Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Tel Aviv on the Hudson
Re: Jews were Oppressed in the Soviet Union. How did they control it then?
These articles might help a bit:
Jews and Communism in Lithuania (1918 to June 1941)
Back in June I had a query from a lady of Lithuanian descent who was finding it difficult to get information about the relationship between the jews and the (tragic) history of her country of origin. This article on the relationship between jews and Communism in Lithuania is part of my belated response to her inquiry.
It is well-known that jews were significantly over represented among the leaders and activists of the Russian Social Democratic Party that went on to split into two elements whose names are better known: Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks; under their part-jewish leader Lenin, were; as I am sure most of my readers know, victorious in the power struggle that derived from the February Revolution of 1917 and ended with the more famous October Revolution that same year.
What is less well-known is that jews were also significantly over-represented in parties set up in an attempt to imitate the Bolshevik success; or official Communist Parties as they came to be referred to, across both Europe and North America. Notable examples of heavily jewish communist parties; well out of proportion to the size of the local jewish population, were the CPUSA (USA and Canada [for a time]), CPP (Poland), PCF (France), CPN (Netherlands), CPB (Belgium), CPM (Hungary), CPR (Romania) etc.
What is usually ignored when we look at this over-representation are the smaller countries that bordered the; then emergent, Soviet Union and how deeply jews were involved in communism in those countries. One such smaller state bordering the emergent Soviet Union was Lithuania and in many respects it affords a textbook example of the scale of jewish involvement in Communism as well as its governance and terror apparatuses.
It is well then to point out that Lithuania only declared independence (under German sponsorship) from the Russian Empire in 1918 and as such was in a fragile condition throughout its early years. For our purposes however it is enough to realise that this was a chaotic period of transition as well as a time of great hope and aspiration for the people of Lithuania. That hope was to be dashed in mid-1940 by Joseph Stalin when he had the Red Army invade and annex Lithuania without prior provocation or even much real reason.
Going back to late 1918 then: the Soviet Union had become semi-established under Lenin and the heavily jewish Bolshevik party. As part of what was believed to be the long awaited proletarian revolution: two of Lenin's principal officials; Adolph Joffe and Dmitry Manuilsky, sought to destroy the nascent Lithuanian state by organizing a Soviet takeover. This they sought to achieve by masterminding the creation of a new Lithuanian government (the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic) in mid-December and the orchestrating the resulting Soviet invasion in late December 1918.
Had it not been for bravery and steadfast fanaticism of Lithuanian and German anti-Communist volunteer army units then the advance of the Red Army might not have been successfully checked, but checked it was and eventually the Soviet Union was driven back with its tail between its legs.
Now of those two agents one; Joffe, was a jew, which is interesting in and of itself but when we look at the 'government' he formed it gets even more interesting. Out of the 8 members of the provisional revolutionary government 2 were jews. These were Semyon Dimanstein and Yitzhak Weinstein of the remaining political players one was a Pole (Kazimierz Cichowski) and another was long-time associate of jewish Bund activists (Zigmas Aleksa-Angarietis). The latter was also a fairly important Marxist thinker in his own right.
This means that jews played a key role in attempting to snuff out out an emergent independent Lithuania as 1 of the 2 principle architects of the policy was jewish and 2 of the 8 members of the Politburo of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic were jewish. If we discount the key background players; Joffe and Manuilsky, then that leaves us with a quarter of the Politburo being jewish, which in turn is clearly in massive disproportion to the minority jewish population in Lithuania at the time (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania between them only had 265,000 jews by 1940 for example). (1)
This jewish-lead (it is worth remembering that Lenin had approved the invasion and that Trotsky was the Commissar for War supervising the invasion at the time) attempt to take over Lithuania did not however decrease jewish power inside the communist party of Lithuania. By the end of 1939 there were 1,120 members of the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) who were not in prison: some 60 percent of these were Lithuanians (670 individuals), while 31 percent of them were jews (346 individuals). The remaining 9 percent were a motley collection of German, Polish and Russian communists. (2)
This is clearly a huge number with approximately a third of all non-imprisoned members of Lithuanian Communist Party in 1939 being jews. When we turn to the imprisoned members of the party then the figure becomes even more alarming with 287 individuals imprisoned of which 145 were jewish. (3) This translates into the alarming statistic that 51 percent of imprisoned members of the Lithuanian Communist Party were jewish.
When we add these figures up it we come to the figure of the Lithuanian Communist Party having 1407 members in 1939 and of these members 491 of them were jews. This translates to 35 percent of the members of the Lithuanian Communist Party members being jewish in 1939.
What Truska does not mention however is that a further 516 communist jews emigrated from Lithuania to the jewish autonomous region in Birobidzhan between 1931 and 1936. (4)
If we factor in these 516 jews who left Lithuania for Birobidzhan at the behest of Stalin's emissaries then we get 1923 de facto members of the Lithuanian Communist Party and of them some 1007 were jews. That translates to some 52 percent of the de facto members of the Lithuanian Communist Party being jewish.
Things get even worse in terms of over-representation when we turn to the amount of jews in the the young wing of the Lithuanian Communist Party at this same point in time: out of some 263 active members only 81 were Lithuanians and 165 were jews. (5) This effectively inverts the ratio of Lithuanians to jews found in the main party with only 31 percent of the members of the Lithuanian Lenin's Communist Youth Union actually being Lithuanian and 63 percent of them being jews.
This means that there were double the number of jews than there were Lithuanians in the Lithuanian Communist Party's young wing!
Further among the MOPR (International Red Aid [i.e. a communist version of the Red Cross that supported imprisoned communist activists as well as their families]) activists in Lithuania in 1939 (MOPR had begun to be wound up in late 1938 due its considerable open involvement in the Spanish Civil War and Stalin's foreign policy considerations) out of a total to 234: only 90 were Lithuanians, while 141 were jews. (6)
This translated into a percentage means that of the MOPR activists in Lithuania: only 38 percent with actually Lithuanians, while 60 percent were jews.
When we consider this we can see that the Lithuanian Communist Party was more or less completely dominated by jews well out of proportion to their representation in the Lithuanian population. This is all the more surprising when we consider that the majority of jews were small business owners in Lithuania when a statistical survey was undertaken in 1937. (7) This was even later confirmed during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania from mid-1940 to mid-1941when the Soviet government started progressively cleansing the Lithuanian Communist Party of many of its jewish members because they had been capitalists for most of their waking life (while just being communists at night and in their leisure time) before the invasion! (8)
It is worth noting however that a large number of those that Truska labels as 'Russian civil servants' were actually themselves jewish: not jews from Lithuania, but rather from the Soviet Union proper. (9)
Predictably the jews of Lithuania viewed the Soviet invasion and occupation of Lithuania in the summer of 1940 positively although there were naturally some dissenters particularly among the official; as well as the religious, jewish organizations. (10) Interestingly jews were not heavily involved in the 'People's Committee' that declared Lithuania a Soviet Republic on July 21st 1941 with only 4 of its 78 members being jews. (11) Of the delegation that left to bring Stalin the official news of his latest conquest only a single jew was included in the 20 members of said delegation. (12)
That said in that summer of 1940 in the powerful Politburo of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party out of 13 members some 4 were jews. (13) This translated into a percentage is some 31 percent of the highest governing institution in Soviet-occupied Lithuania and is a close parallel of the jewish domination of the Lithuanian Communist Party at the end of 1939. By February 1941 however the Stalinist purges of former jewish capitalists and those suspected of ideological deviations had removed a significant element of the jewish members of the Politburo of the Lithuanian Communist Party with only a single jew out of 11 members in total. (14)
It should remembered that Stalin was at this time very conscious of the sheer number of jews in leadership positions of the official Communist parties as well as the Soviet government (15) and part of Stalin's broader policy of minimization (as well as positive discrimination against non-local or non-Russian Communists) in relation to the over-representation of non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet government. (16) This was in order to prevent the antagonism of subject populations such as the Lithuanians (the Ukrainians are another similar example) as even with the Soviet terror apparatus beginning its bloody harvest: the Lithuanian Communist Party put as a few jewish communists into the public view as possible because of violent popular anti-jewish feeling. (17)
As part of this policy the intake of a large number of Lithuanian Communist party representatives and members helped to dilute the figures sufficiently for there to be only 593 jewish full and provisional members of the Lithuanian Communist Party organization out of a total of 4,703 individuals (of which only 2,184 or 46.4 percent were Lithuanian) in June 1941. (18) This is expressed as a percentage is 12.6 percent of the Lithuanian Communist Party, which is still a significant and hugely disproportionate over-representation of jews in the party, but it is significantly lower than it had been in the year before the Soviet occupation.
In the Lithuania's second city; Kaunas, however the proportion of the jews was much higher with some 25.9 of all members of the Lithuanian Communist Party members being jewish in comparison to 21.7 percent being Lithuanian. (19) This is indicative that while the jews had now become a much smaller demographic component of the Lithuanian Communist Party: they still wielded a level of influence that was close to that which they had enjoyed before the Soviet occupation.
This can be shown by pointing out that of the 25 directors and deputy directors of departments within Soviet-occupied Lithuania: 7 were jews (5 from Lithuania and 2 from Russia). (20) Thus the amount of leading jewish figures in the bureaucracy; who after all were more powerful in many respects than members of the Lithuanian Communist Party's Politburo, stands at 28 percent, which is once again roughly equal the amount of considerable over-representation of jews in the Lithuanian Communist Party at the end of 1939.
This compares unfavourably to the extraordinary lack of representation of jews among the official Lithuanian Communist Party bosses, (21) but this; contrary to Truska's interpretation, does not mean that the jews were not powerful in the Lithuanian Communist Party, but rather that Stalin was enforcing his policy of making Communism seem less overtly jewish so as to not antagonize subject populations such as the Lithuanians.
The point is very simple: the official wheels of power in Lithuania were decidedly Lithuanian. This area of government received few of the thousands of Soviet apparatchiks that were exported to man the new bureaucracy, but it is incorrect to believe; as Truska tries to imply, that power rested with these Lithuanian puppets, but rather with the high-ranking Soviet (or otherwise) bureaucrats and officials behind the scenes who carried out the reign of terror that Stalin was about to inflict on Lithuania. (22) This also concords with what we know about Stalin's distrust of the personnel of other Communist Parties who were prone to not be in full accord with him ideologically and thus worthy; in Stalin's eyes, of mistrust bordering on paranoia. (23)
This jewish operational control is shown by the fact that jews dominated Soviet-occupied Lithuania's media with Leiba Sausas being deputy director of the Telegram Agency (ELTA), Emanuelis Ciranskis being deputy chairman of the Radio Committee, Genrikas Zimanas being deputy editor of the Lithuanian Communist Party's Central Committee’s official organ ('Tiesa') and Eugenijus Vicas being the deputy editor of the new communist Russian language daily newspaper 'Truzenik'. (24)
Further the Soviet censorship bureau in Lithuania; Glavlite, was run by three jews: Bencionas Borisas Gurvicius, Abelis Sinjoras and Libe Korbaite, while out of its 32 employees charged with political censorship of the media: some 9 were jewish. (25) This is a representation of jews among the official political censors of Lithuania of some 28 percent, which again directly parallels the level of jewish over-representation and domination of the Lithuanian Communist Party at the end of 1939.
When we move onto those who directly involved in the Soviet terror apparatus in Lithuania; which was responsible for some 20,000 deportations and many more deaths, it gets even more frightening as the new director of the State Security Department; Antanas Snieckus (later Communist dictator of Lithuania for nearly three decades and who incidentally was himself possibly jewish and certainly associated closely with jews in Lithuania), (26) established a 12 man headquarters for the wave of Soviet terror that was about to sweep Lithuania.
Of those 12 individuals some 6 of them were jewish, (27) which is; of course, fifty percent and in massive disproportion to the size of the jewish population in Lithuania although it is in keeping with Soviet terror mechanisms. (28)
In relation to the staff that this headquarters employed it is perhaps not a surprise to learn that out of 254 members of the Snieckus' State Security Department some 44 were (Lithuanian) jews, (29) which is nearly 20 percent of the total number of staff. This is once again well out of proportion to the size of Lithuania's jewish population and while the proportion of Lithuania jews in the terror apparatus dwindled to some 10 percent of the total from August 1940 to June 1941; which Truska makes much of, (30) this is once again largely because Stalin had begun importing large numbers of his own officers: many of whom we have good reason for suspecting were jewish such as those described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 'Gulag Archipelago' (31) and reasonably represented by rising jewish NKVD/NKGB/SMERSH star Solomon Milshtein who was extremely active nearby in 1940 (being responsible for among other things the infamous Katyn Massacre). (32)
This then means that all that Truska has demonstrated is that Lithuanian jews were not as over-represented in the Soviet terror apparatus as time went on, but what he has not proven; or even considered, is that a large part of the incoming Soviet terror apparatus was jewish and that when you combine the Lithuanian and Soviet jewish contribution to the wave of deportations and killings that Soviet occupation brought to Lithuania: it makes the jews stand out as an oddity in relation to the sheer scale of their involvement and also their status as a minority population both within Lithuania and the Soviet Union proper.
Further it is clear; when take the above into consideration, that the real government; i.e. its bureaucracy, of Lithuania during the Soviet occupation of mid-1940 to mid-1941 was significantly and disproportionately jewish. As well as that the Lithuanian Communist Party before the invasion was similarly governed; and also in this case staffed, by a large and very significantly disproportate number of jews.
Thus we can see that jews bear a great deal of historical responsibility for the crimes of the Soviet Union against the Lithuanian people from mid-1940 to 1941.
(1) J. Schechtman, 1970, 'The U.S.S.R., Zionism and Israel', p. 113 in Lionel Kochan (Ed.), 1970, 'The Jews in Russia since 1917', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York
(2) Liudas Truska, n.d., 'Preconditions of the Holocaust: The Upsurge of Anti-Semitism in Lithuania in the years of the Soviet Occupation (1940-1941)', p. 9 (http://www.komisija.lt/Files/www.kom...0(english).pdf)
(4) Benjamin Pinkus, 1988, 'The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 75
(5) Truska, Op. Cit., p. 9
(7) Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, 'On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War', 1st Edition, Profile: London, p. 18
(8) Truska, Op. Cit., pp. 9-10
(9) Extrapolated from Wasserstein, Op. Cit., pp. 19-20; 63-67; 80-81
(10) Truska, Op. Cit., pp. 7-8
(11) Ibid, p. 9
(13) Ibid, p. 10
(15) Pinkus, Op. Cit., p. 140; Alfred Rieber, 2005, 'Stalin as Foreign Policy-Maker: Avoiding War 1929-1953', pp. 149-150 in Sarah Davies, James Harris (Eds.), 2005, 'Stalin: A New History', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York
(16) On this see Jeremy Smith, 2005, 'Stalin as Commissar for Nationality Affairs 1918-1922', pp. 59-62 in Sarah Davies, James Harris, Op. Cit.
(17) Truska, Op. Cit., pp. 8-9
(18) Ibid, p. 10
(21) Ibid, pp. 9-12
(22) Robert Service, 2007, 'Comrades. Communism: A World History', 1st Edition, MacMillan: London, pp. 225-226
(23) On this see William Chase, 2001, 'Enemies Within the Gates?: The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934-1940', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven; also Peter Huber, 1997, 'Structure of the Moscow Apparatus of the Comintern and Decision-Making', pp. 44-62 in Tim Rees, Andrew Thorpe (Eds.), 1997, 'International Communism and the Communist International 1919-1943', 1st Edition, Manchester University Press: Manchester
(24) Truska, Op. Cit., p. 12
(26) EKSTRA - XXI amþiaus savaitinis þurnalas. 2002 m. Sausio 6 d., Nr.1 (213)
(27) Truska, Op. Cit., p. 12
(28) Wasserstein, Op. Cit., pp. 63-67
(29) Truska, Op. Cit., p. 12
(30) Ibid, pp. 13-15
(31) Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 2003, 'The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation', 2nd Edition, The Harvill Press: London, pp. 205-208
(32) Vadim Birstein, 2011, 'SMERSH: Stalin's Secret Weapon. Soviet Military Counter-Intelligence in WWII', 1st Edition, Biteback: London, pp. 94; 120; 180
In Brief: A Recent Article on Jews and Hungarian Communism
The last few days have been rather busy for me and I haven't had much of an opportunity to publish new material here. However as I do not like not publishing anything for a few days I thought to reproduce a paragraph or two from a recent academic article on the issue of anti-Semitism and its origin as a popular sentiment among Hungarians. To wit:
'The Hungarian Communist party's (HCP) history was from its inception intertwined with the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. When the party was formed in November 1918 its leader, Bela Kun, and at least ten of the seventeen central committee members and sixty per cent of the party membership were Jewish. After holding power with the socialists for 133 days, the party was banned, and its leaders, including Kun, lived in exile in the Soviet Union. Kun was executed in 1937, in one of Stalin's purges, probably on suspicion of having Trotskyite sympathies. If his execution was meant as a warning to the rest of the Hungarian communist leadership, it had the desired effect. Matthias Rakosi would surpass all other party chiefs in the Soviet bloc for his subservience to Moscow. In at least one respect, however, Rakosi did not oblige. Notwithstanding Molotov's advice that with the Soviet Union's liberation of Hungary the Communist Party should be re-established with non-Jews at its helm, the four leading members of the newly formed Central Committee were to be of Jewish origin. As Molotov had anticipated, Jewish prominence in the Communist party could not but affect the population's perception of communism, in a country where in the recent past there had been an overwhelming public reaction of indifference to anti-Jewish laws, ghettoization and the deportation of 500,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps.
The communist leaders returning to Hungary in1945 after years of exile in Moscow knew that their efforts to expand the party's social base would be hampered by widespread anti-Semitism. However, rather than confront anti-Jewish prejudice, the party suppressed public discussion of matters touching specifically on Jews.' (1)
This is confirmed by Miller who states quite clearly that:
'In early communist Russia the state may again have appeared to be in danger of becoming Jewish, this time because of the number of actual Jews in positions of power, locally as well as centrally, and this again may have influenced both official and popular thought throughout the Soviet period.' (2)
And who says jews weren't massively over-represented in supporting and trying to implement communism in Russia and in Europe at all levels?
(1) Paul Kelemen, 2012, 'The Hungarian Communist Pary, ethno-nationalism and antisemitism', Twentieth Century Communism, Vol. 4, p. 200
(2) Jacob Miller, 1970, 'Soviet Theory on the Jews', p. 45 in Lionel Kochan (Ed.), 1970, 'The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York
The Jewish Ritual Murder of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and the Romanov Family
The murder of Tsar Nicholas II on the 17th July 1918 in the Ipatiev House (aka 'The House of Special Purpose') in Ekaterinburg is one of several significant events before, during and after the February and October Revolutions of 1917 that we can unequivocally ascribe to the jews. This will be the subject of a forthcoming article, but to get an idea of why this is so: a short summary is in order.
The murder of the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family on the 17th July 1918 was indisputably lead and conducted by four people. The first; and the man who actually killed the Tsar, is Yakov Yurovsky: (1) a long-time Bolshevik activist and also an individual who was then steadily rising through the ranks of the Cheka. (2) Yurovsky was also the man who served as the last; as well as the harshest, gaoler of the Romanovs in addition to possibly being a young protégée of Joseph Stalin. (3)
The second is a man who called himself Filipp Goloschchekin, but in actuality his real name (as opposed to his party name) was Isay Isaakovich. (4) He was Sverdlov's envoy to the Urals Regional Soviet; headed by a lackluster local Bolshevik named Beloborokov, and was the man who controlled the decisions and behaviour of the Soviet. (5) Goloschchekin was no new figure to the Bolshevik party given that he had sat on the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Party (that was later to split forming both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks) along with Lenin in 1909 and 1912. (6)
Goloschchekin; as the head of the regional Cheka, (7) was Yurovsky's direct superior and the man who it was who deliberately brought the Romanovs into his power with; in all probability, the wish; as well as the means, to kill them. (8) It was Goloschchekin who had masterminded the unanimous vote of the Urals Regional Soviet to kill the Tsar with all possible speed on the 29th June 1918 (9) as well as who left on the 3rd June 1918 to meet with his Bolshevik superiors in Moscow (Sverdlov and Lenin respectively [who are the other two responsible parties]) (10) to discuss what should be done with the Tsar. (11)
When he returned on the 12th July Goloschchekin brought verbal orders from Sverdlov and Lenin to murder the Tsar, which would give them plausible deniability and allow them to cast the brutal murder of the Romanovs as being the independent act of Goloschchekin and Yurovsky, which was how the event was subsequently portrayed by obedient Soviet historians. (12)
As Service has noted Lenin's reasoning behind the murder maybe simply summed up as follows:
'He exterminated Romanovs because they had misruled Russia. But he also turned to such measures because he enjoyed – really enjoyed – letting himself loose against people in general from the ancien regime.' (13)
What Service leaves out is that Lenin had a special reason to hate Nicholas II; aside from his overt rationalization of class war, given that Lenin was partly jewish (14) and Nicholas II had overseen a major effort to fight against the jews and jewish power in the Russian Empire. (15) It is difficult to conceive of Lenin's homicidal nature towards the Romanovs; who had also hanged his brother (after all jews supplied most of the leadership and supporters of left wing revolutionary parties in pre-Bolshevik Russia), (16) without thinking that at least part of it was because he was himself the grandchild of a jew.
Yakov Sverdlov; who was the 'man behind the curtain' of Lenin's government and in many ways its true architect, (17) is well-known to have been jewish and to have had; like Lenin, a fanatical hatred of the Romanovs (18) that was almost unique to jewish revolutionaries. (19) Less well-known is the fact that Goloschchekin; as observant readers may have guessed from his real name, was jew who had trained to be a dentist (20) and Yurovsky was the staunchly jewish grandson of a well-regarded Polish rabbi. (21)
This then gives us the decision tree in relation to just who decided to murder the Romanov family (it is worth remembering that the Bolsheviks murdered the Tsar's brother; Grand Duke Mikhail, on the 12th/13th June (22) as well as 6 other close relatives of his the night after at Alapaevsk in the northern Urals) (23).
What this decision tree looks like is as follows:
(Part-Jewish Head of the Soviet State)
(Jewish Chair of the Bolshevik Central Executive Committee)
(born as Isay Isaakovich)
(Jewish Member of the Presidium of the Urals Regional Soviet and de facto Head of the Urals Cheka)
(Jewish Head of 'The House of Special Purpose' and member of Ekaterinburg Cheka)
Who then murdered the Tsar and his family on 17th July 1918.
That means that at no stage did the decision to execute the Romanovs go through an individual who was not jewish, which necessarily informs us that the murder of the Tsar Nicholas II, his direct and his extended family between 12th June and 18th July 1918 can be decisively and exclusively be assigned to the jews.
This naturally hasn't stopped attempts to downplay the jewish role as was the case as early as 1920 (24) as well as in recent works (25) however the spirit of sadistic jewish vengeance (it is worth remembering that the Romanovs were not killed quickly but rather slowly as they were both shot and bayoneted repeatedly taking quite some time to die) (26) that pervades this historical episode is obvious to even the most philo-Semitic of readers.
There are however two anti-Semitic traditions that describe this murder as a jewish ritual murder. We should note that this term has been fraught with epistemological issues ever since it was coined by Henri Desportes in the late 19th/early 20th century in part because it tends to be used as a overarching term to describe several different and distinct phenomena. (27) For our purposes it is enough to label a jewish ritual murder as any murder committed by an individual by a jewish person for an explicit or implicit ritual purpose whether related to Judaism or not.
The first of these traditions is based on the original investigation of what happened to the Tsar and his family by Boris Sokolov. Sokolov concluded; somewhat correctly, that the bodies of the Tsar and his family had been dismembered to an extent, while General Dietrichs (who had retaken Ekaterinburg soon after they had been murdered) and Iliodor the Monk (28) added an additional detail in so far as; according to them, the heads of the Tsar and his family had been severed, pickled and taken back to Moscow for Trotsky to perform an obscure jewish ritual on before they were destroyed by fire. (29)
This would; if true, have meant that the Tsar and his family were subject to a jewish ritual murder: however when the bodies of the Romanov family were located, disinterred and examined in 1991 when it was discovered that all the family had kept their heads (30) (and their identities were once more confirmed in 2008 by genetic testing). (31)
In addition Trotsky; as well as Moises Uritsky [the head of the Petrograd Cheka] (who remember were also both jews), were competing with Sverdlov and Goloschchekin over the solution to the problem of the Romanov family. Trotsky and Uritsky wanted a revolutionary trial followed by an execution as in the French Revolution, while Sverdlov and Goloschchekin didn't want this in part because it would hand Trotsky a huge amount of influence and power. (32)
It would not make sense for Yurovsky; who was Goloschchekin's subordinate not Trotsky's, to have done this given the power politics thus described. We also find no mention of such a behaviour in Yurovsky's secret report written for the Cheka in 1920 (which he surely would have mentioned at least decapitating the bodies and pickling the heads had he done so) or his formal historical account for the USSR's official historians in 1934.
Thus on that score then there is no case for the Romanov family being decapitated, their heads being pickled and then Trotsky performing arcane jewish rituals on them in Moscow.
The second anti-Semitic tradition on this score is related to some graffiti found on the wall of the cellar in which the Romanovs were murdered by Yurovsky. This graffiti; which Telberg and Wilton called a 'mysterious inscription', (33) is usually alleged to be a jewish inscription (or occasionally an 'occult' one). This is unfortunately no true either as the letters are not Aramaic, Hebrew or Yiddish and it takes quite some imagination to see them as being such. If anything they appear to be meaningless scrawls or doodles.
Yet more counts against a jewish origin for this inscription considering that we are told by Captain Francis McCullagh (who was with General Dietrichs at the time of the re-taking of Ekaterinburg) that the walls of Ipatiev House were covered in various scrawls and pornographic graffiti (34) as the guards were often drunk. Even Telberg and Wilton mention the fact that they saw other inscriptions: one a verse from the book of Daniel as well as a swastika drawn by Empress Alexandra before she died. (35)
If we understand that were was graffiti all over the house and that the 'mysterious inscription' isn't just a lone bit of writing on the wall in the cellar: then it is clear that this clearly is not evidence of a jewish ritual murder either because it isn't an isolated bit of graffiti but part of a large amount of scrawls and doodles.
What is however evidence of such is the holistic jewishness of the murder from the decision-making to the killing operations. This; combined with the savagery of the killings, gives us a secular ritual in the form of ideological-spiritual catharsis through ritual desecration in the service of a political religion (Marxism-Leninism). This is shown by the ritual degradation that the Tsar's family was subject to before the murder, (36) the ritualistic savagery of the killing and also the desecration of the bodies afterwards in addition to the brutality of the methods of body disposal attempted (burning them, hacking them up, throwing them down a mine shaft and then pouring sulphuric acid on them).
The indisputably jewish nature of this operation then makes this ritualistic murder into what can be reasonably termed: a modern jewish ritual murder.
(1) Andrew Cook, 2011, 'The Murder of the Romanovs', 1st Edition, Amberley: Stroud, p. 162
(2) Helen Rappaport, 2009, 'Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs', 1st Edition, Random House: London, p. 33
(3) Ibid, p. 32
(4) Ibid, p. 130
(5) Ibid, p. 131
(8) Cook, Op. Cit., pp. 147-149
(9) Rappaport, Op. Cit., p. 41
(10) Orlando Figes, 1997, 'A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924', 1st Edition, Pimlico: London, p. 638; Robert Service, 2003, 'A History of Modern Russia: From Nicholas II to Putin', 2nd Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 107; Robert Service, 2011, 'Spies & Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West', 1st Edition, MacMillan: Basingstoke, pp. 120-121
(11) Robert Massie, 2000, , 'Nicholas & Alexandra', 1st Edition, Phoenix: London, p. 489
(12) Service, 'Spies', Op. Cit., p. 120
(13) Robert Service, 2000, 'Lenin: A Biography', 1st Edition, MacMillan: Basingstoke, p. 364
(14) For more information see the following article: Semitic Controversies: Was Lenin Jewish?
(15) For a useful summary see Benjamin Pinkus, 1988, 'The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 23-33
(16) Robert Service, 2007, 'Comrades: Communism: A World History', 1st Edition, MacMillan: Basingstoke, pp. 136-137
(17) Rappaport, Op. Cit., pp. 104-105
(18) See Leon Trotsky's diary quoted in Figes, Op. Cit., p. 638
(19) Indicated by the decision not to use ordinary Russian revolutionaries or Cheka units to kill the Romanovs, but rather a special unit of 3 long established fanatical members of the Cheka with a unit of predominately non-Russian mercenaries as a reserve force. See Cook, Op. Cit., pp. 158-163 as well as Figes, Op. Cit., p. 640
(20) Rappaport, Op. Cit., p. 130
(21) Ibid, pp. 31-32; Figes, Op. Cit., p. 640
(22) Rappaport, Op. Cit., p. 38
(23) Figes, Op. Cit., p. 641
(24) George Gustav Telberg, Robert Wilton, 1920, 'The Last Days of the Romanovs', 1st Edition, George Doran: New York, pp. 377-378
(25) See the notable omission of Yurovsky and Goloschchekin's jewishness in Pinkus, Op. Cit.; as well as Cook's attempts to ascribe all mentions of the complete jewishness of the decision-making and operative elements of the Tsar to 'paranoid conspiracy theories' (Cook, Op. Cit., pp. 28; 172-173)
(26) William Henry Chamberlain, 1987, 'The Russian Revolution', Vol. II, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, p. 91
(27) Although I strongly disagree with the conclusions of his argument on this score; a good run-down of the problems with Desportes' wide terminology can be found in Darren O' Brien, 2011, 'The Pinnacle of Hatred: The Blood Libel and the Jews', 1st Edition, The Hebrew University Magnes Press: Jerusalem, pp. 63-67
(28) See Nicholas Riasanovsky, 1993, 'A History of Russia', 5th Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 481-182
(29) Cook, Op. Cit., pp. 170-172; 174
(30) Ibid, pp. 180-181
(31) Ibid, pp. 221-227
(32) Ibid, p. 149; Rappaport, Op. Cit., pp. 140-143; Service, 'Spies', Op. Cit., p. 121
(33) Telberg, Wilton, Op. Cit., p. 408
(34) Cook, Op. Cit., p. 213
(35) Telberg, Wilton, Op. Cit., pp. 407-408
(36) Cook, Op. Cit., pp. 203-205
Revolutionary Jew at Work
A Review of Roger Seifert, Tom Sibley, 2012, ‘Revolutionary Communist at Work: A Political Biography of Bert Ramelson’, 1st Edition, Lawrence & Wishart: London
You can read the Second Part of this Review here.
Baruch Rachmilevitch; aka ‘Bert Ramelson’, isn’t a name well known outside the very specific area of the study of post-war British Communism and even then one has to know something of the unionist side of the British left to have some knowledge of Ramelson. This new biography; by one jewish academic (Roger Seifert) and a Trade Union researcher (Tom Sibley), is thus to be welcomed precisely because it sheds a lot of useful light on the kind of man of Ramelson was.
The work is obviously well researched with plenty of citations of source literature and discussions of academic views and controversies. However the book comes across; somewhat unintentionally I think, as being hagiographic as throughout the whole book not a bad word is said about Ramelson and; in fact, I am pushed to recall a single instance where Seifert and Sibley show any sort of criticality towards their subject.
Obviously this doesn’t bode well for the intellectual balance of the work and nor does the fact that Sibley; by his own admission, lacks emotional distance from his subject and writes from his heart not his head. This is best demonstrated in that the criticisms that Seifert and Sibley offer of those; on the ‘right’ and ‘ultra-left’, (1) are always to Ramelson’s favour and generally defend him from any reproach or blame. They treat Ramelson in the tradition of Marxist mythologizing that Lenin so pioneered in his sketches of Marx, his wife Jenny and Engels among others.
Indeed both Seifert and Sibley appear to subscribe to a Marxist-Leninist world-view and as fellow travellers to Ramelson seem to disagree with the demand made by the modern ultra-Leftist; Slavoj Zizek, that all Marxists be ‘ruthlessly critical’.
This lack of criticality is perhaps most bemusingly shown in the appalling lack of general knowledge and numerous misstatements the authors make such as wild statements claiming that Franco would been defeated if he hadn’t been backed by Hitler and Mussolini, which is a ‘what if’ scenario that is only a figment of an author’s imagination rather than the ‘hard reality’ endorsed by Seifert and Sibley's own alleged historical materialism.
They also proceed to claim that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 was ‘defensive in nature’ for the USSR (actually it was meant to give Stalin a free hand in expanding ‘the revolution’ to smaller states giving him time to prepare before launching an invasion of Western Europe) (2) and then have the literal chutzpah to claim that while the pact was defensive: it was brought about because Britain and France wouldn’t endorse an ‘anti-fascist’ alliance. (2) Meaning; in effect, that in their view the USSR was the only consistent ‘anti-fascist’ power when in reality the USSR was interested only in promoting a conflict in Western Europe to weaken it for invasion.
The authors fail to provide any necessary context to their claims and blandly cite one academic; of strong leftist sympathies, as being ‘proof’ of their contention. This is poor and the authors; both with PhDs, are surely aware of it, but does not stop them doing it.
Getting away from the laughable lunacy that these two wannabe Bolsheviks propound in their attempts to place Ramelson in his early historical context: I think a summary and short analysis of Ramelson’s involvement with communism; as a jew, is in order.
Ramelson was born in the Ukrainian town of Cherkassy; near Kiev, to a Torah Scholar (Seifert and Sibley are ignorant of the correct terminology but there we go) and his wife. His mother; as was not uncommon among the orthodox and ultra-orthodox, was the main earner of the household with his father being dedicated to the study and elucidation of the Oral Torah. Seifert and Sibley assert; without necessary qualification, that the family was given charitable gifts by the local jewish community: the necessary qualification being that this was part of the tradition of the Talmid Chacham (Torah Scholars) whereby it was; and is, considered a Mitzvah to support the study of Torah by materially supporting ‘scholars of the law’ so they can devote themselves wholly to their studies.
The authors claim that it was Ramelson’s mother who struggled against poverty and the ilk, but in reality Torah Scholars would never go hungry while there were observant jews around as they could turn up at any house and be welcomed to a meal: particularly if on Shabbos or a festival day. (4)
Of course: Ramelson's father would be expected to provide free tuition and guide religious discussion and rulings per the normal exchange between sponsoring family/community and the Talmid Chacham and his family similar to the deeply personal but incredibly detailed description given by Glückel of Hameln of this same phenomenon several centuries earlier. (5)
This portrayal of the 'starving Ramelson's' is typical of both Marxist claims about Russia before 1917 and also jewish claims about the condition of jews in the Russian Empire before the February Revolution of that same year. Such a portrait is just so much nonsense as there was plenty of food: however it was unscrupulously hoarded and sold at high prices by the heavily jewish 'middle class' whom I would rather expect Seifert and Sibley would rail against for being a 'product of capitalism'. (6)
That however would not be accurate as it is taking the effect as the cause and then building an intellectual Disneyland on top of it. The idea that 'capitalism' causes most; if not all of the world's problems, is a fundamental denial of evolutionary theory, which tells us that any organism will always compete; as an individual and often as a part of a group, for the best reproductive situation for itself.
Therefore if one is competing for the best reproductive situation then it does not fundamentally matter which economic system you institute: the evolutionary nature of human beings as organisms like any other will assert itself and they will only modify their behaviour to best compete for reproductive position within the confines of that system. So rather than having a jewish 'capitalist' on the top: you end up having a jewish 'socialist leader' at the top. Both have competed against others for that position; which leaves them in an excellent reproductive situation, and they continue to be competed against by those with the urge to get to the top themselves.
It is true that 'capitalism' will always exploit the less able, but socialism will always do exactly the same thing: for the simple reason that one does not get to a position of any influence or power without having competed for it and it isn't about the 'best man winning' as both capitalists and socialists frequently aver in their jargon-laden polemics and apologetics. Rather it is about the 'most ruthless man winning': the more ruthless you are in putting yourself forward and getting the best perceived 'results' to back up your personal propaganda the more likely you are going to be promoted to the power and influence you desire.
Life is war: nothing more, nothing less.
When Hayek famously quipped that socialism was and is the 'revolt of the losers' in a capitalist society : he only got it half right as capitalism is by direct contrast the 'revolt of the losers' in a socialist society. In both cases what is constant is not the economic, philosophical or social ideology, but rather the simple animality of man: the change is merely in the contours of the 'survival of the fittest' not in removing that competition and struggle.
As such the jewish capitalist who held the grain back for profit was no better or less 'just' than the jewish socialist who held the grain back for 'the industrial workers' as was later done as part of Lenin's 'war communism' policy during the Russian civil war. Ramelson however; like many jews of the period, perceived this rather differently and he saw 'anti-Semitism' being behind his family's perceived poor economic position.
To give some idea of how absurd and self-serving Ramelson's fundamental reasoning was we can point out that Ramelson's mother actually owned and ran a corner-shop: probably specialising in kosher food for the jewish community. Now in spite of the fact she had a lot of children to look after (and remember this was a time when having 5-8 children was normal); which Seifert and Sibley make much of (without that vital context), the fact she owned property and wasn't having to search for work (common among the Russian agricultural population if they weren't attached to a specific piece of land) or having to perform additional back-breaking piece work to make ends meet (like Joseph Goebbels family had to do at about the same time) (7) tells us that at the very least she was better off than a lot of people around her and across Europe at the time.
That is; of course, with a husband whose position allowed her and her family to have access to free meals and to be first in line for any hand-outs from the local jewish community. Hardly the poor starving jews of Seifert and Sibley are they?
This is further alluded to; however unintentionally, by Seifert and Sibley when they quote Ramelson as saying that after his elder brother died in a swimming accident: he was 'spoiled rotten' by his mother and numerous sisters. That is hardly the behaviour of a starving mother with a large family to feed now is it?
Now if we bear this stable economic position in mind within the other context of the popular; not state-sponsored as frequently claimed, (8) anti-jewish incidents such as the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 (9) and the famous Beilis ritual murder trial between 1911-1913. (10) Then it is hardly surprising that the Ramelsons felt threatened as jews in one of the most anti-jewish areas of the Russian Empire: the Ukraine.
This feeling of insecurity left the Ramelsons with four paths open to them: they could choose between segregation, emigration, nationalism and/or assimilation.
Segregation was the traditional mode of life for jews in Eastern Europe and simply involved using the jewish ghettos; and the Pale of Settlement generally, as a place to sit out of the stormy winds of anti-jewish sentiment until the Messiah turned up and the jews would rule the world in Yahweh's name.
Emigration was where jews decided that they did not want to be restricted in their 'upward mobility' and sought to leave to Western Europe, Latin America or North America to 'find a better life'.
Nationalism; better known as Zionism, was where jews agreed with the teachings of Theodore Herzl and his numerous Zionist ideologues of many different stripes: effectively meaning that they believed that they were a 'race apart' irrespective of Judaism and thus had a 'national right to self-determination' in the form of a new state, which would either be Palestine or somewhere else in the world if Palestine was not obtainable.
Assimilation was where jews either converted to Christianity and sought to 'russify' themselves or they became socialists/anarchists and rejected a separate identity en toto: thus seeking to submerge themselves in humanity as being no different from the rest of it.
All these positions are largely interchangeable and can be combined with each other in varying degrees as indeed was the case in Russia; and the world in general, at the time. Ramelson's family typify this in that Ramelson's father chose segregation and emigration for the family. While Ramelson's uncle chose emigration and assimilation and Ramelson's sisters chose assimilation. Ramelson himself chose assimilation, emigration and nationalism.
We can thus see that what was driving Ramelson and his family to make the decisions they did was not their economic position, but rather the fact that they were jewish and needed to make up their mind about what to do about it in an increasingly hostile environment.
Ramelson appears to have chosen the assimilationist path in part because his sister; Rosa, was a fervent Bolshevik, was very active in the Komsomol (the Bolshevik youth section), became pregnant by and married a Red Army officer (that he himself was jewish is quite possible as Seifert and Sibley mention no disapproval from Ramelson's highly religious family) and became a 'Professor of Economics' at Sverdlov University (she didn't even have a degree). Ramelson remembered her in the following terms; that beautifully describe her actual motivation, as 'a young woman with a pistol in her waistband determined to rid her country of poverty, illiteracy and anti-Semitism'.
While Rosa was bent on eliminating anti-Semitism as well as poverty (which jews frequently believed massively effected them) and illiteracy (which jews frequently believed and still often believe is the cause of anti-jewish sentiment [i.e. 'ignorance of the jews']): her father heartily approved and allowed her to bring non-jewish factory workers to their home so they could show them 'real jews' and how lovely and charming the self-chosen can be when they want something.
Indeed Seifert and Sibley tell us that Ramelson's father heartily approved of Bolshevism for its 'combating anti-Semitism and poverty' in spite of its 'secular nature': this might not sound surprising for many, but in truth it is quite a shocking indication of how jews are utterly egoistical creatures. We can elucidate this by pointing out very simply that to a Torah Scholar Judaism and religion are the be all and end all of his existence in theory: he cares for nothing else as he is strictly to confine himself to understanding and spreading his understanding of the Oral Torah.
So for a jew to be an altruistic creature then Ramelson's father should have immediately sacrificed his own personal interests to defend jews against Bolshevism (i.e. it was a threat against Judaism being militantly atheistic and thus to the jewish religious system of Kehilla/Kahals and Tzaddiks of which Ramelson's father was part) or he should have joined the Bolsheviks (in order to gain best position for the jews after the fighting was over).
The former is actually the more likely of the two eventualities given that; as I have said, Bolshevism was militantly atheistic and it would be difficult not to recognise that even within the time from of the provisional government of Count Lvov and the jew Alexander Kerensky to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
Instead Ramelson's father actually supported Bolshevism; without joining the party or actively fighting for it, while still being a highly religious jew, which is odd precisely because of Bolshevism's obvious atheistic nature and the fact that there were more Judaism-friendly alternatives with just as much chance of victory in the civil war: the Cadets (Liberals), the Social Revolutionaries (Russian peasant socialists), the Greens (non-aligned peasants and anarchists), the local nationalists (e.g. the Ukrainian Rada and its supporters) and the less radical monarchists (i.e. those not associated with the famous 'Black Hundreds'). (11)
Each party/group would have served Ramelson's father a lot better as an alternative for jewish people generally: however Ramelson's father chose to support the Bolsheviks presumably on the logic that they were the strongest opponents of anti-Semitism and poverty which were Ramelson's and his father's chief social concerns (i.e. their own perceived personal situation).
Indeed we see another reason for an egoistic explanation of Ramelson and his father's behaviour in the fact that; according to Seifert and Sibley, Cherkassy was Bolshevik territory and hence it would be most personally beneficial to Ramelson's father to support the Bolsheviks at that point in time, while not formally committing and opening himself up to possible reprisals by opposing groups later on.
It is interesting to note that while their father dallied slightly on the sidelines: Ramelson and his sisters became ardent Bolsheviks with the exception of one; the 'black sheep' so-to-speak, who sided with the Social Revolutionaries. From what Seifert and Sibley annunciate it is quite clear that all of Ramelson's sisters; like him, retained their Bolshevik convictions all their lives.
Ramelson's sister Rosa was later sidelined by Stalin and her (possibly jewish) husband executed during the purges of the late 1930s (for being Trotskyites from what I can discern from what source literature I have had a chance to look at) by the NKVD. She herself was placed within the famous gulag system for a decade as a counter-revolutionary in Stalinist logic.
Indeed it was Ramelson's sister Rosa who 'converted' him by; during a short three week sojourn in Moscow, taking him to see Leon Trotsky harangue the crowds trying to whip up some kind of 'revolutionary' rent-a-mob. That contact left an indelible impression on Ramelson in addition to the mobs of jews attacking Russian policemen in ghettos; probably the reasoning that they were 'Amalek', as shown by the fact that before he left for 'capitalist Canada' in 1922 he did a bit of pro-Bolshevik agitation among his fellow ghetto-dwellers at his leaving party.
(1) This bit of Marxist jargon tends to confuse many people, but when Marxists refer to ‘the right’ they are referring to those who have less radical views on the ownership of the 'means of production' (often contracted to simply ‘property’) and when they refer to ‘the left’ they are referring to those who have more radical views than they do on this subject. Hence the assertion that there are ‘right Marxists’ (e.g. Bukharin) and ‘left Marxists’ (e.g. Trotsky) in relation to Lenin’s Marxism.
(2) On this point see Joachim Hoffmann, 2001, ‘Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941-1945: Planning, Realization and Documentation’, 1st Edition, Theses & Dissertations Press: Capshaw and Ernst Topitsch, 1987, 'Stalin's War: A Radical New Theory of the Origins of the Second World War', 1st Edition, St. Martin's Press: New York.
(3) Worley gives a similar view and calls its theoretical justification ‘crude Marxism’ (Matthew Worley, 2009, ‘The Soviet Union and Bolshevism Abroad’, p. 207 in Nicholas Atkin, Michael Biddiss, 2009, ‘Themes in Modern European History’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York) but in fact this is actually orthodox Leninism applied to real politik (i.e. wait till your opponents weaken each other and then take power with your strength).
(4) Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1990, 'The Eastern European Era in Jewish History', pp. 5-9 in Deborah Dash Moore, 1990, 'Eastern European Jews in Two Worlds: Studies from the YIVO Annual', 1st Edition, Northwestern University Press: Evanston
(5) Marvin Lowenthal, 1932, 'The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln', 1st Edition, Harper: New York, p. 54
(6) Jerry Muller, 2010, 'Capitalism and the Jews', 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 18-20; 74-75
(7) Karl Georg Reuth, 1993, 'Goebbels', 1st Edition, Constable: London, p. 10
(8) See John Doyle Klier, 2011, 'Russians, Jews and the Pogroms of 1881-1882', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York for the most recent debunk of the 'anti-Semitic Russian state conspiracy' argument still trotted out by some Israeli and jewish writers.
(9) See John Doyle Klier, Shlomo Lambroza (Eds.), 1992, 'Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York for a detailed discussion of this general phenomenon as well as a detailed discussion of Kishinev.
(10) I am in the process of researching and writing a book about the Beilis ritual murder trial of 1911-1913, but for general reference Alexander Tager's, 1935, 'The Decay of Czarism: The Beilis Trial', 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, is by the far the most complete; if heavily skewed towards the 'Beilis was innocent' camp, account as it is one of the few accounts in a select field that actually uses the trial records and the original source literature.
(11) Still one of the most readable and educational of the many intellectual offerings concerning this period of Russian history in the English language is William Henry Chamberlain's, 1987, , 'The Russian Revolution', 2 Vols, Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Stalin, SMERSH and the Jews
The name 'SMERSH' is well-known in the West as is what the acronym stands for: 'Death to Spies'. (1) However in spite of its name being widely-known very few people in the Anglophone world know much about Stalin's shadowy counter-espionage and state security organisation made famous by Ian Fleming in his James Bond novels. We are fortunate therefore that a Russian jewish scholar; Vadim Birstein, has recently published an excellent English language history of SMERSH. (2)
Birstein is somewhat of an anomaly in that he is both jewish and; happily, intellectually honest in his work on his subject matter. I may disagree with Birstein about the extent of jewish involvement with SMERSH but never-the-less Birstein admits it was significant even if not as widespread as I would argue that it was. One of the principle themes of Birstein's book is his laudable opposition to current; heavily jewish, 'spookocracy' that governs Russia and in particular its systematic attempts to re-write and re-cast Soviet history; particularly that associated with Stalin's reign, in a positive light and ignore/minimize the massacres he and his; often jewish, minions committed in the name of Marxism-Leninism through 'official' and associated FSB (the modern successor to the famous KGB) historians.
Indeed Birstein rightly points out that works actually celebrating Beria; Stalin's longest serving head of state security and architect of some Stalin's worst excesses, have now appeared and do not mention that Beria himself was a paedophile (he liked having little girls abducted and brought to him so that he could rape them [the body was then disposed of and the family either bought off or sent into the Gulag system]) or the fact that he was responsible for mass killings on a truly gargantuan scale. Beria; in spite of many claims to the contrary, was not himself jewish (he was actually Georgian) but a significant number of his most trusted subordinates were.
Another man who Russia's 'spookocracy' has sought to rehabilitate is SMERSH's wartime head and; like Beria, a major architect of mass genocide although in this case centred on Axis countries and Russian prisoners of war and civilians in formerly German-administered areas of the then Soviet Union: Viktor Abakumov.
Abakumov's long-time jewish deputy Solomon Milshtein (3) (and later head of the 3rd Directorate of the NKGB [successor to the NKVD]) (4) is recorded by Birstein to have helped organise SMERSH killings (most famously at Katyn) and also took charge of censoring letters home from the Red Army soldiers at the front in order to 'keep up civilian morale'. (5)
In practice this meant that if you wrote anything SMERSH deemed not to be positive about the war or anything 'useful to the enemy' (i.e. roughly where you were) then you would be arrested by SMERSH officers and tried by a special military tribunal and often then executed or put into the Gulag system. This was the very same process that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes himself being caught up in in his famous book: 'The Gulag Archipelago'. (6)
Indeed the scale of murders and killings undertaken by SMERSH was truly phenomenal as Birstein records in that between 1941 and 1945 SMERSH's field tribunals alone sentenced at least 164,678 'traitors to the motherland' for similar offences to Solzhenitsyn's famous arrest and detention: 'spreading anti-Soviet propaganda'. Of that number at least twenty were Generals in the Red Army. (7) When one reads Birstein's account of the condition detainees were held in it is little surprise how badly it has affected the lives of those who went through the 'system' and the apparent urge to talk about what happened to them. Indeed Solzhenitsyn is perhaps understating the conditions he and and his fellow inmates endured for fear they would not be believed!
It is little wonder Solzhenitsyn and other survivors of the Gulag system have such animus for their; often jewish, former Soviet masters; such as the jewish apologist for Stalin's slave labour program Aron Solt and jewish NKVD Camp Commandant Naftaly Frenkel, as I have pointed out elsewhere. (8)
Throughout Birstein's work we find consistent and damning documentation of the significant and vitally important jewish role in the early Soviet Union and in spite of Birstein's general rejection of the thesis: his superb understanding of the internal dynamics of Stalin's reign beautifully illustrates the absurd attempts; most recently and notably championed by jewish historian Benjamin Pinkus, to divorce jewry from its actions in support of Lenin and Stalin. (9)
Birstein's memorable characterisation of Stalin's rule as being that of a 'mafia boss' who periodically eliminates those who 'know too much' makes Stalin's apparent alleged 'turn' against Soviet jewry and its diaspora comprehensible.
To explain: the standard jewish/philo-Semitic hypothesis regarding Stalin is that he 'started out' with 'anti-jewish prejudices' and for this they can only provide circumstantial inferences derived from Stalin's time as Commissar for Nationalities under Lenin and articles that he wrote before and during that time (he was a natural for the post being a Georgian and one of Lenin's right-hand men in the pre-war socialist underground in Russia). This coupled with Stalin's anger at his son over his; Yakov's, engagement to the jewess Yulia Meltzer is taken as 'proof' of Stalin's alleged 'latent anti-jewish sentiment', which then; so the story goes, found its ultimate expression in the purges against the 'rootless cosmopolitans' and the Doctor's Plot. (10)
This simple linear storyline of how 'evil Stalin' deceived and then started murdering the jews (nobody denies jews were frequently both left-wing and pro-Soviet at this time politically right across Europe and North America) seems reasonable doesn't it?
Well put it into context a moment: Stalin had from the get-go been killing and imprisoning anybody who he was suspicious about; as remember in Stalin's thought process he was leading Russia to a great socialist future (thus opposition in any form was to Stalin ipso facto counter-revolutionary and/or reactionary), irrespective of whether they were jewish or not.
Several excellent examples are afforded by Birstein: the most notable of which are Abakumov; (the head of SMERSH) who was removed for no other discernible reason that he knew a lot of Stalin's dirty laundry and had thus himself become a security threat to Stalin, and Pavel Rychagov; (the head of the Air Force Directorate and Deputy Defense Commissar in 1941) who had blurted out a criticism of Stalin's lack of provision of suitable aircraft for Red Air Force pilots to train on [i.e. ones that weren't as he put it 'flying coffins'] and therefore had to be removed because he had openly questioned Stalin. (11)
Another example is afforded by a recent biography of the Communist Party of Great Britain's most famous chief industrial organiser and sometime informal ambassador to the Warsaw Pact countries: Bert Ramelson (nee Baruch Rachmilevitch). (12)
Now Ramelson being typical of the circumcised Communists of the time (13) was a Russian jew although he; like his fellow high-ranking jewish Bolshevik Raisa Browder, (14) went in the opposite direction (from Russia to the West) from the more famous early jewish emigrants who; in spite of claims it is a myth, really did emigrate back to Russia in droves. (15)
Three of Ramelson's sisters were Bolsheviks and the fourth was a Social Revolutionary (16): however the most successful of them was Rosa Rachmilevitch who 'converted' Ramelson (17) and even took him to see their fellow jewish Bolshevik; Trotsky, speak in public about the revolution and alleged introduction of socialism into Russia. It was the Bolshevik's overt jewishness and opposition to anti-Semitism that; according to Ramelson himself, affected his own conversion to the cause of international socialism. (18)
Rosa was in many respects a typical early jewish Bolshevik protégée: an early member of the Komsomol (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's youth wing) who married and became pregnant by a Red Army army officer (whether he was also jewish is unstated although this is quite possible even plausible): who Seifert and Sibley assure us wanted 'to rid her country of poverty, illiteracy and anti-Semitism' with 'a pistol in her belt'. (19) Indeed Rosa progressed far under Lenin's regime and was made a Professor of Economics at Sverdlov University (20), but under Stalin's rule her husband was executed as part of the purges and she herself was placed in the Gulag system for a decade: presumably on the charge of being a 'Left Deviationist' better known as 'Trotskyites'. (21)
I would add; as a brief aside, that Rosa strongly reminds me of Haydee Tamara Bunke; Che Guevara's jewish lover and communist intelligence asset (just whose is a matter of some dispute), who her jilted Afro-Cuban lover Ulises Estrada describes in not dissimilar terms in his hagiographic account of her life and times. (22)
What happened to Rosa and her; presumably Leninist, husband is exactly what happened to Abakumov and Rychagov, but rather than being viewed as significant individual threats to Stalin's vision of socialism: Rosa and her husband were viewed as members of a significant group threat to that same vision of socialism. In that Rosa was a Trotskyite; or at least in sympathy with the ideas propounded by Trotksy's 'Fourth Internationale', from what I can discern so therefore to Stalin she was quite literally a subversive and a counter-revolutionary by dint of belonging to an opposing Marxist ideological group.
This means in effect that Stalin wasn't targeting Rosa; or any other jew, just because they were jewish or that he had some form of 'latent anti-Semitism' which made him pick on jews in particular (in fact he didn't). What Stalin was targeting was those he perceived as being opposed and therefore probably subversive (as Stalin is well-known to have been utterly paranoid at the best of times) to his vision of Russia's (and the world's) socialist future.
When Stalin rejected Yulia Meltzer as his son's bride-to-be: he did so more than likely not because she was jewish (which was merely incidental) but because Yakov hadn't told him about it before doing the deed and therefore seeking his approval 'after the fact'. Stalin liked to be in control at all times and Yakov's action clearly took some of that control away: leading not unpredictably to Stalin's violent response and subsequent strident dislike of Yakov.
As with Stalin's later purges against 'rootless cosmopolitans': the fact that many of these writers and intellectuals were jewish is largely incidental precisely because jews still made up a large percentage of the Soviet intelligentsia. So it would be rather odd if the jews were not badly hit: as they were in the purges of the late 1930s by Stalin's removal of any and all those he perceived opposition to his ideas in.
However few proponents of the 'Stalin was an anti-Semite' claim note that one of the reasons that Stalin was more likely to go after the significant jewish segment of the Soviet intelligentsia was that during the Second World War: they had (encouraged by Stalin ironically enough) developed very close contacts with American and European jewry as well as with international Zionist organisations. (23) This; as with returning Soviet prisoners of war, lead by the logic of Soviet jewish intellectuals having been 'exposed' to a significant amount of non-Soviet influences to these same jewish intellectuals being viewed by Stalin as potential threats to his vision of Russia's socialist future.
Thus the simple linear presentation of the 'anti-Semitic Stalin' persecuting the jews in some sinister preconceived master plan is as much of a contrived defensive jewish nonsense as the claim that Karl Marx was an 'anti-Semite'; on the basis of his early essay 'The Jewish Question', as was frequently alleged during the second great American anti-Communist epoch of the late 1940s to the 1960s (24) and which is complete and utter drivel. (25)
The beauty of Birstein's characterisation of Stalin's rule as a 'mafia boss' type scenario is that it at a stroke removes all the preconceptions about 'victimisation' that necessarily come into play when we are dealing with one of the greatest mass murderers in history. It at a stroke removes the jewish ability to plead their case as 'Stalin's eternal victims' and places them instead in the defendants dock on three separate issues:
A) Playing a prominent role in the Bolshevik Revolution and the power struggles that allowed Stalin to come to power in the first place.
B) Aiding and abetting Stalin's various ethnic cleansing campaigns, genocidal operations and his mass purges of the Soviet citizenry as well as foreign communists and cadre both abroad and in the USSR itself. (26)
C) Causing; by their own infatuation with jewishness and Zionist projects as solutions to their identity crisis, Stalin's paranoid eye to fall on them causing mass suffering to themselves, those who investigated them on Stalin's behalf (who were later prosecuted during Nikita Khrushchev's time in office) and those who were caught up in the mass purges that they helped initiate by their own thoughtless and irresponsible actions.
Birstein certainly would not see it quite like this: however that is the necessary consequence of his excellent characterisation regardless of how he may or may not like to spin it.
Another point that Birstein makes especially well is in relation to Vasilii Ulrikh; long-time chairman of the Soviet Military Collegium, which was part of the Soviet Supreme Court under Stalin and who was basically an engineer with no legal training whose wife; Anna Kassel, had worked closely with Lenin in his private office and had aggressively promoted her husband's career through her contact with both Lenin and Stalin. Ulrikh supervised literally thousands of extra-judicial executions of Tsarist officers in the Crimea during 1922 alone and during the Great Terror of the 1930s Ulrikh personally sentenced 25,355 people to death and sent 11,651 into the Gulag system. Ulrikh; perhaps on Stalin's insistence, also carried out at least one of his executions himself when he shot Yan Berzin; former head of the Red Army's Intelligence Directorate, on the 28th July 1938. (27)
Birstein also gratifying endorses the 'Icebreaker' hypothesis of the beginning of hostilities between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union when he tells us that 'though Hitler had planned the invasion of the Soviet Union for some time, his fears of a Soviet military build-up were not unfounded.' (28) Birstein also frequently supports revisionist analyses of the origin of the World War II and has little truck with the usual quasi-apologia of the 'unprepared Stalin' that has been decisively debunked (yet again) by John Mosier (29) although Birstein himself cites Joachim Hoffmann's deconstruction of the Stalinist victim myth. (30)
I would further point out that Birstein adroitly agrees with Mosier's argument that had not the United States; at the behest of the many later discovered jewish Comintern/GRU [Soviet Military Intelligence] agents (Harry Dexter White probably being the most important in this particular respect), ploughed hundreds of thousands of tonnes of military and economic aid into the USSR during 1941 and 1942: the USSR would have simply imploded with the advent of Operation Typhoon (the German assault on Moscow). There we enter the realm of alternative history, but it is never-the-less utterly damning that the United States actually saved a country that was explicitly dedicated to destroying it at the behest of later discovered; largely jewish, traitors.
Other points of interest Birstein discusses are other prominent Soviet jews such as Semyon Krivoshein (a Soviet tank commander) who was a favourite of Stalin's and a hero of Soviet propaganda. (31) One may wonder with good reason whether Krivoshein had actually done anything particularly brave or whether he was just the 'right man, in the right place at the right time' or in modern corporate parlance: his face fitted.
Another was David Ortenberg: the jewish editor-in-chief of the official Red Army newspaper 'Krasnaya Zvezda' in 1941. Ortenberg exhorted Soviet soldiers to murder any one who disagreed with Stalin and particularly anyone who happened to be German (as they were the 'German fascist scoundrels'). (32) Much as the notorious Soviet jewish propagadist Ilya Ehrenberg was to do later, which culminated in vast numbers of war crimes and the famous mass rape of Europe by the Red Army and its significantly jewish officer and commissar corps. (33)
Yet another example; but a rank and file one in this instance, is Yeleazer Meletinsky who was a GRU officer attached to 56th Army and who was arrested and accused of espionage fundamentally because he could speak German and had a Russian-German phrase book. (34) The SMERSH officers questioning him weren't interested in whether he was jewish or whether he was actually guilty of espionage: they were 'hunting traitors' and they had to meet their quota. If they didn't meet their quota on the same logic that I elucidated above they would be judged to be impeding Stalin's vision of a socialist Russia and thus be 'counter-revolutionaries' and/or 'reactionaries' themselves.
It is therefore little surprising that; as Birstein notes, 'the level of hidden anti-Semitism was very high among Russian privates' of the Red Army. (35) The reason is the proverbial elephant in the room of the early Soviet Union: the amount of high-ranking Bolsheviks who were jews.(36)
Thus explaining why Birstein notes that this anti-Semitism was 'vague' (37) as to be specific the Russian private in the Red Army would lay himself open to be charged and probably shot by the NKVD or SMERSH as a 'counter-revolutionary', 'spreading anti-Soviet propaganda' (as German propaganda leaflets frequently used such charges) and/or 'espionage agent' (as only those expressing 'reactionary' views could possibly be German 'White Guard' spies).
All in all Birstein's work on SMERSH is an excellent one and one that deserves to grace the library of any serious anti-Communist or anti-jewish individual as it provides you with a wealth of information; intentionally or not, about the extent of jewish power in the USSR as well all the reasons you will ever need to argue that Marxism is about as intellectually truthful as a back-peddling Rabbi.
(1) Smert' Shpiona
(2) Vadim Birstein, 2011, 'SMERSH: Stalin's Secret Weapon. Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII', 1st Edition, Biteback: London
(3) Ibid, p. 98
(4) Ibid, p. 180
(5) Ibid, pp. 94; 120
(6) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 2003, 'The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation', 2nd Edition, The Harvill Press: London
(7) Birstein, Op. Cit., p. 124
(8) Solzhenitsyn, Op. Cit., pp. 205-208
(9) Benjamin Pinkus, 1984, 'The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967: A Documented Study', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York
(10) See Gennadi Kostyrchenko, 1995, 'Out of the Red Shadows: Anti-Semitism in Stalin's Russia', 1st Edition, Prometheus: New York for a clear statement of this thesis.
(11) Birstein, Op. Cit, p. 84
(12) Roger Seifert, Tom Sibley, 2012, 'Revolutionary Communist at Work: A Political Biography of Bert Ramelson', 1st Edition, Lawrence & Wishart: London, p. 23
(13) Compare to Robert Service's notes on Maxim Litvinov and the jewish Bolshevik diaspora in Britain and America in Robert Service, 2011, 'Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West', 1st Edition, MacMillan: London, pp. 13-14; 82-87
(14) Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, 1994, 'The Secret World of American Communism', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 243-245
(15) Service, Op. Cit., p. 49
(16) Social Revolutionaries were a competing and more unorthodox form of Marxism to that propounded by Lenin (leader of the Bolsheviks) and Martov (the jewish leader of the Mensheviks). The SR's difference with the Social Democratic Party (which Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were differing factions of) was in their identification of the revolutionary class. Lenin and Martov agreed with Marx and Engels in holding the industrial workers [the 'urban proletariat'] to be the most 'class conscious' and thus the principal class agent in revolutionary change: the SR's disagreed and held (in keeping with liberal religious discourse (a-la Tolstoy) and home-grown Russian socialist thought) that the rural communes and peasantry were that class. At its most basic the SR's saw themselves as championing peasants rights and interests, while the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks saw themselves as championing industrial workers rights.
(17) Seifert, Sibley, Op. Cit., p. 26
(18) Ibid, p. 27
(19) Ibid, p. 24
(20) Ibid, p. 25
(21) Ibid, p. 338
(22) Ulises Estrada, 2005, 'Tania: Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia', 1st Edition, Ocean Press: Melbourne, pp. 32-33
(23) Joshua Rubenstein, Vladimir Naumov, 2005, 'Stalin's Secret Progrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee', 2nd Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 7-40
(24) Zygmund Dobbs, 1949, 'Karl Marx: Father of Modern Anti-Semitism' in Isaac Don Levine (Ed.), 1976, 'Plain Talk: An Anthology from the leading Anti-Communist Magazine of the 40s', 1st Edition, Arlington House: New York, pp. 400-404
(25) Jerry Z. Muller, 2010, 'Capitalism and the Jews', 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 34-45
(26) On this see William Chase, 2001, 'Enemies Within the Gates?: The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934-1939', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven
(27) Birstein, Op. Cit., pp. 64-65
(28) Ibid, p. 85
(29) John Mosier, 2010, 'Deathride: Hitler versus Stalin: The Eastern Front, 1941-1945', 1st Edition, Simon & Schuster: New York
(30) Joachim Hoffmann, 2001, 'Stalin's War of Extermination 1941-1945: Planning, Realization and Documentation', 1st Edition, Theses & Dissertations Press: Capshaw
(31) Birstein, Op. Cit., p. 75
(32) Ibid, pp. 106-107
(33) Hoffmann, Op. Cit., pp. 228-242
(34) Birstein, Op. Cit., p. 117
(35) Ibid, p. 119
(36) Orlando Figes, 1997, 'A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924', 1st Edition, Pimlico: London, p. 696
(37) Birstein, Op. Cit., p. 120
A Judeo-Bolshevik Debacle
Readers of past and contemporary mainstream books, articles and various papers on what is today classed as ”anti-semitic literature” will no doubt have come across the arguments of how the rise of the Bolsheviks and subsequent rule of communist Soviet was notably headed by jewish men of power. This article will deal with some of the misinformation or otherwise inaccurate claims concerning, ”Judeo-Bolshevism”, in particular some lists given by an oft used source on this matter, the british journalist Robert Wilton, who provided the West to a great extent with the imagery of a predominantly jewish Bolshevik government.
Let's begin with Wilton's list on the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Government 1918, which he reported consisted of three russians and nine jews:
”Bronstein (Trotsky), Apfelbaum (Zinoviev), Lurie (Larine), Uritsky, Volodarski, Rosenfeld (Kamenev), Smidovich, Sverdlov (Yankel), and Nakhamkes (Steklov).The three Russians were: Ulyanov (Lenin), Krylenko, and Lunacharsky. ”
This is a problematic rendering for several reasons, let's start with the fact that Lurie, Nakhamkes, Smidovitch, and Volodarski weren't even in the Central Committee anytime between 1917-1922. Furthermore, for reasons due to the material presented by Wilton being demonstrably incorrect, his list doesn't include Stalin, it doesn't list Berzin nor Smilga either or Chubar, Manuilsky or Bukharin either.
The composition of the Central Committee in 1918 was:
”TsK: Members: Artem F. A., Buharin N. I. (Russian), Vladimirskij M. F. (Russian), Dzerzhinskij F. E. (Pole), Zinovjev G. E. (Jew), Krestinskij N. N. (Ukrainian), Lashevich M. M., Lenin V. I. (Russian), Sverdlov Ja. M. (Jew), Smilga I. T., Sokol'nikov G. Ja. (Jew), Stalin I. V. (Georgian), Stasova E. D. (Russian), Trotskij L. D. (Jew), Shmidt V. V. (German)”.
Tsk stands for Tsentral'nyj Komitet (Central Committee), and as is given above, there were 4 jews out of 15 members, not 9 jews out of 12 members. If we count the ¼ jew Lenin then there were 5 out of 15. While a notable disproportionate jewish membership, one that would more than suffice if you're interested in showing notable jewish membership and influence, it still demonstrates the erroneous list of Wilton's. However, for arguments sake let us assume that Wilton might have referred to the prior composition of Central Committee, the pre-October Revolution body of 1917, if so then the latest one in 1917, prior to the Revolution, consisted of the following members:
”TsK: Members: Artem F. A., Berzin Ja. A., Bubnov A. S. (Russian), Buharin N. I. (Russian), Dzerzhinskij F. E. (Pole), Zinovjev G. E. (Jew), Kamenev L. B. (Jew), Kollontaj A. M., Krestinskij N. N. (Ukrainian), Lenin V. I. (Russian), Milyutin V. P. (Russian), Muranov M. K. (Ukrainian), Nogin V. P. (Russian), Rykov A. I. (Russian), Sverdlov Ja. M. (Jew), Smilga I. T., Sokol'nikov G. Ja. (Jew), Stalin I. V. (Georgian), Trotskij L. D. (Jew), Uritskij M. S. (Jew), Shaumyan S. G.”
Here we have 21 members and of those there are six jews, or seven if you count Lenin. Wilton's list continues with more grossly erronous names:
”The Soviet government, or "Council of People's Commissars' (also known as the "Sovnarkom") was made up of the following, Wilton reported:
Peoples Commissariat (Ministry) Name Nationality
Chairman V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin) Russian
Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin Russian
Nationalities J. Dzhugashvili [Stalin] Georgian
Agriculture Protian Armenian
Economic Council Lourie (Larin) Jew
Food Supply A.G. Schlikhter Jew
Army and Navy [Military] L.D. Bronstein (Trotski) Jew
State Control K.I. Lander Jew
State Lands Kaufmann Jew
Works [Labor] V. Schmidt Jew
Social Relief E. Lilina (Knigissen) Jew
Education A. Lunacharsky Russian
Religion Spitzberg Jew
Interior Apfelbaum [Radomyslski] (Zinoviev) Jew
Hygiene Anvelt Jew
Finance I. E. Gukovs [and G. Sokolnikov] Jew
Press Voldarski [Goldstein] Jew
Elections M.S. Uritsky Jew
Justice I.Z. Shteinberg Jew
Refugees Fenigstein Jew
Refugees Savitch (Assistant) Jew
Refugees Zaslovski (Assistant) Jew
Out of these 22 "Sovnarkom" members, Wilton summed'up, there were three Russians, one Georgian, one Armenian, and 17 Jews.”
Since the Sovnarkom (or Council of People's Commissariat) changed over the years the above must be a list on the years prior to 1921 when Wilton's book (the edition, which included these lists) on the matter came out. Although it would've helped had he given the actual year since it seems his list simply chooses some who were first, and some who were commissars later on, attached with false listings etc. Hence one would then have to include a whole lot more commissars if one is to jump between dates, to be fair, i.e. a whole lot more non-jewish commissars would be included.
The established Council was originally established with the following members:
”Chairman: V. I. Lenin (1/4 Russian, Tatar, German, Jewish)
Commissar of Agriculture: V. P. Milyutin (Russian)
Commissars of Army and Navy: V. A. Ovseyenko, N. V. Krylenko, P. V. Dybenko (Russians, Osveyenko was ethnic ukranian)
Commissar of Commerce and Industry: V. P. Nogin (Russian)
Commissar of Education: A. V. Lunacharsky (Ukranian)
Commissar of Food: I. A. Teodorovich (Polish, not jewish)
Commissar of Foreign Affairs: L. D. Trotsky (jewish)
Commissar of Interior: A. I. Rykov (Russian)
Commissar of Justice: G. I. Oppokov (Russian)
Commissar of Labour: A. G. Shlyapnikov (Russian)
Commissar of Nationality Affairs: I. V. Stalin (Georgian)
Commissar of Post and Telegraphs: N. P. Avilov (Russian)
Commissar of Treasury: I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov (Russian)”, , 
Let's consider the above list while I comment further on the names of Wilton's list. The first jew on his list is Larin (Ministry of the Economic Council). This is false, Larin was not a minister there-of or in any ministry with the word ”Economy” in it. The ministers of Finance (giving Wilton the benefit of a doubt let us include it) and of the commissariat of Supreme Council of National Economy between 1917-1922 were:
Finance: Ivan Skvortzov, Isidor Gukovski, Vjatsheslav Menzhinski and Nikolai Krestinski.
Supreme Council of National Economy: Valerian Obolenski followed by Aleksei Rykov.
The second jew in Wilton's list is A.G. Schlikhter (Ministry of Food, Food Supply). While I have not been able to confirm whether or not he was in fact jewish, he was indeed minister of Food but only between the 18th of December 1917 and January 1st 1918. The one succeeding him was Aleksandr Tsiurupa (Cyurupa) who became the new minister of Food on January 1st 1918 and acted as such for the following three years. It is worth mentioning that while Schlikhter didn't act as minister for very long, he continued to work as a senior official for the Commissariat of Food Supply and was, under Cyurupa, an ardent radicalist urging the powers that be to use their over arching grasp on the food supplies as a means to further the totalitarian mentality of, as he is cited to have stated, ”organized revolutionary violence”.
The third jew on the list is Trotsky (Ministry of Military and Navy Affairs). Trotsky was indeed a jew and also Commissar (i.e. minister) of Military and Navy Affairs between March 1918 to July 1923. The ministers of this Commissariat between 1917-1922 were Nikolai Podovski who was succeeded by Leon Trotsky.
The fourth jew on the list is Karl Lander (Ministry of State Control). I haven't found any sources that would confirm Lander to have been jewish, only Latvian, and Wilton did not add footnotes or a bibliography to support his assertions of who was jewish and who wasn't. Nevertheless, Lander was Minister of State Control between 1918 to 1919, preceded by Eduard Essen and succeeded by Josef Stalin then Aleksandr Cyurupa.
The fifth one is Kaufmann (Ministry of State Lands). There was no Commissariat of State Lands in Lenin's Council of the People's Commissariat. He is not found in any of the existing Commissariat-groups between 1917-1922 either.
The sixth one is Vasili Schmidt (Ministry of Labour) who's ethnicity is not given in any sources available apart from his name being of obvious German extraction. He was however indeed minister of said section, between late 1918 to mid 1923, preceeded by Aleksandr Shlyapnikov.
The seventh one is one E. Lilina (Social Relief). First let me point out that there wasn't a Commissariat/Ministry of Social Relief, there was one called Ministry of Social Affairs. Furthermore, there seems to be no sign anywhere in any ministry of an E. Lilina or ”Knigissen” as is the additional name given to her by Wilton. The ministers of Social Affairs (there was no Commissariat called ”Social Relief”) between 1917-1922 were Aleksandra Kollontai, Aleksandr Vinokurov, Miron Vladimirov and Nikolai Milyutin.
The eight one on the list is A. (Anatoli Vasilyevich) Lunacharsky (Ministry of Education). He was minister of Education between 1917 to 1923. He wasn't jewish though and if anyone has proof to the contrary then they are welcome to submit it.
The ninth one is Spitzberg, no first name given (Ministry of Religion). There was no Commissariat called ”Religion”, or anything with that name in it, but even if we assume that the Commissariat went under a different tite this Spitzberg isn't found elsewhere in any other ministry during or after the given period of the USSR's Sovnarkoms.
The tenth one is Zinoviev (Ministry of Interior). While undoubtedly one of the more influental jews in power during the early years of the Bolsheviks new government: he was never the Minister of Interior. The ministers of Interior between 1917 to 1922 were Aleksei Rykov, Grigori Petrovksi and then Felix Dzershinsky.
The eleventh one on the list is Anvelt (Ministry of Hygiene). Again: there was no Ministry with the word ”Hygiene” in it. The closest one would be the Ministry of Health but the minister of it between 1917-1922 was Nikolai Semashko, not Jaan Anvelt who wasn't part of the Sovnarkoms at any time. However, Anvelt headed the communist party of Estonia and the ”Council of The Commune of the Working People of Estonia”, which was a short-lived republic that existed in parts of Estonia.
The twelveth and thirtheenth jews are I. E. Gukovs and G. Sokolnikov (Ministry of Finance). The latter is correct but I can not confirm the former's ethnicity to have been jewish. The ministers of Finance between 1917-1922 were Ivan Skvortzov, Isidor Gukovski, Vjatsheslav Menzhinski and Nikolai Krestinski.
The fourteenth one on the list is Voldarski [Goldstein](Ministry of Press). The was no ”Commissariat of Press”, the closest one would have to be the Commissariat of Post and Telegraphs or the Commissariat of Communication. In any case, Voldarski (Volodarsky) was not minister in any of the given Sovnarkom categorical groups. Allthough, he was the head of the Press Division of the Executive Committee (until he was killed in June 1918) and appointed member of the editorial board of the central newspaper, which he shared with Milyutin, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Podvojsky.
Let me add though that this does not suggest jews not to have been a hefty part of the Bolshevik publication apparateus as the editorial board of the central newspaper et al had a large overrepresentation of jews until the mid 1920's.
”For example, M. Zarubeznyi, author of the 1925 Yearbook of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, has a special list in his publication, The Jews in the Kremlin, with the names and functions of various Jews in the Foreign Commissariat, and he notes that among the key figures in the literary and publishing section of the People’s Commissariat he found “not one gentile.”
The fiftheenth jew is M.S. Uritsky (Minister of Elections). There was no ministry of Elections and Uritsky was not a minister elsewhere either. Uritsky was appointed in charge of the Checka section in Petrograd, though the head (the actual minister) of this entire section was Alexi Rykov, succeeded by Petrovsky and then Felix Dzerzhinsky.
The sixteenth is I.Z. Shteinberg (Ministry of Justice). This is correct, Steinberg was jewish and acted as minister of Justice for a period of three months in late 1917 to early 1918. He was preceeded by Afanasi Lomov (Oppokov), Pjotr Strutshka and succeeded by Pjotr Strutshka (again) and Dimitri Kurski.
The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth ones are Fenigstein, Savich and Zaslovski (Ministry of Refugees). Unfortunately for Wilton, and those using his sources there was no minister of Refugees, those issues would have been dealt by the Ministry of Interior or State Control, neither housed any of the formentioned in the ministry there-of, or as ministers in any of the other Sovnarkom-categories.
Ergo, the claim that out of 22 Sovnarkoms, there were 17 jews is entirely fabricated and not only is the list problematic since it does not list a specific year (we are forced to go by the 1917-1922 due to Wilton's list being from 1921). It also handpicks people from different times, and adds them up into one finite list, giving the impression of higher jewish participation. As I said earlier, for such a list to have been valid and accurate it would've had to include many other ministers as well, most of whom weren't jews. Also, to falsely attribute a position to a jew that either didn't exist, or at least didn't hold that given position, only adds to the fraudulent case that define Wilton's lists.
Of the several alleged ministers between 1917-1922 mentioned by Wilton. We can only confirm three to have been jewish ministers of said positions. If I give Wilton the benifit of a doubt that the ones of unconfirmed jewish ancestry were actual jews then we would have had 6 jews. The list would no longer include just 22 Sovnarkoms though, because as the names have been picked between the period of 1917 to 1921 there would be some 60-61 ministers in the entire list. While not as remarkable a jewish overrepresentation as Wilton's list suggests, there would still be a noteworthy disproportionate representation of jews there-of, and for those who wish to make a point or argument about it should preferably avoid Wilton's work as it is demonstrably inaccurate.
I do not wish to make this article too lenghty, but I'd like to add a few briefs notes on a more contemporary source that in general does little but echo the irrationale and incorrect methodology on detailing jewish influence and presence in the USSR's echelons. For an overall figure of jewish membership: there was a chart provided by US Senator William King.
In a recent paper written by Michael A Hoffman II, you will find compairable musings and especially similar lists that incorrectly attributes ”jewish” ancestry to a given name or simply ascribes a position to the jew which he didn't have. Let's go through a few assertions of this text.
”Olga Bronstein: officer, Soviet Cheka Secret Police, sister of Trotsky, wife of Kamenev.”
She was not part of the Cheka at any time nor the NKVD, rather she was involved in various education and theater work like the TEO (Theater Division of which she headed) and then various positions in foreign policy sections until her date of her execution.
”Matvei Berman and Naftaly Frenkel: founders, the Gulag death camp system.”
Frenkel was not a founder, but a prisoner, of what was to be one of the first Gulag camps: Solovetsky. He did eventually, during his term there, rise to inmate overseer and a commanding position there was given to him. After a year he was released. Due to his ability to, despite its utter lack of humanitarian sentiment in this context, turn profit and order in the administration of the camp, he got on Stalin's good side. Which is why he later was given the commanding position of the BAMlag camp, a horrible place of death, famine etc. A pertinent quote on Frenkel:
”Even if Frenkel did not invent every aspect of the system, he did find a way to turn a prison camp into an apparently profitable economic institution, and he did so at a time, in a place, and in a manner which may well have brought that idea to the attention of Stalin.”
Why make up titles and deeds for people that one could readily criticize six ways from sunday for what they actually did? If anything it only serves as a willing sacrifice for the hungry debunkers and opposers of critique against jewry or jewish involvement.
Another claim by Hoffman:
”Miron Vovsi: general, Soviet Red Army.”
This is almost painfully inaccurate and Hoffman should know better, or perhaps not given his tendency for repetition and regurgitations of blatantly false information like the above. Miron was not a general but a doctor, actually he was one of Stalin's own bdck-and-call doctors, brother of Mikhoels Vovsi who was killed by order of Stalin for his work in anti-fascist groups etc.
”David Dragonsky: general, Soviet Red Army, Hero of the Soviet Union.”
Never heard of him. If he was a general then he would've been listen in official records. He is also not listed anywhere as a general, nor as an officer as far as I've been able to confirm.
Perhaps Hoffman got the name from somewhere else? Dragonsky, the surname, is an old G.I Joe action-figure toy:
"A former member of the Soviet Army, DRAGONSKY joined the OKTOBER GUARD as the team's mechanic, welder, and incendiary weapons specialist. He has combined all three skills to build custom-designed fire-blasting attachments for the team's vehicles. COBRA forces have been unpleasantly surprised to find themselves blasted by a wall of flames where just moments ago there was only an innocent-looking transport vehicle."
”Mikhail Chazkelevich: general, Soviet Red Army.”
No: he is nowhere to be found either.
”Solomon Mikhoels: commissar of Soviet propaganda.”
First of all, he was not a commissar. He was the head of the 'Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee', he also (under Lenin) helped create the Moscow Jewish Theater. He was an actor and also directed plays there which would naturally not be opposed to the established regime's agenda or policies, however it has been noted that critcism of the communist regime was intervowen in these plays and wether or not this is true, the aftermath speaks for itself. Solomon dealt too much, in Stalin's view of things, with other jews and jewish societies that weren't down with the communism programme so to speak., .
Stalin launched a form of campaign in 1948-1952 against what was called, "rootless cosmopolitans". The officially communist-supportive committee, "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee", were targeted, members arrested or killed and charged with disloyalty and "political incorrectness". The 1949 the campaign had heavy use of Stalin's mass-media against the "rootless cosmopolitans". Also, on an event postly called "Night of Murdered Poets", fifteen yiddish writes were executed under the formentioned label of "rootless". During these events, Stalin had Solomon killed as well.
”Nikolai Bukharin: Lenin's chief theorist.”
Well: Bukharin was not a jew.
”Samuel Agursky: commissar.”
He wasn't a commissar. He did however work for a few years as an editor the yiddish Bolshevik paper called "The Free Worker", which was sectioned under the Peoples Commissariat of National Affairs. There, he together with Stalin signed a decree to dissolve jewish religious organisations as they in their regard attracted enemies and promoted a non-worker spirit. He was arrested in 1938 and a year later exiled to Khazakstan where he subsequently passed away.
He was not jewish unless there are some verifications around I've been unable to find.
The jewish overrepresentation of the high positions of power in the USSR/Bolshevik apparatus was indeed notable in its early years, but after Lenin's death and Stalin's rise, the numbers decreases heavily from the mid 20's and onward as can be seen by previously mentioned sources and information but also in the make up of the Bolshevik’s Politburo section:
”10  Oct 1917 Andrei Bubnov, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Sokolnikov, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky elected members of the Political Bureau at the Central Committee meeting”
2 Russians, 4 Jews, 1 Georgian.
”16 March 1921 Zinoviev, Kamenev, Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky elected full members at the Central Committee plenum; Bukharin, Kalinin and Vyacheslav Molotov elected candidate members.”
3 Jews, 1 Georgian, 4 Russians.
”1 January 1926 Bukharin, Kliment Voroshilov, Zinoviev, Kalinin, Molotov, Rykov, Stalin, Tomsky and Trotsky elected full members at the Central Committee plenum; Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, Grigory Petrovsky, Rudzutak and Nikolai Uglanov elected candidate members”
8 Russians, 3 Jews, 1 Latvia, 1 Pole, 1 Georgian.
”23 October 1926 Trotsky and Kamenev relieved of duties at the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission ”
1 Jew, Kaganovich.
”19 December 1927 Bukharin, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Kuibyshev, Molotov, Rykov, Rudzutak, Stalin and Tomsky elected full members at the Central Committee plenum; Andreyev, Kaganovich, Kirov, Stanislav Kosior, Mikoyan, Petrovsky, Uglanov and Chubar elected candidate members”
1 Armenian, 1 Latvian, 1 Jew, 2 Ukrainians, 1 Georgian, 11 Russians.
”13 July 1930 Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Kirov, Kosior, Kuibyshev, Molotov, Rudzutak, Rykov and Stalin elected full members at the Central Committee plenum; Andreyev, Mikoyan, Petrovsky, Syrtsov and Chubar elected candidate members.”
1 Armenian, 1 Georgian, 1 Jew, 1 Latvian, 2 Ukrainians, 9 Russians.
”10 February 1934 Andreyev, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Kirov, Kosior, Kuibyshev, Molotov, Ordzhonikidze and Stalin elected full members at the Central Committee plenum; Mikoyan, Petrovsky, Pavel Postyshev, Rudzutak and Chubar elected candidate members”
2 Georgians, 1 Armenian, 1 Latvian, 2 Ukrainians, 1 Jew, 8 Russians.
Or as Medvedev wrote:
”The myth of the non-Russian, or more narrowly, the Jewish character of the October Revolution and Soviet government first arose during the civil war. The White Guard press, and later the Russian emigre press were full of references to the "Kike-Bolshevik commissars" and the "Kike-Bolshevik Red Army." Even the London Times [Robert Wilton was the Times Correspondent -PM] wrote on March 5, 1919, that Jews held 75 percent of the leading positions in the RSFSR. The proceedings of the 439th and 469th sessions of the U.S. Senate contain the assertion that "in 1918 the Government in Petrograd consisted of 16 Russians and 371 Jews, with 265 of those Jews having come from New York." The story is still being told in many Russian emigre publications, though not in such fantastic form.” 
This sort of bad research and relying on problematic sources is a real problem with the anti-semitic literature (in many cases: Eastern European/Slavic sources), there needs to be a yardstick set and a defined methodology of approaching critique of jewry and activities there-of in history. Passing around sources like Wilton and Hoffman who seem to name just about everyone in the old USSR as jewish does not help, but moreso tips the scale of critique to be used as cannon fodder for the ADL's of this world, giving them the justification for claiming critique of jews to be irrational and stupid. I implore those wanting to bring the actual figures of representation and the given functions of the representatives to curve their enthusiasm and simply go with what they can corroborate and confirm, beyond David Duke's ”Jewish Supremacism”, or similary myopic sources critiquing jews. It is time people stopped becoming willing buffoons and ideological renegades spouting, purporting and regurgitating any bit of information they can get their hands on just because it appears to be slanderous enough against jews and jewry.
Strive to be correct, coherent and factual . Recognize that as such your methodology should have few sweethearts. Since there is a fundamental difference between your preferred ideology and your applied method of scrutiny and research: the latter should not obey the former, but rather the case would ideally be the opposite.
 Wilton worked as a war-correspondent journalist stationed in western Russia on behalf of the british ”The Times” before, during and some years after the October Revolution in 1917. The name-the-jew lists he composed on the new government's membership were included in the french edition of his ”Last Days of the Romanovs” (1920), they were not included in the english editions at that time.
 Robert Wilton; ”Les Derniers Jours des Romanoffs” (1921) cited in Mark Weber: ”The Jewish Role In The Bolshevik Revolution”, The Journal of Historical Review: The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's Early Soviet Regime
 S. A. Mesyats, ”Istorija vysshykh organov KPSS”, http://holocaust.skeptik.net/misc/party.htm
 ”Commissar” is interchangable with ”minister”, it was due to the latter being viewed as a bourgeois term that the former was applied.
 Glossary of Organisations: Co
 Terra España - Noticias, Deportes, Entretenimiento y Estilo de Vida
 Terra España - Noticias, Deportes, Entretenimiento y Estilo de Vida
 Bread and Butter Authority in Russia 1914-1921: Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921 "d0e6288"
 M. Zarubezny, 'The Jews in the Kremlin' (published in Russian), alef Publishing, Tel Aviv, Feb. 1989, No. 263, 26. http://officeexit.info/shop/images/T...08%20Small.pdf
 ”Conditions in Russia” File:1924 Chart - Conditions in Russia.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 'Judaic Communists: The Documentary Record' (Judaic Communism: The Documentary Record)
 Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky. ”A History of Russian Theatre”, Cambridge University Press, 1999
 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ”The Gulag Archipelago”, New York, 1973
 Anne Applebaum, ”Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps”, Penguin Books, London, 2004, p. 51
 Generals from Soviet Union
 COMPLETE GUIDE TO G. I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO (http://joes.propadeutic.com/2006.html)
 Israel News - Haaretz Israeli News source
 In memory of Solomon Mikhoels - 11 January, 2003 - English pravda.ru
 Stéphane Courtois, ”The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression”, Harvard University Press, 1999
 Lenin and the Jewish Question - by Naji Alloush - The Free Arab Voice
 Terra España - Noticias, Deportes, Entretenimiento y Estilo de Vida , http://holocaust.skeptik.net/misc/party.htm
 Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev, ”Let History Judge”, Trans. George Shriver, Columbia University Press, 1989, pp. 559-560
‘This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other... This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found.’
- Mikhail Bakunin, 1907, ‘Oeuvres’, Vol. 5, 5th Edition, P. V. Stock: Paris, pp. 243-244
Last edited by Karl Radl; 08-28-2013 at 07:43 PM.