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Bolshevik atrocities with the dismissive response “They were scum, detached from Judaism, so
why do we have to answer for them?”
DM Navigator rightly reminds me of my words regarding all the Communist leaders of
any nation, “They went back on their nationality, surrendering to inhumanity.” Right. But true to
the words of Pasmanik in the 20s: “Let all thoughtful Russian people respond to one question:
could the Bolsheviks, even with Lenin at its head, have won if Russia were well-fed, and had
provided land and culture to the peasantry? Could all the Elders of Zion together, even
headed by
Trotsky, have wrought such great havoc in Russia by themselves?” He’s right, of course. They
could not.
Right. But true to the words of Pasmanik in the 20s: “We can not limit ourselves to the
statement that the Jewish people are not responsible for these or any other actions of its
individual members. We are responsible for Trotsky, as we dissociated ourselves from him.”
This topic must not be fenced off. At the very least the present day Jewish people need to
renounce their actions and learn from this lesson.
Carefully working on a biography of Trotsky, I agree with the opinion that he did not
have a specific strong Jewish attachment, but was a sincere ardent internationalist. So this would
be a Tribesman easy to condemn? But with the rising star of Trotsky, in the autumn of 1917, he
became the pride of too many, almost an idol of the radical left-wing circles of American Jewry.
50 years ago there was sitting with me in the camp a young man, Vladimir Gershuni - a
passionate socialist and internationalist. In the 60s we met on the outside, and on some occasion
he gave me his notes. And in them he asserts that Trotsky was a Prometheus
in October, “He was
a Prometheus, not because he was such a freak, but because he was a child of the people, a
Prometheus who even when he was chained to a rock, his anger blunted with
chains of secret and
open hostility, did so much for humanity.”
All researchers who do not approve the participation of Jews in the revolution tend not to
recognize these Jews by their nationality. Those who interpret the Jewish hegemony in early
Bolshevism as a victory of the Jewish spirit, among them many Israeli historians, have
enthusiastically praised their Jewish identity.
Already in the 20s, just after the Civil War, there were sounded
otrechnye arguments. In
the book
Russian Jews I.O. Levin analyzes: Jews among the Bolsheviks were not many, and
there is no reason to hold all the people responsible for its individual members; Czarist Russia
persecuted Jews and in the Civil War the Bolsheviks sought protection from pogroms and that is
why there is
no criminal responsibility for, all is personal moral responsibility.
Yet Pasmanik did not think that such a moral responsibility can be cleansed. But even he
sought consolation: “Why should the Jewish masses be held responsible for the abomination of
individual Jewish commissars? This is undoubtedly deeply unfair. But the imposition of liability
on the Jews only proves that we recognize the presence of a special Jewish nation. At the time
when the Jews are no longer a nationality, when they become Russian, German, British of the
Jewish faith, they are freed from the burdens of collective responsibility.”
However, the 20th century recognized a Jewish nation, with an anchor in Israel. The
willingness to accept responsibility for it past, for both Jews and Russians, is inseparable from
ability of any people or nation to build a decent life. Yes, there were a lot of reasons why the
Jews went to the Bolsheviks and why some still see new good the Civil War. However, if
Russian Jews commemorate this period by primarily justifying and excusing their participation,
they are lost, reduced to the level of solely Jewish self-understanding with the rest of humanity
shut out, another version of their age-old delusion of being God’s Chosen People.
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Germans will sometimes make excuses for Hitler’s time. “They were not real Germans,
and scum.” But every nation is morally responsible for all of its past, including that which
shameful. How do we Russians respond to the historical horror of Bolshevism we inflicted on
ourselves and on the world? With endless attempts to understand why this was allowed to
happen that never really go anywhere, because certain names may not be named, certain things
may not be said, and certain facts never openly acknowledged? And with never any actual
conclusions as to blame? No culprits ever actually named? The question never asked, “Is it
possible that the same people might do the same thing again?”
That’s the spirit of the Jewish people, and they should be held responsible for their
revolutionary thugs and for the readiness of the endless ranks who went into Bolshevik service to
commit mass murder. Their intentions and behavior today must be scrutinized in full knowledge
of what they have done to others in the past and with an eye to what they might do in the future;
there is justification for that. We must not conceal the truth in the eyes of other nations, or from
ourselves, or from our consciences before God. How do we Russians take responsibility for the
pogroms, for those merciless peasants arsonists, for the mad revolutionary soldiers and sailor-
beasts, and yet the Jews get to spread their hands in blameless innocence over the countless
Yiddish names among the commissar-butchers who commanded the whole wretched business?
About them [the Russian Bolsheviks] I think I said enough in
The Red Wheel. Well, I
might add here one example: here is the Red Guard Basov, truth-seeker and people’s advocate,
who took his sister Shingareva money for tea in the Mariinsky Hospital, and
a few hours later the
same night that led the sailors to the hospital to shoot Kokoshkin.
We must answer as responsible for the actions of our nation which is our larger family,
for if responsibility is removed then the whole concept of the national identity is lost.