Solzhenitsyn Book Infuriates Russian Jews

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's charge in his latest book that Jews were as much perpetrators of Soviet communist repression as they were its victims has infuriated Russian Jews, who say that the book is filled with inaccuracies.

One prominent Jewish leader told Britain's Guardian newspaper that the book was without merit.

"This is a mistake, but even geniuses make mistakes," Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress told the Guardian. "Richard Wagner did not like the Jews, but was a great composer. Dostoyevsky was a great Russian writer, but had a very sceptical attitude towards the Jews.

"This is not a book about how the Jews and Russians lived together for 200 years, but one about how they lived apart after finding themselves on the same territory. This book is a weak one professionally. Factually, it is so bad as to be beyond criticism. As literature, it is not of any merit."

In the book, "Two Hundred Years Together," Solzhenitsyn, 84, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 for being the first to expose the horrors of the Stalinist gulag [the chain of brutal Soviet prison camps where he was imprisoned], deals with one of the last taboos of the communist revolution: that Jews were as much perpetrators of the repression as its victims.

One charge that has Russian Jews angry was his claim that "If I would care to generalise, and to say that the life of the Jews in the camps was especially hard, I could, and would not face reproach for an unjust national generalisation. But in the camps where I was kept, it was different. The Jews whose experience I saw - their life was softer than that of others."

He then adds: "But it is impossible to find the answer to the eternal question: who is to be blamed, who led us to our death? To explain the actions of the Kiev cheka [secret police - forerunners of the KGB] only by the fact that two thirds were Jews, is certainly incorrect."

According to the Guardian, the book's title refers to the 1772 partial annexation of Poland and Russia which greatly increased the Russian Jewish population. Three chapters discuss the Jewish role in the revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia.

Solzhenitsyn argues that Russia must come to terms with the Stalinist and revolutionary genocides - and that its Jewish population should be as offended at their own role in the purges as they are at the Soviet power that also persecuted them.

"My book was directed to empathise with the thoughts, feelings and the psychology of the Jews - their spiritual component," he said. "I have never made general conclusions about a people. I will always differentiate between layers of Jews. One layer rushed headfirst to the revolution. Another, to the contrary, was trying to stand back. The Jewish subject for a long time was considered prohibited. Zhabotinsky [a Jewish writer] once said that the best service our Russian friends give to us is never to speak aloud about us."

DM Thomas, one of Solzhenitsyn's biographers, told the Guardian that he did not think the book was fuelled by anti-Semitism. "I would not doubt his sincerity. He says that he firmly supports the state of Israel. In his fiction and factual writing there are Jewish characters that he writes about who are bright, decent, anti-Stalinist people."

Professor Robert Service of Oxford University, an expert on 20th century Russian history, praised the book saying what he has read about it shows that Solzhenitsyn was "absolutely right".

While researching a book on Lenin, Prof Service told the Guardian that he came across details of how Trotsky, who was of Jewish origin, asked the politburo in 1919 to ensure that Jews were enrolled in the Red army. Trotsky said that Jews were disproportionately represented in the Soviet civil bureaucracy, including the cheka.

"Trotsky's idea was that the spread of anti-Semitism was [partly due to] objections about their entrance into the civil service. There is something in this; that they were not just passive spectators of the revolution. They were part-victims and part-perpetrators."

Less complimentary was Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB) who told the Guardian that he failed to see the need for Solzhenitsyn's reopening past wounds at this time.

"The question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD and cheka were serving ideas of social change," he explained.

"If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it will increase the passions of anti-Semitism, which has deep roots in Russian history. I think it is better not to discuss such a question now."

I think you are refering to Tsar Alexander II who was asasinated March 1, 1881 by a revolutionary. It is noteworthy that Tsar Alexander freed the Russian serfs in 1861, a few year before the emancipation proclamation.

Tsar Nicholas II was murdered along with his family (wife, son and 4 daughters) in the basement of the Ipatyev house in Ykaterinburg in 1918 on the orders of Lenin. Tsar Nicholas II and his family were glorified as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (the free Russian Church established after the bolsheviks came to power) in 1981. The Moscow Patriarchate glorified the royal family as martyrs in 2000. The Moscow Patriarchate still has at its head a former KGB agent (Drozdov) in the person of Patriarch Alexei II.

One cannot be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semite, but anti-Zionism certainly cannot be equalled with anti-Semitism! Solzh belongs to that rare species of anti-Semites, who are also Zionists.

The room is spinning!!! That was a dirty trick, Askel!! :)

Jews in this case has nothing to do with religion and is meant as a nationality.

1. A Jewish nation does not exist without a Jewish people. Those who wish to destroy the religion, destroy the people. They are anti-Semites.
2. Shall we blame Georgians for Stalin, Tatars for Lenin, and Russians for Khruschev?

Krushev by the way is Ukrainian. You'd be surprised how many non religious or moderitly religious Jews don't see your view as the defining one. Rather like saying if Germans aren't Christian then they aren't Germans. Try this on....there used to be a lot of Jewish Arabs and the Simarions were also Jewish.

By the way, how can Jews have been the dispraportionate victems of anti-Kulak campeigns when kulak's (fists) were the middle class farmers of the old Empire, almost all Russians/Ukrainians and Belarussians?

I was a little sloppy here. I used Kulak instead of the more general term for non-proletariates.
Jews were Kulaks, but far more were petty bourgious or shopkeepers and were thus all killed off. However, Jewish landowners were specifically targeted in large numbers.

Nazis targeted Jews, Gypsies, and eventually slavs based on a race-based ideology. Nazism was a nationalist ideology for Germans.

Communists, many of whom were Jewish, targetted all reactionary elements, some of which were Jewish. Jewishness was not the defining factor, communism was.
Many other non-Russian minorities were disporportionately involved both in the party and as victims.

The truth is taht Jews were targeted and but for the death of Stalin in 1953, Soviet Jews would have experienced teh same fate as Kulmyks and Crimean Tatars as the "doctor's plot" played out.

Your use of an article from Hoffman-info.com, a Holocaust Denial site, taht quote the anti-semite Sobran doesn't help your case.
You are spreading propoganda about "Judeao-Bolshevists", some of which is actually based on communist policy of blaming Jews for communist atrocities.

Krushev by the way is Ukrainian.
I believe that he was an ethnic Russian living in the Ukraine. There are millions of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

You'd be surprised how many non religious or moderitly religious Jews don't see your view as the defining one.

What, they equate Judaism with anti-Jewish philosopies?
They may as well equate Chjistianity and Communism.

Rather like saying if Germans aren't Christian then they aren't Germans.

Ridiculous. Gothic peoples were Goths before and after they converted to Christianity. Their racial heritage is the defining factor, not their race. (Think Turks. There are Muslim, Christian, and Manachean Turks)
The Nazis were post-Christian, but overtly German. They mixed racial pseaudo science with revisionist history and occultist Aryanism.

Try this on....there used to be a lot of Jewish Arabs and the Simarions were also Jewish.

43% of Israeli Jews are Sephardic or Mizrahi. They are almost indistinguishable from Arabs.
My Second cousin married a Yemeni Jew. She looks Arab, speaks Arabic perfectly, and the wedding included Arab-Yemeni customs.

Likewise, it is dificult for outsiders to tell Juwuri from Christian or Muslim Kavkaz peoples. A Kurdish Jew and a Kurdish Muslim are the same in one generation if each losses religion.

Totally correct in saying that Jews in the camps had it easier? That is utter nonsense.

Here is the offending quote: "But in the camps where I was kept, it was different. The Jews whose experience I saw - their life was softer than that of others."

Apparently you know more about what Mr. Solzhenitsyn personally observed than he himself does?

Personally, I don't know whether I believe or disbelieve his claim. But it is, after all, an eyewitness testimony - which may or may not be a lie, or a false memory, or something. But the article tries to make it seem like he made the charge that all Jews in all camps had it easier, and from this quote I don't think that's true.

First, Goths and Austro Goths have nothing to do with Germanics, you are mistaking an architectural style with a race of people. Second, what do you call Christian Jews, or did you miss the point that Christ and all of his Apostales were Jews? As are a lot of my father's relatives, Orthodox Christian Jews....which means they are Jews by race not religion. Or what about Gentiles who convert to Judism? Are they now ethnically Jewish? Believe it or not, even the Hebrews were once pagan.

Sorry to point something out there, the Jewish landowners did not get special treatment because they were jews, they were killed by fellow jews who were running the state terror organs and were killing off any ethnic middle class. Jews were not the sole or the majority of the victems here and no matter how this is turned it will never seem that way. Whole villages of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians were simply exterminated for resisting collectivism. And for the record, half the people killed in the concentration camps by the Nazies were Christians, mostly Poles. Jews have suffered, but to say they have some kind of monopoly on being persecuted and are innocent of persecution is ludicrous to the extreme....abserve the comments of how the Hebrews treated the minority Semaritans....who were also Jewish by religion.

"they are no more blameless then any other people. All races of man have sinned against God, to include the Jews....all races of men have produced evil sociopaths, to deny this is reverse racism."

Thank you for this post and for the others here who are holding back the assiduously enforced concept that only the Jews are blameless. The Tenach reveals that the One the Jew claims to serve did not think so by listing the trangressions and firmly attaching the names of the transgressors whether they were of the Kingdom of Judah or the Kingdom of Israel to whom the birthright was given.

What is happening today is the most enormous perpetration of reverse racism which has ever existed and the means is named pc in which the most hallowed words are "anti-semetic" and "holocaust". What is to be avoided at all costs is truth because truth takes us out of the bracket of privilege or standing above everyone else.

Strangely, the only reason the Jew merits any standing is because of The Lord's promise to an initially insignificant son of Judah named David. And one of the most galvanizing and exemplary things about David was that he honored truth and bowed to its' discipline EVEN IF it diminished him.

These days it is rare to find that quality of character. It's to be expected that an Alexander Solzhenitsyn is despised. David, standing in his place, would likely be reviled as well in this climate.

The "Jew" merits standing for the same reason any race or person merits standing if he serves the Lord. Jews, religious jews, serve the Lord as do religious Christians. A race of people is not to blame for the actions of the individuals, but the individuals are not to be exempt of their actions for their race. Such is a correct view of humans, we are all individuals and racial dictates are a creation of weak minds and unsecure psychies.

Would you have reacted the same if it was about Germans or Russians or Kazaks or Bashkirs in the camps?

The honest answer is no. I would not have reacted the same. -However, I would fully expect Russians, Kazaks, or Bashkirs to say the same as I if it (the cheap shot) was directed towards them.

First, Goths and Austro Goths have nothing to do with Germanics, you are mistaking an architectural style with a race of people.

I am not making a mistake here. Goths were the common name for the Eastern German peoples.
http://search.britannica.com/search?ref=B04319&query=Goth

Second, what do you call Christian Jews, or did you miss the point that Christ and all of his Apostales were Jews?
I won't speak to Jesus, as I will annoy Christians.
As far as his Apostles and other early Christians, they belonged to a diverging Sect, which became another religion over a period of 200 years.

As are a lot of my father's relatives, Orthodox Christian Jews....which means they are Jews by race not religion.

They were Jews by birth, but are no longer Jews. You can no more be a Christian and Jew than a Christian and Muslim.

Or what about Gentiles who convert to Judism? Are they now ethnically Jewish?

Gentiles who convert are Jews by religion, not ethnicity. However, they are accepted as Israelites without a tribe.

Believe it or not, even the Hebrews were once pagan.

I am aware of this. However it is religion that became the defining character.

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