Trudy Gold
Jewish Responses to Revolution

Trudy Gold | Jewish Responses to Revolution | 07.13.22

- Good evening everyone, and welcome to you who have joined on this ridiculously hot evening in London. And I had to put in an extra session this week because there is just so much to say about the Jews in Russia that I just wanted to give it, I suppose, more attention. Anyway, this is a very, very interesting subject to me. The majority of Jews were never communists, but as I’ve said to you many times before, the problem was that so many of the leaders were Jewish. And you very much got the notion, if you read the reports of the time that certainly the enemies of the revolution really did believe that all Jews were revolutionaries. The reality was that when revolution broke out in 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution, the majority of Jews were against it. Having said that, what happened in the Civil War, to give you a beautiful quote, “It wasn’t that they loved Mordecai, it is that they hated Haman,” because those events in the Russian Civil War of 1919 to 1921 catapulted so many Jews into actually supporting the revolution. And I’ll come onto that in a minute, but just to refresh your memories as to the anti-Semitism of the regime, I’m going to read a letter that Nicholas II wrote to his mother.

You will remember that when William talked about Nicholas II, he said that, “Obviously, if you’re looking at from a Jewish point of view, you are not going to buy the sweet, saintly Saint Nicholas.” And this letter is after those terrible pogroms of 1905. This is a letter dated October the 27th, 1905. “I’ll begin by saying the situation is better than it was a week ago. In the first days, the subversives raised their heads, but a strong reaction setting quickly.” In fact, if you go onto the next slide, Lauren, I think I’ve written it up for them. Oh, no, sorry, sorry, go back. “In the first days, the subversives raised their heads, but a strong reaction set in quickly and a whole mass of loyal people suddenly made their power felt. The result was obvious. And what would one expect in our country? The impertinence of the socialists and the revolutionaries has angered the people once more because nine tenths of the troublemakers are Jews, the people whose anger is toned against them. That’s how the pogroms happened. It is amazing how they took place simultaneously in all the towns of Russia and Siberia. Cases as far apart as Tom’s, Sympheral, and Odessa showed clearly what an infuriated mob can do.

They surrounded the houses where the revolutionary had taken refuge, set fire to them and killed everyone trying to escape.” So that gives you a really interesting notion of how the conservative autocrat Nicholas regarded the Jews, and so did the majority of his conservative ministers. And remember, he believes he rules by divine right. And as William told you, he probably would’ve been okay if he was managing a small, little estate and could be the kind of monarch that his cousin George V was with absolutely no power. But by the time you get to 1914, it is a disaster for Russia. And by 1900, Jews, I’m talking now about within the extremist parties. Having said that the majority of Jews were not revolutionaries, what I’m going to try and show you is just how it was perceived. And by the 1890s, Jews made up 70% of all men in the People’s Will Party. That was the real revolutionary party that of course had assassinated Alexander II and 28% of all female members of the party. It’s fascinating how many Jewish women were drawn to revolutionary parties throughout Europe. 33% of all the female defendants at political trials, and 15% at all the male members of political tribes were Jewish.

So in those trials of revolutionaries, it’s completely, it’s so startling. And according to the commander of the Siberian Military District, and of course that’s where most of them were actually sent to General Sukhorin, he says, “A 4,525 political deportees in January, 1905, 41% were Russian, and 37% were Jewish.” And look at the… Think of the difference in population. Yes, the Jewish population between 1897 and 1910, the Jewish urban population had grown exponentially by over a million people, and there were 5 million Jews in Russia at the end of the century. Not taken into account, of course, how many left, but it gives you a notion of just how prominent the Jews were in these movements. When the Social Democratic Party was founded in the empire, it’s the Bund which we’ve already talked about. The first Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party was actually the Bund. It was a Bund initiative. And at the Party Congress in 1903 in London, 40% of those there were Jewish.

And also Vilma, which was such a Jewish city, was the main conduit for smuggling illegal books and planning escapes. Also, the other point to make, and I’m sure most of you know about this, and many of you would’ve studied it, many of the revolutionaries from country to country were Jewish, and also some of them had millionaire relatives who helped them. For example, the American soap magnet, Joseph Fells. He was involved in funding quite a lot of the congresses and a man called Gelfand, better known as Parvus, himself a millionaire, is going to be the man who arranged Lennon’s train to come back to Russia. So, when war breaks out in 1914, over 500,000 Jews were frog-marched into the Russian interior. Because if you think of the battlefield, the one thing that the Czar felt he couldn’t trust was the Jews. So men had of course been conscripted into the army. So it’s the old, it’s women, and children. And over a hundred thousand of them died as a result of the deprivation of being pushed in the starvation, the horror of being pushed back into the Russian interior. And let us have a look at the first slide that I want to show you. This is actually a mayday oration.

This is the extremists of the young Jews. “We Jews repudiate our national holidays and festivals which are useless for human society. We link ourselves with the armies of socialism and adopt their holidays. Our holidays, which we have inherited from our ancestors, will vanish together with the old system. The torch of socialism will not descend from heaven on Mount Sinai in thunder and lightning, and the Messiah will not come riding on a white horse.” Now, the majority of these young people came from a hustler background. Important to remember that the bulk of Jewry within the Russian Empire are still traditional. They’re either traditional Orthodox or they are Hasidic. And these ideas don’t permeate. Having said that, what is certainly true is that the majority of towns where there was Jews, did have a Marxist study centre. Ironically, after the revolution and the appalling Civil War, the only Jewish group that supported the Czar were a group of ultra-orthodox who believed that that could combat. If you think about it, socialism, Zionism, and liberalism, because to them, that was the greatest threat. Can we see the next comment?

This is Dewitt, who of course was one of Nicholas’s ministers when Herzl visited Russia. He’s talking about the anti-semitism and he admits, “I think the fault is with our government. The Jews are too oppressed.” And if you could go on to the next one, now, this is Molotov. Of course, Molotov, a very important figure in Soviet politics. Think the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement that I’ll be talking about later on in the course. And this is his autobiography, which he wrote in 1991. And this is what he had to say, “Almost all the Mensheviks were Jews. Even amongst the Bolsheviks, the leaders, there were many Jews. Generally Jews are an oppositional nation.” There is an explanation. “Oppositional and revolutionary elements formed a higher percentage amongst Jews than Russians insulted, injured, or oppressed. They were more versatile. They penetrated everywhere. They were more active than the Russians.” And let me say from the beginning this is another argument that if you take groups of young Jews, and we are probably, we’re only talking, I’m not including the Bund in this, which was huge.

But if you are talking about the revolutionary parties, you are only talking about a few thousand people. As I said, the majority of them had come from Huskler backgrounds. They’d left their Judaism behind. They’d go into the outside world, they find it wanting. I always think of that great quote of Rosa Luxemburg, who of course led the revolution in Berlin, a woman from Poland. And she said, in a letter to a friend, she said, “There’s no room in my heart for Jewish suffering.” What she actually meant by that is, “I can’t suffer just for the Jews. I have to suffer for everybody.” So, important to remember, these characters do come in the main from a huskler background. And what I want to do now is to… Can we go on to the next quote, please? This is a member of the Douma, and he’s talking about the expulsions that I told you that happened in 1914-15. “I can testify with what incredible cruelty the expulsion of the Jews from the province of Raden took place. The whole population was driven out within a few hours during the night.

At 11:00 PM, the population were told they had to leave. Everyone found at daybreak would be hanged. Old men, invalids, that should be paralytics, had to be carried on people’s backs because there were no vehicles. The Jews were treated like criminals. In trains, one carriage was completely sealed. When opened, most were half-dead, 16 had scarlet fever, and one had typhus.” So this is when Czarist government is at its most cruel. And of course, it’s to fall in 1917. What I’m going to look at now with you is some of the important figures in the movement that ironically… I can say this until I go purple. These people have thrown their Jewishness aside. They really do believe in the dream. They really believe that if all the barriers are crumbled, and that each has according to their need, that the means of production is shared, that humanity will come to its senses and all the divisions between people are removed. This is really Isaac Deutsche’s non-Jewish Jews, I guess. So I think I must keep on saying that to you. And the first character, though I want to look at is Pavel Axelrod. Can we go onto the next slide, please?

Here we go. Pavel Axelrod, 1850 to 1928. And I’m going to give you a little of their background so you understand the world they came from. Very, very poor. They came from, what is today, from Belarus, Mogilev. He was the son of an innkeeper that was very much a Jewish profession. And the father lost his money. The family go to the poor house, and he had to work from very young. And he already becomes politicised. He comes to maturity in the early years of Alexander II’s Reign. And then of course you have the total disappointments. By the time he’s 16 years old though, he’s already read the work of Ferdinand Lassalle. Who was he? Ferdinand Lassalle was a brilliant man of Jewish origin. He was a brilliant lawyer, and he founded the German Social Democratic party. So he reads his writings, and a group of wealthy Jews, they saw that he was very, very bright, and they managed to get him a place at the University of Kiev. What happens to him when he goes to Kiev? He organises political meetings.

And in 1874, he was one of a group of a hundreds of idealistic students who left the city to work with the peasants. The experiment totally fails. Alexander puts the lid back on on all the freedoms. So what does he do? He emigrates to Geneva, and he plays around with all sorts of ideas. He plays with anarchism, he plays with Bundism. He’s looking, he’s looking, he’s looking. In 1875, he returns to Russia. He marries the daughter of another Jew, a man called Isaac Kaminer, who was a very wealthy man. And he actually was a Jewish, he was a Jewish Ukrainian Hebrew language poet. He was a doctor, he was a satirist. And it’s actually, Axelrod always said he first came across Socio-Marxism in Kaminer’s home. And for a while though, after the pogroms of 1881, he joined Hibat Tzion. So he’s playing with all these kind of ideas, and to provide money for his family, he goes to work, he develops actually a drink called kefir, which is a fermented milk drink. He becomes very successful. Offices all over Switzerland, which gives him a steady income. And he then, after the assassination of Alexander II, again, he changes, his views change. And he with Plekhanov and a fascinating woman called Vera Zasulich, she was one of the daughters of an impoverished noble.

They came together and they created in Switzerland, a group called Emancipation in Labour, and it’s the first Russian Marxist group. And it’s very, very important because they produced lots of letters. They produced lots of articles. And what they basically believed that a revolution of the peasants could overthrow Czarism and introduce socialism. Now, what was so important with this group is that this group becomes, if you like, the teachers of Lenin, Trotsky, Kautsky, Tsederbaum, Bernstein, all come under his influence. So he is terribly, terribly important. He goes to the Social Democrat Conference in London. He sides with the Menshevik. Now, William explained to you the division between the two. Originally he was wanted to be… He was seen to be the leader, but he later cedes that to another Jew called Julius Martov. When I talk about Jew, please don’t forget they themselves don’t see themselves as Jews anymore. And the other point to remember is the majority of these people who are playing around with socialist ideas, be they Menshevik or Bolshevik, they were emigres. And they lived a sort of international life, often paid for by wealthy fellow travellers, and they knew each other. There’s this incredible network. Also, they very much liked the Bohemian life, sexual freedom, romance, conspirator, intrigue. And as I said, one of the salient points of them is of course, that they offered equality to women.

So, let me turn to the next character, Lev Deutch. Now these are characters. These are, if you like, the mentors of the Russian Revolution. Again, he was the son of a Jewish merchant and a Russian mother. By the age of 19, he was already in a Rodney group. You know, People’s Will. He becomes a political activist. He believed in the use of violence. By 1880, he’s wanted, he has to get to Geneva. And there he studies Marx. He goes into more, more, more detail. And he’s another member of the labour group with Axelrod and Vera Zasulich and Plekhanov. So these are the characters who really created all. So it’s important that of the four who become the mentors, two are in fact of Jewish birth. Not important to them, but it’s going to become very important to the enemies of communism because one of the things I want to lay down once and for all is that one of the main conduits of anti-Semitism in the 20th century is going to be the association of the Jews with communism and with revolution. His job was smuggling literature into Russia.

He was arrested in Germany in 1884, sent back to Russia. He’s deported, served 13 years in exile in Siberia. And of course it was the University of Marxism because he shares his cell with other Marxists, and of course they promulgate all their ideas. He never supported the October Revolution. He called it a “Bolshevik misadventure.” And he later withdrew from politics. And the last one of this little group I want to talk about, can we go on please? Is Julius Martov. Now, he was a fascinating man. His real name was Osip Tsederbaum. He was already a political activist as a teenager. He rejects his grandfather, who’s quite a wealthy man, wants to send him to America. He goes to Vilnius. He sees all the horror of the poverty. There was a famine in the area. It makes him a Marxist. And he wrote this, “My subjective political romanticism was dwarfed before the philosophical and sociological height of Marxism.”

He becomes a very close colleague of Lenin. And in 1895, he is there in the league for the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes. He organises a successful strike in Russia. He’s exiled to Siberia, forced to leave. He joins with Lenin and works with him on Iskra, The Spark. They worked on it mainly in London. Those of you who come from England round the back of King’s Cross station, you will find a Blue Plaque where Lenin and Krupskaya stayed. He was one of… Although he joined the social democratic party, he was always on good terms with the Bund. Important to remember, they’re all after the same souls. It was said of him by Lenin, “He was too good and intellectual to be a successful politician.” He joins with the Mensheviks, he becomes their leader. And he believed, he was horrified by the October Revolution. Blood bleeds blood. We witnessed the growth of the Civil War, the growing bestiality of men engaged in it.

In 1920, completely disillusioned, Menshevism was outlawed by Lenin, so was the Bund. And he left, and he died in Germany in 1923. And now let me give you a little bit more history background, and then I can get onto these other characters. Can we see the next chat please, if you don’t mind? There you have Alexander Gelfand, better known as Parvus. Israel Lazarevich Gelfand, he was born in a little shtetl in Belarus. His father was a locksmith. They moved to Odessa. He went to a gymnasium and then to Switzerland. A brilliant mind. Most of these characters had completely sharp intellects. Switzerland, he’s exposed to the writings of Herzen, of course, that liberal socialist Russian. He goes to Basel University, PhD in political economy. Can you just imagine what it must have been like at these Swiss universities? You have a very disproportionate number of young Jewish intellectuals. Bundists, Zionists, think about it. Where did Weismann study? He studied at the University of Geneva. Can you just imagine the atmosphere between all these characters, all fighting for the soul of each other.

Now, he was an incredible character, Parvus. He moved to Germany. He became very close to Rosa Luxemburg. He met Lenin in Munich and encouraged him to publish Iskra. In 1905, we find him at the revolution, the phoney revolution. He was arrested with Trotsky, and he was visited in prison by Rosa Luxemburg, exiled to three years in Siberia. That’s when his career becomes fascinating. He moves to Turkey, he creates an arms trading business. He becomes a financial and political advisor to the Young Turk Revolution. He edited their daily paper and dealt with good deliveries to the Turkish army. He is a real wheeler dealer. Also, somebody should really make a film about this man. He becomes a business partner both with Krupp, and also he was an intelligence asset for the British. In Turkey, he became close to the German ambassador. And it’s Parvus, as early as 1915, he actually presented to the German military a 20 page plan, quote, “A preparation for massive political strikes in Russia.”

What he is about? He wants revolution in Russia. Germany and Russia are not ally, of course, they’re opposed to each other. There’s a horrible war going on. And what he thought was, he worked it out. If he could smuggle the revolutionaries into Russia, then perhaps… Remember he has this plan in 1915, then in fact, perhaps the revolution could happen. And of course it’s during the first revolution of February, March, depending on which calendar you want to take. 1970, when you have the liberal Kerensky in government, the Germans finally take his plan. Why? Because Kerensky’s government was a liberal government with a dream of emulating the sort of democracy of Britain without the Czar, but it was a patriotic government that wanted to keep in the war. And just think of the first line of the “Communist Manifesto,” “Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

If there’s a war, if Kerensky’s group keep Russia in the war, this will go on and on. But if the Bolsheviks take power, then they pull Russia out of the war. And that is exactly what the Germans bought. And it was Parvus who organised the train that took Lenin and his compatriots back into Russia. And as William explained to you, they managed with not that many people to take control. Now, just continuing with him, he lost his reputation in Germany. He’s a sponsor of Bolshevism, but he spent his last years in Berlin. They saw him too much as a wheeler dealer. And he wouldn’t really help the Spartacus in Berlin. So what happens to him? He spends his last years in a 32 room mansion on what’s known as Peacock Island on the river Havel near Wannsee, and that’s where he wrote his memoir. So an absolutely fascinating character. So the train goes into Russia, of course, enter the Bolsheviks. April the seventh, 1917, it pulls into a station on the Swiss border. There are 32 people on board, 10 women, two children, and 20 men. Alexander Guchkov, who is the Russian Minister of War in the provisional government, extreme elements consisting of Jews and imbeciles.

In fact, they were 19 Bolsheviks, five Mensheviks, and six of the Bund. Now let’s go on and have a look at some of those characters on the train. There you have Lev Kamenev. Lev Kamenev became… Born Leo Rosenfeld, he was Trotsky’s brother-in-law. I’m not going to talk too much about Trotsky because obviously, he is going to deserve a complete session on his own. And I’m going to do something very naughty in August. I’m going to twin him with Jabotinsky, and we’re going to see what we do with it. So he’s, as I said, he’s born Leo Rosenfeld, Trotsky’s brother-in-law, and he is going to become the first head of the Soviet state 1923-24. Can we go on please? There you see Grigory Zinoviev, best born as Hirsh Apfelbaum, son of a Ukrainian Jew, studied philosophy and literature. He becomes head of the Communist International. There was a city named for him, Zinovyevsk. Now, of course, later on, the two of them are going to create a cabal. The two Jews, Zinoviev and Kamenev are going to create a cabal with Stalin after Lenin’s death to oust Trotsky.

They were rewarded in 1936, when of course they were assassinated by Stalin. Well, killed by Stalin in the terrible great purges. You know, it’s terribly difficult when you are dealing with a character like Stalin. And I’m coming on to him in my next session, because you are dealing with a man who according to Russian figures was responsible for the deaths of 40 million people. It’s beyond imagination. So it’s a very tough area to talk about. Anyway, let’s come on to another character on the train. There you have Grigori Sokolnikov. Now, he was born Yankele Brilliant. He was the son of a Jewish doctor. PhD, a member of the Comintern. A very, very important figure in Soviet Russia, executed by Stalin in 1939. Karl Radek, next one. Can we see Karl Radek, Yakov Sverdlov? Oh, sorry, I’ve got them round the wrong way. Yakov Sverdlov, he’s a fascinating character.

Born Solomon Sverdlov, his father was already a revolutionary. And he very much, he’s converted to Christianity though after his wife’s death. He was very close to Maxim Gorky, the writer. And he becomes chairman of the Russian Central Committee, 1917 to 1919. A city Sverdlov was named after him. And he died in the pandemic of 1919. And he was the one who probably gave the order for the assassination of the Romanovs, although it would’ve come from Lenin. We actually have the evidence that he discussed it with Trotsky. So that is Sverdlov. And can we go on please? For some reason I don’t have… Now there you have Karl Radek. He was born Karol Sobelsohn. He came from a Lithuanian Jewish family. He edited the party paper. He was very close to Trotsky. And when Trotsky’s appointed the Commissar for foreign affairs, he becomes his deputy. And of course, he meets a terrible end in 1939. Right. Can we go on? Karl Radek. Adolph Joffe, now, he wasn’t on the train, but I wanted to give you a little… I wanted to give you, bring him into your attention now, because I will be referring to him. He made his way to Russia in another method. Adolph Joffe was actually a Karaite, which is a very, very interesting.

He becomes Trotsky’s… He’s very close to Trotsky, he’s becomes his secretary. And it’s Adolph Joffe with Trotsky that is going to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which brings Russia out of the war. So you’ll have a group of individuals who are incredibly important in all of this. So that’s the picture I need to give you. So can we go on please? And there you see him, the daddy of them all. Lev Davidovich Bronstein, Commissar for Foreign Affairs. It was suggested by Lenin that he takes the position of home affairs. And he said, “Don’t be silly. Don’t let it happen. You know, that will cause much, too much trouble.” And he is the man who is going to create the Red Army. He was a brilliant organiser. He was by far the greatest intellectual, well, maybe as great as Lenin, but he was an absolutely fascinating individual. And of course, the great intellectual is going to be completely outmanoeuvred by whom? By the Wiley Stalin. And with the help of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin has managed, he managed to oust him from all positions.

But whilst Lenin’s alive, he is the man who not only creates, he reorganises the Red Guard into a Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. He appoints political commissars to each unit of the Red Army to maintain morale and loyalty. And he then went in for the mandatory conscription of the peasantry. He turned out to be a brilliant strategist. And of course, the minute the war is over, the French, the British, and the Americans, and the Japanese send troops into Russia to try and defeat the Red Army. And it’s the brilliance of Trotsky, because the whole empire falls apart. You’ve got to imagine, in Ukraine, there is a movement for Ukrainian independence. There are anarchists, there’s the White Army. And who makes up the White Army? Czarist officers, royalists, anyone who was against the revolution. So there’s the White Army, there’s Nestor’s Black Army, which are the anarchists. You have the Polish army, and you have Poland’s going for independence. And you have the Ukrainian army. It is absolutely catastrophic. Can we see the next quote, please?

Yes, this is from the great historian Simon Dubnow, and he says it all. And of course he dies. He is murdered by the Nazis when he’s 80 years old in Vilma in 1941. And this is what he has to say, “We shall never be forgiven for the share that the Jewish speculators of the revolution have taken in the Bolshevik terror. The Jewish fellow workers of Lenin eclipse even him. The Smolney Institute, the headquarters of the Petrograd Revolution is secretly called Y Central.” Later this will be talked about. “And anti-Semitism will be even deeper.” So think about it. It’s Trotsky who signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Joffe. And I think that is one of the most potent pictures. If you think about it, these two bearded Jews signing with whom? The German high command. And when I gave my presentation on the protocols, I said, “How did the protocols really come West?” When the White Army is finally defeated as the Germans move out, they allow so many of those officers to actually go on the trains back into Germany, and they bring with them the protocols of the elders of Zion.

So it’s that period of civil war, which really go back to that quote I gave you at the beginning. “It wasn’t that they loved Mordecai, it was because they hated Haman.” Because the Civil War was one… The show swallows up the horrors of the Civil War. But the Civil War from a Jewish point of view, from anyone’s point of view, look, Russia’s imploded, the Czar is assassinated, the whole country… When there is revolution, and I think of the size of Russia. All these people going for independence, all with different kinds of means. In the Ukraine, a Cossack leader, Symon Petliura between November, 1918, during the Civil War in the Ukraine, there are over 1000 separate pogroms and military actions in over 500 different locations. There’s now a debate on the number of deaths. Geoffrey Vidick has written a brilliant book on this. And I had the pleasure of interviewing him on Lockdown actually last year. He puts the figure as high up as a hundred thousand, and about 600,000 were forced to flee. About two thirds of Jewish houses and shops were completely destroyed.

Petliura’s army, they are also killed by the armies of the anarchists. And in the early 20th century, remember, in this area of the Ukraine, there are over 3 million Jews in the area. In many of the small towns, Jews made up a third of the population. Yiddish was their language. They were artisans, they were shopkeepers, they were petty merchants. And it was one of Europe’s most poor regions. And in the countryside, Jews were more of a rarity. They were employed to manage the estates of the nobility. Remember that’s why they’d gone into Ukraine in the first place when it had been conquered by the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. And they ran the inns, so… And also, another point about Ukraine, and I think it’s very important for those of you who are fascinated by what’s going on, and that terrible tragedy. In the East, they were Russian Orthodox. They had a metropolitan.

In the West, they had communion with the Pope, then known as unions or Greek Catholics. So there’s a great religious divide. In the West, they turned more to the Habsburgs and to the poles. In the east, they turned more to Russia. And also what had been worked out in the end of the 19th century, the beginning of a Ukrainian national movement. For example, Shevchenko, who is their most important poet in 1841, his epic poem on the Haidamakas. Now the Haidamakas were a group of Cossacks who’d murdered the Jews in the 1780s. In Galatzia, of course, the Borderlands, a socialist writer called Yvonne France wrote popular stories about hardworking Ukrainian peasants and also the hardworking oil workers who are being exploited by the Jewish manipulators. So there’s so much anti-Jewish trope in Slavic literature, and the innkeepers are blamed for the peasants’ drunkenness. And also something else that was written about in this literature that sometimes for porn, Jews held church keys and holy relics. So it gives you a notion that the sort of hatred that can be whipped up. And also the Jews were completely baffling to these Orthodox churchgoers.

So once there is a war situation, a civil war situation, when all the constraints disappear, you have this terrible, terrible blood bath. Jews lived apart from the peasants, they might have performed the service industries from the peasants. And frankly, when society was under control, relations were peaceable. But once, when things go wrong, everything blows. And also the advent of the railways, the development of the leather factories transformed the impoverished towns. And also who was a… And many of the peasants hated this. So who are they associating the railways with? With the Jews. And it also created a new class of wealthy Jews. So as you see, I’ve given you the example of the Ukraine where you see law and order completely disintegrate. And the Cossack leader Petliura, under him, his men, in fact, there’s a big debate as to whether Petliura was the monster, that at the time he was thought to be. Because what happens to Petliura is, his revolution fails, he flees to Paris. And in 1926, he is shot by a young Jew called Sholem Schwarzbard.

And in the trial, Schwarzbard manages to prove because… He managed to prove that Petliura was… His forces were responsible for killing over 15 members of his own family. So as a result of that, it was justified, the homicide, and he was freed. And it also must be said that between 1918 and 1921, about 1 million Ukrainians died through famine, disease, violence. Remember I’m talking Jewish history, I’m looking at its inside-out history. From a Ukrainian point of view, it was a terrible, terrible time. They lost 20% of their population, the bloodlands, the shattering of empire. And of course, the Jews become the perfect scapegoats. Now, what else happened? Let’s talk now about the Whites, General Denikin. General Denikin, who was the leader of the command, the Whites. He had a lot of support from Winston Churchill, because Winston Churchill, he wrote to a colleague, “Bolshevism must be strangled at birth.”

Now, of course, his army is going to be defeated. He settles in Paris. Later on, he begs the allies not to repatriate Soviet prisoners of war after the second World War. He goes to America in 1960. In 1945, he’s buried with full military honours in Detroit. And in 2005, at the wish of his daughter and the blessing of Putin, his remains were transferred to the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. An extract from his diary was used by Putin in May, 2009, which I think you’ll find very interesting. When Putin visited the monastery and he stopped at the tomb of Denikin, who he considered to be a hero, he explained, he used quotes from Denikin’s diary explaining the relationship between great and little Russia, either in other words, the Ukraine. And Denikin had written, “Nobody should be allowed to interfere between us. It is only Russia’s right.” So it’s important to know this period of history because if you know it, you get a much better understanding of what the Ukraine today is all about.

And I’m not saying, look, I think what Putin is doing in the Ukraine is totally indefensible, but from the point of view of a Russian nationalist, Ukraine is Russian. And it goes back all the way back to Kiev, to the notion Kiev, remember Muscovite Kiev to this notion. And for so many centuries, it was part of the Czarist empire. And then after the Civil War, the majority of it went into Russia. It’s only after the collapse of communism that it emerges. Khrushchev allowed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Remember, he comes from the Ukraine. He allowed it as an entity within the communist world. But the point is, that’s what Putin believes. And he quotes, ironically, he quotes Denikin. Now, in fact, we know that Churchill, remember he’s committing troops. He’s very worried about the anti-Semitism. This is from a British war correspondent, John Ernst Hodgson. “I had not been with Denikin for more than a month before I was forced to the conclusion that the Jew represented a very big element in Russian upheaval.”

The officer’s men laid practically all the blame for their country’s troubles on the Hebrews. They held that the whole cataclysm had been engineered by some great and secret society of international Jews who in the pay and up the orders of Germany had seized the psychological moment and snatched the reins of government. All the figures and facts that were available seemed to lend colour to this contention. No less than 82% of Commissars were known to be Jews. The fierce and implacable Trotsky who shared an office with Lenin, ironically, it came out that Lenin’s grandfather was Jewish. A man called Israel Brand Krupskaya… After Lenin’s death, Krupskaya, his wife, wanted it made public, and Stalin never allowed it to happen. Of course, it all comes out after the collapse of communism, when of course the Jews were blamed for the revolution. Okay, so let me go back. No less than 82% of Commissars were known to be Jews, the fierce and implacable Trotsky. And of course he’s their great enemy because he’s the leader of the Red Army, going around on his train, a brilliant orator, whipping up the troops. Trotsky, being a yiddisha, whose real name was Bronstein, amongst Denikin’s offices.

This idea was an obsession of such terrible bitterness and insistency as to make statements of the wildest and most fantastical character. “When I told them England owed a great deal to its loyal Jews, they stared at me as sconce and sadly shook their heads in fear for England’s credulity entrusting the chosen race. When America showed itself against any interference in Russia, the idea gained credence that Wilson was himself a Jew.” So what I’ve tried to show you tonight, the fact that so many of the leadership were Jewish, and because of the horror of the Civil War, it plunged many Jews into supporting the revolution. And of course, once the revolution happened and the Bolsheviks took control, and Stalin was commissar for nationalities by the way. Judaism, if you wanted to look, just as Christianity becomes a real problem to Russia, if you wanted any position in the party, you couldn’t go to synagogue, you couldn’t go to church. And it was, sex as the Jewish sections that break down Jewish life in Russia, and I’m going to be talking about that.

And of course then you have that extraordinary comment by a rabbi of Moscow who went to see Trotsky. And he said to him, “Why are you doing this?” And of course, Trotsky gave the usual mantra, “We’re one people now.” And the rabbi said, “Trotsky may well believe this, but one day Bronstein will pay for it.” And of course what happens is, Jewish life is destroyed. Ironically, Yiddish isn’t, because nationalities within Russia, the Russians were very ambiguous about it. Zionism was outlawed. The Bund was outlawed. This is a one-party state, remember? And Zionists are the traitors. Remember that comment of one of the revolutionaries? “The Bund are merely Zionists who suffered from seasickness.” There can be no Jewish autonomy within Russia now, but Jews were allowed to use Yiddish. There was a Yiddish theatre, et cetera. Yiddish culture, that’s allowed, but Hebrew isn’t, because that’s the language of Zionism. And I remember when I taught in Russia at the time of the Refuseniks, and there was one mohel for the whole of Moscow, and he was 82 years old.

What is fascinating is, how somehow they kept some sort of semblance of Judaism without the knowledge because that was they did, the communists, and Jewish communists did everything they could to destroy the knowledge. And what I’m going to be talking about next week probably is when Golda visits Moscow as the first Israeli Ambassador, over 50,000 young people come out to greet her. She goes to the show synagogue. There are still synagogues, but only the old would go there. And the 50,000 young people came out to greet the representative of the Jewish state. And that’s when Stalin realised he still had a Jewish problem. So let me stop there, Lauren, and let’s see if we’ve got any questions ‘cause I think we have.

Q&A and Comments

Oh, this is from Jennifer. “Trudy, your cottage in Como, Daniel Silver’s hero, Gabrielle Alan has his fiction home there.” Rose says, “Come to Canada.” Never that up, oh my goodness. Amelie, “117 in Las Vegas.” Wow! And you had the strength to listen to this. Barbara, “I’m in New York. It’s a bit warm.” Tim. Tim, “Hi Trudy, I very much enjoy your talks. I hope you don’t mind my questions. I find it very interesting. They were talking about the Jews and the Russians.”

Q: “Is it an indication of anti-Semitism that they don’t think you could be Russian and Jewish?” A: Well, certainly the forces of conservatism didn’t. They didn’t believe Jews could ever be loyal to Russia. Think about it, Tim. The Russians frog-marched. Jews lived to the west of Russia. Remember the pale of settlement is to the west, huge area. They’re pushing them back into the Russian interior and they talk about them as Jews.

This is from Peter, “As a retired teacher, I found your disillusionment of having talked for decades without trumping over anti-Semitism touching. I thought you might find the following quote helpful. Can education or chance make passionate people out of those born cold? You can preach all you like to someone who doesn’t feel, you will blow on extinct colds. If there’s a spark, your breath can bring it to life, but the spark must be there first,” Didro. Thank you, Peter. I’m sorry I should not have been so mournful yesterday. I don’t always believe that. It just a good acquaintance of mine. Her son had a terrible incident and I was just feeling it rather badly. Thank you for that. You are right. And I remember one of my mentors, Felix Shaf, who lost most of his family. His grandfather was actually the rabbi. And after the war, he came to England 'cause there was a numerous classism at the Agalonian. And after the war, he wanted some sort of understanding of Poland. And he actually, he was responsible for myself and my colleagues teaching about the Holocaust in Poland just as communism began to fall. He was indefatigable. And he said, “You have to go on, because one day you might just teach the person who can change the world.” I thought it was schmaltzy. But, you know, I think that’s a lovely, lovely quote Peter, and I will remember it. And Lauren, can you keep that one for me please?

• [Lauren] Yep, no problem.

Q: “Were none of the non-Jewish revolutionary compatriots of these Jewish revolutionaries anti-Semites?” A: Well, yes, some of them were I’m afraid. And that’s going to come out when we talk about Stalin.

Q: “If communism was supposed to bring equality to everyone, when and how did it all go wrong?” A: A wonderful dream, Arlene, because then we’re outside the realm of politics and we are into the realm of human behaviour. And also, of course, Lenin had to go for the one-party state.

It’s Gelfand, it’s Gelfand, Karen. That’s a very good question. Karen has asked, “Regarding all those people who changed their names from Jewish to Russian sounding names. Do they change them for safety reasons so they wouldn’t be persecuted, or they just didn’t want to appear more Russian and less Jewish?” That’s an excellent question, and I’m going to try and come up with an answer for you.

Q: “Why would the Jews be so baffling?” A: Oh, that’s a lovely question, Tim. Because they prayed to a different God. They prayed in a different language. They had different economic employment patterns. They were international, and to the Russian peasant, the Russian Orthodox peasant, they were the Christ killers.

Oh, this is from Monty, I love this. “Once I tried to help someone to save him from something, his answer was, "Worry about yourself.” Maybe we shouldn’t try to save the world as Jews.“ You know, Monty, I’ve been doing a lot of background reading for this. Different writers, different philosophers. Wistrich believed that there is a messianism in Judaism, even in these Marxists. And that they themselves would not take it on. But if they did, I think before the revolution, I’m not talking about Trotsky post-revolution, I’m talking about many of these young people. They really were idealistic. They wanted to improve the world for the better. And I think the other thing to say about why were so many of them Jews… Remember, they came from huskeler intellectual backgrounds. It was the party of the working classes. It was never "until I’m green or blue.” It was never a majority Jewish response.

But there is this Jewish belief in social justice. Is there not those of you who are sure goers, you know, if you think of the various passages we read from the prophets, it’s their social justice. And also, I do believe that, you know, if you think of The First Commandment, “I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out from the land in Egypt, now shall have no other gods before me.” And not only that, there’s no intermediaries. A rabbi is merely a teacher. So in theory, of course we have our great learned figures. We respect enough and revere. But there is this notion of somehow we are all equal before the Almighty. And if you think also about if I can talk about a Jewish characteristic, we are very disputatious. We are taught to question. So I think, I agree, sometimes we should just shut up. And the other thing, Monty, it’s the great debate as well, isn’t it?

Q: “What about Kekonovic?” A: I haven’t been able to talk about all of them. Of course, Kekonovic was a close friend of Stalin and died in his bed. Look, he was a ruthless SOB, I may use that expression. I’m going to discuss with you whether Stalin was actually an anti-Semite. How on earth do you deal with a man who destroyed any opposition? And many of the people he destroyed in the purges were Jews. But then they were a disproportionate part of his opposition. He actually spoke out against anti-Semitism. That’s one of the problems I’m having when I’m going to be talking about Stalin. That he is totally… If you think of him, he’s totally ruthless, that all he cares about is power. That whether he’s actually an anti-Semite or not is another question, but if you are at the end of a rope or being shot, I don’t suppose the motivation of the perpetrator matters too much.

Susan, “My husband’s parents were so pink as he called them, they refused him a be mitzvah. I bar mitzvah him much later in Israel.” Sure, I mean, and think of those of you who come from New York. There was a Meddin Bund school in New York. And please don’t forget the Second Aliyah. The majority of the people, the men and women who settled in Palestine in the Second Aliyah were Marxists. Surely those Marxist kibbutz are the most perfect example of Marxism in action. Everything had to be shared. Golden Meyer stayed on such kibbutz. Don’t forget Vangorian himself. He finished up on a kibbutz, didn’t he? So it is very much social conscience. And certainly in England, up until 1973, regardless of wealth, the majority of Jews voted for the Labour Party.

Q: “Were Jews as active amongst non-Marxist in the lead up to the revolution?” A: Well, they were. The Bund was Jewish and 90% of the Mensheviks were Jews. But, they didn’t… Look, Maxim Winegar, who was a brilliant lawyer. There was a group of Jewish intellectuals. Their response, they were not a big group, but there was a group of Jewish intellectuals who hoped, who dreamt in the doomer of 1900 and of the 1906, that the Czar would liberalise and that they believed that they could become citizens of Russia. But of course that dream went by the wayside. I think, look, the majority of Jews of Eastern Europe, and that means the majority of our ancestors, that 40% of them got out, remember. Some of them brought their socialism to London, to New York, Chicago. Wherever they landed, they brought their socialism with them, but they didn’t choose to stay in the Eastern Europe under the Czars. And of course, after the revolution, after communism consolidated, you couldn’t get out of the Soviet Union. Why would anyone want to leave the workers’ paradise? And you know, in the ‘20s, there was a lot of relationships between left-wing socialism in Palestine and Russia. There were even British. There were British socialists who flirted with Stalin.

I think that’s all the questions, isn’t it? And goodnight everyone, and I hope you don’t all melt. Bye.