Were the Jews Responsible for the Russian Revolution/Bolsehvik Coup?

[Ellie]

Thanks for your input.
Regarding the English translation, I'm afraid I have no other choice since I don't know French, but I'll keep aware of your comments while reading.

[JamesAPrattIII]

It's been awhile but I believe I read that the bookstores in the last decades of the USSR were full of anti-Semitic literature. These stores did not sell books that were not cleared by a censor. Also in this period if you were a really smart Jew and wanted to be a scientist you could pretty much forget it in the USSR. The powers that be would stop you and unlike tsarist Russia going to a foreign university was out of the question. This hurt the USSR technology wise ect.

Correction I should have said about half the generals in the NKVD in 1936 were Jewish. Source my notes from the book "Bloodlands"

[JamesAPrattIII]

Another Jew that played a major role in enabling the Bolsheviks to seize and hold on to power was Olof Aschberg according to the book "History's Greatest Heist"  he was the Bolsheviks banker. One also must point out the book "Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution" points out some Wall Streeters also helped the Bolsheviks out fiscally. The book "The Russian Revolution" R Pipes points out that in 1918 the German generals wanted to get rid of Lenin but wealthy German industrialists and bankers with the German foreign ministry stopped them. Note:As far as I can tell none of the people mentioned in the later two books who helped the Bolsheviks were Jewish.

[Ellie]

I think the American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff also assisted the Bolsheviks. Earlier on he also assisted the Japanese against Tsarist Russia.

[JamesAPrattIII]

I think the book "wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution" says Schiff did not help the Bolsheviks he did help the Japanese get loans during the Russo-Japanese War.

[Ellie]

The Tsars' negative attitude to the Jews didn't do them any good. Both Witte and Stolypin, I believe, warned Nicholas II about that, but his mind was closed and completely taken in by the anti-Semite reactionaries.

[Forum Admin]

"Les Derniers Années de la Cour de Tzarskoe Selo" Gen. Alexandre Spiridovitch, Payot Paris.  Vol. 2, Ch. 19
Prince Vladimir Petrovitch Metchersksi, Chamberlain of His Majesty's Court, owner and editor in chief of the newspaper "Grazdanyin" ("The Citizen" weekly monarchist newspaper in Petersburg, pretending to be reactionary) was dead.
   The Prince had lived in the country house of Nicholas F. Bourdukov, Equerry to the Court, who had been his great and loyal friend.
   The death of the Prince was an event.  With his passing a man disappeared who, thanks to his exclusive position, could freely criticize, by means of his famous newspaper, any  he wished of the high functionaries of the State and their actions, including the Ministers.  It was a well known fact in Russia that the Emperor himself was a longstanding reader of the "Grazdanyin".
   The Prince was a great man of politics, a great person under the last two Emperors.  He died at the age of 77.
   Prince Metcherski loved Emperor Nicholas II as both the monarch and the son of Alexander III, with whom he had had a great friendship since his youth, starting when Alexander Alexandrovitch was still Tsarevitch.
   In the Prince's office one could see a portrait photograph of Tsar Alexander III with the following dedication: "In memory of past years and of our evenings. Your devoted, Alexander."
   And on the photograph of Emperor Nicholas II, given to the Prince on January 14, 1910, was inscribed:
"To the indefatigable combatant for the maintenance of the historical foundations necessary for the continuing development of the Russian State."
   The Emperor respected the Prince as a friend of his father, great patriot and personal friend.  He often desired to know the Prince's opinions on political matters, but always guarded his independence.  The Emperor called him once "the Minister without a portfolio." However, there were two matters which the Emperor prohibited the Prince from touching: the Jewish question and external politics

"Why are you going to ask these questions as the last ones?"
   "It is because they are the most serious ones" the Prince replied, "I am going to everything possible to tell the Emperor my thoughts, and my opinions. But at the same time I am afraid that the Emperor will be displeased that I have ventured into the forbidden circle.  You know well that every time I have tried to touch on the question of the Jews, the Emperor has become angry and for some time afterward would change the tone of his letters written to me. But, I have very little time left to live, and I must tell my beloved Tsar the truth one last time.  I greatly love our Minster of the Interior, Maklakov, but he is quite wrong on that matter.  He is very young and quite presumptuous, and I will speak out this time against him.  I will warn him.  His obstinance is harmful to the Emperor.  Many measures against the Jews must be eliminated as useless, fictitious, unreasonable and quite harmful to the Supreme Power." ....
In the car, alone with just his friend, the Prince sighed profoundly.
   "You don't know, my friend, how difficult it was to speak to the Emperor…Even thinking about that reception is painful for me...I spoke about the Jewish question. The Emperor listened to me without interrupting me and with great attention.  From time to time, in his kind face, I saw the shadow of displeasure.  I did everything I could to force him to respond to me.  But he kept silent.  Knowing well his intelligence, the fineness of his spirit, I was wounded that he did not want to face the evidence.  When I had finished with the Jewish question, the Emperor thought for several minutes, looked me fixed in the eyes and slowly smiled as if he wanted to soften his response, said to me: 'Excuse me, my old friend, but I am not in agreement with you.  I thank you very much for the advice which you have given me and which has been dictated by your devotion to me, by the love for our Mother Russia, but…you know that it is often that I do not wish to follow your advice.  I must take into consideration many other circumstances which you do not know about, which escape your attention…My responsibility towards Russia is so great that I do not have the right to consider a question of such great importance to the State on just one side alone, although I should find it personally desireable. You do not know all of these circumstances which I do, which I do not have the right to ignore, and which, quite to the contrary, I must take into consideration…"



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[JamesAPrattIII]

Here are some more examples of Russian anti-Semitism ect

The book Prologue to the Revolution Michael Chernivsky minutes of the council of minsters these men are shocked by the Pogroms committed by the Russian army but then go on to say that Jews control the world banking system ect!? One must point out that the Russian army wasn't the only army behaving badly in Poland. The Austrian army also behaved rather badly as well.  The book Nationalizing the Russian Empire in discussing the 1915 Pogroms in Poland  mentions the Cossacks were the worst offenders but it also mentions time where citizens, police, soldiers and even on a few occations Cossacks intervened to stop them.

Alexander III in the book Pogrom was sad and disturbed that soldiers preferred to attack Jews instead of the Pogromists. Was shocked to hear of an officer taking part in a Pogrom. When he read that military court were too indulgent towards Pogromists he wrote "This is unforgivable!"

[Ellie]

I was about to begin a new topic on what I'm about to say, but thought that it could well fit in here.

Mind you, this is a very sensitive issue since I have known many survivors of the Holocaust. I therefore find it difficult to contend with the knowledge that Jewish people participated in so many acts of brutality.

I've just completed the thread on Soviet Atrocities, which expresses much anger felt by many that the Holocaust seems to overshadow many other horrors not any less brutal, such as those perpetrated by the likes of Lenin and Stalin.

Without trying to make excuses for anyone, I would just like to draw your attention to the fact that many of the later Soviet dissidents were Jews  - i.e. Anatoly Sheranski and Ida Nudal (sp?) who suffered greatly for their beliefs under the totalitarian Soviet Government. Moreover, a number of distinguished writers who currently expose the horrors of the Soviet Union are Jewish such as Richard Pipes and, if I'm not mistaken, Orlando Figes.

I'm in a rush right now for work, but just had to get this. The Atrocities thread has kept me up thinking all night

[Nictionary]

I recently read a quote in Lucien Wolf's The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs (1921) which deals with this issue:

"...I find a notorious German anti-Semitic book quoting... Wilton, of the Times, as its authority for the statement that 'of 384 People's Commissars who constitute the Government only 13 are Russians, while 300 are Jews.' What are the facts? The only officials in Soviet Russia who are authorised to hold the rank of People's Commissars are the members of the Cabinet. These number 17, and of them 16 are indisputably Gentiles, while only one – Trotsky – is Jewish by birth... The other so-called Jewish Commissars are all men of the second and lower ranks of officials belonging exclusively either to the Civil Service or the Soviet analogue of our municipal life. They are probably fairly numerous, but in what may be called the second rank they do not number more than ten at the outside. The others may or may not be convinced Bolsheviks. They are servants of the State who may have many other motives for serving the Soviets than an enthusiasm for Lenin's politics...Trotsky has in his War Office and Corps of Officers probably as many ex-Tsarist officers – including sixteen Generals – as there are 'Jewish Commissars' in the whole Soviet Administration. And yet nobody dreams of describing the Red Legions as a Tsarist Army. These officers are probably not even Bolsheviks. If we could know their motives we should probably find that they were not very widely different from those which actuate the 'Jewish Commissars.'   
   "All this is not to say that there are no professing Jews in the Bolshevist ranks, or that the number of indifferent and apostate Jews who have thrown in their lot with the Soviets is quite negligible. What is contended is that normally the Jew is intensely antipathetic to Bolshevism, and that at the beginning of the Revolution relatively very few Jews – even of those who were Jews by race only – rallied to the call of Lenin. That this situation has changed during the last year is not improbable. But with whom does the blame rest? If Jews have reluctantly turned toward Bolshevism, it is because they have been forced into it by the anti-Bolsheviks. They cannot but be alarmed by the persistancy and passion with which the charge of Bolshevism is levelled against them, and the threats which come from all sides to avenge in their persons the sins of Lenin and Trotsky."

It is worth pointing out that while Trotsky's family was of Jewish extraction, they were not religious and the languages spoken at home were Russian and Ukrainian, not Yiddish.  Trotsky and most other ethnically Jewish Bolsheviks were professed atheists, and in fact in September 1918 the Rabbinical Council of Odessa declared herem (excommunication) on Zinoviev, Trotsky and several other Jewish members of the Bolshevik movement.

Marx dismissed Judaism as a reflection of the money-lending era of capitalism.  When the revolution came it was doomed to disappear: there would be no such person as a "Jew".  Consequently, Trotsky and other Jewish Marxists, such as Martov, Axelrod, Luxemburg and Otto Bauer, felt obliged to reject self-determination Jews while advocating it for everyone else.  Robert Service writes that Trotsky followed an orthodox Marxist line on matters of nationality and religion: “In his own eyes, he had ceased to be a Jew in any important sense because Marxism had burned out the fortuitous residues of his origins.”  Trotsky felt as Marx that "religion is the opium of the people. Whoever fails to struggle against religion is unworthy of bearing the name of a revolutionary." In a letter written less than six months before his assassination he stated that "for forty-three years of my life I have remained a revolutionary. I shall die a proletarian revolutionary, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and consequently an irreconcilable atheist."

When Trotsky was head of the Red Army, Moscow’s chief rabbi, Jacob Mazeh, asked Trotsky to use the army to protect the Jews from pogrom attacks. Trotsky reportedly responded, “Why do you come to me? I am not a Jew,” to which Mazeh answered: “That’s the tragedy. It’s the Trotskys who make revolutions, and it’s the Bronsteins who pay the price.”

[Nictionary]

Plehve's meeting with Herzl is not evidence against his anti-Semitism.  On the contrary, Herzl wrote in his diary that Plehve told him, "You don't have to justify your movement to me.  You are preaching to a convert…we would very much like to see the creation of an independent Jewish state capable of absorbing several million Jews. Of course we would not like to lose all our Jews. We should like to keep the very intelligent ones, those of which you, Dr Herzl, are the best example. But we should like to rid ourselves of the weak-minded and those with little property."  In other words, Plehve supported Zionism because it would get rid of "his" Jews.  In the same vein the Kaiser told Herzl, "I am all in favour of the kikes going to Palestine. The sooner they take off the better."  Then there is Plehve's infamous saying, "We must drown the revolution in Jewish blood."  After the Kishinev Pogrom only two men were sentenced to seven or five years respectively and twenty-two were sentenced for one or two years.

[Ellie]

Thanks for your reply Nictionary. I took a look at Wilton's book on Amazon, and I wasn't only upset at what was written there, but also the various responses to his book, which went along the lines that it's refreshing to get at the truth about the Jews.

[Ortino]

I would also say that Ortino disclosing his Judaism at the very beginning of his first post, less we discern any sort bias on his behalf, was impressive as well. Not that taking a strong position on antisemitism requires such a disclosure or requires one to be Jewish in the first place...it's just nice to hear the honesty up front.

I'm actually a woman, but you're welcome I suppose.

I was about to begin a new topic on what I'm about to say, but thought that it could well fit in here.

Mind you, this is a very sensitive issue since I have known many survivors of the Holocaust. I therefore find it difficult to contend with the knowledge that Jewish people participated in so many acts of brutality.

The Bolshevik Revolution occurred a number of years before the Holocaust, so why should that not square with what happened in the 1930s-1940s? Also, talk about a moral double standard--just because Jews have a history of persecution doesn't mean that isn't possible for them to commit crimes. Is there a particular reason you hold them to a higher moral standard than the rest of the world's population?

[Ellie]

Jews are no better or worse than anyone else. However, Jewish law puts human life above all and a bit in me hopes that Jewish value for the sanctity of life would inhibit them from acts of such brutality.
I've learned that I am wrong. This is the cause of my strong reaction to Jewish behavior during that time.