Posted on 01/27/2003 3:10:30 PM PST by Ivan the Terrible
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."
As for Christianity, it formerly split when the Apostale James was murdered by a mob in Jerusalem.
That is one of the most ignorant statements I've ever heard. You don't loose your ethnicity by changing religion, your DNA doesn't magically change.
. And for the record, half the people killed in the concentration camps by the Nazies were Christians, mostly Poles.
1/9 Christian Poles died. 2/3 of European Jews were killed. That is a huge difference.
. 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
I have never claimed this.
Certainly the Roma/Gypsies suffered a similar fate.
Hebrews treated the minority Semaritans....who were also Jewish by religion.
Samaritans are not Jews by religion. They are followers of a closely related sect that began diverging in the 10th Century BCE, after the United Kingdom split into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. The North, dominated by the tribe of Ephraim began to change the common religion in ways influenced by neighboring Semetic religions.
Many from the Northern Kingdom fled to Judah after the Assyrians invaded.
Some picked up Jewish customs. Others kept their own. After the Babylonians exiled most citizens of the Southern Kingdom, the remaining Ephraimites and Judeans intermarried with settling Babylonians and a new cult emmerged with different sacred places, differet rituals, and a different name for God.
When the Jews returned from Babylonian exile, they found this new sect occupying much of the land. This was the cause of much hostility as both claimed to be the correct religion.
At any rate, Jews persecuted Samaritans rarely and only between 600BCE and 70 CE. Thereafter, Jews adn Samaritans made common cause against the Romans and Hellenistic colonizers. They were united int eh Bar Kokhba revolt of 135-136 and many more until the last one in 617CE.
Today, thanks to Byzantine Christian and Muslim subjugation, there are fewer than 10,000 Samaritans. They are not persecuted in Israel, but are persecuted by the Palestinians.
Naziism is a particularist nationalist socialism. Instead of class warfare, tehre was ethnic warfare. Being German or Non-German was the defining issue.
Thus the ethnic heritage, which the communist gave up, is irrelevent. On the other hand, the ethnic heritage, which the Nazi extolled is relevant.
I'm sorry taht you are blind to the differences between class, race, adn religion.
How about this, all those who killed Jews in Russia during Pogroms weren't Russians since Russians are Christian and murder is against the teachings of Christ.
That's silly. Christians have been killing Jews for Millenia, often under the direct authority of religious leaders. Try again.
The Slavophiles were Orthodox Christians.
You mean like the way Jews were killing Christians, when Christians were the minority? Maybe you are familiar with the history of St. Paul when he was Saul?
As for Communism, first off, early on, certain ethnic groups were primary targets, like Cossaks.
But I'd accept your arguement: Soviet Communists killed off people in horrendous numbers. However, the defining factor of communism is not nationalism, much less a particular nationalism. Communism is universalist.
if it wasn't a total reversal of your earlier claims that Jews were the primary or out of proportion targets...so which is it? Can't have it both ways.
As for the Nazies, they killed off quite a bit of their Prussian Aristocracy while they were at it too.
Circles of Socialism!
Iraq too!
:-(
Right....
Most Russian Jews were just feeding old Uncle Joes alligator, hoping it ate them last. It did.
As far as any of the Gulags being 'cushy', well that's just insane. Some may have been worse than others, but none of them were 'cushy' by any stretch of the imagination.
Me thinks thou dost protest too much.
L
As for Communism, first off, early on, certain ethnic groups were primary targets, like Cossaks.
Please include (and this is incomplete) the Ruthenians, Karelian Finns, Kalmyks, Krimchaks, Volga Germans, and Crimean Tatars (including the Jewish Karaylar).
But I'd accept your arguement: "Soviet Communists killed off people in horrendous numbers. However, the defining factor of communism is not nationalism, much less a particular nationalism. Communism is universalist."
The ideology was universalist. However, the communist leadership saw many minorities as enemies and persecuted them in excess to the general populations. Look at the deportations to Siberia of entire ethnic groups.
As for the Nazies, they killed off quite a bit of their Prussian Aristocracy while they were at it too.
The Prussian Aristocracy, being an artifact of the Second Reich, was a threat to them.
Most of the German officers involved in coup and assasination attempts were Junkers.
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