- A reader writes, "Lenin was no Jew ... Trotsky
was no friend of the Jews."
-
- In dealing with this question, I do not want to get bogged
down in questions of race; what counts is identity.
-
- Most people have diverse ancestry, but select certain
features of it with which to identify. This subjective factor - in the
mind - far outweighs race. Ten generations back, each of us has 1024 ancestors;
to select one (eg the bearer of our surname or religion) to identify with,
is arbitary, but meaningful in cultural terms.
-
- (1) Dmitri Volkoganov on Lenin and Trotsky (2) Conversations
with an old Jewish man (3) Josepha Nedava on Trotsky (4) Letter to Israel
Shamir & Henry Makow
-
- (1) Dmitri Volkoganov on Lenin and Trotsky
-
- Volkoganov was Director of the Institute For Military
History in the USSR in its latest years. After the fall of the USSR he
gained access to the previously-secret archives on Lenin.
-
- In his biography Lenin, he writes of Lenin's Jewish self-identity:
Lenin's sister Anna confirmed it in a letter to Stalin.
-
- "{p. 8} In her letter to Stalin, Anna wrote, 'It's
probably no secret for you that the research on our grandfather shows that
he came from a poor Jewish family ...
-
- "{p. 9} ' ... she also asserted ... that Lenin's
Jewish origins 'are further confirmation of the exceptional abilities of
the Semitic tribe, [confirmation] always shared by Ilyich [Lenin] ... Ilyich
always valued the Jews highly'. ... Anna's claim explains, for instance,
why Lenin frequently recommended giving foreigners, especially Jews, intellectually
demanding tasks, and leaving the elementary work to the 'Russian fools'..
-
- "But a little over a year later, Anna approached
Stalin again, asserting that 'in the Lenin Institute, as well as in the
Institute of the Brain ... they have long recognized the great gifts of
this nation and the extremely beneficial effects of its blood on the progeny
of mixed marriages. Ilyich himself rated their revolutionary qualities
highly, contrasting it with the more sluggish and unstable character of
the Russians. He often pointed out that the great [attributes of] organization
and the strength of the revolutionary bodies in the south and west [of
Russia] arose precisely from the fact that 50 per cent of their members
were of that nationality.' But Stalin, the Russified Georgian, could not
allow it to be known that Lenin had Jewish roots, and his strict prohibition
remained firmly in place."
-
- "{p.xxxvii} He {Lenin} went on: 'Hand out the work
to Russian idiots: send the cuttings here, but not occasional issues (as
these idiots have been doing until now).'
-
- "{p. 112} He {Lenin} might have been thinking of
Parvus (or perhaps himself?) when he said to Gorky: 'the clever Russian
is almost always a Jew or has Jewish blood in him.'"
-
- (2) Conversations with an old Jewish man
-
- Not long after I wrote my article <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/hiding.html>Hiding
Behind Auschwitz, I had some amazing conversations with a Jewish man who
must have assumed that I am Jewish on account of my surname. I commented
to him that "Capitalism is a cruel system", which is my honest
belief, when he agreed and went on to say, "Communism was the perfect
system", because it was "one for all and all for one". Although
he is an atheist, he also said, "What we have now is no good. The
Jewish religion is 100%. [Even] Catholicism was not bad."
-
- He also said, "They were all Jews - Marx was a Jew,
Lenin was a Jew, X was a Jew, Y was a Jew." Even though I had read
that Lenin considered himself a Jew, I was so stunned to hear him say so,
that I missed catching the names of the X and the Y. This man had been
a prisoner at the Belsen concentration camp. Yet he said to me, "Hitler
did a lot of good for his people. Mussolini did a lot of good for his people.
Mussolini's only mistake was to join with Hitler."
-
- (3) Josepha Nedava on Trotsky
-
- On Trotsky, the following is from Josepha Nedava's book
Trotsky and the Jews (Nedava himself is Jewish):
-
- Joseph Nedava, Trotsky and the Jews, The Jewish Publication
Society of America, Philadelphia 5732 / 1972.
-
- {start quote} {p. 36} A Jewish journalist who knew Trotsky
from the period of his stay in Vienna ("when he used to play chess
with Baron Rothschild in Cafe Central and frequent Cafe Arkaden daily
to read the press there") is even firmer on the Yiddish issue: "He
[Trotsky] knew Yiddish, and if at a later date, in his autobiography, he
pretends to know nothing about Jews and Judaism, then this is nothing
but a plain lie. He who had visited at Cafe Arkaden for years on end must
have mastered both these matters to perfection. The language in greatest
use at that Cafe was - besides 'Viennese-German' - Yiddish."26 {see
note 26 below}
-
- Trotsky of course had no objection to the Yiddish language
as such (as Hebraists, for instance, had, contending that Hebrew was the
only national language of the Jews); this appears from his reply to Lazar
Kling, the editor of the Jewish Trotskyite organ in New York (Unzer Kamf
- Our Struggle):
-
- You ask, what is my attitude to the Yiddish language?
- As to any other language. If indeed I used in my autobiography the word
"jargon," it is because in my youth the Jewish language was
not called "Yiddish," as it is today, but "jargon."
This is how the Jews themselves called it, {continued below at p. 37}
-
- {footnote 26 to the above is on p. 237:}
-
- {p. 237} 26. M. Waldman, "Trotski be-Vina-Zikhronot"
[Trotsky in Vienna - reminiscences], Ha'olam (Jerusalem) 27, no. 55 (2
October 1940): 864. Trotsky was a keen chess player; Ziv, Trotsky, p. 76.
At those Vienna cafes he learned the colloquial Yiddish word kibitzer -
"an onlooker . . . especially one who volunteers advice" (Webster's
New World Dictionary). In a speech in Moscow he once said: "I lived
as an emigre in Vienna for several years, and there they use a word which,
it seems to me, cannot be found in any other language - kibitzer. Remember
this word - it will prove useful to you. This word designates a man who,
seeing two people playing chess, takes without fail a seat nearby and always
knows the very best move, and if you sit down to play a game with him,
he proves to be an ignoramus after the first move"; Pravda, no. 219,
20 October 1922; and L. Trotsky, Pokolenie Oktyabrya (Moscow, 1924), p.
77. {end note 26}
-
- {p. 37} at least, in Odessa, and they have injected into
this word absolutely nothing of slight. The word "Yiddish" has
been made of common use, in any case, in France, for instance, only for
the last 15-20 years.
-
- {p. 106} Much more helpful to the suffering Jews in those
dire days was Trotsky's sister, Olga Kamenev, wife of the influential Bolshevik
-
- {p. 107} leader Lev Kamenev {one of the triumvirate who
succeeded Lenin, with Zinoviev and Stalin; of the three, only one was
non-Jewish}.
-
- {p. 195} Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the future Zionist leader,
related in his autobiography that "Switzerland - and this meant chiefly
Berne and Geneva - was, at the turn of the century, the crossroads of
Europe's revolutionary forces. Lenin and Plekhanov made it their center.
Trotsky . . . was often there." ...
-
- Trotsky must have followed very closely the Sixth Zionist
Congress at Basle in 1903. Shortly after the close of the Second Social-Democratic
Congress in London he arrived in Switzerland, at the very time when the
Zionist Congress was taking place, in August. It should be noted that
this congress marked the zenith of Dr. Herzl's activities, and the Zionist
Organization was granted an international status following the diplomatic
negotiations which had been carried on by the British government with
its representatives. Preparations for convening the Zionist Congress were
well publicized by the world press, and Trotsky was attracted - either
on his own account or through his Bundist acquaintances - to
-
- {p. 196} attend its proceedings. He read the Zionist
organ Die Welt, as well as the general press, which reflected the keen
interest in the Zionist movement even among non-Zionist and non-Jewish
circles. ...
-
- {p. 204} On his arrival in Mexico in January 1937, Trotsky
granted several interviews to the press, in which he expressed his views
on Jewish problems. He admitted that with Hitler's rise to power in Germany,
things had altered considerably for European Jewry. Agonizingly he had
to reappraise his former assumptions:
-
- During my youth I rather leaned toward the prognosis
that the Jews of different countries would be assimilated and that the
Jewish question would thus disappear, as it were, automatically. The historical
development of the last quarter of a century has not confirmed this view.
Decaying capitalism has everywhere swung over to an intensified nationalism,
one aspect of which is anti-Semitism. The Jewish question has loomed largest
in the most highly developed capitalist country of Europe, Germany.
-
- Trotsky still did not concede that the Jewish question
could be solved within the framework of the capitalist system; but assimilation,
as a kind of self-regulating process which might have taken care of the
problem over an extended period of time, could no longer be relied upon;
its pace was not speedy enough to cope with the appearance of such radically
destructive movements as nazism. Palliatives, therefore, had to be sought,
and Trotsky was driven to admit the existence of one of them - territorialism.
"The Jews of different countries," he said, "have created
their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted
to modern culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish
nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come." The admission
of the existence of a "Jewish nation" was a weird recantation
on the part of Trotsky, unless it was a mere semantic slip of the tongue.
-
- Admitting in 1937 the need for a palliative solution
to the Jewish problem but realizing, of course, that Zionism was basically
a territorial movement. Trotsky took issue with it, not on the grounds
of substance, but rather practical viability. He said so explicitly:
-
- We must bear in mind that the Jewish people will exist
a long time. The nation cannot normally exist without common territory.
Zionism springs from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day
demon-
-
- {p. 205} strate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving
the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine
acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character.
I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within
the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism.
-
- In his interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
Trotsky recalled that he had been inclined toward the idea of assimilation
of Jews, but had changed his attitude because of "historical developments."
-
- He then brought up a new concept, which had never before
preoccupied the minds of Marxist doctrinaires: emigration. Orthodox socialism,
which claims to be anchored in the underlying fraternity of the human
race, does not envisage the need for transplanting peoples in order to
solve social problems. Trotsky, however, admits to the peculiarity of
the Jewish problem in this respect too:
-
- Socialism will open the possibility of great migrations
on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. It goes without
saying that what is here involved is not compulsory displacements, that
is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities, but displacements
freely consented to, or rather demanded, by certain nationalities or parts
of nationalities. The dispersed Jews who would want to be reassembled in
the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under
the sun. The same possibility will be opened for the Arabs, as for all
other scattered nations. National topography will become a part of the
planned economy. This is the great historic perspective as I see it. To
work for international Socialism means to work also for the solution of
the Jewish question.* {Why does Trotsky mention the Arabs, if not implying
that Palestine would be given to the Jews? H. G. Wells also envisaged mass
migration in his world state.}
-
- Here Trotsky may have prophetically adumbrated the national
renascence which sprouted among wide sections of Soviet Jewry, which,
following the Six-Day War of 1967, has assumed the form of a persistent
struggle for the right of immigration to Israel.?
-
- * Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 18 January 1937.
-
- ? It is noteworthy that P. B. Akselrod anticipated Trotsky
by many years in defending the idea of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
See Deich, Yiden in der Rusisher Revolutsie, 1:9.
-
- {p. 206} In June 1937 Mrs. Beba Idelson, a Russian-born
Jewish socialist Zionist leader in Palestine, visited Trotsky in Mexico.
First she participated in a press conference at Diego Rivera's residence
and then had a long conversation with Trotsky in his study. The following
are some of her recollections of that conversation:
-
- I told him who I was, and that at the time I had been
expelled from Russia as a Zionist-Socialist. If he was interested, I would
tell him about our life in Palestine. Trotsky got up from his chair, asked
me to wait awhile, and soon returned with his wife. He introduced me to
her and asked me to tell him everything. He wanted to know about Palestine
and was happy to hear a report from a person living there.
-
- I talked to him not as one talks to a stranger. A feeling
accompanied me all the time that he was a Jew, a wandering Jew, without
a fatherland. This brought me closer to him, aroused in me confidence
that my story was addressed to a man who was able to understand. I interrupted
my story several times, asking him whether he was sure he had the time
to listen to me, and he urged me to continue, jotted down some points,
and then began to question me: How many Jews are there in Palestine? Where
do they reside; is it only in towns? He asked numerous questions about
the kibbutzim and the Histadrut. Are we able to work in harmony with the
employers within the framework of the Zionist Organization; how do we
bring Jews to Palestine and how do they join our party; how is our young
generation being brought up and what is its language? He asked me to say
a few sentences in Hebrew and smiled at the sound of the language. He wrote
several words and noted down mainly the names of the Zionist leaders,
the parties, the Histadrut, and various places in Palestine. He showed
interest as if he were a man hearing about an unknown land, but I was
under the impression that the subject absorbed his thought and heart.
-
- The conversation lasted nearly three hours. After telling
how we were fighting for Jewish immigration into our country, and he was
deeply immersed in thought, I asked him: "Here is a country that
is ready to admit you; perhaps you, too, will go to Palestine?" I
felt that a shiver ran through his spine. He replied with a calm question:
"Wouldn't you be afraid to accept me?" I answered: "No,
we won't be afraid, for our idea is stronger than any fear of any man,
even of a man like you." Trotsky came over to me, pressed my hand,
and said: "Thank you. It is a long time since I have felt so good.
But you should know that I have friends throughout the world. We have not
renounced our views,
-
- {p. 207} even though I am rejected by Stalin and his
Oprichniks [this is Trotsky's expression, referring to the special corps
created by Ivan the Terrible to fight treason which instituted the reign
of terror]. I have friends, and they are also persecuted." I told
him that his persecuted friends lived in their own countries, whereas he
had no country of refuge, for he was a Jew. Trotsky nodded agreement.
-
- We had lunch together. His wife showed no interest in
our conversation. From time to time she would address questions to him,
but he would put off his reply and then turn to me with further questions
about matters relating to Palestine. He was particularly interested in
our relations with our Arab neighbors. He asked me whether there were Communists
in Palestine, and why they did not go to Russia instead of staying in a
Zionist country. He also wanted to know whether the Communist party was
legal, big or small. When I told him that the Communists were not among
the builders of the kibbutzim ("communes," as Trotsky called
them), he laughed, commenting: "They do not have this in Russia, either."
He was very interested in the status of women in Palestine, and also asked
a personal question - how I had arrived in Mexico and what the nature of
my mission was. He showed me his library, which filled a large hall, consisting
of books in various languages; I realized how spiritually attached he was
to this single possession of his in exile. I asked him: "Should you
be obliged to leave Mexico - what will you do with this library: perhaps
you would transfer it to Palestine?'
-
- When we renewed our conversation after the meal, he listened
attentively to what I told him about the cultural work being carried on
in our country, about the libraries in each and every settlernent, about
the National Library in Jerusalem, about the Hebrew press. I can no longer
recall all his questions, but I cannot forget how attentively he listened
to what I told him about our children, the sabras, and their love of their
fatherland. I noticed that my words penetrated deep into his heart, that
he was glad to hear about a world from which he had dissociated himself.
I sensed that he was listening not like a man who placed himself above
all nationality, and that our great idea found an echo in his heart.
-
- At the end of our conversation Trotsky asked me not to
publish the fact of our meeting and its contents: "Let the matter
remain between us. The world will not understand. People will seek in
this, too, grounds for accusing me of harboring alien views, and perhaps
even sympathy for Zionism." I promised him this and kept my promise
for nineteen years.
-
- {end quote}
- More from Nedava at <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/nedava.html>nedava.html.
-
- (4) Letter to Israel Shamir & Henry Makow
-
- 4.1 Henry Makow writes that the "Enlightenment"
is actually a Luciferian Revolt: http://www.etherzone.com/2003/mako090803.shtml.
-
- 4.2 Israel Shamir wrote:
-
- [shamireaders] Discussion on Communism
-
- Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 21:36:03 +0300 From: "Israel
Shamir" <shamir@home.se>
-
- Preface
-
- Our friend anti-Zionist Henry Makow promoted on his site
<http://www.savethemales.ca/>http://www.savethemales.ca a book by
an Estonian writer Juri Lina who happened to combine hatred to Jews, Christianity
and Communism. Lina wrote: "Both Christianity and Marxism were created
with a view to slavery" - that is really Hitlerite line that any neo-con
would subscribe to. I actually share his idea of similarity of 'Christians
and Communists', and belong to both. But what he curses, I bless daily
in the church.
-
- For whatever was its conception, the Communism as it
became known in the second half of the 20th century was a wonderful humanistic
faith of mutual support, heavily influenced by the Orthodox Christianity
of Russia. Many anti-communist theories and 'facts' are provided in order
to facilitate the great robbery of Russia in 1991 and the rest of the Third
World. Lina collected all garbage produced by CIA- paid anticommunists
of Russia. Otherwise, he reprocessed the old stuff well known to all of
us.
-
- As for Jews, by stretching this term to infinity (from
Proudhon to Torquemada, from Lenin to Robespierre, and to practically every
non-Estonian) he makes it meaningless. In no way one can desribe Lenin
or Marx as 'Jews'. Marx was a Christian, and a strongest anti-Jewish voice
from St Paul to modernity, Lenin was a Russian noble and a (lapsed) Christian,
who fought the Jewish Bund and was shot by a Jewish assassin. If a few
drops of Jewish blood would qualify for calling a man - a Jew, we would
have a billion of Jews. ... {endquote}
-
- 4.3 Juri Lina's book - reply to Henry Makow and Israel
Shamir
-
- Israel & Henry,
-
- I have a copy of Juri Lina's book Under the Sign of the
Scorpion, and find it a mixture of valuable information I did not know
before, and unsubstantiated statements. I would like to see it rewritten,
with the latter either backed-up or removed.
-
- Making sense of the Soviet Union and East Bloc has become
more important that we thought 10 years ago. My websitesite, while not
comprehensive, provides a lot of "missing" information about
the stages the USSR went through.
-
- 1. The early, pre-Stalin, phase, was set up by Non-Theistic
Jews. I provide verification of this from reliable sources. See the information
provided above, and <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/zioncom.html>zioncom.html.
-
- Non-theistic Judaism is a religion, a variation of Judaism:
<http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/philos.html>philos.html.
-
- When I say that they were Jews, this is not a matter
of blood, but of their own personal Identity - they way they saw things.
That can change over time. No-one should be categorised, judged or imprisoned
by factors he or she did not choose, such as ancestry or the name given
by parents.
-
- There's no point in denying it; however, interpreting
it is another matter.
-
- One interpretation might stress "benevolence":
this faction of Jews is ruling for the benefit of the lower orders. Another
interpretation stresses "malevolence": the hijacking of the socialist
movement for their own totalitarian purposes.
-
- 2. Stalin rose to power for a number of reasons:
-
- - because the Red Army's attempt in 1920 to smash Poland
and reach Germany failed
-
- - because Trotsky was feared by other Jewish Bolsheviks.
When Lenin died, power passed to a triumvirate: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin.
Of these, Stalin was the only non-Jew
-
- - because Trotsky did not attend Lenin's funeral
-
- - and perhaps, because of hostility to Jewish domination;
this factor increased later
-
- 3. Stalin was brutal, but his brutality was, in part,
directed against the non-theistic Jewish Bolsheviks ... who in time, came
to reassess Trotsky and coalesce around him as the rival leader, the exiled
pretender to the throne. Thus Isaac Deutscher, in his book The Prophet
Outcast, records Trotsky's aspiration - even in 1939 - to return to the
USSR in the wake of Stalin's overthrow (Victory in Defeat: pp. 510ff).
-
- Deuscher articulated a strong Jewish Identity: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/deutscher.html>deutscher.html.
-
- 4. The plan by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committe for a
Jewish Republic in the Crimea, the Baruch Plan of 1946 for World Government,
and the rallying of Soviet Jews to Israel (eg at Golda Meir's visit) affected
Stalin's perception of Jewish solidarity with Jews in the US and Israel.
Moscow & Jerusalem became rival centres representing divergent visions
of socialism. This was an unseen Cold War: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/sudoplat.html>sudoplat.html.
-
- 5. Stalin was murdered, within 2 months of the Doctors
Plot being announced; Zionism was one of the issues in his murder: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/death-of-stalin.html>death-of-stalin.html.
-
- The murderers comprised a "Jewish" faction
(Beria, Kaganovich et al) and a "Russian" faction (Khruschev
et al). Beria, of the Jewish faction, took power, and instituted "reforms"
of the type Gorbachev was to repeat later. East Germany began to collapse
... in response, the "Russian" faction was able to overthrow
Beria and install Khruschev: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/beria.html>beria.html.
-
- 6. Gorbachev seems to have removed the totalitarian aspects
of Communism; on that account, he may have been the best ruler. But he
was aiming at Beria's "Convergence" policy, i.e. at a World Government,
a Single Civilization uniting East & West. For this, he thought he
must dismantle the heritage of Stalin, including the East Bloc: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/convergence.html>convergence.html.
-
- 7. Convergence is associated, loosely, with the Trotskyist
movement, which is also loosely called "Marxist Anti-Communist"
(see <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/kostel.html>kostel.html)
and "New Left": <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/new-left.html>new-left.html.
The magazine New Left Review, for example, was closely attuned to the ideas
of Isaac Deutscher, a champion of Trotsky.
-
- 8. Convergence is also associated with the "Open
Conspiracy" for World Government: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/wells-lenin-league.html>wells-lenin-league.html.
-
- 9. The kind of "Marxism" we now have in the
West is the Trotskyist kind. Thus the Greens promote Gay Marriage and Open
Borders. The Gay & Radical Feminist movements are following the policies
of the Trotskyist period of the USSR, during which Marriage was officially
abolished and homosexuality (including sodomy) normalised. Stalin re-instituted
marriage, and made sodomy a crime: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/sex-soviet.html>sex-soviet.html.
-
- {end}
-
- If, prior to the Russian Revolution, Trotsky used to
play chess with Baron Rothschild in Vienna, why didn't Trotsky capture
Rothschild as he later helped capture the Tsar, in the name of the Working
Class?
-
- The admission by Lazar Kaganovich's relative, that Bolshevism
was imposed on the Russians by non-theistic Jews: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/kaganovich.html>kaganovich.html.
-
- Dmitri Volkogonov on Trotsky's role in the Kronstadt
Massacre: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/kronstadt.html>kronstadt.html.
-
- Bertrand Russell's observation of the Jewish role in
early Bolshevism: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/russell.html>russell.html.
-
- Making sense of Stalin: <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/stalin.html>stalin.html.
-
-
- <http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/index.html>
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