- Foreword
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- A copy of this book was recently offered on American
Book Exchange for $1000. It has been either sold of withdrawn. Other
copies of what appear to be the same book are much less, and I acquired
two copies, one for myself and our good comrade, "Bill The Hermit",
whose essays appear on several websites, including Ziopedia. Read his
short review to get an idea of what is in this fascinating book. As I
have said for sometime, some of the most interesting books about Judaics
and their doings are written by themselves. Several old photos are quite
revealing, telling the observant reader as much as the chapters themselves.
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- Zvi Gitelman's old book Jewish Nationality and Soviet
Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930, published in 1972
by Princeton University Press, is a real eye opener for those who refuse
to believe that Jews were prominently involved with the Bolshevik revolution
and pre-World War Two communism. Gitelman's study does not focus on the
totality of Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik regime but only on the
more limited "Jewish Section" of the Party, the so-called Evsektsiia.
This section of the Party was designed to bring Jews into the Communist
orbit whether they had been traders or revolutionaries during the preceding
Czarist regime. The Jews had, of course, been deeply involved in revolutionary
activities prior to the revolution of 1917. They had been among the biggest
revolutionaries in Russia. They dominated the Bund, the Jewish Social Revolutionary
Party (the S.E.R.P.), the Socialist Zionist Party and the later union of
the two in May 1917, the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party (the Farainigte).
Once the Bolshevik seizure of power took place in October 1917 all these
groups were either dissolved or merged into the Communist Party-and the
"Jewish Section" was born.
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- Not all Jews in Russia had been revolutionaries, of course.
But they were all extremely grateful to the revolution for removing the
Czarist restrictions on Jewish employment and upward mobility. Jews of
all varieties and descriptions rushed into the new Soviet bureaucracy to
fill upper level positions. The "Jewish Section" existed to make
sure that all classes of Russia's Jews, bankers, traders, merchants, doctors
and lawyers, the impoverished masses, etc., got the message that communism
was to be the new system. The activities of the "Jewish Section"
were several. One was the establishment of Yiddish schools throughout the
Soviet Union to teach communism to the masses. Another was the proliferation
of Yiddish communist publications throughout the former Czarist Empire.
As Gitelman writes on p.332 "The number of Yiddish books and brochures
published annually in the Soviet Union, steadily declining in 1921-1924,
rose from 76 in 1924 to 168 in 1925, by 1930 it had reached 531. The Jewish
Section also worked extensively with overseas Jewish agencies in North
America, such as the Joint Distribution Committee to provide relief and
assistance for Jews in the Communist state. The Soviet agencies Idgezcom
and SETMAS (Union of the Jewish Working Masses) were also involved in this
work.
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- The Jewish Section of the Party was shut down in 1930,
its mission accomplished. The Jews of Marxist Russia had by this time been
thoroughly integrated into a state favorable to their interests. As Gitelman
notes, a great many communist Jews remained outside the Jewish Section
of the Party, preferring to work in regular Party circles. This was, to
a great degree, the product of orthodox Marxist doctrine which taught that
Jews would lose their Jewishness once the Communist millennium had arrived
and the age old "Jewish problem" would be solved. But whether
Jews worked as orthodox Marxists or as agents of the special Jewish Section,
they worked faithfully for a new communist regime in which most of them
fanatically believed. This deep and abiding Jewish faith in communism lasted
until the end of the 1950's when Jewish predominance in the Soviet hierarchy
was finally broken. This love affair of Jews with communism is now usually
dismissed as Nazi propaganda. But it was a deep involvement indeed-and
one which has disappeared down the historical memory hole.
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