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{{Redirect|Jewish Communism|the short-lived political party in Mandate Palestine and Israel|Hebrew Communists}} {{Redirect|Jewish Communism|the short-lived political party in Mandate Palestine and Israel|Hebrew Communists}}
] propaganda poster depicting a demonic ] wearing a ], sitting near a pile of skeletons. The caption reads "Peace and Freedom in Soviet Russia."]]{{Antisemitism}} ] propaganda poster depicting a demonic ] wearing a ], sitting near a pile of skeletons. The caption reads "Peace and Freedom in Soviet Russia."]]{{Antisemitism}}
'''Jewish Bolshevism''' or '''Judeo-Bolshevism''' is the ] that ] have been the driving force behind ] movements, or more specifically Soviet ].{{sfn|Alderman|1983}}{{pn|date=September 2013}} The expression has been used as a catchword for the assertion that Communism is a Jewish conspiracy, and it has often coincided with overtly aggressive ]ic tendencies in the 20th century and 21st century. In Poland, Judeo-Bolshevism was known as ] and was used as an ] stereotype.<ref>Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, "Żydzi w kierownictwie UB. Stereotyp czy rzeczywistość?", ''Biuletyn IPN'' (11/2005), pp. 37-42</ref> '''Jewish Bolshevism''' or '''Judeo-Bolshevism''' is the ] that ] have been the driving force behind ] movements, or more specifically Soviet ].{{sfn|Alderman|1983}}{{pn|date=September 2013}} The expression has been used as a catchword for the assertion that Communism is a Jewish conspiracy, and it has often coincided with overtly aggressive ]ic tendencies in the 20th century and 21st century. In Poland, Judeo-Bolshevism was known as ] and was used as an ] stereotype.<ref>Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, "Żydzi w kierownictwie UB. Stereotyp czy rzeczywistość?", ''Biuletyn IPN'' (11/2005), pp. 37-42</ref>


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==Origins== ==Origins==
The worldwide spread of the concept in the 1920s is associated with the publication and circulation of '']''. The expression made an issue out of the Jewishness of some leading Bolsheviks (most notably ]) during and after the October Revolution. ] says that "primarily through ''the Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', the ] spread these charges to an international audience."{{sfn|Pipes|1997|p=93}} ] wrote that it is rare to find an antisemitic source after 1917 that "does not stand in debt to the ] analysis of the Revolution."''{{sfn|Webb|1976|p=295}} The worldwide spread of the concept in the 1920s is associated with the publication and circulation of '']''. The expression made an issue out of the Jewishness of some leading Bolsheviks (most notably ]) during and after the October Revolution. ] says that "primarily through ''the Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', the ] spread these charges to an international audience."{{sfn|Pipes|1997|p=93}} ] wrote that it is rare to find an antisemitic source after 1917 that ..."does not stand in debt to the ] analysis of the Revolution."''{{sfn|Webb|1976|p=295}}


==Jewish involvement in Russian Communism== ==Jewish involvement in Russian Communism==
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===Persecution of Jews in the late Russian Empire=== ===Persecution of Jews in the late Russian Empire===
{{Main|History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union}} {{Main|History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union}}
Jews had been a persecuted minority in the ].<ref></ref> They had endured a form of ] in the ], as well as sporadic ]s. In the period from 1881 to 1920, more than two million Jews left Russia.<ref name="FP_PAE"> Beyond the Pale. The History of Jews in Russia. (Exhibition by Friends and Partners Project)</ref> According to ]: "Expulsions, deportations, arrests, and beatings became the daily lot of the Jews, not only of their lower class, but even of the middle class and the Jewish intelligentsia. The government of Alexander III waged a campaign of war against its Jewish inhabitants The Jews were driven and hounded, and emigration appeared to be the only escape from the terrible tyranny of the ]."{{sfn|Wein|1990|p=173}} Jews had been a persecuted minority in the ].<ref></ref> They had endured a form of ] in the ], as well as sporadic ]s. In the period from 1881 to 1920, more than two million Jews left Russia.<ref name="FP_PAE"> Beyond the Pale. The History of Jews in Russia. (Exhibition by Friends and Partners Project)</ref>
According to ]: <blockquote>Expulsions, deportations, arrests, and beatings became the daily lot of the Jews, not only of their lower class, but even of the middle class and the Jewish intelligentsia. The government of Alexander III waged a campaign of war against its Jewish ... The Jews were driven and hounded, and emigration appeared to be the only escape from the terrible tyranny of the ]."{{sfn|Wein|1990}}{{pn|date=September 2013}}</blockquote>


Jews in relatively large numbers joined various ideological currents favoring gradual or revolutionary changes within the ]. Those movements ranged from the far left (],<ref>Goncharok, Moshe. ''Century of Will: Russian Anarchism and Jews (XIX-XX Centuries)''. Jerusalem: Mishmeret Shalom, 1996. http://makhno.ru/lit/vek_voli/3.php {{ru icon}}</ref> ], ], ]{{sfn|Levin|1988|p=13}}) to moderate left (]{{sfn|Ascher|1992|p=148}}) and constitutionalist (]{{sfn|Witte|24 March 1907}}) parties. Monarchist parties, such as ], expressed clearly antisemitic attitudes, and included antisemitic paragraphs in their political program. Jews in relatively large numbers joined various ideological currents favoring gradual or revolutionary changes within the ]. Those movements ranged from the far left (],<ref>Goncharok, Moshe. ''Century of Will: Russian Anarchism and Jews (XIX-XX Centuries)''. Jerusalem: Mishmeret Shalom, 1996. http://makhno.ru/lit/vek_voli/3.php {{ru icon}}</ref> ], ], ]{{sfn|Levin|1988|p=13}}) to moderate left (]{{sfn|Ascher|1992|p=148}}) and constitutionalist (]{{sfn|Witte|24 March 1907}}) parties. Monarchist parties, such as ], expressed clearly antisemitic attitudes, and included antisemitic paragraphs in their political program.


===Jews in the Bolshevik party=== ===Jews in the Bolshevik party===
On the eve of the ], in 1917, the Bolshevik party had about 10,000 members, of whom 364 were ethnic Jews.<ref name="FP_PAE"/><ref name="Kara-Murza">]. "Revolutionary (Socialist) Political Forces between February and October." ''Soviet Civilization''. Vol. 1. () {{ru icon}}</ref> Between 1917 and 1919, Jewish Bolshevik party leaders included ], ], ], ], ], and ]. ] was of mixed ethnic Russian and Jewish parentage.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}}{{sfn|Hoffman|Mendelsohn|2008|p=178}} Trotsky was also a member (or "]") of the ruling ].<ref name=deut>], "] as a Mirror of ]". ''Moskovskiy Komsomolets''. 10 January 2003. http://www.sem40.ru/anti/7820 {{ru icon}}</ref> Among the 23 Narkoms between 1923 and 1930, five were Jewish.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}}
] (Lev Davidovich Bronshtein)]]
]
On the eve of the ], in 1917, the Bolshevik party had about 10,000 members, of whom 364 were ethnic Jews.<ref name="FP_PAE"/><ref name="Kara-Murza">]. "Revolutionary (Socialist) Political Forces between February and October." ''Soviet Civilization''. Vol. 1. () {{ru icon}}</ref> In June 1917, the number of Jewish Bolsheviks present at the First ] was a minimum of 31 percent, in addition 37 percent of Unified Social Democrats were Jews.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=175}} Jews made up 7.1% of members who had joined before October 1917.<ref name=deut/> At the Bolshevik Central Committee meeting of October 23, 1917, which voted to launch an armed insurrection, 5 out of the 12 members present were Jews. ], ], and ] consisted the three of the seven Politbureau members responsible for directing the ] .{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=175}} Historian Arkady Vaksberg observes: "There is no getting around the fact that the first violins in the orchestra of ] were four Jews — ], ], ], and ] (Petr Voikov). The concert master and conductor was ]."{{sfn|Vaksberg|1994|pp=37}}
According to the 1922 party census, there were 19,564 Jewish Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}} Jews made up 7.1% of members who had joined before October 1917.<ref name=deut/>


Among members of the ] in 1929, there were 402 ethnic Russians, 95 Ukrainians, 55 Jews, 26 Latvians, 13 Poles, and 12 Germans{{spaced ndash}}Jewish representation had declined from 60 members in 1927.{{sfn|Pinkus|1990|p=81}} With regards to Jewish representation in the ruling Politburo, it waned very rapidly starting in 1918. It began with the assassination of ], the most radical member of the Politburo, in August 1918. Then ] died of disease in March 1919 and Sokolnikov was shunted aside. Three years later in 1922, Jewish members in the Central Committee, the Politburo's new name, had shrunk to a minority of three: Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Eventually they were all physically eliminated by ]: Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1936 and Trotsky in 1940.
The ] (VtsIK) formed during the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets contained 101 members of which 62 were Bolsheviks and included 23 Jews, 20 Russians, 5 Ukrainians, 5 Poles, 4 Balts, 3 Georgians, and 2 Armenians. According to ], former head of ], during the discussion of Bolshevik takeover of the congress all 15 speakers who partipated as official representatives were Jews while historian ] says that it was likely 14. Kamenev and Sverdlov were the first two VtsIK chairmen which lead the Soviet state. Sverdlov also served at the Party's chief administrator. The first Bolsheviks in charge of ] and ] were Kamenev and Zinoviev. Zinoview also served as the chairman of the ].{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=175}} Historian ] notes “it seems beyond serious debate that in the first twenty years of the Bolshevik Party the top ten to twenty leaders included close to a majority of Jews. Of the seven ‘major figures’ listed in The Makers of the Russian Revolution, four are of Jewish origin.”{{sfn|Lindemann|1997|pp=429-430}}


In the 1920s, of the 417 members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the People's Commissars, 6% were ethnic Jews.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}}
Serving between 1916 and 1917 as ], ], noted that: "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution."{{sfn|Francis|1921|p=214}} Between March and June 1919, Captain ], a US military intelligence officer, reported: "It is probably unwise to say this loudly in the United States, but the Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning guided and controlled by Russian Jews More than 300 Jews are (Bolshevik) commissars. Of this number 264 had come from the United States since the downfall of the Imperial government" A ] subcomittee commented in the ] that by December 1919, 371 members of the 388 member Bolshevik central government led by Zinoniev were Jews.{{sfn|Gutiérrez|4 November 2003}}


Between 1936 and 1940, during the ], ] and after the ], Stalin had largely eliminated Jews from senior party, government, diplomatic, security and military positions.{{sfn|Levin|1988|pp=318-325}} A prominent victim of the Purge was the Head of the State Security or ] ( the enforcement arm of government previously known as the ] and ] ) who also happened to have come from a Jewish background: ]. In 1939, Stalin directed incoming Foreign Minister ] to "purge the ministry of Jews".{{sfn|Resis|2000|p=35}} Although some scholars believe that this decision was taken for primarily domestic reasons,{{sfn|Resis|2000|p=35}} others argue it may have been a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=56}}{{sfn|Moss|2005|p=283}}
Between 1917 and 1919, Jewish Bolshevik party leaders included ], ], ], ], ], and ]. ] was of mixed ethnic Russian and Jewish parentage.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}}{{sfn|Hoffman|Mendelsohn|2008|p=178}} ]'s maternal grandfather was Jewish.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=163}} ], established in April 1918{{sfn|Lodder|1993|p=16}}, was headed by ], a Jew, who was responsible for designing the first Soviet flag, state emblem, official seals, and postage stamps.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=178}} Trotsky was also a member of the ruling ].<ref name=deut>], "] as a Mirror of ]". ''Moskovskiy Komsomolets''. 10 January 2003. http://www.sem40.ru/anti/7820 {{ru icon}}</ref> Among the 23 council members between 1923 and 1930, five were Jewish.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}} In April 1917, ]'s governing bureau had 24 members of which 10 (41.7 percent) were Jews.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=175}}


According to historian Iakov Etinger, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were antisemitic in nature, and a more intense antisemitic policy developed toward the end of World War II.{{sfn|Ro'i|1995|pp=103-106}} Stalin in 1952 allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy for the United States".{{sfn|Figes|2008|p=251}}
In 1918, Jews in the ] Soviet secret police constituted 65.5 percent of "responsible officials", 3.7 percent in officials in Moscow, 4.3 percent of commissars, and 8.6 percent of senior officials. Jews consistuted 19.1 percent of central apparatus investigators and made up 50 percent (6 out of 12) of the investigators in the department responisble for quelling counter-revolution efforts. In 1923, the "leading" officials of the OGPU, the Cheka's successor, was 15.5 percent Jewish and 50 percent of the Collegium's Secretariat members were Jews. In 1920, 9.1 percent of all members of provincial Cheka offices was Jewish. Russians made up the majority of members, with Latvians being the most overrepresented group.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=177}} Jewish scholar ] observed: "The high visibility of Jews in the Bolshevik regime was dramatized by the large numbers of Jews in the Cheka From the Jewish point of view it was no doubt the lure of immediate physical power which attracted many Jewish youths Whatever the reasons, Jews were heavily represented in the secret
police Since the Cheka was the most hated and feared organ of the Bolshevik government, anti-Jewish feelings increased in direct proportion to Cheka terror."{{sfn|Gitelman|1972|p=117}}


==Nazi Germany==
Between 1919 and 1921, the ] was a consistent one-fourth Jewish. In 1918, Jews comprised 54 percent of "leading" Party officials in Petrograd, 45 percent of city and provincial Party officials, and 36 percent of Northern District commissars. In 1919, Jews represented three of the five members in Petrograd's trade union council presiduium, and in 1920 were 13 out of the 36 members of Petrograd Soviet's Executive Committee. In 1923, Jews in Moscow held 29 percent of the Party's "leading cadres" and 45 percent of the provincial social security administration. Moscow's Party organization was 13.5 percent Jewish, three times the general Jewish population percent.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=175}} According to the 1922 party census, there were 19,564 Jewish Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}} In 1922, an estimated 40 percent of the top leadership of the ] was Jewish.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=175}}


] traces the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy theory to Nazi ideologue ], for whom Bolshevism was "the revolt of the Jewish, Slavic and ] ] against the German (]) element in Russia". Germans, according to Rosenberg, had been responsible for Russia's historic achievements and had been sidelined by the Bolsheviks, who did not represent the interests of the Russian people, but instead those of its ethnic Jewish and Chinese population.{{sfn|Laqueur|1990|pp=33-34}}
]'s ''Conditions in Russia'' (1924)]]


In ], this concept of Jewish Bolshevism reflected a common perception that Communism was a Jewish-inspired and Jewish-led movement seeking world domination from its origin. The term was popularized in print in German journalist ]'s 1924 pamphlet "Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin" ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin") which depicted ] and Lenin as both being Communists and Jews. This was followed by ]'s 1923 edition of the '']'' and ]'s '']'' in 1924, which saw Bolshevism as "Jewry's twentieth century effort to take world dominion unto itself."
In the mid-1920s, of the 417 members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the People's Commissars, 6% were ethnic Jews.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=96}} In 1929, among members of the ] there were 402 ethnic Russians, 95 Ukrainians, 55 Jews, 26 Latvians, 13 Poles, and 12 Germans{{spaced ndash}}Jewish representation had declined from 60 members in 1927.{{sfn|Pinkus|1990|p=81}} With regards to Jewish representation in the ruling Politburo, it waned very rapidly starting in 1918. It began with the assassination of ], the most radical member of the Politburo, in August 1918. Then ] died of disease in March 1919 and Sokolnikov was shunted aside. Three years later in 1922, Jewish members in the Central Committee, the Politburo's new name, had shrunk to a minority of three: Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Eventually they were all physically eliminated by ]: Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1936 and Trotsky in 1940.


] leaders from ]'s '']'']]
] (Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda)]]
According to French spymaster and writer Henri Rollin, "Hitlerism" was based on "anti-Soviet counter-revolution" promoting the "myth of a mysterious Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik plot", entailing that the ] had been instigated by a vast Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to topple the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires and implement Bolshevism by fomenting liberal ideas.{{sfn|Kellogg|2008}}{{pn|date=September 2013}}
The ], OGPU's successor, was "one of the most Jewish of all Soviet institutions."{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=254}} By 1934, Jews were the most numerous in the “leading cadres” with 37 Jews compared to 30 Russians, 7 Latvians, 5 Ukrainians, 4 Poles, 3 Georgians, 3 Belorussians, 2 Germans, and 5 assorted others. Jews were in charge of twelve key NKVD departments and directorates which included the police, ] labor camps, counterintelligence, surveillance, and economic wrecking. ], also a Jew, served as the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=221}} In January 1937, the top 111 NKVD officials was composed of 42 Jews, 35 Russians, 8 Latvians, and 26 others. At the time Jews still lead twelve of twenty NKVD directorates and held seven of the ten departments that made up the Main Directorate for State Security, including the departments of Protection of Government Officials, Counterintelligence, Secret-Political, Special Army Surveillance, Foreign Intelligence, Records, and Prisons. Spying in Western Europe and in the United States and foreign service was "an almost exclusively Jewish specialty." Jews lead the Gulag since its founding in 1930 until near the end of the Great Purge in late November 1938.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|pp=254-255}}


A major source for ] about Jewish Bolshevism in the 1930s and early 1940s was the pro-Nazi and antisemitic international ''Welt-Dienst'' news agency founded in 1933 by ].
Between 1936 and 1940, during the ], ] and after the ], Stalin had largely eliminated Jews from senior party, government, diplomatic, security and military positions.{{sfn|Levin|1988|pp=318-325}} The majority of Jews were "not directly affected by the Great Terror, and of those who were, most suffered as members of the political elite."{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=275}} Between 1937 and 1938, an estimated 1 percent of all Jews in the Soviet Union were arrested for political crimes in contrast to 16 percent of all Poles and 30 percent of all Latvians.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=273}} In 1939, Stalin directed incoming Foreign Minister ] to "purge the ministry of Jews".{{sfn|Resis|2000|p=35}} Although some scholars believe that this decision was taken for primarily domestic reasons,{{sfn|Resis|2000|p=35}} others argue it may have been a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks.{{sfn|Herf|2008|p=56}}{{sfn|Moss|2005|p=283}} By early 1939, the Jewish proportion of people in the Gulag was "about 15.7 percent lower than their share of the total population."{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=273}} According to historian Iakov Etinger, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were antisemitic in nature, and a more intense antisemitic policy developed toward the end of World War II.{{sfn|Ro'i|1995|pp=103-106}}, Slezkine disputes this stating that "Jews were the only large Soviet nationality that was not targeted for a purge during the Great Terror."{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=274}} Stalin in 1952 allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy for the United States".{{sfn|Figes|2008|p=251}}


Within the German Army, a tendency to see Soviet Communism as a Jewish conspiracy had grown since the First World War, something that became officialised under the Nazis. A 1932 pamphlet by Ewald Banse of the Government-financed German National Association for the Military Sciences described the Soviet leadership as mostly Jewish, dominating an apathetic and mindless Russian population.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=119}}
==Hungary, Romania, and Poland==
] poster in the ], equating ] with the Jews. The text reads "The Jew is our enemy forever".]]
In ], ], and ], Jews were in charge of a "high proportion of the most sensitive positions in the Party apparatus, state administration, and especially the ], foreign service, and secret police." The regimes in the countries "resembled the Soviet Union of the 1920s insofar as they combined the ruling core of the old Communist underground, which was heavily Jewish, with a large pool of upwardly mobile Jewish professionals".{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=314}}


Propaganda produced in 1935 by the psychological war laboratory of the German War Ministry described Soviet officials as "mostly filthy Jews" and called on ] soldiers to rise up and kill their "Jewish commissars". This material was not used at the time, but served as a basis for propaganda in the 1940s.{{sfn|Förster|2005|pp=122-127}}
In Hungary, Jews were "overrepresented in both socialist intellectuals and in communist militants."{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=90}} Jewish scholar ] notes that “for 135 days , Hungary was ruled by a Communist dictatorship. Its party boss, Béla Kun, was a Jew. So were 31 of the 49 commissars in Kun’s regime.{{sfn|Sachar|1985|p=339}} Jews constituted "95 percent of the leading figures" of Kun’s regime.{{sfn|Pipes|2011|p=}}

In Poland, 7 out of 10 of the original Communist leadership was composed of Jews. During the 1930s, they composed between 22 to 26 percent of the overall Party membership, 51 percent of the youth wing (1930), about 65 percent of all Communists in ] (1937), 75 percent of the propaganda wing, 90 percent of the ] (MOPR), and the majority of Central Committee members.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=90}}

==Nazi Germany==
] leaders from ]'s '']'']]] poster in the ], equating ] with the Jews. The text reads "The Jew is our enemy forever".]]
] traces the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy theory to Nazi ideologue ], for whom Bolshevism was "the revolt of the Jewish, Slavic and ] ] against the German (]) element in Russia". Germans, according to Rosenberg, had been responsible for Russia's historic achievements and had been sidelined by the Bolsheviks, who did not represent the interests of the Russian people, but instead those of its ethnic Jewish and Chinese population.{{sfn|Laqueur|1990|pp=33-34}}

In ], this concept of Jewish Bolshevism reflected a common perception that Communism was a Jewish-inspired and Jewish-led movement seeking world domination from its origin. The term was popularized in print in German journalist ]'s 1924 pamphlet "Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin" ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin") which depicted ] and Lenin as both being Communists and Jews. This was followed by ]'s 1923 edition of the '']'' and ]'s '']'' in 1924, which saw Bolshevism as "Jewry's twentieth century effort to take world dominion unto itself."

According to French spymaster and writer Henri Rollin, "Hitlerism" was based on "anti-Soviet counter-revolution" promoting the "myth of a mysterious Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik plot", entailing that the ] had been instigated by a vast Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to topple the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires and implement Bolshevism by fomenting liberal ideas.{{sfn|Kellogg|2008}}{{pn|date=September 2013}}


In his speech to the ''Reichstag'' justifying ] in 1941, Hitler said:<blockquote>"For more than two decades the Jewish Bolshevik regime in Moscow had tried to set fire not merely to Germany but to all of Europe…The Jewish Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have unswervingly undertaken to force their domination upon us and the other European nations and that is not merely spiritually, but also in terms of military power…Now the time has come to confront the plot of the Anglo-Saxon Jewish war-mongers and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik centre in Moscow!"{{sfn|Hillgruber|1987}}{{pn|date=September 2013}}</blockquote>
A major source for ] about Jewish Bolshevism in the 1930s and early 1940s was the pro-Nazi and antisemitic international ''Welt-Dienst'' news agency founded in 1933 by ].{{cn|date=September 2013}} Within the German Army, a tendency to see Soviet Communism as a Jewish conspiracy had grown since the First World War, something that became officialised under the Nazis. A 1932 pamphlet by Ewald Banse of the Government-financed German National Association for the Military Sciences described the Soviet leadership as mostly Jewish, dominating an apathetic and mindless Russian population.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=119}} Propaganda produced in 1935 by the psychological war laboratory of the German War Ministry described Soviet officials as "mostly filthy Jews" and called on ] soldiers to rise up and kill their "Jewish commissars". This material was not used at the time, but served as a basis for propaganda in the 1940s.{{sfn|Förster|2005|pp=122-127}} According to ]: "In some countries Jews became the leading element in the legal and illegal Communist parties and in some cases were even instructed by the Communist International to change their Jewish-sounding names and pose as non-Jews, in order not to confirm right-wing propaganda that presented Communism as an alien, Jewish conspiracy."{{sfn|Eliav|2007|p=91}}


Nazi propaganda presented Barbarossa as an ideological-racial war between German National Socialism and “Judeo-Bolshevism”, dehumanising the Soviet enemy as a force of Slavic '']'' (sub-humans) and “Asiatic” savages engaging in “barbaric Asiatic fighting methods” commanded by evil Jewish commissars whom German troops were to grant no mercy.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=126}} The vast majority of the Wehrmacht officers and soldiers tended to regard the war in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as sub-human.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=127}}
In his speech to the ''Reichstag'' justifying ] in 1941, Hitler said:
<blockquote>"For more than two decades the Jewish Bolshevik regime in Moscow had tried to set fire not merely to Germany but to all of Europe The Jewish Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have unswervingly undertaken to force their domination upon us and the other European nations and that is not merely spiritually, but also in terms of military power…Now the time has come to confront the plot of the Anglo-Saxon Jewish war-mongers and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik centre in Moscow!"{{sfn|Hillgruber|1987|p=111}}</blockquote>


==Outside Nazi Germany==
Nazi propaganda presented Barbarossa as an ideological-racial war between German National Socialism and “Judeo-Bolshevism”, dehumanising the Soviet enemy as a force of Slavic '']'' (sub-humans) and "Asiatic" savages engaging in “barbaric Asiatic fighting methods” commanded by evil Jewish commissars whom German troops were to grant no mercy.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=126}} The vast majority of the Wehrmacht officers and soldiers tended to regard the war in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as sub-human.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=127}}


==Great Britain== ===Great Britain, 1920s===


In the early 1920s, a leading British antisemite, ], stated that Bolshevism was the same thing as Judaism.{{sfn|Webb|1976|p=130}} In the same decade, future wartime Prime Minister ] penned an editorial entitled "Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People", which was published in the ''Illustrated Sunday Herald.'' In the article, he stated that Jewish involvement in the various recent worldwide revolutionary movements (namely Communism) was a function of their character: In the early 1920s, a leading British antisemite, ], stated that Bolshevism was the same thing as Judaism.{{sfn|Webb|1976|p=130}} In the same decade, future wartime Prime Minister ] penned an editorial entitled "Zionism versus Bolshevism," which was published in the ''Illustrated Sunday Herald.'' In the article, he stated that Jewish involvement in the various recent worldwide revolutionary movements (namely Communism) was a function of their character:


<blockquote>"{Bolshevism} among the Jews is nothing new. From the days of ] to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), ] (Hungary), ] (Germany), and ] (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders."{{sfn|Churchill|8 February 1920}}</blockquote> <blockquote>{Bolshevism} among the Jews is nothing new. From the days of ] to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), ] (Hungary), ] (Germany), and ] (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.{{sfn|Churchill|8 February 1920}}</blockquote>


Author ] noted that Churchill's analysis failed to analyze the role that Russian oppression of Jews had played in their joining various revolutionary movements, but instead "to inherent inclinations rooted in Jewish character and religion."{{sfn|Lebzelter|1978|p=181}} Author ] noted that Churchill's analysis failed to analyze the role that Russian oppression of Jews had played in their joining various revolutionary movements, but instead "to inherent inclinations rooted in Jewish character and religion."{{sfn|Lebzelter|1978|p=181}}


==Iran== ===Iran, 2006===


In 2006, ]ian Presidential Advisor ], secretary-general of the new "World Foundation for Holocaust Studies" established at the ], stated: In 2006, ]ian Presidential Advisor ], secretary-general of the new "World Foundation for Holocaust Studies" established at the ], stated:
<blockquote>"The Bolshevik Soviet government in Lenin's time, and later, in Stalin's - both of whom were Jewish, though they presented themselves as Marxists and atheists... - was one of the forces that, until the Second World War, cooperated with Hitler in promoting the idea of establishing the State of Israel."{{sfn|MEMRI|3 January 2007}}</blockquote> <blockquote>"The Bolshevik Soviet government in Lenin's time, and later, in Stalin's - both of whom were Jewish, though they presented themselves as Marxists and atheists... - was one of the forces that, until the Second World War, cooperated with Hitler in promoting the idea of establishing the State of Israel."{{sfn|MEMRI|3 January 2007}}</blockquote>


==USA== ===USA===
During the 1930s, in the United States, Jews, largely immigrants from Eastern Europe, accounted for about 40 to 50 percent of ] membership and at least a comparable proportion of the Party's leaders, journalists, theorists, and organizers.{{sfn|Slezkine|2011|p=90}}


Frank L. Britton, editor of '']'' published a book, ''Behind Communism'', in 1952 which disseminated the myth that Communism was a Jewish conspiracy originating in ].{{sfn|Primary Source Microfilm|2005}} Historian ] notes that: “During the heyday of the Cold War, American Jewish publicists spent a lot Frank L. Britton, editor of '']'' published a book, ''Behind Communism'', in 1952 which disseminated the myth that Communism was a Jewish conspiracy originating in ].{{sfn|Primary Source Microfilm|2005}}
of time denying that — as 1930s anti-Semites claimed — Jews played a disproportionately important role in Soviet and world Communism. The truth is until the early 1950s Jews did play such a role.”{{sfn|Cantor|1996|p=364}}


==See also== ==See also==
*]
*] *]
*] *]
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*] *]
*]
*] *]
*] *]
**] **]
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*] *]
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* {{cite book * {{cite book
| last = Alderman | last = Alderman
| first = Geoffrey | first = G.
| title = The Jewish Community in British Politics | title = The Jewish Community in British Politics
| publisher = Clarendon Press | publisher = Clarendon Press
| location = Oxford | location = Oxford
| year = 1983 | year = 1983
| isbn = 978-0-19-827436-0
| ref = harv | ref = harv
}} }}
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| last = Ascher | last = Ascher
| first = Abraham | first = Abraham
| author-link = Berel Wein
| title = The Revolution of 1905 | title = The Revolution of 1905
| publisher = Stanford University Press | publisher = Stanford University Press
| location = Palo Alto | location = Palo Alto
| year = 1992 | year = 1992
| isbn = 978-0-8047-2328-2
| ref = harv
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Cantor
| first = Norman F.
| author-link = Norman Cantor
| title = The Jewish Experience: An Illustrated History of Jewish Culture & Society
| publisher = Castle Press
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| ref = harv | ref = harv
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| date = 8 February 1920 | date = 8 February 1920
| ref = {{harvid|Churchill|8 February 1920}} | ref = {{harvid|Churchill|8 February 1920}}
}}
* {{cite book
| last = Eliav
| first = Binyamin
| contribution = Communism
| editor1-last = Skolnik
| editor1-first = Fred
| editor2-last = Berenbaum
| editor2-first = Michael
| title = Encyclopaedia Judaica
| volume = 5
| edition = 2nd
| publisher = Macmillian Reference USA
| location = New York
| year = 2007
| isbn = 978-0-02-865933-6
| ref = harv
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* {{cite book * {{cite book
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| location = London | location = London
| year = 2008 | year = 2008
| isbn = 978-0-312-42803-7 | isbn =
| ref = harv | ref = harv
}} }}
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| editor1-first = Ljubica | editor1-first = Ljubica
| editor2-last = Erickson | editor2-last = Erickson
| editor2-first = John | editor2-first = Mark
| title = Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy
| editor3-last = Erickson
| editor3-first = Mark
| title = Russia War, Peace And Diplomacy: Essays in Honour of John Erickson
| publisher = Weidenfeld & Nicolson | publisher = Weidenfeld & Nicolson
| location = London | location = London
| year = 2005 | year = 2005
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* {{cite book
| last = Francis
| first = David R.
| author-link = David R. Francis
| title = Russia from the American Embassy, 1916-1918
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| title = The Myth of Jewish Communism: A Historical Interpretation | title = The Myth of Jewish Communism: A Historical Interpretation
| publisher = Peter Lang | publisher = Peter Lang
| location = New York | location =
| year = 2009 | year = 2009
| isbn = 978-90-5201-465-4
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* {{cite book
| last = Gitelman
| first = Zvi
| title = Jewish Nationalism and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPU, 1917-1930
| publisher = Princeton
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| isbn = | isbn =
| ref = harv | ref = harv
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* {{cite web
| last = Gutiérrez
| first = Alberto
| editor-last = Hilton
| editor-first = Ronald
| editor-link = Ronald Hilton
| title = Russia: Jews and Communism
| url = http://wais.stanford.edu/Russia/russia_JewsAndCommunism(110403).html
| series = World Association for International Studies
| newspaper = Stanford University
| date = 4 November 2003
| ref = {{harvid|Gutiérrez|4 November 2003}}
}} }}
* {{cite book * {{cite book
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| location = Cambridge | location = Cambridge
| year = 2008 | year = 2008
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| volume = 18 | volume = 18
| pages = 103-132 | pages = 103-132
| jstor =
| url = http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/documents/studies/Andreas_Hillgruber.pdf | url = http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/documents/studies/Andreas_Hillgruber.pdf
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| location = Cambridge | location = Cambridge
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| location = New Brunswick | location = New Brunswick
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| location = Oxford | location = Oxford
| year = 1978 | year = 1978
| isbn = 978-0-333-24251-3 | isbn = 9780333242513
| ref = harv | ref = harv
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| location = New York University Press | location = New York University Press
| year = 1988 | year = 1988
| isbn = 978-0-8147-5034-6 | isbn =
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* {{cite book
| last = Lindemann
| first = Albert S.
| author-link = Albert Lindemann
| title = Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews
| publisher = New York
| location = Cambridge University Press
| year = 1997
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| ref = harv
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* {{cite book
| last = Lodder
| first = Christine
| contribution = Lenin's Plan for Monumental Propaganda
| editor1-last = Bown
| editor1-first = Matthew Cullerne
| editor2-last = Taylor
| editor2-first = Brandon
| title = Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917-1992
| publisher = Manchester University Press
| location = Manchester
| year = 1993
| isbn = 978-1-4008-2855-5
| ref = harv | ref = harv
}} }}
* {{cite web * {{cite web
| title = Mohammad Ali Ramin, Advisor to Iranian President Ahmadinejad: ‘Hitler Was Jewish’ | title = Mohammad Ali Ramin, Advisor to Iranian President Ahmadinejad: ‘Hitler Was Jewish’
| url = http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1993.htm | url = http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1993.htm#_edn1
| publisher = Middle East Media Research Institute | publisher = Middle East Media Research Institute
| date = 3 January 2007 | date = 3 January 2007
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| isbn = 978-1-84331-034-1 | isbn = 1-84331-034-1
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| location = Cambridge | location = Cambridge
| year = 1990 | year = 1990
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| location = New York | location = New York
| year = 1997 | year = 1997
| isbn = 978-0-684-83131-2 | isbn = 0-684-83131-7
| ref = harv
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* {{cite book
| last = Pipes
| first = Richard
| title = Russia under the Bolshevik Regime
| publisher = Random House
| location = New York
| year = 2011
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| location = | location =
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* {{cite book
| last = Sachar
| first = Howard M.
| title = Diaspora: An Inquiry into the Contemporary Jewish World
| publisher = Harper and Row
| location = New York
| year = 1985
| isbn = 978-0-06-015403-5
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* {{cite book
| last = Slezkine
| first = Yuri
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| title = The Jewish Century
| publisher = Princeton University Press
| location = Princeton
| year = 2011
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| ref = harv
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* {{cite book
| last = Vaksberg
| first = Arkady
| title = Stalin Against the Jews
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* ]: ''Rulers of Russia'', 3rd American edition, revised and enlarged, Detroit: Condon Printing Co., 1940 * ]: ''Rulers of Russia'', 3rd American edition, revised and enlarged, Detroit: Condon Printing Co., 1940
*Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein: '"Juedischer Bolschewismus". Mythos und Realität'. Dresden: Antaios, 2003, ISBN 3-935063-14-8; 2.ed. Graz: Ares, 2010. *Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein: '"Juedischer Bolschewismus". Mythos und Realität'. Dresden: Antaios, 2003, ISBN 3-935063-14-8; 2.ed. Graz: Ares, 2010.
* ]: ''The Jewish Century'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 ISBN 0-691-11995-3
* ]: ''Deux Siècles Ensemble. Tome 2. 1917-1972. Juifs et Russes pendant la periode Soviétique, 1917-1972'', Paris: Fayard, 2003. ISBN 2-213-61518-7 * ]: ''Deux Siècles Ensemble. Tome 2. 1917-1972. Juifs et Russes pendant la periode Soviétique, 1917-1972'', Paris: Fayard, 2003. ISBN 2-213-61518-7
* Arkady Vaksberg: ''Stalin against the Jews'', New York: Vintage Books (a division of Random House), 1994, ISBN 0-679-42207-2
* ]: ''Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky'', London: Harrap, 1976 ISBN 0-245-52785-0 * ]: ''Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky'', London: Harrap, 1976 ISBN 0-245-52785-0
{{refend}} {{refend}}

Revision as of 22:36, 6 September 2013

"Jewish Communism" redirects here. For the short-lived political party in Mandate Palestine and Israel, see Hebrew Communists.
A White propaganda poster depicting a demonic Leon Trotsky wearing a pentacle, sitting near a pile of skeletons. The caption reads "Peace and Freedom in Soviet Russia."
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Jewish Bolshevism or Judeo-Bolshevism is the conspiracy theory that Jews have been the driving force behind Communist movements, or more specifically Soviet Bolshevism. The expression has been used as a catchword for the assertion that Communism is a Jewish conspiracy, and it has often coincided with overtly aggressive nationalistic tendencies in the 20th century and 21st century. In Poland, Judeo-Bolshevism was known as Żydokomuna and was used as an antisemitic stereotype.

The expression was the title of a pamphlet, The Jewish Bolshevism, and became current after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, featuring prominently in the propaganda of the anti-communist "White" forces during the Russian Civil War.

The label "Judeo-Bolshevism" was used in Nazi Germany to equate Jews with communists, implying that the communist movement served Jewish interests and/or that all Jews were communists. According to Hannah Arendt, it was "the most efficient fiction of Nazi Propaganda". In Poland before World War II, Żydokomuna was used in the same way to allege that the Jews were conspiring with the USSR to capture Poland. According to André Gerrits, "The myth of Jewish Communism was one of the most popular and widespread political prejudices in the first half of the 20th century, in Eastern Europe in particular." The allegation continues to be used in antisemitic publications and websites today.

Origins

The worldwide spread of the concept in the 1920s is associated with the publication and circulation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The expression made an issue out of the Jewishness of some leading Bolsheviks (most notably Leon Trotsky) during and after the October Revolution. Daniel Pipes says that "primarily through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Whites spread these charges to an international audience." James Webb wrote that it is rare to find an antisemitic source after 1917 that ..."does not stand in debt to the White Russian analysis of the Revolution."

Jewish involvement in Russian Communism

Persecution of Jews in the late Russian Empire

Main article: History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Jews had been a persecuted minority in the Russian Empire. They had endured a form of racial segregation in the Pale of Settlement, as well as sporadic pogroms. In the period from 1881 to 1920, more than two million Jews left Russia.

According to Berel Wein:

Expulsions, deportations, arrests, and beatings became the daily lot of the Jews, not only of their lower class, but even of the middle class and the Jewish intelligentsia. The government of Alexander III waged a campaign of war against its Jewish ... The Jews were driven and hounded, and emigration appeared to be the only escape from the terrible tyranny of the Romanovs."

Jews in relatively large numbers joined various ideological currents favoring gradual or revolutionary changes within the Russian Empire. Those movements ranged from the far left (anarchists, Bundists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks) to moderate left (Trudoviks) and constitutionalist (Constitutional Democrats) parties. Monarchist parties, such as Union of the Russian People, expressed clearly antisemitic attitudes, and included antisemitic paragraphs in their political program.

Jews in the Bolshevik party

On the eve of the February Revolution, in 1917, the Bolshevik party had about 10,000 members, of whom 364 were ethnic Jews. Between 1917 and 1919, Jewish Bolshevik party leaders included Grigory Zinoviev, Moisei Uritsky, Lev Kamenev, Yakov Sverdlov, Grigory Sokolnikov, and Leon Trotsky. Lev Kamenev was of mixed ethnic Russian and Jewish parentage. Trotsky was also a member (or "Narkom") of the ruling Council of People's Commissars. Among the 23 Narkoms between 1923 and 1930, five were Jewish.

Conditions in Russia (1924) A Census - Bolsheviks by Ethnicity

According to the 1922 party census, there were 19,564 Jewish Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total. Jews made up 7.1% of members who had joined before October 1917.

Among members of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets in 1929, there were 402 ethnic Russians, 95 Ukrainians, 55 Jews, 26 Latvians, 13 Poles, and 12 Germans – Jewish representation had declined from 60 members in 1927. With regards to Jewish representation in the ruling Politburo, it waned very rapidly starting in 1918. It began with the assassination of Moisei Uritsky, the most radical member of the Politburo, in August 1918. Then Yakov Sverdlov died of disease in March 1919 and Sokolnikov was shunted aside. Three years later in 1922, Jewish members in the Central Committee, the Politburo's new name, had shrunk to a minority of three: Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Eventually they were all physically eliminated by Joseph Stalin: Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1936 and Trotsky in 1940.

In the 1920s, of the 417 members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the People's Commissars, 6% were ethnic Jews.

Between 1936 and 1940, during the Great Purge, Yezhovshchina and after the rapprochement with Nazi Germany, Stalin had largely eliminated Jews from senior party, government, diplomatic, security and military positions. A prominent victim of the Purge was the Head of the State Security or NKVD ( the enforcement arm of government previously known as the Cheka and GPU ) who also happened to have come from a Jewish background: Genrikh Yagoda. In 1939, Stalin directed incoming Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews". Although some scholars believe that this decision was taken for primarily domestic reasons, others argue it may have been a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks.

According to historian Iakov Etinger, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were antisemitic in nature, and a more intense antisemitic policy developed toward the end of World War II. Stalin in 1952 allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy for the United States".

Nazi Germany

Walter Laqueur traces the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy theory to Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, for whom Bolshevism was "the revolt of the Jewish, Slavic and Mongolian races against the German (Aryan) element in Russia". Germans, according to Rosenberg, had been responsible for Russia's historic achievements and had been sidelined by the Bolsheviks, who did not represent the interests of the Russian people, but instead those of its ethnic Jewish and Chinese population.

In Nazi Germany, this concept of Jewish Bolshevism reflected a common perception that Communism was a Jewish-inspired and Jewish-led movement seeking world domination from its origin. The term was popularized in print in German journalist Dietrich Eckhart's 1924 pamphlet "Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin" ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin") which depicted Moses and Lenin as both being Communists and Jews. This was followed by Alfred Rosenberg's 1923 edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler's Mein Kampf in 1924, which saw Bolshevism as "Jewry's twentieth century effort to take world dominion unto itself."

File:1.2 The Jewish Bolshevism Image.png
Caricatures of Bolshevik leaders from Alfred Rosenberg's The Jewish Bolshevism

According to French spymaster and writer Henri Rollin, "Hitlerism" was based on "anti-Soviet counter-revolution" promoting the "myth of a mysterious Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik plot", entailing that the First World War had been instigated by a vast Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to topple the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires and implement Bolshevism by fomenting liberal ideas.

A major source for propaganda about Jewish Bolshevism in the 1930s and early 1940s was the pro-Nazi and antisemitic international Welt-Dienst news agency founded in 1933 by Ulrich Fleischhauer.

Within the German Army, a tendency to see Soviet Communism as a Jewish conspiracy had grown since the First World War, something that became officialised under the Nazis. A 1932 pamphlet by Ewald Banse of the Government-financed German National Association for the Military Sciences described the Soviet leadership as mostly Jewish, dominating an apathetic and mindless Russian population.

File:Nazi Lithuanian poster.JPG
1941 Nazi propaganda poster in the Lithuanian language, equating Stalinism with the Jews. The text reads "The Jew is our enemy forever".

Propaganda produced in 1935 by the psychological war laboratory of the German War Ministry described Soviet officials as "mostly filthy Jews" and called on Red Army soldiers to rise up and kill their "Jewish commissars". This material was not used at the time, but served as a basis for propaganda in the 1940s.

In his speech to the Reichstag justifying Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Hitler said:

"For more than two decades the Jewish Bolshevik regime in Moscow had tried to set fire not merely to Germany but to all of Europe…The Jewish Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have unswervingly undertaken to force their domination upon us and the other European nations and that is not merely spiritually, but also in terms of military power…Now the time has come to confront the plot of the Anglo-Saxon Jewish war-mongers and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik centre in Moscow!"

Nazi propaganda presented Barbarossa as an ideological-racial war between German National Socialism and “Judeo-Bolshevism”, dehumanising the Soviet enemy as a force of Slavic Untermensch (sub-humans) and “Asiatic” savages engaging in “barbaric Asiatic fighting methods” commanded by evil Jewish commissars whom German troops were to grant no mercy. The vast majority of the Wehrmacht officers and soldiers tended to regard the war in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as sub-human.

Outside Nazi Germany

Great Britain, 1920s

In the early 1920s, a leading British antisemite, Henry Hamilton Beamish, stated that Bolshevism was the same thing as Judaism. In the same decade, future wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill penned an editorial entitled "Zionism versus Bolshevism," which was published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald. In the article, he stated that Jewish involvement in the various recent worldwide revolutionary movements (namely Communism) was a function of their character:

{Bolshevism} among the Jews is nothing new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.

Author Gisela C. Lebzelter noted that Churchill's analysis failed to analyze the role that Russian oppression of Jews had played in their joining various revolutionary movements, but instead "to inherent inclinations rooted in Jewish character and religion."

Iran, 2006

In 2006, Iranian Presidential Advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin, secretary-general of the new "World Foundation for Holocaust Studies" established at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, stated:

"The Bolshevik Soviet government in Lenin's time, and later, in Stalin's - both of whom were Jewish, though they presented themselves as Marxists and atheists... - was one of the forces that, until the Second World War, cooperated with Hitler in promoting the idea of establishing the State of Israel."

USA

Frank L. Britton, editor of The American Nationalist published a book, Behind Communism, in 1952 which disseminated the myth that Communism was a Jewish conspiracy originating in Palestine.

See also

Notes

  1. Alderman 1983.
  2. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, "Żydzi w kierownictwie UB. Stereotyp czy rzeczywistość?", Biuletyn IPN (11/2005), pp. 37-42
  3. Laqueur 1990.
  4. Gerrits 2009, p. 16.
  5. Gerrits 2009, p. 195.
  6. Pipes 1997, p. 93.
  7. Webb 1976, p. 295.
  8. Russia Today
  9. ^ Political Activity and Emigration. Beyond the Pale. The History of Jews in Russia. (Exhibition by Friends and Partners Project)
  10. Wein 1990. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWein1990 (help)
  11. Goncharok, Moshe. Century of Will: Russian Anarchism and Jews (XIX-XX Centuries). Jerusalem: Mishmeret Shalom, 1996. http://makhno.ru/lit/vek_voli/3.php Template:Ru icon
  12. Levin 1988, p. 13.
  13. Ascher 1992, p. 148.
  14. Witte & 24 March 1907.
  15. Kara-Murza, Sergey. "Revolutionary (Socialist) Political Forces between February and October." Soviet Civilization. Vol. 1. (The chapter about the growth of Russian political parties during February-October 1917 online) Template:Ru icon
  16. ^ Herf 2008, p. 96.
  17. Hoffman & Mendelsohn 2008, p. 178.
  18. ^ Deutsch, Mark, "Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a Mirror of Russian Xenophobia". Moskovskiy Komsomolets. 10 January 2003. http://www.sem40.ru/anti/7820 Template:Ru icon
  19. Pinkus 1990, p. 81.
  20. Levin 1988, pp. 318–325.
  21. ^ Resis 2000, p. 35.
  22. Herf 2008, p. 56.
  23. Moss 2005, p. 283.
  24. Ro'i 1995, pp. 103–106.
  25. Figes 2008, p. 251.
  26. Laqueur 1990, pp. 33–34.
  27. Kellogg 2008.
  28. Förster 2005, p. 119.
  29. Förster 2005, pp. 122–127.
  30. Hillgruber 1987.
  31. Förster 2005, p. 126.
  32. Förster 2005, p. 127.
  33. Webb 1976, p. 130.
  34. Churchill & 8 February 1920.
  35. Lebzelter 1978, p. 181.
  36. MEMRI & 3 January 2007.
  37. Primary Source Microfilm 2005.

References

Further reading

  • Mikhail Agursky: The Third Rome: National Bolshevism in the USSR, Boulder: Westview Press, 1987 ISBN 0-8133-0139-4
  • Harry Defries, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews, 1900-1950 Jewish Bolshevism, p. 70, ISBN 0-7146-5221-0
  • Dennis Fahey: Rulers of Russia, 3rd American edition, revised and enlarged, Detroit: Condon Printing Co., 1940
  • Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein: '"Juedischer Bolschewismus". Mythos und Realität'. Dresden: Antaios, 2003, ISBN 3-935063-14-8; 2.ed. Graz: Ares, 2010.
  • Yuri Slezkine: The Jewish Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 ISBN 0-691-11995-3
  • Alexandre Soljenitsyne: Deux Siècles Ensemble. Tome 2. 1917-1972. Juifs et Russes pendant la periode Soviétique, 1917-1972, Paris: Fayard, 2003. ISBN 2-213-61518-7
  • Arkady Vaksberg: Stalin against the Jews, New York: Vintage Books (a division of Random House), 1994, ISBN 0-679-42207-2
  • Robert Wistrich: Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky, London: Harrap, 1976 ISBN 0-245-52785-0

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