[Nachum]

"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."

All except for my Russian Jewish friends who were tortured or died in the camps.

[PaulJ]

"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 guess PC is not just a US phenomenon.

[Alouette]

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."

I read THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, and also THE FIRST CIRCLE, Solzhenitsyn's novel based on his own experience. He bragged that he was able to get his poor little dissident self assigned to an "island of paradise", a "Club Red" for scientists and academics. In the camps where he was kept, EVERYONE had it easy.

Here is a memoir of a Rabbi who survived the Gulag, and he did not have as comfy a vacation as Solzhenitsyn.

[Argus]

Solzhenitsyn's writings always need to be taken in their full context. His enemies have used selective quotation to accuse him of anti-Semitism before, without justification.

The fact that many of Lenin's collaborators in the Bolshevik Party, and in the Russian and European revolutionary movement generally, were of Jewish origin is indisputable. It's worth noting as a historical anomaly with readily identifiable causes. It is not anti-Semitic to point this out, unless one veers into Nazi ravings about "Judeo-Bolshevism". I doubt very much that this is Solzhenitsyn's thesis.

Now Stalin - there was a real anti-Semite.

[A. Pole]

"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."

Solzhenitsyn is fanatically committed to the truth, no matter if it is pleasant or not , or what are the consequences. I think that he believes that truth is the path to God. He must be a very difficult person in his private life.

[TexanToTheCore]

The participation of Jews in the prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary Bolshevism is well documented by Robert Conquest as well as others. Many Jews felt, as they do now, that they were the underdogs and tended to gravitate to underdog political movements. There is nothing new to this information.

[Bahbah]

"Yevgeny Satanovsky"

Not a very felicitous last name, IMHO.

[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

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.

Right. It would be like blaming the Germans for the Holocaust just because the Camp guards tended to be Germans. (ROFLMAO)

I believe that the Soviet Jews could be classified into 3 main groups: the Mensheviks who were the leftists non on Lenin's side (the Bolsheviks). Then, the Bolshevik Jews themselves were split between the followers of Trotsky who advocated spreading the revlutionary terror world-wide and the followers of Stalin who were happy with the 'go slow' method of fully terrorizing the Russian first. The Stalinists, as they happened to be in control until the 50's, tended not to be very kind with the Jews who seemed to be follwing Trotsky.

[eclectic]

He says that he firmly supports the state of Israel

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. He just wants all Jews to leave Mother Russia for Israel. His book is absolutely disgusting. I lost all respect for the bum

[Cicero]

In the early days, "progressive" Jews did play a leading part in the Soviet terror. Trotsky was a Jew. Litvinov was Jewish. So were many other key players, including members of the secret police. And it goes back all the way to the first Russian Revolutionaries who assassinated Tsar Nicholas II in the 19th century--also Jewish.

In Hungary, the murderous revolutionary Bela Kun and his followers were Jewish. The situation was not unlike what we see in America today, although much bloodier for both perpetrators and victims, with some Jews remaining loyal to Judaism and persecuted for it, and others seduced by the bloodthirsty, visionary left.

Ironically, these "progressive" Jews stirred up hatred of Jews among the Cossacks and others who suffered from revolutionary violence, and it was the religious Jews who got it in the neck, although they were entirely innocent, because they were much more visibly identifiable as Jews because of their dress.

The Communist party in the Soviet Union had a complicated relationship with Jews. In Stalin's late years certainly the Jews suffered as much as anyone else.

I am very much against antisemitism, but I also believe that we need to look at history squarely. And, needless to say, the fact that not all Jews were on the side of the victims should be an excuse for antisemitism.