| How
profoundly this paradoxical "particularism" (i.e., chauvinism)
is ingrained in the Jewish consciousness is evidenced even in leftist
political organizations that are supposed to be founded upon notions of
universality, egalitarianism, and pan-human solidarity. In the years leading
up to the Russian communist revolution in the early twentieth century,
the undying obsession by most Russian Jews for themselves -- distinct
from many Russian leftists around
them -- often manifest itself in ethnocentric political expressions. Many
Jews of Russia and Poland congregated towards their own socialist movement
called the Bund. Much to the aggravation of communist party leader V.
I. Lenin and his universalistic
Bolshevik movement, the Bund's version of leftism insisted upon -- even
within the context of the existing nation state of Russia -- special Jewish
national rights beyond
those civil. [AGUS, p. 164] "It was not enough for the Bund,"
says Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, "to shift ... from Russian to Yiddish
in its agitational programme, it had to develop a fully fledged national
programme which demanded cultural autonomy for the Jews of the Russian
empire." [LOWE, p. 171] When non-Jews began rioting in Russia against
Jewish exclusionism and commercial exploitation in the late 1800s, "the
Bund ... used these pogroms as an opportunity to intensify its economic
activities and further its political aims." [LOWE, p. 171] "[The
Bund's] leaders," says Joseph Marcus, "consistently conducted
a class-conscious policy, ostensibly in the interests of the whole working
class, but actually confined to its Jewish members." [MARCUS, p.
211]
While the Bund had a large following in Eastern
Europe, notes Shmuel Ettinger,
"at
the same time, the Zionist Federation, which was also being formed
by
Russian Jews, stimulated the [Jewish] nationalist trends ... Among
Jewish
political subgroups the Socialist Zionist Party demanded that
a
Jewish society, socialist in principle, be established in a special
territory
to be set aside for the Jews; the Jewish Socialist Party, the
'Seymists,'
demanded a superior leadership institution, 'Sejm,' for
every
one of the nations which belonged to the Federation of Russia;
the
'Peoples' Party' (Folkspartey), led by historian Simon Dubnov,
demanded
a large measure of autonomy for the Jews within the
framework
of the Russian state ... Many Jews also played a part
in
organizing the general Russian political parties." [ETTINGER, 1984,
p.
9]
Across time and culture, even in the context
of the supposed multiculturalist and egalitarian American New Left movement
of the 1960's, Jews collectively tended to perceive themselves with
special distinction. As Arthur
Liebman noted:
"[Gentile
intellectuals] really are not totally accepted into even the
secularist
humanist liberal company of their quondam Jewish friends.
Jews
continue to insist in indirect and often inexplicable ways on their
own
uniqueness. Jewish universalism in relations between Jews and
non-Jews has an empty ring ... Still, we have
the anomaly of Jewish
secularists
and atheists writing their own prayer books. We find
Jewish
political reformers ... ostensibly pressing for universalist
political goals -- while organizing their own
political clubs which are
so
Jewish in style and manner that non-Jews often feel unwelcome."
[LIEBMAN,
in MACDONALD, p. 158]
Jews have a long history of leftist political
advocacy, agitation against any status quo of Christian empowerment,
and profoundly disproportionate percentages of leadership roles in groups
that ostensibly espouse pan-human, universalist themes. With massive Jewish escape from the working class in America, Nathan
Glazer and Patrick Moynihan noted in 1963 that "the unions are
increasingly less Jewish [but] Jewish labor leaders continue to dominate,
even though they deal for the most part with non-Jewish workers."
[GLAZER/MOYNIHAN, p. 144-145] "In America and Europe," says
Barry Rubin, "the left was so heavily Jewish as to be virtually
a communal activity in itself, especially in the 1930's ... Marxist
intellectuals in those years were heavily Jewish in composition and
profoundly Jewish in their thinking ... [Its pre-eminent leaders] were
all born into highly assimilated, wealthy families..." [RUBIN,
B., p. 147] Reflecting on the
collapse of the leftist movement in America, Harold Cruse, an African-American
intellectual and former communist, complained that
"The
Jews could not [Americanize Marxism] with the nationalist-
aggressiveness emerging out of East Side ghettoes
to demonstrate
through
Marxism their intellectual superiority over the Anglo-Saxon
goyim.
The Jews failed to make Marxism applicable to anything in
America
but their own national-group ambition or individual self-
election."
[LIEBMAN, A., p. 529]
In 1982 a Jewish author noted a similar
quote by a Gentile communist activist from Wisconsin:
"It became increasingly apparent to most
participants [at a communist
youth
conference] that virtually all the speakers were Jewish New
Yorkers.
Speakers with thick New York accents would identify
themselves as 'the delegate from the Lower East
Side' or 'the comrade
from
Brownsville.' Finally the national leadership called a recess to
discuss
what was becoming an embarassment. How could a
supposedly
national student organization be so totally dominated by
New York Jews? ... The convention was held in
Wisconsin." [in MACDONALD, 1998, p. 72]
"The problem arose," says Arthur Liebman, "to the means to accomplish the objective of Americanizing what was an essentialy Jewish and European socialist movement ... [LIEBMAN, A., 1986, p. 340] ... The disporportionate presence of Jews and the foreign born generally in the socialist movement coupled with the relative absence of non-Jews and native Americans troubled many of its leaders, Jews and non-Jews alike. The Communist party, for example, in the 1920s was made up almost entirely of Jews and foreign born, most of whom were in foreign language federations. The Jews alone in the 1930s and 1940s accounted for approximately 40 to 50 percent of the membership of the Communist party." [LIEBMAN, A.,| 1986, p. 339] Nathaniel Weyl notes that: "Although Communist leaders were normally taciturn about the extent to which Party membership was Jewish, Jack Stachel
complained in
The Communist for April 1929 that in
Los Angeles 'practically 90 per
cent
of the membership is Jewish.' In 1945, John Williamson, another
national leader of the American Communist Party,
observed that, while
a
seventh of Party membership was concentrated in Brooklyn, it
was
not the working-class districts, but in Brownsville, Williamsburg,
Coney Island and Bensonhurst, which he characterized
'as primarily
Jewish
American communities.' In 1951, the same complaint about
Brooklyn
was reiterated. A 1938 breakdown of Communist educational
directors on a district level reported that
17 out of 34 were Jewish and
only
nine 'American' ... Based on scrutiny of surnames, Glazer concluded
The popular association of Jews with Communism," notes Peter Novick, "dated from the Bolshevik Revolution. Most of the 'alien agitators' deported from the United States during the Red Scare after World War I had been Jews." [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 92] Major American twentieth century court trials included those of Charles Schenck, general secretary of the Socialist Party, who was arrested for sedition in 1919: "The case marked the first time the Supreme Court ruled on the extent to which the U.S. government may limit speech." [KNAPPMAN, E., 1995, p. 61, 60] Likewise, in 1927 the Supreme Court "upheld the conviction of Socialist Benjamin Gitlow under a New York state law for advocating criminal anarchy." [KNAPPMAN, E., 1995, p. 63] Peter Pulzer once noted that, in the German socialist ranks of the early 20th century, "Their [Jews'] disproportionately bourgeois origins and their tendency to derive their views from first principles rather than empirical experience, led them into a dominating position [in] the party's debates." [WEISBERGER, A., 1997, p. 93] "Hilquit, in turn, brought the unmentionable to the center stage in an emotional speech, declaring, 'I apologize for having been born abroad, for being a Jew, and living in New York City.' Hilquit's oblique reference to anti-Semitism assured him of victory. As Thomas[Hilquit's opponent for the chairmanship] later commented, 'Once the anti-Semitic issue was raised, even though unjustly, I was inclined to think it best that Hillquit won.' The Socialist party did not want to risk being labeled anti-Semitic." [LIEBMAN, A., 1986, p. 341] Some estimates suggest that 60% of the leadership
for the 60s-era radical SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)
were Jews (well-known radicals included Kathy Boudin, Bettina Aptheker,
among many others). [PRAGER, p. 61]
From 1960 to 1970, five of the nine changing presidents of
the organization were Jewish males (Al Haber, Todd Gitlin, and the
last three for the decade: Mike Spiegel, Mike Klonsky, and Mark
Rudd). [SALE, K., 1973, p. 663] "Perhaps fully 50 percent of the revolutionary
Students for a Democratic Society," says Milton Plesur, "and
as many as 50 to 75 percent of those in campus radical activities
in the late 1960s were Jewish." [PLESUR, M., 1982, p. 137]
As Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter note:
"The early SDS was heavily Jewish in both its leadership and its activist cadres. Key SDS leaders included Richard Flacks, who played an important role in its formation and growth, as well as Al Haber, Robb Ross, Steve Max, Mike Spiegel, Mike Klonsky, Todd Gitlin, Mark Rudd, and others. Indeed, for the first few years, SDS was largely funded by the League for Industrial Democracy, a heavily Jewish socialist (but anti-communist) organization. SDS's early successes were at elite universities containing substantial numbers of Jewish students and sympathetic Jewish faculty, including the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Brandeis, Oberlin, and the University of California. At Berkeley SDS leaders were not unaware of their roots. As Robb Ross put it, describing the situation at the Unversity of Wisconsin in the early 1960s, '... my impression is that the left at Madison is not just a new left, but a revival of the old ... with all the problems that entails. I am struck by the lack of Wisconsin-born people [in the Madison-area left] and the massive preponderance of New York Jews. The situation at the University of Minnesota is similar' ... [Researcher] Berns and his associates found that 83 percent of a small radical activist sample studied at the University of California in the early 1970s were of Jewish background." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 61] Susan Stern was among those to turn to the violent Weatherman underground organization. Ted Gold, another Weatherman member, died when a bomb he was making exploded in his hands. [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 61] In an iconic 1970 incident, three of the four students shot and killed by National Guardsmen at a famous Kent State University demonstration were Jewish. [BYARD, K., 5-5-00] A
study by Joseph Adelson at the University of Michigan, one of the
American hotbeds of 1960s-era activism, suggested that 90% of those
defined as politically "radical students" at that school
were Jews. [PRAGER, p. 61, 66] And, "when, for instance, the
Queens College SDS held a sit-in at an induction center several
years ago," wrote Gabriel Ende, "they chose to sing Christmas
carols to dramatize their activity, although the chairman and almost
all of the members were Jewish." [ENDE, G., 1971, p. 61]
Ronald Radosh notes that "In elite institutions like the University of Chicago, a large 63 percent of student radicals were Jewish; Tom Hayden may have been the most famous name in the University of Michigan SDS, but '90 percent of the student left [in that school] came from jewish backgrounds;' and nationally, 60 percent of SDS members were Jewish. As my once-friend Paul Breines wrote about my own alma mater the University of Wisconsin, 'the real yeast in the whole scene had been the New York Jewish students in Wisconsin' ... As late as 1946, one-third of America's Jews held a favorable view of the Soviet Union." [RADOSH, R., 6-5-01] Decades earlier, note Rothman and Lichter: "The American Student Union, the most prominent radical student group during the 1930s, was heavily concentrated in New York colleges and universities with large Jewish enrollments. And on other campuses, such as the University of Illinois, substantial portions of its limited membership were students of Jewish background from New York City." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 101] In communist organizations that supposedly
idealized a classless society for all people, it inevitably grated with
enduring Jewish self-perception: Jews often tended to configure as a
special caste of controllers of -- not a religious, but now -- a secular messianism. As Jeff Schatz notes
about pre-World War II Poland: "Despite the fact that [communist]
party authorities consciously strove to promote classically proletarian
and ethnically Polish members to the cadres of leaders and functionaries,
Jewish communists formed 54 percent of the field leadership of the KPP
[Polish Communist Party] in 1935. Moreover, Jews constituted a total
of 75 percent of the party's technica,
the apparatus for production and distribution of propaganda material.
Finally, communists of Jewish origin occupied most of the seats of the
Central Committee of the of the KPPP [Communists Workers Party of Poland]
and the KPP." [SCHATZ, p. 97] Jews were at this time 10% of the
Polish population.
In Russia, notes Shmuel Ettinger,
"when
the Russian Social Democratic Party split into two factions --
Bolsheviks
and Mensheviks -- both factions had many Jews in
their leaderships (such as Boris Axelrod, Yuly
Martov, Lev Trotsky,
Grigory
Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenov) and among their most active
party
members. Many Jews also played a part in the foundations and
leadership of the party ... For example, Mikhail
Gots was one of the
party's main thereoticians and Grigory Gershuni
was the leader of
its
fighting organization, which carried out terrorist acts against the
Tsarist
regime." [ETTINGER, p. 9]
Earlier in Russia, notes Leon Schapiro,
"a particularly important part was played by [Jewish revolutionary
Aaron] Zundelovich, who in 1872 had formed a revolutionary circle mainly
among students at the state-sponsored rabbinical school, at Vilna."
[SCHAPIRO, L., 1961, p. 153]
Also, notes Albert Lindemann, "it seems
beyond serious debate that in the first twenty years of the Bolshevik
Party the top ten to twenty leaders included close to a majority of
Jews. Of the seven 'major figures' listed in The Makers of the Russian
Revolution, four are of Jewish origin." [LINDEMANN, p. 429-430] Among the most important Jewish communists
were the aforementioned Trotsky (originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein)
and Grigori Yevseyevich Zinoviev ("Lenin's closest associate in
the war years"). Lev Borisovich Kamenev (Rosenfeld) headed the
party newspaper, Pravda. Adolf Yoffe was head of the Revolutionary
Military Committee of the Petrograd Bolshevik Party in 1917-18. Moisei
Solomonovich, head of the secret police in Petrograd, was known by some
as the epitome of "Jewish terror against the Russian people."
[LINDEMANN, p. 431]
In Hungary, notes Jewish scholar Howard Sachar, "for 135 days [in 1919], Hungary was ruled by a Communist dictatorship. Its party boss, Bela Kun, was a Jew. So were 31 of the 49 commissars in Kun's regime." [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 339] "most managers of the forty-eight People's Commissars in his revolutionary government. Most managers of the new state farms were Jewish, as were the bureau chiefs of the Central Administration and the leading olice officers. Overall, of 202 high officials in the Kun government, 161 were Jewish. Jews remained active in the Communist party during the Horthy regime of 1920-44, dominating its leadership. Again, most were from established, midle-class (or, at worst, lower-middle-class) backgrounds. Hardly any were proletarians or peasants. Most of the Hungarian Jewish community was massacred during World War II ... Nonetheless, the leading cadres of the Communist party in the postwar period were Jews, who completely dominated the regime until 1952-53 ... The wags of Budapest explained the presence of a lone gentile in the party leadership on the grounds that a 'goy' was needed to turn on the lights on Saturday." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 89] "In Lithuania," add Rothman and Lichter, "about 54 percent of the [Communist] party cadres were Jewish. Salonika Jewry played a major role in the foundation of Greek Communist party and remained prominent until the early 1940s. Similar patterns prevailed in Rumania and Czechoslovakia. Jews played quite prominent roles in the top and second echelon leadership of the communist regimes in all of these countries in the immediate postwar period. Theywere often associated with Stalinist policies and were strongly represented in the secret police. In Poland, for example, three of the five members of the original Politburo were Jewish. A fourth, Wladyslaw Gomulka, was married to a woman of Jewish background. In both Rumania and Czechoslovakia, at least two of the four key figures in the Communist party were of Jewish background." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 90] In Canada, in the 1940s, the Jewish head
of the Communist Party in Montreal, Harry Binder, estimated that 70%
of the Communist Party membership in his city were Jewish. In Toronto,
from a Jewish population of 50,000, about 30% of the formal members
of the local Communist community were believed to be Jews, not including
those who had looser ties to the organization. [PARIS, E., 1980, p.
145]
David Biale notes Jewish pre-eminence among
the communists of South Africa:
"The
fact that they were outsiders to the main elements of white South
African
society -- British and Afrikaner -- undoubtedly made them more
likely
to rebel against the existing order. It was the explosive combination
Jews of Polish background played an important role in the founding of the Cuban communist party," note Rothman and Lichter, "and there are scattered indications of their significance in left-wing parties and groups in other Latin American countries. Jews were also prominent in the formation of Communist parties in various North African countries." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 90-91] Even in 1930's pre-Nazi Germany, the Communist
Party's top two leaders -- Rosa Luxemberg and Paul Levi -- were
Jewish. (Hannah Arendt notes that Luxemberg was a member of a "Polish-Jewish
'peer group,'" which was a "carefully hidden attachment
to the Polish party which sprang from it.") [ARENDT, 1968,
p. 40] Earlier, in the wake of World War I, another Jewish radical,
Kurt Eisner, proclaimed a socialist republic in Bavaria. Upon his
assassination, Eisner's government was replaced by another socialist
one -- that of president Ernst Toller (also Jewish). Erich Muehsam
and Gustav Landauer were other Jews in high positions in the government.
[PAYNE, p. 124-125] Next came a Communist coup to oust the socialist
regime. As John Cornwell describes it, "After a week or two
of outlandish misrule, on April 12 [1919] a reign of terror ensued
under the red revolutionary trio of Max Levien, Eugen Levine, and
Tonja Axelrod [also all Jewish] to hasten the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The new regime kidnapped 'middle-class' hostages, throwing
them into Stadeheim Prison. They shut down schools, imposed censorship,
and requisitioned peoples' homes and possessions." [CORNWELL,
p. 74] In Austria, in 1920, repeating the theme, "the socialist
government was led by Friedrich Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Seitz, Julius
Deutsch and Hugo Breitner." [GROLLMAN, E., 1965, p. 117]
'The list of leading socialists [in Germany]
of Jewish origin is long and illustrious," adds Adam Weisberger,
"-- Eduard Bernstein, Rosa Luxemberg, Gustav Landauer, Kurt Eisner,
Paul Singer, Hugo Haase -- to mention some of the most prominent among
them." [WEISBERG, A., 1997, p. 2]
As George Mosse notes:
"Jews
were highly visible in many of the postwar [World War I]
revolutions, not only in Bolshevik Russia but
also in Budapest,
Munich,
and Berlin. During the postwar crisis, belief in Jewish
conspiracies
and subversive activity was not just a curious notion
held
by professed haters of Jews; in 1918, even Winston Churchill
associated
Jews with the Bolshevik conspiracy." [MOSSE, G., 1985,
"They
were, for better or worse, considered less susceptible to the
lures
of 'Polish nationalism,' to which even impeccable Polish Communists were
not thought immune. It should be remembered that these Jews
left-wingers, and Moscow was taking no chances
with sentimental
ties of comradeship cramping their style as
guardians of political
'purity.'
Many of them had not only sadistic inclinations but also
various grudges against their future victims,
both Polish and Jewish.
Indeed,
it is significant that there were no traces of 'Jewish
This is a common Jewish apologetic tact today,
to explain away the Jewish identities
of so many communist terrorists by proclaiming that they had no connective
identity with others in their work circles. Even here, Jewish consensus
proclaims, even as Jews murdered others, Jews remain victims of anti-Semitism.
But as Kevin MacDonald suggests, "surface declarations of a lack of Jewish identity may be highly misleading ... There is good evidence for widespread self-deception about Jewish identity among Jewish radicals ... [Bolshevism] was a government that aggressively attempted to destroy all vestiges of Christianity as a socially unifying force within the Soviet Union while at the same time it established a secular Jewish subculture." [MACDONALD, 1998, p. 60] Arthur Liebman notes this phenomenon in "the flood of Yiddish-speaking Jews" to America in the early years of the twentieth century: "These new Jews were too large a constituency to be kept separate from the Socialist party for the length of time ncessary to accept the arguments of the sophisticated Marxist cosmopolitan Jews. If these masses of Jews who valued their Jewish identity and language would come to socialism through a speical Jewish organization, then the Socialists decided they would have it. The Jewish Socialist Federation was officially recognized by the Socialist party in 1912." [LIEBMAN, A., 1986, p. 339] As Jewish author John Sack notes about the
many officials of Jewish origin in Poland after World War II who headed
the repressive communist secret police system:
"I'd
interviewed twenty-three Jews who'd been in the Office [of State
Security], and one, just one, had considered
himself a communist in
1945. He and the others had gone to Jewish schools,
studied the
Torah,
had been bar-mitzvahed, sometimes wore payes
... By whose
definition
weren't they Jews? Not by the Talmud's, certainly not by
the government of Israel's or the government
of Nazi Germany's."
[PIOTROWSKI,
p. 63]
Melanie Kaye-Kantrowitz puts her Jewish
identity in a socialist context this way:
"Out of nowhere pops a question,
'If you don't care about being
Jewish, how come all your friends are Jews?'
Vivian ... thinks about being Jewish
on the toilet and in her
sleep, as well as every other moment of
the day or night.
'I live in New York,' I snap, and we
both burst out laughing.
Mentally I flip through my friends for a
non-Jew. Nothing.
She shakes her head. 'You're such a Jew.
How come you
don't know this about yourself?'
... My parents never thought about it
either, it was who they
were. In Vilna they were Jews and socialists,
and when they came
here they were still Jews and socialists.
They lived among other
Jews. Everyone spoke Jewish. What was there
to think? It was
like air, they breathed it. There was Jewish
everything. My parents
would argue who you could trust less, communists
or Democrats,
anarchists they never worried about. All
Jewish. Orthodox,
secular. Owners, bosses, workers. Doctors,
teachers, salesclerks,
writers, dancers, peddlers, you name it.
All Jewish. Movies. Gossip
columns. Like I said, you breathed it."
[KAYE-KANTROWITZ,
1990, p. 188]
Jewish author Anne Roiphe, today an ardent
supporter of Israel, addresses the same theme:
"I
can say I was a Marxist before I was old enough to know history,
and
afterward a liberal, a Leftist, a woman of the people with the people,
contradictions."
[ROLPHE, 1981, p. 113]
Rolphe's first hypocrisy was that she was
born to wealth: "I am the product of the [economic] wits of my
grandfather." [ROLPHE, 1981, p. 113] And despite an identity as
a Marxist, Leftist, liberal, or whatever else she thought she was, Rolphe
inevitably was drawn back to "this odd mystical connection to the
Jewish peoplehood, " [ROLPHE, 1981, p. 182] writing an entire volume
about it (subtitled A Jewish Journey in Christian America). "I
thought," she wrote, "that ... I had asserted my ego as separate
from the forced march of Jewish history ... I had thought I had cut
out the roots of the
Jewish communist Sam Carr was released
from a Canadian prison in 1951 for spying for Russia. "Ironically,"
notes Erna Paris, "given the fact that he 'wasn't much of a Jew,'
he did become the leader of the Unified Jewish People's Order after
1960." [PARIS, E., p. 176] In Argentina, Jewish publisher Jacobo
Timerman was imprisoned by the ruling military junta in 1977. It was
pointed out to him by his right-wing interrogators that he was a member
of a "registered affiliate organization of the Communist Party"
in his youth. Timerman denied that he joined it because of any interest
in communism, but, rather, for how it could serve his other ideological
interests: "I belonged to it as an anti-Fascist, a Jew, and a Zionist."
[TIMERMAN, J., 1981, p. 116]
"A number of Jewish socialists, particularly
in the later stages of the [German] Wilhelhmine period," notes
Adam Weisberger, "exhibited the phenomenon of returning to Judaism
... although admittedly often in secular or accentuated form. Joseph
Bloch, for example, originally an ardent assimilationist and German
nationalist, became perhaps the chief proponent of Zionism in the German
socialist movement." [WEISBERGER, A., 1997, p. 98]
In 1961, Jewish author Daniel Aaron criticized
the shallow attachment many in radical movements really had to their
left-wing postures: "Some writers joined or broke from the [Communist]
Movement because of their wives, or for careerist reasons, or because
they read their own inner disturbances into the realities of social
dislocation. To put it another way, the subject matter of politics ...
was often the vehicle for non-political emotions and compulsions."
[WALD, p. 14]
Sigmund Freud (although not a Marxist, his
areligious work is often joined to Marxist theory) insisted that his
psychological speculations applied to all people and tried to dismiss
any evidence of his own special Jewish particularism. But he was always
conflicted about it. As he once wrote about his connection to Jewish
identity, "When I felt an inclination to [Jewish] national enthusiasm
I strove to suppress it as being harmful and wrong, alarmed by the warning
examples of the people among whom we Jews live. But plenty of other
things remained to make the attraction of Jewry and Jews irresistible
-- many obscure emotional forces, which were the more powerful the less
they could be expressed in words, as well as a clear consciousness of
inner identity, the safe privacy of a common mental connection."
[ROIPHE, 1981, p. 180] (The clique that runs, and enforces, the psychoanalytic
world, as we shall see later, remains overwhelmingly Jewish).
Jewish messianic elitism in leftist "universalist"
circles endures to this day. In 1992, Michael Lerner, prominent editor
of the left-wing Jewish journal Tikkun, suggested remedies for
curing anti-Semitism in leftist organizations. The cure? "Put[ting]
self-affirming Jews in positions of leadership in your organizations"
[LERNER, Socialism, p. 115] and indoctrination sessions to sensitize
non-Jews to Jewish needs (Lerner's term is: "internal education
programs.")
Erna Paris notes the history of Jewish communism
in Canada:
"Although the Jewish left claimed to
be dedicated to perfect equality,
it also gave full-blown expression to the
strong velvet-gloved, ancient,
patriarchal traditions of Judaism. If the
ancestral prophets like Amos
were the Fathers of Israel, so the men of
UJPO [United Jewish
People's Order: a 'Jewish' branch of communism]
and the school of
the Jewish labour movement were the 'Fathers'
of the women and
children in the movement. Without question,
they were the new
Hebrew prophets of a better world."
[PARIS, E., p. 152]
As Adam Weisberger notes this Jewish identity
root in the profound historical influence of Jews in revolutionary communist
and socialist movements that aimed to destroy the existing social order:
"A messianic idea, derived from traditional
Judaism, persisted through
Judaism
and possessed little or no formal Jewish education, remained
an
essential part of the mission of those Jews who believed they had
"After being nurtured by a culture that saw itself superior by virtue of its special relationship with God," note Jewish authors Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, "many Jews must have experienced their contact with modern Europe [with the birth of the Enlightenment] as traumatic. It was difficult to think Jewish life superior to the achievements of European civilization once the protective mantle of the shtetl was no longer present. What better way to reestablish claims to superiority than by adopting the most 'advanced' social position of the larger society and viewing this adoption as a reflection of Jewish heritage? Thus many radical Jewish intellectuals were able to continue to assert Jewish superiority, even as they denied their Jewishness." [ROTHMAN/ LICHTER, 1982, p. 121] Arnold Eisen, in a discussion of Leslie Fiedler (who started out as a socialist) and other well-known Jewish American "intellectuals," notes the transformative essence of Jewish identity from traditional Judaism to modern political movements: "Here the entire language of chosenness -- suffering, witness, mission, reciprocity, exclusivity, covenant, and even repudiation of Christianity and idol worship! -- has been appropriated and hollowed out in order to endow the Jewish intellectual with the role of prophet to his own community and the world." [EISEN, p. 136] Salo Baron goes back further in time, but underscores the same Jewish identity foundation, which can, however incongruously, simultaneously straddle both "universalistic" communist movements and "particularist" Zionism: "Under one guise or another, even the
antireligious movements in
19th
century Judaism were unable to cast off their messianic yearnings
in
that long chain of evolution." [BARON, 1964, p. 172]
David Horowitz recalls what it was like growing
up in a New York City household with his communist parents, an environment
still founded upon the Jewish religious myths of redemption:
"In
the radical romance of our political lives, the world was said
to
have begun in innocence, but to have fallen afterwards under
an
evil spell, afflicting the lives of all with great suffering and
injustice.
According to our myth, a happy ending beckoned,
however. Through the efforts of progressives
like us, the spell
would
one day be lifted, and mankind would be freed from its
trials." [HOROWITZ, D., 1999, p. 284]
Even the founder of Hadassah (the women's
Zionist organization), Henrietta Szold, once wrote that "the world
has not progressed beyond the need of Jewish instruction, but the Jew
can be witness and a missionary only if he is permitted to interpret
the lessons of Judaism as his peculiar nature and his peculiar discipline
enable him to interpret them." [GAL, A., 1986, p. 371] How Zionism,
the modern secular expression of traditional Jewish ethnocentrism, is
supposed to "instruct the world that has not progressed beyond
the need of Jewish instruction" is never explained. [Note Zionism's
implicit racism and oppressive policies against non-Jews in the later
chapter about Israel].
With the erosion of the New Left in America
in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Israel's 1967 victory in its
war with surrounding Arab states, distinctly Judeo-centric political
configurations arose out of the Jewish universalistic left-wing community
that, as Mordecai Chertoff notes, "affirm[ed] Zionism
... and Judaism ... as socialists and radicals." [CHERTOFF,
p. 192] Such organizations included the Jewish Student Movement, the
Jewish Action Committee, Kadimah, the Jewish Student Union, the Maccabees,
American Students for Israel, the World Union of Jewish Students, Na'aseh,
Jews for Urban Justice, the New Jewish Committee, the Jewish Liberation
Project, the Youth Commitee for Peace and Democracy in the Middle East,
and the Committee for Social Justice in the Middle East. Such organizations
produced between 20 and 40 periodicals with a combined circulation of
over 300,000. [GLAZER, NEW p. 192-193]
"The extreme radical groups of the
New Left came out officially in favor of the Arabs," notes James
Yaffe, "but it generally conceded that there was much opposition
from Jews in those groups. 'Jewish kids in the Movement,' one of them
told me, 'have a double standard on Israel. A non-Jewish leftist is
much more likely to condemn Israel than a Jewish leftist." [YAFFE,
J., 1968, p. 193]
"There are still those [Jews] who
are impressed," wrote Nathan Glazer in 1971, "by what seems
to be the New Left concern for all of mankind, but more and more ...
are discovering ... that there is a limit to the number of trumpets
one can respond. [Jews] are responding, in greater numbers to their
own." [GLAZER, p. 196] "How many times," complained anti-Vietnam
War activist Gabriel Ende in the same year, "have committed Jews
joined with others in Vietnam and student power rallies, only to have
their erstwhile companions stab them in the back with boorish anti-Israel
remarks on the morrow?" [ENDE, G., 1971, p. 59] Jewish
international economic power toward expressly Jewish political ends
in a war could even be asserted in Asia. At the turn of the twentieth
century, American Jews who were concerned about a perceived Russian
mistreatment of its Jewish citizens included Jacob Schiff, a senior
partner in the American banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. He believed
that "the only hope for Russian Jews seemed to lay in the possibility
that the Russo-Japanese War would lead to upheaval in Russia and constitutional
government there." [BEST, G., 1972, p. 315] Toward this end,
Schiff helped Japan raise $180 million, nearly one-fourth of the total
Japanese expenditure in its war with Russia.
Schiff, the wealthy capitalist, even funded socialist indoctrination
programs for Russian prisoners of war by the Japanese, in the hope
that this might aid in the Tsar's downfall. [LINDEMANN, p. 170] The
Universal Jewish Encyclopedia claims that "in his later
years [Schiff] recognized that he had innocently aided in the creation
of a menace in the shape of Japanese imperialism." [UJE, v. 9,
p. 400]
At the same time, since 1890, Jewish-American financiers -- led
by Jacob Schiff, Isaac Seligman, and Adolph Lewisohn -- had vigorously
lobbied the powerful international Jewish banking community as a collective
entity to reject Russia's own searches for loans. Ultimately defeated
by Japan and suffering great indemnity demands, Tsarist Russia faced
a largely successful international economic lockout by Jewish money
lenders (the Russian government ultimately collapsed to the communist
revolution, a situation international Jewry hoped to be better for
Russian Jews). "A great nation," reported the Jewish
Chronicle with satisfaction about the teetering Tsarist state,
"was now going from one Jewish banker to the other, vainly appealing
for financial help." [ARONSFELD, p. 103]
Simon Wolf, Chairman of the Board of Delegates
of the United American Hebrew Congregation, wrote that
"Russia
at this juncture needs two important elements to inspire its future
formation
of public opinion and in the control of the finances...”
[ARONSFELD,
p. 100]
The following ultimatum to the huge country
of Russia, and a threat to those who broke Jewish ranks to do business
with it, was announced by a group of Jewish American businessmen wielding
their own foreign policy, self-described as the "Hebrew alliance:"
"First,
until equal civil and religious rights are given the Jews of Russia,
no
money will be loaned the Russian government by any American
Jews.
Second,
the Rothschilds [the worlds greatest and far-reaching banking
firm,
based in Europe] are united with the American Jewish bankers in
this agreement and will use all their enormous
prestige and power to
assist in carrying out the threat.
Third,
no financial concern will be allowed to loan Russia money, under
pain
of the displeasure and financial punishment that such a
combination
of resources of the Hebrew alliance could so readily
dispense."
[ARONSFELD, p. 100]
Jewish economic collusion against Russia,
notes Edwin Black, "was widely criticized for the stubborn continuation
of their boycott even as it threatened the Allies' [World War I] war
effort. But the boycott remained in effect until the monarchy was
toppled in 1917." [BLACK, p. 31] Even within Russia itself, a
Jewish "adventurous millionaire," Parvus (aka Israel Lazarevitch
Gelfand, or also anglicized as Helphand), was a sponsor of V. I. Lenin.
[SINGER, N., p. 2] In this historical context -- the "conspiracy" of international
Jewish financiers unifying to bring Tsarist Russia to collapse --
the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia notes that "the canard
of the Jewish conspiracy to attain political world domination originated
at the time when the Tsarist regime was threatened with revolution."
[UJE, v. 3, p. 1] The most famous anti-Semitic volume of all time,
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed to evidence
a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, was created -- and published
-- in Russia at this time.
Jewish
Prominence and Power in Soviet Communism
With the eventual fall of Tsarist rule, the influence of Jews in the rise of Russian communism was profound. (After all, as Louis Rapoport notes, "[Karl] Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, and Eduard Bernstein [were] men of Jewish origin who laid the foundations of communism and socialism.") [RAPOPORT, L., 1990, p. 15] During the 1917 revolution, two communist factions, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks vied for power. Leading up to the revolution, eight of the seventeen Menshevik Party central committee members were Jewish. The "entire Menshevik Party which included many Jewish members ... was politically linked with the Jewish Labor Bund [a party largely championing Jewish nationalism]." [LEVIN, N., 1988, p. 13] The head of the Menshevik Party was also Jewish, Raphael Abramovich. [RAPOPORT, L., 1990, p. 31] The rival Bolshevik revolutionary faction,
however, prevailed in the overthrow of the tsarist government, replacing
it with a communist government headed by V. I. Lenin. (A Jew, Boris
Zbarsky, even was the one who embalmed Lenin's corpse for permanent
display in the Kremlin). [RAPOPORT, L., 1990, p. 95] Lenin had a Jewish
grandfather, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, on his mother's side. Russian
author Dmitri Volkogonov's 1994 biography of Lenin notes that
"In [Lenin's sister's] letter to Stalin [after Lenin's death], Anna wrote: 'It's probably no secret for you that the research on our grandfather shows that he came from a poor Jewish family, that he was, as his baptismal certificate says, the son of 'Zhitomir meschanin Moishe Blank.' She went on to suggest that 'this fact could serve to help combat anti-semitism.' Paradoxically for a Marxist who believed in the primacy of environmental over inherited factors, she also asserted the dubious proposition that Lenin's Jewish origins 'are further confirmation of the exceptional abilities of the Semitic tribe, [confirmation] always shared by Ilyich [Lenin] .... Ilyich always valued Jews highly.' Anna's claim explains, for instance, why Lenin frequently recommended giving foreigners, especially Jews, intellectually demanding tasks, and leaving the elementary work to the 'Russian fools.'" [VOLKOGONOV, D., 1994, p. 8-9] Lenin also once told Maxim Gorky that "the clever Russian is almost always a Jew or has Jewish blood in him." [VOLKOGONOV, D., 1994, p. 112] At the time of the revolution, the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Jacob Sverdlov, was Jewish. [WEYL, 1968, p. 197] As the new ruling Bolshevik clique took shape, three of the six members of the original ruling Politburo were also Jewish. Two of them, Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and Grigori Zinoviev (Apfelbaum), joined with Stalin to form the threesome that ruled Russia at leader V. I. Lenin's death. [GINSBERG, B., 1993, p. 30] (Zinoviev once remarked that "We must carry along with us ninety million out of the one hundred million Soviet Russian population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.") [RAPOPORT, L., 1990, p. 31] Zinoviev "and his wife Z. I. Lilina were close family friends of Lenin, and Zinoviev probably received more personal letters from Lenin than any other leader." Similarly, Lev Kamenev "received the most correspondence [from Lenin] ... He was much trusted by Lenin, even on personal matters, for example on Lenin's relationship with his mistress Inessa Armand at the time he and Lenin were sharing an apartment in Poland. Kamenev's knowledge of Lenin is important because he was the first editor, with Lenin's direct participation, of Lenin's collected works." [VOLKOGONOV, D., 1994, p. xxxv] Another Jew, Angelica Balabanova, formerly an associate of Mussolini in Italy, headed the first Communist Comintern. Karl Radek (Sobelsohn) was "one of the leading agents of the Communist International ... The short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic was led by Bela Kun (a variant of Cohen) and the organizer of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets of the even more ephemeral Bavarian Soviet Republic was Eugen Levine." [WEYL, p. 197] Howard Sachar notes more deeply the case
of Hungary where
"a
free election took place in November 1945, and the communists won
Army
behind them, the Communists turned their efforts in the next
year
to infiltration ... Their Soviet-trained leadership included a large
majority
of Jews. Although many of the commissars from the Bela
Kun
era in 1919 had been killed, a number of them survived in Soviet
exile.
These were the men who returned now in the wake of the Red
Army.
Their spokesman was Matyas Rakosis ... He returned
at
the head of a quintet of fellow Jews that included Erno Gero, who
would
become the communist government's economic overlord;
Mihaly
Farka, its military and defense chieftain; Jozeph Revai, its
cultural
'pope'; and most importantly, Gabor Peter, who would be
named
head of the dreaded security police." [SACHAR, H., 1985,
p.
344]
Jewish pre-eminence in the new Russian regime
was throughout the communist system. As Zvi Gitelman notes:'
"The idea that the Bolshevik regime was a Jewish one gained
popularity because of the relatively large
numbers of Jews who
in 1917 suddenly rushed into governmental
posts from which
they had been barred under the tsars. So
striking was the
prominence of Jews in high places that when
it was proposed
that a Jewish ticket be put forth in the
elections to the Constituent
Assembly, Maxim Vinaver commented, 'Why
do Jews need a
separate ticket? Whichever party wins, we
will still be the
winners.'" [GITELMAN, Z., 1972, p.
114]
In the struggle for power in Russia, notes
Nathaniel Weyl, "the prominence of Jews in the leadership of
the Bolshevik Party was no greater than their prominence in the leadership
of other, less totalitarian parties."
Prominent Jews in rival socialist factions included Julius
Martov (Tsederbaum), Raphael Abramovitch, and I. N. Steinberg. Boris
Savinkov, also Jewish, was the "legendary head of the Terrorist
Brigade of the Socialist Revolutionary Party." Aaron Baron and
Lev Chorny were well-known Anarchists. [WEYL, 1968, p. 199-200] Building
to the Russian revolution era, prominent Jewish revolutionaries also
included Grigory Abramovich Perets and Nikolay Utin. One of the founders
(in 1876) of the "Land and Liberty" revolutionary party
was Mark Natanson. "Another Jew," notes Leon Schapiro, "Aaron
Zundelevich, played an important part on its executive committee.
There were Jewish propagandists, Jewish organisers, Jewish terrorists
... It is impossible to doubt the importance of the Jewish contribution
to the less spectacular business of organisation and staff-work. It
was the Jews, with their long experience of exploiting conditions
on Russia's western frontier which adjoined the Pale for smuggling
and the like, who organised the illegal transport of literature, planned
escapes and illegal crossings, and generally kept the wheels of the
whole organisation running." [SCHAPIRO, L., 1961, p. 152] One
of the Land and Liberty party's later branches, the "Black Repartition"
group, "soon became the cradle of the Marxist movement. Jewish
revolutionaries participated in all stages and in all aspects of this
movement." [SCHAPIRO, L., 1961, p. 149-151]
"The abundance of Jewish names in
the higher and middle levels of power (in the [Bolshevik] Party and
state apparat, in the military, ministry, etc.) is indisputable,"
says apologist Jewish author Arkady Vaksberg, "... For anti-Semites
now, this is an odious and outrageous fact; from the point of view
of normal people not blinded by chauvinist hatred, it is meaningless."
[VAKSBERG, p. 22] "Among the second-string leaders of the Soviet,"
observed Nathaniel Weyl, "were Gregory Sokolnikov (Brilliant),
Solomon Lozovsky, who would head the Red International of Labor Unions,
and Moses Uritsky, chief of the Petrograd Cheka and number two man in the Soviet
secret police."[WEYL, 1968, p. 198]
In 1923, notes Isaac Deutscher, "a
triumvirate, composed of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, formed itself
within the Politbureau ... Between them, the three men virtually controlled
the whole [Communist] party and, through it, the Government ... Zinoviev
was, in addition, the President of the Communist International."
[DEUTSCHER, p. 255] Amidst
intrigue and power struggles within the communist movement, however,
by 1927 Kamenev and Zinoviev "at last threw in their lot with
Trotsky." [DEUTSCHER, p. 307] Trotsky, an enemy of Stalin, was "the
founder and builder of the Red Army," [DEUTSCHER, p. 192] and
once the "number two man next to Lenin. " [NEW ENCYC BRITTANICA,
p. 945] He was also Jewish, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Trotsky,
Zinoviev, and Kamenev, notes Arkady Vaksberg, "alone formed the
'leadership nucleus' and had every reason to expect to inherit the
mantle of leadership from Lenin. The man closest to the 'troika' (Trotsky-Zinoviev-Kamenev)
after [Yakov] Sverdlov's death was Grigori Sokolnikov." [VAKSBERG,
p. 19] All five of these men poised to rule Russia were Jewish. Kamenev
once told Trotsky (his brother-in-law) [WALSH, p. 440] that "It
will be enough for you and Zinoviev to appear together on the platform
in order to reconquer the whole party." [DEUTSCHER, p. 308] It
didn't work out that way. Stalin proved to be a more ruthless and/or
shrewd leader in the struggle for power.
Nonetheless, Jews were very well represented
in the Soviet system under Stalin. As Isaac Deutscher notes,
"Jews
were quite prominent in [Stalin's] entourage, though far less
so
than they had been in Lenin's. [Max] Litvinov stood for over a decade
the
end Stalin's factotum; Mekhlis was the chief political Commissar
of
the army; and Zaslavsky and Ehrenburg were the most popular
of
Stalin's sycophants. Yet he was not averse from playing on
anti-Jewish
emotions when this suited his convenience. During
the
struggle of against the inner-party oppositions his agents made
the most of the circumstance that Trotsky, Zinoviev,
Kamenev,
and Radek were of Jewish origin." [DEUTSCHER,
p. 605]
"Lev Mekhlis," notes Louis Rapoport,
"would become Stalin's secretary and
one of the most despised
men in Soviet history ... Immediately after
the Revolution, many
Jews were euphoric over their high representation
in the new
government. Lenin's first Politburo was
dominated by men of
Jewish origins ... Under Lenin, Jews became
involved in all aspects
of the Revolution, including its dirtiest
work. Despite the Communists'
The Soviet Union's leading communist newspaper
was Pravda. It's "leading staff members," Yakov Khavinson
and David Zaslavsky, were Jewish, as were the Soviet Unions ambassadors
to the U.S., Maxim Litvinov and Ivan Maisky, who were recalled in
1943. [VAKSBERG, p. 260, 139]
In 1994, Russian-born (and raised) Jewish
author Arkady Vaksberg wrote a book entitled Stalin Against the
Jews. Its fundamental thesis is that Stalin was a fanatical anti-Semite.
(Louis Rapoport's Stalin's War Against the Jews reflects the
same theme). The fact that many Jews (including millions
of others) died under his direction is beyond question. And Stalin's
actions in later life reflect his suspicions of the loyalty of many
in the Jewish community. But the fact that Stalin was nonetheless
surrounded by Jews everywhere in positions of high power (Lazar Kaganovich,
Pyatnitsky, Fillip Goloschekin "and many others who were made
part of the ruling circle") [VAKSBERG, p. 20] is described by
Vaksberg as "camoflauge" for the Soviet leader's hatred
of Jews. [VAKSBERG, p. 27] Yet Vaksberg's own evidence to portray
the Russian Jewish community as solely victims consistently deflates
the premise of Stalin's enduring anti-Semitism.Vaksberg assails Stalin
as a singularly rabid, irrational Jew-hater even while stating that
"the people who surrounded Stalin and who had rendered him service
in the twenties and thirties were mostly Jews" [VAKSBERG, p.
35] and conceding that Jews especially close to Stalin like Emelyan
Yaroslavky (Mines Gubelman), Moisey Gubelman, Lev Mekhlis ("Stalin's
right hand man"), [VAKSBERG, p. 23] Lazar Kaganovich and Isaac
Mintz all survived Stalin's declared "anti-Zionist" purges.
"Why did Stalin, as an anti-Semite,"
wonders Vaksberg, "have two Jewish secretaries -- Lev Mekhlis
and Grigori Kanner?" [VAKSBERG, p. 27] Why too, we might add in turning Vaksberg's facts to different theses,
whenever Stalin went on a vacation, did Lazar Kaganovich, a Jew, take
over running the government? [VAKSBERG, p. 51] And why, we might add,
if Stalin was so all-encompassingly hateful of Jews, did he entrust
his life to a Jewish bodyguard, Matyas Rakoszy? [VAKSBERG, p. 40]
(Another Jewish Stalin bodyguard, son of a rabbi, and "protege
of Nikita Khruschev," was Alexander Contract, who started out
in the NKVD -- later the KGB. Contract even saved the life of future
Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin). [O'DWYER, T., 7-6-98] And
if Stalin was singularly focused in his alleged hatred of Jews, why
did his "personal corps of physicians" include "Drs.
Weisbrod, Moshenberg, and Lev Gigorievich Levin?" [RAPOPORT,
L., 1990, p. 37] Even prominent non-Jewish Communist Party officials
(and close associates of Stalin's social circle), President Mikhail
Kalinin, Bukharin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Andreyev, Poskrebyshev, and
Rykov, all had Jewish wives. Stalin's own daughter Svetlana Allilueva
had an affair with Jewish screenwriter Alexei Kapler; she later married
Grigory Morozov (Moroz), also Jewish. [VAKSBERG, p. 138; RAPOPORT,
L., 1990, p. 208] The fact that Stalin reportedly did not approve
of these men is routinely explained by Jewish scholars as anti-Semitism.
Stalin's sister-in-law (eventually imprisoned) by his first wife was
also Jewish. So was one of his daughters-in-law. And there is controversial
testimony that Stalin even had a Jewish mistress, Rosa Kaganovich.
[RAPAPORT, L., p. 46, 241]
Over a hundred Jewish generals also served
in Stalin's Soviet army, including the chief of the Soviet Air Force
at the start of World War II, General Jacob Smushkevich. [GOLDBERG,
M. H., 1976, p. 78]
"It seemed," says Louis Rapoport,
"there
were Jews wherever [Stalin] looked. His loyal tin soldier, Marshal
Voroshilov,
was devoted to his Jewish wife, Catherine. Marshal Bulganin
Stalin's alleged fanatical anti-Semitism
had further curious twists. "Another non-Jew not only helped
create Israel," notes M. Hersch Goldberg, "but saved it.
Incredible as it may seem, that man was Joseph Stalin. The tale of
Stalin's role in helping create and then insure the early survival
of Israel has been little told; and on those occasions when it has
been mentioned, there has been no satisfactory explanation for it."
This includes the fact that in 1947 the Soviet Union publicly supported
the creation of a Jewish state, and was the second country (after
the U.S.) to recognize its establishment. Stalin also initially supported
Israel in its war of independence against the Arabs and supported
Israel with shipments of arms through Czecheslovakia. Even the Soviet delegate to the United Nations, also President of
the Security Council, was of Jewish heritage -- Jacob Malik. [GOLDBERG,
M. H., 1976, p. 220-224] It would seem that if Stalin was truly overwhelmed
with feelings of irrational anti-Semitism, Jewish power within his
own government had overwhelmed him.
From the start of his argument about Stalin's
single-minded hatred of Jews, Arkady Vaksberg marks the early struggle
for power between Stalin and Trotsky-Zinoviev-Kamenev-Sikolnikov:
"All four men whom Stalin perceived as his rivals in the struggle
for power were Jewish. Each of them, especially Trotsky, naturally
had a large number of allies in higher eschelons of power who could
influence the distribution of posts and positions and the political
clout and popularity of candidates. There was a certain ethnic 'imbalance'
here too." [VAKSBERG, p. 19]
As normal in Jewish scholarship (framing
Jews as victims even as they act as oppressors), Vaksberg even makes
the preposterous claim that the reason Jewish commanders ran 11 of
the 12 major Gulag Archipelago concentration camps (including the
director of them all, Matvei Berman, who also headed the slave labor
project that built the Belomar-Baltic Canal) was that Stalin wanted
to make Jews look bad, and foment anti-Semitism. "It could not,"
he insists, "have been sheer coincidence." [VAKSBERG, p.
98] Maybe not. But other possible reasons are too profoundly troubling
for Vaksberg to consider.
Jews were also everywhere prominent in Soviet
secret police organizations. "From the beginning," writes
Benjamin Ginsberg, "the Soviet state relied upon military, police,
and security services to sustain itself, and Jews were active in these
agencies. ... Jews ... staff[ed] and direct[ed] the coercive instruments
upon which the state relied to control its citizens." [GINSBERG,
B., 1993, p. 30] Genrikh Yagoda, for instance, was the Soviet Chief
of the Secret Police in the 1930s. A pharmacist, he specialized "in
preparing poisons for his agents to use in liquidating Stalin's opponents."
[GINSBERG, B., 1993, p. 31] "Yagoda was the man Stalin trusted
most within the repressive aparat without which no totalitarian regime
can exist," says Arkady Vaksberg, "The Soviet version of
dictatorship and Stalin personally would not have survived without
the 'faithful watchdogs of the revolution' and their 'punishing swords.'"
[VAKSBERG, p. 36] Yagoda's brother-in-law, Leopold Averebakh was the
"chief supervisor of Party purity in Soviet literature."
[VAKSBERG, p. 35]
(America has even had its own Jewish secret police kind of poisoner. Journalist Alexander Cockburn noted Sidney Gottleib as the "US Official Poisoner ... For more than two decades [he] managed the CIA's Technical Services Division ... With Gottleib's death, America has lost its prime poisoner. For many years, most notably in the 1950s and 1960s, Gottleib presided over the CIA's technical services division and supervised preparation of lethal poisons, experiments in mind control and administration of LSD and other psycho-active drugs to unwitting subjects.") [COCKBURN, A., GOTTLIEB] "Working side by side with Yagoda,"
notes Arkady Vaksberg about a kindred Jewish government deputy, "was
another professional chekist
(a euphemism for professional executioner), Meer Trilissen ...
The many actions undertaken by Trilissen's agents included blowing
up the cathedral in Sofia with the Bulgarian tsar and his government
inside." [VAKSBERG, p. 38]
Other Jews, Matvei Berman and Naftali Frenkel
of the secret police, were instrumental in the creation of the slave
labor system in which 200,000 workers died during one project alone,
the White Sea-Baltic Canal. [GINSBERG, B., 1993, p. 31] "It was
Frenkel," notes Louis Rapoport,
"who refined Berman's use of prisoners
as slave labors ... Most of
the chief overseers of the Canal were Jews.
Solzhenitsyn described
them as 'six hired murderers each of whom
accounted for thirty
thousand lives: Firin - Berman - F |