1 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 200 Years Together Russo-Jewish History
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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 indifference 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 officially, 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 obs erved 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.” 90
*** 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.” 91
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.” 92
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The present-day Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that “by different estimates, from 70,000 to 180,000-200,000 Jews were killed.” 94
Compiling data from different 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. 95
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. 96 In 1919 in Kiev, the official 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 influence public opinion in Russia and abroad … in many Jewish and non-Jewish circles in Europe and America.” 97
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.” 98 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. Pasma nik wrote: “During the first winter of Bolshevik rule, the Red troops fighting 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.” 99
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.” 100 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
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extraordinarily … and, especially in the South, spread extensively in the broad masses of the urban and rural population.” 101
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.” 102
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…. Officers 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 affiliation 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.” 103
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 benefit of a possible White victory — the sane evolution of the Russian state. Sources: 1 Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // Россия и евреи: Сб. 1 (далее — РиЕ) / Отечественное объединение русских евреев за границей. Париж: YMCA-Press, 1978, с. 117 *1-е изд. — Берлин: Основа, 1924+. 2 Pitirim Sorokin. Leaves from a Russian Diary. New York: E.F.Button & Co., 1925, p. 267. 3 Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ). Иерусалим: Кетер, 1976. Т. 1, с. 686. 4 Арон Абрамович. В решающей войне: Участие и роль евреев СССР в войне против нацизма. 2 -е изд. Тель-Авив, 1982. Т. 1, с. 45-61. 161
5 Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — РЕЭ). 2-е изд., испр. и доп. М., 1997. Т. 3, с. 285. 6 РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 122, 340, 404, 515; т. 2, с. 120, 126, 434, 511. 7 РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 61, 278, 305, 503. 8 РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 144; т. 2, с. 354, 388-389. 9 Червонное казачество: воспоминания ветеранов: *Сб.+ М.: Воениздат, 1969. 10 В.В. Шульгин. «Что нам в них не нравится…»: Об Антисемитизме в России *далее — В.В. Шульгин+. Париж, 1929, с. 145. 11 Там же, с. 157. 12 Б. Мирский. Чёрная сотня // Еврейская трибуна: Еженедельник, посвященный интересам русских евреев. Париж, 1924, 1 февраля, с. 3. 13 С.П. Мельгунов. «Красный Террор» в России, 1918-1923. 2-е изд. доп. Берлин: Ватага, 1924, с. 43, 48, 57, 70-71, 72-73. 14 Там же, с. 50, 99, 100, 105, 109, 113. 15 Columbia University, New York, Trotsky’s Archive, bMs Russ 13 T-160, Дело: «Партийная переписка № 9 за 1919 г.», с. 9. 16 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. 321, 344. 17 Л.Ю. Кричевский. Евреи в аппарате ВЧК-ОГПУ в 20-е годы // Евреи и русская революция, с. 327-329. 18 РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 106, 124, 223, 288; т. 2, с. 22, 176, 302, 350, 393; т. 3, с. 374, 473. 19 С.С. Мослов. Россия после четырёх лет революции (далее С.С.Маслов). Париж: Русская печать, 1922. Кн. 2, с. 193. 20 П.И. Негретов. В.Г. Короленко: Летопись жизни и творчества, 1917-1921 / Под ред. А.В. Храбровицкого. Москва: Книга, 1990, с. 151-154, 232-236. 21 Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // РиЕ, с. 117 -118. 22 С.С. Маслов, с. 196. 23 РЕЭ, т. 2, с. 388-389. 24 В.В. Шульгин, Приложения, с. 313-318. 25 Чекист о ЧК (Из архива «Особой Следств. Комиссии на Юге России») // На чужой стороне: Историко - литературные сборники / Под ред. С.П.Мельгунова. Берлин: Ватага; Прага: Пламя, 1925. Т. 9, с. 111 -141. 26 Алексей Ремизов. Взвихренная Русь. London: Overseas Publications, 1979, с. 376-377. 27 В.В. Шульгин, с. 95-96. 162
28 С.С. Маслов, с. 44. 29 Изложение беседы с Б.Линкольном см.: В.Любарский. Что делать, а не кто виноват // Время и мы: Международный журнал литературы и общественных проблем. Нью-Йорк, 1990, № 109, с. 134. 30 РиЕ, с. 6, 7. 31 Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // РиЕ, с. 100. 32 Ю. Стеклов. Народная оборона — национальная оборона // Известия, 1920, 18 мая, с. 1. 33 Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР. М.; Л.: ГИЗ, 1929, с.31. 34 КЕЭ, т 6, с.646; т. 1, с. 326. 35 Дж. Мюллер. Диалектика трагедии: антисемитизм и коммунизм в Центральной и Восточной Европе // “22″: Общественно-политический и литературный журнал еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1990, № 73, с. 96, 99-100. 36 КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 733-734. 37 Дж. Мюллер. Диалектика трагедии… // “22″, 1990, № 73, с. 99. 38 Там же, с. 100-101. 39 Г.А. Ландау. Революционные идеи в еврейской общественности // РиЕ, с. 115. 40 И.Б. Шехтман. Еврейская общественность на Украине (1917-1919) //Книга о русском еврействе*, 1917- 1967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк: Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 22. 41 Там же, с. 29, 30, 35. 42 В.И. Ленин. Сочинения: В 45 т. 4-е изд. М.: Госполитиздат, 1941-1967. Т. 30, с. 246. 43 И.Б. Шехтман. Еврейская общественность… // КРЕ-2, с. 33-34. 44 И.Б. Шехтман. Еврейская общественность… // КРЕ-2, с. 35-37. 45 КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 256. 46 РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 407. 47 И.М. Троцкий. Еврейские погромы на Украине и в Белоруссии 1918 -1920 гг. // КРЕ-2*, с. 59. 48 Там же, с. 62. 49 Там же. 50 Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 211. 51 И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 66-67. 52 КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 570. 163
53 И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 65. 54 С.С. Мослов, с. 25, 26. 55 Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР, с. 40, 41. 56 С.С. Маслов, с. 40. 57 Дж. Мюллер. Диалектика трагедии… // “22″, 1990, № 73, с. 97. 58 В. Литвинов. Махно и евреи // “22″, 1983, № 28, с. 191-206. 59 КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 574. 60 Еврейские погромы, 1918-1921 / Сост. З.С. Островский. М.: Акц. об-во «Школа и книга», 1926. 61 Еврейские погромы, 1918-1921, с. 73-74. 62 КЕЭ, т. 7, с, 403. 63 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство: (Большевизм и иудаизм). Париж, 1923, с. 169. 64 Т.И. Полнер. Жизненный путь Князя Георгия Евгениевича Львова. Париж, 1932, с. 274. 65 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 176-177. 66 КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 403. 67 Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина: Власть и антисемитизм. М.: Международные отношения, 2001, с. 56-57. 68 Д.С. Пасманик. Чего же мы добиваемся? // РиЕ, с. 216. 69 Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 56. 70 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 185. 71 Ген. А. фон Лампе. Причины неудачи вооружённого выступления белых // Посев, 1981, № 3, с. 38 -39 (перепечатка из: Русский колокол, 1929, № 6-7). 72 КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 572. 73 В.В. Шульгин, с. 97-98. 74 И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 64. 75 В.В. Шульгин. с. 86. 76 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 186-187. 77 Я.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 65-66. 78 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 173-174.
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79 КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 572-574. 80 Д.О. Линский. О национальном самосознании русского еврея // РиЕ, с. 149 -151. 81 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 183. 82 В.В. Шульгин, с. 55, 81, 82. 83 Д.О. Линский. О национальном самосознании русского еврея // РиЕ, с. 157, 160 -161. 84 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 181, 187. 85 И.О. Левин. Евреи в революции // РиЕ, с. 136. 86 И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 81,82. 87 Д.С. Пасманик. Русская революция и еврейство, с. 181. 88 КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 598. 89 Michael J. Cohen. Churchill and the Jews. London; Totowa, NJ: Frank Cass, 1985, p. 56, 57. 90 Кн. Гр. Н. Трубецкой. Очерк взаимоотношений Вооружённых Сил Юга России и Представителей Французского Командования. Екатеринодар, 1919 // Кн. Гр. Н.Трубецкой. Годы смут и надежд. Монреаль, 1981, с. 202. 91 Ю. Ларин. Евреи и антисемитизм в СССР, с. 38. 92 Еврейские погромы, 1918-1921, с. 74. 93 Большая Советская Энциклопедия. 1-е изд. М., 1932. Т. 24, с. 148. 94 КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 569. 95 Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 56. 96 И.Б. Шехтман. Советская Россия, сионизм и Израиль // КРЕ-2, с. 321; КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 85; т. 1, с. 560. 97 И.О. Левин. Евреи в революции // РиЕ, с. 134. 98 КЕЭ, т. 6, 570, 574. 99 И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 63. 100 С.С. Маслов, с. 26. 101 С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм в Советском Союзе. Нью-Йорк: Изд-во им. Чехова, 1952, с. 14. 102 Д.О. Линский. О национальном самосознании русского еврея // РиЕ, с. 147, 148, 149. 103 И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // РиЕ, с. 58-60.
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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 fleeing. 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, financiers, 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.”*1+ 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.”*2+ (This figure 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 first 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.”*3+ “While Paris was, from the beginning, the political centre and unofficial 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).”*4+ It was “easier to settle” in Berlin because of inflation. “On the streets of Berlin” you could see “former major industrialists and merchants, bankers and manufacturers,”*5+ 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 confident 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”*6+; 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 166
groups (unlike the feeling between Jews and the Russian monarchist emigrants). The influence 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.[7]) 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, selfless cares for Russian culture abroad”*8+), Sofia 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, Teffi, 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 reflected 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 figures who gave specific flavour to the whole movement … were Slavic Russians.” But after emigration “where there is a refined 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 specific 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 influential 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 emigra nts 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’
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