In his latest book Solzhenitsyn, 84, deals with one of the last taboos of the communist revolution: that Jews were as much perpetrators of the repression as its victims. Two Hundred Years Together - a reference to the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population - contains three chapters discussing the Jewish role in the revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia.
Of course, he was immediately accused of antisemitism in writing the book but anyone who reads it cannot fail to appreciate his efforts to provide a balanced view of a complex relationship.
I found this section of his book about the Civil War of great interest. To quote:
The Civil War spilled over Russia’s borders. Let’s review that briefly (though the events in Europe are outside of the scope of this book).
The Bolsheviks invaded Poland in 1920 ... it appears that Polish Jews met the Red Army very warmly. According to a Soviet source, whole battalions of Jewish workers participated in the fighting at Minsk. 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.”
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 affected 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 significantly influenced 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 significant.” 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. [35] 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. 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.”
“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 find 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 off 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.”
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 emphasis has been added by me to highlight one of the reasons for the rise of antisemitism in Europe in the 1920's and 1930's. While the Communist revolution failed to carry beyond Russia, the Zionists of course made use of this antisemitic feeling to make Europe an increasingly uncomfortable place for Jews to live. Ultimately it proved a poisonous place to live and the intention of course was to populate Palestine by as many Jews as possible by any means possible. Communism and Zionism were at that time two sides of the same coin. Following David Ben-Gurion's return in 1923 from a visit to the Soviet Union, he declared: "I am a Bolshevik.
Of course "the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population" is important to bear in mind because, prior to this annexation, Poland was a much larger and more powerful country and its rise and fall was intimately connected with its Jewish citizens. Figure 1 shows a map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent.
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Figure 1: source |
Between 1772 and 1795, the country was partitioned three times and after 1795, it ceased to exist for 123 years.
The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.
The First Partition of Poland was decided on August 5, 1772. Two decades later, Russian and Prussian troops entered the Commonwealth again and the Second Partition was signed on January 23, 1793. Austria did not participate in the Second Partition. The Third Partition of Poland took place on October 24, 1795, in reaction to the unsuccessful Polish Kościuszko Uprising the previous year. With this partition, the Commonwealth ceased to exist. Source.
The most comprehensive survey of Polish history available in English, God's Playground demonstrates Poland's importance in European history from medieval times to the present. Abandoning the traditional nationalist approach to Polish history, Norman Davies instead stresses the country's rich multinational heritage and places the development of the Jewish German, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian communities firmly within the Polish context. Davies emphasises the cultural history of Poland through a presentation of extensive poetical, literary, and documentary texts in English translation. In each volume, chronological chapters of political narrative are interspersed with essays on religious, social, economic, constitutional, philosophical, and diplomatic themes. This new edition has been revised and fully updated with two new chapters to bring the story to the end of the twentieth century.
UPDATE: at the start of Chapter 21: During the Soviet-German War, the editor inserts a very important comment on the opening page (478) of that chapter:
"... readers should note that up until now the author has closely scrutinised all the sources and his own experience, and often found Jewish and Soviet sources to be full of exaggerations and outright lies, especially in relation to supposed hardships suffered by the Jews. However, in the case of alleged actions of Hitler and the Nazi’s (their sworn enemies), all Jewish and Soviet sources are taken by the author to be absolute truth."
Again, on the first page (504) of Chapter 22: From the end of the war to Stalin's death, the editor adds a comment to what Solzhenitsyn has written:
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. [ed: or maybe because it wasn’t actually happening?]
It's unfortunate that the author abandoned all objectivity in his account of German actions against Jews during the war years. Clearly, he felt that any attempt at objectivity would fuel accusations of anti-semitism. Such accusations were directed at him anyway. He would have done better to leave Chapter 21 blank and let readers of the book draw their own conclusions for its blankness.
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