Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii
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the Jews. Of course, robbery is robbery. However, I have nothing against the principle of equality among nations when it comes to robbery. If you're going to rob someone, then go ahead and rob everyone!
No matter how hard I try, I just can't get the “socialist” expression “got any Yids?” out of my non-socialist brain.90
The SD A. S. Lokerman, a delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDRP, was shaken by all he had seen during the seventy-four-day period of Bolshevik rule, and quickly published a book about what he had experienced. He describes the death of the Zionist M. Shapiro, who worked as a cashier at a hospital called “Hope” (Nadezhda). In response to the rant of a Red Army soldier who was shouting, “We're gonna kill all the bourgeois and the Yids!” Shapiro said that only hooligans spoke in such a matter. Shapiro was then detained while they “established his identity.” Within an hour his corpse turned up at the hospital.91
Lokerman wrote that of all the naïve, theoretical, and unfeasible pretensions of the Bolshevik project there remained only a kind of facade, “behind which convicted felons, Black Hundreds, sadists, [and others] would commit heinous and hideous acts. As a true movement of the people, Bolshevism took in all sorts of scum from all levels of society. These elements gradually came to determine the tone and character of the entire Bolshevik movement…. our ‘sailor comrades’ have recently begun to turn on their ‘leadership’ because of the latter's education, bourgeois heritage, or, in some instances, indulgent attitude towards Jews.”92
Prince G. N. Trubetskoi, a former envoy to Serbia, describes a typical episode in his memoirs. Soon after the retreat of the Volunteer Army from Rostov in February of 1918, Trubetskoi set off for Moscow, accompanied by his son, P. B. Struve and the philosopher N. S. Arseniev. They were traveling through the back country to get to the railroad when they found themselves in front of a Red “revolutionary committee” in a remote village. The travelers, who had managed to obtain false travel documents, were subjected to a search and interrogation:
They treated Arseniev rather strangely. For some reason they took him for a Yid. We repeatedly told them that he was from an Orthodox family, and that two of his uncles were priests. Our driver vouched for him, telling how Arseniev had been recounting Saints' lives for the duration of our journey. “They can do that,” noted the chairman of the committee. He was the cruelest of all of our interrogators. They wouldn't relent in their calling Arseniev a Yid…these were truly the unwashed masses in revolt.93
Antisemitic tendencies could often be found among the operatives of the Cheka. G. Ia. Aronson, a Menshevik, described his time in the Butyrka prison after the Bolsheviks had begun to turn on their former SD allies:
The VChK created a joint commission with the MChK [the Moscow Cheka] for the purposes of our interrogation. It was headed by Samsonov, a Chekist, a worker, and (I think) a former anarchist. The interrogations themselves were revolting. They grilled us on our family backgrounds, whether we came from the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, made some jokes at the expense of the bourgeoisie. Then, out of nowhere, a whiff of antisemitism. Samsonov asked one of the workers, a member of the Central Committee, the following question:
How'd you end up in this company of lawyers, doctors, and Jews?94
It was even more common to hear antisemitic remarks from the other side, by the way. A typical middle-class homeowner once told Aronson,
I know you are the ones behind the revolution. Under the Tsars he kept foreigners like you busy. Didn't give Jews the right to live wherever they wanted. The Finns and Poles always wanted to secede from Russia. The Caucasians were always stirring things up. I know that Tsereteli and Liber set up the Revolution. But for us, Russians, peasants, workers, merchants, let me tell you, the revolution has been nothing but complete and total destruction. You just took advantage of our weak character and laxness. We ourselves are to blame: after all, why in the world did we blindly follow a bunch of Jews and Georgians?95
Another interesting event occurred during the investigation into the murder of the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. S. Uritsky. The Chekists in charge of the case, Otto and Riks, originally believed that the murder had been planned by Zionists and Bundists, who detested Uritsky for his “internationalism.” The pair arrested a large group of Jews. However, both overly zealous investigators were relieved of duty for their antisemitic actions, and those arrested were set free.96 Otto would return to work for the Cheka in 1919.
It should be noted, however, that these antisemitic tendencies, and even the pogroms themselves, occurred at the beginning of the Red Army's existence. As I. M. Cherikover put it, “The Red Army had not yet been reigned in and subjected to discipline. At this time there was no systematic, concerted struggle against the widespread antisemitic sentiment among the rank and file. That was to come later.”97
The Bolshevik leadership could not help noticing the dangers posed by antisemitism, and introduced a number of measures aimed at repressing it. In addition to theoretical formulations, based on the ideal of the “international proletariat,” the Bolsheviks were acutely aware that antisemitism could prove to be a useful weapon in the hands of their enemies.
From the very first days of the Soviet state, antisemitic propaganda—to say nothing of violent acts committed against Jews—was equated with counterrevolutionary activity. According to the “resolution on the fight against counterrevolutionary activity,” approved by the Second All-Russian Congress (October 26–27, 1917), local soviets were ordered to “immediately undertake the most serious measures aimed at preventing counterrevolutionary and “antisemitic” speeches, and to prevent any pogroms.”98
On April 27, 1918 the Moscow Oblast Sovnarkom, in accordance with the resolution, resolved to “recognize the absolute necessity of doing educational work among Red Army members, with the goal of raising the level of their cultural enlightenment and consciousness,” as well as “diligently” recruiting “members of political parties that support the Soviet platform to serve in the ranks of the Red Army.” The Moscow Oblast Sovnarkom, then, viewed a lack of education as the most significant factor behind the pogroms. Among other things, the Sovnarkom required “the local Jewish commissariat and the editorial offices of Izvestia to immediately set about creating pamphlets concerning the Jewish question, and to publish a series of articles on the topic in Izvestia itself.” The Information Department of the local military commissariat was ordered to “pay serious attention to the development of antisemitic agitation and to keep records of troops to be relied upon in the event of a pogrom.”99
However, these measures did not diminish the amount of antisemitic activity. On July 27, 1918 the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR adopted a directive entitled, “On eliminating the antisemitic movement at its root.” It stated that “counterrevolutionaries have renewed their persecution of the Jews, taking advantage of the hunger and fatigue of the masses, in addition to the undeveloped nature of much of the masses, and the remnants of enmity towards the Jews with which the masses were inoculated during the Tsarist regime” [italics mine]. It was explained to the workers that “The Jewish bourgeois is our enemy not because he is Jewish, but because he is bourgeois. The Jewish worker is our brother.”100
The Sovnarkom declared that “the antisemitic movement threatens the revolutionary efforts of the peasants and workers” and called for “the working people of Socialist Russia to fight this evil by any means necessary,” as well as ordering all deputies “to take decisive measures to destroy the antisemitic movement at its roots.”101 According to Dimanshtein, the main author, the text of the declaration was edited by Lenin. It was Lenin who introduced the phrase “at its root.” Leaders of pogroms were to be branded as outlaws.
Iu. Larin, who was later asked why Lenin considered the struggle against antisemitism to be important for “our revolution,” gave a fairly crafty reply: “It doesn't just have to do with protecting Jewish workers from injustice, it has to do with protecting the entire revolution from the bourgeoisie” [italics Larin's].102 The cleverness in the response had to do with the fact that by the summer of 1918, the Red Army posed at least as great a threat to the Jews as it did to the Bolsheviks' enemies.