Trudy Gold
Stalin and the Jews
Summary
The lecture discusses Joseph Stalin’s complex relationship with the Jewish population in Russia. It highlights that while Stalin was responsible for immense suffering and death during his rule, it’s challenging to evaluate whether he was specifically anti-Semitic due to his amoral and power-driven nature. Despite Stalin’s involvement in the revolution and his position as Commissar of Nationalities, the Soviet regime outlawed antisemitism, aiming to promote equality among different ethnic groups. The lecture describes how Jewish life in Russia was significantly affected by Stalin’s policies, including the suppression of religious practices, the outlawing of the Bund (a Jewish socialist party), and restrictions on Hebrew language use.
Trudy Gold
Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.
He realised that Stalin was taking over the party and he realised the ruthlessness. Lenin himself was totally ruthless. You see, Stalin was not an ideologue, let’s get real.
The tsarist government is autocratic and brutal. They did execute many of them, they did exile many of them. But the point about the Tsarist government, the Okhrana was absolutely inefficient.
What the Russians did in the Ukraine was absolutely brutal. Millions of people died of starvation. They call it their genocide but Russia believes it’s part of Russia. So you’ve got two people looking at the same piece of land with completely different eyes.