Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii
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1914 nearly half of Russia's 5.6 million Jews belonged to the lower middle class, while another quarter could be considered members of the proletariat, a fact that casts doubt on the conservatives' claim that Jews served as the “spearhead of capitalism.”67 At the same time, such a claim did contain a kernel of truth. Of course, it was not the unemployed Jews of the shtetl that conservatives had in mind, but rather other Jews—the successful financiers, wholesale traders, and industrialists. The liberal economist M. V. Bernatskii, who was later to become the Finance Minister of the Provisional Government (and later served in the same capacity for Denikin and Vrangel), would concur with the conservative opinion, though he viewed the situation as a positive one. Taking into account that Jews composed more than a third of the “merchant class,” he wrote, “If we can put aside the ideals of subsistence production and see the successes of our country's development in trade, we are forced to admit that Jews have played an enormous role in the Russian economy. Enormous, as they are the ones who are making such trade possible.” Bernatskii was also of the opinion that if there were no Jews in Russia, it would be necessary to invite them in, to stimulate trade and industry.68
Unfortunately, Bernatskii was in the minority, and the restrictions placed on Jews, motivated by fears of “Jewish domination,” slowed economic development. These fears were completely irrational. Productive citizens (or “subjects”) serve as the foundation of civil order; the fruits of their collective labors decrease poverty; so by extension, the authorities' ire at their presence should logically also decrease. Yet the authorities, or at least most of them, preferred to have Jews leave the country if they refused to “perish or assimilate,” instead of allowing them to work for the “economic prosperity of Russia,” to use Witte's formulation. Even as the Ministry of Finance attempted to prove that “our industry is as yet unable to get by without foreign and Jewish capital,” the Ministry of War, the Ministry of the Interior, and several others, up to and including Nicholas II, were not inclined to repeal the numerous restrictions placed on Jews.69
The Russian government closely followed popular opinion, and derived much of its support from the more conservative portions of society. Those in charge of policy concerning the Jews in Imperial Russia increasingly came from the conservative camp. While liberals considered Jewish “emancipation” to be a component of their main goal of liberating Russian society from backwards absolutism, “patriotic guardians” of various types believed that Jewish activities, be they intellectual or economic in nature, were leading to the impoverishment of the nation and to a perilous break with the spiritual values of the Russian Orthodox state.
The slogan “The Jew [zhid ] is coming!” which appeared on the pages of the newspaper New Times (Novoe Vremia) in 1880,70 could be found, in one form or another, in nearly every conservative or reactionary publication. Thirty years after this phrase graced New Times's pages, an even worse variant would appear: the “Jewish Invasion.”71 Antisemitism in Russia contained its own peculiar combination of a hatred for Judaism, which was deeply entrenched in Orthodox culture,72 along with the anti-capitalist reaction to modernization, whose main perpetrators, it was claimed, were Jews. Parts of Russia's intelligentsia were likewise heavily influenced by European antisemitism, particularly of the German variety.73
Turgenev's Huntsman's Sketches encapsulate the relationship of “the people” to the Jews, which is based on fundamental religious differences. The protagonist, the landowner Chertopkhanov, hears the rumblings and shrieks of a crowd as he is passing through a local village. Someone is being beaten. He asks a local woman about what is taking place:
“The Lord knows, batiushka,” answered the old woman…“you can hear that our lads are beating a Yid [zhid].”
“A Yid? What Yid?”
“The Lord knows, batiushka. A Yid appeared among us; and where he's come from—who knows?”
“So, you see, they're beating him, sir.”
“Why beating him? What for?”
“I don't know, batiushka. No doubt, he deserves it. And, indeed, why not beat him? After all, batiushka, he crucified Christ!”74
This story, entitled “The End of Chertopkhanov,” was published in 1872. Thirty years afterwards, the economist and journalist M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii was serving his exile in the Poltava gubernia. He discovered that Ukrainian peasants and the local Jews would get along well and would cooperate to their mutual benefit. “Yet despite all this,” he wrote, “the Jew can never be completely sure that this Russian neighbor, whom he lives next to in peace and harmony year in and year out, won't someday attack him, steal his property, commit foul acts against him, or even possibly kill him…He might be an ‘OK Jew' but…from the point of view of the Russian peasant he will always be an outsider and moreover a proponent of a repulsive faith. ‘Did the Jews not crucify our Lord?' This universal source of antisemitism, consecrated by the passage of centuries, particularly in Russia, cannot help influencing social opinion.”75 Tugan-Baranovskii also argued that the basis of Russian antisemitism was not to be found only in the archaic worldview of the peasants, but also in the upper and middle classes and parts of the intelligentsia. He believed that antisemitism was a result of increased nationalism and economic competition; in his opinion, those unable to compete economically with the Jews would often become nationalists and antisemites.
The integration of the Jewish population under the conditions of a growing nationalism (or nationalisms, as the Jews were caught between growing Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish nationalism) only served to strengthen anti-semitic tendencies. The Jews were accused of facilitating the development of industry at the expense of agriculture. Witte's introduction of the gold standard was also blamed on the Jews, as many knew it would lessen the value of agricultural goods. Such a situation, in the opinion of many journalists, would benefit only a small number of bankers and Jews who did not concern themselves with production through labor. New Times attributed the rise of the Bund, the beginnings of the Zionist movement, and increased Jewish interest in Marxism to the notion that the Jews were planning on carving out their own state from Russia. If an earlier revolutionary slogan had been “all lands to the peasants!” then in the current climate Jews were accused of transforming peasants into proletarians, thus freeing up the land for its new owners.76
Russian business owners and journalists, particularly in Moscow, were the most fervent in attacking their foreign and non-Christian competitors. For example, the newspaper Russian Review (Russkoe Obozrenie), founded in 1890 by the merchant D. I. Morozov and edited by Prince D. N. Tsertelev, frequently targeted Jews, Poles, and Germans. The paper claimed, among other things, that Jews considered themselves to be “above the law.” Some of the articles bear an eerie resemblance to the denunciations of later eras.77
Attempts to push Jews out of one or another sphere of social activity could not always be explained by the purely “materialist” concept of competition. The nationalist credo that the Russian land was tied to its people also served as a common theme for radical right-wing journalists, as well as certain government administrators. In 1909 N. P. Muratov, the governor of Tambov, removed S. M. Starikov from his position as head of the local music academy, basing his decision on the belief that “the state of music in Tambov has suffered in the hands of the Jews,” as well as on the more abstract idea that a city “which is truly the center of a Russian gubernia is well deserving of a ‘Russian' music academy.”78
At the turn of the century, a small but significant portion of the Russian intelligentsia fell under the influence of European racial theory. The famous conservative journalist M. O. Menshikov popularized the racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, as well as racist German theoreticians.79 Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, one of the ideological bases for Nazism, was published in Russia by A. S. Suvorin in five separate editions between 1906 and 1910 under the title The Jews: Their Origins and the Reasons for Their Influence in Europe (Evrei, ikh proiskhozhdenie i prichiny ikh vliianiia v Evrope). The neo-Slavophile S. F. Sharapov criticized “liberal dogma” for its belief that the Jews were as white as the Germans,