Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii

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СКАЧАТЬ demonstrations. One of the “founding fathers” of the RSDRP, he was a delegate to the Second Congress, and sided with the Mensheviks. He was a brilliant publicist and orator, a well-known party member on the national level and a leading figure in the organized labor movement. Arrested several times in the past, he reappeared in Rostov in 1917 and was immediately elected to the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.⁷³

      After those first few euphoric weeks that followed the February Revolution, it soon became clear that freedom was only freedom and nothing more; that for victory in war one must fight, and that to build civil society one must work. In other words, things were not going to simply take care of themselves. As a result, those seized by revolutionary fervor began to search for the cause of their worsening material conditions. A new search for enemies was underway. For some it was the Kadets, for others the Bolsheviks, for still others the bourgeoisie. But for an even greater number, these enemies were to be the Jews. The open and active work of politicians of Jewish heritage, no matter what their position or ideological orientation might be, now seemed to confirm the writings of antisemitic thinkers and journalists.

      The growth in antisemitic sentiment that began in the summer of 1917 was universally noted by contemporaries of every political conviction and creed.

      It should be noted that the disappearance of parties to the “right” of the Kadets from the Russian political scene after the February Revolution did not mean the disappearance of those newspapers that liked to publish articles written in the spirit of the Black Hundreds. Likewise it did not entail the disappearance of the admittedly significant readership of said publications. One such publication, A. A. Suvorin's Malen'kaia Gazeta (Little Newspaper), claimed that it was “for Jewish equality, but against Jewish dominance,” to quote the title of one of its articles. Denying any charges of antisemitism, it implored: “good Jews, good Russian citizens, cast out your reckless, evil tribesmen yourselves, for they will bring great harm to your people in Russia.” The newspaper published articles that would make claims along the lines of “the second army is under the command of the ‘Bolshevik,’ Rabinovich.” Authors of such articles would call attention to the ethnic heritage of their political opponents, playing on the nationalistic sympathies of their readers. According to contemporaries, Little Newspaper would “sell out in minutes,” was “vulgar and illiterate, but contained true life, and its readers were addicted to it.” Its popularity can be measured by the increase in its print runs, from 20,000–60,000 copies in 1916 up to 109,000 copies in June of 1917.⁷⁴

      In the beginning of June 1917, Jewish Week already noted with some concern that “among the masses Leninism is beginning to be associated with the idea of a specifically Jewish kind of agitation, and though this demagogic tendency is refuted every day, it still calls forth more and more hatred. In this fertile soil…. will a wave of antisemitic pogroms grow.” The paper associated this rise with the yellow press, publications such as Vechernee Vremia (Evening Times) and Little Newspaper, which were dedicated to trashing the “Bolshevik Jews, who appear in public using Russian last names.” Little Newspaper in particular, “the mouthpiece of that journalistic villain, Aleksei Suvorin” would “day in and day out” prominently display a list of all Jewish Bolsheviks, both their real names and their pseudonyms.⁷⁵ Jewish Week's contention that taking on a Russian last name in a country where Russian is the dominant language is completely natural—and that such complaints could just as easily apply to the Russian “Ulianov”—would probably have done little to convince the readers of these tabloids. The success of Little Newspaper was due in no small part to the fact that it had its finger on the pulse of a certain segment of Russian society, who considered their misfortunes to be the result of the sudden arrival of “foreigners” in positions of power.

      By June, Jewish circles in Petrograd were extremely concerned as to what form the “Christian masses' response to Jewish ‘activity’” would take. Alarmed by the lack of tact displayed by Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, the author of the “Notes” section of Jewish Week feared that should a time of troubles ensue, the Jews would be blamed for “the anarchy brought into Russian life as a result of Marxism and maximalism.”⁷⁶

      On June 8 a meeting took place in the hall of the Petrograd stock exchange. The topic of conversation was the response of Jewish society to the current political climate. Vinaver, Sliozberg, and Dubnov all spoke, with the latter “disowning” the “Bolshevik demagogues” from the Jewish community.⁷⁷

      At approximately the same time Maksim Gorky remarked in an article from the cycle Untimely Thoughts (Nesvoevremennye Mysli) that “antisemitism is still alive, and is slowly and carefully rearing its wretched head once more, hissing, slandering, splattering with the poisonous spittle of hatred”:

      How did this happen? It turns out there were two Jews among the more anarchic Bolsheviks. Or maybe the number was even as high as three. Some even count as many as seven and are firmly convinced that these seven Samsons will reduce the 170-million-strong Russian temple to rubble.

      It would be funny and stupid, if it weren't so despicable…

      There are…thousands of proofs demonstrating that the equation Jew = Bolshevik is a stupid one, the result of the zoological tendencies of agitated Russian citizens.

      I, of course, will not take the trouble to provide these proofs—honorable people have no need of them, while those lacking honor would find them unconvincing.

      Idiocy is a disease that cannot be cured by means of suggestion. To the person suffering from this incurable condition it crystal clear: since there are seven and a half Jews among the Bolsheviks, the Jews are to blame for everything…

      And after all of this, the honest and sane Russian man will once more begin to feel alarmed, and will experience a tormenting shame for his Rus', and for the Russian blockhead who in times of trouble immediately looks for an enemy from without, instead of in the depths of his own stupidity.⁷⁸

      Stupidity, however, is an international phenomenon. After all, the belief on the part of many Jewish activists that a mere change in the external power structure of the country would solve the “Jewish question” could also be attributed to stupidity or naïveté. The Russian Revolution gave the Jews the March 22 declaration of equal rights, passed by the Provisional Government. However, it would also later give them an explosion of pogrom activity and an indescribable amount of suffering. As is often the case with such tragedies, all this would happen to a group of people who were, to a large extent, apolitical in nature.

      After the events of July 1917 (the “dress rehearsal” for the Bolshevik coup), Stepun recalled how “janitors, shop-owners, cabbies, and barbers, all of the unwashed masses of the Petrograd petit bourgeoisie were dying for the opportunity to attack ‘comrades, Jews, and traitors.’”⁷⁹

      The renowned literary historian Boris Eichenbaum recorded a conversation he overheard in a bookshop on August 23, where an elderly sailor said “The revolution is insane, it was carried out by a minority, there aren't any Russians in the Soviet of Workers Deputies, they are all traitors that should be hanged.” The owner of the book shop agreed with him, saying, “The Jews did everything.”⁸⁰

      Dubnov writes the following on September 20: “the shops are filled with the most scandalous conversations about how the Yids are evil, how they made themselves rich during the war at the expense of the people's misfortune, how Jews have seized power in the city Dumas and government institutions.”⁸¹

      It is somewhat curious that some far-right journalists, as well as a good portion of the military rank-and-file that the Bolsheviks were dependent on, would all agree that the Bolshevik struggle was a fight against the Jews. One possible explanation is that a number of the Bolsheviks' opponents in the Soviets and other organizations in Petrograd СКАЧАТЬ