VI[ToC]
BOLSHEVISM AND THE JEWS
No one who knows how the Jews of Russia, in common with the rest of the population, have suffered from Bolshevist misrule will be likely to give credence to the theory that Bolshevism is part of a Jewish conspiracy. As everybody knows, Jews made up a very considerable part of the commercial class in Russia. The indemnities levied upon this class by the Bolshevist commissions in the cities have applied equally to Jew and Gentile. It is a fact that ordinary Jewish shopkeepers have been compelled to pay their full share of the indemnities so levied. Scores of thousands of Jews have had their property confiscated and been reduced to abject poverty. Many thousands more have had to flee, leaving everything behind them, thankful only that they could save their lives. The Chresvy-chaikas have drawn no distinction between Jew and Gentile, and the available records, meager as they are, prove that the Jews have contributed their full quota to the long list of the victims of these infamous terrorist organizations. Pogroms and other manifestations of anti-Semitism have been too common in Bolshevist Russia to permit any suspicion that Bolshevism is a pro-Jewish movement. The evidence upon this point is overwhelming.
I am quite well aware that the statement that pogroms have been common in Bolshevist Russia will be challenged and indignantly denied by many of our American defenders of the Bolsheviki, Jews and Gentiles alike. It is none the less a well-attested fact. I have in my possession a mass of evidence which amply proves the truth of the statement. At the same time, I do not mean to charge that the Soviet government has deliberately instigated or authorized pogroms. Indeed, I am quite ready to believe that the Soviet government has honestly desired and attempted to prevent such pogroms. Lenin accepted the presidency of an organization formed to combat anti-Semitism. The truth seems to be that just as pogroms have admittedly taken place in the new republic of Poland, despite the efforts of the Polish government to prevent them, and just as pogroms were carried out by Denikin's Volunteer Army despite General Denikin's attempts to prevent them, and the severe punishments inflicted by him upon the culprits, so regular Bolshevist troops in southern Russia have plundered and murdered Jews and raped and mutilated Jewish women and girls. Just as these lines are being written word comes, from sources of unquestionable authority, of pogroms against the Jews in the Ukraine, in which Bolshevist troops participated.
The Pogrom Victims' Relief Committee of the Russian Red Cross Society published a report of its investigations of the Jewish pogroms in southern Russia during the period when General Denikin's forces were fighting the Bolsheviki. The report, based upon evidence of unquestionable reliability, showed that Jews had been plundered and murdered not only by disorderly troops of Denikin's Volunteer Army, and by the troops of Petlura and by the robber bands led by "atamans," like Makhno, but also by regular Bolshevist troops. The report attributes to the latter the destruction of at least thirteen Jewish communities in southern Russia and the murder of five hundred Jews. And this is only one report of many. Before me as I write is the account given by an eyewitness of the pogrom which opened at Novo-Poltavka on September 1, 1919, and lasted through the whole of the week following. More than one hundred Jews were murdered, numerous women and girls were raped, and the entire colony was plundered. This pogrom was carried on by the guerrilla bands led by "atamans" Makhno and Grigoriev, together with regular Bolshevist troops.[2] Do you ask me to believe that these pogroms were deliberately brought about as part of a "Jewish" conspiracy?
Under the rule of the Bolsheviki the local organs of Jewish autonomy in the Ukraine were entirely destroyed.[3] The chairman of the Jewish Community in Kiev, Mr. D. Levenstein, has testified to the brutal treatment of the Jews in that city during the Bolshevist occupation. Vladimir Kossovsky, one of the foremost leaders of the "Bund," well known in Socialist international circles, in an article published in the Jewish Socialist monthly, Die Zukunft, of New York, says:
Jewish pogroms in Bolshevist Russia have occurred with particular intensity during the first half of 1918. I shall point, as an example, to the pogroms in Gulkhov, in the government of Chernigov, where they assumed a particularly brutal form, and in a number of places in the Poliesiye. All of these pogroms were the work of Bolshevist troops.