Solzhenitsyn's Damning History of the Jews in Russia - a Review

The translation of Solzhenitsyn's book appears to have been done without permission from his family, and this might be why this lengthy and detailed review is no longer available on the page of the book on Amazon.com, where it originally appeared.

The book might disappear altogether from Amazon, so if you want to get your Kindle copy, act now. Otherwise you can find it on many sources on the internet.

Jews had enormous influence in the English and American media at the turn of the century - this is what most people in America and UK were told about Russian Jews (Click for Hi-Res image)

The translator, Columbus Falco, describes the censorship of this book when it appeared in 2002:

"Published in the original Russian in 2002, the book was received with a firestorm of rage and denunciation from the literary and media world, from the Jews, and from almost the entire intelligentsia of the established order in the West…

Immense efforts have been made by the Russian authorities and also by the Western liberal democratic power structure to ignore 200 YEARS TOGETHER, to suppress it as much as possible, and above all to prevent and interdict the book’s translation into foreign languages, most especially into English, which has become essentially the worldwide language of our epoch…

The Russian authorities have to this date refused to allow any official English translation of the book to be published". (p. 2).

CHARACTERISTICS OF SOLZHENITSYN’S MAGNUM OPUS

So what is so naughty, naughty about this book?

Most of it consists of unremarkable information that can be found in standard, non-censored texts. [For details, see comments.]

Agree with author Solzhenitsyn or not, but recognize the fact that he is no lightweight. Solzhenitsyn goes into considerable detail about many different historical epochs, and clearly has a deep knowledge of the issues that he raises. His approach is balanced. He is sympathetic towards Jews as well as critical of Jews.

The latter evidently does not sit well with many, because it does not comply with the standard Judeocentric narrative, in which Jews are just victims and can do no wrong. Worse yet, a famous writer is bringing sometimes-unflattering information about Jews to light, and this is threatening. Hence the censorship.

JEWS IN 19TH CENTURY TSARIST RUSSIA

Far from living in oppression, Russia’s Jews not only had more freedom than the serfs, but also more than the Russian traders and merchants. (pp. 16-17), and this was also true of more recent times. (p. 45). Soon after the Partitions of Poland, Derzhavin visited the area and reported on the Jews in the then-current manorial society. The Polish nobility had turned over the management of their estates to the Jews (p. 21), and the Jews engaged in conduct that brought them short-term profits and long-term antagonisms.

Consider the PROPINACJA. The Jews accumulated wealth by cooperating with each other. (p. 31). They made profits by taking the peasants’ grain to the point of impoverishing them (and causing famine), turning it into brandy, and then encouraging drunkenness. (p. 21, 24). Jews forced peasants into lifelong debt and crushing poverty by requiring payment, in cattle and tools, for liquor. (p. 31).

In addition, a system of bribery protected this arrangement. Thus, the Polish magnates were on the “take” of part of the wealth squeezed by Jews out of the peasantry, and, without the Jews and their inventiveness, this system of exploitation could not have functioned, and would have ended. (p. 22). Solzhenitsyn adds that, “…the Jewish business class derived enormous benefit from the helplessness, wastefulness, and impracticality of landowners…” (p. 54).

The Jews kept moving around in order to prevent an accurate count of their numbers—in order to evade taxes. (p. 25). A delegation of Jews travelled to St. Petersburg to try to bribe Russian officials to suppress Derzhavin’s report. (p. 28). In 1824, Tsar Alexander I noticed that Jews were corrupting local inhabitants to the detriment of the treasury and private investors. (p. 32).

Jews were not forced into “parasitic” occupations: They chose them. (p. 31). By the late 19th century (the time of the pogroms), Russian anger had boiled over, focusing on such things as Jews not making their own bread, massive overpricing and profiteering, enriching themselves while impoverishing the muzhik, and taking control of forests, lands, and taverns. (pp. 78-80).

Nor is it true that the Jews were kept out of “productive” occupations. To the contrary. A concerted 50-year tsarist effort to turn Jews into farmers attracted few participants (p. 33), and ended in failure. (p. 58). None of the rationalizations for its failure are valid: Other newcomers to Russian agriculture (Mennonites, Bulgarian and German colonists, etc.), facing the same challenges as the Jews, did quite well. (p. 36). Jewish farmers neglected farm work (pp. 34-35), and kept drifting back into selling goods and leasing of their property to others to farm. (pp. 56-57). The century-later efforts by the Communists, to get Jews into farming, fared no better. (p. 208, 251).

Jewish resistance to assimilation is usually framed in terms of the GOY excluding the Jew. It was the other way around. For the first half of the 19th century, rabbis and kahals strenuously resisted enlightenment, including the proffered Russian education to Jews. (p. 38).

Jews have always tended to exaggerate the wrongs they have experienced from others. (p. 42). This applies to such things as double taxation, forced military service, expulsion from villages, etc. (p. 42, 46, 50).

The Jews of the Vilnius (Wilno), Kaunas, and Grodno regions sided with the Russians during the Poles’ ill-fated January 1863 Insurrection. (p. 69). This confirms Polish sources.

Mainstream Judaism did not conduct ritual murder. However, it is possible that some Jewish cults did so. (p. 40). [For more, see my review of BLOOD PASSOVER]. As for the PROTOCOLS, their authenticity was rejected early-on by the tsarist government. However, this did not erase legitimate grievances about Jewish influence. (p. 174).

JEWS IN COMMUNISM: THE USUAL EXCUSES

We often hear that Communist Jews were “not real Jews”. This nonsense is equivalent to saying that Lenin and other Russian Communists were “not real Russians”—a contrived distinction that Solzhenitsyn refuses to make. (p. 117). [For more, see comments].

One common exculpation for Jews supporting revolutionary movements, and then Communism, is that of the tsarist system preventing Jews from improving their lot. This is nonsense. Once the Jews accepted the Russian education system, their numbers increased, to such a spectacular extent (by about 1870: p. 63, 71), in Russian higher education, that quotas (numerus clausus) had to be imposed upon them. This nowadays-called affirmative action became necessary because Jews were wealthier and thus unfairly advantaged in schooling-related matters. (p. 88).

Hungary is instructive. There, Jewish grievances were the least valid. Hungarian Jews had enjoyed atypical freedoms and a high standard of living, and there had been no pogroms. Yet the 1919 Hungarian Communism was especially dominated by Jews, and was odiously cruel. (pp. 153-154).

Another exculpation for Jews in Communism was the alleged need for defense against pogroms conducted by the Whites. Not so. The massive influx of Jews into the Soviet apparatus occurred in late 1917 and 1918, but the White pogroms did not begin until 1919. (p. 121).

THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF JEWS IN COMMUNISM

One can easily make lists of Jews in high positions in the Soviet Union. Influential Jews commonly occurred at a rate 10 or more times the abundance of Jews in the USSR. (e. g, pp. 143-on, 225-on). [For more, see comments]. Whether or not motivated by "ethnic solidarity", Jews in authority tended to promote other Jews to high positions. (p. 138).

However, the Jewish role in Communism goes far beyond what is apparent in any such “grocery list”. For instance, consider what some call the Judaization of academia, and its impact on the bloody events of 1917. Solzhenitsyn comments, “The February Revolution was carried out by Russian hands and Russian foolishness. Yet at the same time, its ideology was permeated and dominated by the intransigent hostility to the historical Russian state that ordinary Russians didn’t have, but the Jews had. So the Russian intelligentsia too had adopted this view.” (p. 98).

Now consider the October Revolution. Lenin contended that the Bolshevik success in the revolution had been made possible by the role of the large Jewish intelligentsia in several Russian cities. (p. 119). Furthermore, according to Lenin, the October Revolution was preserved by the actions of Jews against the attempted sabotage by government officials. (p. 128).

The energy and high intelligence of the Jews made them indispensable. (p. 129, 189). In fact, Solzhenitsyn suggests that Soviet Communism lost its ideological fervor, and began slowly to die of “Russian laziness”, already in the late 1960s, all because the Jews were largely gone. (p. 317).

SOME INTERESTING FACTS

Dekulakization was not just an economic measure. It was a tool to uproot peoples and destroy their traditions and culture. For this reason, Stalin’s dictatorship can in no sense be accepted as a nationalist (Russian) phenomenon. (p. 221).

Religious Judaism was never persecuted as intensely by the Communists, in the 1920s and 1930s, as was Russian Orthodox Christianity. (p. 306). High-level Jew Lazar Kaganovich directed the destruction of the Church of the Redeemer. He also wanted to destroy St. Basil's Cathedral. (p. 223).

The famous mobile gas chambers were not invented by the Nazis. They were developed, in 1937, by Isai Davidovich Berg, a leading Jew in the NKVD. (p. 237).

COMMUNISM IS OK—UNTIL IT NO LONGER SERVES JEWISH INTERESTS

Solzhenitsyn notes the irony that, in the West, there was little effective concern about the victims of Communism until it turned on the Jews. He quips,

“15 million peasants were destroyed in the ‘dekulakisation’, 6 million peasants were starved to death in 1932, not even to mention the mass executions and millions who died in the camps, and at the same time it was fine to politely sign agreements with Soviet leaders, to lend them money, to shake their ‘honest hands’, to seek their support, and to boast of all this in front of your parliaments.

But once it was specifically JEWS that became the target, then a spark of sympathy ran through the West and it became clear what sort of regime this was.” (p. 346; Emphasis is Solzhenitsyn’s).

NOWADAYS JEWS DODGE THEIR RESPONSIBILITY AND BLAME THE RUSSIANS

Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes the standard double-standard (one which Poles are all too familiar with), as he describes current Jewish attitudes,

“There are so many such confident voices ready to judge Russia’s many crimes and failings, her inexhaustible guilt towards the Jews—and they so sincerely believe this guilt to be inexhaustible almost all of them believe it! Meanwhile, their own people are coyly cleared of any responsibility for their participation in Cheka shootings, for sinking the barges and their doomed human cargo in the White and Caspian seas, for their role in collectivization, the Ukrainian famine and in all the abominations of the Soviet administration, for their talented zeal in brainwashing the ‘natives’. This is not contrition.” (p. 335).

Of course, Solzhenitsyn is not insinuating that Jews are collectively guilty for Communism. However, Jews should accept collective liability for Communism and its crimes in much the same way that Germans accept collective liability for Nazism and its crimes. (p. 141, 321). Until they do so, this issue of the Zydokomuna (Judeo-Bolshevism) will not go away.

JEWISH INFLUENCE IN COMMUNISM WAS FAR GREATER THAN ANY “GROCERY LIST” OF JEWISH COMMUNISTS  We keep hearing that Jews at no time constituted a majority of the leadership in Communism. This is technically true, but it does not tell the whole story.  Refer to: Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews, by Albert S. Lindemann: To begin with, Jewish Communists were noted for their high intelligence, verbal skills, assertiveness, ideological fervor, etc. (p. 429). Not surprisingly, few non-Jewish Communist leaders approached the caliber of the Jewish Communist leaders. For example, Lindemann reminds us that, “Jewish or gentilized, Trotsky was a man of unusual talents.” (p. 447). In addition, “Trotsky’s paramount role in the revolution cannot be denied…” (p. 448). This can be generalized, “Other non-Jews might be mentioned but almost certainly do not quite measure up to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yoffe, Sverdlov, Uritsky, or Radek in visibility inside Russia and abroad, especially not in the crucial years from 1917 to 1921.” (p. 432). Finally, influential Jews did not have to act alone. In fact, Jews had the skill of influencing non-Jews to think in Jewish ways. Lenin can validly be understood as a “Jewified gentile” (pp. 432-433). The same can be said for the renegade-Pole Dzerzhinsky (p. 442, 446), as well as the Russian Kalinin, who was called by Jewish Bolsheviks “more Jewish than the Jews”. (p. 433). I. JEWISH COMMUNISTS INFLUENCED NON-JEWS TO GO ALONG WITH THEIR THINKING Let us elaborate on Feliks Dzerzhinsky. Refer to: The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police: Author Leggett describes how Dzerzhinsky grew up in Vilna [Wilno, Vilnius], which he describes as a cosmopolitan city with a strong Jewish element and a focal point of socialist ferment in Tsarist Russia. (p. 34). He adds that, “Dzerzhinsky came under the influence of Martov, future leader of the Menshevik Party, by whom he was introduced into Jewish circles, both proletarian and of the intelligentsia; he made many Jewish friends and zealously learned Yiddish. The Bund—Jewish social democratic workers’ organization in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, founded in 1897—helped Dzerzhinsky in his political activity, for instance in late 1899. Dzerzhinsky’s close friend and schoolmate in Vilna was Mikhail Goldman…” (pp. 24-25). The strong Jewish influence very much extended to Dzerzhinsky’s personal life. Leggett continues, “Goldman’s sister, Julia, was for several years Dzerzhinsky’s romantic love…formed a deeply romantic attachment, lasting from 1905 to early 1910, for another Jewish woman, Sabina Feinstein, sister of a prominent SDKPiL member. Very soon afterwards, in November 1910, Dzerzhinsky married Sofia Sigizmundovna nee Mushkat, who was likewise Jewish…” (p. 25). As if to underscore the fact that Jewish influence in Communism is much greater than just the "grocery list" of Jewish Communists, Leggett writes of "Rosa Luxemburg [Luksemburg], celebrated for her intellectual brilliance and her political passion." (p. 24). So intoxicated had "Bloody Feliks" ("KRWAWE FELEK") Dzierzinski become of Luksemburg's ideas that he actually clashed with Lenin on the resurrection of the Polish state. Only that it was the non-Pole Lenin supporting the restoration of the Polish nation and renegade-Pole Dzerzhinsky opposing it, in accordance with Luxemburg. (pp. 23-24). The foregoing can be generalized. Refer to: The Crucifixion of Russia: A History of the Russians and the Jews A new English translation of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn comments,

“The February Revolution was carried out by Russian hands and Russian foolishness. Yet at the same time, its ideology was permeated and dominated by the intransigent hostility to the historical Russian state that ordinary Russians didn’t have, but the Jews had. So the Russian intelligentsia too had adopted this view.” (p. 98). II. JEWS AS THE “BRAINS” BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE EARLY SOVIET UNION See my review of: The Rulers of Russia III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWS IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AS NOTED BY SOME JEWS See my review of: The new Poland, IV. DECADES BEFORE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, JEWS HAD PLAYED AN INDISPENSABLE ROLE IN KEEPING REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS GOING IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY, AND IN MAKING RADICAL MOVEMENTS EVEN MORE RADICAL: See my review of: Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia V. COMMUNISM PERMEATED MUCH OF PRE-WWII JEWISH THINKING, NOTABLY IN POLAND Refer to: Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto (My Review was Feb 12, 2012) Moshe Arens wrote: "The years preceding World War II were a time when Socialists throughout the world were preaching the `class struggle' and `solidarity of the proletariat.' Many of them, not only avowed Communists, saw the Soviet Union as the pioneer and leader of this `struggle.' This was also true in Palestine, where the Socialist Zionists had achieved a dominant position in the Jewish community." (p. 7). The so-called "proletarian" camp included the Socialist Zionists and the non-Socialist Bund. (p. 9). Arens notes: "The Socialist Zionist movements, attached to Marxist ideology..." (p. 44). ZOB leader Anielewicz was a member of Hashomer Hatzair with its "Marxist approach to Zionism". (p. 113). Hashomer Hatzair and Left Po'alei Zion showed their true colors (pardon the pun) in preferring that the red flag be hoisted over the fighting Ghetto instead of the blue-white Zionist flag. (p. 287). ZOB leader Hersh Berlinski exhibited undisguised disloyalty to Poland as he said that his support was to the USSR over Poland. (p. 142). As for the Warsaw Ghetto rank-and-file soldiers, Arens refers to them as: "...younger generation, their orthodox Marxist thinking giving rigidity to their arguments." (p. 106). Who can blame Poles for their reluctance to support the Uprising owing to its taint of Communism? (p. 71; 200-201; 226) VI. A RATHER CANDID DISCUSSION, ABOUT JEWS IN COMMUNISM, BY LEADING JEWISH COMMUNISTS See my review of: "Them": Stalin's Polish puppets VII JEWISH COMMUNISM AS A FORM OF JEWISH NIHILISM See my review of: Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism -------- CONCLUSION: Since Jews Take Collective Credit for Their Albert Einsteins and Jonas Salks, Should They Not Also Assume Collective Liability for Jewish Mass-Murderers Such as Genrikh Yagoda and Lazar Kaganovich? 

HOW THE MASSIVE OVER-INVOLVEMENT OF JEWS IN COMMUNISM LONG INFLAMED POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS The ZYDOKOMUNA (Judeo-Bolshevism) cannot be wished away. In addition, the Jewish share of blame for Communism is not erased just because there were non-Communist Jews. Finally, since Jews regularly call on Poles to “come to terms with the past”, in a collective sense, for the actions of only SOME Poles, the Jews should be held to the same standard. To learn of the dominance of Jews in the leadership of the early decades of the Soviet Union, please click on, and read my detailed review of, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). See also THE RULERS OF RUSSIA, by Denis Fahey. (1940). Condon Printing Company, Detroit. For details on the massive long-term Jewish overrepresentation in the leadership of the Soviet Communist Secret Police (the NKVD), responsible for the murder of millions of innocent people, please click on, and read my detailed review, of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 26: Jews and Ukrainians. Also see THE JEWISH CENTURY. My Amazon review is dated October 29, 2010. For a scholarly Russian-language primary source on the Jewish leadership that had dominated the NKVD, please click on, and read my detailed English-language review, of Kto Rukovodil NKVD, 1934-1941: Spravochnik.