by the
Mamelukes, and the invasion by the Mongol hordes.” Over the
following centuries, the Jewish population was somewhat
replenished by a modest migratory ow of “believers from
di erent countries”. At the end of the eighteenth century a
certain number of Hasidim emigrated from Russia. “In the
middle of the nineteenth century, there were twelve thousand
Jews in Palestine,” whereas at the end of the eleventh century
there were twenty‐ ve thousand. “These Jewish towns in the
land of Israel constituted what was called the Yishuv. All their
inhabitants (men) were only studying Judaism, and nothing
else. They lived on Haluka—subsidies sent by Jewish
communities in Europe. These funds were distributed by the
rabbis, hence the absolute authority of the rabbis. The leaders
of the Yishuv “rejected any attempt to create in the country
even an embryo of productive work of Jewish origin.” They
were studying exclusively the Talmud, nothing else, and on a
fairly elementary level. “The great Jewish historian G. Gretz,
who visited Palestine in 1872,” found that “only a minority
studied for real, the others preferred to stroll the streets,
remained idle, engaged in gossip and slander.” He believed that
“this system favours obscurantism, poverty and degeneration
of the Jewish population of Palestine”—and for this he himself
“had to undergo Herem[827].”[828]
In 1882, in Kharkov, Palestinophile students founded the
Biluim circle. They proposed to “create in Palestine a model
agricultural colony”, to set “the tone to the general colonisation
of Palestine by the Jews”; they undertook to found circles in
several cities of Russia. (Later they created a rst settlement in
Palestine, but were confronted to the hostility and opposition
of the traditional Yishuv: the rabbis demanded that, according
to ancient custom, the cultivation of the earth be suspended
one year out of seven.[829])
Pinsker supported the advocates of the return to Palestine: in
1887 he summoned the rst Congress of Palestinophiles in
Katovice, then in Druskeniki, and the second in 1887.
Propagandists began to cover the Pale of Settlement, speaking
in synagogues and public meetings. (Deutsch testi es that
after 1882 P. Axelrod himself contributed to palestinophilia…
[830])
Of course, Smolenskin is one of the passionate apostles of
the return to Palestine: bubbling and lively, he connects with
Anglo‐Jewish political actors, but he comes up against the
opposition of the Alliance, who does not want to promote the
colonisation of Palestine, but rather to direct the migratory
wave towards America. He then describes the tactics of the
Alliance as “betrayal of the cause of the people.” His premature
death cut his e orts short.[831]
We note, however, that this movement towards Palestine
was rather weakly received by the Jews of Russia; it was even
thwarted. “The idea of a political revival of the Jewish people
brought a small handful of intellectuals behind it at the time,
and it soon came up against erce adversaries.”[832] The
conservative circles, the rabbinate and the Tzadikim[833] saw
in this current towards Palestine an attack on the divine will,
“an attack on faith in the Messiah who alone must bring the
Jews back to Palestine. As for the progressive assimilationists,
they saw in this current a reactionary desire to isolate the Jews
from the rest of enlightened humanity.”[834]
The Jews of Europe did not support the movement either.
Meanwhile, on site, the success of the return was revealed to
be “too mitigated”: “many colonists discovered their
incompetence in the work of the land”; “the ideal of rebirth of
the ancient country was crumbling into petty acts of pure
benevolence”; “The colonies survived only because of the
subsidies sent by Baron Rothschild.” And in the early 1990s,
“colonisation went through… a serious crisis due to an
anarchic system of land purchase” and a decision by Turkey
(the owner of Palestine) to ban the Jews of Russia from
disembarking in Palestinian ports.[835]
 It was at this time that the publicist, thinker and organiser
Asher Ginzberg became known, under the eloquent
pseudonym of Ahad Haam (“One of His People”). He strongly
criticised practical palestinophilia as it had been constituted;
what he advocated was, “before striving for a renaissance on a
territory”, to worry about “a ‘rebirth of hearts’, an intellectual
and moral improvement of the people”: “to install at the centre
of Jewish life, a living and spiritual aspiration, a desire for
national cohesion, revival and free development in a national
spirit, but on the basis of all men.”[836] This will later be called
“spiritual Zionism” (but not “religious”, and this is important).
That same year, 1889, in order to unite among them those
who were dear to the idea of a rebirth of national feeling, Ahad
Haam founded a league—or, as it is called—an order: Bne‐
Moshe[837] (“The sons of Moses”), whose status “resembled
strongly those of the Masonic lodges; the applicant made the
solemn promise of strictly executing all the demands of order;
the new members were initiated by a master, the “big brother”;
the neophyte undertook to serve without reserve the ideal of
national rebirth, even if there was little hope that this ideal
would be realised any time soon.”[838] It was stipulated in the
manifesto of order that “national consciousness takes
precedence over religious consciousness, personal interests are
subject to national interests,” and it was recommended that a
feeling of unreserved love for Judaism, placed above all other
objectives of the movement. Thus was prepared “the ground
for the reception of political Zionism” of Herzl[839]… of which
Ahad Haam absolutely did not want.
He made several trips to Palestine: in 1891, 1893, and 1900.
Regarding colonisation, he denounced an anarchic character
and an insu cient rootedness in tradition.[840] He “severely
criticised the dictatorial conduct of Baron Rothschild’s
emissaries.”[841]
 This is how Zionism was born in Europe, a decade behind
Russia. The rst leader of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had been,
until the age of thirty‐six (he only lived to forty‐four), a writer,
a playwright, a journalist. He had never been interested in
Jewish history or, a fortiori, in the Hebrew language, and,
characteristically, as a good Austrian liberal, he considered the
aspirations of the various “ethnic minorities” of the Austro‐
Hungarian Empire to self‐determination and national
existence to be reactionary, and found it normal to sti e them.
[842] As Stefan Zweig writes, Herzl cherished the dream of
seeing the Jews of Vienna enter the cathedral in order to be
baptised and seeing the Jewish question resolved once and for
all by the fusion of Judaism and Christianity. But anti‐Jewish
sentiments developed in Austria‐Hungary in parallel with the
rise of Pan‐Germanism, while in Paris, where Herzl resided at
the time, the Dreyfus a air broke out. Herzl had the
opportunity to witness the “public degradation of Captain
Dreyfus”; convinced of his innocence, he was deeply shaken
and changed his course. “If separation is inevitable,” he said,
“well, let it be radical! … If we su er from being without a
country, let us build ourselves a homeland!”[843] Herzl then
had a revelation: it was necessary to create a Jewish state! “As if
struck by lightning, Herzl was enlightened by this new idea:
anti‐Semitism is not a fortuitous phenomenon subject to
particular conditions, it is a permanent evil, it is the eternal
companion of the eternal errant,” and “‘the only possible
solution to the Jewish question’, is a sovereign Jewish
state.”[844] (To conceive such a project after nearly two
thousand years of diaspora, what imaginative power one
needed, what exceptional audacity!) However, according to S.
Zweig, Herzl’s pamphlet entitled A Jewish State received from
the Viennese bourgeoisie a welcome “perplexed and irritated…
What’s gotten into this writer, so intelligent, so cultivated and
spiritual? Our language is German and not Hebrew, our
homeland—beautiful Austria”, Herzl, “does he not give our
worst enemies arguments against us: he wants to isolate us?”
Consequently, “Vienna… abandoned him and laughed at him.
But the answer came to him from elsewhere; it burst forth like
a thunderbolt, so sudden, charged with such a weight of
passion and such ecstasy that he was almost frightened to have
awakened, around the world, a movement with his dozens of
pages, a movement so powerful and through which he found
himself overwhelmed. His answer did not come to him, it is
true, from the Jews of the West… but from the formidable
masses of the East. Herzl, with his pamphlet, had in amed this
nucleus of Judaism, which was smouldering under the ashes of
the stranger.”[845]
Henceforth, Herzl gives himself body and soul to his new
idea. He “breaks o with those closest to him, he only frequents
the Jewish people… He who, even recently, despised politics,
now founds a political movement; he introduces to it a spirit
and a party discipline, forms the framework of a future army
and transforms the [Zionist] congresses into a true parliament
of the Jewish people.” At the rst Congress of Basel in 1897 he
produced a very strong impression “on the Jews who were
meeting for the rst time in a parliamentary role,” and “during
his very rst speech, he was unanimously and enthusiastically
proclaimed… leader and chief of the Zionist movement.” He
shows “a consummate art to nd the formulas of conciliation”,
and, conversely, “the one who criticises his objective… or
merely blames certain measures taken by him…, that one is the
enemy not only of Zionism, but of the entire Jewish
people.”[846]
The energetic writer Max Nordau (Suedfeld) supported him
by expressing the idea that emancipation is fallacious, since it
has introduced seeds of discord into the Jewish world: the
emancipated Jew believes that he really has found a homeland,
when “all that is living and vital in Judaism, which represents
the Jewish ideal, the courage and the ability to advance, all this
is none other than Zionism.”[847]
At this 1st Congress, the delegates of Russian Zionism
“constituted one third of the participants… 66 out of 197.” In
the eyes of some, their presence could be regarded as a gesture
of opposition to the Russian government. To Zionism had
adhered all of the Russian Khovevei‐Tsion, “thus contributing
to the establishment of global Zionism.”[848] Thus “Zionism
drew its strength from the communities of oppressed Jews in
the East, having found only limited support among the Jews of
Western Europe.”[849] But it also followed that the Russian
Zionists represented for Herzl a most serious opposition. Ahad
Haam waged a erce struggle against Herzl’s political Zionism
(alongside the majority of the palestinophiles), strongly
criticising the pragmatism of Herzl and Nordau, and
denouncing what he called “their indi erence to the spiritual
values of Judaic culture and tradition.”[850] He found chimeric
the hope of political Zionism to found an autonomous Jewish
state in the near future; he regarded all this movement as
extremely detrimental to the cause of the spiritual rebirth of
the nation… “They do not care about the salvation of Judaism
in perdition because they care nothing about spiritual and
cultural heritage; they aspire not to the rebirth of the ancient
nation, but to the creation of a new people from the dispersed
particles of ancient matter.”[851] (If he uses and even
emphasises the word “Judaism,” it is almost evident that it is
not in the sense of the Judaic religion, but in the sense of the
spiritual system inherited from ancestors. The Jewish
Encyclopædia tells us about Ahad Haam that in the 70s, “he was
more and more imbued with rationalism and deviated from
religion.”[852] If the only vocation for Palestine is to “become
the spiritual centre that could unite, by national and spiritual
ties, the dispersed nations,”[853] a centre which “would pour
out its ‘light’ on the Jews of the whole world”, would create “a
new spiritual bond between the scattered members of the
people”, it would be less a “State of the Jews” than “an elite
spiritual community.”[854]
Discussions agitated the Zionists. Ahad Haam strongly
criticised Herzl whom Nordau supported by accusing Ahad
Haam of “covert Zionist”. World Zionist congresses were held
every year; in 1902 took place the one of the Russian Zionists in
Minsk, and the discussions resumed. This is where Ahad Haam
read his famous exposition: A spiritual rebirth.[855]
Zionism no longer met with amenity from the outside. Herzl
expected this: as soon as the program of the Zionists would
take a concrete form and as soon as the real departure to
Palestine began, anti‐Semitism everywhere would end. But
long before this result was reached, “stronger than others, the
voice of those who… feared that the taking of a public position
in the nationalist sense of an assimilated Jew would give
antisemites the opportunity to say that every assimilated Jew
hides under his mask an authentic Jew… incapable of blending
into the local population.”[856] And as soon as an independent
state was created, the Jews went everywhere to be suspected
and accused of civic disloyalty, ideological isolationism—
which their enemies had always suspected and accused them
of.
In reply, at the Second Zionist Congress (1898), Nordau
declared: “We reject with disdain the name of ‘party’; the
Zionists are not a party, they are the Jewish people
themselves… Those who, on the contrary, are at ease in
servitude and contempt, they keep themselves carefully apart,
unless they ght us ercely.”[857]
 As one English historian observes: Yes, “Zionism has done a
great service to the Jews by restoring them a sense of dignity,”
and yet “it leaves unresolved the question of their attitude
towards the countries in which they live.”[858]
In Austria, a compatriot of Herzl, Otto Weininger, argued
with him: “Zionism and Judaism are incompatible with the fact
that Zionism intends to force the Jews to take upon themselves
the responsibility of a state of their own, which contradicts the
very essence of every Jew.”[859] And he predicted the failure of
Zionism.
In Russia in 1899, I. M. Biekerman argued strongly against
Zionism, as an idea deemed “quacky, inspired by anti‐
Semitism, of reactionary inspiration and harmful by nature”; it
is necessary “to reject the illusions of the Zionists and, without
in any way renouncing the spiritual particularism of the Jews,
struggle hand in hand with the cultural and progressive forces
of Russia in the name of the regeneration of the common
fatherland.”[860]
At the beginning of the century, the poet N. Minsky had
issued this criticism: Zionism marks the loss of the notion of
universal man, it lowers the cosmopolitan dimensions, the
universal vocation of Judaism to the level of an ordinary
nationalism. “The Zionists, speaking tirelessly of nationalism,
turn away from the genuinely national face of Judaism and in
fact seek only to be like everyone else, not worse than
others.”[861]
It is interesting to compare these sentences with the remark
made before the revolution by the orthodox thinker S.
Bulgakov: “The biggest di culty for Zionism is that it is not
able to recover the lost faith of the fathers, and it is obliged to
rely on a principle that is either national, cultural or ethnic, a
principle on which no genuine great nation can rely
exclusively.”[862]
 But the rst Russian Zionists—now, “it is from Russia that
most of the founders of the State of Israel and the pioneers of
the State of Israel came out,”[863] and it was in Russian that
“were written the best pages of Zionist journalism”[864]—were
lled with an irrepressible enthusiasm for the idea of returning
to their people the lost homeland, the ancient land of the Bible
and their ancestors, to create a State of unparalleled quality
and to have men of exceptional quality grow there.
And this impulse, this call addressed to all to turn to physical
work, the work of the earth!—Does not this appeal echo the
exhortations of a Tolstoy, the doctrine of asceticism?[865]
All streams lead to the sea.

   
But, in the nal analysis, how can a Zionist behave towards the
country in which he resides for the time being?
For the Russian Zionists who devoted all their strength to
the Palestinian dream, it was necessary to exclude themselves
from the a airs that agitated Russia as such. Their statutes
stipulated: “Do not engage in politics, neither internal nor
external.” They could only weakly, without conviction, take
part in the struggle for equal rights in Russia. As for
participating in the national liberation movement?—but that
would be pulling the chestnuts out of the re for the others!
[866]
Such tactics drew Jabotinsky’s ery reproaches: “Even
passing travellers have an interest in the inn being clean and
tidy.”[867]
And then, in what language should the Zionists display their
propaganda? They did not know Hebrew, and, anyway, who
would have understood it? Consequently: either in Russian or
in Yiddish. And this brought closer once more the radicals of
Russia[868] and the Jewish revolutionaries.
Evidently, the Jewish revolutionary youth jousted with the
Zionists: no and no! The solution of the Jewish question does
not lie in the departure out of Russia, it is in the political ght
for equal rights here! Instead of going to settle far beyond the
seas, we must make use of the possibility of a rming ourselves
here in this country. And their arguments could not avoid
shaking more than one by their clarity.
In the Bolshevik circles, the Zionists were denounced as
“reactionary”; they were treated as “the party of the darkest,
most desperate pessimism.”[869]
Inevitably, intermediate currents were to emerge. Thus the
Zionist party of the left Poalei‐Tsion (“Workers of Zion”). It was
in Russia that it was founded in 1899; it combined “socialist
ideology with political Zionism.” It was an attempt to nd a
median line between those concerned exclusively with class
problems and those concerned only with national problems.
“Profound disagreements existed within Poalei‐Tsion on the
question of participation in revolutionary action in
Russia.”[870] (And the revolutionaries themselves were
divided, some leaning towards the Social‐Democrats, others
towards the Social Revolutionaries.)
“Other Tseirei‐Tsion groups, ideologically close to non‐
Marxist socialist Zionism, began to form from 1905
onwards.”[871] In 1904, a split within Poalei‐Tsion gave birth
to a new party, the “Socialist Zionists”, breaking with the ideal
of Palestine: the extension of Yiddish as a spoken language to
all Jewish masses, that is quite su cient, and we scorn the idea
of national autonomy! Zionism begins to take on a bourgeois
and reactionary tint. What is needed is to create from it a
socialist movement, to awaken revolutionary political instincts
in the Jewish masses. The party “strongly supported” the
“social and economic content” of Zionism, but denied the need
to “revive the land of Judea, culture, Hebrew traditions.”
Granted, Jewish emigration is too chaotic, it must be oriented
towards a speci c territory, but “there is no essential link
between Zionism and Palestine.” The Hebrew state must be
based on socialist and non‐capitalist foundations. Such an
emigration is a long‐term historical process; the bulk of the
Jewish masses will remain well into the future in their current
places of residence. “The party has approved the participation
of the Jews in the political struggle in Russia”[872]—that is to
say, in the struggle for their rights in this country. As for
Judaism and faith, they despised them.
All this mishmash had to generate a “socialist Jewish” group
called “Renaissance”, which “believed that the national factor is
progressive by nature”, and in 1906 the members of this group
who had broken with the Zionists Socialist Party constituted
the Soviet Socialist Workers’ Party, the SERP. (They were called
serpoviys or seymovtsy, for they demanded the election of a
Jewish national Sejm—Seim—intended to be the “supreme
organ of Jewish national self‐government.”[873]) For them,
Russian and Hebrew were, in their capacity of languages of use,
equal. And by advocating “autonomism” within the Russian
state, the SERP, socialist, was distinguished from the Bund, also
socialist.[874]
In spite of the disagreements that divided the Zionists
among themselves, a general shift of Zionism towards
socialism took place in Russia, which attracted the attention of
the Russian government. Until then, it had not interfered with
Zionist propaganda, but in 1903 Interior Minister Plehve
addressed the governors of the provinces and to the mayors of
the big cities a bulletin stating that the Zionists had relegated
to the background the idea of leaving Palestine and had
concentrated on the organisation of Jewish life in their places
of residence, that such direction could not be tolerated and that
consequently any public propaganda in favour of Zionism
would now be prohibited, as well as meetings, conferences, etc.
[875]
Made aware of this, Herzl (who had already solicited an
audience with Nicholas II in 1899) went immediately to Saint
Petersburg to ask to be received by Plehve. (It was just after the
Kichinev pogrom, which occurred in the spring, of which
Plehve had been strongly accused—and which had therefore
attracted him the blame and invectives of the Russian
Zionists…)
Plehve made Herzl understand (according to the latter’s
notes) that the Jewish question for Russia is grave, if not vital,
and “we endeavour to solve it correctly… the Russian State
wishes to have a homogeneous population”, and it demands a
patriotic attitude from all… “We want to assimilate [the Jews],
but assimilation… is slow… I am not the enemy of the Jews. I
know them well, I spent my youth in Warsaw and, as a child, I
always played with Jewish children. I would very much like to
do something for them. I do not want to deny that the
situation of the Jews of Russia is not a happy one. If I were a
Jew, I, too, would probably be an opponent of the government.”
“The formation of a Jewish State [accommodating] several
million immigrants would be extremely desirable for us. That
does not mean, however, that we want to lose all our Jewish
citizens. Educated and wealthy people, we would gladly keep
them. The destitute without education, we would gladly let
them go. We had nothing against Zionism as long as it
preached emigration, but now “we note great changes”[876] in
its goals. The Russian government sees with a kindly eye the
immigration of Zionists to Palestine, and if the Zionists return
to their initial plans, they are ready to support them in the face
of the Ottoman Empire. But it cannot tolerate the propagation
of Zionism, which advocates a separatism of national
inspiration within Russia itself[877]: this would entail the
formation of a group of citizens to whom patriotism, which is
the very foundation of the State, would be foreign. (According
to N. D. Lyubimov, who was then director of the minister’s
cabinet, Plehve told him that Herzl, during the interview, had
recognised that Western bankers were helping the
revolutionary parties of Russia. Sliosberg, however, thinks this
is unlikely.[878])
Plehve made his report to the Emperor, the report was
approved, and Herzl received a letter of con rmation in the
same vein.
He felt that his visit to Plehve had been a success.
Neither of them suspected that they had only eleven months
left to live…
Turkey had no intention of making any concessions to the
Zionists, and the British Government, in that same year of
1905, proposed that not Palestine, but Uganda, be colonised.
In August 1903, at the Sixth Congress of the Zionists in
Basel, Herzl was the spokesperson for this variant “which, of
course, is not Zion”, but which could be accepted on a
provisional basis, in order for a Jewish state to be created as
quickly as possible.[879]
This project provoked stormy debates. It seems that it met
with some support, in the Yishuv, for new immigrants,
discouraged by the harsh living conditions in Palestine. The
Russian Zionists—who claimed to have more than all the need
to quickly nd a refuge— ercely opposed the project. Headed
by M. M. Oussychkine (founder of the Biluim group and, later,
the right‐hand man of Ahad Haam in the Bne‐Moshe League),
they recalled that Zionism was inseparable from Zion and that
nothing could replace it![880]
 Congress nevertheless constituted a commission to travel to
Uganda to study the land.[881] The Seventh Congress, in 1905,
heard its report, and the Ugandan variant was rejected.[882]
Overcome by all these obstacles, Herzl succumbed to a heart
attack before he knew the nal decision.[883]
But this new dilemma provoked a new rupture in Zionism:
they split the so‐called “territorialists”, led by Israel Zangwill,
to which joined the English delegates. They established their
International Council; the latter held its meetings, receiving
subsidies from Jacob Schi e and Baron Rothschild. They had
given up demanding “Palestine and nothing else”. Yes, it was
necessary to carry out a mass colonisation by the Jews, but
wherever it was. Year after year, in their research, they
reviewed a dozen countries. They almost selected Angola, but
“Portugal is too weak, it will not be able to defend the Jews”,
and therefore “the Jews risk becoming the victims of the
neighbouring tribes.”[884]
They were even ready to accept territory within Russia even
if they could create an autonomous entity with an independent
administration.
This argument: a strong country must be able to defend
immigrants on the premises of their new residence, reinforced
those who insisted on the need to quickly establish an
independent state capable of hosting mass immigration. This
was suggested—and would suggest later—Max Nordau when
he said that he was not afraid of the “economic unpreparedness
of the country [that is, of Palestine] for the reception of
newcomers.”[885] However, for this, it was necessary to be get
the better of Turkey, and also nd a solution to the Arab
problem. The adherents of this program understood that, in
order to implement it, it was necessary to have recourse to the
assistance of powerful allies. Now this assistance, no country,
for the moment, proposed it.
 To arrive at the creation of the State of Israel, we must go
through two more world wars.
 Chapter 8. At the Turn of the 20th Century

It appears that after six years of re ection and hesitation, the

Tsar Alexander III irrevocably chose, as of 1887, to contain the
Jews of Russia by restrictions of a civil and political nature, and
he held this position until his death.
The reasons were probably, on the one hand, the evident part
played by the Jews in the revolutionary movement, on the
other, the no less evident fact that many Jewish youths
shunned military service: “only three quarters of those who
should have been enrolled served in the army.”[886] One
noticed “the ever‐increasing number of Jews who did not
respond to the appeal”, as well as the increasing amount of
unpaid nes related to these absences: only 3 million rubles
out of 30 million were returned annually to the funds of the
State. (In fact, the government still had no accurate statistics
on the Jewish population, its birth rate, its mortality rate
before the age of 21. Let us remind that in 1876 [see Chapter 4],
because of this absenteeism, there had been a restriction of the
“favour accorded to certain persons by virtue of their family
situation”—which meant that the only sons of Jewish families
were now subjected, like the others, to general conscription,
and as a result the proportion of Jewish conscripts had become
greater than that of non‐Jews. This situation was not corrected
until the early 1900s under Nicolas II.[887])
As far as public education was concerned, the tsar’s wish,
which he had formulated in 1885, was that the number of Jews
admitted to institutions outside the Pale of Settlement was in
the same ratio as the number of Jews in the total population.
But the authorities pursued two aims simultaneously: not only
to slow down the growing ow of Jews towards education, but
also to ght against the revolution, to make the school, as it
was called, “not a pool of revolutionaries, but a breeding
ground for science.”[888] In the chancelleries, they were
preparing a more radical measure which consisted of
prohibiting access to education to elements likely to serve the
revolution—a measure contrary to the spirit of
Lomonosov[889] and profoundly vicious, prejudicial to the
State itself: it was to deny the children of disadvantaged strata
of the general population (the “sons of cooks”) admission to
colleges. The formulation, falsely reasonable, falsely decent,
was: “Leave the school principals free to accept only children
who are in the care of persons who can guarantee them good
supervision at home and provide them with all that is
necessary for the pursuit of their studies”—furthermore, in
higher education establishments, it was planned to increase
the right of access to classes.[890]
This measure provoked a strong outrage in liberal circles, but
less violent and less lasting than the one that was instigated in
1887 by a new measure: the reduction of the number of Jews
admitted to high schools and universities. It was originally
planned to publish these two provisions within the framework
of the same law. But the Council of Ministers opposed it,
arguing that “the publication of a general decision
accompanied by restrictions for the Jews could be
misinterpreted.” In June 1887, therefore, only a part was
promulgated, the one that concerned non‐Jews: “Measures
aiming to regulate the contingent of pupils in secondary and
higher education”—measures directed in fact against the
common people… As for the reduction of the quota of the Jews,
it was entrusted to the Minister of Education, Delianov, who
implemented it in July 1887 by a bulletin addressed to the
rectors of school boards. He xed for the secondary and higher
schools the numerus clausus of the Jews at 10% for the Pale of
Settlement, 5% outside it, and 3% in the two capitals.
“Following the example of the Ministry of Public
Instruction”, other organisations began to introduce “quotas of
admission into their institutions, and some were closed down
to the Jews.” (Such as the Higher School of Electricity, the Saint
Petersburg School of Communication, and, most strikingly, the
Academy of Military Medicine which temporarily prohibited,
but “for many years”, its access to Jews.[891])
This numerus clausus law, which had not been established
during the ninety‐three years of massive presence of Jews in
Russia and which was to continue for twenty‐nine years
(practically until 1916) struck the Jewish society of Russia all
the more painfully because in the years 1870‒1880 there had
been a “remarkable impulse of the Jews to enter schools and
colleges”, a phenomenon which Sliosberg in particular explains
is “not due to the realisation of the masses of the necessity of
education… but rather due to the fact that, for a Jew without
capital, guring out how to deploy one’s forces in the economic
eld was very di cult, and due to the fact that conscription
became compulsory for all, but that there were dispensations
for the students.” Thus, if only well‐to‐do Jewish youth had
studied before, a “Jewish student proletariat” was now being
created; if among the Russians, now as in the past, it was the
favoured social classes that received higher education, among
the Jews, in addition to the wealthy, young people from the
underprivileged classes began to study.[892]
We would like to add that in those years there had been a
turning‐point in the whole world and in all elds of culture,
towards a no longer elitist but generalised education—and the
Jews, particularly intuitive and receptive, had been the rst to
feel it, at least instinctively. But how can we nd a way to
satisfy, without causing friction, without clashes, the constant
and increasing aspiration of the Jews to education? In view of
the fact that the indigenous population, in its mass, remained
fairly asleep and backward, how to avoid prejudice to the
development of either side?
Of course, the objective of the Russian government was the
struggle against the revolution, for among the student youth
many Jews had been noticed by their activism and their total
rejection of the regime in place. However, when we know the
enormous in uence exerted by Pobedonostsev[893] during the
reign of Alexander III, it must be admitted that the aim was
also to defend the Russian nation against the imbalance that
was to occur in the eld of education. This is what testi es the
Baron Morits von Hirsch, a big Jewish banker who visited
Russia and to whom Pobedonostsev expressed his point of
view: the policy of the government is inspired not by the idea
that the Jews are a “threat”, but by the fact that, rich in their
multi‐millennial culture, they are more spiritually and
intellectually powerful than the still ignorant and unpolished
Russian people—that is why measures had to be taken to
balance the “low capacity of the local population to resist.”
(And Pobedonostsev asked Hirsch, known for his philanthropy,
to promote the education of the Russian people in order to
realise the equal rights of the Jews of Russia. According to
Sliosberg, Baron Hirsch allocated one million rubles to private
schools.[894])
Like any historical phenomenon, this measure can be viewed
from various angles, particularly from the two di erent angles
that follow.
For a young Jewish student, the most elementary fairness
seemed outed: he had shown capacities, application, he had to
be admitted… But he was not! Obviously, for these gifted and
dynamic young people, to encounter such a barrier was more
than mortifying; the brutality of such a measure made them
indignant. Those who had hitherto been con ned to the trades
of commerce and handicrafts were now prevented from
accessing ardently desired studies that would lead to a better
life.
Conversely, the “native population” did not see in these
quotas a breach of the principle of equality, on the contrary,
even. The institutions in question were nanced by the public
treasury, and therefore by the whole population, and if the Jews
were more numerous, it meant that it was at the expense of all;
and it was known that, later on, educated people would enjoy a
privileged position in society. And the other ethnic groups, did
they also have to have a proportional representation within the
“educated layer”? Unlike all the other peoples of the empire, the
Jews now aspired almost exclusively to education, and in some
places this could mean that the Jewish contingent in schools
exceeded 50%. The numerus clausus was unquestionably
instituted to protect the interests of Russians and ethnic
minorities, certainly not to bully the Jews. (In the 20s of the
twentieth century, a similar approach was sought in the United
States to limit the Jewish contingent in universities, and
immigration quotas were also established—but we shall come
back to this. Moreover, the matter of quotas, put today in terms
of “no less than”[895], has become a burning issue in America.)
In practice, there have been many exceptions to the
application of the numerus clausus in Russia. The rst to avoid it
were girls’ high schools: “In most high schools for young girls,
the quotas were not current, nor in several public higher
education establishments: the conservatories of Saint
Petersburg and Moscow, the School of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture of Moscow, the Kiev School of Commerce,
etc.”[896] A fortiori quotas were not applied in any private
establishment; and these were numerous and of high quality.
[897] (For example, at the Kirpitchnikova High School, one of
the best high schools in Moscow, a quarter of the students were
Jewish.[898] They were numerous at the famous
Polivanovskaya high school in Moscow, and the Androyeva
girls’ school in Rostov, where my mother was a pupil, there
were in her class more than half of Jewish girls.) Business
schools (under the Ministry of Finance), to which Jewish
children were eager to register, were initially opened to them
without any restrictions, and those which took place after
1895 were relatively light (for example: in commercial schools
in the Pale of Settlement, nanced out of private funds, the
number of Jews admitted depended on the amount of money
allocated by Jewish merchants for the maintenance of these
schools, and in many of them the percentage of Jewish
students was 50% or more).
If the o cial standard was strictly observed at the time of
admission to the secondary classes, it was often largely
overstepped in the larger classes. Sliosberg explains this
notably by the fact that the Jewish children who entered high
school pursued it to the end, whereas the non‐Jews often gave
up their studies before completion. This is why, in large classes,
there were often much more than 10% Jewish pupils.[899] He
con rmed that they were numerous, for example, at the
Poltava high school. Out of 80 boys, eight were Jewish.[900] In
the boys ‘schools of Mariupol, at the time when there was
already a local Duma, about 14 to 15% of the pupils were
Jewish, and in girls’ high schools, the proportion was even
higher.[901] In Odessa, where Jews constituted one‐third of the
population,[902] they were in 1894, 14% in the prestigious
Richelieu high school, more than 10% in the gymnasium No. 2,
37% in gymnasium No. 3; in girls’ high schools the proportion
was of 40%; in business schools, 72%, and in university, 19%.
[903]
 To the extent that nancial means permitted it, no obstacle
prevented this thirst for education. “In a number of secondary
schools in the central Russian provinces there were few Jewish
pupils at that time, and parents took the opportunity to send
their children there… The wealthiest parents had their
children home schooled: they prepared for examinations to
enter the next grade and thus reached this way the senior
year.”[904] In the period between 1887 and 1909, Jewish
children were free to pass the school‐leaving examinations,
and “they graduated as equals those who had followed the
curriculum.”[905] The majority of “external” pupils were
Jewish. A family like that of Jacob Marchak (a jeweller with no
great fortune, the father of the poet[906]), whose ve children
had a higher education, was not uncommon before the
revolution.
Moreover, “private establishments were opened everywhere,
whether mixed for the Jews and Christians, or for the Jews
only… Some of these establishments enjoyed the same rights as
public establishments; the others were authorised to issue
certi cates entitling them to enrol in higher educational
establishments.”[907] “A network of private Jewish settlements
was established, which formed the basis of a national‐type
education,”[908] “The Jews were also oriented towards higher
education establishments abroad: a large part of them, on their
return to Russia, passed examinations before the State
Commissions.”[909] Sliosberg himself observed that in the 80s,
at the University of Heidelberg that “the majority of Russian
listeners were Jews” and that some, among them, did not have
their bachelor’s degree.[910]
One can rightly wonder whether the restrictions, dictated by
fear in front of the revolutionary moods of the students, did
not contribute to feeding said moods. If these were not
aggravated by indignation at the numerus clausus, and by
contacts maintained abroad with political emigrants.
What happened in Russian universities after the publication
of the bulletin? There was no sharp fall, but the number of Jews
decreased almost every year, from 13.8% in 1893 to 7% in
1902. The proportion of Jews studying at the universities of
Saint Petersburg and Moscow remained no less than the
imposed 3% norm throughout the period of validity of the said
standard.[911]
Minister Delianov acceded more than once to the requests
submitted to him, and authorised admission to university
beyond the numerus clausus.[912] This was how “hundreds of
students” were admitted. (Delianov’s exibility will succeed
later the rigidity of Minister Bogolepov—and it is not excluded
that this may have contributed to making him the target of
terrorists[913].[914]) Sliosberg gives this overview: the
percentage in the superior courts of medicine for women
outweighed that of the Academy of Military Medicine and that
of the university, and “all the Jewish girls of the empire poured
in.” Several hundred Jews were enrolled at the School of Psycho‐
neuropathology in Saint Petersburg, where they could enter
without a baccalaureate, and so they were thousands over the
years. It was called the School of Neuropathology, but it also
housed a faculty of law. The Imperial Conservatory of Saint
Petersburg was “ lled with Jewish students of both sexes.” In
1911, a private mining school opened in Ekaterinoslav.[915]
Admission to specialised schools, such as that of health
o cers, was done with great freedom. J. Teitel says that at the
Saratov school of nurses (of high quality, very well equipped)
Jews from the Pale of Settlement were admitted without any
limitation—and without prior authorisation issued by the
police for the displacement. Those who were admitted thus
received full rights. This practice was con rmed by the
governor of Saratov at that time, Stolypin. Thus the proportion
of Jewish students could rise to 70%. In the other technical
colleges of Saratov, Jews from the Pale of Settlement were
admitted without any norm, and many of them continued
their studies in higher education… From the Pale of Settlement
also came “a mass of external pupils that did not nd their
place in university, and for whom the Jewish community of the
city struggled to nd work.”[916]
To all this it should be added that the number of
establishments where the teaching was delivered in Hebrew
was not limited. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century
there were 25,000 primary schools (Heder) with 363,000 pupils
in the Pale of Settlement (64% of all Jewish children).[917] It is
true that in 1883 the old “Jewish establishments of the State”
were closed due to having no use: no one went there any more.
(But note: the opening of these institutions was once
interpreted by the Jewish publicists as an act and a ruse of the
“adverse reaction”, and today their closure was also the “act of
adverse reaction”!)
In summary: the admission quotas did not hinder the Jews’
aspiration to education. Nor did they contribute to raising the
educational level of the non‐Jewish peoples of the empire; they
only aroused bitterness and rage among the Jewish youth. But
this, in spite of the prohibitions, was going to constitute an
intelligentsia of vanguard. It was the immigrants from Russia
who formed the nucleus of the rst intellectual elite of the
future State of Israel. (How many times do we read in the
Russian Jewish Encyclopædia the notices “son of small
craftsman”, “son of small trader”, “son of merchant”, and,
further on, “completed university”?)
The university diploma initially conferred the right to reside
throughout the empire and to serve in the administration
(later, access to education in academies, universities and public
schools was once again limited). Graduates of the Faculty of
Medicine—doctors and pharmacists—were allowed to “reside
anywhere, whether they practised their profession or not,” and
like all those who had completed a higher degree, they could
even “devote themselves to commerce or other trades”, “be
members of the merchant corps without having previously
spent ve years in the rst guild in the Pale of Settlement” as
was required of other merchants. “The Jews holding the title of
Doctor of Medicine” could practice their profession in any
district of the empire, hire a medical secretary and two aides
among their co‐religionists by bringing them from the Pale of
Settlement. The right to reside in any place, as well as the right
to trade, was attributed to all those who practised paramedical
professions without having completed a higher education—
dentists, nurses, midwives. As from 1903, a requirement was
added: that these persons should mandatorily practise their
eld of specialisation.[918]

   
Restrictions also a ected the bar, the independent body of
lawyers set up in 1864. This profession paved the way for a
successful career, both nancially and personally, and to
convey one’s ideas: advocacy by lawyers in court were not
subject to any censorship, they were published in the press, so
that the speakers enjoyed greater freedom of expression than
the newspapers themselves. They exploited it widely for social
criticism and for the “edi cation” of society. The class of
solicitors had transformed themselves in a quarter of a century
into a powerful force of opposition: one should remember the
triumphal acquittal of Vera Zasulich in 1878.[919] (The moral
laxity of the lawyers’ argumentation at the time strongly
worried Dostoevsky: he explained it in his writings.[920])
Within this in uential brotherhood, the Jews quickly occupied
a preponderant place, revealing themselves to be the most
gifted of all. When, in 1889, the Council of the Sworn
Attorneys of Saint Petersburg published “for the rst time in its
report the data concerning the number of Jews in this trade,”
the great Saint Petersburg lawyer A. J. Passover “renounced the
title of member of the Council and was no longer a candidate
for election.”[921]
In the same year 1889, the Minister of Justice, Manasseine,
presented a report to Tsar Alexander III; it was stated that “the
bar is invaded by the Jews, who supplant the Russians; they
apply their own methods and violate the code of ethics to
which sworn‐in attorneys must obey.” (The document does not
provide any clari cation.[922]) In November 1889, on the
orders of the tsar, a provision was made, supposedly
provisionally (and consequently able to escape the legal
procedure), requiring that “the admission to the numbers of
those avowed and delegated authorities of non‐Christian
confession… will be henceforth, and until promulgation of a
special law on the subject, possible only with the authorisation
of the Minister of Justice.”[923] But as apparently neither the
Moslems nor the Buddhists availed themselves in large
numbers of the title of lawyer, this provision proved to be de
facto directed against the Jews.
From that year onwards, and for another fteen years,
practically no unbaptised Jew received this authorisation from
the minister, not even such brilliant personalities—and future
great advocates—as M. M. Winaver[924] or O. O. Gruzenberg:
they remained con ned for a decade and a half in the role of
“law clerks”. (Winaver even pleaded more than once in the
Senate, and was very much listened to.) The “clerks” in fact
pleaded with the same freedom and success as the attorneys
themselves: here, there were no restrictions.[925]
In 1894, the new Minister of Justice, N. V. Muraviev, wanted
to give this temporary prohibition the value of permanent law.
His argument was as follows: “The real danger is not the
presence in the body of lawyers of a certain number of people
of Jewish faith who have rejected to a large extent the notions
contrary to the Christian norms which pertain to their nation,
but it is in the fact that the number of such persons becomes so
great that they are likely to acquire a preponderant importance
and to exert an adverse in uence on the general level of
morality and on the activities of that corporation.”[926] In the
bill, it was advocated that the proportion of non‐Christian
solicitors be limited in each jurisdiction to 10%. The tsar’s
government rejected this project—but, as Mr. Krohl said, “this
idea… did not meet the condemnation it deserved in the
Russian public opinion”, and within the Society of Jurists of
Saint Petersburg, “only a few people protested vigorously…; the
rest, the vast majority, were clearly in favour of the draft at the
time of its discussion.”[927] This gives an unexpected insight
into the state of mind of the capital’s intelligentsia in the mid-
90s. (In the Saint Petersburg jurisdiction, 13.5% of the
attorneys were Jews, while in Moscow, less than 5%.[928])
The prohibition for the clerks of solicitors to become
themselves avowed was felt all the more painfully because it
followed limitations in the scienti c careers and the service of
the State.[929] It would not be lifted before 1904.
In the 80s, a limitation on the number of Jewish jurors was
introduced in the provinces of the Pale of Settlement, so that
they did not have a majority within the juries.
It was also from the 80s that the hiring of Jews in the judicial
administration ceased. There were, however, exceptions to
this: thus J. Teitel, who had been appointed shortly after his
university studies, remained there twenty‐ ve years. He
nished his career ennobled with the civil rank of general. (It
must be added that, later, Cheglovitov[930] forced him to retire
“of his own free will.”) In the exercise of his duties, he often
had, he, the Israelite, to administer oaths to Orthodox
witnesses, and he never met any objection from the clergy. J. M.
Halpern, also an o cial in the judicial administration, had
acceded to the high‐ranking position of Deputy Director of the
Ministry of Justice and to the rank of Secret Advisor.[931]
Halpern sat on the Pahlen Commission in the capacity of
expert. (Before that, the rst prosecutor of the Senate had been
G. I. Trahtenberg, and his deputy G. B. Sliosberg had initiated
himself to defend the rights of the Jews.) He was also rst
prosecutor of the Senate S. J. Outine—but he was baptised and
consequently, was not taken into account.
The religious criterion has never been a false pretence for
the tsarist government, but has always been a real motive. It
was because of this that the old believers[932], ethnically
Russian, were ferociously persecuted for two and a half
centuries, as well as, later, the Dukhobors[933] and the
Molokanes[934], also Russians.
The baptised Jews were numerous in the service of the
Russian State; we will not discuss it in this book. Let us quote
under Nicholas I, the Count K. Nesselrod, who had a long career
at the head of the Ministry of Foreign A airs; Ludwig Chtiglits,
who received the barony in Russia[935]; Maximilian Heine,
brother of the poet and military doctor, who ended his career
with the rank of state councillor; Governor General Bezak,
General of the suite of His Majesty Adelbert, the Colonel of the
Horse Guard Meves, the Hirs diplomats, one of whom was
Minister under Alexander III. Later, there was the Secretary of
State Perets (grandson of the tax‐collector Abram Perets[936]),
Generals Kaufman‐Turkestansky and Khrulyov; The squire
Salomon, director of the Alexandrovsky high school; Senators
Gredinger, Posen; in the Police Department, Gurovich,
Vissarionov, among many others.
Was the conversion to Christianity, especially to
Lutheranism, in the eyes of some considered as easy? Are all
the tracks open to you at once? Sliosberg observed at one point
an “almost massive denial” on the part of young people.[937]
But, of course, seen from the Jewish side, this appeared to be a
grave betrayal, “a bonus to the abjuration of his faith… When
we think of the number of Jews who resist the temptation to be
baptised, one gains a great respect for this unhappy
people.”[938]
Formerly, it was with candour: we divided people into two
categories, “ours” and “others,” according to the criterion of
faith alone. This state of mind, the Russian State, still re ected
it in its dispositions. But, at the dawn of the twentieth century,
could it not have thought a little and wondered whether such a
procedure was morally permissible and practically e ective?
Could we continue to o er the Jews material welfare at the cost
of denying their faith?
And then what advantage could be derived from
Christianity? Many of these conversions were for pure
convenience. (Some justi ed themselves by luring themselves:
“I can thus be much more useful to my people.”[939])
For those who had obtained equal rights in the service of the
State, “there no longer existed any restriction of any kind
whatsoever which prevented them from gaining access to
hereditary nobility” and to receive the highest rewards. “The
Jews were commonly enrolled without di culty in
genealogical records.”[940] And even, as we see from the
census of 1897, 196 members of the hereditary nobility
counted Hebrew as their mother tongue (amongst the nobility
in their personal capacities and the civil servants, they were
3,371 in the same case[941]). There even was, among the
Brodsky, a family of modest artisans, Marshals of the nobility
of the province of Ekaterinoslav.
But from the 70s of the nineteenth century onwards, Jews
who sought positions in the administration of the State began
to encounter obstacles (and this became worse from 1896
onwards); it must be said that few were those who aspired to
this kind of routine and poorly paid activity. Moreover, from
the 90s, the obstacles also a ected the elective functions.
In 1890 a new Zemstvo Ordinance was issued, according to
which the Jews were excluded from the self‐management of
the Zemstvo—in other words, outside the urban areas of the
provinces and districts. It was planned to “not allow [the Jews]
to participate in the electoral meetings and assemblies of the
Zemstvos”[942] (these did not yet exist in the western
provinces). The motivation was that “Jews, who usually pursue
their particular interests, do not meet the demand for a real,
living and social connection with local life.”[943] At the same
time, to work in the Zemstvo as an independent contractor, to
the title of what was called the “outsider element” (element
that would introduce into the Zemstvo, several years in
advance, the explosive charge of radicalism), was not forbidden
to Jews—and there they were many.
The restrictions in the Zemstvos did not a ect the Jews of
the central Russian provinces because the great majority of
them resided in the cities and were more interested in urban
administration. But in 1892 there appeared this time a new
provision for cities: the Jews lost the right to elect and to be
elected delegates to the Dumas and to the municipal o ces, as
well as to hold any o ce of responsibility, or conduct there
economic and administrative services. This represented a more
than sensible limitation. As delegates, Jews were admitted only
in cities of the Pale of Settlement, but here too, subject to a
restriction: no more than one‐tenth of the number of the
municipal duma, and again “on assignment” for the local
administration that selected Jewish candidates—an annoying
procedure, to say the least. (Particularly for bourgeois family
men, as Sliosberg rightly points out: what a humiliation for
them in relation to their children… how, after that, can they
remain loyal to such a government?[944]) “There has been no
harder time in the history of Russian Jews in Russia. They were
expelled from all positions they had conquered.”[945] In
another passage, the same author speaks without ambiguity of
the bribes received by the o cials of the Ministry of the
Interior to act in favour of the Jews.[946] (That was to soften
somewhat the rigour of the times.)
Yes, the Jews of Russia were undoubtedly bullied, victims of
inequality in civil rights. But this is what reminds us of the
eminent Cadet V. A. Maklakov, who found himself in the
emigration after the revolution: “The ‘inequality in rights’ of
the Jews naturally lost its acuteness in a state where the
enormous mass of the population (82%), that on which the
prosperity of the country depended, the peasantry—dull, mute,
submissive—was also excluded from common law, the same for
all”[947]—and it stayed in the same situation after the
abolition of serfdom; for it also, military service was
inescapable, secondary and higher education inaccessible, and
it did not obtain that self‐administration, that rural Zemstvo
which it much need. Another emigrant, D. O. Linsky, a Jew,
even bitterly concluded that, in comparison with the levelling
up of the soviets, when the entire population of Russia was
deprived of all rights, “the inequality in the rights of the Jewish
population before the revolution appears like an inaccessible
ideal.”[948]
We have gotten used of saying: the persecution of the Jews in
Russia. But the word is not fair. It was not a persecution,
strictly speaking. It was a whole series of restrictions, of
bullying. Vexing, admittedly, painful, even scandalous.

   
However, the Pale of Settlement, over the years, was becoming
more and more permeable.
According to the census of 1897, 315,000 Jews were already
residing outside its boundaries, that is to say, in sixteen years, a
nine‐fold increase (and this represented 9% of the total Jewish
population of Russia apart from the kingdom of Poland.[949]
Let us compare: there were 115,000 Jews in France, and
200,000 in Great Britain[950]). Let us consider also that the
census gave undervalued gures, in view of the fact that in
many cities of Russia many craftsmen, many servants serving
“authorised” Jews did not have an o cial existence, being
shielded from registration.
Neither the top of the nance nor the educated elite were
subject to the restrictions of the “Pale”, and both were
established freely in the central provinces and in the capitals. It
is well known that 14% of the Jewish population practised
“liberal professions”[951]—not necessarily the intellectual
type. One thing, however, is certain: in pre‐revolutionary
Russia, the Jews “occupied a prominent place in these
intellectual occupations. The famous Pale of Settlement itself
did not in any way prevent a large fraction of the Jews from
penetrating more and more into the provinces of central
Russia.”[952]
The so‐called “artisanal” trades where the Jews were the
most numerous were the dentists, the tailors, the nurses, the
apothecaries, and a few others, trades of great utility
everywhere, where they were always welcome. “In 1905, in
Russia, more than 1,300,000 Jews were engaged in artisanal
activities,”[953] which meant that they could live outside the
“Pale”. And it must not be forgotten either that “nowhere in the
laws it was stipulated, for example, that the craftsman who
exercises a trade has no right to engage in commerce at the
same time”; moreover, “the notion of ‘doing business’ is not
de ned by law”: for example, “deposit‐selling” with
commission, is it trade? Thus, in order to exercise any form of
trade (even large‐scale trading), to engage in the purchase of
real estate, in the development of factories, one had to pass as
“artisan” (or “dentist”!) For example, the “artisan” Neimark
possessed a factory of sixty workers; typos thus opened their
own printing press.[954] And there existed yet another way:
several people regroup, and only one pays the fee of the rst
guild, the others pretending to be his “clerks”. Or even, to be
“adopted” in a central province by retired Jewish soldiers (the
“adopted” father received a pension in return[955]). In Riga,
thousands of Jewish families lived on the timber trade until
they were expelled due to false attestations.[956] At the dawn
of the twentieth century, Jewish settlements were found in all
Russian cities of some importance.
J. Teitel testi ed that “the construction of the Samara‐
Orenburg railway line resulted in the in ux of a large number
of Jews to Samara. The supervisors of this railway were Jews—
Varchavsky, Gorvitch. For a long time they were also the
owners. They occupied the control stations as well as a large
number of subordinate jobs. They brought their families from
the Pale of Settlement, and thus a very numerous Jewish colony
was formed. They also took the export of wheat from the rich
province of Samara to foreign countries. It should be noted
that they were the rst to export eggs from Russia to Western
Europe. All these activities were carried out by so‐called
‘artisans’.” And Teitel enumerates three successive governors of
the province of Samara as well as a chief of police (who,
previously, in 1863, had been “excluded from the University of
Saint Petersburg for having participated in student disorders”
who “closed their eyes to these so‐called artisans.” Thus,
around 1889, there lived in Samara “more than 300 Jewish
families, without a residence permit”[957],—which means that
in Samara, in addition to the o cial gures, there were in fact
around 2,000 Jews.
Stories come to us from another end of Russia: at Viazma,
“the three pharmacists, the six dentists, a number of doctors,
notaries, many shopkeepers, almost all hairdressers, tailors,
shoemakers were Jewish. All those who appeared as such were
not dentists or tailors, many traded and no one prevented them
from doing so. Of its 35,000 inhabitants, Viazma also had
about two thousand Jews.[958]
In the region of the Army of the Don, where severe
restrictions were imposed on Jews in 1880 and where they
were forbidden to reside in Cossack villages and suburbs of the
cities, there were nevertheless 25,000 keepers of inns and
bu ets, barbers, watchmakers, tailors. And any delivery of a
quantity of goods, no matter the size, depended on them.
The system of restrictions on the rights of the Jews, with the
whole range of corrections, reservations and amendments
thereto, had been built up stratum after stratum over the years.
The provisions aimed at the Jews were scattered in the various
collections of laws promulgated at di erent times, badly
harmonised among themselves, badly amalgamated with the
common laws of the empire. The governors complained of it.
[959] We must try to penetrate the mysteries of the
innumerable derogations, special cases, exceptions of
exceptions, which swarmed the legislation on the Jews, to
understand what journey of the combatant this represented
for the ordinary Jew, and what puzzle for the administration.
Such complexity could only engender formalism, with its
succession of cruelties; thus, when a head of a family domiciled
in a central Russian province lost his right of residence (after
his death or as a result of a change of profession), his whole
family lost it with him. Families were thus expelled after the
death of the head of the family (with the exception of single
persons over 70 years of age).
However, complexity did not always play in disfavour of the
Jews; it sometimes played to their advantage. Authors write
that “it was the police commissioners and their deputies who
were responsible for settling the endless wavering in the
application of the restrictive measures,” which resulted in the
use of bribes and to the circumvention of the law[960]—always
favourable to the Jews. There were also perfectly workable legal
channels. “The contradictory nature of the innumerable laws
and provisions on Jews o ers the Senate a broad spectrum of
interpretations of legislation… In the 90s, most of the
provisions appealed by the Jews were annulled” by the Senate.
[961] The highest dignitaries often closed their eyes to non‐
compliance with anti‐Jewish restrictions—as G. Sliosberg
testi ed, for example: “Ultimately, Jewish a airs depended on
the head of the police department, Pyotr Nikolayevich
Dumovo… The latter was always open to the complainants’
arguments and I must say, to be honest, that if the application
of any restrictive regulation were contrary to human charity,
[Dournovo] would look into the matter and resolve it
favourably.”[962]
“Rather than the new laws, it was the provisions tending to a
harder application of the old laws which were felt most
painfully by the broad sections of the Jewish population.”[963]
The process, discreet but irreversible, by which the Jews
gradually penetrated into the provinces of central Russia was
sometimes stopped by the administration, and some duly
orchestrated episodes went down in history.
This was the case in Moscow after the retirement of the all‐
powerful and almost irremovable Governor General V. A.
Dolgorukov, who had regarded with great kindness the arrival
of the Jews in the city and their economic activity. (The key to
this attitude obviously resides in the person of the great banker
Lazar Solomonovich Poliakov, “with whom Prince Dolgorukov
had friendly ties and who, evil tongues a rmed, had opened to
him in his bank an unlimited line of credit. That the prince had
need of money, there was no doubt about it,” for he had yielded
all his fortune to his son‐in‐law, while he himself “loved to live
it up, and also had great spendings.” Consequently, L. Poliakov
“was covered year after year with honours and distinctions.”
Thanks to this, the Jews of Moscow felt a rm ground beneath
their feet: “Every Jew could receive the right of residence in the
capital” without actually putting himself “at the service of one
of his coreligionists, a merchant of the rst Guild.”[964])
G. Sliosberg informs us that “Dolgorukov was accused of
yielding too much to the in uence of Poliakov.” And he
explains: Poliakov was the owner of the Moscow mortgage
lending, so neither in the province of Moscow nor in any
neighbouring province could any other mortgage bank operate
(i.e. granting advances on property mortgage‐funds). Now,
“there was no nobleman possessing land that did not
hypothecate his possessions.” (Such was the defeat of the
Russian nobility at the end of the nineteenth century: and,
after that, of what use could it still be for Russia?…) These
noblemen found themselves “in a certain dependence on
banks”; to obtain large loans, all sought the favours of Lazar
Poliakov.[965]
Under the magistracy of Dolgorukov, around the 90s, “there
were many recruitments of Jews in the body of merchants of
the rst guild. This was explained by the reluctance of
Muscovite merchants of Christian denomination to pay the
high entrance fees of this rst guild. Before the arrival of the
Jews, the Muscovite industry worked only for the eastern part
of the country, for Siberia, and its goods did not run westward.
It was the Jewish merchants and industrialists who provided
the link between Moscow and the markets of the western part
of the country. (Teitel con rms that the Jews of Moscow were
considered the richest and most in uential in Russia.)
Threatened by the competition, German merchants became
indignant and accused Dolgorukov of favouritism towards the
Jews.[966]
But the situation changed dramatically in 1891. The new
Governor‐General of Moscow, the Grand Duke Sergey
Alexandrovich[967], an almighty man due to his position and
dependent on no one due to his fortune, took the decision to
expel all the Jewish craftsmen from Moscow, without any
preliminary inquiry as to who was truly a craftsman and who
pretended to be a craftsman. Whole neighbourhoods—
Zariadie, Marina Roscha—were emptied of their inhabitants. It
is estimated that as many as 20,000 Jews were expelled. They
were allowed a maximum of six months to liquidate their
property and organise their departure, and those who declared
that they did not have the means to ensure their displacement
were shipped in prison vans. (At the height of the expulsions
and to control how they were executed, an American
government commission—Colonel Weber, Dr. Kamster—went
to Russia. The astonishing thing is that Sliosberg brought them
to Moscow, where they investigated what was happening, how
measures were applied to stem the “in ux of Jews”, where they
even visited the Butyrka prison incognito, where they were
o ered a few pairs of handcu s, where they were given the
photographs of people who had been sent in the vans… and the
Russian police did not notice anything! (These were the
“Krylov mores”[968]!) They visited again, for many more
weeks, other Russian cities. The report of this commission was
published in 1892 in the documents of the American
Congress… to the greatest shame of Russia and to the liveliest
relief of Jewish immigration to the United States.[969] It is
because of this harassment that Jewish nancial circles, Baron
de Rothschild in the lead, refused in 1892 to support Russian
borrowing abroad.[970] There had already been attempts in
Europe in 1891 to stop the expulsion of the Jews from Moscow.
The American‐Jewish banker Seligman, for example, went to
the Vatican to ask the Pope to intercede with Alexander III and
exhort him to more moderation.[971] In 1891, “a part of the
expelled Jews settled without permission in the suburbs of
Moscow.” But in the fall of 1892, following the measures taken,
an order was made to “expel from Moscow former soldiers of
the retired contingent and members of their families not
registered in the communities.”[972] (It should be noted that in
1893 the large Russian commercial and industrial enterprises
intervened to soften these measures.) Then, from 1899, there
was almost no new registration of Jews in the rst guild of
Moscow merchants.[973]
In 1893 a new aggravation of the fate of the Jews arose: the
Senate rst noticed the existence of a bulletin issued by the
Ministry of the Interior, in force since 1880 (the “Charter of
Jewish Freedom”) which allowed Jews who had already
established themselves outside the Pale of Settlement, illegally
however, to remain where they were. This bulletin was
repealed (except in Courland and Livonia where it was
retained). The number of families who had settled over the last
twelve years amounted to 70,000! Fortunately, thanks to
Dournovo, “life‐saving articles were enacted which, in the end,
prevented the immense catastrophe that threatened.”[974]
 In 1893, “certain categories of Jews” were expelled in turn
from Yalta, for the summer residence of the Imperial family
was not far away, and they were forbidden any new settlement
there: “The always increasing in ux in the number of Jews in
the city of Yalta, the appetite for real estate, threatens this
holiday resort of becoming, purely and simply, a Jewish
city.”[975] (here could have been at play, after all the terrorist
attacks in Russia, the security of the Imperial family in its
residence in Livadia. Alexander III had every reason to believe
—he was only one year away from his death—that he was
cordially hated by the Jews. It is not possible to exclude as
motive the idea of avenging the persecution of the Jews, as can
be deduced by the choice of terrorist targets—Sipiagin, Plehve,
Grand Duke Serge.) This did not prevent many Jews from
remaining in the Yalta region—judging from what the
inhabitants of Alushta wrote in 1909, complaining that the
Jews, buyers of vineyards and orchards, “exploit ‘to foster their
development’ the work of the local population,” taking
advantage of the precarious situation of said population and
granting loans “at exorbitant rates” which ruin the Tatars,
inhabitants of the site.[976]
But there was also another thing in the favour of the tireless
struggle against smuggling, the right of residence of the Jews
in the Western frontier zone was limited. There was in fact no
further expulsion—with the exception of individuals caught in
the act of smuggling. (According to memorialists, this
smuggling, which consisted in passing the frontier to
revolutionaries and their printed works, continued until the
First World War.) In 1903‒1904, a debate ensued: the Senate
provides that the Provisional Regulations of 1882 shall not
apply to the frontier zone and that accordingly Jews residing in
that area may “freely settle in the rural areas. The Council of
the Province of Bessarabia then issued a protest, informing the
Senate that ‘the entire Jewish population’” in the border area,
including those where Jews had illegally settled there, was now
seeking to gain access to the countryside where there were
already ‘more Jews than needed’,” and that the border area
“now risked becoming for the Jews the ‘Promised Area’.” The
protest passed before the Council of State, which, taking into
account the particular case of rural localities, squarely
abolished the special regime of the border area, bringing it back
to the general regime of the Pale of Settlement.[977]
This softening, however, did not nd signi cant echo in the
press or in society. No more than the lifting, in 1887, of the
prohibition of the Jews to hire Christian servants. Nor did the
1891 Act introducing into the Penal Code a new article on
“responsibility in the event of an open attack on part of the
population by another”, an article that the circumstances of
life in Russia had never required, but which had been sorely
lacking during the pogroms of 1881. For greater caution it was
now introduced.

   
And again, let us repeat: the limitations on the rights of the
Jews never assumed a racial character in Russia. They applied
neither to the Karaites[978], nor to the Jews of the mountains,
nor to the Jews of Central Asia, who, scattered and merged with
the local population, had always freely chosen their type of
activity.
The most diverse authors explain to us, each one more than
the other, that the root causes of the restrictions su ered by
Jews in Russia are of an economic nature. The Englishman J.
Parks, the great defender of these restrictions, nevertheless
expresses this reservation: “Before the war [of 14‒18], some
Jews had concentrated considerable wealth in their hands…
This had led to fear that abolishing these limitations would
allow the Jews to become masters of the country.”[979]
Professor V. Leontovitch, a perfectly consistent liberal, notes:
“Until recently, we seemed to be unaware that the restrictive
measures imposed on Jews came much more from anti‐
capitalist tendencies than from racial discrimination. The
concept of race was of no interest to Russia in those years,
except for specialists in ethnology… It is the fear of the
strengthening of the capitalist elements, which could
aggravate the exploitation of peasants and of all the workers,
which was decisive. Many sources prove this.”[980] Let us not
forget that the Russian peasantry had just undergone the shock
of a sudden mutation: from the transition of feudal relations to
market relations, a passage to which it was not at all prepared
and which would throw it into an economic maelstrom
sometimes more pitiless than serfdom itself.
V. Choulguine writes in this regard as follows: “The
limitation of the rights of the Jews in Russia was underpinned
by a ‘humanistic thought’… It was assumed that the Russian
people, taken globally (or at least some of their social strata)
was, in a way, immature, e eminate…, that it allowed itself to
be easily exploited…, that for this reason it had to be protected
by state measures against foreign elements stronger than
itself. Northern Russia began to look at the Jews with the eyes
of Southern Russia. The Little‐Russians had always seen the
Jews, whom they knew well in the days of their coexistence
with Poland, under the guise of the ‘pawnbrokers’ who suck the
blood of the unfortunate Russian.”[981] The restrictions were
designed by the government to combat the massive economic
pressure that put the foundations of the state at risk. Parks also
detects in this vision of things a part of truth; he observes “the
disastrous e ect which the faculty of exploiting one’s
neighbour may have,” and “the excessive role of innkeepers and
usurers in the rural areas of Eastern Europe”, even if he
perceives the reasons for such a state of a airs “in the peasant’s
nature more than in the Jews themselves.” In his opinion, the
vodka trade, as the “main activity of the Jews” in Eastern
Europe, gave rise to hatred, and among the peasants even more
than among the others. It was he who fed more than one
pogrom, leaving a deep and broad scar in the consciousness of
the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, as well as in the memory
of the Jewish people.[982]
We read in many authors that the Jewish innkeepers lived
very hard, without a penny, that they were almost reduced to
begging. But was the alcohol market as narrow as that? Many
people grew fat with the intemperance of the Russian people—
and the landowners of Western Russia, and the distillers, and
the drinking‐house keepers… and the government! The
amount of revenue can be estimated from the time it was
entered as national revenue. After the introduction of a state
monopoly on spirits in Russia in 1896, with the abolition of all
private debits and the sale of beverages by excise duty, the
Treasury collected 285 million rubles in the following year—to
report to the 98 millions of the direct tax levied on the
population. This con rms that not only was the manufacture
of spirits “a major source of indirect contributions”, but also
that the spirits industry’s revenues, which until 1896 only paid
“4 kopecks of excise duty per degree of alcohol produced,” were
much higher than the direct revenues of the empire.[983]
But what was at that time the Jewish participation in this
sector? In 1886, during the works of the Pahlen Commission,
statistics were published on the subject. According to these
gures, Jews held 27% (the decimals do not appear here: the
numbers have been rounded up everywhere) of all distilleries
in European Russia, 53% in the Pale of Settlement (notably
83% in the province of Podolsk, 76% in that of Grodno, 72% in
that of Kherson). They held 41% of breweries in European
Russia, 71% in the Pale of Settlement (94% in the province of
Minsk, 91% in the province of Vilnius, 85% in the province of
Grodno). The proportion of manufacturing and sales points in
Jewish commerce is 29% in European Russia, 61% in the Pale
of Settlement (95% in the province of Grodno, 93% in Mogilev,
91% in the province of Minsk).[984]
It is understandable that the reform which established the
state monopoly on spirits was “greeted with horror… by the
Jews of the Pale of Settlement.”[985]
It is incontestable: the establishment of a State monopoly on
spirits dealt a very severe blow to the economic activity of the
Jews of Russia. And until the First World War (it ended at that
time), this monopoly remained the favourite target of general
indignation—whereas it merely instituted a rigorous control of
the amount of alcohol produced in the country, and its quality.
Forgetting that it reached the Christian tenants in the same
way (see the statistics above), it is always presented as an anti‐
Jewish measure: “The introduction at the end of the 90s of the
sale of alcohol by the State in the Pale of Settlement has
deprived more than 100,000 Jews of their livelihood”; “Power
meant… forcing the Jews to leave the rural areas,” and since
then “this trade has lost for the Jews the importance it once
had.”[986]
It was indeed the moment—from the end of the nineteenth
century—when Jewish emigration from Russia grew
remarkably. Is there a link between this emigration and the
establishment of the state monopoly on the sale of spirits?
That is di cult to say, but the gure of 100,000 quoted above
suggests so. The fact is that Jewish emigration (in America)
remained low until 1886‒1887; it experienced a brief surge in
1891‒1892, but it was only after 1897 that it became massive
and continuous.[987]
The “Provisional Regulations” of 1882 had not prevented
further in ltration of Jewish spirits into the countryside. Just
as, in the 70s, they had found a loophole against the
prohibition of selling elsewhere than home by inventing
“street” commerce. It had been devised to circumvent the law
of May 3rd, 1882 (which also forbade the commerce of vodka
by contract issued with a Jew), leasing “on the sly”: to set up an
inn there, one rented a land by oral and not written contract, in
order for the taxes to be covered by the owner, and the
proceeds from the sale of drinks went to the Jew.[988] It was
through this and other means that the implantation of the
Jews in the countryside could continue after the categorical
prohibition of 1882. As Sliosberg writes, it was from 1889 that
began the “wave of expulsions” of the Jews outside the villages
of the Pale of Settlement, which resulted in “a pitiless
competition, generating a terrible evil: denunciation” (in other
words, Jews began to denounce those among them who lived
illegally). But here are the gures put forward by P. N. Miliukov:
if in 1881 there were 580,000 Jews living in villages, there were
711,000 Jews in 1897, which means that the rate of new
arrivals and births far outweighed those of evictions and
deaths. In 1899, a new Committee for Jewish A airs, the
eleventh of the name, with Baron Lexhull von Hildebrandt at
its head, was set up to revise the Provisional Regulations. This
Committee, wrote Miliukov, rejected the proposal to expel from
the countryside the Jews who illegally established themselves
there, and softened the law of 1882.[989]
While “recognising that the peasantry, which is not very
developed, has no entrepreneurial spirit and no means of
development, must be protected from any contact with Jews,”
the Committee insisted that “the landowners have no need for
the tutelage of the government; the limitation of the right of
the owners to manage their property as they see t depreciates
said property and compels the proprietors to employ, in
concert with the Jews, all sorts of expedients to circumvent the
law”; the lifting of prohibitions on Jews will enable landowners
to derive greater bene t from their assets.[990] But the
proprietors no longer had the prestige, which might have given
weight to this argument in the eyes of the administration.
It was in 1903‒1904 that the revision of the Regulations of
1882 was seriously undertaken. Reports came from the
provinces (notably from Sviatopolk Mirsky, who was Governor‐
General and soon to become the Liberal Minister of the
Interior), saying that the Regulations had not proved their
worth, that it was imperative that the Jews should leave towns
and villages where their concentration was too high, and that,
thanks to the establishment of a State monopoly on beverages,
the threat of Jewish exploitation of the rural population was
removed. These proposals were approved by Sipyagin, the
minister (who was soon to be shot down by a terrorist), and, in
1908, endorsed by Plehve (soon assassinated in his turn). A list
of a hundred and one villages had been drawn up and
published, to which fty‐seven others would soon be added, in
which the Jews acquired the right to settle and purchase real
estate, and to lease it. (In the Jewish Encyclopædia dating before
the revolution, we read the names of these localities, some of
which, already quite important, were to spread rapidly:
Yuzovka, Lozovaya, Ienakievo, Krivoy Rog, Sinelnikovo,
Slavgorod, Kakhovka, Zhmerynka, Chepetovka, Zdolbuniv,
Novye Senjary, among others.) Outside this list and Jewish
agricultural settlements, Jews did not get the right to acquire
land. However, the Regulations were soon abrogated for
certain categories: graduates of higher studies, pharmacists,
artisans and former retired soldiers. These people were given
the right to reside in the countryside, to engage in commerce
and various other trades.[991]
While the sale of spirits and the various kinds of farming—
including that of the land—were the main sources of income
for Jews, there were others, including notably the ownership of
land. Among the Jews, “the aspiration to possess the land was
expressed by the acquisition of large areas capable of
harbouring several types of activities rather than by the use of
small parcels which are to be developed by the owner
himself.”[992] When the land, which gives life to the peasant,
reaches a higher price than that of a purely agricultural
property, it was not uncommon for a Jewish entrepreneur to
acquire it.
As we have seen, the direct leasing and purchasing of the
land by the Jews was not prohibited until 1881, and the
purchasers were not deprived of their rights by the new
prohibitions. This is how, for example, Trotsky’s father, David
Bronstein, possessed in the province of Kherson, not far from
Elizabethgrad, and held in his possession until the revolution
an important business (an “economy” as it was called in the
South). He also owned, later on, the “Nadejda” mine in the
suburb of Krivoi Rog.[993] On the basis of what he had
observed in the exploitation of his father—and, as he heard it,
“in all farms it is the same”, Trotsky relates that the seasonal
workers, who had come by foot from the central provinces to
be hired, were very malnourished: never meat nor bacon, oil
but very little, vegetables and oatmeal, that’s all, and this,
during the hard summer work, from dawn to twilight, and
even, “one summer, an epidemic of hemeralopia[994] was
declared among the workers.”[995] For my part, I will argue
that in an “economy” of the same type, in Kuban, with my
grandfather Scherbak (himself a member of a family of
agricultural workers), the day workers were served, during the
harvest, meat three times a day.
But a new prohibition fell in 1903: “A provision of the
Council of Ministers deprived all Jews of the right to acquire
immovable property throughout the empire, outside urban
areas, that is to say in rural areas.”[996] This limited to a
certain extent the industrial activity of the Jews, but, as the
Jewish Encyclopædia points out, by no means their agricultural
activity; in any case, “to use the right to acquire land, the Jews
would undoubtedly have delegated fewer cultivators than
landlords and tenants. It seems doubtful whether a population
as urban as the Jewish population was able to supply a large
number of farmers.”[997]
In the early years of the twentieth century, the picture was
as follows: “About two million hectares which are now owned
or leased by Jews in the empire and the Kingdom of Poland…
only 113,000… are home to Jewish agricultural
settlements.”[998]
Although the Provisional Regulations of 1882 prohibited the
Jews from buying or leasing out of towns and villages, devious
means were also found there, notably for the acquisition of
land intended for the sugar industry.
Thus the Jews who possessed large areas of land were
opposed to the agrarian reform of Stolypin, which granted land
to the peasants on a personal basis. (They were not the only
ones: one is astonished at the hostility with which this reform
was received by the press of those years, and not only by that of
the extreme right, but by the perfectly liberal press, not to
mention the revolutionary press.) The Jewish Encyclopædia
argues: “The agrarian reforms that planned to cede land
exclusively to those who cultivated it would have harmed the
interests of a part of the Jewish population, that which worked
in the large farms of Jewish owners.”[999] It was not until the
Revolution passed that a Jewish author took a look back and,
already boiling with proletarian indignation, wrote: “The
Jewish landowners possessed under the tsarist regime more
than two million hectares of land (mainly around Ukrainian
sugar factories, as well as large estates in Crimea and Belarus)”,
and, moreover, “they owned more than two million hectares of
the best land, black earth.” Thus, Baron Ginzburg possessed in
the district of Dzhankoy 87,000 hectares; the industrialist
Brodsky owned tens of thousands of hectares for his sugar
mills, and others owned similar estates, so that in total the
Jewish capitalists combined 872,000 hectares of arable land.
[1000]
After the land ownership came the trade of wheat and cereal
products. (Let us remember that the export of grain “was chie y
carried out by Jews.”[1001] “Of the total Jewish population of
the USSR, not less than 18%, before the revolution (i.e. more
than one million people!] were engaged in the trade of wheat,
bosses and members of their families alike, which caused a real
animosity of the peasants towards the Jewish population”
(because the big buyers did everything to lower the price of the
wheat in order to resell it for more pro t.[1002]) In the western
provinces and in Ukraine, the Jews bought in bulk other
agricultural commodities. (Moreover, how can we not point out
that in places like Klintsy, Zlynka, Starodub, Ielenovka,
Novozybkov, the old believers, workers and industrious, never
let trade go by other hands?) Biekerman believes that the
prohibition of Jewish merchants to operate throughout the
territory of Russia fostered apathy, immobility, domination by
the kulaks. However, “If Russia’s trade in wheat has become an
integral part of world trade, Russia owes it to the Jews.” As we
have already seen, “as early as 1878, 60% of wheat exports
from the port of Odessa were by Jews. They were the rst to
develop the wheat trade at Nikolayev,” Kherson, Rostov‐on‐
Don, as well as in the provinces of Orel, Kursk, and Chernigov.
They were “well represented in the wheat trade in Saint
Petersburg.” And in the North‐West region, out of 1,000 traders
of cereal products there were 930 Jews.”[1003]
However, most of our sources do not shed light on how these
Jewish merchants behaved with their trading partners. In fact,
they were often very hard and practised procedures that today
we would consider illicit; they could, for example, agree among
themselves and refuse to buy the crop in order to bring down
prices. It is understandable that in the 90s farmers’
cooperatives (under the leadership of Count Heiden and
Bekhteyev) were set up in the southern provinces for the rst
time in Russia and a step ahead of Europe. Their mission was to
thwart these massive, monopolistic purchases of peasant
wheat.
Let us recall another form of commerce in the hands of the
Jews: the “export of wood came second after the wheat.”[1004]
From 1813 to 1913, these exports were multiplied by 140! And
the Communist Larinus fulminated: “The Jewish proprietors
possessed… large forested areas, and they leased a part of it,
even in the provinces where the Jews were not normally
allowed to reside.”[1005] The Jewish Encyclopædia con rms it:
“The Jews acquired the land, especially in the central provinces,
chie y to exploit the forest wealth.”[1006] However, as they did
not have the right to install sawmills in some places, the wood
left abroad in the raw state, for a dead loss for the country.
(There existed other prohibitions: access for export of timber
in the ports of Riga, Revel, Petersburg; the installation of
warehouses along the railways).[1007]
Such is the picture. Everything is there. And the tireless
dynamism of Jewish commerce, which drives entire states. And
the prohibitions of a timorous, sclerotic bureaucracy that only
hinders progress. And the ever‐increasing irritation these
prohibitions provoke among the Jews. And the sale of the
Russian forest, exported abroad in its raw state, as a raw
material. And the small farmer, the small operator, who,
caught in a merciless vise, has neither the relationships nor the
skills to invent other forms of trade. And let us not forget the
Ministry of Finance, which pours its subsidies on industry and
railways and abandons agriculture, whereas the tax burden is
carried by the class of the farmers, not the merchants. One
wonders: under the conditions of the new economic dynamics
that came to replenish the Treasury and was largely due to the
Jews, was there anyone to worry about the harm done to the
common people, the shock su ered by it, from the break in its
way of life, in its very being?
For half a century, Russia has been accused—from the inside
as well as from the outside—of having enslaved the Jews
economically and having forced them to misery. It was
necessary that the years passed, that this abominable Russia
disappear from the surface of the earth, it will be necessary to
cross the revolutionary turmoil for a Jewish author of the 30s
to look at the past, over the bloody wall of the Revolution, and
acknowledge: “The tsarist government has not pursued a
policy of total eviction of Jews from economic life. Apart from
the well‐known limitations… in the countryside…, on the
whole, the tsarist government tolerated the economic activity
of the Jews.” The tensions of the national struggle, “the Jews
did not feel them in their economic activity. The dominant
nation did not want to take the side of a particular ethnic
group, it was only trying to play the role of arbiter or
mediator.”[1008]
Besides, it happened that the government was intruding into
the economy on national grounds. It then took measures
which, more often than not, were doomed to failure. Thus, “in
1890, a bulletin was di used under which the Jews lost the
right to be directors of corporations that intended to purchase
or lease lands.”[1009] But it was the childhood of the art of
circumventing this law: remaining anonymous. This kind of
prohibition in no way impeded the activity of Jewish
entrepreneurs. “The role of Jews was especially important in
foreign trade where their hegemony was assured and their
geographical location (near borders) and by their contacts
abroad, and by their commercial intermediaries skills.”[1010]
As regards to the sugar industry, more than a third of the
factories were Jewish at the end of the century.[1011] We have
seen in previous chapters how the industry had developed
under the leadership of Israel Brodsky and his sons Lazar and
Leon (“at the beginning of the twentieth century, they
controlled directly or indirectly seventeen sugar mills”[1012]).
Galperine Moses, “in the early twentieth century had eight
factories and three re neries… He also owned 50,000 hectares
of sugar beet cropland.”[1013]
“Hundreds of thousands of Jewish families lived o the
sugar industry, acting as intermediaries, sellers, and so on.”
When competition appeared, as the price of sugar began to fall,
a syndicate of sugar producers in Kiev called for control of
production and sale, in order for prices not to fall.[1014] The
Brodsky Brothers were the founders of the Re ners’ Union in
1903.[1015]
In addition to the grain trade, the wood trade and the sugar
industry where they occupied a predominant position, other
areas must be cited in which the Jews largely contributed to
development: our milling, fur trade, spinning mills,
confection, the tobacco industry, the brewery.[1016] In 1835
they were also present at the major fairs in Nizhny Novgorod.
[1017] In Transbaikalia they launched a livestock trade which
took o in the 90s, and the same happened in Siberia for the
production of coal—Andjero‐Soudji hard coal—and the
extraction of gold, where they played a major role. After 1892,
the Ginzburg “devoted themselves almost exclusively to the
extraction of gold.” The most prosperous enterprise was the
Lena Gold Mining Company, which “was controlled in fact
(from 1896 until its death in 1909) by Baron Horace Ginzburg,
son of Evzel Ginzburg, founder of the Bank of the same name
and president of its branch in Saint Petersburg. (The son of
Horace, David, also a baron, remained at the head of the Jewish
community of Saint Petersburg until his death in 1910. His
sons Alexander and Alfred sat on the board of Lena, the gold
mining company. Another son, Vladimir, married the daughter
of the owner of the Kiev sugar factory, L. I. Brodsky.) Horace
Ginzburg was also “the founder of… the gold extraction
companies from Transbaikalia, Miias, Berezovka, Altai and a
few others.”[1018] In 1912, a huge scandal about the Lena
mines broke out and caused quite a stir throughout the
country: the operating conditions were abominable, the
workers had been misled… Appropriately, the tsarist
government was accused of everything and demonised. No
one, in the raging liberal press mentioned the main
shareholders, notably the Ginzburg sons.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews represented
35% of the merchant class in Russia.[1019] Choulguine gives
us what he observed in the southwest region: “Where have they
gone, Russian traders, where is the Russian third estate? … In
time, we had a strong Russian bourgeoisie… Where have they
gone?” “They were ousted by the Jews, lowered into the social
ladder, to the state of moujiks.”[1020] The Russians in the
southwest region have chosen their own fate: it is clear. And at
the beginning of the century, the eminent politician V. I.
Gourko[1021] observed: “The place of the Russian merchant is
more and more frequently taken by a Jew.”[1022]
 The Jews also gained in uence and authority in the booming
sector of the cooperative system. More than half of the Mutual
Credit and Savings and Loan Companies were in the Pale of
Settlement (86% of their members in 1911 were Jewish).[1023]
We have already spoken of the construction and operation of
the Russian railways by the Poliakov brothers, Bliokh and
Varshavsky. With the exception of the very rst lines (the
Tsarskoselskaya line and the Nikolaevskaya line), almost all the
railways that were later built were made by concessionary
companies in which the Jews occupied the command posts;
“But, as of the 1890s, the state was the rst builder.” On the
other hand, it is under the leadership of David Margoline that
was created in 1883 the great shipping company “on the
Dnieper and its tributaries”, the main shareholders of which
were Jews. In 1911, the company owned a eet of 78 vessels
and accounted for 71% of the tra c on the Dnieper.[1024]
Other companies operating on the Western Dvina, the Niemen,
joined the Mariinsky Canal and the Volga.
There were also about ten oil companies belonging to Jews
from Baku. “The biggest were the oil company belonging to the
brothers S. and M. Poliak and to Rothschild, and the joint‐stock
company of the Caspian‐Black Sea, behind which was also
found the name of Rothschild.” These companies were not
allowed to extract oil; they specialised in re ning and
exporting.[1025]
But it was in nance that the economic activity of the Jews
was the most brilliant. “Credit is an area where Jews have long
felt at home. They have created new ways and have perfected
the old. They played a leading role in the hands of a few large
capitalists and in the organisation of commercial investment
banks. The Jews brought out of their ranks not only the
banking aristocracy but also the mass of employees.”[1026]
The bank of Evzel Ginzburg, founded in 1859 in Saint
Petersburg, grew and strengthened thanks to its links with the
Mendelssohn in Berlin, the Warburg in Hamburg, the
Rothschild in Paris and Vienna. But when the nancial crisis of
1892 broke out, and “because of the government’s refusal to
support its bank with loans,” as had happened twice before, E.
Ginzburg withdrew from business.[1027] By the 70s, there
existed a network of banks founded by the three Poliakov
brothers, Jacob, Samuel and Lazar. These are the Azov‐Don
Commercial Bank (to be later managed by B. Kaminka), the
Mortgage Lending of Moscow, the Don Land Bank, the Poliakov
Bank, the International Bank and “a few other houses which
will later form the Uni ed Bank.”—The Bank of Siberia had A.
Soloveitchik at its head, the Commercial Bank of Warsaw was
directed by I. Bliokh. In several other large establishments, Jews
occupied important posts (Zak, Outine, Khesine, A. Dobryi,
Vavelberg, Landau, Epstein, Krongold). “In two large banks
only, the Commercial Bank of Moscow and that of the Volga‐
Kama, there were no Jews either in the leadership or among the
sta .”[1028] The Poliakov brothers all had the rank of secret
counsellor and, as we have said, all three were granted
hereditary nobility.[1029]

   
Thus, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the Pale of
Settlement had already completely emptied itself of its
substance. It had not prevented the Jews from occupying solid
positions in the vital sectors of the country’s life, from
economy and nance to the intellectual sphere. The “Pale” no
longer had any practical utility; its economic and political
purpose was outdated. It had only lled the Jews with anti‐
government bitterness and resentment; it had thrown oil on
the re of social discontent and had struck the Russian
government with the seal of infamy in the eyes of the West.
But let us be clear: this Russian Empire, with the slowness
and sclerosis of its bureaucracy, the mentality of its leaders,
where and in what way did it fall behind all through the
nineteenth century and decades before the revolution? It had
been unable to settle a dozen major problems a ecting the life
of the country. It had not been able to organise local civil self‐
government, install zemstvos in rural districts, carry out
agrarian reform, remedy the state of pernicious state of
humiliation of the Church, or communicate with civil society
and make its action understood. It had managed neither the
boom of mass education nor the development of Ukrainian
culture. To this list let us add another point where the delay
proved catastrophic: the revision of the real conditions of the
Pale of Settlement, the awareness of their in uence on all
positionings of the State. The Russian authorities have had a
hundred years and more to solve the problems of the Jewish
population, and they have not been able to do so, neither in the
sense of an open assimilation nor by allowing the Jews to
remain in voluntary isolation, that which was already theirs a
century before.
Meanwhile, during the decades from the 70s to the
beginning of the twentieth century, Russian Judaism
experienced a rapid development, an undeniable blossoming of
its elite, which already felt cramped, not only within the limits
of the Pale of Settlement, but in those of the empire.
When analysing the concrete aspects of the inequality in
Jewish rights in Russia, the Pale of Settlement and the numerus
clausus, we must not lose sight of this general picture. For if
American Judaism grew in importance, the Jews of Russia at
the beginning of the twentieth century still constituted nearly
half of the Jewish population of the planet.[1030] This is to be
remembered as an important fact in the history of Judaism.
And it is still Mr. Biekerman who, looking behind him over the
ditch of the revolution, wrote in 1924: “Tsarist Russia was
home to more than half the Jewish people. It is natural,
consequently, that the Jewish history of the generations that
are closest to us is mainly the history of the Jews of Russia.”
And even though in the nineteenth century “the Jews of the
West had been richer, more in uential, and more cultured than
we were, the vitality of Judaism was nevertheless in Russia.
And this vitality grew stronger and stronger at the same time
as the Russian Empire ourished… It was only when provinces
populated by Jews were united to Russia that this rebirth
began. The Jewish population grew rapidly in number, to such
an extent that it was able to leave a very numerous colony
overseas; it had amassed and possessed important capital in its
hands; a middle class had grown and acquired authority; the
standard of living of the lower strata had also grown
incessantly. By a variety of e orts, the Jews of Russia had been
able to overcome the physical and moral abjection which they
had brought from Poland; European culture and education
reached Jewish circles… and we went so far in this direction,
we have amassed such spiritual wealth that we have been able
to a ord the luxury of having a literature in three languages…”
All this culture, all this wealth, it is in Russia that the Jews of
Eastern Europe have received them. Russian Judaism, “by its
numbers and by the greenness of the energies it contained,
proved to be the backbone of all the Jewish people.”[1031]
A more recent author, our contemporary, con rms in 1989
the correctness of this painting brushed by his elder, witness of
the time. He wrote: “The public life of the Jews of Russia had
reached, at the turn of the two centuries, a degree of maturity
and amplitude which many small peoples in Europe might
have envied.”[1032]
 If there is a reproach that cannot be made to the “prison of
the people”, it is to have denationalised the people, be it the
Jews or others.
Certain Jewish authors, it is true, deplore the fact that in the
80s “the cultivated Jews of the capital had hardly been involved
in the defence of Jewish interests”, that only Baron Ginzburg
and a few other wealthy Jews with good relations.[1033] “The
Jews of Petersburg (30,000 to 40,000 in 1900) lived
unconnected with one another, and the Jewish intelligentsia,
in its majority, remained aloof, indi erent to the needs and
interests of the community as a whole.”[1034] Yet it was also
the time when “the holy spirit of the Renaissance… hovered
over the Pale of Settlement and awakened in the younger
generations the forces that had been dormant for many
centuries among the Jewish people… It was a veritable spiritual
revolution.” Among Jewish girls, “the thirst for instruction
showed literarily religious signs.” And already, even in Saint
Petersburg, “a large number of Jewish students frequented
higher education institutions.” At the beginning of the
twentieth century, “a great part of the Jewish intelligentsia…
felt… that it was its duty to return to its people.”[1035]
Thanks to this spiritual awakening at the end of the
nineteenth century, very diverse and sometimes contradictory
trends emerged in Russian Judaism. Some of them will be
called upon to determine to a large extent the destinies of our
land throughout the twentieth century.
At the time, the Jews of Russia envisaged at least six possible
orientations, however incompatible with each other. Namely:

the safeguard of their religious identity by isolation, as

had been practised for centuries (but this path became
more and more unpopular);
assimilation;
 the struggle for national and cultural autonomy, the
active presence of Judaism in Russia as a distinct
element;
emigration;
adherence to Zionism;
adherence to the revolution.

Indeed, the proponents of these di erent tendencies were

often united in the work of acculturation of the Jewish masses
in three languages—Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian—and in
welfare works—in the spirit of the theory of “small gestures” in
vogue in Russia in the 80s.
Mutual aid was embodied in Jewish associations, some of
which, after the revolution, were able to continue their action
in emigration. This was the case with the Society for the
Dissemination of Education among the Jews of Russia, which
had been founded in 1863. By the mid-90s, this Society was
already opening its own schools, with, besides an education in
Russian, courses in Hebrew. It convened Pan‐Russian
conferences on the theme of Jewish popular education.[1036]
In 1891 began the works of a Commission of Jewish History
and Ethnography, which in 1908 became the Society of Jewish
History and Ethnography. It coordinated the study of Jewish
history through Russia and the collection of archives.[1037]
In 1880, the “King of the Railways”, Samuel Poliakov,
founded the Society of Craft and Agricultural Labour among
the Jews (SCAL). The latter collected a good deal of money and
“devoted the bulk of its e orts, at the beginning of its e orts, to
the transfer of Jewish artisans outside the Pale of Settlement to
the central provinces.”[1038] We have seen that after the initial
authorisation given (in 1865) to this transfer the craftsmen
moved only in small numbers. What happened after the
pogroms of 1881‒1882? We could think: now, they will
certainly leave, they have the help the SCAL, plus a subsidy
from the government for the displacement, they will not
remain there, moping around, con ned in this damned Pale
where one was condemned to a wretched death, but no: after
more than ten years of e orts on the part of the SCAL, only 170
artisans moved! The SCAL decided then to help artisans inside
the Pale by purchasing tools, setting up workshops and then
creating professional schools.[1039]
Emigration was taken over by the Society for Colonisation by
the Jews (SCJ), whose creation followed the opposite course:
rst abroad, then in Russia. It was founded in London in 1891
by Baron Moritz von Hirsch, who for this purpose made a
donation of 2,000,000 pounds sterling. His idea was the
following: to substitute the chaotic emigration of the Jews of
Eastern Europe with a well‐ordered colonisation, oriented
towards the countries requiring cultivators, and thus to bring
back at least part of the Jews to the cultivation of the land, to
free them from this “anomaly… which arouses the animosity
of the European peoples.”[1040] “To seek for the Jews who leave
Russia ‘a new homeland and try to divert them from their
usual activity, trade, make them farmers and thereby
contribute to the work of rebirth of the Jewish people’.”[1041]
This new homeland, it would be Argentina. (Another objective
was to divert the wave of Jewish immigration away from the
shores of the United States where, owing to the in ux of
immigrants, the wage decline induced by their competition,
there rose the spectre of anti‐Semitism.) As it was proposed to
populate this land with Jews of Russia, an o ce of the Society
for Colonisation opened in Saint Petersburg in 1892. It “set up
450 information o ces and 20 neighbourhood committees.
They received the candidates for emigration to help them
obtain their exit papers from the territory, they negotiated
with the maritime messengers, they procured travellers with
tickets at reduced prices, they published brochures” on
countries likely to welcome new settlers.[1042] (Sliosberg
denounces in passing the fact that “no person not holding a
double title as a banker or a millionaire had access to their
direction.”[1043])
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the emigration of
Jews from Russia had been growing steadily for various
reasons, some of which have already been mentioned here. One
of the most serious of these was the compulsory conscription:
if so many young men (it is Denikin who writes it) chose to
mutilate themselves, was it not better to emigrate? Especially
when we know that conscription simply did not exist in the
United States! (The Jewish authors are silent on this motif, and
the Jewish Encyclopædia itself, in the article “The Emigration of
the Jews of Russia”, does not say a single word of it.[1044] It is
true that this reason does not explain on its own the
emigration boom in the 90s.) Another reason, also of
signi cance: the Provisional Regulations of 1882. The third
major shock was the expulsion of Jewish craftsmen from
Moscow in 1891. And also this other, very violent: the
establishment of the state monopoly on spirits in Russia in
1896, which deprived all the tenants of drinking places of their
income and reduced the revenues of the distillers. (Sliosberg:
those who had been expelled from the villages or provinces of
the interior were volunteers for emigration.) G. Aronson notes
that in the 80s an average of 15,000 Jews emigrated each year,
and that they were up to 30,000 in the 90s.[1045]
The attitude of the Russian authorities in the face of this
growing emigration—a genuine boon to the State—was
benevolent. The Russian Government readily agreed to the
establishment of the SCJ in Saint Petersburg, and the measures
that it adopted to promote emigration; it did not interfere in
any of its actions, authorising the age group of the conscripts
to emigrate with their families; it issued free exit visas and
granted special rates on trains—on one condition, however:
once gone, the emigrants were never to return to Russia again.
[1046]
To cross the ocean, it was necessary at the time to pass
through England, which meant that in the English port cities
there was provisionally a crowd of Jewish emigrants—some of
whom remained and settled in Great Britain while others
returned there after an attempt to settle in the United States.
As early as 1890, English public opinion rebelled against the
policy of the Russian government: “The Jewish question is
constantly occupying the columns of the British newspapers…
In America, too, the question of the situation of Jews in Russia
remains day after day of actuality.”[1047] Having assessed the
proportions that this migratory ow was likely to take, Great
Britain soon closed its doors.[1048]
The immigration to Argentina had also stopped in 1894. The
Jewish Encyclopædia described this as a “brooding crisis… in the
Argentine question.”[1049] Sliosberg spoke of the
“disenchantment of immigrants in Argentina” (the disgruntled
rebelled and sent collective petitions to the administration of
Baron Hirsch). The Duma debates highlighted a situation
similar to the experience in New Russia: “Immigration to
Argentina provides examples that con rm that in many cases
people have received land on very advantageous terms, but
have abandoned it to engage in other trades more in line with
their abilities.”[1050]
After this, although its vocation remained in the principle of
pushing the Jews to become farming “settlers”, the Society for
Colonisation renounced this objective. It set itself the task of
helping “the excessively disorderly emigration of Jews from
Russia”, “it was concerned with providing information to the
emigrants, defending their interests, being the connection
with host countries”, and it had to modify its statutes, which
had been bequeathed by Baron Hirsch. Large sums were
allocated “to raise the standard of living of Jews in their places
of residence”; from 1898 onwards, “action was taken among
the population within Russia itself,” and in the existing Jewish
agricultural colonies the “introduction of more modern tools
and methods of cultivation”, “the granting of an advantageous
credit for the improvement of the soil.” However, again,
“despite the large sums invested in this sector, agricultural
activity remained relatively stagnant.”[1051] Conversely,
migratory ows outside Russia continued to increase, “in
direct connection with the craft crisis and the gradual
elimination of small trade and factories”; this ow “reached its
peak… in 1906”, but was not “able to absorb the annual surplus
of the population” of the Jews. It should be noted that “the
great mass of emigrants was destined for the United States”—
for example, in 1910, they were 73%.[1052] “From 1881 to
1914, 78.6% of emigrants from Russia landed in the United
States.”[1053] From this period, we can thus see what will be
the general movement of our century. (Note that at the
entrance to the American territory no paper certifying
craftsmanship was required, and it followed that during the
rst six years of the century 63% of Russian immigrants
“engaged in industry”. This meant that those who left Russia
for America were exclusively artisans? This could o er an
explanation to the question as to why the artisans did not go to
the Central provinces, which were now open to them? But it is
also necessary to consider that for many immigrants, and
especially for those who had neither resources nor trade, no
other answer was possible than that of recognising themselves
as part of the “category notoriously well accepted by the
Americans.”[1054])
 One is struck by how few of the emigrants are the
individuals belonging to the cultivated stratum, the one
allegedly the most persecuted in Russia. These people did not
emigrate. From 1899 to 1907, they were barely 1% to do so.
[1055] The Jewish intelligentsia did not in any way tend to
emigrate: it was, in its eyes, a way of escaping the problems and
fate of Russia at the very moment when opportunities for
action were opening up. As late as 1882, the resolution of a
Congress of Jewish public gures “called for a de nite rejection
of the idea of organising an emigration, for this idea
contradicts the dignity of the Russian State.”[1056] In the last
years of the nineteenth century, “the new generation wanted to
be actively involved in history… and across the board, from the
outside as well as from the inside, it has gone from defensive to
o ensive… Young Jews now want to write their own history, to
a x the seal of their will to their destiny, and also, to a just
extent, on the destiny of the country in which they live.”[1057]
The religious wing of Russian Judaism also denounced
emigration, considering it as a break with the vivifying roots of
East European Judaism.
The secular e orts of the new generation were primarily
concerned with a vast program of speci cally Jewish
instruction, culture and literature in Yiddish, the only ones
capable of creating a link with the mass of the people.
(According to the census of 1897, only 3% of Russian Jews
recognised Russian as their mother tongue, while Hebrew
seemed forgotten and no one thought it could be reborn.) It
was proposed to create a network of libraries specially designed
for Jews, newspapers in Yiddish (the daily Der Freynd appeared
in 1903; and it sold like hot cakes in the villages; not belonging
to any political party, it nevertheless sought to give political
training[1058]). It was in the 90s that took shape “the
grandiose metamorphosis of the amorphous Jewish mass into
a nation, the Jewish Renaissance.”[1059]
One after the other, authors writing in Yiddish became very
popular: Mendele Mocher‐Sefarim, Scholom‐Aleichem, Itzhak‐
Leibush Peretz. And the poet Bialik, to follow the movement,
translated his own poems into Yiddish. In 1908, this trend
reached its peak at the Tchernovtsy Conference, which
proclaimed Yiddish as the “national language of the Jewish
people” and advocated the translation of all printed texts into
Yiddish.[1060]
At the same time, considerable e orts were made for Jewish
culture in the Russian language. Thus the ten volumes of the
Jewish Library, of historical and literary content[1061]; the
Petersburg magazines born from 1881, Rassvet (“The Dawn”),
then Rousski Evrei (“The Russian Jew”). (They soon stopped
appearing: “these publications did not meet the support of the
Jewish public itself”[1062]). The magazine Voskhod (“The Break
of Day”) opened its pages to all Jewish authors, translating all
the novelties, o ering a place of choice for studies on Jewish
history,[1063] (May we, Russians, show the same interest in
our own history!). For the time being, “the dominant role in the
public life of Russian Judaism” was held by the “Jewish
Petersburg”: “towards the middle of the 90s, [it is in Petersburg
that] almost all senior management was formed, the Jewish
intellectual aristocracy”; all the talents are in Petersburg.[1064]
According to an approximate calculation, only 67,000 Jews
spoke Russian uently in 1897, but it was the cultivated elite.
And already “the whole younger generation” in Ukraine in the
90s was raised in Russian, and those who went to study in the
high schools completely lost contact with Jewish education.
[1065]
There was not, strictly speaking, a slogan of the type:
Assimilation! We must blend into the Russian element! Nor an
appeal to renounce one’s nationality. Assimilation was a
commonplace phenomenon, but it created a link between
Russian Judaism and the future of Russia.[1066] Moreover,
Sliosberg refutes the term assimilation: “Nothing was more
opposed to the truth” than to say that “assimilated persons
considered themselves… Russians under the Mosaic Law.” On
the contrary, “the appetite for Russian culture did not exclude
confessing the traditions of Hebrew culture.”[1067] However,
after the disillusionment of the 80s, “certain Jewish
intellectuals, deeply imbued with the idea of assimilation, felt a
break in their conception of public life.”[1068] Soon, “there
soon was only one Jewish organisation left, one party
defending assimilation. However… while it had given up arms
as a theory, it remained a very real part of the life of the Jews of
Russia, at least among those who lived in the big cities.”[1069]
But it was decided to “break the link between emancipation…
and… assimilation”—in other words: to obtain one and not the
other, to gain equality but without the loss of Jewishness.
[1070] In the 90s, Voskhod‘s primary objective was to ght for
the equal rights of Jews in Russia.[1071]
A “Defence O ce” for the Jews of Russia had been formed in
Saint Petersburg at the beginning of the century, the members
of which were eminent advocates and men of letters. (Before
them, Baron Hirsch had been the only one to work as they did:
it was to him that all the grievances of the Jews went.) Sliosberg
speaks to us in detail about its founders.[1072]
During those years, “the Jewish spirit awoke for the
struggle”, the Jews were assisted to “a strong thrust of their
self‐consciousness, public and national”—but a conscience
now devoid of any religious form: “The villages deserted by the
most fortunate…, the villages abandoned by the young people,
gone to join the city…, the galloping urbanisation” undermined
the religion “in broad sections of the Jewish population from
the 90s”, and caused the authority of the rabbis to fall. The
scholars of the Talmudic schools themselves were seduced by
secularisation.[1073] (That being said, the biographical notes
of the Jewish Encyclopædia concerning the generation that grew
up at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often
include the words “received a traditional religious education”.)
On the other hand, as we have pointed out, what developed
with unpredictable force and in an unexpected form was
palestinophilia.

   
The events in Russia could not but be perceived by the Jews of
Russia and by the Russians involved in public life in the light of
what was happening at the same time in Europe: contacts were
then free and frequent between educated people and the
borders were permeable to ideas and events.
European historians point to a “nineteenth‐century anti‐
Semitism… a growing animosity towards Jews in Western
Europe, where, however, it seemed that we were making great
strides towards its disappearance.”[1074] Up to Switzerland
where the Jews, in the middle of the century, had not been able
to obtain freedom of residence in the townships, the freedom
to trade or to exercise handicrafts. In France, it was the blast of
the Dreyfus A air. In Hungary, “the old landed aristocracy…
accused the Jews… of having ruined it”; In Austria and in the
present‐day Czech Republic, at the end of the nineteenth
century, an “anti‐Semitic movement” was spreading, and “the
petty bourgeoisie… fought the social‐democratic proletariat
with anti‐Jewish slogans.”[1075] In 1898, bloody pogroms took
place in Galicia. The rise in all countries of the bourgeoisie
“increased the in uence of the Jews, grouped in large numbers
in capitals and industrial centres… In cities such as Vienna and
Budapest…, the press, the theatre, the bar, the medical
profession, found in their ranks a percentage of Jews much
higher than their proportion in the population as a whole.
Those years mark the beginning of the great fortunes of certain
Jewish merchants and bankers.”[1076]
But it was in Germany that the anti‐Jewish tendencies
manifested themselves with the greatest insistence. Let us rst
name Richard Wagner (as early as 1869). In the 70s
conservative and clerical circles demanded that the rights of
German Jews should be restricted and that any new Jewish
immigration should be banned. From the end of the 70s, the
“intellectual circles themselves,” whose spokesman was the
Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitschke, said: “The
agitators of today have well perceived the mindset of society
which regards the Jews as our national misfortune”; “The Jews
never succeed in merging with the peoples of Western Europe”,
and show hatred towards Germanism. Then comes Karl Eugen
Duhring, made famous for his polemic with Marx and
Engels[1077]: “The Jewish question is a simple matter of race,
and the Jews are a race that is not only foreign but irremediably
and ontologically bad.” Then comes the philosopher Edward
Hartman. In the political sphere, this movement led to the rst
international anti‐Jewish congress of 1882 (in Dresden), which
adopted the “Manifesto addressed to the Christian peoples and
governments that are dying of Judaism”, and demanded the
expulsion of Jews from Germany.—But in the early 90s the
anti‐Jewish parties had regressed and su ered a series of
setbacks on the political scene.[1078]
France was also the scene if not of the emergence of an
equally aggressive racial theory, at least of a broad anti‐Jewish
political propaganda: the one broadcast by Edouard Drumont
in his Libre Parole from 1892. Then came “a real competition
between Socialism and anti‐Semitism”; “The Socialists did not
hesitate to embellish their speeches of outputs against the Jews
and to lower themselves right up to anti‐Semitic demagogy… A
social anti‐Semitic fog enveloped the entirety of France.”[1079]
(Very similar to the propaganda of the populists in Russia in
the years 1881‒1882.) And it was then that in 1894 the
thunderous Dreyfus A air broke out. “In 1898, it [anti‐
Semitism] reached its climax throughout Western Europe—in
Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States.”[1080]
The Russian press of the years 1870‒1890 also issued some
anti‐Jewish statements, but without the strong theoretical
colouring they had in Germany, nor the exacerbated social
violence in Austria‐Hungary and France. Let us recall the
accounts of Vsevolod Krestovsky (Egyptian Darkness, among
others) and some crude newspaper articles.
It is appropriate to set apart the newspaper Novoïe Vremia
(“The New Times”), which owed its success to its engaged
positions to the “Slav movement” linked to the Russo‐Turkish
war for the defence of the Balkans. But when “from the theatre
of operations were received reports on acts of plunder
perpetrated by intendants and suppliers, these suppliers “of
Jewish origin” appeared as the incarnation of all Russian
Judaism, and Novoïe Vremia adopted a frankly anti‐Semitic
stance.” Beginning in the 80s, the newspaper did more than “go
into the camp of reactionaries”, “it went beyond all the limits of
hatred and improbity in the Jewish question. The warning cry
‘Beware the Jew!’ resounded for the rst time in the columns of
Novoïe Vremia. The paper insisted on the need to take rm
measures against the Jews’ ‘stranglehold’ over Russian science,
literature and art…” It did not miss an opportunity to
denounce the fact of “withdrawing from military
service.”[1081]
 These attacks on Jews, both abroad and in Russia, stirred
Vladimir Solovyov, and in 1884 he vigorously criticised them:
“The Judaeans have always behaved to us in the manner of the
Judaeans, and we, Christians, have not yet learned to behave
with Judaism in a Christian way”; “With regard to Judaism, the
Christian world in its mass has so far shown only an irrational
jealousy or a feeble indi erence.” No, “it is not Christian Europe
that is tolerant of Jews, it is the Europe of unbelievers.”[1082]
The growing importance of the Jewish question for Russia,
Russian society understood it only half a century behind its
government. It was only after the Crimean War that “the
emerging Russian public opinion began to conceive the
existence of a Jewish problem in Russia.”[1083] But there
needed to elapse a few more decades before it understood the
primacy of this question. “Providence has brought the greatest
part of the Jewish people to our country, and the strongest,”
wrote Vladimir Solovyov in 1891.[1084]
The year before, with the support of some sympathisers,
Solovyov wrote a “Protest” in which it was said that “the sole
cause of the so‐called Jewish question” was the abandonment
of all righteousness and humanity, “a senseless craze for blind
national egoism.” “To stir up racial and religious hatred, which
is so contrary to the spirit of Christianity…, deeply perverts
society and can lead to a return to barbarism…” “We must
strongly denounce the anti‐Semitic movement, “even if only
through the instinct of national survival.”[1085]
According to the account given to him by M. Doubnov,
Solovyov collected more than a hundred signatures, including
those of Tolstoy and Korolenko[1086]. But the editors of all the
newspapers had been ordered not to publish this protest.
Solovyov wrote a scalding letter to Tsar Alexander III, but was
told that if he persisted, he would be punished with an
administrative measure. He gave up.[1087]
 Just as in Europe, the multifaceted thrust of Jewish
ambitions could not fail to arouse anxiety among the actors of
Russian public life here, a erce opposition there, and there
again, on the contrary, sympathy. And, in some, a political
calculation. Like the Will of the People in 1881, who
understood the pro t to be drawn from the Jewish question (at
the time, it was in the direction of persecution), the radical and
liberal circles of the time, namely the left wing of society,
conceived and made theirs for a long time still the idea that the
Jewish question could be used as a political map of the struggle
against the autocracy: it was necessary to repeat over and over
that the only way to obtain equality in rights for the Jews was
the de nitive overthrow of the power of the tsars. From the
Liberals to the Bolsheviks. Passing by the S.‐R., all have never
ceased to involve the Jews—some with real sympathy—to use
them as a convenient asset in the anti‐monarchical combat.
This asset, the revolutionaries never let it go, they exploited it
without the least scruple until 1917.
However, these various tendencies and debates in the
newspapers did not a ect the attitude of the people towards the
Jews in Greater Russia. Many testimonies con rm this.
Thus J. Teitel, a man who lived for a long time in deep Russia
and frequented common people, a rms that “any racial or
national hostility is foreign to the common people.”[1088] Or,
in memoires left by the Viazemsky princes, this episode: there
was at Korobovka Hospital, a district of Ousmansky, a
somewhat inconsiderate Russian physician, Doctor Smirnov;
the peasants did not like him, and his successor, the devoted
Doctor Szafran, immediately bene ted from the a ection and
gratitude of all the peasants in the neighbourhood. Another
con rmation, inspired by the experience of the prisoners of the
years 1880‒1890: P. F. Iakoubovitch‐Melchine writes: “It would
be an ungrateful task to seek, even in the scum of our people,
the least trace of anti‐Semitism.”[1089] And it was indeed
because they sensed this that the Jews of a small town in
Belarus addressed a telegram at the beginning of the twentieth
century to Madam F. Morozova, the wife of a wealthy merchant,
who was in charge of charity: “Give us this much. The
synagogue burned down. You know we have the same God.”
And she sent the sum requested.
Deep down, neither the Russian liberal press nor the Jewish
press have ever accused the Russian people of any land‐based
anti‐Semitism. What both of them repeated relentlessly was
that anti‐Semitism in the popular mass, had been completely
fabricated and fuelled by the government. The very formula
“Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality” was felt in Jewish circles
as a formula directed against the Jews.
In the middle of the twentieth century, we can read from a
Jewish writer: “In tsarist Russia, anti‐Semitism had no deep
roots among the people… In the broad masses of the people,
there was practically no anti‐Semitism; moreover, the very
question of relations with Judaism did not arise… It was only
in certain parts of what was called the Pale of Settlement, and
mainly in Ukraine since the time of Polish domination, that,
due to certain circumstances on which there is no need to
dwell here, a certain tendency towards anti‐Semitism
manifested itself in the peasantry,”[1090] that is perfectly true.
And one could add: Bessarabia. (One can judge of the antiquity
of these feelings and circumstances by reading
Karamzin[1091]: the Cossacks who surrounded the False
Dmitry[1092]—of the Cossacks of the Don, obviously—treated
the Russians of Jidy (Jews)[1093], which means that in the
western provinces this word was an insult.)
And what about Russian folklore? The Dahl dictionary
encompasses Great Russia, and the western provinces, and
Ukraine. Editions before the revolution contain a large number
of words and expressions formed on the root jid‐ (Judeo‐).
(Signi cant detail: in the Soviet edition of 1955, the entire
typography of the page containing these words was
revised[1094], and the whole lexical “niche” between jidkii and
jigalo has been entirely suppressed.) However, amongst these
expressions quoted by Dahl, there are some which are
inherited from the Slavonic Church where the word jid was by
no means pejorative: it was the name of a people. There are also
some that come from Polish and post‐Polish practice within
the Pale of Settlement. Still others were introduced into the
language at the time of the Troubles, in the seventeenth
century, at a time when, in Greater Russia, there was almost no
contact with the Jews. These inheritances are also re ected in
the dicta that Dahl mentions in their Russian form—but we
can guess under the latter the southern form. (And, what is
certain is that they did not leave the bowels of the Ministry of
the Interior! …)
And then, let us compare these sayings with others: oh how
the people created malicious adages against the Orthodox
clergy! Not one, almost, is favourable to it!
A witness of Mariupol[1095] (and he is not the only one, it is
a well‐known fact) tells us that among them, before the
revolution, there was a clear distinction between the two
words evrei (Hebrew) and jid (Jew). The Evrei was a law‐abiding
citizen, whose morals, conduct, and behaviour towards others
did not di er in any way from the surrounding environment.
While the Jid was the jivoder (the swindler). And it was not
uncommon to hear: “I’m not a Jid, I’m an honest Evrei, I do not
intend to dupe you.” (Such words put into the mouths of Jews,
we nd them in literature, and we have also read them in the
pamphlets of the populists.)
This semantic di erentiation, we must never lose sight of it
when interpreting sayings.
 All this is the trace of an old national quarrel on the territory
of the West and Southwest.
For neither in Central Russia nor in the North and East, not
even during the general shock of October 1905, there weren’t
any anti‐Jewish pogroms (if there was indignation, it was
against the revolutionary intellectuals in general, against their
jubilation and ridicule of the Manifesto of October 17th). But
this does not prevent, in the eyes of the whole world, the pre‐
revolutionary Russia—not the empire, but Russia—to bear
forever the seal of infamy, that of the pogroms and the Black
Hundreds. And it is indelible, encrusted in minds for yet how
many centuries to come?
The anti‐Jewish pogroms have always and exclusively
broken out in South‐Western Russia—as it was the case in
1881. And the Kichinev pogrom of 1903 was of the same
nature.

   
Let us not forget that at the time the population of Bessarabia
was largely illiterate, that in Kishinev there were 50,000 Jews,
50,000 Moldovans, 8,000 Russians (in fact, mainly Ukrainians,
but the di erence was not noted) and a few thousand others.
What were the main forces responsible for the pogroms? “The
delinquents of the pogroms were mainly Moldovans.”[1096]
The Kishinev pogrom began on April 6, the last day of the
Jewish Passover and the rst day of the Orthodox Passover.
(This is not the rst time we have observed this tragic link
between anti‐Jewish pogroms and the Passover of Christians:
in 1881, 1882, and 1899 in Nikolaev[1097]—and it lls us with
extreme pain and anxiety.)
 Let us use the one document that is based on a rigorous
investigation carried out right after the events. This is the
indictment issued by the local court prosecutor, V. N.
Goremykine, who “did not call a single Jew as an accused, for
which he was harshly vili ed by the reactionary press.”[1098]
(As we shall see, the court rst sat in closed session to “not
exacerbate the passions”, and the indictment was originally
published abroad in the emigrated press organ of Stuttgart
Osvobojdenie [“Release”].[1099])
The document begins with an account of “the usual clashes
between Jews and Christians as happened in recent years at
Easter” and “the animosity of the local population towards the
Jews.” It says that “two weeks before the Passover… rumours
circulated in the city, announcing that there would be, during
future holidays, aggressions against the Jews.” A newspaper,
the Bessarabets (“the Bessarabian”), had played a role of blaster
in publishing “day after day, throughout the last few weeks,
incendiary articles, strongly anti‐Jewish, which did not go
unnoticed among small clerks, pencil‐pushers, the entire little
people of Bessarabia. Among the last provocative articles in the
newspaper was the one about the murder of a Christian child in
the village of Doubossary, allegedly carried out by Jews for
ritual purposes” (and another rumour ran that a Jew had
murdered his Christian servant when she had actually
committed suicide[1100]).
And the police of Kishinev, what did it do? “Did not give any
particular consideration to the rumours,” and despite the fact
that “in recent years there has been regular ghting between
Jews and Christians, the Kishinev police did not take any
serious preventive measures,” it only reinforced the patrols “for
the holidays, in the places where the crowd was going to be the
densest”, by adding men recruited from the local garrison.
[1101] The chief of police gave no clear instruction to his
o cers.
This is clearly the most unpardonable: repeated brawls every
year for the Passover, rumours of such a content—and the
police fold their arms. One more sign of the state of decline of
the governmental machinery. For there are two things, one:
either we let go of the empire (how many wars, how many
e orts have been made to unite, for obscure reasons, Moldavia
with Russia), or we safeguard the good order which must reign
over its entire territory.
On the afternoon of April 6, the streets of the city is invaded
by “people in celebration”, with “many teenagers” wandering
among the crowd, as well as angry people. The boys start
throwing stones at nearby Jewish houses, throwing harder and
harder, and when the commissioner and his inspectors try to
arrest one of them, “they get stones in their turn.” Adults then
get involved. “The police took no rm measures to stop the
disorders” and these led to the sacking of two Jewish shops and
a few sheds. In the evening, the disorders subsided, “no assault
had been perpetrated against the Jews that day”; the police had
arrested sixty people during the day.
However, “on the early morning of April 7, the very agitated
Christian population began to assemble in various parts of the
city and in the suburbs, in small groups which provoked Jews
to clashes of increasing violence.” In the same way, from the
rst hour on the New Market, “more than a hundred Jews had
gathered, armed with stakes and pickets, ri es even here and
there, who red a few shots. The Christians had no rearms.
The Jews said: ‘Yesterday you did not scatter the Russians,
today we will defend ourselves.’ And some held bottles of
vitriol in their hands, which they threw at the Christians they
met.” (Pharmacies were traditionally held by Jews.) “Rumours
spread throughout the city, reporting that the Christians were
being assaulted by the Jews; they swell from mouth to mouth
and exasperate the Christian population”: one transforms
“were beaten” into “were slaughtered”, one carries that the Jews
have sacked the cathedral and murdered the priest. And now,
“in various parts of the town, small groups of fteen to twenty
persons each, chie y workmen, with teenagers in their lead
who throw stones into the window‐panes, begin to plunder the
shops, the premises, the dwellings of the Jews, smashing
everything inside. These groups are gradually enlarged by the
passers‐by.” Towards two, three o’clock in the morning,
“disturbances spread in a more and more extended radius”;
“the houses where icons or crosses have been exposed in
windows are not a ected.” “In the sacked premises, everything
was totally destroyed, the goods ejected from the shops to be
trampled or stolen by individuals who escorted the attackers.”
They went so far as to “sack the houses of prayer of the Jews,
and throw down the sacred scrolls [the Torah] in the street.”
Drinking places, of course, were sacked; “The wine was poured
into the street or drunk on the spot by the bandits.”
The inertia of the police, owing to the absence of a proper
command, caused these crimes to be perpetrated with
impunity, and this did not fail to encourage and excite the evil‐
doers. The police forces, left to their own devices, far from
uniting their e orts, acted according to their instinct… “and
the subordinate policemen were mostly mute spectators of the
pogrom.” However, a phone call was made to the local garrison
to call for reinforcements, but “whenever the soldiers went to a
certain point, they could not nd anybody there,” and “in the
absence of new instructions, they remained inactive”; “They
were scattered in the city in isolated groups, with no clear
objective and no coordination with each other”; “They only
dispersed the excited crowds.” (This garrison was not the most
e cient, and, moreover, it was just after Passover: many
o cers and soldiers were on leave.[1102]) “The inertia of the
police… engendered new rumours, saying that the government
would have allowed to attack the Jews, since they are enemies
of the country”—and the pogrom, unleashed, inebriated,
became envenomed. “The Jews, fearing for their possessions
and for their lives, lost all composure, fear made them go mad.
Several of them, armed with revolvers, proceeded to counter‐
attack to defend themselves. Ambushed on street corners,
behind fences, on balconies, they began to shoot looters, but
awkwardly, without aiming at their targets, so that it did
nothing to help them and only aroused in the pogrom
troublemakers a terrible explosion of rage. “The crowd of
plunderers was seized with rage, and where the shooting had
resounded, it came at once to tear everything apart and be
violent towards the Jews who were there. “A shot was
particularly fatal to the Jews: the man who snatched a young
Russian boy, little Ostapov.” “From one, two o’clock in the
afternoon, the blows of the Jews became more and more
violent,” and by ve o’clock they were accompanied by “a series
of murders.” At half‐past three in the afternoon, Governor Von
Raaben, completely overwhelmed, passed an order to the chief
of the garrison, General Bekman, authorising the “use of arms”.
Bekman immediately had the city canvassed, and the troops,
who had “ventured out” walked in good order from that
moment on. “From that moment on, the troops were now able
to carry out mass arrests,” and energetic measures were taken.
At nightfall, the pogrom was under control.
The act stipulates the death toll: “There were 42 deaths,
including 38 Jews”; “all the bodies bore traces of blows by blunt
objects—clubs, shovels, stones—and some, blows of axes”;
“almost all were wounded in the head, some in the chest also.
They had no traces of bullets, no evidence of torture or rape
either (this was con rmed by doctors’ expert opinions and
autopsies, as well as by the report of the Medico‐Legal
Department of the Central Administration of Bessarabia);
“there were 456 wounded, including 62 among the
Christians…; eight were wounded by bullets… of the 394
Jewish wounded, only ve were seriously injured. No trace of
abuse… except for a one‐eyed man whose healthy eye had been
ripped out… three‐quarters of the men assaulted were adults;
there were three complaints of rape, two of which were
prosecuted.” Seven soldiers were wounded, including a soldier
who “had his face burned with vitriol”; 68 policemen received
minor injuries. “There were 1,350 homes ransacked, almost a
third of the houses in Kishinev: an enormous gure, the
equivalent of a bombing… as for the arrests, “there were 816 on
the morning of April 9”, and in addition to the investigations
into the murders, 664 persons appeared in court.
In some authors, the gures of the victims among the Jews
di er from the o cial statistics, but the gap is not very large.
The Book of the Jews of Russia estimates that there were 45 Jews
killed, 86 seriously wounded, 1,500 houses and shops looted or
destroyed.[1103] Biekerman puts forward the gure of 53 dead,
but maybe not all Jews.[1104] The recent Jewish Encyclopædia
(1988) states: “49 people were killed, 586 wounded, more than
1,500 houses and shops looted.”[1105]
This is the o cial description. But we sense what is hiding
behind it. We are told: “Only one person, one Jew with one eye”
has had the other ripped out. We learn a little more from
Korolenko in his essay Dom no 13 (“House No. 13”).[1106] This
poor man was called Meer Weisman: “To my question, wrote
Korolenko—did he know who did this?—, he answered with
perfect serenity that he did not know, but that ‘a kid’, the son of
his neighbours, had boasted that he had done it with a lead
weight attached to a string.” We see then that perpetrators and
victims knew each other rather well… Korolenko resumed: “It
is true that what I advance, I hold of the Jews themselves, but
there is no reason not to believe their sayings… Why would
they have invented these details? …” And, in fact, why would
the family of Bentsion Galanter, mortally hit on the head,
invent that the murderers had planted nails all over his body?
Was not the family of the Nisenson accountant su ciently
tried, why would it add that he had been “rinsed” in a puddle
before being massacred? These details are not ction.
But to those who were far from the events, to the agitators of
public opinion, these horrors were not enough. What they
remembered was not tragedy, misfortune, the dead, but rather:
how to exploit them to strike the tsarist power? And they
resorted to terrifying exaggerations. To overcome reactions of
horror, to try to see clearly in the versions built up in the
months and years following, would it not be minimising the
tragedy? And to attract many insults? But to see it clearly is a
duty, because we took advantage of the pogrom of Kishinev to
blacken Russia and mark her forever of the seal of infamy.
Today, all honest historical work on the subject demands a
distinction between the horrible truth and the treacherous lies.
The conclusion of the indictment is the following: the
disorders “have reached the magnitude described only because
of the inertia of the police, deprived of an adequate
command… The preliminary investigation did not nd
evidence that the disorders had been premeditated.”[1107]
These clues, no further investigation found them either.
But so be it: the O ce for the Defence of the Jews, which we
have already mentioned, (was attended by such eminent
persons as Mr. Winaver, Mr. G. Sliosberg, Mr. Bramson, Mr.
Koulicher, Mr. A. Braoudo, Mr. S. Pozner, Krohl[1108]), as soon
as the news of the pogrom of Kishinev reached it, it excluded
from the outset all possible causes apart from that of a
conspiracy fomented from above: “Who gave the order of
organising the pogrom, who took the direction of the dark
forces that perpetrated it?”[1109] “As soon as we learned of the
climate in which the killings of Kishinev took place, we did not
doubt that this diabolical undertaking had been concocted by
the Police Department and carried out at his command.”
Although, of course, “the wretches kept their project secret,”
wrote Krohl in the 40s of the 20th century.[1110] “But, as
convinced as we are that the killings of Kishinev were
premeditated in high places, with the tacit agreement and
perhaps at the initiative of Plehve, we can unmask these high‐
placed assassins and expose them to the light of the world only
on one condition: if we have the most indisputable proofs
against them. That is why we decided to send the famous
lawyer Zaroudny to Kishinev.”[1111] “He was the most suitable
person for the mission we had entrusted to him,” “he
undertook to reveal the hidden springs of the Kishinev
massacre, after which the police, to divert attention, arrested a
few dozens thieves and looters.”[1112] (Recall that in the
aftermath of the pogrom, 816 people were arrested.) Zaroudny
gathered information and brought back “material of
exceptional importance”. That is to say that “the chief person
in charge, the organiser of the pogrom, had been the head of
local security, K. Lewendal,” a gendarmerie o cer who had
been appointed to Kishinev shortly before the pogrom. It was
“at his command that the police and the troops openly lent a
hand to the assassins and the looters.”[1113] He would have
“totally paralysed the action of the governor.”[1114] (It is
known, however, that in Russia neither the police nor the
troops were under the orders of the Okhrana.)
This said “exceptionally important” material, which
denounced the guilty “with absolute certainty,” was never
published neither at the time or later. Why? But because, if it
had been so, how could Lewendal and his accomplices escape
punishment and dishonour? This material is known only by
hearsay: a dealer named Pronine and a notary named
Pissarjevsky would have been found several times in a certain
café and, on Lewendal’s instructions, would have planned the
pogrom.[1115] And it was after these meetings that all the
police and the troops opted for the pogrom. The prosecutor
Goremykine examined the charges against Lowendal and
declared them unfounded.[1116] (The journalist Kruchevane,
whose incendiary articles had really favoured the pogrom, was
stabbed in Petersburg two months later by Pinhas Dachevsky
who wanted to kill him.[1117])
The authorities, during this time, continued the
investigation. The director of the police department, A. A.
Lopoukhine (with his liberal sympathies, he was unsuspected
in the eyes of the public) was quickly dispatched to Kishinev.
Governor Von Raaden was dismissed, along with several other
senior o cials from Bessarabia; a new governor was
appointed, Prince S. Urusov (soon to be a prominent K. D., and
would sign the appeal to the rebellion called “Vyborg’s
Appeal”). A bulletin from the Minister of the Interior, Plehve,
was published in The Messenger of the Government of April 29: in
it he stated his indignation at the inaction of the authorities of
Kishinev; he called on all provincial governors, city governors
and police chiefs to vigorously halt all violence by taking all
possible measures.[1118]
The Orthodox Church also expressed itself. The Holy Synod
issued a bulletin inviting the clergy to take measures to
extirpate feelings of hostility towards the Jews. Some of the
hierarchs, notably Father John of Kronstadt, who were very
much listened to and revered by the faithful, appealed to the
Christian people, expressing their disapproval, their
exhortations, their appeals for appeasement. “They have
substituted for the Christian holiday a sanguinary and satanic
orgy.”[1119] And Bishop Antony (Krapovitsky) declared: “The
punishment of God will befall the wretches who have spilled
blood related to that of the God‐Man, to His pure Mother, the
apostles and the prophets… so that you know how much the
Divine Spirit cherishes the Jewish people, still rejected today,
and know what is His wrath against those who would want to
o end Him.”[1120] A text on the subject was distributed to the
people. (The long exhortations and explanations of the Church,
however, were not unrelated to an archaic state of mind, frozen
for centuries and to be surpassed by the formidable evolutions
in progress.)
In the rst days of May, a month after the events, an
information campaign but also one of intoxication about the
pogrom broke out in the Russian press as well as in the
European and American ones. In Petersburg, fanatical articles
spoke of assassinations of mothers and infants, of rape—
sometimes of underage girls, sometimes of women under the
eyes of their husbands or of their father and mother; there was
talk of “torn tongues; a man was ripped open, a woman’s head
was pierced with nails driven in by the nostrils.”[1121] Less
than a week had elapsed when these horrifying details
appeared in the papers of the West. Western public opinion
gave it full credence. The in uential Jews in England relied on
these fabrications and included them word for word in their
public protest.[1122] Should we repeat: “No evidence of abuse or
rape was observed on the bodies.” Due to a new wave of
newspaper articles, forensic pathologists were asked to submit
supplementary reports. The doctor of the City Health Service,
named Frenkel (who had examined the bodies in the Jewish
cemetery), and another named Tchorba (who had received the
dead and wounded at the hospital in the Kishinev Zemstvo
between 5 P.M., the second day after the Passover, and noon,
the third day, and then at the Jewish hospital), and the doctor
Vassiliev (who had carried out an autopsy of thirty‐ ve
corpses)—all attested the absence of traces of torture or
violence on the bodies described in the newspapers.[1123] It
was later learned at the trial that doctor Dorochevsky—the one
who, it was thought, had supplied these frightening reports—
had seen nothing of these atrocities, and declined any
responsibility for the publication of the tabloids.[1124] As for
the prosecutor at the Criminal Chamber of Odessa, he had, in
reply to a question from Lopoukhine regarding the rapes,
“secretly conducted his own investigation”: the accounts of the
families of the victims themselves did not con rm any case of
rape; the concrete cases, in the expertise, are positively
excluded.[1125] But who paid attention to the examinations
and conclusions of doctors? Who cares about the prosecutor’s
speci c research? All these documents may remain, turning
yellow, in cabinets les!
All that the witnesses had not con rmed, all that Korolenko
had not related, the authorities did not have the presence of
mind to refute it. And all these details spread throughout the
world, and took the form of a fact in public opinion, which they
were to remain throughout the twentieth century, and which
they will probably still be throughout the whole of the twenty‐
rst century—cold, frozen, stowed forever in the name of
Russia.
However, Russia, for many years now, but with increasing
acuteness, knew a mad, deadly distortion between “civil
society” and the government. It was a struggle to the death: for
the liberal and radical circles, and even more so for the
revolutionaries, any incident (true or false) discrediting the
government was a blessing, and for them everything was
permitted—any exaggeration, any distortion, any make‐up of
facts; the important thing was to humiliate power as severely
as possible. For the Russian radicals, a pogrom of this gravity
was a chance in their ght!
The government resolved to forbid all publication in the
newspapers concerning the pogrom, but it was a blunder, for
the rumours were re‐echoed with greater force by the
European and American press; All the rantings escalated with
even more impunity—exactly as if there had never been any
police report.
And here it was, the great o ensive launched against the
government of the tsar. The Bureau for the Defence of the Jews
sent telegrams to all the capitals: organise protest meetings
everywhere![1126] A member of the Bureau wrote: “We have
communicated the details of the atrocities… in Germany,
France, England, the United States… The impression that our
information caused was shattering; in Paris, Berlin, London
and New York, there were protest meetings in which the
speakers painted a frightening picture of the crimes committed
by the tsarist government.”[1127] Here he is, they thought, the
Russian bear as it has been since the dawn of time! “These
atrocities shocked the world. And now, without any restraint,
the police and the soldiers have by all means assisted the
assassins and the plunderers in perpetrating their inhuman
acts.”[1128] The “cursed autocracy” has marked itself with an
indelible stigma! In meetings, they stigmatised the new plan of
tsarism, “premeditated by it”. In the synagogues of London,
they accused… the Holy Synod of having committed this
killing due to religious inspiration. Some of the hierarchs of the
Catholic Church also declared their disapproval. But it was by
far the European and American press that showed themselves
as being the most virulent (notably the press tycoon William
Hearst): “We accuse the tsarist power of being responsible for
the massacre of Kishinev. We declare that his guilt in this
holocaust is total. It is before his door and in front of any other
that the victims of this violence are exposed. “May the God of
Justice descend here below to nish with Russia as He has
nished with Sodom and Gomorrah… and let him evacuate
this pestilential focus from the face of the earth.” “The killing
of Kishinev surpasses in insolent cruelty all that has ever been
recorded in any civilised nation”[1129]… (including, one must
believe, the extermination of the Jews in medieval Europe?).
Alas, Jews more or less circumspect, more or less stunned,
joined in the same assessment of the events. And not less than
thirty years after the events, the respectable jurist G. Sliosberg
retains the same details in publications of emigration—(even
though he himself never went to Kishinev, then or later): the
nails planted in the head of the victim (he goes so far as
attributing this information to the account of Korolenko!), and
the rapes, and the presence of “several thousand soldiers” (the
modest garrison of Kishinev had never seen as many!) who
“seemed to be there to protect the perpetrators of the
pogrom.”[1130]
But Russia, in the eld of communication, was
inexperienced, unable to justify itself coherently seeing it was
still unaware of the methods used for this.
Meanwhile, the so‐called “cold premeditation” of the pogrom
was not supported by any solid proof—none that was
commensurate with the raging campaign. And although
lawyer Zaroudny had already “closed his investigation and…
rmly established that the chief organiser and the sponsor of
the pogrom was none other than the chief of the local Okhrana,
Baron Lewendal”[1131]—even in this variant, the character of
Lewendal did not reach the government su ciently, it was
necessary to draw a little more to reach the central power.
But here we are!—six weeks after the pogrom, in order to
further stir up general indignation, and to dishonour the key
gure of power, one “discovered” (no one knows by whom, but
very appropriately) an “ultra‐secret letter” from the Minister of
Interior Plehve to the governor of Kishinev, Von Raaben (not a
bulletin addressed to all the governors of the Pale of
Settlement, no, but a letter addressed to him alone ten days
before the pogrom), in which the minister, in rather evasive
terms, gave advice: if serious disturbances occur in the
province of Bessarabia, not to repress them by arms, but to use
only persuasion. And now an individual, very timely there too,
transmitted the text of this letter to an English correspondent
in Saint Petersburg, D. D. Braham, and the latter hastened to
publish it in London in the Times of 18 May 1903.[1132]
A priori: what is the weight of a single publication in a single
newspaper, which nothing corroborates—neither on the spot
nor later? But it weighs as much as you want! Enormously,
even! And in this case, the publication of the Times was
supported by the protest of prominent British Jews, with
Monte ore at their head (from an internationally‐known
family).[1133]
Thanks to the climate that reigned throughout the world,
this letter was a colossal success: the sanguinary intentions
against the Jews of the universally abhorred tsarism, which had
not yet been proved, were suddenly “attested with supporting
documents.” Articles and meetings had a new upsurge
throughout the world. On the third day after the publication,
the New York Times pointed out that “three days already that
the letter was disclosed—and no denial occurred”, and the
British press has already declared it to be authentic. “What can
we say about the level of civilisation of a country, of which a
minister can give his signature to such exactions?”[1134] The
Russian government, in its awkwardness and
incomprehension of the gravity of the matter, found nothing
better to do than to negligently abandon a laconic denial
signed by the head of the Police Department, A. Lopoukhine,
and only on the ninth day after the scandalous publication of
the Times,[1135] but instead of investigating the falsi cation,
he simply settled on expelling Braham from the territory.
One can argue with certainty that this was indeed a forgery,
for several reasons. Not only because Braham never exhibited
any proof of the authenticity of the letter. Not only because
Lopoukhine, the declared enemy of Plehve, had himself denied
this text. Not only because Prince Urusov, the great Jewish
sympathiser who had succeeded Von Raaben and controlled
the archives of the governorate, found no “letter of Plehve.” Not
only because poor Von Raaben, dismissed, his life and career
broken, never, in his desperate e orts to restore his reputation,
complained of having received instructions “from above”—
which would have immediately restored his career and made
him the idol of liberal society. The main reason lies in the fact
that the State archives in Russia had nothing in common with
the rigged archives of the Soviet era when any document was
concocted upon request or others burned in secret. No, in the
Russian archives everything was preserved, inviolably and
forever. Immediately after the February Revolution, an
extraordinary commission of inquiry of the Provisional
Government, and, still more zealously, the “Special
Commission for the Study of the History of the Pogroms,” with
investigators as serious as S. Dubnov, Krasny‐Admoni, did not
nd the document in Petersburg or Kishinev, nor its record it
upon entrance or exit; they found only the translation into
English of Braham’s English text (as well as papers containing
“indications of severe punishment and dismissal… sanctioning
any illegal action by agents responsible for the Jewish
question”).[1136]
After 1917, what was still to be feared? But not a single
witness, not a single memorialist, was able to tell the story of
where this immortal telegram had fallen, or to boast of having
acted as an intermediary. And Braham himself—neither at the
time, nor later—didn’t say a single word about it.
But this did not prevent the constitutional‐Democratic
newspaper Retch (“The Word”) from writing with con dence,
on 19 March 1917: “The bloodbath of Kishinev, the counter‐
revolutionary pogroms of 1905 were organised, as was
de nitively established, by the Police Department.” And, in
August 1917, at the Moscow State Conference, the President of
the Special Commission of Inquiry publicly declared that he
would “soon present the police department’s documents
concerning the organisation of anti‐Jewish pogroms”—but
neither soon nor later, neither the Commission, nor,
subsequently, the Bolsheviks exhibited any document of this
kind. Thus the lie encrusted itself, practically up to now! … (In
my November 16, one of the characters evokes the pogrom of
Kishinev, and in 1986 the German publisher adds an
explanatory note in this regard stating: “Anti‐Jewish Pogrom,
carefully prepared, which lasted two days. The Minister of the
Interior Plehve had conjured the governor of Bessarabia, in the
event of a pogrom, not to use rearms.”[1137]) In the recent
Jewish Encyclopædia (1996) we read this statement: “In April
1903, the new Minister of the Interior, Plehve, organised with
his agents a pogrom in Kishinev.”[1138] (Paradoxically, we read
in the previous tome: “The text of Plehve’s telegram published
in the Times of London… is held by most scholars as being a
fake”[1139]).
And here: the false story of the Kishinev pogrom made much
more noise than the real, cruel and authentic one. Will the
point be made one day? Or will it take yet another hundred
years?
The incompetence of the tsarist government, the
decrepitude of its power, had manifested itself on various
occasions, in Transcaucasia, for example, during the killing
spree between the Armenians and Azeris, but the government
was declared guilty only in the a air of Kishinev.
“The Jews,” wrote D. Pasmanik, “have never imputed the
pogrom to the people, they have always accused the power and
the administration exclusively… No facts could ever shake this
opinion, a furthermore perfectly super cial opinion.”[1140]
And Biekerman emphasised that it was a matter of public
knowledge that pogroms were for the government a form of
struggle against the revolution. More circumspect minds
reasoned thus: if in the recent pogroms no technical
preparation by the power is attested, “the state of mind which
reigns in Saint Petersburg is such that any virulent judeophobe
will nd among the authorities, from the minister to the last
sergeant of town, a benevolent attitude towards him.” Yet the
Kishinev trial, which took place in the autumn of 1903, showed
exactly the opposite.
For the liberal and radical opposition, this trial was to be
transformed into a battle against the autocracy. Were sent as
“civil parties” eminent lawyers, Jews and Christians—Mr.
Karabchevsky, O. Gruzenberg, S. Kalmanovitch, A. Zaroudny, N.
Sokolov. The “brilliant left‐wing advocate” P. Pereverzev and a
few others joined as defenders of the accused “so that they
would not be afraid to tell the court… who had prompted them
to start the carnage”[1141]—to clarify: to say that it was the
power that had armed them. The “civil parties” demanded that
further investigation be carried out and that the “real culprits”
should be placed on the stand. The authorities did not publish
the transcripts so as not to exacerbate the passions in the city
of Kishinev, nor those already white‐hot of world opinion.
Things were all the easier: the squad of activists who
surrounded the “civil parties” made their own reports and sent
them through the world, via Romania, for publication. This,
however, did not modify the course of the trial. The killers’
faces were scrutinized, but the culprits were undoubtedly the
authorities—guilty only, it is true, of not having intervened in
a timely manner. At that point, the group of lawyers split a
collective statement stating that “if the court refuses to bring
to justice and punish the main culprits of the pogrom”—that is,
not some ordinary Governor Von Raaben (he no longer
interested anyone), but indeed Minister Plehve himself and the
central government of Russia—“they [the defenders] will have
nothing more to do in this trial.” For they “encountered such
hostility on the part of the court that it gave them no
possibility… to defend freely and in conscience the interests of
their clients, as well as those of justice.”[1142] This new tactic
of the lawyers, which constituted a purely political approach,
proved to be quite fertile and promising; it made a great
impression on the whole world. “The action of lawyers has
been approved by all the best minds in Russia.”[1143]
The trial before the Criminal Division of Odessa was now
proceeding in order. The prognostications of Western
newspapers that “the trial of Kishinev will only be a
masquerade, a parody of justice,”[1144] were not con rmed in
any way. The accused, in view of their number, had to be
divided into several groups according to the gravity of the
charge. As mentioned above, there were no Jews among the
accused.[1145] The chief of the gendarmerie of the province
had already announced in April that out of 816 people arrested,
250 had been dismissed for inconsistency of the charges
against them, 446 had immediately been the subject of judicial
decisions (as evidenced in the Times), and “persons convicted
by the court have been sentenced to the heaviest penalties”;
about 100 were seriously charged, including 36 accused of
murder and rape (in November, they will be 37). In December,
the same chief of the gendarmerie announced the results of the
trial: deprivation of rights, property, and penal colony (seven
years or ve years), deprivation of rights and disciplinary
battalion (one year and one and a half years). In all, 25
convictions and 12 acquittals.[1146] The real culprits of real
crimes had been condemned, the ones we have described. The
condemnations, however, were not tender—“the drama of
Kishinev ends on a usual contradiction in Russia: in Kishinev,
criminals seem to be subjected to a rigorous judicial
repression,” the American Jewish Yearbook stated, astonished.
[1147]
In the spring of 1904, the Cassation proceedings in
Petersburg were made public.[1148] And in 1905 the Kishinev
pogrom was once again examined in the Senate; Winaver took
the oor to prove nothing new.
In reality, the a air of the Kishinev pogrom had in icted a
hard lesson on the tsarist government by revealing to it that a
State that tolerates such infamy is a scandalously impotent
State. But the lesson would have been equally clear without
poisonous falsi cations or false additions. Why did the simple
truth about Kichinev’s pogrom seem insu cient? Presumably
because this truth would have re ected the true nature of the
government—a sclerotic organisation, guilty of bullying the
Jews, but which remained unsteady and incoherent. However,
with the aid of lies, it was represented as a wise persecutor,
in nitely sure of himself, and evil. Such an enemy could only
deserve annihilation.
The Russian government, which for a long time already had
been largely surpassed on the international stage, did not
understand, either on the spot nor afterwards, what a shocking
defeat it had just wiped out there. This pogrom soiled a
stinking stain on all of Russian history, all the ideas that the
world had of Russia as a whole; the sinister gleam of re
projected by it announced and precipitated the upheavals
which were soon to shake the country.
 Chapter 9. During the Revolution of 1905

The Kishinev pogrom produced a devastating and indelible

e ect on the Jewish community in Russia. Jabotinsky: Kishinev
traces “the boundary between two epochs, two psychologies.”
The Jews of Russia have not only experienced deep sorrow, but,
more profoundly so, “something which had almost made one
forget the pain—and that was shame.”[1149] “If the carnage of
Kishinev played a major role in the realisation of our situation,
it was because we then realised that the Jews were
cowards.”[1150]
We have already mentioned the failure of the police and the
awkwardness of the authorities—it was therefore natural that
the Jews had asked themselves the question: should we
continue to rely on the protection of public authorities? Why
not create our own armed militias and defend ourselves
weapons in hand? They were incited by a group of prominent
public men and writers—Doubnov, Ahad Haam, Rovnitsky,
Ben‐Ami, Bialik: “Brothers… cease weeping and begging for
mercy. Do not expect any help from your enemies. Only rely on
your own arms!”[1151]
These calls “produced on Jewish youth the e ect of an
electric shock.”[1152] And in the overheated atmosphere that
began to reign after the Kishinev pogrom, “armed groups of
self‐defence” quickly saw the light at various locations in the
Pale of Settlement. They were generally nanced “by the Jewish
community”[1153], and the illegal introduction of weapons
from abroad did not pose a problem for the Jews. It was not
unusual for these weapons to fall into the hands of very young
people.
 O cial reports do not indicate the existence of armed
groups among the Christian population. The government
struggled as best it could against the bombs of terrorists. When
armed militias began to develop, it saw in them—it is only
natural—totally illegal demonstrations, the premises of the
civil war, and it banned them by the means and information it
had at its disposal. (Also today, the whole world condemns and
prohibits “illegal paramilitary formations.”)
A highly operational armed group was formed in Gomel
under the direction of the local committee of the Bund. On
March 1st, 1903, the latter had organised “festivities” for the
anniversary of the “execution of Alexander II.”[1154] In this
city, where Christians and Jews were nearly equal in
number[1155], and the socialist Jews were more than
determined, the establishment of armed groups of self‐defence
was particularly strong. This was to be noted during the events
of August 29th and September 1st 1903—the Gomel pogrom.
According to the ndings of the o cial investigation, the
responsibility for the Gomel pogrom is shared: Christians and
Jews mutually attacked each other.
Let us take a closer look at the o cial documents of the time,
in this case the indictment of the Gomel a air, based on the
police reports drawn up on the spot. (Police reports, which date
back to the early twentieth century in Russia, have repeatedly
proven their accuracy and their irreproachable precision—and
this up to the hustle and bustle of the days of February 1917,
up to the moment where the police stations of Petrograd were
vested by the insurgents, burnt down—since then, this stream
of minutely‐recorded information was cut o , and remained so
for us.)
At the Gomel trial, the indictment states: “The Jewish
population… began to procure weapons and to organise self‐
defence circles in the event of trouble directed at the Jews…
Some residents of Gomel had the opportunity to attend Jewish
youth training sessions outside the city and which gathered up
to a hundred people practising shooting guns.”[1156]
“The generalisation of the possession of weapons, on the one
hand, the awareness of one’s numerical superiority and
cohesion, on the other hand, have emboldened the Jewish
population to the extent that, among its youth, they spoke not
only of self‐defence, but of indispensable revenge for the
Kishinev pogrom.”
Thus hatred expressed in one place is re ected in another,
distant—and against the innocent.
“For some time past, the attitude of the Jews of Gomel has
become not only contemptuous, but frankly provocative; the
attacks—both verbal and physical—on peasants and workers
have become commonplace, and the Jews display their
contempt in all sorts of ways even against the Russians
belonging to higher social strata, for example, by forcing
soldiers to change sidewalk.” On August 29th, 1903,
everything started with a banal incident in a market: an
altercation between the herring merchant Malitskaya and her
client Chalykov; she spat in his face, the dispute turned into a
brawl, “immediately several Jews rushed upon Chalykov, threw
him to the ground, and began to strike him with everything
they could put their hands on. A dozen peasants wanted to
defend Chalykov, but the Jews immediately emitted whistles
previously agreed upon, causing a considerable in ux of other
Jews… No doubt these whistles were a call for help… thus they
immediately mobilised the entire Jewish population of the
city”; “on foot, by car, armed as they could, the Jews ocked to
the market everywhere. Very soon, the Street of the Market, the
market itself and all the adjacent streets were swarming with
people; The Jews were armed with stones, sticks, hammers,
specially‐made clubs or even simply iron bars. Everywhere
shouts were heard: ‘Let’s go, Jews! To the market! It is the
pogrom of the Russians!’ And all this mass went into small
groups to pursue the peasants to strike them”—and the latter
were numerous, on a market day. “Leaving there their
purchases, the peasants—when they had time—jumped on
their chariots and hastened to leave the city… Witnesses say
that when they caught Russians, the Jews beat them without
mercy, they beat old people, women and even children. For
example, a little girl was pulled out of a chariot and dragged by
her hair on the roadway.” “A peasant by the name of Silkov had
placed himself at some distance to enjoy the spectacle while
nibbling a piece of bread. At that moment, a Jew who ran
behind him struck his throat with a mortal knife wound, then
disappeared among the crowd.” Other episodes are listed. An
o cer was only saved thanks to the intervention of Rabbi
Maiants and the owner of the neighbouring house, Rudzievsky.
Upon arriving at the scene, the police were welcomed “on the
Jews’ side, by a hail of stones and by revolver shots… which
started not only from the crowd but also from the balconies of
neighbouring buildings”; “the violence against the Christian
population continued almost until the evening, and it was only
with the arrival of a detachment from the army that the mobs
of Jews were dispersed”; “the Jews struck the Russians, and
especially the peasants, who… were incapable of any
resistance, either because of their small number compared to
that of the Jews or because of their lack of defences… That day,
all the victims were Russians… many wounded, people beaten
to a pulp.”[1157] The indictment concludes with regard to the
events of August 29th that they “undeniably had the character
of an ‘anti‐Russian pogrom’.”[1158]
These facts caused “deep indignation among the Christian
population”, which reinforced “the euphoric mood” of the Jews,
their “enthusiasm”…: “We are no longer in Kishinev!” On
September 1st, after the midday siren, the railway workers
were abnormally noisy as they left the workshops, shouts and
exclamations were heard, and the chief of police ordered to
block the bridge leading to the city. Then the workers spread to
the neighbouring streets and “stones ew to the windows of
houses inhabited by Jews,” while “in the city were beginning to
form large gatherings of Jews” who “threw from a distance
pieces of wood and stones onto the crowd of workers”; “two
paving stones thrown by the Jewish crowd” struck a police
commissioner in the back who fell unconscious. The Russian
crowd began to yell: “the kikes have killed the commissary!”
and undertook to sack Jewish houses and shops. The
intervention of the troop, which separated the adversaries and
deployed itself in the face of both, prevented the shedding of
blood. On the Jews’ side, stones were thrown, and revolver
shots were red at the soldiers “with a shower of insults.” The
commander asked Rabbi Maiants and Doctor Zalkind to
intervene with the Jews, but “their appeals for calm were of no
e ect and the crowd continued its agitation”; it was only
possible to draw it back by pointing the bayonets. The main
success of the army was to prevent “the breakers from reaching
the city centre, where were found the shops and houses of the
wealthy Jews.” Then the pogrom moved to the outskirts of the
city. The chief of the police still tried to exhort the crowd, but
they cried out: “You are with the Jews, you have betrayed us!
The salvos drawn by the troops upon the Russians as well as on
the Jews curbed the pogrom, but two hours later it resumed in
the suburbs—again shootings on the crowd, several dead and
wounded, and then the pogrom ceased. However, the
indictment refers to the presence in the city centre of “groups
of Jews who conducted themselves in a very provocative
manner and opposed the army and the police… As on 29
August, all were armed… many brandished revolvers and
daggers”, “going as far as ring shots or throwing stones on the
troops charged to protect their property”; “they attacked the
Russians who ventured alone in the streets, including the
soldiers”: a peasant and a beggar were killed. During that day,
three middle‐class Jews succumbed to “deadly wounds”.
Towards the evening the disorders ceased. Five Jews and four
Christians had been killed. “Nearly 250 commercial or
residential premises belonging to Jews had been a ected by the
pogrom.” On the Jewish side, “the overwhelming majority of
active participants in the events consisted exclusively of…
young people,” but many “more mature” people, as well as
children, had handed them stones, boards, and logs.”[1159]
No description of these events can be found by any Jewish
writer.
“The Gomel pogrom had not taken its organisers o guard. It
had been prepared for a long time, the formation of self‐
defence had been put in place soon after the events of
Kishinev.”[1160] Only a few months after Kishinev, the Jews
could no longer despise themselves for the resigned attitude
with which they were accused of, among others, by the poet
Bialik. And, as always happens with armed groups of this type,
the boundary between defence and attack became blurred. The
rst was fed by the Kishinev pogrom, the second of the
revolutionary spirit of the organisers.
(Activism of Jewish youth had already manifested itself
before. Thus, in 1899, the “Chklov a air” was revealed: in this
city where there were nine Jews for a Russian, disarmed
Russian soldiers—they were demobilised—were severely
beaten by Jews. After examining this episode, the Senate
considered it to be a manifestation of ethnic and religious
hatred of Jews towards Russians under the same article of the
Penal Code as that had been applied to the trial of those
responsible for the Kishinev pogrom.)
 This activism must not be accounted for solely by the Bund.
“At the head of this process [of creating, at a steady pace,
organisations of self‐defence] are found the Zionists and the
parties close to Zionism—the Zionist‐Socialists and the ‘Poalei
Zion’.” Thus, it is how in Gomel, in 1903, “the majority of the
detachments were organised by the ‘Poalei Zion’ party.”[1161]
(Which contradicts Buchbinder, fervent admirer of the Bund—I
do not really know whom to believe.)
When the news of Gomel’s pogrom reached Saint Petersburg,
the Jewish Defence O ce dispatched two lawyers—still
Zaroudny and N. D. Sokolov—to proceed to a private
investigation as soon as possible. Zaroudny once again
gathered “irrefutable proofs” that the pogrom had been
organised by the Department of Security,[1162] but here also,
they were not made public. (Thirty years later, even Sliosberg,
who participated in the trials of Gomel, followed suit in his
Memoirs in three volumes, asserting, without any shred of
evidence—which seems incomprehensible on the part of a
lawyer—, mistaking the dates—and those errors that can be
attributed to age, he found no one to correct them—, that the
Gomel pogrom had been deliberately organised by the police.
He excludes also all o ensive action on the part of the self‐
defence detachments of the Bund and of the Poalei Zion. (He
speaks of it incoherently and confusedly, for example: “The
young people of the self‐defence groups quickly put an end to
the misbehaviour and drove out the peasants”, “the young Jews
gathered promptly and, on more than one occasion, they were
able to repel the rioters,”[1163] just like that, without using any
weapons? …)
The o cial investigation was proceeding seriously, step by
step—and during that time Russia was plunging into the
Japanese war. And it was not until October 1904 that Gomel’s
trial took place—in a white‐hot political atmosphere.
 Forty‐four Christians and 36 Jews appeared before the court;
Nearly a thousand people were called to the witness stand.
[1164] The Defence O ce was represented by several lawyers:
Sliosberg, Kupernik, Mandelstam, Kalmanovich, Ratner, Krohl.
From their point of view, it was unjust that even a single Jew
should be included in the bench of the accused: for the entire
Jewish community in Russia “it was like a warning against
recourse to self‐defence.”[1165] From the government’s point
of view, this was not “self‐defence”. But the lawyers of the
Jewish defendants did not deal with the details, nor the Jewish
property that had really been sacked—they focused only on one
thing: to uncover the “political motives” of the pogrom, for
example, to point out that Jewish youth, in the midst of the
fray, was shouting: “Down with the autocracy!” In fact, shortly
afterwards, they decided to abandon their clients and leave the
courtroom collectively in order to send an even stronger
message: to repeat the precedent of the Kishinev trial.[1166]
This method, as skilful as it was revolutionary, was entirely
in the air of the time in December 1904: these liberal advocates
wanted to explode the judicial system itself!
After their departure, “the trial quickly came to an end”
insofar as it was now possible to examine the facts. Some of the
Jews were acquitted, the others were sentenced to penalties not
exceeding ve months; “The condemnations which befell the
Christians were equal to those of the Jews.”[1167] In the end,
there were about as many convictions on one side as on the
other.[1168]

   
By plunging into the Japanese war, by adopting a rigid and
insightful stance in the con ict over Korea, neither the
Emperor Nicholas II nor the high dignitaries around him
realised how much, on the international plane, Russia was
vulnerable to the west and especially to the “traditionally
friendly” America. Nor did they take into account the rise of
Western nanciers, who were already in uencing the policy of
the great powers, increasingly dependent on credit. In the
nineteenth century things did not happen this way yet, and the
Russian government, always slow to react, did not know how
to perceive these changes.
However, after the Kishinev pogrom, Western opinion had
become rmly established in an attitude of repulsion towards
Russia, considered as an old scarecrow, an Asiatic and despotic
country where obscurantism reigns, where the people are
exploited, where the revolutionaries are treated without pity,
subjected to inhuman su erings and deprivations, and now
they are massacring the Jews “by the thousands”, and behind
all this there is the hand of the government! (As we have seen,
the government was unable to rectify this distorted version of
the facts in time, with energy and e ciency.) So, in the West,
people began to consider it appropriate, even worthy of
consideration, to hope that the revolution would break out in
Russia as soon as possible: it would be a good thing for the
whole world—and for the Jews of Russia in particular.
And, above all, the incompetence, the incapacity, the
unpreparedness to conduct far‐o military operations against
a country that at that time seemed small and weak, in the
context of an agitated, openly hostile public opinion, that
longed for the defeat of its own country.
The sympathy of the United States for Japan expressed itself
abundantly in the American press. It “hailed every Japanese
victory and did not hide its desire to see Russia undergo a rapid
and decisive setback.”[1169] Witte mentions twice in his
Memoirs that President Theodore Roosevelt was on the side of
Japan and supported it.[1170] And Roosevelt himself: “As soon
as this war broke out I brought to Germany’s and France’s
attention, with the utmost courtesy and discretion, that in case
of an anti‐Japanese agreement” with Russia “I would
immediately take the side of Japan and would do everything in
the future to serve its interests.”[1171] It may be supposed that
Roosevelt’s intentions were not unknown to Japan.
And it was there that the very powerful banker Jakob Schi
appeared—one of the greatest of the Jews, he who could realise
his ideals thanks to his exceptional position in the economic
sphere.”[1172] “From his earliest years Schi took care of
business a airs”; he emigrated from Germany to New York and
soon became head of the Bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. In 1912, “he is
in America the king of rail, owner of twenty‐two thousand
miles of railroads”; “he also has a reputation as an energetic
and generous philanthropist; he is particularly sensitive to the
needs of the Jewish community.”[1173] Schi was particularly
keen on the fate of the Russian Jews—hence his hostility
towards Russia until 1917. According to the Encyclopædia
Judaica (in English), “Schi made a remarkable contribution to
the allocation of credits to his own government and to that of
other countries, particularly pointing out a loan of 200 million
dollars to Japan during the con ict opposing it to Russia in
1904‒1905. Outraged by the anti‐Semitic policy of the tsarist
regime in Russia, he eagerly supported the Japanese war e ort.
He constantly refused to participate in lending to Russia and
used his in uence to deter other institutions from doing so,
while granting nancial aid to the self‐defence groups of
Russian Jews.”[1174] But while it is true that this money
allowed the Bund and the Poalei Zion to supply themselves
with weapons, it is no less likely that they also bene ted from
other revolutionary organisations in Russia (including the S.‐R.
who, at the time, practised terrorism). There is evidence that
Schi , in an interview with an o cial of the Ministry of
Finance of Russia, G. A. Vilenkine, who was also one of his
distant relatives, “acknowledged that he contributed to the
nancing of the revolutionary movement in Russia” and that
“things had gone too far”[1175] to put an end to it.
However, in Russia, Baron G. O. Ginzburg continued to
intervene in favour of equal rights for the Jews. To this end, in
1903 he visited Witte at the head of a Jewish delegation. The
latter (who had already dealt with the Jewish question when he
was secretary‐general of the government) replied to them then:
that the Jews should be granted equal rights only gradually, but
“in order for the question to be raised, the Jews must adopt ‘a
completely di erent behaviour’,” that is to say, to refrain from
interfering in the political life of the country. “It is not your
business, leave it to those who are Russian by blood and civil
status, it is not for you to give us lessons, you should rather
take care of yourself.” Ginzburg, Sliosberg, and Koulicher
agreed with this opinion, other participants did not,
particularly Winaver, who objected: “The time has come to
grant equal rights to all the subjects [of the empire]… The Jews
must support with all their strength those of the Russians who
ght for it, and thus against the power in place.”[1176]
From the Japanese war, from the beginning of 1904, the
Russian government sought nancial support from the West,
and in order to obtain it, was willing to promise an extension
of the rights of the Jews. At Plehve’s request, high personalities
came into contact with Baron Ginzburg on this subject, and
Sliosberg was sent abroad to survey the opinion of the greatest
Jewish nanciers. As a matter of principle, Schi “declined all
bargaining over the number and nature of the rights granted to
the Jews.” He could “enter into nancial relations only with a
government that recognises to all its citizens the equality of
civic and political rights… ‘One can only maintain nancial
relations with civilized countries’.” In Paris, Baron de
Rothschild also refused: “I am not prepared to mount any
nancial operation whatsoever, even if the Russian
government brings improvements to the fate of the
Jews.”[1177]
Witte succeeded in obtaining a large loan without the help
of Jewish nancial circles. Meanwhile, in 1903‒1904, the
Russian government had undertaken to lift certain provisions
limiting the rights of the Jews (we have already mentioned
them in part). The rst step in this direction, and the most
important, had been, during Plehve’s lifetime, and by way of
derogation of the 1882 Regulations, the lifting of the
prohibition on Jews settling in 101 densely populated localities
which were not considered cities despite signi cant industrial
and commercial activity, particularly in the grain trade.[1178]
Secondly, the decision to promote a group of Jews to the rank of
avowed attorneys, which had not been done since 1889.[1179]
After the assassination of Plehve and the era of “con dence”
inaugurated by the short‐lived minister of the Interior
Sviatopolk‐Mirsky, this process continued. Thus, for Jews with
higher education, the lifting of restrictive measures taken in
1882 took place, including the right to settle in areas
previously prohibited to them, such as those of the Army of the
Don, of Kuban, of Terek. The ban on residence in the border
strip of 50 versts was also lifted; they re‐established the right
(abolished under Alexander II after 1874) to reside throughout
the whole territory of the empire for “the brass of the army of
Jewish origin… with exemplary service records.”[1180] On the
occasion of the birth of the heir to the throne, in 1904,
amnesty was decreed on the nes, which had befallen the Jews
who had evaded their military obligations.
But all these concessions came too late. In the node of the
Japanese war that surrounded Russia, they were henceforth
not accepted, as we have seen, neither by Western Jewish
nanciers, nor by the majority of Jewish politicians in Russia,
nor, with strong reason, by Jewish youth. And in response to
statements made by Sviatopolk‐Mirsky when he took o ce—
promising relief in both the Pale of Settlement and the choice
of an activity—a declaration of “more than six thousand
people” (The signatures had been collected by the Jewish
Democratic Group): “We consider all e orts to satisfy and
appease the Jewish population by partial improvements in
their condition as futile. We consider as null and void any
policy of gradually lifting the prohibitions weighing on us…
We are waiting for equal rights… we make of it a matter of
honour and justice.”[1181]
It had become easier to weigh on a government entangled in
war.
It goes without saying that, in a context in which cultivated
Russian society had only contempt for power, it was di cult to
expect Jewish youth to manifest massively its patriotic
enthusiasm. According to the data provided by General
Kushropkin, then Minister of War, then commander‐in‐chief of
the eastern front, “in 1904 the number of insubordinates
among the Jewish conscripts doubled compared with the year
1903; more than 20,000 of them have evaded their military
obligations without good cause. Out of 1,000 conscripts, more
than 300 were missing, while among the Russian conscripts
this number fell to only 2 per 1,000. As for the Jewish
reservists, they deserted en masse on the way to the area of
military operations.”[1182]
An American statistic suggests indirectly that from the
beginning of the Japanese war there was a wave of mass
emigration of Jews of military service age. During the two
years of war, the gures for Jewish immigration to the United
States increased very sharply for people of working age (14‒44
years) and men: the former were 29,000 more than what they
were expected, (compared to other immigrant categories); the
second, 28,000 more (compared to women). After the war, the
usual proportions were found.[1183] (The Kievian newspaper
reported at the time that “from 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish
soldiers and reservists… have gone into hiding or ed
abroad.”[1184] In the article “Military service in Russia” of the
Jewish Encyclopædia, we can see a comparative picture of
insubordination among Jews and Christians, according to
o cial gures, the proportion of the former compared with the
latter is 30 to one in 1902 and 34 to one in 1903. The Jewish
Encyclopædia indicates that these gures can also be explained
by emigration, deaths not taken into account, or
miscalculations, but the inexplicable absence in this table of
statistical data for 1904 and 1905, leaves no possibility of
obtaining a precise idea of the extent of the insubordination
during the war.[1185]
As for the Jewish ghters, the Jewish Encyclopædia says that
there were between 20,000 and 30,000 during the war, not to
mention the 3,000 Jews serving as doctors; and it points out
that even the newspaper Novoïe Vremia, although hostile to the
Jews, recognised their courageous behaviour in combat.[1186]
These statements are corroborated by the testimony of General
Denikin “In the Russian army, the Jewish soldiers, resourceful
and conscientious, adapted well, even in times of peace. But in
times of war all di erences were self‐e acing, and individual
courage and intelligence were also recognised.”[1187] A
historical fact: the heroism of Iossif Troumpeldor who, having
lost a hand, asked to remain in the ranks. In fact, he was not the
only one to distinguish himself.[1188]
At the end of this war lost by Russia, President Theodore
Roosevelt agreed to mediate the talks with Japan (Portsmouth,
USA). Witte, who led the Russian delegation, evokes “this
delegation of Jewish big shots who came to see me twice in
America to talk to me about the Jewish question.” These were
Jakob Schi , the eminent lawyer Louis Marshall and Oscar
Strauss, among others. The position of Russia had become
rather uncomfortable, which imposed a more conciliatory tone
on the Russian minister than in 1903. Witte’s arguments
“raised violent objections on the part of Schi .”[1189] Fifteen
years later, Kraus, one of the members of this delegation, who
in 1920 became president of the B’nai B’rith Lodge, said: “If the
tsar does not give his people the freedoms to which it is
entitled, the revolution will be able to establish a republic that
will allow access to these freedoms.”[1190]
During the same weeks, a new danger began to undermine
Russian‐American relations. On his way back to Witte, T.
Roosevelt asked him to inform the Emperor that the trade
agreement which had long bound (1832) his country to Russia
would su er if it applied confessional restrictions to American
businessmen going to its territory.[1191] This protest, which,
of course, was a matter of principle, concerned, in practice, a
signi cant number of Russian Jews who had immigrated to the
United States and had become American citizens. They
returned to Russia—often to engage in revolutionary activities
—henceforth as merchants who were not subject to any
professional or geographical limitation. This landmine could
only explode a few years later.
For several years Stuttgart had published the Osvoboj‐
denie[1192] magazine, and the great mass of cultivated
Russians scarcely concealed its sympathies for the illegal
organisation Union for Liberation. In the autumn of 1904, a
“banqueting campaign” was held in all the major cities of
Russia, where impassioned and premonitory toasts were called
for the overthrow of the “regime”. Participants from abroad
also spoke in public (such as Tan Bogoraz).
 “Political unrest had penetrated all layers of the Jewish
community.” The latter was engulfed in this bubbling, without
distinction of classes or parties. Thus “many Jewish public
men, even of patriotic sensibility, were part of the Union for
Liberation.”[1193] Like all Russian liberals, they proved to be
“defeatists” during the Japanese war. Like them, they
applauded the “executions” of the ministers Bogolepov,
Sipiagin, Plehve. And this entire “progressive” Russia pushed
even the Jews in this direction, unable to admit that a Jew could
be more on the right than a left‐wing democrat, but feeling
that he should, more naturally yet, be a socialist. A
Conservative Jew? Ugh! Even in an academic institution such as
the Jewish Historical‐Ethnographic Commission, “in these
tumultuous years there was no time to serenely engage in
scienti c research…” it was necessary “to make History”.[1194]
“The radical and revolutionary movements within the Russian
Jewish community have always been based on the idea that the
problem of equal rights… the fundamental historical question
of the Jews of Russia, would be solved only when one would cut
once for all the head of the Medusa and all the serpents that
spring from it.”[1195]
During these years in Saint Petersburg, the Jewish Defence
O ce developed its activities with the aim of “ ghting anti‐
Semitic literature and disseminating appropriate information
on the legal situation of Jews in order to in uence mainly the
opinion of liberal Russian circles.” (Sliosberg points out that
these activities were largely subsidised by the international
EK0[1196].[1197]) But it was not so much Russian society that
it was a question of in uencing. The Bureau did not open
branches in Russia, not even in Moscow, Kiev, or Odessa: on the
one hand, Zionist propaganda absorbed all the energy of the
most cultivated Jews; on the other, “Bund propaganda
mobilised the greater part of the educated Jewish youth.”
(Sliosberg insisting that the Bund be condemned, Winaver
objected that he should not quarrel with the Bund: “it disposes
of energy and propaganda power.”[1198] However, the Bureau
soon maintained a strong relationship, built on reciprocal
information and mutual aid, with the American Jewish
Committee (chaired by J. Schi , then Louis Marshall), the
English Jewish Committee (Claude Monte ore, Lucine Woolf),
the Alliance in Paris and the Support Committee of the German
Jews (Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden: James Simon, Paul
Nathan[1199]).
Here is the testimony of M. Krohl: “The heart of our group
was the ‘Press O ce’[whose mission was to disseminate]
through the Russian and foreign press serious information
about the situation of the Jews in Russia.” It was A. I. Braudo
who undertook this task. “He accomplished it perfectly. Under
the conditions of the Russia of that time, this kind of work
required a great deal of prudence,” was to be carried out “in the
greatest secrecy. Even the members of the Defence O ce did
not know by what means or by what channels he had
succeeded in organising such and such a press campaign… A
large number of articles published in the Russian or foreign
press of the time, often with great repercussions, had been
communicated to the newspapers or magazines either
personally by Braudo, or through his intermediary.”[1200]
“Providing serious information” to launch “this or that press
campaign”—it is a bit chilling, especially in light of what
happened in the 20th century. In today’s language, it is called
“skilful manipulation of the media.”
In March 1905 the Defence Bureau convened in Vilnius the
Constituent Congress of the “Union for the Equal Rights for the
Jewish People in Russia,”[1201] but it quickly proceeded to its
self‐dissolution and joined the direction of the Union for the
integrality of rights (the expression “integrality”, because it
was stronger than that of “equal rights”, had been proposed by
Winaver. Today, we evoke it under a hybrid form such as the
“Union for Achieving Integral Equality of Rights”[1202]).
It was wanted that this new Union bring together all Jewish
parties and groups.[1203] But the Bund denounced this
congress as a bourgeois. However, many Zionists could not
remain in their splendid isolation. The prodromes of the
Russian revolution led to a split in their ranks. And some of
these fractions did not resist the temptation to participate in
the great things that unfolded before their eyes! But in so
doing, they exerted an in uence on the strictly civic
orientation of the congress agenda. The idea was making its
way not only to ght for civic rights but also, with the same
energy, for national rights.[1204]
Sliosberg fought against the in uence of the Zionists “who
wanted to withdraw the Jews from the number of citizens of
Russia” and whose demands “were often formulated only for
demagogic reasons.” For the Jewish community in Russia “has
in no way been limited in the expression of its national life…
Was it appropriate to raise the question of national autonomy
of the Jews when none of the nationalities living in Russia
possessed it, whereas the Russian people themselves, in their
orthodox part, were far from being free in the expression of
their religious and national life?” But, “at that time, demagogy
assumed a very special signi cance in the Jewish
backstreet.”[1205]
Thus, in place of the notion, clear in the eyes of everyone, of
“equality of rights”, which certainly had not yet happened, but
seemed no longer to lag behind political developments, the
slogan was issued for the integrality of rights of the Jews. What
was meant by this was that, in addition to equal rights,
“national autonomy” was also recognised. “It must be said that
those who formulated these requirements did not have a very
clear idea of their content. The creation of Jewish schools was
not limited by any law. The study of the Russian language was
required… insofar as it was not a question of Heders.[1206] But
other more civilised countries also imposed the use of the State
language in relations with the administration as well as in
school.[1207] Thus, there was no “national autonomy” for the
Jews in the United States. But the “obtentionists” (“Union for
the obtention…”) demanded “national and cultural self‐
determination” on the territory of Russia, as well as a
substantial autonomy for the Jewish communities (and, in the
same breath: the secularisation of these, to tear them away
from the religious in uence of Judaism—which suited both the
Zionists and the Socialists). Later, this was called “national‐
personal autonomy”. (Accompanied by the requirement that
the Jewish cultural and social institutions be nanced by the
State but without it interfering in their functioning.) And how
can we imagine the “self‐management” of a nation scattered
territorially? The Second Congress of the Union, in November
1905, took the decision to convene a Jewish National Assembly
of Russia.[1208]
All these ideas, including the “national‐personal autonomy”
of the Jews of Russia, were expressed and continued in various
forms until 1917. However, the Union for the Integrality of
Rights proved ephemeral. At the end of 1906, the Jewish
People’s Anti‐Zionist Group seceded (Winaver, Sliosberg,
Koulicher, Sternberg) on the grounds that it refused the idea of
a Jewish National Assembly; shortly afterwards it was the turn
of the Jewish People’s Party (S. Doubnov—religious and cultural
nationalism, notably the right to use the Jewish language in
public life throughout the country, but with what means,
how?); then the Jewish Democratic Group (Bramson, Landau),
close to the Labour Party.[1209] The Union for the integrality
of rights was also accused of having rallied to the KD and,
consequently, was “no longer being able to represent the Jewish
population of Russia”; the Zionists regarded the “secularists” as
“partisans of assimilation”, and the socialists as bourgeois.
[1210] In short, at the beginning of 1907, the Union ceased to
exist.[1211]
The Zionists were increasingly drawn into the revolutionary
whirlpool, and in November 1906, at their All‐Russian
Congress in Helsinfors, it was declared “indispensable not only
to turn to the daily needs and demands of the Jews of Russia,
but also to engage fully in their political and social
struggle”[1212]; Jabotinsky insisted that the Zionist program
should include the requirement of the establishment in Russia
of the sovereignty of the people; D. Pasmanik objected that
“such a demand can only be made by those who are ready to
stand on the barricades.”[1213] At the end of its work, the
Congress brought its “sanction to the rallying of the Zionists to
the Liberation Movement”.[1214] But the latter was just about
to lose momentum after the failure of Vyborg’s manifesto.
[1215]
The author of this program, Jabotinsky, put forward the
following arguments: the goal set by Zionism can only be
reached in several decades, but by ghting for their full rights,
Jews will understand better what Zionism is.[1216] However,
he said: “We leave the rst ranks to the representatives of the
majority nation. We cannot pretend to play a leading role: we
are aligning ourselves.[1217] In other words: Palestine is one
thing; in the meantime, let us ght in Russia. Three years
earlier, Plehve had told Herzl that he feared precisely this kind
of drift of Zionism.
Sliosberg is far from minimising the role of the Zionists:
“After the Congress of Helsinfors, they decided to take control
of all public activities of the Jews” by trying to “impose their
in uence at the local level”. (In the rst Duma, of the 12 Jewish
deputies, ve were Zionists.) But he also notes that this
profusion of parties was “the business of small circles of
intellectuals”, not of the Jewish masses, and their propaganda
“only caused to confuse the issues.”[1218]
True, all this scattering did not contribute to the
clari cation of the debate: it was no longer very clear what the
Russian Jews were ghting, for what rights—equal or integral?
—or on which plan—civic or national?
And, let us not forget: “All these groups composed only of
intellectuals… did not understand Orthodox Jews, who
eventually understood the need to organise to combat the
growing anti‐religious in uence exerting itself on Jewish
youth.” And it was thus that “was born what was later to
develop in ‘T’Agoudat Israel’.” “This movement was concerned
that “Jewish revolutionary elements are recruited among the
Jewish youth who have moved away from religion,” whereas
“the majority of the Jews are religious and, while demanding
recognition of their rights and the lifting of the prohibitions
against them, remain loyal subjects of the Emperor and are far
from any idea of overthrowing the existing regime.”[1219]
When one studies the history of Russian Jews at the
beginning of the twentieth century, there are few references to
Orthodox Jews. Sliosberg once said, raising the ire of the Bund:
“With the melameds[1220] behind me, I rely on a greater
number of Jews than the Bund leaders, for there are more
melameds among the Jews than the workers.”[1221] In fact, the
secularisation of Jewish society in no way a ected the
existence of traditional communities in the Pale of Settlement.
For them, all the ancestral questions concerning the
organisation of their lives, the religious instruction, the
rabbinate, remained topical. During the temporary lull of 1909,
the reform of the traditional Jewish community was discussed
with great seriousness at the Kovno Congress. “The work of the
Congress proved to be very fruitful, and few Jewish assemblies
could have equalled it by the seriousness and wisdom of the
resolutions adopted there.”[1222]
“Orthodox Judaism has always been in con ict—not always
open, but rather latent—with the Jewish intelligentsia. It was
clear that in condemning the movement for the liberation of
the Jews it hoped to win the government’s favour.”[1223] But it
was too late: on the eve of the 1905 revolution, we have seen
that the autocratic regime had lost control of the country. As
for traditional Judaism, it had already lost a whole generation—
moreover it was not the rst—who had gone towards Zionism,
secular liberalism, rarely enlightened conservatism, but also,
and with the heaviest consequences, towards the revolutionary
movement.

   
The new generation of revolutionaries had emerged at the turn
of the century. Its leaders, Grigory Gershuni and Mikhail Gotz,
had decided to revive the terrorist methods of The Will of the
People. “Gershuni took upon himself the heavy responsibility
of creating in Russia a new revolutionary party called to
succeed with dignity to the Will of the People,” and “thanks to
his talents as organiser as well as to those of other
revolutionaries entirely devoted to the cause, this party was
born at the end of the year 1901.” “At the same time… was also
constituted its armed faction. Its creator and its inspirer was
none other than the very same Gershuni.”[1224] Among the S.‐
R.[1225], the Jews “immediately played a leading role.”
Amongst them were “An‐ski Rappoport, K. Jitlovsky, Ossip
Minor, I. Roubanovitch” and—still him!—Mark Natanson. The
armed faction included among its members “Abraham Gotz,
Dora Brilliant, L. Zilberberg”, not to mention the famous Azef.
It is among the S.‐R. That M. Trilisser was also formed—he who
later would become famous in the Cheka. “Among the
grassroots activists of the S.‐R. party, there were also quite a
few Jews,” even though, adds Schub, “they never represented a
tiny minority.” According to him, it is even “the most Russian”
of the revolutionary parties.[1226] For security reasons, the
seat of the party was transferred abroad (for example, the Bund
was absent), in Geneva, at M. Gotz and O. Minor’s place.
As for Gershuni, this indomitable “tiger”, after succeeding in
deceiving Zubatov’s[1227] vigilance, he began to criss-cross
Russia, like B. Savinkov, fomenting terrorist actions and
checking their proper execution. It was thus that he was
present at the Place Saint‐Isaac during the assassination of
Sipiagin[1228]; he was at Ufa when Governor Bogdanovitch
was killed[1229]; and at Kharkov when it was Governor
Obolensky’s turn; on the Nevsky prospect during the failed
attack on Pobedonostsev[1230]. The execution was always
entrusted to “Christians” such as P. Karpovitch, S. Balmachov,
E. Sozonov, etc. (The bombs used for the assassination of
Plehve, Grand Duke Sergey Aleksandrovich, and planned
attacks on Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich and Interior
Ministers Boulygin and Durnovo were made by Maximilian
Schweitzer, who in 1905 was himself victim of the machine he
was making.[1231]) Arrested by chance, Gershuni was
condemned to death, reprieved by the Emperor without having
asked for it; in 1907 he found an ingenious means of escaping
from the prison of Akatuysk, hiding in a cabbage‐barrel, and
then gained by way of Vladivostok, America and Europe; the
Russian government demanded his extradition from Italy, but
the European liberal opinion was unanimous in refusing it and
Clemenceau also used his in uence: he was also, as we know, a
“tiger”. Soon after, Gershuni died of a sarcoma in the lung.
Among other leading S.‐R. terrorists, we must also mention
Abraham Gotz, who played an active part in the attacks on
Dournovo, Akimov, Shuvalov, Trepov[1232], and played a role
in the assassination of Mine and Rieman. (But, he had the
misfortune of living much longer than his elder brother, who
died prematurely—and the Bolsheviks later gave him a hard
time.)
To play with History, precautions were less taken than the
previous revolutionary generation. Less well known than
others, Pinhas (Pyotr) Rutenberg is not less worthy of interest.
In 1905 he trained groups of ghters in Saint Petersburg and
supplied them with weapons. Inspired by Gapon[1233], he was
at his side on 9 January 1905; But it was also he who, in 1906,
“by order of the S.‐R. party, organises and supervises his
assassination” (later he will author a book entitled Gapon’s
Assassination[1234]). In 1919, he immigrated to Palestine
where he distinguished himself in the electri cation of the
country. There, he shows that he is capable of building; but in
his early years, in Russia, he certainly does not work as an
engineer, he destroys! One loses the trace of the “student of
Zion”, irresponsible instigator of the mutiny of Sveaborg, who,
however, escaped the slaughter that ensued.
Apart from the S.‐R., each year brought with it new social‐
democratic ghters, theorists, and talkers. Some had short‐
lived notoriety in narrow circles, such as Alekandra
Sokolovskaya, whom History retained only because she was
Trotsky’s rst wife and the mother of his two daughters.
Others have been unjustly forgotten: Zinovy Litvine‐Sedoi, the
chief of sta of the detachments of the Krasnaya Presnia
district during the armed insurrection in Moscow; Zinovy
Dosser, a member of the “troika” who led this insurrection.
Among its leaders, we can cite again “Marat”—V. L. Chanzer,
Lev Kafenhausen, Lubotsky‐Zagorsky (who for nearly a
century gave his pseudonym[1235] to the monastery of The
Trinity Saint Sergius) and Martin Mandelstam‐Liadov, member
of the executive Commission of the RSDLP[1236] for the
organisation of the armed insurrection.[1237] Others—like F.
Dan or O. Nakhamkis—were to play an important role later in
1917.
Despite Bakunin’s aversion for the Jews, there are many of
them among the leaders and theorists of anarchism. But “other
Russian anarchists, such as Kropotkin, had no hostility
towards the Jews and tried to win them over to their
cause.”[1238] Among these leaders are Yakov Novomirsky,
Alexander Gue, Lev Tcherny, V. Gordine.[1239] One of them, I.
Grossman‐Rochin, evokes with the greatest respect the gure
of Aron Eline, of Bialystok: “a famous terrorist”, but not only “a
specialist in gory operations” “never does he fall… into
‘systematic activism’.”[1240] “The least patient among the
mass of Jews… are looking for a faster way to achieve
socialism. And this recourse, this ‘ambulance’, they nd in
anarchism.”[1241] It is the Jews of Kiev and Southern Russia
who have been most attracted to anarchism, and in the
documents relating to the Bogrov a air[1242] there is often
mention of smaller‐scale anarchists, forgotten by history.
We have already observed, but it is worth recalling, that it
was not only because of the inequalities of which they were the
victims that many Jews were rushing into the revolution. “The
participation of the Jews in the revolutionary movement which
had gained the whole of Russia is only partly explained by their
situation of inequality… The Jews merely shared the general
feeling of hostility towards the autocracy.[1243] Should we be
surprised? Young people from the intelligentsia, both Russian
and Jewish, heard in their families, all year long, only “crimes
perpetrated by the power”, of the “government composed of
assassins”, and they precipitated the revolutionary action with
all the energy of their fury. Bogrov like the others.
In 1905, the Jewish historian S. Doubnov accused all Jewish
revolutionaries of “national treason.” In his article entitled
“Slavery in the Revolution,” he wrote: “This entire numerous
army of young Jews, who occupy the most prominent positions
in the Social Democratic Party and who run for positions of
command, has formally cut o all ties with the Jewish
community… You build nothing new, you are only the valets of
the revolution, or its commissionaires.”[1244]
But as time passed, the approval of the adults to their
revolutionary progeny grew. This phenomenon was intensi ed
among the “fathers” of the new generation and was on the
whole more marked among the Jews than among the Russians.
Meier Bomach, member of the Duma, declared ten years later
(1916): “We do not regret that the Jews participated in the
struggle for liberation… They were ghting for your
freedom.”[1245] And six months later, in the con agration of
the new revolution, in March 1917, the celebrated lawyer O. O.
Gruzenberg held these passionate but not unfounded remarks
before the leaders of the Provisional Government and the
Soviet of deputies of workers and soldiers: “We generously
o ered to the revolution a huge ‘percentage’ of our people—
almost all its ower, almost all its youth… And, when in 1905
the people rose up, countless Jewish ghters came to swell their
ranks, carried by an irresistible impulse.”[1246] Others will say
the same thing: “Historical circumstances made the Jewish
masses of Russia unable to not participate in the most active
way in the revolution.”[1247] “For the Jews, the solution of the
Jewish question in Russia was the triumph of progressive ideas
in this country.”[1248]
The revolutionary e ervescence that had seized Russia was
undoubtedly stirred up by that which reigned among the Jews.
 However, youth alone, trained in intellectual or manual
labour, could not make the revolution. One of the top priorities
was to win over to the revolutionary cause, and to lead the
industrial workers, and especially those of Saint Petersburg, to
battle. However, as noted by the director of the police
department at the time, “at the initial stage of its development,
the workers’ movement… was foreign to political aspirations.”
And even on the eve of January 9th, “during an extraordinary
meeting which they had organised on December 27th, the
workers chased a Jew who tried to make political propaganda
and distribute lea ets, and three Jewish women who sought to
propagate political ideas were apprehended.”[1249]
In order to train the workers of Saint Petersburg, Gapon’s
pseudo‐religious propaganda took place.
On 9 January, even before the troops opened re, it was the
young Simon Rechtzammer (the son of the director of the
Warehouse and Grain Storage Company) who took the lead of
the only barricade erected that day (On the fourth street of
Saint‐Basil’s island), with the destruction of the telegraph and
telephone lines and the attack on the police station. Moreover,
the workers of this quarter were employed two days later “to
copiously beat the intellectuals.”[1250]
We know that the Russian revolutionaries who immigrated
to Europe welcomed the news of the shooting of Petersburg
with a mixture of indignation and enthusiasm: it’s about time!!
Now it’s going to blow!! As for the propagation of this
enthusiasm—and of the insurrection—in the Pale of
Settlement, it was the tireless Bund who harnessed itself,
whose hymn (An‐ski said of it that it was “The Marseillaise of
the Jewish Workers”) included the following words:
Enough of loving our enemies, we want to hate them!! …
… it is ready the pyre! We will nd enough logs
For its holy ames to engulf the planet!![1251]
 (Let us note in passing that The International was translated
into Russian by Arkadi Kotz as early as 1912.[1252] Several
generations were religiously imbued with his words: Stand up!
The damned of the earth! and of the past let us make a clean
slate…)
The Bund immediately issued a proclamation (“about two
hundred thousand copies”): “The revolution has begun. It
burned in the capital, its ames covering the whole country…
To arms! Storm the armouries and seize all the weapons… Let
all the streets become battle elds!”[1253]
According to the Red Chronicle of the Soviet regime’s
beginnings, “the events of 9 January in Saint Petersburg echoed
a great deal in the Jewish workers’ movement: they were
followed by mass demonstrations of the Jewish proletariat
throughout the Pale of Settlement. At their head was the Bund.
To ensure the massive nature of these demonstrations,
detachments of the Bund went to workshops, factories, and
even to the workers’ homes to call for the cessation of work;
they employed force to empty the boilers of their steam, to tear
o the transmission belts; they threatened the owners of
companies, here and there shots were red, at Vitebsk one of
them received a jet of sulphuric acid. It was not “a spontaneous
mass demonstration, but an action carefully prepared and
organised.” N. Buchbinder regrets, however, that “almost
everywhere the strikes were followed only by the Jewish
workers… In a whole series of towns the Russian workers put
up a strong resistance to the attempts to stop factories and
plants.” There were week‐long strikes in Vilnius, Minsk, Gomel,
Riga, of two weeks in Libava. The police had to intervene,
naturally, and in several cities the Bund constituted “armed
detachments to combat police terror.”[1254] In Krinki (the
province of Grodno), the strikers gunned the police,
interrupted telegraphic communications, and for two days all
the power was in the hands of the strike committee. “The fact
that workers, and among them a majority of Jews, had thus
been able to hold power from the beginning of 1905, was very
signi cant of what this revolution was, and gave rise to many
hopes.” It is no less true that the Bund’s important
participation in these actions “might lead one to believe that
discontent was above all the result of the Jews, while the other
nationalities were not that revolutionary.”[1255]
The strength of the revolutionaries manifested itself
through the actions, carried out in broad daylight, of armed
detachments of “self‐defence” which had been illustrated
during the Gomel pogrom and which had since then grown
considerably stronger. “Self‐defence was most often in close
contact with the armed detachments of political
organisations… It can be said that the whole Pale of Settlement
was covered by a whole network of armed self‐defence groups
which played an important military role—only a professional
army could face them.”[1256]—At the height of the revolution,
they were joined by Zionist groups of various tendencies: “the
particularly active participation of the Poalei Zion”, as well as
“armed detachments of the ZS [Zionist Socialists]”, But also
from SERP. So that “in the armed operations that occurred
during the revolution, these socialists belonging to di erent
currents of Zionism found themselves at our side,”[1257]
remembers S. Dimanstein, later a prominent Bolshevik leader.
The Bund was to continue its military operations
throughout this changing and uncertain year of 1905. Special
mention should be made to the April events in Jitomir.
According to the Jewish Encyclopædia, it was a pogrom against
the Jews, moreover “fomented by the police.”[1258] As for
Dimanstein, who boasts of having “actively participated in the
1905 revolution on the territory of the so‐called Pale of
Settlement,” he wrote: “It was not a pogrom, but a ght against
the troops of the counter‐revolution.”[1259] The Jewish
Encyclopædia indicates that up to twenty Jews were
killed[1260]; the new one: “almost fty (according to other
sources, about thirty‐ ve).”[1261] According to the latter,
“disorders began after provocateurs had declared that Jews had
red shots on the portrait of the tsar outside the city.”[1262]
While The Messenger of the Government gives as a fact that, two
weeks before the pogrom, “a crowd of nearly three hundred
people gathered outside the city… to practice shooting with
revolvers… by aiming for the portrait of His Majesty the
Emperor.” After this, several brawls broke out between the Jews
and the Christians within the city—still according to The
Messenger of the Government, the aggressors were mostly Jews.
[1263] According to the new Jewish Encyclopædia, on the day of
the event, “the Jewish detachments of self‐defence heroically
resisted the rioters.” From a neighbouring village, a group of
young armed Jews came to their rescue, when, on the way,
“they were stopped by Ukrainian peasants” at Troyanovo.
“They tried to take refuge among the Jewish inhabitants of the
village, but these did not let them in” and, a characteristic fact,
“indicated to the peasants where two of them had been hiding”;
“ten members of the detachment were killed.”[1264]
At the time, a particularly e ective manœuvre had already
been devised: “The funerals of the victims who fell for the
revolution constituted one of the most e ective means of
propaganda capable of in ating the masses”, which had for
consequence that “the ghters were aware that their death
would be used for the pro t of the revolution, that it would
arouse a desire for vengeance among the thousands of people
who were going to attend their funeral,” and that on these
occasions “it was relatively easier to organise manifestations.
The liberal circles considered it their duty to ensure that the
police did not intervene during a funeral.” Thus “the funeral
became one of the components of revolutionary propaganda in
1905.”[1265]
In the summer of that year, “the police terror was massive,
but there were also many acts of revenge on the part of the
workers who threw bombs on patrols of soldiers or Cossacks,
murdered policemen, whether o cers or not; these cases were
far from being isolated”, because it was “a step backwards or
forwards for the revolution in the Jewish sector.”[1266]
Example: the Cossacks killed a Bund militant in Gomel; eight
thousand people attend his funeral, revolutionary speeches are
given—and the revolution advances, always advances! And
when the time came to protest against the convening of the
“Boulyguine”[1267] consultative Duma, the campaign “moved
from the Stock Exchange in the Jewish quarter to the
synagogues… where speakers of the Party intervened during
the service… under the protection of armed detachments that
sealed o the exits… During these assemblies, it was frequent
that resolutions prepared in advance were adopted without
discussion”—the unfortunate faithfuls come to pray, did they
have a choice? Go and talk to these fellows! There is no question
of “stopping the revolutionary process at this stage…”[1268]
The project of convocation of this consultative Duma, which
was not followed up on due to the events of 1905, started from
the assumption that they did not possess it for the designation
of municipal self‐government bodies, it had been originally
planned to not grant the Jews the right to vote. But the
revolutionary momentum was growing, the Jewish municipal
councillors appointed by the provincial authorities resigned
demonstratively here and there, and the Duma Elections Act of
August 1905 already provided for the granting of voting rights
to the Jews. But the revolution continued its course, and public
opinion rejected this consultative Duma, which was therefore
not united.
 The tension remained high throughout this unhappy year
1905; the government was overtaken by the events. In the fall,
strikes, notably in the railways, were being prepared
everywhere in Russia. And, of course, the Pale of Settlement
was not spared. In the region of the Northwest, during early
October, was seen “a rapid rise… of the revolutionary energy of
the masses”, “a new campaign of meetings takes place in the
synagogues” (always in the same way, with men posted at exits
to intimidate the faithful), “we prepare ourselves feverishly for
the general strike.” In Vilnius, during a meeting authorised by
the governor, “some shot the immense portrait of the Emperor
that was there, and some smashed it with chairs”; An hour
later, it was on the governor in person that one drew—here it
was, the frenzy of 1905! But in Gomel, for example, the Social
Democrats could not agree with the Bund and “they acted in
disorder”; as for the social revolutionists, they “joined” the
Zionist Socialists; and then “bombs are thrown at the Cossacks,
who retaliate by shooting and knocking on all those who fall
under their hand, without distinction of nationality,”[1269]—a
very pretty revolutionary outburst! They were rubbing their
hands!
It is not surprising that “in many places… we could observe
well‐to‐do and religious Jews actively ghting the revolution.
They worked with the police to track down Jewish
revolutionaries, to break up demonstrations, strikes, and so
on.” Not that it was pleasing to them to nd themselves on the
side of power. But, not having detached themselves from God,
they refused to witness the destruction of life. Still less did they
accept the revolutionary law: they venerated their Law. While
in Bialystok and other places the young revolutionaries
assimilated the “Union of the Jews” to the “Black Hundreds”
because of its religious orientation.[1270]
 According to Dimanstein, the situation after the general
strike in October could be summarised as follows: “The Bund,
the ZS and other Jewish workers’ parties called for
insurrection,” but “there a certain weariness could be
perceived.”[1271] Later, like the Bolsheviks, the Bund boycotted
early in the 1906[1272] the elections to the rst Duma, still
caressing the hopes of a revolutionary explosion. This
expectation having been disappointed, it resigned itself to
bring its positions closer to those of the Mensheviks; in 1907,
at the fth Congress of the RSDLP, of the 305 deputies, 55 were
members of the Bund. And it even became a “supporter of
extreme Yiddishism.”[1273]
It is in this amped atmosphere, very uncertain for the power
in place, that Witte persuaded Nicholas II to promulgate the
Manifesto of 17 October 1905. (More exactly, Witte wanted to
publish it in the form of a simple government press release, but
it is Nicholas II himself who insisted that the promulgation of
the Manifesto, made in the name of the tsar, should assume a
solemn character: he thought he would thus touch the hearts
of his subjects.) A. D. Obolensky, who drew up the initial draft,
reported that among the three main points of the Manifesto
there was a special one devoted to the rights and freedoms of
the Jews—but Witte (doubtlessly at the pressing request of the
Emperor) modi ed its formulation by addressing in a general
way the respect for individuals and the liberty of conscience,
expression, and assembly.”[1274] The question of the equal
rights of the Jews was therefore no longer mentioned. “It was
only in the speech published at the same time than the
Manifesto… that Witte spoke of the need to “equalise all
Russian subjects before the law irrespective of their confession
and nationality.”[1275]
But: we must make concessions only at the right time and in
a position of strength—and this was no longer the case. Liberal
and revolutionary opinion laughed at the Manifesto, seeing it
only as a capitulation, and rejected it. The Emperor, like Witte,
was deeply a ected, but also certain representatives of the
Jewish intelligentsia: “For what the best of the Russians had
been waiting for decades was nally realised… In fact, the
Emperor willingly surrendered the autocratic regime and
pledged to hand over the legislative power to the
representatives of the people… One would have thought that
this change would ll everyone with joy”—but the news was
welcomed with the same revolutionary intransigence: the
struggle continues![1276] In the streets, the national ag, the
portraits of the Emperor and the coat of arms of the State were
torn o .
The account of Witte’s interview with the Petersburg press
on 18 October, following the promulgation of the Manifesto, is
rich in information. Witte obviously expected manifestations
of gratitude and relied on the friendly support of the press to
calm the spirits, he even openly solicited it. He obtained only
scathing replies, rst from the director of the Stock Exchange
News, S. M. Propper, then from Notovitch, Khodski, Arabajine,
and Annensky; all demanded with one voice: proclaim
immediately political amnesty! “This requirement is
categorical!” General Trepov must be dismissed from his post
as governor‐general of Saint Petersburg. This is the unanimous
decision of the press.” The unanimous decision of the press! And
to withdraw the Cossacks and the army from the capital: “We
shall not publish any more newspapers as long as the troops
are there!” The army is the cause of the disorder… The security
of the city must be entrusted to the “popular militia”! (That is
to say, to the detachments of revolutionaries, which meant
creating in Petersburg the conditions for a butchery, as it
would soon be in Odessa, or, in the future, to set up in
Petersburg the conditions favourable to the future revolution
of February.) And Witte implored: “Let me breathe a little!”,
“Help me, give me a few weeks!”; he even passed among them,
shaking hands with each one.[1277] (For his part, he will
remember later: Propper’s demands “meant for me that the
press had lost its head.”) Despite this, the government had
intelligence and courage to refuse the establishment of anarchy
and nothing serious happened in the capital.
(In his Memoirs, Witte relates that Propper “had arrived in
Russia from abroad, a penniless Jew with no mastery of the
Russian language… He had made his mark in the press and had
become the head of the Stock Exchange News, running through
the antechambers of in uential gures… When I was Minister
of Finance, [Propper] begged for o cial announcements,
various advantages, and eventually obtained from me the title
of commercial advisor.” However, at this meeting, he
formulated, not without a certain insolence, “demands, even
declarations” like this one: “We have no con dence in the
government.”[1278])
In the course of the same month of October, The Kievian
published an account of an o cer returning to Moscow just at
that moment, after a year and a half of captivity in Japan, who
was initially moved to tears by the generosity of the Emperor’s
Manifesto, which opened up favourable prospects for the
country. At the mere sight of this o cer in battle dress, the
welcome which the Muscovite crowd received from him was
expressed in these terms: “Spook! Suck‐up! The tsar’s lackey!”
During a large meeting in the Theatre Plaza, “the orator called
for struggle and destruction”; another speaker began his
speech by shouting: “Down with the autocracy!” “His accent
betrayed his Jewish origins, but the Russian public listened to
him, and no one found anything to reply to him.” Nods of
agreement met the insults uttered against the tsar and his
family; Cossacks, policemen and soldiers, all without exception
—no mercy! And all the Muscovite newspapers called for armed
struggle.”[1279]
In Petersburg, as is well known, a “Soviet of the Workers’
Deputies” was formed on 13 October, headed by the
incomparable Parvus and Trotsky, and with the straw man
Khroustalëv‐Nossarëv as a bonus. This Soviet aimed for the
complete annihilation of the government.
The events of October had even greater and more tragic
consequences in Kiev and Odessa: two great pogroms against
the Jews, which must now be examined. They were the subject
of detailed reports of Senate committees of inquiry—these were
the most rigorous investigative procedures in Imperial Russia,
the Senate representing the highest and most authoritative
judicial institution and of the greatest independence.

   
It is Senator Tourau who drafted the report on the Kiev
pogrom.[1280] He writes that the causes of this “are related to
the troubles that have won the whole of Russia in recent years”,
and he supports this assertion by a detailed description of
what preceded it and the course of the facts themselves.
Let us remind that after the events of 9 January in Saint
Petersburg, after months of social unrest, after the infamous
defeat against Japan, the imperial government found nothing
better to do to calm the minds than to proclaim on the 27th of
August, the complete administrative autonomy of the higher
education institutions and the territory on which they were
located. This measure had no other result than to turn up the
revolutionary heat.
It is thus, writes Senator Tourau, that “individuals having
nothing to do with the scienti c activity of these institutions
were free to access them,” and they did so “for the purpose of
political propaganda.” At the University and Polytechnic of
Kiev “a series of meetings were organised by the students, to
which participated an external audience,” and they were called
“popular meetings”; a more numerous day‐to‐day public went
there: at the end of September, up to “several thousand people.”
During these meetings, red ags were displayed, “passionate
speeches were given about the de ciencies of the political
regime in place, on the necessity of ghting the government”;
“funds were raised for the purchase of weapons”, “lea ets were
distributed and brochures on revolutionary propaganda were
sold.” In mid‐October, “the university as well as the Polytechnic
Institute had gradually been transformed into arenas for open
and unbridled anti‐government propaganda. Revolutionary
militants who were, until recently, prosecuted by the
authorities for organising clandestine meetings in private
places, now felt invulnerable,” they “hatched and discussed
plans to bring down the existing political system.” But even
this did not seem su cient and the revolutionary action began
its expansion: by attracting the “pupils of secondary schools”,
in other words, high school pupils, and by moving the eld of
revolutionary activity: (A Jewish student takes the oor to
denounce the Kishinev pogrom, immediately lea ets are
spread out in the room and cries are heard: “Down with the
police! Down with the autocracy!”); in some cases at a meeting
of the Society of Art and Literature (windows are broken, “we
break chairs and staircase ramps to throw them on
peacekeepers”). And there was no authority to prevent this: the
universities, autonomous, now had their own law.
The description of these events, supported by the
statements of more than ve hundred witnesses, alternates
throughout this report with remarks on the Jews who stand
out in the background of this revolutionary crowd. “During the
years of the Russian revolution of 1905‒1907, the
revolutionary activity of the Jews increased considerably”. No
doubt the novelty of the thing made it seem obvious. “The
Jewish youth,” the report says, “dominated by numbers both at
the 9 September meeting at the Polytechnic Institute and
during the occupation of the premises of the Arts and Literary
Society”; and, also, on 23 September in the University Hall
where “up to 5,000 students and persons outside the university
were gathered, with more than 500 women among them.” On
October 3rd, at the Polytechnic Institute, “nearly 5,000 people
gathered… with a Jewish majority of women.” The
preponderant role of the Jews is mentioned again and again: at
the meetings of 5‒9 October; at the university meeting on 12
October, in which “participated employees of the railway
administration, students, individuals of indeterminate
professions” as well as “masses of Jews of both sexes”; on 13
October at the university where “nearly 10,000 people from
diverse backgrounds gathered” and speeches were delivered by
S‐R. and Bund militants. (The Jewish Encyclopædia con rms the
fact that even beyond Kiev, during demonstrations celebrating
new freedoms, “most of the protesters in the Pale of Settlement
were Jews.” However, it calls “lies” the information according
to which, in Ekaterinoslav, “they were collecting silver for the
Emperor’s co n in the street,” and in Kiev they “lacerated the
portraits of the Emperor in the premises of the Municipal
Duma.”[1281] Yet this last fact is precisely con rmed by the
Tourau report.)
In Kiev, in October, the revolutionary movement was
gaining momentum. Alexander Schlichter (future Bolshevik
leader, specialist in our requisitions and “Agriculture
Commissioner” in Ukraine just before the great organised
famine) fomented a south‐western railway strike, paralysing
the trains to Poltava, Kursk, Voronezh, and Moscow. Threats
were made to force the workers of the Kiev mechanical
construction factory to go on strike on 12 October. At the
university, “exceptional collections ‘for armaments’ took place:
the participants threw gold coins, bank notes, silverware, a
lady even o ered her earrings.” “Flying detachments” were
formed with the mission of interrupting by force the work in
high schools, the factories, the transports, the commerce, and
to “prepare the armed resistance to the forces of order.” The
whole movement “had to take to the streets.” On the 14th of
October, the newspapers ceased to appear, with the exception
of The Kievian, aligned on the right; only the telegrammes
relating to the liberation movement were allowed to pass. The
“ ying detachments” prevented the trams from rolling,
breaking their windows (some passengers were wounded). At
the rst appearance of the agitators everything was closed,
everything stopped; the post o ce closed its doors after a
bomb threat; streams of students and pupils were converging
towards the university at the call of Schlichter, as well as
“young Jews of various professions”.
It was then that the authorities took the rst steps. It was
forbidden to meet in the streets and in public squares, and the
cordoning o by the army of the university and the Polytechnic
took place in order for only the students to be allowed in,
“arrest… of a few individuals for contempt of the police and
the army”, of some S.‐R. and Social Democrats, of the lawyer
Ratner, who “had actively participated in popular meetings”
(Schlichter, him, had taken o ). The trams began to circulate
again, the shops re‐opened their doors, and in Kiev the days of
16 and 17 October went by peacefully.
It was in this context (which was that of many other places
in Russia) that the Emperor, relying on the gratitude of the
population, launched on 17 October the Manifesto establishing
the liberties and a parliamentary system of government. The
news reached Kiev by telegram on the night of the 18th, and in
the morning the text of the Manifesto was sold or distributed
in the streets of the city (as for the newspaper The Kievian,
“Jewish student youth rushed to buy it and immediately tear it
ostensibly into pieces”). The authorities ordered ipso facto the
release of both those who had been arrested in the last days and
those who had previously been “charged with assault on the
security of the State”, with the exception, however, of those
who had used explosives. Both the police and the army had
deserted the streets, “important rallies” were formed, at rst
calmly. “In the vicinity of the university there was a large
crowd of students, high school pupils and “a signi cant
number of young Jews of both sexes”. Giving way to their
demands, the rector “had the portal of the main building
opened.” Immediately “the great hall was invaded by a part of
the crowd which destroyed the portraits of the Emperor, tore
up the red hangings” to make ags and banners, and some
“noisily invited the public to kneel before Schlichter by virtue
of victim of arbitrariness.” If “those who were near him
actually fell on their knees,” another part of the public
“considered that all that had just taken place was o ensive to
their national sentiments.” Then the crowd went to the
Municipal Duma, and at its head Schlichter pranced around on
a horse, displaying a red band, and at every halt harangued the
crowd, claiming that “the struggle against the government was
not over.” Meanwhile, in the Nicholas Park, “the Jews had
thrown a rope around the statue of the Emperor [Nicholas I]
and tried to overthrow it from its pedestal”; “At another place,
Jews wearing red bands began to insult four soldiers who
passed by, spitting on them”; the crowd threw stones on a
patrol of soldiers, wounded six, and two demonstrators were
hit by the ring of a riposte. However, the interim mayor was
visited by a group of peaceful citizens who “asked for the
opening of the meeting room of the municipal council” so that
the grateful protesters could “express their feelings about the
Manifesto. Their request was met” and a peaceful rally was held
“under the presidency of the municipal councillor Scheftel.”
But a new wave, many thousands of people wearing red badges
and ribbons, ocked in; “it was made up of students, people of
di erent social classes, age, sex and condition, but the Jews
were especially noted for it”; one party burst into the meeting
room, the others occupied the square in front of the Duma. “In
a moment all the national ags which had decorated the Duma
on the occasion of the Manifesto were torn out and replaced by
red and black banners. At that moment a new procession
approached, carrying at arm’s length the lawyer Ratner who
had just gotten out of prison; he called the crowd to release all
the other prisoners; on the balcony of the Duma, Schlichter
publicly embraced him. For his part, the latter “exhorted the
population to go on a general strike… and pronounced
insulting words addressed to the person of the Sovereign. In
the meantime, the crowd had torn the Emperor’s portraits
hung in the assembly hall of the Duma, and broken the
emblems of imperial power which had been placed on the
balcony for the festivities.” “There is no doubt that these acts
were perpetrated by both Russians and Jews”; a “Russian
worker” had even begun to break the crown, some demanded
that it should be put back in its place, “but a few moments later
it was again thrown to the ground, this time by a Jew who then
broke in half of the letter ‘N’”; “Another young man, Jewish in
appearance,” then attacked the jewels of the diadem. All the
furniture of the Duma was shattered, the administrative
documents torn. Schlichter directed the operations: in the
corridors, “money was collected for unknown purposes”.
Excitement in front of the Duma, however, only increased;
perched on the roof of stationary trams, orators delivered ery
speeches; but it was Ratner and Schlichter who were the most
successful from the balcony of the Duma. “An apprentice of
Jewish nationality began shouting from the balcony: ‘Down
with the autocracy!’; another Jew, properly dressed: ‘Same to
the swine!’”; “Another Jew, who had cut the tsar’s head from the
picture, reproducing him, introduced his own by the ori ce
thus formed, and began to yell at the balcony: ‘I am the tsar!’”;
“the building of the Duma passed completely into the hands of
revolutionary socialist extremists as well as the Jewish youth
who had sympathised with them, losing all control of itself.”
I dare say that something stupid and evil has revealed itself
in this frantic jubilation: the inability to remain within certain
limits. What, then, prompted these Jews, in the midst of the
delirious plebs, to trample so brutally what the people still
venerated? Aware of the precarious situation of their people
and their families, on 18 and 19 October they could not, in
dozens of cities, refrain from embarking in such events with
such passion, to the point of becoming its soul and sometimes
its main actors?
Let us continue reading the Tourau report: “Respect for the
national sentiment and the symbols venerated by the people
was forgotten. As if a part of the population… did not shy away
from any means of expressing its contempt…”; “the indignities
carried out to the portraits of the Emperor excited an immense
popular emotion. Cries came from the crowd gathered in front
of the Duma: ‘Who has dethroned the tsar?’, others wept.”
“Without being a prophet, one could foresee that such o ences
would not be forgiven to the Jews,” “voices rose to express
astonishment at the inaction of the authorities; here and there,
in the crowd… they began to shout: ‘We must break some
kikes!’” Near the Duma, the police and an infantry company
stood idly by. At that moment, a squadron of dragoons
appeared brie y, greeted by shots from the windows and the
balcony of the Duma; they began to bombard the infantry
company with stones and bottles, to blast it from all sides: the
Duma, the Stock Exchange, the crowd of demonstrators.
Several soldiers were wounded; the captain gave orders to open
re. There were seven dead and one hundred and thirty
wounded. The crowd dispersed. But on the evening of the 18th
of October, “the news of the degradations committed on the
Emperor’s portraits, the crown, the emblems of the monarchy,
the national ag, circled the city, and spread into the suburbs.
Small groups of passers‐by, mostly workers, craftsmen,
merchants, who commented on the events with animation put
the full responsibility for them on the Jews, who always stood
out clearly from the other demonstrators.” “In the Podol
district, the workers’ crowd decided to seize all the
‘democrats’… who had fomented the disturbances and placed
them in a state of arrest ‘pending the orders of His Majesty the
Emperor’.” In the evening, “a rst group of demonstrators
gathered in the Alexander Plaza, brandishing the portrait of
the Emperor and singing the national anthem. The crowd grew
rapidly and, as many Jews returned from the Krechtchatik with
red insignia in the buttonhole, they were taken for the
perpetrators of the disorders perpetrated in the Duma and
became the target of aggressions; some were beaten.” This was
already the beginning of the pogrom against the Jews.
Now, to understand both the unpardonable inaction of the
authorities during the sacking of the Duma and the
destruction of the national emblems, but also their even more
unpardonable inaction during the pogrom itself, one has to
take a look at what was happening within the organs of power.
At rst glance, one might think it was the result of a
combination of circumstances. But their accumulation has
been such in Kiev (as well as in other places) that one cannot
fail to discern the mismanagement of the imperial
administration of the last years, the consequences of which
were fatal.
As for the governor of Kiev, he was simply absent. Vice‐
Governor Rafalski had just taken o ce, had not had time to
nd his bearings, and lacked con dence in the exercise of
temporary responsibilities. Above him, Governor General
Kleigels, who had authority over a vast region, had, from the
beginning of October, taken steps to be released from his duties
—for health reasons. (His real motivations remain unknown,
and it is not excluded that his decision was dictated by the
bubbling revolution of September, which he did not know how
to control.) In any case, he, too, considered himself as
temporary, while in October the directives of the Ministry of the
Interior continued to rain on him—10 October: take the most
energetic measures “to prevent disorder in the street and to put
an end to it by all means in case they occur”; 12: “repress street
demonstrations, do not hesitate to use armed force”; 13: “do
not tolerate any rally or gathering in the streets and, if
necessary, disperse them by force”. On 14 October, as we have
seen, the unrest in Kiev has crossed a dangerous limit. Kleigels
brought together his close collaborators, including the Kiev
chief of police, Colonel Tsikhotski, and the deputy head of
security (again, the leader was absent), Kouliabka, a man as
agitated as he was ine ective, the very one who, by stupidity,
was about to expose Stolypin to the blows of his assassin.
[1282] From the panicked report of the latter stemmed the
possibility not only of demonstrations of armed people in the
streets of Kiev, but also of an armed insurrection. Kleigels,
therefore, renounced reliance on the police, put in place the
provisions for “recourse to the armed forces to assist the civil
authorities”—and, on 14 October, handed over “his full powers
to the military command”, more precisely to the commander—
on a temporary basis once again (the commander himself is
absent, but it must be said that the situation is anything but
worrying!)—from the Kiev military region, the general Karass.
The responsibility for security in the city was entrusted to
General Drake. (Is it not comical enough: which of the
surnames that have just been enumerated makes it possible to
suppose that the action is taking place in Russia?) General
Karass “found himself in a particularly di cult situation”
insofar as he did not know the “data of the situation nor of the
sta of the administration and of the police”; “By giving him
his powers, General Kleigels did not consider it necessary to
facilitate the work of his successor; he con ned himself to
respecting forms, and at once ceased to deal with anything.”
It is now time to talk about the chief of police, Tsikhotski. As
early as 1902, an administrative inspection had revealed that
he concealed the practice of extortion of the Jews in exchange
for the right of residence. It was also discovered that he lived
“above his means”, that he had bought—as well as for his son‐
in‐law—properties worth 100,000 rubles. It was considered
that he should be brought to justice when Kleigels was
appointed Governor‐General; very quickly (and, of course, not
without having received a large bribe), the latter intervened so
that Tsikhotski was kept at his post and even obtained a
promotion and the title of general. Regarding the promotion, it
did not work, but there were no penalties either, although
General Trepov had been working towards this end from
Petersburg. Tsikhotski was informed at the beginning of
October that Kleigels had asked to leave his post at the end of
the month—his morale fell even lower, he saw himself already
condemned. And on the night of the 18th of October, at the
same time as the Imperial Manifesto, the o cial con rmation
of the retirement of Kleigels came from Saint Petersburg.
Tsikhotski now had nothing to lose. (Another detail: even
though the situation was so troubled, Kleigels left his post even
before the arrival of his successor, who was none other than the
pearl of the Imperial administration, General Sukhomlinov, the
future Minister of Defence who scuttled the preparations for
the war against Germany; as for the functions of Governor‐
General, they were temporarily assumed by the aforesaid
General Karass.) And it was thus that “there was no rapid
termination of the confusion that had settled within the police
after the handing over of power to the army, but that it only
increased to manifest itself with the greatest acuity during the
disorders.”
The fact that Kleigels had “renounced his ‘full powers’… and
that these had been handed over for an inde nite period to the
military authorities of the city of Kiev is mainly at the origin of
the uncertain mutual relations which later established
themselves between civil authorities and military authorities”;
“the extent and limits of the powers [of the army] were not
known to anybody” and this vagueness “lead to a general
disorganisation of services.”
This manifested itself from the beginning of the pogrom
against the Jews. “Many police o cers were convinced that the
power had been fully handed over to the military command
and that only the army was competent to act and to repress the
disorders”; that is why they “did not feel concerned by the
disorders which took place in their presence. As for the army,
referring to an article of the provisions on the use of the armed
forces to assist the civil authorities, it was awaiting indications
from the police, considering with reason that it was not its
responsibility to ful l the missions of the latter”: these
provisions “stipulated precisely” that the civil authorities
“present at the scene of the disorders should guide the joint
action of the police and the army with a view to their
repression.” It was also up to the civil authorities to determine
when to use force. Moreover, “Kleigels had not considered it
useful to inform the military command about the situation in
the city, nor had he told it what he knew about the
revolutionary movement in Kiev. And this is what made units
of the army begin to scour the city aimlessly.”
So, the pogrom against the Jews began in the evening of 18
October. “At its initial stage, the pogrom undoubtedly assumed
the character of retaliation against the o ence to national
sentiment. The assaults against the Jews passed in the street,
the destruction of shops and the merchandise they contained
were accompanied by words such as: ‘Here it is, your liberty!
Here it is, your Constitution and your revolution! This, this is
for the portraits of the tsar and the crown!’” The next morning,
19 October, a large crowd came from the Duma to the Cathedral
of Saint Sophia, bearing the empty frames of the Tsar’s
portraits and the broken emblems of the imperial power. It
stopped at the university to have the damaged portraits
restored; a mass was celebrated and “the Metropolitan Flavian
exhorted the people not to indulge in excesses and return
home”. “But while the people who formed the heart of the
patriotic demonstration… maintained an exemplary order,
individuals who joined them along the way allowed themselves
to be subjected to all kinds of violence against the Jewish
passers‐by, as well as high school pupils or students in
uniform.” They were then joined by “the workers, the homeless
of the ea market, the bums”; “groups of rioters sacked the
houses and shops of the Jews, threw into the street their goods
and merchandise, which were partly destroyed on the spot,
partly plundered”; “the servants, the guardians of buildings,
the little shopkeepers apparently saw nothing wrong with
taking advantage of the property of others”; “others, on the
contrary, remained isolated to all interested goals until the last
day of the disorders,” “they tore from the hands of their
companions the objects that they had stolen and, without
paying attention to their value, destroyed them on the spot.”
The rioters did not touch the shops of the Karaites nor the
“houses where they were presented portraits of the Emperor.”
“But, on the whole, only a few hours after it had begun, the
pogrom took the form of a pitiless rampage. On the 18th, it
continued long into the night, then stopped on its own, to
resume on the morning of the 19th, and to cease only on the
evening of the 20th. (There were no res, except one in the
Podol district.) On the 19th, “luxury shops belonging to Jews
were sacked as far as the city centre on the Krechtchatik. The
heavy metal curtains and the locks were forced after half an
hour of hard work”; “Expensive textiles, velvet cloths were
thrown into the street and spread out in the mud, in the rain,
like rags of no value. In front of the shop of the jeweller
Markisch, on the Krechtchatik, the pavement was littered with
precious objects”—and the same for fashion shops, the dry
goods stores; the pavement was fraught with account books,
invoices. In Lipki (the chic neighbourhood) “the private
mansions of Jews were sacked,—that of Baron Ginzburg, of
Halperine, of Alexander and Leon Brodksy, of Landau, and
many more. All the luxurious decoration of these houses was
destroyed, the furniture broken and thrown into the street”;
likewise, “a model secondary school for the Jews, the Brodsky
school, was ravaged,” “there was nothing left of the marble
staircases and the wrought iron ramps.” In all, it was “nearly
fteen hundred apartments and commercial premises
belonging to Jews were plundered.” Starting from the fact that
“nearly two‐thirds of the city’s trade was in the hands of Jews,”
Tourau assessed losses—including the richest mansions—to
“several million rubles.” It had been planned to ransack not
only Jewish houses, but also those of prominent liberal
personalities. On the 19th, Bishop Plato “led a procession
through the streets of Podol where the pogrom had been
particularly violent, urging the people to put an end to the
abuses. Imploring the crowd to spare the lives and property of
the Jews, the bishop knelt several times before it… A broken
man came out of the crowd and shouted threateningly: ‘You
too, you’re for the Jews?’”
We have already seen the carelessness that prevailed among
the authorities. “General Drake did not take appropriate
measures to ensure the proper organisation of security.” The
troops “should not have been scattered in small detachments,”
“there were too many patrols,” and “the men often stayed idle.”
And here we are: “What struck everyone during the pogrom
was the obvious inaction, close to complacency, which was
shown by both the army and the police. The latter was
virtually absent, and the troops moved slowly, merely replying
to the shots red from certain houses, while on either side of
the street the shops and apartments of the Jews were sacked
with impunity.” A prosecutor asked a patrol of Cossacks to
intervene to protect stores that were looted nearby; “the
Cossacks replied that they would not go, that it was not their
sector.”
More serious still: a whole series of witnesses had “the
impression that the police and the army had been dispatched
not to disperse the breakers but to protect them.” Here the
soldiers declared that they had “been ordered to ensure that
there were no clashes and that the Russians were not attacked.”
Elsewhere they said that if they had “taken an oath to God and
to the tsar,” it was not to protect “those who had lacerated and
jeered at the portraits of the tsar.” As for the o cers, “they
considered themselves powerless to prevent disorders, and felt
themselves entitled to use force only in cases where the
violence was directed against their men.” Example: of a house
“ran out a Jew covered with blood, pursued by the crowd. An
infantry company was right there, but it paid no attention to
what was going on and quietly went up the street.” Elsewhere,
“the plunderers were massacring two Jews with table legs; a
detachment of cavalry stationed ten paces away contemplated
placidly the scene.” It is not surprising that the man in the
street could have understood things like this: “The tsar
graciously granted us the right to beat the kikes for six days”;
and the soldiers: “You see, is all this conceivable without the
approval of the authorities?” For their part, the police o cers,
“when they were demanded to put an end to the disorders,
objected that they could do nothing to the extent that the full
powers had been transferred to the military command.” But
there was also a large crowd of thugs that took ight “due to a
police commissioner who brandished his revolver, assisted by
only one peacekeeper”, and “police o cer Ostromenski, with
three patrolmen and some soldiers, succeeded in preventing
acts of looting in his neighbourhood without even resorting to
force.”
The looters did not have rearms, while the young Jews,
they, had some. However, unlike what happened in Gomel, here
the Jews had not organised their self‐defence, even though
“shots were red from many houses” by members of self‐
defence groups who included in their ranks “both Jews and
Russians who had taken their part”; “It is undeniable that in
some cases these shots were directed against the troops and
constituted acts of retaliation for the shots red on the crowd
during the demonstrations” of the previous days; “Sometimes
Jews red on the patriotic parades organised in response to the
revolutionary demonstrations that had taken place before.” But
these shots “had deplorable consequences. Without producing
any e ect on the rioters, they gave the troops a pretext to apply
their instructions to the letter”; “as soon as shots came from a
house, the troops who were there, without even inquiring
whether they were directed against them or against the rioters,
sent a salvo into its windows, after which the crowd” rushed in
and ransacked it. “We saw cases where we were ring at a
house solely because someone had claimed that shots had
gone”; “it also happened that the looters climbed the stairs of a
house and red shots towards the street to provoke the troops’
retaliation” and then engage in plundering.
And things got worse. “Some of the policemen and soldiers
did not disdain the goods thrown into the street by the
vandals, picked them up and hid them in their pockets or
under their hoods.” And, although these cases “were
exceptional and punctual”, one still saw a police o cer
dismantling the door of a shop himself, and a corporal
imitating him. (The false rumours of looting by the army
began to circulate when General Evert ordered in his area to
con scate goods taken by the looters and stolen goods and to
transport them to the warehouses of the army for subsequent
restitution to their owners on presentation of a receipt, thus
saving property worth several tens of thousands of rubles.)
It is hardly surprising that this scoundrel of Tsikhotski,
seeing his career broken, not only did not take any action
concerning the action of the police (having learned of the
beginning of the pogrom on the evening of the 18th, he did not
communicate by telegram any information to the
neighbourhood police stations before late in the evening on the
19th), not only did he not transmit any information to the
generals of military security, but he himself, passing through
the city, had “considered what was going on with calm and
indi erence”, contenting himself to say to the plunderers:
“Move along, gentlemen” (and those few, encouraged one
another: “Do not be afraid, he’s joking!”); and when, from the
balcony of the Duma, they began to shout: “Pound the kikes,
plunder, break!” And the crowd then carried the chief of police
in triumph, the latter “addressed greetings in response to the
cheering of the demonstrators.” It was not until the 20th, after
General Karass had sent him a severe warning (as to the
Director of the Governor‐General’s Chancery, he declared that
Tsikhovsky would not escape the penal colony), that he ordered
the police to take all measures to put an end to the pogrom.
Senator Tourau e ectively had to bring him to justice.
Another security o cial, disgruntled with his career,
General Bessonov, “was in the midst of the crowd of rioters and
was peacefully parleying with them: ‘We have the right to
demolish, but it is not right to steal.’ The crowd shouted:
‘Hurray!’” At another moment he behaved “as an indi erent
witness to the plunder. And when one of the breakers shouted:
‘Slam the kikes!’ [Bessonov] reacted with an approving laugh.”
He reportedly told a doctor that “if he had wanted to, he could
have put an end to the pogrom in half an hour, but the Jews’
participation in the revolutionary movement had been too
great, they had to pay the price.” After the pogrom, summoned
by the military authorities to explain himself, he denied
having spoken favourably of the pogrom and declared, on the
contrary, to have exhorted people to return to calm: “Have
mercy on us, do not force the troops to use their weapons… to
shed Russian blood, our own blood!”
Delegations went one after the other to General Karass, some
requesting that some of them take troops out of the city, others
for the use of force, and others for taking measures to protect
their property. However, throughout the day of the 19th, the
police did nothing and the military executed orders badly. On
20 October, Karass ordered “to encircle and apprehend the
hooligans.” Many arrests were made; once, the army opened
re on the rioters, killing ve and wounding several others. By
the evening of the 20th, the pogrom was de nitely over, but
late in the evening “the rumour that the Jews murdered
Russians sowed dismay among the population”; retaliation was
feared.
During the pogrom, according to police estimates (but a
number of victims were taken by the crowd), there were a total
of 47 deaths, including 12 Jews, and 205 wounded, one‐third of
them Jews.
Tourau concludes his report by explaining that “the root
cause of the Kiev pogrom lies in the traditional enmity between
the population of Little Russia and the Jewish population,
motivated by di erences of opinion. As for its immediate
cause, it resides in the outrage of national sentiment caused by
the revolutionary manifestations to which the Jewish youth
had taken an active part.” The working class “imputed to the
Jews only” the responsibility for the “blasphemies uttered
against what was most sacred to them. They could not
understand, after the grace granted by the Emperor, the very
existence of the revolutionary movement, and explained it by
the desire of the Jews to obtain ‘their own liberties’.” “The ip
side of the war in which Jewish youth had always openly
expressed its deepest satisfaction, its refusal to ful l its
military obligations, its participation in the revolutionary
movement, acts of violence and the killings of agents of the
State, its insulting attitude towards the armed forces… all this
incontestably provoked exasperation towards the Jews among
the working class,” and “this is why in Kiev there have been
several cases where many Russians gave open shelter to
unfortunate Jews who ed from the violence, but categorically
refused Jewish youth.”
As for the newspaper The Kievian, it wrote[1283]: “Poor Jews!
Where is the fault of these thousands of families? … For their
misfortune, these poor Jews could not control their brainless
youngsters … But brainless youngsters, there are also some
among us, the Russians, and we could not control them either!”
 The revolutionary youth scoured the countryside, but it was
the peaceful adult Jews who had to pay the piper.
Thus, on both sides, we have dug a bottomless abyss.

   
As for the Odessa pogrom, we have a similar and equally
detailed report, that of Senator Kozminski.[1284]
In Odessa, where a lively revolutionary sentiment had
always existed, the tremors had started since January; the blast
took place on the 13th of June (independently, therefore, of the
arrival of the Potemkin battleship in the harbour of Odessa on
the 14th). The entire day of the 14th of June passed in turmoil,
especially among the young, but this time also among the
workers, whose “numerous crowds began to impose by force
the cessation of work in plants and factories.” A crowd “of
about three hundred people attempted to break into a [tea]
parlour… Several shots were red at the head of the local police
station, who was preventing the crowd from entering, but the
latter was dispersed” by a salvo shot by a detachment of
policemen. “However, the crowd soon re‐formed,” and
proceeded to the police station; some shots were red from the
Doks house: “from the windows and the balcony, several shots
were red at the police o cers.” Another group “erected a
barricade with building materials in the street, and then began
shooting at a police detachment.” In another street, a crowd of
the same kind “overturned several tramway wagons with
horses”. “A fairly large group of Jews broke into a tin factory,
threw tobacco in the eyes [of a police o cer]…, scattered at the
appearance of a police detachment while opening re with
revolvers; among them four Jews [their names follow] were
arrested on the spot”; at a crossroads, “a gathering of Jews was
formed, [two of them] red revolver shots at a mounted guard”;
“in general, throughout the day of 14 June, almost all the
streets of the city were the scene of clashes between Jews and
the security forces, during which they used rearms and
projectiles,” wounding several police o cers. “A dozen Jews
were also wounded,” which the crowd took to hide them. As he
tried to escape, a certain Tsipkine threw a bomb, causing his
own death as well as that of police o cer Pavlovski.
It was at this time that the Potemkin entered the Odessa
harbour! A crowd of nearly ve thousand people assembled,
“many men and women gave speeches calling the people for an
uprising against the government”; among the students who
got aboard the battleship were Konstantin Feldman (who urged
to support the movement in town by cannonading it, but “the
majority of the crew opposed it”).
And the authorities in all this? The governor of Odessa—in
other words, the head of the police—Neudhart, was already
completely distraught on the day of the arrival of the Potemkin;
he felt (as in Kiev) that “the civil authorities were unable to
restore order, and that is why he had handed over all
subsequent decisions aimed at the cessation of disorder to the
military command, that is to say, the commander of the Odessa
garrison, General Kakhanov. (Did there exist a superior
authority to that one in Odessa? Yes, of course, and it was
Governor General Karangozov, who, as the reader will have
guessed, was acting on a temporary basis, and felt hardly at
ease.) General Kakhanov found nothing better than to have the
port sealed by the army and to enclose the thousands of
“unsafe elements” who had gathered there to cut them o —not
yet contaminated—from the city.
On 15 June, the uprising in Odessa and the Potemkin mutiny
collapsed into one movement: the inhabitants of the city,
“among whom many students and workers” boarded the
battleship, exhorting “the crew to common actions”. The crowd
in the harbour rushed to “plunder the goods that were stored
there”, beginning with the boxes of wine; then stormed the
warehouses to which it set re (more than 8 million rubles of
losses). The re threatened the quarantine port where foreign
vessels were anchored and import goods were stored.
Kakhanov still could not resolve to put an end to the disorder
by force, fearing that the Potemkin would reply by bombarding
the city. The situation remained equally explosive on the 15th.
The next day the Potemkin drew ve salvos on the town, three
of them blank, and called on the commander of the armed
forces to board the ship to demand the withdrawal “of the
troops from the city and the release of all political prisoners.”
On the same day, 16 June, at the funeral of the only sailor
killed, “scarcely had the procession entered the town than it
was joined by all kinds of individuals who soon formed a crowd
of several thousand persons, principally young Jews,” and on
the grave an orator, “after shouting ‘Down with the autocracy!’,
called on his comrades to act with more determination,
without fear of the police.”
But that very day, and for a long time, the state of siege was
proclaimed in the city. The Potemkin had to take o to escape
the squadron that had come to capture it. And although the
four days it had been anchored in the port Odessa “and the
many contacts which had been established between the people
and it substantially raised the morale of the revolutionaries”
and “gave rise to the hope of a possible future support of the
armed forces”, despite of that the summer was going to end
calmly, perhaps even no upset would have occurred in Odessa
if, on the 27th of August, had been promulgated the
incomparable law on the autonomy of higher education
institutions! Immediately, “a ‘soviet coalition’ was formed by
the students,” which, “by its determination and audacity,
succeeded in bringing under its in uence not only the student
community but also the teaching force” (professors feared
“unpleasant confrontations with the students, such as the
boycott of classes, the expulsion of such and such professor
from the amphi, etc.”).
Large gatherings took place at the university, “fund‐raising
to arm the workers and the proletariat, for the military
insurrection, for the purchase of weapons with a view to
forming militias and self‐defence groups”, “discussions were
held about the course of action to be taken at the time of the
insurrection.” At these meetings the “faculty of professors”
took an active part, “sometimes with the rector Zantchevski at
its head,” who promised to “make available to the students all
the means at their disposal to facilitate their participation in
the liberation movement.”
On 17 September, the rst meeting at the university took
place “in the presence of an outside public so numerous that it
had to be split into two groups”; The S.‐R. Teper “and two
Jewish students made speeches calling on the public to lead the
struggle to free the country from political oppression and a
deleterious autocracy.” On 30 September, the state of siege was
lifted in Odessa and henceforth rushed to these meetings
“students of all educational establishments, some of whom
were not more than fourteen years old”; the Jews “were the
principal orators, calling for open insurrection and armed
struggle.”
On 12 and 13 October, before all other secondary schools,
“the pupils of two business schools, that of the Emperor
Nicholas I and that of Feig, ceased to attend classes, being the
most sensitive to revolutionary propaganda”; on the 14th, it
was decided to halt the work in all the other secondary schools,
and business schools and the students went to all the high
schools of the city to force the pupils to go on course strikes.
The rumour went around that in front of the Berezina high
school, three students and three high school students had been
wounded with swords by police o cers. Certainly, “the
investigation would establish with certainty that none of the
young people had been a ected and that the pupils had not yet
had time to leave the school.” But this kind of incident, what a
boon to raise the revolutionary pressure! On the same day, the
courses ceased at the university, forty‐eight hours after the
start of the school year; the striking students burst into the
municipal Duma shouting: “Death to Neudhart!” and
demanding that they stop paying salaries to the police.
After the episode of the Potemkin, Neudhart had regained
power in his hands, but until the middle of October he did not
make any measure against the revolutionary meetings—
besides, could he do very much when the autonomy of
universities had been established? On the 15th he received
orders from the Ministry of the Interior to prohibit the
entrance of outsiders to the university, and on the following
day he surrounded the latter by the army, while ordering the
cartridges to be taken out from the armouries, until then sold
over‐the‐counter. “The closure of the university to the outside
world provoked great agitation among Jewish students and
Jewish youth,” an immense crowd set out, closing the shops on
its way (the American armoury was plundered), overturning
streetcars and omnibuses, sawing trees to make barricades,
cutting o telegraph and telephone wires for the same
purpose, dismantling the gates of the parks. Neudhart asked
Kakhanov to have the town occupied by the troops. Then, “the
barricades behind which the demonstrators had gathered—
mostly Jews, among them women and adolescents—, they
began to re on the troops; shots were red from the roofs of
houses, balconies, and windows”; the army opened re in its
turn, the demonstrators were scattered and the barricades
dismantled. “It is impossible to accurately estimate the number
of deaths and injuries that occurred on that day, as the health
team—consisting mainly of Jewish students in red‐white
blouses with a red cross—hurried to take the wounded and the
dead to the university in rmary”—thus in an autonomous and
inaccessible zone—, “at the Jewish hospital or at the emergency
stations near the barricades, as well as in almost all
pharmacies.” (They had stopped delivering medicine even
before the events.) According to the governor of the city, there
were nine deaths, nearly 80 wounded, including some
policemen. “Among the participants in the disorders were
apprehended that day 214 people, of whom 197 Jews, a large
number of women, and 13 children aged 12 to 14 years.”
And all this, still twenty‐four hours before the incendiary
e ect of the Manifesto was felt.
One might think that by exposing the role of the Jews so
frequently in revolutionary movements, the Senate’s report
was biased. But it must be borne in mind that in Odessa the
Jews represented one‐third of the population, and, as we have
seen, a very signi cant proportion of the student population; it
must also be borne in mind that the Jews had taken an active
part in the Russian revolutionary movement, especially in the
Pale of Settlement. In addition, Senator Kouzminski’s report
provides evidence of its objectivity in many places.
On 16 October, “when they arrived at the police station, the
people arrested were victims of assault by the police and
soldiers”; however, “neither the governor of the city nor the
police o cials responded in due course… and no investigation
was carried out”; it was not until later that more than twenty
of those who had been in this precinct declared that “those
arrested had been systematically beaten; rst they were pushed
down a staircase leading to the basement… many of them fell
to the ground and it was then that policemen and soldiers,
arranged in a row, beat them with the back of their sabres,
rubber truncheons, or simply their feet and sts”; the women
were not spared. (It is true that, on the same evening,
municipal councillors and justices of the peace went to the
scene and gathered complaints from the victims. As for the
senator, he identi ed several culprits during his inquiry in
November and had them brought to justice.)
“On the 17th of October, the whole town was occupied by
the army, patrols were criss-crossing the streets, and public
order was not troubled all day. However, the Municipal Duma
had met to discuss emergency measures, including how to
replace the state police with an urban militia. On the same day,
the Bund’s local committee decided to organise a solemn
funeral for the victims who had fallen the day before on the
barricades, but Neudhart, understanding that such a
demonstration would cause, as always, a new revolutionary
explosion, “gave the order to remove in secret, of the Jewish
hospital” where they were, the ve corpses and “to bury them
before the scheduled date”, which was done on the night of 18.
(The next day the organisers demanded that the corpses be
unearthed and brought back to the hospital. Due to the
developments of events, the bodies were embalmed there and
remained in that state for a long time.) And it was at this time
that the news of the Imperial Manifesto spread, pushing
Odessa towards new storms.
Let us quote rst of all the testimony of members of a Jewish
self‐defence detachment: “During the pogrom, there was a
certain coordination centre that worked quite well…
Universities played an enormous role in the preparation of the
events of October… the soviet coalition of the Odessa
University included” a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, an S.‐R., a
representative of the Bund, Zionist Socialists, the Armenian
communities, Georgian and Polish ones as well. “Student
detachments were formed even before the pogrom”; during
“immense meetings at the university”, money was collected to
buy weapons, “of course not only to defend ourselves, but with
a view to a possible insurrection.” “The soviet coalition also
raised funds to arm the students”; “when the pogrom broke
out, there were two hundred revolvers at the university,” and “a
professor… procured another hundred and fty others.” A
“dictator” was appointed at the head of each detachment
“without taking into account his political stance”, and “it
happened that a detachment composed mainly of members of
the Bund was commanded by a Zionist‐Socialist, or vice versa”;
“on Wednesday [19 October], a large quantity of weapons were
distributed in a pro‐Zionist synagogue”; “the detachments
were made up of Jewish and Russian students, Jewish workers,
young Jews of all parties, and a very small number of Russian
workers.”[1285]
A few years later, Jabotinsky wrote that during the pogroms
of the year 1905 “the new Jewish soul had already reached its
maturity.”[1286] And in the still rose‐tinted atmosphere of the
February Revolution, a major Russian newspaper gave the
following description: “When, during the Neudhart pogroms
in 1905, the young militiamen of self‐defence travelled
through Odessa, weapons in their sts, they aroused emotion
and admiration, we were heavy‐hearted, we were touched and
full of compassion…”[1287]
And this is what one of our contemporaries wrote: “The
courage shown by Gomel’s ghters in ames tens of thousands
of hearts. In Kiev, 1,500 people are engaged in self‐defence
detachments, in Odessa several thousands.”[1288] But in
Odessa, the number of combatants as well as their state of
mind—and, in response, the brutality of the police forces—
gave a much di erent turn to events than they had experienced
in Kiev.
 Let us go back to the Kuzminski report. After the
proclamation of the Manifesto, on the morning of the 18th,
General Kaoulbars, commanding the military district of
Odessa, in order “to give the population the possibility of
enjoying without restrictions the freedom in all its forms
granted by the Manifesto,” ordered the troops not to appear in
the streets, “so as not to disturb the joyous humour of the
population.” However, “this joyous mood did not last.” On all
sides “groups of Jews and students began to ock towards the
city centre,” brandishing red ags and shouting: “Down with
the autocracy!”, while speakers called for revolution. On the
façade of the Duma, two of the words forming the inscription
in metal letters “God save the Tsar” were broken; the Council
Chamber was invaded, “a large portrait of His Majesty the
Emperor was torn to shreds,” the national ag which oated on
the Duma was replaced by a red ag. The headdresses of three
ecclesiastics, who were in a cab at a funeral, were stolen; later,
the funeral procession they conducted was repeatedly stopped,
“religious songs interrupted by cheers.” “There was a headless
scarecrow bearing the inscription ‘Here is the Autocracy’, and a
dead cat was showed o while collecting money ‘to demolish
the tsar’ or ‘for Nicholas’s death’.” “The young people, especially
the Jews, who were obviously aware of their superiority, taught
the Russians that their freedom had not been freely granted to
them, that it had been torn from the government by the Jews…
They declared openly to the Russians: ‘Now we are going to
govern you’,” but also: “We have given you God, we will give you
a tsar.” A large crowd of Jews waving red ags long pursued two
peacekeepers, one of them managed to escape by the roofs,
while on the other, a man named Goubiy, the crowd “armed
with revolvers, axes, stakes, and iron bars, found him in an
attic, and hurt him so badly that he died during his transport
to the hospital; the concierge of the building found two of his
 ngers cut by axe.” Later, three police o cers were beaten and
wounded, and the revolvers of ve peacekeepers were
con scated. The prisoners were then freed in one, two, and
three police stations (where on the 16th there had been
beatings, but the detainees had already been released on the
orders of Neudhart; in one of these precincts, the liberation of
the prisoners was negotiated in exchange for Goubiy’s corpse;
sometimes there was nobody behind bars. As for the rector of
the university, he actively participated in all this, transmitting
to the prosecutor the demands of “a crowd of ve thousand
people”, while “the students went so far as to threaten to hang
the police o cers”. Neudhart solicited the advice of the mayor
of the city, Kryjanovsky, and a professor at the university,
Shtchepkin, but they only demanded that he “disarm the police
on the spot and make it invisible,” otherwise, added Shchepkin,
“the victims of popular revenge cannot be saved, and the police
will be legitimately disarmed by force.” (Interrogated later by
the senator, he denied having spoken so violently, but one can
doubt his sincerity in view of the fact that on the same day he
had distributed 150 revolvers to the students and that, during
the inquiry, he refused to say where he had procured them.)
After this interview, Neudhart ordered (without even warning
the chief of police) to withdraw all the peacekeepers “in such a
way that from that moment the whole of the city was deprived
of any visible police presence”—which could have been
understood if the measure had been intended to protect the life
of the agents, but at the same time, the streets had been
deserted by the army, which, for the moment, was pure
stupidity. (But we remember that in Petersburg this was
precisely what the press owners demanded from Witte, and it
had been di cult for him to resist them.)
“After the police left, two types of armed groups appeared:
the student militia and the Jewish self‐defence detachments.
The rst was set up by the ‘soviet coalition’ which had procured
arms.” Now, “the municipal militia, made up of armed students
and other individuals, placed themselves on guard” instead of
policemen. This was done with the assent of General Baron
Kaulbars and the governor of the city, Neudhart, while the
police chief, Golovin, o ered his resignation in protest and was
replaced by his deputy, von Hobsberg. A provisional committee
was set up at the Municipal Duma; in one of his rst
statements, he expressed his gratitude to the students of the
university “for their way of ensuring the security of the city
with energy, intelligence, and devotion”. The committee itself
assumed rather vague functions. (During the month of
November the press took an interest in one of the members of
this committee, also a member of the Duma of the Empire, O. I.
Pergament, and in the second Duma somebody had to recall
that he proclaimed himself President “of the Republic of the
Danube and the Black Sea,” or “President of the Republic of
South Russia,”[1289] in the intoxication of those days, this was
not unlikely.)
And what could happen after the streets had been deserted,
during these feverish days, by both the army and the police,
and that the power had passed into the hands of an
inexperienced student militia and groups of self‐defence? “The
militia arrested persons who seemed suspicious to it and sent
them to the university for examination”; here a student
“walked at the head of a group of Jews of about sixty persons
who red revolver shots at random”; “the student militia and
Jewish self‐defence groups themselves perpetrated acts of
violence directed against the army and peaceful elements of
the Russian population, using rearms and killing innocent
people.”
The confrontation “was inevitable, given the crystallisation
of two antagonistic camps among the population.” On the
evening of the 18th, “a crowd of demonstrators waving red
ags, and composed predominantly of Jews, tried to impose a
stoppage of work at the factory at Guen… The workers refused
to comply with this demand; after which the same crowd,
crossing Russian workmen in the street, demanded that they
should uncover themselves before the red ags. As the latter
refused,”—well here it is, the proletariat!—from the crowd
“shots were red; the workers, though unarmed, succeeded in
dispersing it,” and pursued it until it was joined by another
crowd of armed Jews, up to a thousand people, who began to
re on the workmen…; four of them were killed. This is how
“brawls and armed clashes between Russians and Jews were
unleashed at various points in the city; Russian workers and
individuals without any de nite occupation, also known as
hooligans, began to chase the Jews and to beat them up, and
then move on with the rampage and destruction of houses,
apartments and shops belonging to Jews.” It was then that a
police commissioner called “an infantry company which put an
end to the clashes.”
On the following day, 19 October, “towards 10, 11 in the
morning, there were seen forming in the streets… crowds of
Russian workers and persons of various professions carrying
icons, portraits of His Majesty the Emperor, as well as the
national ag, and singing religious hymns. These patriotic
demonstrations composed exclusively of Russians were
formed simultaneously at several locations in the city, but
their starting point was in the port from where set o a rst
manifestation of workmen, especially numerous.” There exists
“reasons to assert that the anger provoked by the o ensive
attitude of the Jews over the whole of the previous day, their
arrogance and their contempt for the national sentiment
shared by the Russian population had to, in one way or
another, lead to a reaction of protest.” Neudhart was not
ignorant of the fact that a demonstration was being prepared
and he authorised it, and it passed under the windows of the
commander of the military district and the governor of the
city, and then proceeded to the cathedral. “As it went on, the
crowd was swollen by the addition of passers‐by, including a
large number of hooligans, tramps, women and adolescents.”
(But it is appropriate here to draw a parallel between the story
of a member of the Poalei Zion: “The pogrom of Odessa was not
the work of hooligans… During these days the police did not
allow entrance to the city to the tramps of the port,”; “it was
the small artisans and the small merchants who gave free rein
to their exasperation, the workers and apprentices of various
workshops, plants, or factories”, “Russian workers lacking
political consciousness”; “I went to Odessa only to see a
pogrom organised by provocation, but, alas, I did not nd it!”
And he explains it as hatred between nationalities.[1290])
“Not far from the Cathedral Square…, several shots were
red towards the crowd of protesters, one of them killed a little
boy who was carrying an icon”; “the infantry company who
arrived on the spot was also greeted by gun re.” They red
from the windows of the editorial o ce of the newspaper
Yuzhnoye Obozrenie, and “during the entire route of the
procession gunshots came from windows, balconies, roofs”;
“moreover, explosive devices were launched in several places
on the demonstrators”, “six people were killed” by one of them;
in the centre of Odessa, “at the corner of Deribassov and
Richelieu, three bombs were thrown on a squadron of
Cossacks.” “There were many deaths and wounded among the
demonstrators,” “not without reason the Russians blamed the
Jews, and it is why shouts merged quickly from the crowd: ‘Beat
up the kikes!’, ‘Death to the heebs!’,” and “at various points in
the city the crowd rushed to the Jewish shops to plunder
them”; “these isolated acts were rapidly transformed into a
generalised pogrom: all the shops, houses and apartments of
the Jews on the path of the demonstration were completely
devastated, all their property destroyed, and what had escaped
the vandals was stolen by the cohorts of hooligans and beggars
who had followed the lead of the protesters”; “it was not
uncommon for scenes of looting to unfold under the eyes of
demonstrators carrying icons and singing religious hymns.”
On the evening of the 19th, “the hatred of the antagonist
camps reached its peak: each one hit and tortured mercilessly,
sometimes with exceptional cruelty, and without distinction
of sex or age, those who fell into their hands.” According to the
testimony of a doctor at the university clinic, “hooligans threw
children from the rst or second oor onto the road; one of
them grabbed a child by the feet and smashed his skull against
the wall. For their part, the Jews did not spare the Russians,
killing those they could at the rst opportunity; during the day
they did not show themselves in the streets, but red on the
passers‐by from the doors, from the windows, etc., but in the
evening they met in numerous groups,” going as far as
“besieging police stations.” “The Jews were particularly cruel
with police o cers when they managed to catch them.” (Here
is now the point of view of the Poalei Zion: “The press spread a
legend that self‐defence had taken a huge crowd of hooligans
and locked them up in the university premises. Numbers in the
order of 800 to 900 individuals were cited; it is in fact
necessary to divide this number by ten. It was only at the
beginning of the pogrom that the vandals were brought to the
university, after which things took a completely di erent
turn.”[1291] There are also descriptions of the Odessa pogrom
in the November 1905 issues of the newspaper The Kievian.
[1292])
And what about the police, in all this? In accordance with
Neudhart’s stupid dispositions, “on 19 October… as on the
following days, the police were totally absent from the streets
of Odessa”: a few patrols, and only occasionally. “The
vagueness that reigned in the relations between civil
authorities and military authorities, which ran counter to the
legal provisions,” had the consequence that “the police o cers
did not have a very clear idea of their obligations”; even more,
“all the police o cers, considering that the responsibility for
the political upheavals was incumbent on the Jews” and that
“these were revolutionaries, felt the greatest sympathy for the
pogrom which was unfolding before their eyes and judged even
super uous to conceal themselves.” Worse: “In many cases,
police o cers themselves incited hooligans to ransack and loot
Jewish houses, apartments, and shops”; and at the height of it:
“in civilian clothes, without their insignia”, they themselves
“took part in these rampages,” “directed the crowd,” and there
were even “cases where police o cers red on the ground or in
the air to make the military believe that these shots came from
the windows of houses belonging to Jews.”
And it was the police who did that!
Senator Kouzminski brought to trial forty‐two policemen,
twenty‐three of whom were o cers.
And the army—“scattered over the immense territory of the
city” and supposed to “act autonomously”? “The military also
did not pay any attention to the pogroms, since they were not
aware of their exact obligations and were not given any
indication by the police o cers”, they “did not know against
whom or according to what order they should use armed force;
on the other hand, the soldiers could assume that the pogrom
had been organised with the approval of the police.”
Consequently, “the army took no action against the vandals.”
Worse still, “there is evidence that soldiers and Cossacks also
took part in the looting of shops and houses.” “Some witnesses
a rmed that soldiers and Cossacks massacred innocent people
for no reason.”
Again, these are innocent people who have paid for others.
“On 20 and 21 October, far from subsiding, the pogrom
gained frightening momentum”; “the plunder and destruction
of Jewish property, the acts of violence and the killings were
openly perpetrated, and with complete impunity, day and
night.” (Point of view of the Poalei Zion: on the evening of the
20th, “the university was closed by the army” while “inside it,
we had barricaded ourselves in the event of an assault by the
troops. Detachments of self‐defence no longer went into town.”
In the latter, on the other hand, “self‐defence had organised
itself spontaneously”, “powerful detachments of townspeople”,
“equipped with weapons of opportunity: hatchets, cutlasses,
limes”, “defended themselves with determination and anger
equal to those they were victims of, and succeeded in
protecting their perimeter almost completely.”[1293]
On the 20th, a group of municipal councillors headed by the
new mayor (the former Kryjanovsky, who noted his
powerlessness in the face of what was happening in the
university, where even weapons were being gathered, and had
resigned on the 18th) went to General Kaulbars, “urging him to
take all the power in his hands to the extent that the military
command… alone is capable of saving the city.” The latter
explained to them that “before the declaration of the state of
siege, the military command had no right to interfere in the
decisions of the civil administration and had no other
obligation” than to assist it when it requested it. “Not to
mention that the ring of the troops and the bombs thrown at
them made it extremely di cult to restore order.” He nally
agreed to intervene.—On the 21st of October he gave orders to
take the most energetic measures against the buildings from
which shots were red and bombs were thrown. On the 22nd:
“order to take down on the spot all those who guilty of attacks
on buildings, businesses or persons.” As early as the 21st, calm
began to return to di erent parts of the city; from the 22nd,
“the police ensured the surveillance of the streets” with the
reinforcement of the army; “the streetcars began to circulate
again and in the evening, one could consider that the order was
restored in the city.”
The number of victims was di cult to de ne and varies
from one source to another. The Kuzminski report states that
“according to information provided by the police, the number
of people killed amounts to more than 500 persons, including
more than 400 Jews; as to the number of injuries recorded by
the police, it is 289…, of which 237 Jews. According to the data
collected from the cemetery guardians, 86 funerals were
celebrated in the Christian cemetery, 298 in the Jewish
cemetery.” In the hospitals were admitted “608 wounded,
including 392 Jews.” (However, many had to be those who
refrained from going to hospitals, fearing that they would later
be prosecuted.)—The Jewish Encyclopædia reports 400 deaths
among the Jews.[1294]—According to the Poalei Zion: based on
the list published by the rabbinate of Odessa, “302 Jews were
killed, including 55 members of self‐defence detachments, as
well as 15 Christians who were members of these same
detachments”; “among the other deaths, 45 could not be
identi ed; 179 men and 23 women were identi ed.” “Many
deaths among the vandals; no one counted them, nor cared to
know their number; in any event, it is said that there were not
less than a hundred.”[1295] As for the Soviet work already
quoted, it did not hesitate to put forward the following gures:
“more than 500 dead and 900 wounded among the
Jews.”[1296]
One should also mention, by way of illustration, the hot
reactions of the foreign press. In the Berliner Tageblatt, even
before the 21st of October, one could read: “Thousands and
thousands of Jews are massacred in the south of Russia; more
than a thousand Jewish girls and children were raped and
strangled.”[1297]
On the other hand, it is without exaggeration that
Kuzmininski summarises the events: “By its magnitude and its
violence, this pogrom surpassed all those who preceded it.”—
He considers that the main person in charge is the governor of
the city, Neudhart. The latter made an “unworthy concession”
by yielding to Professor Chtchepkin’s demands, by
withdrawing the police from the city and handing it over to a
student militia that did not yet exist. On the 18th, “he did not
take any measure… to disperse the revolutionary crowd that
had gathered in the streets”, he tolerated that power would go
to “the rami cations of Jews and revolutionaries” (did he not
understand that reprisals in the form of a pogrom would
follow?). His negligence could have been explained if he had
handed power over to the army, but that did not happen
“during the entire period of the troubles.” This did not,
however, prevent him from broadcasting during the events
fairly ambiguous statements and later, during the
investigation, to lie to try to justify himself. Having established
“the evidence of criminal acts committed in the exercise of his
functions,” Senator Kouzminski had Neudhart brought to
justice.
With respect to the military command, the senator had no
power to do so. But he indicates that it was criminal on behalf
of Kaulbars to yield on 18 October to the demands of the
Municipal Duma and to withdraw the army from the streets of
the city. On the 21st, Kaulbars also uses equivocal arguments in
addressing the police o cers gathered at the governor’s house:
“Let us call things by name. It must be acknowledged that in
our heart we all approve of this pogrom. But, in the exercise of
our functions, we must not let the persecution we may feel for
the Jews transpire. It is our duty to maintain order and to
prevent pogroms and murders.”
The senator concluded his report by stating that “the
troubles and disorders of October were provoked by causes of
undeniably revolutionary character and found their
culmination in an anti‐Jewish pogrom solely because it was
precisely the representatives of that nationality which had
taken a preponderant part in the revolutionary movement.”
But could we not add that it is also due to the long‐standing
laxity of the authorities over the excesses of which the
revolutionaries were guilty?
But as “the conviction that the events of October were the
sole cause of Neudhart’s actions…”, “his provocations”,
immediately after the end of the disorders “several
commissions were formed in Odessa, including the University,
the Municipal Duma and the Council of the Bar Association”;
they were actively engaged in collecting documents proving
that “the pogrom was the result of a provocation.” But after
examining the evidence, the senator “discovered… no
evidence” and the investigation “did not reveal any facts
demonstrating the participation of even a single police o cer
to the organisation of the patriotic manifestation.”
The senator’s report also highlights other aspects of the year
1905 and the general era.
On 21 October, “as rumours spread throughout the city that
bombs were being made and weapons were being stored in
large quantities within the university compound,” the military
district commander proposed to have the buildings inspected
by a Committee composed of o cers and professors. The rector
told him that “such an intrusion would violate the autonomy
of the university”. Since the day it was proclaimed in August,
the university was run by a commission composed of “twelve
professors of extremist orientation”. (Shchepkin, for example,
declared at a meeting on October 7th: “When the hour strikes
and you knock on our door, we will join you on your
Potemkin!”), But this commission itself was made under the
control of the student “soviet coalition” who dictated its orders
to the rector. After the rejection of Kaulbars’ request, the
“inspection” was carried out by a commission composed of
professors and three municipal councillors, and, of course,
“nothing suspicious” was discovered.—“Facts of the same
nature were also be observed in the Municipal Duma. There, it
was the municipal employees who manifested claims to
exercise in uence and authority”; their committee presented
to the Duma, composed of elected representatives, demands “of
an essentially political character”; on the 17th, the day of the
Manifesto, they concocted a resolution: “At last the Autocracy
has fallen into the precipice!”—as the senator writes, “it is not
excluded that at the outset of the troubles there might have
been inclinations to take the whole of power.”
(After that, it was the revolutionary wave of December, the
comminatory tone of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies—“we
demand” the general strike—the interruption of electric
lighting in Odessa, the paralysis of commerce, transport, the
activity of the port, bombs were ying again, “the destruction
in sets of the new patriotic‐oriented newspaper Rousskaïa
retch[1298], “the collection [under threat] of money to nance
the revolution”, the cohorts of disa ected high school students
and the population frightened “under the yoke of the
revolutionary movement.”)

   
This spirit of 1905 (the spirit of the whole “liberation
movement”), which had manifested itself so violently in
Odessa, also broke out in these “constitutional days”[1299] in
many other cities of Russia; both in and outside the Pale of
Settlement, the pogroms “broke out everywhere… on the very
day when was received the news of the Proclamation” from the
Manifesto.
Within the Pale of Settlement, pogroms were held in
Kremenchug, Chemigov, Vinnitsa, Kishinev, Balta,
Ekaterinoslav, Elizabethgrad, Oman, and many other towns
and villages; the property of the Jews was most often destroyed
but not looted. “Where the police and the army took energetic
measures, the pogroms remained very limited and lasted only a
short time. Thus at Kamenets‐Podolsk, thanks to the e ective
and rapid action of the police and the army, all attempts to
provoke a pogrom were sti ed in the bud.” “In Chersonese and
Nikolayev, the pogrom was stopped from the beginning.”[1300]
(And, in a south‐western town, the pogrom did not take place
for the good reason that adult Jews administered a punishment
to the young people who had organised an anti‐government
demonstration after the proclamation of the Imperial
Manifesto of 17 October.”[1301])
Where, in the Pale of Settlement, there was no single
pogrom, it was in the northwest region where the Jews were
most numerous, and it might have seemed incomprehensible if
the pogroms had been organised by the authorities and
“generally proceeded according to the same scenario.”[1302]
“Twenty‐four pogroms took place outside the Pale of
Settlement, but they were directed against all the progressive
elements of society,”[1303] and not exclusively against the Jews
—this circumstance puts in evidence what pushed people to
organise pogroms: the shock e ect provoked by the Manifesto
and a spontaneous impulse to defend the throne against those
who wanted to put down the tsar. Pogroms of this type broke
out in Rostov‐on‐the‐Don, Tula, Kursk, Kaluga, Voronezh,
Riazan, Yaroslav, Viazma, Simferopol, “the Tatars participated
actively in the pogroms at Kazan and Feodossia.”[1304] In Tver,
the building of the Council of the Zemstvo was sacked; at
Tomsk the crowd set re to the theatre where a meeting of the
Left took place; two hundred persons perished in the disaster!
In Saratov, there were disturbances, but no casualties (the local
governor was none other than Stolypin[1305]).
On the nature of all these pogroms and the number of their
victims, the opinions diverge strongly according to the
authors. The estimates that are made today are sometimes very
fanciful. For example, in a 1987 publication: “in the course of
the pogroms we count a thousand killed and tens of thousands
of wounded and maimed”—and, as echoed by the press at the
time: “Thousands of women were raped, very often under the
eyes of their mothers and children.”[1306]
Conversely, G. Sliosberg, a contemporary of the events and
with all the information, wrote: “Fortunately, these hundreds
of pogroms did not bring about signi cant violence on the
person of the Jews, and in the overwhelming majority of cases
the pogroms were not accompanied by murders.”[1307] As for
the women and the elderly, the rebuttal comes from the
Bolshevik ghter Dimanstein, who declared with pride: “Jews
who were killed or wounded were for the most part some of the
best elements of self‐defence, they were young and combative
and preferred to die rather than surrender.”[1308]
As for the origins of the pogroms, the Jewish community
and then the Russian public opinion in 1881 were under the
tenacious hold of a hypnosis: undoubtedly and undeniably, the
pogroms were manipulated by the government! Petersburg
guided by the Police Department! After the events of 1905, the
whole press also presented things as such. And Sliosberg
himself, in the midst of this hypnosis, abounds in this sense:
“For three days, the wave of pogroms has swept over the Pale of
Settlement [we have just seen that this area was not touched in
full and that, conversely, other regions of Russia were—A. S.],
and according to a perfectly identical scenario, were planned in
advance.”[1309]
And this strange absence, in so many, many authors, if only
one would attempt to explain things di erently! (Many years
later, I. Frumkin acknowledged at least: the pogroms of 1905
were “not only anti‐Jewish, but also counter‐
revolutionary.”[1310] And no one even asks the question: and if
the root causes were the same and should be sought in political
events, the state of mind of the population? Are not the same
concerns expressed in this way? Let us recall that the crowd
had here and there demonstrated against the strikers before
the proclamation of the Manifesto. Let us also recall that a
general strike of the railways took place in October and that the
communications had been interrupted throughout the country
—and, in spite of this, so many pogroms broke out at the same
time? It should also be noted that the authorities ordered
investigations in a whole series of towns and that sanctions
were imposed on police o cers convicted of breaches of duty.
Let us recall that during the same period the peasants
organised pogroms against the landowners all over the place,
and that they all proceeded in the same way. Without doubt,
we are not going to say that these pogroms were also contrived
by the Police Department and that they did not re ect the same
uneasiness among all the peasants.
It seems that one proof—only one—of the existence of a
scheme exists, but it does not point in the direction of power
either. The Minister of the Interior R. N. Dournovo discovered
in 1906 that an o cial in charge of special missions, M. S.
Komissarov, had used the premises of the Police Department to
secretly print lea ets calling for the ght against Jews and
revolutionaries.[1311] It should be emphasised, however, that
this was not an initiative of the Department, but a conspiracy
by an adventurer, a former gendarmerie o cer, who was
subsequently entrusted with “special missions” by the
Bolsheviks, to the Cheka, to the GPU, and was sent to the
Balkans to in ltrate what remained of the Wrangel
army[1312].
The falsi ed versions of events have nonetheless solidly
embedded themselves in consciences, especially in the distant
regions of the West, where Russia has always been perceived
through a thick fog, while anti‐Russian propaganda was heard
distinctly. Lenin had every interest in inventing the fable
according to which tsarism “endeavoured to direct against the
Jews the hatred which the workers and peasants, overwhelmed
by misery, devoted to the nobles and capitalists”; and his
henchman, Lourie‐Larine, tried to explain this by class
struggle: only the rich Jews would have been targeted—
whereas the facts prove the contrary: it was precisely they who
enjoyed the protection of the police.[1313] But, even today, it is
everywhere the same version of the facts—let us take the
example of the Encyclopædia Judaica: “From the beginning,
these pogroms were inspired by government circles. The local
authorities received instruction to give freedom of action to the
thugs and to protect them against Jewish detachments of self‐
defence.”[1314] Let us take again the Jewish Encyclopædia
published in Israel in the Russian language: “By organising the
pogroms, the Russian authorities sought to…”; “the
government wanted to physically eliminate as many Jews as
possible”[1315] [emphasis in italics added everywhere by me—
A. S.]. All these events, therefore, would not have been the
e ect of the criminal laxity of the local authorities, but the
fruit of a machination carefully guarded by the central
government?
However, Leo Tolstoy himself, who at the time was
particularly upset with the government and did not miss an
opportunity to speak ill of it, said at the time: “I do not believe
that the police push the people [to the pogroms]. This has been
said for Kishinev as well as for Baku… It is the brutal
manifestation of the popular will… The people see the violence
of the revolutionary youth and resist it.”[1316]
At the tribune of the Duma, Chulguine proposed an
explanation similar to that of Tolstoy: “The posse justice is
very widespread in Russia as in other countries… What
happens in America is rich in lessons regarding this…: posse
justice is called lynching… But what has recently happened in
Russia is even more terrible—it is the form of posse justice
called pogrom! When the power went on strike, when the most
inadmissible attacks on the national sentiment and the most
sacred values for the people remained completely unpunished,
then, under the in uence of an unreasoned anger, it began to
do justice to itself. It goes without saying that in such
circumstances the people are incapable of di erentiating
between the guilty and the innocent and, in any case, what has
happened to us—it has rejected all the fault on the Jews. Of
these, few guilty have su ered, for they have been clever
enough to escape abroad; it is the innocent who have massively
paid for them.”[1317] (Cadet leader F. Rodichev, for his part,
had the following formula: “Anti‐Semitism is the patriotism of
disoriented people”—let us say: where there are Jews.)
The tsar had been too weak to defend his power by the law,
and the government proved its pusillanimity; then the petty
bourgeois, the petty traders and even the workers, those of the
railways, the factories, the very people who had organised the
general strike, revolted, stood up in a spontaneous way to
defend their most sacred values, wounded by the contortions
of those who denigrated them. Uncontrollable, abandoned,
desperate, this mass gave free rein to its rage in the barbaric
violence of the pogroms.
And in the case of a contemporary Jewish writer who is also
lacking in sagacity when he persists in asserting that
“undoubtedly, tsarist power played a major role in the
organisation of anti‐Jewish pogroms”, we nd in a nearby
paragraph: “We are absolutely convinced that the Police
Department was not su ciently organised to implement
simultaneous pogroms in six hundred and sixty di erent
places that same week.” The responsibility for these pogroms
“is not solely and not so much for the administration, but
rather for the Russian and Ukrainian population in the Pale of
Settlement.”[1318]
On the latter point, I agree as well. But subject to a
reservation, and it is of size: the Jewish youth of this time also
carries a heavy share of responsibility in what happened. Here
manifested itself a tragic characteristic of the Russian‐
Ukrainian character (without attempting to distinguish which
of the Russians or Ukrainians participated in the pogroms):
under the in uence of anger, we yield blindly to the need to
“blow o some steam” without distinguishing between good
and bad; after which, we are not able to take the time—
patiently, methodically, for years, if necessary—to repair the
damage. The spiritual weakness of our two peoples is revealed
in this sudden outburst of vindictive brutality after a long
somnolence.
We nd the same impotence on the side of the patriots, who
hesitate between indi erence and semi‐approval, unable to
make their voice heard clearly and rmly, to guide opinion, to
rely on cultural organisations. (Let us note in passing that at
the famous meeting at Witte’s, there were also representatives
of the press of the right, but they did not say a word, they even
acquiesced sometimes to Propper’s impertinences.)
Another secular sin of the Russian Empire tragically had its
e ects felt during this period: the Orthodox Church had long
since been crushed by the State, deprived of all in uence over
society, and had no ascendancy over the popular masses (an
authority which it had disposed of in ancient Russia and
during the time of the Troubles, and which would soon be
lacking very much during the civil war!). The highest hierarchs
were able to exhort the good Christian people, for months and
years, and yet they could not even prevent the crowd from
sporting cruci xes and icons at the head of the pogroms.
It was also said that the pogroms of October 1905 had been
organised by The Union of the Russian People. This is not true:
it did not appear until November 1905, in instinctive reaction
to the humiliation felt by the people. Its programme at the time
had indeed global anti‐Jewish orientations: “The destructive,
anti‐governmental action of the Jewish masses, solidarity in
their hatred for everything Russian and indi erent to the
means to be used.”[1319]
In December, its militants called on the Semienovski
regiment to crush the armed insurrection in Moscow. Yet the
Union of the Russian People, which was ultimately made
legendary by rumours and fears, was in reality only a shabby
little party lacking in means whose only raison d’être was to
lend its support to the autocratic monarch, which, early as the
spring of 1906, had become a constitutional monarch. As for
the government, it felt embarrassed to have support for such a
party. So that the latter, strong of its two or three thousand
local soviets composed of illiterates and incompetents, found
itself in opposition to the government of the constitutional
monarchy, and especially to Stolypin.—From the tribune of the
Duma, Purishkevich[1320] interrogated in these terms the
deputies, “since the appearance of the monarchist
organisations, have you seen many pogroms in the Pale of
Settlement?… Not one, because the monarchists organisations
struggled and struggled against Jewish predominance by
economic measures, cultural measures, and not by
punches.”[1321]—These measures were they so cultural, one
might ask, but no pogrom is actually known to have been
caused by the Union of the Russian People, and those which
preceded were indeed the result of a spontaneous popular
explosion.
A few years later, the Union of the Russian People—which,
from the start, was merely a masquerade—disappeared in the
mist of general indi erence. (One can judge of the vagueness
that surrounded this party by the astonishing characteristic
that is given in the Jewish Encyclopædia: the anti‐Semitism of
the Union of the Russian People “is very characteristic of
nobility and great capital”![1322])
There is another mark of infamy, all the more indelible as its
outlines are vague: “the Black Hundreds.”
Where does that name come from? Di cult to say:
according to some, this is how the Poles would have designated
out of spite the Russian monks who resisted victoriously the
assault of the Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius in 1608‒1609.
Through obscure historical channels, it reached the twentieth
century and was then used as a very convenient label to
stigmatise the popular patriotic movement that had
spontaneously formed. It was precisely its character, both
imprecise and insulting, that made it a success. (Thus, for
example, the four KDs who became emboldened to the point of
entering into negotiations with Stolypin were denounced as
“KD‐Black‐Hundreds”. In 1909, the Milestones Collection was
accused of “propagating in a masked form the ideology of the
Black Hundreds.”) And the “expression” became commonplace
for a century, although the Slavic populations, totally
dismayed and discouraged, were never counted by hundreds
but by millions.
In 1908‒1912, the Jewish Encyclopædia published in Russia,
in its honour, did not interfere in giving a de nition of the
“Black Hundreds”: the Jewish intellectual elite of Russia had in
its ranks su cient minds that were balanced, penetrating, and
sensible. But during the same period before the First World
War, the Brockhaus‐Efron Encyclopædia proposed a de nition in
one of its supplements: “The ‘Black Hundreds’ has been for a
few years the common name given to the dregs of society
focused on pogroms against Jews and intellectuals.” Further,
the article broadens the statement: “This phenomenon is not
speci cally Russian; it appeared on the stage of history… in
di erent countries and at di erent times.”[1323] And it is true
that, in the press after the February revolution, I found the
expression “the Swedish Black Hundreds!”…
A wise contemporary Jewish author rightly points out that
“the phenomenon which has been designated by the term
‘Black Hundreds’ has not been su ciently studied.”[1324]
But this kind of scruple is totally foreign to the famous
Encyclopædia Britannica whose authority extends to the entire
planet: “The Black Hundreds or Union of the Russian People or
organisation of reactionary and anti‐Semitic groups in Russia,
constituted during the revolution of 1905. Uno cially
encouraged by authorities, the Black Hundreds recruited their
troops for the most part from the landowners, the rich
peasants, the bureaucrats, the police, and the clergy; they
supported the Orthodox Church, autocracy and Russian
nationalism. Particularly active between 1906 and
1911…”[1325]
One remains stunned before so much science! And this is
what is being read to all cultivated humanity: “recruited their
troops for the most part from the landowners, the rich
peasants, the bureaucrats, the police, and the clergy!” It was
thus those people who smashed the windows of the Jewish
shops with their sticks! And they were “particularly active”
after 1905… when the calm had returned!
True, in 1905‒1907 there were actions against landowners,
there were even more pogroms against the Jews. It was always
the same ignorant and brutal crowd that ransacked and looted
houses and property, massacring people (including children),
and even cattle; but these massacres never led to
condemnation on the part of the progressive intelligentsia,
while the deputy in the Duma Herzenstein, in a speech in
which he took with passion and reason the defence of small
peasant farms, alerting parliamentarians of the danger of an
extension of the res of rural estates, exclaimed: “The
illuminations of the month of May last year are not enough for
you, when in the region of Saratov one hundred and fty
properties were destroyed practically in a single day?”[1326]
These illuminations were never forgiven. It was, of course, a
blunder on his part, from which it should not be inferred that
he was glad of such a situation. Would he have used this word,
however, about the pogroms against the Jews of the preceding
autumn?
It was not until the Great, the real revolution, that the
violence against the noble landlords was heard, they “were no
less barbaric and unacceptable than the pogroms against the
Jews… There is, however, in the left‐wing circles a tendency to
consider… as positive the destruction of the old political and
social system.”[1327]
Yes, there was another frightening similarity between these
two forms of pogroms: the sanguinary crowd had the feeling of
being in its right.
    
The last pogroms against the Jews took place in 1906 in Sedlets,
in Poland—which is beyond our scope—and in Bialystok during
the summer. (Soon after, the police sti ed a pogrom in
preparation in Odessa after the dissolution of the rst Duma.)
In Bialystok was constituted the most powerful of the
anarchist groups in Russia. Here, “important bands of
anarchists had made their appearance; they perpetrated
terrorist acts against owners, police o cers, Cossacks, military
personnel.”[1328] The memories left by some of them make it
possible to represent the atmosphere of the city very clearly in
1905‒1906: repeated attacks by the anarchists who had settled
in the Street de Souraje, where the police did not dare go any
more. “It was very common for policemen on duty to be
assassinated in broad daylight; This is why we saw fewer and
fewer of them…” Here is the anarchist Nissel Farber: “he threw
a bomb at the police station,” wounding two peacekeepers, a
secretary, killing “two bourgeois who were there by chance,”
and, lack of luck, perished himself in the explosion. Here is
Guelinker (a.k.a. Aron Eline): he also launched a bomb, which
seriously wounded the deputy of the chief of police, a
commissioner, two inspectors and three agents. Here is
another anarchist whose bomb “wounds an o cer and three
soldiers,” hurts him as well, in fact, “and, unfortunately, kills a
militant of the Bund.” Here again it is a commissioner and a
peacekeeper who are killed, there are two gendarmes, and
again the same “Guelinker kills a concierge.” (Apart from the
attacks, the “expropriation of consumer products” was also
practised—food had to be eaten.) “The authorities lived in fear
of an ‘uprising’ of the anarchists in the Street de Souraje,” the
police had taken the habit of “expecting such an uprising for
today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.” “The majority…
of the anarchists… were leaning towards a resolute armed
action in order to maintain, as much as possible, an
atmosphere of class war.”
To this end, terror was also extended to the Jewish
“bourgeois”. The same Farber attacked the head of a workshop, a
certain Kagan, “at the exit of the synagogue… he wounded him
seriously with a knife in the neck”; another little patron,
Lifchitz, su ered the same fate; also “the wealthy Weinreich
was attacked in the synagogue,” but the revolver was of poor
quality and jammed three times.” There was a demand for a
series of “signi cant ‘gratuitous’ actions against the bourgeois:
“the bourgeois must feel himself in danger of death at every
moment of his existence.” There was even the idea of
“disposing all along [the main street of Bialystok] infernal
machines to blow up the entire upper class” at once. But “how
to transmit the anarchist ‘message’?” Two currents emerged in
Bialystok: the “gratuitous” terrorists and the “communards”
who considered terrorism to be a “dull” and mediocre method,
but tended towards the armed insurrection “in the name of
communism without State”: “To invest in the city, to arm the
masses, to resist several attacks by the army and then to drive
them out of the city,” and, “at the same time, to invest in plants,
factories and shops.” It was in these terms that, “during
meetings of fteen to twenty thousand people, our speakers
called for an armed uprising.” Alas, “the working masses of
Bialystok having withdrawn from the revolutionary vanguard
that they themselves had suckled from,” it was imperative to
“overcome… the passivity of the masses.” The anarchists of
Bialystok thus prepared an insurrection in 1906. Its course and
its consequences are known as the “pogrom of Bialystok”.
[1329]
 It all began with the assassination of the chief of police,
which took place precisely in this “Street de Souraje where the
Jewish anarchist organisation was concentrated”; then
someone shot or threw a bomb on a religious procession. After
that, a commission of inquiry was dispatched by the State
Duma, but alas, alas, three times alas, it failed to determine
“whether it was a shot or some sort of whistling: witnesses
were unable to say.”[1330] This, the communist Dimanstein
wrote very clearly, twenty years later, that “a recracker was
thrown at an Orthodox procession as a provocation.”[1331]
Nor can one exclude the participation of the Bund who,
during the “best” months of the 1905 revolution, had burned
with a desire to move to armed action, but in vain, and was
withering away to the point of having to consider renewing
allegiance to the Social democrats. But it is of course the
anarchists of Bialystok themselves who manifested themselves
with the most brilliance. Their leader, Judas Grossman‐
Rochinin, recounted after 1917 what this nest of anarchists
was: above all, they were afraid of “yielding to a wait‐and‐see
approach and to common sense”. Having failed in organising
two or three strikes because of the lack of support from the
population, they decided in June 1906 to “take charge of the
city” and expropriate the tools of production. “We considered
that there was no reason to withdraw from Bialystok without
having given a last class struggle, that it would have come
down to capitulating in front of a complex problem of a
superior type”; if “we do not move to the ultimate stage of the
struggle, the masses will lose con dence [in us].” However,
men and weapons were lacking to take the city, and Grossman
ran to Warsaw to seek help from the armed fraction of the PPS
(the Polish Socialists). And there he heard a newsagent
shouting: “Bloody pogrom in Bialystok!… thousands of
victims!”… Everything became clear: the reaction had preceded
us!”[1332]
And it is there, in the passage “to the ultimate stage of the
struggle”, that is doubtlessly found the explanation for the
“pogrom”. The revolutionary impetus of the Bialystok
anarchists was expressed subsequently. At the trial, in the
pleadings of the lawyer Gillerson who “called for the overthrow
of the government and the political and social system existing
in Russia”, and which, for precisely this reason, was himself
prosecuted. As for the Duma commission, it considered that
“the conditions of a pogrom had also been created by various
elements of society who imagined that ghting the Jews was
tantamount to ghting the liberation movement.”[1333]
But after that “ recracker thrown by the provocation” which
the Duma Committee had not been able to detect, what had
been the course of events? According to the commission’s
ndings, “the systematic execution of innocent Jews, including
women and children, was carried out under the pretext of
repressing the revolutionaries.” There were “more than seventy
dead and about eighty wounded” among the Jews. Conversely,
“the indictment tended to explain the pogrom by the
revolutionary activity of the Jews, which had provoked the
anger of the rest of the population.” The Duma Committee
rejected this version of the facts: “There was no racial,
religious, or economic antagonism in Bialystok between Jews
and Christians.”[1334]
And here is what is written today: “This time the pogrom
was purely military. The soldiers were transformed into
rioters,” and chased the revolutionaries. At the same time,
these soldiers were said to be afraid of the detachments of
Jewish anarchists in the Street de Souraje, because “the war in
Japan… had taught [Russian soldiers] to beware of gunshots”—
such were the words pronounced in the Municipal Duma by a
Jewish councillor.[1335] Against the Jewish detachments of
self‐defence are given the infantry and the cavalry, but, on the
other side, there are bombs and rearms.
In this period of strong social unrest, the Duma committee
concluded to a “stra ng of the population”, but twenty years
later, we can read in a Soviet book (in any case, the “old regime”
will not come back, will not be able to justify itself, and so we
can go ahead!): “They massacred entire families with the use of
nails, they pierced their eyes, cut tongues, smashed the skulls
of children, etc.”[1336] And a luxury book edited abroad,
sensationalist book, denunciatory, a richly illustrated folio,
printed on coated paper, entitled The Last Autocrat (decreeing
in advance that Nicholas II would indeed be the “last”),
proposed the following version: the pogrom “had been the
object of such a staging that it seemed possible to describe the
program of the rst day in the Berlin newspapers; thus, two
hours before the beginning of the Bialystok pogrom, the
Berliners could be informed of the event.”[1337] (But if
something appeared in the Berlin press, was it not merely an
echo of Grossman‐Rochin’s shenanigans?)
Moreover, it would have been rather absurd on the part of
the Russian government to provoke pogroms against the Jews
even as the Russian ministers were lobbying among Western
nanciers in the hope of obtaining loans. Let us remember that
Witte had great di culty in obtaining from the Rothschilds,
who were ill‐disposed towards Russia because of the situation
of the Jews and the pogroms, “as well as other important
Jewish establishments,”[1338] with the exception of the
Berliner banker Mendelssohn. As early as December 1905, the
Russian ambassador to London, Benkendorf, warned his
minister: “The Rothschilds are repeating everywhere… That
Russia’s credit is now at its lowest level, but that it will be
restored immediately if the Jewish question is settled.”[1339]
 At the beginning of 1906, Witte disseminated a government
communiqué saying that “ nding a radical solution to the
Jewish problem is a matter of conscience for the Russian
people, and this will be done by the Duma, but even before the
Duma unites itself, the most stringent provisions will be
repealed insofar as they are no longer justi ed in the present
situation.”[1340] He begged the most eminent representatives
of the Jewish community of Saint Petersburg to go as a
delegation to the tsar, and he promised them the most kind
welcome. This proposal was discussed at the Congress of the
Union for the Integrality of Rights—and after the ery speech
of I. B. Bak (editor of the Retch newspaper) it was decided to
reject it and to send a less important delegation to Witte, not to
provide answers, but to make accusations: to tell him “clearly
and unambiguously” that the wave of pogroms was organised
“at the initiative and with the support of the
government.”[1341]
After two years of revolutionary earthquake, the leaders of
the Jewish community in Russia who had taken the upper hand
did not for a moment contemplate accepting a progressive
settlement regarding the question of equal rights. They felt
that they were carried by the wave of victory and had no need
to go to the tsar in the position of beggars and loyal subjects.
They were proud of the audacity displayed by the Jewish
revolutionary youth. (One must position oneself in the context
of the time when the old imperial army was believed to be
immovable, to perceive the signi cance of the episode during
which, in front of the regiment of Rostov grenadiers standing
at attention, his commander, Colonel Simanski, had been
arrested by a volunteer Jew!) After all, perhaps these
revolutionaries had not been guilty of “national treason,” as
Doubnov had accused them, perhaps they were the ones who
were in the truth?—After 1905, only the fortunate and prudent
Jews were left to doubt it.
What was the record of the year 1905 for the entire Jewish
community in Russia? On the one hand, “the revolution of
1905 had overall positive results… it brought to the Jews
political equality even when they did not even enjoy civil
equality… Never as after the “Liberation Movement” did the
Jewish question bene t from a more favourable climate in
public opinion.”[1342] But, on the other hand, the strong
participation of the Jews in the revolution contributed to the
fact that they were henceforth all identi ed with it. At the
tribune of the Duma in 1907 V. Choulgin proposed to vote a
resolution to nd that “… the western half of Russia, from
Bessarabia to Warsaw, is full of hatred towards the Jews whom
they consider the responsible for all their
misfortunes…”[1343]
This is indirectly con rmed by the increase in Jewish
emigration from Russia. If, in 1904‒1905, there was still an
increase in emigration among mature men, the whole age
pyramid is concerned from 1906 onwards. The phenomenon is
therefore not due to the pogroms of 1881‒1882, but indeed
those of 1905‒1906. From now on, for the United States alone,
the number of immigrants rose to 125,000 people in 1905‒
1906 and to 115,000 in 1906‒1907.[1344]
But at the same time, writes B. I. Goldman, “in the short
years of agitation, higher education institutions did not
rigorously apply the numerus clausus to the Jews, a relatively
large number of Jewish professional executives, and as they
were more skilful than the Russians in placing themselves on
the market, without always being distinguished by a great
moral rigour in their activity, some began to speak of a “hold of
the Jews” on the intellectual professions.[1345] And “in the
‘Project for Universities’ prepared in 1906 by the Ministry of
Public Instruction, no mention was made to the numerus
clausus.” In 1905 there were 2,247 (9.2%) Jewish students in
Russia; in 1906, 3,702 (11.6%); In 1907, 4,266 (12%).[1346]
In the program of reforms announced on August 25th, 1906
by the Government, the latter undertook to re‐examine, among
the limitations to which the Jews were subjected, those which
could be immediately lifted “insofar as they merely provoke
dissatisfaction and are obviously obsolete.”
However, at the same time, the Russian government could
no longer be a ected by the revolution (which was prolonged
for another two years by a wave of terrorism hardly contained
by Stolypin) and by the very visible participation of the Jews in
this revolution.
To these subjects of discontent was added the humiliating
defeat against Japan, and the ruling circles of Saint Petersburg
yielded to the temptation of a simplistic explanation: Russia is
fundamentally sound, and the whole revolution, from
beginning to end, is a dark plot hatched by the Jews, an episode
of the Judeo‐Masonic plot. Explain everything by one and the
same cause: the Jews! Russia would long have been at the zenith
of glory and universal power if there were no Jews!
And, clinging to this short but convenient explanation, the
high spheres only brought the hour of their fall even closer.
The superstitious belief in the historical force of
conspiracies (even if they exist, individual or collective) leaves
completely aside the main cause of failures su ered by
individuals as well as by states: human weaknesses.
It is our Russian weaknesses that have determined the
course of our sad history—the absurdity of the religious
schism caused by Nikon[1347], the senseless violence of Peter
the Great and the incredible series of counter‐shocks that
ensued, wasting our strength for causes that are not ours, the
inveterate su ciency of the nobility and bureaucratic
petri cation throughout the nineteenth century. It is not by
the e ect of a plot hatched from the outside that we have
abandoned our peasants to their misery. It was not a plot that
led the great and cruel Petersburg to sti e the sweet Ukrainian
culture. It was not because of a conspiracy that four ministries
were unable to agree on the assignment of a particular case to
one or the other of them, they spent years in exhausting
squabbles mobilising all levels of the hierarchy. It is not the
result of a plot if our emperors, one after the other, have proved
incapable of understanding the evolution of the world and
de ning the true priorities. If we had preserved the purity and
strength, which were formerly infused into us by Saint Sergius
of Radonezh, we should not fear any plot in the world.
No, it can not be said in any case that it was the Jews who
“organised” the revolutions of 1905 or 1917, just as one cannot
say that it was this nation as a whole that fomented them. In
the same way, it was not the Russians or the Ukrainians, taken
together as nations, who organised the pogroms.
It would be easy for us all to take a retrospective look at this
revolution and condemn our “renegades.” Some were “non‐
Jewish Jews,”[1348] others were “internationalists, not
Russians.” But every nation must answer for its members in
that it has helped to train them.
On the side of the Jewish revolutionary youth (but also of
those who had formed it) as well as those of the Jews who
“constituted an important revolutionary force,”[1349] it seems
that the wise advice Jeremiah addressed to the Jews deported to
Babylon was forgotten: “Seek peace for the city where I have
deported you; pray to Yahweh in its favour, for its peace
depends on yours.” (Jeremiah 29‒7.)
While the Jews of Russia, who rallied the revolution, only
dreamed of bringing down this same city without thinking of
the consequences.
    
In the long and chaotic human history, the role played by the
Jewish people—few but energetic—is undeniable and
considerable. This also applies to the history of Russia. But for
all of us, this role remains a historical enigma.
For the Jews as well.
This strange mission brought them everything but
happiness.
 Chapter 10. The Period of the Duma

The Manifesto of 17 October marked the beginning of a

qualitatively new period in Russian history, which was later
consolidated by a year of Stolypin’s government: the period of
the Duma or of limited Autocracy, during which the previous
principles of government—the absolute power of the tsar, the
opacity of the ministries, the immutability of the hierarchy—
were rapidly and sensibly restricted. This period was very
di cult for all the higher spheres, and only men with a solid
character and an active temperament could enrol with dignity
in the new era. But public opinion also found it di cult to get
accustomed to the new electoral practices, to the publicity of
the debates in the Duma (and even more to the responsibility of
the latter); and, in its left wing, the enraged Leninists as well as
the enraged of the Bund simply boycotted the elections to the
rst Duma: we have nothing to do with your parliaments, we
will achieve our ends by bombs, blood, convulsions! And so
“the attitude of the Bund towards the Jewish deputies of the
Duma was violently hostile.”[1350]
But the Jews of Russia, led by the Union for the integrality of
rights, were not mistaken and, expressing their sympathy for
the new institution, “participated very actively in the elections,
voting most often for the representatives of the [Cadet] party
who had placed the equality of rights for the Jews on its
agenda.” Some revolutionaries who had regained their spirits
shared the same dispositions. Thus Isaac Gurvitch, who had
emigrated in 1889—an active supporter of the Marxist left, was
the co‐founder of the American Social‐Democratic Party—,
returned to Russia in 1905, where he was elected to the Duma
Electoral College.[1351]—There were no limitations on the
Jews in the elections, and twelve of them sat in the rst Duma;
it was true that most of them came from the Pale of Settlement,
while the Jewish leaders of the capital, who did not have the
property quali cations, could not be elected: only Winaver, L.
Bramson[1352], and the converted Jew M. Herzenstein (to
whom Prince P. Dolgorukov had given his place).
As the number of Jews in the Duma was signi cant, the
Zionist deputies proposed forming an “independent Jewish
group” abiding by “the discipline of a real political party”, but
the non‐Zionist deputies rejected this idea, contenting itself “to
meet from time to time to discuss matters of direct concern to
Jewish interests,”[1353] agreeing however, to comply already to
“a genuine discipline in the sense of strictly abiding by the
decisions of a college composed of members of the Duma and
those of the Committee for the integrality of rights”[1354] (the
“Political Bureau”).
At the same time a solid alliance was formed between the
Jews and the Cadet party. “It was not uncommon for the local
chapters of the Union [for the integrality of rights] and the
constitutional‐democratic party to be composed of the same
people.”[1355] (Some teased Winaver by calling him the
“Mosaic Cadet”.) “In the Pale of Settlement, the overwhelming
majority of the [Cadet] party members were Jews; in the
interior provinces, they represented in number the second
nationality… As Witte wrote, ‘almost all Jews who graduated
from higher education joined the party of People’s Freedom
[that is, The Cadets]… which promised them immediate access
to equal rights.’ This party owes much of its in uence on the
Jews who provided it with both intellectual and material
support.”[1356] The Jews “introduced coherence and rigour…
into the Russian ‘Liberation Movement’ of 1905.”[1357]
However, A. Tyrkova, an important gure in the Cadet party,
notes in his memoirs that “the chief founders and leaders of
the Cadet party were not Jews. There were not, among the
latter, any personality su ciently prominent to drive the
Russian liberals behind it, as the Jew Disraeli had done for the
English Conservatives in the middle of the nineteenth
century… The people that mattered most within the Cadet
party were Russians. This does not mean that I deny the
in uence of these Jews who have joined our masses. They could
not fail to act upon us, if only by their inexhaustible energy.
Their very presence, their activity, did not allow us to forget
them, to forget their situation, to forget that they had to be
helped.” And, further on: “Re ecting on all these networks of
in uence of the Jews [within the Cadet party], one cannot
overlook the case of Miliukov. From the beginning, he became
their favourite, surrounded by a circle of admirers, more
precisely feminine admirers… who cradled him in muted
melodies, cajoled him, covered him without restraint of praise
so excessive that they were comical.”[1358]
V. A. Obolensky, also a member of the party, describes a
Cadet club during the time of the First Duma at the corner of
Sergevskaya and Potmekinskaya streets. The elite of the
secularised Jewish society and the elite of the Russian
politicised intelligentsia were mingled: “There were always a
lot of people, and the public, composed mostly of wealthy
Jewish Petersburgers, was very elegant: the ladies wore silk
robes, shiny brooches and rings, the gentlemen had the airs of
well‐nourished and self‐satis ed bourgeois. Despite our
democratic convictions, we were somewhat shocked by the
atmosphere that prevailed in this ‘Cadet club’. One can imagine
the embarrassment experienced by the peasants who came to
attend the meetings of our parliamentary group. A ‘party of
gentlemen’, that is what they said to each other when they
ceased to attend our meetings.”[1359]
 At the local level, cooperation between the Union for the
integrality of rights and the Cadet Party was manifested not
only in the presence of “as many Jewish candidates as possible”,
but also in the fact that “the local factions of the Union [for the
integrality of rights] was instructed to support [non‐Jews] who
promised to contribute to the emancipation of the Jews.”[1360]
As explained in 1907 the cadet newspaper Retch, in reply to
questions repeatedly asked by other newspapers: “Retch has, in
its time, formulated very precisely the conditions of the
agreement with the Jewish group… The latter has the right to
challenge the electoral college and to oppose nominations to
the Duma.”[1361]
During the parliamentary debates, the Duma, following the
logic of the Imperial Manifesto, raised the question of equal
rights for Jews within the general framework of granting the
same rights to all citizens. “The State Duma has promised to
prepare a ‘law on the full equalisation of the rights of all
citizens and the abrogation of any limitations or privileges
associated with membership to a social class, nationality,
religion or sex’.”[1362] After adopting the main guidelines of
this law, the Duma lost itself in debates for another month,
multiplying “thunderous declarations followed by no
e ect”[1363], to be ultimately dissolved. And the law on civil
equality, especially for the Jews, remained pending.
Like most Cadets, the Jewish deputies of the First Duma
signed Vyborg’s appeal, which meant that it was now
impossible for them to stand for elections; Winaver’s career
particularly su ered from it. (In the First Duma, he had made
violent remarks, although he would later advise the Jews not to
put themselves too much in the spotlight to prevent a
recurrence of what had happened in the revolution of 1905.)
“The participation of the Jews in the elections of the second
Duma was even more marked than during the rst election
campaign… The Jewish populations of the Pale of Settlement
showed the strongest interest in this election. The political
debate reached all levels of society.” Nevertheless, as the Jewish
Encyclopædia published before the Revolution indicates, there
was also an important anti‐Jewish propaganda carried out by
right‐wing monarchist circles, particularly active in the
western provinces; “the peasants were persuaded that all
progressive parties were ghting for the equal rights of the
Jews to the detriment of the interests of the ethnic
population”[1364]; that “behind the masquerade of the popular
representation, the country was governed by a Judeo‐Masonic
union of spoliators of the people and traitors to the
fatherland”; that the peasant should be alarmed at the
“unprecedented number of new masters unknown to the elders
of the village, and whom he henceforth had to nourish with his
labour”; that the Constitution “promised to replace the Tatar
yoke by that, injurious, of the international Kahal.” And a list of
the existing rights to be abrogated was drawn up: not only
were Jews not to be elected to the Duma, but they all had to be
relegated to the Pale of Settlement; prohibiting them from
selling wheat, grain and timber, working in banks or
commercial establishments; con scating their properties;
prohibiting them from changing their names; to serve as
publisher or editor of news organisation; to reduce the Pale of
Settlement itself by excluding the fertile regions, to not grant
land to the Jews within the province of Yakutsk; in general, to
regard them as foreigners, to substitute for them military
service by a tax, etc. “The result of this anti‐Semitic
propaganda, spread both orally and in writing, was the collapse
of progressive candidates in the second Duma throughout the
Pale of Settlement.”[1365] There were only four Jewish
deputies in the second Duma (including three Cadets).[1366]
 But even before these elections, the government addressed
the issue of equal rights for Jews. Six months after taking o ce
as Prime Minister in December 1906, Stolypin had the
government adopt a resolution (the so‐called “Journal of the
Council of Ministers”) on the continuation of the lifting of
restrictions imposed on Jews, and this in essential areas, thus
orienting itself towards integral equality. “They considered to
eliminate: the prohibition of Jews from residing in rural areas
within the Pale of Settlement; the prohibition of residing in
rural areas throughout the Empire for persons enjoying the
right of universal residence”; “the prohibition of including Jews
in the directory of joint stock companies holding land.”[1367]
But the Emperor replied in a letter dated 10 December:
“Despite the most convincing arguments in favour of adopting
these measures… an inner voice dictates with increasing
insistence not to take this decision upon myself.”[1368]
As if he did not understand—or rather forgot—that the
resolution proposed in the Journal was the direct and
inescapable consequence of the Manifesto he had signed
himself a year earlier…
Even in the most closed bureaucratic world, there are always
o cials with eyes and hands. And if the rumour of a decision
taken by the Council of Ministers had already spread to the
public opinion? And here we are: we will know that the
ministers want to emancipate the Jews while the sovereign, he,
stood in its way…
On the same day, 10 December, Stolypin hastened to write to
the Emperor a letter full of anxiety, repeating all his arguments
one by one, and especially: “The dismissal of the Journal is for
the moment not known by anyone,” it is therefore still possible
to conceal the equivocations of the monarch. “Your Majesty, we
have no right to put you in this position and shelter ourselves
behind you.” Stolypin would have liked the advantages
accorded to the Jews to appear as a favour granted by the tsar.
But since this was not the case, he now proposed to adopt
another resolution: the Emperor made no objections on the
merits, but did not want the law to be promulgated over the
head of the Duma; it must be done by the Duma.
Secretary of State S. E. Kryjanovski said that the emperor
then adopted a resolution which went along in this direction:
that the representatives of the people take responsibility both
for raising this issue as well as resolving it. But, no one knows
why, this resolution received little publicity, and “on the side of
the Duma, absolutely nothing happened.”[1369]
Widely to the left, penetrated by progressive ideas and so
vehement towards the government, the second Duma was free!
Yet, in the second Duma, there was still less talk of the
deprivation of rights su ered by the Jews than in the
rst.”[1370] The law on equal rights for Jews was not even
discussed, so, what can be said about its adoption…
Why then did the second Duma not take advantage of the
opportunities o ered to it? Why did it not seize them? It had
three entire months to do it. And why did the debates, the
clashes, relate only to secondary, tangential issues? The
equality of the Jews—still partial, but already well advanced—
was abandoned. Why, indeed, why? As for the “Extra‐
Parliamentary Extraordinary Commission”, it did not even
discuss the plan to repeal the restrictions imposed on Jews, but
circumvented the problem by focusing on integral equality “as
quickly as possible.”[1371]
Di cult to explain this other than by a political calculation:
the aim being to ght the Autocracy, the interest was to raise
more and more the pressure on the Jewish question, and to
certainly not resolve it: ammunition was thus kept in reserve.
These brave knights of liberty reasoned in these terms: to avoid
that the lifting of restrictions imposed on the Jews would
diminish their ardour in battle. For these knights without fear
and without reproach, the most important, was indeed the
ght against the power.
All this was beginning to be seen and understood. Berdyaev,
for example, addressed the whole spectrum of Russian
radicalism with the following reproaches: “You are very
sensitive to the Jewish question, you are ghting for their
rights. But do you feel the ‘Jew’, do you feel the soul of the
Jewish people?… No, your ght in favour for the Jews does not
want to know the Jews.”[1372]
Then, in the third Duma, the Cadets no longer had the
majority; they “did not take any more initiatives on the Jewish
question, fearing that they would be defeated… This caused
great discontent among the Jewish masses, and the Jewish
press did not deprive itself of attacking the party of the People’s
Freedom.”[1373] Although “the Jews had participated in the
electoral campaign with the greatest ardour and the number of
Jewish voters exceeded that of the Christians in all the cities of
the Pale of Settlement,” they were beaten by the opposing
party, and in the third Duma there were only two Jewish
deputies: Nisselovitch and Friedman.[1374] (The latter
succeeded to remain up to the fourth Duma.)—Beginning in
1915, the Council of State included among its members a Jew,
G. E. Weinstein, of Odessa. (Just before the revolution, there
was also Solomon Samoylovich Krym, a Karaim.[1375])
As for the Octobrists[1376] whose party had become a
majority in the third Duma, on the one hand they ceded, not
without hesitation, to the pressure of public opinion which
demanded equal rights for the Jews, which led to the criticism
of Russian nationalist deputies: “We thought that the
Octobrists remained attached to the defence of national
interests”—and now, without warning, they had relegated to
the background both the question of “the granting of equal
rights to the Russians of Finland” (which meant that this
equality did not exist in this “Russian colony”…) and that of the
annexation by Russia of the Kholm region in Poland, with all
Russians that inhabit it—but “they have prepared a bill to
abolish the Pale of Settlement.”[1377] On the other hand, they
were attributed statements “of manifestly anti‐Semitic
character”: thus the third Duma, on the initiative of Guchkov,
issued in 1906 “the wish… that Jewish doctors not be admitted
to work in the army health services”[1378]; likewise, “it was
proposed to replace the military service of the Jews by a
tax.”[1379] (In the years preceding the war, the project of
dispensing the Jews from military service was still largely and
seriously debated; and I. V. Hessen published a book on this
subject entitled The War and the Jews.)
In short, neither the second, third, nor fourth Dumas took it
upon themselves to pass the law on the integral equality of
rights for the Jews. And every time it was necessary to ratify
the law on equality of rights for peasants (promulgated by
Stolypin as of 5 October 1906), it was blocked by the same
Dumas, under the pressure of the left, on the grounds that the
peasants could not be granted equal rights before they were
granted to the Jews (and the Poles)!
And thus the pressure exerted upon this execrated tsarist
government was not relieved, but doubled, quintupled. And
not only did this pressure exerted on the government not be
relieved, not only were these laws not voted upon by the Duma,
but it would last until the February Revolution.
While Stolypin, after his unfortunate attempt in December
1906, quietly took administrative measures to partially lift the
restrictions imposed on the Jews.
An editorialist from Novoie Vremia, Menshikov, condemned
this method: “Under Stolypin, the Pale of Settlement has
become a ction.”[1380] The Jews “are defeating the Russian
power by gradually withdrawing all its capacity to intervene…
The government behaves as if it were a Jew.”[1381]
Such is the fate of the middle way.
The general outcry of the parties of the left against a policy
of progressive measures, this tactical refusal for a smooth
evolution towards equal rights, was strongly supported by the
Russian press. Since the end of 1905, it was no longer subject to
prior censorship. But it was not only a press that had become
free, it was a press that considered itself a full‐ edged actor in
the political arena, a press, as we have seen, that could
formulate demands, such as that of withdrawing the police from
the streets of the city! Witte said it had lost its reason.
In the case of the Duma, the way in which Russia, even in its
most remote provinces, was informed of what was going on
there and what was said there, depended entirely on
journalists. The shorthand accounts of the debates appeared
late and with very low circulation, so there was no other source
of information than the daily press, and it was based on what
they read that the people formed an opinion. However, the
newspapers systematically distorted the debates in the Duma,
largely opening their columns to the deputies of the left and
showering them with praise, while to the deputies of the right
they allowed only a bare minimum.
A. Tyrkova says that in the second Duma, “the accredited
journalists formed their own press o ce,” which “depended on
the distribution of places” among the correspondents. The
members of this o ce “refused to give his card of
accreditation” to the correspondent of the Journal the Kolokol
(favourite newspaper of the priests of the countryside).
Tyrkova intervened, noting that “these readers should not be
deprived of the possibility of being informed about the debates
in the Duma by a newspaper in which they had more
con dence than those of the opposition”; but “my colleagues,
among whom the Jews were the most numerous…, got carried
away, began shouting, explaining that no one was reading the
Kolokol, that that newspaper was of no use.”[1382]
For the Russian nationalist circles, responsibility for this
conduct of the press was simply and solely the responsibility of
the Jews. They wanted to prove that almost all journalists
accredited to the Duma were Jews. And they published
“whistle‐blowing” lists listing the names of these
correspondents. More revealing is this comical episode of
parliamentary life: one day, answering to the attacks of which
he was the object, Purishkevich pointed, in the middle of his
speech, the box of the press, located near the tribune and
delimited by a circular barrier, and said: “But see this Pale of
Settlement of the Jews!”—Everyone turned involuntarily to the
representatives of the press, and it was a general burst of
laughter that even the Left could not repress. This “Pale of
Settlement of the Duma” became an adopted wording.
Among the prominent Jewish publishers, we have already
spoken of S. M. Propper, owner of the Stock Exchange News and
unfailing sympathiser of the “revolutionary democracy”.
Sliosberg evokes more warmly the one who founded and
funded to a large extent the cadet newspaper Retch, I. B. Bak: “A
very obliging man, very cultured, with a radically liberal
orientation.” It was his passionate intervention at the Congress
of the Jewish mutual aid committees at the beginning of 1906
that prevented a conciliation with the tsar. “There was no
Jewish organisation devoted to cultural action or bene cence,
of which I. Bak was not a member”; he was particularly
distinguished by his work in the Jewish Committee for
Liberation.[1383] As for the Retch newspaper and its editor‐in‐
chief I. V. Hessen, they were far from limiting themselves to
Jewish questions alone, and their orientation was more
generally liberal (Hessen subsequently proved it in emigration
with the Roul and the Archives of the Russian Revolution). The
very serious Russkie Vedomosti published Jewish authors of
various tendencies, both V. Jabotinsky and the future inventor
of war communism, Lourie‐Larine. S. Melgounov noted that
the publication in this body of articles favorable to the Jews
was explained “not only by the desire to defend the oppressed,
but also by the composition of the newspaper’s managing
team.”[1384] “There were Jews even among the collaborators of
the Novoie Vremia of Suvorin”; the Jewish Encyclopædia quotes
the names of ve of them.[1385]
The newspaper Russkie Vedomosti was long dominated by the
gure of G. B. Iollos, called there by Guerzenstein who had been
working there since the 80s. Both were deputies to the First
Duma. Their lives su ered cruelly from the atmosphere of
violence engendered by political assassinations—these being
the very essence of the revolution—a “rehearsal” of 1905‐06.
According to the Israeli Jewish Encyclopædia, the responsibility
for their assassination would rest with the Union of the
Russian People.[1386] For the Russian Jewish Encyclopædia, if
the latter bore responsibility for the assassination of
Guerzenstein (1906), Iollos, him, was killed (1907) by “Black
Hundreds Terrorists.”[1387]
Jewish publishers and journalists did not restrict their
activities to the capital or to highly intellectual publications,
but they also intervened in the popular press, such as the
Kopeika, a favourite reading of the concierges—a quarter of a
million copies in circulation, it “played a major role in the ght
against anti‐Semitic denigration campaigns.” (It had been
created and was led by M. B. Gorodetski.[1388]) The very
in uential Kievskaya Mysl (to the left of the Cadets) had as
editor‐in‐chief Iona Kugel (they were four brothers, all
journalists), and D. Zaslavski, a wicked rascal, and, what seems
to us very moving, Leo Trotsky! The biggest newspaper of
Saratov was edited by Averbakh‐senior (brother‐in‐law of
Sverdlov). In Odessa appeared for some time the Novorossiysky
Telegraf, with strong right‐wing convictions, but measures of
economic su ocation were taken against it—successfully.
The Russian press also had “migrant” stars. Thus L. I.
Goldstein, an inspired journalist who wrote in the most diverse
newspapers for thirty‐ ve years, including the Syn Otetchestva,
and it was also he who founded and directed the Rossia, a
clearly patriotic newspaper. The latter was closed because of a
particularly virulent chronicle directed against the Imperial
family: “These Obmanovy gentlemen”. The press was to
celebrate Goldstein’s jubilee in the spring of 1917.[1389]—As
well as the discreet Garvei‐Altus, who had a moment of glory
for his chronicle “The Leap of the Passionate Panther”, in which
he poured a torrent of calumnies on the Minister of the
Interior, N. A. Maklakov. (But all this was nothing compared to
the unheard‐of insolence of the “humouristic lea ets” of the
years 1905‐1907 which covered in muck, in unimaginable
terms, all the spheres of power and of the State. The chameleon
Zinovi Grjebine: in 1905 he published a satirical lea et, the
Joupel; in 1914‐1915 he directed the right-minded Otetchestvo,
and in 1920 he set up a Russian publishing house in Berlin in
collaboration with the editions of the Soviet State.[1390])
But if the press re ected all sorts of currents of thought,
from liberalism to socialism, and, as far as the Jewish thematic
was concerned, from Zionism to Autonomism, it was a
position deemed incompatible with journalistic respectability:
which consisted in adopting a comprehensive attitude towards
power. In the 70s, Dostoyevsky had already noted on several
occasions that “the Russian press is out of control.” This was
even to be seen on the occasion of the meeting of 8 March 1881,
with Alexander III, newly enthroned emperor, and often
afterwards: the journalists acted as self‐proclaimed
representatives of society.
The following statement was attributed to Napoleon: “Three
opposition papers are more dangerous than one hundred
thousand enemy soldiers.” This sentence applies largely to the
Russo‐Japanese war. The Russian press was openly defeatist
throughout the con ict and in each of its battles. Even worse, it
did not conceal its sympathies for terrorism and revolution.
This press, totally out of control in 1905, was considered
during the period of the Duma, if we are to believe Witte, as
essentially “Jewish” or “semi‐Jewish”[1391]; or, to be more
precise, as a press dominated by left‐wing or radical Jews who
occupied key positions. In November 1905, D. I. Pikhno, editor‐
in‐chief for twenty‐ ve years of the Russian newspaper The
Kievian and a connoisseur of the press of his time, wrote: “The
Jews… have bet heavily on the card of the revolution… Those,
among the Russians, who think seriously, have understood
that in such moments, the press represents a force and that
this force is not in their hands, but in that of their adversaries;
that they speak on their behalf throughout Russia and have
forced people to read them because there is nothing else to
read; and as one cannot launch a publication in one day, [the
opinion] has been drowned beneath this mass of lies, incapable
of nding itself there.”[1392]
L. Tikhomirov did not see the national dimension of this
phenomenon, but he made in 1910 the following remarks
about the Russian press: “They play on the nerves… They
cannot stand contradiction… They do not want courtesy, fair
play… They have no ideal, they do not know what that is.” As
for the public formed by this press, it “wants aggressiveness,
brutality, it does not respect knowledge and lets itself be
deceived by ignorance.”[1393]
 At the other end of the political spectrum, here is the
judgement that the Bolshevik M. Lemke passed on the Russian
press: “In our day, ideas are not cheap and information is
sensational, self‐assured and authoritative ignorance lls the
columns of the newspapers.”
More speci cally, in the cultural sphere, Andrei Bely—who
was anything but a right‐wing man or “chauvinist”—wrote
these bitter lines in 1909: “Our national culture is dominated
by people who are foreign to it… See the names of those who
write in Russian newspapers and magazines, literary critics,
musical critics: they are practically nothing but Jews; there are
among them people who have talent and sensibility, and some,
few in number, understand our national culture perhaps better
than the Russians themselves; but they are the exception. The
mass of Jewish critics is totally foreign to Russian art, it
expresses itself in a jargon resembling Esperanto, and carries
on a reign of terror among those who try to deepen and enrich
the Russian language.”[1394]
At the same time, V. Jabotinsky, a perspicacious Zionist,
complained of “progressive newspapers nanced by Jewish
funds and stu ed with Jewish collaborators,” and warned:
“When the Jews rushed en masse into Russian politics, we
predicted that nothing good would come of it, neither for
Russian policy nor for the Jews.”[1395]
The Russian press played a decisive role in the assault of the
Cadets and the intelligentsia against the government before
the revolution; the deputy in the Duma A. I. Chingariov
expresses well the state of mind that reigned there: “This
government only has to sink! To a power like this we cannot
even throw the smallest bit of rope!” In this regard, it may be
recalled that the First Duma observed a minute of silence in
memory of the victims of the Bialystok pogrom (refusing to
admit, as we have seen, that it was an armed confrontation
between anarchists and the army); the second Duma also paid
tribute to Iollos, murdered by a terrorist; but when
Purishkevich o ered to observe a minute of silence in memory
of the o cers and soldiers who had died in the course of their
duty, he was removed from the sitting and the
parliamentarians were so manic that they thought it
unthinkable to pity those who ensured security in the country,
that elementary security which they all needed.
A. Koulicher drew up a fair assessment of this period, but too
late, in 1923, in emigration: “Before the revolution there were,
among the Jews of Russia, individuals and groups of
individuals, the activity could be characterised… precisely by
the lack of sense of responsibility in the face of the confusion
that reigned in the minds of the Jews… [through] the
propagation of a ‘revolutionary spirit’ as vague as it was
super cial… All their political action consisted in being more
to the left than the others. Con ned to the role of irresponsible
critics, never going to the end of things, they considered that
their mission consisted of always saying: ‘It is not enough!’…
These people were ‘democrats’… But there was also a particular
category of democrats—moreover, they referred to themselves
as the ‘Jewish Democratic Group’—who attached this adjective
to any substantive, inventing an unsustainable talmud of
democracy… With the only end to demonstrate that the others
were not yet su ciently democrats… They maintained an
atmosphere of irresponsibility around them, of contentless
maximalism, of insatiable demand. All of which had fatal
consequences when the revolution came.”[1396] The
destructive in uence of this press is undoubtedly one of the
weaknesses, of great vulnerability, of Russian public life in the
years 1914‐1917.
But what became of the “reptilian press”, the one that laid
down in front of the authorities, the press of the Russian
nationalists? The Russkoye Znamya of Dubrovin—it was said
that things fell from your hands so much he was rude and bad.
(Let us note, in passing, that it was forbidden to circulate it in
the army at the request of certain generals.) The Zemshchina
was hardly better—I do not know, I have not read any of these
papers. As for the Moskovskiye Vedomosti, out of breath, they no
longer had readers after 1905.
But where were the strong minds and sharp pens of the
conservatives, those who were concerned about the fate of the
Russians? Why were there no good newspapers to
counterbalance the devastating whirlwind?
It must be said that, in view of the agile thought and writing
of the liberal and radical press, so accountable for its
dynamism to its Jewish collaborators, the Russian nationalists
could only align slow, rather soft, spirits who were not at all
prepared to ght this kind of battle (but what is there to say
about this state of a airs today!). There were only a few literary
types exasperated by the left press, but totally devoid of talent.
Moreover, right‐wing publications were facing serious
nancial di culties. While the newspapers nanced by
“Jewish money”—as Jabotinsky used to say—o ered very good
wages, hence the profusion of wordsmiths; and, above all, all
these journals without exception were interesting. Finally, the
left‐wing press and the Duma demanded the closure of the
“subsidised newspapers”, that is to say, supported in secret and
rather weakly by the government.
State Secretary S. E. Kryjanovski acknowledged that the
government was providing nancial support to more than 30
newspapers in various parts of Russia, but without success,
both because the right lacked educated people, prepared for
journalistic activity, and because the power itself did not know
how to do it either. More gifted than others was I. I. Gourland, a
Jew of the Ministry of the Interior, a unique case—who, under
the pseudonym of “Vassiliev”, wrote pamphlets sent in sealed
envelopes to prominent public gures.
Thus the government had only one organ which merely
enumerated the news in a dry and bureaucratic tone, the
Pravitelstvenny Vestnik. But to create something strong,
brilliant, convincing, to openly go to the conquest of public
opinion even in Russia—let us not even talk about Europe!—
that, the imperial government either did not understand the
necessity of it, or was incapable of doing so, the enterprise
being beyond its means or intelligence.
The Novoie Vremia of Suvorin long maintained a pro‐
governmental orientation; it was a very lively, brilliant and
energetic newspaper (but, it must be said, equally changing—
sometimes favourable to the alliance with Germany,
sometimes violently hostile to it), and, alas, not always
knowing how to make the di erence between national revival
and attacks on the Jews. (Its founder, old Suvorin, sharing his
property among his three sons before dying, gave them as a
condition to never yielding any of their shares to Jews.) Witte
ranked Novoie Vremia among the newspapers which, in 1905,
“had an interest to be of the left…, then turned right to become
now ultra‐reactionaries. This very interesting and in uential
journal o ers a striking example of this orientation.” Although
very commercial, “it still counts among the best.”[1397] It
provided a great deal of information and was widely
disseminated—perhaps the most dynamic of the Russian
newspapers and, certainly, the most intelligent of the organs of
the right.
And the leaders of the right? And the deputies of the right in
the Duma?
Most often they acted without taking into account the real
relationship between their strengths and their weaknesses,
showing themselves both brutal and ine ective, seeing no
other means of “defending the integrity of the Russian State”
than calling for more bans on Jews. In 1911, the deputy
Balachov developed a programme that went against the
current and the times: reinforcing the Pale of Settlement,
removing Jews from publishing, justice, and the Russian
school. Deputy Zamyslovski protested that within the
universities, the Jews, the S.‐R.s, the Social Democrats enjoyed a
“secret sympathy”—as if one could overcome by decree a
“secret sympathy”—In 1913 the Congress of the Union of the
nobility demanded (as had already been done in 1908 under
the third Duma) that more Jews be taken into the army, but
that they be symmetrically excluded from public functions, the
territorial and municipal administration, and justice.
In the spring of 1911, Purishkevich, striving with others
against an already weakened Stolypin, proposed to the Duma
these extreme measures: “Formally forbid the Jews to take any
o cial duty in any administration… especially in the
periphery of the Empire… The Jews convicted of having tried to
occupy these functions will have to answer before
justice.”[1398]
Thus the right reproached Stolypin for making concessions
to the Jews.
When he had taken o ce in the spring of 1906, Stolypin had
had to consider the Manifesto of 17 October as a fait accompli,
even if it had to be slightly amended. That the Emperor had
hastily signed it without su cient re ection—it no longer
mattered, it had to be applied, the State had to be rebuilt in the
midst of di culties, in accordance with the Manifesto and in
spite of the hesitations of the tsar himself. And this implied
equal rights for the Jews.
Of course, the restrictions imposed on the Jews continued,
not only in Russia. In Poland, which was considered—as well as
Finland—to be oppressed, these limitations were even more
brutal. Jabotinsky writes: “The yoke that weighs heavily on
Jews in Finland is beyond measure even with what is known of
Russia or Romania… The rst Finnish man, if he surprises a
Jew out of a city, has the right to arrest the criminal and take
him to the police station. Most trades are forbidden to Jews.
Jewish marriages are subject to compulsory and humiliating
formalities… It is very di cult to obtain permission to build a
synagogue… The Jews are deprived of all political rights.”
Elsewhere in Austrian Galicia, “the Poles do not hide that they
see in the Jews only a material used to strengthen their
political power in this region… There have been cases where
high school students were excluded from their establishment
‘for cause of Zionism’, one hinders in a thousand and one ways
the functioning of Jewish schools, manifests hatred towards
their jargon (Yiddish), and the Jewish Socialist Party itself is
boycotted by the Polish Social‐Democrats.”[1399] Even in
Austria, although a country of Central Europe, hatred towards
the Jews was still alive, and many restrictions remained in
force, such as the Karlsbad baths: sometimes they were simply
closed to the Jews, sometimes they could only go there in the
summer, and the “winter Jews” could only access it under strict
control.[1400]
But the system of limitations in Russia itself fully justi ed
the grievances expressed in the Jewish Encyclopædia as a whole:
“The position of the Jews is highly uncertain, inasmuch as it
depends on how the law is interpreted by those responsible for
applying it, even at the lowest level of the hierarchy, or even
simply their goodwill… This blur… is due to… the extreme
di culty of achieving uniform interpretation and application
of the laws limiting the rights of the Jews… Their many
provisions have been supplemented and modi ed by numerous
decrees signed by the emperor on the proposal of various
ministries… and which, moreover, were not always reported in
the General Code of Laws”; “Even if he has an express
authorisation issued by the competent authority, the Jew is not
certain that his rights are intangible”; “A refusal emanating
from a junior o cial, an anonymous letter sent by a
competitor, or an approach made in the open by a more
powerful rival seeking the expropriation of a Jew, su ce to
condemn him to vagrancy.”[1401]
Stolypin understood very well the absurdity of such a state
of a airs, and the irresistible movement that then pushed for a
status of equality for the Jews, a status that already existed to a
large extent in Russia.
The number of Jews established outside the Pale of
Settlement increased steadily from year to year. After 1903, the
Jews had access to an additional 101 places of residence, and
the number of these was still signi cantly increased under
Stolypin, which implemented a measure which the tsar had not
taken in 1906 and which the Duma had rejected in 1907. The
former Jewish Encyclopædia indicates that the number of these
additional places of residence amounted to 291 in 1910‐
1912[1402]; As for the new Encyclopædia, it puts the number to
299 for the year 1911.[1403]
The old Encyclopædia reminds us that from the summer of
1905 onwards, in the wake of revolutionary events, “the
governing bodies [of educational establishments] did not take
into account the numerus clausus for three years.”[1404] From
August 1909 onwards, the latter was reduced from what it was
before in the higher and secondary schools (now 5% in the
capitals, 10% outside the Pale of Settlement, 15% within
it[1405]), but subject to compliance. However, since the
proportion of Jewish students was 11% at the University of
Saint Petersburg and 24% at that of Odessa[1406], this measure
was felt to be a new restriction. A restrictive measure was
adopted in 1911: the numerus clausus was extended to the
outside world[1407] (for boys only, and in girls’ institutions the
real percentage was 13.5% in 1911). At the same time, artistic,
commercial, technical and vocational schools accepted Jews
without restrictions. “After secondary and higher education,
the Jews rushed into vocational education” which they had
neglected until then. Although in 1883 “Jews in all municipal
and regional vocational schools” accounted for only 2% of the
workforce, 12% of boys and 17% of girls in 1898.[1408] In
addition, “Jewish youth lled private higher education
institutions”; thus, in 1912, the Kiev Institute of Commerce
had 1,875 Jewish students, and the Psycho‐Neurological
Institute, “thousands”. Beginning in 1914, any private
educational institution could provide courses in the language
of its choice.[1409]
It is true that compulsory education for all was part of the
logic of the time.
Stolypin’s main task was to carry out the agrarian reform,
thus creating a solid class of peasant‐owners. His companion in
arms, Minister of Agriculture A. V. Krivoshein, who was also in
favour of abolishing the Pale of Settlement, insisted at the same
time that be limited “the right of anonymous companies with
shares” to proceed with the purchase of land, to the extent that
it was likely to result in the formation of a “signi cant Jewish
land capital”; indeed, “the penetration into the rural world of
Jewish speculative capital risked jeopardising the success of the
agrarian reform” (at the same time he expressed the fear that
this would lead to the emergence of anti‐Semitism unknown
until then in the countryside of Greater Russia[1410]). Neither
Stolypin nor Krivoshein could allow that the peasants remain
in misery due to the fact of not owning land. In 1906, Jewish
agricultural settlements were also deprived of the right to
acquire land belonging to the State, which was now reserved
for peasants.[1411]
 The economist M. Bernadski cited the following gures for
the pre‐war period: 2.4% of Jews worked in agriculture, 4.7%
were liberal professionals, 11.5% were domestic servants, 31%
worked in commerce (Jews accounted for 35% of merchants in
Russia), 36% in industry; 18% of the Jews were settled in the
Pale of Settlement.[1412] In comparing the latter gure to the
2.4% mentioned above, the number of Jews residing in rural
areas and occupied in agriculture had not increased
signi cantly, while according to Bernadski, “it was in the
interest of the Russians that Jewish forces and resources were
investing themselves in all areas of production”, any limitation
imposed on them “represented a colossal waste of the
productive forces of the country.” He pointed out that in 1912,
for example, the Society of producers and manufacturers of an
industrial district in Moscow had approached the President of
the Council of Ministers so that the Jews would not be
prevented from playing their role of intermediary link with
Russian industrial production centres.[1413]
B. A. Kamenka, chairman of the Board of Directors of Azov
Bank and the Don, turned to the nancing of the mining and
metallurgical industry and sponsored eleven important
enterprises in the Donets and Urals region.[1414]—There was
no restriction on the participation of Jews in joint‐stock
companies in the industry, but “the limitations imposed on
joint‐stock companies wishing to acquire property triggered an
outcry in all nancial and industrial circles.” And the measures
taken by Krivoshein were to be abrogated.[1415]
V. Choulguine made the following comparison: “The
‘Russian power’ seemed very ingenuous in the face of the
perfectly targeted o ensive of the Jews. The Russian power
reminded one of the ood of a long and peaceful river: an
endless expanse plunged into a soft sleepiness; there is water,
oh my God there is, but it is only sleeping water. Now this same
river, a few versts farther away, enclosed by strong dikes, is
transformed into an impetuous torrent, whose bubbling
waters precipitate itself madly into turbines.”[1416]
It is the same rhetoric that is heard on the side of liberal
economic thought: “Russia, so poor… in highly skilled
workforce…, seems to want to further increase its ignorance
and its intellectual lagging in relation to the West.” Denying
the Jews access to the levers of production “amounts to a
deliberate refusal to use… their productive forces.”[1417]
Stolypin saw very well that this was wasteful. But the
di erent sectors of the Russian economy were developing too
unevenly. And he regarded the restrictions imposed on Jews as
a kind of customs tax that could only be temporary, until the
Russians consolidated their forces in public life as well as in the
sphere of the economy, these protective measures secreted an
unhealthy greenhouse climate for them. Finally (but after how
many years?), the government began to implement the
measures for the development of the peasant world, from
which were to result a true and genuine equality of rights
between social classes and nationalities; a development which
would have made the Russians’ fear of the Jews disappear and
which would have put a de nitive end to all the restrictions of
which the latter were still victims.
Stolypin was considering using Jewish capital to stimulate
Russia’s economy by welcoming their many joint‐stock
companies, enterprises, concessions and natural resource
businesses. At the same time, he understood that private
banks, dynamic and powerful, often preferred to agree among
themselves rather than compete, but he intended to
counterbalance this phenomenon by “nationalising credit”,
that is, the strengthening of the role of the State Bank and the
creation of a fund to help entrepreneurial peasants who could
not obtain credit elsewhere.
 But Stolypin was making another political calculation: he
thought that obtaining equal rights would take some of the
Jews away from the revolutionary movement. (Among other
arguments, he also put forward: at the local level, bribery was
widely used to circumvent the law, which had the e ect of
spreading corruption within the State apparatus.)
Among the Jews, those who did not give in to fanaticism
realised that, despite the continued restrictions, in spite of the
increasingly virulent (but impotent) attacks on right‐wing
circles, those years o ered more and more favourable
conditions to the Jews and were necessarily leading to equal
rights.
Just a few years later, thrown into emigration by the “great
revolution”, two renowned Jewish gures meditated on pre‐
revolutionary Russia:
Self‐taught out of poverty at the cost of the greatest e orts,
he had passed his bachelor’s degree as an external candidate at
the age of thirty and obtained his university degree at thirty‐
ve; he had actively participated in the Liberation Movement
and had always regarded Zionism as an illusory dream—his
name was Iosif Menassievich Bikerman. From the height of his
fty‐ ve years of age he wrote: “Despite the regulations of May
[1882] and other provisions of the same type, despite the Pale
of Settlement and numerus clausus, despite Kishinev and
Bialystok, I was a free man and I felt as such, a man who had
before him a wide range of possibilities to work in all kinds of
elds, who could enrich himself both materially and
spiritually, who could ght to improve his situation and
conserve his strength to continue the ght. The restrictions…
were always diminishing under the pressure of the times and
under ours, and during the war a wide breach was opened in
the last bastion of our inequality. It was necessary to wait
another ve or fteen years before obtaining complete equality
before the law; we could wait.”[1418]
Belonging to the same generation as Bikerman, he shared
very di erent convictions and his life was also very di erent: a
convinced Zionist, a doctor (he taught for a time at the Faculty
of Medicine in Geneva), an essayist and a politician, Daniil
Samoylovich Pasmanik, an immigrant as well, wrote at the
same time as Bikerman the following lines: “Under the tsarist
regime, the Jews lived in nitely better and, whatever may be
said of them, their conditions of life before the war—both
materially as well as others—were excellent. We were then
deprived of political rights, but we could develop intense
activity in the sphere of our national and cultural values, while
the chronic misery that had been our lot disappeared
progressively.”[1419]—“The chronic economic slump of the
Jewish masses diminished day by day, leaving room for
material ease, despite the senseless deportations of several tens
of thousands of Jews out of the Front areas. The statistics of the
mutual credit societies… are the best proof of the economic
progress enjoyed by the Jews of Russia during the decade
preceding the coup. And so it was in the eld of culture. Despite
the police regime—it was absolute freedom in comparison with
the present Bolshevik regime—Jewish cultural institutions of
all kinds prospered. Everything was bursting with activity:
organisations were booming, creation was also very alive and
vast prospects were now open.”[1420]
In a little more than a century, under the Russian crown, the
Jewish community had grown from 820,000 (including the
Kingdom of Poland) to more than ve million representatives,
even though more than one and a half million chose to
emigrate,[1421]—an increase of a factor of eight between 1800
and 1914. Over the last 90 years, the number of Jews had
multiplied by 3.5 (going from 1.5 million to 5,250,000),
whereas during the same period the total population of the
Empire (including the new territories) had multiplied by only
2.5.
However, the Jews were still subject to restrictions, which
fuelled anti‐Russian propaganda in the United States. Stolypin
thought he could overcome it by explaining it, inviting
members of Congress and American journalists to come and
see, in Russia itself. But in the autumn of 1911, the situation
became so severe that it led to the denunciation of a trade
agreement with the United States dating back eighty years.
Stolypin did not yet know what the e ect of a passionate
speech of the future peacemaker, Wilson, might be, nor what
the unanimity of the American Congress could mean. He did
not live enough to know.
Stolypin, who imprinted its direction, gave its light and
name to the decade before the First World War,—all the while
he was the object of furious attacks on the part of both the
Cadets and the extreme right, when deputies of all ranks
dragged him in the mud because of the law on the Zemstvo
reform in the western provinces—was assassinated in
September 1911.
The rst head of the Russian government to have honestly
raised and attempted to resolve, in spite of the Emperor’s
resistance, the question of equality for the Jews, fell—irony of
History!—under the blows of a Jew.
Such is the fate of the middle way…
Seven times attempts had been made to kill Stolypin, and it
was revolutionary groups more or less numerous that had
fermented the attacks—in vain. Here, it was an isolated
individual who pulled it o .
At a very young age, Bogrov did not have su cient
intellectual maturity to understand the political importance of
Stolypin’s role. But from his childhood he had witnessed the
daily and humiliating consequences of the inequality of the
Jews, and his family, his milieu, his own experience cultivated
his hatred for imperial power. In the Jewish circles of Kiev,
which seemed ideologically mobile, no one was grateful to
Stolypin for his attempts to lift the restrictions imposed on the
Jews, and even if this feeling had touched some of the better
o , it was counterbalanced by the memory of the energetic way
in which he had repressed the revolution of 1905‐1906, as well
as by the discontent with his e orts to “nationalise credit” in
order to openly compete with private capital. The Jewish circles
in Kiev (but also in Petersburg where the future murderer had
also stayed) were under the magnetic in uence of a eld of
absolute radicalism, which led young Bogrov not only to feel
entitled, but to consider it his duty to kill Stolypin.
This eld was so powerful that it allowed the following
combination: Bogrov‐senior rose in society, he is a capitalist
who prospers in the existing system; Bogrov‐junior works at
destroying this system and his father, after the attack, publicly
declares that he is proud of him.
In fact, Bogrov was not so isolated: he was discreetly
applauded in the circles which once manifested their
unwavering delity to the regime.
This gunshot that put an end to the hope that Russia ever
recovered its health could have been equally red at the tsar
himself. But Bogrov had decided that it was impossible, for (as
he declared himself) “it might have led to persecution against
the Jews,” to have “damaging consequences on their legal
position.” While the Prime Minister would simply not have
such e ects, he thought. But he was deceived heavily when he
imagined that his act would serve to improve the lot of the
Jews of Russia.
And Menshikov himself, who had rst reproached Stolypin
with the concessions he had made to the Jews, now lamented
his disappearance: our great man, our best political leader for a
century and a half—assassinated! And the assassin is a Jew! A
Jew who did not hesitate to shoot the Prime Minister of
Russia!? “The gunshot of Kiev… must be considered as a
warning signal… the situation is very serious… we must not
cry revenge, but nally decide to resist!”[1422]
And what happened then in “Kiev the reactionary” where
the Jews were so numerous? In the rst hours after the attack,
they were massively seized with panic and began to leave the
city. Moreover, “the Jews were struck with terror not only in
Kiev, but in the most remote corners of the Pale of Settlement
and of the rest of Russia.”[1423] The Club of Russian
Nationalists expressed its intention to circulate a petition to
drive out all the Jews of Kiev (which remained at the stage of
intentions). There was not the start of a beginning of pogrom.
The President of the youth organisation “The Two‐Headed
Eagle”, Galkin, called for destroying the o ces of the local
security and for busting some Jew: he was immediately
neutralised. The new Prime Minister, Kokovtsov, urgently
recalled all Cossack regiments (they were manœuvring away
from the city) and sent a very rm telegram to all the
governors: to prevent pogroms by any means, including force.
The troops were concentrated in greater numbers than during
the revolution. (Sliosberg: if pogroms had broken out in 1911,
“Kiev would have been the scene of a carnage comparable to the
horrors of the time of Bogdan Khmelnitsky.”[1424])
No, nowhere in Russia there was the slightest pogrom.
(Despite this, there has been much written, and insistently,
that the tsarist power had never dreamed of anything but one
thing: to organise an anti‐Jewish pogrom.)
Of course, the prevention of public disorder is one of the
primary duties of the State, and when this mission is ful lled,
it does not have to expect recognition. But that under such
extreme circumstances—the assassination of the head of
government—, that it was possible to avoid pogroms, the
threat of which caused panic among the Jews, it nevertheless
merited a small mention, if only in passing. Well, no, we did
not hear anything like that and no one spoke about it.
Di cult to believe, but the Kiev Jewish community did not
publicly express condemnation nor regret regarding this
assassination. On the contrary. After the execution of Bogrov,
many Jewish students were ostensibly in mourning.
However, all this, the Russians noted it. Thus, in December
1912, Rozanov wrote: “After [Stolypin’s assassination]
something broke in my relationship [to the Jews]: would a
Russian ever have dared to kill Rothschild or any other of ‘their
great men’?”[1425]
If we look at it from a historical point of view, two important
arguments prevent the act committed by Bogrov from being
considered on behalf of the “powers of internationalism”. The
rst and most important: it was not the case. Not only the book
written by his brother[1426], but di erent neutral sources
suggest that Bogrov really believed that he could work this way
to improve the lot of the Jews. And the second: to return to
certain uncomfortable episodes in history, to examine them
attentively to deplore them, is to assume one’s responsibilities;
but to deny them and wash one’s hands, that’s just low.
Yet this is what happened almost immediately. In October
1911, the Duma was arrested by the Octobrists on the murky
circumstances of the assassination of Stolypin. This provoked
an immediate protest from the deputy Nisselovitch: why, when
formulating their interpellation, did the Octobrists not conceal
the fact that the murderer of Stolypin was Jewish? It was there,
he declared, anti‐Semitism!
I shall have to endure this incomparable argument myself.
Seventy years later, I was the object of a heavy accusation on
the part of the Jewish community in the United States: why, in
my turn, did I not conceal, why did I say that the assassin of
Stolypin was a Jew[1427]? It does not matter if I have
endeavoured to make a description as complete as possible. It
does not matter what the fact of being Jew represented in the
motivations of his act. No, non‐dissimulation betrayed my anti‐
Semitism!!
At the time, Guchkov replied with dignity: “I think that there
is much more anti‐Semitism in Bogrov’s very act. I would
suggest to the Deputy Nisselovitch that he should address his
passionate words not to us but to his fellow co‐religionists. Let
him use all the force of his eloquence to convince them to keep
away from two profane professions: that of spy in the service
of the secret police and that of terrorist. He would thus render
a much greater service to the members of his
community!”[1428]
But what can one ask of the Jewish memory when Russian
history itself has allowed this murder to be e aced from its
memory as an event without great signi cance, as a smear as
marginal as it is negligible. It was only in the 80s that I started
to pull it out of oblivion—for seventy years, to mention it was
considered inappropriate.
As the years go by, more events and meanings come to our
eyes.
More than once I have meditated on the whims of History:
on the unpredictability of the consequences it raises on our path—
I speak of the consequences of our actions. The Germany of
William II opened the way for Lenin to destroy Russia, and
twenty‐eight years later it found itself divided for half a
century.—Poland contributed to the strengthening of the
Bolsheviks in the year 1919, which was so di cult for them,
and it harvested 1939, 1944, 1956, 1980.—With what
eagerness Finland helped Russian revolutionaries, she who
could not bear, who did not su er from the particular
freedoms at her disposal—but within Russia—and, in return,
she su ered forty years of political humiliation
(“Finlandisation”).—In 1914, England wanted to put down the
power of Germany, its competitor on the world stage, and it
lost its position of great power, and it was the whole of Europe
that had been destroyed. In Petrograd, the Cossacks remained
neutral both in February and in October; a year later, they
underwent their genocide (and many of the victims were these
same Cossacks).—In the rst days of July 1917, the S.‐R. of the
left approached the Bolsheviks, then formed a semblance of a
“coalition”, a broad platform; a year later they were crushed as
no autocracy could have had the means to do so.
These distant consequences, none of us are capable of
foreseeing them, ever. The only way to guard against such
errors is to always be guided by the compass of divine morality.
Or, as the people say: “Do not dig a pit for others, you will fall
into it yourself.”
Similarly, if the assassination of Stolypin had cruel
consequences for Russia, the Jews neither derived any bene t
from it.
Everyone can see things in his own way, but I see here the
giant footsteps of History, and I am struck by the unpredictable
character of its results.
Bogrov killed Stolypin, thus thinking of protecting the Jews
from oppression. Stolypin would in any case have been
removed from o ce by the Emperor, but he would surely have
been recalled again in 1914‐16 because of the dizzying
de ciency in men able to govern; and under his government we
would not have had such a lamentable end neither in the war
nor in the revolution. (Assuming that with him in power we
would have engaged in this war.)
 First footstep of History: Stolypin is killed, Russia works its
last nerves in war and lies under the heel of the Bolsheviks.
Second footstep: however erce they are, the Bolsheviks
reveal themselves as being more lame than the imperial
government, abandoning half of Russia to the Germans a
quarter of a century later, including Kiev.
Third footstep: the Nazis invest in Kiev without any
di culty and annihilate its Jewish community.
Again the city of Kiev, once again a month of September, but
thirty years after Bogrov’s revolver shot.
And still in Kiev, still in 1911, six months before the
assassination of Stolypin, had started what would become the
Beilis a air[1429]. There is good reason to believe that under
Stolypin, justice would not have been degraded as such. One
clue: one knows that once, examining the archives of the
Department of Security, Stolypin came across a note entitled
“The Secret of the Jews” (which anticipated the
“Protocols”[1430]), in which was discussed the “International
Jewish plot”. Here is the judgement he made: “There may be
logic, but also bias… The government cannot use under any
circumstance this kind of method.”[1431] As a result, “the
o cial ideology of the tsarist government never relied on the
‘Protocols’.”[1432]
Thousands and thousands of pages have been written about
the Beilis trial. Anyone who would like to study closely all the
meanders of the investigation, of the public opinion, of the
trial itself, would have to devote at least several years to it. This
would go beyond the limits of this work. Twenty years after the
event, under the Soviet regime, the daily reports of the police
on the progress of the trial were published[1433]; they can be
commended to the attention of amateurs. It goes without
saying that the verbatim record of the entire proceedings was
also published. Not to mention the articles published in the
press.
Andrei Yushchinsky, a 12‐year‐old boy, pupil of a religious
institution in Kiev, is the victim of a savage and unusual
murder: there are forty‐seven punctures on his body, which
indicate a certain knowledge of anatomy—they were made to
the temple, to the veins and arteries of the neck, to the liver, to
the kidneys, to the lungs, to the heart, with the clear intention
of emptying him of his blood as long as he was still alive, and in
addition—according to the traces left by the blood ow—in a
standing position (tied and gagged, of course). It can only be
the work of a very clever criminal who certainly did not act
alone. The body was discovered only a week later in a cave on
the territory of the factory of Zaitsev. But the murder was not
committed there.
The rst accusations do not refer to ritual motives, but the
latter soon appears: the connection is made with the beginning
of Jewish Passover and the construction of a new synagogue on
the grounds of Zaitsev (a Jew). Four months after the murder,
this version of the accusation leads to the arrest of Menahem
Mendel Beilis, 37, employed at the Zaitsev factory. He is
arrested without any real charges against him. How did all this
happen?
The investigation into the murder was carried out by the
criminal police of Kiev, a worthy colleague, obviously, of the
Security section of Kiev, which had gotten tangled up in the
Bogrov a air[1434] and thus caused the loss of Stolypin. The
work was entrusted to two nobodies in all respects similar to
Kouliabko, Bogrov’s “curator”, Michtchouk, and Krassovsky,
assisted by dangerous incompetents (they cleaned the snow in
front of the cave to facilitate the passage of the corpulent
commissioner of police, thus destroying any potential
indications of the presence of the murderers). But worse still,
rivalry settled between the investigators—it was to whom the
merit of the discovery of the guilty person would be attributed,
by whom the best version would be proposed—and they did
not hesitate to get in each other’s way, to sow confusion in the
investigation, to put pressure on the witnesses, to stop the
competitor’s indicators; Krassovksy went so far as to put
makeup on the suspect before introducing him to a witness!
This parody of inquiry was conducted as if it were a trivial
story, without the importance of the event even crossing their
minds. When the trial nally opened, two and a half years
later, Michtchouk had run o to Finland to escape the charge of
falsi cation of material evidence, a signi cant collaborator of
Krassovsky had also disappeared, and as for the latter,
dismissed of his duties, he had switched sides and was now
working for Beilis’s lawyers.
For nearly two years, we went from one false version to
another; for a long time the accusation was directed to the
family of the victim, until the latter was completely put out of
the question. It became clearer and clearer that the prosecution
was moving towards a formal accusation against Beilis and
towards his trial.
He was therefore accused of murder—even though the
charges against him were doubtful—because he was a Jew. But
how was it possible in the twentieth century to in ate a trial to
the point of making it a threat to an entire people? Beyond the
person of Beilis, the trial turned in fact into an accusation
against the Jewish people as a whole—and, since then, the
atmosphere around the investigation and then the trial became
superheated, the a air took on an international dimension,
gained the whole of Europe, and then America. (Until then,
trials for ritual murders had taken place rather in the Catholic
milieu: Grodno (1816), Velij (1825), Vilnius, the Blondes case
(1900), the Koutais a air (1878) took place in Georgia,
Doubossar (1903) in Moldavia, while in Russia strictly
speaking, there was only the Saratov a air in 1856. Sliosberg,
however, does not fail to point out that the Saratov a air also
had also a Catholic origin, while in Beilis’s case it was observed
that the band of thieves who had been suspected at one time
was composed of Poles, that the ritual crime expert appointed
at the trial was a Catholic, and that the attorney Tchaplinski
was also Polish.[1435])
The ndings of the investigation were so questionable that
they were only retained by the Kiev indictment chambre by
three votes to two. While the monarchist right had sparked an
extensive press campaign, Purishkevich expressed himself in
the Duma in April 1911: “We do not accuse the Jews as a whole,
we cry for the truth” about this strange and mysterious crime.
“Is there a Jewish sect that advocates ritual murders…? If there
are such fanatics, let them be stigmatised”; as for us, “we are
ghting against many sects in Russia,” our own[1436], but at
the same time he declared that, according to him, the a air
would be sti ed in the Duma by fear of the press. Indeed, at the
opening of the trial, the right‐wing nationalist Chulguine
declared himself opposed to it being held and to the “miserable
baggage” of the judicial authorities in the columns of the
patriotic Kievian (for which he was accused by the extreme
Right to be sold to the Jews). But, in view of the exceptionally
monstrous character of the crime, no one dared to go back to
the accusation in order to resume the investigation from
scratch.
On the other side, the liberal‐radicals also launched a public
campaign relayed by the press, and not only the Russian press,
but that of the whole world. The tension had reached a point of
no return. Sustained by the partiality of the accusation, it only
escalated, and the witnesses themselves were soon attacked.
According to V. Rozanov, every sense of measure had been lost,
especially in the Jewish press: “The iron st of the Jew… falls on
venerable professors, on members of the Duma, on
writers…”[1437]
However, the ultimate attempts to get the investigation back
on track had failed. The stable near the Zaitsev factory, which
was initially neglected by Krassovsky and then assumed to
have been the scene of the crime, burned down two days before
the date xed for its examination by hasty investigators. A
brazen journalist, Brazul‐Brouchkovsky, conducted his own
investigation assisted by the same Krassovsky, now released
from his o cial duties. (It must be remembered that Bonch‐
Bruevich[1438] published a pamphlet accusing Brazoul of
venality.[1439]) They put forward a version of the facts
according to which the murder was allegedly committed by
Vera Cheberyak, whose children frequented Andrei
Yushchinsky, herself irting with the criminal underworld.
During their long months of inquiry, the two Cheberyak sons
died under obscure circumstances; Vera accused Krassovsky of
poisoning them, who in turn accused her of killing her own
children. Ultimately, their version was that Yushchinsky had
been killed by Cheberyak in person with the intention of
simulating a ritual murder. She said that the lawyer Margoline
had o ered her 40,000 rubles to endorse the crime, which he
denied at the trial even though he was subject at the same
moment to administrative penalties for indelicacy.
Trying to disentangle the innumerable details of this judicial
imbroglio would only make the understanding even more
di cult. (It should also be mentioned that the “metis” of the
revolution and the secret police were also involved. In this
connection, mention should be made of the equivocal role and
strange behaviour during the trial of Lieutenant‐Colonel
Gendarmerie Pavel Ivanov—the very one who, in de ance of all
laws, helped Bogrov, already condemned to death, to write a
new version of the reasons which would have prompted him to
kill Stolypin, a version in which the full weight of
responsibility fell on the organs of Security to which Ivanov did
not belong.) The trial was about to open in a stormy
atmosphere. It lasted a month: September‐October 1913. It was
incredibly heavy: 213 witnesses summoned to the bar (185)
presented themselves, still slowed down by the procedural
arti ces raised by the parties involved; the prosecutor Vipper
was not up to the standard of the group of brilliant lawyers—
Gruzenberg, Karabtchevski, Maklakov, Zaroudny—who did not
fail to demand that the blunders he uttered be recorded in the
minutes, for example: the course of this trial is hampered by
“Jewish gold”; “they [the Jews in general] seem to laugh at us,
see, we have committed a crime, but no one will dare to hold us
accountable.”[1440] (Not surprisingly, during the trial, Vipper
received threatening letters—on some were drawn a slipknot—
and not just him, but the civil parties, the expert of the
prosecution, probably also the defence lawyers; the dean of the
jury also feared for his life.) There was a lot of turmoil around
the trial, selling passes for access to hearings, all of Kiev’s
educated people were boiling. The man in the street, him,
remained indi erent.
A detailed medical examination was carried out. Several
professors spread their di erences as to whether or not
Yushchinsky had remained alive until the last wound, and how
acute were the su erings he had endured. But it was the
theological‐scienti c expertise that was at the centre of the
trial: it focused on the very principle of the possibility of ritual
murders perpetrated by Jews, and it was on this that the whole
world focused its attention.[1441] The defence appealed to
recognised authorities in the eld of Hebraism, such as Rabbi
Maze, a specialist in the Talmud. The expert appointed by the
Orthodox Church, Professor I. Troitsky of the Theological
Academy of Petersburg, concluded his intervention by
rejecting the accusation of an act of cold blood attributable to
the Jews; he pointed out that the Orthodox Church had never
made such accusations, that these were peculiar to the Catholic
world. (Bikerman later recalled that in Imperial Russia the
police o cers themselves cut short “almost every year”
rumours about the Christian blood shed during the Jewish
Passover, “otherwise we would have had a ‘case of ritual
murder’ not once every few decades, but every year.”[1442] The
main expert cited by the prosecution was the Catholic priest
Pranaitis. To extend the public debate, the prosecutors
demanded that previous ritual murder cases be examined, but
the defence succeeded in rejecting the motion. These
discussions on whether the murder was ritual or not ritual
only further increased the emotion that the trial had created
through the whole world.
But it was necessary that a judgment should be pronounced
—on this accused, and not another—and this mission went to a
dull jury composed of peasants painfully supplemented by two
civil servants and two petty bourgeois; all were exhausted by a
month of trials, they fell asleep during the reading of the
materials of the case, requested that the trial be shortened,
four of them solicited permission to return home before its
conclusion and some needed medical assistance.
Nevertheless, these jurors judged on the evidence: the
accusations against Beilis were unfounded, not proved. And
Beilis was acquitted.
And that was the end of it. No new search for the culprits
was undertaken, and this strange and tragic murder remained
unexplained.
Instead—and this was in the tradition of Russian weakness
—it was imagined (not without ostentation) to erect a chapel
on the very spot where the corpse of young Yushchinsky had
been discovered, but this project provoked many protests,
because it was judged reactionary. And Rasputin dissuaded the
tsar from following up on it.[1443]
This trial, heavy and ill‐conducted, with a white‐hot public
opinion for a whole year, in Russia as in the rest of the world,
was rightly considered a battle of Tsou‐Shima.[1444] It was
reported in the European press that the Russian government
had attacked the Jewish people, but that it was not the latter
that had lost the war, it was the Russian State itself.
As for the Jews, with all their passion, they were never to
forgive this a ront of the Russian monarchy. The fact that the
law had nally triumphed did nothing to change their feelings.
It would be instructive, however, to compare the Beilis trial
with another that took place at the same time (1913‐15) in
Atlanta, USA; a trial which then made great noise: the Jew Leo
Frank, also accused of the murder of a child (a girl raped and
murdered), and again with very uncertain charges. He was
condemned to be hung, and during the proceedings of
cassation an armed crowd snatched him from his prison and
hanged him.[1445] On the individual level, the comparison is in
favour of Russia. But the Leo Frank a air had but little echo in
public opinion, and did not become an object of reproach.

   
There is an epilogue in the Beilis case.
“Threatened with revenge by extreme right‐wing groups,
Beilis left Russia and went to Palestine with his family. In 1920
he moved to the United States. He died of natural causes, at the
age of sixty, in the vicinity of New York.[1446]
Justice Minister Shcheglovitov (according to some sources,
he had “given instructions for the case to be elucidated as a
ritual murder”[1447]) was shot by the Bolsheviks.
In 1919 the trial of Vera Cheberyak took place. It did not
proceed according to the abhorred procedures of tsarism—no
question of popular jury!—and lasted only about forty minutes
in the premises of the Cheka of Kiev. A member of the latter,
who was arrested in the same year by the Whites, noted in his
testimony that “Vera Cheberyak was interrogated exclusively
by Jewish Chekists, beginning with Sorine” [the head of the
Blumstein Cheka]. Commander Faierman “subjected her to
humiliating treatment, ripped o her clothes and struck her
with the barrel of his revolver… She said: ‘You can do whatever
you want with me, but what I said, I will not come back on it…
What I said at the Beilis trial, nobody pushed me to say it,
nobody bribed me…’” She was shot on the spot.[1448]
In 1919, Vipper, now a Soviet o cial, was discovered in
Kaluga and tried by the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal. The
Bolshevik prosecutor Krylenko pronounced the following
words: “Whereas he presents a real danger to the Republic…
that there be one Vipper less among us!” (This macabre joke
suggested that R. Vipper, a professor of medieval history, was
still alive.) However, the Tribunal merely sent Vipper “to a
concentration camp… until the communist regime be
de nitively consolidated.”[1449] After that, we lose his track.

   
Beilis was acquitted by peasants, those Ukrainian peasants
accused of having participated in the pogroms against the Jews
at the turn of the century, and who were soon to know the
collectivisation and organised famine of 1932‐33—a famine
that journalists have ignored and that has not been included in
the liabilities of this regime.
Here is yet another of these footsteps of History…
 Chapter 11. Jews and Russians before the
First World War: The Growing Awareness

In Russia—for another ten years it escaped its ruin—the best

minds among the Russians and the Jews had had time to look
back and evaluate from di erent points of view the essence of
our common life, to seriously consider the question of culture
and national destiny.
The Jewish people made its way through an ever‐changing
present by dragging behind it the tail of a comet of three
thousand years of diaspora, without ever losing consciousness
of being “a nation without language nor territory, but with its
own laws” (Salomon Lourie), preserving its di erence and its
speci city by the force of its religious and national tension—in
the name of a superior, meta‐historical Providence. Have the
Jews of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sought to
identify with the peoples who surrounded them, to blend into
them? It was certainly the Jews of Russia who, longer than
their other co‐religionists, had remained in the core of
isolation, concentrated on their religious life and conscience.
But, from the end of the nineteenth century, it was precisely
this Jewish community in Russia that began to grow stronger,
to ourish, and now “the whole history of the Jewish
community in the modern age was placed under the sign of
Russian Jewry”, which also manifested “a sharp sense of the
movement of History.”[1450]
For their part, the Russian thinkers were perplexed by the
particularism of the Jews. And for them, in the nineteenth
century, the question was how to overcome it. Vladimir
Solovyov, who expressed deep sympathy for the Jews, proposed
to do so by the love of the Russians towards the Jews.
Before him, Dostoyevsky had noticed the disproportionate
fury provoked by his remarks, certainly o ensive but very
scarce, about the Jewish people: “This fury is a striking
testimony to the way the Jews themselves regard the
Russians… and that, in the motives of our di erences with the
Jews, it is perhaps not only the Russian people who bears all the
responsibility, but that these motives, obviously, have
accumulated on both sides, and it cannot be said on which side
there is the most.”[1451]
From this same end of the nineteenth century, Teitel reports
the following observation: “The Jews are in their majority
materialists. Strong in them is the aspiration to acquire
material goods. But what contempt for these material goods
whenever it comes to the inner ‘I’, to national dignity! Why, in
fact, the mass of Jewish youth—who has completely turned
away from religious practice, which often does not even speak
its mother tongue—why did this mass, if only for the sake of
form, not convert to Orthodoxy, which would have opened to it
wide the doors of all the universities and would have given it
access to all the goods of the earth?” Even the thirst for
knowledge was not enough, while “science, superior
knowledge was held by them in higher esteem than fortune.”
What held them back was the concern not to abandon their co‐
religionists in need. (He also adds that going to Europe to study
was not a good solution either: “Jewish students felt very
uncomfortable in the West… The German Jew considered them
undesirable, insecure people, noisy, disorderly,”; and this
attitude was not only that of the German Jews, “the French and
Swiss Jews were no exception.”[1452]
As for D. Pasmanik, he also mentioned this category of Jews
converted under duress, who felt only more resentment
towards the power and could only oppose it. (From 1905,
conversion was facilitated: it was no longer necessary to go to
orthodoxy, it was enough to become a Christian, and
Protestantism was more acceptable to many Jews. In 1905 was
also repealed the prohibition to return to Judaism.[1453])
Another writer bitterly concluded, in 1924, that in the last
decades preceding the revolution it was not only “the Russian
government… which de nitely ranked the Jewish people
among the enemies of the country”, but “even worse, it was a
lot of Jewish politicians who ranked themselves among these
enemies, radicalising their position and ceasing to di erentiate
between the ‘government’ and the fatherland, that is, Russia…
The indi erence of the Jewish masses and their leaders to the
destiny of Great Russia was a fatal political error.”[1454]
Of course, like any social process, this—and, moreover, in a
context as diverse and mobile as the Jewish milieu—did not
take place linearly, it was split; in the hearts of many educated
Jews, it provoked rifts. On the one hand, “belonging to the
Jewish people confers a speci c position in the whole of the
Russian milieu.”[1455] But to observe immediately a
“remarkable ambivalence: the traditional sentimental
attachment of many Jews to the surrounding Russian world,
their rootedness in this world, and at the same time an
intellectual rejection, a refusal across the board. A ection for
an abhorred world.”[1456]
This approach so painfully ambivalent could not fail to lead
to equally painfully ambivalent results. And when I. V. Hessen,
in an intervention in the second Duma in March 1907, after
having denied that the revolution was still in its phase of rising
violence, thus denying right‐wing parties the right to arise as
defenders of the culture against anarchy, exclaimed: “We who
are teachers, doctors, lawyers, statisticians, literary men,
would we be the enemies of culture? Who will believe you,
gentlemen?”—They shouted from the benches of the right:
“You are the enemies of Russian culture, not of Jewish
culture!”[1457] Enemies, of course not, why go so far, but—as
the Russian party pointed out—are you really, unreservedly,
our friends? The rapprochement was made di cult precisely
by this: how could these brilliant advocates, professors and
doctors not have in their heart of hearts primarily Jewish
sympathies? Could they feel, entirely and unreservedly,
Russian by spirit? Hence the problem was even more
complicated. Were they able to take to heart the interests of the
Russian State in their full scope and depth?
During this same singular period, we see on the one hand
that the Jewish middle classes make a very clear choice to give
secular education to their children in the Russian language,
and on the other there is the development of publications in
Yiddish—and comes into use the term “Yiddishism”: that the
Jews remain Jewish, that they do not assimilate.
There was still a path to assimilation, doubtlessly marginal,
but not negligible: that of mixed marriages. And also a current
of super cial assimilation consisting in adapting arti cial
pseudonyms to the Russian way. (And who did this most
often?! The great sugar producers of Kiev “Dobry”[1458],
“Babushkin”[1459], prosecuted during the war for agreement
with the enemy. The editor “Iasny”[1460] that even the
newspaper of constitutional‐democrat orientation Retch called
an “avid speculator”, an “unscrupulous shark.”[1461] Or the
future Bolshevik D. Goldenbach, who regarded “all of Russia as
a country without worth” but disguised himself as “Riazanov”
to bother the readers with his Marxist theoretician
ratiocinations until his arrest in 1937.)
And it was precisely during these decades, and especially in
Russia, that Zionism developed. The Zionists were ironical
about those who wanted to assimilate, who imagined that the
fate of the Jews of Russia was indissolubly linked to the destiny
of Russia itself.
And then, we must turn rst to Vl. Jabotinsky, a brilliant and
original essayist, who was brought, in the years preceding the
revolution, to express not only his rejection of Russia but also
his despair. Jabotinsky considered that Russia was nothing
more than a halt for the Jews on their historical journey and
that it was necessary to hit the road—to Palestine.
Passion ignited his words: it is not with the Russian people
that we are in contact, we learn to know it through its culture,
“mainly through its writers…, through the highest, the purest
manifestations of the Russian spirit,”—and this appreciation,
we transpose it to the whole of the Russian world. “Many of us,
born of the Jewish intelligentsia, love the Russian culture with
a maddening and degrading love… with the degrading love of
swine keepers for a queen.” As for the Jewish world, we
discover it through the baseness and ugliness of everyday life.
[1462]
He is merciless towards those who seek to assimilate. “Many
of the servile habits that developed in our psychology as our
intelligentsia became russi ed,” “have ruined the hope or the
desire to keep Jewishness intact, and lead to its disappearance.”
The average Jewish intellectual forgets himself: it is better not
to pronounce the word “Jew”, “the times are no longer about
that”; we are afraid to write: “we the Jews”, but we write: “we
the Russians” and even: “we the Russko s”. “The Jew can
occupy a prominent place in Russian society, but he will always
remain a second class Russian,” and this, all the more so
because he retains a speci c ‘inclination of the soul’.”—We are
witnessing an epidemic of baptisms for interest, sometimes for
stakes far more petty than obtaining a diploma. “The thirty
pennies for equal rights…” When abjuring our faith, strip
yourself also of our nationality.[1463]
 The situation of the Jews in Russia—and not at any time, but
precisely after the years 1905‒1906—seemed to him
desperately gloomy: “The objective reality, that is, the fact of
living abroad, has turned itself against our people today, and
we are weak and helpless.”—“Already in the past we knew we
were surrounded by enemies”; “this prison” (Russia), “a pack of
dogs”; “the body lying, covered with the wounds of the Jewish
people of Russia, tracked, surrounded by enemies and
defenceless”; “six million human beings swarming in a deep
pit…, a slow torture, a pogrom that does not end”; and even,
according to him, “newspapers nanced by Jewish funds” do
not defend the Jews “in these times of unprecedented
persecution.” At the end of 1911, he wrote: “For several years
now the Jews of Russia have been crammed on the bench of the
accused”, despite the fact we are not revolutionaries, that “we
have not sold Russia to the Japanese” and that we are not
Azefs[1464] or Bogrovs[1465]”; and in connection with Bogrov:
“This unfortunate young man—he was what he was—, at the
hour of such an admirable death[!], was booed by a dozen
brutes from the cesspool of the Kievian Black Hundreds, come
to ensure that the execution had indeed taken place.”[1466]
And, returning again and again to the Jewish community
itself: “Today we are culturally deprived, as at the bottom of a
slum, of an obscure impasse.”—“What we su er above all is
contempt for ourselves; what we need above all is to respect
ourselves… The study of Jewishness must become for us the
central discipline… Jewish culture is now the only plank of
salvation for us.”[1467]
All of this, we can, yes, we can understand it, share it. (And
we, Russians, can do it, especially today, at the end of the
twentieth century.)
It does not condemn those who, in the past, have
campaigned for assimilation: in the course of History “there
are times when assimilation is undeniably desirable, when it
represents a necessary stage of progress.” This was the case
after the sixties of the nineteenth century, when the Jewish
intelligentsia was still in its embryonic state, beginning to
adapt to the surrounding environment, to a culture that had
reached maturity. At that time, assimilation did not mean
“denying the Jewish people, but on the contrary, taking the rst
step on the road to autonomous national activity, taking a rst
step towards renewal and rebirth of the nation.” It was
necessary to “assimilate what was foreign to us in order to be
able to develop with new energy what was our own.” But half a
century later, many radical transformations took place both
inside and outside the Jewish world. The desire to appropriate
universal knowledge has become widespread as never before.
And it is then, now, that must be inculcated to the younger
generations the Jewish principles. It is now that there is a threat
of an irremediable dilution in the foreign environment: “There
is no day that passes in which our sons do not leave us” and “do
not become strangers to us”; “enlightened by the
Enlightenment, our children serve all the peoples of the Earth,
except ours; no one is there to work for the Jewish cause.” “The
world around us is too magni cent, too spacious and too
rich”—we cannot admit that it diverts Jewish youth from “the
ugliness of the daily existence of the Jews… The deepening of
national values of Jewishness must become the main axis… of
Jewish education.”—“Only the bond of solidarity allows a
nation to hold” (we ourselves would need it!—A. S.), while
denial slows down the struggle for the right of the Jews: one
imagines that there is a way out, and “we leave… lately… in
compact masses, with lightness and cynicism.”[1468]
Then, letting himself be carried away: “The royal spirit [of
Israel] in all its power, its tragic history in all its grandiose
magni cence…” “Who are we to justify ourselves before them?
Who are they to demand accountability?”[1469]
The latter formula, we can also respect it fully. But under the
condition of reciprocity. Especially since it is not up to any
nation or religion to judge another.
The calls to return to Jewish roots did not remain unheeded
in those years. In Saint Petersburg, before the revolution, “we
could note in the circles of the Russo‐Jewish intelligentsia a
very great interest in Jewish history.”[1470] In 1908, the Jewish
Historical‐Ethnographic Commission expanded into a Jewish
Historical‐Ethnographic Society,[1471] headed by M. Winaver.
It worked actively and e ciently to collect the archives on the
history and ethnography of the Jews of Russia and Poland—
nothing comparable was established by Jewish historical
science in the West. The magazine The Jewish Past, led by S.
Dubnov, then was created.[1472] At the same time began the
publication of the Jewish Encyclopædia in sixteen volumes
(which we use extensively in this study), and the History of the
Jewish People in fteen volumes. It is true that in the last
volume of the Jewish Encyclopædia, its editors complain that
“the elite of the Jewish intelligentsia has shown its indi erence
to the cultural issues raised by this Encyclopædia,” devoting
itself exclusively to the struggle for the equality—all formal—
of rights for the Jews.[1473]
Meanwhile, on the contrary, in other minds and other Jewish
hearts there was a growing conviction that the future of the
Jews of Russia was indissolubly linked to that of Russia.
Although “scattered over an immense territory and among a
foreign world…, the Russian Jewish community had and was
conscious of being a unique whole. Because unique was the
environment that surrounded us…, unique its culture… This
unique culture, we absorbed it throughout the whole
country.”[1474]
 “The Jews of Russia have always been able to align their own
interests to those of all the Russian people. And this did not
come from any nobility of character or a sense of gratitude, but
from a perception of historical realities.” Open controversy
with Jabotinsky: “Russia is not, for the millions of Jews who
populate it, a step among others on the historical path of the
wandering Jew… The contribution of Russian Jews to the
international Jewish community has been and will be the most
signi cant. There is no salvation for us without Russia, as there
is no salvation for Russia without us.”[1475]
This interdependence is a rmed even more categorically by
the deputy of the second and third Dumas, O. I. Pergament: “No
improvement of the internal situation of Russia ‘is possible
without the simultaneous enfranchisement of the Jews from
the yoke of inequality’.”[1476]
And there, one cannot ignore the exceptional personality of
the jurist G. B. Sliosberg: among the Jews he was one of those
who, for decades, had the closest relations with the Russian
State, sometimes as Deputy to the Principal Secretary of the
Senate, sometimes as a consultant to the Ministry of the
Interior, but to whom many Jews reproached his habit of asking
the authorities for rights for the Jews, when the time had come
demand them. He writes in his memoirs: “From childhood, I
have become accustomed to consider myself above all as a Jew.
But from the beginning of my conscious life I also felt like a son
of Russia… Being a good Jew does not mean that one is not a
good Russian citizen.”[1477]—“In our work, we were not
obliged to overcome the obstacles encountered at every step by
the Jews of Poland because of the Polish authorities… In the
Russian political and administrative system, we Jews did not
represent a foreign element, insofar as, in Russia, cohabited
many nationalities. The cultural interests of Russia did not
con ict in any way with the cultural interests of the Jewish
community. These two cultures were somewhat
complementary.”[1478] He even added this somewhat
humorous remark: the legislation on Jews was so confusing
and contradictory that in the 90s, “it was necessary to create a
speci c jurisprudence for the Jews using purely Talmudic
methods.”[1479]
And again, in a higher register: “The easing of the national
yoke which has been felt in recent years, shortly before Russia
entered a tragic period in its history, bore in the hearts of all
Russian Jews the hope that the Russian Jewish consciousness
would gradually take a creative path, that of reconciling the
Jewish and Russian aspects in the synthesis of a higher
unity.”[1480]
And can we forget that, among the seven authors of the
incomparable Milestones[1481], three were Jews: M. O.
Gershenzon, A. S. Izgoev‐Lande, and S. L. Frank?
But there was reciprocity: in the decades preceding the
revolution, the Jews bene ted from the massive and
unanimous support of progressive circles. Perhaps the
amplitude of this support is due to a context of bullying and
pogroms, but it has never been so complete in any other
country (and perhaps never in all the past centuries). Our
intelligentsia was so generous, so freedom‐loving, that it
ostracised anti‐Semitism from society and humanity;
moreover, the one who did not give his frank and massive
support to the struggle for equal rights of the Jews, who did not
make it a priority, was considered a “despicable anti‐Semite”.
With its ever‐awakening moral consciousness and extreme
sensitivity, the Russian intelligentsia sought to understand and
assimilate the Jewish view of priorities a ecting the whole of
political life: is deemed progressive all that is a reaction against
the persecution of the Jews, all the rest is reactionary. Not only
did Russian society rmly defend the Jews against the
government, but it forbade itself and forbade anyone to show
any trace of a shadow of criticism of the conduct of each Jew in
particular: and if this bore anti‐Semitism within me? (The
generation formed at that time retained these principles for
decades.)
V. A. Maklakov evokes in his memoirs a signi cant episode
that occurred during the congress of the Zemstvos in 1905,
when the wave of pogroms against the Jews and intellectuals
had just swept through and began to rise in strength the
pogroms directed against landowners. “E. V. de Roberti
proposed not to extend the amnesty [demanded by the
congress] to the crimes related to violence against children and
women.” He was immediately suspected of wanting to
introduce a “class” amendment, that is to say, to concern
himself with the families of the noble victims of pogroms. “E.
de Roberti hastened… to reassure everybody: ‘I had absolutely
no plan in regard to the property of the noblemen… Five or
twenty properties burned down, this has no importance. I have
in view the mass of immovable property and houses belonging
to Jews, which were burned and pillaged by the Black
Hundreds’.”[1482]
During the terror of 1905‒1907, Gerzenstein (who had been
ironic about the property res of the noblemen) and Iollos were
considered as martyrs, but no one among the thousands of
other innocent victims, were considered so. In The Last
Autocrat, a satirical publication that the Russian liberals
published abroad, they succeeded in placing the following
legend under the portrait of the general whom the terrorist
Hirsch Lekkert had attempted in vain to assassinate: “Because
of him”[I emphasise—A. S.], the tsar “had executed… the Jew
Lekkert.”[1483]
It was not just the parties of the opposition, it was the whole
mass of middle‐class civil servants who were trembling at the
idea of sounding like “non‐progressives”. It was necessary to
enjoy a good personal fortune, or possess remarkable freedom
of mind, to resist with courage the pressure of general opinion.
As for the world of the bar, of art, of science, ostracism
immediately struck anyone who moved away from this
magnetic eld.
Only Leo Tolstoy, who enjoyed a unique position in society,
could a ord to say that, for him, the Jewish question was in the
81st place.
The Jewish Encyclopædia complained that the pogroms of
October 1905 “provoked in the progressive intelligentsia a
protestation that was not speci c [i.e., exclusively Jewish‐
centred], but general, oriented towards all manifestations of
the ‘counter‐revolution’ in all its forms.”[1484]
Moreover, Russian society would have ceased to be itself if it
had not brought everything to a single burning question:
tsarism, still tsarism, always tsarism!
But the consequence was this: “After the days of October [the
pogroms of 1905], concrete aid to the Jewish victims was
brought only by the Jews of Russia and other countries.”[1485]
And Berdyaev added: “Are you capable of feeling the soul of the
Jewish people?… No, you are ghting… in favour of an abstract
humanity.”[1486]
This is con rmed by Sliosberg: “In politically evolved
circles,” the Jewish question “was not political in the broad
sense of the term. Society was attentive to manifestations of
the reaction in all its forms.”[1487]
In order to correct this misjudgement of Russian society, a
collection of articles entitled Shchit [The Shield] was published
in 1915: it took on globally and exclusively the defence of the
Jews, but without the participation of the latter as writers,
these were either Russian or Ukrainian, and a beautiful skewer
of celebrities of the time was assembled there—nearly forty
names.[1488] The whole collection was based on a single
theme: “Jews in Russia”; it is univocal in its conclusions and its
formulations denote in some places a certain spirit of sacri ce.
A few samples—L. Andreev: “The prospect of an approaching
solution to the Jewish problem brings about a feeling of ‘joy
close to fervour’, the feeling of being freed from a pain that has
accompanied me all my life,” which was like “a hump on the
back”; “I breathed poisonous air…”—M. Gorky: “The great
European thinkers consider that the psychic structure of the
Jew is culturally higher, more beautiful than that of the
Russian.” (He then rejoiced at the development in Russia of the
sect of the Sabbatists and that of the “New Israel”.)—P.
Maliantovitch: “The arbitrariness to which the Jews are
subjected is a reproach which, like a stain, covers the name of
the Russian people… The best among the Russians feel it as a
shame that pursues you all your life. We are barbarians among
the civilised peoples of humanity… we are deprived of the
precious right to be proud of our people… The struggle for the
equal rights of the Jews represents for the Russian man… a
national cause of prime importance… The arbitrariness
subjected to the Jews condemns the Russians to failure in their
attempts to attain their own happiness.” If we do not worry
about the liberation of the Jews, “we will never be able to solve
our own problems.”—K. Arseniev: “If we remove everything
that hinders the Jews, we will see ‘an increase in the
intellectual forces of Russia’.”—A. Kalmykova: “On the one
hand, our ‘close spiritual relationship with the Jewish world in
the domain of the highest spiritual values’; on the other, ‘the
Jews may be the object of contempt, of hatred’.”—L. Andreev: “It
is we, the Russians, who are the Jews of Europe; our border, it is
precisely the Pale of Settlement.”—D. Merezhkovsky: “What do
the Jews expect of us? Our moral indignation? But this
indignation is so strong and so simple… that we only have to
scream with the Jews. This is what we do.”—By the e ect of I
am not sure which misunderstanding, Berdyaev is not one of
the authors of the Shield. But he said of himself that he had
broken with his milieu from his earliest youth and that he
preferred to frequent the Jews.
All the authors of the Shield de ne anti‐Semitism as an
ignoble feeling, as “a disease of consciousness, obstinate and
contagious” (D. Ovsianikov‐Kulikovsky, Academician). But at
the same time, several authors note that “the methods and
processes… of anti‐Semites [Russians] are of foreign origin” (P.
Milyukov). “The latest cry of anti‐Semitic ideology is a product
of the German industry of the spirit… The ‘Aryan’ theory… has
been taken up by our nationalist press… Menshikov[1489]
[copies] the ideas of Gobineau” (F. Kokochkin). The doctrine of
the superiority of the Aryans in relation to the Semites is “of
German manufacture” (see Ivanov).
But for us, with our hump on our backs, what does it change?
Invited by the “Progressive Circle” at the end of 1916, Gorky
“devoted the two hours of his lecture to rolling the Russian
people in the mud and raising the Jews to the skies,” as noted by
the Progressive deputy Mansyrev, one of the founders of the
“Circle”.[1490]
A contemporary Jewish writer analyses this phenomenon
objectively and lucidly: “We assisted to a profound
transformation of the minds of the cultivated Russians who,
unfortunately, took to heart the Jewish problem much more
greatly than might have been expected… Compassion for the
Jews was transformed into an imperative almost as categorical
as the formula ‘God, the Tsar, the Fatherland’”; as for the Jews,
“they took advantage of this profession of faith according to
their degree of cynicism.”[1491] At the same time, Rozanov
spoke of “the avid desire of the Jews to seize everything.”[1492]
 In the 20s, V. Choulguine summed it up as follows: “At that
time [a quarter of a century before the revolution], the Jews had
taken control of the political life of the country… The brain of
the nation (if we except the government and the circles close to
it) found itself in the hands of the Jews and was accustomed to
think according to their directives.” “Despite all the
‘restrictions’ on their rights, the Jews had taken possession of
the soul of the Russian people.”[1493]
But was it the Jews who had seized the Russian soul or did
the Russians simply not know what to do with it?
Still in the Shield, Merezhkovsky tried to explain that philo‐
Semitism had arisen in reaction to anti‐Semitism, that the
blind valourisation of a foreign nationality was asserted, that
the absolutisation of the “no” led to that of the “yes”.[1494] And
Professor Baudouin de Courtenay acknowledged that “many,
even among the ‘political friends’ of the Jews, experience
repulsion and acknowledge it in private. Here, of course, there
is nothing to do. Sympathy and antipathy… are not
commanded.” We must nevertheless rely “not on a ects, but
on reason.”[1495]
The confusion that reigned in the minds of those days was
brought to light with greater signi cance and reach by P. B.
Struve, who devoted his entire life to breaking down the
obstacles erected on the path that would lead him from
Marxism to the rule of law, and, along the way, also obstacles of
other kinds. The occasion was a polemic—fallen into a deep
oblivion, but of great historical importance—which broke out
in the liberal Slovo newspaper in March 1909 and immediately
won the entirety of the Russian press.
Everything had begun with the “Chirikov a air”, an episode
whose importance was in ated to the extreme: an explosion of
rage in a small literary circle accusing Chirikov—author of a
play entitled The Jews, and well disposed towards them—to be
anti‐Semitic. (And this because at a dinner of writers he had let
himself go on to say that most of the literary critics of Saint
Petersburg were Jews, but were they able to understand the
reality of Russian life?) This a air shook many things in
Russian society. (The journalist Lioubosh wrote about it: “It is
the two kopeck candle that set re to Moscow.”)
Considering that he had not su ciently expressed himself
on the Chrikov a air in a rst article, Jabotinsky published a
text entitled “Asemitism” in the Slovo newspaper on 9 March
1909. He stated in it his fears and his indignation at the fact
that the majority of the progressive press wanted to silence
this matter. That even a great liberal newspaper (he was
referring to the Russian News) had not published a word for
twenty‐ ve years on “the atrocious persecutions su ered by
the Jewish people… Since then the law of silence has been
regarded as the latest trend by progressive philo‐Semites.” It
was precisely here that evil resided: in passing over the Jewish
question. (We can only agree with this!) When Chirikov and
Arabajine “assure us that there is nothing anti‐Semitic in their
remarks, they are both perfectly right.” Because of this
tradition of silence, “one can be accused of anti‐Semitism for
having only pronounced the word ‘Jew’ or made the most
innocent remark about some particularity of the Jews… The
problem is that the Jews have become a veritable taboo that
forbids the most trivial criticism, and that it is them that are
the big losers in the a air.” (Here again, we can only agree!)
“There is a feeling that the word ‘Jew’ itself has become an
indecent term.” “There is here an echo of a general state of
mind that makes its way among the middle strata of the
progressive Russian intelligentsia… We can not yet provide
tangible proofs of it, we can only have a presentiment about
this state of mind”—, but it is precisely this that torments him:
no proofs, just an intuition—and the Jews will not see the
storm coming, they will be caught unprepared. For the
moment, “we see only a small cloud forming in the sky and we
can hear a distant, but already menacing roll.” It is not anti‐
Semitism, it is only “Asemitism”, but that also is not
admissible, neutrality cannot be justi ed: after the pogrom of
Kishinev and while the reactionary press peddles “the in amed
tow of hatred”, the silence of the progressive newspapers about
“one of the most tragic questions of Russian life” is
unacceptable.[1496]
In the editorial of the same issue of Slovo, were formulated
the following reservations about Jabotinsky’s article: “The
accusations made by the author against the progressive press
correspond, in our opinion, to the reality of things. We
understand the sentiments that have inspired the author with
his bitter remarks, but to impute to the Russian intelligentsia
the intention, so to speak deliberately, of sweeping the Jewish
question under the rug, is unfair. The Russian reality has so
many unresolved problems that we cannot devote much space
to each one of them… Yet, if many of these problems are
resolved, this will have very important e ects, including for
the Jews who are citizens of our common homeland.”[1497]
And if the editorialist of the Slovo had then asked Jabotinsky
why he did not defend one or the other of those fools who
uttered “the most innocent remark about some particularity of
the Jews”? Was Jewish opinion interested only in them, did
they take their part? Or was it enough to observe how the
Russian intelligentsia got rid of these “anti‐Semites”? No, the
Jews were no less responsible than the others for this “taboo”.
Another article in the same paper helped launch the
discussion: “The agreement, not the fusion”, of V. Golubev.
Indeed, the Chirikov a air “is far from being an isolated case”,
“at the present time… the national question… is also of
concern to our intelligentsia”. In the recent past, especially in
the year of the revolution[1498], our intelligentsia has “sinned
very much” by cosmopolitanism. But “the struggles that have
been fought within our community and between the
nationalities that populate the Russian State have not
disappeared without leaving traces.” Like the other
nationalities, in those years, “the Russians had to look at their
own national question…; when nationalities deprived of
sovereignty began to self‐determine, the Russians felt the need
to do so as well.” Even the history of Russia, “we Russian
intellectuals, we know it perhaps less well than European
history.” “Universal ideals… have always been more important
to us than the edi cation of our own country.” But, even
according to Vladimir Solovyov, who is however very far
removed from nationalism, “before being a bearer of universal
ideals, it is essential to raise oneself to a certain national level.
And the feeling of raising oneself seems to have begun to make
its way into our intelligentsia.” Until now, “we have been silent
on our own peculiarities.” Remembering them in our memory
does not constitute a manifestation of anti‐Semitism and
oppression of other nationalities: between nationalities there
must be “harmony and not fusion”.[1499]
The editorial team of the newspaper may have taken all
these precautions because it was preparing to publish the
following day, 10 March, an article by P. B. Struve, “The
intelligentsia and the national face”, which had coincidentally
arrived at the same time than that of Jabotinsky and also
dealing with the Chirikov case.
Struve wrote: “This incident,” which will “soon be
forgotten”, “has shown that something has moved in the
minds, has awakened and will no longer be calmed. And we
will have to rely on that.” “The Russian intelligentsia hides its
national face, it is an attitude that imposes nothing, which is
sterile.”—“Nationality is something much more obvious [than
race, colour of skin] and, at the same time, something subtle. It
is the attraction and repulsion of the mind and, to become
aware of them, it is not necessary to resort to anthropometry
or to genealogy. They live and palpitate in the depths of the
soul.” One can and must ght to make these
attractions/repulsions not be brought into law, “but ‘political’
equity does not require from us ‘national’ indi erence.” These
attractions and repulsions belong to us, they are our goods”,
“the organic feeling of our national belonging… And I do not
see the slightest reason… to renounce this property in the
name of anyone or anything.”
Yes, insists Struve, it is essential to draw a border between
the legal, the political domains and the realm where these
sentiments live. “Especially with regard to the Jewish question,
it is both very easy and very di cult.”—“The Jewish question is
formally a question of law”, and, for this reason, it is easy and
natural to help solve it: to grant the Jews equal rights—yes, of
course! But at the same time it is “very di cult because the
force of rejection towards the Jews in di erent strata of Russian
society is considerable, and it requires great moral force and a
very rational mind to, despite this repulsion, resolve
de nitively this question of right.” However, “even though
there is a great force of rejection towards the Jews among large
segments of the Russian population, of all the ‘foreigners’ the
Jews are those who are closest to us, those who are the most
closely linked to us. It is a historico‐cultural paradox, but it is
so. The Russian intelligentsia has always regarded the Jews as
Russians, and it is neither fortuitous nor the e ect of a
‘misunderstanding’. The deliberate initiative of rejecting
Russian culture and asserting Jewish ‘national’ singularity does
not belong to the Russian intelligentsia, but to this movement
known as Zionism… I do not feel any sympathy for Zionism,
but I understand that the problem of ‘Jewish’ nationality does
indeed exist,” and even poses itself more and more. (It is
signi cant that he places “national” and “Jewish” in quotation
marks: he still cannot believe that the Jews think of themselves
as others.) “There does not exist in Russia other ‘foreigners’
who play a role as important in Russian culture… And here is
another di culty: they play this role while remaining Jews.”
One cannot, for example, deny the role of the Germans in
Russian culture and science; but by immersing themselves in
Russian culture, the Germans completely blend into it. “With
the Jews, that’s another matter!”
And he concludes: “We must not deceive [our national
feeling] or hide our faces… I have a right, like any Russian, to
these feelings… The better it is understood… the less there will
be misunderstandings in the future.”[1500]
Yes… Oh, if we had woken up, as much as we are, a few
decades earlier! (The Jews, they, had awakened long before the
Russians.)
But the very next day, it was a whirlwind: as if all the
newspapers had waited for that! From the liberal Hacha Gazeta
(“Is this the right moment to talk about this?”) and the right‐
wing newspaper Novoie Vremia to the organ of the Democratic
constitutional party Retch where Milyukov could not help
exclaiming: Jabotinsky “has succeeded in breaking the wall of
silence, and all the frightening and threatening things that the
progressive press and the intelligentsia had sought to hide
from the Jews now appear in their true dimension.” But, later
on, argumentative and cold as usual, Milyukov goes on to the
verdict. It begins with an important warning: Where does it
lead? Who bene ts from it? The “national face” which, moreover,
“we must not hide”, is a step towards the worst of fanaticism!
(Thus, the “national face” must be hidden.) Thus “the slippery
slope of æsthetic nationalism will precipitate the intelligentsia
towards its degeneration, towards a true tribal chauvinism”
engendered “in the putrid atmosphere of the reaction reigning
over today’s society.”[1501]
But P. B. Struve, with an almost juvenile agility in spite of his
forty years, retaliates as soon as 12 March in the columns of the
Slovo to the “professorial speech” of Milyukov. And, above all, to
this sleight of hand: “Where does it lead?” (“Who bene ts from
it?” “Who will draw the chestnuts from the re?”—this is how
people will be silenced—whatever they say—for a hundred
years or more. There is a falsifying process that denotes a total
inability to understand that a speech can be honest and have
weight in itself.)—“Our point of view is not refuted on the
merits”, but confronted on the polemic mode to “a projection”:
“Where does it lead?”[1502] (A few days later, he wrote again in
the Slovo: “It is an old process to discredit both an idea that one
does not share and the one who formulates it, insinuating
per diously that the people of Novoie Vremia or Russkoye
Znamya will nd it quite to their liking. This procedure is, in
our opinion, utterly unworthy of a progressive press.”[1503])
Then, as to the substance: “National questions are, nowadays,
associated with powerful, sometimes violent feelings. To the
extent that they express in everyone the consciousness of their
national identity, these feelings are fully legitimate and… to
sti e them is… a great villainy.” That is it: if they are repressed,
they will reappear in a denatured form. As for this “‘Asemitism’
which would be the worst thing, it is in fact a much more
favourable ground for a legal solution of the Jewish question
than the endless struggle between ‘anti‐Semitism’ and ‘philo‐
Semitism’. There is no non‐Russian nationality that needs… all
Russians to love it without reservation. Even less that they
pretend to love it. In truth, ‘Asemitism’, combined with a clear
and lucid conception of certain moral and political principles
and certain political constraints, is much more necessary and
useful to our Jewish compatriots than a sentimental and soft
‘philo‐Semitism’”, especially if this one is simulated.—And “it is
good that the Jews see the ‘national face’” of Russian
constitutionalism and democratic society. And “it is of no use
to them to speak under the delusion that this face belongs only
to anti‐Semitic fanaticism.” This is not “the head of the
Medusa, but the honest and human face of the Russian nation,
without which the Russian State would not stand up.”[1504]—
And again these lines of Slovo‘s editorial team: “Harmony…
implies recognition and respect for all the speci cities of each
[nationality].”[1505]
Heated debates continued in the newspapers. “Within a few
days a whole literature was formed on the subject.” We assisted
“In the Progressive Press… to something unthinkable even a
short time ago: there is a debate on the question of Great‐
Russian nationalism!”[1506] But the discussion only reached
this level in the Slovo; the other papers concentrated on the
question of “attractions and repulsions”.[1507] The
intelligentsia turned its anger towards its hero of the day
before.
Jabotinsky also gave voice, and even twice… “The bear came
out of his lair,” he lashed out, addressed to P. Struve, a man who
was however so calm and well‐balanced. Jabotinsky, on the
other hand, felt o ended; he described his article, as well as
that of Milyukov, as “a famous batch”: “their languorous
declamation is impregnated with hypocrisy, insincerity,
cowardice and opportunism, which is why it is so incorrigibly
worthless”; and to ironise in quoting Milyukov: thus “the holy
and pure Russian intelligentsia of old” “felt feelings of
‘repulsion’ at the encounter of the Jews?… Bizarre, no?” He
criticised “the ‘holy and pure’ climate of this marvellous
country”, and the zoological species of Yursus judaeophagus
intellectualis.” (The conciliatory Winaver also took for his rank:
“the Jewish footman of the Russian palace”). Jabotinsky
fulminated at the idea that the Jews should wait “until was
resolved the central political problem” (i.e. the tsar’s
deposition): “We thank you for having such a attering opinion
on our disposition to behave like a dog with his master”, “on
the celerity of faithful Israel”. He even concluded by stating
that “never before the exploitation of a people by another had
ever been revealed with such ingenuous cynicism.”[1508]
It must be admitted that this excessive virulence hardly
contributed to the victory of his cause. Moreover, the near
future was going to show that it was precisely the deposition of
the tsar which would open the Jews to even more possibilities
than they sought to obtain, and cut the grass under the foot of
Zionism in Russia; so much and so well that Jabotinsky was
also deceived on the merits.
Much later and with the retreat of time, another witness of
that era, then a member of the Bund, recalled that “in the years
1907‒1914, some liberal intellectuals were a ected by the
epidemic, if not of open anti‐Semitism, at least ‘Asemitism’
that struck Russia then; on the other hand, having gotten over
the extremist tendencies that had arisen during the rst
Russian revolution, they were tempted to hold the Jews
accountable, whose participation in the revolution had been
blatant.” In the years leading up to the war, “the rise of Russian
nationalism was present… in certain circles where, at rst
sight, the Jewish problem was, only a short time before,
perceived as a Russian problem.”[1509]
In 1912, Jabotinsky himself, this time in a more balanced
tone, reported this judicious observation of a prominent Jewish
journalist: as soon as the Jews are interested in some cultural
activity, immediately the latter becomes foreign to the Russian
public, who is no longer attracted to it. A kind of invisible
rejection. It is true, that a national demarcation cannot be
avoided; it will be necessary to organise life in Russia “without
external additions which, in so large a quantity, perhaps
cannot be tolerated [by the Russians].”[1510]
To consider all that has been presented above, the most
accurate conclusion is to say that within the Russian
intelligentsia were developing simultaneously (as history
o ers many examples) two processes that, with regard to the
Jewish problem, were distinguished by a question of
temperament, not by a degree of sympathy. But the one
represented by Struve was too weak, uncertain, and was sti ed.
Whilst the one who had trumpeted his philo‐Semitism in the
collection The Shield enjoyed a wide publicity and prevailed
among public opinion. There is only to regret that Jabotinsky
did not recognise Struve’s point of view at its fair value.
As for the 1909 debate in the Slovo columns, it was not
limited to the Jewish question, but turned into a discussion of
Russian national consciousness, which, after the eighty years
of silence that followed, remains today still vivacious and
instructive,—P. Struve wrote: “Just as we must not Russify
those who do not want it, so we must not dissolve ourselves in
Russian multinationalism.”[1511]—V. Golubev protested
against the “monopolisation of patriotism and nationalism by
reactionary groups”: “We have lost sight of the fact that the
victories won by the Japanese have had a disastrous e ect on
the popular conscience and national sentiment. Our defeat not
only humiliated our bureaucrats,” as public opinion hoped,
“but, indirectly, the nation as well.” (Oh no, not “indirectly”:
quite directly!) “Russian nationality… has vanished.”[1512] Nor
is it a joke that the ourishing of the word “Russian” itself,
which has been transformed into “authentically Russian”. The
progressive intelligentsia has let these two notions go,
abandoning them to the people of the right. “Patriotism, we
could only conceive it in quotation marks.” But “we must
compete with reactionary patriotism with a popular
patriotism… We have frozen in our refusal of the patriotism of
the Black Hundreds, and if we have opposed something of it, it
is not another conception of patriotism, but of universal
ideals.”[1513] And yet, all our cosmopolitanism has not
allowed us, until today, to fraternise with the Polish society…
[1514]
A. Pogodin was able to say that after V. Solovyov’s violent
indictment of Danilevsky’s book, Russia and Europe, after
Gradovsky’s articles, were “the rst manifestations of this
consciousness which, like the instinct of self‐preservation,
awakens among the peoples when danger threatens them.”
(Coincidentally—at the very moment when this polemic took
place, Russia had to endure its national humiliation: it was
forced to recognise with pitiable resignation the annexation by
Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was equivalent to a
“diplomatic Tsou‐Shina”.) “Fatality leads us to raise this
question, which was formerly entirely foreign to the Russian
intelligentsia, but which life itself imposes on us with a
brutality that forbids all evasion.”[1515]
In conclusion, the Slovo wrote: “A fortuitous incident
triggered quite a journalistic storm.” This means that “Russian
society needs national awareness”. In the past, “it had turned
away not only from a false anti‐national policy… but also from
genuine nationalism without which a policy cannot really be
built.” A people capable of creation “cannot but have its own
face.”[1516] “Minine[1517] was certainly a nationalist.” A
constructive nationalist, possessing the sense of the State, is
peculiar to living nations, and that is what we need now.[1518]
“Just as three hundred years ago, history tells us to reply,” to
say, “in the dark hours of trial… if we have the right, like any
people worthy of the name, to exist by ourselves.”[1519]
And yet—even if, apparently, the year 1909 was rather
peaceful—one felt that the Storm was in the air!
 However, certain things were not lost sight of (M. Slavinski):
“Attempts to Russify or, more exactly, to impose the Russian‐
Russian model on Russia… have had a disastrous e ect on
living national peculiarities, not only of all the non‐sovereign
peoples of the Empire, but also and above all of the people of
Great‐Russia… The cultural forces of the people of Great Russia
proved insu cient for this.” “For the nationality of Great
Russia, only the development of the interior, a normal
circulation of blood, is good.”[1520] (Alas! even today, the
lesson has not been assimilated). “Necessary is the struggle
against physiological nationalism, [when] a stronger people
tries to impose on others who are less so a way of life that is
foreign to them.”[1521] But an empire as this could not have
been constituted solely by physical force, there was also a
“moral force”. And if we possess this force, then the equality of
rights of other peoples (Jews as well as Poles) does not threaten
us in any way.[1522]
In the nineteenth century already, and a fortiori at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian intelligentsia
felt that it was at a high level of global consciousness,
universality, cosmopolitanism or internationality (at the time,
little di erence was made between all these notions). In many
elds, it had almost entirely denied what was Russian,
national. (From the top of the tribune of the Duma, one
practised at the pun: “patriot‐Iscariot.”)
As for the Jewish intelligentsia, it did not deny its national
identity. Even the most extreme of Jewish socialists struggled
to reconcile their ideology with national sentiment. At the
same time, there was no voice among the Jews—from Dubnov
to Jabotinsky, passing by Winaver—to say that the Russian
intelligentsia, who supported their persecuted brothers with
all their souls, might not give up his own national feeling.
Equity would have required it. But no one perceived this
disparity: under the notion of equality of rights, the Jews
understood something more.
Thus, the Russian intelligentsia, solitary, took the road to the
future.
The Jews did not obtain equal rights under the tsars, but—
and probably partly for this very reason—they obtained the
hand and the delity of the Russian intelligentsia. The power
of their development, their energy, their talent penetrated the
consciousness of Russian society. The idea we had of our
perspectives, of our interests, the impetus we gave to the search
for solutions to our problems, all this, we incorporated it to the
idea that they were getting of it themselves. We have adopted
their vision of our history and how to get out of it.
Understanding this is much more important than
calculating the percentage of Jews who tried to destabilise
Russia (all of whom we did), who made the revolution or
participated in Bolshevik power.
 Chapter 12. During the War (1914‒1916)

The First World War was undoubtedly the greatest of the follies
of the twentieth century. With no real motives or purposes,
three major European powers—Germany, Russia, Austria‐
Hungary—clashed in a deadly battle which resulted in the rst
two not recovering for the duration of the century, and the
third disintegrating. As for the two allies of Russia, seemingly
victors, they held out for another quarter of a century, and
then lost their power of domination forever. Henceforth, the
whole of Europe ceased to ful l its proud mission of guiding
humanity, becoming an object of jealousy and incapable of
keeping in its weakened hands its colonial possessions.
None of the three emperors, and even less Nicholas II and his
entourage, had realised in what war they were plunging, they
could imagine neither its scale nor its violence. Apart from
Stolypin and after him, Durnovo, the authorities had not
understood the warning addressed to Russia between 1904 and
1906.
Let us consider this same war with the eyes of the Jews. In
these three neighbouring empires lived three‐quarters of the
Jews of the planet (and 90% of the Jews of Europe[1523]) who
were on top of that living in the area of future military
operations, of the province of Kovno (then Livonia) up to
Austrian Galicia (then Romania). And the war placed them
before an interrogation as pressing as it was painful: could all,
living on the front steps of these three empires, preserve their
imperial patriotism under these conditions? For if, for the
armies that were advancing, behind the front was the enemy,
for the Jews established in these regions, behind the front lived
neighbours and co‐religionists. They could not want this war:
could their mindset shift brutally towards patriotism? As for
the ordinary Jews, those of the Pale of Settlement, they had
even less reason to support the Russian army. We have seen
that a century before, the Jews of western Russia had helped
the Russians against Napoleon. But, in 1914, it was quite
di erent: in the name of what would they help the Russian
army? On behalf of the Pale of Settlement? On the contrary, did
the war not give rise to the hope of a liberation? With the
arrival of the Austrians and the Germans, a new Pale of
Settlement was not going to be established, the numerus clausus
would not be maintained in the educational establishments!
It is precisely in the western part of the Pale of Settlement
that the Bund retained in uence, and Lenin tells us that its
members “are in their majority Germanophiles and rejoice at
the defeat of Russia.”[1524] We also learn that during the war,
the Jewish autonomist movement Vorwarts adopted an openly
pro‐German position. Nowadays, a Jewish writer notes nely
that, “if one re ects on the meaning of the formula ‘God, the
Tsar, the Fatherland…’, it is impossible to imagine a Jew, a loyal
subject of the Empire, who could have taken this formula
seriously,” in other words, in the rst degree.[1525]
But, in the capitals, things were di erent. Despite their
positions of 1904‒1905, the in uential Jewish circles, like the
Russian liberals, o ered their support to the autocratic regime
when the con ict broke out; they proposed a pact. “The
patriotic fervour which swept Russia did not leave the Jews
aside.”[1526] “It was the time when, seeing the Russian
patriotism of the Jews, Purishkevich[1527] embraced the
rabbis.”[1528] As for the press (not Novoie Vremia, but the
liberal press, “half‐Jewish” according to Witte, the same one
who expressed and oriented the jolts of public opinion and
who, in 1905, literally demanded the capitulation of power), it
was, from the rst days of the war, moved by patriotic
enthusiasm. “Over the head of little Serbia, the sword is raised
against Great Russia, the guarantor of the inalienable right of
millions of people to work and to life!” At an extraordinary
meeting of the Duma, “the representatives of the di erent
nationalities and di erent parties were all, on this historic day,
inhabited by the same thought, a single emotion made all the
voices tremble… That no one lay a hand on Saint Russia!… We
are ready for all sacri ces to defend the honour and dignity of
Russia, one and indivisible… ‘God, the Tsar, the people’—and
victory is assured… We, Jews, defend our country because we
are deeply attached to it.”
Even if, behind this, there was a well‐founded calculation,
the expectation of a gesture of recognition in return—the
attainment of equal rights, even if it was only once the war was
over—, the government had to, by accepting this unexpected
ally, decide to assume—or promise to assume—its share of
obligations.
And, in fact, did the achievement of equal rights necessarily
have to come through the revolution? Moreover, the crushing
of the insurrection by Stolypin “had led to a decline in interest
in politics in Russian as well as Jewish circles,”[1529]—which,
at the very least, meant that there was a move away from the
revolution. As Chulguine[1530] declared: “Combating the Jews
and the Germans simultaneously was above the forces of
power in Russia, it was necessary to conclude a pact with
somebody.”[1531] This new alliance with the Jews had to be
formalised: it was necessary to produce at least a document
containing promises, as had been done for the Poles. But only
Stolypin would have had the intelligence and the courage to do
so. Without him, there was no one to understand the situation
and take the appropriate decisions. (And, from the spring of
1915, even more serious mistakes were made.)
 The liberal circles, including the elite of the Jewish
community, also had in view another consideration that they
took for a certainty. From the year 1907 (again, without urgent
necessity), Nicholas II had allowed himself to be dragged into a
military alliance with England (thus putting around his neck
the rope of the subsequent confrontation with Germany). And,
now, all the progressive circles in Russia were making the
following analysis: the alliance with the democratic powers
and the common victory with them would inevitably lead to a
global democratisation of Russia at the end of the war and,
consequently, the de nitive establishment of equal rights for
the Jews. There was, therefore, a sense for the Jews of Russia,
and not only for those who lived in Petersburg and Moscow, to
aspire to the victory of Russia in this war.
But these considerations were counterbalanced by the
precipitated, massive expulsion of the Jews from the area of the
front, ordered by the General Sta at the time of the great
retreat of 1915. That the latter had the power to do so was the
result of ill‐considered decisions taken at the beginning of the
war. In July 1914, in the heat of the action, in the agitation
which reigned in the face of the imminence of con ict, the
Emperor had signed without re ection, as a document of
secondary importance, the provisional Regulation of the eld
service which gave the General Sta unlimited power over all
the neighbouring regions of the front, with a very wide
territorial extension, and this, without any consultation with
the Council of Ministers. At the time, no one had attached any
importance to this document, because all were convinced that
the Supreme Command would always be assured by the
Emperor and that there could be no con ict with the Cabinet.
But, as early as July 1914, the Emperor was persuaded not to
assume the Supreme Command of the armies. As a wise man,
the latter proposed the post to his favourite, the ne speaker
Sukhomlinov, then Minister of Defence, who naturally declined
this honour. It was the great prince Nicholas Nicolaevich who
was appointed, and the latter did not consider it possible to
begin by upsetting the composition of the General Sta , at the
head of which was General Yanushkevich. But, at the same
time, the provisional regulations were not altered, so that the
administration of a third of Russia was in the hands of
Yanushkevich, an insigni cant man who was not even a
military o cer by profession.
From the very beginning of the war, orders were given
locally for the expulsion of the Jews from the army areas.[1532]
In August 1914, the newspapers read: “The rights of the Jews…
Telegraphic instruction to all the governors of provinces and
cities to stop the acts of mass or individual expulsion of Jews.”
But, from the beginning of 1915, as testi ed the doctor D.
Pasmanik, a medic on the front during the war, “suddenly,
throughout the area of the front and in all circles close to
power, spread the rumour that the Jews were doing
espionage.”[1533]
During the summer of 1915, Yanukhovich—precisely him—
tried to mask the retreat of the Russian armies, which at that
time seemed appalling, by ordering the mass deportation of the
Jews from the front area, arbitrary deportation, without any
examination of individual cases. It was so easy: to blame all the
defeats on the Jews!
These accusations may not have come about without the
help of the German General Sta , which issued a proclamation
calling on the Jews of Russia to rise up against their
government. But opinion, supported by many sources, prevails
that in this case it was Polish in uence that was at work. As
Sliosberg wrote, just before the war, there had been a brutal
explosion of anti‐Semitism, “a campaign against Jewish
domination in industry and commerce… When war broke out,
it was at its zenith… and the Poles endeavoured by all means to
tarnish the image of the Jewish populations in the eyes of the
Supreme Command by spreading all sorts of nonsense and
legends about Jewish espionage.”[1534]—Immediately after
the promises made by Nikolai Nikolaevich in the Appeal to the
Poles of 14 August, the latter founded in Warsaw the “Central
Committee of the Bourgeoisie”, which did not include a single
Jew, whereas in Poland the Jews represented 14% of the
population. In September, there was a pogrom against the Jews
in Souvalki.[1535]—Then, during the retreat of 1915, “the
agitation which reigned in the midst of the army facilitated the
spread of the calumnies made up by the Poles.”[1536] Pasmanik
asserts that he is “in a position to prove that the rst rumours
about the treason of the Jews were propagated by the Poles”, a
part of which “was actively assisting the Germans. Seeking to
avert suspicion, they hastened to spread the rumour that the
Jews were engaged in espionage.”[1537] In connection with
this expulsion of the Jews, several sources emphasised the fact
that Yanukhevich himself was a “Pole converted to
Orthodoxy”.[1538]
He may have undergone this in uence, but we consider
these explanations insu cient and in no way justifying the
attitude of the Russian General Sta .
Of course, the Jews in the front area could not break their
ties with the neighbouring villages, interrupt the “Jewish post”,
and turn into the enemies of their co‐religionists. Moreover, in
the eyes of the Jews in the Pale of Settlement, the Germans
appeared as a European nation of high culture, much di erent
from the Russians and the Poles (the black shadow of
Auschwitz had not yet covered the earth or crossed the Jewish
conscience…). At that time, the Times correspondent, Steven
Graham, reported that as soon as the smoke of a German ship
appeared on the horizon, the Jewish population of Libava
“forgot the Russian language” and began to speak German. If
they had to leave, the Jews preferred to go to the German side.
—The hostility displayed by the Russian army, and then their
deportation, could only provoke their bitterness and cause
some of them to collaborate openly with the Germans.
In addition to the accusations against the Jews living in
these areas, the Jews were accused of cowardice and desertion.
Father Georges Chavelsky, chaplain of the Russian Army, was
attached to the Sta , but often went to the front and was well
informed of all that was going on there; he wrote in his
memoirs: “From the rst days of the war, it was repeated with
insistence that the Jewish soldiers were cowards and deserters,
and local Jews spies and traitors. There were many examples of
Jews who had gone to the enemy or ed; or Jewish civilians
who had given information to the enemy, or, in the course of
their o ensives, had delivered to them Russian soldiers and
o cers who had lingered on the spot, etc., etc. The more time
passed, the more our situation deteriorated, the more the
hatred and the exasperation against the Jews increased.
rumours were spreading from the front to the rear… they
created a climate that was becoming dangerous for all Jews in
Russia.”[1539]—Second Lieutenant M. Lemke, a Socialist who
was then in Sta , recorded, in the newspaper he was secretly
keeping, reports from the southwest Front, in December 1915;
he noted in particular: “There is a disturbing increase in the
number of Jewish and Polish defectors, not only in the
advanced positions but also in the rear of the front.”[1540]—In
November 1915, one even heard during a meeting of the
Progressive Bloc bureau the following remarks, noted by
Milyukov: “Which people gave proof of its absence of
patriotism?—The Jews.”[1541]
In Germany and Austria‐Hungary, the Jews could occupy
high‐level positions in the administration without having to
abjure their religion, and this was also true in the army. While
in Russia, a Jew could not become an o cer if he did not
convert to orthodoxy, and Jews with higher levels of education
were most often completing their military service as simple
soldiers. One can understand that they did not rush in to serve
in such an army. (In spite of this, Jews were decorated with the
cross of Saint‐George.) Captain G. S. Doumbadze recalled a Jew,
a law student, who received this decoration four times, but
refused to enter the School of O cers in order not to have to
convert, which would have caused his father to die of grief.
Later he was executed by the Bolsheviks.[1542])
For all that, it would be unreliable and implausible to
conclude that all these accusations were mere fabrications.
Chavelsky writes: “The question is too vast and complex… but I
cannot help saying that at that time there was no lack of
motives for accusing the Jews… In times of peace, it was
tolerated that they be assigned to civilian tasks; during the
war… the Jews lled the combat units… During the o ensives,
they were often in the rear; when the army retreated, they were
at the front. More than once they spread panic in their units…
It cannot be denied that the cases of espionage, of going over to
the enemy were not rare… We couldn’t avoid nding
suspicious that the Jews were also perfectly informed of what
was happening on the front. The ‘Jewish telephone’ sometimes
worked better and faster than all the countryside’s
telephones… It was not uncommon for the news of the front to
be known in the small hamlet of Baranovichi, situated near the
General Sta , even before they reach the Supreme Commander
and his Chief of Sta .”[1543] (Lemke points out the Jewish
origins of Chavelsky himself.[1544])
A rabbi from Moscow went to the Sta to try to persuade
Chavelsky that “the Jews are like the others: there are some
courageous, there are some cowards; there are those who are
loyal to their country, there are also the bastards, the traitors,”
and he cited examples taken from other wars. “Although it was
very painful for me, I had to tell him everything I knew about
the conduct of Jews during this war,” “but we were not able to
reach an agreement.”[1545]
Here is yet the testimony of a contemporary. Abraham
Zisman, an engineer, then assigned to the Evacuation
Commission, recalled half a century later: “To my great shame,
I must say that [the Jews who were near the front] behaved very
despicably, giving the German army all the help they
could.”[1546]
There were also charges of a strictly economic nature
against the Jews who supplied the Russian army. Lemke thus
copied the order to the General Sta signed by the Emperor on
the very day of his taking o ce as Supreme Commander (this
order had therefore been prepared by Yanushkevich): Jewish
suppliers abused the orders for bandages, horses, bread given to
them by the army; they receive from the military authorities
documents certifying “that they have been entrusted with the
task of making purchases for the needs of the army… but
without any indication of quantity or place.” Then “the Jews
have certi ed copies of these documents made and distributed
to their accomplices”, thus acquiring the possibility of making
purchases all over the Empire. “Thanks to the solidarity
between them and their considerable nancial resources, they
control vast areas where are bought mainly horses and bread,”
which arti cially raises prices and makes more di cult the
work of the o cials responsible of supplies.[1547]
But all these facts cannot justify the conduct of
Yanushkevich and the General Sta . Without making an e ort
to separate the good wheat from the cha , the Russian High
Command launched an operation, as massive as it was inept,
for the expulsion of the Jews.
 Particularly striking was the attitude towards the Jews of
Galicia who lived in Austro‐Hungarian territory. “From the
beginning of the First World War, tens of thousands of Jews
ed from Galicia to Hungary, Bohemia, and Vienna. Those who
remained su ered greatly during the period of the Russian
occupation of this region.”[1548] “Bullying, beatings, and even
pogroms, frequently organised by the Cossack units, became
the daily lot of the Jews of Galicia.”[1549] This is what Father
Chavelsky writes: “In Galicia, hatred towards the Jews was still
fuelled by the vexations in icted under the Austrian
domination of the Russian populations [in fact, Ukrainian and
Ruthenian] by the powerful Jews”[1550] (in other words, these
same populations were now participating in Cossack
arbitrariness).
“In the province of Kovno all the Jews were deported
without exception: the sick, the wounded soldiers, the families
of the soldiers who were at the front.”[1551] “Hostages were
required under the pretext of preventing acts of espionage,”
and facts of this kind “became commonplace.”[1552]
This deportation of the Jews appears in a stronger light than
in 1915—contrary to what would happen in 1941—there was
no mass evacuation of urban populations. The army was
withdrawing, the civilian population remained there, nobody
was driven out—but the Jews and they alone were driven out,
all without exception and in the shortest possible time: not to
mention the moral wound that this represented for each one,
this brought about the ruin, the loss of one’s house, one’s
property. Was it not, in another form, always the same pogrom
of great magnitude, but this time provoked by the authorities
and not by the populace? How can we not understand the
Jewish misfortune?
To this we must add that Yanushkevich, like the high‐
ranking o cers who were under his command, acted without
any logical re ection, in disorder, precipitation, incoherence,
which could only add to the confusion. There exists no
chronicle nor account of all these military decisions. Only
echoes scattered in the press of the time, and also in “The
Archives of the Russian Revolution” by I. V. Hessen, a series of
documents[1553] collected at random, without follow‐up; and
then, as with Lemke, copies of documents made by individuals.
This scattered data nevertheless allow us to form an opinion
on what happened.
Some of the provisions foresee expelling Jews from the area
of military operations “in the direction of the enemy” (which
would mean: in the direction of the Austrians, across the front
line?), to send back to Galicia the Jews originating from there;
other directives foresee deporting them to the rear of the front,
sometimes at a short distance, sometimes on the left bank of
the Dnieper, sometimes even “beyond the Volga”. Sometimes it
is “cleansing the Jews of a zone of ve versts from the front”,
sometimes we speak of a zone of fty versts. The evacuation
timeframes are sometimes ve days, with authorisation to take
away one’s property, sometimes twenty‐four hours, probably
without this authorisation; as for the resisters, they will be
taken under escort. Or even: no evacuation, but in the event of
a retreat, take hostages among the signi cant Jews, especially
the rabbis, in case Jews denounce either Russians or Poles who
are well disposed in regard to Russia; in the event of execution
of these by the Germans, carry out the execution of the
hostages (but how can we know, verify that there were
executions in German‐occupied territory? It was truly an
incredible system!). Other instruction: we do not take hostages,
we just designate them among the Jewish population
inhabiting our territories—they will bear responsibility for
espionage in favour of the enemy committed by other Jews. Or
even: avoid at all costs that the Jews be aware of the location of
the trenches dug in the rear of the front (so that they cannot
communicate it to the Austrians through their co‐religionists,
—it was known that Romanian Jews could easily cross the
border); or even, on the contrary: oblige precisely civilian Jews
to dig the trenches. Or even (order given by the commander of
the military region of Kazan, General Sandetski, known for his
despotic behaviour): assemble all the Jewish soldiers in
marching battalions and send them to the front. Or,
conversely: discontent provoked by the presence of Jews in the
combat units; their military ineptitude.
There is a feeling that in their campaign against the Jews,
Yanushkevich and the General Sta were losing their minds:
what exactly did they want? During these particularly di cult
weeks of ghting, when the Russian troops retreated,
exhausted and short of ammunition, a yer containing a “list
of questions” was sent to the heads of units and instructed
them to assemble information on “the moral, military, physical
qualities of Jewish soldiers”, as well as their relations with local
Jewish populations. And the possibility was considered of
completely excluding Jews from the army after the war.
We also do not know the exact number of displaced persons.
In The Book of the Jewish Russian World, we read that in April
1915, 40,000 Jews were expulsed from the province of
Courland, and in May 120,000 of them were expelled from
Kovno.[1554] In another place, the same book gives an overall
gure for the whole period, amounting to 250,000[1555]
including Jewish refugees, which means that the deportees
would hardly have accounted for more than half of this digit.
After the revolution, the newspaper Novoie Vremia published
information according to which the evacuation of all the
inhabitants of Galicia dispersed on the territory of Russia
25,000 persons, including nearly a thousand Jews.[1556]
(These are numbers that, for the moment, are too weak to be
probable.)
On 10‒11 May 1915, the order was issued to put an end to
the deportations, and these ceased. Jabotinsky drew the
conclusion of the expulsion of the Jews from the zone of the
front in 1915 by speaking of a “catastrophe probably
unprecedented since the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella” in
Spain in the fteenth century.[1557] But is there not also
something of a move of History in the fact that this massive
deportation—itself, and the indignant reactions it provoked—
would make a concrete contribution to the much desired
suppression of the Pale of Settlement?
Leonid Andreyev had rightly observed: “This famous
‘barbarity’ of which we are accused of… rests entirely and
exclusively on our Jewish question and its bloody
outbursts.”[1558]
These deportations of Jews were resonant on a planetary
scale. From Petersburg, during the war, Jews defending human
rights transmitted information about the situation of their co‐
religionists to Europe; “Among them, Alexander Isayevich
Braudo distinguished himself by his tireless activity.”[1559] A.
G. Shlyapnikov relates that Gorky had sent him documents on
the persecution of Jews in Russia; he brought them to the
United States. All this information spread widely and rapidly in
Europe and America, raising a powerful wave of indignation.
And if the best among the representatives of the Jewish
community and the Jewish intelligentsia feared that “the
victory of Germany… would only reinforce anti‐Semitism…
and, for that reason alone, there could be no question of
sympathies towards the Germans or hopes for their
victory,”[1560] a Russian military intelligence o cer in
Denmark reported in December 1915 that the success of anti‐
Russian propaganda “is also facilitated by Jews who openly
declare that they do not wish the victory of Russia and its
consequence: the autonomy promised to Poland, for they know
that the latter would take energetic measures with a view to
the expulsion of Jews from within its borders”[1561]; In other
words, it was Polish anti‐Semitism that was to be feared, not
German anti‐Semitism: the fate which awaited the Jews in a
Poland which had become independent would perhaps be even
worse than that which they underwent in Russia.
The British and French Governments were somewhat
embarrassed to openly condemn the attitude of their ally. But
at that time, the United States was increasingly engaged in the
international arena. And in the still neutral America of 1915,
“sympathies were divided…; some of the Jews who came from
Germany were sympathetic to the latter, even though they did
not manifest it in an active manner.”[1562] Their dispositions
were maintained by the Jews from Russia and Galicia, who, as
the Socialist Ziv testi ed, wished for (it could no longer be
otherwise) the defeat of Russia, and even more so by the
“professional revolutionists” Russian‐Jews who had settled in
the United States.[1563] To this was added the anti‐Russian
tendencies in the American public: very recently, in 1911, the
dramatic break‐up of an eighty‐year‐old US‐Russian economic
agreement took place. The Americans regarded the o cial
Russia as a country that was “corrupt, reactionary, and
ignorant”.[1564]
This quickly translated into tangible e ects. As early as
August 1915, we read in the reports that Milyukov was holding
meetings of the Progressive Bloc: “The Americans pose as a
condition [of aid to Russia] the possibility for American Jews to
have free access to Russian territory,”[1565]—always the same
source of con ict as in 1911 with T. Roosevelt.—And when a
Russian parliamentary delegation went to London and Paris in
early 1916 to apply for nancial aid, it was faced to a
categorical refusal. The episode is told in detail by
Shingaryov[1566], in the report he presented on 20 June 1916
to the Military and Maritime Commission of the Duma after
the return of the delegation. In England, Lord Rothschild
replied to this request: “You are a ecting our credit in the
United States.” In France, Baron Rothschild declared: “In
America, the Jews are very numerous and active, they exert a
great in uence, in such a manner that the American public is
very hostile to you.” (Then “Rothschild expressed himself even
more brutally”, and Shingaryov demanded that his words not
be included in the record.) This nancial pressure from the
Americans, the rapporteur concludes, is a continuation of a
policy that has led them to break our trade agreement in 1911
(but, of course, to that was added the massive deportations of
Jews undertaken in the meantime). Jakob Schi , who had
spoken so harshly of Russia in 1905, now declared to a French
parliamentarian sent to America: “We will give credit to
England and France when we have the assurance that Russia
will do something for the Jews; the money you borrow from us
goes to Russia, and we do not want that.”[1567]—Milyukov
evoked the protests at the Duma tribune of “millions and
millions of American Jews… who have met a very wide echo in
American opinion. I have in my hands many American
newspapers that prove it… Meetings ending with scenes of
hysteria, crying jags at the evocation of the situation of the
Jews in Russia. I have a copy of the provision made by President
Wilson, establishing a ‘Jewish Day’ throughout the United
States to collect aid for the victims.” And “when we ask for
money to American bankers, they reply: Pardon, how is that?
We agree to lend money to England and France, but on
condition that Russia does not see the colour of it… The
famous banker Jakob Schi , who rules the nancial world in
New York, categorically refuses any idea of a loan to
Russia…”[1568]
The Encyclopædia Judaica, written in English, con rms that
Schi , “using his in uence to prevent other nancial
institutions lending to Russia…, pursued this policy
throughout the First World War”[1569] and put pressure on
other banks to do the same.
For all these upheavals provoked by the deportations, both in
Russia and abroad, it was the Council of Ministers who had to
pay for the broken pots even though the Sta did not consult it
and gave no attention to its protests. I have already quoted a
few snippets of the passionate debates that were agitating the
Cabinet on this subject.[1570] Here are a few others.
Krivoshein[1571] was in favour of temporarily granting the
Jews the right to settle in all the cities of Russia: “This favour
granted to the Jews will be useful not only from a political
point of view, but also from an economic point of view… Up to
now, our policy in this eld made one think of this sleeping
miser on his gold, which does not bene t from it and does not
allow others to do so.” But Roukhlov replied: this proposal
“constitutes a fundamental and irreversible modi cation of
legislation which has been introduced throughout History
with the aim of protecting the Russian heritage from the
control of the Jews, and the Russian people of the deleterious
in uence of the neighbouring of the Jews… You specify that
this favour will be granted only for the duration of the war…,
but we must not be in denial”: after the war, “not one
government will be found” to “send the Jews back to the Pale of
Settlement… The Russians are dying in the trenches and
meanwhile the Jews will settle in the heart of Russia, bene t
from the misfortunes endured by the people, of general ruin.
What will be the reaction of the army and the Russian
people?”—And again, during the following meeting: “The
Russian population endures unimaginable hardships and
su ering, both on the front and in the interior of the country,
while Jewish bankers buy from their co‐religionists the right to
use Russia’s misfortune to exploit tomorrow this
exsanguinated people.”[1572]
But the ministers acknowledged that there was no other way
out. This measure was to be “applied with exceptional
speed”—“in order to meet the nancial needs of the war.”[1573]
All of them, with the exception of Roukhlov, signed their name
at the bottom of the bulletin authorising the Jews to settle
freely (with the possibility of acquiring real estate) throughout
the Empire, with the exception of the capitals, agricultural
areas, provinces inhabited by the Cossacks and the Yalta region.
[1574] In the autumn of 1915 was also repealed the system of
the annual passport, which had hitherto been compulsory for
the Jews who were now entitled to a permanent passport.
(These measures were followed by a partial lifting of the
numerus clausus in educational establishments and the
authorisation to occupy the functions of litigator within the
limits of the representation quotas.[1575]) The opposition that
these decisions met in the public opinion was broken under the
pressure of the war.
Thus, after a century and a quarter of existence, the Pale of
Settlement of the Jews disappeared forever. And to add insult to
injury, as Sliosberg notes, “this measure, so important in its
content…, amounting to the abolition of the Pale of
Settlement, this measure for which had fought in vain for
decades the Russian Jews and the liberal circles of Russia, went
unnoticed!”[1576] Unnoticed because of the magnitude
assumed by the war. Streams of refugees and immigrants were
then overwhelming Russia.
The Refugee Committee, set up by the government, also
provided displaced Jews with funds to help settlements.[1577]
Until the February revolution, “the Conference on Refugees
continued its work and allocated considerable sums to the
various national committees,” including the Jewish
Committee.[1578] It goes without saying that were added to
this the funds contributed by many Jewish organisations that
had embarked on this task with energy and e ciency. Among
them was the Union of Jewish Craftsmen (UJC), created in
1880, well‐established and already extending its action beyond
the Pale of Settlement. The UJC had developed a cooperation
with the World Relief Committee and the “Joint” (“Committee
for the distribution of funds for aid to war‐a ected Jews”). All
of them provided massive aid to the Jewish populations of
Russia; “The ‘Joint’ had rescued hundreds of thousands of Jews
in Russia and Austria‐Hungary.”[1579] In Poland, the UJC
helped Jewish candidates for emigration or settled as farmers—
because “during the war, Jews who lived in small villages had
been driven, not without coercion by the German occupier, to
the work of the land.”[1580] There was also the Jewish
Prophylactic Society (JPS), founded in 1912; it had given itself
for mission not only to direct medical aid to the Jews, but also
the creation of sanatoriums, dispensaries, the development of
sanitary hygiene in general, the prevention of diseases, “the
struggle against the physical deterioration of Jewish
populations” (Nowhere in Russia there existed yet
organisations of this kind). Now, in 1915, these detachments
were organising for Jewish emigrants, all along their route and
at their place of destination, supply centres, ying medical
teams, countryside hospitals, shelters and pædiatric
consultations.[1581]—Also in 1915, appeared the Jewish
Association for the Assistance of War Victims (JAAWV);
bene ting of support from the Committee for Refugees and the
so generously endowed by the State “Zemgor” (association of
the “Union of Zemstvos” and the “Union of Cities”), as well as
credit from America, the JAAWV set up a vast network of
missionaries to help the Jews during their journey and their
new place of residence, with rolling kitchens, canteens,
clothing distribution points, (employment agencies, vocational
training centres), childcare establishments, schools. What an
admirable organisation!—let us remember that approximately
250,000 refugees and displaced persons were taken care of;
according to o cial gures, the number of these was already
reaching 215,000 in August 1916.[1582]—and there was also
the “Political Bureau” near the Jewish Deputies of the fourth
Duma, which resulted from an agreement between the Jewish
Popular Group, the Jewish People’s Party, the Jewish
Democratic Group and the Zionists; during the war, it deployed
“considerable activity”.[1583]
In spite of all the di culties, “the war gave a strong impulse
to the spirit of initiative of the Jews, whipped their will to take
charge.”[1584] During these years “the considerable forces
hidden hitherto in the depths of the Jewish consciousness
matured and revealed to the open… immense reserves of
initiative in the most varied elds of political and social
action.”[1585]—In addition to the resources allocated by the
mutual aid committees, the JAAWV bene ted from the
millions paid to it by the government. At no time did the
Special Conference on Refugees “reject our suggestion” on the
amount of aid: 25 million in a year and a half, which is
in nitely more than what the Jews had collected (the
government paid here the wrongs of the General Sta ); as for
the sums coming from the West, the Committee could retain
them[1586] for future use.
It is thus that with all these movements of the Jewish
population—refugees, displaced persons, but also a good
number of volunteers—the war signi cantly altered the
distribution of Jews in Russia; important settlements were
established in towns far from the front, mainly Nizhny
Novgorod, Voronezh, Penza, Samara, Saratov, but also in the
capitals. Although the abolition of the Pale of Settlement did
not concern Saint Petersburg and Moscow, these two cities
were now practically open. Often, they would go there to join
relatives or protectors who had settled there long ago. In the
course of memoirs left by contemporaries, one discovers for
example a dentist of Petersburg named Flakke: ten‐room
apartment, footman, servant, cook—well‐o Jews were not
uncommon, and, in the middle of the war, while there was a
shortage of housing in Petrograd, they opened up
opportunities for Jews from elsewhere. Many of them changed
their place of residence during those years: families, groups of
families that left no trace in history, except sometimes in
family chronicles of a private nature, such as those of the
parents of David Azbel: “Aunt Ida… left the coldness and
somnolence of Chernigov at the beginning of the First World
War to come and settle in Moscow.”[1587] The new arrivals
were often of a very modest condition, but some of them came
to in uential positions, such as Poznanski, a clerk in the
Petrograd Military Censorship Commission, who had the upper
hand “over all secret a airs”.[1588]
Meanwhile, the General Sta mechanically poured out its
torrents of directives, sometimes respected, sometimes
neglected: to exclude Jews under the banner of all activities
outside armed service: secretary, baker, nurse, telephonist,
telegrapher. Thus, “in order to prevent the anti‐government
propaganda supposed to be carried out by Jewish doctors and
nurses, they should be assigned not to hospitals or country
in rmaries, but ‘to places not conducive to propaganda
activities such as, for example, the advanced positions, the
transport of the wounded on the battle eld’.”[1589] In another
directive: expel the Jews out of the Union of Zemstvos, the
Union of Cities and the Red Cross, where they concentrate in
great numbers to escape armed service (as did also, we note in
passage, tens of thousands of Russians), use their
advantageous position for propaganda purposes (as did any
liberal, radical, or socialist who respected themselves) and,
above all, spread rumours about “the incompetence of the high
command” (which corresponded to a large extent to
reality[1590]). Other bulletins warned against the danger of
keeping the Jews in positions that brought them into contact
with sensitive information: in the services of the Union of
Zemstvos of the western front in April 1916, “all the important
branches of the administration (including those under the
defence secrecy) are in the hands of Jews”, and the names of
those responsible for the registration and classi cation of
con dential documents are cited, as well as that of the Director
of the Department of Public Information, who, “by his
functions, has free access to various services of the army at the
rear of the front or in the regions”.[1591]
However, there is no evidence that the ranting of the General
Sta on the necessity of chasing the Jews from the Zemgor had
any tangible results. Always well informed, Lemke observes
that “the directives of the military authorities on the exclusion
of the Jews” from the Zemgor “were not welcomed”. A bulletin
was published stating that “all persons of Jewish confession
who are dismissed by order of the authorities shall be
reimbursed for two months with salary and travel allowances
and with the possibility of being recruited prioritarily in the
establishments of the Zemgor at the rear of the front.”[1592]
(The Zemgor was the darling of the in uential Russian press. It
is thus that it unanimously declined to reveal its sources of
nancing: in 25 months of war, on 1 September 1916, 464
million rubles granted by the government—equipment and
supplies were delivered directly from state warehouses—
compared with only nine million collected by Zemstvos, towns,
collects.[1593] If the press refused to publish these gures, it is
because it would have emptied of its meaning the opposition
between the philanthropic and charitable action of the Zemgor
and that of a stupid, insigni cant, and lame government.)
Economic circumstances and geographical conditions
meant that among the army’s suppliers, there were many Jews.
A letter of complaint expressing the anger of the “Orthodox‐
Russian circles of Kiev…, driven by their duty as patriots”,
points to Salomon Frankfurt, who occupied a particularly high
position, that of “delegate of the Ministry of Agriculture to the
supply of the army in bacon” (it must be said that complaints
about the disorganisation caused by these requisitions were
heard all the way to the Duma). Also in Kiev, an obscure
“agronomist of a Zemstvo of the region”, Zelman Kopel, was
immortalised by History because of having ordered an
excessive requisition just before Christmas 1916, he deprived
of sugar a whole district during the holidays (In this case, a
complaint was also lodged against the local administration of
the Zemstvos[1594]).
In November 1916, the deputy N. Markov, stigmatising in
the Duma “the marauders of the rear and trappers” of State
property and National Defence, designated, as usual, the Jews
in particular: in Kiev, once again, it was Cheftel, a member of
the Municipal Council, who blocked the warehouses and let rot
more than 2,500 tons of our, sh, and other products that the
town kept in reserve, while at the same time, “the friends of
these gentlemen sold their own sh at grossly in ated prices”;
it was V. I. Demchenko, elected from Kiev to the Duma, who hid
“masses of Jews, rich Jews” (and he enumerates them) “to make
them escape military service”; it was also, in Saratov, “the
engineer Levy” who supplied “through the intermediary of the
commissioner Frenkel” goods to the Military‐Industrial
Committee at in ated prices.[1595] But it should be noted that
the military‐industrial committees set up by Guchkov[1596]
were behaving in exactly the same way with the Treasury. So…
In a report of the Petrograd Security Department dated
October 1916, we can read: “In Petrograd, trade is exclusively in
the hands of Jews who know perfectly the tastes, aspirations,
and opinions of the man in the street”; but this report also
refers to the widespread opinion on the right according to
which, among the people, “the freedom enjoyed by Jews since
the beginning of the war” arouses more and more discontent;
“it is true, there still exists o cially some Russian rms, but
they are in fact controlled by Jews: it is impossible to buy or to
order anything without the intervention of a Jew.”[1597]
(Bolshevik publications, such as Kaiourov’s book[1598] at that
time in Petrograd, did not fail to disguise reality by alleging
that in May 1915, during the sacking of German rms and
shops in Moscow, the crowd also attacked the Jewish
establishments—which is false, and it was even the opposite
that happened: during the anti‐German riot, the Jews, because
of the resemblance of their surnames, protected themselves by
hanging on the front of their shop the placard: “This shop is
Jewish”—and they were not touched, and Jewish trade was not
to su er in all the years of war.)
However, at the top of the monarchy—in Rasputin’s morbid
entourage—, a small group of rather shady individuals played
an important role. They not only outraged the right‐wing
circles—it is how, in May 1916, the French ambassador to
Petrograd, Maurice Paleologue, noted in his diary: “A bunch of
Jewish nanciers and dirty speculators, Rubinstein, Manus,
etc., have concluded an agreement with him [Rasputin] and
compensate him handsomely for services rendered. On their
instructions, he sends notes to ministers, to banks or to
various in uential personalities.”[1599]
 Indeed, if in the past it was Baron Ginzburg who intervened
openly in favour of the Jews, this action was henceforth
conducted secretly by the upstarts who had clustered around
Rasputin. There was the banker D. L. Rubinstein (he was the
director of a commercial bank in Petrograd, but con dently
made his way to the entourage of the throne: he managed the
fortunes of Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, made the
acquaintance of Rasputin through A. Vyrubova[1600], then
was decorated with the order of Saint Vladimir, he was given
the title of State Counsellor, and therefore of the “Your
Excellency”.) But also the industrialist I. P. Manus (director of
the Petrograd wagon factory, member of the Putilov factory
board, the board of two banks and the Russian Transport
Company, also a State Councillor).
Rubinstein attached to Rasputin a permanent “secretary”,
Aron Simanovich, a rich jeweller, diamond dealer, illiterate but
very skilful and enterprising (but what did Rasputin need of a
“secretary”, he who possessed nothing?…)
This Simanovich (“the best among the Jew”, would have
scribbled the “starets” on his portrait) published in
immigration a little book boasting about the role he had played
at that time. We nd in it all sorts of gossip without interest, of
fabrications (he speaks of the “hundreds of thousands of Jews
executed and massacred by order of the Grand Duke Nikolai
Nikolaevich”[1601]); But, through this scum and those surges
of boastfulness, one can glimpse real facts, quite concrete.
For example, the “dentists a air”—for most Jews—which
had broken out in 1913: “a veritable dentist’s diploma factory
had been elaborated” which ooded Moscow,[1602]—their
detention gave the right to permanent residence and dispensed
of military service. There were about 300 of them (according to
Simanovich: 200). The false dentists were condemned to one
year in prison, but, on the intervention of Rasputin, they were
pardoned.
“During the war… the Jews sought protection from Rasputin
against the police or the military authorities,” and Simanovitch
proudly con des that “many Jewish young men implored his
help to escape the army,” which, in time of war, gave them the
possibility of entering the University; “There was often no legal
way”—but Simanovich claims that it was always possible to
nd a solution. Rasputin “had become the friend and
benefactor of the Jews, and unreservedly supported my e orts
to improve their condition.”[1603]
By mentioning the circle of these new favourites, one cannot
fail to mention the unparalleled adventurer Manassevich‐
Manoulov. He was, in turn, an o cial of the Ministry of the
Interior and an agent of the Russian secret police in Paris,
which did not prevent him from selling abroad secret
documents from the Police Department; he had conducted
secret negotiations with Gapon; when Stürmer[1604] was
appointed Prime Minister, he was entrusted with “exceptional
‘secret missions’.”[1605]
Rubinstein barged into public life by buying out the
newspaper Novoie Vremia (see chapter 8), hitherto hostile to
the Jews. (Irony of history: in 1876, Suvorin had bought this
paper with the money of the banker of Warsaw Kroneberg, and
at the beginning, well oriented towards the Jews, he opened its
columns to them. But, at the beginning of the war between
Russia and Turkey, Novoie Vremia suddenly changed course,
“went to the side of the reaction,” and, “as far as the Jewish
question was concerned, no longer put a stop to hatred and bad
faith.”[1606]) In 1915, Prime Minister Goremykin[1607] and
the Minister of the Interior Khvostov, Junior[1608] in vain
prevented Rubinstein’s buyback of the newspaper,[1609] he
achieved his aims a little later,—but we were already too close
to the revolution, all that did not serve much. (Another
newspaper on the right, the Grajdanin was also partially
bought by Manus).
S. Melgounov nicknamed the “quintet” the small group
which treated his a airs in the “antechamber”[1610] of the tsar
—through Rasputin. Given the power of the latter, it was no
small matter: dubious characters were in the immediate
vicinity of the throne and could exert a dangerous in uence on
the a airs of the whole of Russia. Britain’s ambassador,
Buchanan, believed that Rubinstein was linked to the German
intelligence services.[1611] This possibility cannot be ruled
out.
The rapid penetration of German espionage into Russia, and
its links with the speculators of the rear, forced General
Alekseyev[1612] to solicit from the emperor, during the
summer of 1916, the authorisation to carry out investigations
beyond the area of competence of the General Sta ,—and thus
was constituted the “Commission of Inquiry of General
Batiushin”. Its rst target was the banker Rubinstein, suspected
of “speculative operations with German capital”, nancial
manipulation for the bene t of the enemy, depreciation of the
ruble, overpayment of foreign agents for orders placed by the
General Stewardship, and speculative operations on wheat in
the region of the Volga. On the decision of the Minister of
Justice, Rubinstein was arrested on 10 July 1916 and charged
with high treason.[1613]
It was from the empress in person that Rubinstein received
the strongest support. Two months after his arrest, she asked
the Emperor “to send him discreetly to Siberia, not to keep him
here, so as not to annoy the Jews”—“speak of Rubinstein” with
Protopopov[1614]. Two weeks later, Rasputin sent a telegram
to the emperor saying that Protopopov “implores that no one
come to disturb him”, including counter‐espionage…; “he
spoke to me of the detainee with gentleness, as a true
Christian.”—Another three weeks later, the Empress: “About
Rubinstein, he is dying. Send immediately a telegram [to the
northwest Front]… for him to be transferred from Pskov under
the authority of the Minister of the Interior”—that is, of that
good and gentle Christian of Protopopov! And, the following
day: “I hope you sent the telegram for Rubinstein, he’s dying.”
And the next day: “Have you arranged for Rubinstein to be
handed over to the Minister of the Interior? If he stays in Pskov,
he will die,—please, my sweet friend!”[1615]
On 6 December, Rubinstein was released—ten days before
the assassination of Rasputin, who had just enough time to
render him a last service. Immediately afterwards, the Minister
Makarov[1616], whom the Empress detested, was dismissed.
(Shortly thereafter, he will be executed by the Bolsheviks.)—It
is true that with the liberation of Rubinstein, the investigation
of his case was not nished; he was arrested again, but during
the redeeming revolution of February, along with other
prisoners who languished in the tsarist gaols, he was freed of
the Petrograd prison by the crowd and left ungrateful Russia,
as had the time to do so Manassevich, Manus, and Simanovich.
(This Rubinstein, we will still have the opportunity to meet
him again.)
For us who live in the 90s of the twentieth century,[1617]
this orgy of plundering of State property appears as an
experimental model on a very small scale… But what we nd in
one case or another, it is a government both pretentious and
lame that leaves Russia abandoned to its destiny.

   
Educated by the Rubinstein case, the General Sta had the
accounts of several banks checked. At the same time, an
investigation was opened against the sugar producers of Kiev—
Hepner, Tsekhanovski, Babushkin, and Dobry. They had
obtained permission to export sugar to Persia; they had made
massive shipments, but very little merchandise had been
reported by the customs and had reached the Persian market;
the rest of the sugar had “disappeared”, but, according to some
information, it had passed through Turkey—allied to Germany
—and had been sold on the spot. At the same time, the price of
sugar had suddenly risen in the regions of the South‐West,
where Russia’s sugar industry was concentrated. The sugar
deal was conducted in an atmosphere of rigour and
intransigence, but the Batiushin commission did not carry out
its investigation and forwarded the le to an investigative
judge of Kiev, who began by expanding the accused, and then
they found support alongside the throne.
As for the Batiushin Commission itself, its composition left
much to be desired. Its ine ectiveness in investigating the
Rubinstein case was highlighted by Senator Zavadski.[1618] In
his memoirs, General Lukomski, a member of the Sta ,
recounts that one of the chief jurists of the commission,
Colonel Rezanov, an indisputably competent man, was also
found to be quite fond of menus, good restaurants, boozy
dinners; another, Orlov, proved to be a renegade who worked in
the secret police after 1917, then went to the Whites and, in
emigration, would be marked by his provocative conduct.
There were probably other shady gures on the committee who
did not refuse bribes and had capitalised on the release of the
detainees. Through a series of indiscriminate acts, the
commission drew the attention of the Military Justice of
Petrograd and senior o cials of the Ministry of Justice.
 However, there was not only the Sta to deal with the
problem of speculators, in relation to the activities “of the Jews
in general”. On 9 January 1916, Acting Director of the Police
Department, Kafafov, signed a classi ed defence directive,
which was addressed to all provincial and city governors and
all gendarmerie commands. But the “intelligence service” of
public opinion soon discovered the secret, and a month later,
on 10 February, when all business ceased, Chkheidze[1619]
read out this document from the tribune of the Duma. And
what could be read there was not only that “the Jews make
revolutionary propaganda”, but that “in addition to their
criminal activity of propaganda… they have set themselves
two important objectives: to arti cially raise the price of
essential commodities and withdraw from circulation
common currency”—they thus seek “to make the population
lose con dence in the Russian currency”, to spread the rumour
that “the Russian government is bankrupt, that there is not
enough metal to make coins.” The purpose of all this, according
to the bulletin, was “to obtain the abolition of the Pale of
Settlement, because the Jews think that the present period is
the most favourable to achieve their ends by maintaining the
trouble in the country.” The Department did not accompany
these considerations with any concrete measure: it was simply
“for information”.[1620]
Here is the reaction of Milyukov: “The method of
Rostopchin[1621] is used with the Jews—they are presented to
an overexcited crowd, saying: they are the guilty, they are
yours, do what you want with them.”[1622]
During the same days, the police encircled the Moscow Stock
Exchange, carried out identity checks among the operators and
discovered seventy Jews in an illegal situation; a roundup of
the same type took place in Odessa. And this also penetrated
the Duma Chamber, causing a real cataclysm—what the
Council of Ministers feared so much a year ago was happening:
“In the current period, we can not tolerate within the Duma a
debate on the Jewish question, a debate which could take on a
dangerous form and serve as a pretext for the aggravation of
con icts between nationalities.”[1623] But the debate really
took place and lasted several months.
The most lively and passionate reaction to the bulletin of the
Department was that of Shingaryov[1624]—he had no equal to
communicate to his listeners all the indignation which aroused
in his heart: “there is not an ignominy, not a turpitude which
the State has not been guilty towards the Jew, it which is a
Christian state… spreading calumny over a whole people
without any foundation… Russian society will be able to cure
its evils only when you will withdraw that thorn, this evil that
gangrenes the life of the country—the persecution of
nationalities… Yes, we hurt for our government, we are
ashamed of our State! The Russian army found itself without
ammunition in Galicia—“and the Jews would be responsible for
it?” “As for the rise in prices, there are many complex reasons
for this… Why, in this case, does the bulletin mention only the
Jews, why does it not speak of the Russians and even others?”
Indeed, prices had soared all over Russia. And the same goes for
the disappearance of coins. “And it is in a bulletin of the
Department of Police that one can read all this!”[1625]
Nothing to object.
Easy to write a bulletin in the back of an o ce, but very
unpleasant to respond to a raging Parliament. Yet this was
what its author, Kafafov, had to resolve. He defended himself:
the bulletin did not contain any directive, it was not addressed
to the population, but to local authorities, for information and
not for action; it aroused passions only after being sold by
“timorous” civil servants and made public from the rostrum.
How strange, continued Kafafov: we are not talking here of
other con dential bulletins which have also, probably, been
leaked; thus, as early as May 1915, he had himself initialled one
of this order: “There is a rise in hatred towards Jews in certain
categories of the population of the Empire”, and the
Department “demands that the most energetic measures be
taken in order to prevent any demonstration going in this
direction”, any act of violence of the population directed
against the Jews, “to take the most vigorous measures to sti e
in the bud the propaganda that begins to develop in certain
places, to prevent it from leading to outbreaks of pogroms.”
And even, a month earlier, at the beginning of February, this
directive sent to Poltava: reinforce surveillance so as to “be able
to prevent in time any attempt to pogrom against the
Jews.”[1626]
And to complain: how is it that that bulletins such as these
do not interest public opinion, that, those, they are allowed to
pass in the utmost silence?
In his heated speech, Shingaryov immediately warned the
Duma against the danger of “engaging in debates on the
boundless ocean of the Jewish question.” But that was what
happened because of the publicity reserved for this bulletin.
Moreover, Shingaryov himself pushed clumsily in this
direction, abandoning the ground for the defence of the Jews to
declare that the real traitors were the Russians:
Sukhomlinov[1627], Myasoedov, and General Grigoriev, who
had shamefully capitulated at Kovno.[1628]
This provoked a reaction. Markov[1629] objected that he had
no right to speak of Sukhomlinov, the latter being for the
moment only accused. (The Progressive Bloc was successful in
the Sukhomlinov a air, but at the end of the Provisional
Government, it itself had to admit that time had been wasted,
that there had been no treason there.) Myasoedov had already
been convicted and executed (but some facts may suggest that
it was also a fabricated a air); Markov limited himself to
adding that “he had been hanged in the company of six Jewish
spies” (what I did not know: Myasoedov had been judged alone)
and that, here is one to six, that was the report.[1630]
Among certain proposals contained in the programme that
the Progressive Bloc had succeeded in putting together in
August 1915, “the autonomy of Poland” seemed somewhat
fantastical insofar as it was entirely in the hands of the
Germans; “the equality of rights for peasants” did not have to
be demanded of the government, because Stolypin had made it
happen and it was precisely the Duma which did not endorse it,
positing precisely as a condition the simultaneous equality of
the Jews; so much so that “the gradual introduction of a
process of reducing the limitations of rights imposed on
Jews”—even though the evasiveness of this formulation was
obvious—nevertheless became the main proposal of the
programme of the Bloc. The latter included Jewish
deputies[1631] and the Yiddish press reported: “The Jewish
community wishes the Progressive Bloc a good wind!”
And now, after two years of an exhausting war, heavy losses
on the front and a feverish agitation in the rear, the extreme
right waved its admonitions: “You have understood that you
must explain yourself before the people over your silence about
the military superiority of the Germans, your silence about the
ght against the soaring prices, and your excessive zeal to want
to grant equal rights to the Jews!” That is what you are
demanding “of the government, at the present moment, in the
midst of war,—and if it does not meet these demands you blow
it o and recognise only one government, the one that will give
equality to the Jews!” But “we are surely not going to give
equality now, just now that everyone is white‐hot against the
Jews; in doing so, you only raise public opinion against these
unfortunates.”[1632]
 Deputy Friedman refutes the claim that the people are at the
height of exasperation: “In the tragic context of the oppression
of the Jews, however, there is a glimmer of hope, and I do not
want to ignore it: it is the attitude of the Russian populations of
the interior provinces towards the Jewish refugees who arrive
there.” These Jewish refugees “receive help and hospitality”. It
is “the pledge of our future, our fusion with the Russian
people.” But he insists that the responsibility for all the
misfortunes of the Jews rests with the government, and he lays
his accusations at the highest level: “There was never a pogrom
when the government did not want it.” Through the members
of the Duma, “I am addressing the 170 million inhabitants of
Russia…: they want to use your hands to lift the knife on the
Jewish people of Russia!”[1633]
To this was replied: do the deputies of the Duma only know
what is thought of in the country? “The country does not write
in Jewish newspapers, the country su ers, works… it is bogged
down in the trenches, it is there, the country, and not in the
Jewish newspapers where work John Does obeying mysterious
guidelines.” It was even said, “That the press is controlled by
the government is an evil, but there is an even greater evil: that
the press is controlled by the enemies of the Russian
State!”[1634]
As Shingaryov had sensed, the liberal majority of the Duma
was, now, no longer interested in prolonging the debate on the
Jewish question. But the process was on and nothing could
stop it. And it was a never‐ending series of speeches that came
in the middle of the other cases to be dealt with for four
months until the end of the fall session.
The right accused the Progressive Bloc: no, the Duma was
not going to tackle the problem of rising prices! “You are not
going to ght with the banks, the unions, against strikes in the
industry, because that would be tantamount to ghting against
the Jews.” Meanwhile, the Reformist Municipality of Petrograd
“gave the town supply to two Israelites, Levenson and Lesman:
the rst the meat supply, the second the food shops—although
he had illegally sold our to Finland. Other examples of
suppliers arti cially in ating prices are given.[1635] (None of
the deputies took it upon himself to defend these speculators.)
After that, it is impossible that the question not come up for
discussion, so current during these years of war, of the numerus
clausus! As we have seen, it had been re‐established after the
revolution of 1905, but was gradually mitigated by the
common practice of day school in high schools and the
authorisation given to Jews who had completed their medical
studies abroad to pass the State diploma in Russia; other
measures were taken in this direction—but not the abrogation
pure and simple—in 1915, when the Pale of Settlement was
abolished. P. N. Ignatiev, Minister of Public Instruction in
1915‒1916, also reduced the numerus clausus in higher
education institutions.
And in the spring of 1916, the walls of the Duma echoed the
debate on this issue at length. The statistics of the Ministry of
Education are examined, and Professor Levachev, deputy of
Odessa, states that the provisions of the Council of Ministers
(authorising the derogatory admission of children of Jews
called up for military service) have been arbitrarily extended
by the Ministry of Education to the children of Zemgor
employees, evacuation agencies, hospitals, as well as persons
declaring themselves [deceitfully] dependent on a parent called
up for military service. Thus, of the 586 students admitted in
1915 in the rst year of medicine at the University of Odessa,
“391 are Jews”, that is to say two thirds, and that “only one
third remain for the other nationalities.” At the University of
Rostov‐on‐Don: 81% of Jewish students at the Faculty of Law,
56% at the Faculty of Medicine, and 54% at the Faculty of
Sciences.[1636]
Gurevich replies to Levachev: this is proof that the numerus
clausus is useless! “What is the use of the numerus clausus,
when even this year, when the Jews bene ted from a higher
than normal arrangement, there was enough room to welcome
all Christians who wanted to enter the university?” What do
you want—empty classrooms? Little Germany has a large
number of Jewish teachers, yet it does not die of it![1637]
Markov’s objection: “Universities are empty [because Russian
students are at war, and they send [to the universities] masses
of Jews.” “Escaping military service,” the Jews “have
overwhelmed the University of Petrograd and, thanks to that,
will swell the ranks of the Russian intelligentsia… This
phenomenon… is detrimental to the Russian people, even
destructive,” because every people “is subject to the power of its
intelligentsia.” “The Russians must protect their elites, their
intelligentsia, their o cials, their government; the latter must
be Russian.”[1638]
Six months later, in the autumn of 1916, Friedman harped
on about this by asking the Duma the following question:
“Thus it would be better for our universities to remain empty…
it would be better for Russia to nd itself without an
intellectual elite rather than admit Jews in too great
numbers?”[1639]
On the one hand, Gurevitch was obviously right: why should
the classrooms have been left empty? Let each one do what he
has to do. But, in asking the question in these terms, did he not
comfort the suspicions and bitterness of the right: therefore,
we do not work together? One group to make war, the other to
study?
(My father, for example—he interrupted his studies at
Moscow University and joined the army as a volunteer. It
seemed at the time that there was no alternative: to not go to
the front would have been dishonourable. Who, among these
young Russian volunteers, and even among the professors who
remained in the universities, understood that the future of the
country was not only played on the battle elds? No one
understood it neither in Russia, nor in Europe.)
In the spring of 1916, the debate on the Jewish question was
suspended on the grounds that it provoked undesirable
agitation in public opinion. But the problem of nationalities
was put back on the agenda by an amendment to the law on
township Zemstvos. The creation of this new administrative
structure was discussed during the winter of 1916‒17 during
the last months of the existence of the Duma. And then one
ne day, when the main speakers had gone for refreshments or
had returned to their penates, and that there was little left for
the sitting than half of the well‐behaved deputies, a peasant of
Viatka, named Tarassov, managed to sneak into the tribune.
Timidly, he spoke, striving to make the members of the house
understand the problem of the amendment: it provides that
“everyone is admitted, and the Jews, that is, and the Germans,
all those who will come to our township. And to those, what
will be their rights? These people who are going to be registered
[in our township]… but they are going to take places, and the
peasants, no one takes care of them… If it is a Jew who runs the
township administration and his wife who is secretary, then
the peasants, them, what are their rights?… What is going to
happen, where will the peasants be?… And when our valiant
warriors return, what will they be entitled to? To stay in the
back; but during the war, it was on the front line that they
were, the peasants… Do not make amendments that contradict
the practical reality of the peasant life, do not give the right to
the Jews and the Germans to participate in the elections of the
township zemstvos, for they are peoples who will bring
nothing useful; on the contrary, they will greatly harm and
there will be disorders across the country. We peasants, we are
not going to submit to these nationalities.”[1640]
But in the meantime, the campaign for equal rights for Jews
was in full swing. It now enjoyed the support of organisations
that had not previously been concerned with the issue, such as
the Gvozdev Central Workers’ Group[1641], which represented
the interests of the Russian proletariat. In the spring of 1916,
the Workers’ Group claimed to be informed that “the reaction
[implied: the government and administration of the Ministry
of the Interior] is openly preparing a pogrom against the Jews
throughout Russia”. And Kozma Gvozdev repeated this
nonsense at the Congress of Military‐Industrial Committees.—
In March 1916, in a letter to Rodzianko[1642], the Workers’
Group protested against the suspension of the debate on the
Jewish question in the Duma; And the same Group accused the
Duma itself of complacency towards the anti‐Semites: “The
attitude of the majority at the meeting of 10 March is de facto
to give its direct support and to reinforce the policy of anti‐
Jewish pogroms led by the power… By its support of the
militant anti‐Semitism of the ruling circles, the majority in the
Duma is a serious blow to the work of national defence.”[1643]
(They had not agreed, they had not realised that in the Duma it
was precisely the left who needed to end the debate.)—The
workers also bene ted from the support of “Jewish groups”
who, according to a report by the Security Department in
October 1916, “have overwhelmed the capital and, without
belonging to any party, are pursuing a policy violently hostile
to the power.”[1644]
And the power in all this? Without direct evidence, it can be
assumed that within the ministerial teams that succeeded each
other in 1916, the decision to proclaim equal rights for the
Jews was seriously considered. This had been mentioned more
than once by Protopopov, who had already succeeded, it seems,
in turning Nicholas II in this direction. (Protopopov also had an
interest in going quickly to cut short the campaign that the left
had set in motion against him.)—And General Globachev, who
was the last to direct the Department of Security before the
revolution, writes in his memoirs, in the words of Dobrovolsky,
who was also the last Minister of Justice of the monarchy: “The
bill on equal rights for the Jews was already ready [in the
months that preceded the revolution] and, in all likelihood, the
law would have been promulgated for the 1917 Easter
celebrations.”[1645]
But in 1917, the Easter celebrations were to take place under
a completely di erent system. The ardent aspirations of our
radicals and liberals would then have come true.
“Everything for victory!”—Yes, but “not with that power!”
Public opinion, both among the Russians and among the Jews,
as well as the press, all were entirely directed towards Victory,
were the rst to claim it,—only, not with this government! Not
with this tsar! All were still persuaded of the correctness of the
simple and brilliant reasoning they had held at the beginning
of the war: before it ends (because afterwards it would be more
di cult) and by winning a victory over victory on the
Germans, to throw down the tsar and change the political
regime.
And that is when the equal rights for the Jews would come.

   
We have examined in many ways the circumstances in which
took place one hundred and twenty years of common life
between Russians and Jews within the same State. Among the
di culties, some have found a solution over time, others
emerged and increased in the course of the years prior to the
spring of 1917. But the evolving nature of the processes in
motion visibly taking over and promised a constructive future.
And it was at that moment that a blast disintegrated the
political and social system of Russia—and thus the fruits of
evolution, but also the military resistance to the enemy, paid
for with so much blood, and nally the prospects for a future of
ful lment: it was the revolution of February.
 Volume 2

The Jews in the Soviet Union

 Chapter 13. The February Revolution

The 123-year-old history of unequal citizenship of the Jewish

people in Russia, from the Act of Catherine the Great of 1791,
ended with the February Revolution.
It bears looking into the atmosphere of those February days;
what was the state of society by the moment of emancipation?
There were no newspapers during the rst week of the
Revolutionary events in Petrograd. And then they began
trumpeting, not looking for the ways to rebuild the state but
vying with each other in denouncing all the things of the past.
In an unprecedented gesture, the newspaper of the
Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), Rech, announced that from
now on “all Russian life must be rebuilt from the roots.”[1646]
(A thousand-year life! — why, all of a sudden from “the roots”?)
And the Stock-Market News announced a program of action:
“Yank, yank all these weed-roots out! No need to worry that
there might be some useful plants among them — it’s better to
weed them all even at the price of unavoidable innocent
victims.”[1647] (Was this really March 1917 or March 1937?)
The new Minister of Foreign A airs Milyukov bowed and
scraped: “Up to now we blushed in front of our allies because of
our government…. Russia was a dead weight for our
allies.”[1648]
Rarely in those beginning days was it possible to hear
reasonable suggestions about rebuilding Russia. The streets of
Petrograd were in chaos, the police were non-functional and all
over the city there was continuous disorderly gun re. But
everything poured into a general rejoicing, though for every
concrete question, there was a mess of thoughts and opinions,
a cacophony of debating pens. All the press and society agreed
on one thing — the immediate legislative enactment of Jewish
equality. Fyodor Sologub eloquently wrote in the Birzheviye
Vedomosti: “The most essential beginning of the civil freedom,
without which our land cannot be blessed, the people cannot
be righteous, national achievements would not be sancti ed …
— is the repeal of all religious and racial restrictions.”
The equality of Jews advanced very quickly. The 1st of March
[old calendar style], one day before the abdication, a few hours
before the infamous “Order No. 1,” which pushed the army to
collapse, V. Makhlakov and M. Adzhemov, two commissars of
the Duma Committee delegated to the Ministry of Justice, had
issued an internal Ministry of Justice directive, ordering to
enlist all Jewish-assistants to attorneys-at-law into the Guild of
Judicial Attorneys. “Already by the 3rd of March … the
Chairman of the State Duma, M. Rodzianko, and the Prime
Minister of the Provisional Government, Prince G. Lvov, signed
a declaration which stated that one of the main goals of the
new government is a `repeal of all restrictions based upon
religion, nationality and social class.´”[1649] Then, on the 4th
of March, the Defense Minister Guchkov proposed to open a
path for the Jews to become military o cers, and the Minister
of Education Manuelov proposed to repeal the percentage
quotas on the Jews. Both proposals were accepted without
obstacles. On the 6th of March the Minister of Trade and
Manufacturing, Konovalov, started to eliminate “national
restrictions in corporative legislation,” that is, a repeal of the
law forbidding purchase of land by companies with Jewish
executives.
These measures were quickly put into practice. By the 8th of
March in Moscow, 110 Jewish “assistants” were raised to the
status of attorneys-at-law; by March 9th in Petrograd — 124
such Jews[1650]; by the 8th of March in Odessa — 60.[1651] On
the 9th of March the City Duma of Kiev, not waiting for the
upcoming elections, included in its body ve Jews with voting
power.[1652]
And here — on March 20 the Provisional Government made
a resolution, prepared by the Minister of Justice, A. Kerensky,
with the participation of members of the political bureau of
Jewish deputies in the 4th State Duma … legislated an act,
published on March 22, that repealed “all restrictions on the
rights of Russian citizens, regardless of religious creed, dogma
or nationality.” This was, in essence, the rst broad legislative
act of the Provisional Government. “At the request of the
political bureaus (of Jewish deputies), the Jews were not
speci cally mentioned in the resolution.”[1653]
But in order to “repeal all the restrictions on Jews in all of our
laws, in order to uproot … completely the inequality of Jews,”
G.B. Sliozberg recalls, “it was necessary to make a complete list
of all the restrictions … and  the collation of the list of laws to
be repealed required great thoroughness and experience.” (This
task was undertaken by Sliozberg and L.M. Bramson.)[1654]
The Jewish Encyclopedia says: “The Act listed the statutes of
Russian law that were being abolished by the Act — almost all
those statutes (there were nearly 150) contained some or other
anti-Jewish restrictions. Subject to repeal were, in part, all
proscriptions connected to the Pale of Settlement; thereby its
factual liquidation in 1915 was legally validated.[1655] The
restrictions were removed layer by layer: travel, habitation,
educational institutions, participation in local self-
government, the right to acquire property anywhere in Russia,
participation in government contracts, from stock exchanges,
hiring servants, workers and stewards of a di erent religion,
the right to occupy high positions in the government and
military service, guardianship and trusteeship. Recalling a
cancellation of an agreement with the United States, they
repealed similar restrictions on “foreigners who are not at war
with the Russian government,” mainly in reference to Jews
coming from the United States.
The promulgation of the Act inspired many emotional
speeches. Deputy Freedman of the State Duma asserted: “For
the past thirty- ve years the Jews have been subjected to
oppression and humiliation, unheard of and unprecedented
even in the history of our long su ering people…. All of it …
was the result of state-sponsored anti-Semitism.”[1656]
Attorney O.O. Gruzenberg stated: “If the pre-Revolution
Russian government was a vast and monstrous prison, … then
its most stinking, terrible cell, its torture chamber was carted
away for us, the six-million Jewish people.  And for the rst
time the Jewish child learned … about this usurious term
`interest´ in the state school…. Like hard labor camp prisoners
on their way to camp, all Jews were chained together as
despised aliens…. The drops of blood of our fathers and
mothers, the drops of blood of our sisters and brothers fell on
our souls, there igniting and enlivening  the unextinguishable
Revolutionary re.”[1657]
Rosa Georgievna, the wife of Vinaver, recalls: “The events (of
the March 1917 Revolution) coincided with the Jewish
Passover. It looked like this was a second escape from Egypt.
Such a long, long path of su ering and struggle has passed, and
how quickly everything had happened. A large Jewish meeting
was called,” at which Milyukov spoke: “At last, a shameful spot
has been washed away from Russia, which can now bravely
step into the ranks of civilized nations.” Vinaver “proposed to
the gathering to build a large Jewish public house in Petrograd
in memory of the meeting, which will be called “The House of
Freedom.”[1658]
Three members of the State Duma, M. Bomash, E. Gurevich
and N. Freedman published an “open letter to the Jewish
people”: that now “our military misfortunes could deal grave
damage to the still in rm free Russia. Free Jewish warriors …
will draw new strength for the ongoing struggle, with the
tenfold energy extending the great feat of arms.” And here was
the natural plan: “The Jewish people should quickly re-organize
their society. The long-obsolete forms of our communal life
must be renewed on the free, democratic principles.”[1659]
The author-journalist David Eisman responded to the Act
with an outcry: “Our Motherland! Our Fatherland! They are in
trouble! With all our hearts … we will defend our land…. Not
since the defense of the Temple has there been such a sacred
feat of arms.”
And from the memoirs of Sliozberg: “The great fortune to
have lived to see the day of the declaration of emancipation of
Jews in Russia and the elimination of our lack of rights —
everything I have fought for with all my strength over the
course of three decades — did not ll me with the joy as it
should had been,” because the collapse had begun right away.
[1660]
And seventy years later one Jewish author expressed doubts
too: “Did that formal legislative Act really change the situation
in the country, where all legal norms were precipitously losing
their power?”[1661]
We answer: in hindsight, from great distance, one should
not downplay the signi cance of what was achieved. Then, the
Act suddenly and dramatically improved the situation of the
Jews. As for the rest of the country, falling, with all its peoples,
into an abyss — that was the unpredictable way of the history.
The most abrupt and notable change occurred in the
judiciary. If earlier, the Batyushin’s commission on bribery
investigated the business of the obvious crook D. Rubinstein,
now the situation became reversed: the case against Rubinstein
was dropped, and Rubinstein paid a visit to the Extraordinary
Investigatory Commission in the Winter Palace and
successfully demanded prosecution of the Batyushin’s
commission itself. Indeed, in March 1917 they arrested General
Batyushin, Colonel Rezanov, and other investigators. The
investigation of activities of that commission began in April,
and, as it turned out, the extortion of bribes from the bankers
and sugar factory owners by them was apparently signi cant.
Then the safes of Volga-Kama, Siberian, and Junker banks,
previously sealed up by Batyushin, were unsealed and all the
documents returned to the banks. (Semanovich and Manus
were not so lucky. When Simanovich was arrested as secretary
to Rasputin, he o ered 15,000 rubles to the prison convoy
guards, if they would let him make a phone call, yet “the
request was, of course, turned down.”[1662] As for Manus,
suspected of being involved in shady dealings with the German
agent Kolyshko, he battled the counterintelligence agents who
came for him by shooting through his apartment’s door. After
his arrest, he ed the country). The situation in the
Extraordinary Investigatory Commission of the Provisional
Government can be manifestly traced by records of
interrogations in late March. Protopopov was asked how he
came to be appointed to the Ministry of Internal A airs, and in
response he mentioned the directive issued by him: “the
residence rights of the Jews were signi cantly expanded” in
Moscow. Asked about the priorities of his Ministry, he rst
recalled the foodstu s a air, and, after then the progressive
issue — the Jewish question….” The director of the Department
of Police, A.T. Vasilyev didn’t miss an opportunity to inform the
interrogators that he helped defend the sugar factory owners
(Jews): “Gruzenberg called me in the morning in my apartment
and thanked me for my cooperation”; “Rosenberg  … visited me
to thank me for my e orts on his behalf.”[1663] In this way, the
accused tried to get some leniency for themselves.
 A notable aspect of the weeks of March was an energetic
pursuit of known or suspected Judeophobes. The rst one
arrested, on February 27, was the Minister of Justice
Scheglovitov. He was accused of personally giving the order to
unjustly pursue the case against Beilis. In subsequent days, the
Beilis’s accusers, the prosecutor Vipper and Senator
Chaplinsky, were also arrested. (However, they were not
charged with anything speci c, and in May 1917 Vipper was
merely dismissed from his position as the chief prosecutor of
the Criminal Department of the Senate; his fate was sealed
later, by the Bolsheviks). The court investigator Mashkevich
was ordered to resign — for during the Beilis trial he had
sanctioned not only expert witness testimony against the
argument on the ritual murder, but he also allowed a second
expert testimony arguing for the case of such murder. The
Minister of Justice Kerensky requested transfer of all materials
of the Beilis case from the Kiev Regional Court,[1664] planning
a loud re-trial, but during the stormy course of 1917 that didn’t
happen. The chairman of the “Union of the Russian People,”
Dmitry Dubrovin, was arrested and his archive was seized; the
publishers of the far-right newspapers Glinka-Yanchevsky and
Poluboyarinova were arrested too; the bookstores of the
Monarchist Union were simply burned down.
For two weeks, they hunted for the fugitives N. Markov and
Zamyslovsky, doing nightly searches for two weeks in St.
Petersburg, Kiev and Kursk. Zamislovsky was hunted for his
participation in the case against Beilis, and Markov, obviously,
for his speeches in the State Duma. At the same time, they
didn’t touch Purishkevich, one assumes, because of his
Revolutionary speeches in the Duma and his participation in
the murder of Rasputin. An ugly rumor arose that Stolypin
took part in the murder of Iollos, and in Kremenchuk, a street
that had previously been named after Stolypin was renamed 
after Iollos.
Over all of Russia there were hundreds of arrests, either
because of their former positions  or even because of their
former attitudes.
It should be noted that the announcement of Jewish equality
did not cause a single pogrom. It is worth noticing not only for
the comparison to 1905, but also because, all through March
and April, all major newspapers were constantly reporting the
preparation of pogroms, and that somewhere, the pogroms had
already supposedly begun.
Rumors started on March 5, that somewhere either in Kiev
or Poltava Province, Jewish pogroms were brewing, and
someone in Petrograd put up a hand-written anti-Jewish yer.
As a result, the Executive Committee of Soviet Workers and
Soldiers’ Deputies formed a special “visiting commission … led
by Rafes, Aleksandrovich, and Sukhanov.” Their task was to
“delegate commissars to various towns, with the rst priority
to go into the regions where the Black Hundreds, the servants
of the old regime, are trying to sow ethnic antagonism among
the population.”[1665] In the newspaper Izvestia SRSD [Soviet
Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies] there was an article Incitement
to Pogrom: “It would be a huge mistake, tantamount to a crime,
to close our eyes to a new attempt of the overthrown
dynasty…” — because it is them [translator’s note — the
Monarchists] who organize the trouble…. “In Kiev and Poltava
provinces, among the underdeveloped, backwards classes of
the population at this moment there is incitement against
Jews…. Jews are blamed for the defeats of our Army, for the
revolutionary movement in Russia, and for the fall of the
monarchy…. It’s an old trick, … but all the more dangerous
because of its timing…. It is necessary to quickly take decisive
measures against the pogrom instigators.”[1666] After this the
commander of the Kiev Military District General Khodorovich
issued an order: all military units are to be on high alert and be
ready to prevent possible anti-Jewish riots.
Long after this, but still in April, in various newspapers,
every two or three days they published rumors of preparations
for Jewish pogroms,[1667] or at the very least, about moving of
piles of “pogrom literature” by railroads. Yet the most stubborn
rumors circulated about a coming pogrom in Kishinev — that
was to happen at the end of March, right between the Jewish
and (Russian) Orthodox Passovers, as happened in 1903.
And there were many more such alarming press reports (one
even said that the police in Mogilev was preparing a pogrom
near the Headquarters of Supreme High Command). Not one of
these proved true.
One need only get acquainted with the facts of those
months, to immerse oneself in the whole “February”
atmosphere — of the defeated Right and the triumphant Left,
of the stupor and confusion of the common folk — to dismiss
outright any realistic possibility of  anti-Jewish pogroms. But
how could ordinary Jewish residents of Kiev or Odessa forget
those horrible days twelve years before? Their apprehension,
their wary caution to any motion in that direction was
absolutely understandable.
The well-informed newspapers were a di erent story. The
alarms raised by the newspapers, by enlightened leaders of the
liberal camp, and half-baked socialist intellectuals — one
cannot call this anything except political provocation.
Provocation, however, that fortunately didn’t work.
One actual episode occurred at the Bessarabian bazaar in
Kiev, on April 28: a girl stole a piece of ribbon in a Jewish shop
and ran away; the store clerk caught up to her and began to
beat her. A crowd rushed to lynch the clerk and the store
owner, but the police defended them. In another incident, in
the Rogachevsky district, people, angered by exorbitant prices,
smashed the stores — including Jewish ones.
Where and by whom was the Jewish emancipation met with
hostility? Those were our legendary revolutionary Finland, and
our “powerful” ally, Romania. In Finland (as we learned in
Chapter 10 from Jabotinsky) the Jews were forbidden to reside
permanently, and since 1858, only descendants of “Jewish
soldiers who served here” (in Finland, during the Crimean War)
were allowed to settle. “The passport law of 1862 … con rmed
that Jews were forbidden entry into Finland,” and “temporary
habitation [was permitted] at the discretion of a local
governor”; the Jews could not become Finnish citizens; in order
to get married, a Jew had to go to Russia; the rights of Jews to
testify in Finnish courts were restricted. Several attempts to
mitigate the restriction of the civil rights of the Jews in Finland
were not successful.[1668] And now, with the advent of Jewish
equal rights in Russia, Finland, not having yet announced its
complete independence (from Russia), did not legislate Jewish
equality. Moreover, they were deporting Jews who had illegally
moved to Finland, and not in a day, but in an hour, on the next
train out. (One such case on March 16 caused quite a splash in
the Russian press.) But Finland was always extolled for helping
the revolutionaries, and liberals and socialists stopped short of
criticizing her. Only the Bund sent a wire to very in uential
Finnish socialists, reprimanding them that this “medieval” law
was still not repealed. The Bund, “the party of the Jewish
proletariat, expresses strong certainty that you will take out
that shameful stain from free Finland.”[1669] However, in this
certainty, the Bund was mistaken.
And a huge alarm was raised in the post-February press
about the persecution of Jews in Romania. They wrote that in
Jassy it was even forbidden to speak Yiddish at public meetings.
The All-Russian Zionist Student Congress “Gekhover” proposed
“to passionately protest this civil inequality of Jews in Romania
and Finland, which is humiliating to the world Jewry and
demeaning to worldwide democracy.”[1670] At that time
Romania was weakened by major military defeats. So the Prime
Minister Bratianu was making excuses in Petrograd in April
saying that “most of the Jews in Romania … migrated there
from Russia,” and in particular that “prompted Romanian
government to limit the political rights of the Jews”; he
promised equality soon.[1671] However, in May we read: “In
fact, nothing is happening in that direction.”[1672] (In May, the
Romanian communist Rakovsky reported that “the situation of
the Jews in Romania is … unbearable”; the Jews were blamed
for the military defeat of the country; they were accused of
“fraternizing” with Germans in the occupied parts of the
country. “If the Romanian government was not afraid [to anger
their allies in the Entente], then one would fear for the very
lives of the Jews.”)[1673]
The worldwide response among the allies of the February
Revolution was expressed in a tone of deep satisfaction, even
ecstasy among many, but in this response there was also a
short-sighted calculation: that now Russia will become
invincible in war.  In Great Britain and the USA there were large
meetings in support of the Revolution and the rights of the
Jews. (I wrote about some of these responses in March 1917 in
Chapters 510 and 621). From America they o ered to send a
copy of the Statue of Liberty to Russia. (Yet as the situation in
Russia continued to deteriorate, they never got around to the
Statue). On March 9 in the House of Commons of the British
Parliament the Minister of Foreign A airs was asked a question
about the situation of the Jews in Russia: does he plan to
consult with the Russian government regarding guarantees to
the Russian Jews for the future and reparations for the past?
The answer showed the full trust that the British government
had for the new Russian government.[1674] From Paris, the
president of the International Jewish Union congratulated
[Russian Prime Minister] Prince Lvov, and Lvov answered:
“From today onward liberated Russia will be able to respect the
faiths and customs of all of its peoples forever bound by a
common religion of love of their homeland.” The newspapers
Birzhevka, Rech and many others reported on the sympathies of 
Jacob Schi , “a well known leader of North American circles
that are hostile to Russia.” He wrote: “I was always the enemy
of Russian absolutism, which mercilessly persecuted my co-
religionists. Now let me congratulate … the Russian people for
this great act which they committed so perfectly.”[1675] And
now he “invites the new Russia to conduct broad credit
operations in America.”[1676] Indeed, “at the time he provided
substantial credit to the Kerensky government.”[1677] Later in
emigration, the exiled Russian right-wing press published
investigative reports attempting to show that Schi actively
nanced the Revolution itself. Perhaps Schi shared the short-
sighted Western hope that the liberal revolution in Russia
would strengthen Russia in the war. Still, the known and public
acts of Schi , who had always been hostile to Russian
absolutism, had even greater e ect than any possible secret
assistance to such a revolution.
The February Revolution itself often consciously appealed
for support to Jews, an entire nation enslaved. Eye-witness
testimonies that Russian Jews were very ecstatic about the
February Revolution are rife.
Yet there are counter-witnesses too, such as Gregory
Aronson, who formed and led the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies
of Vitebsk (which later had as a member Y.V. Tarle, a future
historian). He wrote that on the very rst day, when news of
the Revolution reached Vitebsk, the newly formed Security
Council met in the city Duma, and immediately afterwards
Aronson was invited to a meeting of representatives of the
Jewish community (clearly, not rank and le, but leaders).
“Apparently, there was a need to consult with me as a
representative of the new dawning era, what to do further…. I
felt alienation from these people, from the circle of their
interests and from the tense atmosphere, which was at that
meeting….  I had a sense that this society belonged mostly to
the old world, which was retreating into the past.”[1678] “We
were not able to eliminate a certain mutual chill that had come
from somewhere. The faces of the people I was working with,
displayed no uplift or faith. At times, it appeared that these
sel ess social activists perceived themselves as elements of the
old order.”[1679]
That is a precise witness account.  Such bewilderment,
caution and wavering predominated among religiously
conservative Jews, one assumes, not only in Vitebsk.  The
sensible old Jewry, carrying a sense of many centuries of
experience of hard ordeals, was apparently shocked by the
sudden overthrow of the monarchy and had serious
misgivings.
Yet, in the spirit of the 20th century, the dynamic masses of
every nation, including Jews, were already secular, not chained
to traditions and very eager to build “the happy new world.”
The Jewish Encyclopedia notes “a sharp intensi cation of the
political activity of Jewry, noticeable even against a
background of stormy social uplift that gripped Russia after
February 1917.”[1680]
Myself, having worked for many years on the “February”
press and memoirs of the contemporaries of the February,
could not fail to noticed this “sharp strengthening,” this
gusting. In those materials, from the most varied witnesses
and participants of those events, there are so many Jewish
names, and the Jewish theme is very loud and persistent.  From
the memories of Rodzyanko, from the town governor Balk,
from General Globachyov and many others, from the rst days
of the Revolution in the depths of the Tavrichesky Palace, the
numbers of Jews jumped out at me — among the members of
the commandants o ce, the interrogation commissions, the
pamphlet-merchants and so on.  V.D. Nabokov, who was well
disposed towards Jews, wrote that on March 2 at the entrance
to the Tavrichesky mini-park in front of the Duma building,
there was “an unbelievable crush of people and shouting; at the
entrance of the gates some young, Jewish-looking men were
questioning the bypassers.”[1681] According to Balk, the crowd
that went on the rampage at the “Astoria” [an elite hotel in St.
Petersburg] on the night of February 28, consisted of armed …
soldiers, sailors and Jews.[1682] I would indulge some
emigrant irritability here as they used to say “well, that’s all the
Jews”; yet the same was witnessed by another neutral observer,
the Methodist pastor Dr. Simons, an American who had already
been in Petrograd for ten years and knew it well. He was
debriefed by a commission of the American Senate in 1919:
“Soon after the March Revolution of 1917, everywhere in
Petrograd you could see groups of Jews, standing on benches,
soap boxes and such, making speeches…. There had been
restrictions on the rights of Jews to live in Petrograd, but after
the Revolution they came in droves, and the majority of
agitators were Jews … they were apostate Jews.[1683]
A certain “Student Hanokh” came to Kronstadt a few days
before a planned massacre of sixty o cers, who were named
on a hit-list; he became the founder and chairman of the
Kronstadt’s “Committee of the Revolutionary Movement.” (The
order of the Committee was to arrest and try each and all
o cers. “Somebody had carefully prepared and disseminated
false information,” triggering massacres rst in Kronstadt,
then in Sveaborg; it was “because of the uncertainty of the
situation, when every fabrication was taken for a hard
fact.”[1684]) The baton of the bloody Kronstadt a air was
carried by the drop-out psychoneurologist “Dr. Roshal.” (Later,
after the October coup, S.G. Roshal was appointed the
Commandant of the Gatchina, and from November he was the
commissar of the whole Romanian Front, where he was killed
upon arrival.[1685])
A certain Solomon and a Kaplun spoke on behalf of the
newly-formed revolutionary militia of the Vasilievsky Island
(in the future, the latter would become the bloody henchman
of Zinoviev).
The Petrograd Bar created a special “Commission for the
examination of the justice of imprisoning persons arrested
during the time of the Revolution” (thousands were arrested
during this time in Petrograd) — that is, to virtually decide
their fate without due process (and that of all the former
gendarmes and police). This commission was headed by the
barrister Goldstein. Yet, the unique story of the petty o cer
Timofey Kirpichnikov, who triggered the street Revolution,
was written in March 1917 and preserved for us by the Jew
Jacob Markovich Fishman — a curious historical gure. (I with
gratitude relied on this story in The Red Wheel.)
The Jewish Encyclopedia concludes: “Jews for the rst time in
Russian history had occupied posts in the central and regional
administrations.”[1686]
On the very heights, in the Executive Committee of the
Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, invisibly ruling the
country in those months, two leaders distinguished
themselves: Nakhamkis-Steklov and Gummer-Sukhanov.On
the night of March 1st to March 2nd they dictated to the
complacently-blind Provisional Government a program which
preemptively destroyed its power for the entire period of its
existence.
 Re ective contemporary G.A. Landau thus explains the
active participation of the Jews in the revolution: “The
misfortune of Russia, and the misfortune of the Russian Jewry,
is that the results of the rst Revolution [1905] were still not
processed, not transformed into a new social fabric; no new
generation was born, when a great and back-breaking war
broke out. And when the hour of disintegration came, it came
upon the generation that from the very beginning was a kind
of exhausted remnant of the previous revolution; it found the
inertia of depleted spirituality, lacking an organic connection
to the situation, and chained by spiritual stagnation to the ten-
years-ago-bygone period. And so the organic Revolutionism of
the beginning of the 20th century [of the First Russian
Revolution of 1905] had turned into the mechanical
`permanent Revolution´ of the wartime era.”[1687]
Through many years of detailed studies I have spent much
time trying to comprehend the essence of the February
Revolution and the Jewish role in it. I came to this conclusion
and can now repeat: no, the February Revolution was not
something the Jews did to the Russians, but rather it was done
by the Russians themselves, which I believe I amply
demonstrated in The Red Wheel. We committed this downfall
ourselves:  our anointed Tsar, the court circles, the hapless
high-ranking generals, obtuse administrators, and their
enemies — the elite intelligentsia, the Octobrist Party, the
Zemstvo, the Kadets, the Revolutionary Democrats, socialists
and revolutionaries, and along with them, a bandit element of
army reservists, distressingly con ned to the Petersburg’s
barracks. And this is precisely why we perished. True, there
were already many Jews among the intelligentsia by that time,
yet that is in no way a basis to call it a Jewish revolution.
One may classify revolutions by their main animating
forces, and then the February Revolution must be seen as a
Russian national Revolution, or more precisely, a Russian
ethnic Revolution. Though if one would judge it using the
methodology of materialistic sociologists — asking who
bene ted the most, or bene ted most quickly, or the most
solidly and in the long term from the Revolution, — then it
could be called otherwise, Jewish, for example. But then again
why not German? After all, Kaiser Wilhelm initially bene ted
from it. But the remaining Russian population got nothing but
harm and destruction; however, that doesn’t make the
Revolution “non-Russian.” The Jewish society got everything it
fought for from the Revolution, and the October Revolution
was altogether unnecessary for them, except for a small slice of
young cutthroat Jews, who with their Russian internationalist
brothers accumulated an explosive charge of hate for the
Russian governing class and burst forth to “deepen” the
Revolution.
So how, having understood this, was I to move through
March 1917 and then April 1917? Describing the Revolution
literally hour by hour, I frequently found the many episodes in
the sources that had a Jewish theme. Yet would it be right to
simply pour all that on the pages of March 1917?  Then that
easy and piquant temptation — to put all the blame on Jews, on
their ideas and actions, to see them as the main reason for
these events — would easily skew the book and overcome the
readers, and divert the research away from the truly main
causes of the Revolution.
And so in order to avoid the self-deception of the Russians, I
persistently and purposely downplayed the Jewish theme in
The Red Wheel, relative to its actual coverage in the press and on
the streets in those days.
The 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’t have, but
the Jews — had. So the Russian intelligentsia too had adopted
this view. (This was discussed in Chapter 11). This intransigent
hostility grew especially sharp after the trial of Beilis, and then
after the mass expulsion of Jews in 1915. And so this
intransigence overcame the moderation.
Yet the Executive Committee of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, which was formed within hours of the Revolution,
appears very di erent. This Executive Committee was in fact a
tough shadow government that deprived the liberal
Provisional Government of any real power, while at the same
time, criminally refused to accept responsibility for its power
openly. By its “Order No. 1,” the Executive Committee  wrested
the power from the military and created support for itself in
the demoralized garrison of Petrograd. It was precisely this
Executive Committee, and not the judiciary, not the timber
industrialists, not the bankers, which fast-tracked the country
to her doom. In the summer of 1917, Joseph Goldenberg, a
member of the Executive Committee explained to the French
Diplomat Claude Anet: “The Order No. 1 was not a mistake; it
was a necessity…. On the day we executed the Revolution, we
realized that if we did not destroy the old army, it would crush
the Revolution. We had to choose between the army and the
Revolution, and we did not waver: we chose the latter … [and
we in icted,] I dare say, a brilliant blow.”[1688] So there you
have it. The Executive Committee quite purposely destroyed
the army in the middle of the war.
Is it legitimate to ask who were those successful and fatal-
for-Russia leaders of the Executive Committee? Yes, it is
legitimate, when actions of such leaders abruptly change the
course of history. And it must be said that the composition of
the Executive Committee greatly concerned the public and the
newspapers in 1917, during which time many members of the
Committee concealed themselves behind pseudonyms from
the public eye: who was ruling Russia?  No one knew.
Then, as it turned out, there was a dozen of soldiers, who
were there just for show and weren’t very bright, they were
kept out of any real power or decision making. From the other
thirty, though, of those who actually wielded power, more than
half were Jewish socialists. There were also Russians,
Caucasians, Latvians and Poles. Less than a quarter were
Russians.
The moderate socialist V.B. Stankevich noted: “What really
stuck out in the composition of the Committee was the large
foreign element … totally out of proportion to their part of the
population in Petrograd or the country in general.” Stankevich
asks, “Was this the unhealthy scum of Russian society? Or was
this the consequence of the sins of the old regime, which by its
actions violently pushed the foreign element into the Leftist
parties? Or was that simply the result of free competition?”
And then, “there remains an open question — who bears more
guilt for this — the foreign born, who were there, or the
Russians who could have been there but weren’t?”[1689]
For a socialist that might be a case to look for a guilty party.
Yet wouldn’t it better for all — for us, for you, for them — to
avoid sinking into that mad dirty torrent altogether?
 Chapter 14. During 1917

In the beginning of April 1917 the Provisional Government

had discovered to its surprise that Russian nances, already for
some time in quite bad shape, were on the brink of complete
collapse. In an attempt to mend the situation, and stir
enthusiastic patriotism, the government loudly, announced
the issuance of domestic Freedom Loan bonds.
Rumors about the loan had began circulating as early as
March and Minister of Finance Tereshchenko informed the
press that there were already multi-million pledges from
bankers to buy bonds, “mainly from the Jewish bankers, which
is undoubtedly related to the abolition of religious and
national restrictions.”[1690] Indeed, as soon as the loan was
o cially announced, names of large Jewish subscribers began
appearing in newspapers, accompanied by prominent front-
page appeals: “Jewish citizens! Subscribe to the Freedom Loan!”
and “Every Jew must have the Freedom Loan bonds!”[1691] In a
single subscription drive in a Moscow synagogue 22 million
rubles was collected. During the rst two days, Jews in Ti is
subscribed to 1.5 million rubles of bonds; Jews in Minsk – to
half a million in the rst week; the Saratov community – to 800
thousand rubles of bonds. In Kiev, the heirs of Brodsky and
Klara Ginzburg each spent one million. The Jews abroad came
forward as well: Jacob Schi , 1 million; Rothschild in London, 1
million; in Paris, on the initiative of Baron Ginzburg, Russian
Jews participated actively and subscribed to severalmillion
worth of bonds.[1692] At the same time, the Jewish Committee
in Support for Freedom Loan was established and appealed to
public.[1693]
 However, the government was very disappointed with the
overall result of the rst month of the subscription. For
encouragement, the lists of major subscribers (who purchased
bonds on 25 thousand rubles or more) were published several
times: in the beginning of May, in the beginning of June and in
the end of July.  “The rich who did not subscribe”[1694] were
shamed. What is most striking is not the sheer number of
Jewish names on the lists (assimilated Russian-Germans with
their precarious situation during the Russo-German War were
in the second place among bond-holders) but the near absence
of the top Russian bourgeoisie, apart from a handful of
prominent Moscow entrepreneurs.
In politics, “left and center parties burgeoned and many Jews
had became politically active.”[1695] From the very rst days
after the February Revolution, central newspapers published
an enormous number of announcements about private
meetings, assemblies and sessions of various Jewish parties,
initially mostly the Bund, but later Poale Zion, Zionists,
Socialist Zionists, Territorialist Zionists, and the Socialist
Jewish Workers’ Party (SJWP). By March 7 we already read
about an oncoming assembly of the All-Russian Jewish
Congress – nally, the pre-revolutionary idea of Dubnov had
become widely accepted. However, “because of sharp
di erences between Zionists and Bundists,” the Congress did
not materialize in 1917 (nor did it occur in 1918 either
“because of the Civil War and antagonism of Bolshevik
authorities”).[1696] “In Petrograd, Jewish People’s Group was
re-established with M. Vinaver at the helm.”[1697] They were
liberals, not socialists; initially, they hoped to establish an
alliance with Jewish socialists. Vinaver declared: “we applaud
the Bund – the vanguard of the revolutionary
movement.”[1698] Yet the socialists stubbornly rejected all
gestures of rapprochement.
 The rallying of Jewish parties in Petrograd had indirectly
indicated that by the time of revolution the Jewish population
there was already substantial and energetic. Surprisingly,
despite the fact that almost no “Jewish proletariat” existed in
Petrograd, the Bund was very successful there. It was
extraordinarily active in Petrograd, arranging a number of
meetings of local organization (in the lawyer’s club and then on
April 1 in the Tenishev’s school); there was a meeting with a
concert in the Mikhailovsky Theatre; then on April 14-19 “the
All-Russian Conference of the Bund took place, at which a
demand to establish a national and cultural Jewish autonomy
in Russia was brought forward again.”[1699] (“After conclusion
of speeches, all the conference participants had sung the
Bund’s anthem Oath, The Internationale, and La
Marseillaise.”[1700]) And, as in past, Bund had to balance its
national and revolutionary platforms: in 1903 it struggled for
the independence from the Russian Social Democratic Labor
Party, and yet in 1905 it rushed headlong into the All-Russian
revolution. Likewise, now, in 1917, the Bund’s representatives
occupied prominent positions in the Executive Committee of
the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies [a Soviet is the
Russian term used for an elected (at least in theory) council]
and later among the Social Democrats of Kiev. “By the end of
1917 the Bund had nearly 400 sections countrywide, totaling
around 40,000 members.”[1701]
Developments in Poale Zion were no less amazing. In the
beginning of April they also held their All-Russian Conference
in Moscow. Among its resolutions we see on the one hand a
motion to organize the All-Russian Jewish Congress and
discuss the problem of emigration to Palestine. On the other
hand, the Poale Zion Conference in Odessa had simultaneously
announced the party’s uncompromising program of class
warfare: “Through the e orts of Jewish revolutionary
democracy the power over destinies of the Jewish nation was
… wrested from the dirty grasp of ‘wealthy and settled’ Jews
despite all the resistance of bourgeoisie to the right and the
Bund to the left…. Do not allow the bourgeois parties to bring
in the garbage of the old order…. Do not let the hypocrites
speak – they did not ght but sweated out the rights for our
people on their bended knees in the o ces of anti-Semitic
ministers; …  they did not believe in the revolutionary action of
the masses.” Then, in April 1917, when the party had split the
“Radical Socialist” Poale Zion moved toward the Zionists,
breaking away from the main “Social Democratic” Poale Zion,
[1702] which later would join the Third International.[1703]
Like the two above-mentioned parties, the SJWP also held its
statewide conference at which it had merged with the Socialist
Zionists, forming the United Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party
(Fareynikte) and parting with the idea “of any extraterritorial
Jewish nation” with its own parliament and national
autonomy. “Fareynikte appealed to the Provisional
Government asking it to declare equality of languages and to
establish a council on the a airs of nationalities” which would
speci cally “fund Jewish schools and public agencies.” At the
same time, Fareynikte closely collaborated with the Socialist
Revolutionaries.[1704]
However, it was Zionism that became the most in uential
political force in the Jewish milieu.[1705] As early as the
beginning of March, the resolution of Petrograd’s Zionist
Assembly contained the following wording: “The Russian
Jewry is called upon to support the Provisional Government in
every possible way, to enthusiastic work, to national
consolidation and organization for the sake of the prosperity of
Jewish national life in Russia and the national and political
renaissance of Jewish nation in Palestine.” And what an
inspiring historical moment it was – March 1917 – with the
British troops closing on Jerusalem right at that time! Already
on March 19 the proclamation of Odessa’s Zionists stated:
“today is the time when states rearrange themselves on
national foundations. Woe to us if we miss this historic
opportunity.” In April, the Zionist movement was strongly
reinforced by the public announcement of Jacob Schi , who
had decided to join Zionists “because of fear of Jewish
assimilation as a result of Jewish civil equality in Russia. He
believes that Palestine could become the center to spread ideals
of Jewish culture all over the world.”[1706] In the beginning of
May, Zionists held a large meeting in the building of Petrograd
Stock Exchange, with Zionist hymns performed several times.
In the end of May the All-Russian Zionist Conference was held
in the Petrograd Conservatory. It outlined major Zionist
objectives: cultural revival of the Jewish nation, “social
revolution in the economic structure of Jewish society to
transform the ‘nation of merchants and artisans into the
nation of farmers and workers,’ an increase in emigration to
Palestine and ‘mobilization of Jewish capital to nance the
Jewish settlers’.” Both Jabotinsky’s plan on creation of a Jewish
legion in the British Army and the I. Trumpeldorf’s plan for the
“formation of a Jewish army in Russia which would cross the
Caucasus and liberate Eretz Yisrael [The land of Israel] from
Turkish occupation have been discussed and rejected on the
basis of the neutrality of Zionists in the World War I.”[1707]
The Zionist Conference decreed to vote during the oncoming
local elections for the parties “not farther to the right than the
People’s Socialists,” and even to refuse to support
Constitutional Democrats like D. Pasmanik, who later
complained: “It was absolutely meaningless – it looked like the
entire Russian Jewry, with its petty and large bourgeoisie, are
socialists.”[1708] His bewilderment was not unfounded.
 The congress of student Zionist organization, Gekhover,
with delegates from 25 cities and all Russian universities, had
taken place in the beginning of April in Petrograd. Their
resolution stated that the Jews were su ering not for the sake
of equality in Russia but for the rebirth of Jewish nation in the
native Palestine. They decided to form legions in Russia to
conquer Palestine. Overall, “during the summer and fall of
1917 Zionism in Russia continued to gain strength: by
September its members numbered 300,000.”[1709]
It is less known that in 1917 Jewish “orthodox movements
enjoyed substantial popularity second only to the Zionists and
ahead of the socialist parties” (as illustrated by their success
“during elections of the leadership of reorganized Jewish
communities”).[1710]
There were rallies (“The Jews are together with the
democratic Russia in both love and hatred!”), public lectures
(“The Jewish Question and the Russian Revolution”), city-wide
“assemblies of Jewish high school students” in Petrograd and
other cities (aside from general student meetings). In
Petrograd, the Central Organ of Jewish Students was
established, though not recognized by the Bund and other
leftist parties. While many provincial committees for the
assistance to the “victims of the war” (i.e., to Jewish refugees
and deportees) ceased to exist because at this time “democratic
forces needed to engage in broader social activities,” and so the
Central Jewish Committee for providing such aid was formed
by April. In May the Jewish People’s Union was established to
facilitate consolidation of all Jewish forces, to prepare for the
convocation of the All-Russian Jewish Union and to get ready
for the oncoming elections to the Constituent Assembly. In the
end of May there was another attempt of uni cation: the
steering committee of the Jewish Democratic Alliance
convened the conference of all Jewish democratic
organizations in Russia. Meanwhile, lively public discussion
went on regarding convocation of the All-Russian Jewish
Congress: the Bund rejected it as inconsistent with their plans;
the Zionists demanded the Congress include on their agenda
the question of Palestine – and were themselves rejected by the
rest; in July the All-Russian Conference on the Jewish Congress
preparation took place in Petrograd.[1711] Because of social
enthusiasm, Vinaver was able to declare there that the idea of
united Jewish nation, dispersed among di erent countries, is
ripe, and that from now on the Russian Jews may not be
indi erent to the situation of Jews in other countries, such as
Romania or Poland. The Congress date was set for December.
What an upsurge of Jewish national energy it was! Even
amid the upheavals of 1917, Jewish social and political
activities stood out in their diversity, vigor and organization.
The “period between February and November 1917 was the
time of blossoming” of Jewish culture and healthcare. In
addition to the Petrograd publication The Jews of Russia, the
publisher of The Jewish Week had moved to Petrograd;
publication of the Petrograd-Torgblat in Yiddish had begun;
similar publications were started in other cities. The Tarbut
and Culture League [a network of secular, Hebrew-language
schools] had established “dozens of kindergartens, secondary
and high schools and pedagogic colleges” teaching both in
Yiddish and in Hebrew. A Jewish grammar school was founded
in Kiev. In April, the rst All-Russian Congress on Jewish
Culture and Education was held in Moscow. It requested state
funding for Jewish schools A conference of the Society of
Admirers of Jewish Language and Culture took place. The
Habima Theatre, “the rst professional theatre in Hebrew in
the world,”[1712] opened in Moscow. There were an exposition
of Jewish artists and a conference of the Society on Jewish
Health Care in April in Moscow.
 These Jewish activities are all the more amazing given the
state of general governmental, administrative and cultural
confusion in Russia 1917.
A major event in the Jewish life of the time was the granting
of o cial permission for Jewish youth to enlist as o cers in
the Russian Army. It was a large-scale move: in April, the
headquarters of the Petrograd military district had issued an
order to the commanders of Guards military units to
immediately post all Jewish students to the training battalion
at Nizhny Novgorod with the purpose of their further
assignment to military academies[1713] – that is virtually
mass-scale promotion of young Jews into the o cer ranks.
“Already in the beginning of June 1917, 131 Jews graduated
from the accelerated military courses at the Konstantinovsky
military academy in Kiev as o cers; in the summer 1917
Odessa, 160 Jewish cadets were promoted into o cers.”[1714]
In June 2600 Jews were promoted to warrant-o cer rank all
over Russia.
There is evidence that in some military academies Junkers
[used in Tsarist Russia for cadets and young o cers] met
Jewish newcomers unkindly, as it was in the Alexandrovsky
military academy after more than 300 Jews had been posted to
it. In the Mikhailovsky military academy a group of Junkers
proposed a resolution that: “Although we are not against the
Jews in general, we consider it inconceivable to let them into
the command ranks of the Russian Army.” The o cers of the
academy dissociated themselves from this statement and a
group of socialist Junkers (141-strong) had expressed their
disapproval, “ nding anti-Jewish protests shameful for the
revolutionary army,”[1715] and the resolution did not pass.
When Jewish warrant o cers arrived to their regiments, they
often encountered mistrust and enmity on the part of soldiers
for whom having Jews as o cers was extremely unusual and
strange. (Yet the newly-minted o cers who adopted new
revolutionary style of behavior gained popularity lightning-
fast.)
On the other hand, the way Jewish Junkers from the military
academy in Odessa behaved was simply striking. In the end of
March, 240 Jews had been accepted into the academy. Barely
three weeks later, on April 18 old style, there was a First of May
parade in Odessa and the Jewish Junkers marched
ostentatiously singing ancient Jewish songs. Did they not
understand that Russian soldiers would hardly follow such
o cers? What kind of o cers were they going to become? It
would be ne if they were being prepared for the separate
Jewish battalions. Yet according to General Denikin, the year
1917 saw successful formation of all kinds of national
regiments – Polish, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian (the Latvian
units were already in place for a while) – except the Jewish
ones: it was “the only nationality not demanding national self-
determination in military. And every time, when in response to
complaints about bad acceptance of Jewish o cers in army
formation of separate Jewish regiments was suggested, such a
proposal was met with a storm of indignation on the part of
Jews and the Left and with accusations of a spiteful
provocation.”[1716] (Newspapers had reported that Germans
also planned to form separate Jewish regiments but the project
was dismissed.) It appears, though, that new Jewish o cers
still wanted some national organization in the military. In
Odessa on August 18, the convention of Jewish o cers decided
to establish a section which would be responsible for
connections between di erent fronts “to report on the
situation of Jewish o cers in the eld.” In August, “unions of
Jewish warriors appeared; by October such unions were
present at all fronts and in many garrisons. During the October
10-15, 1917 conference in Kiev, the All-Russian Union of
Jewish Warriors was founded.”[1717] (Although it was a new
‘revolutionary army’, some reporters still harbored hostility
toward o cer corps in general and to o cer’s epaulettes in
particular; for instance, A. Alperovich whipped up emotions
against o cers in general in Birzhevye Vedomosti [Stock
Exchange News] as late as May 5.)[1718]
Various sources indicate that Jews were not eager to be
drafted as common soldiers even in 1917; apparently, there
were instances when to avoid the draft sick individuals passed
o as genuine conscripts at the medical examining boards,
and, as a result, some district draft commissions began
demanding photo-IDs from Jewish conscripts (an unusual
practice in those simple times). It immediately triggered angry
protests that such a requirement goes against the repulsion of
national restrictions, and the Ministry of Internal A airs
forbade asking for such IDs.
In the beginning of April the Provisional Government issued
an order by telegraph to free without individual investigation
all Jews previously exiled as suspects of espionage. Some of
them resided in the now-occupied territories, while others
could safely return home, and yet many deportees asked for
permission to reside in the cities of the European part of
Russia. There was a ow of Jews into Petrograd (Jewish
population of 50,000 in 1917)[1719] and a sharp increase of
Jewish population in Moscow (60,000).[1720]
Russian Jews received less numerous, but highly energetic
reinforcement from abroad. Take those two famous trains that
crossed hostile Germany without hindrance and brought to
Russia nearly 200 prominent individuals, 30 in Lenin’s and 160
in Natanson-Martov’s train, with Jews comprising an absolute
majority (the lists of passengers of the ‘exterritorial trains’
were for the rst time published by V. Burtsev).[1721] They
represented almost all Jewish parties, and virtually all of them
would play a substantial role in the future events in Russia.
Hundreds of Jews returned from the United States: former
emigrants, revolutionaries, and draft escapees – now they all
were the ‘revolutionary ghters’ and ‘victims of Tsarism’. By
order of Kerensky, the Russian embassy in the USA issued
Russian passports to anyone who could provide just two
witnesses (to testify to identity) literally from the street. (The
situation around Trotsky’s group was peculiar. They were
apprehended in Canada on suspicion of connections with
Germany. The investigation found that Trotsky travelled not
with imsy Russian papers, but with a solid American
passport, inexplicably granted to him despite his short stay in
the USA, and with a substantial sum of money, the source of
which remained a mystery.[1722]) On June 26 at the exalted
“Russian rally in New York City” (directed by P. Rutenberg, one-
time friend and then a murderer of Gapon), Abraham Kagan,
the editor of Jewish newspaper Forwards, addressed Russian
ambassador Bakhmetev “on behalf of two million Russian Jews
residing in the United States of America”: “We have always
loved our motherland; we have always sensed the links of
brotherhood with the entire Russian nation…. Our hearts are
loyal to the red banner of the Russian liberation and to the
national tricolor of the free Russia.” He had also claimed that
the self-sacri ce of the members of Narodnaya Volya [literally,
The People’s Will, a terrorist leftwing revolutionary group in
Tsarist Russia, best known for its assassination of Tsar
Alexander II, known as ‘the Tsar Liberator for ending serfdom]
“was directly connected to the fact of increased persecution of
the Jews” and that “people like Zundelevich, Deich, Gershuni,
Liber and Abramovich were among the bravest.”[1723]
And so they had begun coming back, and not just from New
York, judging by the o cial introduction of discounted railroad
fare for ‘political emigrants’ travelling from Vladivostok. At the
late July rally in Whitechapel, London, “it was found that in
London alone 10,000 Jews declared their willingness to return
to Russia”; the nal resolution had expressed pleasure that
“Jews would go back to struggle for the new social and
democratic Russia.”[1724]
Destinies of many returnees, hurrying to participate in the
revolution and jumping headlong into the thick of things, were
outstanding. Among the returnees were the famous V.
Volodarsky, M. Uritsky, and Yu. Larin, the latter was the author
of the ‘War Communism economy’ program. It is less known
that Yakov Sverdlov’s brother, Veniamin, was also among the
returnees. Still, he would not manage to rise higher than the
deputy Narkom [People’s Commissar] of Communications and
a member of Board of the Supreme Soviet of the National
Economy. Moisei Kharitonov, Lenin’s associate in emigration
who returned to Russia in the same train with him, quickly
gained notoriety by assisting the anarchists in their famous
robbery in April; later he was the secretary of Perm, Saratov
and Sverdlov gubkoms [guberniya’s Party committee], and the
secretary of Urals Bureau of the Central Committee. Semyon
Dimanshtein, a member of a Bolshevik group in Paris, would
become the head of the Jewish Commissariat at the People’s
Commissariat of Nationalities, and later the head of YevSek
[Jewish Section] at the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee; he would in fact supervise the entire Jewish life.
Amazingly, at the age of 18 he managed “to pass quali cation
test to become a rabbi” and became a member of the Russian
Social Democratic Workers’ Party – all this in course of one
year.[1725] Similarly, members of the Trotsky’s group had also
fared well: the jeweler G. Melnichansky, the accountant
Friman, the typographer A. Minkin-Menson, and the decorator
Gomberg-Zorin had respectively headed Soviet trade unions,
Pravda, the dispatch o ce of bank notes and securities, and the
Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal.
Names of other returnees after the February Revolution are
now completely forgotten, yet wrongly so, as they played
important roles in the revolutionary events. For example, the
Doctor of Biology Ivan Zalkind had actively participated in the
October coup and then in fact ran Trotsky’s People’s
Commissariat of Internal A airs. Semyon Kogan-Semkov
became the “political commissar of Izhevsk weapons and steel
factories” in November 1918; that is he was in charge of the
vindictive actions during suppression of major uprising of
Izhevsk workers[1726] known for its large, in many thousands,
victim’s toll; in a single incident on the Sobornaya Square in
Izhevsk 400 workers were gunned down.[1727] Tobinson-
Krasnoshchekov later headed the entire Far East as the
secretary of the Far East Bureau and the head of local
government. Girshfeld-Stashevsky under the pseudonym
“Verkhovsky” was in command of a squad of German POWs
and turncoats, that is, he laid foundation for the Bolshevik
international squads; in 1920 he was the head of clandestine
intelligence at the Western front; later, in peacetime, “he, on
orders of Cheka Presidium, had organized intelligence network
in the Western Europe”; he was awarded the title of “Honorary
Chekist.”[1728]
Among returnees were many who did not share Bolshevik
views (at least at the time of arrival) but they were nevertheless
welcomed into the ranks of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s party. For
instance, although Yakov Fishman, a member of the Military
Revolutionary Committee of the October coup, had deviated
from the Bolshevik mainstream by participating in the Left
Socialist Revolutionary insurrection in July 1918, he was later
accepted into the Russian Communist party of Bolsheviks
(RCPB) and entrusted with a post in the Military Intelligence
Administration of the Red Army. Or take Ye m Yarchuk, who
had returned as an Anarchist Syndicalist, but was delegated by
the Petrograd Soviet to reinforce the Kronstadt Soviet; during
the October coup he had brought a squad of sailors to Petrograd
to storm the Winter Palace. The returnee Vsevolod Volin-
Eikhenbaum (the brother of the literary scholar) was a
consistent supporter of anarchism and the ideologist of
Makhno [a Ukrainian separatist-anarchist] movement; he was
the head of the Revolutionary Military Soviet in the Makhno
army. We know that Makno was more of an advantage than a
detriment to Bolsheviks and as a result Volin was later merely
forced to emigrate together with a dozen of other anarchists.
[1729]
The expectations of returnees were not unfounded: those
were the months marked by a notable rise to prominence for
many Jews in Russia. “The Jewish Question exists no longer in
Russia.”[1730] (Still, in the newspaper essay by D. Aizman, Sura
Alperovich, the wife of a merchant who moved from Minsk to
Petrograd, had expressed her doubts: “So there is no more
slavery and that’s it?” So what about the things “that ‘Nicholas
of yesterday’ did to us in Kishinev [in regard to the Kishinev
pogrom]?”[1731]) In another article David Aizman thus
elaborated his thought: “Jews must secure the gains of
revolution by any means … without any qualms. Any necessary
sacri ce must be made. Everything is on the stake here and all
will be lost if we hesitate…. Even the most backward parts of
Jewish mass understand this.” “No one questions what would
happen to Jews if the counter-revolution prevails.” He was
absolutely con dent that if that happens there would be mass
executions of Jews. Therefore, “the lthy scum must be crushed
even before it had any chance to develop, in embryo. Their very
seed must be destroyed…. Jews will be able to defend their
freedom.”[1732]
 Crushed in embryo…. And even their very seed…. It was
already pretty much the Bolshevik program, though expressed
in the words of Old Testament. Yet whose seed must be
destroyed? Monarchists’? But they were already breathless; all
their activists could be counted on ngers. So it could only be
those who had taken a stand against the unbridled, running
wild soviets, against all kinds of committees and mad crowds;
those, who wished to halt the breakdown of life in the country
– prudent ordinary people, former government o cials, and
rst of all o cers and very soon the soldier-general Kornilov.
There were Jews among those counter-revolutionaries, but
overall that movement was the Russian national one.
What about press? In 1917, the in uence of print media
grew; the number of periodicals and associated journalists and
sta was rising. Before the revolution, only a limited number
of media workers quali ed for draft deferral, and only those
who were associated with newspapers and printing o ces
which were established in the pre-war years. (They were
classi ed as ‘defense enterprises’ despite their desperate ght
against governmental and military censorship.) But now, from
April, on the insistence of the publishers, press privileges were
expanded with respect to the number of workers exempt from
military service; newly founded political newspapers were
henceforth also covered by the exemption (sometimes
fraudulently as the only thing needed to qualify was
maintaining a circulation of 30,000 for at least two weeks).
Draft privileges were introduced on the basis of youth, for the
‘political emigrants’ and those ‘released from exile’ –
everything that favored employment of new arrivals in the
leftist newspapers. At the same time, rightist newspapers were
being closed: Malenkaya Gazeta [Small Newspaper] and
Narodnaya Gazeta [People’s Newspaper] were shut down for
accusing Bolsheviks of having links with Germans. When
many newspapers published the   telegrams fraudulently
attributed to the Empress and the fake was exposed (it was “an
innocent joke of a telegraph operator lady,” for which, of
course, she was never disciplined) and so they had to retract
their pieces, Birzhevye Vedomosti, for instance, had produced
such texts: “It turned out that neither the special archive at the
Main Department of Post and Telegraph, where the royal
telegrams were stored, nor the head o ce of telegraph contain
any evidence of this correspondence.”[1733] See, they
presented it as if the telegrams were real but all traces of their
existence had been skillfully erased. What a brave free press!

   
As early as in the beginning of March the prudent Vinaver had
warned the Jewish public: “Apart from love for freedom, self-
control is needed…. It is better for us to avoid highly visible
and prominent posts…. Do not hurry to practice our
rights.”[1734] We know that Vinaver (and also Dan, Liber and
Branson) “at di erent times have been o ered minister posts,
but all of them refused, believing that Jews should not be
present in Russian Government.” The attorney Vinaver could
not, of course, reject his sensational appointment to the Senate,
where he became one of four Jewish Senators (together with G.
Blumenfeld, O. Gruzenberg, and I. Gurevich).[1735] There were
no Jews among the ministers but four in uential Jews occupied
posts of deputy ministers: V. Gurevich was a deputy to
Avksentiev, the Minister of Internal A airs; S. Lurie was in the
Ministry of Trade and Industry; S. Schwartz and A. Ginzburg-
Naumov – in the ministry of Labor; and P. Rutenberg should be
mentioned here too. From July, A. Galpern became the chief of
the administration of the Provisional Government (after V.
Nabokov)[1736]; the director of 1st Department in the Ministry
of Foreign A airs was A. N. Mandelshtam. The assistant to the
head of the Moscow military district was Second Lieutenant
Sher (since July 1917); from May, the head of foreign supply
department at General Sta was A. Mikhelson; the commissar
of the Provisional Government in the eld construction o ce
was Naum Glazberg; several Jews were incorporated by
Chernov into the Central Land Committee responsible for
everything related to allotting land to peasants. Of course,
most of those were not key posts, having negligibly small
in uence when compared to the principal role of the Executive
Committee, whose ethnic composition would soon become a
hotly debated public worry.
At the August Government Conference dedicated to the
disturbing situation in the country, apart from the
representatives of soviets, parties, and guilds, a separate
representation was granted to the ethnic groups of Russia,
with Jews represented by eight delegates, including G.
Sliozberg, M. Liber, N. Fridman, G. Landau, and O. Gruzenberg.
The favorite slogan of 1917 was “Expand the Revolution!”
All socialist parties worked to implement it. I. O. Levin writes:
“There is no doubt that Jewish representation in the Bolshevik
and other parties which facilitated “expanding of revolution” –
Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, etc. – with respect to
both general Jewish membership and Jewish presence among
the leaders, greatly exceeds the Jewish share in the population
of Russia. This is an indisputable fact; while its reasons should
be debated, its factual veracity is unchallengeable and its denial
is pointless”; and “a certainly convincing explanation of this
phenomenon by Jewish inequality before the March revolution
… is still not su ciently exhaustive.”[1737] Members of central
committees of the socialist parties are known. Interestingly,
Jewish representation in the leadership of Mensheviks, the
Right and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Anarchists
was much greater than among the Bolshevik leaders. At the
Socialist Revolutionary Congress, which took place in the end
of May and beginning of June 1917, 39 out of 318 delegates
were Jewish, and out of 20 members of the Central Committee
of the party elected during the Congress, 7 were Jewish. A. Gotz
was one of the leaders of the right wing faction and M.
Natanson was among the leaders of the left Socialist
Revolutionaries.”[1738] (What a despicable role awaited
Natanson, “the wise Mark,” one of the founder of Russian
Narodnichestvo [“Populism”]! During the war, living abroad, he
was receiving nancial aid from Germany. In May 1917 he
returned in Russia in one of the ‘extraterritorial trains’ across
Germany; in Russia, he had immediately endorsed Lenin and
threw his weight in support of the latter’s goal of dissolving the
Constituent Assembly; actually, it was he who had voiced this
idea rst, though Lenin, of course, needed no such nudge.)
Local government elections took place in the summer.
Overall, socialist parties were victorious, and “Jews actively
participated in the local and municipal work in a number of
cities and towns outside of the [former] Pale of Settlement.” For
instance, Socialist Revolutionary O. Minor .became head of the
Moscow City Duma; member of the Central Committee of the
Bund, A. Vainshtein (Rakhmiel),of the Minsk Duma; Menshevik
I. Polonsky, of the Ekaterinoslav Duma, Bundist D. Chertkov, of
the Saratov Duma.” G. Shreider had become the mayor of
Petrograd, and A. Ginzburg-Naumov was elected a deputy
mayor in Kiev.”[1739]
But most of these persons were gone with the October coup
and it was not they who shaped the subsequent developments
in Russia. It would become the lot of those who now occupied
much lower posts, mostly in the soviets; they were numerous
and spread all over the country: take, for instance, Khinchuk,
head of the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, or
Nasimovich and M. Trilisser of the Irkutsk Soviet (the latter
would later serve in the Central Executive Committee of the
Soviets of Siberia and become a famous Chekist).[1740]
All over the provinces “Jewish socialist parties enjoyed large
representation in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies.”[1741] They were also prominently presented at the
All-Russian Democratic Conference in September 1917, which
annoyed Lenin so much that he had even demanded
surrounding the Alexandrinsky Theater with troops and
arresting the entire assembly. (The theater’s superintendent,
comrade Nashatyr, would have to act on the order, but Trotsky
had dissuaded Lenin.) And even after the October coup, the
Moscow Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies had among its members,
according to Bukharin, “dentists, pharmacists, etc., –
representatives of trades as close to the soldier’s profession as
to that of the Chinese Emperor.”[1742]
But above all of that, above all of Russia, from the spring to
the autumn of 1917, stood the power of one body – and it was
not the Provisional Government. It was the powerful and
insular Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and later,
after June, the successor to its power, the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee (CEC) – it was they who had in fact ruled
over Russia. While appearing solid and determined from
outside, in reality they were being torn apart by internal
contradictions and inter-factional ideological confusion.
Initially, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies unanimously approved the
Order No. 1, but later was doubtful about the war – whether to
continue destroying army or to strengthen it. (Quite
unexpectedly, they declared their support for the Freedom
Loan; thus they had incensed the Bolsheviks but agreed with
the public opinion on this issue, including the attitudes of
liberal Jews.)
The Presidium of the rst All-Russian CEC of the Soviet of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (the rst governing Soviet
body) consisted of nine men. Among them were the Social
Revolutionaries (SRs) A. Gots and M. Gendelman, the
Menshevik, F. Dan, and the member of Bund, M. Liber. (In
March at the All-Russian Conference of the Soviets, Gendelman
and Steklov had demanded stricter conditions be imposed on
the Tsar’s family, which was under house arrest, and also
insisted on the arrest of all crown princes – this is how
con dent they were in their power.) The prominent Bolshevik,
L. Kamenev, was among the members of that Presidium. It also
included the Georgian, Chkheidze; the Armenian, Saakjan; one
Krushinsky, most likely a Pole; and Nikolsky, likely a Russian –
quite an impudent [ethnic] composition for the governing
organ of Russia in such a critical time.
Apart from the CEC of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, there was also the All-Russian Executive Committee
of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, elected in the end of May. Of
its 30 members, there were only three actual peasants – an
already habitual sham of the pre-Bolshevik regime. Of those
thirty, D. Pasmanik identi ed seven Jews: “a sad thing it was,
especially considering Jewish interests”; and “they had become
an eyesore to everybody.”[1743] Then this peasant organ put
forward a list of its candidates for the future Constituent
Assembly. Apart from Kerensky, the list contained several Jews,
such as the boisterous Ilya Rubanovich, who had just arrived
from Paris, the terrorist Abram Gots, and the little-known
Gurevich…[1744] (In the same article, there was a report on the
arrest for desertion of warrant o cer M. Golman, the head of
the Mogilev Guberniya, a Peasant Soviet.[1745])
 Of course, the actions of the executive committees could not
be solely explained by their ethnic composition – not at all!
(Many of those personalities irreversibly distanced themselves
from their native communities and had even forgotten the way
to their shtetls.) All of them sincerely believed that because of
their talents and revolutionary spirit, they would have no
problem arranging workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ matters in
the best way possible. They would manage it better simply
because of being more educated and smarter than all this
clumsy hoi polloi.
Yet for many Russians, from commoner toa general, this
sudden, eye-striking transformation in the appearance among
the directors and orators at rallies and meetings, in command
and in government, was overwhelming.
V. Stankevich, the only o cer-socialist in the Executive
Committee, provided an example: “this fact [of the abundance
of Jews in the Committee] alone had enormous in uence on the
public opinion and sympathies…. Noteworthy, when Kornilov
met with the Committee for the rst time, he had accidently
sat in the midst of Jews; in front of him sat two insigni cant
and plain members of the Committee, whom I remember
merely because of their grotesquely Jewish facial features. Who
knows how that a ected Kornilov’s attitudes toward Russian
revolution?”[1746]
Yet the treatment of all things Russian by the new regime
was very tale-telling. Here is an example from the “days of
Kornilov” in the end of August 1918.  Russia was visibly dying,
losing the war, with its army corrupted and the rear in collapse.
General Kornilov, cunningly deceived by Kerensky, artlessly
appealed to the people, almost howling with pain: “Russian
people! Our great Motherland is dying. The hour of her death is
nigh…. All, whose bosoms harbor a beating Russian heart, go
to the temples and pray to God to grant us the greatest miracle
of salvation for our beloved country!”[1747] In response to that
the ideologist of the February Revolution and one of the
leading members of the Executive Committee, Gimmer-
Sukhanov, chuckled in amusement: “What an awkward, silly,
clueless, politically illiterate call … what a lowbrow imitation
of Suzdalshchina [‘Suzdalshchina’ refers to resistance in Suzdal
to the Mongol invaders]!”[1748]
Yes, it sounded pompously and awkwardly, without a clear
political position. Indeed, Kornilov was not a politician but his
heart ached. And what about Sukhanov’s heart – did he feel any
pain at all? He did not have any sense of the living land and
culture, nor he had any urge to preserve them – he served to his
ideology only, the International, seeing in Kornilov’s words a
total lack of ideological content. Yes, his response was caustic.
But note that he had not only labeled Kornilov’s appeal an
‘imitation’, he had also derogatorily referred to ‘Suzdalshchina,’
to Russian history, ancient art and sanctity. And with such
disdain to the entire Russian historical heritage, all that
internationalist ilk – Sukhanov and his henchmen from the
malicious Executive Committee, steered the February
Revolution.
And it was not the ethnic origin of Sukhanov and the rest; it
was their anti-national, anti-Russian and anti-conservative
attitudes. We have seen similar attitudes on the part of the
Provisional Government too, with its task of governing the
entire Russia and its quite Russian ethnic composition. Yet did
it display a Russian worldview or represent Russian interests if
only a little? Not at all! The Government’s most consistent and
‘patriotic’ activity was to guide the already unraveling country
(the ‘Kronstadt Republic’ was not the only place which had
“seceded from Russia” by that time) to the victory in war! To
the victory at any cost! With loyalty to the allies! (Sure, the
allies, their governments, public and nancers, put pressure on
Russia. For instance, in May, Russian newspapers cited The
Morning Post from Washington: “America made it clear to the
Russian government” that if [Russia] makes a separate peace
[with Germany], the United States would “annul all nancial
agreements with Russia.”[1749] Prince Lvov [Prince Georgi
Lvov, led the Russian Provisional Government during the
Russian revolution’s initial phase, from March 1917 until he
relinquished control to Alexander Kerensky in July 1917]
upheld the sentiment: “The country must determinately send
its army to battle.”[1750]) They had no concern about
consequences of the ongoing war for Russia. And this
mismatch, this loss of sense of national self-preservation,
could be observed almost at every meeting of the Provisional
Government cabinet, almost in every discussion.
There were simply ridiculous incidents. Throwing millions
of rubles left and right and always keenly supporting “cultural
needs of ethnic minorities,” the Provisional Government at its
April 6 meeting had rejected the request of the long-established
“Great Russian Orchestra of V. V. Andreev” to continue getting
paid as before, “from the funds of the former His Majesty’s
Personal Chancellery” (the funds were con scated by the
Provisional Government itself). The petition was turned down
despite the fact that the requested sum, 30 thousand rubles per
year, was equivalent to the annual pay of just three minister
assistants. “Deny!” (Why not disband your so-called “Great
Russian” orchestra? – What kind of name is that?) Taken aback
and believing that it was just a misunderstanding, Andreev
petitioned again. Yet with an unusual for this torpid
government determination, he was refused a second time too,
at the April 27 meeting.[1751]
Milyukov, a Russian historian and minister of the
Provisional Government, did not utter a single speci cally
Russian sentiment during that year. Similarly, “the key gure
of the revolution,” Alexander Kerensky, could not be at any
stage accused of possessing an ethnic Russian consciousness.
Yet at the same time the government demonstrated constant
anxious bias against any conservative circles, and especially –
against Russian conservatives. Even during his last speech in
the Council of the Russian Republic (Pre-Parliament) on
October 24, when Trotsky’s troops were already seizing
Petrograd building after building, Kerensky emphatically
argued that the Bolshevik newspaper Rabochy Put (Worker’s
Way) and the right-wing Novaya Rus (New Russia)   – both of
which Kerensky had just shut down – shared similar political
views….

   
The “darned incognito” of the members of the Executive
Committee was, of course, noticed by the public. Initially it was
the educated society of Petrograd that was obsessed with this
question, which several times surfaced in newspapers. For two
months, the Committee tried to keep the secret, but by May
they had no other choice but reveal themselves and had
published the actual names of most of the pseudonym-holders
(except for Steklov-Nakhamkis and Boris Osipovich Bogdanov,
the energetic permanent chair of the council; they had
managed to keep their identities secret for a while; the latter’s
name confused the public by similarity with another
personality, Bogdanov-Malinovsky). This odd secrecy irritated
the public, and even ordinary citizens began asking questions.
It was already typical in May that if, during a plenary meeting
of the Soviet, someone proposed Zinoviev or Kamenev for
something, the public shouted from the auditorium
demanding their true names.
 Concealing true names was incomprehensible to the
ordinary man of that time: only thieves hide and change their
names. Why is Boris Katz ashamed of his name, and instead
calling himself “Kamkov”? Why does Lurie hide under the alias
of “Larin”? Why does Mandelshtam use the pseudonym
“Lyadov”? Many of these had aliases that originated   out of
necessity in their past underground life , but what had
compelled the likes of Shotman, the Socialist Revolutionary
from Tomsk, (and not him alone) to become “Danilov” in 1917?
Certainly, the goal of a revolutionary, hiding behind a
pseudonym, is to outsmart someone, and that may include not
only the police and government. In this way, ordinary people as
well are unable to gure out who their new leaders are.
Intoxicated by the freedom of the rst months of the
February Revolution, many Jewish activists and orators failed
to notice that their constant fussing around presidiums and
rallies produced certain bewilderment and wry glances. By the
time of the February Revolution there was no “popular anti-
Semitism” in the internal regions of Russia, it was con ned
exclusively to the areas of the Pale of Settlement. (For instance,
Abraham Cogan had even stated in 1917: “We loved Russia
despite all the oppression from the previous regime because we
knew that it was not the Russian people” behind it but Tsarism.
[1752]) But after just a few months following the February
Revolution, resentment against Jews had suddenly ared up
among the masses of people and spread over Russia, growing
stronger with each passing month. And even the o cial
newspapers reported, for instance, on the exasperation in the
waiting lines in the cities. “Everything has been changed in
that twinkle of the eye that created a chasm between the old
and the new Russia. But it is queues that have changed the
most. Strangely, while everything has moved to the left, the
food lines have moved to the right. If you … would like to hear
Black Hundred propaganda  … then go and spend some time in
a waiting line.” Among other things you will nd out that
“there are virtually no Jews in the lines, they don’t need it as
they have enough bread hoarded.” The same “gossip about Jews
who tuck away bread” rolls from another end of the line as
well; “the waiting lines is the most dangerous source of
counterrevolution.”[1753] The author Ivan Nazhivin noted
that in the autumn in Moscow anti-Semitic propaganda fell on
ready ears in the hungry revolutionary queues: “What rascals!
…  They wormed themselves onto the very top! … See, how
proudly they ride in their cars…. Sure, not a single Yid can be
found in the lines here…. Just you wait!”[1754]
Any revolution releases a ood of obscenity, envy, and anger
from the people. The same happened among the Russian
people, with their weakened Christian spirituality. And so the
Jews – many of whom had ascended to the top, to visibility,
and, what is more, who had not concealed their revolutionary
jubilation, nor waited in the miserable lines – increasingly
became a target of popular resentment.
Many instances of such resentment were documented in
1917 newspapers. Below are several examples. When, at the
Apraksin market on Sennaya Square, a hoard of goods was
discovered in possession of Jewish merchants, “people began
shout … ‘plunder Jewish shops!’, because ‘Yids are responsible
for all the troubles’ … and this word ‘Yid’ is on everyone’s
lips.”[1755] A stockpile of our and bacon was found in the
store of a merchant (likely a Jew) in Poltava. The crowd started
plundering his shop and then began calling for a Jewish
pogrom. Later, several members of the Soviet of Workers’
Deputies, including Drobnis, arrived and attempted to appease
the crowd; as a result, Drobnis was beaten.[1756] In October in
Ekaterinoslav soldiers trashed small shops, shouting “Smash
the bourgeois! Smash the Yids!” In Kiev at the Vladimirsky
market a boy had hit a woman, who tried to buy our out her
turn on the head Instantly, the crowd  started yelling “the Yids
are beating the Russians!” and a brawl ensued. (Note that it had
happened in the same Kiev where one could already see the
streamers “Long live free Ukraine without Yids and Poles!”) By
that time “Smash the Yids!” could be heard in almost every
street brawl, even in Petrograd, and often completely without
foundation. For instance, in a Petrograd streetcar two women
“called for disbanding of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, lled, according to them, exclusively by ‘Germans
and Yids’. Both were arrested and called to account.”[1757]
Newspaper  Russkaya Volya (Russian Freedom) reported:
“Right in front of our eyes, anti-Semitism, in its most primitive
form … re-arises and spreads…. It is enough to hear to
conversations in streetcars [in Petrograd] or in waiting lines to
various shops, or in the countless eeting rallies at every
corner and crossroad … they accuse Jews of political
stranglehold, of seizing parties and soviets, and even of ruining
the army … of looting and hoarding goods.”[1758]
Many Jewish socialists, agitators in the front units, enjoyed
unlimited success during the spring months when calls for a
“democratic peace” were tolerated and ghting was not
required. Then nobody blamed them for being Jewish. But in
June when the policy of the Executive Committee had changed
toward support and even propaganda for the o ensive, calls of
“smash the Yids!” began appearing and those Jewish persuaders
su ered battering by unruly soldiers time and time again.
Rumors were spreading that the Executive Committee in
Petrograd was “seized by Yids.” By June this belief had taken
root in the Petrograd garrison and factories; this is exactly
what soldiers shouted to the member of the Committee
Voitinsky who had visited an infantry regiment to dissuade the
troops from the looming demonstration conceived by
Bolsheviks on June 10.
V. D. Nabokov, hardly known for anti-Semitism, joked that
the meeting of the foremen of the Pre-Parliament in October
1917 “could be safely called a Sanhedrin”: its majority was
Jewish; of Russians, there were only Avksentiev, me,
Peshekhonov, and Chaikovsky….” His attention was drawn to
that fact by Mark Vishnyak who was present there also.[1759]
By autumn, the activity of Jews in power had created such an
e ect that even Iskry (Sparks), the illustrated supplement to the
surpassingly gentle Russkoe Slovo (Russian Word) that would
until then never dare defying public opinion in such a way, had
published an abrasive anti-Jewish caricature in the October 29
issue, that is, already during ghts of the October coup in
Moscow.
The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies actively fought against anti-Semitism. (I
cannot rule out that the harsh refusal to accept the well-
deserved Plekhanov into the CEC in April 1917 was a kind of
revenge for his anti-Bund referral to the “tribe of Gad,” which
was mentioned in Lenin’s publications.[1760] Indeed, I cannot
provide any other explanation.) On July 21 the 1st All-Russian
Congress of Soviets had issued a proclamation about a struggle
against anti-Semitism (“about the only resolution approved by
the Congress unanimously, without any objections or
arguments”[1761]). When in the end of June (28th and 29th)
the re-elected Bureau of the CEC had assembled, they had heard
a report on “the rise of anti-Semitic agitation … mainly in the
northwestern and southwestern” guberniyas; a decision was
made immediately to send a delegation of 15 members of the
CEC with special powers there[1762], subordinating them to
the direction of the “Department on the Struggle against
Counter-Revolution.”
 On the other hand, Bolsheviks, who advanced their agenda
under the slogan “Down with the ministers-capitalists!” not
only did nothing to alleviate this problem, they even fanned its
ames (along with the anarchists, despite the fact that the
latter were headed by one Bleikhman). They claimed that the
Executive Committee was so exceptionally lenient toward the
government only because capitalists and Jews control
everything (isn’t that reminiscent of Narodnaya Volya [the
People’s Will terrorist organization] of 1881?).
And when the Bolshevik uprising of July 3-4 broke out (it
was in fact targeted not against the already impotent
Provisional Government but against the Bolshevik’s true
competitor – Executive Committee), the Bolsheviks slyly
exploited the anger of soldiers toward Jews by pointing them to
that very body – see, there they are!
But when the Bolsheviks had lost their uprising, the CEC had
conducted an o cial investigation and many members of the
commission of inquiry were Jews from the presidium of the
CEC. And because of their “socialist conscience” they dared not
call the Bolshevik uprising a crime and deal with it accordingly.
So the commission had yielded no result and was soon
liquidated.
During the garrison meeting, arranged by the CEC on
October 19, just before the decisive Bolshevik uprising, “one of
representatives of 176th Infantry Regiment, a Jew,” warned
that “those people down on the streets scream that Jews are
responsible for all the wrongs.”[1763] At the CEC meeting
during the night of October 25, Gendelman reported that when
he was giving a speech in the Peter and Paul Fortress earlier
that afternoon he was taunted: “You are Gendelman! That is
you are a Yid and a Rightist!”[1764] When on October 27 Gotz
and his delegation to Kerensky tried to depart to Gatchina from
the Baltiysky Rail Terminal, he was nearly killed by sailors who
screamed that “the soviets are controlled by Yids.”[1765] And
during the ‘wine pogroms’ on the eve of the ‘glorious Bolshevik
victory,’ the calls “Slaughter Yids!” were heard also.
And yet there was not a single Jewish pogrom over the whole
year of 1917. The infamous outrageous pogroms in Kalusha
and Ternopol were in fact the work of frenzied drunken
revolutionary soldiers, retreating in disorder. They smashed
everything on their way, all shops and stores; and because most
of those were Jewish-owned, the word spread about ‘Jewish
pogroms’. A similar pogrom took place in Stanislavov, with its
much smaller Jewish population, and quite reasonably it was
not labeled a ‘Jewish’ pogrom.
Already by the mid-summer of 1917 the Jews felt threatened
by the embittered population (or drunken soldiers), but the
ongoing collapse of the state was fraught with incomparably
greater dangers. Amazingly, it seems that both the Jewish
community and the press, the latter to a large extent identi ed
with the former, learned nothing from the formidable
experiences of 1917 in general, but narrowly looked at the
“isolated manifestations of pogroms.” And so time after time
they missed the real danger. The executive power behaved
similarly. When the Germans breached the front at Ternopol in
the night of July 10, the desperate joint meeting of the CEC of
the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and the Executive
Committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies had taken place.
They had acknowledged that should the revolution perish, the
country crumbles down (in that exact order), and then named
Provisional Government a “Government for Salvation of the
Revolution,” and noted in their appeal to the people that “dark
forces are again prepared to torment our longsu ering
Motherland. They are setting backward masses upon the
Jews.”[1766]
 On July 18 at a panel session of the State Duma, in an
extremely small circle, Rep. Maslennikov spoke against the
Executive Committee and among other things spelled out the
real names of its members. On the very same evening at the
factional meeting of the CEC they beat an alarm: “This is a case
of counterrevolution, it must be dealt with according to the
recently issued decree of the Minister of Internal A airs
Tsereteli on suppression of counterrevolution! (The decree was
issued in response to the Bolshevik uprising, though it was
never used against Bolsheviks.) In two days Maslennikov made
excuses in an article in the newspaper Rech [Speech]: indeed, he
named Steklov, Kamenev, and Trotsky but never intended to
incite anger against the entire Jewish people, and “anyway,
attacking them, I had absolutely no wish to make Jewish people
responsible for the actions of these individuals.”[1767]
Then, in mid-September, when the all gains of the February
Revolution were already irreversibly ruined, on the eve of the
by now imminent Bolshevik coup, Ya. Kantorovich warned in
Rech about the danger that: “The dark forces and evil geniuses
of Russia will soon emerge from their dens to jubilantly
perform Black Masses….” Indeed, it will happen soon. Yet what
kind of Black masses? – “…Of bestial patriotism and pogrom-
loving ‘truly-Russian’ national identity.”[1768] In October in
Petrograd I. Trumpeldor had organized Jewish self-defense
forces for protection against pogroms, but they were never
needed.
Indeed, Russian minds were confused, and so were Jewish
ones.
Several years after the revolution, G. Landau, looking back
with sadness, wrote: “Jewish participation in the Russian
turmoil had astonishingly suicidal overtones in it; I am
referring not only to their role in Bolshevism, but to their
involvement in the whole thing. And it is not just about the
huge number of politically active people, socialists and
revolutionaries, who have joined the revolution; I am talking
mainly about the broad sympathy of the masses it was met
with…. Although many harbored pessimistic expectations, in
particular, an anticipation of pogroms, they were still able to
reconcile such a foreboding with an acceptance of turmoil
which unleashed countless miseries and pogroms. It resembled
the fatal attraction of butter ies to re, to the annihilating
re…. It is certain there were some strong motives pushing the
Jews into that direction, and yet those were clearly suicidal….
Granted, Jews were not di erent in that from the rest of
Russian intelligentsia and from the Russian society…. Yet we
had to be di erent … we, the ancient people of city-dwellers,
merchants, artisans, intellectuals … we had to be di erent
from the people of land and power, from peasants, landowners,
o cials.”[1769]
And let’s not forget those who were di erent. We must
always remember that Jewry was and is very heterogeneous,
that attitudes and actions vary greatly among the Jews. So it
was with the Russian Jewry in 1917: in provinces and even in
the capital there were circles with reasonable views and they
were growing as October was getting closer.
The Jewish stance toward Russian unity during the months
when Russia was pulled apart not only by other nations, but
even by Siberians, was remarkable. “All over the course of
revolution Jews, together with Great Russians, were among the
most ardent champions of the idea of Great Russia.”[1770]
Now, when Jews had gotten their equal rights, what could they
have in common with di erent peoples on the periphery of the
former empire? And yet the disintegration of a united country
would fracture Jewry. In July at the 9th Congress of
Constitutional Democrats, Vinaver and Nolde openly argued
against territorial partition of peoples and in favor of Russian
unity.[1771] Also in September, in the national section of the
Democratic Conference, the Jewish socialists spoke against any
federalization of Russia (in that they had joined the
Centralists). Today they write in an Israeli magazine that
Trumpeldor’s Jewish detachments “backed the Provisional
Government and had even foiled the Kornilov’s mutiny.”[1772]
Perhaps. However, in rigorously studying events of 1917, I did
not encounter any such information. But I am aware of
opposite instances: in early May 1917 in the thundering
patriotic and essentially counter-revolutionary “Black Sea
Delegation,” the most successful orator calling for the defense
of Russia was Jewish sailor Batkin.
D. Pasmanik had published the letters of millionaire
steamship owner Shulim Bespalov to the Minister of Trade and
Industry Shakhovsky dated as early as September 1915:
“Excessive pro ts made by all industrialists and traders lead
our Motherland to the imminent wreck.” He had donated half a
million rubles to the state and proposed to establish a law
limiting all pro ts by 15%. Unfortunately, these self-
restricting measures were not introduced as ‘rush to freedom’
progressives, such as Konovalov and Ryabushinsky, did not
mind making 100% war pro ts. When Konovalov himself
became the Minister of Trade and Industry, Shulim Bespalov
wrote to him on July 5, 1917: “Excessive pro ts of
industrialists are ruining our country, now we must take 50%
of the value of their capitals and property,” and added that he is
ready to part with 50% of his own assets. Konovalov paid no
heed.[1773]
In August, at the Moscow All-Russian State Conference, O. O.
Gruzenberg (a future member of the Constituent Assembly)
stated: “These days the Jewish people … are united in their
allegiance to our Motherland, in unanimous aspiration to
defend her integrity and achievements of democracy” and
were prepared to give for her defense “all their material and
intellectual assets, to part with everything precious, with the
ower of their people, all their young.”[1774]
These words re ected the realization that the February
regime was the best for the Russian Jewry, promising economic
progress as well as political and cultural prosperity. And that
realization was adequate.
The closer it got to to October coup and the more apparent
the Bolshevik threat, the wider this realization spread among
Jews, leading them to oppose Bolshevism. It was taking root
even among socialist parties and during the October coup
many Jewish socialists were actively against it. Yet they were
debilitated by their socialist views and their opposition was
limited by negotiations and newspaper articles – until the
Bolsheviks shut down those newspapers.
It is necessary to state explicitly that the October coup was
not carried by Jews (though it was under the general command
of Trotsky and with energetic actions of young Grigory
Chudnovsky during the arrest of Provisional Government and
the massacre of the defenders of the Winter Palace). Broadly
speaking, the common rebuke, that the 170-million-people
could not be pushed into Bolshevism by a small Jewish
minority, is justi ed. Indeed, we had ourselves sealed our fate
in 1917, through our foolishness from February to October-
December.
The October coup proved a devastating lot for Russia. Yet the
state of a airs even before it promised little good to the people.
We had already lost responsible statesmanship and the events
of 1917 had proved it in excess. The best Russia could expect
was an  inept, feeble, and disorderly pseudo-democracy, unable
to rely on enough citizens with developed legal consciousness
and economic independence.
 After October ghts in Moscow, representatives of the Bund
and Poale-Zion had taken part in the peace negotiations – not
in alliance with the Junkers or the Bolsheviks — but as a third
independent party. There were many Jews among Junkers of
the Engineers School who defended the Winter Palace on
October 25: in the memoirs of Sinegub, a palace defender,
Jewish names appear regularly; I personally knew one such
engineer from my prison experience. And during the Odessa
City Duma elections the Jewish block had opposed the
Bolsheviks and won, though only marginally.
During the Constituent Assembly elections “more than 80%
of Jewish population in Russia had voted” for Zionist parties.
[1775] Lenin wrote that 550 thousands voted for Jewish
nationalists.[1776] “Most Jewish parties have formed a united
national list of candidates; seven deputies were elected from
that list – six Zionists” and Gruzenberg. The success of Zionists
was facilitated by the recently published declaration of British
Minister of Foreign A airs Balfour on the establishment of
‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine, which was “met with
enthusiasm by the majority of Russian Jewry (celebratory
demonstrations, rallies and worship services took place in
Moscow, Petrograd, Odessa, Kiev and many other cities).”[1777]
Prior to the October coup, Bolshevism was not very
in uential among Jews. But just before the uprising, Natanson,
Kamkov, and Shteinberg on behalf of the left Socialist
Revolutionaries had signed a combat pact with Bolsheviks
Trotsky and Kamenev.[1778] And some Jews distinguished
themselves among the Bolsheviks in their very rst victories
and some even became famous. The commissar of the famed
Latvian regiments of the 12th Army, which did so much for the
success of Bolshevik coup, was Semyon Nakhimson. “Jewish
soldiers played a notable role during preparation and execution
of the armed uprising of October 1917 in Petrograd and other
cities, and also during suppression of mutinies and armed
resurrections against the new Soviet regime.”[1779]
It is widely known that during the ‘historical’ session of the
Congress of Soviets on October 27 two acts, the ‘Decree on
Land’ and the ‘Decree on Peace’, were passed. But it didn’t leave
a mark in history that after the ‘Decree on Peace’ but before the
‘Decree on Land’ another resolution was passed. It declared it “a
matter of honor for local soviets to prevent Jewish and any
other pogroms by dark forces.”[1780](Pogroms by ‘Red forces
of light’ were not anticipated.)
So even here, at the Congress of Workers’ and Peasants’
Deputies, the Jewish question was put ahead of the peasant
one.
 Chapter 15. Alongside the Bolsheviks

This theme—the Jews alongside the Bolsheviks—is not new, far

from it. How many pages already written on the subject! The
one who wants to demonstrate that the revolution was
“anything but Russian”, “foreign by nature”, invokes Jewish
surnames and pseudonyms, thus claiming to exonerate the
Russians from all responsibility in the revolution of seventeen.
As for the Jewish authors, those who denied the Jews’ share in
the revolution as well as those who have always recognised it,
all agree that these Jews were not Jews by spirit, they were
renegades.
We also agree on that. We must judge people for their spirit.
Yes, they were renegades.
But the Russian leaders of the Bolshevik Party were also not
Russians by the spirit; they were very anti‐Russian, and
certainly anti‐Orthodox. With them, the great Russian culture,
reduced to a doctrine and to political calculations, was
distorted.
The question should be asked in another way, namely: how
many scattered renegades should be brought together to form
a homogeneous political current? What proportion of
nationals? As far as the Russian renegades are concerned, the
answer is known: alongside the Bolsheviks there were
enormous numbers, an unforgivable number. But for the
Jewish renegades, what was, by the enrolment and by the
energy deployed, their share in the establishment of Bolshevik
power?
Another question concerns the attitude of the nation
towards its own renegades. However, the latter was contrasted,
ranging from abomination to admiration, from mistrust to
adherence. It has manifested itself in the very reactions of the
popular masses, whether Russian, Jewish, or Lithuanian, in life
itself much more than in the brie ngs of historians.
And nally: can nations deny their renegades? Is there any
sense in this denial? Should a nation remember or not
remember them? Can it forget the monster they have begotten?
To this question the answer is no doubt: it is necessary to
remember. Every people must remember its own renegades,
remember them as their own—to that, there is no escape.
And then, deep down, is there an example of renegade more
striking than Lenin himself? However, Lenin was Russian,
there is no point in denying it. Yes, he loathed, he detested
everything that had to do with ancient Russia, all Russian
history and a fortiori Orthodoxy. From Russian literature he
had retained only Chernyshevsky and Saltykov‐Shchedrin;
Turgenev, with his liberal spirit, amused him, and Tolstoy the
accuser, too. He never showed the least feeling of a ection for
anything, not even for the river, the Volga, on whose banks his
childhood took place (and did he not instigate a lawsuit against
his peasants for damage to his lands?). Moreover: it was he who
pitilessly delivered the whole region to the appalling famine of
1921. Yes, all this is true. But it was we, the Russians, who
created the climate in which Lenin grew up and lled him with
hatred. It is in us that the Orthodox faith has lost its vigour,
this faith in which he could have grown instead of declaring it
a merciless war. How can one not see in him a renegade? And
yet, he is Russian, and we Russians, we answer for him. His
ethnic origins are sometimes invoked. Lenin was a mestizo
issued from di erent races: his paternal grandfather, Nikolai
Vasilyevich, was of Kalmyk and Chuvash blood, his
grandmother, Anna Aleksievna Smirnova, was a Kalmyk, his
other grandfather, Israel (Alexander of his name of baptism)
Davidovitch Blank, was a Jew, his other grandmother, Anna
Iohannovna (Ivanovna) Groschopf, was the daughter of a
German and a Swede, Anna Beata Estedt. But that does not
change the case. For nothing of this makes it possible to
exclude him from the Russian people: we must recognise in
him a Russian phenomenon on the one hand, for all the ethnic
groups which gave him birth have been implicated in the
history of the Russian Empire, and, on the other hand, a
Russian phenomenon, the fruit of the country we have built, we
Russians, and its social climate—even if he appears to us,
because of his spirit always indi erent to Russia, or even
completely anti‐Russian, as a phenomenon completely foreign
to us. We cannot, in spite of everything, disown him.
What about the Jewish renegades? As we have seen, during
the year 1917, there was no particular attraction for the
Bolsheviks that manifested among the Jews. But their activism
has played its part in the revolutionary upheavals. At the last
Congress of the Russian Social‐Democratic Labour Party
(RSDLP) (London, 1907), which was, it is true, common with
the Mensheviks, of 302‒305 delegates, 160 were Jews, more
than half—it was promising. Then, after the April 1917
Conference, just after the announcement of the explosive April
Theses of Lenin, among the nine members of the new Central
Committee were G. Zinoviev, L. Kamenev, Ia. Sverdlov. At the
VIth summer Congress of the RKP (b) (the Russian Communist
Party of the Bolsheviks, the new name of the RSDLP), eleven
members were elected to the Central Committee, including
Zinoviev, Sverdlov, Trotsky, Uritsky.[1781] Then, at the
“historic meeting” in Karpovka Street, in the apartment of
Himmer and Flaksermann, on 10 October 1917, when the
decision to launch the Bolshevik coup was taken, among the
twelve participants were Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov,
Uritsky, Sokolnikov. It was there that was elected the rst
“Politburo” which was to have such a brilliant future, and
among its seven members, always the same: Trotsky, Zinoviev,
Kamenev, Sokolnikov. Which is already a lot. D. S. Pasmanik
clearly states: “There is no doubt that the Jewish renegades
outnumbered the normal percentage…; they occupied too
great a place among the Bolshevik commissioners.”[1782]
Of course, all this was happening in the governing spheres of
Bolshevism and in no way foreshadowed a mass movement of
Jews. Moreover, the Jewish members of the Politburo did not
act as a constituted group. Thus Kamenev and Zinoviev were
against a hasty coup. The only master of the work, the genius
of October’s coup de force, was in fact Trotsky: he did not
exaggerate his role in his Lessons of October. This cowardly
Lenin, who, he, had been hiding out, made no substantial
contribution to the putsch.
Basically, because of his internationalism and following his
dispute with the Bund in 1903, Lenin adhered to the opinion
that there was not and never would be such a thing as a “Jewish
nationality”; that this was a reactionary action which
disunited the revolutionary forces. (In agreement with him,
Stalin held the Jews for a “paper nation”, and considered their
assimilation inevitable.) Lenin therefore saw anti‐Semitism as
a manœuvre of capitalism, an easy weapon in the hands of
counter‐revolution, something that was not natural. He
understood very well, however, what mobilising force the
Jewish question represented in the ideological struggle in
general. And to exploit, for the good of the revolution, the
feeling of bitterness particularly prevalent among the Jews,
Lenin was always ready to do so.
From the rst days of the revolution, however, this appeal
proved to be oh so necessary! Lenin clung to it. He, who had not
foreseen everything on the plane of the state, had not yet
perceived how much the cultivated layer of the Jewish nation,
and even more so its semi‐cultivated layer, which, as a result of
the war, was found scattered throughout the whole of Russia,
was going to save the day throughout decisive months and
years. To begin with, it was going to take the place of the
Russian o cials massively determined to boycott the
Bolshevik power. This population was composed of border
residents who had been driven out of their villages and who
had not returned there after the end of the war. (For example,
Jews expelled from Lithuania during the war had not all
returned after the revolution: only the small rural people had
returned, while the “urban contingent” of the Jews of Lithuania
and “the young had stayed to live in the big cities of
Russia.”[1783])
And it was precisely “after the abolition of the Pale of
Settlement in 1917 that the great exodus of Jews from its
boundaries into the interior of the country ensued.”[1784] This
exodus is no longer that of refugees or expellees, but indeed of
new settlers. Information from a Soviet source for the year
1920 testi es: “In the city of Samara, in recent years, tens of
thousands of Jewish refugees and expellees have established
themselves”; in Irkutsk, “the Jewish population has increased,
reaching fteen thousand people; important Jewish
settlements were formed in Central Russia as well as on the
banks of the Volga and the Urals.” However, “the majority
continue to live on subsidies from social welfare and other
philanthropic organisations.” And here are the Izvestia calling
for “the Party organisations, the Jewish sections and the
departments of the National Commissariat to organise a vast
campaign for the non‐return to the ‘tombs of the ancestors’
and for the participation in the work of production in Soviet
Russia.”[1785]
But put yourself in the place of the Bolsheviks: they were
only a small handful that had seized power, a power that was
so fragile: in whom, great gods, could one have con dence?
Who could be called to the rescue? Simon (Shimon)
Dimantstein, a Bolshevik from the very beginning and who,
since January 1918, was at the head of a European Committee
specially created within the Commissariat of Nationalities,
gives us the thought of Lenin on this subject: “the fact that a
large part of the middle Jewish intelligentsia settled in Russian
cities has rendered a proud service to the revolution. They
defeated the vast sabotage enterprise we faced after the
October Revolution, which was a great danger to us. They were
numerous—not all, of course, far from it—to sabotage this
sabotage, and it was they who, at that fateful hour, saved the
revolution.” Lenin considered it “inappropriate to emphasise
this episode in the press…”, but he remarked that “if we
succeeded in seizing and restructuring the State apparatus, it
was exclusively thanks to this pool of new civil servants—
lucid, educated, and reasonably competent.”[1786]
The Bolsheviks thus appealed to the Jews from the very rst
hours of their takeover, o ering to some executive positions, to
others tasks of execution within the Soviet State apparatus.
And many, many, answered the call, and immediately entered.
The new power was in desperate need of executors who were
faithful in every way—and there were many of them among
the young secularised Jews, who thus mingled with their
colleagues, Slavs and others. These were not necessarily
“renegades”: there were among them some without political
party a liations, persons outside the revolution, who had
hitherto remained indi erent to politics. For some, this
approach was not ideological; it could be dictated only by
personal interest. It was a mass phenomenon. And from that
time the Jews no longer sought to settle in the forbidden
countryside, they endeavoured to reach the capitals:
“Thousands of Jews joined the Bolsheviks in crowds, seeing
them as the most erce defenders of the revolution and the
most reliable internationalists… The Jews abounded in the
lower levels of the Party apparatus.”[1787]
“The Jew, who obviously could not have come from the
nobility, the clergy, or the civil service, found himself among
the ranks of the personalities of the future of the new
clan.”[1788] In order to promote the Jews’ commitment to
Bolshevism, “at the end of 1917, while the Bolsheviks were still
sketching out their institutions, a Jewish department within
the Commissariat of Nationalities began to function.”[1789]
This department was, since 1918, transformed into a separate
European Commissariat. And in March 1919, at the VIIIth
Congress of the RKP (b), the Communist European Union of
Soviet Russia was to be proclaimed as an integral but
autonomous part of the RKP (b). (The intention was to
integrate this Union into the Comintern and thereby
permanently undermine the Bund). A special European section
within the Russian Telegraph Agency was also created
(ROSTA).
D. Schub justi es these initiatives by saying that “large
contingents of the Jewish youth joined the Communist Party”
following the pogroms in the territories occupied by the
Whites[1790] (i.e. from 1919 onwards). But this explanation
does not hold the road. For the massive entry of the Jews into
the Soviet apparatus occurred towards the end of the year 1917
and during 1918. There is no doubt that the events of 1919 (see
infra, chapter 16) strengthened the link between the Jewish
elites and the Bolsheviks, but they in no way provoked it.
Another author, a communist, explains “the particularly
important role of the Jewish revolutionary in our labour
movement” by the fact that we can observe with the Jewish
workers, “highly developed, the traits of character required of
any leading role,” traits which are still in draft form among the
Russian workers: an exceptional energy, a sense of solidarity, a
systematic mind.[1791]
Few authors deny the role of organisers that was that of the
Jews in Bolshevism. D. S. Pasmanik points out: “The appearance
of Bolshevism is linked to the peculiarities of Russian history…
But its excellent organisation, Bolshevism, is due in part to the
action of the Jewish commissioners.”[1792] The active role of
the Jews in Bolshevism did not escape the notice of observers,
notably in America: “The Russian revolution rapidly moved
from the destructive phase to the constructive phase, and this
is clearly attributable to the edifying genius inherent to Jewish
dissatisfaction.”[1793] In the midst of the euphoria of October,
how many were not, the Jews themselves admit it, with their
heads held high, their action within Bolshevism!
Let us remember: just as, before the revolution, the
revolutionaries and liberal radicals had been quick to exploit
for political purposes—and not for charity—the restrictions
imposed on Jews, likewise, in the months and years that
followed October, the Bolsheviks, with the utmost
complaisance, used the Jews within the State apparatus and the
Party, too, not because of sympathy, but because they found
their interest in the competence, intelligence and the
particularism of the Jews towards the Russian population. On
the spot they used Latvians, Hungarians, Chinese: these were
not going to be sentimental…
The Jewish population in its mass showed a suspicious, even
hostile attitude towards the Bolsheviks. But when, as a result of
the revolution, it had acquired complete freedom which
fostered a real expansion of Jewish activity in the political,
social and cultural spheres—a well‐organised activity to boot—
it did nothing to prevent the Bolshevik Jews from occupying
the key positions, and these made an exceedingly cruel use of
this new power fallen into their hands.
 From the 40s of the twentieth century onwards, after
Communist rule broke with international Judaism, Jews and
communists became embarrassed and afraid, and they
preferred to stay quiet and conceal the strong participation of
Jews in the communist revolution, however the inclinations to
remember and name the phenomenon were described by the
Jews themselves as purely anti‐Semitic intentions.
In the 1970s and 1980s, under the pressure of new
revelations, the vision of the revolutionary years was adjusted.
A considerable number of voices were heard publicly. Thus the
poet Nahum Korzhavin wrote: “If we make the participation of
the Jews in the revolution a taboo subject, we can no longer talk
about the revolution at all. There was a time when the pride of
this participation was even prized… The Jews took part in the
revolution, and in abnormally high proportions.”[1794] M.
Agursky wrote on his part: “The participation of the Jews in the
revolution and the civil war has not been limited to a very
active engagement in the State apparatus; it has been in nitely
wider.”[1795] Similarly, the Israeli Socialist S. Tsyroulnikov
asserts: “At the beginning of the revolution, the Jews… served
as the foundation of the new regime.”[1796]
But there are also many Jewish writers who, up to this day,
either deny the Jews’ contribution to Bolshevism, or even reject
the idea rashly, or—this is the most frequent—consider it only
reluctantly.
However the fact is proven: Jewish renegades have long been
leaders in the Bolshevik Party, heading the Red Army (Trotsky),
the VTsIK (Sverdlov), the two capitals (Zinoviev and Kamenev),
the Comintern (Zinoviev), the Pro ntern (Dridzo‐Lozovski) and
the Komsomol (Oscar Ryvkin, and later Lazar Shatskin, who
also headed the International Communist Youth).
“It is true that in the rst Sovnarkom there was only one Jew,
but that one was Trotsky, the number two, behind Lenin,
whose authority surpassed that of all the others.”[1797] And
from November 1917 to the summer of 1918, the real organ of
government was not the Sovnarkom, but what was called the
“Little Sovnarkom”: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kareline, Prochian.
After October, the VTsIK Presidium was of equal importance to
that of the Sovnarkom, and among its six members were
Sverdlov, Kamenev, Volodarski, Svetlov‐Nakhamkis.
M. Agursky rightly points out: for a country where it was not
customary to see Jews in power, what a contrast! “A Jew in the
presidency of the country… a Jew in the Ministry of War…
There was there something to which the ethnic population of
Russia could hardly accustom itself to.”[1798] Yes, what a
contrast! Especially when one knows of what president, of what
minister it was!

   
The rst major action of the Bolsheviks was, by signing the
peace separated from Brest‐Litovsk, to cede to Germany an
enormous portion of the Russian territory, in order to assert
their power over the remaining part. The head of the signatory
delegation was Io e; the head of foreign policy, Trotsky. His
secretary and attorney, I. Zalkin, had occupied the cabinet of
comrade Neratov at the ministry and purged the old apparatus
to create a new organisation, the Commissariat for Foreign
A airs.
During the auditions held in 1919 in the American Senate
and quoted above, the doctor A. Simons, who from 1907 to
1918 had been the dean of the Methodist Episcopal Church of
Petrograd, made an interesting remark: “While they did not
mince their words to criticise the Allies, Lenin, Trotsky, and
their followers never expressed—at least I have never heard—
the slightest blame on Germany.” And at the same time, when I
spoke with o cial representatives of the Soviet government, I
discovered that they had a desire to preserve friendly relations
with America as far as possible. This desire was interpreted by
the allied chancelleries as an attempt to detach America from
its partners. Moreover, if the Soviet regime collapsed, they
expected our country [the United States] to serve as a refuge for
the Bolshevik demons who could thus save their skin.”[1799]
The calculation is plausible. Is it not even… certain? It may
be supposed that Trotsky himself, strengthened by his recent
experience in America, comforted his companions with this
hope.
But where the calculation of the Bolshevik leaders was more
ambitious and well‐founded, it was when it dealt with the use
of the great American nanciers.
Trotsky himself was an incontestable internationalist, and
one can believe him when he declares emphatically that he
rejects for himself all belonging to Jewishness. But judging by
the choices he made in his appointments, we see that the
renegade Jews were closer to him than the renegade Russians.
(His two closest assistants were Glazman and Sermuks, the
head of his personal guard, Dreitser.[1800]) Thus, when it
became necessary to nd an authoritative and ruthless
substitute to occupy this post at the War Commissariat—judge
the lack!—, Trotsky named without inching Ephraim
Sklyansky, a doctor who had nothing of a soldier or a
commissar. And this Sklyansky, as vice‐president of the
Revolutionary Council of War, would add his signature above
the one of the Supreme Commander, the General S. S. Kamenev!
Trotsky did not think for a moment of the impression that
the appointment of a doctor or the extraordinary promotion of
a Sklyansky would make on the non‐commissioned members:
he could not care less. And yet, it was he who once declared:
“Russia has not reached the maturity necessary to tolerate a
Jew at its head”; this famous sentence shows that the question
concerned him all the same when it was formulated about
him…
There was also this well‐known scene: the inaugural session
of the Constituent Assembly is opened on 5 January 1918 by
the Dean of Deputies, S. P. Chevtsov, but Sverdlov, with utter
imprudence, snatches the bell from him, chases him from the
tribune, and resumes the meeting. This Constituent Assembly,
so long awaited, so ardently desired, that sacred sun that was
about to pour happiness onto Russia—it only takes a few hours
for Sverdlov and the sailor Jelezniakov to wring its neck!
The pan‐Russian Commission for the election of the
Constituent Assembly had previously been dissolved, and its
organisation had been entrusted to a private person, the young
Brodsky. As for the Assembly—so ardently desired—its
management was handed to Uritsky, who was assisted by
Drabkin, who was to set up a new chancellery. It was thus, by
this kind of operation, that the new type of—Jewish—
government was sketched. Other preliminary actions: eminent
members of the Constituent Assembly, personalities known to
the whole of Russia, such as the Countess Panina, an immense
benefactress, were arrested by an obscure personage, a certain
Gordon. (According to the newspaper Den [The Day], Gordon
was the author of some wicked patriotic articles that appeared
in Petrogradski Kourier [The Courier of Petrograd], then went on
to trade in cabbage and chemical fertilisers—before nally
becoming Bolshevik.[1801])
Another thing not to be forgotten: the new masters of the
country did not neglect their personal interest. In other words:
they plundered honest people. “Stolen money is usually
converted into diamonds… In Moscow, Sklyansky is said to be
‘the rst diamond buyer’”; he was caught in Lithuania, during
the baggage veri cation of Zinoviev’s wife, Zlata Bernstein‐
Lilina—“jewelery was found, worth several tens of millions of
rubles.”[1802] (And to say that we believed in the legend that
the rst revolutionary leaders were disinterested idealists!) In
the Cheka, a trustworthy witness tells us, himself having
passed in its clutches in 1920, the chiefs of the prisons were
usually Poles or Latvians, while “the section in charge of the
ght against tra ckers, the least dangerous and the most
lucrative, was in the hands of Jews.”[1803]
Other than the positions at the front of the stage, there
existed in the structure of Lenin’s power, as in any other
conspiracy, silent and invisible gures destined to never write
their names in any chronicle: from Ganetski, that adventurer
Lenin liked, up to all the disturbing gures gravitating in the
orbit of Parvus. (This Evgeniya Sumenson, for example, who
surfaced for a short time during the summer of 1917, who was
even arrested for nancial manipulation with Germany and
who remained in liaison with the Bolshevik leaders, although
she never appeared on the lists of leaders of the apparatus)
After the “days of July”, Russkaya Volio published raw
documents on the clandestine activity of Parvus and his closest
collaborator, Zurabov, who “occupies today, in the social
democratic circles of Petrograd, a well‐placed position”; “were
also found in Petrograd Misters Binstock, Levin, Perazich and a
few others.”[1804]
Or also: Samuel Zaks, the brother‐in‐law of Zinoviev (his
sister’s husband), the boss of the subsidiary of the Parvus
pharmacy in Petrograd and the son of a wealthy maker of the
city, who had given the Bolsheviks, in 1917, a whole printing
house. Or, belonging to the Parvus team itself, Samuel Pikker
(Alexander Martynov[1805], whom had formerly polemicised
Lenin on theoretical questions—but now the time had come to
serve the Party and Martynov had gone into hiding).
 Let us mention some other striking gures. The most
illustrious (for massacres in Crimea) Rosalia Zalkind‐
Zemlyachka, a real fury of terror: she was in 1917‒1920, long
before Kaganovich, secretary of the Committee of the
Bolsheviks of Moscow along with V. Zagorsky, I. Zelensky, I.
Piatnitsky.[1806] When one knows that the Jews constituted
more than a third of the population of Odessa, it is not
surprising to learn that “in the revolutionary institutions of
Odessa there were a great number of Jews”. The President of the
Revolutionary War Council, and later of the Sovnarkom of
Odessa, was V. Yudovsky; the chairman of the Provincial Party
Committee, the Gamarnik.[1807] The latter would soon rise in
Kiev to be the chairman of the provincial committees—
Revolutionary Committee, Party Executive Committee, then
Chairman of the Regional Committees, and nally Secretary of
the Central Committee of Belarus, member of the Military
Region Revolutionary War Council of Belarus.[1808] And what
about the rising star, Lazar Kaganovich, the president of the
Provincial Committee Party of Nizhny Novgorod in 1918? In
August‒September, the reports of mass terror operations in
the province all begin with the words: “In the presence of
Kaganovich”, “Kaganovitch being present”[1809]—and with
what vigilance!… There is a photo, which was inadvertently
published and which bears this caption: “Photograph of the
Presidium of one of the meetings of the Leningrad Committee,
that is to say of the Petrograd Soviet after the October
Revolution. The absolute majority at the presidium table is
constituted of Jews.”[1810]
Reviewing all the names of those who have held important
positions, and often even key positions, is beyond the reach of
anyone. We will cite for illustrative purposes a few names,
trying to attach them with a few details.—Here is Arkady
Rosengoltz among the actors of the October coup in Moscow;
he was afterwards a member of the Revolutionary War
Councils of several army corps, then of the Republic; he was
Trotsky’s “closest assistant”; he then occupied a number of
important posts: the Commissariat of Finance, the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspectorate (an organ of inquisition), and nally
the Commissariat for Foreign Trade for seven years.—Semyon
Nakhimson, who, on the eve of October, was commissioner of
the notorious Latvian skirmishers, was the erce
commissioner of the military region of Yaroslav (he was killed
during an insurrection in the city).—Samuel Zwilling, who,
after his victory over the Orenburg ataman, Dutov, took the
head of the Orenburg District Executive Committee (he was
killed shortly thereafter).—Zorakh Grindberg, Commissioner
for Instruction and Fine Arts of the Northern Commune, who
took a stand against the teaching of Hebrew, the “right arm” of
Lunacharsky.—Here is Yevgeniya Kogan, wife of Kuybyshev:
she was already in 1917 secretary of the Party Committee of
the region of Samara; in 1918‒19 she became a member of the
Volga Military Revolutionary Tribunal; in 1920 she met at the
Tashkent City Committee, then in 1921 in Moscow, where she
became Secretary of the City Committee and then Secretary of
the National Committee in the 1930s.—And here is the
secretary of Kuybyshev, Semyon Zhukovsky: he goes from
political sections to political sections of the armies; he is
sometimes found in the Propaganda Department of the Central
Committee of Turkestan, sometimes the political leader of the
Baltic Fleet (for the Bolsheviks, everything is at hand…), and,
nally, at the Central Committee.— Or there are the Bielienki
brothers: Abram, at the head of the personal guard of Lenin
during the last ve years of his life; Grigori, who moved from
the Krasnaya Presnia District Committee to the position of
head of the agitprop at the Comintern; nally, he is found at the
Higher Council of the National Economy, the Workers’ and
Peasants’ Inspectorate (RKI), at the Commissariat of Finances.
—Dimanstein, after passing through the European
Commission and the European Section, is at the Central
Committee of Lithuania–Belarus, at the Commissariat of
Instruction of Turkestan, then Head of the Political
Propaganda of Ukraine.—Or Samuel Filler, an apothecary
apprentice from the province of Kherson, who hoisted himself
up to the presidium of the Cheka of Moscow and then of the
RKI.—Anatoly (Isaac) Koltun (“deserted and emigrated
immediately after”, then returned in 1917): he is found both as
a senior o cer in the Central Control Commission of the VKP
(b) and in charge of the Party of Kazakhstan, then in Yaroslavl,
in Ivanovo, then back to the Control Commission, and then to
the Moscow Court—and suddenly he is in Scienti c Research!
[1811] The role of the Jews is particularly visible in the RSFSR
organs responsible for what constitutes the crucial problem of
those years, the years of war communism: supplies. Let’s just
look at the key positions.—Moisei Frumkin: from 1918 to 1922,
member of the college of the Commissariat of Supply of the
RSFSR, and from 1921—in full famine—Deputy Commissioner:
he is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Food Fund
(Glavprodukt) and has as his assistant I. Rafailov.—Iakov
Brandenbourgski–Goldzinski, returning from Paris in 1917 and
immediately becoming a member of the Petrograd Supply
Committee and from 1918 onwards a member of the
Commissariat; during the civil war, with extraordinary powers
in the VTsIK for requisition operations in several provinces.—
Isaak Zelensky: in 1918‒20 in the supply section of the
Moscow Soviet, then member of the college of the RSFSR
Supply Commissariat; Later in the Secretariat of the Central
Committee and Secretary for Central Asia.—Semyon Voskov
(arrived from America in 1917, actor of the October coup in
Petrograd): in 1918, commissioner of supply for the immense
region of the North.—Miron Vladimirov–Chein nkel: since
October 1917 as head of the supply service for the city of
Petrograd, then member of the college of the Supply
Commission of the RSFSR; in 1921: commissioner for the
Supply for Ukraine, then for Agriculture. —Grigori
Zusmanovich, commissioner in 1918 at the Supply of the Army
in Ukraine.—Moisei Kalmanovitch: late 1917, commissioner of
the Supply of the Western Front; In 1919‒1920, commissioner
of the supply of the Byelorussian SSR, then of the Lithuania–
Belarus SSR, and chairman of a special commission for the
supply of the Western Front (at the summit of his career:
president of the Administration Council of the Central Bank of
the USSR).[1812]
Recently published documents inform us of the way in
which the great peasant revolt of 1921 in Western Siberia broke
out, the insurrection of Ichim. After the erce requisitions of
1920, when the region had, on 1 January 1921, ful lled the
required requisition plan by 102%, the Supply Commissioner
of the Tyumen Province, Indenbaum, instituted an additional
week to “ nalise” it, the 1st to 7th January, i.e. the week before
Christmas[1813]. The commissioner of requisitions at Ichim
received, as did the others, the o cial direction: “Requisitions
must be carried out without taking into account the
consequences, con scating, if necessary, all the grain in the
villages (emphasised by me—A. S.) and leaving the producer
only a ration of famine.” In a telegram signed by his hand,
Indenbaum demanded “the most merciless repression and
systematic con scation of the wheat that might still be there.”
In order to form the brigades of requisition, were recruited, not
with the consent of Ingenbaum, thugs, and sub‐proletarians
who had no scruples in bludgeoning the peasants. The Latvian
Matvei Lauris, a member of the Provincial Commissariat of
Supply, used his power for his personal enrichment and
pleasure: having taken up his quarters in a village, he had
thirty‐one women brought in for himself and his squad. At the
Xth Congress of the RKP (b), the delegation of Tyumen
reported that “the peasants who refused to give their wheat
were placed in pits, watered, and died frozen.”[1814]
The existence of some individuals was only learned a few
years later thanks to obituaries published in the Izvestia. Thus:
“comrade Isaac Samoylovich Kizelstein died of tuberculosis”;
he had been an agent of the Cheka College, then a member of
the Revolutionary War Council of the 5th and 14th Armies,
“always devoted to the Party and to the working class”.[1815]
And oh how many of these “obscure workers” of all
nationalities were found among the stranglers of Russia!
Bolshevik Jews often had, in addition to their surname as
underground revolutionaries, pseudonyms, or modi ed
surnames. Example: in an obituary of 1928, the death of a
Bolshevik of the rst hour, Lev Mikhailovich Mikhailov, who
was known to the Party as Politikus, in other words by a
nickname; his real name, Elinson, he carried it to the grave.
[1816] What prompted an Aron Rupelevich to take the
Ukrainian surname of Taratut? Was Aronovitch Tarchis
ashamed of his name or did he want to gain more weight by
taking the name of Piatnitsky? And what about the
Gontcharovs, Vassilenko, and others…? Were they considered
in their own families as traitors or simply as cowards?
Observations made on the spot have remained. I. F. Najivin
records the impressions he received at the very beginning of
Soviet power: in the Kremlin, in the administration of the
Sovnarkom, “reigns disorder and chaos. We see only Latvians
and even more Latvians, Jews and even more Jews. I have never
been an anti‐Semite, but there were so many it could not escape
your attention, and each one was younger than the last.”[1817]
 Korolenko himself, as liberal and extremely tolerant as he
was, he who was deeply sympathetic to the Jews who had been
victims of the pogroms, noted in his Notebooks in the spring of
1919: “Among the Bolsheviks there are a great number of Jews,
men and women. Their lack of tact, their assurance are striking
and irritating,” “Bolshevism has already exhausted itself in
Ukraine, the ‘Commune’ encounters only hatred on its way.
One sees constantly emerge among the Bolsheviks—and
especially the Cheka—Jewish physiognomies, and this
exacerbates the traditional feelings, still very virulent, of
Judæophobia.”[1818]
From the early years of Soviet rule, the Jews were not only
superior in number in the upper echelons of the Party, but also,
more remarkably and more sensitively for the population, to
local administrations, provinces and townships, to inferior
spheres, where the anonymous mass of the Streitbrecher had
come to the rescue of the new and still fragile power which had
consolidated it, saved it. The author of the Book of the Jews of
Russia writes: “One cannot fail to evoke the action of the many
Jewish Bolsheviks who worked in the localities as subordinate
agents of the dictatorship and who caused innumerable ills to
the population of the country”—and he adds: “including the
Jewish population.”[1819]
The omnipresence of the Jews alongside the Bolsheviks had,
during these terrible days and months, the most atrocious
consequences. Among them is the assassination of the
Imperial family, of which, today, everybody speaks, and where
the Russians now exaggerate the share of the Jews, who nd in
this heart‐wrenching thought an evil enjoyment. As it should,
the most dynamic Jews (and they are many) were at the height
of events and often at the command posts. Thus, for the
assassination of the Tsar’s family: the guards (the assassins)
were Latvians, Russians, and Magyars, but two characters
played a decisive role: Philip Goloshchekin and Yakov Yurovsky
(who had received baptism).
The nal decision belonged to Lenin. If he dared to decide in
favour of the assassination (when his power was still fragile), it
was because he had foreseen both the total indi erence of the
Allies (the King of England, cousin of the tsar, had he not
already, in the spring of 1918, refused asylum to Nicholas II?)
And the fatal weakness of the conservative strata of the
Russian people.
Goloshchekin, who had been exiled to Tobolsk in 1912 for
four years, and who in 1917 was in the Urals, was in perfect
agreement with Sverdlov: their telephone conversations
between Yekaterinburg and Moscow revealed that 1918 they
were on rst‐name basis. As early as 1912 (following the
example of Sverdlov), Goloshchekin was a member of the
Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. After the coup of
October, he became secretary of the Provincial Committee of
Perm and Yekaterinburg, and later of the Ural Region
Committee, in other words he had become the absolute master
of the region.[1820]
The project of assassination of the imperial family was
ripening in the brains of Lenin and his acolytes—while, on
their side, the two patrons of the Urals, Goloshchekin and
Bieloborodov (president of the Ural Soviet), simmered their
own machinations. It is now known that at the beginning of
July 1918 Goloshchekin went to Moscow in order to convince
Lenin that letting the tsar and his family “ ee” was a bad
solution, that they had to be openly executed, and then
announce the matter publicly. Convincing Lenin that the tsar
and his family should be suppressed was not necessary, he
himself did not doubt it for a moment. What he feared was the
reaction of the Russian people and the West. There were,
however, already indications that the thing would pass
without making waves. (The decision would also depend, of
course, on Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin—but they
were for the time absent from Moscow, and their mentality,
with the possible exception, possibly, of that of Kamenev,
allowed to suppose none of them would have anything to say
about it. Trotsky, as we know, approved of this without feeling
any emotion. In his diary of 1935, he says that on his arrival in
Moscow he had a conversation with Sverdlov. “I asked
incidentally: ‘By the way, where is the tsar?’—‘It’s done, he
replied. Executed.’—‘and the family?’—‘the family as well, with
him.’—‘all of them?’ I asked with a touch of astonishment. ‘All
of them! replied Sverdlov… so what?’ He was waiting for a
reaction from me. I did not answer anything. ‘And who decided
it?’ I asked.—‘All of us, here’—I did not ask any more questions,
I forgot about it… Basically, this decision was more than
reasonable, it was necessary—not merely in order to frighten,
to scare the enemy, to make him lose all hope, but in order to
electrify our own ranks, to make us understand that there was
no turning back, that we had before us only an undivided
victory or certain death.”[1821]
M. Heifets sought out who was able to attend this last
council chaired by Lenin; without a doubt: Sverdlov,
Dzerzhinsky; probably: Petrovsky and Vladimirski (of the
Cheka), Stutchka (of the Commissariat for Justice); Perhaps: V.
Schmidt. Such was the tribunal that condemned the tsar. As for
Goloshchekin, he had returned to Yekaterinburg on 12 July,
awaiting the last signal sent from Moscow. It was Sverdlov who
transmitted Lenin’s last instruction. And Yakov Yurovsky, a
watchmaker, the son of a criminal who had been deported to
Siberia—where was born the o spring—had been placed in July
1918 at the head of the Ipatiev house. This Yurovsky was
manœuvring the operation and re ecting on the concrete
means of carrying it out (with the help of Magyars and
Russians, including Pavel Medvedev, Piotr Ermakov), as well as
the best way of making the bodies disappear.[1822] (Let us
point out here the assistance provided by P. L. Voïkov, the
regional supply commissioner, who supplied barrels of
gasoline and sulphuric acid to destroy the corpses.) How the
deadly salvos succeeded each other in the basement of the
Ipatiev house, which of these shots were mortal, who were the
shooters, nobody later could specify, not even the executants.
Afterwards, “Yurovsky boasted of being the best: ‘It was the
bullet from my colt that killed Nicholas’.” But this honour also
fell to Ermakov and his “comrade Mauser”.[1823]
Goloshchekin did not seek glory, and it is this idiot of
Bieloborodov who beat him. In the 1920s, everyone knew it
was him, the tsar’s number one killer. In 1936, during a tour in
Rostov‐on‐Don, during a Party Conference, he still boasted of it
from the rostrum—just a year before being himself executed.
In 1941 it was Goloshchekin’s turn to be executed. As for
Yurovsky, after the assassination of the tsar, he joined Moscow,
“worked” there for a year alongside Dzerzhinsky (thus
shedding blood) and died of natural death.[1824]
In fact, the question of the ethnic origin of the actors has
constantly cast a shadow over the revolution as a whole and on
each of its events. All the participations and complicities, since
the assassination of Stolypin, necessarily collided with the
feelings of the Russians. Yes, but what about the assassination
of the tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich? Who
were his assassins? Andrei Markov, Gavril Myasnikov, Nikolai
Zhukov, Ivan Kolpaschikov—clearly, all of them Russians.
Here, everyone must—oh how much!—ask themselves the
question: have I enlightened my people with a little ray of good,
or have I obscured it with all the darkness of evil?
So that is that when it comes to the executioners of the
revolution. And what about the victims? Hostages and
prisoners by entire batches— shot, drowned on crowded
barges: the o cers—Russians; the nobles—mostly Russians;
the priests— Russians; members of the Zemstvos—Russians;
and the peasants eeing enlistment in the Red Army, taken up
in the forests—all Russians. And this Russian intelligentsia of
high moral, anti‐anti‐Semitic—for it also, it was bad deaths and
bloody basements. If names and lists of all those who had been
shot and drowned in the rst years of Soviet power could be
found today, from September 1918 onwards, if statistics were
available, it would be surprising to nd that the revolution in
no way manifested its international character, but indeed its
anti‐Slavic character (in accordance, moreover, with the
dreams of Marx and Engels).
And it is this that has imprinted this deep and cruel mark on
the face of the revolution, which de nes it best: who has it
exterminated, carrying away its dead forever, without return,
far from this sordid revolution and this unfortunate country,
the body of this poor, misguided people?

   
During all those months, Lenin was very much occupied with
the climate of tension that had arisen around the Jewish
question. As early as April 1918, the Council of the People’s
Commissars of Moscow and the Moscow region published in
the Izvestia[1825] (thus for a wider audience than the region of
Moscow alone) a circular addressed to the Soviets “on the
question of the anti‐Semitic propaganda of the pogroms”,
which evoked “events having occurred in the region of Moscow
that recalled anti‐Jewish pogroms” (no city was named); it
stressed the need to organise “special sessions among the
Soviets on the Jewish question and the ght against anti‐
Semitism”, as well as “meetings and conferences”, in short, a
whole propaganda campaign. But who, by the way, was the
number one culprit, who had to have his bones broken? But the
Orthodox priests, of course! The rst point prescribed: “Pay the
utmost attention to the anti‐Semitic propaganda carried out by
the clergy; take the most radical measures to stop the counter‐
revolution and the propaganda of the priests” (we do not ask
ourselves at this moment what measures these were… but, in
reality, who knows them better than we do?). Then point
number two recommended “to recognise the necessity to not
create a separate Jewish ghting organisation” (at the time a
Jewish guard was being considered). The point number four
entrusted the O ce of Jewish A airs and the War
Commissariat with the task of taking “preventive measures to
combat anti‐Jewish pogroms”.
At the height of the same year 1918, Lenin recorded on
gramophone a “special discourse on anti‐Semitism and the
Jews”. He there denounced “the cursed tsarist autocracy which
had always launched uneducated workers and peasants against
the Jews. The tsarist police, assisted by landowners and
capitalists, perpetrated anti‐Jewish pogroms. Hostility towards
the Jews is perennial only where the capitalist cabal has
de nitely obscured the minds of the workers and the
peasants… There are among the Jews workmen, men of labour,
they are the majority. They are our brothers, oppressed as we
are by capitalism, they are our comrades who struggle with us
for socialism… Shame on the cursed tsarism!… Shame on those
who sow hostility towards the Jews!”—“Recordings of this
speech were carried all the way to the front, transported
through towns and villages aboard special propaganda trains
which criss‐crossed the country. Gramophones spread this
discourse in clubs, meetings, assemblies. Soldiers, workers and
peasants listened to their leader’s harangue and began to
understand what this was all about.”[1826] But this speech, at
the time, was not published (… by intentional omission?); it
only was so in 1926 (in the book of Agursky senior).
On 27 July 1918 (just after the execution of the imperial
family), the Sovnarkom promulgated a special law on anti‐
Semitism: “The Soviet of the People’s Commissars declares that
any anti‐Semitic movement is a danger to the cause of the
Revolution of the workers and peasants.” In conclusion (from
Lenin’s own hand, Lunacharsky tells us): “The Sovnarkom
directed all Soviet deputations to take radical measures to
eradicate anti‐Semitism. The inciters of pogroms, those who
propagate them, will be declared outlaws.” Signed: VI. Ulyanov
(Lenin).[1827]
If the meaning of the word “outlaw” may have escaped some
at the time, in the months of the Red Terror it would appear
clearly, ten years later, in a sentence of a communist militant—
Larine—who was himself, for a while, the commissar of the
people and even the promoter of “war communism”: “to
‘outlaw’ the active anti‐Semites was to shoot them.”[1828]
And then there is Lenin’s famous reply to Dimanstein in
1919. Dimanstein “wished to obtain from Lenin that be
retained the distribution of Gorky’s tract containing such
praises to the address of the Jews that it could create ‘the
impression that the revolution was based only on the Jews and
especially on the individuals from the middle class’.” Lenin
replied—as we have already said—that, immediately after
October, it was the Jews who had saved the revolution by
defeating the resistance of the civil servants, and consequently
“Gorky’s opinion was perfectly correct.”[1829] The Jewish
Encyclopædia does not doubt it either: “Lenin refused to sweep
under the carpet the extremely pro‐Semite proclamation of M.
Gorky, and it was disseminated in great circulation during the
civil war, in spite of the fact that it risked becoming an asset in
the hands of the anti‐Semites who were enemies of the
revolution.”[1830]
And it became so, of course, for the Whites who saw two
images merge, that of Judaism and that of Bolshevism.
The surprising (short‐sighted!) indi erence of the Bolshevik
leaders to the popular sentiment and the growing irritation of
the population is blatant when we see how much Jews were
involved in repression directed against the Orthodox clergy: it
was in summer 1918 that was initiated the assault on the
Orthodox churches in central Russia and especially in the
Moscow region (which included several provinces), an assault
which only ceased thanks to the wave of rebellions in the
parishes.
In January 1918, the workers who were building the fortress
of Kronstadt rebelled and protested: the executive committee
of the Party, composed “exclusively of non‐natives”, had
designated for guard duty, instead of militia… Orthodox
priests, while “not a Jewish rabbi, not a Moslem mullah, not a
Catholic pastor, not a Protestant pastor, was put to use.”[1831]
(Let us note in passing that even on this small, forti ed island
of the “prison of the peoples” there were places of worship for
all the confessions…)
A text entitled “Charge on the Jews!” appeared even all the
way to the Pravda, a call from the workers of Arkangelsk “to
Russian workers and peasants conscious of their fate”, in which
they read: “are profaned, de led, plundered”—“exclusively
Orthodox churches, never synagogues… Death by hunger and
disease carries hundreds of thousands of innocent lives among
the Russians,” while “the Jews do not die of hunger or
disease.”[1832] (There was also, during the summer 1918, “a
criminal case of anti‐Semitism in the church of Basil the
Blissful, in Moscow…”).
 What madness on the part of the Jewish militants to have
mingled with the ferocious repression exerted by the
Bolsheviks against Orthodoxy, even more erce than against
the other confessions, with this persecution of priests, with
this outburst in the press of sarcasms aimed at the Christ! The
Russian pens also zealously attacked Demian Bedny (E m
Pridvorov), for example, and he was not the only one. Yes, the
Jews should have stayed out of it.
On 9 August 1919, Patriarch Tikhon wrote to the president
of the VTsIK Kalinin (with a copy to the Sovnarkom president,
Ulyanov–Lenin) to demand the dismissal of the investigating
magistrate Chpitsberg, in charge of the “a airs” of the Church:
“a man who publicly outrages the religious beliefs of people,
who openly mocks ritual gestures, who, in the preface to the
book The Religious Plague (1919), gave Jesus Christ abominable
names and thus profoundly upset my religious feeling.”[1833]
The text was transmitted to the Small Sovnarkom, from which
came the reply on 3 September: “classify the complaint of
citizen Belavine (Patriarch Tikhon) without follow‐up.”[1834]
But Kalinin changed his mind and addressed a secret letter to
the Justice Commissioner, Krasikov, saying that he believed
that “for practical and political considerations… replace
Chpitsberg with someone else”, given that “the audience in the
court is probably in its majority Orthodox” and that it is
therefore necessary “to deprive the religious circles… of their
main reason for ethnic revenge.”[1835]
And what about the profanation of relics? How could the
masses understand such an obvious outrage, so provocative?
“‘Could the Russians, the Orthodox have done such things?’
they asked each other across Russia. ‘All that, it is the Jews who
have plotted it. It makes no di erence, to those who cruci ed
Christ’.”[1836]—And who is responsible for this state of mind,
if not the Bolshevik power, by o ering to the people spectacles
of such savagery?
S. Bulgakov, who followed closely what happened to
Orthodoxy under the Bolsheviks, wrote in 1941: “In the USSR,
the persecution of Christians “surpassed in violence and
amplitude all previous persecutions known throughout
History. Of course, we should not blame everything on the
Jews, but we should not downplay their in uence.”[1837]
—“Were manifested in Bolshevism, above all, the force of will
and the energy of Judaism.”—“The part played by the Jews in
Bolshevism is, alas, disproportionately great. And it is above all
the sin of Judaism against Ben–Israel… And it is not the ‘sacred
Israel’, but the strong will of Judaism that, in power,
manifested itself in Bolshevism and the crushing of the
Russian people.”—“Although it derived from the ideological
and practical programme of Bolshevism, without distinction of
nationality, the persecution of Christians found its most
zealous actors among Jewish ‘commissioners’ of militant
atheism,” and to have put a Goubelman– Iaroslavski at the head
of the Union of the Godless was to commit “in the face of all the
Russian Orthodox people an act… of religious
e rontery.”[1838]
Another very ostensible e rontery: this way of rechristening
cities and places. Custom, in fact, less Jewish than typically
Soviet. But can we a rm that for the inhabitants of Gatchina,
the new name of their city—Trotsk—did not have a foreign
resonance? Likewise for Pavlosk, now Slutsk… Uritsky gives its
name to the square of the Palace, Vorovski to the Saint‐Isaac
Plaza, Volodarski to the Prospect of the Founders, Nakhimson
to the Saint Vladimir Prospect, Rochal to the barge of the
Admiralty, and the second‐class painter Isaak Brodsky gives his
name to the so beautiful Saint Michael street…
 They could no longer stand each other, their heads were
turning. Through the immensity of Russia, it ashes by:
Elisabethgrad becomes Zinovievsk… and let’s go boldly! The
city where the tsar was assassinated takes the name of the
assassin: Sverdlovsk.
It is obvious that was present in the Russian national
consciousness, as early as 1920, the idea of a national revenge
on the part of Bolshevik Jews, since it even appeared in the
papers of the Soviet government (it served as an argument to
Kalinin).
Of course, Pasmanik’s refutation was right: “For the wicked
and narrow‐minded, everything could not be explained more
simply—the Jewish Kahal[1839] has decided to seize Russia; or:
it is the revengeful Judaism that settles its accounts with
Russia for the humiliations undergone in the past.”[1840] Of
course, we cannot explain the victory and the maintenance of
the Bolsheviks.—But: if the pogrom of 1905 burns in the
memory of your family, and if, in 1915, were driven out of the
western territories, with the strikes of a whip, your brothers by
blood, you can very well, three or four years later, want to
avenge yourself in your turn with a whip or a revolver bullet.
We are not going to ask whether Communist Jews consciously
wanted to take revenge on Russia by destroying, by breaking
the Russian heritage, but totally denying this spirit of
vengeance would be denying any relationship between the
inequality in rights under the tsar and the participation of Jews
in Bolshevism, a relationship that is constantly evoked.
And this is how I. M. Biekerman, confronted with “the fact of
the disproportionate participation of the Jews in the work of
barbaric destruction”, to those who recognise the right of the
Jews to avenge past persecutions, refutes this right: “the
destructive zeal of our co‐religionists is blamed on the State,
who, by its vexations and persecutions, would have pushed the
Jews into the revolution”; well no, he says, for “it is to the
manner in which an individual reacts to the evil su ered that
he is distinguished from another, and the same is true of a
community of men.”[1841]
Later, in 1939, taking in the destiny of Judaism under the
black cloud of the coming new era, the same Biekerman wrote:
“The great di erence between the Jews and the world around
them was that they could only be the anvil, and never the
hammer.”[1842]
I do not intend to dig here, in this limited work, the great
historical destinies, but I am expressing a categorical
reservation on this point: perhaps this was so since the
beginning of time, but, as of 1918, in Russia, and for another
fteen years, the Jews who joined the revolution also served as
hammer—at least a large part of them.
Here, in our review, comes the voice of Boris Pasternak. In
his Doctor Zhivago, he writes, it is true, after the Second World
War, thus after the Cataclysm which came down, crushing and
sinister, over the Jews of Europe and which overturned our
entire vision of the world—but, in the novel itself, is discussed
the years of the revolution—, he speaks of “this modest,
sacri cial way of remaining aloof, which only engenders
misfortune,” of “their [i.e. the Jews’] fragility and their inability
to strike back.”
Yet, did we not both have before us the same country—at
di erent ages, certainly, but where we lived the same 20s and
30s? The contemporary of those years remains mute with
astonishment: Pasternak would thus not have seen (I believe)
what was happening?—His parents, his painter father, his
pianist mother, belonged to a highly cultivated Jewish milieu,
living in perfect harmony with the Russian intelligentsia; he
himself grew up in a tradition already quite rich, a tradition
that led the Rubinstein brothers, the moving Levitan, the
subtle Guerchenson, the philosophers Frank and Chestov, to
give themselves to Russia and Russian culture… It is probable
that this unambiguous choice, that perfect equilibrium
between life and service, which was theirs, appeared to
Pasternak as the norm, while the monstrous gaps, frightening
relative to this norm, did not reach the retina of his eye.
On the other hand, these di erences penetrated the eld of
view of thousands of others. Thus, witness of these years,
Biekerman writes: “The too visible participation of the Jews in
the Bolshevik saturnalia attracts the eyes of the Russians and
those of the whole world.”[1843]
No, the Jews were not the great driving force of the October
coup. The latter, moreover, brought them nothing, since the
February revolution had already granted them full and
complete freedom. But, after the coup de force took place, it was
then that the younger laic generation quickly changed horses
and launched themselves with no less assurance into the
infernal gallop of Bolshevism.
Obviously, it was not the melamedes[1844] that produced
this. But the reasonable part of the Jewish people let itself be
overwhelmed by hotheads. And thus an almost entire
generation became renegade. And the race was launched.
G. Landau looked for the motives that led the younger
generation to join the camp of the new victors. He writes: “Here
was the rancour with regard to the old world, and the exclusion
of political life and Russian life in general, as well as a certain
rationalism peculiar to the Jewish people,” and “willpower
which, in mediocre beings, can take the form of insolence and
ruthless ambition.”[1845]
Some people seek an apology by way of explanations: “The
material conditions of life after the October coup created a
climate such that the Jews were forced to join the
Bolsheviks.”[1846] This explanation is widespread: “42% of the
Jewish population of Russia were engaged in commercial
activity”; they lost it; they found themselves in a dead‐end
situation—where to go? “In order not to die of hunger, they
were forced to take service with the government, without
paying too much attention to the kind of work they were asked
to do.” It was necessary to enter the Soviet apparatus where
“the number of Jewish o cials, from the beginning of the
October Revolution, was very high.”[1847]
They had no way out? Did the tens of thousands of Russian
o cials who refused to serve Bolshevism have somewhere to
go?—To starve? But how were living the others? Especially
since they were receiving food aid from organisations such as
the Joint, the ORT[1848], nanced by wealthy Jews from the
West. Enlisting in the Cheka was never the only way out. There
was at least another: not to do it, to resist.
The result, Pasmanik concludes, is that “Bolshevism became,
for the hungry Jews of cities, a trade equal to the previous
trades—tailor, broker, or apothecary.”[1849]
But if this is so, it may be said, seventy years later, in good
conscience: for those “who did not want to immigrate to the
United States and become American, who did not want to
immigrate to Palestine to remain Jews, for those, the only issue
was communism”?[1850] Again—the only way out!?
It is precisely this that is called renouncing one’s historical
responsibility!
Other arguments have more substance and weight: “A people
that has su ered such persecution”—and this, throughout its
history—“could not, in its great majority, not become bearers
of the revolutionary doctrine and internationalism of
socialism,” for it “gave its Jewish followers the hope of never
again being pariahs” on this very earth, and not “in the
chimerical Palestine of the great ancestors.” Further on:
“During the civil war already, and immediately afterwards,
they were stronger in competition with the newcomers from
the ethnic population, and they lled many of the voids that
the revolution had created in society… In doing so, they had for
the most part broken with their national and spiritual
tradition,” after which “all those who wanted to assimilate,
especially the rst generation and at the time of their massive
apparition, took root in the relatively super cial layers of a
culture that was new to them.”[1851]
One wonders, however, how it is possible that “the
centuries‐old traditions of this ancient culture have proved
powerless to counteract the infatuation with the barbaric
slogans of the Bolshevik revolutionaries.”[1852] When
“socialism, the companion of the revolution, melted onto
Russia, not only were these Jews, numerous and dynamic,
brought to life on the crest of the devastating wave, but the rest
of the Jewish people found itself deprived of any idea of
resistance and was invited to look at what was happening with
a perplexed sympathy, wondering, impotent, what was going
to result from it.”[1853] How is it that “in every circle of Jewish
society the revolution was welcomed with enthusiasm, an
inexplicable enthusiasm when one knows of what
disillusionments composed the history of this people”? How
could “the Jewish people, rationalist and lucid, allow itself to
indulge in the intoxication of revolutionary
phraseology”[1854]?
D. S. Pasmanik evokes in 1924 “those Jews who proclaimed
loudly and clearly the genetic link between Bolshevism and
Judaism, who openly boasted about the sentiments of
sympathy which the mass of the Jewish people nourished
towards the power of the commissioners.”[1855] At the same
time, Pasmanik himself pointed out “the points which may at
rst be the foundation of a rapprochement between
Bolshevism and Judaism… These are: the concern for happiness
on earth and that of social justice… Judaism was the rst to put
forward these two great principles.”[1856]
We read in an issue of the London newspaper Jewish
Chronicle of 1919 (when the revolution had not yet cooled
down) an interesting debate on the issue. The permanent
correspondent of this paper, a certain Mentor, writes that it is
not tting for the Jews to pretend that they have no connection
with the Bolsheviks. Thus, in America, the Rabbi and Doctor
Judah Magnes supported the Bolsheviks, which means that he
did not regard Bolshevism as incompatible with Judaism.
[1857] He writes again the following week: Bolshevism is in
itself a great evil, but, paradoxically, it also represents the hope
of humanity. Was the French Revolution not bloody, it as well,
and yet it was justi ed by History. The Jew is idealistic by
nature and it is not surprising, it is even logical that he believed
the promises of Bolshevism. “There is much room for re ection
in the very fact of Bolshevism, in the adherence of many Jews
to Bolshevism, in the fact that the ideals of Bolshevism in
many respects join those of Judaism—a great number of which
have been taken up by the founder of Christianity. The Jews
who think must examine all this carefully. One must be foolish
to see in Bolshevism only its o ‐putting aspects…”[1858]
All the same, is not Judaism above all the recognition of the
one God? But, this in itself is enough to make it incompatible
with Bolshevism, the denier of God!
Still on the search for the motives for such a broad
participation of the Jews in the Bolshevik adventure, I.
Biekerman writes: “We might, before of the facts, despair of the
future of our people—if we did not know that, of all the
contagions, the worst is that of words. Why was the Jewish
consciousness so receptive to this infection, the question
would be too long to develop here.” The causes reside “not only
in the circumstances of yesterday,” but also “in the ideas
inherited from ancient times, which predispose Jews to be
contaminated by ideology, even if it is null and
subversive.”[1859]
S. Bulgakov also writes: “The face that Judaism shows in
Russian Bolshevism is by no means the true face of Israel… It
re ects, even within Israel, a state of terrible spiritual crisis,
which can lead to bestiality.”[1860]
As for the argument that the Jews of Russia have thrown
themselves into the arms of the Bolsheviks because of the
vexations they have su ered in the past, it must be confronted
with the two other communist shows of strength that
occurred at the same time as that of Lenin, in Bavaria and in
Hungary. We read in I. Levin: “The number of Jews serving the
Bolshevik regime is, in these two countries, very high. In
Bavaria, we nd among the commissaries the Jews E. Levine, M.
Levin, Axelrod, the anarchist ideologist Landauer, Ernst Toller.”
“The proportion of Jews who took the lead of the Bolshevik
movement in Hungary is of 95%…. However, the situation of
the Jews in terms of civic rights was excellent in Hungary,
where there had not been any limitation for a long time
already; in the cultural and economic sphere, the Jews occupied
such a position that the anti‐Semites could even speak of a hold
of the Jews.”[1861] We may add here the remark of an eminent
Jewish publisher of America; he writes that the Jews of
Germany “have prospered and gained a high position in
society.”[1862] Let us not forget in this connection that the
ferment of rebellion that was at the origin of the coups de force
—of which we shall speak again in chapter 16—had been
introduced by the Bolsheviks through the intermediary of
“repatriated prisoners” stu ed with propaganda.
What brought all these rebels together—and, later, beyond
the seas—, was a urry of unbridled revolutionary
internationalism, an impulse towards revolution, a revolution
that was global and “permanent”. The rapid success of the Jews
in the Bolshevik administration could not be ignored in Europe
and the United States. Even worse: they were admired there! At
the time of the passage from February to October, Jewish public
opinion in America did not mute its sympathies for the
Russian revolution.

   
Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks were conducting their nancial
operations diligently abroad, mainly via Stockholm. Since
Lenin’s return to Russia, secret supplies had come to them, of
German provenance, through the Nia Banken of Olof Aschberg.
This did not exclude the nancial support of certain Russian
bankers, those who, eeing the revolution, had sought refuge
abroad but had transformed there into volunteer support of
the Bolsheviks. An American researcher, Anthony Sutton, has
found (with half a century of delay) archival documents; he
tells us that, if we are to believe a report sent in 1918 to the
State Department by the U.S. Ambassador in Stockholm,
“among these ‘Bolshevik bankers’ is the infamous Dmitri
Rubinstein that the revolution of February had gotten out of
prison, who had reached Stockholm and made himself the
nancial agent of the Bolsheviks”; “we also nd Abram
Jivotovski, a relative of Trostky and Lev Kamenev.” Among the
syndicates were “Denisov of the ex‐Bank of Siberia, Kamenka
of the Bank Azov‐Don, and Davidov of the Bank for Foreign
Trade. Other ‘Bolshevik bankers’: Grigori Lessine, Shtifter,
Iakov Berline, and their agent Isidore Kohn.”[1863]
These had left Russia. Others, in the opposite direction, left
America to return. They were the revenants, all of them
“revolutionaries” (some from long ago, others of recent date)
who dreamed of nally building and consolidating the New
World of Universal Happiness. We talked about it in Chapter
14. They were ocking across the oceans from the port of New
York to the East or from the port of San Francisco in direction
of the West, some former subjects of the Russian Empire,
others purely and simply American citizens, enthusiasts who
even did not know the Russian language.
In 1919, A. V. Tyrkova–Williams wrote in a book published
then in England: “There are few Russians among the Bolshevik
leaders, few men imbued with Russian culture and concerned
with the interests of the Russian people… In addition to
foreign citizens, Bolshevism recruited immigrants who had
spent many years outside the borders. Some had never been to
Russia before. There were many Jews among them. They spoke
Russian badly. The nation of which they had become masters
was foreign to them and, moreover, they behaved like invaders
in a conquered country.” And if, in tsarist Russia, “Jews were
excluded from all o cial posts, if schools and State service
were closed to them, on the other hand, in the Soviet Republic
all committees and commissariats were lled with Jews. Often,
they exchanged their Jewish name for a Russian name… but
this masquerade did not deceive anyone.”[1864]
That same year, 1919, at the Senate Hearings of the
Overmen Commission, an Illinois university professor, P. B.
Dennis, who arrived in Russia in 1917, declared that in his
opinion—“an opinion that matched that of other Americans,
Englishmen, Frenchmen…—, these people deployed in Russia
an extreme cruelty and ferocity in their repression against the
bourgeoisie” (the word is used here without any pejorative
nuance in its primary sense: the inhabitants of the boroughs).
Or: “Among those who carried out ‘murderous propaganda’ in
the trenches and in the rear, there were those who, one or two
years before [i.e. in 1917‒1918], still lived New York.”[1865]
 In February 1920, Winston Churchill spoke in the pages of
the Sunday Herald. In an article entitled “Zionism Against
Bolshevism: Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People”, he
wrote: “Today we see this company of outstanding
personalities, emerging from clandestinity, from the
basements of the great cities of Europe and America, who
grabbed by the hair and seized by the throat the Russian
people, and established itself as the undisputed mistress of the
immense Russian Empire.”[1866]
There are many known names among these people who have
returned from beyond the ocean. Here is M. M. Gruzenberg: he
had previously lived in England (where he had met Sun Yat–
sen), then lived for a long time in the United States, in Chicago
where he had “organised a school for the immigrants”, and we
nd him in 1919 general consul of the RSFSR in Mexico (a
country on which the revolutionaries founded great hopes:
Trotsky would turn up there…), then, in the same year, he sat
in the central organs of the Comintern. He took service in
Scandinavia, Sweden; he was arrested in Scotland. He
resurfaced in China in 1923 under the name of Borodin[1867]
with a whole squad of spies: he was the “principal political
adviser to the Executive Committee of the Kuomintang”, a role
which enabled him to promote the career of Mao Tse–tung and
of Zhou Enlai. However, having suspected Borodin–Gruzenberg
of engaging in subversive work, Chiang Kai–shek expelled him
from China in 1927. Returning to the USSR, he passed
unharmed the year 1937; during the war with Germany, we
nd him editor‐in‐chief of the Soviet Information O ce
alongside Dridzo–Lozovsky. He will be executed in 1951.[1868]
(About the Bolshevik Jews executed in the 1930s, see infra,
chapter 19.)
Among them also, Samuel Agursky, who became one of the
leaders of Belarus; arrested in 1938, he served a sentence of
deportation. (He is the father of the late M. Agursky, who
prematurely disappeared, and who did not follow the same
path as his progenitor, far from it![1869]  [1870]—Let us also
mention Solomon Slepak, an in uential member of the
Comintern, he returned to Russia by Vladivostok where he took
part in assassinations; he then went to China to try to attract
Sun Yat–sen in an alliance with communism; his son Vladimir
would have to tear himself, not without a clash, from the trap
into which his father had fallen in his quest for the radiant
future of communism.[1871] Stories like this, and some even
more paradoxical, there are hundreds of them.
Demolishers of the “bourgeois” Jewish culture also turned up.
Among them, the collaborators of S. Dimanstein in the
European Commissariat: the S.–R. Dobkovski, Agursky (already
mentioned), and also “Kantor, Shapiro, Kaplan, former
emigrant anarchists who had returned from London and New
York”. The objective of the Commissariat was to create a
“Centre for the Jewish Communist Movement”. In August 1918,
the new Communist newspaper in Yiddish Emes (the Truth)
announced: “The proletarian revolution began in the street of
the Jews”; a campaign was immediately launched against the
Heders and the “Talmud‐Torah”… In June 1919, countersigned
by S. Agursky and Stalin, the dissolution of the Central Bureau
of the Jewish Communities was proclaimed,[1872] which
represented the conservative fraction of Judaism, the one that
had not sided with the Bolsheviks.

   
It is nonetheless true that the socialist Jews were not attracted
primarily to the Bolsheviks. Now however: where were the
other parties, what had become of them? What allowed the
Bolshevik Party to occupy an exclusive position was the
disintegration of the old Jewish political parties. The Bund, the
Zionist Socialists and the Zionists of the Poalei had split up and
their leaders had joined the victors’ camp by denying the ideals
of democratic socialism—such as M. Raies, M. Froumkina‐Ester,
A. Weinstein, M. Litvanov.[1873]
Is it possible? Even the Bund, this extremely belligerent
organisation to which even Lenin’s positions were not suitable,
which showed itself so intransigent on the principle of the
cultural and national autonomy of the Jews? Well yes, even the
Bund! “After the establishment of Soviet power, the leadership
of the Bund in Russia split into two groups (1920): the right,
which in its majority, emigrated, and the left which liquidated
the Bund (1921) and adhered in large part to the Bolshevik
Party.”[1874] Among the former members of the Bund, we can
cite the irremovable David Zaslavski, the one who for decades
would put his pen at the service of Stalin (he would be
responsible for stigmatising Mandelstam and Pasternak). Also:
the Leplevski brothers, Israel and Grigori (one, from the outset,
would become an agent of the Cheka and stay there for the rest
of his life, the other would occupy a high position in the NKVD
in 1920, then would be Deputy Commissar of the People,
President of the Small Sovnarkom of the RSFSR, then Deputy
Attorney General of the USSR (1934‒39); he would be a victim
of repression in 1939. Solomon Kotliar, immediately promoted
First Secretary of Orthbourg, of Vologda, of Tver, of the
regional Committee of Orel. Or also Abram Heifets: he returned
to Russia after February 1917, joined the Presidium of the
Bund’s Main Committee in Ukraine, was a member of the
Central Committee of the Bund; in October 1917, he was
already for the Bolsheviks and, in 1919, he gured in the
leading group of the Comintern.[1875]
 To the leftists of the Bund joined the left of the Zionist
Socialists and the SERP[1876]; those entered the Communist
Party as early as 1919. The left wing of the Poalei–Tsion did the
same in 1921.[1877] In 1926, according to an internal census,
there were up to 2,500 former members of the Bund in the
Party. It goes without saying that many, later on, fell under the
blade: “Under Stalin, the majority of them were victims of
ferocious persecutions.”[1878]
Biekerman exclaims: “The Bund, which had assumed the role
of representative of the Jewish working masses, joined the
Bolsheviks in its most important and active part.”[1879]
In his memoirs, David Azbel tries to explain the reasons for
this accession by re ecting on the example of his uncle, Aron
Isaakievich Weinstein, an in uential member of the Bund that
we mentioned above: “He had understood before all others that
his Party, as well as the other socialist parties, were
condemned… He had understood also another thing: to
survive and continue to defend the interests of the Jews would
be possible only by joining the Bolsheviks.”[1880]
For how many of them the reasons 1) survive, 2) continue to
defend the interests of the Jews, were decisive? Tentatively,
both objectives were achieved.
It will note also that after October the other socialist parties,
the S.–R. and the Mensheviks, who, as we know, had a large
number of Jews in their ranks and at their heads, did not stand
up against Bolshevism either. Scarcely aware of the fact that
the Bolsheviks had dismissed this Constituent Assembly which
they had called for, they withdrew, hesitated, divided
themselves in their turn, sometimes proclaiming their
neutrality in the civil war, other times their intention to
temporise. As for the S.–R., they downright opened to the
Bolsheviks a portion of the Eastern front and tried to
demoralise the rear of the Whites.
 But we also nd Jews among the leaders of the resistance to
the Bolsheviks in 1918: out of the twenty‐six signatures of the
“Open Letter of Prisoners on the A air of the Workers’
Congress” written at Taganka Prison, no less of a quarter are
Jewish.[1881] The Bolsheviks were pitiless towards the
Mensheviks of this kind. In the summer of 1918, R.
Abramovich, an important Menshevik leader, avoided
execution only by means of a letter addressed to Lenin from an
Austrian prison by Friedrich Adler, the one who had shot down
the Austrian Prime Minister in 1916 and who had been
reprieved. Others, too, were stoic: Grigori Binshtok, Semyon
Weinstein; arrested several times, they were eventually
expelled from the country.[1882]
In February 1921, in Petrograd, the Mensheviks certainly
supported the deceived and hungry workers, they pushed them
to protest and strike—but without any real conviction. And
they lacked audacity to take the lead of the Kronstadt
insurrection. However, this did not in any way protect them
from repression.
We also know a lot of Mensheviks who joined the Bolsheviks,
who exchanged one party label for another. They were: Boris
Maguidov (he became head of the political section in the 10th
Army, then Donbass, secretary of the provincial committees of
Poltava, Samara, instructor on the Central Committee): Abram
Deborine, a true defector (he rapidly climbed the echelons of a
career of “red professor”, stu ng our heads with Dialectical
Materialism and Historical Materialism…); Alexander
Goikhbarg (member of the Soviet Revolutionary Committee,
public prosecutor at the trial of the ministers of Kolchak,
member of the college of the Commissariat for Justice, then
president of the Little Sovnarkom). Some of them held out for
some time until their arrest, such as I. Liakhovetski–
Maïski[1883]; the others, in great numbers, were reduced very
early to silence, from the trial of the imaginary “Uni ed
Menshevik Bureau” of 1931 (where we nd Guimmer–
Sukhanov who was the designer of the tactics of the Executive
Committee in March 1917.) A huge raid was organised
throughout the Union to apprehend them.
There were defectors in the S.–R.: Lakov Lifchitz, for
example, vice‐president of the Chernigov Cheka in 1919, then
Kharkov, then president of the Kiev Cheka and, at the height of
a rapid career, vice‐president of the Ukrainian GPU. There was
anarchist communists, the most famous being Lazar Kogan
(Special Section of the Armies, Assistant to the Chief of the
Army of the Vecheka in 1930—senior o cial of the Gulag and,
in 1931, chief of the White Sea shipyard of the NKVD). There
are extremely sinuous biographies: Ilya Kit–Viitenko, a
lieutenant in the Austrian army, taken prisoner by the
Russians, and from the moment the Bolsheviks are in power,
takes his ranks at the Cheka–Guepeou and then in the army
and, in the 1930s, was one of the reformers of the Red Army.
And then in the hole for twenty years![1884]
And what about the Zionists? Let us remember: in 1906 they
had posited and proclaimed that they could not stay away from
the Russians’ ght against the yoke of the Autocracy, and they
had actively engaged in the said battle. This did not prevent
them, in May 1918 (when the yoke still weighed so heavily), to
declare that, in matters of Russian domestic policy, they would
henceforth be neutral, “very obviously in the hope of avoiding
the risk” that the Bolsheviks “would accuse them of being
counter‐revolutionaries.”[1885] And at rst—it worked.
Throughout the year 1918 and during the rst six months of
1919, the Bolsheviks left them alone: in the summer of 1918
they were able to hold the All‐Russian Congress of Jewish
Communities in Moscow, and hundreds of these Communities
had their “Palestinian Week”; their newspapers appeared freely
and a youth club, the “Heraluts”[1886], was created.—But in
the spring of 1919 local authorities undertook to ban the
Zionist press here and there, and in the autumn of 1919 a few
prominent gures were accused of “espionage for the bene t of
England”. In the spring of 1920, the Zionists organised a Pan‐
Russian Conference in Moscow. Result: all the participants (90
people) were interned in the Butyrka prison; some were
condemned, but the penalty was not applied, following the
intervention of a delegation of Jewish syndicates from
America. “The Vecheka presidium declared that the Zionist
organisation was counter‐revolutionary, and its activity was
now forbidden in Soviet Russia… From this moment began the
era of clandestinity for the Zionists.”[1887]
M. Heifets, who is a thoughtful man, reminds us very well of
this: did the October coup not coincide exactly with the Balfour
declaration which laid the foundations of an independent
Jewish state? Well, what happened?: “A part of the new Jewish
generation followed the path of Herzl and Jabotinsky, while the
other [let us precise: the biggest] yielded to temptation and
swelled the ranks of the Lenin–Trotsky–Stalin band.” (Exactly
what Churchill feared.) “Herzl’s way then appeared distant,
unreal, while that of Trotsky and Bagritsky enabled the Jews to
gain immediate stature and immediately become a nation in
Russia, equal in right and even privileged.”[1888]
Also defector, of course, and not least, Lev Mekhlis, of the
Poalei–Tsion. His career is well known: in Stalin’s secretariat, in
the editorial board of the Pravda, at the head of the Red Army’s
political sector, in the State Defence Commissariat and
Commissioner of State Control. It was he who made our
landing in Crimea in 1942 fail. At the height of his career: in
the Orgburo of the Central Committee. His ashes are sealed in
the wall of the Kremlin.[1889]
 Of course, there was an important part of the Jews of Russia
who did not adhere to Bolshevism: neither the rabbis, the
lecturers, nor the great doctors, nor a whole mass of good
people, fell into the arms of the Bolsheviks. Tyrkova writes in
the same passage in her book, a few lines later: “This
predominance of the Jews among the Soviet leaders put to
despair those of the Russian Jews who, despite the cruel
iniquities su ered under the tsarist regime, regarded Russia as
the Motherland and led the common life of all Russian
intelligentsia, refusing, in communion with her, any
collaboration with the Bolsheviks.”[1890]—But at the time they
had no opportunity of making themselves heard publicly, and
these pages are naturally lled not with their names, but with
those of the conquerors, those who have bridled the course of
events.
Two illustrious terrorist acts perpetrated by Jewish arms
against the Bolsheviks in 1918 occupy a special place: the
assassination of Uritsky by Leonid Kannegisser, and the attack
on Lenin by Fanny Kaplan. Here too, though the other way
around, was expressed the vocation of the Jewish people to be
always among the rst. Perhaps the blows red at Lenin were
rather the result of S.–R. intentions[1891]. But, as for
Kannegisser (born of hereditary nobility by his grandfather, he
entered the School of O cer Cadets in 1917; by the way, he was
in friendly relations with Sergei Yesenin), I admit full well
Mark Aldanov’s explanation: in the face of the Russian people
and History, he was moved by the desire to oppose the names
of Uritsky and Zinoviev with another Jewish name. This is the
feeling he expresses in a note transmitted to his sister on the
eve of the attack, in which he says he wants to avenge the peace
of Brest‐Litovsk, that he is ashamed to see the Jews contribute
to install the Bolsheviks in power, and also avenge the
execution of his companion of the School of artillery at the
Cheka of Petrograd.
It should be noted, however, that recent studies have
revealed that these two attacks were perpetrated under
suspicious circumstances.[1892] There is strong presumption
that Fanny Kaplan did not shoot Lenin at all, but was
apprehended “to close the case”: a convenient culprit, by
chance. There is also a hypothesis that the Bolshevik
authorities themselves would have created the necessary
conditions for Kannegisser to re his shot. This I strongly
doubt: for what provocation would the Bolsheviks have
sacri ced their beloved child, president of the Cheka? One
thing, however, is troubling: how is it that later, in full Red
Terror, when was attained by force of arms, through the entire
country, thousands of innocent hostages, totally unconnected
with the a air, the whole Kannegisser family was freed from
prison and allowed to emigrate… We do not recognise here the
Bolshevik claw! Or would it be the intervention of a very long
arm to the highest ranking Soviet instances?—A recent
publication tells us that the relatives and friends of L.
Kannegisser had even drawn up an armed attack plan against
the Cheka of Petrograd to free their prisoner, and that all, as
soon as they were arrested, were released and remained in
Petrograd without being disturbed. Such clemency on the part
of the Bolshevik authorities may be explained by their concern
to avoid ill feelings with the in uential Jewish circles in
Petrograd. The Kannegisser family had kept its Judaic faith and
Leonid’s mother, Rosalia Edouardovna, declared during an
interrogation that her son had red on Uritsky because he “had
turned away from Judaism.”[1893]
But here is a Jewish name that has not yet obtained the
deserved celebrity: Alexander Abramovich Vilenkin, hero of
the clandestine struggle against the Bolsheviks. He was a
volunteer in the hussars at the age of seventeen, in 1914, he
was decorated four times with the Cross of Saint George,
promoted to o cer, then, on the eve of the revolution, he
became captain of cavalry; in 1918, he joined the clandestine
organisation Union for the Defence of the Homeland and of
Liberty; he was apprehended by the Cheka at the time when, as
the organisation had been discovered, he was delaying the
destruction of compromising documents. Focused, intelligent,
energetic, uncompromising towards the Bolsheviks, he infused
in others the spirit of resistance. Executed by the Bolsheviks—
it goes without saying. (The information about him came to us
from his comrade‐in‐arms in the underground in 1918, and
also from his cellmate in 1919, Vasily Fyodorovich Klementiev,
captain in the Russian army.[1894])
These ghters against Bolshevism, whatever their
motivations, we venerate their memory as Jews. We regret that
they were so few, as were too few the White forces during the
civil war.

   
A very prosaic and entirely new phenomenon reinforced the
victory of the Bolsheviks. These occupied important positions,
from which many advantages resulted, notably the enjoyment
in both capitals of “vacant” apartments freed by their owners,
“former aristocrats”, now on the run. In these apartments
could live a whole tributary ock of the former Pale of
Settlement. This was a real “exodus”! G. A. Landau writes: “The
Jews have climbed the stairs of power and occupied a few
‘summits’… From there, it is normal that they brought (as they
do everywhere, in any environment) their relatives, friends,
companions from their youth… A perfectly natural process:
the granting of functions to people who are known, trusted,
protected, or simply begging for your favours. This process
multiplied the number of Jews in the Soviet state
apparatus.”[1895] We will not say how many Zinoviev’s wife,
Lilina, thus brought parents and relatives, nor how Zinoviev
distributed positions to his ‘own’. They are the focus, but the
in ux, not to have been noticed at the moment, was enormous
and concerns tens of thousands of people. The people
transmigrated en masse from Odessa to Moscow. (Is it known
that Trotsky himself grati ed his father, whom he moderately
loved, of a Sovkhoz in the suburbs of Moscow?)
These migrations can be followed throughout biographies.
So that of David (not to be confused with Mark) Azbel. In 1919,
still a kid, he left Chemigov where he was born to come to
Moscow where his two aunts already lived. He rst lived in the
house of one of them, Ida, “a wealthy merchant of the First
Guild”, whose husband had returned from America, and then
with the other, Liolia, who was housed in the First House of the
Soviets (The National) with all the best of the Soviet Union.
Their neighbour Ulrich, who would later become famous, said
jokingly: “Why don’t we open a synagogue in the National
where only Jews live?” A whole Soviet elite then left Saint
Petersburg to settle in the Second House of the Soviets (the
Metropolis), in the Third (the Seminary, Bojedomski Street), in
the Fourth (Mokhovaya / Vozdvijenka street) and in the Fifth
(Cheremetievski street). These tenants received from a special
distribution centre abundant parcels: “Caviar, cheese, butter,
smoked sturgeon were never lacking on their table” (we are in
1920). “Everything was special, designed especially for the new
elite: kindergartens, schools, clubs, libraries.” (In 1921‒22, the
year of the murderous famine on the Volga and the help of
TARA[1896], in their “model school, the canteen was fed by the
ARA foundation and served American breakfasts: rice pudding,
hot chocolate, white bread, and fried eggs.”) And “no one
remembered that, the day before, it was vociferated in the
classrooms that the bourgeois should be hung high on the
lantern.” “The children of the neighbouring houses hated those
of the ‘Soviet Houses’ and, at the rst opportunity, went after
them.”
The NEP came. The tenants of the National then moved into
cosy apartments or pavilions that had previously belonged to
aristocrats or bourgeois. In 1921: “spend the summer in
Moscow, where you su ocate?”, no, you are invited to an old
mansion, now con scated, in the outskirts of Moscow. There,
“everything is in the state, as in the days of the former
owners”… except that high fences are erected around these
houses, that guards are posted at the entrance… Wives of the
commissioners began to frequent the best spas of the West. We
see the development, owed to the scarcity of food, of misery
and the concealment of foodstu s, a second‐hand trade and a
whole tra c of goods. “Having bought for peanuts an entire lot
of commodities from emigrating merchants, Aunt Ida and
Uncle Micha sold them under the table” and thus became
“probably the richest people in all of Moscow.”—However, in
1926 they were sentenced to ve years’ imprisonment for
“economic counter‐revolution”, to which were added, at the
end of the NEP, ten years of camp.[1897]
Let us also quote: “When the Bolsheviks became ‘the
government’, all sorts of individuals from the Jewish sub‐
proletariat joined them, wishing to get their share.”[1898]—
And as free trade and private enterprise were forbidden, many
Jewish families saw their daily lives greatly modi ed: “The
middle‐aged people were mostly deprived, while the younger
ones, rid of all spiritual ‘ballast’, by having social careers, were
able to maintain their elders… Hence the excessive number of
Jews in the Soviet state apparatus.” Note: the author does not
justify this process by calling it a “unique issue”, but he notes
with grief the aspect that counts: “This destructive process did
not meet the resistance it would have required in the Jewish
milieu,” on the contrary, it found there “voluntary executants
and a climate of sympathy.”[1899]
It is thus that many Jews entered the Soviet ruling class.
But could this process, however occult as it was, go
unnoticed by the disadvantaged Russian social strata?
And how could the man in the street react? Either by jeers:
“Rosa of the Sovnarkhoz”, “the husband of Khaïka of the
Cheka”. Or by funny stories, from those that ooded Russia as
early as 1918: “Vyssotski tea, Brodsky sugar, Trotsky Russia.”
And, in Ukraine, it gave: “Hop! Harvest Workers / All Jews are
bosses!”
And they began to whisper a new slogan: “The Soviets
without the Jews!”
The co‐authors of the book of Russia and the Jews became
alarmed in 1924: it is clear that “not all Jews are Bolsheviks and
all Bolsheviks are not Jews, but there is no need today to prove
the zealous participation of the Jews in the martyrdom
imposed on an exsanguinate Russia by the Bolsheviks. What
we must, on the contrary, is try to elucidate in a calm manner
how this work of destruction was refracted in the
consciousness of the Russian people. The Russians had never
seen any Jews in command before.”[1900]
They now saw them today at every step. Invested with a
ferocious and unlimited power.
“To answer the question of Judaism’s responsibility in the
emergence of Bolshevik Jews, we must rst consider the
psychology of non‐Jews, that of all these Russians who su er
directly from the atrocities committed… The Jewish actors of
public life who wish to prevent any new bloody tragedy, to save
the Jews of Russia from new pogroms, must take account of
this fact.”[1901] We must “understand the psychology of the
Russians who suddenly found themselves under the authority
of an evil, arrogant, rude, self‐con dent and impudent
brood.”[1902]
It is not for the purpose of settling accounts that we must
remember History. Nor to reassume mutual accusations. But to
understand how, for example, it was possible for important
layers of a perfectly correct Jewish society to have tolerated an
enormous participation of Jews in the rise (1918) of a State that
was not only insensitive to the Russian people, foreign to
Russian history, but which, moreover, in icted on the
population all the outbursts of terror.
The presence of Jews alongside the Bolsheviks raises
questions not because it would induce a foreign origin to this
power. When we speak of the abundance of Jewish names in
revolutionary Russia, we paint a picture of nothing new: how
many Germanic and Baltic names have gured, for a century
and a half to two centuries, in The tsarist administration? The
real question is: in what direction did this power work?
D. S. Pasmanik, however, gives us this re ection: “Let all the
Russians who are capable of re ecting ask themselves whether
Bolshevism, even with Lenin at its head, would have
triumphed if there had been in Soviet Russia a satis ed and
educated peasantry owning land? Could all the ‘Sages of Zion’
gathered together, even with a Trotsky at their head, be able to
bring about the great chaos in Russia?”[1903] He is right: they
could never have done so.
But the rst to ask the question should be the Jews more
than the Russians. This episode of History should call out to
them today. The question of the mass participation of the Jews
in the Bolshevik administration and the atrocities committed
by the Jews should be elucidated in a spirit of far‐sighted
analysis of History. It is not admissible to evade the question by
saying: it was the scum, the renegades of Judaism, we do not
have to answer for them.
D. S. Chturmann is right to remind me of my own remarks
about the communist leaders of any nation: “they have all
turned away from their people and poured into the
inhuman.”[1904] I believe it. But Pasmanik, was right to write
in the 20s: “We cannot con ne ourselves to saying that the
Jewish people do not answer for the acts committed by one or
the other of its members. We answer for Trotsky as long as we
have not dissociated ourselves from him.”[1905] Now, to
dissociate oneself does not mean to turn away, on the contrary,
it means rejecting actions, to the end, and learning from them.
I have studied Trotsky’s biography extensively, and I agree
that he did not have any speci cally Jewish attachments, but
was rather a fanatical internationalist. Does this mean that a
compatriot like him is easier to incriminate than the others?
But as soon as his star rose, in the autumn of 1917, Trotsky
became, for far too many people, a subject of pride, and for the
radical left of the Jews of America, a true idol.
What can I say of America? But of everywhere else as well!
There was a young man in the camp where I was interned in
the 50s, Vladimir Gershuni, a fervent socialist, an
internationalist, who had kept a full conscience of his
Jewishness; I saw him again in the 60s after our release, and he
gave me his notes. I read there that Trotsky was the
Prometheus of October for the sole reason that he was Jewish:
“He was a Prometheus not because he was born such, but
because he was a child of the Prometheus‐people, this people,
who, if it was not attached to the rock of obtuse wickedness by
the chains of a patent and latent hostility, would have done
much more than he did for the good of humanity.”
“All historians who deny the participation of Jews in the
revolution tend not to recognise in these Jews their national
character. Those, on the contrary, and especially Israeli
historians, who see Jewish hegemony as a victory of the Judaic
spirit, those ones exalt their belonging to Jewishness.”[1906]
It was as early as the 20s, when the civil war ended, that
arguments were made to exonerate the Jews. I. O. Levin reviews
them in the collection Russia and the Jews (the Bolshevik Jews
were not so numerous as that… there is no reason why a whole
people should respond to the acts of a few…, The Jews were
persecuted in tsarist Russia…, during the civil war the Jews had
to ee the pogroms by seeking refuge with the Bolsheviks, etc.),
and he rejected them by arguing that it was not a matter of
criminal responsibility, which is always individual, but a moral
responsibility.[1907]
Pasmanik thought it impossible to be relieved of a moral
responsibility, but he consoled himself by saying: “Why should
the mass of the Jewish people answer for the turpitudes of
certain commissioners? It is profoundly unjust. However, to
admit that there is a collective responsibility for the Jews is to
recognise the existence of a Jewish nation of its own. From the
moment when the Jews cease to be a nation, from the day when
they are Russians, Germans, Englishmen of Judaic confession,
it is then that they will shake o the shackles of collective
responsibility.”[1908]
Now, the twentieth century has rightly taught us to
recognise the Hebrew nation as such, with its anchorage in
Israel. And the collective responsibility of a people (of the
Russian people too, of course) is inseparable from its capacity
to build a morally worthy life.
Yes, they are abounding, the arguments that explain why the
Jews stood by the Bolsheviks (and we will discuss others, very
solid, when we talk about the civil war). Nevertheless, if the
Jews of Russia remember this period only to justify themselves,
it will mean that the level of their national consciousness has
fallen, that this consciousness will have lost itself.
The Germans could also challenge their responsibility for
the Nazi period by saying: they were not real Germans, they
were the dregs of society, they did not ask for our opinion… But
this people answers for its past even in its ignominious periods.
How to respond? By endeavouring to conscientise it, to
understand it: how did such a thing happen? Where lies our
fault? Is there a danger that this will happen again?
It is in this spirit that the Jewish people must respond to
their revolutionary assassins as well as the columns of well‐
disposed individuals who put themselves at their service. It is
not a question here of answering before other peoples, but
before oneself, before one’s conscience and before God. As we
Russians must answer, both for the pogroms, and our
incendiary peasants, insensible to all pity, and for our red
soldiers who have fallen into madness, and our sailors
transformed into wild beasts. (I have spoken of them with
enough depth, I believe, in The Red Wheel, and I will add an
example here: the Red Guard A. R. Bassov, in charge of
escorting Shingaryov[1909]—this man passionate of justice, a
popular intercessor—, began by collecting money from the
sister of the prisoner—as a tip and to nance his transfer from
the Peter and Paul fortress to the Mariinski hospital—and a few
hours later, in the same night, he leads to the hospital some
sailors who coldly shoot down Shingaryov and Kokochkine.
[1910] [1911] In this individual—so many homegrown traits!!)
Answer, yes, as one answers for a member of one’s family.
For if we are absolved of all responsibility for the actions of
our compatriots, it is the very notion of nation which then
loses all true meaning.
 Chapter 16. During the Civil War

Trotsky once boasted that during the Civil War, “even”

traveling in his special Revvoyensovet’s [Revolutionary
Military Council] railroad coach, he was able to nd time to
acquaint himself with the latest works of French literature.
Not that he realized exactly what he said. He acknowledged
that he was able to nd not just time, but room in his heart
between appeals to the “revolutionary sailors,” forcibly
mobilized units of Red Army, and a thrown order to execute
every tenth soldier in a unit that wavered in battle. Well, he
usually did not stay around to supervise carrying out such
orders.
Orchestrating a bloody war on the vast plains of Russia, he
was absolutely untouched by the unprecedented su erings of
her inhabitants, by her pain. He soared aloft, above it all, on the
wings of the international intoxication of the Revolution.
The February Revolution was a Russian revolution: no matter
how headlong, erroneous and pernicious it was, it did not
aspire to burn down the entire pre-existing life, to annihilate
the whole pre-revolutionary Russia. Yet immediately after the
October [Bolshevik revolution], the Revolution spilled abroad
and became an international and devastating plague, feeding
itself by devouring and destroying social order wherever it
spread — everything built was to be annihilated; everything
cultivated — to be con scated; whoever resisted — to be shot.
The Reds were exclusively preoccupied with their grand social
experiment, predestined to be repeated, expanded and
implemented all over the world.
From an easy, quick blow, the October coup snowballed into
a erce three-year-long Civil War, which brought countless
bloody calamities to all the peoples of Russia.
The multinationality of the former Empire and the cannon
recoil from the Great War complicated both the inhumane
Bolshevik plot and its implementation. Unlike the French
Revolution, which unfolded on the territory of mono-national
France and did not see much foreign intervention apart from a
short incursion of hostile troops, and with all its horrors being
a national a air from beginning to end, the Russian Revolution
was horribly aggravated by its multinational madness. It saw
the strong participation of Red Latvians (then Russian
subjects), former German and Austrian prisoners of war
(organized into full-blown regiments like the Hungarians), and
even large numbers of Chinese. No doubt the brunt of the
ghting for the Reds was carried out by Russians; some of them
were drafted on pain of death while others volunteered in a
mad belief they would be ghting for a happy future for
themselves. Yet the Russian Jews were not lost in all that
diversity.
The politically active part of Russian Jewry, which backed
the Bolshevik civic regime in 1917, now just as boldly stepped
into the military structures of Bolsheviks. During the rst
years after the October Revolution in the midst of the
internationalist frenzy, the power over this enormous land was
e ortlessly slipping into the hands of those clinging to the
Bolsheviks. And they were overwhelmed by the newfound
immensity of that power. They immediately began using it
without a backward glance or any fear of control — some,
without doubt, in the name of higher ideals, while others — in
the name of lower ones (“obstinacy of fanaticism in some and
ability to adapt in others”[1912]). At that time, nobody could
imagine that the Civil War would ignite enormous Jewish
pogroms, unprecedented in their atrocity and bloodshed, all
over the South of Russia.
 We can judge the true nature of the multi-ethnic war from
the Red pogrom during the suppression of the Kronstadt
Uprising in March 1921. A well-known socialist-revolutionary
and sociologist Pitrim Sorokin writes: “For three days, Latvian,
Bashkir, Hungarian, Tatar, Russian, Jewish and international
rabble, crazed by alcohol and the smell of blood, raped and
killed without restraint.”[1913]
Or here is another recollection from ordinary witnesses.
During the feast of the Epiphany in 1918, an Orthodox Sacred
Procession stirred forth from the gates of the Kremlin in
Tula — and an “international squad” gunned it down.
Even with the ruthless international squads, the force of  the
“Red Guard” alone was no longer su cient. The Bolshevik
regime needed a regular army. In 1918, “Lev Trotsky, with the
help of Sklyansky and Jacov Sverdlov, created the Red Army.”
“Many Jews were ghting in its ranks. Some units were entirely
Jewish, like, for example, the brigade of Josef Furman.”[1914]
The Jewish share in the command corps the Red Army become
large and in uential and this trend continued for many years
even after the end of the Civil War. This Jewish involvement
has been researched by several Jewish authors and
encyclopedias.
In the 1980s, Israeli scholar Aaron Abramovich used many
Soviet sources (including The Fifty-Year Anniversary of the
Soviet Armed Forces, The Soviet Historical Encyclopedia, volumes
of Directives of the Front Command of the Red Army) to compile
detailed nominal rosters of highly ranked Jewish commanders
(exclusively Jewish ones) in the Red Army during the period
from the Civil War up to the aftermath of Second World War.
Let’s skim through the pages allocated to the Civil War.
[1915] This is a very extensive roster; it begins with the
Revvoyensoviet, where Abramovich lists L. Trotsky, E.
Sklyansky, A. Rosengoltz, and Y. Drabkin-Gusev. Trotsky
ordered the “establishment of fronts with headquarters, and
formation of new armies,” and “Jews were present in almost all
the revvoyensoviets of the fronts and armies.” (Abramovich
lists the most prominent individuals: D. Vayman, E. Pyatnitsky,
L. Glezarov, L. Pechyorsky, I. Slavin, M. Lisovsky, G. Bitker, Bela
Kun, Brilliant-Sokolnikov, I. Khodorovsky). Earlier, at the onset
of the Civil War, the Extraordinary Command Sta of the
Petrograd Military District was headed by Uritsky, and among
the members of the Petrograd Committee of Revolutionary
Defense were Sverdlov (the chairman), Volodarsky, Drabkin-
Gusev, Ya. Fishman (a leftist Socialist Revolutionary) and G.
Chudnovsky. In May 1918 there were two Jews among the
eleven commissars of military districts: E. Yaroslavsky-
Gubelman (Moscow District) and S. Nakhimson (Yaroslavsky
District). During the war, several Jews were in charge of armies:
M. Lashevich was in charge of the 3rd — and later, of the 7th
Army of Eastern Front; V. Lazarevich was in charge of the 3rd
Army of the Western Front, G. Sokolnikov led the 8th Army of
the Southern Front, N. Sorkin  — the 9th, and I. Yakir  — the
14th Army. Abramovich painstakingly lists numerous Jewish
heads of sta and members of the revvoyensoviets in each of
the twenty armies; then the commanders, heads of sta and
military commissars of divisions (the list of the latter, i.e.,
those in charge of the ideological branch of command, was
three-times longer than the list of Jewish commanders of
divisions). In this manner Abramovich describes brigades,
regiments and separate detachments. He lists Jewish heads of
political administrations and revolutionary military tribunals
at all levels, noting that “especially large percentage of Jews can
be found among political o cers at all levels of the Red
Army….” “Jews played an important role in the provision and
supply services. Let’s name some of them….” “Jews occupied
important positions in military medicine as well: heads of
sanitary administrations of the fronts and armies, senior
doctors of units and bodies of troops….” “Many Jews —
commanders of large units and detachments — were
distinguished for their courage, heroism and generalship” but
“due to the synoptic character of this chapter we cannot
provide detailed descriptions of the accomplishments of
Jewish Red Army soldiers, commanders and political o cers.”
(Meticulously listing the commanders of armies, the researcher
misses another Jew, Tikhon Khvesin, who happened to be in
charge of the 4th Army of the Eastern Front, then — of the 8th
Army of the Southern Front, and later of the 1st Army of the
Turkestan Front.[1916])
The Russian Jewish Encyclopedia provides additional
information about some commanders. (Here I would like to
commend this encyclopedia (1994), for in our new free times
its authors performed an honest choice — writing frankly
about everything, including less than honorable things.)
Drabkin-Gusev became the Head of Political Administration
of the Red Army and the Chief of the entire Red Army in 1921.
Later he was the head of IstPart (Commission on the History of
October Revolution and Bolshevist Party) and a big gure in the
Comintern, and was buried in the Kremlin wall [in Moscow].
Mikhail Gaskovich-Lashkevich was a member of many
revvoyensoviets, and later he was in charge of the Siberian
Military District, and even later — the First Deputy Chairman
of the Revvoyensoviet of the USSR (yet he was buried merely
on the Field of Mars [in St. Petersburg]).
Israel Razgon  was the military commissar of the
Headquarters of Petrograd Military District and participated in
the suppression of the Kronstadt Uprising; later, he was in
charge of the Red Army of Bukhara, suppressing the uprising in
Central Asia; still later he worked in the Headquarters of the
Black See Fleet.
 Boris Goldberg was Military Commissar of the Tomskaya
Guberniya, later of the Permskaya Guberniya, still later of the
Privolzhskiy Military District, and even later he was in charge
of the Reserve Army and was acknowledged as one of the
founders of Soviet Civil Aviation.
Modest Rubenstein was Deputy Head of the Revvoyensoviet
of the Special Army, and later he was head of political
administration of an army group.
Boris Hippo was the Head of Political Administration of the
Black Sea Fleet. (Later he worked in the political
administrations of the Baltic Sea Fleet, the Turkestan Front,
was the Head of Political Administration of the  Central-Asian
Military District, and later  of the Caucasian Army.)
Michail Landa was a head of the political division of an army,
later — Deputy Head of Political Administration of the entire
Red Army, and still later Head of Political Administration of the
Byelorussian and then of the Siberian Military Districts.
Lev Berlin was Commissar of the Volga Military Flotilla and
later worked in the Political Administration of the Crimean
Army and still later in that of the Baltic Fleet.[1917]
Yet how many outstanding characters acted at lower levels?
Boris Skundin, previously a lowly apprentice of clockmaker
Sverdlov, Sr., successively evolved into the military commissar
of a division, commissar of army headquarters, political
inspector of front, and, nally, into Deputy Head of Political
Administration of the 1st Cavalry Army.
Avenir Khanukaev was commander of a guerilla band who
later was tried before the revolutionary tribunal for crimes
during the capture of Ashgabat and acquitted, and in the same
year of 1919 was made into political plenipotentiary of the
TurkCommission of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee of the Soviet of People’s Commissars on Kashgar,
Bukhara and Khiva.
 Moses Vinnitsky (“Mishka-Yaponchik”) was a member of the
Jewish militia squad in Odessa 1905, and later a gang-leader;
he was freed from a hard labor camp by the February
Revolution and became a commander of a Jewish ghting
brigade in Odessa, simultaneously managing the entire
criminal underworld of Odessa. In 1919 he was a commander
of a special battalion and later he was in charge of an infantry
regiment in the Red Army. His unit was “composed of
anarchists and criminals.” In the end he was shot by his own
side.
Military commissar Isaiah Tzalkovich was in command of a
composite company of the [Red] cadets during the suppression
of the Kronstadt Uprising.[1918]
We can see extraordinary Jewish women in the higher
Bolshevik ranks as well.
Nadezda Ostrovskaya rose from the Head of Gubkom [Party
Committee of a Guberniya, the highest executive authority in a
guberniya] of Vladimir Guberniya to the post of the Head of
Political Administration of the entire 10th Army.
Revekka Plastinina headed Gubrevkom and later the
Gubkom of Archangel Guberniya.
Is it proper to mention here Cecilia Zelikson-Bobrovskaya,
who was a seamstress in her youth, and became the Head of the
Military Department of the Moscow Committee of the All-
Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks?[1919] Or take one of
the Furies of the Revolution Eugenia Bosh (or her sister Elena
Rozmirovich)?
Or another thing — the Soviets used  the phrase “Corps of
Red Cossacks.” Yet those were not Cossacks who embraced
communist ideology but plain bandits (who occasionally
disguised themselves as Whites for deception). Those “Cossack
Corps” were made of all nationalities from Romanians to
Chinese with a full-blown Latvian cavalry regiment. A Russian,
Vitaly Primakov, was in command and its Political Department
was headed by I. I. Minz (by Isaac Greenberg in the Second
Division) and S. Turovskiy was head of the Headquarters. A.
Shilman was the head of operative section of the sta , S.
Davidson managed the division newspaper, and Ya. Rubinov
was in charge of the administrative section of the sta .[1920]
Since we began particularizing let’s look at the famous
leaders of the Red Army, at those never-fading names: Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseyenko, Vasily Blucher, Semyon Budyonny, Klim
Voroshilov, Boris Dumenko, Pavel Dybenko, Aleksa Dundich,
Dmitry Zhloba, Vasily Kikvidze, Epifan Kovtukh, Grigory
Kotovsky, Philip Mironov, Mikhail Muravyov, Vitaly Primakov,
Ivan Sorokin, Semyon Timoshenko, Mikhail Tukhachevsky,
Ieronim Uborevich, Mikhail Frunze, Vasily Chapaev, Ye m
Shchadenko, Nikolay Shchors. Why, couldn’t they pull it o
without Jews?
Or take hundreds and thousands of Russian generals and
o cers of the former Imperial Army, who served in the Red
Army, though not in the political sections (they were not
invited there), but in other signi cant posts. True, they had a
commissar with a gun behind them, and many served on pain
of execution of their hostage families especially in case of
military failures. Yet they gave an invaluable advantage to the
Reds, which actually might have been crucial for the eventual
victory of Bolsheviks. Why, “just about half of the o cers of
the General Sta worked for the Bolsheviks.”[1921]
And we should not forget that initial and fatal susceptibility
of many Russian peasants (by no means all of them, of course)
to Bolshevik propaganda. Shulgin atly noted: “Death to the
Bourgeois” was so successful in Russia because the smell of
blood inebriates, alas, so many Russians; and they get into a
frenzy like wild beasts.”[1922]
 Yet let’s avoid going into another unreasonable extreme,
such as the following: “The most zealous executioners in Cheka
were not at all the `notorious Jews,´ but the recent minions of
the throne, generals and o cers.”[1923] As though they would
be tolerated in there, in the Cheka! They were invited there
with the only one purpose — to be executed. Yet why such a
quick-temper? Those Jews, who worked in the Cheka, were, of
course, not the “notorious Jews,” but quite young and
“committed” ones, with revolutionary garbage lling their
heads. And I deem that they served not as executioners but
mostly as interrogators.
The Cheka (“Extraordinary Commission,” Che-Ka) was
established in December 1917. It instantly gained strength and
by the beginning of 1918 it was already lling the entire
populace with mortal fear. In fact, it was the Cheka that started
the “Red Terror” long before its beginning was o cially
announced on September 5, 1918. The Cheka practiced terror
from the moment of its inception and continued it long after
the end of the Civil War. By January of 1918, the Cheka was
“enforcing the death penalty on the spot without investigation
and trial.” Then the country saw the snatching of hundreds
and later thousands of absolutely innocent hostages, their mass
executions at night or mass drowning in whole barges.
Historian S. P. Melgunov, who himself  happened to experience
perilous incarceration in Cheka prisons, unforgettably re ected
upon the whole epic story of the “Red Terror” in his famous
book “Red Terror” in Russia 1918-1923.
“There was not a single town or a district without an o ce
of the omnipotent All-Russian Extraordinary Commission
[that is, the Cheka], which from now on becomes the main
nerve of state governance and absorbs the last vestiges of law”;
“there was not a single place (in the RSFSR [Russian
Federation]) without ongoing executions”; “a single verbal
order of one man (Dzerzhinsky) doomed to immediate death
many thousand people.” And even when investigation took
place, the Chekists [members of the Cheka] followed their
o cial instructions: “Do not look for evidence incriminating a
suspect in hostile speech or action against Soviet power. The
very rst question you should ask him is about the social class
he belongs to, and what is his descent, upbringing, education
and profession. It is these questions that should determine the
suspect’s fate (the words of M. Latsis in the bulletin Red Terror
on November 1, 1918 and in Pravda on December 25, 1918).”
Melgunov notes: “Latsis was not original here, he simply
rephrased the words of Robespierre in Convent about the mass
terror: `To execute the enemies of the Fatherland, it is
su cient to establish their identities. Not punishment but
elimination is required´.” Directives from the center are picked
up and distributed all over Russia by the Cheka Weekly and
Melgunov cites the periodical profusely: “Red Sword is
published in Kiev … in an editorial by Lev Krainy we read: `Old
foundations of morality and humanity invented by the
bourgeoisie do not and cannot exist for us´…. A. certain
Schwartz follows: `The proclaimed Red Terror should be
implemented in a proletarian way…  If physical extermination
of all servants of Tsarism and capitalism is the prerequisite for
the establishment of the worldwide dictatorship of proletariat,
then it wouldn’t stop us.´”[1924]
It was a targeted, pre-designed and long-term Terror.
Melgunov also provides estimates of the body count of that
“unheard-of swing of murders” (precise numbers were
practically not available then). “Yet, I suppose these horrors …
pale into insigni cance with respect to the number of victims
if compared to what happened in the South after the end of the
Civil War. Denikin’s [the general of the White army in
command of the South Russian front] rule was crumbling. New
power was ascending, accompanied by a bloody reign of
vengeful terror, of mere retaliation. At this point it was not a
civil war, it was physical liquidation of a former adversary.”
There were waves and waves of raids, searches, new raids and
arrests. “Entire wards of prisoners are escorted out and every
last man is executed. Because of the large number of victims, a
machine-gun is used”; “they execute 15-16-years-old children
and 60-years-old elders.” The following is a quote from a Cheka
announcement in  the Kuban region: “Cossack villages and
settlements, which give shelter to Whites and Greens
[Ukrainian nationalists], will be destroyed, the entire adult
population — executed, and all property — con scated.” After
Wrangel [another White general] left, “Crimea was dubbed the
`All-Russian Cemetery´” (di erent estimates suggest the
number of murdered as between 120,000 and 150,000). “In
Sevastopol people were not just shot but hanged, hanged by
dozens and even by hundreds,” Nakhimov Prospect [a major
street] was lined with the corpses of the hanged … people
arrested on the streets and hastily executed without trial.”
Terror in the Crimea continued through 1921.[1925]
But no matter how deep we dig into the history of Cheka,
special departments, special squads, too many deeds and
names will remain unknown, covered by the decomposed
remnants of witnesses and the ash of incinerated Bolshevik
documents. Yet even the remaining documents are overly
eloquent. Here is a copy of a secret “Extract from the protocol
of a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of
the All-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks” dated by April
18, 1919, obtained from the Trotsky archive at Columbia
University.
“Attended cc.[comrades] Lenin, Krestinsky, Stalin, Trotsky.
Heard: …3. Statement of c. Trotsky that Jews and Latvians
constitute a huge percentage of o cials in the front-line
Chekas, front-line and rear area executive commissions and
central Soviet agencies, and that their percentage in the front-
line troops is relatively small, and that because of this, strong
chauvinist agitation is conducted among the Red Army
soldiers with certain success, and that, according to c.
Trotsky’s opinion, it is necessary to redistribute the Party
personnel to achieve a more uniform representation of o cials
of all nationalities between front-line and rear areas.
Decided: To propose cc. Trotsky and Smilga to draft an
appropriate Directive of the Central Committee to the
commissions responsible for the allotment of cadres between
the central and local Soviet organizations and the front.”[1926]
Yet it is hard to believe that the meeting produced the
intended e ect. A contemporary researcher, the rst who
approached “the problem of the role and place of Jews (and
other ethnic minorities) in Soviet machinery,” studied
declassi ed archive documents and concluded that “at the
initial stage of activity of the punitive agencies, during the
`Red Terror,´ national minorities constituted approximately
50% of the central Cheka apparatus, with their representation
on the major posts reaching 70%.”[1927] The author provides
September 25, 1918 statistical data: among the ethnic
minorities — numerous Latvians and fairly numerous Poles “–
the Jews are quite noticeable, especially among “major and
active Cheka o cials,” i.e., commissars and investigators. For
instance, among the “investigators of the Department of
Counter-Revolutionary Activities — the most important Cheka
department — half were Jews.”[1928]
Below are the service records of several Chekists of the very
rst call (from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia).[1929]
Veniamin Gerson was in the Cheka from 1918, and from
1920 he was a personal referent to Dzerzhinsky.
 Israel Leplevsky, a former member of Bund, joined the
Bolsheviks in 1917 and worked in the Cheka from 1918; he was
the head of the State Political Directorate [formed from the
Cheka in 1922] of the Podolsk Guberniya and later  of the
Special Department of Odessa. And he climbed all the way up to
the post of head of the OGPU [Joint State Political Directorate,
the successor to the Cheka] of USSR! Later he occupied posts of
Narkom of Internal A airs of Byelorussia and Uzbekistan.
Zinovy Katznelson became a Chekist immediately after the
October Revolution; later he was a head of special departments
in several armies, and then of the entire Southern Front. Still
later we can see him in the highest ranks in the Cheka
headquarters, and even later at di erent times he was in charge
of the Cheka of the Archangel Guberniya, the Transcaucasian
Cheka, the North Caucasus GPU, the Kharkov GPU [another
Cheka-successor secret police organization]; he also was deputy
to the Narkom of Internal A airs of Ukraine and deputy head
of the entire GULag [that is, the government agency that
administered the main Soviet penal labor camp systems].
Solomon Mogilevsky was chair of the Ivano-Voznesensk
tribunal in 1917, then in charge of Cheka in Saratov. Later we
nd him again in an army tribunal; and after that he was in
succession: deputy head of the Bureau of Investigations of the
Moscow Cheka, head of Foreign A airs Department of Cheka
headquarters, and head of the Cheka of Transcaucasia.
Did Ignaty Vizner contemplate the scale of his actions when
he investigated the case of Nicolay Gumilev? Not likely  — he
was too busy. He served in the Special Section at the Presidium
of Cheka headquarters, he was the founder of the Bryansk
Cheka, and later he was an investigator in the case of the
Kronstadt Uprising and a special plenipotentiary of the
Presidium of the Cheka-GPU on cases of special importance.
 Lev Levin-Velsky, former member of the Bund [a Jewish
socialist labor organization], was in charge of the Cheka of the
Simbirsk Guberniya in 1918-1919, later  of the Special
Department of the 8th Army, still later  of the Cheka of the
Astrakhan Guberniya. Beginning in 1921, he was an envoy
plenipotentiary of the central Cheka in the Far East, and later,
from 1923, an envoy plenipotentiary of the OGPU in Central
Asia. Still later, from the beginning of 1930, he worked in the
Moscow OGPU. (And even later in his career he was deputy
Narkom of Internal A airs of the USSR.)
Or consider Nahum (Leonid) Etington: active in the Cheka
beginning in 1919, later head of the Cheka of the Smolensk
Guberniya; still later he worked in the GPU of Bashkiria; it was
he who orchestrated the assassination of Trotsky.
Isaak (Semyon) Schwartz: in 1918-1919 he was the very rst
chair of the All-Ukranian Cheka. He was succeeded by Yakov
Lifshitz who beginning in 1919 was the head of the Secret
Operations Division and simultaneously a deputy head of the
Cheka of the Kiev Guberniya; later he was deputy head of the
Cheka of the Chernigov Guberniya, and still later — of the
Kharkov Guberniya; and even later he was in charge of the
Operative Headquarters of the All-Ukrainian Cheka; still later,
in 1921-1922, he ran the Cheka of the Kiev Guberniya.
Let’s look at the famous Matvei Berman. He began his career
in a districtCheka in the North Urals; in 1919 he was assigned
as deputy dead of the Cheka of the Yekaterinburg Guberniya,
from 1920 — head of Cheka of Tomsk Guberniya, from 1923 —
of the Buryat-Mongolian Guberniya, from 1924 — Deputy Head
of the OGPU of all of Central Asia, from 1928  — head of the
OGPU of Vladivostok, from 1932  — head of the entire GULag
and simultaneously a deputy Narkom of the NKVD [a successor
organization to the Cheka, GPU and OGPU] (from 1936). (His
brother Boris was in the State Intelligence Organs since 1920;
in 1936 he served as deputy head of foreign intelligence section
in the NKVD.) Boris Pozern, a commissar of the Petrograd
Commune, substantially contributed to matching images of a
Jew and that of a Chekist in people’s minds; on September 2,
1918, he co-signed the proclamation on “Red Terror” with
Zinoviev and Dzerzhinsky. (The Encyclopedia missed one
Aleksandr Ioselevich, secretary of the Petrograd Cheka, who
had co-signed the Red Terror execution lists with Gleb Bokiy in
September, 1918.)
Yet there were others, even more famous individuals. For
instance, Yakov Agranov, a Chekist, phenomenally successful
in conducting repressions; he invented “Tagantzev’s
Conspiracy” (through which he had killed Gumilev); he
directed “cruel interrogations of participants of the Kronstadt
Uprising.” Or take notorious Yakov Blumkin, who participated
in the assassination of the German ambassador in 1918; he was
arrested and later amnestied, and then served in Trotsky’s
secretariat, and later — in Mongolia, Transcaucasia, the Middle
East, and was shot in 1929.
And there were numerous personnel behind every Cheka
organizer…. And hundreds and thousands of innocents met
them during interrogations, in basements and during the
executions.
There were Jews among the victims too. Those who su ered
from the massive communist onslaught on the “bourgeoisie”
were mostly merchants. “In the Maloarkhangelsk District, a
merchant (Yushkevich) was placed on a red-hot cast-iron stove
by members of a communist squad for failure to pay taxes.”
(From the same source: some peasants, who defaulted on the
surplus appropriation system, were lowered on ropes into
water wells to simulate drowning; or, during the winter, they
froze people into ice pillars for failure to pay revolutionary
taxes. The particular sort of punishment depended on the
imagination of the executioners.[1930]) Similarly, Korolenko
described how two millers, named Aronov and Mirkin, were
extrajudicially shot for not complying with absurd
communist-mandated prices on our.[1931] Or here is another
example. In 1913, former Kiev Governor Sukovkin advocated
innocence of Beilis [during Beilis’ Trial]. When the Reds came,
he was arrested. Thousands of Jews in Kiev signed a petition on
his behalf, yet the Cheka had shot him nevertheless.
How then can we explain that the Russian populace
generally regarded the new terror as “Jewish terror”? Look how
many innocent Jews were accused of that. Why was the
perception that Chekists and Jews were all but the same so
widespread among both the Reds and the Whites alike and
among the people in general? Who is responsible for that?
Many. And the White Army is also responsible as we discuss
below. Yet not the least among these reasons is because of the
Chekists themselves, who facilitated this identi cation by their
ardent service on the highest posts in Cheka.
Today we hear bitter complaints that it was not only Jews
who clung to the power, and why any particular clemency
should be expected from the Jewish Chekists? True. These
objections, however, cannot alter the harsh certitude: the
incredibly enormous power on an unimaginable scale had
come into the hands of those Jewish Chekists, who at that time
were supreme, by status and rank, representatives of Russian
Jewry (no matter how horribly it sounds). And those
representatives (again, not elected by their own people) were
not capable of nding enough self-restraint and self-
scrutinizing sobriety to come around, check themselves, and
opt out. It is like the Russian cautionary proverb: “Ah, do not
hurry to grab, rst blow on your ngers” And the Jewish people
(who did not elect those Chekists as their representatives), that
already numerous and active city-dwelling community
(weren’t there prudent elders among them?) also failed to stop
them: be careful, we are a small minority in this country! (Yet
who listened to elders in that age?)
G. Landau writes: “Loss of a liation with a social class
overthrew the ne structure of Jewish society and destroyed
the inner forces of resistance and even that of stability, sending
even them under the chariot of triumphant Bolshevism.” He
nds that apart from the ideas of socialism, separatist
nationalism, and permanent revolution, “we were astonished
to nd among the Jews what we never expected from them —
cruelty, sadism, unbridled violence — everything that seemed
so alien to a people so detached from physical activity; those
who yesterday couldn’t handle a ri e, today were among the
vicious cutthroats.”[1932]
Here is more about the aforementioned  Revekka Plastinina-
Maizel from the Archangel Guberniya Cheka: “Infamous for her
cruelty all over the north of Russia…, [she] voluntarily
`perforated napes and foreheads´… and personally shot more
than one hundred men.” Or “about one Baka who was
nicknamed `a bloody boy´ for his youth and cruelty” — rst
“in Tomsk and then as the head of the Cheka” of the Irkutsk
Guberniya.[1933] (Plastinina’s career carried her up right to a
seat in the Supreme Court of RSFSR which she occupied in
1940s.[1934]) Some may recall the punitive squad of
Mandelbaum in Archangel in the north of Russia, others — the
squad of “Mishka-Yaponchik” in Ukraine….
What would you expect from  peasants in the Tambov
Guberniya if, during the heat of the suppression of the great
peasant uprising in this Central-Russian black-earth region, the
dismal den of the Tambov Gubcom was inhabited by
masterminds of grain allotments, secretaries of Gubcom P.
Raivid and Pinson and by the head of the propaganda
department, Eidman? (A. G. Shlikhter, whom we remember
from Kiev in 1905, was there as well, this time as the chairman
of the Executive Committee of the guberniya.) Y. Goldin was
the Foodstu s Commissar of the Tambov Guberniya; it was he
who triggered the uprising by exorbitant con scations of
grain, whereas one N. Margolin, commander of a grain
con scation squad, was famous for whipping the peasants who
failed to provide grain. (And he murdered them too.) According
to Kakurin, who was the chief of sta to Tukhachevsky, a
plenipotentiary representative of the Cheka headquarters in
the Tambov Guberniya during that period was Lev Levin. Of
course, not only Jews were in it! However, when Moscow took
the suppression of the uprising into her own hands in February
1921, the supreme command of the operation was assigned to
Efraim Sklyansky, the head of “Interdepartmental Anti-
Banditry Commission,” — and so the peasants, noti ed about
that with lea ets, were able to draw their own conclusions.
And what should we say about the genocide on the river
Don, when hundreds of thousands of the ower of Don
Cossacks were murdered? What should we expect from the
Cossack memories when we take into consideration all those
unsettled accounts between a revolutionary Jew and a Don
Cossack?
In August 1919, the Volunteer Army took Kiev and opened
several Chekas and found the bodies of those recently executed;
Shulgin[1935] composed nominal lists of victims using funeral
announcements published in the reopened Kievlyanin; one
can’t help noticing that almost all names were Slavic … it was
the “chosen Russians” who were shot. Materials produced by
the Special Investigative Commission in the South of Russia
provide insights into the Kiev Cheka and its command
personnel (based on the testimony of a captured Cheka
interrogator)[1936]: “The headcount of the `Cheka´ sta
varied between 150 and 300 … percentage-wise, there was
75% Jews and 25% others, and those in charge were almost
exclusively Jews.” Out of twenty members of the Commission,
i.e., the top brass who determined people’s destinies, fourteen
were Jews. “All detained were kept either in the `Cheka´
building or in the Lukyanov’s prison…. A special shed was
tted for executions in the building on Institutskaya St. 40, on
the corner with Levashovskaya St., where the main `Cheka´
o ce of the guberniya had moved from Ekaterininskaya St. An
executioner (and sometimes `amateur´ Chekists) escorted a
completely naked victim into a shed and ordered the victim to
fall facedown on the ground. Then he nished the victim with
a shot in the back of the head.  Executions were performed
using revolvers (typically Colts). Usually because of the short
distance, the skull of the executed person exploded into
fragments…. The next victim was similarly escorted inside and
laid down nearby…. When number of victims was exceeding …
the capacity of the shed, new victims were laid down right
upon the dead or were shot at the entrance of the shed….
Usually the victims went to their execution without
resistance.”
This is what the “people were whispering about.” Or take
another incident, witnessed by Remizov (whom it is hard to
suspect of anti-Semitism given his revolutionary-democratic
past): “Recently there was a military training nearby, at the
Academy, and one Red Army soldier said: `Comrades, lets not
go to the front, it is all because of Yids that we ght!´ And
someone with a brief-case asked him: `Which regiment are
you from?´ And the soldier again: `Comrades, let’s not go to
the front, it is all because of Yids!´ And that one with a
briefcase ordered: `Shoot him!´ Then two other Red Army
soldiers came out and the rst one tried to ee. But he didn’t
make it to the corner as others got him and shot him  — his
brain spilled over and there was a pool of blood.”[1937]
 The Kronstadt Uprising had distinctly anti-Jewish character
(and so all the more was it doomed): they destroyed portraits of
Trotsky and Zinoviev [both Jewish], but not those of Lenin.
And Zinoviev didn’t have guts to go to negotiate with the
rebels  — he would be torn into pieces. So they sent Kalinin
[Russian].
There were labor strikes in Moscow in February 1921  that
had the slogan: “Down with Communists and Jews!”
We have already mentioned that during the Civil War the
majority of Russian socialists (and there were numerous Jews
among them) were, of course, on Lenin’s side, not on Admiral
Kolchak’s and some of them actually fought for the Bolsheviks.
(For example, consider Bund member Solomon Schwartz:
during the period of the provisional government, he was a
director of a department in a ministry; during the Civil War he
volunteered to the Red Army though he did not indicate his
rank; later he emigrated abroad where he published two books
about the Jewish situation in the USSR; we will cite him below.)
Thus it looked as though not only Bolshevik Jews, but all of
Jewry had decided to take the Red side in the Civil War. Could
we claim that their choice was completely deliberate? No.
Could we claim that they didn’t have any other choice? Again,
no.
Shulgin describes the enormous exodus  from Kiev on
October 1, 1919 as the city was to be surrendered to Bolsheviks.
It was an entirely Russian exodus, people were leaving on foot
with knapsacks, across the bridges over Dnepr river; he
estimated their numbers at around 60,000. “There were no
Jews in this exodus: they were not noticeable among those
many thousands of Russians (men, women and children), with
bundles in their hands streaming across the beautiful Chain
Bridge under a sorrowful net of rain.” There were more than
100,000 Jews in Kiev at that time, Shulgin writes. And all of
those rich and very rich Jews — they didn’t leave, they chose to
stay and wait for arrival of Bolsheviks. “The Jews decided not to
share their fate with us. And with that they carved a new and
possibly the deepest divide between us.”[1938]
So it was in many other places. According to the testimony
of socialist-revolutionary S. Maslov: “It is a fact that in towns
and cities of southern Russia, especially in cities to the west of
the Dnepr that changed hands repeatedly, the arrival of Soviets
was most celebrated and the most of hollow sympathy was
expressed in the Jewish quarters, and not infrequently only in
those alone.”[1939]
A contemporary American historian (Bruce Lincoln, author
of a big treatise about our Civil War) “said that the entire
Ukrainian Cheka was composed of almost 80% by Jews,” that
“can be explained by the fact that, prior to arrival of the Reds,
cruel pogroms went on non-stop; indeed those were the
bloodiest pogroms since the times of Bogdan Khmelnytsky
[leader of the Cossack rebellion in Ukraine in 1648-
1657].”[1940] We will discuss the pogroms soon, though it
should be noted that the time sequence was actually the
opposite: those 80% [Jews] were already sta ng the Cheka in
1918, whereas the Petliura’s [a Ukrainian publicist, writer,
journalist who  was head of state during the Ukrainian
independence of 1918-1920] pogroms only gathered
momentum during 1919 (the pogroms by White Army troops
began in the fall of 1919).
Yet it is impossible to answer the eternal question who is the
guilty party, who pushed it into abyss. Of course, it is incorrect
to say that the Kiev Cheka did what it did because it was three-
quarters Jewish. Still, this is something that Jewish people
should remember and re ect upon.
And yes, there were Jews then who appealed to their
compatriots looking back on the tragedy that had befallen both
Russia and Russian Jewry. In their proclamation To the Jews of
all countries!, this group wrote in 1923 that “overly zealous
participation of Jewish Bolsheviks in the oppression and
destruction of Russia … is blamed upon all of us … the Soviet
rule is identi ed with Jewish rule, and erce hatred of
Bolsheviks turns into the equally erce hatred of Jews…. [We]
rmly believe that Bolshevism is the worst of all evils possible
for the Jews and all other peoples of Russia, and that to ght
tooth and nail against the rule of that international rabble over
Russia is our sacred duty before humankind, culture, before
our Motherland and the Jewish people.”[1941] Yet the Jewish
community “reacted to these declarations with great
indignation.”[1942] (We will discuss it in the next chapter.)

   
The Civil War spilled over Russia’s borders. Let’s  review that
brie y (though the events in Europe are outside of the scope of
this book).
The Bolsheviks invaded Poland in 1920. (At this point they
had recalled and adroitly used the Russian “national longing
and national enthusiasm” — as Nahamkis-Steklov put it in an
Izvestia editorial.[1943]) And it appears that Polish Jews met
the Red Army very warmly. According to a Soviet source, whole
battalions of Jewish workers participated in the ghting at
Minsk.[1944] Reading from the Jewish Encyclopedia: “on
numerous occasions, Poles accused Jews of supporting the
enemy, of `anti-Polish´, `pro-Bolshevist´ and even `pro-
Ukrainian´ attitudes.” During the Soviet-Polish war many Jews
“were killed [by Polish Army] on charges of spying for the Red
Army.”[1945] However, we should be wary of possible
exaggerations here as we remember similar accusations in
espionage made by Russian military authorities during the
war, in 1915.
The Soviets quickly formed a revolutionary “government”
for Poland headed by F. Dzerzhinsky. In it were Y. Markhlevsky
and F. Kon. Of course, they were surrounded by “blood work”
specialists and ardent propagandists. (Among the latter we see
a former pharmacist from Mogilev A. I. Rotenberg. Soon after
the aborted Red revolution in Poland, he, together with Bela
Kun and Zalkind-Zemlyachka, went on to conduct the deadly
“cleansing” of the Crimea. In 1921 he participated in that
glorious work again  — this time “purging” Georgia, again
under the direct command of Dzerzhinsky. At the end of 1920s
Rotenberg was in charge of the Moscow NKVD.)
Not only Poland but Hungary and Germany as well were
a ected by the Red Revolution. An American researcher writes:
“the intensity and tenacity of anti-Semitic prejudice in both the
east and the center of Europe was signi cantly in uenced by
Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement.” “In the
beginning of 1919, the Soviets, under predominantly Jewish
leadership, started revolutions in Berlin and Munich,” and “the
share of activist Jews was” disproportionately high in the
German Communist Party of that period,” though “that party’s
support in the Jewish community at large was not signi cant.”
Four out of eleven members of the Central Committee were
Jews with a university education.” In December 1918, one of
them, Rosa Luxemburg, wrote: “In the name of the greatest
aspirations of humankind, our motto when we deal with our
enemies is: “Finger into the eye, knee on the chest!” Rebellion in
Munich was led by a theater critic, Kurt Eisner, a Jew of
“bohemian appearance.” He was killed, but the power in
conservative and Catholic Bavaria was seized by “a new
government made up of leftist intellectual Jews, who
proclaimed the `Bavarian Soviet Republic´”(G. Landauer, E.
Toller, E. Muhsam, O. Neurath) In a week the republic “was
overthrown by an even more radical group,” which declared
the “Second Bavarian Soviet Republic” with Eugen Levine at the
helm.[1946] Let’s read an article about him in the Encyclopedia:
born into merchant Jewish family, he used to be a socialist-
revolutionary; he participated in the [Russian] revolution of
1905, later became German national, joined the “Spartacist
movement” of R. Luxemburg and K. Liebknecht, and now he
became the head of  the Communist government in Bavaria,
which also included the abovementioned E. Muhsam, E. Toller
and a native of Russia, M. Levin.[1947] The uprising was
defeated in May 1919. “The fact that the leaders of the
suppressed Communist revolts were Jews was one of the most
important reasons for the resurrection of political anti-
Semitism in contemporary Germany.”[1948]
“While Jews played a  “quite conspicuous”  role in the
Russian and German communist revolutions, their role in
Hungary became central…. Out of 49 People’s Commissars
there, 31 were Jews,” Bela Kun being the most prominent of
them; “the foreign minister (de-facto head of government),” he
would orchestrate a bloodbath in the Crimea half a year later.
Here we nd Matyas Rakosi, Tibor Szamuely, Gyorgy Lukacs.
“Granted, the prime-minister was a gentile, Sandor Garbai, but
Rakosi later joked that Garbai was elected because someone
had to sign execution orders on Sabbath days.” “Statues of
Hungarian kings and heroes were knocked o their pedestals,
the national anthem outlawed, and wearing the national colors
criminalized.” “The tragedy of the situation was escalated by
the fact that historically Hungarian Jews were much wealthier
than their Eastern-European countrymen and were much
more successful in Hungarian society.”[1949]
The direct relation between the Hungarian Soviet Republic
and our Civil War becomes more clear by the virtue of the fact
that special Red Army Corps were being prepared to go to the
rescue of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but they couldn’t
manage it in time and the Republic fell (in August 1919).

   
The breakdown of the universally hated Russian Empire cost
all involved dearly, including the Jews. G. Landau writes: “In
general, revolution is gruesome, risky and dangerous business.
It is especially gruesome and dangerous for a minority, which
in many ways is alien to the bulk of population…. To secure
their wellbeing, such minority should unwaveringly cling to
law and rely on unshakable continuity of social order and on
the inertia of statutory power. Forces of revolutionary
misalignment and permissiveness hit such a minority
particularly hard.”[1950]
It was looming — straight forward, into the so promising
future! Yet in the near future, during the Civil War, there was
no law and Jewry was hit by pillages and pogroms on the scale
not even close to anything they experienced in days of the Tsar.
And those pogroms were launched not by the White side.
Because of the density of the Jewish population in Ukraine, it
was inevitable that a third force, apart from the Reds and
Whites, would interfere in the Jewish destinies — that of
Ukrainian separatism.
In April 1917, when the Ukrainian Rada [upper house of
parliament] assembled for the rst time, “Jewry … did not yet
believe in the victory of Ukrainian Nationalism,” and that was
manifested in the character of their voting during municipal
summer elections: Jews did not have “any reason” to vote for
Ukrainian separatists.[1951] But already in June, when
something resembling real independent Ukrainian governance
was taking shape — under which apparently the Jews would
have to live from now on — the Jewish representatives entered
the Lesser [lower] Rada, and a Vice-Secretariat on Jewish
nationality (“Jewish Ministry”) was established. The latter
worked on the long-cherished project of “Jewish National
Autonomy” (according to which every nationality and now  —
the Jewish one, creates its own national union, which can
legislate according to the needs and interests of their nation
and for that it receives nancial support from the treasury, and
a representative of the union becomes a member of the
cabinet). Initially, the formative Ukrainian government was
generally benevolent toward Jews, but by the end of 1917 the
mood changed, and the bill on autonomy was met in the Rada
with laughter and contempt; nevertheless, in January 1918, it
was passed, though with di culties. For their part, the Jews
reluctantly accepted “the Third Universal” (November 9, 1917,
the initiation of Ukrainian independence from Russia) as now
they feared anarchy, traditionally dangerous for Jewish
populations, and were afraid of a split within Russian Jewry.
Still, Jewish philistines were making fun of the Ukrainian
language and shop-signs, were afraid of Ukrainian
nationalism, and believed in the Russian state and Russian
culture.[1952] Lenin wrote: Jews, like Great Russians, “ignore
the signi cance of the national question in Ukraine.”[1953]
However, everything pointed  toward secession and the
Jewish delegates in the Rada did not dare to vote against the
Fourth Universal (January 11, 1918, on complete secession of
Ukraine). Immediately thereafter, the Bolsheviks began an
o ensive against Ukraine. The rst “Ukrainian” Central
Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party of Bolsheviks
was formed in Moscow and later moved to Kharkov; it was
headed by Georgiy Pyatakov and among its members were
Semyon Schwartz and Sera ma Gopner. When by the end of
January 1918 they moved to Kiev, Grigory Chudnovsky took
the post of the Commissar of Kiev, Kreitzberg became a
commissar of nances, D. Raikhstein ” press commissar,
Shapiro — commissar of the army. “There was no shortage of
Jewish names among the top Bolsheviks … in such centers as
Odessa and Ekaterinoslav. That was su cient to fuel talks
about “Bolshevik Jews” and “Jewish Bolsheviks” among the
troops loyal to the Rada. Verbal cursing about “traitorous Jews”
became almost commonplace”; “in the very midst of street
ghting [for Kiev], the Zionist fraction produced an o cial
inquiry on the matter of anti-Jewish excesses.” The question
turned into a “verbal skirmish between Ukrainian delegates
and representatives of national minorities.”[1954]
Thus enmity split apart the Jews and the Ukrainian
separatists.
“The Ukrainian government and the leaders of Ukrainian
parties were evacuated to Zhitomir, but the Jewish
representatives did not follow them,” they remained under the
Bolsheviks. And in addition, the Bolsheviks in Kiev were
“supported by a sizable group of Jewish workers, who returned
from England after the [February, Kerensky] revolution” and
who now wholly siding with the Soviet regime … took up the
posts of commissars and … o cials,” and created a “special
Jewish squad of Red Guards.”[1955]
Yet soon after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
[in which the Soviets ceded Ukraine to the Central Powers] as
the government of independent Ukraine returned to Kiev
under the aegis of Austrian and German bayonets in the
beginning of February of 1918, the “haidamakas”
[spontaneous, popular uprisings against Polish rule that took
place in Ukraine in the 18th century] and “free Cossacks” began
snatching and shooting  any former “Jewish commissars,” they
could nd. Yet those were not actual Jewish pogroms, and very
soon Petliura’s government was replaced by the Hetman
government of [Cossack leader] Skoropadsky for the next seven
months. “The command of the units of the German Army that
had occupied Kiev in the spring, treated the needs of Jewish
population with understanding.” (And that population was
not-insubstantial: in 1919, 21% of Kiev’s inhabitants were
Jewish.[1956]) A Jewish Kadet [a member of Russian
Constitutional Democrat Party] Sergei Gutnik became the
Minister of Trade and Industry in the Hetman government.
[1957] Under the Hetmanate, Zionists acted without
hindrance, and an independent Jewish Provisional National
Assembly and a Jewish National Secretariat were elected.
Yet  Hetmanate fell and in December 1918 Kiev came under
the control of the Directorate of Ukraine led by Petliura and
Vynnychenko. The Bund and Poale-Zion [a movement of
Marxist Jewish workers] did their best to help their fellow
socialists of the Directorate and Jewish Secretariat and also
made conciliatory moves. But Petliura saw it di erently. His
mouthpiece, the newspaper Vidrodzhennya wrote: “The birth of
the Ukrainian State was not expected by the Jews. The Jews did
not anticipate it despite having an extraordinary ability of
getting the wind of any news. They … emphasize their
knowledge of Russian language and ignore the fact of
Ukrainian statehood … Jewry again has joined the side of our
enemy.”[1958] Jews were blamed for all the Bolshevik victories
in Ukraine. In Kiev, the Sich Ri emen plundered apartments of
wealthy people which in masse came over to the capital while
the military and atamans [originally Cossack commanders,
then used by the Ukrainian National Army] robbed smaller
towns and shtetls. That year, a regiment named after Petliura
inaugurated mass pogroms by pillaging the town of Sarny.
A Jewish deputy from the Lesser Rada attempted to ward o
the growing tendency toward pogroms among Petliura’s
troops: “We need to warn Ukrainians that you cannot found
your state on anti-Semitism. Leaders of the Directorate should
remember that they are dealing with the world’s people, which
outlived many of its enemies” and threatened to start a
struggle against such government.[1959] Jewish parties
quickly began to radicalize toward the Left, thus inevitably
turning their sympathies to Bolshevism.
Arnold Margolin, then Deputy Minister of Foreign A airs of
Ukraine, said that the situation in Ukraine was reminiscent of
the worst times of Khmelnytsky and Gonta [Cossack leader
against Polish occupation of Ukraine].[1960] D. Pasmanik
bitterly noted that Zionists and Jewish nationalists supported
the Directorate’s government for a while even when anti-
Jewish pogroms raged across Ukraine[1961]: “How could
Jewish socialists forget about the pogromist attitudes of
Petliura and other heroes of the Ukrainian Revolution”.. How
could they forget about the Jewish blood shed by the
descendants and disciples of Khmelnytsky, Gonta and
Zalizniak”[1962] “Between December 1918 and August 1919,
Petliura’s troops carried out dozens of pogroms, killing,
according to the Commission of International Red Cross,
around 50,000 Jews. The largest pogrom happened on February
15, 1919, in Proskurov after a failed Bolshevik coup
attempt.”[1963] “Jewish pogroms that went on non-stop from
the very moment of Ukrainian independence became
particularly ferocious during the period of the so-called
Directorate and kept going until the Ukrainian armed forces
existed.”[1964]
S. Maslov writes: “True, in the Tsar’s times Jews were killed
during pogroms but they have never had been killed in such
numbers as now and with such callous indi erence”;
“sometimes during anti-Jewish pogroms by rebellious peasant
bands the entire shtetls were exterminated with indiscriminate
slaughter of children, women and elders.”[1965] After the
pogromists nished with their business, peasants from
surrounding villages usually arrived on wagons to join in
looting commercial goods often stored in large amounts in the
towns because of the unsettled times.[1966] “All over Ukraine
rebels attacked passenger trains and often commanded
`communists and Jews to get out´ of the coach and those who
did were shot right on the spot”; or, checking papers of
passengers, “suspected Jews were ordered to pronounce
`kukuruza´ [corn]) and those who spoke with an accent were
escorted out and executed.”[1967]
American scholar Muller thinks that “the mass
extermination of Jews in Ukraine and Byelorussia during the
Civil War was by no means a result of articulated policy but
rather a common peasant reaction.”[1968]
Independent rebellious bands of Grigoriev, Zelyony,
Sokolovsky, Struk, Angel, Tyutyunik, Yatzeiko, Volynetz and
Kozyr-Zirka were particularly uncontrolled and because of this
acted with extreme atrocity. However, Nestor Makhno was
di erent.
The raging Civil War provided fertile soil for the self-
realization of Makhno’s criminal and rebellious personality. We
are not going to recount his villainous and clinically-mad
deeds in this work, yet it should be noted that he did not
harbor anti-Jewish attitudes and that his anarchist-communist
followers loudly proclaimed their “implacable hostility toward
any form of anti-Semitism.” At di erent times, a certain Aaron
Baron was his Chief of Sta , Lev Zadov-Zenkovsky was his head
of counter-intelligence, Volin-Eikhenbaum was head of
Makhno’s agitprop, Arshinov was his close adviser, and one
Kogan headed Administration of Huliaipole [his “capital”].
There was even a 300-strong separate Jewish company among
his troops,  led by Taranovsky, and though at one point they
betrayed Makhno, nevetheless Taranovsky was later pardoned
and even made the Makhno’s Chief of Sta . “The Jewish poor
joined Makhno’s army in masses” and allegedly Makhno
trapped and executed ataman Grigoriev for the latter’s anti-
Semitism. In March 1919 Makhno executed peasants from
Uspenovka village for a pogrom in the Jewish agricultural
colony Gorkoye. However, despite his indisputable pro-Jewish
stance (later in emigration in Paris “he was always in a Jewish
milieu” until his death), his often uncontrollable troops carried
out several Jewish pogroms, for instance, in 1918 near
Ekaterinoslav[1969] or in the summer of 1919 in
Aleksandrovsk, though Makhno and his o cers rigorously
protected Jewish populations and punished pogromists with
death.”[1970]
To examine the anti-Jewish pogroms during the Russian
Civil War, we consult a large volume Jewish Pogroms: 1918-1921
compiled by Jewish Public Committee for Aid to Victims of
Pogroms in 1923 and published later in 1926.[1971] (The year
of publication explains why we nd nothing about pogroms by
the Reds — the book “aims to examine the roles of Petliura’s
troops, the Volunteer [White] Army, and Poles in the carnage of
pogroms in the described period.”)
Regular troops participated in pogroms in larger cities and
towns as they marched, whereas independent bands acted in
the hinterlands, thus e ectively denying the Jews safety
anywhere.
Pogroms by Petliura’s troops were particularly atrocious and
systematic and sometimes even without looting, such as, for
example, pogroms in Proskurov, Felsztyn and Zhytomir in
February of 1919, Ovruch in March, Trostyanets, Uman and
Novomirgorod in May 1919. The worst pogroms by bands were
in Smila (March 1919), Elisavetgrad, Radomyshl, Vapniarka and
Slovechno in May 1919, in Dubovka (June 1919); by Denikin’s
troops — in Fastov (September 1919) and Kiev (October 1919).
In Byelorussia, there were pogroms by Polish troops, for
example, in Borisov and in the Bobruisk District, and by Polish-
supported troops of Bulak-Balachowicz in Mazyr, Turov,
Petrakov, Kapatkevitchy, Kovchitsy and Gorodyatitchy (in
1919, 1920, and 1921).
Ukrainian Jewry was horri ed by the murderous wave of
pogroms. During brief periods of respite, the Jewish population
ed en masse from already pillaged or threatened places. There
was indeed a mass exodus of Jews from shtetls and small towns
into larger cities nearby or toward the border with Romania in
a foolish hope to nd aid there, or they simply “aimlessly ed
in panic” as they did from Tetiiv and Radomyshl. “The most
populous and ourishing communities were turned into
deserts. Jewish towns and shtetls looked like gloomy
cemeteries — homes burnt and streets dead and desolated.
Several Jewish townships were completely wrecked and turned
into ashes — Volodarka, Boguslav, Borshchagovka, Znamenka,
Fastov, Te apol, Kutuzovka and other places.”[1972]

   
Let us now examine the White side. At rst glance it may
appear counter-intuitive that Jews did not support the anti-
Bolshevik movement. After all, the White forces were
substantially more pro-democratic then Bolsheviks (as it was
with [White generals] Denikin and Wrangel) and included not
only monarchists and all kinds of nationalists but also many
liberal groups and all varieties of anti-Bolshevik socialists. So
why didn’t we see Jews who shared the same political views and
sympathies there?
 Fateful events irredeemably separated the Jews from the
White movement.
The Jewish Encyclopedia informs us that “initially many Jews
of Rostov supported the White movement. On December 13,
1917 a merchant prince, A. Alperin, gave 800,000 rubles
collected by the Jews of Rostov to A. Kaledin, the leader of Don
Cossacks, `to organize anti-Bolshevik Cossack troops.”[1973]
Yet when General Alekseev [another White commander] was
mustering his rst squadron in December 1917 in the same
city of Rostov and needed funds and asked (note — asked and
did not impress) the Rostov-Nakhichevan bourgeoisie (mainly
Jewish and Armenian) for money, they refused and he collected
just a dab of money and was forced to march out into the
winter with unequipped troops — into his Ice March. And later
“all appeals by the Volunteer Army were mostly ignored, yet
whenever the Bolsheviks showed up and demanded money and
valuables, the population obediently handed over millions of
rubles and whole stores of goods.”[1974] When former Russian
prime minister (of the Provisional Government) prince G. E.
Lvov, begging for aid abroad, visited New York and Washington
in 1918, he met a delegation of American Jews who heard him
out but o ered no aid.[1975]
However, Pasmanik quotes a letter saying that by the end of
1918 “more than three and half millions rubles  … were being
collected in the exclusive Jewish circle” with accompanying
“promises and reassurances” of goodwill toward Jews from the
White authorities. Despite that, Jews were o cially prohibited
to buy land in the Chernomorskaya Guberniya because of
“vicious speculations by several Jews,” though the order was
revoked soon afterwards.[1976]
Here is another example from my own sources: again in
Rostov in February 1918 when the White movement was
merely nascent and seemed almost hopeless, an elderly Jewish
engineer and manufacturer A. I. Arkhangorodsky, who
sincerely considered himself a Russian patriot, literally pushed
his reluctant student son into joining the White youth
marching out into the night [February 22], embarking on their
Ice March (however, his sister didn’t let him go). The Jewish
Encyclopedia also tells us that the “Jews of Rostov were joining
Cossack guerilla squadrons and the student’s battalion of
[White] general L. Kornilov’s army.”[1977]
In Paris in 1975, Col.  Levitin, the last surviving commander
of the Kornilov Regiment, told me that quite a few Jewish
warrant o cers, who were commissioned in Kerensky’s times,
were loyal to Kornilov during the so-called “days of Kornilov”
in August 1917. He recalled one Katzman, a holder of the Order
of St. George from the First Kutepov Division.
Yet we know that many Whites rejected sympathetic or
neutral Jews — because of the prominent involvement of other
Jews on the Red side, mistrust and anger was bred among the
White forces. A modern study suggests that “during the rst
year of its existence, the White movement was virtually free of
anti-Semitism at least in terms of major incidents and Jews
were actually serving in the Volunteer Army. However … the
situation dramatically changed by 1919. First, after the Allied
victory [in WWI], the widespread conviction among the
Whites that Germans helped Bolsheviks was displaced by a
mythos about Jews being the backbone of Bolshevism. On the
other hand, after the White troops occupied Ukraine, they
came under in uence of obsessive local anti-Semitism that
facilitated their espousal of anti-Jewish actions.”[1978]
The White Army “was hypnotized by Trotsky and
Nakhamkis [an agent of the Bolshevik Central Committee] and
that caused the identi cation of Bolshevism with Jewry and led
to pogroms.”[1979] The Whites perceived Russia as occupied by
Jewish commissars  — and they marched to liberate her. And
given considerable unaccountability of separate units of that
nascent and poorly organized army strewn over the vast
Russian territories and the general lack of central authority in
that war, it is not surprising that, unfortunately, some White
troops carried out pogroms. “A. I. Denikin …, like some other
leaders of the South Army (e.g., V. Z. Mai-Mayevsky), endorsed
Kadet [the Constitutional Democratic Party] and Socialist
Revolutionary views and sought to stop the outrages
perpetrated by his troops. Yet those e orts were not
e ective.”[1980]
Naturally, many Jews were driven by survival instinct and
even if they initially expected goodwill on the part of the
Volunteer Army, after pogroms by Denikin’s troops they lost
any inclination to support the White movement.
Pasmanik provides a lively case. “Aleksandrovsk was taken
by the Volunteers from the Bolsheviks. They were met by
unanimous sincere joy of the citizenry…. Overnight half of the
town was sacked and lled by the screaming and moaning of
distressed Jews…. Wives were raped … men beaten and
murdered, Jewish homes were totally ransacked. The pogrom
continued for three days and three nights. Post-executive
Cossack cornet Sliva dismissed complaints of the Public
Administration saying `it is always like that: we take a city and
it belongs to the troops for three days.´”[1981] It is impossible
to explain all this plunder and violence by soldiers of the
Volunteer Army by actions of Jewish commissars.
A top White general, A. von Lampe, claims that rumors
about Jewish pogroms by the Whites are “tendentiously
exaggerated”, that these pillaging “requisitions” were
unavoidable actions of an army without quartermaster
services or regular supplies from the rear areas. He says that
Jews were not targeted deliberately but that all citizens su ered
and that Jews “su ered more” because they were “numerous
and rich.” “I am absolutely con dent that in the operational
theaters of the White armies there were no Jewish pogroms, i.e.,
no organized extermination and pillaging of Jews. There were
robberies and even murders … which were purposefully
overblown and misrepresented as anti-Jewish pogroms by
special press…. Because of these accidents, the Second Kuban
Infantry Brigade and the Ossetian Cavalry Regiment were
disbanded…. All the people, be they Christian or Jewish,
su ered in disorderly areas.”[1982] There were executions (on
tip o s by locals) of those unfortunate commissars and
Chekists who did not manage to escape and there were quite a
few Jews among them.
Events in Fastov in September 1919 appear di erently.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Cossacks “behaved
outrageously … they killed, raped and outed Jewish religious
feelings (they had broken into a synagogue during Yom Kippur,
beat up the  whole congregation, raped the women and tore
apart the Torah scrolls.) About one thousand were
killed.”[1983] A methodical quarter-by-quarter pillaging of
Jews in Kiev after a brief return of the White troops in the end
of October 1919 was dubbed the “quiet pogrom.” Shulgin
writes: “The commanders strictly prohibited `pogroms.´ Yet
the “Yids” were really an annoyance and, secondly, the `heroes
´ were hungry…. In general, the Volunteers in large cities were
starving.” There were nights of plunder but without murder
and rape. It was “the end of Denikin’s period … and the
beginning of the agony of the Volunteer Army.”[1984]
“By the route of its o ensive and, particularly, its retreat,”
during its last brutal retreat in November-December of 1919,
the White Army carried out “a large number of Jewish
pogroms” (acknowledged by Denikin), apparently not only for
plunder but also for revenge. However, Bikerman says that
“murders, pillage and rape of women were not faithful
companions of the White Army, unlike what is claimed by our
[Jewish] National Socialists who exaggerate the horrible events
to advance their own agenda.”[1985]
Shulgin agrees: “For a true White, a massacre of unarmed
civilians, the murder of women and children, and robbing
someone’s property are absolutely impossible things to do.”
Thus, the “true Whites” in this case are guilty of negligence.
They were not su ciently rigorous in checking the scum
adhering to the White movement.”[1986]
Pasmanik concurred that “everybody understands that
General Denikin did not want pogroms but when I was in
Novorossiysk and Ekaterinodar in April-May 1919, i.e., before
the march to the north, I could sense a thickened and pervasive
atmosphere of anti-Semitism everywhere.”[1987] Whatever it
was — negligence or revenge — it served well to ignite the
“White” pogroms of 1919.
Still, “by unanimous testimony of those unlucky enough to
experience both types of pogroms [those by Petliura’s troops
and those by White Army], it was predominantly Petliura’s
troops who went for Jewish life and soul — they did the most
killing.”[1988]
“It was not the Volunteer Army that initiated Jewish
pogroms in the new Russia. They began in the “reborn” Poland
the day after she become a free and independent state. While in
Russia itself they were started by the Ukrainian troops of the
Democrat Petliura and the Socialist Vynnychenko…. The
Ukrainians turned pogroms into an everyday event.”[1989].
The Volunteer Army did not start the pogroms but it carried
on with them, being fueled by a false conviction that all Jews
were for Bolsheviks. “The name of L. Trotsky was particularly
hated among the Whites and Petliura’s soldiers and almost
every pogrom went under a slogan `This is what you get for
Trotsky.´” And even “the Kadets who in the past always
denounced any expression of anti-Semitism, and all the more
so the pogroms … during their November 1919 conference in
Kharkov … demanded that Jews `declare relentless war against
those elements of Jewry who actively participate in the
Bolshevist movement.´” At the same time the Kadets
“emphasized … that the White authorities do everything
possible to stop pogroms,” namely that since the beginning of
October 1919 “the leadership of the [Volunteer] Army began
punishing pogromists with many measures including
execution” and as a result “pogroms stopped for a while.” Yet
“during the December 1919-March 1920 retreat of the
Volunteer Army from Ukraine the pogroms become
particularly violent” and the Jews were accused “of shooting
the retreating Whites in the back.” (Importantly, “there were
no pogroms in Siberia by A. Kolchak’s troops,” as “Kolchak did
not tolerate pogroms.”[1990])
D.O. Linsky, himself a former White Guard, emphatically
writes: “Jewry was possibly given a unique chance to ght so
hard for the Russian land, that the slanderous claim, that for
Jews Russia is just geography and not Fatherland, would
disappear once and for all.” Actually, “there was and is no
alternative: the victory of anti-Bolshevik forces will lead from
su ering to revival of the whole country and of the Jewish
people in particular…. Jewry should devote itself to the Russian
Cause entirely, to sacri ce their lives and wealth…. Through
the dark stains on the White chasubles one should perceive the
pure soul of the White Movement…. In an army where many
Jewish youths were enlisted, in  an army relying on extensive
material support from Jewish population, anti-Semitism
would su ocate and any pogromist movement would be
countered and checked by internal forces. Jewry should have
supported the Russian Army which went on in an immortal
struggle for the Russian land…. Jewry was pushed from the
Russian Cause, yet Jewry had to push away the pushers.” He
writes all this “after having painful personal experience of
participation in the White movement. Despite all those dark
and serious problems that surfaced in the White movement,
we delightfully and with great reverence bow our uncovered
heads before this one and only commendable fact of the
struggle against the ignominy of Russian history, the so-called
Russian Revolution.” It was “a great movement for the
unfading values of [upholding] the human spirit.”[1991]
Yet the White Army did not support even those Jews who
volunteered for service in it. What a humiliation people like
doctor Pasmanik had to go through (many Jews were outraged
after nding him “among the pogromists”)! “The Volunteer
Army persistently refused to accept Jewish petty o cers and
cadets, even those who in October 1917 bravely fought against
Bolsheviks. It was a huge moral blow to Russian Jewry.” “I will
never forget,” he writes, “how eleven Jewish petty o cers came
to me in Simferopol complaining that they were expelled from
ghting units and posted as … cooks in the rear.”[1992]
Shulgin writes: “If only as many Jews participated in the
White Movement as did in the `revolutionary democracy´ or
in `constitutional democracy´ before that….” Yet only a tiny
part of Jewry joined the White Guards … only very few
individuals, whose dedication could not be overvalued as the
anti-Semitism [among the Whites] was already clearly obvious
by that time. Meanwhile, there were many Jews among the
Reds…, there, most importantly, they often occupied the `top
command positions´…. Aren’t we really aware of the bitter
tragedy of those few Jews who joined the Volunteer Army” The
lives of those Jewish Volunteers were as endangered by the
enemy’s bullets as they were by the `heroes of the rear´ who
tried to solve the Jewish question in their own manner.”[1993]
 Yet it was not all about the “heroes of the rear.” And anti-
Semitic feelings had burst into ames among the young White
o cers from the intellectual families — despite all their
education, tradition, and  upbringing.
And this all the more doomed the White Army to isolation
and perdition.
Linsky tells us that on the territories controlled by the
Volunteer Army, the Jews were not employable in the
government services or in the OsvAg (“Information-
Propaganda Agency,” an intelligence and counter-intelligence
agency, established in the White Army by General A.M.
Dragomirov). Yet he refutes the claim that publications of
OsvAg contained anti-Semitic propaganda and that pogromists
were not punished. No, “the command did not want Jewish
pogroms, yet … it could not act against the pogromist attitudes
of their troops … it psychologically couldn’t use severe
measures…. The army was not as it used to be, and
requirements of the regular wartime or peacetime military
charters could not be fully applied to it,” as the minds of all
soldiers were already battle-scarred by the Civil War.[1994]
“Although they didn’t want pogroms, Denikin’s government
didn’t dare to denounce anti-Semitic propaganda loudly,”
despite the fact that the pogroms in icted great harm on
Denikin’s army. Pasmanik concludes: the Volunteer Army
“generally assumed a hostile attitude toward the entire Russian
Jewry.”[1995] But I. Levin disagrees, saying that “the views of
only one part of the movement, those of the active pogromists,
are now attributed to the whole movement,” while in reality
“the White Movement was quite complex, it was composed of
di erent factions … with often opposite views.”[1996] Yet to
bet on Bolsheviks, to walk in their shadows because of fear of
pogroms, is … obvious and evident madness…. A Jew says:
either the Bolsheviks or the pogroms, whereas he should have
been saying: the longer the Bolsheviks hold power, the closer
we are to certain death.”[1997] Yet the “Judeo-Communists”
were, in the parlance of the Whites, agitators as well.
All this was resolutely stopped by Wrangel in Crimea, where
there was nothing like what was described above. (Wrangel
even personally ordered Rev. Vladimir Vostokov to stop his
public anti-Jewish sermons.)
In July 1920, Shulim Bezpalov, the aforementioned  Jewish
millionaire, wrote from Paris to Wrangel in the Crimea: “We
must save our Motherland. She will be saved by the children of
the soil and industrialists. We must give away 75% of our
revenue until the value of ruble has recovered and normal life
rebuilt.”[1998]
Yet it was already too late….
Still, a part of the Jewish population of the Crimea chose to
evacuate with Wrangel’s army.[1999]
True, the White Movement was in desperate need of the
support by the Western public opinion, which in turn largely
depended on the fate of Russian Jewry. It needed that support,
yet, as we saw, it had fatally and unavoidably developed a
hostility toward the Jews and later it was not able to prevent
pogroms. As Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill
“was the major advocate of the Allied intervention in Russia
and military aid to the White armies.” Because of the pogroms,
Churchill appealed directly to Denikin: “my goal of securing the
support in the Parliament for the Russian national movement
will be incomparably more di cult,” if the pogroms are not
stopped. “Churchill also feared the reaction of powerful Jewish
circles among the British elite.”[2000] Jewish circles in the USA
held similar opinions [on the situation in Russia].
However, the pogroms were not stopped, which largely
explains the extremely weak and reluctant assistance given by
the Western powers to the White armies. And calculations by
Wall Street naturally led it to support Bolsheviks as the more
likely future rulers over Russia’s riches. Moreover, the climate
in the US and Europe was permeated by sympathy toward
those who claimed to be builders of a New World, with their
grandiose plans and great social objective.
And yet, the behavior of the former Entente of Western
nations during the entire Civil War is striking by its greed and
blind indi erence toward the White Movement — the
successor of their wartime ally, Imperial Russia. They even
demanded that the Whites join the Bolshevik delegation at the
Versailles Peace Conference; then there was that delirious idea
of peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks on the Princes’
Islands. The Entente, which did not recognize any of the White
governments o cially, was hastily recognizing all those new
national states emerging on the periphery of Russia — thus
unambiguously betraying the desire for its dismemberment.
The British hurried to occupy the oil-rich region of Baku; the
Japanese claimed parts of the Far East and the Kamchatka
Peninsula. The American troops  in Siberia were more of
hindrance than a help and actually facilitated the capture of
Primorye by the Bolsheviks. The Allies even extorted payments
for any aid they provided — in gold from Kolchak; in the South
of Russia, in the form of Black Sea vessels, concessions  and
future obligations. (There were truly shameful episodes: when
the British were leaving the Archangel region in the Russian
north, they took with them some of the Tsar’s military
equipment and ammunition. They gave some of what they
couldn’t take to the Reds and sunk the rest in the sea — to
prevent it from getting into the hands of the Whites!) In the
spring of 1920, the Entente put forward an ultimatum to the
White Generals Denikin and Wrangel demanding an end to
their struggle against the Bolsheviks. (In the summer of 1920
France provided some material aid to Wrangel so that he could
help Poland. Yet only six months later they were
parsimoniously deducting Wrangel’s military equipment as
payment for feeding of those Russian soldiers who retreated to
Gallipoli.)
We can judge about the actions of the few occupational
forces actually sent by the Entente from a testimonial by Prince
Grigory Trubetskoy, a serious diplomat, who observed the
French Army during its occupation of Odessa in 1919: “French
policies in the South of Russia in general and their treatment of
issues of Russian statehood in particular were strikingly
confused, revealing their gross misunderstanding of the
situation.”[2001]

   
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 rst Soviet Encyclopedia proposes the
same number.[2004] The present-day Jewish Encyclopedia tells
us that “by di erent estimates, from 70,000 to 180,000-
200,000 Jews were killed.”[2005]
Compiling data from di erent 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 gures!
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 o cial 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 in uence public opinion in Russia and
abroad … in many Jewish and non-Jewish circles in Europe and
America.”[2008]
Yet the Reds had the nger in the pie as well — and they were
actually rst  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 rst winter of
Bolshevik rule, the Red troops ghting under the red banner
carried out several bloody pogroms, most notable of which
were pogroms in Glukhov and Novgorod-Siverskiy. 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
counter-revolutionary 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 “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…. O cers 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 a liation 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 bene t of a possible
White victory — the sane evolution of the Russian state.
 Chapter 17. Emigration between the two
World Wars

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 eeing. 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, nanciers, 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
gure 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 rst
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 uno cial 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 quarters of
Prague, which became … Russia-in-Exile’s main university
city).”[2018] It was “easier to settle” in Berlin because of
in ation. “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 con dent 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 in uence 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. Fondaminsky-Bunakov
(tireless in his “endless, sel ess cares for Russian culture
abroad”[2022]), So a 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, Te , 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 re ected in
Mihail Osorgin’s article, 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 gures who gave speci c avour to the whole
movement … were Slavic Russians.” But after emigration
“where there is a re ned 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 speci c 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
in uential 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 e ect that M.A.
Osorgin “has no reason to fear that the reader of Rassvet would
nd 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 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,
nanced 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 signi cant 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 rst wave of emigration, re-
established Rassvet, rst 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 nd I. M.
Trotsky from the defunct Russkoe Slovo [Russian Word], N. M.
Volkovyssky, P. I. Zvezdich (who 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 scienti c
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 Zhar-Ptitsa 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 in uential.”  “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 rst 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 nanced 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 signi cantly nancially supported by M. M. Vinaver.”
“Milyukov’s 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 sta included
the acerbic publicist S. L. Polyakov-Litovtsev (who had only
learnt “to speak and write Russian at fteen”), 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 red 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. Fondaminsky-Bunakov, V. V. Rudnev, M. V.
Vishnyak and A. I. Gukovsky. Sedykh noted that “out of [its] ve
editors … three were Jews. In 70 volumes of the Sovremennye
Zapiski we see ction, 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.)
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 “sacri ced 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, eeing after it
was disbanded. From 1919 he lived in Paris, France, during the
period under discussion. He devoted much time and e ort 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 sel essness … 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 ed
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 con dence.”[2037] (Its
masthead now proudly boasts: “the oldest Russian newspaper
in the world”; it is even two years older than Pravda. All the
others have died out at various times, for various reasons.)
Right-wing or nationalist Russian newspapers appeared in
So a, 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 So a was killed.)
The Paris Vozrozhdenie of Yu. Semenov “did not shirk from
anti-Semitic outbursts”[2038] (but not under Struve’s short
reign).

   
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 rst 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 su ered from Bolshevism perhaps
more than any other ethnic group in Russia”; as to the “familiar
identi cation 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 o 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 con rmed; moreover,
anti-Jewish sentiments spread over a large segment of Russian
emigration. The Union for Russian Salvation (dedicated to
crown prince Nikolai Nikolaevich) produced lea ets 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 lea ets did not reach the
USSR, but they scared and o ended 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 rst years after the Bolshevik victory
rejected and damned the Jews, so that “the identi cation 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 anti-Semitic 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 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
book[2046] 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 Belloc[2048] 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 in ict them on those proclaiming the
Kingdom of Ham…. To ght 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 ooded
with Protocols of the Elders of Zion, suddenly and virtually
instantly. These were ve 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 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 con scate 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 rst 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 o cials, army o cers. While
di ering 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 nd broad support in Russian society….
The Court did not give support to distribution either.”[2053]
After many failed attempts, the Protocols were nally 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 de nitely 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 de nite fabrication. The
monarch was shocked by Stolypin’s report, but wrote rmly:
“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 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 So a and Belgrade).
 “After the Bolshevik victory the selling of Protocols was
banned in Russia” and become a criminal o ence, 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 gure, 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 scienti c
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 e orts of all mankind. Pogroms and slander make a
sensible and honest raising of the question more di cult,
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 in uential
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 self-determination, 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 o 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 lled with Jewish children,” to the exclusion of
learning the languages of the newly-formed states. “In these
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 rst 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]

   
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 o cial 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 nd
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 attering and at
rst 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, su ering 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 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 con rm that Bolsheviks are changing for the
better, that they can learn, the NEP came! They’ve loosened
their su ocating 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 o ered his hand to him: “Greetings,
Goryansky.” But Goryansky stood up and contemptuously
turned away from the o ered 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
exempli ed by the opinion of N. Goldman: if all sorts of
freedom-loving governments and organizations “ atter 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, nally, they objected to the continuing
su ering 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 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 gure – 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 re ecting 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 fth anniversary of the founding of the
White Army, Jewish society in general was o ended 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 nished 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 identi cation 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
di cult to nd a balanced point of view on both Russian and
Jewish questions. We … attempted to merge the interests of the
renewed Russia and of the a icted 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 objectively examine the causes of and
the extent of Jewish involvement in the revolution. This …
might have certain e ect 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 rst 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 ourish while the
country disintegrates around us.”[2082]
Obviously, these authors were fully aware of the signi cance
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,” re ections can nally be
understood and comprehended in their entirety.
Their 1923 Proclamation stated: “The National Union of
Russian Jews Abroad rmly 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
di erent from what they’ve thought it should have been.
“Almost all circles and classes of Russian society are now
engaged in grievous self-re ections, 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; 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 nished 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
a iction 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 rebu ed, did not meet enough
opposition from within their own society.”[2087] “It is our
duty to shoulder the struggle speci cally against the Jewish
Bolsheviks, against all kinds of YevSeks [the ‘Jewish Section,’
the name given to o cials appointed by the Soviets to deal
with Jewish a airs], 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 ght
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 justi es 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 di cult task of
 ghting 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 ght 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 tragedy, we see epidemic mindlessness,
endless laxity of speech, and triumphant super ciality.” 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
nd 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, signi cant 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”
in uenced 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 re ect on these words only in regard of the
spiritual chord that so unexpectedly bound the two our peoples
together in History.
“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 ght the molesters of the great country shoulder to
shoulder with all other anti-Bolshevik 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 fteen; educated himself
under di cult 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 ght for the good of the common
motherland. His rst 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 1899-1905 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
di culty managed to return to Russia; he joined the army and
served in eld 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 a airs
commentator for Russkie Vedomosti [Russian Journal] and for
the P. B. Struve’s magazine, Russkaya Mysl [Russian Thought]. He
emigrated rst 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 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 well-known 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 ed 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 in uential 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 nd 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).

   
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 in rmity, of a lack of culture of the
soul…. You are not alone in this world, and your sorrow cannot
ll 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’ su erings.”[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 su ered so much and may su er 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 o ensive was this
attempt to “separate the ‘popular’ anti-Semitism from the
‘o cial’ 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 nd 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]
 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 di cult to counter. The gauntlet was picked up by P.
N. Milyukov, though not very con dently. We remember (see
Chapter 11) that back in 1909 he had also expressed horror at
the unveiling of this stinging, unpleasant national question
“who bene ts?” 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
e ect that a Russian Jew could and had to be a “Russian
democrat.” Milyukov treaded carefully: “but when this demand
… is ful lled, and there appears a ‘new national face’ of Russian
Democracy (the Great Russian),” well, wouldn’t Shekhtman be
rst 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
ve 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 justi ed
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 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 o cers 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 attened 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 rst 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]
 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 nally 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 nd 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 bene cial 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]
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 o 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 rst issue of collection Jewish
world. During the war, those who could, ed 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.
 Chapter 18. In the 1920s

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 rst 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 nd ‘real
life’.”[2128]
Beginning in 1917, “Jews ooded 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 half-seriously in Odessa.
Lurie-Larin, a fanatical and zealous Bolshevik leader during
“War Communism” writes that in the rst 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 o -limits to Jews (so called “prohibited
provinces”) from Ukraine and Byelorussia, into Transcaucasia
and Central Asia. The magnitude of this ow was half a
million, and four- fth of them settled in RSFSR. One in ve of
the Jewish migrants went to Moscow.[2132]
M. Agursky considers Larin’s numbers to be substantially
undercounted and points out that this demographic change
a ected 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
o ered 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 ve 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 ow 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 signi cantly 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 pre-revolutionary 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 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 o cial 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 con rmed 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
o cers, merchants, even children of petty shop keepers were
expelled. Applicants from these classes and children of the
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 education[2143] 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 o cial, Mandelshtam-Lyadov.
[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 e orts… 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 erce
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-o cial through the Jewish
Commissariat at the 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 t 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 anti-Semitism, 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 o . 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:
“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 lling 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 gures 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
lead[2154]  – 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 o cial data reported in  Pravda in 1922, Jews
made up 5.2% of the party.[2155] M. Agursky: “But their actual
in uence 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 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 nd 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 book[2162]).
By 1921 the preponderance of Jews in Petrograd CP
organization… “was apparently so odious that the Politburo,
re ecting 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]
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 40-45% for those in leadership.” (These
gures 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 signi cant in ux 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 ying quickly from cli to cli . From the top
ranks of the Central Asian GPU o 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 ashed 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 Navy[2168]).
In it, Yagoda was rewarded for “particularly valuable service…
for sacri ce 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 ick of a nger 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 others[2169]), 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 to only a few, but now the people
would get to know them. In this jubilee newspaper[2170] issue
we can nd 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 1929-31″[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 o spring of this
glorious clan to the Cheka, GPU, NKVD and the prosecutor’s
o ce. To ful ll 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 War, we nd 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 nd 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 o cials  – 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 a airs 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 scholar[2175] 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 e ect that while Jews made up 1.7% of
the male population in the USSR, they comprised 2.1% of the
combat o cers, 4.4% of the command sta , 10.3% of the
political leadership and 18.6% of military doctors.[2176]
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
rst diplomatic conferences with Soviets in Geneva and the
Hague in 1922, Europe could not help but notice that Soviet
delegations and their sta were mostly Jewish.[2177] Due to
the injustice of history, a long and successful career of Boris
Ye movich 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 red 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 A airs (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.
Gruzenberg-Borodin 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 Jewish[2180] 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
trade missions is colorfully described in a book by G.A.
Solomon,[2181] the rst Soviet trade representative in Tallinn,
Estonia – the rst 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 e ecters.
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 gures 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
sta in the Soviet consulates around the world and nds 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 nd no small
number of Jews in the Supreme Court of RSFSR of 1920’s,[2185]
in the Procurator’s o ce and RKI. Here we can nd 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 uidity, and frequent turnover
of cadres from post to post, from region to region. This
amazing early Soviet shu ing of personnel might have been
caused either by an acute de cit 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 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 Donetsk-Krivoy 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 E m 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 o ce
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
German-American 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-Shein nkel 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]
If you are building a mill, you are responsible for possible
ood. A newspaper article by Z. Zangvil describes celebratory
jubilee meeting of the Gosbank board of directors in 1927 ( ve
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 justi ed this: “history
dragged Jews into the government apparatus,” … Jews had
nowhere else to go besides to government institutions,”
including the Cheka[2195] 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 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, self-
con dent and self-satis ed 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 ght 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 nances 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 o ered 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 “signi cant source of support
for the centralization of power in Moscow over and against the
in uence 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 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.

   
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?
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 gment 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 o 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 stu 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
o 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
ndings. Here was a tested SR with an unassailable reputation
who lived through the rst 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 a ecting 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, “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- ower 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 “identi cation 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 de nition of
power, its content and its politics.” ”Soviet power in the rst
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
di cult thousands year old history”.   “This is particularly
noticeable when it comes to selecting sta at institutions – if
the selection process is in the hands of Jews, you can bet that
the entire sta of responsible positions will go to Jews, even if
it means removing the existing sta .” And often that
“preference for  their own is displayed in a sharp, discourteous
manner which is o ensive 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!
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 lling 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 identi ed 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
Jews[2215]).
 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 Commissariat of
Internal A airs 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
anti-Semitic 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 o cial explanations came from. But he xates on
the unexpected phenomenon and tries to address scienti cally
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 ndings
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 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 sta of the Red Army has a signi cantly
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 anti-Semitism
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. Di culties 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 nds that it arose because “no
other means remained for the White Guard to in uence the
masses besides anti-Semitism.” Its plan of action moves along
“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 nd
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 anti-Semitism 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 anti-Semitism.” (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 nally, 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 o cials in anti-
Semitism: an o cial in Kiev “openly res Jews” with “the
connivance of the local district party committee”; defamatory
anti-Jewish gra ti 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 anti-Semitism 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 o cials 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
ght against counter revolutionary sabotage.” ”Anti-Semitism
is a social pathology like alcoholism or vagrancy. Too often
when dealing with communists we let them o with mere
censure. If a person goes to church and gets married, then we
exclude him without discussion — anti-Semitism is no less an
evil.”
”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 ght 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.
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 speci c articles about acts of anti-
Semitism.” This is not convincing. Article 59-7 of the Criminal
Code (“propaganda or agitation intended to incite national or
religious hatred or dissension”) was su cient to send one to
prison and the article provided for con scation 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 de nition 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
“ nally, 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 ght, 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 o suspected ways
of thinking. (This recalls Grigory Landau, speaking of Jewish
opponents: “They suspect or accuse other groups around them
of anti-Semitism… 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 con icts of a personal nature”.
[2238] In other words the judicial juggernaut had already been
wound up and was running at full speed.

   
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 o cial
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 nancial 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 con scation and nes, 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 di erent 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
1921-22, 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 nancial and other assistance”,
whereas SC “was dedicated to establishment and development
of Jewish industry and agriculture in the south of Ukraine”
during rst half of 1920’s.[2240]
The rst Soviet census provides insight into Jewish life
during the liberalized NEP period. Forty percent of Jews were
classi ed 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 classi ed 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 scal 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 ow of Jewish workers into industry was much slower
than government wished. There were almost no Jews among
railroad men and miners’ they rather preferred the professions
of tailor, tanner, typographer, woodworker and food-related
specialties and other elds 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 rst 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 “Para n A air” (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 nanciers, 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 nance, credit and commerce.
A steamroller of merchandise and property con scations,
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- fth of Soviet
Jews lived in the traditional Jewish settlements by 1930’s”.
[2249]
“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 ght of Soviet authorities against private
enterprise and entrepreneurs is in large part a ght 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 communists during rst two and half
years when Bolsheviks were still overwhelmed by their
economic debacles”. “The rst 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 ea 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 con scations.” “The concept of Jewish equality
virtually turned into ction as two-thirds of Jews lost their
voting rights.”
Because YevSek (Jewish section of the communist party)
“inherited speci c hatred toward petty Jewish bourgeoisie
cultivated by earlier Jewish socialist parties and saw their own
purpose in ghting it, its policy in the beginning of NEP was
substantially di erent 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 de nition, in physical labor. And since
Jews still prefer “unproductive labor”, they inevitably su er.
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 diversi ed
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 nancial 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 of 1927. Most craftsmen couldn’t work because of
shortage of raw materials”.[2254]
The state of a airs 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 con dent 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,
nancial 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 rst 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 ocked 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 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]

   
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 ight the
un attering 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,
nancial 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 signi cance… Through this the foreign
proletariat could judge the “power and solidity of the Soviet
government.” This development had the active participation
and nancial support of the powerful America Joint. The Jewish
Chronicle of London, Oct 16,1925: “The Crimea has been o ered
as replacement for Palestine. Why send Jews to Palestine which
is so unproductive… and which will mean so much sacri ce
and hard work… when the rich land of Ukraine and fruited
elds of the Crimea are smiling upon su ering 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: nd 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 de nitively mark Jews with the brand of
communism”.[2262] In a lead editorial from the Berlin Rul: “It’s
true… the world identi es 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 blu 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  bene cent 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 rst small groups of Jews 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
e orts.
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.
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,” o cially, 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 e ective 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 di erently:
“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 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 ow of 2-3
thousand resettling Jewish families, by the end of ve 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 eld 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 nally 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 lled with sh” and “vast forests.”
The Socialist Vestnik described it as covered with “wild taiga…
swampland made up a signi cant 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 signi cant
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 motive behind the plan which cannot be
excluded: to wedge a loyal Soviet population into the hostile
Cossack frontier.)
OZET sent a scienti c 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 di erent. The CIK of VKPb in
1928 assigned Birobidzhan for Jewish colonization and
preparation of rst settler trains began immediately. “For the
rst 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 horri ed 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 o the loans and credits
they managed to obtain for making the move. Others less
nimble, lived in abject poverty”.[2287]
”During the rst 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 sni s
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 nances for Birobidzhan, from 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.

   
From the October revolution to the end of the 20’s the lives of
ordinary Jews were a ected 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 scienti c 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 in uence 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 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 VKPb[2298]. 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 nal 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 over owing 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.

   
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 eld 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]
However, Jewish historiography did not su er destruction in
the rst 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 2-volume
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 tongue[2307] (another
source cites a gure 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  o cial 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]
“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 Russi cation; 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 speci cally 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 o cially 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 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
nd 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 proli c 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
e orts 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 owered
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 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
ne, 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]

   
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 su ciently 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 abroad.[2324] In 1923 only two o cially
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 Zirei-Zion (‘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 nally 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 signi cant 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 ghting
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 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 ght 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 in uence of communist ideology…” ”The mass
penetration by Jews in all areas of Russian life” and of the
Soviet leadership in the rst 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 in uence. 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 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 nd
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, scienti c 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 su ered, “Soviet Man”
was created, but the decades which followed showed that a
remnant of Jewish self-awareness was preserved and
remained. Even in the ood 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 Ukraine[2341]
(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.

   
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 o end 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
con scation 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 con scated.” 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.)
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 e orts 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 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
ve-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 forbidden[2355] … 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.

   
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, lm schools and lm 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 di erent 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 gure in Soviet, cinema, mostly non ction. 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 gure 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 falsi ed
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 nd
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 gure of Meyerhold,
who became the leading and most authoritarian star of the
Soviet theater. He had numerous 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. Tairov-Kornblit, 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 rst
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 o cial
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 rst 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 rst time heard
during that period. Many “administrators from music”
appeared also, such as Matias Sokolsky-Greenberg, 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 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 o many private publishing rms 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.

   
A vicious battle for the dominance within the Party was waged
between Trotsky and Stalin from 1923 to 1927. Later Zinoviev
fought for rst place equally con dent 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]
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
o . 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 ght against the party.” They are
an “attempt to use any weakness, any ssures 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 speci cally
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 elds, 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 a ord 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 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
eld: 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 a airs.[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 rst time ever a signi cant 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 su ciently 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 o from their
roots and spiritually killed. In its essence, de-Kulakization was
not a socio-economic 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 e ciently 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.
”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 ooded 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 o ered 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 lled 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, Skvortsov-Stepanov 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.]
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 shu e, 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, nding that “reverend artist fathers were
trying again to fuse the church and art”.[2384]
Russia’s self-morti cation re ected 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 o ensive… No matter how o ensive the
participation of sons of Russian peasants in the persecution of
the church, the part played by each non-Russian was even more
o ensive”.[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 ring squad executing 48 “food workers” for having
“caused the Great Famine” (i.e., rather than Stalin): the
wreckers in the meat, sh, conserves and produce trade?
Among these unfortunates were not less than ten Jews.[2387]
What would it take to end the world’s enchantment with
Soviet power? Dora Shturman attentively followed the e orts
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 ring 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 Io e 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 e ect 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 lled the
government, social and cultural elite. The brazenness and
ardor with which all Bolshevik policies were carried out —
whether con scation 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 su ering 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 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.
 Chapter 19. In the 1930s

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 sacri ces, and despite the many
absurdities of the Soviet organizational system, the horrible
epic somehow led to the creation of an industrialized power.
Yet the rst and second ve-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 owed
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 owed with the help and
approval of international nancial magnates, most of all those
on Wall Street, in a persistent continuation of the rst
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 erce 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
o cial 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
recently-opened diplomatic and nancial archives and
followed the connections of Wall 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 nance, through global “socialization,” “for
control … and for the forced appeasement.” Sutton concluded
that: “International nanciers prefer to do business with
central governments. The banking community least of all
wants a free economy and de-centralized authority.”
“Revolution and international nance 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 justi cation 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 nanciers completely refused loans to
pre-revolutionary Russia due to the infringement of the rights
of Jews there, even though Russia was always a pro table
nancial prospect. And clearly, if they were prepared to
sacri ce pro ts 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 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 o 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 rst ve-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 di er 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 brie y 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 identi ed 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 pro essional level. (Nevertheless, from
the mid-1930s he was the Secretary 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 pro table 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 USSR[2400]); Z. Belenky (one of the
three above-mentioned 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 nd 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]
For ve  years lled 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 full-time; 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 rst 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 rst 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 a airs 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
lth); no less remarkable, but only within the limits of the
USSR, was the narkom of internal a airs 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 Commission of the Soviet Control.[2406] In the same
Government we can nd many Jewish names among the
deputy narkoms in various people’s commissariats: nance,
communications, railroad transport, water, agriculture, the
timber industry, the foodstu s industry, education, justice.
Among the most important deputy narkoms were: Ya.
Gamarnik (defense), A. Gurevich (“he made a signi cant
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 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 1934-1936 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 fth, 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 foodstu s.[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 time[2418]); 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]
The Supreme Soviet of the National Economy still existed,
but its signi cance 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
published[2424] 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 bu ets; 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 su ered the same
punishment; and comrade Nepryakhin was expelled from the
party.[2425]
Soon after that, Izvestiya published[2426] 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 hard-workers 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 o ces 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.
Thus the Soviet Jews obtained a weighty share of state,
industrial, and economic power at all levels of government in
the USSR.

   
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 o ensive for
Socialism.”  What secrets, inscrutable to us, could be hidden
behind this “o ensive”?  We can glance into some of them from
the more direct wording: for carrying out “special missions of
top state importance on the clean-up of state apparatus in the
Soviet diplomatic missions abroad.”[2428]
Now let’s look at the state of a airs 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 A airs, 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
the uno cial Soviet representative in Washington.[2431] In
the early and mid-1930s, a great number of Jews successfully
continued to work in Soviet trade delegations. (Here we nd
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
signi cant number of Jewish o cers 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 sta , 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 paci cation 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 o cial
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
identi ed as the chief of sta of the Moscow military district),
Semyon Uritsky (of the Military Intelligence Administration,
until 1937), Boris Feldman – the head of the 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
nd 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 sta .
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 rst 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 o cials 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 rst 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 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 di cult 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
A airs 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 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.

   
Never publicized information about events of di erent times
ows from di erent sources: about the regional
Plenipotentiaries of GPU-NKVD in the 1930s (before 1937). The
names of their o ces 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 di erent provinces. (If we
could only nd 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]
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 A airs 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 A airs of Ukraine; in 1937 he was
replaced by Leplevsky. We see D.M. Sokolinsky rst In Donetsk
Oblast and later in Vinnitsa Oblast; L.Ya. Faivilovich and
Fridberg – in the Northern Caucasus; M.G. Raev-Kaminsky 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 o cials 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 nance
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 o ce
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 and before the
arrival of Germans, there was an explosion of public outrage
against the Jews.
In the novel by D.P. Vitkovsky, Half-life, there is a phrase
about the Jewish looks of investigator, Yakovlev (the action is
set during Khrushchev’s  regime). Vitovsky put it rather
harshly so that Jews, who by the end of the 1960s were already
on the way of breaking away from communism and in their
new political orientation developed sympathy to any camp
memoirs, were nonetheless repulsed by such a description. I
remember V. Gershuni asked me how many other Jewish
investigators did Vitovsky come across during his 30-year-long
ordeal?
What an astonishing forgetfulness betrayed by that rather
innocent slip! Would not it have been more appropriate to
mention not the “30 years” but 50 years, or, at least, 40 years?
Indeed, Vitovsky might not have encountered many Jewish
investigators during his last thirty years, from the end of the
1930s (though they could still be found around even in the
1960s). Yet Vitovsky was persecuted by the Organs for forty
years; he survived the Solovki camp; and he apparently did not
forget the time when a Russian investigator was a less frequent
sight than a Jewish or a Latvian one.
Nevertheless, Gershuni was right in implying that all these
outstanding and not so outstanding posts were fraught with
death for their occupants; the more so, the closer it was to
1937-38.

   
Our arbiters con dently ruled from their heights and when
they were suddenly delivered a blow, it must have seemed to
them like the collapse of the universe, like the end of the world.
Wasn’t there anyone among them before the onslaught who
re ected on the usual fate of revolutionaries?
Among the major communist functionaries who perished in
1937-38, the Jews comprise an enormous percentage. For
example, a modern historian writes that if “from 1 January
1935 to 1 January 1938 the members of this nationality headed
more than 50% of the main structural units of the central
apparatus of the people’s commissariat of internal a airs, then
by 1 January 1939 they headed only 6%.”[2449]
Using numerous “execution lists” that were published over
the recent decades, and the biographical tomes of the modern
Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, we are able to trace to some degree
the fates of those outstanding and powerful Chekists, Red
commanders, Soviet party o cials, diplomats, and others,
whom we mentioned in the previous chapters of this book.
Among the Chekists the destruction was particularly
overwhelming (the names of those executed are italicized):
 G.Ya. Abrampolsky; L.M. Abramson, died in prison in 1939;
Yakov Agranov, 1938;[2450] Abram Belenky, 1941; Lev Belsky-
Levin, 1941; Matvey Berman, 1939; Boris Berman, 1939; Iosif
Blat, 1937; Ya. Veinshtok, 1939; Leonid Vul, 1938, Mark Gai-
Shtoklyand, 1937; Semyon Gendin, 1939; Benjamin Gerson,
1941; Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky, 1938; Lev Zalin-Levin, 1940; A.
Zalpeter, 1939; Lev Zakharov-Meyer, 1937; N.Zelikman, 1937;
Aleksandr Ioselevich, 1937, Zinovy Katsnelson, 1938; Lazar
Kogan, 1939; Mikhail Koltsov-Fridlyand, 1940; Georg Krukovsky,
1938; Izrail Leplevsky, 1938; Natan Margolin, 1938; A. Minaev-
Tsikanovsky, 1939; Lev Mironov-Kagan, 1938; Sergey Mironov-
Korol, 1940; Karl Pauker, 1937; Izrail Pliner, 1939; Mikhail Raev-
Kaminsky, 1939; Aleksandr Radzivilovsky, 1940; Naum Raysky-
Lekhtman, 1939; Grigoriy Rappoport, 1938; Ilya Ressin, 1940; A.
Rutkovsky; Pinkhus Simanovsky, 1940; Abram Slutsky, poisoned
in 1938; David Sokolinsky, 1940; Mikhail Trilisser; Leonid
Fayvilovich, 1936; Vladimir Tsesarsky, 1940; A. Shanin, 1937;
Isaak Shapiro, 1940; Evsey Shirvindt, 1938; Grigoriy Shklyar;
Sergey Shpigelglas, 1940; Genrikh Yagoda, 1938.
Nowadays entire directories, containing lists of the highest
o cials of the Central Apparatus of the Main Directorate of
State Security of the NKVD who fell during the Ezhov’s period
of executions and repressions, are published. There we see
many more Jewish names.[2451]
But only accidentally, thanks to the still unbridled glasnost
that began in the beginning of the 1990s, we learn about
several mysterious biographies formerly shrouded in secrecy.
For example, from 1937, professor Grigory Mayranovsky, a
specialist in poisons, headed the “Laboratory X” in the Special
Section of Operations Technology of the NKVD, which carried
out death sentences through injections with poisons by “the
direct decision of the government in 1937-47 and in 1950”; the
executions were performed in a special prisoner cell at
“Laboratory X” as well as abroad even in the 1960s and 1970s.
[2452] Mayranovsky was arrested only in 1951; from his cell he
wrote to Beria: “Dozens of sworn enemies of the Soviet Union,
including all kinds of nationalists, were destroyed by my
hand.”[2453] And from the astonishing disclosure in 1990 we
learned that the famous mobile gas chambers were invented, as
it turns out, not by Hitler during the World War II, but in the
Soviet NKVD in 1937 by Isai Davidovich Berg, the head of the
administrative and maintenance section of the NKVD of
Moscow Oblast (sure, he was not alone in that enterprise, but
he organized the whole business). This is why it is also
important to know who occupied middle-level posts. It turns
out, that I.D. Berg was entrusted with carrying out the
sentences of the “troika” of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast; he
dutifully performed his mission, which involved shuttling
prisoners to the execution place. But when three “troikas”
began to work simultaneously in the Moscow Oblast, the
executioners became unable to cope with the sheer number of
executions. Then they invented a time-saving method: the
victims were stripped naked, tied, mouths plugged, and
thrown into a closed truck, outwardly disguised as a bread
truck. On the road the exhaust fumes were redirected into the
prisoner-carrying compartment, and by the time the van
arrived to the burial ditch, the prisoners were “ready.” (Well,
Berg himself was shot in 1939, not for those evil deeds, of
course, but for “the anti-Soviet conspiracy”. In 1956 he was
rehabilitated without any problem, though the story of his
murderous invention was kept preserved and protected in the
records of his case and only recently discovered by journalists)
[2454]
There are so many individuals with outstanding lives and
careers in the list above! Bela Kun, the Butcher of Crimea,
himself fell at that time, and with him the lives of twelve
Commissars of the communist government of Budapest ended.
[2455]
However, it would be inappropriate to consider the
expulsion of Jews from the punitive organs as a form of
persecution. There was no anti-Jewish motif in those events.
(Notwithstanding, that if Stalin’s praetorians valued not only
their present bene ts and power but also the opinion of the
people whom they governed, they should have left the NKVD
and not have waited until they were kicked out. Still, this
wouldn’t have spared many of them death, but surely it would
have spared them the stigma?) The notion of purposeful anti-
Jewish purge doesn’t hold water: “according to available data,
at the end of the 1930s the Jews were one of the few national
minorities, belonging to which did not constitute a “crime” for
an NKVD o cial. There were still no regulations on national
and personnel policy in the state security agencies that was
enforced … from the end of the 1940s to the early
1950s”[2456]

   
Many Party activists fell under the destructive wave of 1937-
1938. From 1936-37 the composition of the Soviet of People’s
Commissars began to change noticeably as the purges during
the pre-war years ran through the prominent gures in the
people’s commissariats. The main personage behind
collectivization, Yakovlev, had met his bullet; the same
happened to his comrades-in-arms, Kalmanovich and
Rukhimovich, and many others. The meat-grinder devoured
many old “honored” Bolsheviks, such as the long-retired
Ryazanov or the organizer of the murder of the Tsar
Goloshchekin, not to mention Kamenev and Zinovyev. (Lazar
Kaganovich was spared although, he himself was the “iron
broom” in several purges during 1937-38; for example, they
called his swift purge of the city of Ivanov the “Black Tornado.”)
[2457]
They o er us the following interpretation: “This is a
question about the victims of the Soviet dictatorship; they
were used by it and then mercilessly discarded when their
services became redundant.”[2458] What a great argument! So
for twenty years these powerful Jews were really used? Yet
weren’t they themselves the zealous cogs in the mechanism of
that very dictatorship right up to the very time when their
“services became redundant”? Did not they make the great
contribution to the destruction of religion and culture, the
intelligentsia, and the multi-million peasantry?
A great many Red Army commanders fell under the axe. “By
the summer of 1938 without exception all… commanders of
military districts … who occupied these posts by June 1937
disappeared without a trace.” The Political Administration of
the Red Army “su ered the highest losses from the terror”
during the massacre of 1937, after the suicide of Gamarnik. Of
the highest political o cers of the Red Army, death claimed all
17 army commissars, 25 out of 28 corps commissars, and 34
out of 36 brigade (divisional) commissars.[2459] We see a
signi cant percentage of Jews in the now-published lists of
military chiefs executed in 1937-38.[2460]
Grigory Shtern had a very special military career; he
advanced along the political o cer’s  path. During the Civil
War he was military commissar at regimental, brigade, and
divisional levels. In 1923-25 he was the head of all special
detachments in the Khorezm [a short-lived republic after the
Bolshevik revolution] troops during the suppression of
rebellions in Central Asia. Until 1926, he was the head of the
political administration division. Later he studied at the
military academy for senior military o cers [and thus became
eligible for proper military posts]; in 1929-34 he was a “military
advisor to the Republican government in Spain” (not to be
confused with Manfred Shtern, who also distinguished himself
among the Red Spaniards under the alias of “General Kleber”).
Later he was the Chief of Sta of the Far Eastern Front and
conducted bloody battles at Lake Khasan in 1938 together with
Mekhlis, at the same time conspiring against Marshall Blücher,
whom he ruined and whose post of the front commander he
took over after the arrest of the latter. In March 1939, at the
18th Party Congress, he made this speech: “Together we have
destroyed a bunch of good-for-nothings— the Tukhachevskys,
Gamarniks, Uborevichs [former Soviet Marshalls[ and similar
others.” Well, he himself was shot later, in autumn 1941.[2461]
Shtern’s comrade-in-arms in aviation, Yakov Smushkevich,
also had a head-spinning career. He too began as a political
o cer (until the mid-1930s); then he studied at the academy
for top o cers. In 1936-37 he had also fought in Spain, in
aviation, and was known as “General Douglas”. In 1939 he was
commander of the aviation group at Khalkhin Gol [on the
Manchurian-Mongolian border, site of Soviet-Japanese battles
won by the Russians]. After that he rose to the commander of
all air forces of the Red Army – the General Inspector of the Air
Force; he was arrested in May 1941 and executed in the same
year.[2462]
The wave of terror spared neither administrators, nor
diplomats; almost all of the diplomats mentioned above were
executed.
Let’s name those party, military, diplomatic, and managerial
gures whom we mentioned before on these pages who now
were persecuted (the names of the executed are italicized):
Samuil Agursky, arrested in 1938; Lazar Aronshtam, 1938;
Boris Belenky, 1938; Grigory Belenky, 1938; Zakhar Belenky,1940; 
Mark Belenky, 1938; Moris Belotsky, 1938; German Bitker, 1937;
Aron Vainshtein, 1938; Yakov Vesnik, 1938; Izrail Veitser, 1938;
Abram Volpe, 1937; Yan Gamarnik, committed suicide in 1937;
Mikhail Gerchikov, 1937; Evgeny Gnedin, arrested in 1939;
Philip Goloshchekin, 1941; Ya. Goldin, 1938; Lev Gordon,
arrested in 1939; Isaak Grinberg, 1938; Yakov Gugel, 1937;
Aleksandr Gurevich, 1937; Sholom Dvoilatsky, 1937; Maks Deych,
1937; Semyon Dimanshtein, 1938; E m Dreitser, 1936; Semyon
Zhukovsky, 1940; Samuil Zaks, 1937; Zinovy Zangvil, Isaak
Zelensky, 1938; Grigory Zinovyev, 1936; S. Zorin-Gomberg, 1937;
Boris Ippo, 1937; Mikhail Kaganovich, committed suicide in
expectation of arrest, 1941; Moisey Kalmanovich, 1937; Lev
Kamenev, 1936; Abram Kamensky, 1938; Grigoriy Kaminsky,
1938; Ilya Kit-Viytenko, arrested in 1937 and spent 20 years in
camps; I.M. Kleiner, 1937; Evgeniya Kogan, 1938; Aleksandr
Krasnoshchyokov-Tobinson, 1937; Lev Kritsman, 1937; Solomon
Kruglikov, 1938; Vladimir Lazarevich, 1938; Mikhail Landa,
1938; Ruvim Levin, 1937; Yakov Livshits, 1937; Moisey Lisovsky,
arrested in 1938; Frid Markus, 1938; Lev Maryasin, 1938;
Grigory Melnichansky, 1937; Aleksandr Minkin-Menson, died in
camp in 1955; Nadezhda Ostrovskaya, 1937; Lev Pechersky,
1937; I. Pinson, 1936; Iosif Pyatnitsky-Tarshis, 1938; Izrail
Razgon, 1937; Moisey Rafes, 1942; Grigory Roginsky, 1939;
Marsel Rozenberg, 1938; Arkady Rozengolts, 1938; Naum
Rozovsky, 1942; Boris Royzenman, 1938; E. Rubinin, spent 15
years in camps; Yakov Rubinov, 1937; Moisey Rukhimovich,
1938; Oskar Ryvkin, 1937; David Ryazanov, 1938; Veniamin
Sverdlov, 1939; Boris Skvirsky, 1941; Iosif Slavin, 1938; Grigoriy
Sokolnikov-Brilliant, killed in prison, 1939; Isaak Solts, died in
con nement in 1940; Naum Sokrin, 1938; Lev Sosnovsky, 1937;
Artur Stashevsky-Girshfeld, 1937; Yury Steklov-Nakhamkis, 1941;
Nikolay Sukhanov-Gimmer, 1940; Boris Tal, 1938; Semyon
Turovsky, 1936; Semyon Uritsky, 1937; Evgeny Fainberg, 1937;
Vladimir Feigin, 1937; Boris Feldman, 1937; Yakov Fishman,
arrested in 1937; Moisey Frumkin, 1938; Maria Frumkina-Ester,
died in camp, 1943; Leon Khaikis, 1938; Avenir Khanukaev;
Moisey Kharitonov, died in camp, 1948; Mendel Khataevich,
1937; Tikhon Khvesin, 1938; Iosif Khodorovsky, 1938; Mordukh
Khorosh, 1937; Isay Tsalkovich, arrested in 1937; E m Tsetlin,
1937; Yakov Chubin; N. Chuzhak-Nasimovich; Lazar Shatskin,
1937; Akhiy Shilman, 1937; Ierokhim Epshtein, arrested in
1938; Iona Yakir, 1937; Yakov Yakovlev-Epshtein, 1938; Grigory
Shtern, 1941.
This is indeed a commemoration roster of many top-placed
Jews.
Below are the fates of some prominent Russian Jewish
socialists, who did not join the Bolsheviks or who even
struggled against them.
Boris Osipovich Bogdanov (born 1884) was an Odessan, the
grandson and son of lumber suppliers. He graduated from the
best commerce school in Odessa. While studying, he joined
Social Democrat societies. In June 1905, he was the rst civilian
who got on board the mutinous battleship, Potemkin, when she
entered the port of Odessa; he gave a speech for her crew,
urging sailors to join Odessa’s labor strike; he delivered letters
with appeals to consulates of the European powers in Russia.
He avoided punishment by departing for St. Petersburg where
he worked in the Social Democratic underground; he was a
Menshevik. He was sentenced to two 2-year-long exiles, one
after another, to Solvychegodsk and to Vologda. Before the war,
he entered the elite of the Menshevik movement; he worked
legally on labor questions. In 1915 he became the secretary of
the Labor Group at the Military Industrial Committee, was
arrested in January 1917 and freed by the February Revolution.
He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of Petrograd, and regularly
chaired its noisy sessions which attracted thousands of people.
From June 1917 he was a member of the Bureau of the All-
Russian Central Executive Committee and persistently opposed
ongoing attempts of the Bolsheviks to seize power. After the
failed Bolshevik rebellion in July 1917 he accepted the
surrender of the squad of sailors besieged in the Petropavlovsk
Fortress. After the October coup, in 1918 he was one of the
organizers of anti-Bolshevik workers movement in Petrograd.
During the Civil War he lived in Odessa. After the Civil War he
tried to restart the Menshevik political activity, but at the end
of 1920 he was arrested for one year. That was the beginning of
many years of unceasing arrests and sentences, exiles and
camps, and numerous transfers between di erent camps — the
so-called “Great Road” of so many socialists in the USSR. And
all that was just for being a Menshevik in the past and for
having Menshevik convictions even though by that time he no
longer engaged in politics and during brief respites simply
worked on economic posts and just wanted a quiet life;
however, he was suspected of economic “sabotage.” In 1922 he
requested permission to emigrate, but shortly before departure
was arrested again. First he was sent to the Solovki prison
camp and later exiled to the Pechora camp [in the Urals]; his
sentences were repeatedly extended by three years; he
experienced solitary con nement in the Suzdal camp and was
repeatedly exiled. In 1931 they attempted to incriminate him
in the case of the “All-Soviet Bureau of Mensheviks,” but he was
lucky and they left him alone. Yet he was hauled in again in
1937, imprisoned in the Omsk jail (together with already-
imprisoned communists), where he survived non-stop
interrogations which sometimes continued without a pause
for weeks, at any time of the day or night (there were three
shifts of investigators); he served out 7 years in the Kargopol
camp (several other Mensheviks were shot there); later he was
exiled to Syktyvkar; in 1948 he was again sentenced and exiled
to Kazakhstan. In 1956 he was rehabilitated; he died in 1960, a
worn-out old man.
Boris Davidovich Kamkov-Kats (born 1885) was the son of a
country doctor. From adolescence, he was a member of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party. Exiled in 1905 to the Turukhan
Krai, he escaped. Abroad, he graduated from the Heidelberg
University School of Law. He was a participant in the
Zimmerwald [Switzerland] Conference of socialists (1915).
After the February Revolution he returned to Russia. He was
one of the founders of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party; at
the time of the October coup he entered into a coalition with
the Bolsheviks. He took part in the dispersal of the Russian
Constituent Assembly in January 1918. From April he urged
breaking the alliance with the Bolsheviks; in June he already
urged “a revolutionary uprising against them. After the failed
rebellion of the Socialist Revolutionaries, he went
underground. After a brief arrest in 1920, he was arrested
again in 1921, and exiled in 1923. Between exiles he spent two
years in prison and experienced the same “Great Road.” In 1933
he was exiled to Archangel; he was arrested again in 1937 and
executed in 1938.
Abram Rafailovich Gots (born 1882) was the grandson of a
millionaire tea merchant, V.Ya. Visotsky. From the age of 14, he
was in the the Socialist Revolutionary movement from the very
creation of the SR party in 1901 (his brother Mikhail was the
party leader). From 1906, he was a terrorist, a member of the
militant wing of the SRs. From 1907-1915 he was in hard labor
camps; he spent some time sitting in the infamous
Aleksandrovsky Central. He was a participant of the February
Revolution in Irkutsk and later in Petrograd. He was a member
of the executive committees of the Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies of Petrograd and of the Soviet Peasant’s
Deputies and a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian
Central Executive Committee. From 25 October 1917 he headed
the anti-Bolshevik Committee for the Salvation of the
Motherland and Revolution. During the Civil War he continued
his struggle against Bolsheviks. In 1920 he was arrested; at the
trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1922 he was sentenced
to death, commuted to 5 years of imprisonment. Later he
experienced the “Great Road” of endless new prison terms and
exiles. In 1939 he was sentenced to 25 years in the camps and
died in one a year later.
Mikhail Yakovlevich Gendelman (born 1881) was an
attorney-at-law and a Socialist Revolutionary from 1902. He
participated in the February Revolution in Moscow, was a
member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Soldiers’
and Workers’ Deputies, a member of the Presidium of the All-
Russian Central Executive Committee, and a member of the
Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. On 25
October 1917, he left the meeting of the 2nd All-Russian
Congress of the Soviets in protest against the Bolsheviks. He
was elected to the Constituent Assembly and participated in its
only session, on 5 January 1918. Later in Samara he
participated in the Committee of Members of the Constituent
Assemby. He was arrested in 1921; in 1922 he was sentenced to
death at the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, commuted to
5 years in prison. After numerous prison terms and exiles, he
was shot in 1938.
Mikhail Isaakovich Liber-Goldman (born 1880) was one of
the founders of the Bund (1897), a member of the Central
Committee of the [General Jewish Labor] Bund of Lithuania,
Poland and Russia in Emigration; he represented the Bund at
the congresses of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’
Party. He participated in the revolution of 1905-06. In 1910 he
was exiled for three years to Vologda Province, ed soon
thereafter and emigrated again. He was a steady and
uncompromising opponent of Lenin. He returned to Russia
after 1914, and joined the Socialist “Defender” movement
(“Defense of the Motherland in War”). After the February
revolution, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the
Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, and later
he was a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee. (He left the latter post after the October
coup). Then he brie y participated in the Social Democratic
Workers’ Party of the Mensheviks. He worked on economic
positions andwas one of the leaders of the Menshevik
underground in the USSR. His “Great Road” arrests and exiles
began in1923. He was arrested again and executed in Alma-Ata
in 1937.
For many, there was a similar fate, with repeated sentences
and exiles, right up to the climax of 1937-38.
Yet in those years purges swept all over the country,
destroying the lives of countless ordinary people, including
Jews, people who had nothing to do with politics or authority.
Here are some of the Jews who perished:
Nathan Bernshtein (born 1876) a music scholar and critic; he
taught the history of music and aesthetics and wrote a number
of books; arrested in 1937, he died in prison.
Matvei Bronshtein (born 1906) a talented theoretical
physicist, Doctor of Science, who achieved extraordinary
results. He was the husband of Lyudmila K. Chukovskaya.
Arrested in 1937, he was executed in 1938.
Sergey Ginter (born 1870) an architect and engineer; arrested
in 1934, exiled to Siberia, arrested again in 1937 and executed.
Veniamin Zilbermints (born 1887) a mineralogist and
geochemist; specialist on rare elements, he laid the foundation
for semi-conductor science; he was persecuted in 1938.
 Mikhail Kokin (born 1906) an Orientalist, Sinologist and
historian, arrested in 1937 and executed.
Ilya Krichevsky (born 1885) a microbiologist, immunologist
(also trained in physics and mathematics), Doctor of Medical
Sciences, founder of a scienti c school, chairman of the
National Association of Microbiologists; arrested in 1938 and
died in 1943.
Solomon Levit (born 1894), geneticist; he studied the role of
heredity and environment in pathology. Arrested in 1938 and
died in prison.
Iokhiel Ravrebe (born 1883), an Orientalist,  Judaist, one of
the founders of the reestablished Jewish Ethnographic Society
in 1920. Accused of creating a Zionist organization, he was
arrested in 1937 and died in prison.
Vladimir Finkelshtein (born 1896), a chemical physicist,
professor, corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences; he had many works in applied electrical chemistry;
persecuted in 1937.
Ilya Khetsrov (born 1887), a hygienist and epidemiologist; he
studied environmental hygiene, protection of water resources,
and community hygiene. Arrested in 1938 and executed.
Nakhum Schwartz (born 1888), a psychiatrist, studied Jewish
psychology. In 1921-23 he taught Hebrew and wrote poetry in
Hebrew. Accused of Zionist activity, he was arrested in 1937
and later died in prison.
Here are the fates of the three brothers Shpilrein from
Rostov-on-Don. Jan (born 1887) was a mathematician; he
applied mathematical methods in electrical and heat
engineering, he was professor at the  Bauman Moscow State
Technical University and later the dean of its Electrical
Engineering Department. He was persecuted and died in 1937.
Isaak (born 1891) was a psychologist, Doctor of Philosophy. In
1927 he became the head of the All-Russian Society of
Psychotechnology and Applied Psychophysiology; he
performed extensive psychological analysis of professions and
optimization of working environment. He was arrested in
1935 and later executed. Emil (born 1899) was a biologist, the
dean of the Biology Department of Rostov University. He was
shot in 1937.
Leonid Yurovsky (born 1884) Doctor of Political Economy, one
of the authors of the monetary reform of 1922-24.  A close
friend to A.V. Chayanov and N.D. Kondratev [prominent
Russian scientists], he was arrested in 1930, freed in 1935,
then arrested again in 1937 and executed.

   
Despite the overwhelming percentage of high-placed,
“aristocratic” Jews, who fell under Stalin’s axe, the free Western
press did not perceive the events as speci cally the persecution
of Jews: the Jews were massacred simply because of their
abundance in the top tiers of the Soviet hierarchy. Indeed, we
read such a stipulation in the collection of works Evreysky Mir
[The Jewish World] (1939): “No doubt that the Jews in the USSR
have numerous opportunities, which they did not have before
the revolution, and which they do not have even now in some
democratic countries. They can become generals, ministers,
diplomats, professors, the most high-ranking and the most
servile aristocrats.” Opportunities but “in no way rights”,
because of the absence of such rights, “Yakir, Garmanik,
Yagoda, Zinovyev, Radek, Trotsky” and the rest fell from their
heights and lost their very lives.”[2463] Still, no nationality
enjoyed such a right under the communist dictatorship; it was
all about the ability to cling to power.
 The long-time devoted socialist, emigrant S. Ivanovich (S.O.
Portugeis), admitted: “Under the Tsars, the Jews were indeed
restricted in their ‘right of living’; yet their ‘right to live’ was
incomparably greater then than under Bolshevism.” Indeed.
However, at the same time, despite being perfectly aware of
collectivization, he writes that the “awkward attempts to
establish ‘socialism’ in Russia took the heaviest toll from the
Jews”; that “the scorpions of Bolshevism did not attack any
other people with such brutal force as they attacked
Jews.”[2464]
Yet during the Great Plague of dekulakization, it was not
thousands but millions of peasants who lost both their ‘right of
living’ and the ‘right to live’. And yet all the Soviet pens (with so
many Jews among them) kept complete silence about this cold-
blooded destruction of the Russian peasantry. In unison with
them, the entire West was silent. Could it be really out of the
lack of knowledge? Or was it for the sake of protecting the
Soviet regime? Or was it simply because of indi erence? Why,
this is almost inconceivable: 15 million peasants were not
simply deprived of entering the institutes of higher learning or
of the right to study in graduate school, or to occupy nice posts
— no! They were dispossessed and driven like cattle out of their
homes and sent to certain death in the taiga and tundra. And
the Jews, among other passionate urban activists,
enthusiastically took the reins of the collectivization into their
hands, leaving behind them persistent evil memory. And who
had raised their voices in defense of the peasants then? And
now, in 1932-33, in Russia and Ukraine – on the very outskirts
of Europe, ve to six million people died from hunger! And the
free press of the free world maintained utter silence… And
even if we take into account the extreme Leftist bias of the
contemporary Western press and its devotion to the socialist
“experiment” in the USSR, it is still impossible not to be amazed
at the degree to which they could go to be blind and insensitive
to the su erings of even tens of millions of fellow humans.
If you don’t see it, your heart doesn’t cry.
During the 1920s, the Ukrainian Jews departed from their
pro-Russian-statehood mood of 1917-1920, and by the end of
the 1920s “the Jews are among Ukrainian chauvinists and
separatists, wielding enormous in uence there—but only in
the cities.”[2465] We can nd such a conclusion: the
destruction of Ukrainian-language culture in 1937 was in part
aimed against Jews, who formed “a genuine union” with
Ukrainians “for the development of local culture in Ukrainian
language.”[2466] Nevertheless, such a union in cultural circles
could not soften the attitudes of the wider Ukrainian
population toward Jews. We have already seen in the previous
chapter how in the course of collectivization “a considerable
number of Jewish communists functioned in rural locales as
commanders and lords over life and death.”[2467] This placed a
new scar on Ukrainian-Jewish relations, already tense for
centuries. And although the famine was a direct result of
Stalin’s policy, and not only in Ukraine (it brutally swept across
the Volga Region and the Urals), the suspicion widely arose
among Ukrainians that the entire Ukrainian famine was the
work of the Jews. Such an interpretation has long existed (and
the Ukrainian émigré press adhered to it until the 1980s).
“Some Ukrainians are convinced that 1933 was the revenge of
the Jews for the times of Khmelnitsky.”[2468] [A 17th century
Cossack leader who conducted bloody anti-Jewish pogroms in
Ukraine].
Don’t expect to reap wheat where the weed was sewn. The
supreme authority of so many Jews along with only a small
number of Jews being touched by the grievances which
a icted the rest of population could lead to all sorts of
interpretations.
 Jewish authors who nervously kept an eye on anti-Semitism
in the USSR did not notice this trampled ash, however, and
made rather optimistic conclusions. For instance, Solomon
Schwartz writes: “From the start of the 1930s, anti-Semitism in
the Soviet Union quickly abated”, and “in the mid-1930s it lost
the character of a mass phenomenon …anti-Semitism reached
the all-time low point.” He explains this, in part, as the result of
the end of the NEP (the New Economic Policy) and thereby the
disappearance of Jewish businessmen and petty Jewish
merchants. Later, “forced industrialization and lightning-fast
collectivization,” which he favorably compares with a kind of
“shock therapy, i.e., treatment of mental disorders with electric
shocks,” was of much help. In addition he considers that in
those years the ruling communist circles began to struggle
with Great-Russian “chauvinism.” (Well, they did not begin;
they just continued the policy of Lenin’s intolerance). Schwartz
soundly notes that the authorities were “persistently silent
about anti-Semitism”, “in order to avoid the impression that
the struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism is a struggle for
the Jews.”[2469]
In January 1931, rst the New York Times,[2470] and later the
entire world press published a sudden and ostentatious
announcement by Stalin to the Jewish Telegraph Agency: “The
Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot help but
be an irreconcilable and sworn enemy of anti-Semitism. In the
USSR, anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted by law as a
phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet order. Active anti-
Semites are punished, according to the laws of the USSR, with
the death penalty.”[2471] See, he addressed the democratic
West and did not mind specifying the punishment. And it was
only one nationality in the USSR that was set apart by being
granted such a protection. And world opinion was completely
satis ed with that.
 But characteristically, the announcement by the Leader was
not printed in the Soviet press (because of his cunning
reservations); it was produced for export and he hid this
position from his own citizens; in the USSR it was only printed
at the end of 1936.[2472] Then Stalin sent Molotov to make a
similar announcement at the Congress of Soviets.
A contemporary Jewish author, erroneously interpreting
Molotov’s speech, suggests that  speaking on behalf of the
government he threatened to punish “anti-Semitic feelings”
with death.[2473] Feelings! No, Molotov did not mention
anything like that; he did not depart from Stalin’s policy of
persecuting “active anti-Semites.” We are not aware of any
instance of death penalty in the 1930s for anti-Semitism, but
people were sentenced for it according to the Penal Code.
(People whispered that before the revolution the authorities did
not punish as harshly even for libels against the Tsar.)
But now S. Schwartz observes a change: “In the second half
of the 1930s, these sentiments [people’s hostility toward Jews]
became much more prevalent … particularly in the major
centers, where the Jewish intelligentsia and semi-intelligentsia
were concentrated…. Here again the legend about “Jewish
domination” gradually began to come back to life, and they
began to spread exaggerated notions about the role of Jews in
the middle and top ranks of government.” Well, whether or not
it was really a legend, he immediately attempted to explain it,
though in a quite naïve manner, suggesting the same old
excuse that the Jewish intelligentsia and semi-intelligentsia
simply had almost no other source of livelihood  under Soviet
conditions except the government service.”[2474]
This is so shameful to read. What oppression and despair!
See, they had almost no other sources of livelihood, only
privileged ones. And the rest of population was absolutely free
to toil on kolkhoz elds, to dig pits, and to roll barrows at the
great construction projects of the 5-year plans…
In o cial policy, nothing had changed in the 1930s in the
Jewish Question from the time of the revolution; no o cial
hostility toward Jews existed. Indeed, they used to dream and
proclaim about the impending end of all national con icts.
And the foreign Jewish circles did not and could not sense
any oppression of the Jews in the USSR. In the article The Jews
and the Soviet Dictatorship, S. Ivanovich wrote: “Abroad, many
believe that there is no anti-Semitism in Russia, and on that
basis they are favorably disposed toward the Soviet authorities.
But in Russia they know that this is not true.” However, Jews
“pray for the long-life of the Soviet regime … and are strongly
afraid of its demise,” for “Stalin protects them from pogroms
and hopefully would protect them in future.” The author
sympathizes with such an opinion, although he considers it
awed: “If the Bolshevik dictatorship falls, no doubt there will
be wild anti-Semitic ravages and violence …The fall of the
Soviet regime would be a catastrophe for the Jews, and any
friend of the Jewish people should reject such a prospect with
horror”; yet at the same time he remarks that “the Soviet
dictatorship is already embarrassed by the Judeophilia and
Jewish dominance attributed to it.”[2475]
The resolution on Stalin’s report at the 16th Party Congress
provided the general political direction for the 1930s, calling
for an energetic struggle against chauvinism, and primarily
against the Great Russian chauvinism. The Party language was
easily understood by all. And for several more years this
struggle was enthusiastically carried on. Yet what kind of
Stalinist madness was it? By that time there was no trace left of
the Great Russian chauvinism. Stalin was not able to envision
the immediate future [of WWII] – when only Russian
patriotism would save him from imminent doom.
 Then they have already started to sound the alarm about the
danger of any rebirth of Russian patriotism. In 1939, S.
Ivanovich claimed to notice a trend “of this dictatorship
returning to some national traditions of Moscovite  Russ and
Imperial Russia”; he caustically cited several stamps that
entered popular discourse around that time such as the “‘love
for the Motherland’, ‘national pride’ etc.”[2476]
See, this is where the mortal danger for Russia lurked then,
immediately before Hitler’s assault – in that ugly Russian
patriotism!
This alarm did not leave the minds of Jewish publicists for
the next half century, even when they looked back at that war,
when mass patriotism blazed up, at the war which saved Soviet
Jewry. So in 1988 we read in an Israeli magazine: “Vivid
traditions of the Black Hundreds … were the foundation of
‘vivifying Soviet patriotism’, which blossomed later, during the
Great Patriotic War”[2477] [the o cial Russian designation for
the Eastern front in WWII].
Looking back at that war of 1941-1945, let’s admit that this
is a highly ungrateful judgment.
So, even the purest and most immaculate Russian patriotism
has no right to exist – not now, not ever?
Why is it so? And why it is that Russian patriotism is thus
singled out?

   
An important event in Jewish life in the USSR was the closing
of the YevSek at the Central Committee of the All-Russian
Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1930. Though in accord
with the Soviet blueprint, this act blocked any separate
development of a Jewish society having “national, cultural, and
individual Jewish autonomy.” From now on Jewish cultural
development lay within the Soviet mainstream. In 1937-38 the
leading Yevseks – Dimanshtein, Litvakov, Frumkina-Ester and
their associates Motl Kiper, Itskhok Sudarsky, Aleksandr
Chemerissky – who, in words of Yu. Margolina, “in the service
of the authorities carried out the greatest pogrom against
Jewish culture,”[2478] were arrested and soon executed. Many
Yevseks, “occupying governing positions in the central and
local departments of the Society for Settling Toiling Jews on
the Land (OZET) and in the Jewish community, Jewish cultural
and educational structures,” also fell under the juggernaut. In
1936-39, the majority of them were persecuted.”[2479] The
poisonous atmosphere of 1930s now reached these levels too.
During open public meetings they began to accuse and expose
prominent Jewish communists, who at some time before were
members either of the Bund or of the Zionist Socialist Party, or
even of Poale-Zion, all of which were crippled under the Soviet
regime. Was there anyone, whose past the Bolsheviks did not
try to criminalize? “Who have you been before…?” In 1938 Der
Emes was closed also.
What about education? “Right up to 1933 the number of
Jewish schools and Jewish students in them increased despite
the early (1920s) critique   “of nationalistic over-zealousness”’
in the actions of the Yevseks on the ‘forced transition of Jewish
education into Yiddish.’”[2480] From 1936 to 1939 a “period of
accelerated decline and even more accelerated inner
impoverishment” of the schools in Yiddish was noted.[2481]
After 1936-37 “the number of Jewish schools began to decline
quickly even in Ukraine and Belorussia”; the desire of parents
to send their children to such schools had diminished.
“Education in Yiddish was seen as less and less prestigious;
there was an e ort to give children an education in the Russian
language.” Also, from the second half of the 1930s the number
of institutions of higher education lecturing in Yiddish began
to decline rapidly”; “almost all Jewish institutions of higher
education and technical schools were closed by 1937-
38.”[2482]
At the start of 1930s the Jewish scienti c institutes at the
academies of science of Ukraine and Belorussia were closed; in
Kiev ‘The Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture’ fell into
desolation.” And soon after this arrests followed (Mikhail Kokin
of the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, literature and History
was executed; Iokhiel Rabrebe, formerly of the Petrograd
Institute of Higher Jewish Studies, who in the 1930s headed
the Jewish Section of the Public Library, was sentenced to 8
years and died in the transit camp).[2483]
Persecutions spread to writers in Yiddish: Moyshe Kulbak
was persecuted in 1937; Zelik Akselrod, in 1940; Abram
Abchuk, a teacher of Yiddish and a critic, in 1937; writer Gertsl
Bazov , was persecuted in 1938. Writer I. Kharik and critic Kh.
Dunets were persecuted also.
Still, “literature in Yiddish was actively published until the
end of the 1930s. Jewish publishers were working in Moscow,
Kiev, and Minsk.” Yet what kind of literature was it? In the
1930s “the overwhelming majority of works were written
stereotypically, in accordance with the unshakable principles
of ‘socialist realism.’”[2484] Literature in Yiddish “from the
1930s up to June 1941 … was marked by the cult of Stalin.
Unbridled attery for Stalin owed from the bosom of Jewish
poetry…”[2485] Itsik Feder “managed to light up even o cial
propaganda with lyrical notes. These monstrous sayings are
ascribed to his pen: ‘You betrayed your father — this is great!’,
and ‘I say ‘Stalin’ but envision the sun.’”[2486] Most of these
writers, who zealously tried to please Stalin, were arrested ten
years later. But some of them, as mentioned above, had already
drawn this lot.
 Similarly, “the ideological press of o cial communist
doctrine signi ed for many Jewish artists and sculptors a
complete break up, quite often tragic, with the national Jewish
traditions.” (Still, what culture in the USSR was not touched by
this?) So it comes as little surprise that “the overwhelming
majority … of Jewish theaters devoted much attention to
propaganda performances.” This included all 19
aforementioned professional Yiddish theaters and “numerous
independent collectives, studios, and circles.”[2487]
Concerning Hebrew culture  which preserved the national
traditions: it was by now conclusively banished and went
underground.
It has already been mentioned that the Zionist underground
was crushed by the beginning of the 1930s. Many Zionists were
already rounded up, but still many others were accused of “the
Zionist conspiracy.” Take Pinkhas Dashevsky (from Chapter 8) –
in 1933 he was arrested as a Zionist. Pinkhas Krasny was not a
Zionist but was listed as such in his death sentence. He was
former Minister of Petliura’s Directorate, emigrated but later
returned into the USSR. He was executed in 1939. Volf
Averbukh, a Poale-Zionist from his youth, left for Israel in
1922, where “he collaborated with the communist press.” In
1930, he was sent back to the USSR, where he was arrested.
[2488]
“Most of the semi-legal cheder schools and yeshivas were
shut down” around that time. Arrests rolled on from the late
1920s in the Hasidic underground. Yakov-Zakharia Maskalik
was arrested in 1937, Abrom-Levik Slavin was arrested in
1939. By the end of 1933, “237 synagogues were closed, that is,
57% of all existing in the rst years of Soviet authority … In
the mid-1930s, the closure of synagogues accelerated.” From
1929, “the authorities began to impose excessive tax on matzo
baking.” In 1937, “the Commission on the Questions of
Religions at the Central Executive Committee of the USSR
prohibited baking matzo in Jewish religious communities.” In
1937-38 “the majority of clergy of the Jewish religious cult
were persecuted. There were no rabbis in the majority of still-
functioning synagogues.”[2489] “In 1938 a ‘hostile rabbinical
nest’ was discovered in the Moscow Central Synagogue; the
rabbis and a number of parishioners were arrested.”[2490] The
Rabbi of Moscow, Shmuel-Leib Medalia, was arrested and
executed in 1938. (His son, Moishe Medalia, was arrested at the
same time). In 1937, the Rabbi of Saratov, Iosif Bogatin, was
arrested.[2491]
In the early 1930s, when the Jewish religion was restricted
in the USSR, the closing of thousands of Orthodox Christian
temples and the destruction of many of them rolled along
throughout the entire country. They especially hurried to
“liberate” Soviet Moscow from the church; Boris Iofan was in
charge of that “reconstruction.” In that bitter and hungry year
of devastating breakdown of the country, they promoted
projects for a grand Palace of Soviets in place of the Cathedral
of Christ the Savior. Izvestiya reports: “So far, eleven projects
are presented at the exhibition. Particularly interesting among
them are the works of architects Fridman, B. Iofan, Bronshtein,
and Ladovsky.”[2492] Later, the arrests reached the architects
as well.
The move toward ”settling the toiling Jews on the land”
gradually became irrelevant for Soviet Jews. ”The percentage of
Jewish settlers abandoning lands given to them remained
high.” In 1930-32, the activity of foreign Jewish philanthropic
organizations such as Agro-Joint, OKG, and EKO in the USSR,
had noticeably decreased.” And although in 1933-38 it had still
continued within the frameworks of new restrictive
agreements, “in 1938 the activity ceased completely.” “In the
rst half of 1938, rst the OZET and then the Committee for
Settling the Toiling Jews on the Land (KomZET) were dissolved.
The overwhelming majority of remaining associates of these
organizations, who were still at liberty, were persecuted.” By
1939, “the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Ukraine decided to liquidate …’the arti cially’ created national
Jewish districts and boroughs.”[2493]
Nonetheless, the idea of a Jewish colony in Birobidzhan was
not abandoned in the 1930s and was even actively advanced by
government. In order to put spirit into the masses, the
authorities staged the Second All-Union Congress of the OZET
in Moscow in December 1930.[2494] By the end of 1931, the
general population of that oblast was 45,000 with only 5,000
Jews among them, although whole villages with homes were
built for their settlement and access roads were laid
(sometimes by inmates from the camps nearby; for example,
the train station of Birobidzhan was constructed in this
manner).[2495] Yet non-Jewish colonization of the region went
faster than Jewish colonization.
In order to set matters right, in autumn of 1931 the
Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR
decreed that another 25,000 Jews should be settled in
Birobidzhan during the next two years, after which it would be
possible to declare it the Jewish Autonomous Republic.
However, in the following years the number of Jews who left
exceeded the number of Jews arriving, and by the end of 1933,
after six years of colonization, the number of settled Jews
amounted only to 8,000; of them only 1,500 lived in rural
areas, i.e. worked in kolkhozes; that is, the Jews comprised less
than 1/5 of all kolkhoz workers there. (There is also
information that the land in the Jewish kolkhozes was fairly
often tilled by hired Cossacks and Koreans). The oblast could
not even provide enough agricultural products for its own
needs.[2496]
 Nevertheless, in May 1934, when the non-Jewish population
had already reached 50,000, Birobidzhan was loudly declared a
Jewish Autonomous Oblast. (It still did not qualify for the
status of a “republic.”)
Thus, there was no “national enthusiasm among the Jewish
masses, which would ease the overcoming of the enormous
di culties inherent in such colonization.” There was no
industry in Birobidzhan, and “the economic and social
structure” of the settlers “resembled that of contemporary
Jewish towns and shtetls in Ukraine and Belorussia” This was
particularly true for the city of Birobidzhan, especially
considering ”the increased role of the Jews in the local
administrative apparatus.”[2497]
Culture in Yiddish had certainly developed in the
autonomous oblast – there were Jewish newspapers, radio,
schools, a theater named after Kaganovich (its director was the
future author E. Kazakevich), a library named after Sholem
Aleichem, a museum of Jewish culture, and public reading
facilities. Perets Markish had published the exultant article, A
People Reborn, in the central press.”[2498] (In connection with
Birobidzhan, let’s note the fate of the demographer Ilya
Veitsblit. His position was that “the policy of recruitment of
poor urban Jews in order to settle them in rural areas should
end”; “there are no declassé individuals among the Jews, who
could be suitable for Birobidzhan.” He was arrested in 1933 and
likely died in prison).[2499]
Yet the central authorities believed that that the
colonization should be stimulated even further; and from 1934
they began a near compulsory recruitment among Jewish
artisans and workers in the western regions, that is, among the
urban population without a slightest knowledge of agriculture.
The slogan rang out: “The entire USSR builds the Jewish
Autonomous Oblast!” – meaning that recruitment of non-
Jewish cadres is needed for quicker development. The ardent
Yevsek Dimanshtein wrote that “we do not aim to create a
Jewish majority in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast as soon as
possible; … this would contradict to the principles of
internationalism.”[2500]
But despite all these measures, during the next three years
only another 11,000 to eight or nine thousand Jews were added
to those already living there; still, most of newcomers
preferred to stay in the oblast capital closer to its railroad
station and looked for opportunities to escape). Yet as we know,
the Bolsheviks may not be defeated or dispirited. So, because of
dissatisfaction with the KomZET, in 1936 the “Central
Executive Committee of the USSR decided to partially delegate
the overseeing of Jewish resettlement in the Jewish
Autonomous Oblast to the resettlement department of the
NKVD.”[2501] In August of 1936, the Presidium of the Central
Executive Committee of the USSR proclaimed that “for the rst
time in the history of the Jewish people, their ardent desire to
have their own homeland has been realized and their own
national statehood has been established.”[2502] And now they
began planning resettlement of 150,000 more Jews to
Birobidzhan.
Looking back at it, the Soviet e orts to convert the Jews to
agriculture su ered the same defeat as the Tsarist e orts a
century before.
In the meantime, the year 1938 approached. KomZET was
closed, OZET was disbanded, and the main Yevseks in Moscow
and the administrators of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast were
arrested. Those Birobidzhan Jews who could left for the cities
of the Far East or for Moscow. According to the 1939 Census,
the general population of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast
consisted of 108,000 people; however, “the number of Jews
there remained secret … the Jewish population of Birobidzhan
was still low.” Presumably, eighteen Jewish kolkhozes still
existed, of 40-50 families each,[2503] but in those kolkhozes …
they conversed and corresponded with the authorities in
Russian.
Yet what could Birobidzhan have become for Jews? Just
forty- ve years later, the Israeli General Beni Peled
emphatically explained why neither Birobidzhan nor Uganda
could give the Jewish people a sense of connection with the
land: “I simply feel that I am not ready to die for a piece of land
in Russia, Uganda, or New Jersey!…”[2504]
This sense of connection, after thousands of years of
estrangement, was restored by Israel.

   
The migration of Jews to the major cities did not slow down in
the 1930s. The Jewish Encyclopedia reports that, according to
the Census of 1926, there were 131,000 Jews in Moscow; in
1933, there were 226,500; and in 1939, there were 250,000
Jews. “As a result of the massive resettlement of Ukrainian
Jews, their share among Moscow Jewry increased to
80%.”[2505] In the Book on the Russian Jewry (1968), we nd
that in the 1930s up to a half-million Jews “were counted
among government workers, sometimes occupying prominent
posts, primarily in the economy.”[2506] (The author also
reports, that in the 1930s “up to a half-million Jews became
involved in industry, mainly in manual labor.” On the other
hand, Larin provides another gure, that among the industrial
workers there were only 2.7% Jews or 200,000[2507] or 2.5
times less than the rst estimate). “The ow of Jews into the
ranks of o ce workers grew constantly. The reason for this
was the mass migration to cities, and also the sharp increase of
the educational level, especially of Jewish youth.”[2508] The
Jews predominantly lived in the major cities, did not
experience arti cial social restrictions, so familiar to their
Russian peers, and, it needs to be said, they studied devotedly,
thus preparing masses of technical cadres for the Soviet future.
Let’s glance into statistical data: “in 1929 the Jews comprised
13.5% of all students in the higher educational institutions in
the USSR; in 1933—12.2%; in 1936—13.3% of all students, and
18% of graduate students” (with their share of the total
population being only 1.8%);[2509] from 1928 to 1935, “the
number of Jewish students per 1,000 of the Jewish population
rose from 8.4 to 20.4 [while] per 1,000 Belorussians there were
2.4 students, and per 1,000 Ukrainians – 2.0”; and by 1935 “the
percentage of Jewish students exceeded the percentage of Jews
in the general population of the country by almost seven times,
thus standing out from all other peoples of the Soviet
Union.”[2510] G.V. Kostirchenko, who researched Stalin’s
policies on Jews, comments on the results of the 1939 census:
“After all, Stalin could not disregard the fact that at the start of
1939 out of every 1,000 Jews, 268 had a high school education,
and 57 out of 1,000 had higher education” (among Russians
the gures were, respectively, 81 and 6 per 1,000).[2511] It is
no secret that “highly successful completion of higher
education or doctoral studies allowed individuals to occupy
socially-prestigious positions in the robustly developing Soviet
economy of the 1930s.”[2512]
However, in The Book on Russian Jewry we nd that “without
exaggeration, after Ezhov’s purges, not a single prominent
Jewish gure remained at liberty in Soviet Jewish society,
journalism, culture, or even in the science.”[2513] Well, it was
absolutely not like that, and it is indeed a gross exaggeration.
(Still, the same author, Grigory Aronson, in the same book,
only two pages later says summarily about the 1930s, that “the
Jews were not deprived of general civil rights … they continued
to occupy posts in the state and party apparatus”, and “there
were quite a few Jews … in the diplomatic corps, in the general
sta of the army, and among the professors in the institutions
of higher learning…Thus we enter into the year 1939.”[2514]
The voice of Moscow was that of the People’s Artist, Yury
Levitan – “the voice of the USSR”, that incorruptible prophet of
our Truth, the main host of the radio station of the Comintern
and a favorite of Stalin. Entire generations grew up, listening to
his voice: he read Stalin’s speeches and summaries of
Sovinformburo [the Soviet Information Bureau], and the
famous announcements about the beginning and the end of
the war.[2515]
In 1936 Samuil Samosud became the main conductor of the
Bolshoi Theatre and served on that post for many years.
Mikhail Gnesin continued to produce music “in the style of
modern European music and in the style of the so-called ‘New
Jewish music’”; Gnesin’s sisters successfully ran the music
school, which developed into the outstanding Musical
Institute. The ballet of Aleksandr Krein was performed in the
Mariinsky and Bolshoi theatres. Well, Krein distinguished
himself by his symphony, Rhapsody, that is, a Stalin’s speech set
to music. Krein’s brother and nephew ourished also.[2516] A
number of brilliant musicians rose to national and later to
international fame: Grigory Ginzburg, Emil Gilels, Yakov Zak,
Lev Oborin, David Oistrakh, Yakov Flier and many others. Many
established theatre directors, theatre and literary critics, and
music scholars continued to work without hindrance.
Examining the culture of the 1930s, it is impossible to miss
the extraordinary achievements of the songwriter composers.
Isaak Dunaevsky, “a founder of genres of operetta and mass
song in Soviet music”, “composed easily digestible songs …
routinely glorifying the Soviet way of life (The March of Merry
Lads, 1933; The Song of Kakhovka, 1935; The Song about
Homeland, 1936; The Song of Stalin, 1936, etc.). O cial
propaganda on the arts declared these songs … the
embodiment of the thoughts and feelings of millions of Soviet
people.”[2517] Dunaevsky’s tunes were used as the identifying
melody of Moscow Radio. He was heavily decorated for his
service: he was the rst of all composers to be awarded the
Order of the Red Banner of Labour and elected to the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR in the notorious year 1937. Later he was
also awarded the Order of Lenin. He used to preach to
composers that the Soviet people do not need symphonies.
[2518]
Matvey Blanter and the brothers Daniil and Dmitry Pokrass
were famous for their complacent hit song If War Strikes
Tomorrow (“we will instantly crush the enemy”) and for their
earlier hit the Budyonny March. There were many other famous
Jewish songwriters and composers in 1930s and later: Oskar
Feltsman, Solovyev-Sedoy, Ilya Frenkel, Mikhail Tanich, Igor
Shaferan, Yan Frenkel and Vladimir Shainsky, etc. They
enjoyed copy numbers in the millions, fame, royalties — come
on, who dares to name those celebrities among the oppressed?
And after all, alongside the skillfully written songs, how much
blaring Soviet propaganda did they churn out, confusing,
brainwashing, and deceiving the public and crippling good
taste and feelings?
What about movie industry? The modern Israeli Jewish
Encyclopedia states that in the 1930s “the main role of movies
was to glorify the successes of socialism; a movie’s
entertainment value was minimal. Numerous Jewish
lmmakers participated in the development of standards of a
uni ed and openly ideological lm industry, conservative in
form and obsessively didactic. Many of them were already
listed in the previous chapter; take, for example, D. Vertov’s
Symphony of the Donbass, 1931, released immediately after the
Industrial Party Trial. Here are a few of the then-celebrated
names: F. Ermler (The Coming, The Great Citizen, Virgin Soil
Upturned), S. Yutkevich (The Coming, The Miners), the famous
Mikhail Romm (Lenin in October, Lenin in 1918), L. Arnshtam
(Girlfriends, Friends), I. Trauberg (The Son of Mongolia, The Year
1919), A. Zarkhi and I. Khei ts (Hot Days, Ambassador of the
Baltic).[2519] Obviously, lmmakers were not persecuted in the
1930s, though many cinematography, production and lm
distribution managers were arrested; two high-ranking bosses
of the central management of the cinema industry, B.
Shumyatsky and S. Dukelsky, were even shot.[2520]
In the 1930s, Jews clearly comprised a majority among
lmmakers. So, who was really the victim – deceived viewers,
whose souls were steamrolled with lies and rude didactics, or
the lmmakers, who “forged documentaries, biographies and
produced pseudo-historical and essentially unimportant
propaganda lms,” characterized by “phony monumentality
and inner emptiness”? The Jewish Encyclopedia adds sternly:
“Huge numbers of Jewish operators and directors were engaged
in making popular science, educational, and documentary
lms, in the most o cial sphere of the Soviet cinematography,
where adroit editing helped to produce a “genuine
documentary” out of a fraud. For example, R. Karmen, did it
regularly without scruples.”[2521] (He was a glori ed Soviet
director, producer of many documentaries about the civil war
in Spain and the Nuremberg Trials; he made “the anniversary-
glorifying lm The Great Patriotic War”, Vietnam, and a lm
about Cuba; he was a recipient of three USSR State Prizes (the
Stalin Prize) and the Lenin Prize; he held the titles of the
People’s Artist of the USSR and the Hero of the Socialist Labor).
[2522] Let’s not forget lmmaker Konrad Wolf, the brother of
the famous Soviet spy, Marcus Wolf.[2523]
 No, the o cial Soviet atmosphere of 1930s was absolutely
free of ill will toward Jews. And until the war, the
overwhelming majority of Soviet Jewry sympathized with the
Soviet ideology and sided with the Soviet regime. “There was
no Jewish Question indeed in the USSR before the war – or
almost none”; then the “open anti-Semites were not yet in
charge of newspapers and journals … they did not control
personnel departments”[2524] (quite the opposite – many such
positions were occupied by Jews).
Sure, then Soviet “culture” consisted of “Soviet patriotism,”
i.e., of producing art in accordance with directives from above.
Unfortunately, many Jews were engaged in that pseudo-
cultural sphere and some of them even rose to supervise the
Russian language culture. In the early 1930s we see B.M. Volin-
Fradkin at the head of the Main Administration for Literary
and Publishing A airs (GlavLit), the organ of o cial
censorship, directing the development of the culture. Many of
the GlavLit personnel were Jewish. For example, in GlavLit,
from 1932 to 1941 we see A.I. Bendik, who would become the
Director of the Book Palace during the war.[2525] Emma
Kaganova, the spouse of Chekist Pavel Sudoplatov was “trusted
to manage the activities of informants among the Ukrainian
intelligentsia.”[2526] After private publishers were abolished,
“a signi cant contribution to the organization and
management of Soviet government publishers was made by S.
Alyansky, M. Volfson, I. Ionov (Bernshtein), A. Kantorovich, B.
Malkin, I. Berite, B. Feldman, and many others.”[2527] Soon all
book publishing was centralized in the State Publishing House
and there was no other place for an author to get his work
published.
The Jewish presence was also apparent in all branches of the
printed propaganda Works of the clumsy caricaturist Boris
E mov could be found in the press everyday (he produced
extremely lthy images of Western leaders; for instance, he
had portrayed Nicholas II in a crown carrying a ri e, trampling
corpses). Every two to three days, sketches of other dirty
satirists, like G. Riklin, the piercingly caustic D. Zaslavsky, the
adroit Radek, the persistent Sheinin and the brothers Tur,
appeared in press. A future writer L. Kassil wrote essays for
Izvestiya. There were many others: R. Karmen, T. Tess, Kh.
Rappoport, D. Chernomordikov, B. Levin, A. Kantorovich, and
Ya. Perelman. These names I found in Izvestiya only, and there
were two dozen more major newspapers feeding the public
with blatant lies. In addition, there existed a whole sea of
ignoble mass propaganda brochures saturated with lies. When
they urgently needed a mass propaganda brochure devoted to
the Industrial Party Trial (such things were in acute demand
for all of the 1930s), one B. Izakson knocked it out under the
title: “Crush the viper of intervention!” Diplomat E. Gnedin, the
son of Parvus, wrote lying articles about the “incurable wounds
of Europe” and the imminent death of the West. He also wrote
a rebuttal article, Socialist Labor in the Forests of the Soviet
North,in response to Western “slanders” about the allegedly
forced labor of camp inmates felling timber. When in the
1950s Gnedin returned from a camp after a long term (though,
it appears, not having experienced tree felling himself), he was
accepted as a venerable su erer and no one reminded him of
his lies in the past.
In 1929-31 Russian historical science was destroyed; the
Archaeological Commission, the Northern Commission,
Pushkin House, the Library of the Academy of Sciences were all
abolished, traditions were smashed, and prominent Russian
historians were sent to rot in camps. (How much did we hear
about that destruction?) Third and fourth-rate Russian
historians then surged in to occupy the vacant posts and
brainwash us for the next half a century. Sure, quite a few
Russian slackers made their careers then, but Jewish ones did
not miss their chance.
Already in the 1930s, Jews played a prominent role in Soviet
science, especially in the most important and technologically-
demanding frontiers, and their role was bound to become even
more important in the future. “By the end of 1920s, Jews
comprised 13.6% of all scientists in the country; by 1937 their
share increased to 17.6%”; in 1939 there were more than
15,000 or 15.7% Jewish scientists and lecturers in the
institutions of higher learning.”[2528]
In physics, member of the Academy A. F. Io e nurtured a
highly successful school. As early as 1918, he founded the
Physical-Technical Institute in Petrograd. Later, “ fteen
a liated scienti c centers were created”; they were headed by
Io e’s disciples. “His former students worked in many other
institutes, in many ways determining the scienti c and
technological potential of the Soviet Union.”[2529] (However,
repressions did not bypass them. In 1938, in the Kharkov
Physics-Technological Institute, six out of eight heads of
departments were arrested: Vaisberg, Gorsky, Landau,
Leipunsky, Obreimov, Shubnikov; a seventh—Rueman—was
exiled; only Slutskin remained).[2530] The name of Semyon
Aisikovich, the constructor of Lavochkin ghter aircraft, was
long unknown to the public.[2531] Names of many other
personalities in military industry were kept secret as well.
Even now we do not know all of them. For instance, M. Shkud
“oversaw development of powerful radio stations,”[2532] yet
there were surely others, whom we do not know, working on
the development of no less powerful jammers.)
Numerous Jewish names in technology, science and its
applications prove that the ower of several Jewish generations
went into these elds. Flipping through the pages of
biographical tomes of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, which
only lists the Jews who were born or lived in Russia, we see an
abundance of successful and gifted people with real
accomplishments (which also means the absence of obstacles
to career entry and advancement in general).
Of course, scientists had to pay political tribute too. Take, for
example, ”the First National Conference for the Planning of
Science” in 1931. Academician Io e stated that “modern
capitalism is no longer capable of a technological revolution,” it
is only possible as a result of a social revolution, which has
“transformed the once barbaric and backward Russia into the
Socialist Union of Republics.” He praised the leadership of the
proletariat in science and said that science can be free only
under Soviet stewardship. “Militant philosopher” E. Ya. Kolman
(“one of main ideologists of Soviet science in the 1930s”; he
fulminated against the Moscow school of mathematics)
asserted that “we should … introduce labor discipline in the
sciences, adopt collective methods, socialist competition, and
shock labor methods; he said that science advances “thanks to
the proletarian dictatorship,” and that each scientist should
study Lenin’s Materialism and Empirico-criticism. Academician
A.G. Goldman (Ukraine) enthusiastically chimed in: “The
academy now became the leading force in the struggle for the
Marxist dialectic in science!”[2533]
The Jewish Encyclopedia summarizes: “At the end of 1930s,
the role of the Jews in the various spheres of the Soviet life
reached its apogee for the entire history of the Soviet regime.”
According to the 1939 census, 40% of all economically active
Jews were state  employees. Around 364,000 were categorized
among the intelligentsia. Of them, 106,000 were engineers or
technologists, representing 14% of all professionals of this
category country-wide; 139,000 were managers at various
levels, 7% of all administrators in the USSR; “39,000 doctors, or
slightly less than 27% of all doctors; 38,000 teachers, or more
than 3% of all teachers; “more than 6,500 writers, journalists,
and editors; more than 5,000 actors and lmmakers; more
than 6,000 musicians; a little less than 3,000 artists and
sculptors; and more than 5,000 lawyers.”[2534]
In the opinion of the Encyclopedia, such impressive
representation by a national minority, even in the context of
o cial internationalism and brotherhood of the peoples of the
USSR, created the prerequisites for the backlash by the
state.”[2535]

   
During his political career, Stalin often allied with Jewish
leaders of the communist party and relied on many Jewish
back-benchers. By the mid-1930s he saw in the example of
Hitler all the disadvantages of being a self-declared enemy of
the Jews. Yet he likely harbored hostility toward them (his
daughter’s memoirs support this), though even his closest
circle was probably unaware of it. However, struggling against
the Trotskyites, he, of course, realized this aspect as well –– his
need to further get rid of the Jewish in uence in the party. And,
sensing the war, he perhaps was also grasping that “proletarian
internationalism” alone would not be su cient and that the
notion of the “homeland,” and even the “Homeland”, would be
much needed.
S. Schwartz lamented about anti-revolutionary
transformation of the party as the “unprecedented ‘purge’ of
the ruling party, the virtual destruction of the old party and
the establishment of a new communist party under the same
name in its place – new in social composition and ideology.”
From 1937 he also noted a “gradual displacement of Jews from
the positions of power in all spheres of public life.” “Among the
old Bolsheviks who were involved in the activity before the
party came to power and especially among those with the pre-
revolutionary involvement, the percentage of Jews was
noticeably higher than in the party on average; in younger
generations, the Jewish representation became even smaller…
As a result of the purge, almost all important Jewish
communists left the scene.”[2536] Lazar Kaganovich was the
exception. Still, in 1939, after all the massacres, the faithful
communist Zemlyachka was made the deputy head of the
Soviet of People’s Commissars, and S. Dridzo-Lozovsky was
assigned the position of Deputy to the Narkom of Foreign
A airs.[2537] And yet, in the wider picture, Schwartz’s
observations are reasonable as was demonstrated above.
S. Schwartz adds that in the second half of 1930s Jews were
gradually barred from entering “institutions of higher
learning, which were preparing specialists for foreign relations
and foreign trade, and were barred from military educational
institutions.”[2538] The famous defector from the USSR, I.S.
Guzenko, shared rumors about a secret percentage quota on
Jewish admissions to the institutions of higher learning which
was enforced from 1939.
In the 1990s they even wrote that Molotov, taking over the
People’s Commissariat of Foreign A airs in the spring of 1939,
publicly announced during the general meeting with the
personnel that he “will deal with the synagogue here,” and that
he began ring Jews on the very same day. (Still, Litvinov was
quite useful during the war in his role as Soviet ambassador to
the U.S. They say that upon his departure from the U.S. in 1943
he even dared to pass a personal letter to Roosevelt suggesting
that Stalin had unleashed an anti-Semitic campaign in the
USSR).[2539]
By the mid-1930s the sympathy of European Jewry toward
the USSR had further increased. Trotsky explained it in 1937
on his way to Mexico: “The Jewish intelligentsia … turns to the
Comintern not because they are interested in Marxism or
Communism, but in search of support against aggressive
[German] anti-Semitism.”[2540] Yet it was this same Comintern
that approved the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the pact that dealt
a mortal blow to the East European Jewry!
“In September 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews
ed from the advancing German armies, eeing further and
further east and trying to head for the territory occupied by
the Red Army…. For the rst two months they succeeded
because of the favorable attitude of the Soviet authorities. The
Germans quite often encouraged this ight.” But “at the end of
November the Soviet government closed the border.”[2541]
In di erent areas of the front things took shape di erently:
in some areas, the Soviets would not admit Jewish refugees at
all; in other places they were welcomed but later sometimes
sent back to the Germans. Overall, it is believed that around
300,000 Jews managed to migrate from the Western to the
Eastern Poland in the rst months of the war, and later the
Soviets evacuated them deeper into the USSR. They demanded
that Polish Jews register as Soviet citizens, but many of them
did not rush to accept Soviet citizenship: after all, they
thought, the war would soon be over, and they would return
home, or go to America, or to Palestine. (Yet in the eyes of the
Soviet regime they thereby immediately fell under the category
of “suspected of espionage,” especially if they tried to
correspond with relatives in Poland).[2542] Still, we read in the
Chicago Sentinel that the Soviet Union gave refuge to 90% of all
European Jewish refugees eeing from Hitler.”[2543]
According to the January 1939 census, 3,020,000 Jews lived
in the USSR. Now, after occupation of the Baltics, annexation of
a part of Poland, and taking in Jewish refugees, approximately
two million more Jews were added, giving a total of around 5
million.[2544] Before 1939, the Jews were the seventh largest
people in the USSR number-wise; now, after annexation of all
Western areas, they became the fourth largest people of the
USSR, after the three Slavic peoples, Russian, Ukrainian, and
Belorussian. “The mutual non-Aggression Pact of 23 August
1939 between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union evoked
serious fear about the future of Soviet Jewry, though the policy
of the Soviet Union toward its Jewish citizens was not
changed.” And although there were some reverse deportations,
overall, “the legal status of Jewish population remained
unchanged during the 20 months of the Soviet-German
collaboration.”[2545]
With the start of war in Poland, Jewish sympathies nally
crystallized and Polish Jews, and the Jewish youth in particular,
met the advancing Red Army with exulting enthusiasm. Thus,
according to many testimonies (including M. Agursky’s one),
Polish Jews, like their co-ethnics in Bessarabia, Bukovina and
Lithuania, became the main pillar of the Soviet regime,
supporting it tooth and nail.
Yet how much did these East European Jews know about
what was going on in the USSR?
They unerringly sensed that a catastrophe was rolling at
them from Germany, though still not fully or clearly
recognized, but undoubtedly a catastrophe. And so the Soviet
welcome appeared to them to embody certain salvation.
 Chapter 20. In the camps of GULag

If I haven’t been there, it wouldn’t be possible for me to

compose this chapter.
Before the camps I thought that “one should not notice
nationalities”, that there are no nationalities, there is only
humankind.
But when you are sent into the camp, you nd it out: if you
are of a lucky nationality then you are a fortunate man. You are
provided for. You have survived! But if you are of a  common
nationality – well then, no o ence…
Because nationality is perhaps the most important trait that
gives a prisoner a chance to be picked into the life-saving corps
of “Idiots” [translator note: from Russian “придурок” – a fool
or idiot. This is an inmate slang term to denote other inmates
who didn’t do common labor but managed to obtain positions
with easy duties, usually pretending to be incapable of doing
hard work because of poor health]. Every experienced camp
inmate can con rm that ethnic proportions among Idiots were
very di erent from those in the general camp population.
Indeed, there were virtually no Pribalts among Idiots,
regardless of their actual number in the camp (and there were
many of them); there were always Russians, of course, but in
incomparably smaller proportion than in the camp on average
(and those were often selected from  orthodox members of the
Party); on the other hand, some others were noticeably
concentrated – Jews, Georgians, Armenians; and Azeris also
ended there in higher proportions, and, to some extent,
Caucasian mountaineers also.
Certainly, none of them can be blamed for that. Every nation
in the Gulag did its best crawling to survival, and the smaller
and nimbler it was, the easier it was to accomplish. And again,
Russians were the very last nation in “their own Russian
camps”, like they were in the German Kriegsgefan-genenlagers.
Yet it is not us who could have blamed them, but it is they –
Armenians, Georgians, highlanders, who would have been in
their right to ask us: “Why did you establish these camps? Why
do you force us to live in your state? Do not hold us and we will
not land here and occupy these such attractive Idiotic positions!
But while we are your prisoners – a la guerre comme a la guerre.”
But what about Jews? For Fate interwove Russian and Jews,
perhaps forever, which is why this book is being written.
Before that, before this very line, there will be readers who
have been in the camps and who haven’t been, who will be
quick to contest the truth of what I say here. They will claim
that many Jews were forced to take part in  common labor
activities. They will deny that there were camps where Jews
were the majority among  Idiots. They will indignantly reject
that nations in the camps were helping each other selectively,
and, therefore, at the expense of others.
Some others will not consider themselves as distinct “Jews”
at all, perceiving themselves as Russians in everything. Besides,
even if there  was overrepresentation of Jews on key camp
positions, it was absolutely unpremeditated, wasn’t it? The
selection was exclusively based on merit and personal talents
and abilities to do business. Well, who is to blame if Russians
lack business talents?
There will be also those who will passionately assert directly
opposite: that it was Jews who su ered worst in the camps.
This is exactly how it is understood in the West: in Soviet
camps nobody su ered as badly as Jews. Among the letters
from readers of  Ivan Denisovich there was one from an
anonymous Jew: “You have met innocent Jews who languished
in camps with you, and you obviously not at once witnessed
their su ering and persecution. They endured double
oppression: imprisonment and enmity from the rest of
inmates. Tell us about these people!”
And if I wished to generalize and state that the life of Jews in
camps was especially di cult, then I would be allowed to do so
and wouldn’t be peppered with admonitions for unjust ethnic
generalizations. But in the camps, where I was imprisoned, it
was the other way around – the life of Jews, to the extent of
possible generalization, was easier.
Semen Badash, my campmate from Ekibastuz, recounts in
his memoirs how he had managed to settle – later, in a camp at
Norilsk   –  in the medical unit: Max Minz asked a radiologist
Laslo Newsbaum to solicit for Badash before a free head of the
unit. He was accepted.[2546] But Badash at least nished three
years of medical school before imprisonment. Compare that
with other nurses – Genkin, Gorelik, Gurevich (like one of my
pals, L. Kopelev from Unzlag) – who never before in their lives
had anything to do with medicine.
Some people absolutely seriously write like this: A. Belinkov
“was thrown into the most despicable category of Idiots…” (and
I am tempted to inappropriately add “and languishers” here,
though the  “Languishers” were the social antipodes of  Idiots
and Belinkov never was among the  Languishers). – “To be
thrown into the group ofIdiots”! – what’s an expression! “To be
diminished by being accepted into the ranks of gentlemen”?
And here goes the justi cation: “To dig soil? But at the age of 23
he not only never did it – he never saw a shovel in his life”.
[2547] Well then he had no other choice but to become an Idiot.
Or read what Levitin-Krasnov wrote about one Pinsky, a
literature expert, that he was a nurse in the camp. Which
means that he, on the camp scale, has adhered well. However,
Levitin presents this as an example of the greatest humiliation
possible for a professor of the humanities.
 Or take prisoner who survived, Lev Razgon, a journalist and
not a medic at all, who was heavily published afterwards. But
from his story in “Ogonek” (1988) we nd that he used to be a
medic in the camp’s medical unit, and, moreover, an unescorted
medic. (From other his stories we can gure out that he also
worked as a senior controller at a horrible timber logging
station. But there is not a single story from which we can
conclude that he ever participated in common labor.)
Or a story of Frank Dikler, a Jew from faraway Brazil: he was
imprisoned and couldn’t speak Russian, of course, and guess
what? He had pull in the camp, and he has became a chief of the
medical unit’s kitchen – a truly magni cent treasure!
Or Alexandr Voronel, who was a ”political youngster” when
he landed in the camps, says that immediately after getting in
the camp, he was “readily assisted… by other Jewish inmates,
who had not a slightest idea about my political views”. A Jewish
inmate, responsible for running the bathhouse (a very
important  Idiot as well), has spotted him instantly and
“ordered him to come if he needs any help”; a Jew from prisoner
security (also an Idiot) told another Jew, a brigadier: “There are
two Jewish guys, Hakim, don’t allow them to get in trouble”.
And the brigadier gave them strong protection. “Other thieves,
especially “elders”, approved him: You are so right, Hakim! You
support your own kin! Yet we, Russians, are like wolves to each
other””.[2548]
And let’s not forget that even during camp imprisonment, by
virtue of a common stereotype regarding all Jews as
businessmen,  many of them  were getting commercial o ers,
sometimes even when they didn’t actively look for such
enterprises. Take, for instance, M. Hafez. He emphatically
notes: “What a pity that I can’t describe you those camp
situations. There are so many rich, beautiful stories! However,
the ethical code of a “reliable Jew” seals my mouth. You know
even the smallest commercial secret should be kept forever.
That’s the law of the Tribe”.[2549]
A Lett Ane Bernstein, one of my witnesses from Archipelago,
thinks that he managed to survive in the camps only because in
times of hardship he asked the Jews for help and that the
Jews,  judging by his last name and nimble manners, mistook
him for their tribesman – and always provided assistance. He
says that in all his camps Jews always constituted the upper
crust, and that the most important free employees were also
Jews (Shulman – head of special department, Greenberg – head
of camp station, Kegels  –  chief mechanic of the factory), and,
according to his recollections, they also preferred to select
Jewish inmates to sta their units.
This particular Jewish national contract between free bosses
and inmates is impossible to overlook. A free Jew was not so
stupid to actually see an “Enemy of the People” or an evil
character preying on “the people’s property” in an imprisoned
Jew  (unlike what a dumb-headed Russian saw in another
Russian). He in the rst place saw a su ering tribesman – and I
praise them for this sobriety! Those who know about terri c
Jewish mutual supportiveness (especially exacerbated by mass
deaths of Jews under Hitler) would understand that a free
Jewish boss simply could not indi erently watch Jewish
prisoners ounder in starvation and die, and not help. But I am
unable to imagine a free Russian employee who would save and
promote his fellow Russian prisoners to the privileged
positions only because of their nationality. Though we have
lost 15 millions during collectivization, we are still numerous.
You can’t care about everyone, and nobody would even think
about it.
Sometimes, when such a team of Jewish inmates smoothly
bands together and, being no longer impeded by the ferocious
struggle for survival, they can engage in extraordinary
activities. An engineer named Abram Zisman tells us: “In Novo-
Archangelsk camp, in our spare time, [we] decided to count
how many Jewish pogroms occurred over the course of Russian
history. We managed to excite the curiosity of our  camp
command  on this question (they had a peaceful attitude
toward us). TheNachlag [camp commander] was captain
Gremin (N. Gershel, a Jew, son of a tailor from Zhlobin). He sent
an inquiry to the archives of the former Interior Department
requesting the necessary information, and after eight months
we received an o cial reply that …  76 Jewish
pogroms  occurred  from 1811 to 1917 on the territory of
Russia with the number of victims estimated at approximately
3,000” (That is, the total number of those who su ered in any
way.) The author reminds us that during one six-month period
in medieval Spain  more than twenty thousand Jews were
killed.[2550]
A plot-like atmosphere emanates from the recollections of
Josef Berger, a communist, about a highly-placed snitch Lev
Ilyich Inzhir. A former Menshevik, arrested in 1930, he
immediately began collaborating with the GPU, fearing
reprisals against his family and the loss of his apartment in the
center of Moscow. He “helped to prepare the Menshevik trial” of
1931, falsely testi ed against his best friends, was absolved
and immediately appointed as a chief accountant of
Belomorstroi. During the  Yezhovschina he was a chief
accountant of the GULag “enjoying the complete trust of his
superiors and with connections to the very top NKVD o cials”.
(Inzhir recalled one “Jewish NKVD veteran who interlarded his
words with aphorisms from Talmud”.) He was arrested later
again, this time on the wave of anti-Yezhov purges. However,
Inzhir’s former colleagues from the GULag favorably arranged
his imprisonment. However, at this point he turned into an
explicit ”snitch and provocateur”, and other inmates suspected
that the plentiful parcels he was receiving were not from his
relatives but directly from the Third Department. Nevertheless,
later in 1953 in the Tayshet camp, he was sentenced to an
additional jail term, this time being accused of Trotskyism and
of concealing his “sympathies for the State of Israel” from the
Third Department.[2551]
Of worldwide infamy, BelBallag absorbed hundreds of
thousands of Russian, Ukrainian and Middle Asian peasants
between 1931 and 1932. Opening a newspaper issue from
August, 1933, dedicated to the completion of the
canal  [between White and Baltic seas], we nd a list of
awardees. Lower ranking orders and medals were awarded to
concreters, steel xers, etc, but the highest degree of
decoration, the Order of Lenin, was awarded to eight men only,
and we can see large photographs of each. Only two of them
were actual engineers, the rest were the chief commanders of
the canal (according to Stalin’s understanding of personal
contribution). And whom do we see here? Genrikh Yagoda,
head of NKVD. Matvei Berman, head of GULag. Semen Firin,
commander of BelBaltlag (by that time he was already the
commander of Dmitlag, where the story will later repeat
itself). Lazar Kogan, head of construction (later he will serve
the same function at Volgocanal). Jacob Rapoport, deputy head
of construction. Naftaly Frenkel, chief manager of the labor
force of Belomorstroi (and the evil demon of the whole
Archipelago).[2552]
And all their portraits were enlarged and reprinted again in
the solemnly shameful book  Belomorcanal[2553] – a book of
huge Scriptural  size, like some revelation anticipating advent
of the Millenarian Kingdom.
And then I reproduced these six portraits of villains
in Archipelago, borrowing them from their own exhibition and
without any prior editing, showing everybody who was
originally displayed. Oh my God, what a worldwide rage has
surged! How dared I?! This is anti-Semitism! I am a branded and
screwed anti-Semite. At best, to reproduce these portraits was
“national egotism” – i.e. Russian egotism! And they dared to say
it despite what follows immediately on the next pages
of Archipelago: how docilely “Kulak” lads were freezing to death
under their barrows.
One wonders, where were their eyes in 1933 when it was
printed for the very rst time? Why weren’t they so indignant
then?
Let me repeat what I professed once to the Bolsheviks: one
should be ashamed of hideosity not when it is disclosed to
public but when it is done.
A particular conundrum exists with respect to the
personality of Naftaly Frenkel, that tireless demon
of Archipelago: how to explain his strange return from Turkey
in 1920’s? He successfully got away from Russia with all his
capitals after the rst harbingers of revolution. In Turkey, he
attained a secure, rich and unconstrained social standing, and
he never harbored any Communist ideas. And yet he returned?
To come back and become a toy for the GPU and for Stalin, to
spend several years in imprisonment himself, but in return to
accomplish the most ruthless oppression of imprisoned
engineers and the extermination of hundreds of thousands of
the “de-Kulakized”? What could have motivated his insatiable
evil heart? I am unable to imagine any possible reason except
vengeance toward Russia. If anyone can provide an alternative
explanation, please do so.[2554]
What else could be revealed by someone with a thorough
understanding of the structure of the camp command? The
head of 1st Department of Belomorstroi was one Wolf; the head
of the Dmitrov section of Volgocanal was Bovshover. The
nance division of Belomorstroi was headed by L. Berenzon,
his deputies were A. Dorfman, the already mentioned Inzhir,
Loevetsky, Kagner, Angert. And how many of the other
humbler posts remain unmentioned? Is it really reasonable to
suppose that Jews were digging soil with shovels and racing
their hand-barrows and dying under those barrows from
exhaustion and emaciation? Well, view it as you wish. A. P.
Skripnikova and D. P. Vitkovsky, who were there, told me that
Jews were overrepresented among  Idiots during construction
of Belomorcanal, and they did not roll barrows and did not die
under them.
And you could nd highly-placed Jewish commanders not
only at BelBaltlag. Construction of the Kotlas-Vorkuta railroad
was headed by Moroz (his son married Svetlana Stalina); the
special o cer-in-charge of GULag in the Far East was Grach.
These are only a few of the names, which resurfaced
accidentally. If a former inmate Thomas Sgovio, an American
national, didn’t write to me, I wouldn’t be aware about the head
of the Chai-Uryinsk Mining Administration on Kolyma
between 1943-44 (at the depths of the Patriotic War): “Half-
colonel Arm was a tall black-haired Jew with a terrible
reputation… His orderly man was selling ethanol to everybody,
50 grams for 50 rubles. Arm had his own personal tutor of
English – a young American, arrested in Karelia. His wife was
paid a salary for an accountant’s position, but she didn’t work –
  her job was actually performed by an inmate in the o ce” (a
common practice revealing how families of GULag
commanders used to have additional incomes).
Or take another case: during the age of  glasnost, one Soviet
newspaper published a story about the dreadful GULag
administration that built a tunnel between Sakhalin and the
mainland. It was called the “Trust of Arais”.[2555] Who was
that comrade Arais? I have no idea. But how many perished in
his mines and in the un nished tunnel?
 Sure, I knew a number of Jews (they were my friends) who
carried all the hardships of common labor. In  Archipelago, I
described a young man, Boris Gammerov, who quickly found
his death in the camp. (While his friend, the writer Ingal, was
made an accountant from the very rst day in the camp,
although his knowledge of arithmetic was very poor.) I knew
Volodya Gershuni, an irreconcilable and incorruptible man. I
knew Jog Masamed, who did common labor in the hard labor
camp at Ekibastuz  on principle, though he was called upon to
join the  Idiots. Besides, I would like to list here a teacher
Tatyana Moiseevna Falike, who spent 10 years drudging, she
said, like a beast of burden. And I also would like to name here a
geneticist Vladimir Efroimson, who spent 13 out of his 36
months of imprisonment (one out of his two terms) doing
common labor. He also did it on principle, though he also had
better options. Relying on parcels from home (one cannot
blame him for that), he picked the hand-barrow precisely
because there were many Jews from Moscow in that Jezkazgan
camp, and they were used to settling well, while Efroimson
wanted to dispel any grudge toward Jews, which was naturally
emerging among inmates. And what did his brigade think
about his behavior? – “He is a black sheep among Jews; would a
real Jew roll a barrow?” He was similarly ridiculed by
Jewish  Idiots who felt annoyed that he “ aunted himself” to
reproach them. In the same vein, another Jew, Jacov
Davydovich Grodzensky, who also  beavered in the common
category, was judged by others: “Is he really a Jew?”
It is so symbolic! Both Efroimson and Grodzenskiy did those
right and best things, which could be only motivated by the
noblest of Jewish appeals, to honestly share the common lot,
and they were not understood by either side! They are always
di cult and derided – the paths of austerity and dedication,
the only ones that can save humanity.
 I try not to overlook such examples, because all my hopes
depend on them.
Let’s add here a valiant Gersh Keller, one of the leaders of
Kengir uprising in 1954 (he was 30 years old when executed). I
also read about Yitzhak Kaganov, commander of an artillery
squadron during the Soviet-German war. In 1948, he was
sentenced to 25 years for Zionism. During 7 years of
imprisonment he wrote 480 pieces of poetry in Hebrew, which
he memorized without writing them down.[2556]
During his third trial (July 10, 1978), after already serving
two terms, Alexander Ginsburg, was asked a question “What is
your nationality?” and replied: “Inmate!” That was a worthy
and serious response, and it angered the tribunal. But he
deserved it  for his work for the Russian Public Relief Fund,
which provided assistance to families of political prisoners
of all nationalities, and by his manly vocation. This is what we
are – a genuine breed of prisoners, regardless of nationality.
However, my camps were di erent,  –  spanning from the
“great” Belomor to the tiny 121st camp district of the 15th OLP
of Moscow’s UITLK (which left behind a not inconspicuous
semi-circular building at Kaluga’s gate in Moscow). Out there,
our entire life was directed and trampled by three
leading Idiots: Solomon Solomonov, a chief accountant; David
Burstein, rst an “educator” and later a work-assigning clerk;
and Isaac Bershader. (Earlier, in exactly the same way,
Solomonov and Bershader ruled over the camp at the Moscow
Highway Institute, MHI.) Note that all this happened under
auspices of a Russian camp commander, one ensign Mironov.
All three of them came up before my eyes, and to get
positions for them, in each case their Russian predecessors
were instantly removed from the posts. Solomonov was sent in
rst; he con dently seized a proper position and quickly got on
the right side of the ensign. (I think, using food and money
from outside.) Soon after that the wretched Bershader was sent
in from MHI with an accompanying note “to use him only in
the common labor category” (a quite unusual situation for a
domestic criminal, which probably meant substantial
delinquency). He was about fty years old, short, fat, with a
baleful glare. He walked around  condescendingly  inspecting
our living quarters, with the look of a general from the head
department.
The senior proctor asked him: “What is your specialty?”  –
  “Storekeeper”.  –  “There is no such specialty”  –  “Well, I am a
storekeeper”. – “Anyway, you are going to work in the common
labor brigade”. For two days he was sent there. Shrugging his
shoulders, he went out, and, upon entering the work zone, he
used to seat himself on a stone and rest respectably. The
brigadier would have hit him, but he quailed – the newcomer
was so self-con dent, that anyone could sense power behind
him. The camp’s storekeeper, Sevastyanov, was depressed as
well. For two years he was in charge of the combined provision
and sundry store. He was rmly established and lived on good
terms with the brass, but now he was chilled: everything is
already settled! Bershader is a “storekeeper by specialty”!
Then the medical unit discharged Bershader from the labor
duties on grounds of “poor health” and after that he rested in
the living quarters. Meanwhile, he probably got something
from outside. And within less than a week Sevastyanov was
removed from his post, and Bershader was made a storekeeper
(with the assistance of Solomonov). However, at this point it
was found that the physical labor of pouring grain and
rearranging boots, which was done by Sevastyanov single-
handedly, was also contraindicated for Bershader. So he was
given a henchman, and Solomonov’s bookkeeping o ce
enlisted the latter as service personnel. But it was still not a
su ciently abundant life. The best looking proudest woman of
the camp, the swan-like  lieutenant-sniper  M. was bent to his
will and forced to visit him in his store-room in the evenings.
After Burstein showed himself in the camp, he arranged to
have another camp beauty, A. S., to come to his cubicle.
Is it di cult to read this? But they were by no means
troubled how it looked from outside. It even seemed as if they
thickened the impression on purpose. And how many such
little camps with similar establishments were there all across
the Archipelago?
And did Russian Idiots behave in the same way, unrestrained
and insanely!? Yes. But within every other nation it was
perceived socially, like an eternal strain between rich and poor,
lord and servant. However, when an alien emerges as a “master
over life and death” it further adds to the heavy resentment. It
might appear strange – isn’t it all the same for a
worthless  negligible, crushed, and doomed camp dweller
surviving at one of his dying stages? isn’t it all the same who
exactly seizes the power inside the camp and celebrates crow’s
picnics over his trench-grave? As it turns out, it is not. These
things have been etched into my memory inerasably.
In my play Republic of Labor, I presented some of the events
that happened in that camp on Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya 30.
Understanding the impossibility of depicting everything like it
was in reality, because it would be inevitably considered as
incitement of anti-Jewish sentiment (as if that trio of Jews was
not in aming it in real life, caring little about consequences) I
withheld the abominably greedy Bershader. I concealed
Burstein. I recomposed the pro teer Rosa Kalikman into an
amorphous Bella of eastern origin, and retained the only Jew,
accountant Solomonov, exactly like he was in life.
So, what about my loyal Jewish friends after they perused
the play? The play aroused extraordinarily passionate protests
from V. L. Teush. He read it not immediately but when
Sovremennik  had already decided to stage it in 1962, so the
question was far from scholarly. The Teushes were deeply
injured by the gure of Solomonov. They thought it was
dishonest and unjust to show such a Jew (despite that in the
real life, in the camp, he was exactly as I showed him) in the age
of oppression of Jews. (But then, it appears to me that such age
is everlasting? When have our Jews not been oppressed?) Teush
was alarmed and extremely agitated, and put forward an
ultimatum that if I did not remove or at least soften up the
image of Solomonov, then all our friendship will be ruined and
he and his wife will no longer be able to keep my manuscripts.
Moreover, they prophesized that my very name will be
irretrievably lost and blemished if I leave Solomonov in the
play. Why not to make him a Russian? They were astonished. Is
it so important that he be a Jew? (But if it doesn’t matter, why
did Solomonov select Jews to be Idiots?)
I took a chill pill: a sudden censorial ban, no less weighty
than the o cial Soviet prohibition, had emerged from an
unanticipated direction.  However, the situation was soon
resolved by the o cial prohibition forbidding Sovremennik to
stage the piece.
And there was another objection from Teush: “Your
Solomonov has anything but Jewish personality. A Jew always
behaves discreetly, cautiously, suppliantly, and even cunningly,
but from where comes this pushy impudence of jubilant force?
This is not true, it cannot happen like this!”
However, I remember not this Solomonov alone, and it was
exactly like that! I saw many things in the 1920’s and 1930’s in
Rostov-on-Don. And Frenkel acted similarly, according to the
recollections of surviving engineers. Such a slip of a
triumphant power into insolence and arrogance is the most
repelling thing for those around. Sure, it is usually behavior of
the worst and rudest – but this is what becomes imprinted in
memory. (Likewise the Russian image is soiled by the
obscenities of our villains.)
All these blandishments and appeals to avoid writing about
the things like they were – are undistinguishable from what we
heard from the highest Soviet tribunes: about anti-defamation,
about socialist realism – to write like it should be, not like it
was.
As if a creator is capable of forgetting or creating his past
anew! As if the full truth can be written in parts, including only
what is pleasing, secure and popular.
And how meticulously all the Jewish characters in my books
were analyzed with every personal feature weighted on
apothecary scales. But the astonishing story of Grigory M., who
did not deliver the order to retreat to a dying regiment because
he was frightened (Archipelago GULag, v. 6, Ch. 6) – was not
noticed. It was passed over without a single word! And  Ivan
Denisovich added insult to injury: there were such sophisticated
su erers but I put forward a boor!
For instance, during Gorbachev’s  glasnost, emboldened Asir
Sandler published his camp memoirs. “After rst perusal, I
emphatically rejected One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich…
the main personage was Ivan Denisovich, a man with minimal
spiritual needs, focused only on his mundane troubles” – and
Solzhenitsyn turned him into the national image… (Exactly
like all well-meaning communists were grumbling at that
time!) While “[Solzhenitsyn] preferred not to notice the true
intelligentsia, the determinant of domestic culture and
science”. Sandler was discussing this with Miron Markovich
Etlis (both used to be  Idiots in medical unit). And Etlis added:
“The story is signi cantly distorted, placed upside down”.
“Solzhenitsyn failed to emphasize …the intelligent part of our
contingent”… Self-centered re ections [of Ivan Denisovich]
about himself… that patience… that pseudo-Christian attitude
toward others”. And in 1964 Sandler was lucky to relieve his
feelings in conversation with Ehrenburg himself. And the
latter a rmatively nodded when Sandler mentioned his
“extremely negative” feeling toward my novelette.[2557]
However, not a single Jew reproached me that Ivan
Denisovich, in essence, attends to Cesar Markovich as a
servant, albeit with good feelings.
 Chapter 21. During the Soviet-German War

After Kristallnacht (November 1938) the German Jews lost

their last illusions about the mortal danger they were facing.
With Hitler’s campaign in Poland, the deadly storm headed
East. Yet nobody expected that the beginning of the Soviet-
German War would move Nazi politics to a new level, toward
total physical extermination of Jews.
While they naturally expected all kinds of hardship from the
German conquest, Soviet Jews could not envision the
indiscriminate mass killings of men and women of all ages –
one cannot foresee such things. Thus the terrible and
inescapable fate befell those who remained in the German-
occupied territories without a chance to resist. Lives ended
abruptly. But before their death, they had to pass through
either initial forced relocation to a Jewish ghetto, or a forced
labor camp, or to gas vans, or through digging one’s own grave
and stripping before execution.
The Russian Jewish Encyclopedia gives many names of the
Russian Jews who fell victims to the Jewish Catastrophe; it
names those who perished in Rostov, Simferopol, Odessa,
Minsk, Belostok, Kaunas, and Narva. There were prominent
people among them. The  famous historian S.M. Dubnov spent
the entire inter-war period in exile. He left Berlin for Riga after
Hitler took power. He was arrested during the German
occupation and placed in a ghetto; “in December 1941 he was
included into a column of those to be executed”.”From Vilna,
historian Dina Jo e and director of the Jewish Gymnasium
Joseph Yashunskiy were sent to concentration camps (both
were killed in Treblinka in 1943). Rabbi Shmuel Bespalov, head
of the Hasidim movement in Bobruisk, was shot in 1941 when
the city was captured by the Germans. Cantor Gershon Sirota,
whose performance had once “caught the attention of Nicholas
II” and who performed yearly in St. Petersburg and Moscow,
died in 1941 in Warsaw. There were two brothers Paul and
Vladimir Mintz: Paul, the elder, was a prominent Latvian
politician, “the only Jew in the government of Latvia”. Vladimir
was a surgeon, who had been entrusted with the treatment of
Lenin in 1918 after the assassination attempt. From 1920 he
lived in Latvia. In 1940 the Soviet occupation authorities
arrested Paul Mintz and placed him in a camp in Krasnoyarsk
Krai, where he died early on. The younger brother lived in Riga
and was not touched. He died in 1945 at Büchenwald. Sabina
Shpilreyn, a doctor of medicine, psychoanalyst and a close
colleague of Carl Jung, returned to Russia in 1923 after
working in clinics in Zurich, Munich, Berlin and Geneva;in
1942 she was shot along with other Jews by Germans in her
native Rostov-on-Don. (In Chapter 19, we wrote about the
deaths of her three scientist brothers during Stalin’s terror.)
Yet many were saved from death by evacuation in 1941 and
1942. Various Jewish wartime and postwar sources do not
doubt the dynamism of this evacuation. For example, in The
Jewish World, a book written in 1944, one can read: “The Soviet
authorities were fully aware that the Jews were the most
endangered part of the population, and despite the acute
military needs in transport, thousands of trains were provided
for their evacuation. … In many cities … Jews were evacuated
rst”, although the author believes that the statement of the
Jewish writer David Bergelson that “approximately 80% of
Jews were successfully evacuated”[2558] is an exaggeration.
Bergelson wrote: “In Chernigov, the pre-war Jewish population
was estimated at 70,000 people and only 10,000 of them
remained by the time the Germans arrived. … In
Dnepropetrovsk, out of the original Jewish population of
100,000 only 30,000 remained when the Germans took the
city. In Zhitomir, out of 50,000 Jews, no less than 44,000
left.”[2559] In the Summer 1946 issue of the bulletin, Hayasa
E.M. Kulisher wrote: “There is no doubt that the Soviet
authorities took special measures to evacuate the Jewish
population or to facilitate its unassisted ight. Along with the
state personnel and industrial workers, Jews were given
priority [in the evacuation] … The Soviet authorities provided
thousands of trains speci cally for the evacuation of
Jews.”[2560] Also, as a safer measure to avoid bombing raids,
Jews were evacuated by thousands of haywagons, taken from
kolkhozes and sovkhozes [collective farms] and driven over to
railway junctions in the rear. B.T. Goldberg, a son-in-law of
Sholem Aleichem and then a correspondent for the Jewish
newspaper Der Tog from New York, after a 1946-1947 winter
trip to the Soviet Union wrote an article about the wartime
evacuation of Jews (Der Tog, February 21, 1947). His sources in
Ukraine, “Jews and Christians, the military and evacuees, all
stated that the policy of the authorities was to give the Jews a
preference during evacuation, to save as many of them as
possible so that the Nazis would not destroy them.”[2561] And
Moshe Kaganovich, a former Soviet partisan, in his by then
foreign memoirs (1948) con rms that the Soviet government
provided for the evacuation of Jews all available vehicles in
addition to trains, including trains of haywagons – and the
orders were to evacuate “ rst and foremost the citizens of
Jewish nationality from the areas threatened by the enemy”.
(Note that S. Schwartz and later researchers dispute the
existence of such orders, as well as the general policy of Soviet
authorities to evacuate Jews “as such.”[2562])
Nevertheless, both earlier and later sources provide fairly
consistent estimates of the number of Jews who were
evacuated or ed without assistance from the German-
occupied territories. O cial Soviet gures are not available; all
researchers complain that the contemporaneous statistics are
at best approximate. Let us rely then on the works of the last
decade. A demographer M. Kupovetskiy, who used formerly
unavailable archival materials and novel techniques of
analysis, o ers the following assessment. According to the
1939 census, 3,028,538 Jews lived in the USSR within its old
(that is, pre-1939-1940) boundaries. With some corrections to
this gure and taking into account the rate of natural increase
of the Jewish population from September 1939 to June 1941
(he analyzed each territory separately), this researcher
suggests that at the outbreak of the war approximately
3,080,000 Jews resided within the old USSR borders. Of these,
900,000 resided in the territories which would not be occupied
by Germans, and at the beginning of the war 2,180, 000 Jews
(“Eastern Jews”)[2563] resided in the territories later occupied
by the Germans. “There is no exact data regarding the number
of Jews who ed or were evacuated to the East before the
German occupation. Though based on some studies …, we
know that approximately 1,000,000 -1,100,000 Jews managed
to escape from the Eastern regions later occupied by Germans”.
[2564]
There was a di erent situation in the territories
incorporated into the Soviet Union only in 1939-1940, and
which were rapidly captured by the Germans at the start of the
“Blitzkreig”.  The lightning-speed German attack allowed
almost no chance for escape; meanwhile the Jewish population
of these “bu er” zones numbered 1,885,000 (“Western Jews”)
in June 1941.[2565] And “only a small number of these Jews
managed to escape or were evacuated. It is believed that the
number is … about 10-12 percent.”[2566]
Thus, within the new borders of the USSR, by the most
optimistic assessments, approximately 2,226,000 Jews
(2,000,000 Eastern, 226,000 Western Jews) escaped the
German occupation and 2,739,000 Jews (1,080,000 Easterners
and 1,659,000 Westerners) remained in the occupied
territories.
Evacuees and refugees from the occupied and threatened
territories were sent deep into the rear, “with the majority of
Jews resettled beyond the Ural Mountains, in particular in
Western Siberia and also in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Turkmenistan”.[2567] The materials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee (EAK) contain the following statement: “At the
beginning of the Patriotic War about one and half million Jews
were evacuated to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other Central
Asian Republics.”[2568] This gure does not include the Volga,
the Ural and the Siberian regions. (However, the Jewish
Encyclopedia argues that “a 1,500,000 gure” is a great
exaggeration.”[2569]) Still, there was no organized evacuation
into Birobidzhan, and no individual refugees relocated there,
although, because of the collapse of Jewish kolkhozes, the
vacated housing there could accommodate up to 11,000
families.[2570] At the same time, “the Jewish colonists in the
Crimea were evacuated so much ahead of time that they were
able to take with them all livestock and farm implements”;
moreover, “it is well-known that in the spring of 1942, Jewish
colonists from Ukraine established kolkhozes in the Volga
region” How? Well, the author calls it the “irony of Nemesis”:
they were installed in place of German colonists who were
exiled from the German Republic of the Volga by Soviet
government order starting on August 28, 1941.[2571]
As already noted, all the cited wartime and postwar sources
agree in recognizing the energy and the scale of the organized
evacuation of Jews from the advancing German army. But the
later sources, from the end of the 1940s, began to challenge
this. For example, we read in a 1960s source: “a planned
evacuation of Jews as the most endangered part of the population
did not take place anywhere in Russia” (italicized as in the
source).[2572] And twenty years later we read this: after the
German invasion of the Soviet Union, “contrary to the rumors
that the government allegedly evacuated Jews from the areas
under imminent threat of German occupation, no such
measures had ever taken place. … the Jews were abandoned to
their fate. When applied to the citizen of Jewish nationality, the
celebrated `proletarian internationalism´ was a dead letter”.
[2573] This statement is completely unfair.
Still, even those Jewish writers, who deny the “bene cence”
of the government with respect to Jewish evacuation, do
recognize its magnitude. “Due to the speci c social structure of
the Jewish population, the percentage of Jews among the
evacuees should have been much higher than the percentage of
Jews in the urban population”.[2574] And indeed it was. The
Evacuation Council was established on June 24, 1941, just two
days after the German invasion (Shvernik was the chairman
and Kosygin and Pervukhin were his deputies) .Its priorities
were announced as the following: to evacuate rst and
foremost the state and party agencies with personnel,
industries, and raw materials along with the workers of
evacuated plants and their families, and young people of
conscription age. Between the beginning of the war and
November 1941, around 12 million people were evacuated
from the threatened areas to the rear.[2575] This number
included, as we have seen, 1,000,000 to 1,100,000 Eastern Jews
and more than 200,000 Western Jews from the soon-to-be-
occupied areas. In addition, we must add to this gure a
substantial number of Jews among the people evacuated from
the cities and regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic (RSFSR, that is, Russia proper) that never fell to the
Germans (in particular,  those from Moscow and Leningrad).
Solomon Schwartz states: “The general evacuation of state
agencies and industrial enterprises with a signi cant portion
of their sta (often with families) was in many places very
extensive. Thanks to the social structure of Ukrainian Jewry
with a signi cant percentages of Jews among the middle and
top civil servants, including the academic and technical
intelligentsia and the substantial proportion of Jewish workers
in Ukrainian heavy industry, the share of Jews among the
evacuees was larger than their share in the urban (and even
more than in the total) population.”[2576]
The same was true for Byelorussia. In the 1920s and early
1930s it was almost exclusively Jews, both young and old, who
studied at “various courses, literacy classes, in day schools,
evening schools and shift schools.  … This enabled the poor
from Jewish villages to join the ranks of industrial workers.
Constituting only 8.9% of the population of Byelorussia, Jews
accounted for 36% of the industrial workers of the republic in
1930.”[2577]
“The rise of the percentage of Jews among the evacuees”,
continues S. Schwartz, “was also facilitated by the fact that for
many employees and workers the evacuation was not
mandatory. … Therefore, many, mostly non-Jews, remained
were they were.” Thus, even the Jews, “who did not t the
criteria for mandatory evacuation … had better chances to
evacuate”.[2578] However, the author also notes that “no
government orders or instructions on the evacuation
speci cally of Jews or reports about it ever appeared in the
Soviet press”. “There simply were no orders regarding the
evacuation of Jews speci cally. It means that there was no
purposeful evacuation of Jews.”[2579]
Keeping in mind the Soviet reality, this conclusion seems ill
grounded and, in any case, formalistic. Indeed, reports about
mass evacuation of the Jews did not appear in the Soviet press.
It is easy to understand why. First, after the pact with Germany,
the Soviet Union suppressed information about Hitler’s
policies towards Jews, and when the war broke out, the bulk of
the Soviet population did not know about the mortal danger
the German invasion posed for Jews. Second, and this was
probably the more-important factor – German propaganda
vigorously denounced “Judeo-Bolshevism” and the Soviet
leadership undoubtedly realized that they gave a solid
foundation to this propaganda during the 1920s and 1930s, so
how could they now declare openly and loudly that the
foremost government priority must be to save Jews? This could
only have been seen as playing into Hitler’s hands.
Therefore, there were no public announcements that among
the evacuees “Jews were over-represented”. “The evacuation
orders did not mention Jews”, yet “during the evacuation the
Jews were not discriminated” against;[2580] on the contrary
they were evacuated by all available means, but in silence,
without press coverage inside the USSR. However, propaganda
for foreign consumption was a di erent matter. For example,
in December 1941, after repulsing the German onslaught on
Moscow, Radio Moscow  – not in the Russian language, of
course, but “in Polish”, and on “the next day, ve more times in
German, compared the successful Russian winter
countero ensive with the Maccabean miracle” and told the
German-speaking listeners  repeatedly that “precisely during
Hanukkah week”, the 134th Nuremberg Division, named after
the city “where the racial legislation originated” was destroyed.
[2581] In 1941- 42 the Soviet authorities readily permitted
worshippers to over ll synagogues in Moscow, Leningrad, and
Kharkov and to openly celebrate the Jewish Passover of 1942.
[2582]
We cannot say that the domestic Soviet press treated
German atrocities with silence. Ilya Ehrenburg and others (like
the journalist Kriger) got the go-ahead to maintain and in ame
hatred towards Germans throughout the entire war and not
without mentioning the burning topic of Jewish su ering, yet
without a special stress on it. Throughout the war Ehrenburg 
thundered, that “the German is a beast by his nature”, calling
for “not sparing even unborn Fascists” (meaning the murder of
pregnant German women), and he was checked only at the very
end, when the war reached the territory of Germany and it
became clear that the Army had embraced only too well the
party line of unbridled revenge against all Germans.
However these is no doubt that the Nazi policy of
extermination of the Jews, its predetermination and scope, was
not su ciently covered by the Soviet press, so that even the
Jewish masses in the Soviet Union could hardly realize the
extent of their danger. Indeed, during the entire war, there
were few public statements about the fate of Jews under
German occupation. Stalin in his speech on Nov. 6, 1941 (the
24th anniversary of the October Revolution) said: “The Nazis
are … as eager to organize medieval Jewish pogroms as the
Tsarist regime was. The Nazi Party is the party … of medieval
reaction and the Black-Hundred pogroms.”[2583] “As far as we
know”, an Israeli historian writes, “it was the only case during
the entire war when Stalin publicly mentioned the Jews”.[2584]
On January 6, 1942, in a note of the Narkomindel [People’s
Commissariat of Foreign A airs] composed by Molotov and
addressed to all states that maintained diplomatic relations
with the Soviet Union, the Jews are mentioned as one of many
su ering Soviet nationalities, and shootings of Jews in Kiev,
Lvov, Odessa, Kamenetz-Podolsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol,
Kerch were highlighted and the numbers of victims listed. “The
terrible massacre and pogroms were in icted by German
invaders in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. … A signi cant number
of Jews, including women and children, were rounded up;
before the execution all of them were stripped naked and
beaten and then … shot by sub-machine guns. Many mass
murders occurred … in other Ukrainian cities, and these bloody
executions were directed in particular against unarmed and
defenseless Jews from the working class.”[2585] On December
19, 1942, the Soviet government issued a declaration that
mentioned Hitler’s “special plan for total extermination of the
Jewish population in the occupied territories of Europe” and in
Germany itself; “although relatively small, the Jewish minority
of the Soviet population … su ered particularly hard from the
savage bloodthirstiness of the Nazi monsters”. But some
sources point out that this declaration was somewhat forced; it
came out two days after a similar declaration was made by the
western Allies, and it was not republished in the Soviet press as
was always done during newspaper campaigns. In 1943, out of
seven reports of the Extraordinary State Commission for
investigation of Nazi atrocities (such as extermination of
Soviet prisoners of war and the destruction of cultural artifacts
of our country), only one report referred to murders of Jews –
in the Stavropol region, near Mineralnye Vody.[2586] And in
March 1944 in Kiev, while making a speech about the su ering
endured by Ukrainians under occupation, Khrushchev “did not
mention Jews at all”.[2587]
Probably this is true. Indeed, the Soviet masses did not
realize the scale of the Jewish Catastrophe. Overall, this was our
common fate – to live under the impenetrable shell of the USSR
and be ignorant of what was happening in the outside world.
However, Soviet Jews could not be all that unaware about the
events in Germany. “In the mid-thirties the Soviet Press wrote a
lot about German anti-Semitism… A novel by Leon
Feichtwanger The Oppenheim Family and the movie based on
the book, as well as another movie, Professor Mamlock, clearly
demonstrated the dangers that Jews were facing.”[2588]
Following the pogroms of Kristallnacht, Pravda published an
editorial “The Fascist Butchers and Cannibals” in which it
strongly condemned the Nazis: “The whole civilized world
watches with disgust and indignation the vicious massacre of
the defenseless Jewish population by German fascists. … [With
the same feelings] the Soviet people watch the dirty and bloody
events in Germany. … In the Soviet Union, along with the
capitalists and landowners, all sources of anti-Semitism had
been wiped out.”[2589] Then, throughout the whole November,
Pravda printed daily on its front pages reports such as “Jewish
pogroms in Germany”, “Beastly vengeance on Jews”, “The wave
of protests around the world against the atrocities of the
fascist thugs”. Protest rallies against anti-Jewish policies of
Hitler were held in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Minsk,
Sverdlovsk, and Stalin. Pravda published a detailed account of
the town hall meeting of the Moscow intelligentsia in the Great
Hall of the Conservatory, with speeches given by A.N. Tolstoy,
A. Korneychuk, L. Sobolev; People’s Artists [a Soviet title
signifying  prominence in the Arts] A.B. Goldenweiser and S.M.
Mikhoels, and also the text of a resolution adopted at the
meeting: “We, the representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia
… raise our voice in outrage and condemnation against the
Nazi atrocities and inhuman acts of violence against the
defenseless Jewish population of Germany. The fascists beat
up, maim, rape, kill and burn alive in broad daylight people
who are guilty only of belonging to the Jewish nation.”[2590]
The next day, on November 29, under the headline “Soviet
intelligentsia is outraged by Jewish pogroms in Germany”,
Pravda produced the full coverage of rallies in other Soviet
cities.
However, from the moment of the signing of the
Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in August of 1939, not only criticism
of Nazi policies but also any information about persecution of
the Jews in European countries under German control
vanished from the Soviet press. “A lot of messages … were
reaching the Soviet Union through various channels  –
intelligence, embassies, Soviet journalists. … An important
source of information… was Jewish refugees who managed to
cross the Soviet border. However, the Soviet media, including
the Jewish press, maintained silence.”[2591]
“When the Soviet-German War started and the topic of Nazi
anti-Semitism was raised again, many Jews considered it to be
propaganda”, argues a modern scholar, relying on the
testimonies of the Catastrophe  survivors, gathered over a half
of century. “Many Jews relied on their own life experience
rather than on radio, books and newspapers. The image of
Germans did not change in the minds of most Jews since WWI.
And back then the Jews considered the German regime to be
one of the most tolerant to them.”[2592] “Many Jews
remembered, that during the German occupation in 1918, the
Germans treated Jews better than they treated the rest of the
local population, and so the Jews were reassured.”[2593] As a
result, “in 1941, a signi cant number of Jews remained in the
occupied territories voluntarily”. And even in 1942, “according
to the stories of witnesses… the Jews in Voronezh, Rostov,
Krasnodar, and other cities waited for the front to roll through
their city and hoped to continue their work as doctors and
teachers, tailors and cobblers, which they believed were always
needed…. The Jews could not or would not evacuate for purely
material reasons as well.”[2594]
While the Soviet press and radio censored the information
about the atrocities committed by the occupiers  against the
Jews, the Yiddish newspaper Einigkeit (“Unity”), the o cial
publication of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (EAK), was
allowed to write about it openly from the summer of 1942.
Apparently, the rst step in the establishment of EAK was a
radio-meeting in August 1941of “representatives of the Jewish
people” (S. Mikhoels,  P. Marques, J. Ohrenburg, S. Marshak, S.
Eisenstein and other celebrities participated.) For propaganda
purposes, it was broadcast to the US and other Allied countries.
“The e ect on the Western public surpassed the most
optimistic expectations of Moscow. … In the Allied countries
the Jewish organizations sprang up to raise funds for the needs
of the Red Army.” Their success prompted the Kremlin to
establish a permanent Jewish Committee in the Soviet Union.
“Thus began the seven-year-long cooperation of the Soviet
authorities with global Zionism.”[2595]
The development of the Committee was a di cult process,
heavily dependent on the attitudes of government. In
September 1941, an in uential former member of the Bund,
Henryk Ehrlich, was released from the prison to lead that
organization. In 1917, Ehrlich had been a member of the
notorious and then omnipotent Executive Committee of the
Petrosoviet. Later, he emigrated to Poland where he was
captured by the Soviets in 1939. He and his comrade, Alter,
who also used to be a member of the Bund and was also a
native of Poland, began preparing a project that aimed to
mobilize international Jewish opinion, with heavier
participation of foreign rather than Soviet Jews. “Polish Bund
members were intoxicated by their freedom…  and
increasingly acted audaciously. Evacuated to Kuibyshev
[Samara] along with the metropolitan bureaucracy, they
contacted Western diplomatic representatives, who were
relocated there as well,… suggesting, in particular, to form a
Jewish Legion in the USA to ght on the Soviet-German front”.
“The things have gone so far that the members of the Polish
Bund … began planning a trip to the West on their own”. In
addition, both Bund activists “presumptuously assumed (and
did not hide it) that they could liberally reform the Soviet
political system”. In December 1941, both overreaching leaders
of the Committee were arrested (Ehrlich hanged himself in
prison; Alter was shot).[2596]
Yet during the spring of 1942, the project of the Jewish Anti-
Fascist Committee was revived, and a meeting “of the
representatives of Jewish people” was called forth again.  A
Committee was elected, although this time exclusively from
Soviet Jews. Solomon Mikhoels became its Chairman and
Shakhno Epstein, “Stalin’s eye `in Jewish a airs´ and a former
fanatical Bundist and later a fanatical Chekist, became its
Executive Secretary”.  Among others, its members were authors
David Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Leib Kvitko, and Der Nistor;
scientists Lina Shtern and Frumkin, a member of the Academy.
Poet Itzik Fefer became the Vice President.[2597] (The latter
was a former Trotskyite who was pardoned because he
composed odes dedicated to Stalin; he was “an important
NKVD agent”, and, as a “proven secret agent”, he was entrusted
with a trip to the West.[2598]) The task of this Committee was
the same: to in uence international public opinion, and “to
appeal to the ‘Jews all over the world’ but in practice it appealed
primarily to the American Jews”,[2599] building up sympathy
and raising nancial aid for the Soviet Union. (And it was the
main reason for Mikhoels’ and Fefer’s trip to the United States
in summer 1943, which coincided with the dissolution of
Comintern. It was a roaring success, triggering rallies in 14
cities across the US: 50,000 people rallied in New York City
alone. Mikhoels and Fefer were received by former Zionist
leader Chaim Weizmann and by Albert Einstein.[2600]) Yet
behind the scenes the Committee was managed by Lozovskiy-
Dridzo, the Deputy Head of the Soviet Information Bureau
(Sovinformbureau); the Committee did not have o ces in the
Soviet Union and could not act independently; in fact, it was
“not so much a fundraising tool for the Red Army as an arm of
… pro-Soviet propaganda abroad.”[2601]

   
Some Jewish authors argue that from the late 1930s there was
a covert but persistent removal of Jews from the highest ranks
of Soviet leadership in all spheres of administration. For
instance, D. Shub writes that by 1943 not a single Jew
remained among the top leadership of the NKVD, though
“there were still many Jews in the Commissariat of Trade,
Industry and Foods. There were also quite a few Jews in the
Commissariat of Public Education and in the Foreign
O ce.”[2602] A modern researcher reaches a di erent
conclusion based on archival materials that became available
in 1990s: “During the 1940s, the role of Jews in punitive organs
remained highly visible, coming to the end only in the postwar
years during the campaign against cosmopolitanism.”[2603]
However, there are no di erences of opinion regarding the
relatively large numbers of Jews in the top command positions
in the Army. The Jewish World reported that “in the Red Army
now [during the war], there are over a hundred Jewish
generals” and it provided a “small randomly picked list of such
generals”, not including “generals from the infantry”. There
were 17 names (ironically, “Major-General of Engineering
Service Frenkel Naftaliy Aronovich” of GULag was also
included).[2604] A quarter of a century later, another
collection of documents con rmed that there were no less than
a hundred Jewish generals in the middle of the war and
provided additional names.[2605] (However, the volume
unfortunately omitted the “Super-General” Lev Mekhlis – the
closest and most trusted of Stalin’s henchmen from 1937 to
1940; from 1941 he was the Head of Political Administration of
the Red Army. Ten days after the start of the war, Mekhlis
arrested a dozen of the highest generals of the Western Front.
[2606] He is also infamous for his punitive measures during
the Soviet-Finnish War and then later at Kerch in the Crimea.)
The Short Jewish Encyclopedia provides an additional list of
fteen Jewish generals. Recently, an Israeli researcher has
published a list of Jewish generals and admirals (including
those who obtained the rank during the war). Altogether, there
were 270 generals and admirals! This is not only “not a few” –
this is an immense number indeed. He also notes four wartime
narkoms (people’s commissars): in addition to Kaganovich,
these were Boris Vannikov (ammunition), Semien Ginzburg
(construction), Isaac Zaltzman (tank industry) and several
heads of main military administrations of the Red Army; the
list also contains the names of four Jewish army commanders,
commanders of 23 corps, 72 divisions, and 103 brigades.[2607]
“In no army of the Allies, not even in the USA’s, did Jews
occupy such high positions, as in the Soviet Army”, Dr. I. Arad
writes.[2608] No, “the displacement of Jews from the top posts”
during the war did not happen. Nor had any supplanting yet
manifested itself in general aspects of Soviet life. In 1944 (in
the USA) a famous Socialist Mark Vishnyak stated that  “not
even hardcore enemies of the USSR can say that its government
cultivates anti-Semitism”.[2609] Back then – it was
undoubtedly true.
According to Einigkeit (from February 24, 1945, almost at
the end of the war), “for courage and heroism in combat”…
63,374 Jews were awarded orders and medals”, and 59 Jews
became the Heroes of the Soviet Union. According to the
Warsaw Yiddish language newspaper Volksstimme in 1963 the
number of the Jews awarded military decorations in WWII was
160,772, with 108 Heroes of the Soviet Union among them.
[2610] In the early 1990s, an Israeli author provided a list of
names with dates of con rmation , in which 135 Jews are listed
as Heroes of the Soviet Union and 12 Jews are listed as the full
chevaliers of the Order of Glory.[2611] We nd similar
information in the three-volume Essays on Jewish Heroism.
[2612] And nally, the latest archival research (2001) provides
the following gures: “throughout the war 123,822 Jews were
awarded military decorations”;[2613] thus, among all
nationalities of the Soviet Union, the Jews are in fth place
among the recipients of decorations, after Russians,
Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Tatars.
I. Arad states that “anti-Semitism as an obstacle for Jews in
their military careers, in promotion to higher military ranks
and insignia did not exist in the Soviet Army during the war”.
[2614] Production on the home front for the needs of the war
was also highly rewarded. A huge in ux of  Soviet Jews into
science and technology during the 1930s had borne its fruit
during the war. Many Jews worked on the design of new types
of armaments and instrumentation, in the  manufacturing of
warplanes, tanks, and ships, in scienti c research, construction
and development of industrial enterprises, in power
engineering, metallurgy, and transport. For their work from
1941 to 1945 in support of the front, 180,000 Jews were
awarded decorations. Among them were scientists, engineers,
administrators of various managerial levels and workers,
including more than two hundred who were awarded the
Order of Lenin; nearly three hundred Jews were awarded the
Stalin Prize in science and technology. During the war, 12 Jews
became Heroes of Socialist Labor, eight Jews became full
members of the Academy of Science in physics and
mathematics, chemistry and technology, and thirteen became
Member-Correspondents of the Academy.[2615]
    
Many authors, including S. Schwartz, note that “the role of Jews
in the war was systematically concealed” along with a
deliberate policy of “silence about the role of Jews in the war”.
He cites as a proof the works of prominent Soviet writers such
as K. Simonov (Days and Nights) and V. Grossman (The People Is
Immortal) where “among a vast number of surnames of
soldiers, o cers, political o cers and others, there is not a
single Jewish name.”[2616] Of course, this was due to
censoring restrictions, especially in case of Grossman. (Later,
military personnel with Jewish names re-appeared in
Grossman’s essays.)  Another author notes that postcards
depicting a distinguished submarine commander, Israel
Fisanovich, were sold widely throughout the Soviet Union.
[2617] Later, such publications were extended; and an Israeli
researcher lists another 12 Jews, Heroes of the Soviet Union,
whose portraits were mass reproduced on postal envelopes.
[2618]
Even through I’m a veteran of that war, I have not researched
it through books much, nor was I collecting materials or have
written anything about it. But I saw Jews on the front. I knew
brave men among them. For instance, I especially want to
mention two fearless antitank ghters: one of them was my
university friend Lieutenant Emanuel Mazin; another was
young ex-student soldier Borya Gammerov (both were
wounded in action). In my battery among 60 people two were
Jews – Sergeant Ilya Solomin, who fought very well through the
whole war, and Private Pugatch, who soon slipped away to the
Political Department. Among twenty o cers of our division
one was a Jew – Major Arzon, the head of the supply
department. Poet Boris Slutsky was a real soldier, he used to
say: “I’m full of bullet holes”. Major Lev Kopelev, even though
he served in the Political Department of the Army (responsible
for counter-propaganda aimed at enemy troops), he fearlessly
threw himself in every possible  ghting melee. A former
“Mi iyetz” Semyon Freylih, a brave o cer, remembers: “The
war began … . So I was o to the draft board and joined the
army” without graduating from the University, as “we felt
ashamed not to share the hardships of millions”.[2619] Or take
Lazar Lazarev, later a well-known literary critic, who as a
young man fought at the front for two years until both his
hands were mauled: “It was our duty and we would have been
ashamed to evade it. … it was life – the only possible one under
the circumstances, the only decent choice for the people of my
age and education”.[2620] Boris Izrailevich Feinerman wrote in
1989 in response to an article in Book Review, that as a 17-year-
old, he volunteered in July 1941 for an infantry regiment; in
October, his both legs were wounded and he was taken
prisoner of war; he escaped and walked out of the enemy’s
encirclement on crutches – then of course he was imprisoned
for `treason´” – but in 1943 he managed to get out of the camp
by joining a penal platoon; he fought there and later became a
machine gunner of the assault infantry unit in a tank regiment
and was wounded two more times.
We can nd many examples of combat sacri ce in the
biographical volumes of the most recent Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia. Shik Kordonskiy, a commander of a mine and
torpedo regiment, “smashed his burning plane into the enemy
cargo ship”; he was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet
Union. Wolf Korsunsky, “navigator of the air regiment”,
became a Hero of the Soviet Union too. Victor Hasin, “a Hero of
the Soviet Union … squadron commander … participated in
257 air skirmishes, personally shot down a number of the
enemy’s airplanes”,  destroyed another 10 on the ground; he
was shot down over “the enemy occupied territory, and spent
several days reaching and crossing the front lines. He died in
hospital from his wounds”. One cannot express it better! The
Encyclopedia contains several dozens names of Jews who died
in combat.
Yet, despite these examples of unquestioned courage, a
Jewish scholar bitterly notes “the widespread belief in the army
and in the rear that Jews avoided the combat units”.[2621] This
is a noxious and painful spot. But, if you wish to ignore the
painful spots, do not attempt to write a book about ordeals that
were endured together.
In history, mutual national perceptions do count. “During
the last war, anti-Semitism in Russia increased signi cantly.
Jews were unjustly accused of evasion of military service and
in particular, of evasion of front line service.”[2622] “It was
often said about Jews that instead of ghting, they stormed the
cities of Alma-Ata and Tashkent.”[2623] Here is a testimony of
a Polish Jew who fought in the Red Army: “In the army, young
and old had been trying to convince me that … there was not a
single Jew on the front . `We’ve got to ght for them.´ I was
told in a `friendly´ manner: `You’re crazy. All your people are
safely sitting at home. How come you are here on the front?
´”[2624] I. Arad writes: “Expressions such as `we are at the
front, and the Jews are in Tashkent´, `one never sees a Jew at
the front line´could be heard among soldiers and civilians
alike.”[2625] I testify: Yes, one could hear this among the
soldiers on the front. And right after the war  – who has not
experienced that? – a painful feeling remained among our Slavs
that our Jews could have acted in that war in a more self-
sacri cing manner, that among the lower ranks on the front
the Jews could have been more represent.
These feelings are easy to blame (and they are blamed
indeed) on unwarranted Russian anti-Semitism.(However,
many sources blame that on the “German propaganda”
digested by our public. What a people! They are good only to
absorb propaganda – be it Stalin’s or Hitler’s – and they are good
for nothing else!) Now that it is half a century passed since
then. Isn’t it time to unscramble the issue?
There are no o cial data available on the ethnic
composition of the Soviet Army during the Second World War.
Therefore, most studies on Jewish participation in the war
provide only estimates, often without citation of sources or
explanation of the methods of calculation. However, we can
say that the 500,000 gure had been rmly established by
1990s: “The Jewish people supplied the Red Army with nearly
500,000 soldiers.”[2626] “During World War II, 550,000 Jews
served in the Red Army.”[2627] The Short Jewish Encyclopedia
notes that “only in the eld force of the Soviet Army alone
there were over 500,000 Jews”, and “these gures do not
include Jewish partisans who fought against Nazi Germany”.
[2628] The same gures are cited in Essays on Jewish heroism, in
Abramovich’s book In the Deciding War and in other sources.
We came across only one author who attempted to justify
his assessment by providing readers with details of his
reasoning. It was an Israeli researcher, I. Arad, in his the above
cited book on the Catastrophe.
Arad concludes that “the total number of Jews who fought in
the ranks of the Soviet Army against the German Nazis was no
less than 420,000-430,000”.[2629] He includes in this number
“the thousands of Jewish partisans who fought against the
German invaders in the woods” (they were later incorporated
into the regular army in 1944 after the liberation of Western
Byelorussia and Western Ukraine. At the same time, Arad
believes that during the war “approximately 25,000-30,000
Jewish partisans operated in the occupied areas of the Soviet
Union”.[2630] (The Israeli Encyclopedia in the article “Anti-Nazi
Resistance” provides a lower estimate: “In the Soviet Union,
more than 15,000 Jews fought against the Nazis in the
underground organizations and partisan units.”[2631]) In his
calculations, Arad assumes that the proportion of mobilized
Jews was the same as the average percentage of mobilized for
the entire population of USSR during the war, i.e., 13.0-13.5%. 
This would yield 390,000-405,000 Eastern Jews (out of the
total of slightly more than 3 million), save for the fact that “in
certain areas of Ukraine and Byelorussia, the percentage of
Jewish population was very high; these people were not
mobilized because the region was quickly captured by the
Germans”. However, the author assumes that in general the
mobilization “shortfall” of the Eastern Jews was small and that
before the Germans came, the majority of males of military age
were still mobilized  – and thus he settles on the number of
370,000-380,000 Eastern Jews who served in the army.
Regarding Western Jews, Arad reminds us that in 1940 in
Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine, during the
mobilization of conscripts whose year of birth fell between of
1919 and 1922, approximately 30,000 Jewish youths were
enlisted, but the Soviet government considered the soldiers
from the newly annexed western regions as “unreliable”;
therefore, almost all of them were transferred to the Labor
Army after the war began. “By the end of 1943, the process of
re-mobilization of those who were previously transferred into
the Labor Army began  … and there were Jews among them.”
The author mentions that 6,000 to 7,000 Western Jewish
refugees fought in the national Baltic divisions. By adding the
Jewish partisans incorporated into the army in 1944, the
author concludes: “we can establish that at least 50,000 Jews
from the territories annexed to the USSR, including those
mobilized before the war, served in the Red Army”. Thus I. Arad
comes to the overall number of 420,000-430,000 Jews in
military service between 1941 and 1944.[2632]
According to Arad, the number of 500,000 soldiers
commonly used in the sources would imply a general base
(500,000 conscripts taken out of the entire Jewish population)
of 3,700,000-3,850,000 people. According to the above-
mentioned sources, the maximum estimate for the total
number of Eastern and Western Jews who escaped the German
occupation was 2,226,000, and even if we were to add to this
base all 1,080,000 Eastern Jews who remained under the
occupation, as though they had had time to supply the army
with all the people of military age right before the arrival of the
Germans – which was not the case – the base would still lack a
half-million people. It would have also meant that the success
of the evacuation, discussed above, was strongly
underestimated.
There is no such contradiction in Arad’s assessment. And
though its individual components may require correction,
[2633] overall, it surprisingly well matches with the hitherto
unpublished data of the Institute of the Military History,
derived from the sources of the Central Archive of the Ministry
of Defense. According to that data, the numbers of mobilized
personnel during the Great Patriotic War were as follows:
Russians – 19,650,000
Ukrainians – 5,320,000
Byelorussians – 964,000
Tartars – 511,000
Jews – 434,000
Kazakhs – 341,000
Uzbeks – 330,000
Others – 2,500,000[2634]
Thus, contrary to the popular belief, the number of Jews in
the Red Army in WWII was proportional to the size of
mobilization base of the Jewish population. The fraction of
Jews that participated in the war in general matches their
proportion in the population.
So then, were the people’s impressions of the war really
prompted by anti-Semitic prejudice? Of course, by the
beginning of the war, a certain part of the older and middle-
aged population still bore scars from the 1920s and 1930s. But
a huge part of the soldiers were young men who were born at
the turn of the revolution or after it; their perception of the
world di ered from that of their elders dramatically. Compare:
during the First World War, in spite of the spy mania of the
military authorities in 1915 against the Jews who resided near
the front lines, there was no evidence of anti-Semitism in the
Russian army. In 1914, out of 5 million Russian Jews,[2635] “by
the beginning of WWI, about 400,000 Jews were inducted into
the Russian Imperial Army, and by the end of war in 1917 this
number reached 500,000”.[2636] This means that at the
outbreak of the war every twelfth Russian Jew fought in the war,
while by the end, one out of ten. And in World War II, every
eighth or seventh.
So, what was the matter? It can be assumed that the new
disparities inside the army played their role with their
in uences growing stronger and sharper as one moved closer
to the deadly frontline.
In 1874 Jews were granted equal rights with other Russian
subjects regarding universal conscription, yet during WWI
until the February Revolution, Tsar Alexander II’s  law which
stipulated that Jews could not advance above the rank of petty
o cer (though it did not apply to military medics) was still
enforced. Under the Bolsheviks, the situation had changed
radically, and during the WWII, as the Israeli Encyclopedia
summarizes, “compared to other nationalities of the Soviet
Union, Jews were disproportionately represented among the
senior o cers, mainly because of the higher percentage of
college graduates among them”.[2637] According to I. Arad’s
evaluation, “the number of Jews-commissars and political
o cers in various units during the war was relatively higher
than number of Jews on other Army positions”; “at the very
least, the percentage of Jews in the political leadership of the
army” was “three times higher than the overall percentage of
Jews among the population of the USSR during that period”.
[2638] In addition, of course, Jews were “among the head
professionals of military medicine … among the heads of
health departments on several fronts. … Twenty-six Jewish
generals of the Medical Corps and nine generals of the
Veterinary Corps were listed in the Red Army.” Thirty-three
Jewish generals served in the Engineering Corps.[2639] Of
course, Jewish doctors and military engineers occupied not
only high o ces: “among the military medical sta … there
were many Jews (doctors, nurses, orderlies).”[2640] Let us recall
that in 1926 the proportion of Jews among military doctors
was 18.6% while their proportion in the male population was
1.7%,[2641] and this percentage could only increase during the
war because of the large number of female Jewish military
doctors: “traditionally, a high percentage of Jews in the Soviet
medicine and engineering professions naturally contributed to
their large number in the military units.”[2642]
However undeniably important and necessary for nal
victory these services were, what mattered is that not
everybody could survive to see it. Meanwhile an ordinary
soldier, glancing back from the frontline, saw all too clearly
that even the second and third echelons behind the front were
also considered participants in the war: all those deep-rear
headquarters, suppliers, the whole Medical Corps from medical
battalion to higher levels, numerous behind-the-lines technical
units and, of course, all kinds of service personnel there, and,
in addition, the entire army propaganda machine, including
touring ensembles, entertainment troupes – they all were
considered war veterans and, indeed, it was apparent to
everyone that the concentration of Jews was much higher there
than at the front lines. Some write that “among Leningrad’s
veteran-writers”, the Jews comprised “by most cautious and
perhaps understated assessment… 31%”[2643] – that is,
probably more. Yet how many of them were editorial sta ? As a
rule, editorial o ces were situated 10-15 kilometers behind
the frontline, and even if a correspondent happened to be at
the front during hostilities, nobody would have forced him “to
hold the position”, he could leave immediately, which is a
completely di erent psychology. Many trumpeted their status
as “front-liners”, but writers and journalists are guilty of it the
most. Stories of prominent ones deserve a separate dedicated
analysis. Yet how many others – not prominent and not famous
– front-liners settled in various newspaper publishing o ces at
all levels – at fronts, armies, corps and divisions? Here is one
episode. After graduating from the machine gun school,
Second Lieutenant Alexander Gershkowitz was sent to the
front. But, after a spell at the hospital, while “catching up with
his unit, at a minor railroad station he sensed the familiar
smell of printing ink, followed it – and arrived at the o ce of a
division-level newspaper, which serendipitously was in need of
a front-line correspondent”. And his fate had changed. (But
what about catching up with his infantry unit?) “In this new
position, he traveled thousands of kilometers of the war
roads.”.[2644] Of course, military journalists perished in the
war as well.
Musician Michael Goldstein, who got “the white ticket” (“not
t”) because of poor vision, writes of himself: “I always strived
to be at the front, where I gave thousands of concerts, where I
wrote a number of military songs and where I often dug
trenches.”[2645] Often? Really? A visiting musician – and with
a shovel in his hands? As a war veteran, I say  – an absolutely
incredible picture. Or here is another amazing biography.
Eugeniy Gershuni “in the summer of 1941… volunteered for a
militia unit, where he soon organized a small pop ensemble”.
Those, who know about these unarmed and even non-
uniformed columns marching to certain death, would be
chilled. Ensemble, indeed! In September 1941, “Gershuni with
his group of artists from the militia was posted to Leningrad’s
Red Army Palace, where he organized and headed a troop-
entertainment circus”. The story ends “on May 9, 1945, when
Gershuni’s circus threw a show on the steps of the Reichstag in
Berlin”.[2646]
Of course, the Jews fought in the infantry and on the
frontline. In the middle of the 1970s, a Soviet source provides
data on the ethnic composition of two hundred infantry
divisions between January 1, 1943 and January 1, 1944 and
compares it to the population share of each nationality within
the pre-September 1939 borders of the USSR..  During that
period, Jews comprised respectively 1.5% and 1.28% in those
divisions, while their proportion in the population in 1939 was
1.78%,[2647] Only by the middle of 1944, when mobilization
began in the liberated areas, did the percentage of Jews fall to
1.14% because almost all Jews in those areas were
exterminated.
It should be noted here that some audacious Jews took an
even more fruitful and energetic part in the war outside of the
front. For example, the famous “Red Orchestra” of Trepper and
Gurevich spied on Hitler’s regime from within until the fall of
1942, passing to the Soviets extremely important strategic and
tactical information. (Both spies were arrested and held by the
Gestapo until the end of the war; then, after liberation, they
were arrested and imprisoned in the USSR  – Trepper for 10
years and Gurevich for 15 years.[2648]) Here is another
example: a Soviet spy, Lev Manevich, was ex-commander of a
special detachment during the Civil War and later a long-term
spy in Germany, Austria, and Italy. In 1936, he was arrested in
Italy, but he managed to communicate with Soviet intelligence
even from the prison. In 1943, while imprisoned in the Nazi
camps under the name of Colonel Starostin, he participated in
the anti-fascist underground. In 1945, he was liberated by the
Americans but died before returning to the USSR (where he
could have easily faced imprisonment). Only 20 years later, in
1965, was he awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union
posthumously.[2649] (One can also nd very strange
biographies, such as Mikhail Scheinman’s. Since the 1920s he
served as a provincial secretary of the Komsomol; during the
most rampant years of the Union of Militant Atheists he was
employed at its headquarters; then he graduated from the
Institute of Red Professors and worked in the press department
of the Central Committee of the VKPb. In 1941, he was
captured by the Germans and survived the entire war in
captivity – a Jew and a high-level commissar at that! And
despite categorical evidence of his culpability from SMERSH’s
[Translator’s note: a frontline counter-intelligence
organization, literally, “Death to Spies”] point of view, how
could he possibly surviveif he was not a traitor? Others were
imprisoned for a long time for lesser “crimes”.Yet nothing
happened, and in 1946 he was already safely employed in the
Museum of the History of Religion and then in the Institute of
History at the Academy of Science.[2650])
Yet such anecdotal evidence cannot make up a convincing
argument for either side and there are no reliable and speci c
statistics nor are they likely to surface in the future.
Recently, an Israeli periodical has published some
interesting testimony. When a certain Jonas Degen decided to
volunteer for a Komsomol platoon at the beginning of the war,
another Jewish youth, Shulim Dain, whom Jonas invited to
come and join him, replied “that it would be really fortunate if
the Jews could just watch the battle from afar since this is not
their war, though namely this war may inspire Jews and help
them to rebuild Israel. When I am conscripted to the army, I’ll
go to war. But to volunteer? Not a chance.”[2651] And Dain was
not the only one who thought like this; in particular, older and
more experienced Jews may have had  similar thoughts. And
this attitude, especially among the Jews devoted to the eternal
idea of Israel, is fully understandable. And yet it is ba ing,
because the advancing enemy was  the arch enemy of the Jews,
seeking above all else to annihilate them. How could Dain and
like-minded individuals remain neutral? Did they think that
the Russians had no other choice but to ght for their land
anyway?
One modern commentator (I know him personally – he is a
veteran and a former camp inmate) concludes: “Even among
the older veterans these days I have not come across people
with such clarity of thought and depth of understanding” as
Shulim Dain (who perished at Stalingrad) possessed: “two
fascist monsters interlocked in deadly embrace”. Why should
we participate in that?[2652]
Of course, Stalin’s regime was not any better than Hitler’s.
But for the wartime Jews, these two monsters could not be
equal! If that other monster won, what could then have
happened to the Soviet Jews? Wasn’t this war the personal
Jewish war? wasn’t it their own Patriotic War – to cross arms
with the deadliest enemy in the entire Jewish history? And
those Jews who perceived the war as their own and who did not
separate their fate from that of Russians, those like Freylikh,
Lazarev and Fainerman, whose thinking was opposite to
Shulim Dain’s, they fought sel essly.
 God forbid, I do not explain the Dain’s position as “Jewish
cowardice”. Yes, the Jews demonstrated survivalist prudence
and caution throughout the entire history of the Diaspora, yet
it is this history that explains these qualities. And during the
Six-Day War and other Israeli wars, the Jews have proven their
outstanding military courage.
Taking all that into consideration, Dain’s position can only
be explained by a relaxed feeling of dual citizenship – the very
same that back in 1922, Professor Solomon Lurie from
Petrograd considered as one of the main sources of anti-
Semitism (and its explanation) – a Jew living in a particular
country belongs not only to that country, and his loyalties
become inevitably split in two. The Jews have “always harbored
nationalist attitudes, but the object of their nationalism was
Jewry, not the country in which they lived”.[2653] Their
interest in this country is partial. After all, they – even if many
of them only unconsciously – saw ahead looming in the future
their very own nation of Israel.

   
And what about the rear? Researchers are certain about the
“growth of anti-Semitism … during the war.”[2654] “The curve
of anti-Semitism in those years rose sharply again, and anti-
Semitic manifestations … by their intensity and prevalence
dwarfed the anti-Semitism of the second half of the
1920s.”[2655] “During the war, anti-Semitism become
commonplace in the domestic life in the Soviet deep
hinterland.”[2656]
During evacuation, “so-called domestic anti-Semitism,
which had been dormant since the establishment of the
Stalinist dictatorship in the early 1930s, was revived against
the background of general insecurity and breakdown and other
hardships and deprivations, engendered by the war.”[2657]
This statement refers mainly to Central Asia, Uzbekistan, and
Kazakhstan, “especially when the masses of wounded and
disabled veterans rushed there from the front”,[2658] and
exactly there the masses of the evacuated Jews lived, including
Polish Jews, who were “torn from their traditional
environment” by deportation and who had no experience of
Soviet kolkhozes. Here are the testimonies of Jewish evacuees
to Central Asia recorded soon after the war: “The low labor
productivity among evacuated Jews … served in the eyes of the
locals as a proof of allegedly characteristic Jewish reluctance to
engage in physical labor.”[2659] “The intensi cation of [anti-
Semitic] attitudes was fueled by the Polish refugees’ activity on
the commodity markets.”[2660] “Soon they realized that their
regular incomes from the employment in industrial
enterprises, kolkhozes, and cooperatives … would not save
them from starvation and death. To survive, there was only
one way – trading on the market or `speculation´”; therefore,
it was the Soviet reality that drove “Polish Jews to resort to
market transactions whether they liked it or not.”[2661] “The
non-Jewish population of Tashkent was ill-disposed toward the
Jewish evacuees from Ukraine. Some said, `Look at these Jews.
They always have a lot of money.´”[2662] “Then there were
incidents of harassment and insults of Jews, threats against
them, throwing them out of bread queues.”[2663] “Another
group of Russian Jews, mostly bureaucrats with a considerable
amount of cash, inspired the hostility of the locals for in ating
the already high market prices.”[2664]
The author proceeds con dently to explain these facts thus:
“Hitler’s propaganda reaches even here”,[2665] and he is not
alone in reaching such conclusions.
 What a staggering revelation! How could Hitler’s
propaganda victoriously reach and permeate all of Central Asia
when it was barely noticeable at the front with all those rare
and dangerous-to-touch lea ets thrown from airplanes, and
when all private radio receiver sets were con scated
throughout the USSR?
No, the author realizes that there “was yet another reason
for the growth of anti-Semitic attitudes in the districts that
absorbed evacuees en masse. There, the antagonism between
the general mass of the provincial population and the
privileged bureaucrats from the country’s central cities
manifested itself in a subtle form. Evacuation of organizations
from those centers into the hinterland provided the local
population with an opportunity to fully appreciate the depth
of social contrast.”[2666]

   
Then there were those populations that experienced the
German invasion and occupation, for instance, the Ukrainians.
Here is  testimony published in March 1945 in the bulletin of
the Jewish Agency for Palestine: “The Ukrainians meet
returning Jews with hostility. In Kharkov, a few weeks after the
liberation, Jews do not dare to walk alone on the streets at
night. … There have been many cases of beating up Jews on the
local markets. … Upon returning to their homes, Jews often
found only a portion of their property, but when they
complained in courts, Ukrainians often perjured themselves
against them.”[2667] (The same thing happened everywhere;
besides it was useless to complain in court anyway: many of
the returning non-Jewish evacuees found their old places
looted as well.) “There are many  testimonies about hostile
attitudes towards Jews in Ukraine after its liberation from the
Germans.”[2668] “As a result of the German occupation, anti-
Semitism in all its forms has signi cantly increased in all social
strata of Ukraine, Moldova and Lithuania.”[2669]
Indeed, here, in these territories, Hitler’s anti-Jewish
propaganda did work well during the years of occupation, and
yet the main point was the same: that under the Soviet regime
the Jews had merged with the ruling class – and so a secret
German report from the occupied territories in October 1941
states that the “animosity of the Ukrainian population against
Jews is enormous…. they view the Jews … as informants and
agents of the NKVD, which organized the terror against the
Ukrainian people.”[2670]
Generally speaking, early in the war, the “German’s plan was
to create an impression that it was not Germans but the local
population that began extermination of the Jews”; S. Schwartz
believes that, unlike the reports of the German propaganda
press, “the German reports not intended for publication are
reliable.”[2671] He profusely quotes a report by SS
Standartenführer F. Shtoleker to Berlin on the activities of the
SS units under his command (operating in the Baltic states,
Byelorussia and in some parts of the RSFSR) for the period
between the beginning of the war in the East and October 15,
1941: “Despite facing considerable di culties, we were able to
direct local anti-Semitic forces toward organization of anti-
Jewish pogroms within several hours after arrival [of German
troops]. … It was necessary to show that … it was a natural
reaction to the years of oppression by Jews and communist
terror. …  It was equally important to establish for the future as
an undisputed and provable fact that … the local people have
resorted to the most severe measures against Bolsheviks and
Jews on their own initiative, without demonstrable evidence
for any guidance from the German authorities.”[2672]
 The willingness of the local population for such initiatives
varied greatly in di erent occupied regions. “In the tense
atmosphere of the Baltics, the hatred of Jews reached a boiling
point at the very moment of Hitler’s onslaught against Soviet
Russia on June 22, 1941.”[2673] The Jews were accused of
collaboration with the NKVD in the deportation of Baltic
citizens. The Israeli Encyclopedia quotes an entry from the diary
of Lithuanian physician E. Budvidayte-Kutorgene: “All
Lithuanians, with few exceptions, are unanimous in their
hatred of Jews.”[2674] Yet, the Standartenführer reports that
“to our surprise, it was not an easy task … to induce a pogrom
there”. This was achieved with the help of Lithuanian
partisans, who exterminated 1,500 Jews in Kaunas during the
night of June 26 and 2,300 more in the next few days; they also
burned the Jewish quarter and several synagogues.[2675]
“Mass executions of the Jews were conducted by the SS and the
Lithuanian police on October 29 and November 25, 1941.”
About 19,000 of the 36,000 Jews of Kaunas were shot in the
Ninth Fort.[2676] “In many Lithuanian cities and towns, all of
the Jewish population was exterminated by local Lithuanian
police under German control in the autumn of 1941.”[2677] “It
was much harder to induce the same self-cleaning operations
and pogroms in Latvia”, reports the Standartenführer, because
there “the entire national leadership, especially in Riga, was
destroyed or deported by the Bolsheviks.”[2678] Still, on July 4,
1941, Latvian activists in Riga “set re to several synagogues
into which the Jews had been herded. … About 2,000 died”; in
the rst days of occupation, locals assisted in executions by the
Germans of several thousand Jews in the Bikernieki forest near
Riga, and in late October and in early November in the
shootings of about 27,000 Jews at a nearby railway station
Rumbula.[2679] In Estonia, “with a small number of Jews in
the country, it was not possible to induce pogroms”, reports the
o cer.[2680] (Estonian Jews were destroyed without pogroms:
“In Estonia, about 2,000 Jews remained. Almost all male Jews
were executed in the rst weeks of the occupation by the
Germans and their Estonian collaborators. … The rest were
interned in the concentration camp Harku near Tallinn”, and
by the end of 1941 all of them were killed.[2681]
But the German leadership was disappointed in Byelorussia.
S. Schwartz: “the failure of the Germans to draw sympathy
from the broad masses of locals to the cause of extermination
of Jews… is completely clear from secret German documents …
The population invariably and consistently refrains from any
independent action against the Jews.”[2682] Still, according to
eyewitnesses in Gorodok in the Vitebsk oblast, when the ghetto
was liquidated on Oct. 14, 1941, the “Polizei were worse than
the Germans”;[2683] and in Borisov, the “Russian police” (it
follows in the report that they were actually imported from
Berlin)  “destroyed within two days [October 20 and 21, 1941]
6,500 Jews. Importantly, the author of the report notes that the
killings of Jews were not met with sympathy from the local
population: `Who ordered that… How is it possible…? Now
they kill the Jews, and when will be our turn? What have these
poor Jews done? They were just workers. The really guilty ones
are, of course, long gone.´”[2684] And here is a report by a
German “trustee”, a native Byelorussian from Latvia: “In
Byelorussia, there is no Jewish question. For them, it’s a purely
German business, not Byelorussian… Everybody sympathizes
with and pities the Jews, and they look at Germans as
barbarians and murderers of the Jews [Judenhenker]: a Jew,
they say, is a human being just like a Byelorussian.”[2685] In
any case, S. Schwartz writes that “there were no national
Byelorussian squads a liated with the German punitive units,
though there were Latvian, Lithuanian, and `mixed´ squads;
the latter enlisted some Byelorussians as well.”[2686]
 The project was more successful in Ukraine. From the
beginning of the war, Hitler’s propaganda incited the
Ukrainian nationalists (“Bandera?s Fighters”) to take revenge
on the Jews for the murder of Petliura by Schwartzbard.[2687]
The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Bandera-Melnik
(OUN) did not need to be persuaded: even before the Soviet-
German War, in April 1941, it adopted a resolution at its
Second Congress in Krakow, in which paragraph 17 states: “The
Yids in the Soviet Union are the most loyal supporters of the
ruling Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Moscow
imperialism in Ukraine… The Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists considers the Yids as the pillar of the Moscow-
Bolshevik regime, while educating the masses that Moscow is
the main enemy.”[2688] Initially, the “Bandera Fighters” allied
with the Germans against the Bolsheviks. During the whole of
1940 and the rst half of 1941, the OUN leadership was
preparing for a possible war between Germany and the USSR.
“Then the main base of the OUN was the
Generalgouvernement, i. e., the Nazi-occupied Poland. …
Ukrainian militias were being created there, and lists of
suspicious persons, with Jews among them, were compiled.
Later these lists were used by Ukrainian nationalists to
exterminate Jews. … `Mobile units´ for the East Ukraine were
created and battalions of Ukrainian Nationalists,  `Roland´
and `Nakhtigal´, were formed in the German Army.” The OUN
arrived in the East [of Ukraine] together with the frontline
German troops. During the summer of 1941 “a wave of Jewish
pogroms rolled over Western Ukraine. … with participation of
both Melnyk’s and of Bandera’s troops. As a result of these
pogroms, around 28,000 Jews were killed.”[2689] Among OUN
documents, there is a declaration by J. Stetzko (who in July
1941 was named the head of the Ukrainian government): “The
Jews help Moscow to keep Ukraine in slavery, and therefore, I
support extermination of the Yids and the need to adopt in
Ukraine the German methods of extermination of Jewry.” In
July, a meeting of Bandera’s OUN leaders was held in Lvov,
where, among other topics, policies toward Jews were
discussed. There were various proposals: to build the policy “on
the principles of Nazi policy before 1939. … There were
proposals to isolate Jews in ghettoes. … But the most radical
proposal was made by Stepan Lenkavskiy, who stated:
`Concerning the Jews we will adopt all the measures that will
lead to their eradication.´”[2690] And until the relations
between the OUN and the Germans deteriorated (because
Germany did not recognize the self-proclaimed Ukrainian
independence), there were “many cases, especially in the rst
year … when Ukrainians directly assisted the Germans in the
extermination of Jews.” “Ukrainian auxiliary police, recruited
by the Germans mainly in Galicia and Volhynia,”[2691] played
a special role. “In Uman in September 1941, Ukrainian city
police under command of several o cers and sergeants of the
SS shot nearly 6,000 Jews”; and in early November 6 km outside
Rovno, “the SS and Ukrainian police slaughtered 21,000 Jews
from the ghetto.”[2692] However, S. Schwartz writes: “It is
impossible to gure out which part of the Ukrainian
population shared an active anti-Semitism with a
predisposition toward pogroms. Probably quite a large part,
particularly the more cultured strata, did not share these
sentiments.” As for the original part of the Soviet Ukraine
[within the pre-September 1939 Soviet borders], “no evidence
for the `spontaneous´ pogroms by Ukrainians could be found
in the secret German reports from those areas.”[2693] In
addition, “Tatar militia squads in the Crimea were
exterminating Jews also.”[2694]
Regarding indigenous Russian regions occupied by the
Germans, the Germans “could not exploit anti-Russian
sentiments and the argument about Moscow’s imperialism was
unsustainable; and the argument for any Judeo-Bolshevism,
devoid of support in local nationalism, largely lost its appeal”;
among the local Russian population “only relatively few people
actively supported the Germans in their anti-Jewish policies of
extermination.”[2695]
A researcher on the fate of Soviet Jewry concludes: the
Germans in Lithuania and Latvia “had a tendency to mask
their pogromist activities, bringing to the fore extermination
squads made up of pogromists emerging under German
patronage from the local population”; but “in Byelorussia, and
to a considerable extent even in Ukraine and especially in the
occupied areas of the RSFSR”, the Germans did not succeed as
“the local population had mostly disappointed the hopes
pinned on it” –  and there “the Nazi exterminators had to
proceed openly.”[2696]

   
Hitler’s plan for the military campaign against the Soviet
Union (Operation Barbarossa) included “special tasks to prepare
the ground for political rule, with the character of these tasks
stemming from the all-out struggle between the two opposing
political systems.” In May and June 1941, the Supreme
Command of the Wehrmacht issued more speci c directives,
ordering execution without trial of persons suspected of
hostile action against Germany (and of political commissars,
partisans, saboteurs and Jews in any case) in the theater of
Barbarossa.[2697]
To carry out special tasks in the territory of the USSR, four
special groups (Einsatzgruppen) were established within the
Security Service (SS) and the Secret Police (Gestapo), that had
operational units (Einsatzkommando) numerically equal to
companies. The Einsatzgruppen advanced along with the front
units of the German Army, but reported directly to the Chief of
Security of the Third Reich, Reinhard Heydrich.
Einsatzgruppe A (about 1000 soldiers and SS o cers under
the command of SS Standartenführer Dr. F. Shtoleker) of Army
Group “North” operated in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the
Leningrad and Pskov oblasts. Group B (655 men, under the
command of Brigadenführer A. Neveu) was attached to Army
Group “Centre”, which was advancing through Byelorussia and
the Smolensk Oblast toward Moscow. Group C (600,
Standartenführer E. Rush) was attached to Army Group
“South” and operated in the Western and Eastern Ukraine.
Group D (600 men under the command of SS Standartenführer
Prof. O. Ohlendorf) was attached to the 11th Army and
operated in Southern Ukraine, the Crimea, and in the
Krasnodar and Stavropol regions.
Extermination of Jews and commissars (“carriers of the
Judeo-Bolshevik ideology”) by the Germans began from the
rst days of the June 1941invasion, though they did so
“somewhat chaotically and with an extremely broad
scope.”[2698] “In other German-occupied countries,
elimination of the Jewish population proceeded gradually and
thoroughly. It usually started with legal restrictions, continued
with the creation of ghettos and introduction of forced labor
and culminated in deportation and mass extermination. In
Soviet Russia, all these elements were strangely intermingled
in time and place. In each region, sometimes even within one
city, various methods of harassment were used… there was no
uniform or standardized system.”[2699] Shooting of Jewish
prisoners of war could happen sometimes right upon capture
and sometimes later in the concentration camps; civilian Jews
were sometimes rst con ned in ghettoes, sometimes in
forced-labor camps, and in other places they were shot
outright on the spot, and still in other places the “gas vans”
were used. “As a rule, the place of execution was an anti-tank
ditch, or just a pit.”[2700]
The numbers of those exterminated in the cities of the
Western USSR by the winter of 1941 (the rst period of
extermination) are striking: according to the documents, in
Vilnius out of 57,000 Jews who had lived there about 40,000
were killed; in Riga out of 33,000 – 27,000; in Minsk out of the
100,000-strong ghetto – 24,000 were killed (there the
extermination continued until the end of occupation); in
Rovno out of 27,000 Jews  – 21,000 were killed; in Mogilev
about 10,000 Jews were shot; in Vitebsk  – up to 20,000; and
near Kiselevich village nearly 20,000 Jews from Bobruisk were
killed; in Berdichev – 15,000.[2701]
By late September, the Nazis staged a mass extermination of
Jews in Kiev. On September 26 they distributed
announcements around the city requiring all Jews, under the
penalty of death, to report to various assembly points. And
Jews, having no other option but to submit, gathered
obediently, if not trustingly, altogether about 34,000; and on
September 29 and 30, they were methodically shot at Babi Yar,
putting layer upon layers of corpses in a large ravine.Hence
there was no need to dig any  graves  – a giant hecatomb!
According to the o cial German announcement, not
questioned later, 33,771 Jews were shot over the course of two
days. During the next two years of the Kiev occupation, the
Germans continued shootings in their favorite and so
convenient ravine. It is believed that the number of the executed
– not only Jews – had reached, perhaps, 100,000.[2702]
The executions at Babi Yar have become a symbol in world
history. People shrug at the cold-blooded calculation, the
business-like organization, so typical for the 20th century that
crowns  humanistic civilization: during the “savage” Middle
Ages people killed each other en masse only in a t of rage or in
the heat of battle.
It should be recalled that within a few kilometers from Babi
Yar, in the enormous Darnitskiy camp, tens of thousands
Soviet prisoners of war, soldiers and o cers, died during the
same months: yet we do not commemorate it properly, and
many are not even aware of it. The same is true about the more
than two million Soviet prisoners of war who perished during
the rst years of the war.
The Catastrophe  persistently raked its victims from all the
occupied Soviet territories.
In Odessa on October 17, 1941, on the second day of
occupation by German and Romanian troops, several thousand
Jewish males were killed, and later, after the bombing of the
Romanian Military O ce, the total terror was unleashed: about
5,000 people, most of them Jews and thousands of others, were
herded into a suburban village and executed there. In
November, there was a mass deportation of people into the
Domanevskiy District, where “about 55,000 Jews” were shot in
December and January of 1942.[2703] In the rst months of
occupation, by the end of 1941, 22,464 Jews were killed in
Kherson and Nikolayev; 11,000  in Dnepropetrovsk; 8,000  in
Mariupol’ and almost as many in Kremenchug; about 15,000  in
Kharkov’s Drobytsky Yar; and more than 20,000  in Simferopol’
and Western Crimea.[2704]
By the end of 1941, the German High Command had realized
that the “blitz” had failed and that a long war loomed ahead.
The needs of the war economy demanded a di erent
organization of the home front. In some places, the German
administration slowed down the extermination of Jews in
order to exploit their manpower and skills. “As the result,
ghettoes survived in large cities like Riga, Vilnius, Kaunas,
Baranovichi, Minsk, and in other, smaller ones, where many
Jews worked for the needs of the German war economy.”[2705]
Yet the demand for labor that prolonged the existence of these
large ghettoes did not prevent resumption of mass killings in
other places in the spring of 1942: in Western Byelorussia,
Western Ukraine, Southern Russia and the Crimea, 30,000 Jews
were deported from the Grodno  region to Treblinka and
Auschwitz; Jews of Polesia, Pinsk, Brest-Litovsk, and Smolensk
were eradicated. During the 1942 summer o ensive, the
Germans killed local Jews immediately upon arrival: the Jews
of Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk and Essentuki were killed in antitank
ditches near Mineralni’ye Vody; thus died evacuees to
Essentuki from Leningrad and Kishinev. Jews of Kerch and
Stavropol were exterminated as well. In Rostov-on-Don,
recaptured by the Germans in late July 1942, all the remaining
Jewish population was eradicated by August 11.
In 1943, after the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the
outcome of the war became clear. During their retreat, the
Germans decided to exterminate all remaining Jews. On June
21, 1943 Himmler ordered the liquidation of the remaining
ghettoes. In June 1943, the ghettoes of Lvov, Ternopol, and
Drohobych were liquidated. After the liberation of Eastern
Galicia in 1944, “only 10,000 to 12,000 Jews were still alive,
which constituted about 2% of all Jews who had remained
under occupation.” Able-bodied Jews from ghettoes in Minsk,
Lida, and Vilnius were transferred to concentration camps in
Poland, Estonia, and Latvia, while the rest were shot. Later,
during the summer, 1944 retreat from the Baltics, some of the
Jews in those camps were shot, and some were moved into
camps in Germany (Stutthof et al.).[2706]
Destined for extermination, Jews fought for survival:
underground groups sprang up in many ghettoes to organize
escapes. Yet after a successful breakout, a lot depended on the
local residents  – that they not betray the Jews, provide them
with non-Jewish papers, shelter and food. In the occupied
areas, Germans sentenced those helping Jews to death.[2707]
“But everywhere, in all occupied territories, there were people
who helped the Jews. … Yet there were few of them. They
risked their lives and the lives of their families. … There were
hundreds, maybe thousands of such people. But the majority of
local populations just watched from a distance.”[2708] In
Byelorussia and the occupied territories of the RSFSR, where
local populations were not hostile to the remaining Jews and
where no pogroms ever occurred, the local population provided
still less assistance to Jews than in Europe or even “in Poland,
the country … of widespread, traditional, folk anti-
Semitism.”[2709] (Summaries of many similar testimonies can
be found in books by S. Schwartz and I. Arad.) They plausibly
attribute this not only to the fear of execution but also to the
habit of obedience to authorities (developed over the years of
Soviet rule) and to not meddling in the a airs of others.
Yes, we have been so downtrodden, so many millions have
been torn away from our midst in previous decades, that any
attempt at resistance to government power was foredoomed,
so now Jews as well could not get the support of the
population.
But even well-organized Soviet underground and guerrillas
directed from Moscow did little to save the doomed Jews.
Relations with the Soviet guerrillas were a specially acute
problem for the Jews in the occupied territories. Going into the
woods, i.e., joining up with a partisan unit, was a better lot for
Jewish men than waiting to be exterminated by the Germans.
Yet hostility to the Jews was widespread and often acute
among partisans, and “there were some Russian detachments
that did not accept Jews on principle. They alleged that Jews
cannot and do not want to ght”, writes a former Jewish
partisan Moshe Kaganovich. A non-Jewish guerilla recruit was
supplied with weapons, but a Jew was required to provide his
own, and sometimes it was traded down. “There is pervasive
enmity to Jews among partisans. … in some detachments anti-
Semitism was so strong that the Jews felt compelled to ee
from such units.”[2710]
For instance, in 1942 some two hundred Jewish boys and
girls ed into the woods from the ghetto in the shtetl of Mir in
Grodno oblast, and “there they encountered anti-Semitism
among Soviet guerrillas, which led to the death of many who
ed; only some of them were able to join guerrilla
squads.”[2711] Or another case: A guerrilla squad under the
command of Ganzenko operated near Minsk. It was
replenished “mainly with fugitives from the Minsk ghetto”, but
the “growing number of Jews in the unit triggered anti-Semitic
clashes” – and then the Jewish part of the detachment broke
away.[2712] Such actions on the part of the guerrillas were
apparently spontaneous, not directed from the center.
According to Moshe Kaganovich, from the end of 1943 “the
in uence of more-disciplined personnel arriving from the
Soviet Union” had increased “and the general situation for [the
Jews had] somewhat improved.”[2713] However, he complains
that when a territory was liberated by the advancing regular
Soviet troops and the partisans were sent to the front (which is
true, and everybody was sent indiscriminately), it was
primarily Jews who were sent[2714] – and that is incredible.
However, Kaganovich writes that Jews were sometimes
directly assisted by the partisans. There were even “partisan
attacks on small towns in order to save Jews” from ghettoes
and [concentration] camps, and that “Russian partisan
movement helped eeing Jews to cross the front lines. … [And
in this way they] smuggled across the frontline many
thousands of Jews who were hiding in the forests of Western
Byelorussia escaping the carnage.” A partisan force in the
Chernigov region accepted “more than ve hundred children
from Jewish family camps in the woods, protected them and
took care of them… After the Red Army liberated Sarny (on
Volyn), several squads broke the front and sent Jewish children
to Moscow.” (S. Schwartz believes that “these reports are greatly
exaggerated. [But] they are based on real facts, [and they] merit
attention.”[2715])
Jewish family camps originated among the Jewish masses
eeing into the woods and there “were many thousands of
such fugitives.” Purely Jewish armed squads were formed
speci cally for the protection of these camps. (Weapons were
purchased through third parties from German soldiers or
policemen.) Yet how to feed them all? The only way was to take
food as well as shoes and clothing, both male and female, by
force from the peasants of surrounding villages. “The peasant
was placed between the hammer and the anvil. If he did not
carry out his assigned production minimum, the Germans
burned his household and killed him as a `partisan´. On the
other hand, guerrillas took from him by force all they
needed”[2716] – and this naturally caused spite among the
peasants: they are robbed by Germans and robbed by
guerrillas – and now in addition even the Jews rob them? And
the Jews even take away clothes from their women?
In the spring of 1943, partisan Baruch Levin came to one
such family camp, hoping to get medicines for his sick
comrades. He remembers: Tuvia Belsky “seemed like a
legendary hero to me. … Coming from the people, he managed
to organize a 1,200-strong unit in the woods. … In the worst
days when a Jew could not even feed himself, he cared for the
sick, elderly and for the babies born in the woods.” Levin told
Tuvia about Jewish partisans: “We, the few survivors, no longer
value life. Now the only meaning of our lives is revenge. It is
our duty – to ght the Germans, wipe out all of them to the last
one.” I talked for a long time; … o ered to teach Belsky’s people
how to work with explosives, and all other things I have myself
learned. But my words, of course, could not change Tuvia’s
mindset… `Baruch, I would like you to understand one thing.
It is precisely because there are so few of us left, it is so
important for me that the Jews survive. And I see this as my
purpose; it is the most important thing for me.´”[2717]
And the very same Moshe Kaganovich, as late as in 1956,
wrotein a book published in Buenos Aires, “in peacetime, years
after the devastating defeat of Nazism” – shows, according to S.
Schwartz, “a really bloodthirsty attitude toward the Germans,
an attitude that seems to be in uenced by the Hitler plague…. 
he glori es putting German prisoners to `Jewish death´ by
Jewish partisans according to the horrible Nazi’ examples or
excitedly recalls the speech by a commander of a [Jewish]
guerrilla unit given before the villagers of a Lithuanian village
who were gathered and forced to kneel  by partisans in the
square after a punitive raid against that village whose
population had actively assisted the Germans in the
extermination of Jews (several dozen villagers were executed
during that raid).”[2718] S. Schwartz writes about this with a
restrained but clear condemnation.
Yes, a lot of things happened. Predatory killings call for
revenge, but each act of revenge, tragically, plants the seeds of
new retribution in the future.

   
The di erent Jewish sources variously estimate the total losses
among Soviet Jews during the Second World War (within the
post-war borders). “How many Soviet Jews survived the war?”,
asks S. Schwartz and o ers this calculation: 1,810,000-
1,910,000 (excluding former refugees from the Western Poland
and Romania, now repatriated ). “The calculations imply that
the number of Jews by the end of the war was markedly lower
than two million and much lower than the almost universally
accepted number of three million.”[2719] So, the total number
of losses according to Schwarz was 2,800,000-2,900,000.
In 1990 I. Arad provided his estimate: “During the liberation
of German-occupied territories … the Soviet Army met almost
no Jews. Out of the 2,750,000-2,900,000 Jews who remained
under the Nazi rule [in 1941] in the occupied Soviet territories,
almost all died.” To this gure Arad suggests adding “about
120,000 Jews – Soviet Army soldiers who died on the front, and
about 80,000 shot in the POW camps”, and “tens of thousands
of Jews [who died] during the siege of Leningrad, Odessa and
other cities, and in the deep rear … because of harsh living
conditions in the evacuation.”[2720]
Demographer M. Kupovetskiy published several studies in
the 1990s, where he used newly available archival materials,
made some corrections to older data and employed an
improved technique for ethnodemographic analysis. His result
was that the general losses of Jewish population within the
postwar USSR borders in 1941-1945 amounted to 2,733,000
(1,112,000 Eastern and 1,621,000 Western Jews), or 55% of
4,965,000 – the total number of Jews in the USSR in June 1941.
This gure, apart from the victims of Nazi extermination,
includes the losses among the military and the guerrillas,
among civilians near the front line, during evacuation and
deportation, as well as the victims of Stalin’s camps during the
war. (However, the author notes, that quantitative evaluation
of each of these categories within the overall casualty gure is
yet to be done.[2721]) Apparently, the Short Jewish Encyclopedia
agrees with this assessment as it provides the same number.
[2722]
The currently accepted gure for the total losses of the
Soviet population during the Great Patriotic War is 27,000,000
(if the “method of demographic balance” is used, it is
26,600,000[2723]) and this may still be underestimated.
We must not overlook what that war was for the Russians.
The war rescued not only their country, not only Soviet Jewry,
but also the entire social system of the Western world from
Hitler. This war exacted such sacri ce from the Russian people
that its strength and health have never since fully recovered.
That war overstrained the Russian people. It was yet another
disaster on top of those of the Civil War and de-kulakization –
and from which the Russian people have almost run dry.

   
The ruthless and unrelenting Catastrophe, which was
gradually devouring Soviet Jewry in a multitude of
exterminating events all over the occupied lands, was part of a
greater Catastrophe designed to eradicate the entire European
Jewry.
As we examine only the events in Russia, the Catastrophe as
a whole is not covered in this book. Yet the countless miseries
having befallen on both our peoples, the Jewish and the
Russian, in the 20th century, and the unbearable weight of the
lessons of history and gnawing anxiety about the future, make
it impossible not to share, if only brie y, some re ections
about it, re ections of mine and others, and impossible not to
examine how the high Jewish minds look at the Catastrophe
from the historical perspective and how they attempt to
encompass and comprehend it.
 It is for a reason that the “Catastrophe” is always written
with a capital letter. It was an epic event for such an ancient
and historical people. It could not fail to arouse the strongest
feelings and a wide variety of re ections and conclusions
among the Jews.
In many Jews, long ago assimilated and distanced from their
own people, the Catastrophe reignited a more distinct and
intense sense of their Jewishness. Yet “for many, the
Catastrophe became a proof that God is dead. If He had existed,
He certainly would never have allowed Auschwitz.”[2724] Then
there is an opposite re ection: “Recently, a former Auschwitz
inmate said: “In the camps, we were given a new Torah, though
we have not been able to read it yet.”[2725]
An Israeli author states with conviction: “The Catastrophe
happened because we did not follow the Covenant and did not
return to our land. We had to return to our land to rebuild the
Temple.”[2726]
Still, such an understanding is achieved only by a very few,
although it does permeate the entire Old Testament.
Some have developed and still harbor a bitter feeling: “Once,
humanity turned away from us. We weren’t a part of the West
at the time of the Catastrophe. The West rejected us, cast us
away.”[2727] “We are as upset by the nearly absolute
indi erence of the world and even of non-European Jewry to
the plight of the Jews in the fascist countries as by the
Catastrophe in Europe itself. … What a great guilt lies on the
democracies of the world in general and especially on the Jews
in the democratic countries! … The pogrom in Kishinev was an
insigni cant crime compared to the German atrocities, to …
the methodically implemented plan of extermination of
millions of Jewish lives; and yet Kishinev pogrom triggered a
bigger protest… Even the Beilis Trial in Kiev attracted more
worldwide attention.”[2728]
 But this is unfair. After the world realized the essence and
the scale of the destruction, the Jews experienced consistent
and energetic support and passionate compassion from many
nations.
Some contemporary Israelis recognize this and even warn their
compatriots against any such excesses: “Gradually, the
memory of the Catastrophe ceased to be just a memory. It has
become the ideology of the Jewish state. … The memory of the
Catastrophe turned into a religious devotion, into the state
cult. … The State of Israel has assumed the role of an apostle of
the cult of the Catastrophe, the role of a priest who collects
routine tithes from other nations. And woe to those who refuse
to pay that tithe!” And in conclusion: “The worst legacy of
Nazism for Jews is the Jew?s role of a super-victim.”[2729]
Here is a similar excerpt from yet another author: the cult of
the Catastrophe has lled “a void in the souls of secular Jews,”
“from being a reaction to an event of the past, the trauma of the
Catastrophe has evolved into a new national symbol, replacing
all other symbols.” And “this `mentality of the Catastrophe´ is
growing with each passing year”; “if we do not recover from
the trauma of Auschwitz, we will never become a normal
nation.”[2730]
Among the Jews, the sometimes painful work of re-
examining the Catastrophe never ceases. Here is the opinion of
an Israeli historian, a former inmate of a Soviet camp: “I do not
belong to those Jews who are inclined to blame the evil `goyim
´ for our national misfortunes while casting ourselves as …
poor lambs or toys in the hands of others. Anyway not in the
20th century! On the contrary, I fully agree with Hannah
Arendt that the Jews of our century were equal participants in
the historical games of the nations and the monstrous
Catastrophe that befell them was the result of not only evil
plots of the enemies of mankind, but also of the huge fatal
miscalculations on the part of the Jewish people themselves,
their leaders and activists.”[2731]
Indeed, Hannah Arendt was “searching for the causes of the
Catastrophe [also] in Jewry itself. … Her main argument is that
modern anti-Semitism was one of the consequences of the
particular attitudes of the Jews towards the state and society in
Europe”; the Jews “turned out to be unable to evaluate power
shifts in a nation state and growing social
contradictions.”[2732]
In the late 1970s, we read in Dan Levin’s book: “On this issue,
I agree with Prof. Branover who believes that the Catastrophe
was largely a punishment for our sins, including the sin of
leading the communist movement. There is something in
it.”[2733]
Yet no such noticeable movement can be observed among
world Jewry. To a great many contemporary Jews such
conclusions appear insulting and blasphemous.
To the contrary: “The very fact of the Catastrophe served as a
moral justi cation for Jewish chauvinism. Lessons of the
Second World War have been learned exactly contrariwise. …
The ideology of Jewish Nationalism has grown and
strengthened on this soil. This is terribly sad. A feeling of guilt
and compassion towards the nation-victim has become an
indulgence, absolving the sin unforgivable for all others. It is
hence comes the moral permissibility of public appeals not to
mix one’s own ancient blood with the alien blood.”[2734]
In the late 1980s, a Jewish publicist from Germany wrote:
“Today, the `moral capital´ of Auschwitz is already
spent.”[2735] One year later, she stated: “Solid moral capital
gained by the Jews because of Auschwitz seems to be depleted”;
the Jews “can no longer proceed along the old way by raising
pretensions to the world. Today, the world already has the right
to converse with the Jews as it does with all others”; “the
struggle for the rights of Jews is no more progressive than a
struggle for the rights of all other nations. It is high time to
break the mirror and look around  – we are not alone in this
world.”[2736]
It would have been equally great for Russian minds to
elevate themselves to similarly decent and benevolent self-
criticism, especially in making judgments about Russian
history of the 20th century – the brutality of the Revolutionary
period, the cowed indi erence of the Soviet times and the
abominable plundering of the post-Soviet age. And to do it
despite the unbearable burden of realization that it was we
Russians who ruined our history – through our useless rulers
but also through our own worthlessness – and despite the
gnawing anxiety that this may be irredeemable – to perceive
the Russian experience as possibly a punishment from the
Supreme Power.
 Chapter 22. From the end of the war to
Stalin’s death

At the beginning of the 1920s the authors of a collection of

articles titled Russia and the Jews foresaw that “all these bright
perspectives” (for the Jews in the USSR) looked so bright only
“if one supposes that the Bolsheviks would want to protect us.
But would they? Can we assume that the people who in their
struggle for power betrayed everything, from the Motherland
to Communism, would remain faithful to us even when it stops
bene ting them?”[2737]
However, during so favorable a time to them as the 1920s
and 1930s the great majority of Soviet Jews chose to ignore this
sober warning or simply did not hear it.
Yet the Jews with their contribution to the Russian
Revolution should have expected that one day the inevitable
recoil of revolution would hit even them, at least during its ebb.
The postwar period became “the years of deep
disappointments”[2738] and adversity for Soviet Jews. During
Stalin’s last eight years, Soviet Jewry was tested by persecutions
of the “cosmopolitans,” the loss of positions in science, arts and
press, the crushing of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (EAK)
with the execution of its leadership and, nally, by the
“Doctors’ Plot.”
By the nature of a totalitarian regime, only Stalin himself
could initiate the campaign aimed at weakening the Jewish
presence and in uence in the Soviet system. Only he could
make the rst move.
Yet because of the rigidity of Soviet propaganda and Stalin’s
craftiness, not a single sound could be uttered nor a single step
made in the open. We have seen already that Soviet propaganda
did not raise any alarm about the annihilation of Jews in
Germany during the war; indeed it covered up those things,
obviously being afraid of appearing pro-Jewish in the eyes of its
own citizens.
The disposition of the Soviet authorities towards Jews could
evolve for years without ever really surfacing at the level of
o cial propaganda. The rst changes and shu es in the
bureaucracy began quite inconspicuously at the time of
growing rapprochement between Stalin and Hitler in 1939. By
then Litvinov, a Jewish Minister of Foreign A airs, was
replaced by Molotov (an ethnic Russian) and a ‘cleansing’ of the
Ministry of Foreign A airs (NKID) was underway.
Simultaneously, Jews were barred from entrance into
diplomatic schools and military academies. Still, it took many
more years before the disappearance of Jews from the NKID
and the sharp decline of their in uence in the Ministry of
Foreign Trade became apparent.
Because of the intrinsic secrecy of all Soviet inner party
moves, only very few were aware of the presence of the subtle
anti-Jewish undercurrents in the Agitprop apparatus by the
end of 1942 that aimed to push out Jews from the major art
centers such as the Bolshoi Theatre, the Moscow Conservatory,
and the Moscow Philarmonic, where, according to the note
which Alexandrov, Head of Agitprop, presented to the Central
Committee in the summer of 1942, ‘everything was almost
completely in the hands of non-Russians’ and ‘Russians had
become an ethnic minority’ (accompanied by a detailed table to
convey particulars).[2739] Later, there had been attempts to
“begin national regulation of cadres… from the top down,
which essentially meant primarily pushing out Jews from the
managerial positions”.[2740] By and large, Stalin regulated this
process by either supporting or checking such e orts
depending on the circumstances.
The wartime tension in the attitudes toward Jews was also
manifested during post-war re-evacuation. In Siberia and
Central Asia, wartime Jewish refugees were not welcomed by
the local populace, so after the war they mostly settled in the
capitals of Central Asian republics, except for those who moved
back, not to their old shtetls and towns, but into the larger
cities.[2741]
The largest returning stream of refugees ed to Ukraine
where they were met with hostility by the local population,
especially because of the return of Soviet o cials and the
owners of desirable residential property. This reaction in the
formerly occupied territories was also fueled by Hitler’s
incendiary propaganda during the Nazi occupation.
Khrushchev, the Head of Ukraine from 1943 (when he was
First Secretary of the Communist Party and at the same time
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine),
not only said nothing on this topic in his public speeches,
treating the fate of Jews during the occupation with silence,
but he also upheld the secret instruction throughout Ukraine
not to employ Jews in positions of authority.
According to the tale of an old Jewish Communist Ruzha-
Godes, who survived the entire Nazi occupation under a guise
of being a Pole named Khelminskaya and was later denied
employment by the long-awaited Communists because of her
Jewishness, Khrushchev stated clearly and with his peculiar
frankness: “In the past, the Jews committed many sins against
the Ukrainian people. People hate them for that. We don’t need
Jews in our Ukraine. It would be better if they didn’t return
here. They would better go to Birobidzhan. This is Ukraine.
And, we don’t want Ukrainian people to infer that the return of
Soviet authority means the return of Jews”.[2742]
 “In the early September 1945 a Jewish major of the NKVD
was brutally beaten in Kiev by two members of the military. He
shot both of them dead. This incident caused a large-scale
massacre of Jews with ve fatalities”.[2743] There are
documented sources of other similar cases.[2744]
Sotsialistichesky Vestnik wrote that the Jewish “national
feelings (which were exacerbated during the war) overreacted
to the numerous manifestations of anti-Semitism and to the
even more common indi erence to anti-Semitism”.[2745]
This motif is so typical — almost as much as anti-Semitism
itself: the indi erence to anti-Semitism was likely to cause
outrage. Yes, preoccupied by their own miseries, people and
nations often lose compassion for the troubles of others. And
the Jews are not an exception here. A modern author justly
notes: “I hope that I, as a Jew who found her roots and place in
Israel, would not be accused of apostasy if I point out that in
the years of our terrible disasters, the Jewish intellectuals did
not raise their voices in defense of the deported nations of
Crimea and the Caucasus”.[2746]
After the liberation of Crimea by the Red Army in 1943,
“talks started among circles of the Jewish elite in Moscow
about a rebirth of the Crimean project of 1920s,” i.e., about
resettling Jews in Crimea. The Soviet government did not
discourage these aspirations, hoping that “American Jews
would be more generous in their donations for the Red Army.”
It is quite possible that Mikhoels and Fe er [heads of the Jewish
Anti-Fascist Committee, EAK], based on a verbal agreement
with Molotov, negotiated with American Zionists about
nancial support of the project for Jewish relocation to Crimea
during their triumphal tour of the USA in summer of 1943. The
idea of a Crimean Jewish Republic was also backed by Lozovsky,
the then-powerful Assistant Minister of Foreign A airs.[2747]
 The EAK had yet another project for a Jewish Republic — to
establish it in the place of the former Volga German
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (where, as we have seen
in previous chapters, Jewish settlements were established in
the wake of the exile of  the Germans). Ester Markish, widow of
EAK member Perets Markish, con rms that he presented a
letter “concerning transferring the former German Republic to
the Jews”.[2748]
In the Politburo, “Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov were
the most positively disposed to the EAK”.[2749] And,
“according to rumors, some members of the Politburo… were
inclined to support this [Crimean] idea”.[2750] On February 15,
1944, Stalin was forwarded a memorandum about that plan
which was signed by Mikhoels, Fe er and Epshtein. (According
to P. Sudoplatov, although the decision to expel the Tatars from
Crimea had been made by Stalin earlier, the order to carry it out
reached Beria on February 14,[2751] so the memorandum was
quite timely.)
That was the high point of Jewish hopes. G. V. Kostirenko, a
researcher of this period, writes: the leaders of the EAK
“plunged into euphoria. They imagined (especially after
Mikhoels’ and Fe er’s trip to the West) that with the necessary
pressure, they could in uence and steer their government’s
policy in the interests of the Soviet Jews, just like the American
Jewish elite does it”.[2752]
But Stalin did not approve the Crimean project – it did not
appeal to him because of the strategic importance of the
Crimea. The Soviet leaders expected a war with America and
probably thought that in such case the entire Jewish
population of Crimea would sympathize with the enemy. (It is
reported that at the beginning of the 1950s some Jews were
arrested and told by their MGB [Ministry for State Security, a
predecessor of KGB] investigators: “You are not going to stand
against America, are you? So you are our enemies.”)
Khrushchev shared those doubts and 10 years later he stated to
a delegation of the Canadian Communist party that was
expressing particular interest in the Jewish question in the
USSR: Crimea “should not be a center of Jewish colonization,
because in case of war it will become the enemy’s bridgehead”.
[2753] Indeed, the petitions about Jewish settlement in Crimea
were very soon used as a proof of the “state treason” on the part
of the members of the EAK.
By the end of WWII the authorities again revived the idea of
Jewish resettlement in Birobidzhan, particularly Ukrainian
Jews. From 1946 to 1947 several organized echelons and a
number of independent families were sent there, totaling up to
5-6 thousand persons.[2754] However, quite a few returned
disillusioned. This relocation movement withered by 1948.
Later, with a general turn of Stalin’s politics, arrests among the
few Birobidjan Jewish activists started. (They were accused of
arti cial inculcation of Jewish culture into the non-Jewish
population and, of course, espionage and of having planned
Birobidzhan’s secession in order to ally with Japan). This was
the de facto end of the history of Jewish colonization in
Birobidzhan. At the end of the 1920s there were plans to re-
settle 60,000 Jews there by the end of the rst 5-year planning
period. By 1959 there were only 14,000 Jews in Birobidzhan,
less than 9% of the population of the region.[2755]
However, in Ukraine the situation had markedly changed in
favor of Jews. The government was engaged in the erce
struggle with  Bandera’s separatist ghters and no longer
catered to the national feelings of Ukrainians. At the end of
1946, the Communist Party “started a covert campaign against
anti-Semitism, gradually conditioning the population to the
presence of Jews among authorities in di erent spheres of the
national economy.” At the same time, in the beginning of 1947,
Kaganovich took over for Khrushchev as the o cial leader of
Ukrainian Communist Party. The Jews were promoted in the
party as well, “of which a particular example was the
appointment of a Jew … the Secretary… of Zhitomir Obkom”.
[2756]
However, the attitudes of many Jews towards this
government and its new policies were justi ably cautious.
Soon after the end of the war, when the former Polish citizens
began returning to Poland, many non-Polish Jews “hastily
seized this opportunity” and relocated there.[2757] (What
happened after that in Poland is yet another story: a great
overrepresentation of Jews occurred in the post-war puppet
Polish government, among managerial elites and in the Polish
KGB, which would again result in miserable consequences for
the Jews of Poland. After the war, other countries of Eastern
Europe saw similar con icts: “the Jews had played a huge role
in economic life of all these countries,” and though they lost
their possessions under Hitler, after the war, when “the
restitution laws were introduced… (they) a ected very large
numbers of new owners.” Upon their return Jews demanded
the restoration of their property and enterprises that were not
nationalized by Communists and this created a new wave of
hostility towards them.[2758])
Meanwhile, during these very years the biggest event in
world Jewish history was happening — the state of Israel was
coming into existence. In 1946-47, when the Zionists were at
odds with Britain, Stalin, perhaps out of anti-British
calculation and or opportunistically hoping to get a foothold
there, took the side of the former. During all of 1947 Stalin,
acting through Gromyko in the UN, actively supported the idea
of the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and
supplied the Zionists with a critical supply of Czechoslovak-
made weapons. In May 1948, only two days after the Israeli
declaration of nationhood, the USSR o cially recognized that
country and condemned hostile actions of Arabs.
However, Stalin miscalculated to what extent this support
would reinvigorate the national spirit of Soviet Jews. Some of
them implored the EAK to organize a fundraiser for the Israeli
military, others wished to enlist as volunteers, while still
others wanted to form a special Jewish military division.[2759]
Amid this burgeoning enthusiasm, Golda Meir arrived to
Moscow in September of 1948 as the rst ambassador of Israel
and was met with unprecedented joy in Moscow’s synagogues
and by Moscow’s Jewish population in general. Immediately, as
the national spirit of Soviet Jews rose and grew tremendously
because of the Catastrophe, many of them began applying for
relocation to Israel. Apparently, Stalin had expected that. Yet it
turned out that many of his citizens wished to run away en
masse into, by all accounts, the pro-Western State of Israel.
There, the in uence and prestige of the United States grew,
while the USSR was at the same time losing support of Arab
countries. (Nevertheless, “the cooling of relations [with Israel]
was mutual. Israel more and more often turned towards
American Jewry which became its main support”.[2760])
Probably because he was frightened by such a schism in the
Jewish national feelings, Stalin drastically changed policies
regarding Jews from the end of 1948 and for the rest of his
remaining years. He began acting in his typical style — quietly
but with determination, he struck to the core, but with only
tiny movements visible on the surface.
Nevertheless, while the visible tiny ripples hardly mattered,
Jewish leaders had many reasons to be concerned, as they felt
the fear hanging in the air. The then editor of the Polish-Jewish
newspaper Folkshtimme, Girsh Smolyar, recalled the “panic
that seized Soviet communist Jews after the war.” Emmanuel
Kazakevitch and other Jewish writers were distressed. Smolyar
had seen on Ehrenburg’s table “a mountain of letters — literally
scream of pain about current anti-Jewish attitudes throughout
the country”.[2761]
Yet Ehrenburg knew his job very well and carried it out. (As
became known much later, it was exactly then that the pre-
publication copy of the Black Book compiled by I. Ehrenburg
and B. Grossman, which described the mass killings and
su ering of the Soviet Jews during the Soviet-German war, was
destroyed.) In addition, on September 21, 1948, as a
counterbalance to Golda Meir’s triumphal arrival, Pravda
published a large article commissioned by Ehrenburg which
stated that the Jews are not a nation at all and that they are
doomed to assimilate.[2762] This article created dismay not
only among Soviet Jews, but also in America. With the start of
the Cold War, “the discrimination against the Jews in the Soviet
Union “became one of the main anti-Soviet trump cards of the
West. (As was the inclination in the West towards various
ethnic separatist movements in the USSR, a sympathy that had
never previously gained support among Soviet Jews).
However, the EAK, which had been created to address war-
time issues, continued gaining in uence. By that time it listed
approximately 70 members, had its own administrative
apparatus, a newspaper and a publishing house. It functioned
as a kind of spiritual and physical agent of all Soviet Jews before
the CK (Central Committee) of the VKPb (all-Russian
Communist Party of Bolsheviks), as well as before the West.
“EAK executives were allowed to do and to have a lot — a
decent salary, an opportunity to publish and collect royalties
abroad, to receive and to redistribute gifts from abroad and,
nally, to travel abroad.” EAK became the crystallization center
of an initially elitist and upper-echelon and then of a broadly
growing Jewish national movement”,[2763] a burgeoning
symbol of Jewish national autonomy. For Stalin, the EAK
become a problem which had to be dealt with.
He started with the most important gure, the Head of the
Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformburo), Lozovsky, who,
according to Fe er (who was vice-chairman of EAK since July
1945), was “the spiritual leader of the EAK… knew all about its
activities and was its head for all practical purposes.” In the
summer of 1946, a special auditing commission from Agitprop
of the CK [of the VKPb] inspected Sovinformburo and found
that “the apparatus is polluted … [there is] an intolerable
concentration of Jews.” Lozovsky was ejected from his post of
Assistant Minister of Foreign A airs (just as Litvinov and
Maisky had been) and in summer of 1947 he also lost his post
as of Head of the Sovinformburo.[2764]
After that, the fate of the EAK was sealed. In September of
1946, the auditing commission from the Central Committee
concluded that the EAK, instead of “leading a rigorous
o ensive ideological war against the Western and above all
Zionist propaganda… supports the position of bourgeois
Zionists and the Bund and in reality… it ghts for the
reactionary idea of a United Jewish nation.” In 1947, the
Central Committee stated, that “the work among the Jewish
population of the Soviet Union is not a responsibility” of the
EAK. “The EAK’s job was to focus on the “decisive struggle
against aggression by international reactionaries and their
Zionist agents”.[2765]
However, these events coincided with the pro-Israel stance
of the USSR and the EAK was not dissolved. On the other hand,
EAK Chairman Mikhoels who was “the informal leader of
Soviet Jewry, had to shed his illusions about the possibility of
in uencing the Kremlin’s national policy via in uencing the
Dictator’s relatives.” Here, the suspicion fell mostly on Stalin’s
son—in-law Grigory Morozov. However, the most active help to
the EAK was provided by Molotov’s wife, P.S. Zhemchyzhina,
who was arrested in the beginning of 1949, and Voroshilov’s
wife, “Ekaterina Davidovna (Golda Gorbman), a fanatic
Bolshevik, who had been expelled from the synagogue in her
youth.” Abakumov reported that Mikhoels was suspected of
“gathering private information about the Leader”.[2766]
Overall, according to the MGB he “demonstrated excessive
interest in the private life of the Head of the Soviet
Government,” while leaders of the EAK “gathered materials
about the personal life of J. Stalin and his family at the behest
of US Intelligence”.[2767] However, Stalin could not risk an
open trial of the tremendously in uential Mikhoels, so
Mikhoels was murdered in January 1948 under the guise of an
accident. Soviet Jewry was shocked and terri ed by the demise
of their spiritual leader.
The EAK was gradually dismantled after that. By the end of
1948 its premises were locked up, all documents were taken to
Lubyanka, and its newspaper and the publishing house were
closed. Fe er and Zuskin, the key EAK gures, were secretly
arrested soon afterwards and these arrests were denied for a
long time. In January 1949 Lozovsky was arrested, followed by
the arrests of a number of other notable members of the EAK in
February. They were intensively interrogated during 1949, but
in 1950 the investigation stalled. (All this coincided [in accord
with Stalin’s understanding of balance] with the annihilation
of the Russian nationalist tendencies in the leadership of the
Leningrad government — the so-called “anti-party group of
Kuznetsov-Rodionov-Popkov,” but those developments, their
repression and the signi cance of those events were largely
overlooked by historians even though “about two thousand
party functionaries were arrested and subsequently
executed”[2768] in 1950 in connection with the “Leningrad
A air”).
 In January 1948, Stalin ordered Jews to be pushed out of
Soviet culture. In his usual subtle and devious manner, the
“order” came through a prominent editorial in  Pravda,
seemingly dealing with a petty issue, “about one anti-Party
group of theatrical critics”.[2769] (A more assertive article
in  Kultura i Zhizn followed on the next day[2770]). The key
point was the “decoding” of Russian the Russian pen-names of
Jewish celebrities. In the USSR, “many Jews camou age their
Jewish origins with such arti ce,” so that “it is impossible to
gure out their real names” explains the editor of a modern
Jewish journal.[2771]
This article in Pravda had a long but obscure pre-history. In
1946 reports of the Central Committee it was already noted
“that out of twenty-eight highly publicized theatrical critics,
only six are Russians. It implied that the majority of the rest
were Jews.” Smelling trouble, but still “supposing themselves to
be vested with the highest trust of the Party, some theatrical
critics, con dent of victory, openly confronted Fadeev” in
November 1946.[2772] Fadeev was the all-powerful Head of
the Union of Soviet Writers and Stalin’s favorite. And so they
su ered a defeat. Then the case stalled for a long time and only
resurfaced in 1949.
The campaign rolled on through the newspapers and party
meetings. G. Aronson, researching Jewish life “in Stalin’s era”
writes: “The goal of this campaign was to displace Jewish
intellectuals from all niches of Soviet life. Informers were
gloatingly revealing their pen-names. It turned out that E.
Kholodov is actually Meyerovich, Jakovlev is Kholtsman,
Melnikov is Millman, Jasny is Finkelstein, Vickorov is
Zlochevsky, Svetov is Sheidman and so on. Literaturnaya Gazeta
worked diligently on these disclosures”.[2773]
Undeniably, Stalin hit the worst-o ending spot, the one that
highly annoyed the public. However, Stalin was not so simple
as to just blurt out “the Jews.” From the rst push at the “groups
of theatrical critics” owed a broad and sustained campaign
against the “cosmopolitans” (with their Soviet inertial dim-
wittedness they overused this innocent term and spoiled it).
“Without exception, all ‘cosmopolitans’ under attack were
Jews. They were being discovered everywhere. Because all of
them were loyal Soviet citizens never suspected of anything
anti-Soviet, they survived the great purges by Yezhov and
Yagoda. Some were very experienced and in uential people,
sometimes eminent in their elds of expertise”.[2774] The
exposure of “cosmopolitans” then turned into a ridiculous,
even idiotic glori cation of Russian “primacy” in all and every
area of science, technology and culture.
Yet the “cosmopolitans” usually were not being arrested but
instead were publicly humiliated, red from publishing
houses, ideological and cultural organizations, from TASS,
from Glavlit, from literature schools, theaters, orchestras; some
were expelled from the party and publication of their works
was often discouraged.
And the public campaign was expanding, spreading into
new elds and compromising new names. Anti-Jewish
cleansing of “cosmopolitans” was conducted in the research
institutes of the Academy of Science: Institute of Philosophy
(with its long history of internecine feuding between di erent
cliques), the institutes of Economy, Law, in the Academy of
Social Sciences at the CK of the VKPb, in the School of Law (and
then spread to the o ce of Public Prosecutor).
Thus, in the Department of History at MGU (Moscow State
University), even a long-standing faithful communist and
falsi er, I. I. Minz, member of the Academy, who enjoyed
Stalin’s personal trust and was awarded with Stalin Prizes and
concurrently chaired historical departments in several
universities, was labeled “the head of cosmopolitans in
Historical Science.” After that numerous scienti c posts at
MGU were ‘liberated’ from his former students and other
Jewish professors.[2775]
Purges of Jews from technical elds and the natural sciences
were gradually gaining momentum. “The end of 1945 and all
of 1946 were relatively peaceful for the Jews of this particular
social group.” L. Mininberg studied Jewish contributions in
Soviet science and industry during the war: “In 1946, the rst
serious blow since the end of the war was dealt to the
administration and a big ‘case’ was fabricated. Its principal
victims were mainly Russians…there were no Jews among
them,” though “investigation reports contained testaments
against Israel Solomonovitch Levin, director of the Saratov
Aviation Plant. He was accused on the charge that during the
Battle for Stalingrad, two aviation regiments were not able to
take o because of manufacturing defects in the planes
produced by the plant. The charge was real, not made-up by the
investigators. However, Levin was neither red nor arrested.”
In 1946, “B.L. Vannikov, L.M. Kaganovich, S.Z. Ginzburg, L.Z.
Mekhlis all kept their Ministry posts in the newly formed
government… Almost all Jewish former deputy ministers also
retained their positions as assistants to ministers.” The rst
victims among the Jewish technical elite appeared only in
1947.[2776]
In 1950, academic A. F. Io e “was forced to retire from the
post of Director of the Physical-Engineering Institute, which he
organized and headed since its inception in 1918.” In 1951, 34
directors and 31 principal engineers of aviation plants had
been red. “This list contained mostly Jews.” If in 1942 there
were nearly forty Jewish directors and principal engineers in
the Ministry of General Machine-Building (Ministry of Mortar
Artillery) then only three remained by 1953. In the Soviet
Army, “the Soviet authorities persecuted not only Jewish
generals, but lower ranking o cers working on the
development of military technology and weaponry were also
removed”.[2777]
Thus, the “purging campaigns” spread over to the defense,
airplane construction, and automobile industries (though they
did not a ect the nuclear branch), primarily removing Jews
from administrative, directorial and principal engineering
positions; later purging was expanded onto various
bureaucracies. Yet the genuine, ethnic denominator was never
mentioned in the formal paperwork. Instead, the sacked
o cials faced charges of economic crimes or having relatives
abroad at a time when con ict with the USA was expected, or
other excuses were used. The purging campaigns rolled over
the central cities and across the provinces. The methods of
these campaigns were notoriously Soviet, in the spirit of
1930s: a victim was inundated in a vicious atmosphere of
terror and as a result often tried to de ect the threat to himself
by accusing others.
By repeating the tide of 1937, albeit in a milder form, the
display of Soviet Power reminded the Jews that they had never
become truly integrated and could be pushed aside at any
moment. “We do not have indispensable people!” (However,
“Lavrentiy Beria was tolerant of Jews. At least, in appointments
to positions in government”.[2778])
“‘Pushing’ Jews out of prestigious occupations that were
crucial for the ruling elite in the spheres of manufacturing,
administration, cultural and ideological activities, as well as
limiting or completely barring the entrance of Jews into certain
institutions of higher education gained enormous momentum
in 1948-1953. … Positions of any importance in the KGB, party
apparatus, and military were closed to the Jews, and quotas
were in place for admission into certain educational
institutions and cultural and scienti c establishments”.[2779]
Through its “ fth item” [i.e., the question about nationality]
Soviet Jews were oppressed by the very same method used in
the Proletarian Questionnaire, other items of which were so
instrumental in crushing the Russian nobility, clergy,
intellectuals and all the rest of the “former people” since the
1920s.
“Although the highest echelon of the Jewish political elite
su ered from administrative perturbations, surprisingly it was
not as bad as it seemed,” — concludes G. V. Kostyrchenko. “The
main blow fell on the middle and the most numerous stratum
of the Jewish elite — o cials… and also journalists, professors
and other members of the creative intelligentsia. … It was
these, so to say, nominal Jews — the individuals with nearly
complete lack of ethnic ties — who su ered the brunt of the
cleansing of bureaucracies after the war”.[2780]
However, speaking of scienti c cadres, the statistics are
these: “at the end of the 1920s there were 13.6% Jews among
scienti c researchers in the country, in 1937 — 17.5%”,[2781]
and by 1950 their proportion slightly decreased to 15.4%
(25,125 Jews among 162,508 Soviet researchers).[2782] S.
Margolina, looking back from the end of the 1980s concludes
that, despite the scale of the campaign, after the war, “the
number of highly educated Jews in high positions always
remained disproportionally high. But, in contrast with the
former “times of happiness,” it certainly had decreased”.[2783]
A.M. Kheifetz recalls “a memoir article of a member of the
Academy, Budker, one of the fathers of the Soviet A-bomb”
where he described how they were building the rst Soviet A-
bomb — being exhausted from the lack of sleep and fainting
from stress and overwork — and it is precisely those days of
persecution of “cosmopolitans” that were “the most inspired
and the happiest” in his life.[2784]
 In 1949 “among Stalin Prize laureates no less than 13% were
Jews, just like in the previous years.” By 1952 there were only
6%.[2785] Data on the number of Jewish students in USSR were
not published for nearly a quarter of century, from the pre-war
years until 1963. We will examine those in the next chapter.
The genuine Jewish culture that had been slowly reviving
after the war was curtailed and suppressed in 1948-1951.
Jewish theatres were no longer subsidized and the few
remaining ones were closed, along with book publishing
houses, newspapers and bookstores.[2786] In 1949, the
international radio broadcasting in Yiddish was also
discontinued.[2787]
In the military, “by 1953 almost all Jewish generals” and
“approximately 300 colonels and lieutenant colonels were
forced to resign from their positions”.[2788]

   
As the incarcerated Jewish leaders remained jailed in Lubyanka
for over three years, Stalin slowly and with great caution
proceeded in dismantling the EAK. He was very well aware
what kind of international storm would be triggered by using
force. (Luckily, though, he acquired his rst H-bomb in 1949.)
On the other hand, he fully appreciated the signi cance of
unbreakable ties between world Jewry and America, his enemy
since his rejection of the Marshall Plan.
Investigation of EAK activities was reopened in January
1952. The accused were charged with connections to the
“Jewish nationalist organizations in America,” with providing
“information regarding the economy of the USSR” to those
organizations… and also with “plans of repopulating Crimea
and creating a Jewish Republic there”.[2789] Thirteen
defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death: S. A.
Lozovsky, I. S. Ysefovich, B. A. Shimeliovich, V. L. Zuskin,
leading Jewish writers D.R. Bergelson, P. D. Marshik, L. M.
Kvitko, I. S. Fe er, D. N. Gofshtein, and also L. Y. Talmi, I. S.
Vatenberg, C. S. Vatenberg — Ostrovsky, and E. I. Teumin.[2790]
They were secretly executed in August. (Ehrenburg, who was
also a member of the EAK, was not even arrested. (He assumed
it was pure luck.) Similarly, the crafty David Zaslavsky survived
also. And even after the execution of the Jewish writers,
Ehrenburg continued to reassure the West that those writers
were still alive and writing.[2791] The annihilation of the
Jewish Antifascist Committee went along with similar secret
“daughter” cases; 110 people were arrested, 10 of them were
executed and 5 died during the investigation.[2792]
In autumn of 1952 Stalin went into the open as arrests
among Jews began, such as arrests of Jewish professors of
medicine and among members of literary circles in Kiev in
October 1952. This information immediately spread among
Soviet Jews and throughout the entire world. On October
17th,  Voice of America broadcast about “mass repressions”
among Soviet Jews.[2793] Soviet “Jews were frozen by mortal
fear”.[2794]
Soon afterwards in November in Prague, a show trial of
Slansky, the Jewish First Secretary of the Czechoslovak
Communist Party, and several other top state and party leaders
took place in a typically loud and populist Stalinist-type
entourage. The trial was openly anti-Jewish with naming
“world leading” Jews such as Ben Gurion and Morgenthau, and
placing them in league with American leaders Truman and
Acheson. The outcome was that eleven were hanged, eight Jews
among them. Summing up the o cial version, K. Gotwald said:
“This investigation and court trial … disclosed a new channel
through which treason and espionage permeated the
Communist Party. This is Zionism”.[2795]
At the same time, since summer of 1951, the development of
the “Doctors’ Plot” was gaining momentum. The case included
the accusation of prominent physicians, doctors to the Soviet
leadership, for the criminal treatment of state leaders. For the
secret services such an accusation was nothing new, as similar
accusations had been made against Professor D. D. Pletnev and
physicians L. G. Levin and I. N. Kazakov already during the
“Bukharin trial” in 1937. At that time, the gullible Soviet public
gasped at such utterly evil plots. No one had any qualms about
repeating the same old scenario.
Now we know much more about the “Doctors’ Plot.” Initially
it was not entirely an anti-Jewish action; the prosecution list
contained the names of several prominent Russian physicians
as well. In essence, the a air was fueled by Stalin’s generally
psychotic state of mind, with his fear of plots and mistrust of
the doctors, especially as his health deteriorated. By September
1952 prominent doctors were arrested in groups.
Investigations unfolded with cruel beatings of suspects and
wild accusations; slowly it turned into a version of “spying-
terroristic plot connected with foreign intelligence
organizations,” “American hirelings,” “saboteurs in white
coats,” “bourgeois nationalism” — all indicating that it was
primary aimed at Jews. (Robert Conquest in The Great Terror
follows this particular tragic line of involvement of highly
placed doctors. In 1935, the false death certi cate of Kuibyshev
was signed by doctors G. Kaminsky, I. Khodorovsky, and L.
Levin. In 1937 they signed a similarly false death certi cate of
Ordzhonikidze. They knew so many deadly secrets — could
they expect anything but their own death? Conquest writes
that Dr. Levin had cooperated with the Cheka since 1920.
“Working with Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky, and Yagoda. … [he]
was trusted by the head of such an organization. … It is
factually correct to consider Levin… a member of Yagoda’s
circle in the NKVD.” Further, we read something sententious:
“Among those outstanding doctors who [in 1937] moved
against [Professor of Medicine] Pletnev and who had signed
erce accusative resolutions against him, we nd the names of
M. Vovsi, B. Kogan and V. Zelenin, who in their turn… were
subjected to torture by the MGB in 1952-53 in connection with
“the case of doctor-saboteurs,” “as well as two other doctors, N.
Shereshevky and V. Vinogradov who provided a pre-speci ed
death certi cate of Menzhinsky”.[2796])
On January 3, 1953  Pravda and  Izvestiya published an
announcement by TASS about the arrest of a “group of doctors-
saboteurs.” The accusation sounded like a grave threat for
Soviet Jewry, and, at the same time, by a degrading Soviet
custom, prominent Soviet Jews were forced to sign a letter
to Pravda with the most severe condemnation of the wiles of
the Jewish “bourgeois nationalists” and their approval of
Stalin’s government. Several dozen signed the letter. (Among
them were Mikhail Romm, D. Oistrakh, S. Marshak, L. Landau,
B. Grossman, E. Gilels, I. Dunayevsky and others. Initially
Ehrenburg did not sign it — he found the courage to write a
letter to Stalin: “to ask your advice.” His resourcefulness was
unsurpassed indeed. To Ehrenburg, it was clear that “there is
no such thing as the Jewish nation” and that assimilation is the
only way and that Jewish nationalism “inevitably leads to
betrayal.” Yet that the letter that was o ered to him to sign
could be invidiously inferred by the “enemies of our country.”
He concluded that “I myself cannot resolve these questions,”
but if “leading comrades will let me know … [that my
signature] is desired … [and] useful for protecting our
homeland and for peace in the world, I will sign it
immediately”.[2797])
 The draft of that statement of loyalty was painstakingly
prepared in the administration of the Central Committee and
eventually its style became softer and more respectful.
However, this letter never appeared in the press. Possibly
because of the international outrage, the “Doctors’ Plot”
apparently began to slow down in the last days of Stalin.[2798]
After the public announcement, the “‘Doctors’ Plot’ created a
huge wave of repression of Jewish physicians all over the
country. In many cities and towns, the o ces of State Security
began fabricating criminal cases against Jewish doctors. They
were afraid to even go to work, and their patients were afraid to
be treated by them”.[2799]
After the “cosmopolitan” campaign, the menacing growl of
“people’s anger” in reaction to the “Doctors’ Plot” utterly
terri ed many Soviet Jews, and a rumor arose (and then got
rooted in the popular mind) that Stalin was planning a mass
eviction of Jews to the remote parts of Siberia and North — a
fear reinforced by the examples of postwar deportation of
entire peoples. In his latest work G. Kostyrchenko, a historian
and a scrupulous researcher of Stalin’s “Jewish” policies, very
thoroughly refutes this “myth of deportation,” proving that it
had never been con rmed, either then or subsequently by any
facts, and even in principle such a deportation would not have
been possible.[2800]
But it is amazing how bewildered were those circles of Soviet
Jews, who were unfailingly loyal to the Soviet-Communist
ideology. Many years later, S. K. told me: “There is no single
action in my life that I am as ashamed of as my belief in the
genuineness of  the “Doctors’ Plot” of 1953! — that they,
perhaps involuntarily, were involved a foreign conspiracy…”
An article from the 1960s states that “in spite of a
pronounced anti-Semitism of Stalin’s rule … many [Jews]
prayed that Stalin stayed alive, as they knew through
experience that any period of weak power means a slaughter of
Jews. We were well aware of the quite rowdy mood of the
‘fraternal nations’ toward us”.[2801]
On February 9th a bomb exploded at the Soviet embassy in
Tel Aviv. On February 11, 1953 the USSR broke o diplomatic
relations with Israel. The con ict surrounding the “Doctors’
Plot” intensi ed due to these events.
And then Stalin went wrong, and not for the rst time,
right? He did not understand how the thickening of the plot
could threaten him personally, even within the secure quarters
of his inaccessible political Olympus. The explosion of
international anger coincided with the rapid action of internal
forces, which could possibly have done away with Stalin. It
could have happened through Beria (for example, according to
Avtorhanov’s version.[2802])
After a public communiqué about the “Doctors’ Plot” Stalin
lived only 51 days. “The release from custody and the acquittal
of the doctors without trial were perceived by the older
generation of Soviet Jews as a repetition of the Purim miracle”:
Stalin had perished on the day of Purim, when Esther saved the
Jews of Persia from Haman.[2803]
On April 3 all the surviving accused in the “Doctors’ Plot”
were released. It was publicly announced the next day.
And yet again it was the Jews who pushed the frozen history
forward.
 Chapter 23. Before the Six-Day War

On the next day after Stalin’s death, on March 6, the MGB

(Ministry of State Security) “ceased to exist”, albeit only
formally, as Beria had incorporated it into his own Ministry of
Interior A airs (MVD). This move allowed him “to disclose the
abuses” by the MGB, including those of the still publicly
unanounced MGB Minister, Ignatiev (who secretly replaced
Abakumov). It seems that after 1952 Beria was losing Stalin’s
trust and had been gradually pushed out by Ignatiev-Ryumin
during the `Doctors’ Plot´. Thus, by force of circumstances,
Beria became a magnet for the new anti-Stalin opposition.  And
now, on April 4, just a month after Stalin’s death, he enjoyed
enough power to dismiss the “Doctors’ Plot” and accuse
Ryumin of its fabrication. Then three months later the
diplomatic relations with Israel were restored.
All this reinvigorated hope among the Soviet Jews, as the rise
of Beria could be very promising for them. However, Beria was
soon ousted.
Yet because of the usual Soviet inertia, “with the death of
Stalin … many previously red Jews were reinstalled in their
former positions”; “during the period called the “thaw”, many
old Zionists …  were released from the camps”; “during the
post-Stalin period, the rst Zionist groups started to emerge  –
initially at local levels.”[2804]
Yet once again the things began to turn unfavorably for the
Jews. In March 1954, the Soviet Union vetoed the UN Security
Council attempt to open the Suez Canal to Israeli ships. At the
end of 1955, Khrushchev declared a pro-Arab,  anti-Israel turn
of Soviet foreign policy. In February 1956, in his famous report
at the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev, while speaking
profusely about the massacres of 1937-1938, did not point any
attention to the fact that there were so many Jews among the
victims; he did not name Jewish leaders executed in 1952; and
when speaking of the “Doctors’ Plot,” he did not stress that it
was speci cally directed against the Jews. “It is easy to imagine
the bitter feelings this aroused among the Jews,” they “swept
the Jewish communist circles abroad and even the leadership
of those Communist parties, where Jews constituted a
signi cant percentage of members (such as in the Canadian
and US Communist parties).”[2805] In April 1956 in Warsaw,
under the communist regime (though with heavy Jewish
in uence), the Jewish newspaper Volksstimme published a
sensational article, listing the names of Jewish cultural and
social celebrities who perished from 1937-1938 and from
1948-1952.  Yet at the same time the article also condemned
the “capitalist enemies”, “Beria’s period” and welcomed the
return of “Leninist national policy.” “The article in Volksstimme
had unleashed a storm.”[2806]
International communist organizations and Jewish social
circles loudly began to demand an explanation from the Soviet
leaders. “Throughout 1956, foreign visitors to the Soviet Union
openly asked about Jewish situation there, and particularly
why the Soviet government has not yet abandoned the dark
legacy of Stalinism on the Jewish question?”[2807] It became a
recurrent theme for the foreign correspondents and visiting
delegations of “fraternal communist parties”. (Actually, that
could be the reason for the loud denouncement in the Soviet
press of the “betrayal” of Communism by Howard Fast, an
American writer and former enthusiastic champion of
Communism. Meanwhile, “hundreds of Soviet Jews from
di erent cities in one form or another participated in meetings
of resurgent Zionist groups and coteries”; “old Zionists with
connections to relatives or friends in Israel were active in those
groups.”[2808]
In May 1956, a delegation from the French Socialist Party
arrived in Moscow. “Particular attention was paid to the
situation of Jews in the Soviet Union.”[2809] Khrushchev
found himself in a hot corner – now he could not a ord to
ignore the questions, yet he knew, especially after experiencing
postwar Ukraine, that the Jews are not likely to be returned to
their [high] social standing like in 1920s and 1930s. He replied:
“In the beginning of the revolution, we had many Jews in
executive bodies of party and government …. After that, we
have developed new cadres …. If Jews wanted to occupy
positions of leadership in our republics today, it would
obviously cause discontent among the local people …. If a Jew,
appointed to a high o ce, surrounds himself with Jewish
colleagues, it naturally provokes envy and hostility toward all
Jews.” (The French publication Socialist Herald calls “strange”
and “false” the Khrushchev’s point about “surrounding himself
with Jewish colleagues”.)  In the same discussion, when Jewish
culture and schools were addressed, Khrushchev explained
that “if Jewish schools were established, there probably would
not be many prospective students. The Jews are scattered all
over the country …. If the Jews were required to attend a Jewish
school, it certainly would cause outrage. It would be
understood as a kind of a ghetto.”[2810]
Three months later, in August 1956, a delegation of the
Canadian Communist Party visited the USSR – and it stated
outright that it had “a special mission to achieve clarity on the
Jewish question”. Thus, in the postwar years, the Jewish
question was becoming a central concern of the western
communists. “Khrushchev rejected all accusations of anti-
Semitism as a slander against him and the party.” He named a
number of Soviet Jews to important posts, “he even mentioned
his Jewish daughter-in-law,” but then he “quite suddenly …
switched to the issue of “good and bad features of each nation”
and pointed out “several negative features of Jews”, among
which he mentioned “their political unreliability.” Yet he
neither mentioned any of their positive traits, nor did he talk
about other nations.[2811]
In the same conversation, Khrushchev expressed his
agreement with Stalin’s decision against establishing a
Crimean Jewish Republic,  stating that such [Jewish]
colonization of the Crimea would be a strategic military risk
for the Soviet Union. This statement was particularly hurtful
to the Jewish community. The Canadian delegation insisted on
publication of a speci c statement by the Central Committee of
Communist Party of the Soviet Union about the su erings of
Jews, “but it was met with rm refusal” as “other nations and
republics, which also su ered from Beria’s crimes against their
culture and intelligentsia, would ask with astonishment why
this statement covers only Jews?” (S. Schwartz dismissively
comments: “The pettiness of this argumentation is
striking.”[2812])
Yet it did not end at that. “Secretly, in uential foreign Jewish
communists tried” to obtain “explanations about the fate of
the Jewish cultural elite”, and in October of the same year,
twenty-six Western “progressive Jewish leaders and writers”
appealed publicly to Prime-Minister Bulganin and “President”
Voroshilov, asking them to issue “a public statement about
injustices committed [against Jews] and the measures the
goverment had designed to restore the Jewish cultural
institutions.”[2813]
Yet during both the “interregnum” of 1953-1957 and then in
Khrushchev’s period, the Soviet policies toward Jews were
inconsistent, wary, circumspect and ambivalent, thus sending
signals in all directions.
 In particular, the summer of 1956, which was lled with all
kinds of social expectations in general, had also became the
apogee  of Jewish hopes. One Surkov, the head of the Union of
Writers, in a conversation with a communist publisher from
New York City mentioned plans to establish a new Jewish
publishing house, theater, newspaper and quarterly literary
magazine; there were also plans to organize a countrywide
conference of Jewish writers and cultural celebrities. It also
noted  that a commission for reviving the Jewish literature in
Yiddish had been already established. In 1956, “many Jewish
writers and journalists gathered in Moscow again.”[2814] The
Jewish activists later recalled that “the optimism inspired in all
of us by the events of 1956 did not quickly fade away.”[2815]
Yet the Soviet government continued with its meaningless
and aimless policies, discouraging  any development of an
independent Jewish culture. It is likely that Khrushchev
himself was strongly opposed to it.
And then came new developments  – the Suez Crisis, where
Israel, Britain and France allied in attacking Egypt (“Israel is
heading to suicide,” formidably warned the Soviet press), and
the Hungarian Uprising, with its anti-Jewish streak, nearly
completely concealed by history,[2816] (resulting, perhaps,
from the overrepresentation of Jews in the Hungarian KGB).
(Could this be also one of the reasons, even if a minor one, for
the complete absence of Western support for the rebellion? Of
course, at this time the West was preoccupied with the
Suez Crisis. And yet wasn’t it a signal to the Soviets suggesting
that it would be better if the Jewish theme be kept hushed?)
Then, a year later, Khrushchev nally overpowered his
highly placed enemies within the party and, among others,
Kaganovitch was cast down.
Could it really be such a big deal? The latter was not the only
one ousted and even then, he was not the principal gure
among the dethroned; and he was de nitely not thrown out
because of his Jewishness. Yet “from the Jewish point of view,
his departure symbolized the end of an era”. Some looked
around and counted – “the Jews disappeared not only from the
ruling sections of the party, but also from the leading
governmental circles.”[2817]
It was time to pause and ponder thoroughly – what did the
Jews really think about such new authorities?
David Burg, who emigrated from the USSR in 1956, came
upon a formula on how the Jews should treat the Soviet rule. (It
proved quite useful for the authorities): “To some, the danger
of anti-Semitism `from below´ seems greater than the danger
of anti-Semitism `from above´”; “though the government
oppresses us, it nevertherless allows us to exist. If, however, a
revolutionary change comes, then during the inevitable
anarchy of the transition period we will simply be
exterminated. Therefore, let’s hold on to the government no
matter how bad it is.”[2818]
We repeatedly encountered similar concerns in the 1930s  –
that the Jews should support the Bolshevik power in the USSR
because without it their fate would be even worse. And now,
even though the Soviet power had further deteriorated, the
Jews had no other choice but hold on to it as before.
The Western world and particularly the United States always
heeded such recommendations, even during the most strained
years of the Cold War. In addition, socialist Israel was still full
of communist sympathizers and could forgive the Soviet Union
a lot for its role in the defeat of Hitler. Yet how then could
Soviet anti-Semitism be interpreted? In this aspect, the
recommendation of D. Burg stood up to the acute “social
demand” – to move emphasis from the anti-Semitism of the
Soviet government to the “anti-Semitism of the Russian
people” – that ever-present curse.
 So now some Jews have even fondly recalled  the long-
disbanded YevSek [the “Jewish Section” of the Central
Committee, dismantled in 1930 when Dimanshtein and its
other leaders were shot]. Even though back in the 1920s it
seemed overly pro-Communist, the YevSek was “to certain
extent a guardian of Jewish national interests … an organ that
produced some positive work as well.”[2819]
In the meantime, Khrushchev’s policy remained equivocal; it
is reasonable to assume that though Khrushchev himself did
not like Jews, he did not want to ght against them, realizing
the international political counter-productivity of such an
e ort. In 1957-1958, Jewish musical performances and public
literary clubs were authorized and appeared in many cities
countrywide.  (For example, “in 1961, Jewish literary soirees
and Jewish song performances were attended by about
300,000 people.”[2820]) Yet at the same time, the circulation of
Warsaw’s Volksstimme was discontinued in the Soviet Union,
thus cutting the Soviet Jews o from an outside source of
Jewish information.[2821] In 1954, after a long break, Sholom
Aleichem’s The Adventures of Mottel was again published in
Russian, followed by several editions of his other books and
their translations into other languages; in 1959 a large edition
of his collected works was produced as well. In 1961 in
Moscow, the Yiddish magazine Sovetish Heymland was
established (though it strictly followed the o cial policy line).
Publications of books by Jewish authors, who were executed in
Stalin’s times, were resumed in Yiddish and Russian, and one
even could hear Jewish tunes on the broadcasts of the All-
Soviet Union radio.[2822] By 1966, “about one hundred Jewish
authors were writing in Yiddish in the Soviet Union,” and
“almost all of the named authors simultaneously worked as
Russian language journalists and translators,” and “many of
them worked as teachers in the Russian schools.”[2823]
However, the Jewish theater did not re-open until 1966. In
1966, S. Schwartz de ned the Jewish situation [in the USSR] as
“cultural orphanhood.”[2824] Yet another author bitterly
remarks: “The general lack of enthusiasm and interest … from
the wider Jewish population  … toward those cultural
undertakings …  cannot be explained solely by o cial policies
….” “With rare exceptions, during those years the Jewish actors
performed  in half-empty halls. Books of   Jewish writers were
not selling well.”[2825]
Similarly ambivalent, but more hostile policies of the Soviet
authorities in Khrushchev’s period were implemented against
the Jewish religion. It was a part of Khrushchev’s general anti-
religious assault; it is well known how devastating it was for
the Russian Orthodox Church. Since the 1930s, not a single
theological school functioned in the USSR. In 1957 a yeshiva – a
school for training rabbis – opened in Moscow. It
accommodated only 35 students, and even those were being
consistently pushed out under various pretexts such as
withdrawal of residence registration in Moscow. Printing of
prayer books and manufacturing of religious accessories was
hindered. Up to 1956, before the Jewish Passover matzah was
baked by state-owned bakeries and then sold in stores.
Beginning in 1957, however, baking of matzah was obstructed
and since 1961 it was banned outright almost everywhere. One
day, the authorities would not interfere with receiving parcels
with matzah from abroad, another day, they stopped the
parcels at the customs, and even demanded recipients to
express in the press their outrage against the senders.[2826] In
many places, synagogues were closed down. “In 1966, only 62
synagogues were functioning in the entire Soviet
Union.”[2827] Yet the authorities did not dare to shut down the
synagogues in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and in the capitals of
the republics. In the 1960s, there used to be extensive worship
services on holidays with large crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 on
the streets around synagogues.[2828] C. Schwartz notes that in
the 1960s Jewish religious life was in severe decline, yet he
large-mindedly reminds us that it was the result of the long
process of secularization that began in Russian Jewry in the
late 19th Century. (The process, which, he adds, has also
succeeded in extremely non-communist Poland between the
First and Second World Wars.[2829]) Judaism in the Soviet
Union lacked a united control center; yet when the Soviet
authorities wanted to  squeeze out a political show from the
leading rabbis for foreign policy purposes, be it about the well-
being of Judaism in the USSR or outrage against the nuclear
war, the government was perfectly able to stage it.[2830] “The
Soviet authorities had repeatedly used Jewish religious leaders
for foreign policy goals.” For example, “in November 1956 a
group of rabbis issued a protest against” the actions of Israel
during the Suez War.[2831]
Another factor, which aggravated the status of Judaism in
the USSR after the Suez War, was the growing fashionability of
what was termed the “struggle against Zionism.” Zionism,
being, strictly speaking, a form of socialism, should naturally
had been seen as a true brother to the party of Marx and Lenin.
Yet after the mid-1950s, the decision to secure the friendship
of the Arabs drove the Soviet leaders toward persecution of
Zionism. However, for the Soviet masses Zionism was a distant,
unfamiliar and abstract phenomenon. Therefore, to esh out
this struggle, to give it a distinct embodiment, the Soviet
government presented Zionism as a caricature composed of the
characteristic and eternal Jewish images. The books and
pamphlets allegedly aimed against Zionism also contained
explicit anti-Judaic and anti-Jewish messages. If in the Soviet
Union of 1920-1930s Judaism was not as brutally persecuted
as the Russian Orthodox Christianity, then in 1957 a foreign
socialist commentator noted how that year signi ed “a
decisive intensi cation of the struggle against Judaism,” the
“turning point in the struggle against the Jewish religion,” and
that “the character of struggle betrays that it is directed not
only against Judaism, but against the Jews in general.”[2832]
There was one stirring episode: in 1963 in Kiev, the Ukrainian
Academy of Sciences published 12,000 copies of a brochure
Unadorned Judaism in Ukrainian, yet it was lled with such
blatant anti-Jewish caricatures that it provoked a large-scale
international outcry, joined even by the communist “friends”
(who were nancially supported by Moscow), such as the
leaders of the American and British communist parties,
newspapers L’Humanite, L’Unita, as well as a pro-Chinese
communist newspaper from Brussels, and many others. The
UN Human Rights Commission demanded an explanation
from its Ukrainian representative. The World Jewish Cultural
Association  called for the prosecution of the author and the
cartoonist. The Soviet side held on for awhile, insisting that
except for the drawings, “the book deserves a generally positive
assessment.”[2833] Finally, even Pravda had to admit that it
was indeed “an ill-prepared … brochure” with “erroneous
statements … and illustrations that may o end feelings of
religious people or be interpreted as anti-Semitic,” a
phenomenon that, “as is universally known, does not and
cannot exist in our country.”[2834] Yet at the same time
Izvestia stated that although there were certain drawbacks to
the brochure, “its main idea … is no doubt right.”[2835]
There were even several arrests of religious Jews from
Moscow and Leningrad – accused of “espionage [conversations
during personal meetings in synagogues] for a  capitalistic
state [Israel]” with synagogues allegedly used as “fronts for
various criminal activities”[2836] – to scare others more
e ectively.
    
Although there were already no longer any Jews in the most
prominent positions, many still occupied in uential and
important second-tier posts (though there were exceptions: for
example, Veniamin Dymshits smoothly ran Gosplan (the State
Planning Committee) from 1962, while being at the same time
the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of USSR and a
member of Central Committee from 1961 to 1986[2837]). Why,
at one time the Jews were joining “NKVD and the MVD … in
such numbers that even now, after all purges of the very Jewish
spirit, a few individuals miraculously remained, such as the
famous Captain Jo e in a camp in Mordovia.”[2838]
According to the USSR Census of 1959, 2,268,000 Jews lived
in the Soviet Union. (Yet there were caveats regarding this
gure: “Everybody knows … that there are more Jews in the
Soviet Union than the Census showed,” as on the Census day, a
Jew states his nationality not according to his passport, but any
nationality he wishes.[2839])  Of those, 2,162,000 Jews lived in
the cities, i.e., 95,3% of total population – much more than
82% in 1926 or 87% in 1939.[2840] And if we glance forward
into the 1970 Census, the observed “increase in the number of
Jews in Moscow and Leningrad is apparently caused not by
natural growth but by migration from other cities (in spite of
all the residential restrictions).” Over these 11 years, “at least
several thousand Jews relocated to Kiev. The concentration of
Jews in the large cities had been increasing for many
decades.”[2841]
These gures are very telling for those who know about the
di erences in living standards between the urban and the rural
populations in the Soviet Union. G. Rosenblum, the editor of
the prominent Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, recalls an
almost anecdotal story by Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Dr.
Harel about his tour of the USSR in the mid-1960s. In a large
kolkhoz near Kishinev he was told that “the Jews who work
here want to meet [him]. [The Israeli] was very happy that there
were Jews in the kolkhoz” (love of agriculture – a good sign for
Israel). He  recounts: “Three Jews came to meet me … one was a
cashier, another – editor of the kolkhoz’s wall newspaper and
the third one was a kind of economic manager. I couldn’t nd
any other. So, what the Jews used to do [i.e. before], they are still
doing.” G. Rosenblum con rms this: “Indeed, the Soviet Jews in
their masses did not take to the physical work.”[2842] L.
Shapiro concludes, “Conversion of Jews to agriculture ended in
failure despite all the e orts … of public Jewish organizations
and … the assistance of the state.”[2843]
In Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev – the cities enjoying the
highest living and cultural standards in the country, the Jews,
according to the 1959 Census, constituted 3.9%, 5.8%, and
13.9 % of the population, respectively, which is quite a lot,
considering that they accounted only for 1.1% of the entire
population of the USSR.[2844]
So it was that this extremely high concentration of Jews in
urban areas – 95% of all Soviet Jews lived in the cities – that
made “the system of prohibitions and restrictions” particularly
painful for them.  (As we mentioned in the previous chapter,
this system was outlined back in the early 1940s.) And
“although the restrictive rules have never been o cially
acknowledged and o cials stoutly denied their existence,
these rules and restrictions very e ectively barred the Jews
from many spheres of action, professions and positions.”[2845]
Some recall a disturbing rumor circulating then among the
Jews: allegedly, Khrushchev said in one of his unpublished
speeches that “as many Jews will be accepted into the
institutions of higher education as work in the coal
mines.”[2846] Perhaps, he really just blurted it out in his usual
manner, because such “balancing” was never carried out. Yet
by the beginning of 1960s, while the absolute number of
Jewish students increased, their relative share decreased
substantially when compared to the pre-war period: if in 1936
the share of Jews among students was 7.5 times higher than
that in the total population,[2847] then by 1960s it was only
2.7 times higher. These new data on the distribution of
students in higher and secondary education by nationality
were published for the rst time (in the post-war period) in
1963 in the statistical annual report, The National Economy of
the USSR,[2848] and a similar table was annually produced up
to 1972. In terms of the absolute number of students in
institutions of higher education and technical schools in the
1962-1963 academic year, Jews were fourth after the three
Slavic nations (Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians), with
79,300 Jewish students in institutions of higher education out
of a total 2,943,700 students (2.69%). In the next academic
year 1963-1964, the number of Jewish students increased to
82,600, while the total number of students in the USSR reached
3,260,700 (2.53%). This share remained almost constant until
the 1969-1970 academic year; 101,000 Jewish students out of
total 4,549,900. Then the Jewish share began to decline and in
1972-1973 it was 1.91%: 88,500 Jewish students out of total
4,630,246.[2849] (This decline coincided with the beginning of
the Jewish immigration to Israel.)
The relative number of Jewish scientists also declined in
1960s, from 9.5% in 1960 to 6.1% in 1973.[2850] During those
same years, “there were tens of thousands Jewish names in the
Soviet art and literature,”[2851] including 8.5% of writers and
journalists, 7.7% of actors and artists, more than 10% of
judges and attorneys, and about 15% doctors.[2852]
Traditionally, there were always many Jews in medicine, yet
consider the accursed “Soviet psychiatry,” which in those years
began locking up healthy people in mental institutions. And
who were those psychiatrists?  Listing the “Jewish
occupations,” M.I. Heifets writes: “`Psychiatry is a Jewish
monopoly,´ a friend, a Jewish psychiatrist, told me, just before
[my] arrest; `we began to get Russians only recently and even
then as the result of an order´” [translator’s note: admission
into medical residency training was regulated at local and
central levels; here author indicates that admission of
ethnically Russian doctors into advanced  psychiatry training
was mandated from the higher levels]. He provides examples:
the Head Psychiatrist of Leningrad, Professor Averbukh,
provides his expertise for the KGB in the “Big House”; in
Moscow there was famous Luntz; in the Kaluga Hospital there
was Lifshitz and “his Jewish gang.” When Heifetz was arrested,
and his wife began looking for a lawyer with a “clearance,” that
is, with a permission from the KGB to work on political cases,
she “did not nd a single Russian” among them as all such
lawyers were Jews[2853]).
In 1956, Furtseva, then the First Secretary of Moscow
Gorkom (the City’s Party Committee), complained that in some
o ces Jews constitute more than half of the sta .[2854] (I have
to note for balance that in those years the presence of Jews in
the Soviet apparatus was not detrimental. The Soviet legal
machinery was in its essence stubbornly and hardheartedly
anti-human, skewed against any man in need, be it a petitioner
or just a visitor. So it often happened that the Russian o cials
in Soviet o ces, petri ed by their power, looked for any excuse
to triumphantly turn away a visitor; in contrast, one could nd
much more understanding in a Jewish o cial and resolve an
issue in a more humane way). L. Shapiro provides examples of
complaints that in the national republics, the Jews were pushed
out and displaced from the bureaucratic apparatus by native
intelligentsia[2855] – yet it was a common and o cially-
mandated system of preferences in the ethnic republics [to
a rm the local cadres], and Russians were displaced just as
well.
This reminds me of an example from contemporary
American life. In 1965, the New York Division of the American
Jewish Committee had conducted a four-months-long
uno cial interview of more than a thousand top o cials in
New York City banks. Based on its results, the American Jewish
Committee mounted a protest because less than 3% of those
surveyed were Jews, though they constituted one quarter of the
population of – that is, the Committee demanded proportional
representation. Then the chairman of the Association of Banks
of New York responded that banks, according to law, do not
hire on the basis of “race, creed, color or national origin” and do
not keep records of such categories (that would be our accursed
“ fth article” [the requirement in the Soviet internal passport –
“nationality”]!). (Interestingly, the same American Jewish
Committee had conducted a similar study about the ethnic
composition of management of the fty largest U.S. public
utility services two years before, and in 1964 it in similar vein
it studied industrial enterprises in the Philadelphia region.)
[2856]
Yet let us return to the Soviet Jews. Many Jewish emigrants
loudly advertised their former activity in the periodical-
publishing and lm-making industries back in the USSR. In
particular, we learn from a Jewish author that “it was due to his
[Syrokomskiy’s] support that all top positions in Literaturnaya
Gazeta became occupied by Jews.”[2857]
Yet twenty years later we read a di erent assessment of the
time: “The new anti-Semitism grew stronger … and by the
second half of the 1960s it already amounted to a developed
system of discreditation, humiliation and isolation of the
entire people.”[2858]
So how can we reconcile such con icting views? How can we
reach a calm and balanced assessment?
Then from the high spheres inhabited by economic barons
there came alarming signals, signals that made the Jews
nervous. “To a certain extent, Jewish activity in the Soviet
Union concentrated in the speci c elds of economy along a
characteristic pattern, well-known to Jewish
sociologists.”[2859] By then, at the end of 1950s, Nikita
[Khrushchev] suddenly realized that the key spheres of the
Soviet economy are plagued by rampant theft and fraud.
“In 1961, an explicitly anti-Semitic campaign was initiated
against the ?theft of socialist property.”[2860] Beginning in
1961, a number of punitive decrees of the Supreme Soviet of
the USSR were passed. The rst one dealt with “foreign
currency speculations,” another – with bribes, and still another
later introduced capital punishment for the aforementioned
crimes, at the same time lawlessly applying the death penalty
retroactively, for the crimes committed before those decrees
were issued (as, for example, the case of J. Rokotov and B.
Faybishenko). Executions started in the very rst year. During
the rst nine trials, eleven individuals were sentenced to death
– among them were “perhaps, six Jews.”[2861] The Jewish
Encyclopedia states it more speci cally, “In 1961-1964, thirty-
nine Jews were executed for economic crimes in the RSFSR and
seventy-nine – in Ukraine,” and forty-three Jews in other
republics.[2862] In these trials, “the vast majority of
defendants were Jews.” (The publicity was such that the court
reports indicated the names and patronymics of the
defendants, which was the normal order of pleadings, yet it
was getting “absolutely clear from that that they were
Jews.”[2863])
 Next, in a large court trial in Frunze in 1962, nineteen out of
forty-six defendants were apparently Jewish. “There is no
reason to think that this new policy was conceived as a system
of anti-Jewish measures. Yet immediately upon enforcement,
the new laws acquired distinct anti-Jewish avor,” – the author
of the quote obviously points out to the publication of the full
names of defendants, including Jewish ones; other than that,
neither the courts, nor the government, nor the media made
any generalizations or direct accusations against the Jews. And
even when Sovetskaya Kyrgizia wrote that “they occupied
di erent posts, but they were closely linked to each other,” it
never clari ed the begged question “how were they linked?”
The newspaper treated this issue with silence, thus pushing
the reader to the thought that the nucleus of the criminal
organization was composed of the “closely linked” individuals.
Yet “closely linked by” what? By their Jewishness. So the
newspaper “emphasized the Jews in this case.”[2864] … Yet
people can be “closely linked” by any illegal transaction, greed,
swindling or fraud. And, amazingly, nobody argued that those
individuals could be innocent (though they could have been
innocent). Yet to name them was equal to Jew-baiting.
Next, in January 1962, came the Vilnius case of speculators
in foreign currency. All eight defendants were Jews (during the
trial, non-Jewish members of the political establishment
involved in the case escaped public naming – a usual Soviet
trick). This time, there was an explicit anti-Jewish sentiment
from the prosecution: “The deals were struck in a synagogue,
and the arguments were settled with the help of wine.”[2865]
S. Schwartz is absolutely convinced that this legal and
economic harassment was nothing else but rampant anti-
Semitism, yet he completely disregards “the tendency of Jews
to concentrate their activity in the speci c spheres of
economy.” Similarly, the entire Western media interpreted this
as a brutal campaign against Jews, the humiliation and isolation
of the entire people; Bertrand Russell sent a letter of protest to
Khrushchev and got a personal response from the Soviet
leader.[2866] However, after that, the Soviet authorities
apparently had second thoughts when they handled the Jews.
In the West, the o cial Soviet anti-Semitism began to be
referred to as “the most pressing issue” in the USSR (ignoring
any more acute issues) and “the most proscribed subject.”
(Though there were numerous other proscribed issues such as
forced collectivization or the surrender of three million Red
Army soldiers in the year of 1941 alone, or the murderous
nuclear “experimentation” on our own Soviet troops on the
Totskoye range in 1954.) Of course, after Stalin’s death, the
Communist Party avoided explicit anti-Jewish statements.
Perhaps, they practiced incendiary “invitation-only meetings”
and “brie ngs” – that would have been very much in the Soviet
style. Solomon Schwartz rightly concludes: “Soviet anti-Jewish
policy does not have any sound or rational foundation,” the
strangulation of the Jewish cultural life “appears puzzling.
How can such bizarre policy be explained?”[2867]
Still, when all living things in the country were being
choked, could one really expect that such vigorous and agile
people would escape a similar lot? To that, the Soviet foreign
policy agendas of 1960s added their weight: the USSR was
designing an anti-Israel campaign. Thus, they came up with a
convenient, ambiguous and inde nite term of “anti-Zionism,”
which became “a sword of Damocles hanging above the entire
Jewish population of the country.”[2868] Campaigning against
“Zionism” in the press became a sort of impenetrable shield as
its obvious anti-Semitic nature became unprovable. Moreover,
it sounded menacing and dangerous – “Zionism is the
instrument of the American imperialism.” So the “Jews had to
prove their loyalty in one way or other, to somehow convince
the people around them that they had no connection to their
own Jewishness, especially to Zionism.”[2869]
The feelings of ordinary Jews in the Soviet Union became the
feelings of the oppressed as vividly expressed by one of them:
“Over the years of persecutions and vili cations, the Jews
developed a certain psychological complex of suspicion to any
contact coming from non-Jews. In everything they are ready to
see implicit or explicit hints on their nationality …. The Jews
can never publicly declare their Jewishness, and it is formally
accepted that this should be kept silent, as if it was a vice, or a
past crime.”[2870]
An incident in Malakhovka in October 1959 added
substantially to that atmosphere. On the night of October 4, in
Malakhovka, a settlement “half an hour from Moscow … with
30,000 inhabitants, about 10% of whom are Jews …, the roof of
the synagogue caught re along with … the house of the Jewish
cemetery keeper … [and] the wife of the keeper died in the re.
On the same night, lea ets were scattered and posted across
Malakhovka: `Away with the Jews in commerce! … We saved
them from the Germans … yet they became arrogant so fast
that the Russian people do not understand any longer… who’s
living on whose land.´”[2871]
Growing depression drove some Jews to such an extreme
state of mind as that described by D. Shturman: some “Jewish
philistines developed a hatred toward Israel, believing it to be
the  generator of anti-Semitism in the Soviet politics. I
remember the words of one succesful Jewish teacher: `One
good bomb dropped on Israel would make our life much easier.
´”[2872]
Yet that was an ugly exception indeed. In general, the
rampant anti-Zionist campaign triggered a “consolidation of
the sense of Jewishness in people and the growth of sympathy
towards Israel as the outpost of the Jewish nation.”[2873]
 There is yet another explanation of the social situation in
those years: yes, under Khrushchev, “fears for their lives had
become the things of the past for the Soviet Jews,” but “the
foundations of new anti-Semitism had been laid,” as the young
generation of political establishment fought for caste
privileges, “seeking to occupy the leading positions in arts,
science, commerce, nance, etc. There the new Soviet
aristocracy encountered Jews, whose share in those elds was
traditionally high.” The “social structure of the Jewish
population, which was mainly concentrated in the major
centers of the country, reminded the ruling elite of their own
class structure.”[2874]
Doubtless, such encounter did take place; it was an epic
“crew change” in the Soviet ruling establishment, switching
from the Jewish elite to the Russian one. It had clearly resulted
in antagonism and I remember those conversations among the
Jews during Khrushchev’s era – they were full of not only
ridicule, but also of bad insults with the ex-villagers,
“muzhiks,” who have in ltrated the establishment.
Yet altogether all the various social in uences combined
with the great prudence of the Soviet authorities led to
dramatic alleviation of “prevalence and acuteness of modern
Soviet anti-Semitism” by 1965, which became far inferior to
what had been observed “during the war and the rst post-war
years,” and it appears that “a marked attenuation, maybe even a
complete dying out of `the percentage quote´ is
happening.”[2875] Overall, in the 1960s the Jewish worldview
was rather positive. This is what we consistently hear from
di erent authors. (Contrast this to what we just read, that “the
new anti-Semitism grew in strength in the 1960s.”) The same
opinion was expressed again twenty years later –
“Khrushchev’s era was one of the most peaceful periods of the
Soviet history for the Jews.”[2876]
 “In 1956-1957, many new Zionist societies sprang up in the
USSR, bringing together young Jews who previously did not
show much interest in Jewish national problems or Zionism.
An important impetus for the awakening of national
consciousness among Soviet Jews and for the development of a
sense of solidarity with the State of Israel was the Suez Crisis
[1956].” Later, “The International Youth Festival [Moscow,
1957] became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist
movement in the USSR among a certain portion of Soviet Jews
… Between the festival and the Six-Day War [1967], Zionist
activity in the Soviet Union was gradually expanding. Contacts
of Soviet Jews with the Israeli Embassy became more frequent
and less dangerous.” Also, “the importance of Jewish Samizdat
increased dramatically.”[2877]
During the so-called Khrushchev’s “thaw” period (the end of
1950s to the beginning of the 1960s), Soviet Jews were
spiritually re-energized; they shook o the fears and distress of
the previous age of the “Doctors’ Plot” and the persecution of
“cosmopolitan.” It “even became fashionable” in the
metropolitan society “to be a Jew”; the Jewish motif entered
Samizdat and poetic soirees then so popular among the young.
Rimma Kazakova even ventured to declare her Jewish identity
from the stage. Yevtushenko quickly caught the air and
expressed it in 1961 in his Babi Yar[2878], proclaiming himself
a Jew in spirit. His poem (and the courage of Literaturnaya
Gazeta) was a literary trumpet call for all of Soviet and world
Jewry. Yevtushenko recited his poem during a huge number of
poetic soirees, always accompanied by a roar of applause. After
a while, Shostakovich, who often ventured into Jewish themes,
set Yevtushenko’s poem into his 13th Symphony. Yet its public
performance was limited by the authorities. Babi Yar spread
among Soviet and foreign Jewries as a reinvigorating and
healing blast of air, a truly “revolutionary act … in the
development of the social consciousness in the Soviet Union”;
“it became the most signi cant event since the dismissal of the
`Doctors’ Plot.´”[2879]
In 1964-65 Jewish themes returned into popular literature;
take, for example, Summer in Sosnyaki by Anatoliy Rybakov or
the diary of Masha Rolnik[2880] (“written apparently under
heavy in uence of Diary of Anne Frank”[2881]).
“After the ousting of Khrushchev from all his posts, the
o cial policy towards Jews was softened somewhat. The
struggle against Judaism abated and nearly all restrictions on
baking matzah were abolished …. Gradually, the campaign
against economic crimes faded away too ….” Yet “the Soviet
press unleashed a propaganda campaign against Zionist
activities among the Soviet Jews and their connections to the
Israeli Embassy.”[2882]
All these political uctuations and changes in the Jewish
policies in the Soviet Union did not pass unnoticed but served
to awaken the Jews.
In the 1959 Census, only 21% Jews named Yiddish as their
rst language (in 1926 -72%).[2883] Even in 1970s they used
to say that “Russian Jewry, which was [in the past] the most
Jewish Jewry in the world, became the least Jewish.”[2884]
“The current state of Soviet society is fraught with destruction
of Jewish spiritual and intellectual potential.”[2885] Or as
another author put it: the Jews in the Soviet Union were
neither “allowed to assimilate,” nor were they “allowed to be
Jews.”[2886]
Yet Jewish identity was never subdued during the entire
Soviet period.
In 1966 the o cial mouthpiece Sovetish Heymland claimed
that “even assimilated Russian-speaking Jews still retain their
unique character, distinct from that of any other segment of
population.”[2887] Not to mention the Jews of Odessa, Kiev,
and Kharkov, who “sometimes were even snooty about their
Jewishness – to the extent that they did not want to befriend a
goy.”[2888]
Scientist Leo Tumerman ( already in Israel in 1977) recalls
the early Soviet period, when he used to “reject any
nationalism.” Yet now, looking back at those years: “I am
surprised to notice what I had overlooked then: despite what
appeared to be my full assimilation into the Russian life, the
entire circle of my close and intimate friends at that time was
Jewish.”[2889]
The sincerity of his statement is certain – the picture is clear.
Such things were widespread and I witnessed similar
situations quite a few times, and Russians people did not mind
such behavior at all.
Another Jewish author notes: in the USSR “non-religious
Jews of all walks of life hand in hand defended the principle of
`racial purity.´” He adds: “Nothing could be more natural.
People for whom the Jewishness is just an empty word are very
rare, especially among the unassimilated [Jews].”[2890]
Natan Sharansky’s testimonial, given shortly after his
immigration to Israel, is also typical: “Much of my Jewishness
was instilled into me by my family. Although our family was an
assimilated one, it nevertheless was Jewish.” “My father, an
ordinary Soviet journalist, was so fascinated with the
revolutionary ideas of `happiness for all´ and not just for the
Jews, that he became an absolutely loyal Soviet citizen.” Yet in
1967 after the Six-Day War and later in 1968 after
Czechoslovakia, “I suddenly realized an obvious di erence
between myself and non-Jews around me … a kind of a sense of
the fundamental di erence between my Jewish consciousness
and the national consciousness of the Russians.”[2891]
And here is another very thoughtful testimonial (1975):
“The e orts spent over the last hundred years by Jewish
intellectuals to reincarnate themselves into the Russian
national form were truly titanic. Yet it did not give them
balance of mind; on the contrary, it rather made them to feel
the bitterness of their bi-national existence more acutely.” And
“they have an answer to the tragic question of Aleksandr Blok:
`My Russia, my life, are we to drudge through life together?´
To that question, to which a Russian as a rule gives an
unambiguous answer, a member of Russian-Jewish
intelligentsia used to reply (sometimes after self-re ection):
`No, not together. For the time being, yes, side by side, but not
together´… A duty is no substitute for Motherland.” And so
“the Jews felt free from obligations at all sharp turns of Russian
history.”[2892]
Fair enough. One can only hope for all Russian Jews to get
such clarity and acknowledge this dilemma.
Yet usually the problem in its entirety is blamed on “anti-
Semitism”: “Excluding us from everything genuinely Russian,
their anti-Semitism simultaneously barred us from all things
Jewish …. Anti-Semitism is terrible not because of what it does
to the Jews (by imposing restrictions on them), but because of
what it does with the Jews by turning them into neurotic,
depressed, stressed, and defective human beings.”[2893]
Still, those Jews, who had fully woken up to their identity,
were very quickly, completely, and reliably cured from such a
morbid condition.
Jewish identity in the Soviet Union grew stronger as they
went through the historical ordeals predestined for Jewry by
the 20th Century. First, it was the Jewish Catastrophe  during
the Second World War. (Through the e orts of o cial Soviet
mu ing and obscuring, Soviet Jewry only comprehended its
full scope later.)
Another push was given by the campaign against
“cosmopolitans” in 1949-1950.
 Then there was a very serious threat of a massacre by Stalin,
eliminated by his timely death.
And with Khrushchev’s “thaw” and after it, later in the
1960s, Soviet Jewry quickly awoke spiritually, already sensing
its unique identity.
During the second half of the 1950s, “the growing sense of
bitterness, spread over large segments of Soviet Jewry”, lead to
“consolidation of the sense of national solidarity.”[2894]
But “only in the late 1960s did a very small but committed
group of scientists (note, they were not humanitarians; the
most colorful gure among them was Alexander Voronel)
begin rebuilding of Jewish national consciousness in
Russia.”[2895]
And then against the nascent national consciousness of
Soviet Jews, the Six-Day War suddenly broke out and instantly
ended in what might have seemed a miraculous victory. Israel
has ascended in their minds and Soviet Jews awoke to their
spiritual and consanguineous kinship [with Israel].
But the Soviet authorities, furious at Nasser’s disgraceful 
defeat, immediately attacked Soviet Jews with the thundering
campaign against the “Judeo-Zionist-Fascism,” insinuating 
that all the Jews were “Zionists” and claiming that the “global
conspiracy” of Zionism “is the expected and inevitable product
of the entirety of Jewish history, Jewish religion, and the resultant
Jewish national character” and “because of the consistent
pursuit of the ideology of racial supremacy and apartheid,
Judaism turned out to be a very convenient religion for
securing world dominance.”[2896]
The campaign on TV and in the press was accompanied by a
dramatic break of diplomatic relations with Israel. The Soviet
Jews had many reasons to fear: “It looked like it was going to
come to calls for a pogrom.”[2897]
 But underneath this scare a new and already unstoppable
explosion of Jewish national consciousness was growing and
developing.
“Bitterness, resentment, anger, and the sense of social
insecurity were accruing for a nal break up which would lead
to complete severing of all ties with [this] country and [this]
society – to emigration.”[2898]
“The victory of the Israeli Army contributed to the
awakening of national consciousness among the many
thousands of almost completely assimilated Soviet Jews …. The
process of national revival has began …. The activity of Zionist
groups in cities all across the country surged …. In 1969, there
were attempts to create a united Zionist Organization [in the
USSR] …. An increasing number of Jews applied to emigrate to
Israel.”[2899]
And the numerous refusals to grant exit visas led to the
failed attempt to hijack an airplane on June 15, 1970. The
following “Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking a air” can be
considered a historic landmark in the fate of Soviet Jewry.
 Chapter 24. Breaking away from Bolshevism

At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe imagined itself to

be on the threshold of worldwide enlightenment. No one could
have predicted the strength with which nationalism would
explode in that very century among all nations of the world.
One hundred years later it seems nationalist feelings are not
about to die soon (the very message that international
socialists have been trying to drum into our heads for the
whole century), but instead are gaining strength.
Yet, does not the multi-national nature of humanity provide
variety and wealth? Erosion of nations surely would be an
impoverishment for humanity, the entropy of the spirit. (And
centuries of the histories of national cultures would then turn
into irredeemably dead and useless antics.) The logic that it
would be easier to manage such a uniform mankind fails by its
petty reductionism.
However, the propaganda in the Soviet empire harped non-
stop in an importunately-triumphant manner about the
imminent withering away and amalgamation of nations,
proclaiming that no “national question” exists in our country,
and that there is certainly no “Jewish question.”
Yet why should not the Jewish question exist — the question
of the unprecedented three-thousand-year-old existence of the
nation, scattered all over the Earth, yet spiritulally soldered
together despite all notions of the state and territoriality, and
at the same time in uencing the entire world history in the
most lively and powerful way? Why should there not be a
“Jewish question” given that all national questions come up at
one time or other, even the “Gagauz question” [a small
Christian Turkic people, who live in the Balkans and Eastern
Europe]?
Of course, no such silly doubt could ever arise, if the Jewish
question were not the focus of many di erent political games.
The same was true for Russia too. In pre-revolutionary
Russian society, as we saw, it was the omission of the Jewish
question that was considered “anti-Semitic.” In fact, in the
mind of the Russian public the Jewish question — understood
as the question of civil rights or civil equality — developed into
perhaps the central question of the whole Russian public life of
that period, and certainly into the central node of the
conscience of every individual, its acid test.
With the growth of European socialism, all national issues
were increasingly recognized as merely regrettable obstacles to
that great doctrine; all the more was the Jewish question
(directly attributed to capitalism by Marx) considered a bloated
hindrance. Mommsen wrote that in the circles of “Western-
Russian socialist Jewry,” as he put it, even the slightest attempt
to discuss the Jewish question was branded as “reactionary”
and “anti-Semitic” (this was even before the Bund).
Such was the iron standard of socialism inherited by the
USSR. From 1918 the communists forbade (under threat of
imprisonment or death) any separate treatment or
consideration of the Jewish question (except sympathy for
their su ering under the Tsars and positive attitudes for their
active role in communism). The intellectual class voluntarily
and willingly adhered to the new canon while others were
required to follow it.
This cast of thought persisted even through the Soviet-
German war as if, even then, there was not any particular
Jewish question. And even up to the demise of the USSR under
Gorbachev, the authorities used to repeat hard-headedly: no,
there is no Jewish question, no, no, no! (It was replaced by the
“Zionist question.”)
Yet already by the end of the World War II, when the extent
of the destruction of the Jews under Hitler had dawned on the
Soviet Jews, and then through Stalin’s “anti-cosmopolitan”
campaign of the late 1940s, the Soviet intelligentsia realized
that the Jewish question in the USSR does exist! And the pre-
revolutionary understanding — that it is central to Russian
society and to the conscience of every individual and that it is
the “true measure of humanity”[2900] — was also restored.
In the West it was only the leaders of Zionism who
con dently talked from the late 19th century about the
historical uniqueness and everlasting relevance of the Jewish
question (and some of them at the same time maintained
robust links with diehard European socialism).
And then the emergence of the state of Israel and the
consequent storms around it added to the confusion of naive
socialist minds of Europeans.
Here I o er two small but at the time quite stirring and
typical examples. In one episode of so-called “the dialogue
between the East and the West” show (a clever Cold-War-period
programme, where Western debaters were opposed by Eastern-
European o cials or novices who played o o cial nonsense
for their own sincere convictions) in the beginning of 1967, a
Slovak writer, Ladislav Mnacko, properly representing the
socialist East, wittily noted that he never in his life had any
con ict with the Communist authorities, except one case when
his driver’s license was suspended for a tra c violation. His
French opponent angrily said that at least in one other case,
surely Mnacko should be in the opposition: when the uprising
in neighboring Hungary was drowned in blood. But no, the
suppression of Hungarian Uprising neither violated the peace
of Mnacko’s mind, nor did it force him to say anything sharp or
impudent. Then, a few months passed after the “dialogue” and
the Six-Day War broke out. At that point the Czechoslovak
Government of Novotny, all loyal Communists, accused Israel
of aggression and severed diplomatic relations with it. And
what happened next? Mnacko — a Slovak married to a Jew —
who had calmly disregarded the suppression of Hungary
before, now was so outraged and agitated that he left his
homeland and as a protest went to live in Israel.
The second example comes from the same year. A famous
French socialist, Daniel Meyer, at the moment of the Six-Day
War had written in Le Monde, that henceforth he is: 1) ashamed
to be a socialist — because of the fact that the Soviet Union calls
itself a socialist country (well, when the Soviet Union was
exterminating not only its own people but also other socialists
— he was not ashamed); 2) ashamed of being a French
(obviously due to the wrong political position of de Gaulle);
and, 3) ashamed to be a human (wasn’t that too much?), and
ashamed of all except being a Jew.[2901]
We are ready to accept both Mnacko’s outrage and Meyer’s
anger, yet we would like to point out at the extreme intensity of
their feelings — given the long history of their obsequious
condoning of communism. Surely, the intensity of their
feelings is also an aspect of the Jewish question in the 20th
century.
So in what way ”did the Jewish question not exist”?
If one listened to American radio broadcasts aimed at the
Soviet Union from 1950 to the 1980s, one might conclude that
there was no other issue in the Soviet Union as important as
the Jewish question. (At the same time in the United States,
where the Jews “can be described as … the most privileged
minority” and where they “gained an unprecedented status,
the majority of [American Jews] still claimed that hatred and
discrimination by their Christian compatriots was a grim fact
of the modern life”;[2902] yet because it would sound
incredible if stated aloud, then the Jewish question does not
exist, and to notice it and talk about it is unnecessary and
improper.)
We have to get used to talking about Jewish question not in a
hush and fearfully, but clearly, articulately and rmly. We
should do so not over owing with passion, but
sympathetically aware of both the unusual and di cult Jewish
world history and centuries of our Russian history that are also
full of signi cant su ering. Then the mutual prejudices,
sometimes very intense, would disappear and calm reason
would reign.
Working on this book, I can’t help but notice that the Jewish
question has been omnipresent in world history and it never
was a national question in the narrow sense like all other
national questions, but was always — maybe because of the
nature of Judaism? — interwoven into something much bigger.

   
When in the late 1960s I mused about the fate of the
communist regime and felt that yes, it is doomed, my
impression was strongly supported by the observation that so
many Jews had already abandoned it.
There was a period when they persistently and in unison
supported the Soviet regime, and at that time the future
de nitely belonged to it. Yet now the Jews started to defect
from it, rst the thinking individuals and later the Jewish
masses. Was this not a sure sign that the years of the Soviet
rule are numbered? Yes, it was.
So when exactly did it happen that the Jews, once such a
reliable backbone of the regime, turned into almost its greatest
adversary?
Can we say that the Jews always struggled for freedom? No,
for too many of them were the most zealous communists.  Yet
now they turned their backs on it. And without them, the
ageing Bolshevist fanaticism had not only lost some of its
fervor, it actually ceased to be fanatical at all, rather it became
lazy in the Russian way.
After the Soviet-German War, the Jews became disappointed
by Communist power: it turned out that they were worse o
than before. We saw the main stages of this split. Initially, the
support of the newborn state of Israel by the USSR had inspired
the Soviet Jews. Then came the persecution of the
“cosmopolitans” and the mainly Jewish intelligentsia (not the
philistine masses yet) began to worry: communism pushes the
Jews aside? oppresses them? The terrible threat of massacre by
Stalin overwhelmed them as well — but it was short-lived and
miraculously disappeared very soon. During the
“interregnum,” [following Stalin’s death] and then under
Khrushchev, Jewish hopes were replaced by dissatisfaction and
the promised stable improvement failed to materialize.
And then the Six-Day War broke out with truly biblical force,
rocking both Soviet and world Jewry, and the Jewish national
consciousness began to grow like an avalanche. After the Six-
Day War, “much was changed … the action acquired
momentum. Letters and petitions began to ood Soviet and
international organizations. National life was revived: during
the holidays it became di cult to get into a synagogue,
underground societies sprang up to study Jewish history,
culture and Hebrew.”[2903]
And then there was that rising campaign against “Zionism,”
already linked to “imperialism,” and so the resentment grew
among the Jews toward that increasingly alien and abominable
and dull Bolshevism — where did such a monster come from?
 Indeed, for many educated Jews the departure from
communism was painful as it is always di cult to part with an
ideal — after all, was not it a “great, and perhaps inevitable,
planetary experiment initiated in Russia in 1917; an
experiment, based on ancient attractive and obviously high
ideas, not all of which were faulty and many still retain their
bene cial e ect to this day…. Marxism requires educated
minds.”[2904]
Many Jewish political writers strongly favored the term
“Stalinism” — a convenient form to justify the earlier Soviet
regime. It is di cult to part with the old familiar and sweet
things, if it is really possible at all.
There have been attempts to increase the in uence of
intellectuals on the ruling elite. Such was the Letter to the XXIII
Congress (of the Communist Party) by G. Pomerants (1966). The
letter asked the Communist Party to trust the “scienti c and
creative intelligentsia,” that “desires not anarchy but the rule of
law … that wants not to destroy the existing system but to
make it more exible, more rational, more humane” and
proposed to establish an advisory think tank, which would
generally consult the executive leadership of the country.[2905]
The o er remained unanswered.
And many souls long ached for such a wasted opportunity
with such a “glorious” past.
But there was no longer any choice . And so the Soviet Jews
split away from communism. And now, while deserting it, they
turned against it. And that was such a perfect opportunity —
they could themselves, with expurgatory repentance,
acknowledge their formerly active and cruel role in the
triumph of communism in Russia.
Yet almost none of them did (I discuss the few exceptions
below). The above-mentioned collection of essays, Russia and
the Jews, so heartfelt, so much needed and so timely when
published in 1924 was ercely denounced by Jewry. And even
today, according to the opinion of the erudite scholar, Shimon
Markish: “these days, nobody dares to defend those hook-nosed
and burry  commissars  because of fear of being branded pro-
Soviet, a Chekist, a God-knows-what else…. Yet let me say in no
uncertain terms: the behavior of those Jewish youths who
joined the Reds is a thousand times more understandable than
the reasons of the authors of that collection of works.”[2906]
Still, some Jewish authors began to recognize  certain things
of the past as they really were, though in the most cautious
terms: “It was the end of the role of the `Russian-Jewish
intelligentsia´ that developed in the prewar and early postwar
years and that was — to some degree sincerely — a bearer of
Marxist ideology and that professed, however timidly and
implicitly and contrary to actual practice, the ideals of
liberalism, internationalism and humanism.”[2907] A bearer of
Marxist ideology? — Yes, of course. The ideals of
internationalism? — Sure. Yet liberalism and humanism? —
True, but only after Stalin’s death, while coming to senses.
However, very di erent things can be inferred from the
writings of the majority of Jewish publicists in the late Soviet
Union. Looking back to the very year of 1917, they nd that
under communism there was nothing but Jewish su ering!
“Among the many nationalities of the Soviet Union, the Jews
have always been stigmatized as the least `reliable´
element.”[2908]
What incredibly short memory one should have to state
such things in 1983? Always! And what about the 1920s? And
the 1930s? To assert that they were then considered the least
reliable?! Is it really possible to forget everything so
completely?
“If … one takes a bird’s-eye view of the entire history of the
Soviet era, then the latter appears as one gradual process of
destruction of the Jews.” Note — the entire history! We
investigated this in the previous chapters and saw that even
without taking into account Jewish over-representation in the
top Soviet circles, there had been a period of well-being for
many Jews with mass migration to cities, open access to higher
education and the blossoming of Jewish culture. The author
proceeds with a reservation: “Although there were …  certain
` uctuations´, the overall trend continued … Soviet power,
destroying all nationalities, generally dealt with the Jews in the
most brutal way.”[2909]
Another author considers a disaster even the early period
when Lenin and the Communist Party called upon the Jews to
help with state governance, and the call was heard, and the
great masses of Jews from the shtetls of the hated Pale moved
into the capital and the big cities, closer to the avant-garde [of
the Revolution]”; he states that the “… formation of the
Bolshevik regime that had turned the greater part of Jews into
`déclassé´, impoverished and exiled them and destroyed their
families” was a catastrophe for the “majority of the Jewish
population.” (Well, that depends on one’spoint of view. And the
author himself later notes: in the 1920s and 1930s, the
“children of déclassé Jewish petty bourgeois were able to
graduate from … the technical institutes and metropolitan
universities and to become `commanders´ of the `great
developments.´”) Then his reasoning becomes vague: “in the
beginning of the century the main feature of Jewish activity
was … a fascination … with the idea of building a new fair
society”– yet the army of revolution “consisted of plain rabble
— all those `who were nothing,´ [a quote from The
Internationale].” Then, “after the consolidation of the regime”
that rabble “decided to implement their motto and to `become
all´ [also a quote from The Internationale], and nished o
their own leaders….  And so the kingdom of rabble —
unlimited totalitarianism — was established.” (And, in this
context, the Jews had nothing to do with it, except that they
were among the victimized leaders.) And the purge continued
“for four decades” until the “mid-1950s”; then the last “bitter
pill … according to the scenario of disappointments” was
prescribd to the remaining “`charmed´ Jews.”[2910] Again we
see the same angle: the entire Soviet history was one of
unending oppression and exclusion of the Jews.
Yet now they wail in protest in unison: “We did not elect this
regime!”
Or even “it is not possible to cultivate a loyal Soviet elite
among them [the Jews].”[2911]
Oh my God, was not this method working awlessly for 30
years, and only later coming undone?  So where did all those
glorious and famous names — whom we’ve seen in such
numbers — came from?
And why were their eyes kept so tightly shut that they
couldn’t see the essence of Soviet rule for thirty to forty years?
How is that that their eyes were opened only now? And what
opened them?
Well, it was mostly because of the fact that now that power
had suddenly turned around and began pushing the Jews not
only out of its ruling and administrative circles, but out of
cultural and scienti c establishements also. “The
disappointment was so fresh and sore, that we did not have the
strength, nor the courage to tell even our children about it. And
what about the children? … For the great majority of them the
main motivation was the same — graduate school, career, and
so on.”[2912]
Yet soon they would have to examine their situation more
closely.
    
In the 1970s we see examples of rather amazing agreement of
opinions, unthinkable for the past half a century.
For instance, Shulgin wrote in 1929: “We must acknowledge
our past. The at denial … claiming that the Jews are to blame
for nothing — neither for the Russian Revolution, nor for the
consolidation of Bolshevism, nor for the horrors of the
communism — is the worst way possible….  It would be a great
step forward if this groundless tendency to blame all the
troubles of Russia on the Jews could be somewhat
di erentiated. It would be already great if any `contrasts´
could be found.”[2913]
Fortunately, such contrasts, and even more —
comprehension, and even remorse — were voiced by some
Jews. And, combined with the honest mind and rich life
experience, they were quite clear. And this brings hope.
Here’s Dan Levin, an American intellectual who immigrated
to Israel: “It is no accident, that none of the American writers
who attempted to describe and explain what happened to
Soviet Jewry, has touched this important issue — the [Jewish]
responsibility for the communism…. In Russia, the people’s
anti-Semitism is largely due to the fact that the Russians
perceive the Jews as the cause of all the evil of the revolution.
Yet American writers — Jews and ex-Communists … do not
want to resurrect the ghosts of the past. However, oblivion is a
terrible thing.”[2914]
Simultaneously, another Jewish writer, an émigré from the
Soviet Union, published: the experience of the Russian (Soviet)
Jewry, in contrast to that of the European Jewry, whose
historical background  “is the experience of a collision with the
forces of outer evil … requires a look not from inside out but
rather of introspection and … inner self-examination.” “In this
reality we saw only one Jewish spirituality — that of the
Commissar — and its name was Marxism.” Or he writes about
“our young Zionists who demonstrate so much contempt
toward Russia, her rudeness and savagery, contrasting all this
with [the worthiness of] the ancient Jewish nation.” “I saw
pretty clearly, that those who today sing hosanna to Jewry,
glorifying it in its entiriety (without the slightest sense of guilt
or the slightest potential to look inside), yesterday were saying:
‘I wouldn’t be against the Soviet regime, if it was not anti-
Semitic,´ and two days ago they beat their breasts in ecstasy:
`Long live the great brotherhood of nations! Eternal Glory to
the Father and Friend, the genius Comrade Stalin!´”[2915]
But today, when it is clear how many Jews were in the iron
Bolshevik leadership, and how many more took part in the
ideological guidance of a great country to the wrong track —
should the question not arise [among modern Jews] as to some
sense of responsibility for the actions of those [Jews]? It should
be asked in general: shouldn’t there be a kind of moral
responsibility — not a joint liability, yet the responsibility to
remember and to acknowledge? For example, modern Germans
accept liability to Jews directly, both morally and materially, as
perpetrators are liable to the victims: for many years they have
paid compensation to Israel and personal compensation to
surviving victims.
So what about Jews? When Mikhail Kheifets, whom I
repeatedly cite in this work, after having been through labor
camps, expressed the grandeur of his character by repenting on
behalf of his people for the evil committed by the Jews in the
Soviet Union in the name of communism — he was bitterly
ridiculed.
The whole educated society, the cultured circle, had genuinely
failed to notice any Russian grievances in the 1920s and 1930s;
they didn’t even assume that  such could exist — yet they
instantly recognized the Jewish grievances as soon as those
emerged. Take, for example, Victor Perelman, who after
emigrating published an anti-Soviet Jewish journal Epoch and
We and who served the regime in the lthiest place, in
Chakovsky’s Literaturnaya Gazeta — until  the Jewish question
had entered his life. Then he opted out….
At a higher level, they generalized it as “the crash of …
illusions about the integration [of Jewry] into the Russian
social movements, about making any change in Russia.”[2916]
Thus, as soon as the Jews recognized their explicit
antagonism to the Soviet regime, they turned into its
intellectual opposition — in accord to their social role. Of
course, it was not them who rioted in Novocherkassk, or
created unrest in Krasnodar, Alexandrov, Murom, or Kostroma.
Yet the lmmaker Mikhail Romm plucked up his heart and,
during a public speech, unambiguously denounced the “anti-
cosmopolitan” campaign — and that became one of the rst
Samizdat documents (and Romm himself, who in so timely a
manner rid himself of his ideological impediments, became a
kind of spiritual leader for the Soviet Jewry, despite his lms
Lenin in October (1937), Lenin in 1918 (1939), and despite being
a vefold winner of the Stalin Prize). And after that the Jews
had become reliable supporters and intrepid members of the
“democratic” and “dissident” movements.
Looking back from Israel at the din of Moscow, another
witness re ected: “A large part of Russian democrats (if not the
majority) are of Jewish origin…. Yet they do not identify
[themselves] as Jews and do not realize that their audience is
also mostly Jewish.”[2917]
And so the Jews had once again become the Russian
revolutionaries, shouldering the social duty of the Russian
intelligentsia, which the Jewish Bolsheviks so zealously helped
to exterminate during the rst decade after the revolution;
they had become the true and genuine nucleus of the new
public opposition. And so yet again no progressive movement
was possible without Jews.
Who had halted the torrent of false political (and often semi-
closed) court trials? Alexander Ginzburg, and then Pavel
Litvinov and Larisa Bogoraz did. I would not exaggerate if I
claim that their appeal “To world public opinion” in January
1968, delivered not through unreliable Samizdat, but handed
fearlessly to the West in front of Cheka cameras, had been a
milestone of Soviet ideological history. Who were those seven
brave souls who dragged their leaden feet to Lobnoye Mesto [a
stone platform in Red Square] on Aug. 25, 1968? They did it not
for the greater success of their protest, but to wash the name of
Russia from the Czechoslovak disgrace by their sacri ce. Four
out of the seven were Jews. (Remember, that the percentage of
Jews in the population of the country then was less than 1%)
We should also remember Semyon Gluzman, who sacri ced his
freedom in the struggle against the “nuthouses” [dissidents
were sometimes incarcerated in psychiatric clinics]. Many
Jewish intellectuals from Moscow were among the rst
punished by the Soviet regime.
Yet very few dissidents ever regretted the past of their
Jewish fathers. P. Litvinov never mentioned his grandfather’s
role in Soviet propaganda. Neither would we hear from V.
Belotserkovsky how many innocents were slaughtered by his
Mauser-toting father. Communist Raisa Lert, who became a
dissident late in life, was proud of her membership in that
party even after The Gulag Archipelago; the party “she had
joined in good faith and enthusiastically” in her youth; the
party to which she had “wholly devoted herself” and from
which she herself had su ered, yet nowadays it is ”not the
same” party anymore.[2918] Apparenty she did not realize how
appealing the early Soviet terror was for her.
After the events of 1968, Sakharov joined the dissident
movement without a backward glance. Among his new
dissident preoccupations were many individual cases; in
particular, personal cases of Jewish refuseniks [those,
overwhelming Jewish, dissidents who requested, but were
refused the right to emigrate from the Soviet Union]. Yet when
he tried to expand the business (as he had innocently con ded
to me, not realizing all the glaring signi cance of what he said),
Gelfand, a member of the Academy of Science, told him that
“we are tired of helping these people to resolve their problems,”
while another member, Zeldovich, said: “I’m not going to sign
any petition on behalf of victims of any injustice — I want to
retain the ability to protect those who su er for their
nationality.” Which means — to protect the Jews only.
There was also a purely Jewish dissident movement, which
was concerned only with the oppression of the Jews and Jewish
emigration from the Soviet Union (more about it — later).

   
A trasformation in public consciousness often pushes forward
outstanding individuals as representatives, symbols and
spokesmen of the age. So in the 1960s Alexander Galich
became such a typical and accurate representative of the
processes and attitudes in the Soviet intellectual circles.
(“`Galich´ is a pen name, explains N. Rubinstein. It is made of
syllables of his real name — Ginsburg Alexander Arkadievich.
Choosing a pen name is a serious thing.”[2919] Actually, I
assume that the author was aware that, apart from being “just
a combination of syllables,” “Galich” is also the name of the
ancient Russian city from the very heart of Slavic history.)
Galich enjoyed the general support of Soviet intelligentsia; tape
recordings of his guitar performances were widely
disseminated; and they have almost become the symbol of the
social revival of the 1960s expressing it powerfully and
vehemently. The opinion of the cultural circle was unanimous:
“the most popular people’s poet,” the “bard of modern Russia.”
Galich was 22 when the Soviet-German War broke out. He
says that he was exempt from military service because of poor
health; he then moved to Grozny, where he “unexpectedly
easily became the head of the literature section of the local
Drama Theatre”; he also “organized a theater of political satire”;
then he evacuated through Krasnovodsk to Chirchik near
Tashkent; in 1942, he moved from there to Moscow with a
front-line theatrical company under formation and spent the
rest of the war with that company.
He recalled how he worked on hospital trains, composing
and performing couplets for wounded soldiers; how they were
drinking spirits with a trainmaster…. “All of us, each in his
own way, worked for the great common cause: we were
defending our Motherland.”[2920] After the war he became a
well-known Soviet scriptwriter (he worked on many movies)
and a playwright (ten of his plays were staged by “many
theaters in the Soviet Union and abroad” [216] [references in
square brackets refer to the page number in the source 21]. All
that was in 1940s and 1950s, in the age of general spiritual
stagnation — well, he could not step out of the line, could he?
He even made a movie about Chekists, and was awarded for his
work.
Yet in the early 1960s, Galich abruptly changed his life. He
found courage to forsake his successful and well-o life and
“walk into the square.” [98] It was after that that he began
performing guitar-accompanied songs to people gathering in
private Moscow apartments. He gave up open publishing,
though it was, of course, not easy: “[it was great] to read a name
on the cover, not just someone else’s, but mine!” [216]
Surely, his anti-regime songs, keen, acidic, and and morally
demanding, were of bene t to the society, further destabilizing
public attitudes.
In his songs he mainly addressed Stalin’s later years and
beyond; he usually did not deplore the radiant past of the age of
Lenin (except one instance: “The carts with bloody cargo /
squeak by Nikitsky Gate” [224]). At his best, he calls the society
to moral cleansing, to resistance (“Gold-digger’s waltz” [26], “I
choose liberty” [226], “Ballad of the clean hands” [181], “Our
ngers blotted from the questionnaires” [90], “Every day silent
trumpets glorify thoughtful vacuity” [92]). Sometimes he sang
the hard truth about the past (“In vain had our infantry
perished in 1943, to no avail” [21]), sometimes — “Red myths,”
singing about poor persecuted communists (“There was a time
— almost a third of the inmates came from the Central
Committee, / There was a time when for the red color / they
added ten years [to the sentence]!”[69]). Once he touched
dekulakization (“Disenfranchised ones were summoned in
rst” [115]). Yet his main blow was against the current
establishment (“There are fences in the country; behind fences
live the leaders” [13]). He was justly harsh there; however, he
oversimpli ed the charge by attacking their privileged way of
life only: here they eat, drink, rejoice [151-152]. The songs were
embittering, but in a narrow-minded way, almost like the
primitive “Red proletarian” propaganda of the past. Yet when
he was switching his focus from the leaders to “the people”, his
characters were almost entirely boobies, fastidious men, rabble
and rascals — a very limited selection.
He had found a precise point of perspective for himself,
perfectly in accord with the spirit of the time: he
impersonalized himself with all those people who were
su ering, persecuted and killed (“I was a GI and as a GI I’ll die”
[248], “We, GIs, are dying in battle”). Yet with his many songs
narrated from the rst person of a former camp inmate, he
made a strong impression that he was an inmate himself (“And
that other inmate was me myself” [87]; “I froze like a horseshoe
in a sleigh trail / Into ice that I picked with a hammer pick /
After all, wasn’t it me who spent twenty years / In those
camps” [24]; “as the numbers [personal inmate number
tattooed on the arm] / we died, we died”; “from the camp we
were sent right to the front!”[69]). Many believed that he was a
former camp inmate and “they have tried to nd from Galich
when and where he had been in camps.”[2921]
So how did he address his past, his longstanding
participation in the stupefying o cial Soviet lies? That’s what
had struck me the most: singing with such accusatory pathos,
he had never expressed a single word of his personal remorse, not
a word of personal repentance, nowhere! Didn’t he realize that
when he sang: “Oh Party’s Iliad! What a giftwrapped
groveling!” [216], he sang about himself? And when he
crooned: “If you sell the unction” [40], as though referring to
somebody else, did it occur to him that he himself was “selling
unction” for half of his life. Why on earth would he not
renounce his pro-o cial plays and lms? No! “We did not sing
glory to executioners!” [119] Yet, as the matter of fact, they did.
Perhaps he did realize it or he gradually came to the realization,
because later, no longer in Russia, he said: “I was a well-o
screenwriter and playwright and a well-o Soviet unky. And I
have realized that I could no longer go on like that. Finally, I
have to speak loudly, speak the truth …” [639].
But then, in the sixties, he intrepidly turned the pathos of
the civil rage, for instance, to the refutation of the Gospel
commandments (“do not judge, lest ye be judged”): “No, I have
contempt for the very essence / Of this formula of existence!”
And then, relying on the sung miseries, he con dently tried on 
a prosecutor’s robe: “I was not elected. But I am the judge!”
[100] And so he grew so con dent, that in the lengthy Poem
about Stalin (The Legend of Christmas), where he in bad taste
imagined Stalin as Christ, and presented the key formula of his
agnostic mindset — his really famous, the clichéd -quotes, and
so harmful lines: “Don’t be afraid of re and hell, / And fear
only him / Who says: `I know the right way!´” [325].
But Christ did teach us the right way…. What we see here in
Galich’s words is just boundless intellectual anarchism that
muzzles any clear idea, any resolute o er. Well, we can always
run as a thoughtless (but pluralistic) herd, and probably we’ll
get somewhere.
Yet the most heartrending and ubiquitous keynote in his
lyrics was the sense of Jewish identity and Jewish pain (“Our
train leaves for Auschwitz today and daily”). Other good
examples include the poems By the rivers of Babylon and Kadish.
(Or take this: “My six-pointed star, burn it on my sleeve and on
my chest.” Similar lyrical and passionate tones can be found in
the The memory of Odessa (“I wanted to unite Mandelstam and
Chagall). “Your kinsman and your cast-o / Your last singer of
the Exodus” — as he addressed the departing Jews.)
The Jewish memory imbued him so deeply that even in his
non-Jewish lyrics he casually added expressions such as: “Not a
hook-nosed”; “not a Tatar, not a Yid” [115, 117]”; “you are still
not in Israel, dodderer?” [294]; and even Arina Rodionovna
[Pushkin’s nanny, immortalized by the poet in his works] lulls
him in Yiddish [101]. Yet he doesn’t mention a single
prosperous or non-oppressed Jew, a well-o Jew on a good
position, for instance, in a research institute, editorial board, or
in commerce — such characters didn’t even make a passing
appearance in his poems. A Jew is always either humiliated, or
su ering, or imprisoned and dying in a camp. Take his famous
lines: “You are not to be chamberlains, the Jews … / Neither the
Synod, nor the Senate is for you / You belong in Solovki and
Butyrki” [the latter two being political prisons] [40].
What a short memory they have — not only Galich, but his
whole audience who were sincerely, heartily taking in these
sentimental lines! What about those twenty years, when Soviet
Jewry was not nearly in the Solovki, when so many of them did
parade as chamberlains and in the Senate!?
They have forgotten it. They have sincerely and completely
forgotten it. Indeed, it is so di cult to remember bad things
about yourself.
And inasmuch as among the successful people milking the
regime there were supposedly no Jews left, but only Russians,
Galich’s satire, unconsciously or consciously, hit the Russians,
all those Klim Petroviches and Paramonovs; all that social
anger invoked by his songs targeted them, through the stressed
”russopyaty” [derogatory term for Russians] images and
details, presenting them as informers, prison guards,
pro igates, fools or drunks. Sometimes it was more like a
caricature, sometimes more of a contemptuous pity (which we
often indeed deserve, unfortunately): “Greasy long hair
hanging down, / The guest started “Yermak” [a song about the
cossack leader and Russian folk hero] … he cackles like a cock  /
Enough to make a preacher swear / And he wants to chat / 
About the salvation of Russia” [117-118]. Thus he pictured the
Russians as always drunk, not distinguishing kerosene from
vodka, not interested in anything except drinking, idle, or
simply lost, or foolish individuals.Yet he was considered a folk
poet…. And he didn’t image a single Russian hero-soldier,
workman, or intellectual, not even a single decent camp
inmate (he assigned the role of the main camp inmate to
himself), because, you know, all those “prison-guard seed”
[118] camp bosses are Russians. And here he wrote about
Russia directly: “Every liar is a Messiah! / <…> And just dare
you to ask — / Brothers, had there even been / Any Rus in
Russia?” — “It is abrim with lth.” — And then, desperately:
“But somewhere, perhaps, / She does exist!?” That invisible
Russia, where “under the tender skies / Everyone shares / God’s
word and bread.” “I pray thee: / Hold on! / Be alive in decay, / So
in the heart, as in Kitezh, / I could hear your bells!” [280-281]
So, with the new opportunity and the lure of emigration,
Galich was torn between the submerged legendary Kitezh
[legendary Russian invisble city] and today’s lth: “It’s the same
vicious circle, the same old story, the ring, which cannot be
either closed, or open!” [599]. He left with the words: “I, a
Russian poet, cannot be separated from Russia by `the fth
article´ [the requirement in the Soviet internal passport –
“nationality”]!” [588]
Yet some other departing Jews drew from his songs a seed of
aversion and contempt for Russia, or at least, the con dence
that it is right to break away from her. Heed a voice from Israel:
“We said goodbye to Russia. Not without pain, but forever….
Russia still holds us tenaciously. But … in a year, ten years, a
hundred years — we’ll escape from her and nd our own home.
Listening to Galich, we once again recognize that it is the right
way.”[2922]
 Chapter 25. Accusing Russia

The Jewish break from the Soviet communism was doubtless a

movement of historical signi cance.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the fusion of the Soviet Jewry and
Bolshevism seemed permanent. Then suddenly, they diverge?
What a joy!
Of course, as is always true for both individuals and nations,
it is unreasonable to expect words of remorse from Jews
regarding their past involvement. But I absolutely could not
expect that the Jews, while deserting Bolshevism, rather than
expressing even a sign of repentance or at least some
embarrassment, instead angrily turned on the Russian people:
it is the Russians who had ruined democracy in Russia (i.e., in
February 1917), it is the Russians who are guilty of support of
this regime from 1918 on.
Sure, they claim, it is we (the Russian people) who are the
guilty! Actually, it was earlier than 1918 – the dirty scenes of
the radiant February Revolution were tale-telling. Yet the
neophyte anti-communists were uncompromising – from now
on everyone must accept that they have always fought against
this regime, and no one should recall that it used to be their
favorite and should not mention how well they had once
served this tyranny. Because it was the “natives” who created,
nurtured and cared for it:
“The leaders of the October Coup … were the followers
rather than the leaders. [Really? The New Iron Party was made
up of the “followers”?] They simply voiced the dormant wishes
of the masses and worked to implement them. They did not
break with the grassroots.” “The October coup was a disaster
for Russia. The country could evolve di erently…. Then [in the
stormy anarchy of the February Revolution] Russia saw the 
signs of law, freedom and respect for human dignity by the
state, but they all were swept away by the people’s
wrath.”[2923]
Here is a more recent dazzling treatment of Jewish
participation in Bolshevism: “The Bolshevism of Lenin and
Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Bolsheviks was
just an intellectual and civilized form of ‘plebian’ Bolshevism.
Should the former fail, the latter, much more dreadful, would
prevail.” Therefore, “by widely participating in the Bolshevik
Revolution, providing it with cadres of intellectuals and
organizers, the Jews saved Russia from total mob rule. They
came out with the most humane of possible forms of
Bolshevism.”[2924] Alas, “just as the rebellious people had used
the Party of Lenin to overthrow the democracy of intellectuals
[when did that exist?], the paci ed people used Stalin’s
bureaucracy to get rid of … everything still harboring free
intellectual spirit.”[2925] Sure, sure: “the guilt of the
intelligentsia for the subsequent dismal events of Russian
history is greatly exaggerated.” And in the rst place, “the
intelligentsia is liable to itself,”[2926] and by no means to the
people. On the contrary, “it would be nice if the people realized
their guilt before the intelligentsia.”[2927]
Indeed, “the totalitarian rule … in its essence and origin is
that of the people.”[2928] “This is a totalitarian country …
because such was the choice of Russian people.”[2929]
It is all because the “Tatar’s wild spirit captured the soul of
Orthodox Russia,”[2930] that is, the “Asian social and spiritual
structure, inherited by the Russians from the Mongols … is
stagnant and incapable of development and progress.”[2931]
(Well, Lev Gumilev also developed a theory that instead of the
Tatar yoke, there was a friendly alliance of Russians and Tatars.
However, Russian folklore, in its many proverbs referring to
Tatars as to enemies and oppressors, provided an unambiguous
answer to that question. Folklore does not lie; it is not pliant
like a scienti c theory.) Therefore, “the October coup was an
unprecedented breakthrough of the Asian essence [of
Russians].”[2932]
For those who want to tear and trample Russian history,
Chaadayev is the favorite theoretician (although he is
undoubtedly an outstanding thinker). First Samizdat and later
émigré publications carefully selected and passionately quoted
his published and unpublished texts which suited their
purposes. As to the unsuitable quotations and to the fact that
the main opponents of Chaadayev among his contemporaries
were not Nicholas I and Benckendor , but his friends –
Pushkin, Vyazemsky, Karamzin, and Yazikov – these facts were
ignored.
In the early 1970s, the hate against all things Russian was
gathering steam. Derogatory expressions about Russian
culture entered Samizdat and contemporary slang. “Human
pigsty” – so much contempt for Russia as being spoiled
material was expressed in the anonymous Samizdat article
signed by “S. Telegin” (G. Kopylov)! Regarding the forest res of
1972, the same “Telegin” cursed Russia in a Samizdat lea et:
“So, the Russian forests burn? It serves Russia right for all her
evil-doing!! “The entire people consolidate into the reactionary
mass” (G. Pomerants). Take another sincere confession: “The
sound of an accordion [the popular Russian national
instrument] drives me berserk; the very contact with these
masses irritates me.”[2933] Indeed, love cannot be forced.
“‘Jews,’‘Jewish destiny’ is just the rehash of the destiny of
intelligentsia in this country, the destiny of her culture; the
Jewish orphanage symbolizes loneliness because of the collapse
of the traditional faith in ‘the people.’”[2934] (What a
transformation happened between the 19th and mid-20th
century with the eternal Russian problem of “the people”! By
now  they view “the people” as an indigenous mass,
apathetically satis ed with its existence and its leaders. And by
the inscrutable providence of Fate, the Jews were forced to live
and su er in the cities of their country. To love these masses is
impossible; to care about them – unnatural.) The same
Khazanov (by then still in the USSR) reasoned: The Russia
which I love is a Platonic idea that does not exist in reality. The
Russia which I see around is abhorrent”; “she is a unique kind
of Augean stables”; “her mangy inhabitants”; “there’ll be a day
of shattering reckoning for all she is today.”[2935]
Indeed, there will be a day of reckoning, though not for the
state of adversity that had fallen on Russia much earlier.

   
In the 1960s, many among intelligentsia began to think and
talk about the situation in the USSR, about its future and about
Russia itself. Due to strict government censorship these
arguments and ideas were mentioned only in private or in
mostly pseudonymous Samizdat articles. But when Jewish
emigration began, the criticisms of Russia openly and
venomously spilled across the free Western world, as it formed
one of the favorite topics among the émigrés and was voiced so
loudly that often nothing else could be heard.
In 1968, Arkady Belinkov ed abroad. He was supposedly a
erce enemy of the Soviet regime and not at all of the Russian
people. Wasn’t he? Well, consider his article The Land of Slaves,
the Land of Masters in The New Bell, a collection he edited
himself. And at what did he direct his wrath? (It is worth
considering that the article was written back in the USSR and
the author did not have enough courage to accuse the regime
itself.) Belinkov does not use the word “Soviet” even once,
instead preferring  a familiar theme: eternally enslaved Russia,
freedom “for our homeland is worse than gobbling broken
glass” and in Russia “they sometimes hang the wrong people,
sometimes the wrong way, and never enough.” Even in the
1820s “it was much evident that in the process of evolution,
the population of [Russia] …would turn into a herd of traitors,
informers, and torturers”; “it was the “Russian fear” – to
prepare warm clothes and to wait for a knock at the door” –
note that even here it was not the “Soviet fear.” (Yet who before
the Bolshevik revolution had ever waited for a knock on the
door in the middle of the night?) “The court in Russia does not
judge, it already knows everything. Therefore, in Russia, it only
condemns.”[2936] (Was it like that even during the
Alexandrine reforms?…. And what about juries and
magistrates? Hardly a responsible, balanced judgment!)
Indeed, so overwhelming is the author’s hate and so bitter
his bile that he vili es such great Russian writers as Karamzin,
Zhukovsky, Tyutchev and even Pushkin, not to mention
Russian society in general for its insu cient revolutionary
spirit: “a pathetic society of slaves, descendants of slaves and
ancestors of slaves,” “the cattle trembling from fear and anger,”
“rectum-pipers, shuddering at the thought of possible
consequences,” “the Russian intelligentsia always been willing
to help sti e freedom.”[2937]
Well, if, for Belinkov, it was all “masked anti-Soviet
sentiments,” a sly wink, then why did he not rewrite it abroad?
If Belinkov actually thought di erently, then why print it in
this form?
No, that is the way he thought and what he hated. So was this
how dissident Jews repudiated Bolshevism?
Around the same time, at the end of the 1960s, a Jewish
collection about the USSR was published in London. It included
a letter from the USSR: “In the depths of the inner labyrinths of
the Russian soul, there is always a pogromist…. A slave and a
thug dwell there too.”[2938] Belotserkovsky happily repeats
someone else’s joke: “the Russians are a strong nation, except
for their heads.”[2939] “Let all these Russians, Ukrainians …
growl drunkenly with their wives, gobble vodka and get
happily misled by communist lies … without us … They were
crawling on all fours worshipping wood and stone when we
gave them the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”[2940]
“Oh, if only you would have held your peace! This would
have been regarded as your wisdom.” (Job 13:5).
(Let us note that any insulting judgment about the “Russian
soul” in general or about the “Russian character” generally does
not give rise to the slightest protest or doubt among civilized
people. The question “of daring to judge nations as one
uniform and faceless whole” does not arise. If someone does
not like all things Russian or feels contempt for them, or even
expresses in progressive circles the belief that “Russia is a
cesspool,” this is no sin in Russia and it does not appear
reactionary or backward. And no one immediately appeals to
presidents, prime ministers, senators, or members of Congress
with a reverent cry, “What do you think of such incitement of
ethnic hatred?” We’ve said worse of ourselves since the 19th
century and right up to the revolution. We have a rich tradition
of this.)
Then we learn of “semi-literate preachers of their religion,”
and that “Russian Orthodoxy hasn’t earned the credence of
intellectuals” (from “Telegin”). The Russians “so easily
abandoned the faith of their forefathers, indi erently watched
how their temples were destroyed in front of their eyes.” Oh,
here is a guess: “Perhaps, the Russian people only temporarily
submitted to the power of Christianity?” That is for 950 years!
“And they only waited for the moment to get rid of it,”[2941]
that is, for the revolution? How much ill will must accumulate
in someone’s heart to utter something like that! (Even Russian
publicists often slipped into this trap of distorted
consciousness. The eminent early emigrant journalist S.
Rafalsky, perhaps even a priest’s son, wrote that “Orthodox
Holy Russia allowed its holy sites to be easily crushed.”[2942]
Of course, the groans of those mowed down by Chekists’
machine guns during Church riots in 1918 were not heard in
Paris. There have been no uprisings since. I would like to have
seen this priest’s son try to save the sacred sites in the 1920s
himself.)
Sometimes it is stated bluntly: “Russian Orthodoxy is a
Hottentot religion” (Grobman). Or, “idiocy perfumed by Rublev,
Dionysius and Berdyaev”; the idea of the “restoration” of
traditional Russian historical orthodoxy “scares many…. This
is the darkest future possible for the country and for
Christianity.”[2943] Or, as novelist F. Gorenshtein said: “Jesus
Christ was the Honorary Chairman of the Union of the Russian
People [pre-revolutionary Russian Nationalist organization],
whom they perceived as a kind of universal ataman [Cossack
chieftain].”[2944]
Don’t make it too sharp – you might chip the blade!
However, one must distinguish from such open rudeness
that velvet soft Samizdat philosopher-essayist Grigory
Pomerants who worked in those years. Presumably, he rose
above all controversies – he wrote about the fates of nations in
general, about the fate of the intelligentsia generally; he
suggested that nowadays no such thing as people exists, save,
perhaps, Bushmen. I read him in 1960s Samizdat saying: “The
people are becoming more and more vapid broth and only we,
the intelligentsia, remain the salt of the earth.” “Solidarity of
the intelligentsia across the borders is a more real thing than
the solidarity of the intelligentsia and its people.”
 It sounded very modern and wise. And yet, in
Czechoslovakia in 1968 it was precisely the unity of the
intelligentsia with the “vapid broth” of its non-existent people
that created a spiritual stronghold long unheard of in Europe.
The presence of two-thirds of a million Soviet troops couldn’t
break their spirit; it was their communist leaders who
eventually gave in. (And 12 years later, the same thing
happened in Poland.)
In his typically ambiguous manner of constructing endless
parallel arguments that never merge into a clear logical
construct, Pomerants never explicitly addressed the national
question. He extensively dwelt on the Diaspora question, in the
most abstract and general manner, not specifying any nation,
hovering aloft in relativism and agnosticism. He glori ed the
Diaspora: “Everywhere, we are not exactly strangers.
Everywhere, we are not exactly natives.”… “An appeal to one
faith, tradition and nation ies in the face of another.”  He
complained: “According to the rules established for the Warsaw
students, one can love only one nation” but “what if I am
related by blood to this country, but love others as well?”[2945]
This is a sophisticated bait-and-switch. Of course, you can
love not only one, but ten or more countries and nations.
However, you can belong to and be a son of only one
motherland, just as you can only have one mother.
To make the subject clearer, I want to describe the letter
exchange I had with the Pomerants couple in 1967. By that
year, my banned novel The First Circle circulated among the
Samizdat – and among the rst who had sent me their
objections were G. S.  Pomerants and his wife, Z. A. Mirkin.
They said that I hurt them by my inept and faulty handling of
the Jewish question, and that I had irreparably damaged the
image of Jews in the novel – and thus my own image.  How did I
damage it? I thought I had managed to avoid showing those
cruel Jews who reached the heights of power during the early
Soviet years. But Pomerants’ letters abounded with undertones
and nuances, and they accused me of insensitivity to Jewish
pain.
I replied to them, and they replied to me. In these letters we
also discussed the right to judge entire nations, even though I
had done no such thing in my novel.
Pomerants suggested to me then – and to every writer in
general as well as to anyone who o ers any personal,
psychological or social judgment – to behave and to reason as if
no nation has ever existed in the world – not only to abstain
from judging them as a whole but to ignore every man’s
nationality. “What is natural and excusable for Ivan Denisovich
(to see Cesar Markovich as a non-Russian) – is a disgrace for an
intellectual, and for a Christian (not a baptized person but a
Christian) is a great sin: ‘There is no Hellene and no Jew for
me.’”
What an elevated point of view. May God help us all reach it
one day. After all, without it, would not the meaning of united
humanity, and so Christinaity, have been useless?
Yet we have already been aggressively convinced once that
there are no nations, and were instructed to quickly destroy
our own, and we madly did it back then.
In addition, regardless of the argument, how can we portray
speci c people without referring to their nationality? And if
there are no nations, are there no languages? But no writer can
write in any language other than his native one. If nations
would wither away, languages would die also.
One cannot eat from an empty bowl.
I noticed that it was more often Jews than any others who
insisted that we pay no attention to nationality! What does
“nationality” have to do with anything? What “national
characteristics,” what “national character” are you talking
about?
And I was ready to shake hands on that: “I agree! Let’s ignore
it from now on….”
But we live in our unfortunate century, when perhaps the
rst feature people notice in others for some reason is exactly
their nationality. And, I swear, Jews are the ones who
distinguish and closely monitor it most jealously and carefully.
Their own nation….
Then, what should we do with the fact – you have read about
it above – that Jews so often judge Russians precisely in
generalized terms, and almost always to condemn? The same
Pomerants writes about “the pathological features of the
Russian character,” including their “internal instability.” (And
he is not concerned that he judges the entire nation. Imagine if
someone spoke of “pathological features of the Jewish
character”… What would happen then?) The Russian “masses
allowed all the horrors of Oprichnina to happen just as they
later allowed Stalin’s death camps.”[2946] (See, the Soviet
internationalist bureaucratic elite would have stopped them –
if not for this dull mass….) More sharply still, “Russian
Nationalism will inevitably end in an aggressive
pogrom,”[2947] meaning that every Russian who loves his
nation already has the potential for being pogromist.
We can but repeat the words of that Chekhov’s character:
“Too early!”
Most remarkable was how Pomerants’s second letter to me
ended. Despite his previously having so insistently demanded
that it is not proper to distinguish between nations, in that
large and emotionally charged letter, (written in a very angry,
heavy hand), he delivered an ultimatum on how I could still
save my disgusting The First Circle. The o ered remedy was
this: to turn Gerasimovich [the hero] into a Jew! So a Jew would
commit the novel’s greatest act of spiritual heroism! “It is
absolutely not important that Gerasimovich had been drawn
from a Russian prototype,” says our indi erent-to-nations
author (italics added). In truth, he did give me an alternative: if
I still insisted on leaving Gerasimovich Russian, then I must
add an equally powerful image of a noble, self-sacri cing Jew to
my story. And if I would not follow any of his advice,
Pomerants threatened to open a public campaign against me. (I
ignored it at this point.)
Notably, he conducted this one-sided battle, calling it “our
polemic,” rst in foreign journals and, when it became possible,
in the Soviet magazines, often repeating and reprinting the
same articles, although taking care each time to exorcise the
blemishes his critics had picked up the last time. In the course
of this he uttered another pearl of wisdom: there was only one
Absolute Evil in the world and it was Hitlerism – in this regard,
our philosopher was not a relativist, not at all. But as to
communism, this former prisoner of the camps and by no
means a Communist himself, suddenly proclaims that
communism – is not an unquestionable evil (and even “some
spirit of democracy surrounded the early Cheka”), and he does
so harder and harder over the years  (reacting to my
intransigence towards communism).[2948] On the other hand,
hard core anti-communism is undoubtedly evil, especially if it
builds upon the Russian Nationalism (which, as he had
reminded us earlier, cannot be separated from pogroms).
That is where Pomerants’s smooth high-minded and “non-
national” principles led.
Given such a skewed bias, can mutual understanding
between Russians and Jews be achieved?
“You mark the speck in your brother’s eye, but ignore the
plank in your own.”
 In those same months when I corresponded with Pomerants,
some liberal hand in the Leningrad Regional Party Committee
copied a secret memorandum signed by Shcherbakov, Smirnov,
and Utekhin on the matter of alleged “destructive Zionist
activity in the city” with “subtle forms of ideological
subversion.” My Jewish friends asked me “How should we deal
with this?” “It is clear, how,” – I replied before even reading the
paper – “Openness! Publish it in Samizdat! Our strength is
transparency and publicity!” But my friends hesitated: “We
cannot do it just like that because it would be misunderstood.”
After reading the documents, I understood their anxiety.
From the reports, it was clear that the youth’s literary evening
at the Writers’ House on January 30, 1968 had been politically
honest and brave – the government with its politics and
ideology had been both openly and covertly ridiculed. On the
other hand, the speeches had clear national emphases (perhaps,
the youth there were mostly Jewish); they contained explicit
resentment and hostility, and even, perhaps, contempt for
Russians, and longing for Jewish spirituality. It was because of
this that my friends were wary of publishing the document in
Samizdat.
I was suddenly struck by how true these Jewish sentiments
were. “Russia is re ected in the window glass of a beer stand,” –
the poet U and had supposedly said there. How horrifyingly
true! It seemed that the speakers accused the Russians, not
directly, but by allusions, of crawling under counters of beer
pubs and of being dragged from the mud by their wives; that
they drink vodka until unconscious, they squabble and steal….
We must see ourselves objectively, see our fatal
shortcomings. Suddenly, I grasped the Jewish point of view; I
looked around and I was horri ed as well: Dear God, where we,
the Jews? Cards, dominoes, gaping at TV…. What cattle, what
animals surround us! They have neither God nor spiritual
interests. And so much feeling of hurt from past oppression
rises in your soul.
Only it is forgotten, that the real Russians were killed,
slaughtered and suppressed, and the rest were stupe ed,
embittered, and driven to the extremes by Bolshevik thugs and
not without the zealous participation of the fathers of today’s
young Jewish intellectuals. Modern day Jews are irritated by
those mugs who have become the Soviet leadership since the
1940s – but they irritate us as well. However, the best among us
were killed, not spared.
“Do not look back!” – Pomerants lectured us later in his
Samizdat essays; do not look back like Orpheus who lost
Eurydice this way.
Yet we have already lost more than Eurydice.
We were taught since the 1920s to throw away the past and
jump on board modernity.
But the old Russian proverb advises – go ahead but always
look back.
We must look back. Otherwise, we would never understand
anything.

   
Even if we had tried not to look back, we would always be
reminded that the “core [Russian issue] is in fact the inferiority
complex of the spiritless leaders of the people that has persisted
throughout its long history,” and this very complex “pushed
the Russian Tsarist government towards military conquests….
An inferiority complex is disease of mediocrity.”[2949] Do you
want to know why the Revolution of 1917 happened in Russia?
Can you guess? Yes, “the same inferiority complex caused a
revolution in Russia.”[2950] (Oh, immortal Freud, is there
nothing he hasn’t explained?)
They even stated that “Russian socialism was a direct heir of
Russian autocracy”[2951] – precisely a direct one, it goes
without saying. And, almost in unison, “there is direct
continuity between the Tsarist government and communism
… there is qualitative similarity.”[2952] What else could you
expect from “Russian history, founded on blood and
provocations?”[2953] In a review of Agursky’s interesting book,
Ideology of National Bolshevism, we nd that “in reality,
traditional, fundamental ideas of the Russian national
consciousness began to penetrate into the practice and
ideology of the ruling party very early”; “the party ideology
was transformed as early as the mid-1920s.” Really? Already in
the mid-1920s? How come we missed it at the time? Wasn’t it
the same mid-1920s when the very words “Russian,” “I am
Russian” had been considered counter-revolutionary? I
remember it well. But, you see, even back then, in the midst of
persecution against all that was Russian and Orthodox, the
party ideology “began in practice to be persistently guided by
the national idea”; “outwardly preserving its internationalist
disguise, Soviet authorities actually engaged in the
consolidation of the Russian state.”[2954] Of course! “Contrary
to its internationalist declarations, the revolution in Russia has
remained a national a air.”[2955] This “Russia, upturned by
revolution, continued to build the people’s state.”[2956]
People’s state? How dare they say that, knowing of the Red
Terror, of the millions of peasants killed during collectivization,
and of the insatiable Gulag?
No, Russia is irrevocably condemned for all her history and
in all her forms. Russia is always under suspicion, the “Russian
idea” without anti-Semitism “seems to be no longer an idea and
not even the Russian one.” Indeed, “hostility towards culture is
a speci c Russian phenomenon”; “how many times have we
heard that they are supposedly the only ones in the whole
world who have preserved purity and chastity, respecting God
in the middle of their native wilderness”;[2957] “the greatest
soulful sincerity has supposedly found shelter in this crippled
land. This soulful sincerity is being presented to us as a kind of
national treasure, a unique product like caviar.”[2958]
Yes, make fun of us Russians; it is for our own good.
Unfortunately, there is some truth to these words. But, while
expressing them, do not lapse into such hatred. Having long
been aware of the terrifying decline of our nation under the
communists, it was precisely during those 1970s that we
gingerly wrote about a hope of revival of our morals and
culture. But strangely enough, the contemporary Jewish
authors attacked the idea of Russian revival with a relentless
fury, as if (or because?) they feared that Soviet culture would be
replaced by the Russian one. “I am afraid that the new ‘dawn’ of
this doomed country would be even more repugnant than its
current [1970-1980s] decline.”[2959]
Looking back from the “democratic” 1990s, we can agree
that it was a prophetic declaration. Still, was it said with
compassion or with malice?
And here is even more: “Beware, when someone tells you to
love your homeland: such love is charged with hatred….
Beware of stories that tell you that in Russia, Russians are the
worst o , that Russians su ered the most, and that the Russian
population is dwindling“ – sure, as we all know, this is a lie! “Be
careful when someone tells you about that great statesman …
who was assassinated” (i.e., Stolypin) – is that also a deception?
No, it is not a deception:  “Not because the facts are incorrect” –
nevertheless, do not accept even these true facts: “Be careful, be
aware!”[2960]
 There is something extraordinary in this stream of
passionate accusations.
Who would have guessed during the ery 1920s that after
the enfeeblement and downfall of that “beautiful” (i.e.,
Communist) regime in Russia, those Jews, who themselves had
su ered much from communism, who seemingly cursed it and
ran away from it, would curse and kick not communism, but
Russia itself – blast her from Israel and from Europe, and from
across the ocean!? There are so many, such con dent voices
ready to judge Russia’s many crimes and failings, her
inexhaustible guilt towards the Jews – and 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
“natives.” This is not contrition.
We, brothers or strangers, need to share that responsibility.
It would have been cleanest and healthiest to exchange
contrition for everything committed.
I will not stop calling the Russians to do that.
And I am inviting the Jews to do the same. To repent not for
Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev; they are known and anyway
can be brushed aside, “they were not real Jews!” Instead, I invite
Jews to look honestly into the oppressive depths of the early
Soviet system, at all those “invisible” characters such as Isai
Davidovich Berg, who created the infamous “gas wagon”[2961]
which later brought so much a iction on the Jews themselves,
and I call on them to look honestly on those many much more
obscure bureaucrats who had pushed papers in the Soviet
apparatus, and who had never appeared in light.
 However, the Jews would not be Jews if they all behaved the
same.
So other voices were heard.
As soon as the great exodus of Jews from the USSR began
there were Jews who – fortunately for all, and to their honor –
while remaining faithful to Judaism, went above their own
feelings and looked at history from that vantage point. It was a
joy to hear them, and we hear them still. What hope for the
future it gives! Their understanding and support are especially
valuable in the face of the violently thinned and drastically
depleted ranks of Russian intelligentsia.
A melancholy view, expressed at end of 19th century, comes
to mind: “Every country deserves the Jews it has.”[2962]
It depends where you look.
If it were not for voices from the third wave of emigration
and from Israel, one would despair of dialogue and of
possibility for mutual understanding between Russians and
Jews.
Roman Rutman, a cybernetics worker, had his rst article
published in the émigré Samizdat in 1973. It was a bright,
warm story of how he rst decided to emigrate and how it
turned out – and even then he showed distinct warmth
towards Russia. The title was illustrative: “A bow to those who
has gone and my brotherhood to those who remain.”[2963]
Among his very rst thoughts during his awakening was “Are
we Jews or Russians?”; and among his thoughts on departure
there was “Russia, cruci ed for mankind.”
Next year, in 1974, in an article The Ring of Grievances, he
proposed to revise “some established ideas on the ‘Jewish
question’” and “to recognize the risk of overemphasizing these
ideas.” There were three: (1) “The unusual fate of the Jewish
people made them a symbol of human su ering”; (2) “A Jew in
Russia has always been a victim of unilateral persecution”; and
(3) “Russian society is indebted to the Jewish people.” He
quoted a phrase from The Gulag Archipelago: “During this war
we discovered that the worst thing on earth is to be a Russian”
and recognized that the phrase is not arti cial or empty, that it
is based on war losses, on the revolutionary terror before that,
on hunger, on “the wanton destruction of both the nation’s
head – its cognitive elite, and its feet, the peasantry.” Although
modern Russian literature and democratic movements preach
about the guilt of Russian society before Jews, the author
himself prefers to see the “circle of grievances” instead of “the
saccharine sentimentality about the troubles and talents of the
Jewish people.” “To break this “‘circle of grievances’ one must
pull at it from both sides.”[2964]
Here it is – a thoughtful, friendly and calm voice.
And over these years, we many times heard the rm voice of
Michael Kheifetz, a recent GULag prisoner. “A champion of my
people, I cannot but sympathize with the nationalists of other
peoples.”[2965] He had the courage to call for Jewish
repentance: “The experience of the German people, who have
not turned away from their horrifying and criminal past, and
who never tried to lay the blame for Nazism on some other
culprits, on strangers, etc. but, instead constantly cleansed
itself in the re of national repentance, and thus created a
German state that for the rst time was admired and respected
by all mankind; this experience should, in my opinion, become
a paragon for the peoples that participated in the crimes of
Bolshevism, including the Jews.” “We, Jews, must honestly
analyze the role we played in other nations’ a airs, the role so
extraordinarily foretold by Z. Jabotinsky.”[2966]
M. Kheifetz demonstrated a truly noble soul when he spoke of
“the genuine guilt of assimilated Jews before the native peoples
of those countries where they live, the guilt, which cannot and
must not allow them to live comfortably in the Diaspora.”
About Soviet Jewry of the 1920s and 1930s he said: “Who if not
us, their bitterly remorseful descendants, has the right to
condemn them for this historic mistake [zealous participation
in building communism] and the settling of historical scores
with Russia for the Pale of Settlement and the pogroms?”[2967]
(Kheifetz also mentioned that B. Penson and M. Korenblit, who
had served labor camp terms along with him, shared his
views.)
Almost simultaneously with the words of Kheifetz, by then
already an emigrant, Feliks Svetov vividly called out for Jewish
repentance from inside the Soviet Union in a Samizdat novel
Open the doors to me.[2968] (It was no accident that F. Svetov,
due to his Jewish perceptivity and intelligence, was one of the
rst to recognize the beginning of Russian religious revival.)
Later, during a passionate discourse surrounding the dispute
between Asta ev and Edelman, Yuri Shtein described “our
Ashkenazi-speci c personality traits, formed on the basis of
our belief of belonging to the chosen people and an insular,
small town mentality. Hence, there is a belief in the infallibility
of our nation and our claim to a monopoly on su ering…. It is
time for us to see ourselves as a normal nation, worthy but not
faultless, like all the other peoples of the world. Especially now,
that we have our own independent state and have already
proved to the world that Jews can ght and plow better than
some more populous ethnic groups.”[2969]
During the left liberal campaign against V. Asta ev, V. Belov,
and V. Rasputin, literary historian Maria Shneyerson, who,
after emigrating, continued to love Russia dearly and
appreciate Russian problems, o ered these writers her
enthusiastic support.[2970]
In the 1970s, a serious, competent, and  forewarning book
on the destruction of the environment in the USSR under
communism was published in the West. Written by a Soviet
author, it was naturally published under a pseudonym, B.
Komarov. After some time, the author emigrated and we
learned his name – Zeev Wolfson. We discovered even more:
that he was among the compilers of the album of destroyed
and desecrated churches in Central Russia.[2971]
Few active intellectuals remained in the defeated Russia, but
friendly, sympathetic Jewish forces supported them. With this
shortage of people and under the most severe persecution by
the authorities, our Russian Public Foundation was established
to help victims of persecution; I donated all my royalties for
The Gulag Archipelago to this fund; and, starting with its rst
talented and dedicated manager, Alexander Ginzburg, there
were many Jews and half-Jews among the Fund’s volunteers.
(This gave certain intellectually blind extreme Russian
nationalists su cient reason to brand our Foundation as being
“Jewish.”)
Similarly, M. Bernshtam, then Y. Felshtinsky and
D.Shturman were involved in our study of modern Russian
history.
In the ght against communist lies, M. Agursky,
D.Shturman, A. Nekrich, M. Geller, and A. Serebrennikov
distinguished themselves by their brilliant, fresh, and  fair-
minded journalism.
We can also recall the heroism of the American professor
Julius Epstein and his service to Russia. In self-centered, always
self-righteous, and never regretful of any wrongdoings
America, he single-handedly revealed the mystery of Operation
Keelhaul, how after the end of the war and from their own
continent, Americans handed over to Stalinist agents and
therefore certain death, hundreds and thousands of Russian
Cossacks, who had naively believed that since they reached the
‘land of free’ they had been saved.[2972]
 All these examples should encourage sincere and mutual
understanding between Russians and Jews, if only we would
not shut it out by intolerance and anger.
Alas, even the mildest remembrance, repentance, and talk of
justice elicits severe outcries from the self-appointed guardians
of extreme nationalism, both Russian and Jewish. “As soon as
Solzhenitsyn had called for national repentance” – meaning
among Russians, and the author didn’t mind that – “here we
are! Our own people are right there in the front line.” He did not
mention any name speci cally but he probably referred to M.
Kheifetz. “See, it turns out that we are more to blame, we
helped … to install … no, not helped, but simply established the
Soviet regime ourselves … were disproportionately present in
various organs.”[2973]
Those who began to speak in a voice of remorse were
furiously attacked in an instant. “They prefer to extract from
their hurrah-patriotic gut a mouthful of saliva” – what a style
and nobility of expression! – “and to thoroughly spit on all
‘ancestors,’ to curse Trotsky and Bagritsky, Kogan, and
Dunaevsky”; “M. Kheifetz invites us to ‘purge ourselves in the
re of national repentance.’”[2974]
And what a thrashing F. Svetov received for the
autobiographical hero of his novel: “A book about conversion to
Christianity … will contribute not to an abstract search for
repentance, but to a very speci c anti-Semitism…. This book is
anti-Semitic.” Yes, and what is there to repent? –The
indefatigable David Markish angrily exclaims. Svetov’s hero
sees a “betrayal” in the fact that “we desert the country, leaving
behind a deplorable condition which is entirely our handiwork:
it is we, as it turns out, who staged a bloody revolution, shot
the father-tsar, befouled and raped the Orthodox Church and in
addition, founded the GULag Archipelago,” isn’t that right?
First, these “comrades” Trotsky, Sverdlov, Berman, and Frenkel
are not at all related to the Jews. Second, the very question
about someone’s collective guilt is wrong.[2975] (As to blaming
Russians, you see, it is a di erent thing   altogether: it was
always acceptable to blame them en masse, from the times of
the elder Philotheus.)
David’s brother, Sh. Markish reasons as follows, “as to the
latest wave of immigrants from Russia … whether in Israel or
in the U.S., they do not exhibit real Russophobia … but a self-
hatred that grows into direct anti-Semitism is obvious in them
only too often.”[2976]
See, if Jews repent – it is anti-Semitism. (This is yet another
new manifestation of that prejudice.)
The Russians should realize their national guilt, “the idea of
national repentance cannot be implemented without a clear
understanding of national guilt…. The guilt is enormous, and
there is no way to shift it on to others. This guilt is not only
about the things of past, it is also about the vile things Russia
commits now, and will probably continue committing in the
future,” as Shragin wrote in the early 1970s.[2977]
Well, we too tirelessly call the Russians to repent; without
penitence, we will not have a future. After all, only those who
were directly a ected by communism recognized its evils.
Those who were not a ected tried not to notice the atrocities
and later on to forget and forgive them, to the extent that now
they do not even understand what to repent of. (Even more so
those who themselves committed the crimes.)
Every day we are burning with shame for our unsettled
people.
And we love it too. And we do not envision our lives without
it.
And yet, for some reason, we have not lost all faith in it.
Still, is it absolutely certain that you had no part in our great
guilt,  in our unsuccessful history?
 Here, Shimon Markish referred to Jabotinsky’s1920s article.
“Jabotinsky several times (on di erent occasions) observed
that Russia is a foreign country to us, our interest in her should
be detached, cool, though sympathetic; her anxiety, grief and
joy are not ours, and our feelings are foreign to her too.”
Markish added: “That’s also my attitude towards Russian
worries.” And he invites us to “call a spade a spade. However,
regarding this delicate point even free western Russians are not
awesomely courageous…. I prefer to deal with enemies.”[2978]
Yet this sentence should be divided into two: is it the case
that to “call a spade a spade” and to speak frankly mean being
an enemy? Well, there is a Russian proverb: do not love the
agreeable; love the disputers.
I invite all, including Jews, to abandon this fear of bluntness,
to stop perceiving honesty as hostility. We must abandon it
historically! Abandon it forever!
In this book, I “call a spade a spade”. And at no time do I feel
that in doing so it is being hostile to the Jews. I have written
more sympathetically than many Jews write about Russians.
The purpose of this book, re ected even in its title, is this: we
should understand each other, we should recognize each other’s
standpoint and feelings. With this book, I want to extend a
handshake of understanding – for all our future.
But we must do so mutually!
This interweaving of Jewish and Russian destinies since the
18th century which has so explosively manifested itself in the
20th century, has a profound historical meaning, and we
should not lose it in the future. Here, perhaps, lies the Divine
Intent which we must strive to unravel – to discern its mystery
and to do what must be done.
And it seems obvious that to know the truth about our
shared past is a moral imperative for Jews and Russians alike.
 Chapter 26. The beginning of Exodus

The Age of Exodus, as Jews themselves would soon name it,

began rather silently: its start can be traced to a December
1966 article in Izvestiya, where the Soviet authorities
magnanimously approved “family reuni cation,” and under
this “banner the Jews were given the right to leave the
USSR”[2979]. And then, half a year later, the historic Six-Day
War broke out. “Like any epic, this Exodus began with a
miracle. And as it should be in an epic, three miracles were
revealed to the Jews of Russia – to the Exodus generation”: the
miracle of the foundation of Israel, “the miracle of the Purim
1953” (that is, Stalin’s death), and “the miracle of the joyous,
brilliant, intoxicating victory of 1967.”[2980]
The Six-Day War gave a strong and irreversible push to the
ethnic consciousness of the Soviet Jews and delivered a blow to
the desire of many to assimilate. It created among Jews a
powerful motivation for national self-education and the study
of Hebrew (within a framework of makeshift centers) and gave
rise to pro-emigration attitudes.
How did the majority of Soviet Jews perceive themselves by
the end of the 1960s, on the eve of Exodus? No, those who
retrospectively write of a constant feeling of oppression and
stress do not distort their memories: “Hearing the word ‘Jew,’
they cringe, as if expecting a blow…. They themselves use this
sacramental word as rarely as possible, and when they do have
to say it, they force the word out as quickly as possible and in a
suppressed voice, as if they were seized by the throat…. Among
such people there are those who are gripped by the eternal
incurable fear ingrained in their mentality.”[2981] Or take a
Jewish author who wrote of spending her entire professional
life worrying that her work would be rejected only because of
her nationality [ethnicity in American terminology].[2982]
Despite having an apparently higher standard of living than
the general population, many Jews still harbored this sense of
oppression.
Indeed, cultivated Jews complained more of cultural rather
than economic oppression. “The Soviet Jews are trying … to
retain their presence in the Russian culture. They struggle to
retain the Russian culture in their inner selves.”[2983] Dora
Shturman recalls: “When the Russian Jews, whose interests are
chained to Russia, are suddenly deprived – even if only on
paper or in words – of their right to engage in the Russian life,
to participate in the Russian history, as if they were interlopers
or strangers, they feel o ended and bewildered. With the
appearance of Tamizdat [a Russian neologism for dissident
self-published (Samizdat) literature, published outside the
USSR (from the Russian word, ‘tam’, meaning ‘there’ or ‘out
there’)] and Samizdat, the xenophobia felt by some Russian
authors toward Jews who sincerely identi ed themselves as
Russians manifested itself for the rst time in many years, not
only on the street level and on the level of state bureaucracy,
but appeared on the elite intellectual level, even among
dissidents. Naturally, this surprised Jews who identi ed with
Russians.”[2984] Galich: “Many people brought up in the 1920s,
1930s and 1940s used to regard themselves as Russians from
their earliest years, in fact from birth, and indeed … they share
all their values and thoughts with the Russian culture.”[2985]
Another author drew the portrait of “the average modern
Russian Jew,” who “would serve this country with good faith
and delity. He … had carefully examined and identi ed his
own aws. He had become aware of them…. And now he tries
to get rid of them … he has stopped arms ourishing. He has
gotten rid of his national peculiarities of speech which were
carried over into Russian…. At some point he would aspire to
become equal with the Russians, to be indistinguishable from
them.” And so: “You might not hear the word ‘Jew’ for years on
end. Perhaps, many have even forgotten that you are a Jew. Yet
you can never forget it yourself. It is this silence that always
reminds you who you are. It creates such an explosive tension
inside you, that when you do hear the word ‘Jew,’ it sounds like
fate’s blow.” This is a very telling account. The same author
describes the cost of this transformation into a Russian. “He
had left behind too much” and become spiritually
impoverished. “Now, when he needs those capacious, rich and
exible words, he can’t nd them….When he looks for but can’t
nd the right word, something dies inside him,” he had lost
“the melodic intonation of Jewish speech” with all its “gaiety,
playfulness, mirth, tenacity, and irony.”[2986]
Of course, these exquisite feelings did not worry each Soviet
Jew; it was the lot of the tiniest minority among them, the top
cultural stratum, those who genuinely and persistently tried to
identify with Russians. It was them who G. Pomeranz spoke
about (though he made a generalization for the whole
intelligentsia): “Everywhere, we are not quite out of place.
Everywhere, we are not quite in our place”; we “have become
something like non-Israeli Jews, the people of the air, who lost
all their roots in their mundane existence.”[2987]
Very well put.
A. Voronel develops the same theme:  “I clearly see all the
sham of their [Jews’] existence in Russia today.”[2988]
If there’s no merging, there will always be alienation.
Nathan Sharansky often mentioned that from a certain
point he started to feel being di erent from the others in
Russia.
During the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking a air trial in
December 1970, L. Hnoh openly stated what he had apparently
nurtured for quite a while: “It became unbearable for me to live
in a country I don’t regard as my own.”
What integrity of mind and courage of word!
So it was this feeling that grew among the Soviet Jews, and
now increasingly among the broad Jewish masses.
Later, in 1982, another Jewish journalist put it like thus: “I
am a stranger. I am a stranger in my own country which I love
abstractly but fear in reality.”[2989]
In the beginning of the 1970s, in a conversation with L.K.
Chukovskaya she told me (I made a note at the time): “This
Exodus was forced on Jewry. I pity those whom the Russians
made feel Jewish. The Soviet Jews have already lost their sense
of Jewishness and I consider this arti cial awakening of their
national sense to be specious.”
This was far from the truth. Despite the fact that she
socialized with many Jews from both capitals, Chukovskaya
was mistaken. This Jewish national awakening was not
arti cial or forced; it was an absolutely natural and even
necessary milestone of Jewish history. It was the sudden
realization that “one can say ‘Jew’ proudly!”[2990]
Another Jewish publicist re ected on the experience of his
generation of young people in the USSR: “So what are we – the
‘grandchildren’ and heirs of that cruel experiment, who broke
through the shell and hatched here in Israel – what are we to
say about our fathers and grandfathers? Should we blame them
that they didn’t raise us in Jewish way? Yet our very sense of
Jewishness was in great part the result of their (as well as our)
failures, catastrophes and despair. So let us appreciate this
past…. Is it up to us to throw stones at the shattered skulls of
the romantics of yesterday?”[2991]
This sincerely and honestly expressed intergenerational
connection to the fathers and grandfathers, who were so
enthusiastic in the early Soviet years, greatly supplements the
whole picture. (You can read between the lines the author’s
rejection of the bene ts and advantages of the ‘new class’ that
has replaced those ‘romantics.’)
A Samizdat article properly pointed out: “The opinion that
the current rise in Jewish ethnic consciousness among
assimilated Soviet Jews is just a reaction to the re-emergence of
anti-Semitism seems deeply mistaken. What we have here is
more likely a coincidence.”[2992]
Di erent contemporaries described the development of their
Jewish self-identi cation somewhat di erently. Some wrote
that “nearly everyone agreed that nothing was happening in
the 1960s” in the sense of national revival, though “after the
war of 1967 things began to change.” Yet it was the plane
hijacking incident that led to the breakthrough.[2993] Others
suggest that “Jewish groups were already forming in the mid-
1960s in Leningrad, Moscow, and Riga,” and that by the end of
the decade a Jewish “underground center” was established in
Leningrad. Yet what kind of conspiracy could it be? “Makeshift
centers to study Hebrew and Jewish history were formed …
and not really for study of Hebrew, but rather for the
socialization of people who wished to study it. Actual language
usually was learnt not beyond two to three hundred words….
As a rule, all participants were state functionaries, and, like
their entire milieu, far removed from the Jewish religion and
national traditions alike.” “The Jews of the 1960s had only a
vague conception of Zionism.” And yet, “we felt ourselves to be
su ciently Jewish, and saw no need whatsoever for any sort of
additional ‘Jewish educational remedy.’” In response to the
barrage of anti-Israeli propaganda, “the inner sympathy
towards Jewry and to Israel” grew. “Even if we were told then
that Israel had abandoned Judaism, it would make no
di erence for us.” And then the movement “began to
transform from an underground to a mass, open … ‘parlour’
phenomenon.” Still, “then nobody believed in the possibility of
emigration, at least in our time, yet everyone considered a
quite real possibility of ending up in a camp.”[2994] (The
interviewer comments: “Alas, it is too short a step from
conspiracy to ‘devilry‘. I saw this in the Jewish movement of
the 1970s, after the trials in Leningrad.”)[2995]
Thus, the return to Jewish culture started and continued
without counting on emigration and initially did not a ect the
everyday life of the participants. “I’m not sure that Aliyah
[return to Israel] began because of Zionists,” as those rst
Zionist groups were too weak for this. “To a certain extent, it
was the Soviet government that triggered the process by
raising a tremendous noise around the Six-Day War. The Soviet
press painted the image of a warlike invincible Jew, and this
image successfully o set the inferiority complex of the Soviet
Jews.”[2996]
But “hide your ‘Judaic terror’ from your co-workers’ eyes,
from your neighbors’ ears!” At rst, there was a deep fear:
“these scraps of paper, bearing your contact details, were as if
you were signing a sentence for yourself, for your children, for
your relatives.” Yet soon “we ceased whispering, we began to
speak aloud,” “to prepare and celebrate” the Jewish holidays
and “study history and Hebrew.” And already from the end of
1969 “the Jews by the   tens and hundreds began signing open
letters to the ‘public abroad.’ They demanded to be ‘released’ to
Israel.”[2997] Soviet Jewry, “separated from world Jewry,
trapped in the melting pot of the despotic Stalinist empire …
was seemingly irredeemably lost for Jewry – and yet suddenly
the Zionist movement was reborn and the ancient Moses’
appeal trumpeted again: ‘Let my people go!’”[2998]
“In 1970 the whole world began to talk about Russian Jews.”
They “rose, they became determined….There is only one
barrier separating them from their dream – the barrier of
governmental prohibition. To break through, to breech it, to y
through it was their only wish…. ‘Flee from Northern
Babylon!’” was the behest of the arrested plane hijackers, the
group led by E. Kuznetsov and M. Dymshits.[2999] In December
1970 during their trial in Leningrad “they weren’t silent, they
didn’t evade, they openly declared that they wanted to steal a
plane to y it across the border to Israel. Remember, they faced
the death sentence! Their ‘confessions’ were in essence the
declarations of Zionism.”[3000] A few months later in May
1971, there was a trial of the ‘Zionist organizations of
Leningrad,’ soon followed by similar trials in Riga and
Kishinev.
These trials, especially the two Leningrad trials, became the
new powerful stimulus for the development of the Jewish
ethnic consciousness. A new Samizdat journal, The Jews in the
USSR, began to circulate soon afterwards, in October 1972. It
vividly reported on the struggle for the legalization of
emigration to Israel and covered the struggle for the right to
freely develop Jewish culture in the USSR.
But even at this point only a minority of Jews were involved
in the nascent emigration movement. “It seems that the life
was easier for the Soviet Jews when they knew that they had no
choice, that they only could persevere and adapt, than now,
when they’ve got a choice of where to live and what to do….
The rst wave that ed from Russia at the end of the 1960s was
motivated only by the goal of spending the rest of their lives in
the only country without anti-Semitism, Israel.”[3001] (As the
author noted, this does not include those who emigrated for
personal enrichment.)
And “a part of Soviet Jewry would happily repudiate their
national identity, if they were allowed to do so.”[3002] – so
scared they were. This section included those Jews who cursed
‘that Israel,’ claiming that it is because of Israel that law-abiding
Jews are often being prevented from career advancement:
“because of those leaving, we too will su er.”
The Soviet government could not but be alarmed by this
unexpected (for them as for the whole world) awakening of
ethnic consciousness among Soviet Jews. It stepped up
propaganda e orts against Israel and Zionism, to scare away
the newly conscious. In March 1970 it made use of that well-
worn Soviet trick, to get the denunciation from the mouths of
the “people themselves,” in this case from the people of “Jewish
nationality.” So the authorities staged a denunciatory public
press-conference and it was dutifully attended not only by the
most hypocritical “o cial Jews” such as Vergelis, Dragunsky,
Chakovsky, Bezymensky, Dolmatovsky, the lm director
Donsky, the propagandists Mitin and Mintz, but also by
prominent people who could easily refuse to participate in the
spectacle and in signing the “Declaration” without signi cant
repercussions for themselves. Among the latter were: Byalik:
the members of Academy, Frumkin and Kassirsky: the
internationally renowned musicians, Fliyer and Zak; the actors,
Plisetskaya, Bystritskaya, and Pluchek. But sign it they did. The
“Declaration” “heaped scorn on the aggression carried by the
Israeli ruling circles … which resurrects the barbarism of the
Hitlerites”; “Zionism has always been an expression of the
chauvinist views of the Jewish bourgeois and its Jewish
raving”; and the signatories intend “to open the eyes of the
gullible victims of Zionist propaganda”: “under the guidance of
the Leninist party, working Jews have gained full freedom from
the hated Tsarism.” Amazing, see who was the real oppressor?
The one already dead for half a century!
But times had changed by this point. The “o cial Jews” were
publicly rebuked by I. Zilberberg, a young engineer who had
decided to irrevocably cut ties with this country and leave. He
circulated an open letter in response to the “Declaration” in
Samizdat, calling its signatories “lackey souls”, and repudiated
his former faith in communism: “we naively placed our hopes
in ‘our’ Jews – the Kaganovichs, the Erenburgs, etc.” (So, after
all, they had once indeed placed their hopes there?) At the same
time he criticised Russians: after the 1950s, did “Russians
repent and were they contrite … and, after spilling a meagre
few tears about the past … did they swear love and
commitment to their new-found brothers?” In his mind there
was no doubt that Russian guilt Jews was entirely one-sided.
Such events continued. Another Samizdat open letter
became famous a year later, this one by the hitherto successful
lm director Mikhail Kalik, who had now been expelled from
the Union of Soviet lm-makers because he declared his
intention to leave for Israel. Kalik unexpectedly addressed   a
letter about his loyalty to Jewish culture “to the Russian
intelligentsia.” It looked as if he had spent his life in the USSR
not among the successful, but had su ered for years among the
oppressed, striving for freedom. And now, leaving, he lectured
this sluggish Russian intelligentsia from the moral high
ground of his victimhood. “So you will stay … with your
silence, with your ‘obedient enthusiasm?’ Who then will take
care for the moral health of the nation, the country, the
society?”
Six months later there was another open letter, this time
from the Soviet writer Grigory Svirsky. He was driven to this by
the fact that he hadn’t been published for several years and
even his name had been removed from the Encyclopaedia of
Literature in punishment for speaking out against anti-
Semitism at the Central Literary House in 1968. This
punishment he termed “murder,” with understandable re,
though he forgot to glance back and to see how many others
su ered in this regard. “I do not know how to live from now
on,” he wrote to the Union of Writers. (This was a sentiment
common to all 6,000 members of the union: they all believed
that the government was bound to feed them for their literary
work). These were “the reasons which made me, a man of
Russian culture, what is more a Russian writer and an expert
on Russian literature, feel myself to be a Jew and to come to the
irrevocable decision to leave with my family to Israel”; “I wish
to become an Israeli writer.” (But he achieved no such
transformation of his profession from one nation to another.
Svirsky, like many previous emigrants, had not realized how
di cult he would nd adjusting to Israel, and chose to leave
there too.)
The hostile anti-Russian feelings and claims we nd in so
many voices of the awakened Jewish consciousness surprise
and bewilder us, making our hearts bleed. Yet in these feelings
of the “mature ferocity” we do not hear any apology pro ered
by our Jewish brothers for at least the events of 1920s. There
isn’t a shadow of appreciation that Russians too are a wronged
people. However, we heard some other voices among the
“ferocious” in the previous chapter. Looking back on those
times when they were already in Israel, they sometimes gave a
more sober account: “we spent too much time settling debts
with Russia in Jews in the USSR” at the expense even of devoting
“too little to Israel and our life there … and thinking too little
about the future.”[3003]

   
For the ordinary mundane and unarmed living, the prospect of
breaking the steel shell that had enveloped the USSR seemed an
impossible and hopeless task. But then they despaired – and
had to try – and something gave! The struggle for the right to
emigrate to Israel was characterised throughout by both
determination and inventiveness: issuing complaints to the
Supreme Soviet, demonstrations and hunger strikes by the
“refuseniks” (as Jews who had been refused exit to Israel called
themselves); seminars by red Jewish professors on the pretext
of wanting “to maintain their professional quali cations”; the
organization in Moscow of an international symposium of
scientists (at the end of 1976); nally, refusal to undergo
national service.
Of course, this struggle could only be successful with strong
support from Jewish communities abroad. ”For us the
existence in the world of Jewish solidarity was a startling
discovery and the only glimmer of hope in that dark time”
remembers one of the rst refuseniks.[3004] There was also
substantial material assistance: “among refuseniks in Moscow
there was born a particular sort of independence, founded on
powerful economic support from Jews abroad.”[3005] And so
they attached even more hopes to assistance from the West,
now expecting similarly powerful public and even political
help.
This support had its rst test in 1972. Somebody in the
higher echelons of the Soviet government reasoned as follows:
here we have the Jewish intelligentsia, educated for free in the
Soviet system and then provided with opportunities to pursue
their academic careers, and now they just leave for abroad to
work there with all these bene ts subsidized by the Soviet
state. Would it not be just to institute a tax on this? Why
should the country prepare for free educated specialists, taking
up the places loyal citizens might have had, only to have them
use their skills in other countries? And so they started to
prepare a law to institute this tax. This plan was no secret, and
quickly became known and widely discussed in Jewish circles.
It became law on August 3, 1972 in the Order of the Presidium
of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the compensation by
citizens of the USSR, who are leaving to permanently live
abroad, of the government expenditure on their education.”
The amount proscribed was between 3,600 and 9,800 roubles,
depending on the rank of the university (3,600 was in those
days the yearly salary of an ordinary senior researcher without
a doctorate).
A storm of international indignation erupted. During the 55
years of its existence, none of the monstrous list of the USSR’s
crimes had caused as united an international protest as this tax
on educated emigrants. American academics, 5,000 in number,
signed a protest (Autumn 1972); and two thirds of American
senators worked together to stop an expected favorable trade
agreement with the USSR. European parliamentarians behaved
similarly. For their part, 500 Soviet Jews sent an open letter to
UN General Secretary Kurt Waldheim (nobody yet suspected
that he too would soon be damned) describing: “serfdom for
those with a higher education.” (In reaching for a phrase they
failed to realize how this would sound in a country which had
genuine kolkhoz serfdom).
The Soviet government buckled, and consigned the order to
the scrapheap.
As to the agreement on trade? In April 1973, union leader
George Meany argued that the agreement was neither in the
interest of the USA nor would it ease international tensions,
but the senators were concerned only about Soviet Jews and
ignored these arguments. They passed the agreement but
adding the “Jackson amendment,” which stated that it would
only be agreed to once Jews were allowed to leave the USSR
freely. And so the whole world heard the message coming from
the American capital: we will help the Soviet government if
they release from their country, not everyone, but speci cally
and only Jews.
 Nobody declared loud and clear: gentlemen, for 55 years it
has been but a dream to escape from under the hated Soviet
regime, not for hundreds of thousands but for millions of our
fellow citizens; but nobody, ever had the right to leave. And yet
the political and social leaders of the West never showed
surprise, never protested, never moved to punish the Soviet
government with trade restrictions. (There was one
unsuccessful attempt in 1931 to organise a campaign against
Soviet dumping of lumber, a practise made possible only by the
use of cheap convict labour, but even this campaign was
apparently motivated by commercial competition). 15 million
peasants were destroyed in the “dekulakisation,” 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 ne to politely sign agreements with
Soviet leaders, to lend them money, to shake their “honest
hands”, to seek their support, and to boast of all this in front of
your parliaments. But once it was speci cally Jews that became
the target, then a spark of sympathy ran through the West and
it became clear just what sort of regime this was. (In 1972 I
made a note on a scrap of paper: “You’ve realized [what’s going
on], thank God. But for how long will your realisation last? All
it takes is for the problems Jews had with emigrating to be
resolved, and you’ll become deaf, blind and uncomprehending
again to the entirety of what is going on, to the problems of
Russia and of communism.”)
“You cannot imagine the enthusiasm with which it [the
Jackson amendment] was met by Jews in Russia…. ‘Finally a
lever strong enough to shift the powers in the USSR is
discovered.’”[3006] Yet suddenly in 1975 the Jackson
amendment became an irrelevance, as the Soviet government
unexpectedly turned down the o er of the trade agreement
with the US. (Or it rather calculated that it could get more
advantages from other competing countries).
The Soviet refusal made an impression on Jewish activists in
the USSR and abroad, but not for long. Both in America and
Europe support for Jewish emigration out of the USSR became
louder. “The National Conference in Defence of Soviet Jews.”
“The Union on Solidarity with Soviet Jewry.” “The Student
Committee of Struggle for Soviet Jewry.” On the “Day of
National Solidarity with Soviet Jews” more than 100,000
demonstrated in Manhattan, including senators Jackson and
Humphrey (both were running for the Democratic nomination
for President.) “Hundreds di erent protests took place…. The 
largest of these were the yearly ‘Solidarity Sundays’ –
demonstrations and rallies in New York which were attended
by up to 250,000 people (these ran from 1974-1987).”[3007] A
three day meeting of 18 Nobel laureates in support of the
Corresponding Member of Academy Levich took place in
Oxford. Another 650 academics from across the world gave
their support – and Levich was allowed to emigrate. In January
1978 more than a hundred American academics sent a
telegram to Brezhnev demanding that he allow professor
Meiman to go abroad. Another worldwide campaign ended in
another success: the mathematician Chudnovsky received
permission to leave for a medical procedure unavailable in the
USSR. It was not just the famous: often a name until then
unheard of would be trumpeted across the world and then
returned to obscurity. For example, we heard it especially
loudly in May 1978, when the world press told us a heart-
rending story: a seven year old Moscow girl Jessica Katz had an
incurable illness, and her parents were not allowed to go to the
States! A personal intervention from Senator Edward Kennedy
followed, and presto! Success! The press rejoiced. The main
news on every television channel broadcast the meeting at the
airport, the tears of happiness, the girl held aloft. The Russian
Voice of America devoted a whole broadcast to how Jessica Katz
was saved (failing to notice that Russian families with sick
children still faced the same impenetrable wall). A medical
examination later showed that Jessica wasn’t ill at all, and that
her cunning parents had fooled the whole world to ensure her
leaving. (A fact acknowledged through gritted teeth on the
radio, and then buried. Who else would be forgiven such a lie?)
Similarly, the hunger strike of V. Borisov (December 1976) who
had already spent nine years in a ‘mental asylum’ was reported
by the Voice of America no di erently from the 15 days of
imprisonment of Ilya Levin, and if anything, more attention
was given to the latter. All a few refuseniks had to do was sign a
declaration about their inability to leave the USSR and it was
immediately reported by the Freedom, Voice of America, the
BBC and by the other most important sources of mass
information, so much so that it is hard now to believe how
loudly they were trumpeted.
Of course it has to be noted that all the pomp surrounding
the appearance of a Soviet Jewish movement served to awaken
among worldwide Jewry, including those in America, an
exciting conception of themselves as a nation. “Prophetic
obsession of the rst Zionists” in the USSR “induced exulting
sympathy among the Western Jews.” “The Western Jews saw
their own ideals in action. They began to believe in Russian
Jews … that meant for them believing in their own best
qualities…. All that which Western Jews wanted to see around
themselves and … didn’t see.”[3008] Others said, with a
penetrating irony: “The o ered product (an insurrectionary
Jewish spirit) found a delighted buyer (American Jews). Neither
America, nor American Jews are at all interested in Jews from
the USSR in themselves. The product bought was precisely the
spirit of Jewish revolt. The Jews of America (and with them the
Jews of London, Amsterdam, Paris, etc.), whose sense of
Jewishness had been excited by the Six-Day War triumph …
saw the chance to participate…. It was a comfortable
‘struggle’… that moreover did not involve any great
exertion.”[3009]
However, it cannot be denied that these inspirations both
here and there merged, and worked together to destabilise the
walls of the steel shell of the old Soviet Union.

   
It is the general opinion that mass Jewish emigration from the
USSR began in 1971, when 13,000 people left (98% to Israel). It
was 32,000 in 1972, 35,000 in 1973 (the proportion going to
Israel varying from 85% to 100%).[3010] However these were
for the most part not from the ethnically Russian areas, but
from Georgia and the Baltic. (A Jewish delegate to an
international congress declared that “Georgia is a country
without anti-Semitism”; many Georgian Jews later became
disappointed with their move to Israel and wanted to go back).
There was no mass movement from the central part of the
USSR. Later, when leaving was made more di cult, some
expressed a serious regret (R. Nudelman):  the “tardy courage of
future refuseniks might have, perhaps, been unnecessary if
they had taken advantage of the breech made when they‘d had
the chance.” Someone disagrees: “But people need time to
mature! … See how long it took before we understood that we
must not stay, that it is simply a crime against your own
children.”[3011]
“Ho, ho, [come forth], and ee from the land of the north,
saith the LORD.” (Zech 2:6)
 Nonetheless, the excitement of Jewish emigration took root
in Russian and Ukrainian towns too. By March 1973, 700,000
requests to emigrate had been registered. However, autumn
1973 saw the Yom Kippur War, and the desire of many to
emigrate suddenly diminished. “Israel’s image changed sharply
after the Yom Kippur War. Instead of a secure and brave rich
country, with con dence in tomorrow and a united leadership,
Israel unexpectedly appeared before the world as confused,
abby, ripped apart by internal contradictions. The standard of
living of the population fell sharply.”[3012]
As a result only 20,000 Jews left the USSR in 1974. In 1975-
76, “up to 50% of emigrating Soviet Jews” once in the stopover 
point of Vienna “went … past Israel. This period saw the birth
of the term ‘directists’” – that is to say those who went directly
to the United States.[3013] After 1977, their numbers “varied
from 70 to 98 percent.”[3014]
“Frankly, this is understandable. The Jewish state had been
conceived as a national refuge for Jews of the whole world, the
refuge which, to begin with, guarantees them a safe existence.
But this did not transpire. The country was in the line of re for
many years.”[3015]
What is more “it soon became clear that Israel needed not
intellectual Soviet Jews … but a national Jewish intelligentsia.”
At this point “thinking Jews … realised with a horror that in
the way they had de ned themselves their whole life they had
no place in Israel,” because as it turned out for Israel you had to
be immersed in Jewish national culture – and so only then “the
arrivals realised their tragic mistake: there had been no point
to leaving Russia”[3016] (although this was also due to the loss
of social position) – and letters back warned those who hadn’t
left yet of this. “Their tone and content at that time was almost
universally negative. Israel was presented as a country where
the government intervenes in and seeks to act paternally in all
aspects of a citizen’s life.”[3017] “A prejudice against
emigration to Israel began to form among many as early as the
mid-1970s.”[3018] “The rm opinion of Israel that the Moscow
and Leningrad intelligentsia began to acquire was of a closed,
spiritually impoverished society, buried in its own narrow
national problems and letting today’s ideological demands
have control over the culture…. At best … it is a cultural
backwater, at worst … yet another totalitarian government,
lacking only a coercive apparatus.”[3019] “Many Soviet Jews
gained the impression, not without reason, that in leaving the
USSR for Israel they were exchanging one authoritarian regime
for another.”[3020]
When in 1972-73 more than 30,000 Soviet Jews had left for
Israel per year, Golda Meir used to meet them personally at the
airport and wept, and the Israeli press called their mass
arrivals “the Miracle of the 20th century.” Back then “everyone
left for Israel. Those who took the road to Rome,” that is to say
not to Israel, “were pointed out. But then the number of
arrivals started to fall from year to year. It decreased from tens
of thousands to thousands, from thousands to hundreds, from
hundreds to a few lone individuals. In Vienna, it was no longer
those taking the road to Rome [the next stop on the road to the
nal desired destination, usually the U.S.] who were pointed
out, it was those ‘loners,’ those ‘clowns,’ those ‘nuts,’ who still
left for Israel.”[3021] “Back then Israel used to be the ‘norm’
and you had to explain why you were going ‘past’ it, but it was
the other way round now: it was those planning to leave for
Israel that often had to explain their decision.”[3022]
“Only the rst wave was idealistic”; “starting with 1974, so
to speak the second echelon of Jews began to leave the USSR,
and for those Israel might have been attractive, but mainly
from a distance.”[3023] Another’s consideration: “Perhaps the
phenomenon of neshira [neshira – dispersal on the way to
Israel; noshrim – the dispersed ones] is somehow connected to
the fact that initial emigration used to be from the hinterlands
[of the USSR], where [Jewish] traditions were strong, and now
it’s more from the centre, where Jews have substantially
sundered themselves from their traditions.”[3024]
Anyway, “the more open were the doors into Israel, the less
Jewish was the e ux,” the majority of activists barely knowing
the Hebrew alphabet.[3025] ”Not to nd their Jewishness, but
to get rid of it … was now the main reason for
emigration.”[3026] They joked in Israel that “the world has not
been lled with the clatter of Jewish feet running to settle in
their own home…. Subsequent waves quickly took into
account the mistake of the vanguard, and instead
enthusiastically leapt en masse to where others’ hands had
already built their own life. En masse, it should be noted, for
here nally was that much spoken of ‘Jewish unity.’”[3027] But
of course these people “left the USSR in search of ‘intellectual
freedom,’ and so must live in Germany or England” or more
simply in the United States.[3028] And a popular excuse was
that the Diaspora is needed as “somebody has to give money to
resource-less Israel and to make noise when it is being bullied!
But on the other hand, the Diaspora perpetuates anti-
Semitism.”[3029]
A. Voronel made a broader point here: “”The situation of
Russian Jews and the problem of their liberation is a re ection
of the all-Jewish crisis…. The problems of Soviet Jews help us to
see the disarray in our own ranks”; “the cynicism of Soviet
Jews” in using calls from made up relatives in Israel instead of
“accepting their fate, the Way of Honour, is nothing more than
a re ection of the cynicism and the rot a ecting the whole
Jewish (and non-Jewish) world”; “questions of conscience move
further and further into background under the in uence of the
business, the competition and the unlimited possibilities of the
Free World.”[3030]
So it’s all quite simple – it was just a mass escape from the
harsh Soviet life to the easy Western one, quite understandable
on a human level. But then what’s about “repatriation?” And
what is the “spiritual superiority” of those who dared to leave
over those who stayed in the “country of slaves”? In ghting in
those days for emigration Soviet Jews loudly demanded: “Let
my people go!” But that was a truncated quote. The Bible said:
“Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the
wilderness.” (Ex. 5:1) Yet somehow too many of those released
went not into the desert, but to the abundance of America.

   
Can we nonetheless say that in the early years of sudden and
successful emigration to Israel, it was the Zionists beliefs and
ambitions that acted as the prime stimulus for Jews to leave?
The testimony of various Jewish writers would suggest not.
“The Soviet situation of the end of the 1960s was one of
Aliyah, not of a Zionist movement. There were many people
psychologically ready to ee the USSR. What can be called a
Zionist movement was entirely subsidiary to this group of
people.”[3031] Those who joined makeshift centres dedicated
to the actual study of Jewish history and culture “were mostly
characterised by a complete lack of the careerism so common
among the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia. This was why they
dedicated the entirety of their free time to Jewish
a airs.”[3032] For them the “era of the Hebrew teachers” had
started even as early as the end of the 1970s, and by the
beginning of the 1980s these “Torah teachers were the only
ones who still in uenced the minds.”[3033]
 The motives of many others who emigrated are explained as
follows: “The Soviet government has placed obstacles in the
way of achieving the most important things – professional
advancement,” and so “Jewry is in danger of
degradation.”[3034] “They were driven into Jewishness, and
then into Zionism … by their faceless bureaucratic
nemesis.”[3035] “Many … had never encountered anti-
Semitism or political persecution. What burdened them was
the dead end that their lives as Soviet Jews had become – as
bearers of a contradiction from which they could free
themselves neither by ‘assimilation’ nor by their
‘Jewishness’”[3036] “There was a growing sense of
incompatibility and sorrow”; “dozens and dozens of dolts …
are dragging you into insigni cance … are pushing you to the
bottom.”[3037] So came the longing to escape the Soviet Union.
“This bright hope, when a man under the complete control of
the Soviet government could in three months become free …
was genuinely exhilarating.”[3038]
Of course, a complex emotional environment developed
around the act of departure. A writer says: the majority of
Soviet Jews are “using the same ‘Zionist’ door … they sadly
leave that familiar, that tolerant Russia” (a slip, but one that is
closer to the truth, as the author had meant to say “tolerated
by” Jews).[3039] Or said thusly: “The vast majority decided to
emigrate with their heads, while their insides,” that is to say
concern with being part of a country and its traditions, “were
against.”[3040] No one can judge to what extent this was a
“majority.” But as we’ve seen the mood varied from the good
poetry of Liya Vladimorova:
But for you my beloved, for you the proud,
I bequest the memories and the departure
to the then-popular joke: “Could the last person to leave
please turn o the lights.”
 This growing desire to emigrate among Soviet Jews
coincided with the beginning of the “dissident” movement in
the USSR. These developments were not entirely independent:
“for some of them [Jewish intellectuals] ‘Jewish ethnic
consciousness in the USSR’ was a new vector of intellectual
development … a new form of heterodoxy,”[3041] and they
regarded their own impatient escape from the country as also a
desperately important political cause. In essence, the dilemma
facing the Zionists at the start of the 20th century was
repeated: if it is your aim to leave Russia, should you at the
same time maintain a political struggle within it? Back then,
most had answered “yes” to the struggle; now, most answered
“no.” But an increasingly daredevil attitude to emigration could
not but feed a similarly daredevil attitude to politics, and
sometimes the daredevils were one and the same. So for
example (in 1976) several activists in the Jewish movement —
V. Rubin, A. Sharansky, V. Slepak — together made an
independent decision to support the “Helsinki Group” of
dissidents, “but this was regarded in Jewish circles as an
unjusti able and unreasonable risk,” as it would lead “to the
immediate and total escalation of the government’s repression
of Jewish activism,” and would moreover turn the Jewish
movement “into the property of dissidents.”[3042]
On the other side, many dissidents took advantage of the
synchronicity of the two movements, and used emigration as a
means of escape from their political battle eld for their own
safety. They found theoretical justi cations for this: “Any
honest man in the USSR is an eternal debtor to Israel, and here
is why…. The emigration breech was made in the iron curtain
thanks to Israel … it protects the rear of those few people
willing to oppose the tyranny of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union [CPSU] and to ght for human rights in the USSR.
The absence of this ‘emergency exit’ would be deadly to the
current democratic movement.”[3043]
It has to be admitted that this is a very cynical justi cation,
and that it says little good of the dissident movement as a
whole. A hostile critic then noted: “these ‘opponents’ [of the
CPSU] are playing an odd game: they become involved in the
democratic movement, already sure of an ‘emergency exit’ for
themselves. But by this they demonstrate the temporary and
inconsequential character of their activity. Do potential
emigrants have the right to speak of changing Russia, or
especially on behalf of Russia?”[3044]
One dissident science ction author (and later, after
emigration, a Russian Orthodox priest) suggested this
formulation, that Jewish emigration creates “a revolution in
the mind of Soviet man”; “the Jews, in ghting for the right to
leave, become transformed into ghters for freedom” in
general….”The Jewish movement serves as a social gland that
begins to secrete the hormones of rights awareness;” it has
become “a sort of ferment perpetuating dissidence.” “Russia is
becoming ‘deserted,’” “that ‘abroad,’ so mythical before, is
becoming populated by our own people,” “the Jewish Exodus …
is gradually leading totalitarian Soviet Moscow to the plains of
freedom.”[3045]
This view was readily accepted and in the coming years
came to be loudly trumpeted:  “the right to emigrate is the
primary human right.” It was repeated often and in unison
that this was an “enforced escape,” and “talk about the
privileged position Jews occupy with regards to emigration is
slander.”[3046]
Yes, taking a lifeboat from a sinking ship is indeed an act of
necessity. But to own a lifeboat is a great privilege, and after the
gruelling ordeals of half a century in the USSR Jews owned one,
while the rest did not. Those more perceptive expressed a more
conscientious feeling: “It is ne to ght for the repatriation of
Jews, it is understandable, and it is ne to ght for the right to
emigrate for everyone – that too is understandable; but you
cannot ght for the right to emigrate but, for some reason, only
for Jews.”[3047] Contrary to the self-satis ed theoreticians of
emigration, and their belief that it brought all Soviet people
closer to emigrating abroad and so partly freed them, in reality
those unable to emigrate came to feel more hopeless, to an even
greater extent fooled and enslaved. There were emigrants who
understood this: “What is cruellest about this situation is that
it is Jews who are leaving. It has bizarrely become a question of
something akin to a certi cate of authenticity.”[3048]
Precisely. But they chose to blind themselves to this.
What could the remaining residents of “totalitarian
Moscow” think? There was a great variety of responses, from
grievance (“You, Jews, are allowed to leave and we aren’t…”) to
the despair of intellectuals. L.K Chukovksaya expressed it in
conversation to me: “Dozens of valuable people are leaving, and
as a result human bonds vital for the country are ripped apart.
The knots that hold together the fabric of culture are being
undone.”
To repeat the lesson: “Russia is becoming deserted.”
We can read the thoughtful comments of an emigrant
Jewish author about this Departure: “Russian Jewry were
path nders in their experiment to merge with the Russian
people and Russian culture, they became involved in Russia’s
fate and history, and, repulsed away as if by a similarly charged
body, left.” (What an accurate and penetrating comparison!)
“What is most stunning about this Departure is how, at the
moment of greatest assimilation, voluntary it was…. The
pathetic character of the Russian Aliyah of the 1970s … was
that we were not exiled from the country on a king’s order or
by the decision of party and parliament, and we were not
 eeing to save ourselves from the whips of an enraged popular
pogrom … this fact is not immediately obvious to the
participants in this historical event.”[3049]
No doubt, the Jewish emigration from the USSR ushered in a
great historical shift. The beginning of the Exodus drew a line
under an epoch lasting two centuries of coerced co-existence
between Jews and Russians. From that point every Soviet Jew
was free to choose for himself — to live in Russia or outside it.
By the second half of the 1980s each was entirely free to leave
for Israel without struggle.
The events that took place over two centuries of Jewish life
in Russia – the Pale of Settlement,the escape from its
stultifying con nes, the owering, the ascension to the ruling
circles of Russia, then the new constraints, and nally the
Exodus – none of these are random streams on the outskirts of
history. Jewry had completed its spread from its origin on the
Mediterranean Sea to as far away as Eastern Europe, and it was
now returning back to its point of origin.
We can see in both this spread and in its reversal a supra-
human design. Perhaps those that come after us will have the
opportunity to see it more clearly and to solve its mystery.
 Chapter 27. About the assimilation

When and how did this extraordinary Jewish status of “guests

everywhere” begin? The conventional wisdom suggests that
the centuries-old Jewish diaspora should be dated from the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in AD70; and that, after
being thrown out of their native land, the Jews began
wandering around the world. However, it is not true because
“the great majority of the Jews were already dispersed by that
time; hardly more than one-eighth of the nation lived in
Palestine.”[3050] The Jewish Diaspora had begun much earlier:
“The Jews were mainly a dispersed nation by the time of the
Babylonian captivity [6th century B.C.] and, possibly, even
earlier; Palestine was only a religious and, to certain extent, a
cultural center.”[3051]
Scattering of the Jews was already foretold in the
Pentateuch. “I will scatter you among the nations” (Leviticus
26:33). “Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you
shall be left few in number among the nations” (Deuteronomy
4:27).
“Only a small part of the Jews had returned from the
[Babylonian] captivity; many had remained in Babylon as they
did not want to abandon their property.” Large settlements
were established outside of Palestine; “large numbers of Jews
concentrated … in major trade and industrial centers of the
ancient world.” (For example, in Alexandria under Ptolemaic
dynasty, Jews accounted for two- fth of the population.) “They
were, mainly, traders and craftsmen.”[3052] The Jewish-
Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus (who died in the middle
of the 1st century, 20 years before the destruction of the
Temple) states: “[The Jews] regard the Holy City as their
metropolis because the Holy Temple of Almighty God is
situated there, and they call “homeland” the countries where
they live, and where their fathers, grandfathers, great-
grandfathers and ancient forebears lived, and where they were
born and brought up.”[3053]
Mikhail Gershenzon mused on the fates of the Jewish nation
after the Babylonian captivity: “[The Jews] took roots in foreign
lands and, contrary to expectations, didn’t aspire to return to
their old homeland.” “Just recall: the Kingdom of Judah was
still there, yet most of the Jews were already scattered across
the whole Middle East; the Second Temple still stood in all its
splendor, but the Language of the Bible was no longer heard on
the streets and in the houses of Jerusalem; everybody spoke
either Syrian or Greek there.” Even back then the Jews were
inclined to think: “We should not hold dear our national
independence, we should learn to live without it, under foreign
rule; we should not become attached to a land or to a single
language.”[3054]
Modern Jewish authors agree: “The Jews in the ancient world
were scattered and established large centers in the Diaspora
even before the collapse of Jewish nationhood.”[3055] “The
nation which was given the Law did not want to return to its
native country. There is some very profound and still not
understood meaning in it. It is much easier to chat about
Jewish values and about the preservation of Jewry than to
explain the true reasons for such a long Galut.”[3056] (Even in
the mid-20th century the Hebrew language still had no word
for “Diaspora” as for the living in the voluntary scattering,
there was only “Galut,” referring to the forced exile.)
From the historical evidence we see that the scattering of the
Jews was not solely their unfortunate fate, but also a voluntary
quest. Indeed, it was a bemoaned disaster, but could it also be a
method of making life easier? This is an important question in
attempting to understand the Diaspora.
The Jews still do not have a generally accepted view on the
Diaspora, whether it has been blessing for them or a bane.
Zionism, from the very moment of its birth, responded to
this question rmly (and fully in line with its essence): “Our
scattering is our biggest curse; it brings us no good, and no
advantages and no peace to others as well…. We are guests
everywhere … and we are still unwanted, everybody wants to
get rid of us.”[3057] “To be a homeless man, feeling as a guest
everywhere — this is the true curse of exile, its real
bitterness!”[3058] “Some say that having several ‘homes’
improves chances to survive for the Jews. In my view, a nation
staying in many other’s homes and not caring about its own
cannot expect security. The availability of many homes
corrupts.”[3059]
Yet the opposite opinion is even more prevalent, and it
seems to be more credible. “Perhaps, the Jewish nation had
survived and persevered not in spite of its exile, but because of
it; the Jewish Diaspora is not an episode, but the organic
‘ingredient’ of Jewish history.”[3060]
“Was the Jewish nation preserved in all its uniqueness in
spite of the exile and scattering or because of it? The tragedy of
Jerusalem in AD70 destroyed the state, yet it was necessary to
save the people”; “the extraordinarily intensi ed instinct of
national self-preservation” prompted Jews toward salvation
through Diaspora.”[3061] “Jewry was never able to fully
comprehend its situation and the causes for it. They saw exile
as the punishment for their sins, yet time and time again it
turned out to be the dispensation by which the Lord has
distinguished his nation. Through the Diaspora, the Jew
worked out the mark of the Chosen he foresaw on his brow….
The scattered state of the nation is not unnatural for him….
Already in the periods of the most comfortable existence in
their own state, Jewry was stationing garrisons on its route
and spearheading vanguards in all directions, as if sensing its
future dispersion and getting ready to retreat to the positions it
had prepared in advance.” “Thus, the Diaspora is a special form
of Jewish existence in space and time of this world.”[3062] And
look how awesomely mobile are the Jews in Diaspora. “The
Jewish people never strike root in one place, even after several
generations.”[3063]
But after they were so widely scattered and had become
small minorities among other nations, the Jews had to develop
a clear position toward those nations — how to behave among
them and how to relate to them, to seek ultimate bonding and
merging with those nations, or to reject them and separate
from them? The Holy Scripture contains quite a few covenants
of isolation. The Jews avoided even their closest kindred
neighbors, the Samaritans and Israelites, so irreconcilably that
it was not permitted to even take a piece of bread from them.
Mixed marriages were very strictly forbidden. “We will not give
our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters
for our sons.” (Nehemiah 10:30) And Ezra had ordered them to
dissolve even the existing marriages, even those with children.
Thus, living in Diaspora for thousands of years, the Jews did
not mix with other nations, just as butter does not mix with
water, but comes to the surface and oats. During all those
long centuries, they perceived themselves as something
distinct, and until the 18th century “the Jews as a nation have
never shown any inclination for assimilation.” The pre-
revolutionary Jewish Encyclopedia, while quoting Marx’s
assertion that “the Jews had not assimilated, because they
represented the highest economic class, that is the class of
capitalists amidst the agricultural and petty bourgeois
nations,” objects, saying that the economy was secondary: “the
Jews of the Diaspora have consciously established their own
economy which protected them from assimilation. They did it
because they were conscious of their cultural superiority,”
which, for its part, was created by “the spiritual meaning of
Judaism in its most complete form. The latter protected them
from imitation.”[3064]
But “from the mid-18th century the Jews started to believe
in assimilation, and that becomes … the ferment of
decomposition of the Jewish nation in Western Europe of the
19th century.” Assimilation begins when “the surrounding
culture reaches the height held by the Jewish culture, or when
the Jewry ceases to create new values.” The national will of the
European Jews was weakened by the end of the 18th century; it
had lost ground because of extremely long waiting. Other
nations began creating brilliant cultures that eclipsed Jewish
culture.”[3065] And exactly then Napoleon launched the Pan-
European emancipation; in one country after another, the
roads to social equality were opening before the Jews, and that
facilitated assimilation. (There is an important caveat here:
“There is no unilateral assimilation,” and “the assimilating
Jews supplemented the host cultures with Jewish national
traits.” Heine and Börne, Ricardo and Marx, Beacons eld-
Disraeli and Lassalle, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn — “during
their assimilation into the host cultures, they added Jewish
elements to them.”[3066])
In some cases, assimilation leads to a brighter creative
personal self-ful llment. But, overall, “assimilation was the
price paid by the Jews for the bene t of having access to the
European culture. Educated Jews convinced themselves that
“the Jews are not a nation, but only a religious group.”[3067]
“The Jewish nation, after it joined the realm of European
nations, began to lose its national uniqueness … only the Jew
from the ghetto retained pronounced national traits … while
the intelligent Jew tried with all his strength to look unlike a
typical Jew.” Thus spread “the theory that there is no Jewish
nation, but only ‘the Poles, Frenchmen and Germans of Mosaic
Law.’”[3068]
Marx, and then Lenin saw the solution of Jewish question in
the full assimilation of the Jews in the countries of their
residence.
In contrast to the clumsiness of those ideologues, the ideas
of M.O. Gershenzon are much more interesting. He put them
forward late in life, in 1920, and they are all the more
interesting because the lofty thinker Gershenzon was a
completely assimilated Russian Jew. Nevertheless, the Jewish
question was alive and well in his mind. He explored it in his
article The Destinies of the Jewish Nation.
Unlike the contemporary Jewish Encyclopedia, Gershenzon
believes that Jewish assimilation is the ancient phenomenon,
from time immemorial. One voice constantly “tempted him
[the Jew] to blend with the environment — hence comes this
ineradicable and ancient Jewish aspiration to assimilate.” Yet
another voice “demanded above all things to preserve his
national uniqueness. The whole story of scattering is the
never-ending struggle of two wills within Jewry: the human
will against the superhuman one, the individual against the
collective…. The requirements of the national will towards the
individual were so ruthless and almost beyond human power,
that without having a great hope common to all Jewry, the Jew
would succumb to despair every now and then, and would be
tempted to fall away from his brethren and desert that strange
and painful common cause.” Contrary to the view that it is not
di cult to explain why assimilation began precisely at the end
of the 18th century, Gershenzon is rather surprised: “Is it not
strange that assimilation so unexpectedly accelerated exactly
during the last one hundred years and it continues to intensify
with each passing hour? Shouldn’t the temptation to fall apart
be diminished greatly nowadays, when the Jews obtained equal
rights everywhere?” No, he replies: “It is not the external force
that splits the Jews; Jewry disintegrates from the inside. The
main pillar of Jewry, the religious unity of the Jewish nation, is
decayed and rotten.” So, what about assimilation, where does it
lead to? “At rst sight, it appears that … [the Jews] are imbued,
to the marrow of their bones, with the cosmopolitan spirit or,
at least, with the spirit of the local culture; they share beliefs
and xations of the people around them.” Yet it is not exactly
like that: “They love the same things, but not in the same
way…. They indeed crave to embrace the alien gods… They
strive to accept the way of life of modern culture…. They
pretend that they already love all that — truly love, and they
are even able to convince themselves of that.” Alas! One can
only love his own faith, “the one born in the throes from the
depths of the soul.”[3069]
Jewish authors genuinely express the spiritual torment
experienced by the assimilating Jew. “If you decided to pretend
that you are not a Jew, or to change your religion, you are
doomed to unending internal struggle with your Jewish
identity…. You live in terrible tension…. In a way, this is
immoral, a sort of spiritual self-violation.”[3070] (This inner
con ict was amazingly described by Chekhov in his essay
Tumbleweed.) “This evil stepmother — assimilation … forced
the individual to adapt to everything: to the meaning of life
and human relations, to demands and needs, to the way of life
and habits. It crippled the psychology of the nation in general
and … that of the national intelligentsia in particular.” It
compelled people “to renounce their own identity, and,
ultimately, led to self-destruction.”[3071] “It is a painful and
humiliating search of identity.”[3072] But even “the most
complete assimilation is ephemeral: it never becomes natural,”
it does not liberate “from the need to be on guard” all the time.
[3073]
In addition to the lack of trust on the part of surrounding
native people, assimilating Jews come under re from their
fellow Jews; they are accused of “consumerism and
conformism,” of “the desire to desert their people, to dispose of
their Jewish identity,” and of “the national defection.”[3074]
Nevertheless, during the 19th century everything indicated
that assimilation was feasible and necessary, that it was
predetermined and even inevitable. Yet the emergence of
Zionism cast a completely new light on this problem. Before
Zionism, “every Jew su ered from painful duality,”[3075] the
dissonance between the religious tradition and the
surrounding external world.
In the early 20th century Jabotinsky wrote: “When the Jew
adopts a foreign culture … one should not trust the depth and
strength of such conversion. The assimilated Jew cannot
withstand a single onslaught, he abandons the ‘adopted’
culture without any resistance whatsoever, as soon as he sees
that the power of that culture is over … he cannot be the pillar
for such a culture.” He provided a shining example of the
Germanized Austria-Hungary, when, with the growth of Czech,
Hungarian and Polish cultures, Germanized Jews actively
conformed to new ways of life. “It is all about certain hard
realities of the natural relationship between a man and his
culture, the culture created by his ancestors.”[3076] This
observation is true, of course, though “hard realities” sounds
somewhat dry. (Jabotinsky not only objected to assimilation
ercely, he also insistently warned the Jews to avoid Russian
politics, literature and art, cautioning that after a while the
Russians would inevitably turn down such service.[3077])
Many individual and collective examples, both in Europe and
Russia, in the past and nowadays, illustrate the fragility of
Jewish assimilation.
Consider Benjamin Disraeli, the son of a non-religious
father; he was baptized in adolescence and he did not just
display the English way of life, he became no less than the
symbol of the British Empire. So, what did he dream about at
leisure, while riding his novel-writing hobby-horse? He wrote
about exceptional merits and Messianism of the Jews,
expressed his ardent love to Palestine, and dreamt of restoring
the Israeli homeland![3078]
And what’s about Gershenzon? He was a prominent
historian of Russian culture and an expert on Pushkin. He was
even criticized for his “Slavophilism.” But, nevertheless, at the
end of his life, he wrote: “Accustomed to European culture
from a tender age, I deeply imbibed its spirit … and I truly love
many things in it…. But deep in my mind I live di erently. For
many years a secret voice from within appeals to me
persistently and incessantly: This is not yours! This is not
yours! A strange will inside me sorrowfully turns away from
[Russian] culture, from everything happening and spoken
around me…. I live like a stranger who has adapted to a foreign
country; the natives love me, and I love them too; I zealously
work for their bene t … yet I feel I am a stranger, and I secretly
yearn for the elds of my homeland.”[3079]
After this confession of Gershenzon, it is appropriate to
formulate the key thesis of this chapter. There are di erent
types of assimilation: civil and domestic assimilation, when
the assimilated individual is completely immersed in the
surrounding life and accepts the interests of the native nation
(in that sense, the overwhelming majority of Russian,
European and American Jews would perhaps consider
themselves assimilated); cultural assimilation; and, at the
extreme, spiritual assimilation, which also happens, albeit
rarely. The latter is more complex and does not result from the
former two types of assimilation. (In the opinion of a critic, The
Correspondence between Two Corners by Vyacheslav Ivanov and
M.O. Gershenzon, that “small book of tremendous importance”,
serves as “a proof of the inadequacy of Jewish assimilation,
even in the case of apparently complete cultural
assimilation.”[3080])
Or take another individual, [M. Krol], a revolutionary in his
youth and a “converted” émigré after the revolution, he
marvels that the Russian Jews even in their new countries of
emigration demonstrated “a huge amount of national energy”
and were building an “original Jewish culture” there. Even in
London the Jews had their own Yiddish schools, their own
social organizations, and their own solid economics; they did
not merge with the English way of life, but only
accommodated to its demands and reinforced the original
English Jewry. (The latter even had their own British Council of
Jews, and called themselves the “Jewish community of the
Great Britain” — note that all this was in England, where
Jewish assimilation was considered all but complete.) He
witnessed the same thing in France, and was particularly
impressed by the similar “feat” in the United States.[3081]
And there is also that unfailing and reliable Jewish mutual
support, that truly outstanding ability that preserves the
Jewish people. Yet it further weakens the stability of
assimilation.
It was not only the rise of Zionism that prompted the Jews to
reject assimilation. The very course of the 20th century was
not conductive to assimilation.
On the eve of World War II in 1939, a true Zionist, Max Brod,
wrote: “It was possible to argue in support of the theory of
assimilation in the days of far less advanced statehood of the
19th century,” but “this theory lost any meaning in the era
when the peoples increasingly consolidate”; “we, the Jews, will
be inevitably crushed by bellicose nationalistic peoples, unless
we take our fate into our hands and retreat in time.”[3082]
Martin Buber had a very stern opinion on this in 1941: “So
far, our existence had served only to shake the thrones of idols,
but not to erect the throne of God. This is exactly why our
existence among other nations is so mysterious. We purport to
teach others about the absolute, but in reality we just say ‘no’ to
other nations, or, perhaps, we are actually nothing more than
just the embodiment of such negation. This is why we have
turned into the nightmare of the nations.”[3083]
Then, two deep furrows, the Catastrophe and the emergence
of Israel soon afterwards, crossed the course of Jewish history,
shedding new and very bright light on the problem of
assimilation.
Arthur Koestler clearly formulated and expressed his
thoughts on the signi cance of the state of Israel for world
Jewry in his book Promise and Ful llment: Palestine 1917-1949
and in an article, Judah at the Crossroads.
An ardent Zionist in his youth, Koestler left Vienna for a
Palestinian kibbutz in 1926; he worked for a few years in
Jerusalem as a Hebrew-writing columnist for Jabotinsky’s
newspaper; he also reported for several German newspapers.
And then he wrote: “If we exclude from the Jewish religion the
mystical craving for the Promised Land, then the very basis and
essence of this religion would disappear.” And further, “after
the restoration of the Jewish state, most of the Jewish prayers,
rites and symbols lost their meaning…. The God of Israel has
abided by the treaty; he had returned the land of Canaan to
Abraham’s seed…. If, however, [the religious Jew] de es the
order to return to the land of his ancestors and thus violates
the treaty, he consequently … anathematizes himself and loses
his Jewishness.” On the other hand, it may be di cult for not
very religious Jews to understand why they should make
sacri ces to preserve “Jewish values” not included in the
religious doctrine. “The [Jewish] religion loses any sense if you
continue to pray about the return to Zion even after you have
grimly determined not to go there.” A painful choice, yes, but
“the choice that must be made immediately, for the sake of the
next generation…. Do I want to move to Israel? If I do not, then
what right do I have to continue calling myself a Jew and thus
to mark my children with the stigma of isolation? The whole
world would sincerely welcome the assimilation of the Jews,”
and after three generations or so, “the Jewish question would
fade away.”[3084]
The London newspaper Jewish Chronicle objected to Koestler:
perhaps, “it is much better, much more reasonable and proper
for a Jew from the Diaspora to live as before, at the same time
helping to build the State of Israel?” Yet Koestler remained
adamant: “They want both to have their cake and eat it. This is
the route to disaster.”[3085]
Yet all previous attempts at assimilation ended in failure; so
why it should be di erent this time? — argued the newspaper.
Koestler replied: “Because all previous attempts of assimilation
were based on the wrong assumption that the Jews could be
adequate sons of the host nation, while at the same time
preserving their religion and remaining ‘the Chosen people.’”
But “ethnic assimilation is impossible if Judaism is preserved; and
conversely Judaism collapses in case of ethnic assimilation. Jewish
religion perpetuates the national isolation — there is nothing
you can do about this fact.” Therefore, “before the restoration
of Israel, the renunciation of one’s Jewish identity was
equivalent to refusal to support the persecuted and could be
regarded as a cowardly surrender.” But “now, we are talking not
about surrender, but about a free choice.”[3086]
Thus, Koestler o ered a tough choice to the Diaspora Jews:
“to become Israelis or to stop being Jews. He himself took the
latter path.”[3087] (Needless to say, Jews in the Diaspora met
Koestler’s conclusions mainly with angry criticism.)
Yet those who had chosen the rst option, the citizens of the
State of Israel, obtained a new support and, from that, a new
view at this eternal problem. For instance, a modern Israeli
author writes sharply: “The Galut Jew is an immoral creature.
He uses all the bene ts of his host country but at the same time
he does not fully identify with it. These people demand the
status which no other nation in the world has — to be allowed
to have two homelands: the one, where they currently live, and
another one, where ‘their heart lives.’ And after that they still
wonder why they are hated!”[3088]
And they do wonder a lot: “Why, why are the Jews so disliked
(true, the Jews are disliked, this is fact; otherwise, why strive
for liberation?)? And from what? Apparently, not from our
Jewishness….” “We know very well that we should liberate
ourselves, it is absolutely necessary, though … we still cannot
tell exactly what from.”[3089]
A natural question — what should we do to be loved — is
seldom asked. Jewish authors usually see the whole world as
hostile to them, and so they give way to grief: “The world is
now split into those who sympathize with the Jewish people,
and those seeking to destroy the Jewish people.”[3090]
Sometimes, there is proud despair: “It is humiliating to rely on
the authorities for the protection from the nation which
dislikes you; it is humiliating to thank ingratiatingly the best
and worthiest of this nation, who put in a good word for
you.”[3091]
Another Israeli disagrees: “In reality, this world is not solely
divided on the grounds of one’s attitude toward Jews, as we
sometimes think owing to our excessive sensitivity.” A. Voronel
agrees: “The Jews pay too much attention to anti-Semites, and
too little — to themselves.”[3092]
 Israel, the Jewish state, must become the center that secures
the future of world Jewry. As early as in the 1920s no other
than Albert Einstein wrote to no other than Pyotr Rutenberg, a
former Social Revolutionary and possibly the main author of
the revolutionary demands of January 9, 1905 (he
accompanied Orthodox Father Gapon during the workers’
procession on that date but was later one of his executioners;
still later, Rutenberg left Russia to rebuild Palestine): “First of
all, your [Palestinian settlers’] lives must be protected, because
you sacri ce yourselves for the sake of the Spirit and in the
name the entire Jewish nation. We must demonstrate that we
are a nation with the will to live and that we are strong enough
for the great accomplishment that would consolidate our
people and protect our future generations. For us and for our
posterity, the State must become as precious as the Temple was
for our ancestors.”[3093]
Jewish authors support this conviction in many ways: “The
Jewish problem, apparently, has no reliable solution without
the Jewish state.”[3094] ”Israel is the center that guarantees the
future of the Jews of the whole world.”[3095] Israel is the only
correct place for Jews, one where their “historical activity does
not result in historical asco.”[3096]
And only a rumble coming from that tiny and endlessly
beleaguered country betrays “the phantom of the Catastrophe,
permanently imprinted in the collective unconscious of the
Israelis.”[3097]

   
And what is the  status of assimilation, the Diaspora, and Israel
today?
 By the 1990s, assimilation had advanced very far. For
example, “for 80-90% of the American Jews, the modern
tendencies of the Jewish life promise gradual assimilation.”
This holds true not only for the United States: “Jewish life
gradually disappears from most of the Diaspora communities.”
Most   modern-day Jews “do not have painful memories of the
Catastrophe…. They identify with Israel much less than their
parents.” Doubtlessly, “the role of the Diaspora is shrinking
disastrously, and this is fraught with inevitable loss of its
essential characteristics.” “Will our grandchildren remain
Jews…? Will the Diaspora survive the end of this millennium
and, if so,   for how long? Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, one of the
greatest teachers of our time … warns that the Jews of the
Diaspora are no longer a group, ‘whose survival is guaranteed
by being in jeopardy.’” And because of that, they, paradoxically,
“are already on the road to extinction, participating in the
‘Catastrophe of self-destruction.’” Moreover, “anti-Semitism in
Western countries cannot be anymore considered as the
element that strengthens Jewish identity. Anti-Semitic
discrimination in politics, business, universities, private clubs,
etc. is for all practical purposes eliminated.”[3098] In present-
day Europe “there are many Jews who do not identify as Jews
and who react idiosyncratically to any attempt to connect
them with that arti cial community.” “The assimilated Jew
does not want to feel like a Jew; he casts away the traits of his
race (according to Sartre).”[3099] The same author o ers a
scorching assessment: “European Jews reject their Jewishness;
they think it is anti-Semitism that compels them to be the Jews.
Yet that is a contradiction: A Jew identi es as a Jew only when
he is in danger. Then he escapes as a Jew. But when he himself
becomes the source of danger, he is not a Jew.”[3100]
Thus, “the contours of the collapse of the Diaspora take
shape exactly when the Western Jews enjoy freedom and
wealth unprecedented in Jewish history, and when they are, or
appear to be, stronger than ever.” And “if the current trends do
not change, most of the Diaspora will simply disappear. We
have to admit a real possibility of the humiliating, though
voluntary, gradual degradation of the Diaspora…. Arthur
Koestler, the advocate of assimilation, who in the 1950s
predicted the death of the Diaspora, might prove to be right
after all.”[3101]
Meanwhile, “the Jews of the world, sometimes even to their
own surprise, feel like they are personally involved in the
destiny of Israel.” “If, God forbid, Israel is destroyed, then the
Jews in other countries will disappear too. I cannot explain
why, but the Jews will not survive the second Catastrophe in
this century.”[3102] Another author attributes the “Jewish
mythology of the imminent Catastrophe” precisely to life in
the Diaspora, and this is why “American (and Soviet) Jews often
express such opinions.” They prepare for the Catastrophe:
should Israel fall, it will be they who will carry on the Jewish
nation.[3103] Thus, “almost all of many hypotheses
attempting to explain the purpose of Jewish Diaspora …
recognize that it makes Jewry nearly indestructible; it
guarantees Jewry eternal life within the limits of the existence
of mankind.”[3104]
We also encounter quite a bellicose defense of the principle
of Diaspora. American professor Leonard Fayne said: “We
oppose the historical demand to make aliyah. We do not feel
like we are in exile.” In June 1994 “the President of the World
Jewish Congress, Shoshana S. Cardin, aggressively announced
to the Israelis: ‘We are not going to become the forage for aliyah
to Israel, and we doubt you have any idea about the richness
and harmony of American Jewish life.’”[3105] Others state:
“We are interesting for the peoples of the world not because of
peculiarities of our statehood, but because of our Diaspora
which is widely recognized as one of the greatest wonders of
world history.”[3106] Others are rather ironic: “One rogue
came up with … the elegant excuse that the “choseness” of the
Jews is allegedly nothing else but to be eternally
scattered.”[3107] “The miracle of the restoration of Israel post
factum gave new meaning to the Diaspora; simultaneously, it
had brilliantly concluded the story that could otherwise drag
on. In short, it had crowned the miracle of the Diaspora. It
crowned it, but did not abolish it.”[3108] Yet “it is ironic too, as
the goals for which we struggled so hard and which lled us
with such pride and feeling of di erence, are already
achieved.”[3109]
Understanding the fate of the Diaspora and any successful
prediction of its future largely depends on the issue of mixed
marriages. Intermarriage is the most powerful and irreversible
mechanism of assimilation. (It is no accident that such unions
are so absolutely forbidden in the Old Testament: “They have
dealt faithlessly with the Lord; for they have borne alien
children.” (Hosea 5:7)) When Arnold J. Toynbee proposed
intermarriage as a means to ght anti-Semitism, hundreds of
rabbis opposed him: “Mass mixed marriage means the end of
Jewry.”[3110]
A dramatic growth of mixed marriages is observed in the
Western countries: “Data documenting the statistics of
‘dissolution’ are chilling. In the 1960s ‘mixed marriages’
accounted for approximately 6% of Jewish marriages in the
United States, the home of the largest Jewish community in the
world. Today [in 1990s], only one generation later, this number
reached 60% — a ten-fold increase. The share of ‘mixed
marriages’ in Europe and Latin America is approximately the
same…. Moreover, apart from the orthodox Jews, almost all
Jewish families in Western countries have an extremely low
birth rate.” In addition, “only a small minority of children from
‘mixed families’ are willing to adopt a distinctly Jewish way of
life.”[3111]
And what about Russia? The Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia
provides the following statistics: in 1988 [still under the Soviet
regime], in the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic), 73% of married Jewish men, and 63% of married
Jewish women had non-Jewish spouses (in 1978 these
numbers were lower: 13% for men, and 20% for women.).
“Actually, Jews in such marriages tend to lose their Jewish self-
consciousness much faster; they more often identify
themselves with other nationalities during census.”[3112]
Thus, almost everywhere, to a greater or lesser degree, we
have the “erosion of Jewish life,” “dilution of racial, religious
and ethnic borders that, until recently, served as the barriers
for assimilation and `intermarriage.´” Today, “when common
anti-Semitism declined so abruptly, … the Jews have lost a
many great principles that in past used to be strong pillars of
self-identi cation.”[3113]
The Jews of the Diaspora are often attacked by the Israelis.
Thirty and forty years after the creation of the State of Israel,
the Israelis ask Diaspora Jews mockingly and sometimes
angrily: “So, what about modern Jews? Most likely, they will
always remain in their true historical home, in the
Galuth.”[3114] “The Algerian Jews had preferred France to
Israel, and then the majority of the Iranian Jews, who left
Khomeini’s rule, gave a wide berth to Israel.” “By pulling up
stakes, they search for countries with higher standards of
living, and a higher level of civilization. The love of Zion is not
su cient in itself.”[3115] “The eternal image of a classical
‘imminent catastrophe’ does not attract the Jews to Israel
anymore.”[3116] “The Jews are a nation corrupted by their
stateless and ahistoric existence.”[3117] “The Jews did not pass
the test. They still do not want to return to their homeland.
They prefer to stay in Galut and complain about anti-Semitism
every time they are criticized…. And nobody may say a bad
word about Israel, because to criticize Israel is ‘anti-Semitism!’
If they are so concerned about Israel, why do they not move
here to live? But no, this is exactly what they try to
avoid!”[3118] “Most of the Jews of the world have already
decided that they do not want to be independent…. Look at the
Russian Jews. Some of them wanted independence, while
others preferred to continue the life of a mite on the Russian
dog. And when the Russian dog had become somewhat sick
and angry, they have turned to the American dog. After all, the
Jews lived that way for two thousand years.”[3119]
And now, the the Diaspora Jew “is often nervous when
confronted by an Israeli; he would rather feel guilty than …
share his fate with Israel. This sense of inferiority is
compensated by intensely maintaining his Jewish identity …
through deliberate over-emphasizing of petty Jewish
symbolism.” At the same time, “the Jew from the Diaspora
alone shoulders the speci c risk of confronting surrounding
anti-Semitism.” Yet, “no matter how the Israel behaves, the
Diaspora has no choice: it will quietly stand behind the Israelis
like an unloved but faithful wife.”[3120]
It was forecasted that “by 2021, the Diaspora will probably
shrink by another million souls.” “The interior workings of
Jewish history… indicate that, most likely, the size of world
Jewry will further decrease with the gradual concentration of a
Jewish majority in Zion and not in the Diaspora.”[3121]
Yet couldn’t it be the other way around? Maybe, after all, the
Russian Jew Josef Bikerman was right when he con dently
claimed that the Diaspora is indestructible? “I accept Galut,
where we have lived for two thousand years, where we have
developed strong cohesion, and where we must live
henceforth, to live and prove ourselves.”[3122] Could it be that
those two voices which, according to Gershenzon, always
sound in Jewish ears — one calling to mix with the
surroundings, and another demanding to preserve Jewish
national uniqueness, — will sound forever?
A reputable historian noted (after World War II) “a paradox
in the life of modern Jewry: ever-growing immersion of Jews in
the life of other nations does not diminish their national
identity and sometimes even intensi es it.”[3123]
Below are few testimonies made by Russian Jews during the
Soviet (“internationalist”) period.
“I always had an acute perception of my Jewishness…. From
the age of 17, when I left the cradle of high school, I mixed in
circles where the Jewish question was central.” “My father had
a very strong Jewish spirit; despite that, he never observed
traditions, Mitzvoth, did not know the language, and yet …
everything, that he, a Jew, knew, was somehow subordinated to
his Jewish identity.”[3124]
A writer from Odessa, Arkady Lvov, remembers: “When I
was a 10-year old boy, I searched for the Jews among scientists,
writers, politicians, and rst of all, as a Young Pioneer [a
communist youth group in the former Soviet Union], I looked
for them among the members of government.” Lazar
Kaganovich was in third place, ahead of Voroshilov and
Kalinin, “and I was proud of Stalin’s minister Kaganovich… I
was proud of Sverdlov, I was proud of Uritsky… And I was
proud of Trotsky — yes, yes, of Trotsky!” He thought that
Ostermann (the adviser of Peter the Great) was a Jew, and when
he found that Ostermann actually was German, he had “a
feeling of disappointment, a feeling of loss,” but he “was openly
proud that Sha rov was a Jew.”[3125]
Yet there were many Jews in Russia who were not afraid “to
merge with the bulk of the assimilating body,”[3126] who
devotedly espoused Russian culture:
 “In the old days, only a handful of Jews experienced this:
Antokolsky, Levitan, Rubinstein, and a few others. Later there
were more of them. Oh, they’ve fathomed Russia so deeply
with their ancient and re ned intuition of heart and mind!
They’ve perceived her shimmering, her enigmatic play of light
and darkness, her struggles and su erings. Russia attracted
their hearts with her dramatic ght between good and evil,
with her thunderstorms and weaknesses, with her strengths
and charms. But several decades ago, not a mere handful, but
thousands Jews entered Russian culture…. And many of them
began to identify sincerely as Russians in their souls, thoughts,
tastes and habits…. Yet there is still something in the Jewish
soul … a sound, a dissonance, a small crack — something very
small, but through it, eventually, distrust, mockery and
hostility leaks from the outside, while from the inside some
ancient memory works away.
So who am I? Who am I? Am I Russian?
No, no. I am a Russian Jew.”[3127]
Indeed, assimilation apparently has some insurmountable
limits. That explains the di erence between full spiritual
assimilation and cultural assimilation, and all the more so,
between the former and widespread civic and social
assimilation. Jews — fatefully for Jewry — preserve their
identity despite all outward signs of successful assimilation,
they preserve “the inner Jewish character” (Solomon Lurie).
The wish to fully merge with the rest of mankind, in spite of
all strict barriers of the Law seems natural and vivid. But is it
possible? Even in the 20th century some Jews believed that “the
uni cation of the mankind is the ideal of Judaic
Messianism.”[3128] But is it really so? Did such an ideal ever
exist?
Far more often, we hear vigorous objections to it: “Nobody
will convince or compel me to renounce my Jewish point of
view, or to sacri ce my Jewish interests for the sake of some
universal idea, be it ‘proletarian internationalism,’ (the one we
idiots believed in the 1920s) or ‘Great Russia,’ or ‘the triumph
of Christianity,’ or ‘the bene t of all mankind,’ and so
on.”[3129]
Nearly assimilated non-Zionist and non-religious Jewish
intellectuals often demonstrate a totally di erent attitude. For
instance, one highly educated woman with broad political
interests, T.M.L., imparted to me in Moscow in 1967 that “it
would be horrible to live in an entirely Jewish milieu. The most
precious trait of our nation is cosmopolitanism. It would be
horrible if all Jews would gather in one militarist state. It is
totally incomprehensible for assimilated Jews.” I objected
timidly: “But it cannot be a problem for the assimilated Jews as
they are not Jews anymore.” She replied: “No, we still have some
[Jewish] genes in us.”
Yet it is not about the fatality of origin, blood or genes, it is
about which pain — Jewish pain or that of the host nation — is
closer to one’s heart. “Alas, nationality is more than just
knowledge of language, or an introduction to the culture, or
even an attachment to the nature and way of life of the
country. There is another dimension in it — that of the
commonality of historic destiny, determined for each
individual by his involvement in the history and destiny of his
own people. While for others this involvement is
predetermined by birth, for the Jew it is largely a question of
personal choice, that of a hard choice.”[3130]
So far, assimilation has not been very convincing. All those
who proposed various ways for universal assimilation have
failed. The di cult problem of assimilation persists. And
though on a global scale the process of assimilation has
advanced very far, it by no means foredooms the Diaspora.
 “Even Soviet life could not produce a fully assimilated Jew,
the one who would be assimilated at the deepest, psychological
level.”[3131] And, as a Jewish author concludes, “Wherever you
look, you will nd insoluble Jewish residue in the assimilated
liquid.”[3132]
Yet individual cases of deep assimilation with bright life
histories do occur. And we in Russia welcome them
wholeheartedly.

   
“A Russian Jew … A Jew, a Russian…. So much blood and tears
have been shed around this boundary, so much unspeakable
torment with no end in sight piled up. Yet, at the same time, we
have also witnessed much joy of spiritual and cultural
growth…. There were and still are numerous Jews who decide
to shoulder that heavy cross: to be a Russian Jew, and at the
same time, a Russian. Two a ections, two passions, two
struggles…. Isn’t it too much for one heart? Yes, it is too much.
But this is exactly where the fatal tragedy of this dual identity
is. Dual identity is not really an identity. The balance here is not
an innate but rather an acquired entity.”[3133] That re ection
on the pre-revolutionary Russia was written in 1927 in the
Paris emigration.
Some fty years later, another Jew, who lived in Soviet
Russia and later emigrated to Israel, looked back and wrote:
“We, the Jews who grew up in Russia, are a weird cross — the
Russian Jews…. Others say that we are Jews by nationality and
Russians by culture. Yet is it possible to change your culture
and nationality like a garment…? When an enormous press
drives one metal into another, they cannot be separated, not
even by cutting. For decades we were pressed together under a
huge pressure. My national identity is expressed in my culture.
My culture coalesced with my nationality. Please separate one
from another. I am also curious which cells of my soul are of
the Russian color and which are of the Jewish one. Yet there
was not only pressure, not only a forced fusion. There was also
an unexpected a nity between these intercrossing origins, at
some deep spiritual layers. It was as if they supplemented each
other to a new completeness: like space supplements time, the
spiritual breadth supplements the spiritual depth, and the
acceptance supplements the negation; and there was a mutual
jealousy about `choseness´. Therefore, I do not have two souls,
which quarrel with each other, weaken each other, and split me
in two. I have one soul … and it is not two-faced, not divided in
two, and not mixed. It is just one.”[3134]
And the response from Russia: “I believe that the contact of
the Jewish and Slavic souls in Russia was not a coincidence;
there was some purpose in it.”[3135]
 Author’s afterword

In 1990, while nishing April 1917 and sorting out the

enormous amount of material not included in The Red Wheel, I
decided to present some of that material in the form of a
historical essay about Jews in the Russian revolution.
Yet it became clear almost immediately that in order to
understand those events the essay must step back in time.
Thus, it stepped back to the very rst incorporation of the Jews
into the Russian Empire in 1772. On the other hand, the
revolution of 1917 provided a powerful impetus to Russian
Jewry, so the essay naturally stretched into the post-
revolutionary period. Thus, the title Two Hundred Years
Together was born.
However, it took time for me to realize the importance of
that distinct historical boundary drawn by mass emigration of
the Jews from the Soviet Union that had begun in the 1970s
(exactly 200 years after the Jews appeared in Russia) and which
had become unrestricted by 1987. This boundary had been
abolished, so that for the rst time, the non-voluntary status of
the Russian Jews no longer a fact: they ought not to live here
anymore; Israel waits for them; all countries of the world are
open to them. This clear boundary changed my intention to
keep the narrative up to the mid-1990s, because the message of
the book was already played out: the uniqueness of Russian-
Jewish entwinement disappeared at the moment of the new
Exodus.
Now, a totally new period in the history of the by-now-free
Russian Jewry and its relations with the new Russia began.
This period started with swift and essential changes, but it is
still too early to predict its long-term outcomes and judge
whether its peculiar Russian-Jewish character will persevere or
it will be supplanted with the universal laws of the Jewish
Diaspora. To follow the evolution of this new development is
beyond the lifespan of this author.
[1]
J. D. Brutskus, Istoki rousskogo evreïstva (Les origines des Juifs
russes), in Annuaire du monde juif, 1939. Paris, éd. de l'Union
des intellectuels russo-juifs, pp. 17-23.
[2]
EJ, t. 15, p. 648.
[3]
PEI, I . 2, p. 40.
[4]
EJ, t. 9, p. 526.
[5]
V N. Toporov, Sviatost i sviatye v russkoï doukhovnoï koultoure
(La sainteté et les saints russes dans la culture russe
spirituelle), t. 1, M. 1995, pp. 283-286. 340.
[6]
N. M . Karamzine, Isloria gosoudarstva Rossiiskogo (Histoire de
la nation russe), Saint-Pétersbourg. 1842-1844, t. 1, p. 127. Cf.
également : S. M . Soloviev. Isloria Rossii s drevneichikh vremen
(Histoire de la Russie depuis les origines) en 15 volumes, M.
1962-1966. t. 1. p. 181.
[7]
Brutskus, pp. 21-22 ; EJ, t. 7, p. 588.
[8]
Toporov, t. 1, p. 280.
[9]
PEJ, t. 4, p. 253.
[10]
Karamzine, t. 2. pp. 87-88.
[11]
V. N. Tatischev, Histoire russe en 7 volumes, t. 2, M. 1963, p.
129.
[12]
Ibidem, p. 129.
[13]
Kuramzine, t. 2. Notes, p. 89.
[14]
Brutskus, p. 23.
[15]
Suloviev, livre I, p. 546.
[16]
Brutskus, p. 26.
[17]
EJ, t. 9, p. 5.
[18]
Ibidem, p. 517.
[19]
Karamzine, t. 4, pp. 54-55.
[20]
PEJ. t. 4, p. 254.
[21]
EJ, t. 5, p. 165.
[22]
Ibidem, 1.13. p. 610.
[23]
Karamzine, t. 6. p. 121.
[24]
Ibidem, p. 121.
[25]
Soloviev, livre III, p. 185.
[26]
Karamzine, t. 6, pp. 121-122.
[27]
J. Hessen, Istoria evreïskogo naroda v Rossii (Histoire du peuple
juif en Russie), en 2 vol., 1.1, Leningrad, 1925, p. 8.
[28]
Dictionnaire encyclopédique en 82 volumes, Saint-Pétersbourg,
1890-1904, t. 22, 1904, p. 943.
[29]
EJ, t. 7, p. 577.
[30]
Karamzine, t. 6, p. 122.
[31]
Sotoviev, livre III, p. 185.
[32]
Karamzine, t. 6, pp. 120-123.
[33]
Toporov, t. 1, p. 357.
[34]
Karamzine, t. 6. p. 123.
[35]
EJ, t. 7, p. 580.
[36]
Karamzine, t. 6, p. 123.
[37]
Soloviev, livre III. p. 168.
[38]
A.V. Kariachev, Olchcrki po istorii Russkoï Tserkvi (Essais sur
l'histoire de l'Église russe) en 2 vol., Paris. 1959, t. 1, pp. 495,
497.
[39]
EJ. t. 13, p. 610.
[40]
Ibidem, t. 7, p. 579.
[41]
PEJ, t. 2, p. 509.
[42]
Kartachev, t. 1, p. 505.
[43]
S. F. Platonov, Moskva i Zapad (Moscou et l'Occident), Berlin,
1926, pp. 37-38.
[44]
PEJ, t. 2, p. 509.
[45]
Hessen, t. 1, p. 8.
[46]
Brutskus ; CM, t. 1, p 28.
[47]
El, t. 8, p. 749.
[48]
Hessen, t. 1. pp. 8-9.
[49]
Ibidem, p. 9.
[50]
Karamzine, t. 12, p. 35-36 ; notes, p. 33.
[51]
PEJ. t. 7, p. 290.
[52]
Hessen, t. I, p. 9.
[53]
Karamzine, t. 12, p. 141.
[54]
/. M . Dijour. Evrci v ckonomitcheskoï jizni Rossii (Les Juifs
dans la vie économique de la Russie), in LMJR, p. 156.
[55]
EJ, t. 13, p. 611.
[56]
Ibidem.
[57]
J. Guessen, t. 1, pp. 9-10.
[58]
EJ, 1.11, p. 330.
[59]
Ibidem.
[60]
EJ, 1.13, p. 612.
[61]
Soloviev, livre VJH, p. 76.
[62]
Ibidem, livre X, p. 477.
[63]
El, t. 5, p. 519.
[64]
EJ, 1.11, p. 330.
[65]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 11-12.
[66]
Ibidem, p. 13 ; EJ, t. 2, p. 592.
[67]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 13-15 ; EJ, t. 2, p. 592.
[68]
EJ, t. 10, pp. 224-225.
[69]
Ibidem, t. 4, p. 591.
[70]
Ibidem, t. 10, p. 225.
[71]
Soloviev, livre X. pp. 256-257.
[72]
Hessen, t. 1. p. 15.
[73]
Soloviev, livre XI, pp. 155-156.
[74]
Hessen, 1. 1, p. 16.
[75]
Soloviev, livre XI, p. 204.
[76]
Hessen, t. I , p. 18.
[77]
S. M Doubnov, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, from
the earliest times until the présent day, Philadelphie, the Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1916, vol. 1, p. 258. Trad.
française di usée par les éd. du Cerf, Paris, 1992. 78. EJ, t. 7, p.
513.
[78]
EJ, t. 7, p. 513.
[79]
Dans son livre inachevé et resté inédit sur la politique du
régime tsariste à l'égard des Juifs, Telnikov fait état de
nombreuses et importantes sources que nous avons utilisées
avec reconnaissance dans la première partie de cet ouvrage.
[80]
E. Herrmann, Geschichte des russischen Staats. Fiinfter band :
Von der Thronbes-teigung der Kaiserin Elisabeth bis zur Feier
des Friedens von kainardsche (1742-1775), Hambourg, 1853,
p. 171.
[81]
G. B. Sliosberg, Dorevolioutsionnyi stroï Rossii (Le régime
prérévolutionnaire de Russie), Paris, 1933, p. 264.
[82]
EJ, t. 5. pp. 519-520.
[83]
Soloviev, livre XI, pp. 134, 319-322.
[84]
Ibidem, p. 383.
[85]
Hessen, Istoria evreïskogo naroda v Rossii (History of the
Jewish People in Russia), in 2 volumes, t. 1, Leningrad, 1925, p.
149.
[86]
M. Kovalevsky, Ravnopravie evreev i ego vragi (The Equality of
the Rights of Jews and their Adversaries), in Schit, literary
collection edited by L. Andréev, M. Gorky and F. Sologoub, 3rd
edition completed, Russian Society for the Study of the lives of
Jews, Moscow, 1916, p. 117.
[87]
Double tax instituted for the Jews by Catherine (to whom the
“old believers” had long been subjected), but which was hardly
applied.
[88]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 148-158; JE, t. 1, pp. 799-800.
[89]
JE, t. 13, pp. 158-159.
[90]
Hessen, t. 1, p. 158-159.
[91]
JE, t. 3, p. 79.
[92]
Hessen, t. 1, p. 128.
[93]
V. N. Nikitin, Evrei i zemledeltsy: Istoritcheskoe.
zakonodatelnoe. administra-tivnoc i bylovoc polojenie kolonii
so vremeni ikh vozniknivenia do nachikh dneï (The Jews in
Agriculture: Historical, legal, administrative, practice of the
colonies from their origin to the present day), 1807-1887, Saint
Petersburg, 1887, pp. 6-7.
[94]
Prince N. N. Golitsyn, Istoria rousskogo zakonodatelstva o
evreiakh (History of Russian Legislation for the Jews), Saint
Petersburg, t. 1, 1649-1825, p. 430.
[95]
Ibidem, t. 1, pp. 439-440.
[96]
Ibidem.

[97]
JE, t. 3. p. 79.
[98]
G. R. Derzhavin, works in 9 vol., 2nd ed., Saint Petersburg, 1864-
1883, t. 6, 1876, pp. 761-762.
[99]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 163-165.
[100]
JE, t. 1. p. 801.
[101]
Ibidem.

[102]
Hessen, 1.1, p. 163-167.
[103]
JE, t. 5, p. 859.
[104]
S. Pozner, Evrei Litvy i Beloroussii 125 let lomou nazad (The
Jews of Lithuania and Belarus 125 Years Ago), in M.J., Directory,
1939, pp. 60, 65-66.
[105]
PJE, t. 7. pp. 309-311.
[106]
Cf, Rousskaïa Volia (The Russian Will), Petrograd, 1917, 22
April, p. 3.
[107]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 222-223.
[108]
JE*, t. 3, pp. 80-81.
[109]
Ibidem, t. 5, pp. 609, 621.
[110]
Ibidem, p. 612.

[111]
JE, t. 11, p. 492.
[112]
V. V. Choulguine, Tchto nam v nikh ne nravitsia…: Ob
antisemitism v Rossii (What we do not like about them: Anti-
Semitism in Russia). Paris, 1929, p. 129.
[113]
JE*, t. 3, p. 81.
[114]
Ibidem*.
[115]
Ibidem*, p. 82; cf. equally Hessen, t. 1. pp. 185, 187.
[116]
P. I. Pestel, Rousskaïa pravda (Russian Truth), Saint Petersburg,
1906, chap. 2, § 14, pp. 50-52.
[117]
Ibidem*, t. 11, p. 493.
[118]
Ibidem*, 1.1, p. 804.
[119]
Ibidem*, 1.11, p. 493.
[120]
Ibidem*, t. 1, p. 804.
[121]
Ibidem, t. 11, p. 493.
[122]
Hessen*. t. 1, pp. 206-207.
[123]
JE, t. 11, p. 493.
[124]
Sabbatarians: sect whose existence is attested from the late
seventeenth century, which was characterised by pronounced
Judaising tendencies.
[125]
PJE, t. 7, p. 313; Kovalevski, in Schit [The Butcher], p. 17.
[126]
JE, 1.1, p. 805.
[127]
JE, t. 12, p. 599.

[128]
Nikitin, pp. 6-7.
[129]
Ibidem, pp. 7, 58, 154.
[130]
I. Orchansky, Evrei v Rossii (Jews in Russia), Essays and Studies,
fasc. 1, Saint Petersburg, 1872, pp. 174-175.
[131]
Nikitin, pp. 3, 128.
[132]
Ibidem*, pp. 7, 13, 16, 19, 58.
[133]
Ibidem*, pp. 14, 15, 17, 19, 24, 50.
[134]
Ibidem, pp. 26, 28, 41, 43-44, 47, 50, 52, 62-63, 142.
[135]
Ibidem*, p. 72.
[136]
Ibidem, pp. 24, 37-40, 47-50, 61, 65, 72-73, 93.
[137]
Ibidem, pp. 29, 37-38.
[138]
Ibidem, pp. 29, 49, 67, 73, 89, 189.
[139]
Ibidem*, pp. 87-88.
[140]
Ibidem*, pp. 64, 78-81, 85, 92-97, 112, 116-117, 142-145.
[141]
Ibidem, pp. 79, 92, 131, 142, 146-149.
[142]
Ibidem*, pp. 36, 106, 145.
[143]
Ibidem, pp. 13, 95, 109, 144, 505.
[144]
Ibidem, pp. 99-102, 105, 146.
[145]
Ibidem, pp. 99-102, 105, 146.
[146]
Ibidem*, pp. 103-104.
[147]
Orchansky, pp. 170, 173-174.
[148]
Nikitin, p. 114.
[149]
Ibidem*, p. 135.
[150]
Ibidem, p. 118.
[151]
Ibidem*, pp. 110, 120-129, 132, 144, 471.
[152]
Ibidem, pp. 138, 156.
[153]
Hessen, 1.1. pp. 205-206.
[154]
Ibidem, pp. 176-181; JE, t. 7, pp. 103-104.
[155]
Hessen, 1.1, pp. 180, 192-194.
[156]
PJE, t. 4, pp. 582-586; Hessen, 1.1, p 183.
[157]
Hessen*, t. 1, pp. 211-212.
[158]
Pestel, pp. 52-53.
[159]
Hessen*, t. 2, p. 18.
[160]
Hessen, I. 1. pp. 169-170.
[161]
Ibidem, p. 51; JE, t. 14, p. 491.
[162]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 171-173.
[163]
Hessen*, t. 2, pp. 11-13.
[164]
Ibidem, t. 1, p. 195.
[165]
Ibidem, pp. 173-175.
[166]
Ibidem*, pp. 191-192.
[167]
Ibidem, p. 209.
[168]
Ibidem, p. 178.
[169]
Orchansky, p. 32.
[170]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 178-179, 184, 186.
[171]
Ibidem, I. 2, pp. 62-63.
[172]
Ibidem*, t. 1, pp. 171-172.
[173]
Ibidem, t. 2, p. 56.
[174]
Ibidem, t. 1, p. 210.
[175]
Ibidem, pp. 170‒171; JE, t. 10, pp. 855-857.
[176]
Hessen, t. 1, pp. 190, 208.
[177]
B. C. Dinour, Religiozno-natsionalnyj oblik rousskoo cvreïstva
(The Religious and National Physionomy of Russian Jews), in
BJWR-1, p. 318.

[178]
Pozner, in JW-1, pp. 61, 63-64.
[179]
Dinour, BJWR-1, pp. 61, 63-64.
[180]
Ibidem, p. 318.
[181]
J. Mark, Literatoura na idich v Rossii (Yiddish Language
Literature in Russia), in BJWR-1, p. 520.
[182]
JE, t. 6, p. 92.
[183]
Ibidem, pp. 191-192.
[184]
J. Kissine, Rasmychlenia o ousskom evreïstve i ego lileraloure
(Thoughts on Russian Judaism and its literature), in Evreïskii
mir. 2, New York, ed. Of the Jewish Russian Union, 1944, p. 171.
[185]
JE, t. 6, pp. 192-193.
[186]
Dinour, LVJR-1, p. 314.
[187]
Hessen, p. 160.
[188]
Ibidem, p. 160.
[189]
Ibidem, t. 2, p. 1.
[190]
M. Troitsky, Evrei v rousskoï chkole (The Jews in Russian
Schools), in LVJR-1, p. 350.
[191]
Hessen*, t. 1, pp. 188-189.
[192]
Dinour, LVJR-1, p. 315.
[193]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 4-7.

[194]
Count Alexander Benkendor (1783-1844), named in 1814 by
Nicholas I Commander of the gendarmes and of the 3rd Section
(the intelligence service).
[195]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 8-10; JE, 1.15, p. 198.
[196]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 2-3.

[197]
JE, t. 11, p. 713.

[198]
Troitsky, in BJWR-1, p. 351.
[199]
(1818‒1881), The “liberator” tsar whose name is associated
with the “great reforms” of the 1860s (abolition of serfdom,
justice, the press, zemstvos, etc.) and the rise of the
revolutionary movement; assassinated on March 13, 1881 by a
commando of the Will of the People.
[200]
JE, t. 11, p. 709.
[201]
Ibidem, pp. 709‒710.

[202]
Hessen, Istoria evreïskogo naroda v Rossii (History of the
Jewish People in Russia), in 2 vol., t. 2, Leningrad, 1927, p. 27.
[203]
LJE, t. 7, p. 322.

[204]
JE, t. 11, pp. 709‒710.

[205]
LJE, t. 2, p. 509.

[206]
JE, 1.11, p. 710.

[207]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 30‒31.
[208]
V. N. Nikitin, Evrei zemlevladeltsy: Istoritcheskoe.
zakonodatelnoe, administrativnoe i bytovoe polojenie kolonij
so vremeni ikh vozniknovenia do nachikh dneï [Jewish
farmers: historical, legislative, administrative and concrete
situation of the colonies from their creation to the present
day], 1807‒1887, Saint Petersburg, 1887, p. 263.

[209]
JE, t. 13, p. 371.

[210]
Hessen*, t. 2, pp. 32‒34.

[211]
JE, t. 11, pp. 468‒469.

[212]
LJE, t. n7, p. 318.

[213]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 68‒71.

[214]
Ibidem, pp. 59‒61.


[215]
LJE, t. 7, p. 317.


[216]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 64‒65.

[217]
Ibidem, p. 141.

[218]
Ibidem, p. 34.

[219]
LJE, t. 7, p. 317.

[220]
LJE. t. 4, pp. 75‒76.

[221]
JE, t. 9 (which covers the years 1847‒1854), p. 243.

[222]
K. Korobkov, Evreïskaïa rekroutchina v tsarstvovanie Nikolaia 1
(The Recruitment of Jews under the Reign of Nicolas I), in
Evreïskaia starina, Saint Petersburg, 1913, t. 6, pp. 79‒80.

[223]
JE, t. 9, pp. 242‒243.

[224]
Ibidem, t. 7, pp. 443‒444.

[225]
Hessen, t. 2. p. 39.

[226]
JE, i. 12, p. 787 ; Hessen, t. 2, p. 39.

[227]
Ibidem, t. 5, p. 613.

[228]
Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. Reviewed, corrected and
augmented, t. 1, Moscow, 1994, p. 317.

[229]
JE, t. 12. p. 163.


[230]
Ibidem*, t. 11, p. 710.

[231]
Letter from V. I. Soloviev to T. Gertz, in V. Soloviev, Evrcïskij
vopros ‐ khristianskij vopros (The Jewish Problem is a Christian
Problem), collection of articles, Warsaw, 1906, p. 25.

[232]
Nicolas Leskov, Evrei v Rossii: neskolko zametchanij po
evreïskomou voprosou. (The Jews in Russia: A few remarks on
the Jewish Problem). Petrograd, 1919 (reproduction of the ed.
of 1884). p. 31.

[233]
I. Orchansky, Evrei v Rossii (Jews in Russia, essays and studies),
fasc. 1, Saint Petersburg, 1872, pp. 192‒195, 200‒207.


[234]
Ibidem, pp. 114‒116, 124‒125.

[235]
Nikitin*, pp. 168‒169, 171.

[236]
Ibidem, pp. 179‒181.

[237]
Ibidem*, pp. 185‒186. 190‒191.

[238]
Nikitin*, pp. 193‒197.


[239]
E. Gliner, Stikhia s tchelovctchcskim lilsom? (The element with
a human face?), in “Vremia i my” (International Review of
Literature and Social Problems). New York, 1993, n° 122, p.
133.

[240]
M. Guerchenson, Soudby evreïskogo naroda (The Destinies of
the Jewish People), in 22, Literary and political review of the
Jewish intelligentsia emigrated from the USSR to Israel, Tel‐
Aviv, n° 19, 1981, p. 111.

[241]
Nikitin, pp. 197‒199. 202‒205, 209, 216.

[242]
Ibidem, pp. 229‒230.

[243]
Ibidem, pp. 232‒234.

[244]
JE, t. 9, pp. 488‒489.

[245]
Nikitin, pp. 239, 260‒263. 267, 355, 358.

[246]
Ibidem, pp. 269, 277, 282, 300, 309, 329‒330, 346, 358, 367,
389‒391, 436‒443, 467.

[247]
Ibidem, pp. 309, 314, 354‒359, 364‒369.

[248]
Nikitin*, pp. 280‒285, 307, 420‒421, 434, 451, 548.

[249]
Orchansky, pp. 176, 182, 185, 191‒192.

[250]
Nikitin, pp. 259, 280, 283, 286. 301. 304‒305, 321, 402‒403.
416‒419, 610.

[251]
Ibidem*, pp. 290, 301, 321‒325, 349, 399, 408, 420‒421, 475,
596.

[252]
Ibidem*, p. 350‒351, 382‒385, 390, 425, 547, 679.

[253]
ount Alexis Araktchev (1769‒1834), a favourite of Alexander I,
creator of the “military colonies” which were to house the
soldiers with their families and replace the garrisons.
[254]
JE, 1.12, p. 695.

[255]
M. Kovalevsky, Ravnopravie evreev i ego vragui (The Equal
Rights of Jews and their Enemies), in Schit: literatournyj
sbornik (Literary collection), under the dir. of L. Andreyev, M.
Gorky and F. Sologub, 3rd ed. increased, Moscow, Russian
Society for the Study of Jewish Life, 1916, p. 117.
[256]
JE, t. 11, p. 494.
[257]
Kovalevsky, in Schit, p. 117.
[258]
Hessen*, t. 2, pp. 50‒52, 105‒106.
[259]
JE, t. 12, p. 599.
[260]
Hessen, t. 2. pp. 47‒48.
[261]
Or “the Grottoes”: a group of monasteries whose origins go
back to the middle of the eleventh century and which still exist
today.
[262]
Ibidem, pp. 40‒42.
[263]
LJE, t. 7, p. 318.
[264]
JE, t. 14, p. 944.
[265]
Ibidem, t. 11, p. 332.
[266]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 46, 48.
[267]
Leskov, pp. 45‒48.
[268]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 49.
[269]
Orchansky, p. 30.
[270]
JE. t. 3, p. 359.
[271]
JE, t. 13. p. 646.

[272]
J.M. Dijour, Evrei v ekonomitcheskoï jizni Rossii (The Jews in
Russian Economic life), in BJWR‐1, pp. 164‒165.
[273]
JE, t. 15, p. 153.
[274]
Dijour, in LJE‐1, pp. 165‒168.
[275]
Hessen*, t. 2, p. 77.
[276]
Ibidem, p. 84; JE, t. 13. p. 47.
[277]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 83.
[278]
Ibidem, p. 84; JE, t. 13. p. 47.
[279]
Hessen, t. 2. pp. 85‒86.
[280]
Ibidem, pp. 84, 86‒87.
[281]
JE, 1.13, pp. 47‒48.
[282]
Ibidem, t. 3, p. 334.
[283]
L Deitch, Roi evreev v rousskom revolioutsionnom dvïjenii,
(The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement), t. 1,
2nd ed., Moscow‐Leningrad, GIZ, 1925, p. 11.
[284]
JE, t. 9, p. 111.
[285]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 85.
[286]
Ibidem, p. 120.
[287]
Paul Axelrod (1850‒1928), founder in Geneva of the very small
group “Liberation of Labour” embryo of the future Russian
Social Democratic Party, founded in 1898.
[288]
Deitch, p. 12‒13.
[289]
I. M. Trotsky, The Jews in Russian Schools, in BJWR‐1, pp. 351‒
354.
[290]
Deitch, p. 10.
[291]
JE, 1.11, p. 713.
[292]
Hessen, t. 11, p. 112.
[293]
Ibidem, p. 121.
[294]
M. Krol, Natsionalism i assimiliatsia v evreïskoï islorii
(Nationalism and Assimilation in Jewish History), in JW, p.
188.
[295]
LJE, t. 4, p. 34; B. C. Dinour. Religiosno‐natsionalnyj oblik
rousskogo evreïstva (The Religious and National Pro le of the
Russian Jews) in BJWR‐1. p. 314.
[296]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 179.
[297]
LJE*, 1.4, pp. 20‒21.
[298]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 89‒90.
[299]
JE, t. 12, p. 640.
[300]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 19.
[301]
Hessen, 1.1, p. 203.
[302]
LJE, t. 7. p. 321.
[303]
Hessen, I. 2, pp. 107‒108.
[304]
Ibidem*, pp. 79‒80.
[305]
JE, t. 13, p. 439.

[306]
Hessen*, t. 2. pp. 81‒82.
[307]
Ibidem, pp. 82‒83.
[308]
Ibidem, pp. 100‒103.
[309]
Ibidem, p.103.
[310]
Dinour, in BJWR‐1. p. 319.
[311]
Hessen*. t. 2. pp. 103‒104.
[312]
Ibidem, pp. 107‒110.
[313]
LJE. t. 4. p. 75.
[314]
JE, t. 9. p. 243.
[315]
Hessen, 1.2. p. 115.
[316]
LJE, t. 7, p. 323.

[317]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 114‒118.
[318]
Ibidem, p. 112.
[319]
JE, 1.13, p. 274.

[320]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 118.
[321]
Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya [The Jewish Encyclopedia]
(henceforth—EE [JE]): V 16 T. Sankt-St.Petersburg.:
Obshchestvo dlya Nauchnikh Evreyskikh Izdaniy I Izd-vo
Brokrauz-Efron [Society for Scienti c Jewish Publications and
Brokrauz-Efron Publishing House], 1906-1913. T 13, p. 373-
374.
[322]
EE* [JE], T 3, p. 163.
[323]
Ibid. T 11, p. 698; Yu Gessen*. Istoriya evreyskogo naroda v Rossii
[History of the Jewish People in Russia] (henceforth—Yu.
Gessen): V 2 T. L., 1925-1927. T 2, p. 160.
[324]
Kratkaya Evreyskaya Entsiklopedia [The Short Jewish
Encyclopedia] (henceforth KEE [SJE] ): [V 10 T.] Jerusalem,
1976-2001. T 4, p. 79.
[325]
Yu. Gessen. T 2, p. 183.
[326]
M. Kovalevskiy*. Ravnopravie evreyev i ego vragi [Jewish Equal
Rights and its Opponents] // Shchit: Literaturniy sbornik [Shchit:
A Literary Anthology] / Under the Editorship of L. Andreyev, M
Gor’kiy, and F. Sologub. 3rd Edition., dop. M.: Russkoe
Obshchestvo dly izucheniya evreyskoy zhizni [Russian Society for
the Study of Jewish Life], 1916, p. 117-118.
[327]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 812-813.
[328]
Ibid. p. 808.
[329]
Ibid. p. 814-815; Yu Gessen*, T 2, p. 147-148.
[330]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 163.
[331]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 164.
[332]
Ibid. p. 161-162.
[333]
I. Orshanskiy. Evrei v Rossii: Ocherki i issledovaniya [The Jews in
Russia: Essays and Research]. Vip. 1 (henceforth—I.
Orshanskiy). Sankt-St. Petersburg., 1872, p. 10-11.
[334]
V.N. Nikitin. Evrei zemledel’tsi: Istoricheskoe, zakonodatel’noe,
administrativnoe i bitovoe polozhenie kolonii co vremeni ikh
vozniknoveniya do nashikh dney 1807-1887 [ Jewish Farmers:
the Historical, Legal, Administrative, and Everyday Condition
of the Colonies, from the Time of Their Origin to Our Days.
1807-1887]. (henceforth—V.N. Nikitin). Sankt-St. Petersburg,
1887, p. 557.
[335]
EE [JE], T 5, p. 610-611.
[336]
Ibid. T 13, p. 663.
[337]
Ibid*, T 5, p. 622.
[338]
Yu. Larin. Evrei i antisemitizm v SSSR [The Jews and Anti-
Semitism in the USSR]. Moscow; Leningrad: GIZ, 1929, p. 49.
[339]
I. Orshanskiy, p. 193.
[340]
G.B. Sliozberg. Dela minuvshikh dney: Zapiski russkogo evreya
[A airs of the Past: the Notes of a Russian Jew] (henceforth—
G.B. Sliozberg): V 3 T. Paris, 1933-1934. T 1, p. 95.
[341]
EE*, T 11, p. 495.
[342]
L. Deych. Rol’ evreyev v russkom revolyutsionnom dvizhenii [The
Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement]. T 1.
Second Edition. Moscow,; Leningrad.: GIZ, 1925, p. 14, 21-22.
[343]
Ibid. p. 28.
[344]
A.A. Gal’denveyzer. Pravovoe polozhenie evreyev v Rossii // [Sb.]
Kniga o russkom evreystve: Ot 1860-kh godov do Revolyutsii 1917g
[The Legal Position of the Jews in Russia // [Anthology] The
Book of Russian Jewry: from the 1860s to the Revolution of
1917]. (henceforth—KRE-1). New York: Soyuz Russkikh Evreyev
[Union of Russian Jews], 1960, p. 119.
[345]
Yu Gessen. T 2, p. 143.
[346]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 813.
[347]
Yu. Gessen*, T 2, p. 144-145; EE [JE] T 1, p. 813.
[348]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 158.
[349]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 144, 154-155.
[350]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 817.
[351]
KEE [SJE], T 4, p. 255.
[352]
Sm.: M. Kovalevskiy // Shchit, p. 118.
[353]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 818; T 11, p. 458-459; T 14, p. 841.
[354]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 150.
[355]
Ibid*, p. 148.
[356]
Ibid, p. 150.
[357]
Ibid. p. 169.
[358]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 208.
[359]
EE [JE], T 15, p. 209; T 1, p. 824.
[360]
Perezhitoe: Sbornik, posvyashchenniy obshchestvennoy i
kul’turnoy istorii evreyev v Rossii [Past Experiences: An
Anthology Dedicated to the Social and Cultural History of the
Jews in Russia]. T 2, Sankt-St. Petersburg, 1910, p. 102.
[361]
G.B. Sliozberg, T 1, p. 137.
[362]
KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 327.
[363]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 819.
[364]
Also, T 13, p. 943-944.
[365]
I.M. Trotskiy. Samodeyatel’nost i samopomoshch’ evreyev v Rossii
[The Individual Initiative and Self-Help of the Jews in Russia]
(OPE, ORT, EKO, OZE, EKOPO) // KRE-1, p. 471.
[366]
Yu. Gessen. T 2, p. 210.
[367]
EE [JE], T 13, p. 947; KEE [SJE], T 4, p. 770.
[368]
KEE [SJE], T 5, p. 473.
[369]
Also, T 4, p. 255.
[370]
Yu Gessen. T 2, p. 159-160, 210.
[371]
Also, p. 159.
[372]
B.Ts. Dinur. Religiozno-natsional’niy oblik russkogo evreystva [The
Religious-National Look of Russian Jewry] // KRE-1, p. 311-
312.
[373]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 640.
[374]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 161.
[375]
Also.
[376]
Also.
[377]
Yu. Orshanskiy, p. 12.
[378]
I. Orshanskiy, p. 1-15.
[379]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 224-225.
[380]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 83-84.
[381]
EE* [JE], T 7, p. 301-302.
[382]
G.B. Sliozberg, T 2, p. 155-156.
[383]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 164.
[384]
I. Orshanskiy, p. 65-68.
[385]
KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 332.
[386]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 824.
[387]
Also*, T 3, p. 164.
[388]
Also, T 1, p. 824; KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 332.
[389]
Golos [The Voice], 1881, No46, 15 (27) February, p. 1.
[390]
A. Shmakov. “Evreyskie” rechi [“Jewish” Questions]. Moscow,
1897, p. 101-103.
[391]
Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar’ [Encyclopedic Dictionary]: V 82 T.
Sankt-St. Petersburg.: Brokgauz i Efron, 1890-1904. T 54, p. 86.
[392]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 164-167.
[393]
G.B. Sliozberg, T 1, p. 116.
[394]
V.N. Nikitin*, p. 448, 483, 529.
[395]
Also*, p 473, 490, 501, 506-507, 530-531, 537-538, 547-548,
667.
[396]
Also, p. 474-475, 502, 547.
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V.N. Nikitin*, p. 502-505, 519, 542, 558, 632, 656, 667.
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Also*, p. 473, 510, 514, 529-533, 550, 572.
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Also, p. 447, 647.
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EE [JE], T 7, p. 756.
[401]
V.N. Nikitin*, p. 478-479, 524, 529-533, 550-551.
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EE [JE], T 7, p. 756.
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V.N. Nikitin, p. 534, 540, 555, 571, 611-616, 659.
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V.N. Nikitin, p. 635, 660-666.
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Also*, p. 658-661.
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EE [JE], T 7, p. 756.
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Also, T 16, p. 399.
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Also, T 2, p. 596.
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Also, T 5, p. 650.
[410]
Also, T 13, p. 606.
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Also, T 5, p. 518; T 13, p. 808.
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Also, T 16, p. 251.
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Yu Larin. Evrei i antisemitizm v SSSR [The Jews and
Antisemitism in the USSR], p. 36.
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V.N. Nikitin, p. xii-xiii.
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N.S. Leskov. Evrei v Rossii: Neskol’ko zamechaniy po evreyskomu
voprosu [The Jews in Russia: Several Observations on the Jewish
Question]. Pg., 1919 [reprint s izd. 1884], p. 61, 63.
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L.N. Tolstoy o evreyakh / Predisl. O.Ya. Pergamenta [L.N. Tolstoy
on the Jews / Foreword O.Ya. Pergamenta], Sankt-PeterburgSt.
Petersburg.: Vremya [Time], 1908, p. 15.
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EE [JE], T 15, p. 492.
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I. Orshanskiy, p. 71-72, 95-98, 106-107, 158-160.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 646.
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I.M. Dizhur. Evrei v ekonomicheskoy zhizni Rossii [The Jews in the
Economic Life of Russia] // KRE-1, p. 168; EE [JE], T 13, p.662.
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L. Deych. Rol’ evreyev…[The Role of the Jews..], T 1, p. 14-15.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 647, 656-658, 663-664; G.B. Sliozberg, T 3, p. 93;
KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 337.
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M.A. Aldanov. Russkie evrei v 70-80-kh godakh: Istoricheskiy
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Essay] // KRE-1, p. 45-46.
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G.B. Sliozberg, T 1, p. 141-142.
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KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 328, 331.
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EE [JE], T 7, p. 762.
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Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 168.
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Also, p. 168.
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Also, p. 206.
[430]
EE [JE], T 6, p. 712, 715-716.
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Also, T 13, p. 618.
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KRE-1, Predislovie [Foreword], p. iii-iv.
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Y.L. Teytel’. Iz moey zhizni za 40 let [From My Life of 40 Years].
Paris: Y. Povolotskiy and Company, 1925, p. 15.
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I.M. Trotskiy. Evrei v russkoy shkole [The Jews in Russian School]
// KRE-1, p. 354.
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Yu. Gessen. T 2, p. 179.
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L. Deych. Rol’ evreyev…, T 1, p. 14.
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EE [JE]*, T 13, p. 48.
[438]
Also, p. 49.
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Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 179.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 48.
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Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 208
[442]
KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 333.
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M.A. Aldanov // KRE-1, p. 45.
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I.M. Trotskiy. Evrei v russkoy shkole [The Jews in Russian Schools]
// KRE-1, p. 355-356.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 50.
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I.M. Trotskiy. Evrei v russkoy shkole [The Jews in Russian Schools]
// KRE-1, p. 355-356.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 618.
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G.Ya. Aronson. V bor’be za grazhdanskie i natsional’nie prava:
Obshchestvennie techeniya v russkom evreystve [In the Struggle
for Civil and National Rights: Social Currents in Russian Jewry]
// KRE-1, p. 207.
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Yu. Gessen. T 2, p. 178, 180.
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Ya.G. Frumkin. Iz istorii russkogo evreystva: Vospominaniya,
materiali, dokumenti [From the History of Russian Jewry:
Memoirs, Materials, and Documents] // KRE-1, p. 51.
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Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 180.
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EE [JE], T 1, p. 823.
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Yu Gessen*, T 2, p. 205.
[454]
Also, p. 170.
[455]
Also, p. 200-201.
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KEE [JEE], T 1, p. 532.
[457]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 200-201.
[458]
EE [JE], T 4, p. 918.
[459]
KEE [SJE], T 1, p. 532.
[460]
Rossiyskaya Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya [The Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia] (henceforth REE). Moscow, 1994–…T 1, p. 164.
[461]
Yu. Gessen. T 2, p. 200-201.
[462]
EE [JE], T 4, p. 918, 920.
[463]
KEE [SJE], T 1, p. 532.
[464]
REE [RJE], T 1, p. 164.
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Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 202.
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Also*, p. 202-203.
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S.M. Sliozberg. O russko-evreyskoy intelligentsia [On the Russo-
Jewish Intelligentsia] // Evreyskiy mir: Ezhegodnik na 1939g.
[Jewish World: Yearbook for 1939] (henceforth—EM-1 [JW-1]).
Paris: Ob’edinenie russko-evreyskoy intelligentsia [Association of
the Russo-Jewish Intelligentsia], p. 34.
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EE [JE], T 3, p. 334.
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Yudl. Mark. Literatura na idish v Rossii [Literature in Yiddish in
Russia] // KRE-1, p. 521; G.Ya. Aronson. Russko-Evreyskaya
pechat’ [Russo-Jewish Press] // Also, p. 548.
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B. Orlov. Ne te vi uchili alfaviti // Vremya i mi: Mezhdunarodniy
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Tel’-Aviv, 1975, No1, p. 130.
[471]
M. Osherovich. Russkie evrei v Soedinennikh Shtatakh Ameriki
[Russian Jews in the United States of America] // KRE-1, p. 289-
290.
[472]
S.M. Sliozberg // EM-1, p. 35.
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G.Ya. Aronson*. V bor’be za…[In the Struggle for…] // KRE-1, p
210.
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S. Shvarts. Evrei v Sovetskom Soyuze c nachala Vtoroy mirovoy
voyni. 1939-1965 [The Jews in the Soviet Union from the Start
of the Second World War. 1939-1965]. New York: Amerikanskiy
evreyskiy rabochiy komitet [American Jewish Workers
Committee], 1966, p. 290.
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I.M. Bikerman. K samopoznaniyu evreya: Chem mi bili, chem mi
stali, chem mi dolzhni bit’. [What We Were, What We Became,
and What We Should Be]. Paris, 1939, p. 48.
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K. Leytes. Pamyati M.A. Krolya [The Memoirs of M.A. Krol’] //
Evreyskiy mir [Jewish World]: Anthology 2 (henceforth EM-2
[JW-2]). New York: Soyuz russkikh evreyev v N’yu Yorke [Union of
Russian Jews in New York], 1944, p. 408-411.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 59.
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I.M. Trotskiy. Samodeyatel’nost’…[Individual Initiative…] //
KRE-1, p. 471-474.
[479]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 172.
[480]
EE [JE]*, T 3, p. 335.
[481]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 170.
[482]
Also, p. 171.
[483]
G.Ya. Aronson*. Russko-Evreyskaya pechat’ [Russo-Jewish Press]
// KRE-1, p. 562.
[484]
S.M. Ginzburg* // EM-1 [JW-1], p. 36.
[485]
Yu. Gessen*, T 2, p. 173.
[486]
Also*, p. 174.
[487]
Also, p. 174-175.
[488]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 480.
[489]
M.A. Aldanov // KRE-1, p. 44.
[490]
G.Ya. Aronson*. Russko-evreyskaya pechat’ [Russo-Jewish Press]
// KRE-1, p. 558-561.
[491]
M. Krol’. Natsionalizm i assimilyatsiya v evreyskoy istorii
[Nationalism and Assimilation in Jewish History] // EM-1 [JW-
1], p. 188-189.
[492]
James Parkes. The Jew and his Neighbor: a Study of the Causes of
anti-Semitism. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1932, p. 41.
[493]
Yu Gessen, T 2, p. 198.
[494]
Also.
[495]
Also, p. 177.
[496]
EE [JE], T 13, p. 638.
[497]
G.Ya. Aronson. Russko-Evreyskaya pechat’ [Russo-Jewish Press] //
KRE-1, p. 551.
[498]
KEE [SJE], T 6, p. 117.
[499]
Also, p. 117-118.
[500]
Also, p. 118.
[501]
K. Itskovich. Odessa-khlebniy gorod [Odessa—City of Bread] //
Novoe russkoe slovo [The New Russian Word], New York, 1984,
21 March, p. 6.
[502]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 334-335.
[503]
Also*, T 13, p. 638.
[504]
G.Ya. Aronson. V bor’be za…[In the Struggle for…] // KRE-1, p.
207.
[505]
KEE [SJE], T 6, p. 692-693.
[506]
EE, T 11, p. 894.
[507]
KEE [SJE], T 2, p. 510.
[508]
V.S. Mandel’. Konservativnie i razrushitel’nie elemente v evreystve
[Conservative and Destructive Elements in Jewry] // Rossiya i
evrei: Sb. 1 [Russia and the Jews: Anthology 1 (henceforth—RiE
[RandJ]) / Otechestvennoe obedinenie russkikh evreyev za granitsey
[The Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad]. Paris: YMCA-
Press, 1978 [1st Publication—Berlin: Osnova, 1924], p. 195.
[509]
I.M. Trotskiy. Evrei v russkoy shkole [The Jews in Russian Schools]
// KRE-1, p. 356.
[510]
V.S. Mandel’ // RiE [RandJ], p. 195.
[511]
Ya. Teytel’. Iz moey zhizni…[From My Life…], p. 239.
[512]
See.: EE [JE], T 3, p. 335; and others.
[513]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 208.
[514]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 335.
[515]
B. Orlov // VM, 1975, No1, p. 132.
[516]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 181.
[517]
G.Ya. Aronson. V bor’be za…[In the Struggle for…] // KRE-1, p.
208-209.
[518]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 198-199.
[519]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 336.
[520]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 232-233.
[521]
S.M. Ginzburg. Nastroeniya evreyskoy molodezhi v 80-kh godakh
proshlogo stoletiya. // EM-2, p. 380.
[522]
G.Ya. Aronson. Russko-evreyskaya pechat’ [Russo-Jewish Press] //
KRE-1, p. 561-562.
[523]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 932; KEE [SJE], T 1, p. 103.
[524]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 945-950.
[525]
Also, p. 948-950.
[526]
Also*, T 2, p. 742.
[527]
Also, T 1, p. 933-936.
[528]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 950-951; I.S. Aksakov. Soch. [Essays].: V7 T
Moscow., 1886-1887. T 3, p. 843-844.
[529]
EE [JE], T 2, p. 738.
[530]
Also, p. 738-739.
[531]
Also, T 1, p. 948-949.
[532]
A.I. Denikin. Put’ russkogo o tsera [The Path of a Russian
O cer]. New York: Publisher-named-Chekov, 1953, p. 284.
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EE [JE], T 13, p. 50-51.
[534]
G.Ya. Aronson. Russko-evreyskaya pechet’ [Russo-Jewish Press] //
KRE-1, p. 558.
[535]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 525-526.
[536]
EE [JE]*, T 2, p. 736, 740.
[537]
Golos [The Voice], 1881, No46, 15 (27) February, p. 1.
[538]
EE [JE], T 2, p. 740.
[539]
Also, T 4, p. 246, 594.
[540]
G.B. Sliozberg, T 1, p. 99.
[541]
Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya (dalee – EE). [The Jewish
Encyclopedia (from here – JE)]. V 16 T. Sankt-Peterburg.:
Obshchestvo dlya Nauchnikh Evreyskikh Izdaniy i Izdatel’stvo
Brokgauz-Efron, 1906-1913. T. 12, s. 611.  Society for Scienti c
Jewish Publications and Publisher Brokgauz-Efron.
[542]
Yu. Gessen. Istoriya evreyskogo naroda v Rossii (dalee – Yu.
Gessen): V2 T. L., 1925-1927. T2., s. 215-216.  History of the
Jewish People of Russia (from here – Yu. Gessen).
[543]
Ibid. Pages 216-217.
[544]
EE, T 12, page 612.
[545]
L. Praysman [Priceman]. Pogromi i samooborona. [Pogroms and
Self-defense] //”22”: Obshchestvenno-politicheskiy i
literaturniy zhurnal evreyskoy intelligentsii iz SSSR v Izraile
[Public-Political and Literary Journal of the Jewish
Intelligentsia from the USSR in Israel]. Tel-Aviv, 1986/87,
No51, p. 174.
[546]
Kratkaya Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya (dale – KEE) [The Short
Jewish Encyclopedia (from here – SJE)]: [V10 T.] Jerusalem,
1976-2001. T 6, p. 562.
[547]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 612.
[548]
KEE [SJE], T 4, p.256.
[549]
Ibid. T 6, p. 562.
[550]
EE [JE], T 12, p 612-613.
[551]
Ibid., p. 612.
[552]
KEE [SJE], T 1, p. 325.
[553]
S. Ginzburg. Nastroeniya evreyskoy molodezhi v 80-kh godakh
proshlogo stoletiya. [The attitudes of Jewish Youth in the 80s
Years of the Previous Century] // Evreyskiy mir [Jewish World]:
Sb 2 [Anthology 2] (dalee – EM-2) [from here – JW-2]. New York:
Soyuz russkikh evreyev v N’yu Yorke [Union of Russian Jews in
New York], 1944, p. 383.
[554]
EE [EJ], T 12, p 611.
[555]
I. Orshanskiy. Evrei v Rossii: Ocherki i issledovaniya [The Jews in
Russia: Essays and Research].  Vip. 1. Sankt-Peterburg, 1872, p
212-222.
[556]
EE [EJ] T 12,, p.613.
[557]
KEE [SJE], T 6, p. 562.
[558]
EE [JE] T 1, p. 826.
[559]
Yu. Gessen, T 12, p. 222.
[560]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 613.
[561]
KEE [SJE], T 6, p 562-563.
[562]
S.M. Dubnov. Noveyshaya Istoriya: Ot frantsuzkoy revolutsii 1789
goda do mirovoy voyni 1914 goda [A New History: from the
French Revolution of 1789 to the First World War of 1914]: V3
T. Berlin: Grani, 1923. T3 (1881-1914), p. 107.
[563]
EE [JE], T  6, p. 612.
[564]
R. Kantor*.  Aleksandr III o evreyskikh pogromakh 1881-1883 gg.
[Aleksandr III on the Jewish Pogroms, 1881-1883]//Evreyskaya
letopis’ [The Jewish Chronicle]: Sb. [Anthology] 1. M.; Pg.:
Paduga, 1923, p. 154.
[565]
A. L’vov // Novaya gazeta [New Gazette], New York, 1981, No70,
5-11 September, p. 26.
[566]
KEE [SJE], T 6, p. 563.
[567]
Mezhdunarodnaya evreyskaya gazeta [International Jewish
Gazette], 1992, March, No6 (70), p. 7.
[568]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 215.
[569]
Zerno: Rabochiy listok [The Truth, (Grain of)]: Worker’s Lea et,
June 1881, No3 //Istoriko-Revolyutsioniy Sbornik (dalee – IPC)
[Historical-Revolutionary Anthology (from here – HRA)] /
Under the Editorship of V.I. Nevskiy: V 3 T.M.; L.: GIZ, 1924-
1926. T 2, p. 360-361.
[570]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 217.
[571]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 614.
[572]
Ibid. T 3, p. 723.
[573]
M. Krol’. Kishinevskiy pogrom 1903 goda i Kishinevskiy pogromniy
protsess [The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 and the Kishinev
Pogrom Process] // EM-2, p. 370.
[574]
Max Raisin. A History of the Jews in Modern Times. 2nd ed.,
New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1923, p. 163.
[575]
G.B. Sliozberg.  Dela minuvshikh dney: Zapiski russkogo evreya
[Things of Days Bygone: Notes of a Russian Jew]: V 3 T. Paris,
1933-1934. T 1, p. 118; T 3, p.53.
[576]
L. Praysman // “22,” 1986, No51, p. 175.
[577]
KEE [SJE] T 6, p. 562-563.
[578]
Yu. Gessen. T 2, p. 216, 220.
[579]
R. Kantor* // Evreyskaya letopis’ [The Jewish Chonicle]: Sb.
[Anthology] 1, M.; Pg.: Raduga, 1923, p. 152.
[580]
Yu. Gessen. T 2, p 218.
[581]
KEE [SJE], T 6, p. 692.
[582]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p 219-220.
[583]
Gleb Uspenskiy. Vlast’ zemli [The Authority of the Land]. L.:
Khudozh. Lit., 1967, p. 67, 88.
[584]
EE* [JE], T 1, p. 826.
[585]
Ibid*, T 12, p. 614
[586]
G.B. Sliozberg. Dela minuvshikh dney… [Things of Days Bygone],
T 1, p. 106.
[587]
A. Lesin. Epizodi iz moey zhizni [Episodes from My Life] // EM-2,
p. 385-387.
[588]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 617-618.
[589]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 218.
[590]
L. Praisman // “22,” 1986, No51, p. 173.
[591]
EE [JE]*, T 1, p. 826.
[592]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 215.
[593]
Katorga i ssilka: Istoriko-revolyutsioniy vestnik [Hard Labor and
Exile: The Historical-Revolutionary Bulletin] Book 48, Moscow,
1928, p. 50-52.
[594]
D. Shub. Evrei v russkoy revolyutsii [Jews in the Russian
Revolution] // EM-2, p. 129-130.
[595]
IPC [IRS], T 2, p. 360-361.
[596]
EE [JE], T 9, p. 381.
[597]
I.S. Aksakov. Sochineniya [Essays]: V 7 T. Moscow, 1886-1887. T
3, p. 690, 693, 708, 716, 717, 719, 722.
[598]
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Iyul’skoe veyanie [The July’s Spirit] //
Otechestvennie zapiski [Homeland Notes], 1882, No 8.
[599]
EE [JE], T 16, p. 142.
[600]
Sh. Markish. O evreyskoy nenavisti k Rossii [About Jewish Hatred
toward Russia] // “22,” 1984, No38, p. 216.
[601]
EE [JE], T 2, p. 741.
[602]
KEE [SJE], T 5, p. 463.
[603]
Yu. Gessen*, T 2, p. 220-221.
[604]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 827.
[605]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 221.
[606]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 827.
[607]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 221.
[608]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 827-828.
[609]
Ibid*. T 2, p. 742-743.
[610]
Ibid*, T 1, p. 827-828.
[611]
Ibid, T 9, p. 690-691.
[612]
EE [JE], T 2, p. 744.
[613]
Yu. Gessen*, T 2, p. 222.
[614]
EE [JE] T 2, p. 744.
[615]
Ibid. T 1, p. 829-830.
[616]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 226-227; KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 341.
[617]
EE [JE], T 5, p. 815-817.
[618]
Ibid. T 12, p. 616.
[619]
EE* [JE], T 5, p 815-817.
[620]
Ibid. p. 816-819.
[621]
KEE [SJE], T 7, p. 342.
[622]
EE [JE], T 5, p. 610-611.
[623]
Yu. Larin. Evrei i antisemitizm v SSSR [Jews and Anti-Semitism in
the USSR]. M.; L.: GIZ, 1929, p. 49-50.
[624]
I.M. Dizhur. Evrei v ekonomicheskoy zhizni Rossii [Jews in the
Economic Life of Russia] // [Sankt-Peterburg.] Kniga o russkom
evreystve: Ot 1860-kh godov do Revolyutsii 1917 g. [The Book of
Russian Jewry: from the 1860s to the Revolution of 1917].
(dalee – KRE-1) [henceforth – KRE-1]. New York: Soyuz Russkikh
Evreyev [Union of Russian Jews], 1960, p. 160.
[625]
I.M. Dizhur. Itogi i perspektivi evreyskoy emigratsii [Outcomes and
Perspectives of Jewish Emigration] // EM-2, p. 34.
[626]
Yu. Larin. The Jews and Anti-Semitism in the USSR, p. 52-53.
[627]
EE [JE] T 1, p. 947.
[628]
Ibid. T 16, p. 264.
[629]
M. Osherovich. Russkie evrei v Soedinenikh Shtatakh Ameriki
[Russian Jews in the United Statees of America] // KRE-1, p.
287.
[630]
Ya. D. Leshchinskiy. Evreyskoe naselenie Rossii i evreyskii trud. The
Jewish Population of Russia and Jewish Trouble] // KRE-1, p.
190.
[631]
Sbornik materialov ob ekonomicheskom polozheniya evreyev v
Rossii [An Anthology of Materials about the Economic
Condition of the Jews in Russia]. Sankt-Peterburg.: Evreyskoe
Kolonizatsionnoe Obshchestvo [Jewish Colonization Society],
1904. T 1. p. xxxiii-xxxv, xiv-xivi.
[632]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 210; EE [JE], T 11, p. 534-539.
[633]
G.B. Sliozberg. Dela minuvshikh dney…T 1, p. 98, 105.
[634]
G.Ya. Aronson. V bor’be za grazhdanskie i natsional’nie prava:
Obshchestvennie techeniya v russkom evreystve [In the Struggle
for the Civil and National Rights: Social Currents in Russian
Jewry] // KRE-1, p. 208.
[635]
Gershon Svet. Russkie evrei v sionizme i v stroitel’stve Palestini i
Izrailya [Russian Jews in Zionism and in the Building of
Palestine and Israel] // KRE-1, p. 241-242.
[636]
EE [JE], T 12, p. 526.
[637]
Ibid. T 5, p. 862, T 3, p. 700.
[638]
Ibid*, T 1, p. 832-833.
[639]
Yu. Gessen*, T2, p. 227-228.
[640]
EE [JE], T 3, p. 85.
[641]
Ibid. T 1, p. 832-834.
[642]
Ibid, T 3, p. 167.
[643]
Ibid. T 1, p. 836.
[644]
Ibid. T 3, p. 167.
[645]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 230.
[646]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 229.
[647]
EE [JE], T 13, p. 51; T 1, p. 834-835.
[648]
Yu. Gessen, T 2, p. 231.
[649]
EE [JE], T 1, p. 835.
[650]
Ibid. p. 834.
[651]
Ibid*, T 13, p. 51.
[652]
Molodaia Rossiia: Revolutionary proclamation of the Russian
Jacobins dated May 1862, written by P. G. Zaychnevsky.
[653]
Dmitri Vladimirovich Karakozov (1840‒1866) red a shot at
Alexander II on 4/16 April 1866: the rst in a long series of
attacks. Condemned to death and executed.
[654]
Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich (1813‒1840): philosopher
and poet, humanist. Founded in 1831 the “Stankevich circle”
where great intellectuals such as Bielinsky, Aksakov,
Granovsky, Katkov, etc. meet. Emigrated in 1837.
[655]
Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812‒1870): writer, philosopher
and “Occidentalist” Russian revolutionary. Spent six years in
exile. Emigrated in 1847 and founded the rst anti‐war
newspaper published abroad, Kolokol (The Bell). Author of
Memoirs on his time, Past and Thoughts.
[656]
Nikolai Platonovich Ogariov (1813‒1877): poet, Russian
revolutionary publicist. Friend and companion in arms of
Herzen. Emigrated in 1856. Participated in the foundation of
Land and Liberty.
[657]
Nikolai Isaakovich Outine (1841‒1883): revolutionary, leading
member of Earth and Freedom. Condemned to death in
absentia. Emigrated in 1863, returned to Russia in 1878.
[658]
Sergei Gennadyevich Nechayev (1847‒1882): revolutionary
and Russian conspirator, author of the famous Catechism of the
Revolutionary. Organised in 1869 the murder of the student
Ivanov, supposedly a traitor to the Cause (which inspired
Dostoevsky’s The Demons). Leaves abroad. Delivered by
Switzerland to Russia, sentenced to twenty years of
imprisonment. Dies in prison.
[659]
L. Deutsch, King evreiev v rousskom revolioutsionnom dvijenii
(The role of the Jews in the Russian revolutionary movement),
vol. 1, 2nd ed., M.L., GIZ, 1925, pp. 20‒22.
[660]
People who succeed in passing, illegally through the borders,
revolutionary writings banned in Russia.
[661]
D. Schub, Evro vrousskoï revolyutsii (The Jews in the Russian
Revolution). JW‐2; Hessen, t. 2, p. 213.
[662]
O. V. Aptekman, Dvc doroguiie teni (Two Dear Shadows); Byloie:
newspaper Posviaschionnyi istorii osvoboditclnogo dvijeniia
(Past: a review of the history of the liberation movement), M.
1921, No. 16, p. 9.
[663]
Piotr Lavrovich Lavrov (1823‒1900): famous theorist of
populism. Emigrated in 1870. Published the magazine Vperiod
(Forward).
[664]
L. Deutsch, pp. 97, 108, 164, 169‒174, 196.
[665]
Ibidem, pp. 20, 130, 139.
[666]
Held in March 1877, also said trial of “Muscovites”, of which
sixteen women.
[667]
Held from October 1877 to February 1878: the most important
political trial of Russia before 1917 (there were four thousand
arrests among the populists of the “march to the people”).
[668]
Ibidem, pp. 33, 86‒88, 185.
[669]
Andrei Ivanovich Jeliabov (1851‒1881): one of the founders of
The Will of the People. Named the “Russian Robespierre”.
Organiser of the attacks against Alexander II. Executed in April
1881.
[670]
In 1876‒77. A group of revolutionary populists tried to raise a
peasant insurrection in the district of Tchiguirine in Ukraine.
[671]
RJE, t. 1, M. 1994, p. 377.
[672]
RJE, t. 2, p. 309.
[673]
Isaac Yakovlevich Pavlovsky, known as I. Yakovlev: journalist,
one of the accused of the trial of the one hundred and ninety‐
three. Emigre, protected by Turgenev, became the
correspondent in Paris of the New Times.
[674]
Deutsch, pp. 77‒79, 85, 89‒112, 140, 21X: V. I. Iohelsohn,
Daliokoie prochloie (A distant Past); Byloie, 1918, No. 13, pp.
54‒55.
[675]
Deutsch, pp. 18, 149, 151, 154.
[676]
Ahad‐Haam (ie “One of his people”), says Asher Finzberg:
Yiddish writer very involved in the Zionist movement.
[677]
Ibidem, pp. 17‒18.
[678]
Ferdinand Lassalle (1825‒1864): philosopher, economist, jurist
and famous German socialist.
[679]
Rudin, the hero of Turgenev’s novel, Rudin (1856), whom the
author put to death on the barricades in Paris in 1848.
[680]
K. Leites, Pamiati M. A. Krolia (The memory of M. A. Krol), JW‐2,
p. 410.
[681]
B. Frumkin. Iz istorii revolioutsionnogo dvijeniia sredi evreiev v
1870‐x godakh (Pages of the history of the revolutionary
movement among the Jews in the 70s) Sb. Soblazn Sotsializma:
Revolutionsiia v Rossii i evrei (Rec. The Temptation of
Socialism Revolution in Russia and the Jews), composed by A.
Serebrennikov, Paris, YMCA Press; Rousskii Put (The Russian
Way), 1995. p. 49.
[682]
JE, L 3, p. 336.

[683]
Deutsch, pp. 56, 67‒68.
[684]
Iohelson, Byloie, 1918, No. 13, pp. 56‒57.
[685]
Ibidem, pp. 61, 66.
[686]
G. J. Aronson, V. borbe za grajdanskiie i nalsionalnyie prava:
obschcstvcnnyie tetcheniia v rousskom evreistve (In the
struggle for national civil rights: the social currents among the
Jews of Russia), UR‐1, p. 210.
[687]
Aptekman. Byloie, 1921, No. 16, pp. 11‒12.
[688]
Deutsch, pp. 183‒185

[689]
O. V. Aptekman, Flerovski‐Bervi i kroujok Dolgouchina (Bervi‐
Flerovsky and the circle of Dolgouchine), Byloie, 1922, No. 18,
p. 63.
[690]
JE, t. 4, p. 714.

[691]
Molokanes or “milk drinkers” (they consume milk during Lent)
are a Russian sect that goes back to the eighteenth century.
They were persecuted, exiled in 1800 north of the Sea of Azov,
and some immigrated to the United States.
[692]
Aptekman, Byloie, 1922, No. 18, p. 63.
[693]
Vassili Vasilievich Bervi‐Flerovsky (1829‒1918): Russian
publicist, sociologist, economist. Participated in the populism
of the 60s. In exile from 1862 to 1887. Wrote the Notes of a
Revolutionary Utopian.
[694]
Ibidem*.
[695]
The Bund (in Yiddish: the Union): the “General Union of Jewish
Workers of Lithuania, Poland and Russia”, founded in Vilnius
in 1897, related to the SD party in 1898‒1903; then again in
1906‒1918 close to the Mensheviks. Dissolved in 1921.
[696]
Obschaia gazela (General Gazette), No. 35, 31 August‒6 Sept.
1995, p. 11.
[697]
Deutsch, pp. 106, 205‒206.
[698]
Iohelson, Byloie, 1918, No. 13, p. 74.
[699]
Deutsch, pp. 34‒37, 183.
[700]
Ibidem, pp. 194 et suiv. ; Iohelson, Byloie, 1918, No. 13, p. 69.
[701]
The Black Repartition, a clandestine newspaper bearing the
same name as the organisation, which knew ve issues in
1880‒1881 Minsk‐Geneva.
[702]
Aptekman, Byloie. 1922, No. 18. pp. 73, 75.
[703]
Deutsch, pp. 38, 41, 94, 189.
[704]
Ibidem, pp. 78‒79, 156‒157.

[705]
Grigori Goldenberg v Petropavolvskoi kreposti (Grigori
Goldenberg in prison Saint‐Pierre‐el‐Saint‐Paul); Krasnyi
arkhiv: istorilcheskii journal Tsentrarkhiva RSFSR (The Red
Archives: Historical Review of the FSSR Archives Center), M.,
1922‒1941, t. 10; 1925, pp. 328‒331.
[706]
Deutsch*, pp. 85‒86.
[707]
Ibidem, p.132.

[708]
RJE, t. 1. p. 344.

[709]
Liubov Issaakovna Axelrod: philosopher, writer, member of the
Menshevik party. His pen name is “the Orthodox” (in the non‐
confessional sense of the word).
[710]
Deutsch, pp. 61‒62, 198‒201, 203‒216.

[711]
The Ghiliaks are a tribe of the north of the island of Sakhalin
and the valley of the lower Amur.
[712]
The Tchouktches, a tribe of eastern Siberia occupying a
territory ranging from the Sea of Behring to the Kolyma.
Nomads and sedentary. Opposed the Russian conquest.
[713]
The Yukaghirs are a tribe of the north‐east of Siberia, very
small in number.
[714]
JE, t. 6, p. 284.
[715]
The lakuts are a people of northeastern Siberia, occupying both
banks of the Lena, extending east to the Kolyma River, north to
the Arctic Ocean, south to the Yablovoi mountains.
[716]
The Buryats, people of Siberia around Lake Baikal, partly
repressed towards Mongolia.
[717]
Filippo Turati (1857‒1932): one of the founders of the Italian
Socialist Party. Emigrated in 1926.
[718]
RJE, t. 2, p. 166; t. l, p. 205.
[719]
The Messenger of Europe: 1) a journal founded by Karamzin
and published from 1802 to 1830; 2) a monthly magazine with
a liberal orientation, which appeared from 1866 to 1918 in
Saint Petersburg.
[720]
The New Times: ultra‐conservative Petersburg daily founded by
the publicist Suvorin. Which appeared from 1868 to 1917.
[721]
Deutsch, pp. 84‒85; Lohelsohn. Byloe, 1918, no. 13, pp. 53‒75;
L. Goumtch. Pervyie evreiskiie rabotchiie kroujki (The rst
Jewish workers’ circles), Byloie, 1907, n. 6/18, p. 68.
[722]
Deutsch, p. 231.
[723]
RHC, t. 1, 2.
[724]
Leonard 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. 157.
[725]
JW.‐2*, p. 392.
[726]
JE, t. 13, p. 644.
[727]
Hessen, t. 2, pp. 213‒214.
[728]
Ibidem, p. 214.
[729]
RHC, 1.1, p. 45.
[730]
March 1st, 1881: day of the assassination of Alexander II.
[731]
Deutsch, pp. 38‒39, Protses dvadtsati narodovoltsev v 1882 g.
(The trial of the members of The Will of the People in 1882),
Byloie, 1906, no. 1, pp. 227‒234.
[732]
The “Ulyanov group”, named after Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov,
Lenin’s elder brother. Faction of the Will of the People.
Alexander Ulyanov prepared an attack on Alexander III in
1887. He was condemned to death and executed.
[733]
RJE, t. 1, p. 314.
[734]
One pood is equivalent to 16.38 kilos.
[735]
Mikhail Rafaelovich Gotz (1866‒1906): member of the S.‐R.
party. Emigrated in 1900.
[736]
O. S. Minor, lakutskaia drama 22 marta 1889 goda (The drama
of Yakutia of 22 March 1889), Byloie, 1906, no. 9, pp. 138‒141,
144; JE, t. 5, p. 599.
[737]
Gounitch, Byloie. 1907, no. 6/18, p. 68.
[738]
I. Mark, Pamiati I. M. Tcherikover (In memory of I. M.
Tcherikover), JW‐2, pp. 424‒425.
[739]
Deutsch, pp. 3‒4.
[740]
I. lliacheviich (I. Rubinovilch), Chto delay evreiam v Rossii?
(What can the Jews do in Russia?), Soblazn Sotsializma (The
Temptation of Socialism), pp. 185‒186.
[741]
Schub, JW‐2*, p. 134.
[742]
Ibidem, pp. 133‒134.
[743]
I. Martov, Zapiski sotsial‐demokrata (Notebooks of a Social‐
Democrat), Berlin, ed. Grjebine, 1922, pp. 187‒189.
[744]
N. A. Buchbinder, Rabotchiie o propagandistskikh kroujkakh
(Workers in regard to circles of propagandists), Soblazn
sotsializma (The temptation of socialism), p. 230.
[745]
Gurvitch, Byloie, op. cit., pp. 65‒68, 74.
[746]
Ibidem, pp. 66‒68, 72‒77.
[747]
J. Krepliak, Poslesloviie k statie Lessina (Postface to the article
by Lessine), JW‐2, p. 392.
[748]
Abramova, Vragi li trudovomou narodou evrei? (Are the Jews
enemies of the working people?), Ti is, Izdatelskaia Komissiia
Kraicvogo Soveta Kavkazskoi armii (Editorial Commission of
the Regional Soviet of the Caucasian Army), 1917, pp. 3‒31.
[749]
S.‐R.: Social‐Revolutionary party. Born in 1901, it preached
terror. Subjected to splits after the revolution of 1905.
Remained powerful among the intelligentsia.
[750]
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847‒1909): brother of
Alexander III, father of the Grand Duke Cyril.
[751]
Deutsch, p. 136.
[752]
RHC, t. 2, pp. 36, 38‒40.
[753]
Ibidem, t. 2, pp. 198‒199.
[754]
Ibidem, p. 36.
[755]
JE, t. 13, p. 645.
[756]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 212.
[757]
I. Larme, Evrei i Anti‐Semitism v SSSR (The Jews and Anti‐
Semitism in the USSR), ML, 1929, p. 31.
[758]
SJE, t. 7*, 1994, p. 258.
[759]
G. Svet, Rousskiie evrei v sionizme i v stroitelstve Palestiny i
Izrailia (The Russian Jews in Zionism and the Edi cation of
Israel), p. 258.
[760]
Iz islorii borby s revolioutsici v 1905 g. (Fragments of the
History of the Fight with the Revolution of 1905), Krasnyi
arkhiv (Red Archives), 1929, vol. 32, p. 229.
[761]
V. V. Choulguine, “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsa…”: Ob
antisemitizme v Rossii. (“What we do not like about them”:
anti‐Semitism in Russia), Paris, 1929, pp. 53‒54, 191.
[762]
Duma State, 4th Legislature, Transcripts of Meetings, Session
5, Meeting 18, 16 Dec. 1916, p. 1174.
[763]
G. P. Fedotov, Litso Rossii; Sbornik stratei (The Face of Russia,
collection of articles) (1918‒1931), Paris, YMCA Press, 1967,
pp. 113‒114.
[764]
Fyodor Dmitrievich Kryukov (1870‒1920): writer of the Gift,
populist, died of typhus during the civil war. He has been
attributed the true paternity of the Peaceful Gift of the
Cholokov Nobel prize.
[765]
M. Agursky, Sovmcslimy li sionizm i sotsializm? (Are Zionism
and socialism compatible?), “22”, Obschestvenno‐polititchcskii
i literaturnyi journal evreiskoi intellignntsii iz SSSR V Izrail
(“22”: social and political review of Jewish intellectuals
emigrated from the USSR in Israel), Tel‐Aviv, 1984, No. 36. p.
130.
[766]
M. Rafes, Natsionalistitcheskii “ouklon” Bunda (The nationalist
“tendency” of the Bund), Soblazn Sotsializma (The temptation
of socialism), p. 276.
[767]
G. A. Landau, Rcvolioutsionnyie idei v evreiskoi
obschestvennosti (Revolutionary ideas in Jewish public
opinion), Rossiia i evrei: Sb. 1 (Russia and the Jews, Collection
1). Otetchestvennoie obiedineniie ruskikh evreiev zagranitsei
(Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad), Paris, YMCA Press,
1978 (Berlin, Osnova, 1924), pp. 106‒109.
[768]
A. O. Marchak, Inlerviou radiostanlsii “Svoboda” (Interview at
“Radio Liberty”), Vospominaniia o revolioutsii 1917 goda
(Memories on the Revolution of 1917), Int. No. 17, Munich,
1965, p. 9
[769]
Dmitry Grigoryevich Bogrov: young secret service agent. Shot
and killed the minister A. Stolypine in Kiev (1911). Condemned
to death and executed.
[770]
Landau, op. cit., p. 109.
[771]
A. Guchkov, Retch v Gosoudarstvennoi Doume 16 dek. 1909; Po
zaprosou o vzryvc na Astrakhanskoi oulitse (Speech to the
State Duma of 16 Dec. 1909, enquiry into the explosion of
Astrakhan Street), A. I. Goutchkov v Tretei Gosoudarstvennoi
Doume (1907‒1912 Gg.): Cb. Retchei (A. I. Guchkov to the third
State Duma) (1907‒1912), Collection of speeches, Saint
Petersburg, 1912, pp. 143‒144.
[772]
I. O. Levin, Evrei u revolioutsi (The Jews and the Revolution),
Rossia i evrei (Russia and the Jews), op. Cit., pp. 130‒132.
[773]
V. S. Mandel, Konservativnyiee i razrouchitelnyie idei v
evreistve (Conservative ideas and destructive ideas in Jewish
society), ibidem, p 199.
[774]
Mandel, ibidem, pp. 172‒173.

[775]
I. M. Biekerman, Rossiya i rouskoie evreistvo (Russia and the
Jews of Russia), ibidem, p. 34.
[776]
The Iskra (The Spark) is the rst Marxist newspaper created by
Lenin abroad. Was published from 1900 to 1903. Was resumed
by the Mensheviks and was published until 1905.
[777]
I. Martov, Povorotnyi punkt v istorii evreiskogo rabotchego
dvijeniia (A turning point in the history of the workers’
movement Soblazn Sotsializma (The temptation of socialism),
pp. 249, 259‒264, JE, t. 5, p. 94.
[778]
G. V. Plekhanov o sotsialistitcheskom dvijenii sredi evreiev (G.
V. Plekhanov on the socialist movement among the Jews),
Soblazn Sotsializma (The temptation of socialism), p. 266.
[779]
SJE, t. 7, p. 396.
[780]
V. I. Lenin, Sotchincniia (Works in 45 vols., 4th ed.),
Gospolitizdat, 1941‒1967, vol. 5, pp. 463‒464, 518.
[781]
Schub, JW‐2, p. 137.
[782]
Aronson, V borbe za… (In the ght for…), BJWR‐1, p. 222.
[783]
Revolioutsionnoie dvijeniie sredi evreiev (The revolutionary
movement among the Jews) Sb. 1, M.; Vsesoiouznoie
Obschestvo Politkatorjan i Ssylno‐poselentsev (Collection 1, M.,
Association for the Soviet Union of Prisoners and Political
Exiles), 1930, p. 25.
[784]
S. Dimanstein, Revolioutsionnoie dvijeniie sredi evreiev (The
Revolutionary Movement Among the Jews), Sb. 1905: Istoriia
rcvolioutsionnogo dvijeniia v otdelnykh otcherkakh
(Collection 1905: History of the Revolutionary Movement,
some separate studies), directed by N. Pokrovsky, T. 3, Book 1,
M‐L., 1927, pp. 127, 138, 156.
[785]
G. B. Sliosberg, Dela minouvehikh dnei: Zapiski ruskogo evreia
(Things of the Past: Notes of a Russian Jew), 3 vols., Paris,
1933‒1934, vol. 3, pp. 136‒137.
[786]
JE, t. 3, p. 337.
[787]
V. Jabotinski, Vvdeniie (Preface) to Kh. N. Bialik, Pesni i poemy
(Songs and poems), Saint Petersburg, ed. Zaltsman, 1914, p. 36.
[788]
JE, t. 2, p. 354.
[789]
Aronson, V borbe za… (In the ght for…), BJWR‐1*, pp. 220‒
222.
[790]
JE, t. 5, p. 99.
[791]
Lenin, 4th ed., Vol. 6, p. 298.
[792]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 258.
[793]
JE*, t. 5, p. 95.
[794]
G. V.: Georgiy Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856‒1918). Social‐
democrat, Marxist, leading member of The Will of the People.
Emigrated in 1880. Leader of the Menshevik party.
[795]
Gad. One of the twelve sons of Jacob. One of the twelve tribes of
Israel.
[796]
Lenin, 4th ed., Vol. 4, p. 311.
[797]
JE, t. 5, pp. 96‒97.
[798]
Lenin, 4th ed., t.7, p.77.
[799]
Ibidem, t. 6, p. 300.
[800]
Ibidem, t. 7, pp. 83‒84.

[801]
JE, t. 5, p. 97; SJE, I. 7, p. 397.

[802]
SJE, t. 7, p. 397.
[803]
Dimanstein, “1905”, vol. 3, Book I, pp. 127, 138, 156.
[804]
Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov (1864‒1917): Chief of the Moscow
Police and Special Police Department (1902‒1905).
[805]
Viatcheslav Konstantinovich Plehve (1846‒1904): cunning
Minister of the Interior, killed by the terrorist S. R. Sozonov.
[806]
N. A. Buchbinder, Nezavissimaia evreiskaia rabolchaia partiia
(The Independent Jewish Workers’ Party). Krasnaia letopis:
lstoritcheskii journal (Red Chronicle: Historical Review), 1922,
no. 2‒3, pp. 208‒241.
[807]
JE, t. 5, p. 101; SJE, t. 1, pp. 559‒560.
[808]
JE, t.5, p.96.
[809]
Dimanstein, “1905”, T. 3, Book I, pp. 149‒150.
[810]
JE*, t. 5, p. 97.
[811]
Lenin, 4th ed. 6, p. 288.
[812]
I. Ben‐Tsvi.
[813]
S. M. Ginzburg, O roussko‐evreiskoi intelligentsii (From the
Russo‐Jewish Intelligence), Sb. Evreiski mir; Ejegodnik na 1939
g. (Rcc. The Jewish World, Annual for the year 1939), Paris,
Association of the Russo‐Jewish Intelligence, p. 39.
[814]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 133.
[815]
N. V. Krylenko, Za piat lct. 1918‒1922: Obvinitelnyie retchi po
naibolee kroupnym protsessam, zaslouchannym v
Moskovskom i Verkhovnom Revolioutsionnykh Tribounalakh
(Over ve years, 1918‒1922: Submissions made in the highest
trials before the Supreme Court and the Moscow Revolutionary
Tribunal), 1923, p. 353.
[816]
Mandel, Rossia i evrei (Russia and the Jews), op. Cit., p. 177.
[817]
A. Lessine, Epizody iz moei jizni (Episodes of My Life), JW‐2, p.
388.
[818]
V. Jabotinsky, O natsionalnom vospitanii (From the Education
of National Sentiment), Sb. Felietony (Collection of Serials).
Saint Petersburg. Typography “Herold”, 1913, pp. 5‒7.
[819]
JE*, t. 14, pp. 403‒404.
[820]
I.L. Klauzner, Literatura na ivril v Rossii (Literature in Modern
Hebrew in Russia). BJWR, p. 506.
[821]
JE, 1.12, p. 259.
[822]
Ibidem, t. 13, p. 639.
[823]
Title of his famous work.
[824]
Ibidem, t. 12, pp. 526‒527; Hessen*, t. 2, pp. 233‒234; G. Svet,
Rousskiie evrei v sionizme i v stroilelstve Palestiny i Izrailia
(The Jews of Russia in Zionism and the Edi cation of Palestine
and Israel). BJWR-1 *, pp. 244‒245.
[825]
JE*, t. 12, pp. 259‒260.
[826]
A pioneering Zionist movement founded before Herzl.
[827]
Herem (Hebrew word): the status of one who is cut o from the
community due to impurity or consecration. The individual in
state of Herem is an outlaw. A kind of excommunication.
[828]
M. Wartburg, Plata za sionism (The Wage of Zionism), in “22”:
Obschestvenno‐politicianski i liieratournyi journal evreiskoi
intelligenlsii iz SSSR V Izraile (“22”: politico‐social and literary
review of the Jewish intelligentsia emigrated from USSR to
Israel), Tel Aviv, 1987, No. 56, pp. 112‒114; Svet, SJE-1, pp.
235‒243.
[829]
JE, t. 4, pp. 577‒579; Warthurg, in “22”, 1987, no. 56, p. 115.
[830]
L. Deulsch, King evreiev v rousskom revolioutsionnom dvijenii
(The role of the Jews in The Russian revolutionary movement),
t. 1, 2nd ed., ML., 1925, pp. 5, 161.
[831]
JE, t. 14, pp. 406‒407.
[832]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 234.
[833]
Tzadikim (Hebrew word): the righteous.
[834]
JE, t. 12, p. 261.
[835]
Ibidem, pp. 261‒262.
[836]
JE*, t. 3, pp. 480‒482.
[837]
Association founded by Ahad Haam in Odessa.
[838]
Ibidem, t. 4, pp. 683‒684.
[839]
Svet, op. cit., pp. 250‒251.
[840]
JE, t. 3, p. 481.
[841]
SJE, t. 1, pp. 248‒249.
[842]
JE, t. 6, pp. 407‒409.
[843]
Stefan Zweig, Vtchrachnii mir. Vospominaniia evropeitsa (The
world of yesterday: Memories of a European), in “22”, 1994, No.
92, pp. 215‒216.
[844]
JE, t. 6, p. 409.
[845]
Zweig, in “22”, op. cil., pp. 216‒217.
[846]
JE, t. 6, pp. 410‒411.
[847]
JE, 1.11, pp. 788‒792.
[848]
SJE, t. 7, p. 940.
[849]
J. Parks, Evrei sredi narodov: Obzor pritchin anti‐semitima (The
Jews among Peoples: An Overview of the Causes of Anti‐
Semitism), Paris, YMCA Press, 1932, p. 45.
[850]
SJE, t. 1, p. 249.
[851]
JE, t. 3, p. 482.
[852]
SJE, I. 1, p. 248.
[853]
JE, 1.12, p. 262.
[854]
Wartburg, in “22”, 1987, no. 56, pp. 116‒117.
[855]
JE, t. 3, p. 482.
[856]
Ibidem, t. 6, p. 409.
[857]
Ibidem*, t. 11, p. 792.
[858]
Parks, p. 186.
[859]
N. Goulina, Kto boilsa Otto Veiningcra? (Who’s afraid of Otto
Weininger?). In “22”*, 1983, No. 31, p. 206.
[860]
JE, t. 4, p. 556.
[861]
N. Minsky, Natsionalnyi lik i patriotism (The National Face and
Patriotism), Slovo, Saint Petersburg, 1909, 28 March (10 April),
p. 2.
[862]
Prou S. Bulgakov, Khristianstvo i evreiskij vopros (Christianity
and the Jewish Question), Paris. YMCA Press, 1991, p. 11.
[863]
F. Kolker, Novyj plan pomoschi sovietskomou cvrcistvou (A
new plan for aid to the Jews of Russia), in “22”, 1983, No. 31, p.
149.
[864]
N. Goulina, V poiskakh outratchennoi samoidenlilikatsii (In
Search of the Lost Self‐Identity), in “22”, 1983, No. 29, p. 216.
[865]
Amos Oz, Spischaia krasaviisa: griozy i pruboujdeniia (Sleeping
Beauty: dreams and awakening), in “22”, 1985, No. 42. p. 117
[866]
G. J. laronson, V borbe za granjdanskiie i nalsionalnyie prava:
Obschestvennyie tetcheniia v rousskom evreistve (In the ght
for civil and national rights: the social currents among the Jews
of Russia), BJWR-1, pp. 218‒219.
[867]
Ibidem*, p. 219.
[868]
Ibidem pp. 219‒220.
[869]
S. Dimanstein. Revolioulsionnyie dvijeniia sredi evreiev (The
revolution among the Jews), Sb. 1905: Istoriia
revolioutsionnogo dvijeniia v otdclnykh otcherkakh (Collection
1905: History of the revolutionary movement in separate
essays), directed by N. Pokrovsky, vol. 3, book 1, M.L., 1927, pp.
107, 116.
[870]
SJE, t. 6, p. 551.
[871]
Ibidem, t. 7, p. 941.
[872]
Ibidem*, pp. 1021‒1022.
[873]
Aronson, SJE-1, pp. 226‒229.
[874]
SJE, 1.1, p. 705, t. 7, p. 1021.
[875]
S. Ginzburg, Poezdka Teodora Gertzla v Petersburg (Theodor
Herzl’s trip to Saint Petersburg), JW, New York, Union of
Russian Jews in New York, 1944, p. 199.
[876]
Ibidem*, pp. 202‒203.
[877]
SJE, t. 6, p. 533.
[878]
G. B. Sliosberg, Dela minouvehikh dnei: Zapiski ruskogo evreia
(Notes of a Jew of Russia) in 3 vols., Paris, 1933‒1934, t. 2, p.
301
[879]
JE*, t. 6, p. 412.
[880]
Ibidem, t. 15, p. 135.
[881]
Ibidem, t. 3, p. 679.
[882]
Ibidem, pp. 680‒681.
[883]
JE, t. 6, p. 407.
[884]
Ibidem, t. 14, pp. 827‒829.
[885]
SJE, t. 7, pp. 861‒892.
[886]
J. Larine, Evrei i antisemitizm v SSSR (The Jews and anti‐
Semitism in the USSR), M.L., 1929, p. 140.
[887]
G.V. Sliosberg, Diela minouvchikh dniei: Zapiski ruskogo evreia
(Notes of a Jew of Russia), 3 vols., Paris, 1933‒1934, vol. 2, pp.
206‒209.
[888]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 231.
[889]
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711‒1765): great scholar
and Russian poet, representative of the Enlightenment in
Russia. Of modest origin, he is the prototype of the genius born
into the people. The University of Moscow bears his name.
[890]
JE*, t. 13, p. 52.
[891]
Ibidem, t. 13, pp. 52‒53.
[892]
Sliosberg, t. 1, p. 92; t. 2, p. 89.
[893]
Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827‒1907) Statesman,
member of the Council of the Empire since 1872, attorney
general of the Holy Synod, preceptor of Nicholas II. Exercised
great in uence over Alexander III.
[894]
Ibidem, t. 2, p. 33.
[895]
An allusion to the a rmative action setting minimum
allowances for the admission of ethnic minorities to the
United States.
[896]
SJE, t. 6, p. 854.
[897]
I. M. Troitsky, Evrei v rousskoi chkole (The Jews in the Russian
School), BJWR-1, p. 359.
[898]
P. D. Ilinsky, Vospominaniya (Memoires), Biblioteka‐fund
“Ruskie Zarubejnie” (Library and Archives), “Russian
Emigration” (BFER), collection 1, A-90, p. 2.
[899]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 90.
[900]
N. V. Volkov‐Mouromtsev, Iounost. Ot Viazmy do Feodosii
(Youth, From Viazma to Feodosiia), 2nd ed., M., Rousski Pout,
Graal, 1997, p. 101.
[901]
I. E. Temirov, Vospominaniia (Memoires). BFER, collection 1, A-
29, p. 24.
[902]
JE, t. 12, p. 58.
[903]
A. Lvov, Novaia gazeta, New York, 5‒11 Sept. 1981, No. 70, p.
26.
[904]
JE, t. 13, pp. 54‒55.
[905]
Ibidem, t. 16, p. 205.
[906]
Samu Yakovlevich Marchak (1887‒1964) Russian man of
letters of the Soviet era.
[907]
Ibidem, t. 13, p. 55.
[908]
SJE, t. 6, p. 854.
[909]
JE, t. 13, p. 55.
[910]
Sliosberg, t. 1, p. 161.
[911]
S. V. Pozner, Evrei v obschei chkole K istorii zakonodatelstva i
pravitelstvennoi politiki v oblasti evreiskogo voprosa (The Jews
in the Common School. For the History of the Legislation and
State Policy in the Field of the Jewish Question), Saint
Petersburg, Razum, 1914, pp. 54‒55.
[912]
Cf. Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 93.
[913]
Nikolai Pavlovich Bogolepov (1847‒1901) lawyer, Minister of
National Education. Mortally wounded in the attack
perpetrated by P. Karpovitch.
[914]
A. Goldenweiser, Pravovoie polojeniie evreiev v rossii (The legal
situation of Jews in Russia), LMJR-1, p. 149.
[915]
Sliosberg, t. 1, pp. 127‒128; t. 3, pp. 290‒292, 301.
[916]
J. L. Teitel, lz moiei jizni za 40 let (Stories of my life over forty
years), Paris, J. Povolotsky and Co, 1925, pp. 170‒176.
[917]
J. M. Troitsky, Evrei v rousskoi chkole (The Jews in the Russian
School), op. cit., p. 358.
[918]
JE, t. 10, pp. 780‒781.
[919]
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich (1849‒1919): revolutionary populist
linked to Netchayev. Shot at the commander of the Saint
Petersburg plaza (1873). Acquitted. Having become a Marxist,
she was one of the leaders of the Menshevik party.
[920]
In the Journal of a writer for the month of February 1876.
[921]
JE, t. 6, p. 118.
[922]
S. L. Kutcherov, Evrei v rousskoi advokatoure (The Jews in the
Russian Bar), BJWR-1, p. 402.
[923]
JE*, t. 1, pp. 469‒470.
[924]
Maxime Moiseyevich Winaver (1862‒1926): a lawyer born in
Warsaw, one of the founders of the Constitutional‐Democratic
Party, of the Cadet party (1905), deputy in the Duma (1906).
Immigrated to France in 1919.
[925]
Goldenweizer, BJWR-1, p. 131.
[926]
Kurcherov, BJWR-1*, p. 404.
[927]
JE, t. 1, pp. 471‒472.
[928]
Kurcherov, Ibidem, p. 405.
[929]
Ibidem.
[930]
Ivan Grigorievich Cheglovitov (1861‒1918) Minister of Justice
in 1906‒1915, President of the Council of the Empire. Shot
without judgement by the Bolsheviks in retaliation for the
failed assassination of Fanny Kaplan against Lenin.
[931]
JE, t. 6, p. 118.
[932]
Old believers are adepts of the “old faith”, the one before the
reforms imposed by the Patriarch Nikon in the seventeenth
century. They were persecuted.
[933]
Doukhobors are “spirit ghters”, a religious sect dating back to
the seventeenth century, which denies the Church as an
institution, the state, and professes a kind of rationalistic
spiritualism.
[934]
See supra (p. 245).
[935]
JE, t. 16, p. 116.
[936]
Ibidem, t. 12, pp. 394‒395.
[937]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 94.
[938]
V. Posse, Evreiskoi zassiliie (The Jewish Violence), Slovo, Saint
Petersburg, 1909, 14 (27) March, p. 2.
[939]
Sliosberg, t. 1, p. 198.
[940]
JE, t. 7, p.34.
[941]
Obschii svod po Imperii rezoultatov razrabotki dannykh pervoi
vseobschei perepisi naseleniia, proizvedionnoi 28 ianvaria
1897 g. (General corpus of results for the empire of the data of
the rst general census of the population carried out on
January 28, 1897), t. 2, Saint Petersburg, 1905, pp. 374‒386.
[942]
JE*, t. 7, p. 763.
[943]
Ibidem*, t. 1, p. 836.
[944]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 220.
[945]
Ibidem, t. 1, p. 259.
[946]
Ibidem, t. 2, pp. 177‒178.
[947]
V. A. Maklakov (1905‒1906), Sb. M. M. Winaver i rousskaia
obschestvennost natchala XX veka (Collection M. M. Winaver
and Russian civil society in the early twentieth century), Paris,
1937, p. 63.
[948]
D. O. Linsky, O natsionalnom samosoznanii ruskogo evreia—
Rossia i evrei (About the national consciousness of the Jew of
Russia), in RaJ, p. 145.
[949]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 210; JE, t. 11, pp. 537‒538.
[950]
SJE, t. 2, pp. 313‒314.
[951]
Larine, p. 71.
[952]
V. S. Mandel, Konservativnyie i razrouchitelnyie elementy v
evreistve (Conservative elements and destructive elements
among Jews), RaJ, p. 202.
[953]
Goldenweiser, RaJ, p. 148.
[954]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 51, 197, 188, 193, 195.
[955]
Ibidem, pp. 22‒24.
[956]
Ibidem, pp. 183‒185.
[957]
Teirel, pp. 36‒37, 47.
[958]
Volkov‐Mouromrsev, pp. 98, 101.
[959]
S. Dimanstein, Revolioutsionnoie dvijeniie sredi evreiev (The
Revolutionary Movement Among the Jews), op. cit., p. 108.
[960]
Goldenweiser, BJWR-1, p. 114.
[961]
JE, t. 14, p. 157.
[962]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 175‒176.
[963]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 232.
[964]
Prince B. A. Chetinine, Khoziaine Moskvy (The Master of
Moscow), Istoritcheski vestnik (The Historical Messenger),
1917, t. 148, p. 459.
[965]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 44‒45.
[966]
Ibidem, pp. 43‒44.
[967]
Sergey Alexandrovich: grand‐duke, brother of Alexander III,
governor‐general of Moscow. Assassinated in February 1905.
[968]
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (1769‒1844): famous Russian
publicist and fabulist who denounces in his writings the
defects of society and the negligence of the rulers.
[969]
Ibidem, pp. 31, 42‒50, 60‒63.
[970]
Ibidem, pp. 7, 174.
[971]
Doneseniie ruskogo posla lzvolskogo iz Vatikana (Report of the
Russian Ambassador to the Vatican, Lzvolski), 7 (19) April
1892, Izvestia, 1930, 23 May, p. 2.
[972]
SJE, t. 5, p. 474.
[973]
JE, t. 11, pp. 336‒338.
[974]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 180‒182.
[975]
JE*, t. 7, p. 594.
[976]
Novoie Vremia, 1909, 9 (22) Dec., p. 6.
[977]
JE, t. 12, pp. 601‒602.
[978]
The Karaites or Karaïmes (word meaning “attached” to the
letter): a Jewish sect that rejects the orthodox doctrine of the
rabbis, admits only the Old Testament and some oral
traditions. The Karaites survive in small settlements in Crimea,
Odessa, Southern Russia, as well as in Poland and Lithuania.
[979]
J. Parks, Evrei sredi narodov Obzor pritchin antisemitima (The
Jews among Peoples: An Overview of the Causes of Anti‐
Semitism), Paris, YMCA Press, 1932, p. 182.
[980]
V. V. Leontovitch, Istoriia liberalizma v Rossii 1762‒1914
(History of liberalism in Russia: 1762‒1914), transl. of the
German, 2nd ed., M., Rousski Pout, 1995, pp. 251‒252. French
translation to Fayard Ed., Paris, 1987.
[981]
V. V. Choulguine, “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsa”: Ob anti‐
Semiticism v Rossii (“What we do not like about them”: On
anti‐Semitism in Russia), Paris, 1929, pp. 185‒186.
[982]
Parks, pp. 153, 155, 233.
[983]
Sbornik materalov ob ekonomitcheskom polojenii evreiev v
Rossii (Collection of materials on the economic situation of
Jews in Russia), vol. 2, St., Evreiskoie Kolonizatsionnoie
Obschestvo (Jewish Colonising Association), 1904, p. 64.
[984]
Evreiskaia piteïnaia torgovlia v Rossii. Statistitcheski
Vremennik Rossiiskoy Imperii (The Jewish Trade of Spirits in
Russia, Statistical Yearbook of the Russian Empire), Series III,
Book 9, Saint Petersburg, 1886, p. V‐X.
[985]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 230.
[986]
Evreiskaya piteinaia torgovlia v Rossii (Jewish trade of spirits
in Russia), op. cit.
[987]
JE, t. 2, pp. 235‒238.
[988]
Cf. Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 55.
[989]
P. Miliukov, Evreiski vopros v rossii (The Jewish Question in
Russia), Schit: Literatourny sbornik (The Shield: Literary
Collection) edited by L. Andreev, M. Gorky and F. Sologoub, 3rd
ed., M. Rousskoie Obschestvo dlia izoutcheniia evreiskoi jizni
(Russian Association for the Study of Jewish Life), 1916, p. 170.
[990]
JE, t. 5, pp. 821‒822.
[991]
Ibidem, t. 5, pp. 821‒822.
[992]
Ibidem, t. 1, p. 422.
[993]
Fabritchno‐zavodskie predpriatia Rossiskoi Imperii (Factories
and Plants of the Russian Empire), 2nd ed., Council of
Congresses of Industry and Commerce, 1914, No. 590.
[994]
Hemeralopia (in Russian: kourinaïa slepota = chicken
blindness) weakening or loss of vision in low light, especially at
dusk.
[995]
L. Trotsky, Moia jizn : Opyt avtobiogra i (My Life:
autobiographical), t. 1, Berlin, Granit, 1930, pp. 42‒43.
[996]
JE, t. 7, p. 734.
[997]
JE, t. 1, p. 423.
[998]
Ibidem.
[999]
Ibidem.
[1000]
Larine, pp. 27, 68‒69, 170.
[1001]
SJE, t. 7, p. 337.
[1002]
Larine, p. 70.
[1003]
I. M. Dijour, Evrei v ekonomitchesköjizni Rossii (The Jews in the
Economic Life of Russia), BJWR‐l *, p. 172.
[1004]
Ibidem*, p. 173.
[1005]
Larine, p.69.
[1006]
JE, t. 1, p. 423.
[1007]
Dijour, SJE-1, p. 173.
[1008]
A. Menes, Evreiski vopros v Vostotchnoï Evrope (The Jewish
Question in Eastern Europe), JW-1, p. 146.
[1009]
SJE, t. 7, p. 368.
[1010]
JE, t. 13, p. 646.
[1011]
Ibidem, p. 662.
[1012]
RJE, t. 1, p. 171.
[1013]
Ibidem, p. 264.
[1014]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 231.
[1015]
RJE, t. 1, p. 171.
[1016]
Dijour, BJWR-1, pp. 163‒174.
[1017]
JE, t. 11, p. 697.
[1018]
SJE, t. 7, p. 369; RJE, t. 1, pp. 315‒316; JE, t. 6, p. 527.
[1019]
M. Vernatsky, Evrei i rousskoie narodnoie khoziaistvo (The Jews
and the Russian Economy), p. 30.
[1020]
Choulguine, pp. 128‒129.
[1021]
Vladimir Yossifovich Gourko (1863‒1917): Deputy Minister of
the Interior in 1906, elected member of the Council of the
Empire since 1912. Emigrated after the Civil War.
[1022]
Vf Gourko, Oustoi narodnogo khoziastva v Rossii: Agrarno‐
ekonomitcheskie etiudy (The Foundations of the National
Economy in Russia: Agrarian and Economic Studies), Saint
Petersburg, 1902, p. 199.
[1023]
Dijour, BJWR-1, p. 176.
[1024]
SJE, t. 7, p. 369.
[1025]
Dijour, BJWR-1, pp. 178‒179; JE, t. 13, p. 660; SJE, t. 7, p. 369.
[1026]
JE, t. 13, pp. 651‒652.
[1027]
JE, t. 6, p. 527.
[1028]
Dijour, BJWR-1, pp. 174‒175; SJE, t. 6, pp. 670‒671.
[1029]
JE, t. 12, p. 734; SJE, t. 6, pp. 670‒671.
[1030]
SJE, t. 2, pp. 313‒314.
[1031]
I. M. Bickerman, Rossiia i rousskoie evreistvo (Russia and
Russian Judaism), RJE, pp. 84‒85, 87.
[1032]
E. Finkelstein, Evrei v SSSR. Pout v XXI vek (The Jews in the
USSR. Entry into the 21st Century), Strana i mir: Obschetv.
Polititcheski, ekonomitcheski i koultourno losfski journal
(The Country and the World: Socio‐political, Economic,
Cultural and Philosophical Review), Munich, 1989, no. 1 (49), p.
70.
[1033]
Sliosberg, t. 1, p. 145.
[1034]
M.A. Krol, Stranitsy moeï jizni (Pages of my life), t. 1, New York,
Union of Russian Jews in New York, 1944, p. 267.
[1035]
Krol., op. cit., pp. 260‒261, 267, 299.
[1036]
JE, t. 1, pp. 60‒61.
[1037]
Ibidem, t. 8, p. 466.
[1038]
Ibidem, t. 11, p. 924.
[1039]
Ibidem, pp. 924‒925.
[1040]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 32, 96‒102.
[1041]
JE, t. 7, p. 504.
[1042]
SJE, t. 2, p. 365.
[1043]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 29, 98‒100.
[1044]
JE, t. 16, pp. 264‒268.
[1045]
G. I. Aronson, V borbe za natsionalnye i granjdanskie prava:
Obschestvennye telchénia v rousskom evreistve (In the
struggle for civil and national rights: Social currents among
the Jews of Russia), BJWR-1, p. 212.
[1046]
JE, t. 7, p. 507; Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 34‒41; SJE, t. 7, p. 366.
[1047]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 27‒30.
[1048]
JE, t. 2, pp. 534‒535.
[1049]
Ibidem, t. 7, p. 504.
[1050]
Gosudarslvcnnaia Duma—Vtoroi sozyv (State Duma, 2nd
Legislature), Stenogramme, Session 2, Saint Petersburg, 1907,
Meeting 24, 9 April 1907, p. 1814.
[1051]
JE, t. 7, p. 505‒509; I. M. Troilsky, Samodeiatelnost i
samopomosch evreiev v Rossii (autonomous activity and
mutual assistance of Jews in Russia), BJWR-1, pp. 491‒495.
[1052]
JE, t. 16, p. 265.
[1053]
SJE, t. 7, p. 366.
[1054]
JE, t. 2, pp. 246‒248.
[1055]
Ibidem, pp. 247‒248.
[1056]
SJE, t. 7, p. 365.
[1057]
V. Jabotinsky, Vvedenie (Preface to K. N. Bialik, Pesni i poemy
(Songs and poems), Saint Petersburg, ed. Zaltsman, 1914, p. 36
[1058]
I. Mark, Literatoura na idish v Rossii (Literature in Yiddish in
Russia), BJWR-1, pp. 537‒539.
[1059]
Aronson, op. cit., BJWR-1, p. 216.
[1060]
Mark, LJE-1, pp. 519‒541.
[1061]
G. I. Aronson, Roussko‐evreiskaïa pclchat (The Russian‐Jewish
Press), BJWR-1, p. 563.
[1062]
Sliosberg, t. 1, pp. 105, 260.
[1063]
Aronson, The Russian‐Jewish Press, op. cit., pp. 563‒568.
[1064]
S. M. Ginzburg, O roussko‐evrciskoï intelligentsii (De
l’intelligentsia russo‐juive), JW-1. pp. 35‒36.
[1065]
I. Ben‐Tvi, Iz istorii rabotchego sionizma v Rossii (About the
History of Workers’ Zionism in Russia). BJWR-1, p. 272.
[1066]
Ginzburg, About Russian‐Jewish Intelligentsia, op. cit., pp. 37‒
39
[1067]
Sliosberg, t. 2, pp. 301‒302.
[1068]
Hessen, t. 2, p. 232.
[1069]
JE, t. 3, p. 232.
[1070]
I. Mark, Pamiati I. M. Tcherkover (To the Memory of I. M.
Tcherkover), JW-2, New York, 1944, p. 425.
[1071]
Aronson, The Russian‐Jewish Press, op. cit., pp. 564‒568.
[1072]
Sliosberg, L 3, pp. 110‒135.
[1073]
Aronson, The Russian‐Jewish Press, op. cit., pp. 213‒215.
[1074]
Parks, p. 161.
[1075]
Istoria XIX veka v 8-mi t. (Russian translation of the History of
the XIX century in 8 volumes, by Lavisse and Rambaud, t. 7),
M., 139, pp. 186, 203.
[1076]
Parks, p. 164.
[1077]
Karl Eugen Dühring (1833‒1921): German philosopher. His
theses, opposed to the economic and social theories of Marx
and Engels, were strongly criticised by the latter in the work
entitled precisely the Anti‐Dühring.
[1078]
JE*, t. 2, pp. 696‒708.
[1079]
Ibidem, pp. 676‒677.
[1080]
R. Noudelman, Prizrak brodit po Evrope (A Spectre Haunts
Europe), in «22», Tel‐Aviv, 1992, no. 84, p. 128.
[1081]
JE, t. 11, p. 758‒759.
[1082]
V. S. Solovyov, Evreistvo i khristianski vopros (Judaism and the
Christian Question), Compl. Works in 10 vols., 2nd ed., St.
Petersburg, 1911‒1914, vol. 4, pp. 135, 136, 138.
[1083]
Aronson, The Russian‐Jewish Press, op. cit., p. 549.
[1084]
Letter from V. Solovyov to F. Hetz, in V. S. Solovyov. Evreiski
vopros—Khristianski vopros / Sobranie statei (The Jewish
question—The Christian question—Collection of articles),
Warsaw, Pravda, 1906. p. 34.
[1085]
Neopoublikovannyi protest protiv antisemitizma (Protest
against anti‐Semitism, unpublished [edited by Vladimir
Solovyov]), BJWR-1, pp. 574‒575. The text of this protest was
originally published in the book by F. Hetz, Ob otnoshenii V.
Solovyova k evreiskomou voprosou (V. Solovyov’s attitude
towards the Jewish question) (M., 1920), where it gures under
the title “Ob antisemititcheskom dvijenii v petchati:
Neizdannaïa statia V. Solovyova” (On the anti‐Semitic
movement in the press: an unpublished article by V. Solovyov),
then it was reprinted in the “free” brochure of Warsaw quoted
above.
[1086]
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853‒1921) famous
Russian writer, great democrat. A political exile, he spent ten
years in Eastern Siberia. Denounces police violence and anti‐
Semitism. Will be horri ed by the terror and despotism of the
Bolsheviks.
[1087]
Cf. BJWR-1*, p. 565.
[1088]
Teitel, p. 176.
[1089]
JE, t. 10, p. 827.
[1090]
S. M. Schwartz, Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soiouze (Anti‐
Semitism in the Soviet Union), New York, ed. Chekhov, 1952, p.
13.
[1091]
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766‒1826): Russian writer.
His great History of the Russian State made Pushkin say of him
that he was the “Christopher Columbus of Ancient Russia.”
[1092]
The False‐Dmitry, said the Usurper: in 1601, this character
appeared in Poland pretending to be the son of Ivan IV. He
marched on Moscow and occupied the throne from 1905 to
1906. He was killed by conspirator boyars.
[1093]
N. M. Karamzin, Istoria Gosudarsva Rossiiskogo (History of the
Russian State), 12 vols., 5 ed., Saint Petersburg, Einerling,
1842‒1844, t. 11, p. 143.
[1094]
Dahl, Toljovyi slovar jivogo velokorousskogo iazyka (Dictionary
of the living Great‐Russian language), t. 1, 1955, p. 541.
[1095]
I. E. Temirov, Vospominania (Souvenirs), BFRZ, f. 1, A-29, p. 23.
[1096]
SJE, t. 4, p. 327.
[1097]
L. Praisman, Pogromy i samooborona (Pogroms and self‐
defense), in “22”, 1986‒1987, no. 51, p. 176.
[1098]
JE, t. 9, p. 507.
[1099]
Kichinevski pogrom: Obvinitelnyi akt (The Kichinev pogrom:
the indictment), Osvobojdenie, Stuttgart, Oct. 19, 1903, no. 9
(33), supplement, pp. 1‒4.
[1100]
I. G. Froumkine, Iz istorii rousskogo evrcistva: vospominaniia,
materialy, dokoumenty (On the history of the Jews of Russia:
memoires, materials, documents), BJWR-1, p. 59.
[1101]
Kichinevski pogrom: Obvinitelnyi akt (The Kichinev pogrom:
the indictment), Osvobojdenie, op. cit., p. 1.
[1102]
Materialy dlia istorii antievreiskikh pogromov v Rossii
(Materials for history 12 vols., 5th ed., Saint Petersburg,
Einerling, 1842‒1844, 11, pp. 143, S. M. Dubnov and G. I.
Krasnyi‐Admoni, t. 1, Pg. 1919 (Materials…), p. 340.
[1103]
Froumkine, BJWR-1, p. 59.
[1104]
Biekerman, RJE, p. 57.
[1105]
SJE, t. 4, p. 327.
[1106]
V. G. Korolenko, Dom no 13, Sobr. sotch. (Complete works), t. 9,
M. 1995, pp. 406‒422.
[1107]
The Kichinev pogrom: The indictment, op. cit., pp. 3, 202.
[1108]
Krohl, Stranitsy… (Pages…), p. 299.
[1109]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 49.
[1110]
M. Krohl, Kishinevski pogrom 1903 goda i Kishinevski
pogromnyi protses (The Kichinev pogrom of 1903 and the trial
of the Kichinev pogrom), Mi-2, p. 372.
[1111]
Ibidem, pp. 372‒373.
[1112]
Krohl, Stranitsy… (Pages…), op. cit., pp. 301, 303.
[1113]
Ibidem, pp. 301‒304.
[1114]
Krohl, op. cit., Mi-2, p. 374.
[1115]
Ibidem.
[1116]
Report to the Prosecutor No. 1392 of 20 Nov. 1903; Report to
the prosecutor No. 1437 of 1 Dec. 1903, in Materialy…
[Materials…], op. cit., pp. 319, 322‒323.
[1117]
RJE, t. 1, p. 417.
[1118]
In Materialy… [Materials…], op. cit., pp. 333‒335;
Pravitelstvennyi vestnik (Government Messenger). Saint
Petersburg, no. 97, 1903, 29 April (12 May).
[1119]
J. de Cronstadt: My thoughts about the violence perpetrated by
Christians against the Jews in Kishinev, in Materialy…
[Materials…], op. cit., pp. 354, 356.
[1120]
Homily of Bishop Antoine of 30 April 1903, in Materialy…
[Materials…], op. cit., pp. 354, 356.
[1121]
Sankt‐Petersburgskie vedomosti (News from Saint Petersburg),
24 April (7 May 1903), p. 5.
[1122]
Baltimore Sun, 16 May 1903, p. 2; The Jewish Chronicle, 15 May
1903, p. 2; Protest by the Board of Deputies and the Anglo‐
Jewish Association, Times, 18 May 1903, p. 10.
[1123]
In Materialy… [Materials…], op. cit., pp. 174‒175.
[1124]
Ibidem, p. 279.
[1125]
Ibidem, pp. 172‒173.
[1126]
Krohl, op. cit., RW-2, pp. 376‒377.
[1127]
Krohl, Stranitsy… (Pages…), op. cit., p. 302.
[1128]
Krohl, op. cit., RW-2, pp. 371‒372.
[1129]
“Remember Kichine ” (editorial), The Jewish Chronicle, 15
May 1903, p. 21; 22 May 1903, p. 10; Baltimore Sun, 16 May
1903, p. 4.
[1130]
Sliosberg, vol. 3, pp. 48‒49, 61‒64.
[1131]
Ibidem.
[1132]
Times, 18 May 1903, p. 10.
[1133]
“Protest by the Board of Deputies and the Anglo‐Jewish
Association”, Times, 18 May 1903, p. 10.
[1134]
New York Times, 19 May 1903, p. 10; 21 May 1903, p. 8.
[1135]
Times, 27 May 1903, p. 7.
[1136]
P. P. Zavarsine, Rabota taino politsii (The Work of Your Secret
Police), Paris, 1924, pp. 68‒69.
[1137]
November sechzehn, München‐Zürich, Piper, 1986, p. 1149.
French Trans., ed. Fayard, Paris, 1985.
[1138]
SJE, t. 7, p. 347.
[1139]
Ibidem, t. 6, p. 533.
[1140]
D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaïa revolioutisiia i evreistvo
(Bolchevisme i ioudaïsme) (The Russian Revolution and
Judaism [The Bolshevism and Judaism]), Paris, 1923, p. 142.
[1141]
Krohl, Stranitsy… (Pages…) op. cit., p. 303.
[1142]
Krohl, op. cit., JW2*, pp. 379‒380.
[1143]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 69.
[1144]
Times, 10 November 1903, p. 4.
[1145]
JE, t. 9, p. 507.
[1146]
Materialy… (Materials…), op. cit., p. 147; Times, 18 May 1903, p.
8; Materialy…, op. cit., p. 294.
[1147]
The American Jewish Year Book, 5664 (1903‒1904),
Philadelphia, 1903, p. 22.
[1148]
Froumkine, BJWR-1, pp. 60‒61.
[1149]
V. Jabotinsky, Vvedenie (Preface to Kh. N. Bialik, Pesni i poemy
(Songs and Poems), Saint Petersburg, Zalzman ed., 1914, pp.
42‒43.
[1150]
V. Jabotinsky, V traournye dni (Days of Mourning), Felietony,
Saint Petersburg, Tipogra a “Guerold”, 1913, p. 25.
[1151]
M. Krohl, Kishinovsky pogrom 1903 goda Kishinëvskiy
pogromnyi protsess (The Kishinev pogrom of 1903), BJWR-2,
New York, 1944, p. 377.
[1152]
Ibidem.
[1153]
S. Dimanstein, Revoloutsionnoïe dvijenie sredi ievreyev (The
revolution-Saint Petersburg, 1905: Istoria rcvoloutsionnovo
dvijenia v otdelnykh otcherkakh (History of the Revolutionary
Movement—abbreviated: “1905”) / pod redaktskiei M. N.
Pokrovskovo, vol. 3, vyp. 1, M. L., 1927, p. 150.
[1154]
N. A. Buchbinder, Ivrevskoye rabotchee dvijenie v Gomele
(1890‒1905) (The Jewish Workers’ Movement in Gomel [1890‒
1905]), Krasnaya lelopis: Istoritcheskii journal, Pg., 1922, nos.
2‒3, pp. 65‒69.
[1155]
Ibidem, p. 38.
[1156]
Kievskaya soudebnaya palata: Delo o gomelskom pogrom (Kiev
courthouse: the Gomel pogrom case), Pravo, Saint Petersburg,
1904, no. 44, pp. 3041‒3042.
[1157]
Ibidem, pp. 3041‒3043.
[1158]
Ibidem, p. 3041.
[1159]
Ibidem, pp. 3043‒3046.
[1160]
Buchbinder, op. cit., p. 69.
[1161]
L. Praisman, Pogromy i samooborona (The pogroms and self‐
defence), “22”: Obchtchestvenno‐polititcheskii literatoumyi
newspaper Ivreiskoi intelligentsii iz SSSR v Izraele, Tel Aviv,
1986‒1987, no. 51, p. 178.
[1162]
From the minouvehikh dnei: Zapiski ruskovo ievreia (Things of
the past: memories of a Russian Jew), V 3-kh t. Paris, 1933‒
1934. t. 3, pp. 78‒79.
[1163]
Ibidem, p. 77.
[1164]
Delo o gomelskom pogrom (Kiev courthouse: the Gomel
pogrom case), op. cit., p. 3040.
[1165]
JE, t. 6, p. 666.
[1166]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 78‒87.
[1167]
JE, t. 6, p. 667.
[1168]
I. G. Froumkine, Iz istorii ruskovo ievreïstva—(Sb.) Kniga o
rousskom cvrcïve: Ot 1860 godov do Revolutsii 1917 g.
(Aspects of the History of Russian Jews), in BJWR-1, p. 61.
[1169]
F. R. Dulles, The Road to Tehran: The Story of Russia and
America, 1781‒1943, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University
Press, 1944, pp. 88‒89.
[1170]
S. I. Witte, Vospominania. Tsarstvovanie Nikolaïa (Memoirs,
The Reign of Nicholas II). In 2 vols., Berlin, Slovo, 1922, t. 1, pp.
376, 393.
[1171]
T. Dennett, Roosevelt and the Russo‐Japanese War, Doubleday,
Page and Company, 1925 (reprinted: Gloucester, Mass., Peter
Smith, 1959), p. 2.
[1172]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 155.
[1173]
JE, t. 16, p. 41.
[1174]
Encyclopædia Judaica, vol. 14, Jerusalem, Keter Publishing
House, Ltd., 1971, p. 961.
[1175]
A. Davydov, Vospominania, 1881‒1955 (Memoirs, 1881‒1955),
Paris, 1982.
[1176]
Witte, Memoirs, op. cit., t. 2, pp. 286‒287.
[1177]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 97, 100‒101.
[1178]
JE, t. 5, p. 863.
[1179]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 190.
[1180]
JE, t. 5, pp. 671, 864.
[1181]
Frumkin, op. cit., BJWR-1, pp. 64, 109‒110.
[1182]
A. N. Kouropatkine, Zadatchi ruskko armii (The Problems of the
Russian Army), Saint Petersburg, 1910, t. 3, pp. 344‒345.
[1183]
JE, t. 2, pp. 239‒240.
[1184]
Kievlianine, 16 Dec. 1905—V. V. Choulguine, “Chto nam v nikh
ne nravitsa…” Ob Antisemilizm v Rossii (“What we do not like
about them…” On Anti‐Semitism in Russia), Paris, 1929,
annexes, p. 308.
[1185]
JE, t. 5, pp. 705‒707.
[1186]
Ibidem, t. 3, pp. 168‒169.
[1187]
A. I. Denikine, Pout rousskovo o tsera (The Routine of a Russian
O cer), New York, ed. Imeni Chekhov, 1953, p. 285.
[1188]
JE, t. 3, p. 169.
[1189]
Witte, op. cit., t. 1, pp. 394‒395.
[1190]
B’nai B’rith News, May 1920, vol. XII, no. 9.
[1191]
Witte, op. cit., p. 401.
[1192]
Organ of the Union for Liberation, organisation of the liberal
opposition, which became the Constitutional‐Democratic Party
(or KD, or Cadet) in 1905.
[1193]
G. I. Aronson, V borbe za grajdanskie i natsionalnye prava:
Obchtchestvennye tetchenia v rousskom evreïstve (The
struggle for civil and national rights: The movements of
opinion within the Jewish community of Russia), BJWR-1, pp.
221‒222.
[1194]
M. L. Vichnitser, Iz peterbourgskikh vospominanii (Memories of
Petersburg), BJWR-1, p. 41.
[1195]
S. Ivanovich, Ievrei i sovetskaya diktatoura (The Jews and the
Soviet Dictatorship), pp. 41‒42.
[1196]
Jewish mutual aid committee
[1197]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 132, 248‒249.
[1198]
Ibidem, pp. 138, 168.
[1199]
Ibidem, pp. 142‒147, 152‒157.
[1200]
M. Krohl, Stranitsy moiei jisni (Pages of my life), t. 1, New York,
1944, pp. 299‒300.
[1201]
JE, t. 14, p. 515.
[1202]
RJE, t. 3, M., 1997, p. 65.
[1203]
JE, t. 14, p. 515.
[1204]
Aronson, The Struggle…, op. cit., p. 222.
[1205]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 170‒171.
[1206]
Jewish elementary schools
[1207]
Ibidem, p. 170.
[1208]
JE, t. 14, p. 516.
[1209]
Ibidem, t. 7, pp. 437‒440.
[1210]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 257‒258.
[1211]
JE, t. 14. p. 517.
[1212]
Aronson, The Struggle…, op. cit., p. 224.
[1213]
D. S. Pasmanik, Chevo je my dobivaïemsia? (What do we really
want?), Rossia i Ievrei, Sb 1 (Russia and the Jews, book 1—later:
RJ) / Otetchestvennoïe obedinenie rousskikh ievreyev za
granitsei, Paris, YMCA Press, 1978, p. 211.
[1214]
Aronson, The Struggle…, op. cit., p. 224.
[1215]
After the dissolution of the rst Duma, about two hundred
deputies met at Vyborg, and expressed their opposition to the
government in the form of a manifesto, which did not meet
with any public echo.
[1216]
G. Svet, Rousskie evrei v sionizme i v stroitelstve Palestiny i
Izrailia (Russian Jews in Zionism and the Construction of
Palestine and Israel), BJWR-1, pp. 263‒264.
[1217]
V. Jabotinsky, levreiskaya kramola (The Jewish Conspiracy),
Felietony, p. 43.
[1218]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 253, 255, 262.
[1219]
Ibidem, pp. 225‒256.
[1220]
Teachers teaching in heders.
[1221]
Ibidem, p. 258.
[1222]
Ibidem, p. 263.
[1223]
Ibidem, p. 265.
[1224]
Krohl, Stanitsy… (Pages…), op. cit., pp. 283‒284.
[1225]
Social Revolutionaries.
[1226]
D. Schub, Evrei rousskoï revolutsii (The Jews in the Russian
Revolution), JW-2, p. 138.
[1227]
Chief of the Russian secret police at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
[1228]
Minister of the Interior assassinated in 1902.
[1229]
SJE, t. 2, p. 111.
[1230]
Politician with revolutionary ideas, very in uential with the
emperors Alexander and Nicolas II (1827‒1907).
[1231]
RJE, t. 3, pp. 378‒379.
[1232]
P. Dournovo (1845‒1915), Minister of the Interior in 1905‒
1906; P. Shuvalov (1830‒1906), Russian diplomat and
politician; D. Trepov (1855‒1906), Deputy Minister of the
Interior, one of the leaders of the repression of the revolution
of 1905‒1907.
[1233]
G. Gapon (1870‒1906), priest and agent of the secret police,
one of the persons responsible for the massacre of
demonstrators in Saint Petersburg, 9 January 1905.
[1234]
RJE, t. 2, p. 517.
[1235]
Zagorsk.
[1236]
Russian Social‐Democratic Labour Party.
[1237]
RJE, t. 1, pp. 436, 468; t. 2, pp. 13, 218.
[1238]
SJE, t. 1, p. 124.
[1239]
A. Vetlouguine, Avanturisly Grajdanskoy voïny (Adventurers of
the Civil War), Paris, Imprimerie Zemgor, 1921, pp. 65‒67, 85.
[1240]
I. Grossman‐Rochin, Doumy o bylom (Re ections on the Past) (Iz
istorii Belostotskovo, anarkhitcheskovo,
“tchemosnamenskovo” dvijenia), Byloïe, M., 1924, nos. 27‒28,
p. 179.
[1241]
Ben‐Khoïrin, Anarkhism i ievreïskaïa massa (Anarchism and
the Jewish masses) (St. Petersburg) Soblazn sotsializma:
Revolutsia v Rossi i ievrci / Sost. A. Serebren‐nikov, Paris, M.,
YMCA Press, Rousskii Pout, 1995, p. 453.
[1242]
See infra, Chapter 10.
[1243]
SJE, t. 7, p. 398.
[1244]
Dimanstein, “1905*”, op. cit., t. 3, v. 1, p. 174.
[1245]
Mejdounarodnoïe nansovoïë polojenie tsarskoi Rossii vo
vremia mirovoï voïny (The nancial situation of tsarist Russia
during the World War), Krasnyi Arkhiv, 1934, t. 64, p. 28.
[1246]
Retch, 1917, 25 March, p. 6.
[1247]
Dimanstein, “1905”, op. cit., p. 175.
[1248]
JE, t. 7, p. 370.
[1249]
Doklad direktora departamenta politsii Lopoukhina ministrou
vnoutrennykh del o sobytiakh 9-vo ianvaria (Report of the
Director of the Police Department, Lopoukhine, to the Minister
of the Interior on the events of 9 January), Krasnaya Ictopis,
1922, no. 1, p. 333.
[1250]
V Nevsky, Ianvarskie dni v Peterbourgue v 1905 godou (The
Days of January in Petersburg in 1905), ibidem, pp. 51, 53.
[1251]
Soblazn Sotsializma, p. 329.
[1252]
RJE, t. 2, p. 70.
[1253]
Dimanstein, “1905”, op. cit., p. 144.
[1254]
N. Buchbinder, 9 ianvaria i icvskoye rabotchee dvijenie (On 9
January and Jewish Labour Movement), Krasnaya Letopis,
1922, no. 1, pp. 81‒87.
[1255]
Dimanstein, “1905”, op. cit., pp. 145, 147.
[1256]
Ibidem, pp. 150‒151.
[1257]
Ibidem, pp. 123‒124.
[1258]
SJE, t. 2, p. 513.
[1259]
Dimanstein, “1905”, op. cit., p. 144.
[1260]
JE, t. 7, p. 602.
[1261]
SJE, t. 2, p. 513.
[1262]
Ibidem, t. 6, p. 566.
[1263]
Pravo, 5 May 1905, pp. 1483‒1484.
[1264]
SJE, t. 2, p. 513; Dimanstein, “1905”, op. cit., pp. 151‒152.
[1265]
Dimanstein, “1905”, op. cit., p. 153.
[1266]
Ibidem, p. 164.
[1267]
A. Boulyguine (1851‒1919). Minister of the Interior in 1905.
[1268]
Ibidem, pp. 165‒166.
[1269]
Ibidem, pp. 167‒168.
[1270]
Ibidem, pp. 173‒175.
[1271]
Ibidem, pp. 177‒178.
[1272]
JE, t. 5, pp. 99‒100.
[1273]
SJE, t. 1, p. 560.
[1274]
Manifest 17 oktiabria (Dokoumenry) (The Manifesto of 17
October [documents]), Krasnyi arkhiv, 1925, t. 11‒12, pp. 73,
89.
[1275]
SJE, t. 7, p. 349.
[1276]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 175.
[1277]
Manifest 17 oktiabria (The Manifesto of 17 October), op. cit., pp.
99‒105.
[1278]
Witte, Memoirs, op. cit., t. 2, pp. 52‒54.
[1279]
Kievlianin, 1905, no. 305: Choulguine*, annexes, op. cit., pp.
271‒274.
[1280]
Vseppodaneïchiï ottchët o proizvedennom senatorom Tourau
izsledovanii pritchin besporiadkov, byvehikh v gor. Kicvc
(Report of Senator Tourau on the causes of the disorders in the
city of Kiev), Materialy k istorii rousskoi kontr‐revolutsii, t. 1.
Pogromy po olitsialnym dokoumentam, Saint Petersburg,
1908, pp. 203‒296.
[1281]
SJE, t. 6, p. 567.
[1282]
See infra, Chapter 10.
[1283]
Kievlianin, 1905, nos. 290, 297, 311, 317, 358, in Choulguine,
annexes, op. cit., pp. 286‒302.
[1284]
Vseppodanischi ottehel senatora Kuzminskovo o pritchinakh
bezporiadkov, proiskhodivehikh v r. Odcssc v oktiabre 1905 g.,
Io poriadke deïstvi m mestnykh vlaslei (Report by Senator
Kouzminski on the causes of the disorders in the city of Odessa
in October 1905 and on the actions carried out by the local
authorities), Kievskii i odcsskii pogromy v ottehetakh
senatorov Tourau i Kouzminskovo. SPb., Letopissets, (1907),
pp. 111‒220.
[1285]
Odesskii pogrom i samooborona (The Odessa pogrom and self‐
defence), Paris, Zapadnyi Tsentralnyi Komitet Samooborony
Poalei Zion, 1906, pp. 50‒52.
[1286]
V. Jabotinsky, Vvedenic (Preface), in K. N. Bialik. Pesni i poemy,
op. cit., p. 44.
[1287]
D. Aizman, Iskouchenie (Temptation), Rousskaïa volia, 29 April
1917, pp. 2‒3.
[1288]
Praisman, in “22”, op. cit., p. 179.
[1289]
Gossudarstvennaya Duma—Vtoroy Sozyv (The Duma of Elai—
second convocation), Slenogralitcheskiï ollchel, p. 2033.
[1290]
Odesskiï pogrom… (The pogrom of Odessa), Poalei Zion. pp.
64‒65.
[1291]
Ibidem, p. 53.
[1292]
The Kievlianin, 14 Nov. 1905, in Choulguine, annexes, op. cit.,
pp. 303‒308.
[1293]
Odesskiï pogrom… (The pogrom of Odessa), Poalei Zion, pp.
53‒54.
[1294]
SJE, t. 6, p. 122.
[1295]
Odesskiï pogrom… (Le pogrom d’Odessa), Poalei Zion, pp. 63‒
64.
[1296]
Dimanstein, in “1905”, t. 3, v. 1, p. 172.
[1297]
Choutguine, Annexes, p. 292.
[1298]
“The Russian Word”
[1299]
Because of the proclamation of the Manifesto modifying the
Russian regime.
[1300]
Report of Senator Kouzminski, pp. 176‒178.
[1301]
Report of Senator Tourau, p. 262.
[1302]
SJE, t. 6, p. 566.
[1303]
Ibidem.
[1304]
JE, t. 12, pp. 620‒622.
[1305]
I. L. Teitel, Iz moiii jizni za 40 let (Memories of 40 years of my
life), Paris, 1925, pp. 184‒186.
[1306]
Praisman, in “22”, 1986/87, no. 51, p. 183.
[1307]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 180.
[1308]
Dimanstein, t. 3, p.172.
[1309]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 177.
[1310]
Frumkin, BJWR-1, p. 71.
[1311]
Retch, 1906, 5 May.
[1312]
One of the main components of the White Army.
[1313]
I. Larme, Ievrei i antisemitizm v SSSR (The Jews and Anti‐
Semitism in the USSR), M.‐L. 1929, pp. 36, 292.
[1314]
Encyclopædia Judaica, vol. 13, p. 698.
[1315]
SJE, t. 6, p. 568.
[1316]
D. P. Makovitsky, 1905‒1906 v Iasnoi Poliane (1905‒1906 in
Yasnaya Poliana), Golos minovehevo. M., 1923, no. 3, p. 26.
[1317]
Second Duma, shorthand for the debates, 12 March 1907, p.
376.
[1318]
Praisman, in “22”, 1986‒87, no. 51, pp. 183, 186‒187.
[1319]
Novoie vremia, 1905, 20 Nov. (3 Dec), pp. 2‒3.
[1320]
V. Purishkevich (1870‒1920), one of the leaders of the Russian
extreme right.
[1321]
Stenographic Record of the Third Duma, 1911, p. 3118.
[1322]
JE, t. 14, p. 519.
[1323]
Entsiklopcditcheskii slovar, Spb., Brockhaus i Efron. Dopoln, t.
2 (4 / d), 1907, p. 869.
[1324]
Boris Orlov, Rossia bez evrcev (Russia without the Jews), “22”,
1988, no. 60, p. 151.
[1325]
Encyclopædia Britannica. 15th ed., 1981, vol. II, p. 62, cl. 2.
[1326]
Proceedings of the First Duma, May 19th 1906, p. 524.
[1327]
I. O. Levine, Evrei v revolutsii (The Jews in the Revolution), RaJ,
p. 135.
[1328]
Dimanstein, t. 3, p. 163.
[1329]
Iz istorii anarkhitcheskovo dvijenia v Bialystoka (Aspects of the
history of the anarchist movement in Bialystok), Soblazn
sotsializma, pp. 417‒432.
[1330]
JE, t. 5, pp. 171‒172.
[1331]
Dimanslein, t. 3, p. 180.
[1332]
Grossman‐Rochtchine, Byloïe, 1924, nos. 27‒28. pp. 180‒182.
[1333]
JE, t. 5, pp. 171‒174.
[1334]
Ibidem, pp. 170. 172.
[1335]
Praisman, pp. 185‒186.
[1336]
Dimanstein, t. 3, p. 180.
[1337]
Der Leizte russischc Allcinherrscher, Berlin, Eberhard Frowein
Verlag (1913), p. 340.
[1338]
A. Popov, Zaem 1906 g. V Donesseniakh ruskovo posla v Parije
(The loan of 1906 through the despatches of the Russian
ambassador to Paris), Krasnyy arkhiv, 1925, t. 11/12, p. 432.
[1339]
K peregovoram Kokovtseva o zaïme v 1905‒1906 gg. (The
Kokovtsev Talks for Borrowing), Krasnyy arkhiv, 1925, t. 10, p.
7.
[1340]
Perepiska N.A. Romanova i P.A. Solypina (Correspondence
between N. A. Romanov and P. A. Stolypin). Krasnyi Arkhiv,
1924, t. 5, p. 106.
[1341]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 185‒188.
[1342]
G. A. Landau, Revolutsionnye idei v ievreïskoi
obchtchcstvennosti (Revolutionary ideas in Jewish opinion).
RaJ, p. 116.
[1343]
Stenographic Record of Debates at the Second Duma, 6 March
1907, p. 151.
[1344]
JE, t. 2, pp. 235‒236; SJE, t. 6, p. 568.
[1345]
B. I. Goldman (B. Gorev), Icvrci v proizvedcniakh rousskikh
pissatelei (The Jews in Russian Literature), Pd. Svobodnoïe
slovo, 1917, p. 28.
[1346]
SJE, t. 7, p. 348.
[1347]
Patriarch of the Russian Church, who in the seventeenth
century wished to impose by force a reform of liturgical texts
and ritual, which gave rise to the schism of the “old believers”.
[1348]
See, for example, Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Harper
Collins, 1987, p. 448.
[1349]
SJE, t. 7, p. 349.
[1350]
JE, t. 5, p. 100.
[1351]
RJE, t. 1, p. 392.
[1352]
JE, t. 7, p. 370.
[1353]
JE, t. 7, p. 371.
[1354]
G. B. Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 200.
[1355]
SJE, p. 349
[1356]
Ibidem, pp. 398‐399.
[1357]
V. V. Choulguine, “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsa…”, Ob
Antisemitism v Rossii (“What we do not like about them…” On
anti‐Semitism in Russia), Paris, 1929, p. 207.
[1358]
A. Tyrkova‐Williams, Na poutiakh k svobode (The Paths to
Freedom), New York, ed. Chekov, 1952, pp. 303‐304.
[1359]
V. A. Obolensky, Moïa jizn. Moi sovremenniki (My life, My
contemporaries), Paris, YMCA Press. 1988, p. 335.
[1360]
SJE, t. 7, p. 349.
[1361]
Retch (The Word), 1907, 7 (19) January, p. 2.
[1362]
JE, t. 7, p. 371.
[1363]
V. A. Maklakov, 1905‐1906 gody (1905‐1906)—M. Winaver i
ruskaya obchtchestvennost nachala XX veka (M. Winaver and
the Russian public opinion at the beginning of the twentieth
century), Paris, 1937, p. 94.
[1364]
JE, t. 7, p. 372.
[1365]
JE, t. 2, pp. 749‐751.
[1366]
JE, t. 7, p. 373.
[1367]
SJE, t. 7, p. 351.
[1368]
Perepiska N. A. Romanova and P. A. Solypina (Correspondence
between N. A. Romanov and P. A. Stolypin), Krasnyi Arkhiv,
1924, vol. 5, p. 105; See also SJE, t. 7, p. 351
[1369]
S. E. Kryjanorski, Vospominania (Memoirs), Berlin, Petropolis,
pp. 94‐95.
[1370]
SJE, t. 7, p. 351.
[1371]
JE, t. 7, p. 373.
[1372]
Nikolai Berdyaev, Filoso a neravenstva (The Philosophy of
Inequality), Paris, YMCA Press, 1970, p. 72.
[1373]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 247.
[1374]
JE, t. 7, pp. 373‐374.
[1375]
A. A. Goldenweiser, Pravovoe polojenie ievreyev v Rossii (The
legal position of Jews in Russia), [Sb.] Kniga o ruskom evreïstve
Ot 1860 godov do Revolutsii 1917 g. (Aspects of the History of
Russian Jews), in BJWR‐1, p. 132; RJE, L 1, p. 212, t. 2, p. 99.
[1376]
Dissenting Cadet Party, founded by Guchkov, demanding the
strict application of 30 October Manifesto.
[1377]
Third Duma, Stenographic Record of Debates, 1911, p. 2958.
[1378]
JE, t. 7, p. 375.
[1379]
SJE, t. 7, p. 353.
[1380]
Novoie Vremia, 1911, 8 (21) Sept., p. 4.
[1381]
Ibidem, 10 (23) Sept., p. 4.
[1382]
Tyrkova‐Williams, pp. 340‐342.
[1383]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 186‐187.
[1384]
S. P. Melgunov, Vospominania i dnevniki. Vyp. I (Memoirs and
Journal, 1), Paris, 1964, p. 88.
[1385]
SJE, t. 7, p. 517.
[1386]
Nationalist mass organisation founded in October 1905 by Dr.
Dubrovin and Vladimir Purishkevich.
[1387]
Ibidem, p. 351; RJE, t. 1, pp. 290, 510.
[1388]
RJE, t. 1, p. 361.
[1389]
Novoie Vremia, 1917, 21 April (4 May); as well as other
newspapers.
[1390]
RJE, t. 1, p. 373.
[1391]
S. I. Witte, Vopominania. TsarsLvoanie Nikolaïa II (Memoirs,
The reign of Nicholas II) in 2 vols., Berlin, Slovo, 1922, t. 2, p.
54.
[1392]
The Kievian, 1905, 17 Nov. in Choulguine, Annexes, pp. 285‐
286.
[1393]
Iz dncvnika L. Tikhomirova (Excerpts from the diary of L.
Tikhomirov). Krasny Arkhiv, 1936, t. 74, pp. 177‐179.
[1394]
Boris Bougayev (Andrei Bely), Chtempelevennaïa kultura (The
Obliterated Culture), Viesy, 1909, no. 9, pp. 75‐77.
[1395]
Vl. Jabotinsky, Dezertiry i khoziaieva (Deserters and Masters),
Felietony, Spb, 1913, pp. 75‐76.
[1396]
A. Koulicher, Ob otvetstvennosti i bezotvetstvennosti
(responsibility and irresponsibility). Ievsreiskaya tribouna,
Paris, 1923, no. 7 (160), 6 April, p. 4.
[1397]
Witte, t. 2, p. 55.
[1398]
Stenographic Record of the Debates in the Third Duma, 1911, p.
2911.
[1399]
Vl. Jabotinsky, Homo homini lupus, Felietony, pp. 111‐113.
[1400]
JE, t. 9, p. 314.
[1401]
JE, t. 13, pp. 622‐625.
[1402]
JE, t. 5, p. 822.
[1403]
SJE, t. 5, p, 315.
[1404]
JE, t. 13, p. 55.
[1405]
SJE, t. 7, p. 352.
[1406]
S. V. Pozner, Ievrei v obschechei chkole… (The Jews in the Public
School…), SPb, Razoum, 1914, p. 54.
[1407]
SJE, t. 6, p. 854; t. 7, p. 352.
[1408]
JE, t. 13, pp. 55‐58.
[1409]
I. M. Troitsky, Ievrei vrusskoï chkole (The Jews and the Russian
School), in BJWR‐1, pp. 358, 360.
[1410]
K. A. Krivoshein, A. V. Krivoshein (1857‐1921) Evo znatchenie v
istorii Rossii natchal XX veka (A. V. Krivoshein: his role in the
history of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century),
Paris, 1973, pp. 290, 292.
[1411]
JE, t. 7, p. 757.
[1412]
M. Bernadski, Ievrci I ruskoye narodnoïe khoziaïstvo (The Jews
and the Russian economy), in Chtchit literatourny sbornik /
pod red. L. Andreeva, M. Gorkovo and E Sologouba. 3‐e izd.,
Dop., M. Rousskoye Obchtchestvo dlia izoutchenia ievreiskoi
jisni, 1916. pp. 28, 30; SJE, t. 7, p. 386.
[1413]
Bernadski, Chtchit, pp. 30, 31.
[1414]
RJE, t. 1, p. 536.
[1415]
Krivoshein, pp. 292‐293.
[1416]
Choulguine, p. 74.
[1417]
Bernadski, pp. 27. 28.
[1418]
I. M. Bikerman, Rossia i ruskoye Ivreisstvo (Russia and its
Jewish Community), in Rossia i ievrei (The Conservative and
Destructive Elements among the Jews), in RaJ, p. 33.
[1419]
D. S. Pasmanik, Ruskaya revolutsia i ievreisstvo (Bolshevik i
iudaism) (The Russian Revolution and the Jews [Bolshevism
and Judaism]), Paris. 1923, pp. 195‐196.
[1420]
D. S. Pasmanik, Tchevo je my dobivaïemsia? (But what do we
want?), RaJ, p. 218.
[1421]
SJE, t. 7, pp. 384‐385.
[1422]
Novoie Vremia, 1911, 10 (23) Sept., p. 4.
[1423]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 249.
[1424]
Ibidem.
[1425]
Perepiska V. V. Rozanova and M. O. Gerschenzona (The
correspondence of V. V. Rozanov and M. O. Gerschenzon), Novy
mir. 1991, no. 3, p. 232.
[1426]
Vladimir Bogrov, Drnitri Bogrov I oubiestvo Stolypina… (Dmitri
Bogrov and the assassination of Stolypin…), Berlin, 1931.
[1427]
In The Red Wheel, First Knot, August Fourteen, ed. Fayard / Seuil.
[1428]
A. Guchkov, Retch v Gosudarstvennoi Doume 15 Oct. 1911
(Address to the Duma of 15 Oct. 1911)—A. I. Goutchkov v
Tretieï Gosoudarstvennoï Doume (1907‐1912), Sbornik retchei
(Collection of speeches delivered by A. Guchkov to The Third
Duma), Spb, 1912, p. 163.
[1429]
See infra, following pages.
[1430]
The famous forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
[1431]
Sliosberg*, t. 2, pp. 283‐284.
[1432]
R. Nudelman, Doklad na seminare: Sovetskii antisemitizm—
pritchiny i prognozy (Presentation at the seminar: Soviet
antisemitism—causes and prognoses), in “22”, review of the
Jewish intelligentsia of the USSR in Israel, Tel Aviv, 1978, no. 3,
p. 145.
[1433]
Protsess Beilisa v otsenke Departamenta politsii (The Beilis
trial seen by the Police Department), Krasny Arkhiv, 1931, t. 44,
pp. 85‐125.
[1434]
See supra, chapter 9.
[1435]
Sliosberg, t. 3, pp. 23‐24, 37.
[1436]
Stenographic Record of the Debates at the Third Duma, 1911,
pp. 3119‐3120.
[1437]
V. V. Rozanov, Oboniatelnoye i osiazatelnoye otnochenie
ievreyev krovi (The Olfactory and Tactile Relationship of the
Jews to Blood), Stockholm, 1934, p. 110.
[1438]
Vladimir Bonch‐Bruevich (1873‐1955), sociologist, publisher,
publicist very attached to Lenin, collaborator of Pravda,
specialist in religious matters.
[1439]
N. V. Krylenko, Za piat let. 1918‐1922: Obvinitelnye retchi. (Five
years, 1918‐1922: Indictments…), M., 1923, p. 359.
[1440]
Ibidem, pp. 356, 364.
[1441]
Retch, 1913, 26 Oct. (8 Nov.), p. 3
[1442]
Bikerman, RaJ, p. 29
[1443]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 47.
[1444]
An allusion to the terrible naval reverse su ered by Russia in
its war against Japan (27‐28 May 1905).
[1445]
V. Lazaris, Smert Leo Franka (Death of Leo Frank), in “22”, 1984,
no. 36, pp. 155‐159.
[1446]
SJE, t. 1, pp. 317, 318.
[1447]
Ibidem, p. 317.
[1448]
Chekist o Tcheka (A Chekist speaks of the Cheka). Na tchoujoï
storone: Istoriko literatournye sborniki / pod red. S. P.
Melgounova, t. 9. Berlin: Vataga; Prague: Plamia, 1925, pp. 118,
135.
[1449]
Krylenko, pp. 367‐368
[1450]
B. T. Dinour, Religiozno‐natsionalny oblik ruskovo ievreistava
(The religious and national aspects of the Jews of Russia), in
BJWR-1, pp. 319, 322.
[1451]
F. M. Dostoyevsky, Dnevnik pisatelia za 1877, 1880 i 1581 gody
(Journal of a writer, March 1877, chapter 2), M., L., 1929, 1877,
Mart, gl 2, p. 78.
[1452]
I. L. Teitel, Iz moiii jizni za 40 let (Memories of 40 years of my
life), Paris, I. Povolotski i ko., 1925, pp. 227‒228.
[1453]
JE, t. 11, p. 894.
[1454]
V. S. Mandel, Konservativnye i pazrouchitelnye elementy v
ievreïstve (Conservative and destructive elements among
Jews), in RaJ, pp. 201, 203.
[1455]
D. O. Linsky, O natsionalnom samosoznanii ruskovo ievreia
(The national consciousness of the Russian Jew), RaJ, p. 142.
[1456]
G. A. Landau, Revolioutsionnye idei v ievreïskoi
obctchestvennosti (Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society), RaJ,
p. 115.
[1457]
Stenographic Record of the Debates of the Second Duma, 13
March 1907, p. 522.
[1458]
Literally “good”, “generous”.
[1459]
Formed from “babushka”—“grandmother”, “granny”.
[1460]
Literally “clear”, “bright”.
[1461]
P. G.—Marodiory knigi 3 (The Marauders of the Book), in Retch,
1917, 6 May, s.
[1462]
Vl. Jabotinsky, [Sb] Felietony. SPb.: Tipogra a Gerold, 1913, pp.
9‒11.
[1463]
Vl. Jabotinsky, [Sb] Felietony, pp. 16, 62‒63, 176‒180, 253‒254.
[1464]
Azef Evno (1569‒1918), terrorist, double agent (of the S.‐R. and
the Okhrana), unmasked by A. Bourtsev.
[1465]
The assassin of Stolypin; Cf. supra, chapter 10.
[1466]
Ibidem, pp. 26, 30, 75, 172‒173, 195, 199‒200, 205.
[1467]
Ibidem, pp. 15, 17, 69.
[1468]
Ibidem, pp. 18‒24, 175‒177.
[1469]
Ibidem, pp. 14, 200.
[1470]
Pamiati, M. L. Vichnitsera, BJWR-1. p. 8.
[1471]
JE, t. 8, p. 466.
[1472]
JE, t. 7, pp. 449‒450.
[1473]
JE, t. 16, p. 276.
[1474]
I. M. Bikerman, Rossia i rousskoye ievreisstvo (Russia and the
Jewish Community of Russia), RaJ. p. 86.
[1475]
St. Ivanovich, Ievrei i sovetskaya dikiatoura (The Jews and the
Soviet Dictatorship), in JW, pp. 55‒56.
[1476]
JE, t. 12, pp. 372‒373.
[1477]
Sliosberg, t. 1, pp. 3‒4.
[1478]
Sliosberg, t. 2, p. 302.
[1479]
Sliosberg, t. 1, p. 302.
[1480]
Linsky, RaJ, p. 144.
[1481]
Vekhi: resounding collection of articles (1909) in which a group
of intellectuals disillusioned from Marxism invited the
intelligentsia to reconcile with the power.
[1482]
V. A. Maklakov, Vlast i obchtchestvennost na zakate staroï
Rossii (Vospominania sovremennika) [The power and opinion
during the twilight of ancient Russia (Memoirs of a
Contemporary)], Paris: Prilojenie k “Illioustrirovannoï Rossii” II
n 1936, p. 466.
[1483]
Der Letzte russische Alleinherscher (The Last Autocrat: Study
on the Life and Reign of the Emperor of Russia Nicholas II),
Berlin, Ebcrhard Frowein Verlag [1913], p. 58.
[1484]
JE, t. 12, p. 621.
[1485]
JE, t. 12, p. 621.
[1486]
Nikolai Berdyaev, Filoso a neravenstva (Philosophy of
Inequality), 2nd ed., Paris, YMCA Press, 1970, p. 72.
[1487]
Sliosberg, t. 1, p. 260.
[1488]
Shchit (the Shield), 1916.
[1489]
Menshikov Michel (1859‒1918), began a career as a sailor
(until 1892), then became a journalist at the New Times,
supported Stolypin. After October, takes refuge in Valdai.
Arrested in August 1918 by the Bolsheviks, he was executed
without trial.
[1490]
Kn. S. P. Mansyrev, Moi vospominania (My memories) // [Sb.]
Fevralskaïa revolioutsia / sost. S. A. Alexeyev. M. L., 1926, p.
259.
[1491]
A. Voronel, in “22”: Obchtchestvenno‐polititcheski i
literatourny newspaper Ivreiskoi intelligentsii iz SSSR v Izrailie,
Tel Aviv, 1986, no. 50, pp. 156‒157.
[1492]
Perepiska V. V. Rozanova and M. O. Gerchenzona
(Correspondence of V. Rozanov and M. Gerchenzon), Novy Mir,
1991, no. 3, p. 239.
[1493]
V. V. Choulguine, “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsa…”: Ob
antisemitzme v Rossii (“What we do not like about them…” On
anti‐Semitism in Russia), Paris, 1929, pp. 58, 75.
[1494]
Shchit (the Shield), p. 164.
[1495]
Ibidem, p. 145.
[1496]
Vl. Jabotinsky, Asemitizm (Asemitism), in Slovo, SPb., 1909, 9
(22) March, p. 2; See also: [Sb.] Felietony, pp. 77‒83.
[1497]
Slovo, 1909, 9 (22) March, p. 1.
[1498]
of 1905.
[1499]
V. Golubev, Soglachenie, a ne stianie, Slovo, 1909, 9 (22) March,
p. 1.
[1500]
P. Struve, Intelligentsia i natsionalnoïe litso, Slovo, 1909, 10
(23) March, p. 2.
[1501]
P. Milyukov, Natsionalizm protiv natsionalizma (Nationalism
Against Nationalism), Retch, 19O9, 11 (24) March, p. 2.
[1502]
P. Struve, Polemitcheskie zigzagui i nesvoïevremennaya pravda
(polemical zigzags and undesired truth), Slovo, 1909, 12 (25)
March, p. 1.
[1503]
Slovo, 1909, 17 (30) March, p. 1.
[1504]
P. Struve, Slovo, 1909, 12 (25) March, p. 1.
[1505]
V. Golubev, K polemike o natsionalizme (On the controversy
regarding nationalism), ibidem, p. 2.
[1506]
M. Slavinski, Ruskie, velikorossy i rossiane (The Russians, the
Great Russians, and the citizens of Russia), ibidem, 14 (27)
March, p. 2.
[1507]
Slovo*, 1909, 17 (30) March, p. 1.
[1508]
Vl. Jabotinsky, Medved iz berlogui—Sb. Felietony, pp. 87‒90.
[1509]
G. I. Aronson, V borbe za grajdanskie i natsionalnye prava
Obchtchestvennye tetchenia v rousskom ievreïstve (The ght
for civil and national rights currents of opinion in the Jewish
community of Russia), BJWR-1, pp. 229, 572.
[1510]
Vl. Jabotinsky—[Sb.] Felietony, pp. 245‒247.
[1511]
P. Struve, Slovo, 1909, 10 (23) March, p. 2.
[1512]
V. Golubev, ibidem, 12 (25) March, p. 2.
[1513]
V. Golubev, O monopolii na patriotizm (On the monopoly of
patriotism), ibidem, 14 (27) March, p. 2.
[1514]
V. Golubev, Ot samuvajenia k ouvajeniou (From self‐respect to
respect), ibidem, 25 March (7 April), p. 1.
[1515]
A. Pogodin, K voprosou o natsionalizme (On the national
question), ibidem, 15 (28) March, p. 1.
[1516]
Slovo, 1909, 17 (30) March, p. 1.
[1517]
Hero of the Russian resistance to the Polish invasion in the
early seventeenth century.
[1518]
A. Pogodin, ibidem, 15 (28) March, p. 1.
[1519]
Slovo, 1909, 17 (30) March, p. 1.
[1520]
M. Slavinski, Slovo, 1909, 14 (27) March, p. 2.
[1521]
A. Pogodin, ibidem, 15 (28) March, p. 1.
[1522]
Slovo, 1909, 17 (30) March, p. 1.
[1523]
SJE, t. 2, 1982, pp. 313‒314.
[1524]
V. I. Lenin, Complete Works in 55 volumes [in Russian], 1958‒
1965, t. 49, p. 64.
[1525]
A. Voronel, “22”, Tel Aviv, 1986, no. 50, p. 155.
[1526]
SJE, t. 7, p. 356.
[1527]
Vladimir Purishkevich (1870‒1920), monarchist, opponent of
Rasputin, the assassination of whom he participated in.
Arrested in 1917, then given amnesty, he participated in the
White movement and died of typhus in Novorossiysh.
[1528]
D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaya revoliutsia i ievreisstvo (Bolchevizm i
Ioudaizm) (The Russian Revolution and the Jews [Bolshevism
and Judaism]), Paris, 1923, p. 143.
[1529]
SJE, t. 7, p, 356.
[1530]
Basile Choulguine (1878‒1976), leader of the right wing of the
Duma with whom he breaks at the time of the Beilis a air.
Participates in the Progressive Bloc. Collects with Guchkov the
abdication of Nicholas II. Immigrated to Yugoslavia until 1944,
he was captured there and spent twelve years in camps. Dies
almost centenary.
[1531]
V. V. Choulguine, “Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsa…” Ob
Antisemitism v rossii (“What we do not like about them…” On
anti‐Semitism in Russia), Paris. 1929, p. 67.
[1532]
SJE, t. 7, p. 356.
[1533]
Pasmanik, op. cit., p. 144.
[1534]
G. B. Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, pp. 316‒317.
[1535]
I G. Froumkine, Iz istorii ruskovo ievreistava, [Sb.] Kniga o
ruskom evreïstve: Ot 1860 godov do Revolutsii 1917 g.
(Aspects of the History of Russian Jews), in BJWR, pp. 85‒86.
[1536]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, p. 324.
[1537]
Pasmanik, op. cit., p. 144.
[1538]
For example: SJE, t. 7, p. 357.
[1539]
Father Georgui Chavelsky, Vospominania poslednevo
protopresvitera ruskoï armii i ota (Memoirs of the last
chaplain of the Russian Army and Russian Hood) v. 2-kh t, t. 1,
New York, ed. Chekhov, 1954, p. 271.
[1540]
Mikhail Lemke, 250 dnei v tsarskoy Stavke (25 sentences 1915—
ioulia 1916) (250 days in the General Sta (25 Sept. 1915-July
1916), PG GIZ, 1920, p. 353.
[1541]
Progressivny blok v 1915‒1916 gg (The Progressive Bloc in
1915‒1916), Krasny arkhiv: Istoritcheskïï Journal
Tsentrarkhiva RSFSR, M. GIZ, 1922‒1941, vol. 52, 1932, p. 179.
[1542]
G. S. Doumbadze (Vospominania), Biblioteka‐fond “Rousskoie
Zaroubejie”, f / l, A-9, p. 5.
[1543]
Father Chavelsky, op. cit., t. 1, p. 272.
[1544]
Lemke, op. cit., p. 37.
[1545]
Father Chavelsky, op. cit., t. 1, pp. 272‒273.
[1546]
Novaya Zaria, San Francisco, 1960, 7 May, p. 3.
[1547]
Lemke*, op. cit., p. 325.
[1548]
SJE, t. 2, p. 24.
[1549]
SJE, t. 7, p. 356.
[1550]
Father Chavelsky, op. cit., p. 271.
[1551]
SJE, t. 7, p. 357.
[1552]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, p. 325.
[1553]
Dokoumenty o presledovanii ievreev (Documents on the
persecution of the Jews), Arkhiv Rousskoi Revolutsii (Archives
of the Russian Revolution), izdavayemy I.V. Gessenom, Berlin:
Slovo, 1922‒1937, t. 19, 1928, pp. 245‒284.
[1554]
A. A. Goldenweiser, Pravovoïc polojenie ievreyev v Rossii (The
legal situation of Jews in Russia), BJWR-1, p. 135.
[1555]
G. I. Aronson, V borbe za grajdanskie i nalsionainyc prava
Obchtchestvennye tetchenia v rousskom evreïstve (The
struggle for civil and national rights: the movements of
opinion within the Jewish community of Russia), BJWR-1, p.
232.
[1556]
Novoie Vremia, 1917, 13 April, p. 3.
[1557]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 1, Introduction by V. Jabotinsky, p. xi.
[1558]
L. Andreyev, Pervaya stoupen (First Step), Shchit (the Shield),
1916, p. 5.
[1559]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, pp. 343‒344.
[1560]
Ibidem, p. 344.
[1561]
Lemke, op. cit., p. 310.
[1562]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, p. 345.
[1563]
G. A. Ziv, Trotsky: Kharakteiistika. Po litchym vospominaniam
(Trotsky: a characteristic, personal memories), New York.
Narodopravstvo, 1921, 30 June, pp. 60‒63.
[1564]
German Bernsrein, Retch, 1917, 30 June, pp. 1‒2.
[1565]
Progressivny blok v 1915‒1917 gg., Krasny arkhiv, 1932, vol.
50‒51, p. 136.
[1566]
Andrei Shingaryov(1869‒1918), one of the leaders of the Cadet
party, was a member of the rst Provisional Government in
1917. Arrested by the Bolsheviks and massacred in his prison.
[1567]
Mejdunarodnoïe polojenie tsarskoi Rossii vo vremia mirovoï
voïny (The international situation of tsarist Russia during the
world war), Krasny arkhiv, 1934, vol. 64, pp. 5‒14.
[1568]
Doklad P. N. Milioukova v Voïenno‐morskoï komissii Gosoud.
Doumy 19 iounia 1916g., Krasny arkhiv, 1933, t. 58, pp. 13‒14.
[1569]
Encyclopædia Judaica, Jerusalem, 1971, vol. 14, p. 961.
[1570]
A. Solzhenitsyn, Krasnoye Koleso (The Red Wheel), t. 3, M.
Voïenizdat, 1993, pp. 259‒263, (French translation: March
seventeen, t. 1, Paris: Fayard).
[1571]
Close collaborator of Stolypin, Minister of Agriculture (1906‒
1915), dies in emigration (1857‒1921).
[1572]
Tiajëlye dni. Sekretnye zasedania soveta ministrov. 16 ioulia‒
sentiabria 1915 (The di cult days, the secret meetings of the
Council of Ministers, 16 July‒September 1915). Sost. A. N.
Yakhontov, Archives of the Russian Revolution, 1926, vol. 18,
pp. 47‒48, 57.
[1573]
Ibidem, p. 12.
[1574]
SJE, t. 7, pp. 358‒359.
[1575]
Ibidem, p. 359.
[1576]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 341.
[1577]
I. L Teitel, Iz moiii jizni za 40 let (Memories of 40 years of my
life), Paris: I. Povolotski i ko., 1925, p. 210.
[1578]
Sliosberg, t. 3, p. 342.
[1579]
SJE, t. 2, p. 345.
[1580]
D. Lvovitch, L. Bramson i Soiouz ORT (L. Bramson and the UJC),
JW-2, New York, 1944, p. 29.
[1581]
I. M. Troitsky, Samodeiatetnost i camopomochtch evreiev v
Rossii (The spirit of initiative and mutual help among the Jews
of Russia), BJWR-1, pp. 479‒480, 485‒489.
[1582]
Aronson, BJWR-1, p. 232; I. Troitsky, ibidem, p. 497.
[1583]
Aronson, op. cit., p. 232.
[1584]
I. Troitsky, op. cit., p. 484.
[1585]
Aronson, op. cit., p. 230.
[1586]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, pp. 329‒331.
[1587]
D. Azbel, Do, vo vremia i posle (Before, during and after),
Vremya i my, New York, Jerusalem, Paris. 1989, no. 104, pp.
192‒193.
[1588]
Lemke, op. cit., p. 468.
[1589]
SJE, t. 7, p. 357.
[1590]
Archives of the Russian Revolution, 1928, t. XIX, pp. 274, 275.
[1591]
Lemke, op. cit., p. 792.
[1592]
Ibidem, p. 792.
[1593]
S. Oldenburg, Tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolai II (the reign of
Emperor Nicholas II), t. 2, Munich, 1949, p. 192.
[1594]
Iz zapisnooi knijki arkhivista, Soob. Mr. Paozerskovo
(Notebooks of an Archivist, Comm. by M. Paozerski), Krasny
Arckhiv, 1926, t. 18, pp. 211‒212.
[1595]
Gosudarstvennaya Duma—Tchetvërty sozyv (Fourth Duma of
the Empire), transcript of the proceedings, 22 Nov. 1916, pp.
366‒368.
[1596]
Alexander Guchkov (1882‒1936), founder and leader of the
Octobrist party, president of the third Duma (March 1910‒
March 1911), president of the All‐Russia War Industry
Committee, became Minister of War and Navy in the rst
temporary government. Emigrated in 1918. He died in Paris.
[1597]
Politicschkoye polojenie Rossii nakanoune Fevralskoi
revoloutsii (Political situation in Russia on the eve of the
February Revolution), Krasny arkhiv, 1926, t. 17, pp. 17, 23.
[1598]
V. Kairorov, Petrogradskie rabotchie v gody
imperialistitcheskoy vonny (Workers of Petrograd during the
years of the imperialist war), M., 1930.
[1599]
Maurice Paleologue, Tsraskaia Rossia nakanoune revolioutsii
(Imperial Russia on the eve of the revolution), M., Pd., GIZ,
1923, p. 136.
[1600]
Anna Vyrubova (1884‒1964), maid of honour of the Empress
of which she was for a long time the best friend, fanatic
admirer of Rasputin, permanent intermediary between the
imperial couple and the starets. She was arrested in 1917, freed
and re‐arrested, and managed to escape to Finland where she
would live for more than 45 years, completely forgotten about.
[1601]
A. Simanovich, Rasputin i ievrei. Vospominania litchnovo
sekretaria Grigoria Rasputin (Rasputin and the Jews, Memoirs
of the personal secretary of Grigory Rasputin), [Sb.] Sviatoï
tchërt. Taïna Grigoria Raspoutina: Vospom., Dokoumenty,
Materialy sledstv. Komissii. M. Knijnaya Palata, 1991, pp. 106‒
107.
[1602]
Sliosberg, op. cit., t. 3, p. 347.
[1603]
Simanovitch, pp. 89, 100, 102, 108.
[1604]
Rasputin’s protégé, became President of the Council of Ministers
(2 February‒23 November 1916), with his duties as Minister of
the Interior (16 March‒17 July) and Foreign A airs (20 July‒23
November). After February, he was arrested and imprisoned at
the Pierre‐et‐Paul fortress where he died on 2 September 1917.
[1605]
S. Melgunov, Legenda o separatnom mire. Kanoun revolioutsii
(The Legend of the Separated Peace, The Eve of the Revolution),
Paris, 1957, pp. 263, 395, 397.
[1606]
JE, t. 11, pp. 758, 759.
[1607]
Ivan Goremykin (1839‒1917), Prime Minister rst in April‒
July 1906, then from January 1914 to January 1916.
[1608]
Alexis Khvostov, Junior (1872‒1918), leader of the rights in the
fourth Duma, Minister of the Interior in 1915‒1916. Shot by
the Bolsheviks.
[1609]
Pismo ministra vnoutrennikh del A. N. Khvostova
Predsedateliou soveta ministrov I. L. Goremykinou ot 16 dek.
1915 (Letter from the Minister of the Interior A. N. Khvostov to
the President of the Council of Ministers I. L. Goremykin, dated
16 December 1915), Delo naroda, 1917, 21 March, p. 2.
[1610]
Melgunov, op. cit., p. 289.
[1611]
Ibidem, p. 402.
[1612]
Mikhail Alekseyev (1857‒1918), then Chief of Sta of the
Supreme Commander. Will advise the tsar to abdicate.
Supreme Commander until 3 June 1917. After October,
organiser of the rst White army, in the Don.
[1613]
V. N. Semennikor, Politika Romanovykh nakanoune revolioutsii.
Ot Antanty—k Guermanii (Politics of the Romanovs on the Eve
of the Revolution: From the Agreement to Germany), M., L.,
GIZ, 1926, pp. 117, 118, 125.
[1614]
Last tsarist Minister of the Interior. Accused of intelligence
with Germany (perpetrated in Sweden during the summer of
1916 on the occasion of a trip to England of a delegation of the
Duma). Imprisoned by the Provisional Government. Executed
by the Bolsheviks.
[1615]
Pisma imperatritsy Aleksandry Fëdorovny k Imperatorou
Nikolaiou II / Per. S angi. V. D. Nabokoa (Letters of the Empress
Alexandra Fecorovna to the Emperor Nicholas II / trad. from
English by V. D. Nabokov), Berlin Slovo, 1922, pp. 202, 204,
211, 223, 225, 227.
[1616]
Minister of Justice from 20 July 1916 to 2 January 1917.
Executed by the Cheka in September 1918.
[1617]
Time when the writing of this present volume was completed,
and allusion to the state of Yeltsinian Russia.
[1618]
S. V. Zavadski, Na velikom izlome (The Great Fracture), Archives
of the Russian Revolution, 1923, t. 8, pp. 19‒22.
[1619]
Menshevik leader, deputy to the third and fourth Dumas; In
February 1917, president of the Petrograd Soviet. Emigrated in
1921, committed suicide in 1926.
[1620]
Archives of the Russian Revolution, 1925, vol. 19, pp. 267‒268.
[1621]
Governor of Moscow at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. It was long believed that he had set re to the city
when the French armed there in 1812. Father of the Countess
of Segur.
[1622]
Stenographic record of the debates of the Fourth Duma. 10
February 1916, p. 1312.
[1623]
Archives of the Russian Revolution, 1926, t. 18, p. 49.
[1624]
Andrei Shingaryov(1869‒1918), Zemstvo doctor, leader of the
Cadet party, will be Minister of Agriculture in the rst
Provisional Government, and Finance in the second.
Slaughtered in his hospital bed on 18 January 1918.
[1625]
Stenographic Record of the Debates of the Fourth Duma, 8
March 1916, pp. 3037‒3040.
[1626]
Ibidem, pp. 3137‒3141.
[1627]
Minister of War ine ective from 1909 to 1915, arrested on 3
May 1916, released in November through Rasputin.
[1628]
Ibidem, pp. 3036‒3037.
[1629]
Nikolai Markov (1876‒1945), called at the Duma “Markov‐II” to
distinguish him from homonyms. Leader of the extreme right.
In November 1918, he went to Finland, then to Berlin and Paris
where he directed a monarchist revue, The Two Headed Eagle.
He moved to Germany in 1936, where he directed an anti‐
Semitic publication in Russian. Died in Wiesbaden.
[1630]
Ibidem, p. 5064.
[1631]
SJE, t. 7, p. 359.
[1632]
Stenographic Record of the Debates of the Fourth Duma,
February 1916, p. 1456 and 28‒29 February 1916, p. 2471.
[1633]
Ibidem, pp. 1413‒1414, 1421, 1422.
[1634]
Ibidem, pp. 1453‒1454, 2477.
[1635]
Ibidem, p. 4518.
[1636]
Ibidem, pp. 3360‒3363.
[1637]
Ibidem, p. 3392.
[1638]
Ibidem, pp. 1456, 3421, 5065.
[1639]
Ibidem, p. 90.
[1640]
Ibidem, pp. 1069‒1071.
[1641]
Also said Kouzma Gvozdiov (born in 1883), a worker, a
Menshevik leader, a defender, president of the Central Workers’
Group; After February, member of the Central Executive
Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Minister of Labour of the
Fourth Provisional Government. In camp or in prison from
1930 onwards.
[1642]
President of the Duma from 1911 to 1917.
[1643]
K istorii gvosdevchtchiny (Contribution to the history of the
Gvozdev movement), Krasny arkhiv. 1934, t. 67, p. 52.
[1644]
Politikchkoye polojenie Rossii nakanoune Fevralskoi
revolioutsii (Political situation in Russia on the eve of the
February Revolution), Krasny arkhiv, 1926, t. 17, p. 14.
[1645]
K. I. Globatchev, Pravda o russkoï revolutionsii: Vospominania
byvchevo Nachalnika Petrogradskovo Okhrannovo Otdelenia.
Dekabr 1922 (The truth about the Russian revolution: memoirs
of the former head of the Petrograd Security Department,
December 1922), Khranenie Koloumbiïskovo ouniversiteta,
machinopis, p. 41.
[1646]
Rech, 1917, March 17
[1647]
Birzhevye Vedomosti, 1917, March 8 (here and further, the
morning edition)
[1648]
ibid, March 10, page 6
[1649]
Abridged Jewish Encyclopedia, (heretofore AJE) Jerusalem:
Society for the Research of Jewish Community, 1994, Volume 7,
Page 377
[1650]
Rech’, March 9, 1917 Page 4: March 10, Page 5, et. al.
[1651]
Birzheviye Vedomosti, March 9, 1917, Page 2
[1652]
Ibid, March 10, Page 2
[1653]
AJE, Volume 7, Page 377
[1654]
G.B. Sliozberg, Dela Minuvshikh Dney: Zapiski Russkovo
Yevreya: Paris, 1933-1934, Volume 3, Page 360
[1655]
AJE, Volume 7, Page 377
[1656]
Rech’, March 25, 1917, Page 6
[1657]
Ibid
[1658]
R.G. Vinaver, Memoirs (New York, 1944) //  Hraneniye
Guverskovo Instituta Voyni, Revolutsiyi I Mira – Stanford,
California, Mashinopis’, Page 92
[1659]
Russkaya Volya, March 29, Page 5
[1660]
G.B. Slyozberg, Dela Minuvshikh Dney, Volume 3, Page 360
[1661]
B. Orlov, Rossiya byez Yevreev (Russia without Jews) // “22”:
Obshestvenno-politicheskiy a literaturniy zhurnal yevreyskoy
inteligentsi’I iz SSSR v Izrayelye.  Tel-Aviv, 1988, No. 60, Page
157.
[1662]
Rech’, March 17, 1917, Page 5
[1663]
Padeniye Tsarskovo Rezhima (Fall of the Tsarist Regime):
Stenographicheskiye otchyoti doprosov a pokazani’I, dannikh
v. 1917 g. v Chryezvichaynoy Sledstvennoy Kommissi’I
Vremennovo Pravityelstva. L.: GUZ, 1924, T.1. Pages 119-121,
429
[1664]
Russkaya Volya (Russian Will), April 21, 1917, Page 4
[1665]
Izvestiya Petrogradskovo Sovieta Rabochikh I Soldatskikh
Deputatov, (heretofore “Izvestiya), March 6, 1917, Page 4
[1666]
Izvestiya, March 6, Page 2
[1667]
For example: Birzheviye Vedomosti, April 8 and 12, 1917;
Russkaya Volya, April 9, 1917; Izvestiya, April 15, and 28, 1917;
et. al.
[1668]
Yevreyskaya Encyclopedia (Jewish Encyclopedia): Volume 16
SPB: Obshestvo dlya Nauchnikh Yevreskikh Izdanni’I I Izd-Vo
Brokaw-Yefron, 1906-1913. Volume 15, Page 281-284
[1669]
Izvyestiya, March 26, 1917 Page 2
[1670]
Russkaya Volya, April 15, 1917, Page 4
[1671]
Birzheviye Vedomosti, April 23, 1917, Page 3
[1672]
ibid, May 19, Page 1
[1673]
Dyen’ (Day), May 10, 1917
[1674]
Birzheviye Vedomosti, March 11, 1917, Page 2
[1675]
Birzheviye Vedomosti, March 10, 1917, Page 6
[1676]
Rech’, March 10, 1917, Page 3
[1677]
Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem, Keter Publishing House,
1971, Volume 14, Page 961
[1678]
G.Y. Aronson, Intervyu Radiostantsi’I “Svoboda” //
Vospominaniya o revolutsi’I 1917 goda, Intervyu No. 66,
Munchen, 1966, Page 13-14
[1679]
G. Aronson, Revolutsionnaya Yunost’: Vospominaniya, 1903-
1917 // Inter-University Project on the History of the
Menshevik Movement, Paper No. 6, New York, August 1961,
Page 33
[1680]
AJE, T. 7, Page 378
[1681]
V. Nabokov, Vremennoye Pravitelstvo // Arkhiv Russkoy
Revolutsi’I, izdavaemiy I.V. Gessenom.  Berlin:  Slovo, 1922-
1937,  Vol. 1, Page 15
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A. Balk, Posledniye pyat’ dney tsarskovo Petrograda (23-28
Fevralya 1917) Dnevnik poslednevo Petrogradskovo
Gradonachal’nika // Khranenie Guverskovo Instituta,
Mashinopis’, Page 16
[1683]
Oktyabrskaya revolutsiya pered sudom amerikanskikh
senatorov: O tsialniy otchyot “overmenskoy kommissi’I”
Senata.  M.;L.; GIZ, 1927 Page 5
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D.O. Zaslavskiy, Vl. A. Kantorovich.  Khronika Fevralskoy
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Rosskiskaya Yevreyskaya Encyclopedia, 2-e izd., ispr. I dop. M.,
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AJE, Volume 7, Page 381
[1687]
G.A. Landau, Revolutsionniye idyee v Yevreyskoy
obshestvennosti // Rossi’I I every: Sb. 1 / Otechestvennoye
ob’yedinennie russkikh yevreyev za granitsyey.  Paris: YMCA –
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[1688]
Claude Anet, La revolution russe: Juin-Novembre 1917. Paris:
Payot et C-ie, 1918, Page 61
[1689]
V.B. Stankevich, Vospominaniya, 1914-1919, Berlin: Izd-vo I.P.
Ladizhnikova, 1920, Page 86
[1690]
Delo Naroda, March 25, 1917, p. 3
[1691]
Russkaya Volya, April 14, 1917, p. 1; April 20, p. 1. See also Rech,
April 16, 1917, p. 1; April 20, p. 1.
[1692]
Russkaya Volya, April 23, 1917, p. 4.
[1693]
Birzhevye Vedomosti, May 24, 1917, p. 2.
[1694]
See, for instance, Russkaya Volya, May 10, 1917, p. 5; Birzhevye
Vedomosti, May 9, 1917, p. 5; Birzhevye Vedomosti, June 1, 1917,
p. 6; Rech, July 29, 1917, p. 6.
[1695]
Kratkaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Short Jewish
Encyclopedia (henceforth—SJE)]. Jerusalem, 1994. v. 7, p. 399.
[1696]
Ibid., p. 380-381.
[1697]
Ibid., p. 379.
[1698]
G. Aronson. Evreyskaya obshchestvennost v Rossii v 1917-1918
[The Jewish Public in Russia in 1917-1918] // Kniga o russkom
evreystve: 1917-1967 [The Book of Russian Jewry: 1917-1967
(henceforth — BRJ-2)]. New York: Association of Russian Jews,
1968, p. 6.
[1699]
SJE, v.7, p. 378.
[1700]
Izvestiya, April 9, 1917, p. 4.
[1701]
SJE, v.7, p. 378-379.
[1702]
SJE, v.7, p. 378.
[1703]
Izvestiya, September 15, 1917, p. 2.
[1704]
SJE, v.6, p. 85; v.7, p. 379.
[1705]
SJE, v.7, p. 378.
[1706]
Birzhevye Vedomosti, April 12, 1917, p. 4.
[1707]
SJE, v.6, p. 463, 464.
[1708]
D. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya? [What are we
struggling for?] // 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. 211 [The 1st Edition: Berlin, Osnova, 1924].
[1709]
SJE, v.7, p. 378.
[1710]
Ibid., p. 379.
[1711]
Ibid., p. 380-381.
[1712]
Ibid., p. 379.
[1713]
Rech, April 27, 1917, p. 3.
[1714]
SJE, v.7, p. 378.
[1715]
Russkaya Volya, April 25, 1917, p. 5.
[1716]
A. I. Denikin. Ocherki russkoi smuty. V1: Krushenie vlasti I armii,
fevral-sentyabr 1917 [Russian Turmoil. Memoirs. V1: Collapse
of Authority and Army]. Paris, 1922, p. 129-130.
[1717]
SJE, v.7, p. 379.
[1718]
Birzhevye Vedomosti, May 5, 1917, p. 2.
[1719]
SJE, v.4, p. 775.
[1720]
SJE, v.5, p. 475.
[1721]
Obshchee delo, October 14 and 16, 1917
[1722]
A. Sutton. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. Translation
from English, Moscow, 1998, p. 14-36.
[1723]
Rech, June 27, 1917, p. 3; June 28, p. 2-3.
[1724]
Rech, August 2, 1917, p. 3.
[1725]
Russkaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia (henceforth—RJE)]. 2nd edition, Moscow, 1994 –
1997. v. 1, p. 240, 427; v. 2, p. 124; v. 3, p. 29, 179, 280.
[1726]
RJE, v. 1, p. 473; v. 3, p. 41.
[1727]
Narodnoe soprotivlenie kommunismu v Rossii: Ural i Prikamye.
Noyabr 1917 – yanvar 1919 [People’s Resistance to
Communism: Urals and Prikamye. November 1917 – January
1919. Redactor M. Bernshtam. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1982, p. 356.
Volume 3 of the series Issledovaniya Noveishei Russkoi istorii
[Studies of Modern Russian History].
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RJE, v. 2, p. 85; v. 3, p. 106.
[1729]
RJE, v. 3, p. 224, 505; v. 1, p. 239.
[1730]
Rech, June 28, 1917, p. 2.
[1731]
Russkaya Volya, April 13, 1917, p. 3.
[1732]
Russkaya Volya, April 9, 1917, p. 3.
[1733]
Birzhevye vedomosti, May 7, 1917, p. 3.
[1734]
G. Aronson. Evreyskaya obshchestvennost v Rossii v 1917-1918
[The Jewish Public in Russia in 1917-1918]. // BRJ-2, p. 7.
[1735]
RJE, v. 7, p. 381.
[1736]
Ibid.
[1737]
I. O. Levin. Evrei v revolutsii [The Jews in the Revolution]. // RJ,
p. 124.
[1738]
RJE, v. 7, p. 399.
[1739]
G. Aronson. Evreyskaya obshchestvennost v Rossii v 1917-1918
[The Jewish Public in Russia in 1917-1918] // BRJ-2, p. 10. RJE,
v. 7, p. 381.
[1740]
RJE, v. 3, p. 162, 293.
[1741]
G. Aronson. Evreyskaya obshchestvennost v Rossii v 1917-1918
[The Jewish Public in Russia in 1917-1918] // BRJ-2, p. 7.
[1742]
Izvestiya, November 8, 1917, p. 5.
[1743]
D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaya revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 153-154.
[1744]
Rech, July 28, 1917, p. 3.
[1745]
Ibid.; see also G. Lelevich. Oktyabr v stavke [The October in the
general Headquarters]. Gomel, 1922, p. 13, 66-67.
[1746]
V. B. Stankevich. Vospominaniya, 1914-1919 [Memoirs, 1914-
1919]. Berlin, publishing house of I. P. Ladyzhnikov, 1920, p.
86-87.
[1747]
A. I. Denikin. Ocherki russkoi smuty. V1: Krushenie vlasti I armii,
fevral-sentyabr 1917 [Russian Turmoil. Memoirs. V1: Collapse
of Authority and Army]. Paris, 1922, p. 216.
[1748]
Nik Sukhanov. Zapiski o revolutsii [Memoirs of the Revolution].
Berlin, Publishing House of Z. I. Grzhebin, 1923, v.5, p. 287.
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Russkaya Volya, May 7, 1917, p. 4.
[1750]
Ibid., p. 6.
[1751]
Zhurnaly zasedanii Vremennogo Pravitelstva [Minutes of the
meetings of the Provisional Government]. Petrograd, 1917. V1:
March-May; April 6 meeting (book 44, p. 5) and April 27
meeting (book 64, p. 4).
[1752]
Rech, June 28, 1917, p. 2.
[1753]
Rech, May 3, 1917, p. 6.
[1754]
Ivan Nazhivin. Zapiski o revolutsii [Notes about Revolution].
Vienna, 1921, p. 28.
[1755]
Rech, June 17, 1917, evening issue, p. 4.
[1756]
Rech, September 9, 1917, p. 3.
[1757]
Rech, August 8, 1917, p. 5.
[1758]
Russkaya Volya, June 17, 1917, evening issue, p. 4.
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V. Nabokov. Vremennoye pravitelstvo [The Provisional
Government] // Archive of Russian Revolution, published by
Gessen. Berlin: Slovo, 1922, v. 1, p. 80.
[1760]
V. I. Lenin. Sochineniya [Works]. In 45 volumes, 4th Edition
(henceforth — Lenin, 4th edition). Moscow, Gospolitizdat,
1941-1967, v. 4, p. 311.
[1761]
Izvestiya, June 28, 1917, p. 5.
[1762]
Izvestiya, June 30, 1917, p. 10.
[1763]
Rech, October 20, 1917, p. 3.
[1764]
Izvestiya, October 26, 1917, p. 2.
[1765]
Delo Naroda, October 29, 1917, p. 1.
[1766]
Rech, July 11, 1917, p. 3.
[1767]
Rech, July 21, 1917, p. 4.
[1768]
Rech, September 16, 1917, p. 3.
[1769]
G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obchshestvennosti
[Revolutionary ideas in Jewish society] // RJ, p. 105, 106.
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D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaya revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 245.
[1771]
Rech, July 26, 1917, p. 3.
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I. Eldad. Tak kto zhe nasledniki Zhabotinskogo? [So Who Are the
Heirs of Jabotinsky?] // “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, 1980, (16),
p. 120.
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D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaya revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 179-181.
[1774]
Rech, August 16, 1917, p. 3.
[1775]
V. Boguslavsky. V sachshitu Kunyaeva [In Defense of Kunyaev]
// “22”, 1980, (16), p. 169.
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Lenin, 4th edition, v. 30, p. 231.
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SJE, v.7, p. 381.
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Kh. M. Astrakhan. Bolsheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki v 1917
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Leningrad, 1973, p. 407.
[1779]
Aron Abramovich. V reshayuchshey voine: Uchastie i rol evreev
SSSR v voine protiv natsisma [In the Deciding War: Participation
and Role of Jews in the USSR in the War Against Nazism] 2nd
Edition, Tel Aviv, 1982, v. 1, p. 45, 46.
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L. Trotsky. Istoriya russkoi revolutsii. T. 2: Oktyabrskaya
revolutsia [The History of Russian Revolution]. Berlin, Granit,
1933, v. 2: October Revolution, Part 2, p. 361.
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SJE, t. 7, p. 399.
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D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaia revolioutsiia i evreistvo (Bolchevism i
ioudaism) [The Russian Revolution and the Jews {Bolshevism
and Judaism}], Paris, 1923, p. 155.
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S. Gringaouz, Evreiskaya natsionalnaia avtonomiia v Litve i
drougikh stranakh Pribaltiki [Jewish national self‐government
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SJE, t. 2, p. 312.
[1785]
Izvestia, 12 Oct. 1920, p. 1.
[1786]
V. Lenin, O evreiskom voprosis v Rossii [On the Jewish Question
in Russia]. Preface by S. Dimanstein, M., Proletarii, 1924, pp.
17‒18.
[1787]
Leonard Schapiro, The Role of the Jews in the Russian
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Review, vol. 40, London, Athlone Press, 1961‒62, p. 164.
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M. Kheifets, Nashi obschiie ouroki [Our lessons]—“22”, no. 14, p.
62.
[1789]
Jewish Tribune, Weekly, Number dedicated to the interests of
Russian Jews, Paris, 1923, September 7, p. 1.
[1790]
D. Schub, Evrei vrusskoï revolioutsii [The Jews in the Russian
Revolution]—BJWR-2, p. 142.
[1791]
Iou. Larine, Evrei i antisemitizn v SSSR [The Jews and anti‐
Semitism in the USSR], M., L., Giz, 1929, pp. 260‒262.
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D. S. Pasmanik, Tchevo my dobyvaemsia? [What are we looking
for?]—RaJ, p. 212.
[1793]
American Hebrew, Sept. 10, 1920, p. 507.
[1794]
Literatournyi kourier [The Literary Courier], quarterly, USA,
1985, no. 11, p. 67.
[1795]
M. Agursky, Ideologuia natsional‐bolchevisma [The ideology of
National‐Bolshevism], Paris, YMCA Press, 1980, p. 264.
[1796]
S. Tsyroulnikov, SSSR, evrei i Israil [The USSR, the Jews, and
Israel]—TN, no. 96, p. 155.
[1797]
L. Schapiro, op. cit., pp. 164‒165.
[1798]
M. Agursky, p. 264.
[1799]
Oktiabrskaïa revolioutsiia pered soudom amcrikanskikh
senatorov [The October Revolution in front of the tribunal of
American Senators], O cial Report of the Overmen’s
Committee of the Senate, M. L., GIZ, 1927, p. 7.
[1800]
Roheri Conquest, Bolshoi terror [The Great Terror], trans. from
English “The Great Terror”, London, 1968, French trans., Paris,
1968.
[1801]
Den, 1917, December 5, p. 2.
[1802]
S. S. Maslov, Rossiia posle tchetyriokh let revolioutsii (Russia
after four years of revolution), Paris, Rousskaya petchat, 1922,
book 2, p. 190
[1803]
S. E. Troubetskoi, Minovchee [The Past], Paris, YMCA Press, 1989,
pp. 195‒196, coll. The Library of Russian Memoirs (LRM);
Series: Our recent past, fasc. 10.
[1804]
Ruskaya Uolia [The Russian Will], 1917, 8 July, evening
delivery, p. 4.
[1805]
Bolsheviki: Dokoumenty po istorii bolchevizma s 1903 in 1916
god byvch. Moskovskogo Okhrannogo Otdeleniia [The
Bolsheviks: Materials for the history of Bolshevism from 1903
to 1916 from the former Moscow Okhrana]. Presented by M. A.
Tsiavlovski, supplemented by A. M. Serebriannikov, New York,
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[1806]
SJE, t. 5, p. 476.
[1807]
SJE, t. 6, p. 124.
[1808]
RJE (2nd edition revised and completed), t. 1, p. 267.
[1809]
Nijegorodski Partarkhiv [Archives of the Nizhny Novgorod
Party], f. 1, op. 1, le 66, lea ets 3, 12, etc.
[1810]
Larine, p. 258.
[1811]
(rec) Bolchevki [The Bolsheviks], 1903‒1916, p. 340; RJE, t. 1,
pp. 100‒101, 376, 427, 465‒466; t. 2, pp. 51, 61, 321, 482; t. 3,
p. 306.
[1812]
RJE, t. 1, pp. 160, 250, 234, 483, 502, 533; t. 3, p. 260.
[1813]
According to the Julian calendar still in force in the Orthodox
Church. Christmas is celebrated on January 7th.
[1814]
Zemlia sibirskaia, dalnievostotchnaia [Siberian Land, Far East],
Omsk, 1993, nos. 5‒6 (May‒June), pp. 35‒37.
[1815]
Izvestia, 1931, 7 April, p. 2.
[1816]
Izvestia, 1928, 6 March, p. 5; RJE, t. 2, pp. 295‒296.
[1817]
Iv. Najivine, Zapiski o revolioutsii [Notes on the Revolution].
Vienna, 1921, p. 93.
[1818]
P. I. Negretov, V. G. Korolenko; Letopis jizni i tvortchestva [V. G.
Korolenko: Chronicle of Life and Work, 1917‒1921] under
publ. of A. V. Khrabrovitski, Moskva: Kniga, 1990, p. 97, 106.
[1819]
G. Aronson, Evreiskaya obschestvennost v Rossii v 1917‒1918
gg. [The Jewish Public Opinion in Russia in 1917‒1918], SJE-2,
1968, p. 16.
[1820]
(Rec.) Bolshevik, 1903‒1916, p. 13, pp. 283‒284.
[1821]
Lev Trogski, Dnevniki i pisma [Newspapers and Letters],
Ermitage, 1986, p. 101.
[1822]
Mikhail Heifets, Tsareoubiistvo v 1918 godou [The
Assassination of the Tsar in 1918], Moscow‐Jerusalem, 1991,
pp. 246‒247, 258, 268‒271.
[1823]
Ibidem, p. 355.
[1824]
Ibidem, pp. 246, 378‒380.
[1825]
Izvestia, 1918, 28 April, p. 4.
[1826]
Iou. Larine, Evrei i antisemitism v SSSR* [The Jews and anti‐
Semitism in the USSR], pp. 7‒8 (with a reference to S. Agursky,
Evreiskii rabotchii v kommounistitcheskom dvijenii [The
Jewish Worker in the Communist Movement], Minsk GIZ, 1926,
p. 155.
[1827]
Izvestia, 1918, 27 July, p. 4.
[1828]
Iou. Larine, p. 259.
[1829]
V. I. Lenin, O evreiskom voprose v Rossii [On the Jewish
Question in Russia], preface by S. Dimanstein. M., Proletarii,
1924, 3 July.
[1830]
SJE, t. 4, p. 766.
[1831]
Tserkovnye Vedomosti [News of the Church], 1918, no. 1
(quoted according to M. Agursky, p. 10)
[1832]
Pravda, 1919, 3 July.
[1833]
Sledstvennoe delo Patriarkha Tikhona [The instruction of
Patriarch Tikhon], rec. of documents from the materials of the
Central Archives, M., 2000, doc. no. 58, pp. 600‒604.
[1834]
GARF, f. 130, op. 4, ed. Khr. 94, l. 1, Minutes of the meeting of
the Small Council of 2 Sept. 1920, no. 546.
[1835]
GARF, f. 1235, op. 56, d. 26, l. 43.
[1836]
S. S. Maslov, p. 43.
[1837]
Arch. Sergui Bulgakov Khristianstvo i evreiskii vopros
[Christianity and the Jewish Question], rec, Paris, YMCA Press,
1991, p. 76.
[1838]
Ibidem, pp. 98, 121, 124.
[1839]
Former governing body of the Jewish Community.
[1840]
D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaia revolioutsiia i evreistvo [The Russian
Revolution and the Jews], p. 156.
[1841]
I. M. Biekerman, Rossiia i rousskoie evrcistvo [Russia and the
Russian Jews], RaJ, p. 25.
[1842]
Id, K samosoznaniou evreia tchem my byli. Tchem my doljny,
byt [For the self‐consciousness of the Jew: who have we been,
who we must become], Paris, 1930, p. 42.
[1843]
I. M. Biekerman, RaJ, pp. 14‒15.
[1844]
Those who teach Jewish law privately.
[1845]
G. A. Landau, Revolioutsionnye idei v evreiskoi
obschestvennosti [The Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Public
Opinion], RaJ, p. 117.
[1846]
D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaia revolioutsiia i evreistvo [The Russian
Revolution and the Jews], p. 156.
[1847]
D. S. Pasmanik, p. 157.
[1848]
Obchtchestvo Pemeslennogo Troude welded evreiev:
Association for craftwork among Jews.
[1849]
D. Choub, Evrei v rousskoi revolioutsii [The Jews in the Russian
Revolution], BJWR-2, p. 143.
[1850]
Chlomo Avineri, Vozvraschenie v istoriiou [Back to the story]
—“22”, 1990, no. 73, p. 112.
[1851]
D. Chiurmann, O natsionalnykh fobiiakh [On national phobias],
—“22”, 1989, no. 68, pp. 149‒150.
[1852]
I. O. Levine, Evrei v revolioutsii [The Jews in the Revolution],
RaJ, p. 127.
[1853]
Landau, RaJ, p. 109.
[1854]
D. O. Linski, O natsionalnom samosoznanii rousskogo evreia
[The National Consciousness of the Russian Jew], RaJ, pp. 145,
146.
[1855]
D. S. Pasmanik, RaJ, p. 225.
[1856]
D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaia revolioutsiia i evreistvo [The Russian
Revolution and Judaism], p. 129.
[1857]
Jewish Chronicle, 28 March 1919, p. 10.
[1858]
Ibidem, 4 April 1919, p. 7.
[1859]
Biekerman, RaJ, p. 34.
[1860]
Arch. Sergui Bulgakov, Khristianstvo i evreiskii vopros
[Christianity and the Jewish Question], pp. 124‒125.
[1861]
Levine, RaJ, pp. 125, 126.
[1862]
Norman Podgorets, Evrei v sovremennom mire [The Jews in the
Modern World] (Int.) BM, no. 86, p. 113.
[1863]
A. Sutton, Orol strit i bolshevitskaya revolioutsiia, [Wall Street
and the Bolshevik Revolution], trans. from the English, M.,
1998, pp. 141‒142.
[1864]
Ariadna Tyrkova‐Williams, From Liberty to Brest–Litovsk
London, Macmillan and Co., 1919, pp. 297‒299.
[1865]
Overmen, pp. 22‒23, 26‒27.
[1866]
Jerry Muller, Dialektika traguedii antisemitizm i kommounizm
v Tsentralnoï i Vostotchnoï Evrope, Evreiskaya Tribouna* (The
Jewish Tribune), 1920, no. 10, p. 3.
[1867]
This is the character of Man’s Fate by Andre Malraux.
[1868]
RJE, t. 1, p. 154.
[1869]
Collaborator of the collection From Under the Rubble, published
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974.
[1870]
Ibidem, p. 22.
[1871]
Chaim Potok, The Gates of November, Chronicles of the Slepak
Family, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, pp. 37, 44‒45.
[1872]
G. Aronson, Evreiski vopros v epokhou Stalina [The Jewish
Question in Stalin’s Era], BJWR, pp. 133‒134.
[1873]
Ibidem, pp. 135‒136.
[1874]
SJE, t. 1, p. 560.
[1875]
RJE, t. 1, p. 478; t. 2, pp. 78, 163; t.3, p. 286.
[1876]
Sotsial–evreiskaya raborchaya partia: Jewish Social Workers
Party.
[1877]
S. Dimanstein, Revolioutsionnie dvijenie sredi evreev [The
revolutionary movement among the Jews] in The
Revolutionaries through several essays, ed. of M. N. Pokrovski,
t. 3, b. I, M‒L, GJZ, p. 215.
[1878]
SJE, t. 1, p. 560.
[1879]
I. M. Biekerman, RaJ, p. 44.
[1880]
D. Azbel, Do, vo vremia i posle [Avant, pendant et après], VM,
1989, no. 104, p. 231.
[1881]
Nezavisimoie rabotcheie dvijeniie v 1918 godou: Dokumenty i
materialy [The independent workers’ movement], established
by M. Bernstam, Paris, YMCA Press, 1981, pp. 291‒293, in
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RJE, t. 1, pp. 135‒136, 199‒200.
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RJE, t. 1, pp. 331, 419; t. 2, pp. 221‒222, 230.
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RJE, t. 2, pp. 36, 51‒52, 176.
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I. B. Shekhtman, Sovetskaia Rossiia, Sionizm i Izrail [Soviet
Russia, Zionism, and Israel], BJWR-2, p. 31.
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Ibidem, p. 315.
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S. Hepshtein, Rousskie sionisty v barbe za Palestinou [The
Russian Zionists in the Fight for Palestine], BJWR-2, pp. 390‒
392.
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Heifets, “22”, 1980, no. 14, p. 162.
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RJE, t. 2, pp. 276‒277.
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Ariadna Tyrkova‐Williams, op. cit., p. 299.
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Party of Socialists Revolutionaries (S–R.).
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B. Orlov, Mif o Fanni Kaplan [The Myth of Fanny Kaplan], ME,
1975, no. 2; G. Nilov. Ouritski, Voldarski, and others, Strana i
Mir, Munich, 1989, no. 6.
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Nikolaï Koniaev, On oubival, slovno pisal stikhotvorenic [He
killed as he would have written verses], Don, pp. 241, 250‒252.
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V. F. Klementiev, V bolchevitskoï Moskve: 1918‒1920 [In the
Moscow of the Bolsheviks], M., Rousski Pout (Russian
Memories, series: Our close past, book 3).
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Landau, RaJ, p. 110.
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American Relief Administration (1919‒1923) the Hoover
commission rescued the victims of the 1922 famine in Russia.
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D. Azbel, ME, 1989, no. 104, pp. 192‒196, 199, 203, 209, 223,
225‒226.
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V. S. Mandel, RaJ, p. 200.
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Landau, RaJ, pp. 111‒112.
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I. M. Biekerman, RaJ, p. 22.
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D. S. Pasmanik, RaJ, p. 212.
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D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaia revolioutsia i evreistvo [The Russian
Revolution and Judaism], p. 200.
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Ibidem, p. 157.
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Dora Chturmann, Gorodou i mirou [Urbi and orbi], Paris–New
York, Third Wave, 1988, p. 357.
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D. S. Pasmanik, Rousskaia revolioutsia i evreistvo [The Russian
Revolution and Judaism], p. 11.
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen: Russland und die Juden
im 20 Jahrhundert [The End of Lies: Russia and the Jews in the
20th Century], Berlin, Siedler Verlag, 1992, pp. 99‒100.
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I. O. Levine, RaJ, p. 123.
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D. S. Pasmanik, p. 198.
[1909]
1869‒1918; Publicist, physician, one of the cadet leaders (K.D.).
Deputy in the Duma in 1917, shot dead by the terrorists.
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1871‒1918, jurist, leader of the Cadet party, deputy in the
Duma in 1917, also shot down by the terrorists.
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A. I. Chingariova, postface to Dnevnik A. Chingariova. Kak eto
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Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской
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Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ).
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Арон Абрамович. В решающей войне: Участие и роль евреев
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Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — РЕЭ). 2-е
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РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 122, 340, 404, 515; т. 2, с. 120, 126, 434, 511.
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РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 61, 278, 305, 503.
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РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 144; т. 2, с. 354, 388-389.
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В.В. Шульгин. «Что нам в них не нравится…»: Об
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Там же, с. 157.
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Б. Мирский. Чёрная сотня // Еврейская трибуна:
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С.П. Мельгунов. «Красный Террор» в России, 1918-1923. 2-е
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Там же, с. 50, 99, 100, 105, 109, 113.
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Columbia University, New York, Trotsky’s Archive, bMs Russ 13
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Л.Ю. Кричевский. Евреи в аппарате ВЧК-ОГПУ в 20-е годы //
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РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 106, 124, 223, 288; т. 2, с. 22, 176, 302, 350, 393; т.
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С.С. Мослов. Россия после четырёх лет революции
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П.И. Негретов. В.Г. Короленко: Летопись жизни и
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С.С. Маслов, с. 196.
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РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 388-389.
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В.В. Шульгин, Приложения, с. 313-318.
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Алексей Ремизов. Взвихренная Русь. London: Overseas
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В.В. Шульгин, с. 95-96.
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С.С. Маслов, с. 44.
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РиЕ, с. 6, 7.
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Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской
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Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР. М.; Л.: ГИЗ, 1929,
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КЕЭ, т 6, с.646; т. 1, с. 326.
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Дж. Мюллер. Диалектика трагедии: антисемитизм и
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 733-734.
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Дж. Мюллер. Диалектика трагедии… // “22”, 1990, № 73, с.
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Там же, с. 100-101.
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И.Б. Шехтман. Еврейская общественность на Украине
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Там же, с. 29, 30, 35.
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В.И. Ленин. Сочинения: В 45 т. 4-е изд. М.: Госполитиздат,
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И.Б. Шехтман. Еврейская общественность… // КРЕ-2, с. 33-
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И.Б. Шехтман. Еврейская общественность… // КРЕ-2, с. 35-
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 256.
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РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 407.
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И.М. Троцкий. Еврейские погромы на Украине и в
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Там же, с. 62.
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Там же.
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Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 211.
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И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 66-67.
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КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 570.
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И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 65.
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С.С. Мослов, с. 25, 26.
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Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР, с. 40, 41.
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С.С. Маслов, с. 40.
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Дж. Мюллер. Диалектика трагедии… // “22”, 1990, № 73, с.
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В. Литвинов. Махно и евреи // “22”, 1983, № 28, с. 191-206.
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КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 574.
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Еврейские погромы, 1918-1921 / Сост. З.С. Островский. М.:
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Еврейские погромы, 1918-1921, с. 73-74.
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КЕЭ, т. 7, с, 403.
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Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство:
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Т.И. Полнер. Жизненный путь Князя Георгия Евгениевича
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Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 176-177.
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КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 403.
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Ген. А. фон Лампе. Причины неудачи вооружённого
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КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 572.
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В.В. Шульгин, с. 97-98.
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В.В. Шульгин. с. 86.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 598.
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Michael J. Cohen. Churchill and the Jews. London; Totowa, NJ:
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Кн. Гр. Н. Трубецкой. Очерк взаимоотношений Вооружённых
Сил Юга России и Представителей Французского
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Большая Советская Энциклопедия. 1-е изд. М., 1932. Т. 24, с.
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КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 569.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 56.
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И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль //
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КЕЭ, т. 6, 570, 574.
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С.С. Маслов, с. 26.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм в Советском Союзе. Нью-Йорк:
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Д.О. Линский. О национальном самосознании русского
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И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 58-60.
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Kratkaja Evreiskaja Entsiklopedija [The Short Jewish Encyclopedia
(henceforth—SJE)]. Jerusalem, 1996. v. 8, p. 294.
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James Parkes. The Jew and his Neighbour: a Study of the Causes of
Antisemitism. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1932, p. 44.
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D. 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.
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Gleb Struve. Russkaja literatura v izgnanii [Russian Literature in
Exile]. The 2nd edition. Paris, YMCA-Press, 1984, p. 24.
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A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in
the émigré Literature] // Kniga o russkom evrejstve: 1917-1967
[The Book of Russian Jewry: 1917-1967 (henceforth — BRJ-2)].
New York: Association of Russian Jews, 1968, p. 426-427.
[2020]
Ibid., p. 426.
[2021]
Evrei 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.
[2022]
Roman Gul. Ya unes Rossiju [I Have Carried Russia with Me].
New York, Most, 1984, v. 2: Russia in France, p. 99.
[2023]
M. 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. 15-17.
(Reprinted from Rassvet. Paris, January 15, 1925 (7)).
[2024]
M. Osorgin. Russkoe odinochestvo [Russian Solitude]. // Jews in
the Culture of Russia-in-Exile. V. 1, p. 18-19.
[2025]
A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in
the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 427.
[2026]
Ibid., 429, 430.
[2027]
I. Levitan. Russkie izdatelstva v 20-kh gg. v Berline [Russian
Publishing Houses in Berlin in 1920s]. // BRJ-2, p. 448.
[2028]
A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in
the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 431, 432.
[2029]
Ibid., p. 431, 432-434.
[2030]
V. 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.
[2031]
A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in
the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 432, 434.
[2032]
Ibid., p. 435-436.
[2033]
SJE, v.9, p. 253.
[2034]
Roman Gul. Ya unes Rossiju [I Have Carried Russia with Me].
New York, Most, 1984, v. 2: Russia in France, p. 100.
[2035]
Gleb Struve. Russkaja literatura v izgnanii [Russian Literature in
Exile]. The 2nd edition. Paris, YMCA-Press, 1984, p. 230.
[2036]
SJE, v.9, p. 255.
[2037]
A. Sedykh. Russkie evrei v emigrantskoj literature [Russian Jews in
the émigré Literature] // BRJ-2, p. 443.
[2038]
Ibid., p. 432.
[2039]
S. S. Moslov. Rossija posle chetyrekh let revolutsii [Russia After
Four Years of Revolution]. Paris: Russkaya Pechat [Russian
Press], 1922, v. 2, p. 37.
[2040]
B. 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.
[2041]
S. Litovtsev. Disput ob antisemitizme [Debate on Anti-Semitism].
// Poslednie Novosti, May 29, 1928, p. 2.
[2042]
D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 9.
[2043]
Ibid.
[2044]
I. 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].
[2045]
To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 6.
[2046]
Georges Batault. Leproblemejuif. Sedition, Paris, 1921.
[2047]
D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 15-16, 95.
[2048]
Hilaire Belloc. The Jews. London, 1922.
[2049]
D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 16, 78.
[2050]
Ibid., p. 11-13.
[2051]
M. Daursky. Ideologiya national-bolshevizma [Ideology of
National Bolshevism]. Paris. YMCA-Press, 1980, p. 195.
[2052]
Norman 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
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SJE, v.6, p. 846.
[2054]
This 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).
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.
[2055]
SJE, v.6, p. 847.
[2056]
Ibid.
[2057]
SJE, v.6, p. 848.
[2058]
A. 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.
[2059]
Yu. Delevsky. Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov: istorija odnogo
podloga [Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the History of a Forgery].
Berlin, 1923.
[2060]
State Archive of the Russian Federation, fonds 5802, catalog 1,
le 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.
[2061]
I. Gar. Evrei v Pribaltijskikh stranakh pod nemetskoj okkupatsiej
[Jews in the Baltic countries under German Occupation]. // BRJ-
2, p. 95.
[2062]
To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 6.
[2063]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 87-89.
[2064]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 219.
[2065]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 84, 89.
[2066]
SJE, v.7, p. 890.
[2067]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 40.
[2068]
Ibid., p. 12.
[2069]
Ibid., p. 47, 48, 72.
[2070]
Yu. Delevsky. Menshee li zlo bolsheviki? [Are Bolsheviks the
Lesser Evil?] // The Jewish Tribune, September 19, 1922, p. 2.
[2071]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 221.
[2072]
G. Ryklin. Sluchai s babelem [An Incident with Babel]. //
Izvestiya, March 16, 1928, p. 5.
[2073]
Poslednie Novosti. August 13, 1936.
[2074]
S. Ivanovich. Evrei i sovetskaya diktatura [Jews and the Soviet
Dictatorship]. //
[2075]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 23-24.
[2076]
Ibid., p. 54-55.
[2077]
D. S. Pasmanik. Russkaja revolutsia i evreistvo: (Bolshevism i
iudaizm) [Russian Revolution and Jewry: Bolshevism and
Judaism]. Paris, 1923, p. 7, 14.
[2078]
D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On
the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 141,
144-145.
[2079]
I. O. Levin. Evrei v revolutsii [The Jews in the Revolution]. // RJ,
p. 124.
[2080]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 24.
[2081]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 215.
[2082]
To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 5.
[2083]
Ibid., p. 7-8.
[2084]
G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obshchestvennosti
[Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society]. // RJ, p. 100.
[2085]
Ibid., p. 104.
[2086]
To the Jews of the World! // RJ, p. 6.
[2087]
G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obshchestvennosti
[Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society]. // RJ, p. 118.
[2088]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 225.
[2089]
Yu. Delevsky. Menshee li zlo bolsheviki? [Are Bolsheviks the
Lesser Evil?] // The Jewish Tribune, September 19, 1922, p. 3.
[2090]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 78.
[2091]
Ibid., p. 52, 53-54.
[2092]
D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On
the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 149.
[2093]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 92.
[2094]
V. S. Mandel. Konservativnye i razrushitelnye elementy v
evreisve [Conservative and Subversive Forces among Jewry]. //
RJ, p. 202.
[2095]
D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On
the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 153,
154.
[2096]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 227-228.
[2097]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 93.
[2098]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 217-218.
[2099]
The 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.
[2100]
Fyodor Stepun. Byvshee i nesbyvsheesja [What Have Been and
What Might-have-been]. The 2nd Edition. London, Overseas
Publications, 1990, v. 1, p. 301.
[2101]
V. S. Mandel. Konservativnye i razrushitelnye elementy v
evreisve [Conservative and Subversive Forces among Jewry]. //
RJ, p. 204.
[2102]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 210.
[2103]
Ibid., p. 212, 213.
[2104]
D. O. Linsky. O natsionalnom samosoznanii russkogo evreja [On
the National Consciousness of the Russian Jew]. // RJ, p. 152.
[2105]
I. M. Bikerman. Rossija i russkoe evreistvo [Russia and Russian
Jewry]. // RJ, p. 74-75.
[2106]
G. A. Landau. Revolutsionnye idei v evreiskoi obshchestvennosti
[Revolutionary Ideas in Jewish Society]. // RJ, p. 100-101.
[2107]
D. S. Pasmanik. Chego zhe my dobivaemsya [What Do We Want to
Achieve?]. // RJ, p. 226.
[2108]
A. Kulisher. Ob otvetstvennosti i bezotvetstvennosti [On
Responsibility and Irresponsibility]. // The Jewish Tribune, April
6, 1923, p. 3-4.
[2109]
B. Mirsky. “I6 punktov” [“16 Points”]. // The Jewish Tribune, April
7, 1924, p. 2.
[2110]
S. Pozner. V chem zhe delo? [So What’s the problem?] // The
Jewish Tribune, April 7, 1924, p. 1-2.
[2111]
Sh. 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.
[2112]
I. 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.
[2113]
P. N. Milyukov. Natsionalnost i natsia [Ethnicity and Nation]. //
The Jewish Tribune, September 1, 1922, p. 1-2.
[2114]
Ibid.
[2115]
Poslednie Novosti. October 14, 1927, p. 2; October 19, 1927, p. 1-
2.
[2116]
Izvestiya, October 21, p. 3.
[2117]
Izvestiya, October 22, p. 1.
[2118]
Izvestiya, October 23, p. 1.
[2119]
Poslednie Novosti. October 25, 1927, p. 2; October 26, 1927, p. 1.
[2120]
Russian Jewish Encyclopedia. The 2nd Revised and Enlarged
Edition. Moscow, 1995, v. 2, p. 59.
[2121]
Poslednie Novosti. October 23, 1927, p. 1.
[2122]
V. V. Shulgin, p. 156.
[2123]
Poslednie Novosti. May 29, 1928.
[2124]
S. Litovtsev. Disput ob antisemitizme [Debate on Anti-Semitism].
// Poslednie Novosti, May 29, 1928, p. 2.
[2125]
V. V. Shulgin, p. 11.
[2126]
S. M. Ginzburg. O russko-evreiskoi intelligentsia [On Russian
Jewish Intelligentsia]. // JW-1, p. 33.
[2127]
Foreword // JW-1, p. 7.
[2128]
М. Поповский. О нас — со всей искренностью // Новый
американец, Нью-Йорк, 1981, 20-26 сентября (№ 84), с. 7.
[2129]
А. Львов. Где ты, Адам // Новая газета, Нью-Йорк, 1981, 28
ноября-4 декабря (№ 82), с. 4.
[2130]
Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ).
Иерусалим, 1976. Т. 1, с. 235.
[2131]
Там же, т. 5, с. 477-478.
[2132]
Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР (далее — Ю.
Ларин). М.;Л.: ГИЗ, 1929, с. 58-60.
[2133]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма. Париж:
YMCA-Press, 1980, с. 265.
[2134]
КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 326.
[2135]
Ю. Ларин, с. 63-64, 74.
[2136]
Izvestia, 1927, 11 déc.. p. 1.
[2137]
С.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).
[2138]
И.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].
[2139]
С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 7, 17, 25, 29, 39.
[2140]
PEJ. t. 8, pp. 161-162.
[2141]
И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 22-23.
[2142]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 186
[2143]
Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // Книга о
русском еврействе, 1917-1967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк:
Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 137.
[2144]
Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — РЕЭ). 2-е
изд., испр. и доп. М., 1995. Т. 2, с. 218.
[2145]
Н. Бухарин. [Доклад на XXIV Ленинградской
губпартконференции] // Правда, 1927, 2 февраля, с. 4.
[2146]
Ю. Ларин, с. 86.
[2147]
Ю. Ларин*, с. 124-125 (со ссылкой на стенограмму речи
Ключникова и указанием, что часть её была напечатана в
«Рабочей Москве» 7 дек. 1926).
[2148]
Там же, с. 127.
[2149]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 223.
[2150]
Г.П. Федотов. Лицо России: Сб. статей (1918-1931). Париж:
YMCA-Press, 1967, с, 57.
[2151]
Г. Симон. Евреи царствуют в России: Из воспоминаний
американца. Париж: Родник, 1929, с. 50.
[2152]
Письмо В.И. Вернадского И.И. Петрункевичу от 14 июня
1927 // Новый мир, 1989, № 12, с. 219.
[2153]
Ю. Ларин, с. 61-63, 86.
[2154]
Там же, с. 259.
[2155]
E.С. О национальном составе РКП // Правда, 1923, 21
августа, с. 5.
[2156]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 264.
[2157]
И.И. Шитц. Дневник «Великого перелома» (март 1928 —
август 1931). Париж: YMCA-Press, 1991, с. 202.
[2158]
Евреи в коммунистической партии // Еврейская трибуна,
1923, 1 июня(№ 164).
[2159]
Ю. Ларин, с. 257, 268.
[2160]
Е.С. О национальном составе РКП // Правда, 1923, 21
августа, с. 5.
[2161]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 303.
[2162]
Ю. Ларин, с. 258.
[2163]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 238-
239.
[2164]
Известия, 1922, 17 мая, с. 4.
[2165]
Большевики: Документы по истории большевизма с 1903 по
1916 год бывш. Московского Охранного Отделения / Сост.
М.А. Цявловский, с дополн. справками A.M.
Серебренникова. Нью-Йорк: Телекс, 1990, с. 316.
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Л.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.
[2167]
Там же, с. 340, 344-345.
[2168]
РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 178.
[2169]
РЕЭ, т.1. с. 21.
[2170]
Известия, 1927, 18 дек., с. 1, 3, 4.
[2171]
РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 115-116, 286, 374, 394, 414.
[2172]
Д. Азбель. До, во время и после // Время и мы (далее — ВМ):
Международный журнал литературы и общественных
проблем. Нью-Йорк, 1989, № 105, с. 204-205.
[2173]
Leonard 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.
[2174]
М. Зарубежный. Евреи в Кремле // Алеф, Тель-Авив, 1989,
Февраль (№ 263), с. 24-28.
[2175]
Арон Абрамович. В решающей войне: Участие и роль евреев
СССР в войне против нацизма. 2-е изд. Тель-Авив, 1982. Т. 1.
[2176]
Ицхак Арад. Холокауст: Катастрофа европейского еврейства
(1933-1945). Иерусалим, 1990, с. 96.
[2177]
Об этом, в частности, см.: Д.С. Пасманик. Русская
революция и еврейство: (Большевизм и иудаизм). Париж,
1923, с. 148.
[2178]
РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 499-500, т. 3, с. 273, 422.
[2179]
Известия, 1927, 22 декабря, с. 1.
[2180]
Vladimir N. Ipatie . The Life of a Chemist. Stanford, 1946, p.
377.
[2181]
Г.А. Соломон. Среди красных вождей. Париж: Мишень, 1930.
4.2.
[2182]
Vladimir N. Ipatie . The Life of a Chemist, p. 377.
[2183]
Еврейская трибуна*, 1922, 6 июля (№ 130), с. 6.
[2184]
М. Зарубежный. Евреи в Кремле // Алеф, 1989, Февраль, с.
26-27.
[2185]
Izvestia. 1927, 25 août, p. 2.
[2186]
РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 331.
[2187]
Там же, с. 105, 536, 538, т. 2, с. 256.
[2188]
РЕЭ. т. 3, с. 311-312.
[2189]
РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 302.
[2190]
РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 197-198, 234, 275-276, т. 2, с. 18, 140 518 т. 3, с.
260.
[2191]
Известия, 1927, 27 ноября, с. 4.
[2192]
РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 383.
[2193]
Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической
властью // Современные записки, Париж, 1928, кн. 36, с.
519-521.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 73.
[2195]
Г. Померанц. Сон о справедливом возмездии // Синтаксис:
Публицистика, критика, полемика. Париж, 1980, № 6, с. 52-
53, 68.
[2196]
В. Мирский. Чёрная сотня // Еврейская трибуна, 1924, 1
февраля (№ 58), с. 3.
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Ст. Иванович. Евреи и советская диктатура // Еврейский
мир: Ежегодник на 1939г. (далее — ЕМ-1). Париж:
Объединение русско-еврейской интеллигенции, с. 47.
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Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки). Париж:
Третья волна, 1978, с. 43.
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Там же, с. 44-45.
[2200]
В. Богуславский. В защиту Куняева // “22”: Общественно-
политический и литературный журнал еврейской
интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1980, № 16, с.
174.
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R. Rutman. Solzhenitsyn and the Jewish Question // Soviet
Jewish A airs, 1974, Vol. 4, № 2, p. 7.
[2202]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 150.
[2203]
К евреям всех стран! // РиЕ, с. 7.
[2204]
И.М. Бикерман. К самопознанию еврея: Чем мы были, чем
мы стали, чем мы должны быть. Париж, 1939, с. 70.
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С.Я. Лурье. Антисемитизм в древнем мире. Тель-Авив: Сова,
1976, с. 8 [1-е изд. — Пг.: Былое, 1922].
[2206]
Е. Кускова. Кто они и как быть? // Еврейская трибуна, 1922,
19 октября (№ 144), с. 1-2.
[2207]
С.С. Маслов. Россия после четырёх лет революции. Париж:
Русская печать, 1922. Кн. 2, с. 41.
[2208]
Там же, с. 41,42,43, 155, 176-177.
[2209]
Там же, с. 42,44-45.
[2210]
Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство*, с. 198-199.
[2211]
Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 198, 200.
[2212]
Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской
общественности // РиЕ, с. 101.
[2213]
Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 217.
[2214]
М. Козаков. [Письмо] // Библиотека-фонд «Русское
Зарубежье» (БФРЗ). Ф. 1, Е-60, с. 1.
[2215]
В.В. Шульгин. «Что нам в них не нравится…»: Об
Антисемитизме в России. Париж, 1929, с. 41-43.
[2216]
Ю. Ларин, с. 254.
[2217]
Г. Римский. Правительственный антисемитизм в Советской
России // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 7 сент. (№ 170), с. 3.
[2218]
Ю. Ларин, с. 240-244.
[2219]
Ю. Ларин, с. 244.
[2220]
Там же, с. 47.
[2221]
Там же, с. 35, 86, 102, 108-110, 120.
[2222]
Там же, с. 121, 134, 135.
[2223]
Там же, с. 144, 145, 148-149.
[2224]
Ю. Ларин, с. 238-240, 244-245, 247, 248.
[2225]
С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 8, 39.
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В. Александрова. Евреи в советской литературе // КРЕ-2, с.
290.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 83-84.
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Л.С. На борьбу с пособниками контрреволюции // Правда,
1928, 17мая, с. 4.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 9, 119-120, 269-270, 276-277, 280-282.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 27, 45-46, 106, 116, 252, 254, 255, 257.
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Там же, с. 138, 283, 288.
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Там же, с. 259, 278.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 72-73.
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Там же*, с. 32.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм… *, с. 88-89.
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Там же*, с. 90-91.
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Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…*, с. 73, 74.
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НЭП и евреи // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 21 сентября (№
171), с. 3-4.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 170,171.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 186.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 75, 77-80, 107.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2,
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Ю. Ларин* с. 121-122.
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Samuel Ettinger. Russian Society and the Jews // Bulletin on
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Известия, 1928, 22 апреля, с. 7.
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КЕЭ. т. 8, с. 187.
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Там же, с. 161.
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Там же, с. 188.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
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НЭП и евреи // Еврейская трибуна, 1923, 21 сентября (№
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Г. Симон. Евреи царствуют в России, с. 22, 159, 192, 217, 237.
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Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической
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Б. Бруцкус. Еврейское население под коммунистической
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Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 194, 195.
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В.И. Ленин. Доклад о замене развёрстки натуральным
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Э. Саттон. Уолл-стрит и большевицкая революция / Пер. с
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Там же, с. 524-526.
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Ю. Ларин*, с. 293, 297-298.
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П. Струве. Проект еврейской колонизации России //
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Руль, Берлин, 1925, 1 октября (№ 1469), с. 1.
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М. Бенедиктов. Еврейская колонизация в СССР // Последние
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Ю. Ларин, с. 295, 296, 300-302.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 184.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 185, 188.
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КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 139-140.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 74, 174, 175, 308.
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Там же, с. 150-152, 233-234.
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Известия, 1928, 1 мая, с. 4.
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Известия, 1927, 13 июля, с. 4.
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Там же.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 552, т. 4, с. 599.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 97-98, 236.
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Там же, с. 206.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 600.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 554.
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Там же, с. 354.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
137.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 554.
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Хрущёв и миф о Биробиджане // Социалистический
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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., 1981, Vol. X., p. 817, clmn.
2.
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КЕЭ*, T. 1, c. 445-446. 159 Ю. Ларин, с. 183-184.
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Larine, pp. 183-184.
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Хрущёв и миф о Биробиджане // Социалистический
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Ю. Ларин, с. 188, 189.
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КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 448, т. 8, с. 188.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 184, 186-189.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 188.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 146.
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Там же, с. 165-166.
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Там же, с. 166.
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КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 947.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 465.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
137.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 465.
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Б. Орлов. Россия без евреев // “22,” 1988, № 60, с. 161.
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Leonard Schapiro. The Role of the Jews in the Russian
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К евреям всех стран! // РиЕ, с. 5.
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Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 214.
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Он же. Русская революция и еврейство*, с. 195.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 439, РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 432, Б. Орлов. Россия без евреев //
“22,” 1988. № 60, с. 161.
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И. Слуцкий. Судьба иврит в России // КРЕ-2, с. 241-242, 246.
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КЕЭ, т. 2, с. 422.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй
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Ю. Ларин, с. 56.
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КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 326, т. 2, с. 465, т. 6, с. 125.
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Ю. Марк. Еврейская школа в Советском Союзе // КРЕ-2, с.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с.175.
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Там же, с. 177-179, РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 195-196.
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Ю. Марк. Литература на идиш в Советской России // КРЕ-2,
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И. Слуцкий. Судьба иврит в России // КРЕ-2, с. 245, 247.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 174, 181-182.
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Г. Свет. Еврейский театр в Советской России // КРЕ-2, с. 266-
271.
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КЕЭ, т. 9, с. 477.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 616.
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Г. Свет. Еврейский театр… // КРЕ-2, с. 273-278.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 183.
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В. Левитина. Стоило ли сжигать свой храм… // “22,” 1984, №
34, с. 204.
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И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль //
КРЕ-2. 321-323.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 200.
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Там же, с. 201.
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КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 476, т. 7, с. 948.
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Михаил Хейфец. Воспоминаний грустный свиток.
Иерусалим, 1996, с. 74-79.
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И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль //
КРЕ-2, с. 324-325.
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Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с, 214.
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КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 948. И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и
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И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 92.
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Там же, с, 53.
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И.О.Левин. Евреи в революции // РиЕ, с. 138.
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Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 199.
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Г.Б. Слиозберг. Дела минувших дней: Записки русского
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Ст. Иванович. Евреи и советская диктатура // ЕМ-1, с. 47.
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Jerusalem Post, 1973, April 13, 1979, October 7.
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lugen: Ru land und die Juden
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М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 114.
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КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 235.
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С. Познер. Советская Россия* // ЕМ-1, с. 271.
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Ю. Ларин*, с. 304.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 194.
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Поход на синагоги в Советской России* // Еврейская
трибуна, 1922, 21 апреля (№ 120), с. 7.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 196.
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Г. Свет. Еврейская религия в Советской России // КРЕ-2, с.
205-207.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 194.
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Там же, с. 195.
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Г. Свет. Еврейская религия… // КРЕ-2, с. 209.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 257.
[2351]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 195.
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Г. Свет. Еврейская религия… // КРЕ-2, с. 208.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 197.
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Там же, с. 198.
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Г. Свет. Еврейская религия… // КРЕ-2, с. 208-209.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 199.
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Ю. Ларин, с. 285.
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И. Слуцкий. Судьба иврит в России // КРЕ-2, с. 246.
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Сорок 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.
[2360]
М. Поповский. О нас — со всей искренностью // Новый
американец, 1981, 20-26 сентября (№ 84), с. 7.
[2361]
КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 275, РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 439.
[2362]
КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 653.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 276-277.
[2364]
А. Тыркова-Вилъямс. Тени минувшего // ВМ, Нью-Йорк,
1990, № 111, с. 214-215.
[2365]
КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 860-862.
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КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 547.
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КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 541-542; РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 86-87.
[2368]
РЕЭ, т.1, с. 377.
[2369]
РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 287.
[2370]
РЕЭ, т.1, с. 288, 409.
[2371]
РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 336.
[2372]
М. Агурский. Идеология национал-большевизма, с. 240.
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Там же, с. 240-242, 244.
[2374]
Известия, 1927, 13 октября, с. 2.
[2375]
Ем. Ярославский. Против антисемитизма // Правда, 1927,
12 ноября, с. 2.
[2376]
Известия, 1927, 11 декабря, с. 1.
[2377]
Там же, 22 декабря, с. 2-4, 23 декабря, с. 4, 5.
[2378]
РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 93, т. 3, с. 497.
[2379]
Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lugen: Ru land und die Juden
im 20. Jahrhundert. S. 84.
[2380]
M. Поповский. О нас — со всей искренностью // Новый
американец, 1981, 20-26 сентября (№ 84), с. 7.
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Н. Семашко. Евреи на земле // Известия, 1927, 20 августа, с.
3.
[2382]
S. Ettinger // Bulletin on Soviet and East European Jewish
A airs, 1970, № 5, p. 38-39.
[2383]
Правда, 1925, 13 августа, с. 3.
[2384]
Сорок Сороков: Альбом-указатель всех московских церквей.
Т. 1*, с. 15.
[2385]
Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Ltigen: Ru land und die Juden
im 20. Jahrhundert. S. 79.
[2386]
А. Воронель. Трепет иудейских забот. 2-е изд. Рамат-Ган:
Москва-Иерусалим, 1981, с. 120.
[2387]
Известия, 1930, 22 сентября, с. 1, 3-4, 25 сентября, с. 1.
[2388]
Д. Штурман. Они — ведали // “22,” 1990, № 73, с. 126-144.
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И. Зунделевич. Восхождение // “22,” 1983, № 29, с. 54.
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lugen: Ru land und die Juden
im20. Jahrhundert. S. 144-145.
[2391]
Г. Шурмак. Шульгин и его апологеты // Новый мир, 1994, №
11, с. 244.
[2392]
Izvestiya, January 22, 1928, p. 1.
[2393]
Izvestiya, January 26, 1928, p. 3.
[2394]
A. Sutton. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. Moscow,
1998; p. 210, 212.
[2395]
Ibid, p. 214, 215.
[2396]
A. 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.
[2397]
Izvestiya, November 30, 1936, p. 2.
[2398]
Rossiyskaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia (henceforth— RJE)]. 2nd Ed. Moscow, 1994. v.1, p.
527-528.
[2399]
Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror]. Firenze:
Edizioni Aurora, 1974, p. 70, 73.
[2400]
RJE, v. 3, p. 95.
[2401]
Izvestiya, July 14, 1930, p. 1.
[2402]
Izvestiya, February 11, 1934, p. 1-2.
[2403]
RJE, v. 2, p. 163.
[2404]
RJE, v. 3, p. 189.
[2405]
Ibid., p. 283, 344.
[2406]
Izvestiya, January 18, 1936, p. 1 and February 6, 1936, p. 3.
[2407]
RJE, V. 1, p. 394.
[2408]
Ibid., p. 313.
[2409]
See, for example: Izvestiya, June 12, 1930; March 14 and 17,
1931; January 6, 1934; January 10 and February 21, 1936.
[2410]
Izvestiya, December 25, 1930, p. 1.
[2411]
Izvestiya, March 14, 1931, p. 3-4; March 17, p. 1-2.
[2412]
Izvestiya, February 2, 1931, p. 4; May 30, p. 1.
[2413]
Izvestiya, February 20, 1936, p. 4.
[2414]
RJE, v. 3, p. 497.
[2415]
RJE, v. 2, p. 98, 256.
[2416]
RJE, v. 1, p. 418.
[2417]
Ibid., p. 483.
[2418]
See, for example: Izvestiya, May 17, 1931, p. 3.
[2419]
Izvestiya, December 9, 1936, p. 1.
[2420]
Izvestiya, July 7, 1930, p. 2.
[2421]
RJE, v.1, p. 222, 387; v. 3, p. 237, 464.
[2422]
Izvestiya, November 14, 1930, p. 2; November 16, p. 4.
[2423]
Izvestiya, February 13, 1931, p. 3.
[2424]
Izvestiya, April 9, 1936, p. 2.
[2425]
Izvestiya, November 5, 1930, p. 2; November 11, p. 5.
[2426]
Izvestiya, June 11, 1936, p. 2.
[2427]
V. Boguslavskiy. V zashchitu Kunyayeva [In Defense of Kunyayev]
// “22”, 1980, (16), p. 174.
[2428]
Izvestiya, April 24, 1931, p. 2.
[2429]
Izvestiya, May 18, 1930, p. 1.
[2430]
Kratkaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Short Jewish
Encyclopedia (henceforth—SJE)]. Jerusalem, 1976-2001. v. 4, p.
879.
[2431]
RJE, v. 3, p. 58.
[2432]
RJE, v. 1, p. 101.
[2433]
Aron 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.
[2434]
RJE, v. 1, p. 63, 376, 515; v. 2, p. 120, 491; v. 3, p. 300-301.
[2435]
RJE, 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.
[2436]
L.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.
[2437]
Izvestiya, November 27, 1935, p. 1; November 29, p. 1.
[2438]
Robert Conquest. Bolshoy terror [The Great Terror], p. 187.
[2439]
RJE, v. 3, p. 473.
[2440]
Aleksandr 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.
[2441]
RJE, v. 2, p. 62.
[2442]
Izvestiya, September 27, 1936, p. 1; September 30, p. 3. See also
RJE, v. 1, p. 124.
[2443]
RJE, v. 2, p. 187, 218, 432; v. 3, p. 358.
[2444]
A. Kokurin, N. Petrov. NKVD: struktura, funktsii, kadry [The
NKVD: Organization, Functions, Cadres] // Svobodnaya mysl
[Free Thought], 1997, (6), p. 113-116.
[2445]
RJE, v. 2, p. 22, 51-52, 389.
[2446]
A. Kokurin, N. Petrov. NKVD: struktura, funktsii, kadry [The
NKVD: Organization, Functions, Cadres] // Svobodnaya mysl
[Free Thought], 1997, (6), p. 118.
[2447]
RJE, v. 2, p. 293; v. 3, p. 311.
[2448]
RJE, v. 1, p. 170.
[2449]
G.V. Kostirchenko. Taynaya politika Stalina: Vlast i antisemitizm
[Stalin’s Secret Policy: Power and Anti-semitism]. Moscow:
Mezhdunarodnie otnosheniya [International Relations], 2001,
p. 210.
[2450]
The names of those executed and the year of execution are
italicized throughout the text; in other instances the date
indicates the year of arrest; those who committed suicide on
the eve of arrest and those who died in custody are mentioned
speci cally.
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See for example: NV. Petrov, K.V. Skorkin. Kto rukovodil NKVD:
1934-1941: Spravochnik [Who Ran the NKVD: 1934-1941.
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Pavel Sudoplatov. Spetsoperatsii: Lubyanka i Kreml: 1930s-1950s
[Special Operations: Lubyanka [Prison] and the Kremlin: the
1930s through the 1950s]. Moscow: OLMA-Press, 1997, p. 440-
441.
[2453]
Izvestiya, May 16, 1992 p. 6.
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E. Zhirnov. “Protsedura kazni nosila omerzitelniy kharakter” [A
Horrible Execution] // Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 28,
1990, p. 2.
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Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror], p. 797-798.
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L.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
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Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror], p. 459.
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Yu. Margolin. Tel-Avivskiy bloknot [Tel-Aviv Notebook] // Novoe
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Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror], p. 427-428,
430.
[2460]
See for example: O.F. Suvenirov. Tragediya RKKA: 1937-1938.
[The Tragedy of the Red Army: 1937-1938] Moscow, Terra,
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RJE, v. 3, p. 430. See also Aron Abramovich. V reshayushchey
voyne. [In the Deciding War], v. 1, p. 66.  See also V. Katuntsev, I.
Kots. Intsident: Podopleyka Khasanskikh sobitiy [The Incident:
the Causes of the Lake Khasan Con ict] // Rodina, 1991, (6), p.
17.
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RJE, v. 3, p. 82. See also Aron Abramovich, V reshayushchey
voyne. [In the Deciding War] v. 1, p. 64-66.
[2463]
St. Ivanovich. Evrei i sovetskaya diktatura [The Jews and the
Soviet Dictatorship] // Evreyskiy Mir: Ezhegodnik na 1939
[Jewish World: Yearbook for 1939]. (henceforth — JW-1). Paris:
Obedinenie russko-evreyskoy intelligentsii [Association of the
Russo-Jewish Intelligentsia], p. 43.
[2464]
Ibid., p. 44-46.
[2465]
Pismo V.I. Vernadskogo I.I. Petrunkevichu ot 14 Iyunya 1927 [A
letter from V.I. Vernadsky to I.I. Petrunkevich of June 14, 1927]
// Novy Mir [New World], 1989, (12), p. 220.
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Mikhail Kheyfetz. Uroki proshlogo [Lessons of the Past] // “22”,
1989, (63), p. 202.
[2467]
Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen: Russland und die Juden
im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992, S. 84.
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M. Tsarinnik. Ukrainsko-evreyskiy dialog [Ukraino-Jewish
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S.M. Schwartz. Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soyuze [Anti-Semitism
in the Soviet Union]. New York: Chekov’s Publishing House,
1952, p. 8, 98-99, 107-108.
[2470]
New York Times, January 15, 1931, p. 9.
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I.V. Stalin. Sochineniya (v 13 tomakh) [Written Works (in 13
volumes)]. M.: Gospolitizdat, 1946-1951. v. 13, p. 28.
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Izvestiya, November 30, 1936, p. 2.
[2473]
S. Pozner. Sovetskaya Rossiya [The Soviet Russia] // JW-1, p. 260.
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S.M. Schwartz. Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soyuze [Anti-Semitism
in the Soviet Union]. New York: Chekov’s Publishing House,
1952,p. 118.
[2475]
St. Ivanovich. Evrei i Sovetskaya diktatura [The Jews and the
Soviet Dictatorship] // JW-1, p. 50, 51, 52.
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Ibid., p. 51-52.
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B. Orlov. Rossiya bez evreyev [Russia without Jews] // “22”,
1988, (60), p. 160.
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Yu. Margolin. Tel-Avivskiy bloknot [Tel-Aviv Notebook] // Novoe
Russkoe Slovo [The New Russian Word], New York, August 5,
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SJE, v. 8, p. 167.
[2480]
Ibid., p. 176.
[2481]
Yu. Mark. Evreyskaya shkola v Sovetskom Soyuze [The Jewish
School in the Soviet Union] // Kniga o russkom evreystve: 1917-
1967 [The Book of Russian Jewry: 1917-1967 (henceforth —
BRJ)]. New York: Association of Russian Jews, 1968, p. 239.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 176, 177, 179.
[2483]
RJE, v. 2, p. 58, 432.
[2484]
SJE, v. 8, p. 179, 181.
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Yu. Mark. Literatura na idish v Sovetskoy Rossii [Literature in
Yiddish in Soviet Russia] // BRJ, p. 216.
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Ibid., p. 230.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 182-183.
[2488]
RJE, v. 1, p. 15, 417; v. 2, p. 84.
[2489]
SJE, v. 8, p. 198-199.
[2490]
Gershon Svet. Evreiskaya religiya v Sovetskoy Rossii [The Jewish
Religion in Soviet Russia] // BRJ, p. 209.
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RJE, v. 1, p. 145; v. 2, p. 260.
[2492]
Izvestiya, July 19, 1931, p. 2.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 173, 190, 193.
[2494]
Izvestiya. December 12, 1930, p. 2.
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S.M. Schwartz, Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 170-171, 200.
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Ibid., p. 177-78.
[2497]
S.M. Schwartz, Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 173, 180.
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Izvestiya, October 26, 1936, p. 3.
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RJE, v. 1, p. 214.
[2500]
S.M. Schwartz. Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 176.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 190.
[2502]
S.M. Schwartz. Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 177.
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Ibid., p. 178, 179.
[2504]
Beni Peled. Mi ne mozhem zhdat eshcho dve tisyachi let! [We
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SJE, v. 5, p. 477-478.
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G. Aronson. Evreyskiy vopros v epokhu Stalina [The Jewish
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Yu. Larin. Evrei i anti-Semitism v SSSR [The Jews and Anti-
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SJE, v. 8, p. 190.
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S. Pozner. Sovetskaya Rossiya [The Soviet Russia] // JW-1, p. 264.
[2511]
G. Kostirchenko. Taynaya politika Stalina [The Secret Policy of
Stalin], p. 198.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 190.
[2513]
G. Aronson. Evreyskiy vopros v epokhu Stalina [The Jewish
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RJE, v. 2, p. 150.
[2516]
Gershon Svet. Evrei v russkoy muzikalnoy culture v sovetskiy
period [The Jews in Russian Musical Culture in the Soviet
Period] // BRJ, p. 256-262.
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SJE, v. 2, p. 393-394.
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Yuriy Elagin. Ukroshchenie iskusstv [Conquest of the Arts] /
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340-345.
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SJE, v. 4, p. 277.
[2520]
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Ibid., p. 277-278.
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SJE, v. 4, p. 116.
[2523]
RJE, v. 1, p. 245-246.
[2524]
Lev Kopelev. O pravde i terpimosti [Of Truth and Tolerance].
New York: Khronika Press, 1982, p. 56-57.
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RJE, v. 1, p. 108, 238-239.
[2526]
Pavel Sudoplatov. Spetsoperatsii: Lubyanka i Kreml: 1930s-1950s
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1930s through the 1950s]. Moscow: OLMA-Press, 1997, p. 19.
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SJE, v. 4, p. 397.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 190-191.
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L.L. Mininberg. Sovetskie evrei v nauke i promishlennosti SSSR v
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Alexander Weissberg. Conspiracy of Silence. London, 1952, p.
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SJE, v. 4, p. 660.
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RJE, v. 3, p. 401.
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Izvestiya, April 7, 1931, p. 2; April 11, p. 3; April 12, p. 4. See
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SJE, v. 8, p. 191.
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SJE, v. 8, p. 191.
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S.M. Schwartz. Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soyuze [Anti-Semitism
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RJE, v. 1, p. 486; v. 2, p. 196.
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промышленности…, с. 18, 444-445, 452, 474-475.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 154-156.
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Е. Сталинский. Евреи в Красной армии // ЕМ-2, с. 250.
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А. Абрамович. В решающей войне. Т. 2, с. 562.
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S. Freilikh, Istoriia odnogo boia... [Histoire d'un combat],
Kinostsenarii [Scénarios de lms]. M., 1990, n" 3. p. 132.
[2620]
L Lazarev, Zapiski pojilogo tcheloveka [Notes d'un homme âgé],
in Znamia, 2001, n"6, p. 167.
[2621]
S. Schwartz, Les Juifs en Union soviétique..., p. 154.
[2622]
Dr. Jerzy Gliksman. Jewish Exiles in Soviet Russia (1939-1943).
part 2, July 1947, p. 17, in Archives du Comité juif américain de
New York, cité d'après S. Schwartz, p. 157.
[2623]
PEJ. t. 8. p. 223.
[2624]
Rachel Erlich. Summary Report on Eighteen Intensive
Interviews with Jewish DP's from Poland and the Soviet Union,
October 1948. p. 27 [Archives du Comité juif américain de New
York], cité d'après S. Schwartz. p. 192.
[2625]
И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 128.
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Е. Сталинский. Евреи в Красной армии // ЕМ-2, с. 240.
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А. Воронель. Люди на войне, или ещё раз об уникальности
Израиля // “22”: Общественно-политический и
литературный журнал еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в
Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1984, № 34, с. 146.
[2628]
КЕЭ, т. 1, статья «Военная служба», с. 690; т. 4, ст.
«Катастрофа», с. 159. В ст. «Советский Союз» (т. 8, с. 224) КЕЭ
даёт цифру 450 тыс. евреев в составе Советской армии, и
ещё 25-30 тыс. в партизанских отрядах.
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И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 102.
[2630]
И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 86.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 441.
[2632]
И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 98-102.
[2633]
Скажем, нам представляется, что число «восточников»,
которых успели мобилизовать до прихода немцев, было
несколько меньше, зато средний процент армейцев от всего
населения СССР, был, возможно, несколько выше, чем
рассчитанный И. Арадом.
[2634]
В ныне выходящей Военной энциклопедии едва ли не
впервые приведены сведения об общем числе
мобилизованных в годы Великой Отечественной Войны —
30 миллионов. См.: Военная энциклопедия: В 8 т. М.:
Воениздат, 2001. Т. 5. с. 182.
[2635]
КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 385.
[2636]
КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 686.
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Там же, с. 686-687.
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И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 118.
[2639]
А. Абрамович. В решающей войне. Т. 2, с 531-532.
[2640]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 232.
[2641]
И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 96.
[2642]
Там же, с. 126.
[2643]
Ю. Колкер. [Рецензия на справочник «Ленинградские
писатели-фронтовики. 1941-1945» / Сост. В. Бахтин. Л.: Сов.
писатель, [1985] // Страна и мир: Обществ.-политический,
экономический и культурно-философский журнал.
Мюнхен, 1987, № 5, с. 138.
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С. Черток // Русская мысль, 1992, 1 мая, с. 18.
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М. Гольдштейн // Русская мысль, 1968, 1 августа, с. 10.
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РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 296-297.
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А.П. Артемьев. Братский боевой союз народов СССР в
Великой Отечественной войне. М.: Мысль, 1975, с. 58-59.
[2648]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 1051; П. Судоплатов. Спецоперации, с. 217-228.
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КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 83; Очерки еврейского героизма. Т. 1, с. 405-430.
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РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 383.
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В. Каган. Правильное решение* // “22”. Ноябрь 1990-Январь
1991, № 74, с. 252. (Это — рецензия на книгу: И. Деген. Из
дома рабства. Тель-Авив: Мория, 1986.)
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Там же, с. 252.
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С.Я. Лурье. Антисемитизм в древнем мире. Тель-Авив: Сова,
1976, с. 77 [1-е изд. — Пг.: Былое, 1922].
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В. Александрова. Евреи в советской литературе // КРЕ-2, с.
297.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 197.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 6.
[2657]
Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 242.
[2658]
С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 157.
[2659]
Dr. Jerzy Gliksman. Jewish Exiles in Soviet Russia (1939-1943).
Part 2, July 1947, p. 6 // Архив Американского Еврейского
Комитета в Нью-Йорке. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в
Советском Союзе…, с. 157.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 191.
[2661]
Rachel Erlich. Summary Report on Eighteen Intensive
Interviews with Jewish DP’s from Poland and the Soviet Union.
October 1948, p. 9f // Архив Американского Еврейского
Комитета в Нью-Йорк — Цит. по: С. Шварц.
Антисемитизм…, с. 192.
[2662]
Там же, р. 26. — Цит. по: С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с.
194.
[2663]
Dr. Jerzy Gliksman. Jewish Exiles…, p. 17. — Цит. по: С.Шварц.
Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 159.
[2664]
Там же, р. 15. — Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…
, с. 159.
[2665]
С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 157.
[2666]
Там же, с. 158.
[2667]
Bulletin of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency for
Palestine. March 1945, p. 2-3. — Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в
Советском Союзе…, с. 160.
[2668]
С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 184.
[2669]
Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
КРБ-2, с. 359.
[2670]
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International
Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. 14 November 1945-1 October
1946. — Nuremberg, 1949, Vol. 38, p. 292-293, Doc. 102-R. —
Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 101.
[2671]
С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 88.
[2672]
Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, p. 672-683, Doc.
180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 89.
[2673]
И. Гар. Евреи в Прибалтийских странах под немецкой
оккупацией // КРЕ-2, с. 97.
[2674]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
[2675]
Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, р. 672-683, Doc.
180-L. Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 89-90.
[2676]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
[2677]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
[2678]
Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, p. 672-683, Doc.
180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 90.
[2679]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
[2680]
Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol.37, p. 672-683, Doc.
180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 89-
90.
[2681]
Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации
(1941-1944): Сб. документов и материалов / Под ред. И.
Арада. Иерусалим: Яд Ва-Шем, 1991, с. 12.
[2682]
Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, p. 672-683, Doc.
180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 91-
92.
[2683]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
[2684]
С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…*, с. 134-135.
[2685]
Там же*, с. 132.
[2686]
Там же*, с. 93.
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И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской
войне // ЕМ-2, с. 235-236.
[2688]
А. Вайс. Отношение некоторых кругов украинского
национального движения к евреям в период Второй
мировой войны* // Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, №
2(9), с. 106.
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А. Вайс. Отношение некоторых кругов украинского
национального движения к евреям в период Второй
мировой войны* // Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, №
2(9), с. 105-106, 107.
[2690]
Там же, с. 106-107.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 98, 101.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 99.
[2694]
А.А. Гольдштейн. Судьба евреев в оккупированной немцами
Советской России // КРЕ-2, с. 74.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 102.
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Там же, с. 74, 90.
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Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации*, с. 4.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 65.
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И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской
войне // ЕМ-2, с. 229.
[2700]
КЕЭ*, т. 8, с. 218.
[2701]
От источника к источнику цифры несколько разнятся.
Статистику этих истреблений, вероятно, невозможно
установить точно. См. уже цитированную статью А.А.
Гольдштейна в «Книге о Русском Еврействе» (1968);
сборник И. Арада «Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы
немецкой оккупации» (1991); статью «Советский Союз» в
КЕЭ, т. 8 (1996).
[2702]
КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 275.
[2703]
КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 125-126.
[2704]
Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации, с.
16.
[2705]
Там же, с. 17.
[2706]
Там же, с. 26-27.
[2707]
КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 222.
[2708]
Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации, с.
24.
[2709]
С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 108.
[2710]
Там же*, с. 121-124.
[2711]
КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 366.
[2712]
РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 499.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 127.
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Там же*, с. 129.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 125-126.
[2716]
Там же*, с. 121, 128.
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Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации, с.
386-387.
[2718]
С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 132.
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Там же, с. 171-173.
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И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 91.
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М. Куповецкий. Людские потери еврейского населения… //
Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 134-155.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 299.
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Е.М. Андреев, Л.Е. Царский, Т.Л. Харькова. Население
Советского Союза, 1922-1991. М., 1993, с. 78.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 175.
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М. Каганская. Миф против реальности // “22”, 1988, № 58, с.
144.
[2726]
Н. Гутина. Ориентация на Храм // Там же, с. 191.
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М. Каганская. Миф против реальности // Там же, с. 141 -142.
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А. Менес. Катастрофа и возрождение // ЕМ-2, с. 111.
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Бен-Барух. Тень // “22”, 1988, № 58, с. 197-198, 200.
[2730]
Ури Авнери. Последняя месть Адольфа Гитлера // “22”, 1993,
№ 85, с. 132, 134, 139.
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М. Хейфец. Что надо выяснить во времени // “22”, 1989, №
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen: Rußland und die Juden im
20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992, pp. 137-138.
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Дан Левин. На краю соблазна: [Интервью] // “22”, 1978, № 1,
с. 55.
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Д. Хмельницкий. Под звонкий голос крови, или с
самосознанием наперевес // “22”, 1992, № 80, с. 175.
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С. Марголина. Германия и евреи: вторая попытка // Страна и
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen…, pp. 150-151.
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И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // Россия и
евреи: Сб. 1 / Отечественное объединение русских евреев за
границей. Париж: YMCA-Press, 1978, с. 80 [1-е изд. —
Берлин: Основа, 1924].
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй
мировой войны (1939-1965). Нью-Йорк: Изд.
Американского Еврейского Рабочего Комитета, 1966, с. 198.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина: Власть и
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Там же, с. 310.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 181-182, 195.
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Хрущёв и еврейский вопрос // Социалистический вестник*,
Нью-Йорк, 1961, № 1, с. 19.
[2743]
Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ).
Иерусалим: Общество по исследованию еврейских общин,
1996. Т. 8, с. 236.
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Социалистический вестник, 1961, № 1, с. 19-20; Книга о
русском еврействе, 1917- 1967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк:
Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 146.
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Хрущёв и миф о Биробиджане // Социалистический
вестник, 1958, № 7-8, с. 145.
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М. Блинкова. Знание и мнение // Стрелец, Jersey City, 1988,
№ 12, с. 12.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 428-429.
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Э. Маркиш. Как их убивали // “22”: Общественно-
политический и литературный журнал еврейской
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203.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 430.
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КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 602.
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Павел Судоплатов. Спецоперации: Лубянка и Кремль: 1930-
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 435.
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Крымское дело // Социалистический вестник, 1957, № 5, с.
98.
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С.М. Шварц. Биробиджан // КРЕ-2, с. 189.
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Там же, с. 192, 195-196.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 185-186.
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Там же, с. 130.
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Там же, с. 217-218.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 403-404.
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С. Цирюльников. СССР, евреи и Израиль // Время и мы
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С. Цирюльников. СССР, евреи и Израиль // ВМ, Нью-Йорк,
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И. Эренбург. По поводу одного письма // Правда, 1948, 21
сентября, с. 3.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 353, 398.
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Там же*, с. 361, 363-364.
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Там же, с. 366, 369.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 376, 379,
404.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 243.
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Там же, с. 248.
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Правда, 1949, 28 января, с. 3.
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На чуждых позициях: (О происках антипатриотической
группы театральных критиков) // Культура и жизнь, 1949,
30 января, с. 2-3.
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В. Перельман. …Виноваты сами евреи // ВМ, Тель-Авив,
1977, № 23, с. 216.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 321, 323.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
150.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
150.
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А. Некрич. Поход против “космополитов” в МГУ //
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Л.Л. Мининберг. Советские евреи в науке и
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Там же, с. 416, 417, 427, 430.
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Л.Л. Мининберг. Советские евреи в науке и
промышленности… с. 442.
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КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 855.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 515, 518.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 190.
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И. Домалъский. Технология ненависти* // ВМ, Тель-Авив,
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der LAgen: Rulland und die Juden
im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992, S. 86.
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Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки). Париж:
Третья волна, 1978, с. 68-69.
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С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм в Советском Союзе. Нью-Йорк:
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 161-163; Л. Шапиро.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 245.
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КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 687.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 251.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 473.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина //КРЕ-2, с.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 507.
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Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с.
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В. Богуславский. У истоков // “22,” 1986, № 47, с. 102.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина*, с. 504.
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Роберт Конквест. Большой террор / Пер. с англ. Firenze:
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«Против попыток воскресить еврейский национализм.”
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 682, 693.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 254, 255.
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Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 671-685.
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Н. Шапиро. Слово рядового советского еврея // Русский
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А. Авторханов. Загадка смерти Сталина: (Заговор Берия).
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Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ).
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй мировой
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Там же, с. 247-248.
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Хрущёв и еврейский вопрос // Социалистический вестник,
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 257.
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Хрущёв и еврейский вопрос // Социалистический вестник,
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Слова Н.С. Хрущёва приведены в отчёте переводчика
французской делегации Пьера Лошака: Realites, Paris, Mai
1957, p. 64-67, 101-104. — Мы цитируем их в обратном
переводе «Социалистического вестника» (1961, № 1, с. 21).
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J.B. Salsberg, Talks with Soviet Leaders on the Jewish Question
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(1961, № 1, с. 20).
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 250.
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Там же*, с. 249-251.
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Там же, с. 241, 272.
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Ю. Штерн. Ситуация неустойчива и потому опасна:
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Andrew Handler. Where Familiarity with Jews Breeds Contempt
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
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David Burg. Die Judenfrage in Der Sowjetunion // Der Anti-
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 238.
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Там же, с. 283-287; КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 258.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 281.
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Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР: Путь в Двадцать первый век
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66.
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 280, 288.
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Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР: Путь в Двадцать первый век
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 304-308.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 259.
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
КРЕ-2, с. 358.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 290.
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Там же, с. 294-296.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 258.
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Антисемитский памфлет в Советском Союзе //
Социалистический вестник, 1965, № 4, с. 67.
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Антисемитский памфлет в Советском Союзе //
Социалистический вестник*, 1965, № 4, с. 68-73.
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В Идеологической комиссии при ЦК КПСС // Правда, 1964,
4 апреля, с. 4.
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Об одной непонятной шумихе // Известия, 1964, 4 апреля,
с. 4.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 303.
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Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия. 2-е изд., испр. и доп.
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Р. Рутман. Кольцо обид // Новый журнал, Нью-Йорк. 1974.
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И. Домальский. Технология ненависти // Время и мы (далее
— ВМ): Международный журнал литературы и
общественных проблем. Тель-Авив. 1978, № 26, с. 113-114.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 298, 300.
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И. Ляст. Алия из СССР — демографические прогнозы // “22”,
1981, № 21, с. 112-113.
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Г. Розенблюм, В. Перельман. Крушение Чуда: причины и
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
КРЕ-2, с. 346.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 300.
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Э. Финкельштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1,
с. 65.
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Н. Шапиро. Слово рядового советского еврея // Русский
антисемитизм и евреи: Сборник. Лондон, 1968, с. 55.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 190.
[2848]
Народное хозяйство СССР в 1963 году: Статистический
ежегодник. М.: Статистика, 1965, с. 579.
[2849]
Народное хозяйство СССР в 1969 году. М., 1970, с. 690;
Народное хозяйство СССР в 1972 году. М., 1972, с. 651.
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И. Домальский. Технология ненависти // ВМ, Тель-Авив,
1978, №25, с. 120.
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Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1,
с. 66.
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А. Нов, Жд. Ньют. Еврейское население СССР:
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// Евреи в Советской России (1917-1967). Израиль:
Библиотека «Алия», 1975, с. 180.
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Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки)*. Париж:
Третья волна, 1978, с. 63-65, 67, 70.
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
КРЕ-2, с. 363.
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Там же.
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New York Times, 1965, October 21, p. 47.
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В. Перельман. О либералах в советских верхах // ВМ, Нью-
Йорк, 1985, № 87, с. 147.
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Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1,
с. 66.
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
КРЕ-2, с. 362.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 261.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 326-327, 329.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 261.
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Н. Шапиро. Слово рядового советского еврея // Русский
антисемитизм и евреи, с. 55.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 330-333.
[2865]
Там же, с. 333-334.
[2866]
Обмен письмами между Б. Расселом и Н.С. Хрущёвым //
Правда, 1963, 1 марта, с. 1.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 421-422.
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Э. Финкельштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир. 1989, № 1,
с. 65.
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Э. Финкельштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1,
с. 66-67.
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Н. Шапиро. Слово рядового советского еврея // Русский
антисемитизм и евреи, с. 48, 55.
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Социалистический вестник, 1959, № 12, с. 240-241.
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Д. Штурман. Советский антисемитизм — причины и
прогнозы: [Семинар] // “22”, 1978, № 3, с. 180.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 395.
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Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1,
с. 64-65.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 372, 409.
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Михаил Хейфец. Новая «аристократия»? // Грани: Журнал
литературы, искусства, науки и общ.-политической мысли.
Франкфурт-на-Майне, 1987, № 146, с. 189.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 262-263.
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R. Rutman // Soviet Jewish A airs, London, 1974, Vol. 4, № 2, p.
11.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 371.
[2880]
Соответственно: Новый мир, 1964, № 12; Мария
Рольникайте. Я должна рассказать // Звезда, 1965, № 2 и №
3.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 373.
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КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 262, 264.
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Там же, с. 295, 302.
[2884]
Г. Розенблюм. Крушение Чуда…: [Беседа с В. Перелъманом] //
ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1977, №24, с. 120.
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Л. Цигельман-Дымерская. Советский антисемитизм —
причины и прогнозы: [Семинар] // “22”, 1978, №3, с. 175.
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Ю. Штерн. Ситуация неустойчива…: [Интервью] // “22”,
1984, № 38, с. 135.
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Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина //
КРЕ-2, с. 379.
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Ю. Штерн. Двойная ответственность: [Интервью] // “22”,
1981, № 21, с. 127.
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“22”*, 1978, № 1, с. 204.
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А. Этерман. Истина с близкого расстояния // “22”, 1987, №
52, с. 112.
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А. Щаранский. [Интервью] // “22”, 1986, № 49. с. 111-112.
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Б. Орлов. Не те вы учили алфавиты // ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1975,
№ 1, с. 129, 132-133.
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В. Богуславский. Галуту — с надеждой // “22”, 1985, № 40, с.
133, 134.
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С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 415.
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Г. Файн. В роли высокооплачиваемых швейцаров // ВМ,
Тель-Авив. 1976, № 12. с. 133-134.
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Р. Нудельман. Советский антисемитизм — причины и
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Э. Финкельштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1,
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Там же.
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КЕЭ, т. 8. с. 267.
[2900]
В. Левитина. Русский театр и евреи. Иерусалим: Библиотека
– Алия, 1988. Т. 1, с. 24.
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Daniel Mayer. J’ai honte d’etre socialist // Le Monde, 1967, 6
Juin, p. 3.
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Michael Medved. The Jewish Question // National Review, 1997,
July 28, p. 53.
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Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки). Париж:
Третья волна, 1978, с. 174.
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Ю. Колкер // Русская мысль, 24 апреля 1987, с. 12.
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Г. Померанц. Проект письма XXIII съезду //
Неопубликованное. Frankfurt/Main: Посев, 1972, с. 269-276.
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Ш. Маркиш. Ещё раз о ненависти к самому себе // “22”:
Общественно-политический и литературный журнал
еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив,
1980, № 16, с. 188.
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Р. Нудельман. Советский антисемитизм — причины и
прогнозы: [Семинар] // “22”, 1978, № 3, с. 147.
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Ф. Колкер. Новый план помощи советскому еврейству //
“22”. 1983, № 31, с. 145.
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Ю. Штерн. Ситуация неустойчива и потому опасна:
[Интервью] // “22”, 1984, № 38, с. 130.
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В. Богуславский. В защиту Куняева // “22”, 1980. № 16, с. 169-
174.
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Ю. Штерн. Ситуация неустойчива… // “22”, 1984, № 38, с.
130.
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В. Богуславский. В защиту Куняева // “22”, 1980. № 16. с. 175.
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В.В. Шульгин. «Что нам в них не нравится…»: Об
Антисемитизме в России. Париж, 1929, с.49-50.
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Дан Левин. На краю соблазна: [Интервью] // “22”, 1978, № 1,
с. 55.
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А. Суконик. О религиозном и атеистическом сознании //
Вестник Русского Христианского Движения. Париж-Нью-
Йорк-Москва, 1977, № 123, с. 43-46.
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Р. Нудельман. Оглянись в раздумье…: [Круглый стол] // “22 .
1982, № 24, с. 112.
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А. Воронель. Будущее русской алии // “22”, 1978, № 2, с. 186.
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Р. Лерт. Поздний опыт // Синтаксис: Публицистика,
критика, полемика. Париж, 1980, № 6, с. 5-6.
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Н. Рубинштейн. Выключите магнитофон — поговорим о
поэте // Время и мы (далее — ВМ): Международный журнал
литературы и общественных проблем. Тель-Авив, 1975, №
2, с. 164.
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Александр Галич. Песни. Стихи. Поэмы. Киноповесть. Пьеса.
Статьи. Екатеринбург: У-Фактория, 1998 (далее — Галич), с.
552, 556, 561-562. Страницы в тексте в квадратных скобка;
Указаны также по этому изданию.
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В. Волин. Он вышел на площадь // Галич, с. 632.
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Н. Рубинштейн. Выключите магнитофон — поговорим о
поэте // ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1975, № 2, с. 177.
[2923]
B. Shragin. Protivostoyanie dukha [Stando of the Spirit
(hereinafter — B. Shragin)]. London: Overseas Publications,
1977, p. 160, 188-189.
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Nik. Shulgin. Novoe russkoe samosoznanie [The New Russian
Mind]. // Vek 20 i mir [The 20th Century and the World].
Moscow, 1990, (3), p. 27.
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M. Meyerson-Aksenov. Rozhdeniye novoi intelligentsii [The Birth
of New Intelligentsia]. // Samosoznanie: Sb. statei. [Self-
consciousness: The Collection of Articles]. New York:
Chronicles, 1976, p. 102.
[2926]
B. Shragin, p, 246, 249.
[2927]
O. Altaev. Dvoinoe soznanie intelligentsii i psevdo-kultura [Dual
Mind of Intelligentsia and Pseudo-Culture]. // Vestnik
Russkogo Studencheskogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniya [Herald
of Russian Student Christian Movement]. Paris – New York,
1970, (97), p. 11.
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M. Meyerson-Aksenov. Rozhdeniye novoi intelligentsii [The Birth
of New Intelligentsia]. // Samosoznanie: Sb. statei. [Self-
consciousness: The Collection of Articles]. New York:
Chronicles, 1976, p. 102.
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Beni Peled. My ne smozhem zhdat escho dve tysyachi let! [We
cannot wait for another two thousand years!]. [Interview] //
“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]. Tel-Aviv, 1981, (17), p. 114.
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N. Prat. Emigrantskie kompleksy v istoricheskom aspekte
[Emigrant’s Fixations in the Historical Perspective]. // Vremya i
my: Mezhdunarodny zhurnal literatury i obshchestvennykh
problem [Epoch and We (hereinafter – EW): International Journal
of Literature and Social Problems]. New York, 1980, (56), p. 191.
[2931]
B. Shragin, p, 304.
[2932]
Ibid., p. 305
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M. Deich.  Zapiski postoronnego [Commentaries of an Outsider].
// “22”, 1982, (26), p. 156.
[2934]
B. Khazanov. Novaya Rossiya [new Russia]. // EW, Tel-Aviv,
1976, (8), p. 143.
[2935]
Ibid., p. 141, 142, 144.
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A. Belinkov. Strana rabov, strana gospod [The land of slaves, the
land of masters]. // The New Bell: The Collection of Literary and
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Ibid., p. 325-328, 337, 347, 355.
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N. Shapiro. Slovo ryadovogo sovetskogo evreya [The Word of an
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The New American, New York, 1982, March 23-29, (110), p. 11.
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Jakob Yakir. Ya pishu Viktoru Krasinu [I Write to Viktor Krasin].
// Our Country, Tel Aviv, 1973, December 12. Cited from the
New Journal, 1974, (117), p. 190.
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Amram. Reaktsiya ottorzheniya [The Reaction of Rejection]. //
“22”, 1979, (5), p. 201.
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The New Russian Word, New York, 1975, November 30, p. 3.
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M. Ortov. Pravoslavnoe gosudarstvo I tserkov [The orthodox State
and the Church]. The Way: The Orthodox Almanac. New York,
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F. Gorenshtein. Shestoi konets krasnoi zvezdy [The Sixs Point of
the Red Star]. // EW, New York, 1982, (65), p. 125.
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G. Pomerants. Chelovek niotkuda [The Man from Nowhere].
From G. Pomerants, Unpublished. Frankfurt, Posev, 1972, p.
143, 145, 161-162.
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G. Pomerants. Sny zemli [Nightdreams of Earth]. // “22”, 1980,
(12), p. 129.
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G. Pomerants. Chelovek niotkuda [The Man from Nowhere].
From G. Pomerants, Unpublished. Frankfurt, Posev, 1972, p.
157.
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G. Pomerants. Son o spravedlivom vozmezdii [A Dream about
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L. Frank. Eshche raz o “russkom voprose” [The “Russian
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Amrozh. Sovetskii antisemitism – prichiny i prognozy [Soviet
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V. Gusman. Perestroika: mify i realnost [Perestroika: Myths and
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B. Shragin, p, 99.
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M. Amusin. Peterburgskie strasti [Passions of St. Petersburg]. //
“22”, 1995, (96), p. 191.
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I. Serman. Review. // “22”, 1982, (26), p. 210-212.
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B. Shragin, p, 158.
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M. Meyerson-Aksenov. Rozhdeniye novoi intelligentsii [The Birth
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B. Khazanov. Pisma bez stempelya [The Letters without
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B. Khazanov. Novaya Rossiya [New Russia]. // EW, Tel Aviv,
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M. Vaiskopf. Sobstvenny Platon [Our Own Platon]. // “22”, 1981,
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B. Khazanov. Po kom zvonit zatonuvshy kolokol [For Whom the
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E. Zhirnov. “Protsedura kazni nosila omerzitelny kharakter” [The
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M. Morgulis. Evreisky vopros v ego osnovaniyakh i chastnostyakh
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R. Rutman. Ukhodyashchemu – poklon, ostayushchemusya –
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those who remain]. // New Journal, New York, 1973, (112), p.
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R. Rutman. Koltso obid [Circle of Grievances]. // New Journal,
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M. Kheifetz. Russkii patriot Vladimir Osipov [Russian Patriot
Vladimir Osipov]. // Kontinent: Literaturny, obshchestvenno-
politichesky i religiozny zhurnal [Continent: Literary, Social,
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M. Kheifetz. Nashi obshchie uroki [The Lessons We Shared].  //
“22”, 1980, (14), p. 162-163.
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M. Kheifetz. Evreiskie zametki [The Jewish Notes]. Paris. Tretya
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Feliks Svetov. Open the doors to me. Paris: Editeurs Reunls, 1978.
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Yu. Shtein. Letter to Editor.  // Country and World, 1987, (2), p.
112.
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M. Shneyerson. Razreshennaya pravda [Allowable Truth]. //
Continent, 1981, (28); see also: M. Shneyerson. Khudozhestvenny
mir pisatelya i pisatel v miru [The Artistic World of an Author
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B. Komarov. Unichtozhenie prirody [Destruction of the Nature].
Frankfurt: Posev, 1978; Razrushennye i oskvernennye khramy:
Moskva i Srednyaya Rossia [Destroyed and Desecrated Churches:
Moscow and Central Russia]. Afterword: Predely vandalizma
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Julius Epstein. Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced
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V. Zeev. Demonstratsiya objektivnosti [Pretending to be
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V. Boguslavsky. V zashchitu Kunyaeva [In Defence of Kunyaev].
 // “22”, 1980, (16), p. 166-167, 170.
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D. Markish. Vykrest [Convert to Christianity]. // “22”, 1981,
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Sh. Markish. O evreiskoi nenavisti k Rossii [On the Jewish Hatred
towards Russia]. // “22”, 1984, (38), p. 218.
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B. Shragin, p, 159.
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Sh. Markish. Eshche raz o nenavisti k samomu sebe [Once Again
on Self-Hatred]. “22”, 1980, (16), p. 178-179, 180.
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F. Kolker. Novyi plan pomoshchi sovetskomu evreistvu [A New
Plan for Assistance to the Soviet Jewry].  // “22”:
Obshchestvenno-politicheskiy i literaturniy zhurnal evreyskoy
intelligentsii iz SSSR v Izraile [Social, Political and Literary
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V. Boguslavsky. Otsy i deti russkoi alii [Fathers and Children of
Russian Aliyah]. // “22”, 1978, (2), p. 176.
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I. Domalsky. Tekhnologiya nenavisti [The Technology of Hate].
 // Vremya i my: Mezhdunarodny zhurnal literatury i
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Journal of Literature and Social Problems (henceforth – EW)]. Tel
Aviv, 1978, (25), p. 106-107.
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Ya. Voronel. U kazhdogo svoi dom [Everyone Has a Home].  //
“22”, 1978, (2), p. 150-151.
[2983]
I. Domalsky. Tekhnologiya nenavisti [The Technology of Hate].
 // EW. Tel Aviv, 1978, (25), p. 129.
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D. Shturman. Razmyshleniya nad rukopisyu [Mulling over the
Manuscript].  // “22”, 1980, 812), p. 133.
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Aleksandr Galich. Pesni. Stikhi. Poemy. Kinopovest. Piesa. Statii
[Songs. Verses. Poems. Movie-essay. Piece. Essays].
Ekaterinburg, U-Faktoriya, 1998, p.586.
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Rani Aren. V russkom galute [In the Russian Galuth].  // “22”,
1981, (19), p. 133-135, 137.
[2987]
G. Pomerantz. Chelovek niotkuda [A Man from Nowhere]. From
G. Pomerantz, Unpublished. Frankfurt: Posev, 1972, p. 161, 166.
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A. Voronel. Trepet iudeiskikh zabot [The Thrills of Jewish
Worries]. 2nd Edition, Ramat-Gahn: Moscow-Jerusalem, 1981,
p. 122.
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M. Deich. Zapiski postoronnego [Notes of an outsider] // “22,”
1982, (26), p. 156.
[2990]
R. Rutman. Ukhodyashchemu – poklon, ostayushchemusya –
bratstvo [Farewell to those who leaves, brotherhood to those
who stay].  // The New Journal, 1973, (112), p. 286.
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V. Boguslavsky. V zashchitu Kunyaeva [In Defence of Kunyaev].
 // “22”, 1980, (16), p. 176.
[2992]
N. Ilsky. Istoriya i samosoznanie [The History and
Consciousness].  // The Jews in the USSR, 1977, (15): citation
from “22”, 1978, (1), p. 202.
[2993]
A. Eterman. Tretye pokolenie [The Third Generation]. Interview.
// “22”, 1986, (47), p. 124.
[2994]
V. Boguslavsky. U istokov [At the Origins]. Interview. // “22”,
1986, (47), p. 102, 105-108.
[2995]
Ibid., p. 109.
[2996]
V. Boguslavsky. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think].
Panel discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 113.
[2997]
V. Boguslavsky. Otsy i deti russkoi alii [Fathers and Children of
Russian Aliyah]. // “22”, 1978, (2), p. 176-177.
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I. Oren. Ispoved [Confession] // “22”, 1979, (7), p. 140.
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V. Boguslavsky. Otsy i deti russkoi alii [Fathers and Children of
Russian Aliyah]. // “22”, 1978, (2), p. 177-178.
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V. Boguslavsky. U istokov [At the Origins]. Interview. // “22”,
1986, (47), p. 121.
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G. Fain. V roli vysokooplachivaemykh shveitzarov [In the Role of
Highly Paid Doorkeepers]. // EW, Tel Aviv, 1976, (12), p. 135.
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I. Domalsky. Tekhnologiya nenavisti [The Technology of Hate].
 // EW. Tel Aviv, 1978, (25), p. 106.
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R. Nudelman. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think].
Panel discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 141.
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N. Rubinshtein. Kto chitatel? [Who is the Reader?]  // EW, Tel
Aviv, 1976, (7), p. 131.
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E. Manevich. Letter to the editor. // EW, New York, 1985, (85),
p. 230-231.
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V. Perelman. Krushenie chuda: prichiny i sledstviya. Beseda s G.
Rosenblyumom [Collapse of the Miracle: Causes and
Consequences. Conversation with G. Rosenblum].  // EW, Tel
Aviv, 1977, (24), p. 128.
[3007]
Kratkaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopediya [The Short Jewish
Encyclopedia (henceforth—SJE)]. Jerusalem, 1996. v. 8, p. 380.
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A. Voronel. Vmesto poslesloviya [Instead of Afterword].  // “22”,
1983, (31), p. 140.
[3009]
V. Boguslavsky. Oni nichego ne ponyali [They still don’t get it]. //
“22”, 1984, (38), p. 156.
[3010]
F. Kolker. Novy plan pomoshchi sovetskomu evreistvu [A New Plan
for Assistance to the Soviet Jewry].  // “22”, 1983, (31), p. 144.
[3011]
Yu. Shtern. Situatsia neustoichiva i potomu opasna [The
Situation is Unstable and Therefore Dangerous]. Interview. //
“22”, 1984, (38), p. 132, 133.
[3012]
E. Manevich. Novaya emigratsiya: slukhi i realnost [New
Emigration: the Rumors and Reality] . // EW, New York, 1985,
(87), p. 107-108.
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F. Kolker. Novy plan pomoshchi sovetskomu evreistvu [A New Plan
for Assistance to the Soviet Jewry].  // “22”, 1983, (31), p. 144.
[3014]
V. Perelman. Oglyanis v somnenii [Look Back in Doubt].  // EW,
New York, 1982, (66), p. 152.
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S. Tsirulnikov. Izrail – god 1986 [Israel, the Year of 1986] . // EW,
New York, 1986, (88), p. 135.
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G. Fain. V roli vysokooplachivaemykh shveitzarov [In the Role of
Highly Paid Doorkeepers].  // EW, Tel Aviv, 1976, (12), p. 135-
136.
[3017]
E. Manevich. Novaya emigratsiya: slukhi i realnost [New
Emigration: the Rumors and Reality] . // EW, New York, 1985,
(87), p. 111.
[3018]
E. Finkelshtein. Most, kotory rukhnul… [The Bridge that Had
Collapsed].  // “22”, 1984, (38), p. 148.
[3019]
E. Sotnikova. Letter to Editor. // EW, Tel Aviv, 1978, (25), p.
214.
[3020]
M. Nudler. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think]. Panel
discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 138.
[3021]
V. Perelman. Letter to Editor. // EW, Tel Aviv, 1977, (23), p. 217.
[3022]
Yu. Shtern. Dvoinaya otvetstvennost [Dual Liability]. Interview
// “22”, 1981, (21), p. 126.
[3023]
E. Manevich. Novaya emigratsiya: slukhi i realnost [New
Emigration: the Rumors and Reality].  // EW, New York, 1985,
(87), p. 109-110.
[3024]
G. Freiman. Dialog ob alie i emigratsii [The Dialog (with Voronel)
on Aliyah and Emigration]. // “22”, 1983, (31), p. 119.
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A. Eterman. Tretye pokolenie [The Third Generation] Interview
// “22”, 1986, (47), p. 126
[3026]
B. Orlov. Puti-dorogi “rimskikh piligrimov” [The Ways and Roads
of “Roman Pilgrims”] // EW, Tel Aviv, 1977, (14), p. 126.
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A. Voronel. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think]. Panel
discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 117-118.
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E. Levin. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think]. Panel
discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 127.
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A. Dobrovich. Letter to Editor. // “22”, 1989, (67), p. 218.
[3030]
A. Voronel. Vmesto poslesloviya [Instead of Afterword]. // “22”,
1983, (31), p. 139-141.
[3031]
V. Boguslavsky. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think].
Panel discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 139.
[3032]
V. Boguslavsky. U istokov [At the Origins]. Interview. // “22”,
1986, (47), p. 105.
[3033]
A. Eterman. Tretye pokolenie [The Third Generation]. Interview
// “22”, 1986, (47), p. 136-140.
[3034]
A. Voronel. Dialog ob alie i emigratsii [The Dialog (with G.
Freiman) on Aliyah and Emigration]. // “22”, 1983, (31), p. 119.
[3035]
Lev Kopelev. O pravde i terpimosti [On Truth and Tolerance].
New York: Khronika Press, 1982, с. 61.
[3036]
Editorial. (R. Nudelman] // “22”, 1979, (7), p. 97.
[3037]
E. Angenits. Spusk v bezdnu [Descend into Abyss]. // “22”,
1980, (15), p. 166, 167.
[3038]
A. Eterman. Tretye pokolenie [The Third Generation] Interview
// “22”, 1986, (47), p. 125.
[3039]
V. Boguslavsky. V zashchitu Kunyaeva [In Defence of Kunyaev].
 // “22”, 1980, (16), p. 175.
[3040]
V. Lyubarsky. Chto delat, a ne kto vinovat [The Question Is Not
Who Is Guilty, But What to Do]. // EW, New York, 1990, (109),
p. 129.
[3041]
B. Khazanov. Novaya Rossiya [The New Russia].  // EW, Tel Aviv,
1976, (8), p. 143.
[3042]
V. Lazaris. Ironicheskaya pesenka [Ironic Song]. // “22”, 1978,
(2), p. 207.
[3043]
I. Melchuk. Letter to Editor // EW, Tel Aviv, 1977, (23), p. 213-
214.
[3044]
V. Lazaris. Ironicheskaya pesenka [Ironic Song]. // “22”, 1978,
(2), p. 200.
[3045]
M. Aksenov-Meerson. Evreiskii iskhod v rossiiskoi perspective [The
Jewish Exodus from Russian Point of View]. // EW, Tel Aviv,
1979, (41).
[3046]
G. Sukharevskaya. Letter to Editor. // Seven Days, New York,
1984, (51).
[3047]
I. Shlomovich. Oglyanis v razdumye [Look Behind and Think].
Panel discussion. // “22”, 1982, (24), p. 138.
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B. Khazanov. Novaya Rossiya [The New Russia] // EW, Tel Aviv,
1976, (8), p. 143.
[3049]
B. Orlov. Ne te vy uchili alfavity [You Have Studied Wrong
Alphabets]. // EW, Tel Aviv, 1975, (1), p. 127-128.
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I.M. Bikerman. K samopoznaniyu evreya: Chem my byli, chem
my stali, chem my dolzhny byt [To the Self-Knowledge of a Jew:
What We Were, What We Became, What We Must Be]. Paris,
1939, p. 17.
[3051]
S.Ya. Lurye. Antisemitizm v drevnem mire [Anti-Semitism in
the Ancient World]. Tel-Aviv: Sova, 1976, p. 160 [1st ed. –
Petrograd: Byloye, 1922].
[3052]
Ibid.*, p. 64, 122, 159.
[3053]
S.Ya. Lurye. Antisemitizm v drevnem mire* [Anti-Semitism in
the Ancient World], p. 160.
[3054]
M. Gershenzon. Sudby evreyskogo naroda [The Destinies of the
Jewish Nation] // “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]. Tel-Aviv, 1981, (19), p. 109-110.
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S. Tsiryulnikov. Filoso ya evreyskoy anomalii [Philosophy of
the Jewish Anomaly] // Vremya i my (daleye – VM):
Mezhdunarodny zhurnal literatury i obshchestvennykh
problem [Epoch and We (hereinafter – EW): International Journal
of Literature and Social Problems]. New York, 1984, (77), p. 148.
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A.-B. Yoshua. Golos pisatelya [Voice of the Writer] // “22”, 1982,
(27), p. 158.
[3057]
Max Brod. Lyubov na rasstoyanii [Love at the Distance] // TW,
Tel-Aviv, 1976, (11), p. 197-198.
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Amos Oz. O vremeni i o sebe [On Time and on Me] // Kontinent:
Literaturny, obshchestvenno-politicheskiy i religiozny zhurnal
[Continent: Literary, Social, Political and Religious Journal].
Moscow, 1991, (66), p. 260.
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A.-B. Yoshua. Golos pisatelya [Voice of the Writer] // “22”, 1982,
(27), p. 159.
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S. Tsiryulnikov. Filoso ya evreyskoy anomalii [Philosophy of
the Jewish Anomaly] // EW, New York, 1984, (77), p. 149-150.
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P. Samorodnitskiy. Stranny narodets [Strange Little Nation] //
“22”, 1980, (15), p. 153, 154.
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E. Fishteyn. Iz galuta s lyubovyu [From the Galut with Love] //
“22”, 1985, (40), p. 112-114.
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M. Shamir. Sto let voyny [One Hundred Years of War] // “22”,
1982, (27), p. 167.
[3064]
Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya (daleye – EE) [The Jewish
Encyclopedia (hereinafter – TJE)]: 16 volumes. Sankt-
Petersburg.: Obshchestvo dlya Nauchnykh Evreyskikh Izdaniy i
Izd-vo Brokgauz-Efron [St. Petersburg: Society for Scienti c
Jewish Publications and Publisher Brokgauz-Efron], 1906-
1913. V. 3, p. 312.
[3065]
Ibid., p. 313.
[3066]
Ibid.
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M. Krol. Natsionalizm i assimilyatsiya v evreyskoy istorii
[Nationalism and Assimilation in the Jewish History] //
Evreyskiy mir: Ezhegodnik na 1939 g. (daleye – EM-1) [The
Jewish World: Yearbook for 1939 (hereinafter – JW-1)]. Paris:
Obyedineniye russko-evreyskoy intelligentsii [Association of
Russian-Jewish Intelligentsia], p. 187.
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I.L. Klauzner. Literatura na ivrite v Rossii [Literature in Hebrew
in Russia] // Kniga o russkom evreystve: Ot 1860-kh godov do
Revolyutsii 1917 g. [Book on the Russian Jewry: From the
1860s until the 1917 Revolution]. New York: Soyuz Russkikh
Evreyev [The Union of Russian Jews], 1960, p. 506.
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M. Gershenzon. Sudby evreyskogo naroda [The Destinies of the
Jewish Nation] // “22”, 1981, (19), p. 111-115.
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N. Podgorets. Evreyi v sovremennom mire [The Jews in the
Modern World]: [Interview] // EM, New York, 1985, (86), p. 117.
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V. Levitina. Stoilo li szhigat’ svoy khram…. [Should We Really
Burn Our Temple….] // “22”, 1984, (34), p. 194.
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Boguslavskiy. Zametki na polyakh [Marginal Notes] // “22”,
1984, (35), p. 125.
[3073]
O. Rapoport. Simptomy odnoy bolezni [Symptoms of One
Disease] // “22”, 1978, (1), p. 122.
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L. Tsigel’man-Dymerskaya. Sovetskiy antisemitizm – prichiny i
prognozy [Soviet Anti-Semitism – Causes and Forecasts]:
[Seminar] // “22”, 1978, (3), p. 173-174.
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G. Shaked. Trudno li sokhranit’ izrail’skuyu kul’turu v
konfrontatsii s drugimi kul’turami [Is It Di cult to Preserve
Jewish Culture in Confrontation with Other Cultures] // “22”,
1982, (23), p. 135.
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Vl. Jabotinsky. Na lozhnom puti [On a False Road] // Vl.
Jabotinsky. Felyetony [Feuilletons]. Sankt-Petersburg:
Tipogra ya “Gerold” [St. Petersburg: Gerold Printing
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Vl. Jabotinsky. Chetyre statyi o “chirikovskom intsidente” [Four
Articles on the “Chirikov Incident”] (1909) // Ibid., p. 76.
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TJE, V. 4, p. 560, 566-568.
[3079]
Vyacheslav Ivanov, M.O. Gershenzon. Perepiska iz dvukh uglov
[The Correspondence Between The Two Corners]. Petrograd:
Alkonost, 1921, p. 60, 61.
[3080]
O. Rapoport. Simptomy odnoy bolezni [The Symptoms of One
Disease] // “22”, 1978, (1), p. 123.
[3081]
M. Krol. Natsionalizm i assimilyatsiya v evreyskoy istorii
[Nationalism and Assimilation in the Jewish History] // JW-1,
p. 191-193.
[3082]
Max Brod. Lyubov’ na rasstoyanii [Love at a Distance] // EW,
Tel-Aviv, 1976, (11), p. 198-199.
[3083]
Martin Buber. Natsionalnye bogi i Bog Izrailya [The National
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Artur Koestler. Iuda na pereputye [Judah at the Crossroads] //
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Ibid., p. 112.
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Ibid., p. 117, 126.
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V. Boguslavskiy. Galutu – s nadezhdoy [To the Galuth with Hope]
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A.-B. Yoshua. Golos pisatelya [Voice of the Writer] // “22”, 1982,
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Yu. Viner. Khochetsya osvoboditsya [I Want to Become Free] //
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M. Goldshteyn. Mysli vslukh [Thoughts Aloud] // Russkaya mysl
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M. Kaganskaya. Nashe gostepriimstvo… [Our Hospitality…] //
“22”, 1990, (70), p. 111.
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A. Voronel’. Oglyanis’ v razdumye… [Look Back in Re ection]:
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A. Chernyak. Neizvestnoye pismo Einshteyna [The Unknown
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A. Katsenelenboygen. Antisemitizm i evreyskoye gosudarstvo
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora: Krizis identi katsii [Israel — the
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N. Gutina. Dvusmyslennaya svyaz [An Ambiguous Connection]
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M. Kaganskaya. Mif protiv realnosti [Myth Against Reality] //
“22”, 1988, (58), p. 141.
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora… [Israel — the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen: Rußland und die Juden
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S. Margolina. Germaniya i evrei: vtoraya popytka [Germany and
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora… [Israel – the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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N. Podgorets. Evreyi v sovremennom mire [The Jews in the
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Z. Bar-Sella. Islamskiy fundamentalizm i evreyskoye
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E. Fishteyn. Iz galuta s lyubovyu [From the Galuth with Love] //
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I. Libler. Izrail – diaspora… [Israel — the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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E. Fishteyn. Glyadim nazad my bez boyazni… [We Are Looking
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A. Voronel. Oglyanis’ v razdumye… [Look Back in Re ection]:
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E. Fishteyn. Iz galuta s lyubovyu [From the Galuth with Love] //
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora… [Israel –the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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[3110]
Ed Norden. Pereschityvaya evreyev* [Recounting the Jews] //
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora… [Israel — the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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Kratkaya Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya [The Shorter Jewish
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora… [Israel — the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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N. Gutina. Dvusmyslennaya svyaz [An Ambiguous Connection]
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S. Tsiryulnikov. Filoso ya evreyskoy anomalii [Philosophy of
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I. Libler. Izrail — diaspora… [Israel — the Diaspora…] // “22”,
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Z. Bar-Sella. Islamskiy fundamentalizm i evreyskoye
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A.-B. Yoshua. Golos pisatelya [Voice of the Writer] // “22”, 1982,
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Beni Peled. Soglasheniye ne s tem partnyorom [Agreement with
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E. Fishteyn. Iz galuta s lyubovyu [From the Galuth with Love] //
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Ed Norden. Pereschityvaya evreyev [Recounting the Jews] //
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I.M. Bikerman. K samopoznaniyu evreya [To the Self-Knowledge
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Sh. Ettinger. Noveyshiy period [Modern Period] // Istoriya
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A. Eterman. Tretye pokoleniye [The Third Generation]
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A. Lvov. Vedi za soboy otsa svoyego [Lead the Way to Your
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Vl. Jabotinsky. Na lozhnom puti [On the Wrong Road] // Vl.
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Rani Aren. V russkom galute [In the Russian Galuth] // “22”,
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G.B. Sliozberg. Dela minuvshikh dney: Zapiski russkogo evreya
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Sh. Markish. Eshchyo raz o nenavisti k samomu sebe [Once
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L. Tsigelman-Dymerskaya. Sovetskiy antisemitizm — prichiny i
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Yu. Shtern. Dvoynaya otvetstvennost [Double Responsibility] //
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O. Rapoport. Simptomy odnoy bolezni [Symptoms of One
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St. Ivanovich. Semyon Yushkevich i evreyi [Semyon Yushkevich
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[R. Nudelman] Kolonka redaktora [Editor’s Column] // “22”,
1979, (7), p. 95-96.
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L-skiy. Pisma iz Rossii [Letters from Russia] // “22”, 1981, (21),
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