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CHAPTER 3

The Bolsheviks and the Jews

Soon after the Bolshevik coup, a writer for the “Kadet” publication Jewish Week reported his observations on the civil servant strike then taking place. In particular, he was interested in those who were going to the Labor Ministry in search of jobs replacing the striking workers. The list of those interested numbered more than 300 individuals.

“I had a distinctly negative impression of those gathered,” wrote M. Levin in an article titled “A Sad Event” (Grustnoe iavlenie), “they were most striking in their lack of intelligence and composure. There were some refugees from the Baltics, soldiers, young women who had never worked anywhere, etc. One could immediately tell that these individuals who wanted to be ‘mobilized into the service’ were completely incapable of replacing the real workers. The entire ‘mobilization’ turned out to be a farce.”¹

Levin was struck by the number of Jews among the would-be strike-breakers. In talking with some of them, he discovered that “they are not Bolsheviks, and in general are not interested in politics. They are simply looking for something to do and are ready to take advantage of the opportunity.” The author was dismayed that “all of these young people felt no shame whatsoever. One young Jewess even boasted to her friend that the commissar had requested that she show up the very next day, as she was able to copy documents quickly.”²

A writer from the Zionist publication Rassvet (Dawn) was likewise ironic:

I have no statistics at hand, but a good half of my acquaintances at least have entered the civil ser vice; our children's teacher (a Jew) has gone to work at the Department of War. I ran into the “untershames” [a synagogue assistant] from our congregation. He was walking around with a rifle on his shoulder, carrying on like he was some kind of militia member. A local reporter has become the commissioner of snow removal, a salesman from the local kosher shop is on some committee or other that's working on the constitution, my tenant, a first rate psycho, is working in provisions (though I have no idea what it is he is supposed to be providing), and my secretary is running some kind of fortress or prison.³

The writer I. F. Nazhivin recalled a visit he paid to V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, who at that time was in charge of the Sovnarkom. He had hoped to receive permission to go abroad. The meeting took place after the Soviet government had already been relocated to Moscow:

I arrived at the Kremlin at the indicated time. I went to the offices of the Sovnarkom, which at the time was located in the court building. All over the place there were Latvians, Jews, Jews, and more Jews. I have never been an antisemite, but the sheer number of them made it impossible to ignore. And they were all still wet behind the ears.⁴

In this case it is easy to compare Nazhivin's impressions with the actual list of those people who were working at the Sounarkon at this time. Nearly 30 people⁵ were employed there, including the second secretary Ia. Sh. Arganov (the future Chekist), Ia. I. Liberman and L. I. Morgenshtern, assistants to the secretary, expediter B. Ia. Belenkaia, registrar M. R. Grosman and typist S. M. Livshits.⁶ In other words, nearly one-fifth of the employees there were Jews. This rate was the same for the other offices of the Sovnarkom as well; of the 105 individuals given permission to eat in the Sovnarkom canteen, about 20 were Jews.⁷ This was more than enough to make their presence “impossible to ignore.” V. G. Korolenko, who had lived in Poltava and considered himself a semitophile, experienced similar feelings: “There are a lot of Jewish boys in the Red Guard, which is a bit irritating, especially as many of those in charge are Jews.”⁸

Of course, for many the problem was not (only) in the number of Jews. It bears repeating that only a few months earlier, Jews had been forbidden from occupying high posts in the state apparatus. They were not even allowed to do technical work. Such a sudden change could not pass unnoticed. Jews had begun to play a role in society that they had never played before.

“To the local mentality this was one of the most surprising phenomena. Something had become real that earlier on had seemed possible only in fantasy. Large numbers of the Jewish semi-educated class were attracted en masse to the organizational and distribution departments of the government,” recalled Ia. A. Bromberg, a cadet from the Konstantin military academy in Kiev who had fought against the Bolsheviks in Kiev in November 1917. He was shocked to see “a Jewish soldier among the Sanhendrin of commissars” who subjected him to a “tortuous and meaningless interrogation”: “The timid and peaceful Jew, who in earlier times would have gladly dived into the nearest available hole upon encountering any outsider…disturbing nothing, lest he himself be harmed, [now] turned out to be a part of, and even in charge of, the most notorious bands of thugs.”⁹

A. A. Borman, son of the famous Kadet A. V. Tyrkova-Williams, joined the Soviet civil service in early spring of 1918 as part of an undercover mission on behalf of the Volunteer Army. According to his memoirs, the Metropol Hotel, which was inhabited mostly by important Soviet officials, was filled with people, “who were attached to the present government only as a result of their material well-being.” “Bureaucrats, merchants, Jews from the Pale,” that was how the “secret agent inside the Kremlin” described the roster of the Sovnarkom.¹⁰

The Metropol, where most of the Soviet elite lived, had been renamed the Second House of Soviets. The other famous Moscow hotel (The National) was renamed the First House of Soviets. On June 2, 1918, 148 government officials or party activists (not including family members) resided in the former “National.” About 30 of these were Jews. Not all of them were Bolshevik Party members; part of the building belonged to the Left SRs. These latter included Party leader B. D. Kamkov (Katz), Chekist G. D. Zaks, Central Committee members Ia. M. Fishman, L. M. Braginskii, V. M. Levin and others could be counted among the denizens of the First House of the Soviets. After the Left SRs revolt on July 6, many inhabitants of the First House went on to meet a variety of fates. Kamkov, after numerous arrests and periods in exile, was eventually shot in 1938. Zaks joined the Bolsheviks and, like many of his comrades, was executed in 1937. Levin managed to emigrate to the United States. But for the time being at least, they and the other Left SRs, including Maria Spiridonova and V. A. Aleksandrovich (then Dzerzhinsky's deputy), were neighbors and allies of their future persecutors and executioners, the Chekists I. K. Ksenofontov and Ia. Kh. Peters.¹¹

According to Borman, most of the Soviet civil servants had little love for the Bolsheviks at first. However, “having settled in to their new jobs they quickly changed and began to fear new changes more than anything else…Officers of the General Staff raced each other in their desire for additional perks. Old, decent workers in the Justice Ministry convinced themselves that they had to serve the new authorities faithfully. The rationalizations were the most primitive: better to let what is remain, otherwise it will cease to be. The effectiveness of ration cards was not limited to the workers.”¹²

At a later date, the satirical poet Leri (V. V. Klopotovskii) wrote the following work regarding the adaptive abilities of a certain segment of the Russian intelligentsia:

When the evil Central Executive Committee, without any right,

Began its march against the people,

And forced them to clean ditches,

As if they had sinister intentions,

Blessed was he who did not waste the day,

And going to the Communist Commissars,

Did not hide his social skills,

And immediately joined the service,

He who having found the norm,

Managed to understand the historical moment,

And placed one foot, so to say,

On the Soviet platform,

He who managed to take on a loyal face,

Even if he was not of the Bolshevik race.¹³

But it was not rations alone that led people to decide to serve the Soviet state. Under the Bolsheviks, a hitherto unknown democratization of power was taking place. It was democratic in the literal sense of the word. The demos occupied positions of power that previously would have been unthinkable, due to class, religious, or educational restrictions. “I have seen so many people, particularly among the Jews, who in old times were virgins when it came to power, so many people who were in love with the task before them,” wrote Viktor Shklovsky in Finland in 1922.¹⁴

Lenin claimed that the Jews who joined the Soviet civil service “eliminated the widespread sabotage that we had encountered immediately after the October Revolution and which had been extremely dangerous for us.”¹⁵ A discussion of Gorky's pamphlet “About Jews” (“O evreiakh”) gave Lenin the opportunity to further elucidate the role that Jews and other ethnic minorities had played in the revolution. In particular, Lenin touched upon the importance of the evacuation of the factories and the Jewish population from the Baltics to Central Russia. While the “Latvians induced steadiness and order” into the ranks of the Russian working class, a “significant number of Jews from the middle intelligentsia” “sabotaged the sabotage” of the civil servants and greatly assisted the revolution in a difficult moment. He emphasized that the Bolsheviks were able to “seize and significantly alter the state apparatus due to this reserve of sober, literate and more or less capable group of new officials.” Lenin wholeheartedly agreed with S. M. Dimanshtein's contention that Jewish “elements” played a large role in the revolution, though he thought it unwise to “single out this moment in the press for numerous reasons.”¹⁶

Of course, in order to aid the revolution in the central provinces, the Jews had to get there first. This move was carried out by the military authorities during World War I. The number of refugees and displaced persons, according to various sources, ranged from 500,000 to a million. Massive deportations and the impossibility of resettling the displaced within the Pale forced the government to temporarily lift the restrictions on Jewish residency outside of the Pale in August of 1915.

There were 211,691 Jewish refugees and evacuees in Russia, according to EKOPO (The Jewish Committee for Assistance to War Victims) and the Tatianin Committee,¹⁷ the organizations set up to provide them with assistance. Of course, the true number is probably somewhat larger, as it is highly unlikely that all refugees were accounted for by charitable organizations.

The refugees arrived from a number of regions (Northwestern—136,431; Poland—26,223; the Baltics—22,242; Southwestern—11,426; no data—12,691). The gubernias with the highest numbers of refugees were the following: Kovno (69,313), Grodno (30,356), Vilna (30,149), and Courland (16,782).

By the second half of 1916, the “old” districts of the Pale had lost 116,698 (55 percent) of their Jewish population, while the “new” districts had lost 94,993 (45 percent). The refugees resettled in the following locales: areas near the front, 66,008 (31 percent); southern gubernias, 65,108 (31 percent); central gubernias, 33,458 (16 percent); Volga region, 34,015 (16 percent); other 13,103 (6 percent). In sum, Jewish refugees resettled in 349 different locations throughout Russia.¹⁸ Around 95 percent of Jewish refugees who left the Pale of Settlement resettled in cities.¹⁹ Only fragmentary information regarding specific cities is available. According to a census of Jewish refugees carried out in March 1917, 4,307 Jews resettled in Voronezh. By the end of 1916, 500 Jews had fled to the Belgorod uezd in the Kursk gubernia.²⁰ The Jewish population of Rostov-on-Don increased by 2,000 individuals from 1914 to 1918, largely due to Jewish refugees.²¹

Charitable organizations registered 140,988 men and 14,579 women, from a variety of professional backgrounds. Craftsmen and those working in industry comprised 51.8 percent of all refugees, those in trade 36.7 percent. Smaller groups included the “free” professions (7 percent) and those employed in private service (1.6 percent) and agriculture (1 percent).²²

The government contributed nearly 17 million rubles in aid to Jewish refugees. More than 10 million rubles in additional aid came from abroad, including 7.25 million rubles sent from the United States, with the rest coming from Great Britain, South Africa, France, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and Scotland. Contributions came from both Jewish and Christian charities. The Jewish Central Committee for War Victims collected 3,769,799.88 rubles, of which 2,0205,84.44 were donated by Petrograd Jews. Aid from July 1, 1914 until July 1, 1917 totaled 31,119,917.44 rubles. Though a significant sum to be sure, it was hardly enough to compensate for all the loss and hardship experienced by the refugees during their exodus.

Jewish refugees received the least assistance from their Russian compatriots and non-Jewish organizations within Russia. Their total donations amounted to less than a third of the sum given by the Scottish Christian Fund, which totaled 291,892 rubles. The main donors on the Russian side were N. A. Shakhov and a certain Tishchenko (10,000 each) and the editorial offices of Russkie Vedomosti (15,000).²³

Upon their arrival, the Jewish refugees were hardly given a warm welcome. The first 600 refugees to Vladimir were personally met at the railway station by the governor, who informed them that only 60 of them were allowed to stay, while the rest had to travel farther north. The governor of Tambov interfered in the distribution of governmental aid to the refugees, claiming they were receiving more than adequate support from their coreligionists in Petrograd. Several local authorities also made it perfectly clear that the newcomers should not show their faces on the street.²⁴ Of course, such prejudices were not limited to Russians. An English nurse by the name Violetta Thurstan managed to outdo her Russian coworkers during her time in the Polish territories. She believed that Jewish refugees suffered less than other nationalities as they were, according to their nature and instincts, a nomadic people with no roots. Thus, she reasoned, it was easier for Jews to settle into new surroundings and adapt to new work. Moreover, they were assisted by their fellow Jews. Thurstan was convinced that many Jews were sympathetic to the Germans, and that any impoverished Jew could making up for his losses by selling information to the enemy.²⁵

By December 1917, there were approximately 2,483,666 Jews in German occupied territories. The Polish territories under Russian control contained 1,675,666 Jews (14 percent of the total population of Poland), while the Vilna gubernia (excluding two uezds), and the Grodno, Kovno, and Courland gubernias held 808,000, or 15 percent of the total population. In the former Pale gubernias there were approximately 3,305,000 Jews (10 percent of the population), and there were 532,000 Jews (0.5 percent) living outside the Pale, for a total of 3,837,000 people. In addition, 78,832 Jews (0.6 percent) lived in the Caucuses, 58,730 (0.6 percent) were in Siberia, and 17,532 (0.2 percent) were in Central Asia.²⁶

For our purposes, however, the Jewish population of Moscow and Petrograd is of much greater importance. According to a law published on August 19, 1915 entitled “On permitting Jewish refugees to inhabit urban centers outside of the Pale of their settlement” (O razreshenii evreiam-bezhentsam zhitel'stva v gorodskikh poseleniiakh vne cherty obshchei ikh osedlosti) Jewish refugees were forbidden from resettling in the capitals, rural areas, and Cossack territories. Nonetheless, the Jewish population in Moscow and Petrograd grew. A census counted 101,000 refugees in Petrograd and its suburbs on February 26, 1916. Of these 4.4 percent were Jews. It is highly likely that there were also a good number of Jews among the 20 percent of those surveyed who refused to list their ethnicity and religious beliefs.²⁷

A year later the ensuing revolution completely removed all restrictions on Jewish mobility throughout Russia. By 1917, Petrograd had a population of 2.5 million people, including 50,000 Jews (by comparison there were 34,995 Jews in Petrograd in 1910, a little less than 2 percent of the city's population). By June 1918, Petrograd's population decreased to 1,469,000, and by August of 1920 it had shrunk even further, to 722,000. The Jewish population, however, decreased at a much slower rate. According to demographics, there were nearly 30,000 Jews in Petrograd in 1920.²⁸ Of course, by this time the composition of the Jewish population had greatly changed. Many members of the former elite had gone abroad or fled to the south. These included M. M. Vinaver, O. O. Gruzenberg, G. B. Sliozberg, and the Gintsburg family.

The revolution sped the process of assimilation for Russia's Jewish population. Before the revolution the number of mixed marriages had been fairly insignificant, but by 1920 34 percent of all Jewish marriages involved a non-Jewish partner.²⁹

By the summer of 1917, nearly 57,000 Jews above the age of 15 resided in Moscow, according to one survey. The commission in charge of the survey put the population of those younger at 15–20 percent of the population, for a total of 65,000–69,000 Jews. Of these, recent arrivals accounted for no less than 60 percent.³⁰

Thousands of Jews were forced to leave their homes at a moment's notice from territories near the German front. Gorky painted a picture in his typically emotional style: “They expelled them, 15–20 thousand at a time. The entire Jewish population of the city! In 24 hours! Sick children were transported in wagons like frozen livestock, like little pigs. Thousands of people marched along the virgin snow, pregnant women gave birth alongside the road, people fell ill, and the elderly perished.”³¹ In their new homes Jews were forbidden from buying land. Meanwhile the Ministry of Internal Affairs was coming out against the Jews' returning to their former homes after these areas were liberated from the enemy. Their justification for this policy was the notion that Jews were unsuited for agricultural work, as well as the belief that the army had to be protected from potential spies.³² The imperial authorities created Lenin's “reserve” with their own hands. In addition to the large number of civilian refugees, it should also be kept in mind that there were a good number of Jewish soldiers as well. While it is probably impossible to arrive at a precise number of these Jewish soldiers who ended up far away from their birthplaces, the total probably numbered in the thousands.

The steady stream of Jews entering the service of the Soviet state is hardly surprising. Unlike the vast majority of the population, Jews could not escape to the countryside to wait out the tumultuous times. During the period of War Communism the population of Petrograd was reduced by three-quarters, whereas the Jewish population only decreased by a little more than two-thirds (and some sources claim it only decreased by half). Civil service presented itself as perhaps the only means by which they could survive in an era characterized by the liquidation of private property. This was even more true for refugees, who had been subsisting on charitable donations. The revolution resulted in thousands of “vacancies,” and the very real chance to make a career by means of this sudden opportunity was tempting to many. Jews were particularly well situated to succeed in the new order due to their high rates of literacy and education. In addition, few Jews had deep ties to the previous regime. In the vast majority of cases, it is difficult to say whether the new workers entered the service because of their political convictions, or whether their political convictions were an extension of their new careers. Noting that the people “dispossessed” as a result of the revolution were disproportionately Jewish, the Menshevik St. Ivanovich (S. O. Portugeis) wrote:

The plagues being visited upon the Jews (not as “Jews” of course, but as “bourgeois”) were mostly carried out with the assistance of Jewish agents from among the communists and renegade Jews from other parties. These “bourgeois” were persecuted by the same Jewish children who had grown up on the very same street, and who were now seduced by bolshevism…This terror and persecutor was no “dover-aher” but our “very own Yankel,” the son of Rabbi Moishe from Kasrilovka, a completely harmless young man who had last year failed his pharmacology exam, but had managed to pass his politgramota exam.³³

Of course, the number of Bolsheviks of Jewish extraction was not limited to failed apothecaries. From 1918 to 1920, three Jews served as People's Commissars (Trotsky, I. E. Gukovskii, who headed Finance from April to August 1918, and M. G. Bronskii, who was the head of Trade and Industry from March to November of 1918) in the Soviet Government (Sovnarkom, the Soviet of People's Commissars). During the same period, there were 15 Russian People' Commissars, in addition to a Pole, a Georgian, and a Latvian, for a total of 21 people (not including left SRs). From April to May of 1918, Jews comprised approximately 20 percent of all collegiums of People's Commissariats (Narkomats) members (24 of 114). Here too the majority were Russians (76 of 114).³⁴

Jews were also prevalent in those spheres that they had dominated under the old regime. All of the workers in the Department of Legal Publications at the Sovnarkom were Jews—S. M. Flaksman, M. A. Ziskin, A. F. Roizman, and R. B. Refes.³⁵ There were also a large number of Jewish workers in the Narkomat of Legal Affairs.³⁶ However, only an insignificant number of these were members of the Bolshevik Party. Among the professional lawyers who entered the Soviet civil service was Aleksandr Grigorievich Goikhbarg (1883–1962), who, according to V. A. Maklakov, “had never been a communist, but had always been a perfect scoundrel, and a corrupt one at that.”³⁷ From 1904 to 1917 Goikhbarg had been a Menshevik, but after the February revolution he became a lecturer at Petrograd University, taught at the Bestuzhev courses, and collaborated on the liberal journal Law Pravo (Law). In 1917, he had also served as one of the editors for the Menshevik publication Novaia zhizn' (New Life). He launched a brilliant career in the Soviet period. In 1918, he became a member of the Collegium of the Narkomat of Legal Affairs, as head of the bureau for law codification. In 1919 he was forced to work in Siberia, where he joined the Russian Communist Party (RKP (b)). In May of 1920 in Omsk, he served as a prosecutor in the first Soviet show trial following the defeat of the Kolchak Government. Trial records (particularly those regarding Goikhbarg's performance at the meetings of the Siberian Bolshevik Central Committee, where it was agreed on beforehand who would face the death penalty) do little to change the picture of Goikhbarg as a “perfect scoundrel.”³⁸ His zeal and “professionalism” were duly rewarded; from 1921 to 1923 Goikhbarg served as the chairman of the “small” Sovnarkom, and it was under his leadership that the civil code of the RSFSR was prepared.³⁹

Of course, not all of those working for Soviet justice were scoundrels and careerists. Among the many true adherents to the revolution was Aleksandr Isaakovich Khmelnitskii (1889–1919). In 1918, he served as the general counsel for the Narkom Narkomat of Legal Affairs. A lawyer's son and native of Odessa, Khmelnitskii finished school at the top of his class and graduated from the Novorossiisk University law faculty with highest honors. Gifted with a remarkable memory, he served as a consultant for the Conference of Justices of Peace and the Society for the Defense of Women before the February Revolution. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, and became the leader of the party organization in Odessa, distinguishing himself as a fiery orator. By 1919, he had become the People's Commissar for the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine, a member of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Bolshevik Party, and the deputy of the head of the Political Directorate of Internal Military Security of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). At the age of 30, Khmelnitskii died of typhus. One can only guess how such a brilliant career might have continued.

The Print Bureau of the Sovnarkom was headed by the Bolshevik Tovii Lazarevich Akselrod (1888–1938). There were several Jews among his staff (many of whom had no party affiliation) who worked as copy editors, typists, couriers, and so on.⁴⁰ The “Sovietization” of the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had earlier been closed to Jews, was a task given to Ivan Abramovich Zalkind (1885–1928), a representative of Trotsky. Zalkind, a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP) from the age of 18, had repeatedly been threatened with arrest and exile before the Revolution, and emigrated to France in 1908, where he completed a doctoral program in biology at the Sorbonne. Like Akselrod, he returned to Russia after the February Revolution, and participated in the October coup in Petrograd. Despite the resistance of many of the former workers of the ministry, Zalkind was able to transform it by relying on the relatively few supporters of the regime within the ministry itself, and by introducing new revolutionary workers into the mix. In December of 1917 he became head of the Western Countries bureau, and soon after, in January of 1918, was appointed Ambassador to Switzerland.⁴¹

Jews likewise played a vital role in the Soviet and Party apparatuses in Petrograd. In September of 1918 they composed 9 percent of all Party operatives, and nearly 54 percent of those among senior officials. According to M. Beizer, the total percentage of Jews in the Bolshevik City Committee (Gorkom) and Gubernia Committee (Gubkom) in 1918 was 45 percent, though by 1921 it was only 22 percent. The Zionist A. Idelson, in attempting to explain the growing numbers of Jews in the corridors of Bolshevik power, claimed that in the educated portion of the masses the majority were Jews. Perhaps he was right. As the lower classes grew in power and influence, so too did the role of Jews in Soviet and Party structures.⁴² Five out of the eleven people in the Petrograd Gorkom in 1918 were of Jewish origin, and three of the five members of the Presidium of the Petrograd Council of Trade Unions (Petrosovprof) in 1919 were Jews. This, of course, was the Party elite, with the “proconsul” of Petrograd, Zinoviev, at its head.

The situation was different at the lower levels of the Party machine. According to V. L. Burtsev, in 1919 the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd was 2.6 percent Jewish, as opposed to 1.8 percent of the general population. By comparison, the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd was 74.2 percent Russian (Russians made up 92.6 percent of the general population), 10.6 percent Latvian (0.7 percent), 6.3 percent Polish (4.2). From these numbers it is readily apparent that the Jewish rank and file did not immediately flock to the Bolshevik Party.⁴³

Of the 23,600 members of the Bolshevik Party in January of 1917, nearly 1000 were Jews (4.3 percent).⁴⁴ Towards the beginning of 1921 (after the major military conflicts of the Civil War), the number had grown to 17,400, although this was still only 2.5 percent of the party as a whole.⁴⁵ The Bolshevik Party, which saw a rapid increase in membership in 1917 from 40,000 members in April to 200,000 by August (before decreasing to 115,000 in 1918⁴⁶) saw a proportionally smaller increase in the number of Jewish members. In 1922, according to a variety of sources, anywhere from 1,175 to 2,182 Jews joined the Party in 1917.⁴⁷ Keeping in mind the fact that Jews in general tended to be more politically active than other ethnic groups, it would seem that on the whole they preferred to join other political organizations.

A brief list of the number of Jews who joined the Communist Party by year, according to Party documents: Before 1917, 964 members, 1917 (2,182), 1918 (2,712), 1919 (5,673), 1920 (5,804), 1921 (1,966). The Party census included 91 percent of all Party members, with the exception of Party organizations in Yakutia and the Far East, where there were very few Jews to begin with. It is clear that in 1920 there were more Jews than the Party records account for, and it is possible that some were expelled from the Party during purges that took place before the census. The reality of conditions during the Civil War period might also explain the difference in numbers. However, the discrepancy does not seem overly significant.⁴⁸ By the beginning of 1922 the Party counted 19,562 Jews in the RKP (b), while the Party census listed 19,564 (5.2 percent of the Party as a whole). It is clear that the “stagnation” in the growth of Jewish members of the Party was due to purges going on within the Party. In 1920 there were 2,728,300 Jews in Russia, comprising 2.11 percent of the population of the country. In terms of absolute numbers, Jews occupied third place in Party membership, after Russians (270,409 or 71.90 percent) and Ukrainians (22,078 or 5.80 percent).⁴⁹

Bolshevism was hardly widespread among the Jewish working class, to say nothing of its lack of popularity among the petty bourgeoisie. In 1917, the membership of Bund was more than ten times the number of Jewish Bolsheviks. In general, the Jewish socialist parties condemned the October coup.

After seizing power, the Bolsheviks were faced with two main tasks in regards to the “Jewish question.” The first was to assert control over the “Jewish street.” The second was to suppress the antisemitic and pogromistic tendencies among the soldiers, sailors, and workers whom the Soviets relied upon for support.

The Bolsheviks paid fairly little attention to the “Jewish proletariat” before the coup, due at least in part to the lack of Yiddish speakers in the ranks of the party. In January of 1918, the Jewish Commissariat (Evkom) was created within the People's Comissariat of Nationalities (Narkomnats) with S. M. Dimanshtein at its head. In July of 1918, the first Jewish section (Evsektsiia) of the RKP (b) was formed in Orel, and 12 other cities with significant Jewish populations soon followed suit. October 1918 marked the first nationwide Evsektsiia conference. Participants included Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks alike, with many of the latter being teachers or various cultural figures. At the conference, the Jewish communists elected the same Dimanshtein as head of the Central Bureau of the organization. The Evkom and the Evsektsiia were run by practically the same people, and were often referred to in tandem. Eventually, the Evkom was absorbed by the Evsektsiia.

The brightest faces of the new organization were Semen (Shimon) Markovich Dimanshtein (1886–1937), and Samuil Khaimovich Agurskii (1884–1947). Dimanshtein studied at a Lubavich yeshiva and at the age of 18 had received the title of rabbi, although he soon chose another path in life. He joined the party in 1904, participated in the 1905 revolution, and was sentenced in Riga in 1909 to four years of hard labor, which he served in the Saratov prison. He was then exiled to Siberia, which he fled in 1913 for Paris. Having returned to Russia after the February revolution, he worked in military organizations and edited the newspaper Okopnaia Pravda (Enshackled Truth). After the October revolution he briefly served as a member of the collegium at the People's Commissariat of Labor, and then was ordered to serve on the “Jewish front.” Agurskii had finished a heder, started to work at the age of 12, and joined the Bund at the age of 18 in 1902. In 1905, he left for the United States, where he worked as a tailor and wrote journalism for local Yiddish-language socialist publications. In 1917 he returned to Russia and became a Bolshevik.

The largest task facing the Evkom and Evsektsiia was the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat over the “Jewish street.” To achieve this, they needed to liquidate Jewish social organizations, Zionist organizations, and finally any Jewish socialist political parties. Jewish communism, having the full might of the Soviet State by its side, was ultimately successful in reaching its goal.⁵⁰

It was also necessary to spread Bolshevik propaganda among the Jewish working class. Given the lack of Yiddish specialists at hand, this proved difficult at first. Of the three editors of the Party's Yiddish-language newspaper Die Varkheit (Truth), two of them did not know Yiddish.⁵¹

The Evkom was not shy about its goals. On May 18, 1918 at the second conference of the Union of Jewish soldiers, the chairman of the Evkom suddenly stood to make a speech. In no uncertain terms he expressed his dissatisfaction that when debate turned towards interaction between numerous social organizations, the Evkom was largely ignored.

The chairman announced that Soviet power was striving for a “complete destruction of Jewish organizations, as well as all other nationalist organizations. The State itself will recreate the institutions that will know how best to help the working class. The Commissariat itself will provide assistance to Jewish soldiers and prisoners of war, as they [the Commissariat] are the true representatives of the working class.”⁵²

A. A. Vilenkin, a member of the Party of People's Socialists, was elected as chairman of the presidium. (Some months later, he was shot by the Bolsheviks for belonging to Savinkov's “Union for the defense of the Motherland and Freedom.”) Among other topics, the conference raised the issue of self-defense in the face of increasing pogroms. One presenter (Brams) noted that the state was always against Jewish self-defense, whether it was during the reign of Nicholas II, or under the “ultra-socialist state of the workers and peasants.”⁵³

The Zionist newspaper Khronika evreiskoi zhizni (Chronicle of Jewish Life), which had replaced Dawn when the latter was closed by the Bolsheviks, remarked with due irony in 1918 that “the Jewish Commissariat maintains its prestige and is acting in accordance with the maxim coined by Sholem Aleichem: ‘You can beat my Jews, and I'll beat yours.’”⁵⁴ The Zionists were unable to maintain such a carefree attitude to the situation for long.

At the peak of the Civil War, the Evsektsiias took to attacking Jewish community organizations. The dismantling of Jewish organizations and the suppression of their activity were completely in keeping with the Lenin's pre-revolutionary views. “Jewish national culture,” wrote Lenin in 1913, “is a slogan of rabbis and the bourgeoisie, the slogan of our enemies.”⁵⁵

The decree concerning the liquidation of autonomous Jewish cultural organizations was prepared by Agurskii, and approved by Stalin (then serving as Commissar of Nationalities) on April 11, 1919:

The Central Commissariat on the Jewish National Affairs, having investigated the activities of the Central Bureau of Jewish Communities, has concluded:

1. That the Jewish Communities and their Central Bureau surround themselves with those who are clearly enemies of the interests of the Jewish working class, and of the October Revolution.

2. That said Communities and Bureau are engaged in harmful political activity, directed at obscuring the class consciousness of the Jewish working masses.

3. That the Communities, having taken upon themselves various governmental functions such as cultural, educational, and social services, are giving the Jewish working youth a distorted education of an antiproletarian nature. Thus the Central Commissariat of Jewish Affairs decrees that the Central Bureau of Jewish Communities, and all Jewish Communities with their corresponding departments located on the territory of the RSFSR be closed forever.

All monies and inventories shall be handed over to the local Jewish Commissariats.

The given directive takes effect from the moment of its publication in any of the official organs of the Soviet government.⁵⁶

S. M. Dubnov, having read the “idiotic” decree that was to close Tsevaad (the Central Bureau of Jewish Communities) and autonomous Jewish communities, remarked in his diary, “These interlopers have decided to repeal an autonomous nationality that has existed for 25 centuries. Pitiful pygmies.”⁵⁷ The “interlopers,” however, were insistent and consistent in achieving their goal.

Copies of the directive were sent out with an accompanying letter by Dimanshtein, which stated:

In keeping with the 2nd All-Russian Conference of the Jewish Sections of the RKP [Russian Communist Party] we have enclosed a directive concerning the liquidation of Jewish cultural organizations. The Moscow and Central Vaad of Jewish communities have already been liquidated, and we are now moving on with the liquidation of other bourgeois organizations: Zionist organizations such as Tarbut, Hehalutz and others.

In accordance with the directive, we suggest you begin the liquidation process in your own city, county, or region.

In order to best carry out this task throughout all of Russia, the liquidation must be carried out immediately and without reservation.⁵⁸

In his commentary to the directive, Dimanshtein wrote that if Jewish communities had earlier been beholden to the Jewish bourgeoisie, then after the revolution they “demonstrated bourgeois tendencies with the minor addition of the Jewish socialist parties.” Power was lodged firmly in the hands of “the Zionist bourgeoisie.” They “feel the support of the imperialist Allied powers, and consider themselves victors, and the soon-to-be masters of Palestine, and already say so openly.” From the words and tone of Dimanshtein's writing, it was not hard to guess who the next victims of the Evsektsiias and Evkom were to be.

“We are convinced,” wrote Dimanshtein,

that the Golden Calf of the Entente powers will be unable to defeat the idea of Soviet power, that, to the contrary, our Moses (Lenin) will turn the calf to ashes (perhaps by simple requisition). Then Turkey will be liberated from the “mandate” of England and the Jewish occupation.

The Jewish worker in has achieved consciousness and recognizes himself and his class enemies, even if they are in Jewish garb. He struggles against them, and casts them out.

With the closing of these organizations we grow closer and closer to the triumph of communism.⁵⁹

In the summer of 1919, the leadership of the Zionist Organization in Russia attempted to ascertain their legal status in the eyes of the Soviet government. At this time, Dimanshtein informed the Presidium of the Cheka that “according to the directive of the most recent conference of the Jewish Communist Sections and Commissariats, which was later confirmed by the Central Committee of the RKP (b), bourgeois Zionist organizations are to be liquidated.” The Bolshevik leadership was faced with a problem: on the one hand, the Zionist movement was recognized throughout the world; on the other, Zionist ideology was incompatible with the ideals of Communism. They found a solution worthy of Solomon: Zionists could be attacked “without any declaration of war,” through secret arrests and administrative pressures. On June 27, 1919 in the Secret Section of the Cheka a “Jewish panel” was formed. On July 21 the Central Executive Committee officially approved the following directive:

In as much as the Zionist party has not been declared counterrevolutionary and for as long as the educational and cultural activity of Zionist organizations does not contradict the decisions of Soviet power, the presidium of the VtsIK [All-Russian Central Executive Committee] orders all Soviet institutions to not interfere in the aforementioned activities described above.

The directive was signed by A. S. Enukidze, Secretary of the VtsIK.⁶⁰

Less than a week after the VtsIK directive, the Central Bureau of the Evsektsiia sent out a secret memo composed on June 29, 1919 and signed by Dimanshtein and secretary of the Central Bureau Anshtein, which requested information on Zionist organizations and evidence of their counterrevolutionary activities:

In order to carry out the liquidation of Zionist organizations with all of its adherent institutions, we are in need of the immediate procurement of specific, well-vetted materials, transcripts, booklets, posters, etc., which characterize the counterrevolutionary activities of Zionist organizations in the provinces, such as:

Praising the Entente powers or calls for their victory

Speeches against the Soviet State

Accusations of antisemitism directed towards the Soviet State

Malicious criticism

Ways in which Zionist organizations associate with similar

organizations abroad and in the countries of the Entente.

Financial records, sources of income, expenditures [of Zionist

organizations], and how active, [and] influential [they are],

and the degree of [their] opposition to the task at hand.

We request that you immediately, without losing a single day, start sending said materials, or portions thereof.⁶¹

Soon the Cheka entered the fray. On September 1, 1919, Chekists searched the grounds of the Central Committee of the Zionist Organization in Petrograd as well as the editorial offices of The Chronicle of Jewish Life. Several members were arrested, including Iu. Brutskus, Sh. Gepshtein, A. Zeideman, A. Rappoport, R. Rubinshtein, and N. Shakhnovich. Their treasury was also seized. A number of the arrests took place in Moscow. The newspaper was closed, those arrested were held from anywhere from several days to six weeks, and the Central Committee's offices were sealed for five months. Curiously enough, one of those arrested, Gepshtein, was accused of sending secret information to London from the basement of his own home.⁶²

In Odessa, the Zionist leaders V. I. Temkin, S. S. Pen, Ia. Ia. Vasserman, Kh. Sh. Rosental and Sh. P. Galperin were arrested on suspicion of fraternizing with the Volunteer Army and the Entente. The Zionists M. D. Elik, E. A. Bogorov, and M. L. Manoszon were shot by the Cheka.⁶³

Dimanshtein provided ideological support for these repressions, claiming that the Zionists were “closely connected to the Entente” and were guilty of counterrevolutionary activities. “The pogroms do not bother them at all,” wrote Dimanshtein. “For them they are just another means by which they can try to force the Jews to strive for their ‘own state’…the documents we have discovered during these searches and arrests confirm this.” This was a concerted disinformation campaign, which included reports that V. E. Zhabotinskii had been proclaimed Governor General of Palestine, and was playing the role of “Muraviev in Poland and Lithuania.”⁶⁴ Subsequently Dimanshtein would attempt to portray Zionists as being in league with the White movement. One example: his publication of an accusatory invective on the trial of a certain Turkeltraub, publisher of Dawn in Kharkov, which was then under Denikin's control, under the heading, “White Zionists in the Seat of the Accused.”

A new blow was struck against the Zionists in the spring of 1920. On April 20, a conference of Zionists gathered at the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow, the first conference since the congress of 1917. On April 23, seventy-five delegates and guests were arrested (two, the elderly rabbi Ia. Muze and the ailing E. Cherikover, were immediately released). At the Lubyanka, Iu. Brutskus made reference to the VTsIK directive that cleared the Zionist Party of counterrevolutionary status. At this point one of the Chekists replied that the organization had not received permission to hold a conference. Brutskus took the opportunity to remind them that according to Soviet law, legal organizations did not need to request permission in order to hold gatherings. The answer he received: “You know the law, but you don't know how things are done in the Cheka. Sit in prison and get to know them.” The Zionist was sent to the Butyrka prison. The Chekists, for their part, strengthened the accusations against the Zionists by claiming that they had seized explosives from the accused. Later Izvestia would go on to publish a refutation of that claim, which had undoubtedly been sanctioned from above.⁶⁵

On June 29, 1920, six of the Zionist leaders (Iu. D. Brutskus, G. I. Gitelson, A. I. Idelson, R. B. Rubinshtein, E. M. Steimatsky, and N. A. Shakhnovich) were sentenced to five years in prison, while one (E. M. Barbel) was sentenced to six months of forced labor without imprisonment. They were all immediately amnestied. The rest had been freed earlier. Despite the fairly lenient sentencing, it was now clear that the Soviet state was holding its course in its attempt to liquidate the Zionist movement, though it was doing so with a minimum of noise. The head of the Secret Section of the Cheka, M. I. Latsis, made the following point in arguing the need to combat Zionism:

If Zionism, which is seizing nearly all of the Jewish intelligentsia, were to fulfill its goals, we would lose a great number of very skilled people who are very much needed for our own administration and organization.⁶⁶

The Central Committee of the RKP (b) allowed Zionists to be targeted in the press. M. Rafes, a former Bund member, was particularly active in this enterprise. After the pogrom carried out by Arabs against the Jews in Jerusalem on April 4, 1920, and the Entente's declaration on April 24 that Palestine was to fall under British control, Rafes published a major article entitled “The Palestinian Pogrom and the Palestinian Idea” (“Palestinskii pogrom and palestinskaia ideia”) in Zhizn' natsional'nostei (The Life of Nationalities). The article was later published as a separate pamphlet. The British Mandate had included the conditions for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine:

Instead of liberating the Jewish people, as the English imperialists and Zionists would claim, we get instead the blatant enslavement of Arab peasants under the yoke of Anglo-Jewish capital, along with the enslavement of the small number of Jewish workers and farmers. Instead of a land “flowing with the milk and honey” of national freedom and ideology, we get a simple three-day Jewish pogrom!

What could be more deeply morally bankrupt?

…Zionism is still destined to serve its shameful role as the lackey of English imperialism…[The] complete rejection of Zionism—that is the ultimate demand of life, now being announced to all left-Socialist Jewish groups, one that will be repeated by the Third Communist International.⁶⁷

The second congress of the Comintern, which took place in July and August of 1920, called “the Zionists' Enterprise in Palestine,” “a shining example of the deception of the working masses of an oppressed people that was carried out by the forces of imperialism, in conjunction with the Entente powers, and their bourgeoisie.”⁶⁸

By the end of 1920, the Zionist movement had been forced to move underground, thanks to the efforts of the Evsektsiia and the Cheka. In the years that followed, nearly all of the Zionist leaders were compelled to leave the country.

At the suggestion of Jewish Communists, the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment included an addendum to the directive entitled “On the schools of national minorities.” Added on June 26, 1919, it said, “The Jewish working masses living in the territory of Soviet Russia are to consider their native language Yiddish and not Hebrew.” The directive was signed by M. N. Pokrovskii, who was also the head of the Soviet school of historical science. It was likewise signed by the head of the Department for the Enlightenment of National Minorities, P. M. Makintsian.⁶⁹

As part of the struggle against Zionism, the All-Ukrainian Committee for Assistance to Pogrom Victims was shut down. The committee had been formed during the period of the Directorate, when pogroms were at their peak. First headed by the well-known lawyer M. N. Kreinin, it would later be run by M. L. Goldstein, also a lawyer. The chairman of the legal commission of the committee was one of the few Jewish lawyers to have served the state under the imperial regime, Ia. L. Teitel. The “pogrom committee” was transformed into a commission under the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Social Services, which strictly enforced the rule that the funds collected by the Committee would go towards restoring labor infrastructure, but that they should in no way fall into the hands of “exploiters.” It could be claimed that this stolen money was redistributed according to clear class principles.⁷⁰

The Bund, the largest Jewish socialist party, did not approve of the Bolshevik coup, as was mentioned in the previous chapter. M. Liber, the leader of the right wing of the party, and his supporters were in favor of military action against the Bolsheviks.

When Bolshevik forces seized Kiev in February of 1918, the Ukrainian Bundists condemned their actions, and their leader M. G. Rafes even wrote that “the Bolsheviks, with their ‘socialist’ artillery have done Shulgin's work for him. They have managed to destroy everything the revolution had achieved in building up Ukraine.” The Kiev Bundists voted against recognizing Bolshevik power in Ukraine, to the count of 762 against, ii in favor, and 7 abstentions.⁷¹ Responding to M. A. Muraviev's claim that the Red Army “had brought in the ideals of socialism on the points of their bayonets,” Rafes composed a pointedly anti-Bolshevik article entitled, “Bayonacracy. ⁷²

According to one of his political opponents, Rafes, the Chairman of the Central Provisional Committee of the Bund in Ukraine, was the brightest star of all the politicians in Kiev at the time: “He was a compelling orator, in both Russian and Yiddish. A talented polemicist, and a dangerous critic. And, what is most important, he had limitless reserves of energy and true strength.”⁷³ Despite the numerous incidents that Rafes was involved in from 1918 to 1920, he always managed to record what had happened and almost immediately publish it. On November 14, 1918 he was arrested by the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev while attending a meeting with other politic al and social activists. A total of twenty-eight people were arrested, among them SRs, SDs, Bundists, and others. They were held in the Lukianov prison.⁷⁴

“The reader should note,” Rafes wrote, “that among those arrested on November 14 there was nary a communist or Bolshevik to be found. The inhabitants of cell 1, corridor 6, had been fighting against the Bolsheviks for a year. Even the left-wing Bundists had no Bolshevik sympathies whatsoever. In Kiev, in Ekaterinoslav, in the city Dumas and in the Central Rada, Bundists always took the initiative in the fight with Bolshevism.”⁷⁵

The accuracy of these words can be measured against those of his political opponent, who recalled that the “best moments” in Rafes' political activity occurred “towards the time of the Bolsheviks arrival in February of 1918.” “During this time, he courageously fought against Bolshevism, and attempted to expose it.”⁷⁶

After the dissolution of the Constitutive Assembly and the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest, the Bund decided to fight against the Bolshevik coup, but by May of 1918 the party was already dominated by those who wished to “fight against Bolshevism in the soviets and through the soviets.” The Bolsheviks did not give them a chance, excluding them from the soviets, along with right SRs and the Mensheviks, in June of 1918, and forbidding party activities of any kind.

At this point, it would have been difficult to divine that within the span of a few months, Bundists and Bolsheviks would be fighting under the same banner.

The Jewish social democratic party Poalei Zion in Russia attempted to fulfill the function of a “constructive opposition” to the Bolsheviks. In the middle of 1918, they decided to join in the work of the Evkom in order to “fight against its goals, which are directed against the interests of the working masses and autonomous Jewish institutions.”⁷⁷ Such relative loyalty did not prevent them from being excluded from the soviets in June of 1918, although they were allowed to carry on with their political activities within Soviet Russia. However, Poalei Zion had very few representatives in the Russian soviets. In Ukraine, representatives of Poalei Zion were part of the Central Rada, and later on were included in the Directorate. In 1917–18 a split in the party could be discerned between the left (headed by G. S. Fridliand) and right (headed by S. I. Goldelman) wings.

Until the end of 1918 the problem of the Bolsheviks' relationships with the Bund, Poalei Zion, and Fareynikte (the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party) was not of pressing importance, as the base of the Jewish socialist parties was located in the territory of the former Pale of Settlement in the occupied lands of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. The situation changed drastically, however, when the Civil War broke out in the southern and northwestern regions of the country.⁷⁸

Another problem that the Bolsheviks faced after seizing power was antisemitism among their own supporters. The internationalist orientation of Bolshevism existed only in the upper echelons of the Party, while the masses from whom the Bolshevik leaders derived much of their support (the army in particular⁷⁹) were decidedly antisemitic.

In the spring of 1918 members of the Red Army, retreating from Ukraine under pressure from German troops, carried out the first “full-fledged” pogroms of the Civil War period. The pogroms mostly took place in the Chernigov gubernia. The “reasons” used to justify the pogroms were strikingly reminiscent of those used during Tsarist times. Jews were accused of welcoming the Germans, of shooting Red Army soldiers in the back, and of being counterrevolutionaries. Fifteen Jews were killed in the city of Mglina during a punitive expedition in response to the murder of a local politician (Shimanovskii), while several more were beaten or wounded. The Red Army also destroyed a large number of Jewish apartments. The next day, the Red Army demanded compensation for the murder, and surrounded the homes of the wealthy (without regard for religion or national origin). At one such house several people had gathered, and the “internationalists” commanded, “The Russian can leave, but the Yids have to stay.” The Red Army soldiers killed seven Jews, including a two-year-old girl and a deaf-mute woman. When Zorin, one of the local Red Army commanders, heard that they were killing Jews, he immediately shot two of the perpetrators on the spot. He was then forced to flee for his life from his own subordinates.⁸⁰ Of course, the Jews had nothing to do with the murder of the politician in question, which was the supposed reason for the expedition in the first place.

On April 6, 1918 in Novgorod-Severskii, a 600-man detachment of Red Army soldiers killed at least 57 Jews⁸¹ (later accounts, which included those killed on the road and in villages surrounding the city, place the total at 88, with an additional 11 seriously injured⁸²). Entire families were destroyed. The writer and Zionist activist A. Ia. Slutskii was killed along with his wife. Among the other victims were “an unknown elderly Jew of 65 years” and “an unknown impoverished Jew who had been a member of the synagogue for 70 years.”⁸³ About 20 Jews were murdered in Seredina-Buda, with additional victims in the surrounding villages.⁸⁴

The bloodiest slaughter took place in the town of Glukhov, were more than 100 Jews were exterminated.⁸⁵ The newspaper Dawn published excerpts from a letter written by one of the local inhabitants who was fleeing “the horrors of Glukhov.” Dated April 23, 1918, it told how the author and his family, having hidden from the Reds in the town of Altukhov, moved constantly from house to house, and eventually took refuge in the forest. The decision was made to leave the children with one of their servants. Soon after, probably frightened by the appearance of the authorities, the servant ran after her masters, imploring them to take the children, as she was afraid that “someone would betray her and say she was hiding Jewish children, and that they would then kill the children, her and her family.”⁸⁶ In this case everything turned out for the better and they were not discovered, although the Red Army had succeeded in putting the fear of God into the local Jewish populace.

There were other, less bloody examples of the “special” relationship Red Army forces had with Jews. In March of 1918 in Ekaterinoslav, for example, a group of “anarchist-maximalists” in conjunction with Red Army forces attacked a Jewish self-defense militia and disarmed them. They then opened fire on the militia, killing one of the militiamen. As this was going on, the attackers cried, “Yids [zhidy] are counterrevolutionaries and Whites.”⁸⁷

In September of 1918, the well-known historian S. P. Melgunov, who was arrested in the first days of the Red Terror after the attempt on Lenin's life, was in a cell of the Butyrka prison with twenty-four Red Army soldiers, who had been incarcerated for the past three months without charge. When Melgunov was interrogated by Dzerzhinsky himself, he used the opportunity to remind the head of the Cheka about the imprisoned soldiers, who apparently had been forgotten about. Dzerzhinsky responded that “it will be good for them to sit in jail for awhile,” as they had tried to organize a pogrom in Vladimir. Melgunov thought that Dzerzhinsky was making up the charge on the spot, as it was highly unlikely that he had personally would know much about the situation. However, it is quite possible that Dzerzhinsky did in fact know what he was talking about. In any case, it is indicative that, invented or not, the first thing that came into Dzerzhinsky's mind at the time was the word pogrom.⁸⁸

The history of the Bolsheviks' initial entry into Rostov-on-Don has been well documented. Soviet forces reached the city three and a half months after the coup in Petrograd. During this time the Jewish population of the city—even supporters of revolution from the Bund and the Mensheviks—had formed an extremely negative attitude towards the Soviet state. Reality was to prove worse than their most pessimistic expectations. For two and a half months terror reigned throughout the city. All the inhabitants, including the “clean” ones, were affected, but the Jews were again singled out for special treatment.

Of course, there were no direct orders that encouraged the persecution of Jews. The “President” of the Don Republic, F. G. Podtelkov, was once asked during a public event, “What are we to do about the Jews?” He answered in a language that was easily understood by the audience at hand, “Under Soviet rule, we are ordered to accept even Yids [zhidy] as people.”⁸⁹

The graphic events of the Bolshevik regime in Rostov have been preserved by contemporaries. The liberal Kadet journalist P. T. Gertso-Vinogradskii, who wrote for the popular newspaper Priazovskii krai (Azov Region), recalls how the Bolsheviks searched the building he was living in at the time:

Some comrades with machine guns show up, and the first question they ask the doorman is:

Got any Yids here?

Do you hear this, you Socialist Gods of Olympus!

They robbed our house during the very first sweep and, becoming enamored of their theft, forgot to separate the Greeks from the Jews. Of course, robbery is robbery. However, I have nothing against the principle of equality among nations when it comes to robbery. If you're going to rob someone, then go ahead and rob everyone!

No matter how hard I try, I just can't get the “socialist” expression “got any Yids?” out of my non-socialist brain.⁹⁰

The SD A. S. Lokerman, a delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDRP, was shaken by all he had seen during the seventy-four-day period of Bolshevik rule, and quickly published a book about what he had experienced. He describes the death of the Zionist M. Shapiro, who worked as a cashier at a hospital called “Hope” (Nadezhda). In response to the rant of a Red Army soldier who was shouting, “We're gonna kill all the bourgeois and the Yids!” Shapiro said that only hooligans spoke in such a matter. Shapiro was then detained while they “established his identity.” Within an hour his corpse turned up at the hospital.⁹¹

Lokerman wrote that of all the naïve, theoretical, and unfeasible pretensions of the Bolshevik project there remained only a kind of facade, “behind which convicted felons, Black Hundreds, sadists, [and others] would commit heinous and hideous acts. As a true movement of the people, Bolshevism took in all sorts of scum from all levels of society. These elements gradually came to determine the tone and character of the entire Bolshevik movement…. our ‘sailor comrades’ have recently begun to turn on their ‘leadership’ because of the latter's education, bourgeois heritage, or, in some instances, indulgent attitude towards Jews.”⁹²

Prince G. N. Trubetskoi, a former envoy to Serbia, describes a typical episode in his memoirs. Soon after the retreat of the Volunteer Army from Rostov in February of 1918, Trubetskoi set off for Moscow, accompanied by his son, P. B. Struve and the philosopher N. S. Arseniev. They were traveling through the back country to get to the railroad when they found themselves in front of a Red “revolutionary committee” in a remote village. The travelers, who had managed to obtain false travel documents, were subjected to a search and interrogation:

They treated Arseniev rather strangely. For some reason they took him for a Yid. We repeatedly told them that he was from an Orthodox family, and that two of his uncles were priests. Our driver vouched for him, telling how Arseniev had been recounting Saints' lives for the duration of our journey. “They can do that,” noted the chairman of the committee. He was the cruelest of all of our interrogators. They wouldn't relent in their calling Arseniev a Yid…these were truly the unwashed masses in revolt.⁹³

Antisemitic tendencies could often be found among the operatives of the Cheka. G. Ia. Aronson, a Menshevik, described his time in the Butyrka prison after the Bolsheviks had begun to turn on their former SD allies:

The VChK created a joint commission with the MChK [the Moscow Cheka] for the purposes of our interrogation. It was headed by Samsonov, a Chekist, a worker, and (I think) a former anarchist. The interrogations themselves were revolting. They grilled us on our family backgrounds, whether we came from the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, made some jokes at the expense of the bourgeoisie. Then, out of nowhere, a whiff of antisemitism. Samsonov asked one of the workers, a member of the Central Committee, the following question:

How'd you end up in this company of lawyers, doctors, and Jews?⁹⁴

It was even more common to hear antisemitic remarks from the other side, by the way. A typical middle-class homeowner once told Aronson,

I know you are the ones behind the revolution. Under the Tsars he kept foreigners like you busy. Didn't give Jews the right to live wherever they wanted. The Finns and Poles always wanted to secede from Russia. The Caucasians were always stirring things up. I know that Tsereteli and Liber set up the Revolution. But for us, Russians, peasants, workers, merchants, let me tell you, the revolution has been nothing but complete and total destruction. You just took advantage of our weak character and laxness. We ourselves are to blame: after all, why in the world did we blindly follow a bunch of Jews and Georgians?⁹⁵

Another interesting event occurred during the investigation into the murder of the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. S. Uritsky. The Chekists in charge of the case, Otto and Riks, originally believed that the murder had been planned by Zionists and Bundists, who detested Uritsky for his “internationalism.” The pair arrested a large group of Jews. However, both overly zealous investigators were relieved of duty for their antisemitic actions, and those arrested were set free.⁹⁶ Otto would return to work for the Cheka in 1919.

It should be noted, however, that these antisemitic tendencies, and even the pogroms themselves, occurred at the beginning of the Red Army's existence. As I. M. Cherikover put it, “The Red Army had not yet been reigned in and subjected to discipline. At this time there was no systematic, concerted struggle against the widespread antisemitic sentiment among the rank and file. That was to come later.”⁹⁷

The Bolshevik leadership could not help noticing the dangers posed by antisemitism, and introduced a number of measures aimed at repressing it. In addition to theoretical formulations, based on the ideal of the “international proletariat,” the Bolsheviks were acutely aware that antisemitism could prove to be a useful weapon in the hands of their enemies.

From the very first days of the Soviet state, antisemitic propaganda—to say nothing of violent acts committed against Jews—was equated with counterrevolutionary activity. According to the “resolution on the fight against counterrevolutionary activity,” approved by the Second All-Russian Congress (October 26–27, 1917), local soviets were ordered to “immediately undertake the most serious measures aimed at preventing counterrevolutionary and “antisemitic” speeches, and to prevent any pogroms.”⁹⁸

On April 27, 1918 the Moscow Oblast Sovnarkom, in accordance with the resolution, resolved to “recognize the absolute necessity of doing educational work among Red Army members, with the goal of raising the level of their cultural enlightenment and consciousness,” as well as “diligently” recruiting “members of political parties that support the Soviet platform to serve in the ranks of the Red Army.” The Moscow Oblast Sovnarkom, then, viewed a lack of education as the most significant factor behind the pogroms. Among other things, the Sovnarkom required “the local Jewish commissariat and the editorial offices of Izvestia to immediately set about creating pamphlets concerning the Jewish question, and to publish a series of articles on the topic in Izvestia itself.” The Information Department of the local military commissariat was ordered to “pay serious attention to the development of antisemitic agitation and to keep records of troops to be relied upon in the event of a pogrom.”⁹⁹

However, these measures did not diminish the amount of antisemitic activity. On July 27, 1918 the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR adopted a directive entitled, “On eliminating the antisemitic movement at its root.” It stated that “counterrevolutionaries have renewed their persecution of the Jews, taking advantage of the hunger and fatigue of the masses, in addition to the undeveloped nature of much of the masses, and the remnants of enmity towards the Jews with which the masses were inoculated during the Tsarist regime” [italics mine]. It was explained to the workers that “The Jewish bourgeois is our enemy not because he is Jewish, but because he is bourgeois. The Jewish worker is our brother.”¹⁰⁰

The Sovnarkom declared that “the antisemitic movement threatens the revolutionary efforts of the peasants and workers” and called for “the working people of Socialist Russia to fight this evil by any means necessary,” as well as ordering all deputies “to take decisive measures to destroy the antisemitic movement at its roots.”¹⁰¹ According to Dimanshtein, the main author, the text of the declaration was edited by Lenin. It was Lenin who introduced the phrase “at its root.” Leaders of pogroms were to be branded as outlaws.

Iu. Larin, who was later asked why Lenin considered the struggle against antisemitism to be important for “our revolution,” gave a fairly crafty reply: “It doesn't just have to do with protecting Jewish workers from injustice, it has to do with protecting the entire revolution from the bourgeoisie” [italics Larin's].¹⁰² The cleverness in the response had to do with the fact that by the summer of 1918, the Red Army posed at least as great a threat to the Jews as it did to the Bolsheviks' enemies.

A pamphlet published by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldeirs Deputies in 1918 was addressed to “our own,” that is, to workers and soldiers. This is clear from the very first paragraphs:

One famous Russian writer refused to sign a document protesting the persecution of the Jews. He found the very possibility of being in league with the persecutors humiliating.

We, the party of the proletariat, must find it equally humiliating and shameful that we are forced to combat pogromistic tendencies within the working class. We write on our banners, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” while we simultaneously collaborate with our class enemies against our Jewish comrades, which greatly harms our goals. The barbarian actions of the German invaders did not make us ignore the cries for revolution from our German comrades. Why then does the ridiculous phrase “Jewish dominance” hypnotize us, robbing us of clarity of thought and freedom of action?”¹⁰³

The pamphlet told readers that Jews, in general, were like any other people. “Like everyone else, Jewish society can be separated into different classes. They are no different from the other peoples they live with. Socialism at its root does not allow for any unique national qualities…all nations, Jews included, can be divided into mutually antagonistic classes.” Keeping in mind that many of his readers were at least somewhat familiar with the Bible, the author continued, “Like all peoples, Jews have their own saints and criminals, geniuses and idiots, heroes and cowards. The Jews gave us both Christ and Judas, the first Christian martyrs, and probably were among the executioners of those same martyrs. They gave us Marx, Lassalle, and other famous revolutionaries, but they were also present in governments that were hostile to the revolution.”¹⁰⁴

One part of the pamphlet was clearly addressed to soldiers in the army, many of whom had been involved in deporting the Jewish population during the First World War:

Among Jewish soldiers there probably were many cowards and traitors. But why did the Tsarist regime conceal the names of Jewish soldiers who had distinguished themselves during the war? The list of Jews who were awarded the Order of St. George was cut from the book right as it was going to press, never to be published. The Tsarist regime manipulated social opinion. But as for those of us who have opened our eyes to the bright future of socialism, can we not throw off these leprous rags of the Tsarist times? You, comrades from the front, can bear witness to the truth of what has been said. Cleansed by revolutionary consciousness, we can now reflect upon what we were party to earlier.”¹⁰⁵

Apparently the author (like a large majority of the Russian intelligentsia) was convinced that the “pogroms never appeared spontaneously, they had always been organized by the government, and were now being organized by the remnants of pro-Tsarist groups.” However, at the time the greatest enemies of the Bolsheviks were the “complicit” Mensheviks and SRs. It would have been difficult to accuse them of organizing the pogroms, and the anonymous author even goes so far as to say that the Mensheviks and right SRs were “principled opponents of pogroms. There are many Jews among them, and of course, Jews do not organize pogroms against themselves. But they have allowed groups and classes to gain power who live to persecute Jews, having built their own success on the misfortune of Jews” [italics in original].¹⁰⁶ Comparing the cruelty and senselessness of pogroms to natural disasters, the author makes the point that at least “the latter cannot be attributed to any kind of ill will.” He concludes, “[P]ogroms are organized by the villains of society, by its thieves and traitors who are now trying to rock the foundations of Soviet authority. Only enemies of the people are capable of organizing pogroms.”¹⁰⁷

This topic remained pertinent more than a year later; the same pamphlet was republished in 1919 with no new additions. Peter Kenez, relying on the 1919 edition (he probably did not suspect the existence of an earlier version of the same text), claims that Soviet propaganda, which had attributed all kinds of crimes (real and invented) to the Volunteer Army, did not single them out in regards to the pogroms. He argues that from the Soviet point of view, this was not the best way to attract the peasantry to the Soviet cause.¹⁰⁸ In general, the observation is apt. But in this case, the example chosen is less than convincing. The Volunteer Army was not mentioned at all in the pamphlet because it did not present a real threat to Soviet power at that time, whose main enemies were the “compromisers,” the Mensheviks and SRs. At this point the Volunteer Army had yet to sully itself with pogroms; their “accomplishments” in this field were yet to come. But most importantly, the pamphlet itself was addressed to “our own,” to the workers and soldiers among whom antisemitic tendencies were widespread. Those in charge of Soviet ideology were well aware of this state of affairs, and party and state organizations in Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev, Kharkov, Kursk, and Odessa published large numbers of pamphlets directed against antisemitism and pogroms. Their style and argumentation have a lot of common with the text examined above.¹⁰⁹

In their continued attacks against pogroms and antisemitic agitation, the Bolsheviks continued to identify monarchism and the international bourgeoisie as the main culprits. In a speech from March 1919 released on gramophone records, entitled “On the pogromistic attacks on the Jews,” Lenin claimed that antisemitic hostility was being employed by capitalists and landowners, and that “the power and forces of capital are reliant on discord among the workers.” He declared, “Shame on that cursed tsarism, which tortures and persecutes the Jews,” and claimed that those who “sow hostility against the Jews sows hatred towards other nations.”¹¹⁰ In June of 1919, the Soviet government set aside funds to aid pogrom victims.¹¹¹ Of course, it is worth mentioning that the Ukrainian Directorate did the same, even though they went on to murder the greatest number of Jews during the Civil War.¹¹² Given the scale of the destruction, Soviet propaganda took a somewhat reserved approach to the question of the pogroms. Still, I do not believe that it is entirely deserving of R. Pipes criticism, namely that “Lenin no more condemned the Ukrainian pogroms than Denikin,” and that “the Soviet press ignored the subject.”¹¹³

In reality the Soviet press was hardly silent. They did not suppress information about the pogroms and tried to explain the events on a “theoretical,” if primitive, level. In May and June of 1919, Pravda published two articles by Il. Vardin (Mgeladze) that examined the pogroms. There are few concrete facts and names, but there is extensive discussion of monarchists, priests, and world capitalism. The first article, entitled “Against the Jews—for the Tsar,” discussed the “flashes of pogroms” in Ukraine and the Western Territories alongside the increase in antisemitic agitation in Soviet Russia:

Both there and here the fight against the Jews is inextricably connected with the fight against the power of the Soviets, against the party of the communists. “Beat the Yids [zhidy], save Russia! Down with the communists and commissars!” This shout can be heard anywhere the dark forces of the priests, landowners, kulaks, and store owners can be found.

The landowner, kulak, priest, and bourgeois, that is, all segments of the population who are leaving the historical stage permanently thanks to the efforts of the revolutionary masses, are uniting under the banner of “Jewish destruction” [zhidoedstva]. Massive pogroms in Petliura's Ukraine, in “democratic” Poland and Galicia all indicate that even the representatives of “national” capital are ready to drink the wine of antisemitism.

We must show the masses what is hiding beneath the slogan “beat the Yids!” We must explain to all the workers that the “Yid” [zhid] was the bone that the Tsar and the gentry tried to throw down the throats of the workers and peasants.

Increasing agitation against the Jews is, in essence, agitation for monarchism, the priests, and the serf owners. We need to wage the same struggle against antisemitism as the revolution currently wages against monarchism.¹¹⁴

Here Vardin largely repeats the major points from Lenin's speech. However, at this juncture pogroms were not being carried out by monarchists. Vardin was forced to admit as much in his next article on the topic a month later. “The latest wave of pogroms against the Jews has shown that these pogroms are not solely the accomplishments of tsarism, of the aristocratic reaction, of the medieval political regime. Even contemporary ‘democracy’ while marching under the sign of ‘equality, fraternity, and freedom,’ has come to swallow Jewish blood ‘in secret.’”¹¹⁵

Vardin paid particular attention to those places (Galicia, Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine) where pogroms were being carried out by Petliura, Grigoriev, and other “democrats.” He declared that the main supporters of pogromistic “democracy” were “the middle element,” the intelligentsia, bureaucrats, kulaks, and other members of the middle class. “In the face of ‘the Jew’ and ‘the communist,’ the ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie finds someone who is guilty of all evils. In stupid, impotent fury he throws himself at the ‘Yid’ and destroys him. This stupid, dirty animal believes he will feel sated once he has systematically devoured the Jew…”

The role of international capital, of course, was not ignored: “the imperialists will be most pleased if the idiots gnaw at the Jewish bone and leave them in peace.” Vardin claimed that even Jewish capitalists were amenable to the massacre of the Jewish nation in the interest of “class solidarity,” pointing out that most of the victims came from the poor. He declared the protests of the Jewish bourgeoisie in Poland and Lithuania against the pogroms to be hypocritical: “The Jewish bourgeois must know that the Polish lackeys of world capital would not dare to organize pogroms against the will of Clemenceau and Lloyd George. The Versailles oligarchy is completely responsible for pogromistic ‘democracy.’” Although Vardin's accusations in the direction of world capital amount to little more than a stylistic cliché, it is more difficult to take issue with his conclusion: “The salvation of the laboring Jewish masses [lies] not in Paris, but in Moscow.”

The Soviet press continued to pay significant attention to the “Jewish question” at later points as well, informing readers of White atrocities and of the anti-Soviet position of the Jewish bourgeoisie, who it claimed were willing to turn a blind eye to the murders of their fellow Jews. In an article published in Izvestia entitled “General Denikin and two Kharkov Jews,” the Kharkov Jewish bourgeoisie came under attack:

No less than the Russians did they dream in the silent night of the destruction of nightmarish Bolshevism, of the strong and benevolent rule (only without pogroms) of Astrov and Vinaver, of law and order for the preservation of their factories, mines, and shops, and they were overjoyed when there was not a single pogrom after their [the Whites] entry into Kharkov. The four thousand Jewish corpses in Ekaterinoslav, and the murdered Jews of Lozovaia were far away and didn't worry them much, especially as the delegation to Mai-Maevskii assured them that measures would be taken to investigate…¹¹⁶

According to Izvestia, the Jewish bourgeoisie had formed a “Jewish Committee for Assisting the Volunteer Army,” in which a certain L. E. Berg and M. A. Eizler played a leading role in calling on “Russian citizens of the Jewish faith” to enlist in the Volunteer Army.¹¹⁷ Izvestia also faithfully reported on the atrocities committed by troops under the leadership of K. K. Mamontov, who had led a daring raid into the rear lines of the Red Army. The reports placed particular emphasis on the specifically antisemitic nature of their attacks.¹¹⁸ In an article written shortly after the Whites' capture of Kiev, it was claimed that “Denikin's forces [by shooting members of the Cheka] initiated a popular revolt that soon took on the familiar form of a Jewish pogrom.”¹¹⁹

The Life of Nationalities, a newspaper of the People's Commissariat of Nationalities, also published information on the pogroms. On one occasion, it published a detailed report on the pogroms that took place in Ukraine from January to August 1, 1919, which had been prepared by the Committee for the Assistance of Pogrom Victims of the Russian Society for the Red Cross in Ukraine. According to the Committee, 26,000 people were killed and nearly three times that many were wounded during the period in question. This put the total number of those killed or wounded in during the first seven months of 1919 at approximately 100,000 individuals.¹²⁰

The Life of Nationalities also reported on the rise of antisemitism in Europe, particularly in Poland,¹²¹ Romania, Hungary, and Germany, all the while emphasizing that antisemitism was also “one of the best means to combat the workers' movement”: “under this cover they can give the masses any poisonous pills they like, and [the masses] will swallow them whole, paying no attention to the poison.”¹²²

From these examples it is clear that the Soviet press was hardly silent on the matter of pogroms. Nor did it ignore the growth of antisemitism in Russia (and in Europe as well). Trotsky himself was to grace the pages of Izvestia and address the issue. The article stemmed from the recent discovery of a report composed by the former Red Army brigade commander Kotomin, who had gone over to the Whites. The report was intended for Kolchak's army, but Soviet military authorities on the Eastern Front had recently managed to obtain a copy, and through a bizarre twist of fate it had found its way to Trotsky's desk. Trotsky entitled one section of his analysis of Kotomin's report “antisemitism.”

In a curious fashion, Trotsky explained the purely rational reasons for the visible role of Jews in the revolutionary movement, while spending even more time trying to refute Kotomin's claim that Jews were “particularly talented.” He also attacked the Jewish communists of the “most recent mobilization,” claiming their dedication to communism was motivated by national, rather than class, concerns.

Trotsky denied Kotomin's claim that Jewish commissars comprised such a “large percentage,” though he did admit that it was a “fairly significant number.” However, Trotsky particularly took issue with another of Kotomin's claims, which was “similar to those of many other antisemites, that the reason for the significant number of Jewish commissars can be seen in the special talents and capabilities of the Jews”:

In reality, such an evaluation is completely uncalled for. The fact is, Jews are mostly an urban population, and within the urban population they comprise a very large element. The Tsarist regime, which created the most trying conditions of existence for the Jews, not only pushed the Jewish workers in the direction of the Russian workers, but also pushed the bourgeois elements of the intelligentsia towards the path of revolution. Among the many Jewish communists of the latest mobilization, there are many for whom communism did not spring from class concerns, but rather national ones. Of course, these are not the best communists, and the organization of Soviet power does not rely upon them, but on the Petersburg and Moscow proletarians who were tempered in the old underground.

Antisemitism is not only hatred towards Jewry, but also cowardice before Jewry. Cowardice has large eyes, and sees qualities in the enemy with that are in no way inherent to him. The social and legal conditions of Jewish life are sufficient to explain the role of the Jews in the revolutionary movement. However, it has not been proven, and cannot be proven, that Jews are more gifted than Russians or Ukrainians.¹²³

Gorky was to express a different opinion of Jewish capabilities. On one occasion, Dimanshtein came to Lenin with Gorky's pamphlet “On the Jews,” which was published in a huge print run by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Dimanshtein wanted Lenin to delay the distribution of the pamphlet, as “Gorky was singing an unbelievable hymn to the Jewish people, praising them without exception, which gave the impression that the revolution was dependent on the Jews, the middle-class elements in particular.” Lenin went only so far as to say that “the pamphlet was not very well designed, for in a peasant country one must occasionally deal with shameful prejudices such as antisemitism.” Nonetheless, Lenin considered the pamphlet to be useful, and did not think that confiscating it would be worthwhile.¹²⁴

Strangely, other than the single phrase, “In the struggle for Russia's freedom the Jewish intelligentsia has spilled just as much of its own blood as the Russian intelligentsia has,” there is not a word about the role of Jews in the revolution in Gorky's pamphlet. Moreover, there is no mention of the revolution “depending on the Jews.”¹²⁵ In his usual manner Gorky scolded the Russian people for their laziness and jealousy, and for their inclination to blame someone else (“wife, neighbor, weather, God, anyone but themselves”) for all of their misfortunes. These allegedly inherent qualities of the Russian people were juxtaposed to Jewish perseverance in the struggle for life, their “wise love” towards children and labor, and their belief that the law will be triumphant.¹²⁶ Gorky's arguments in defense of the Jews were quite distant from the clichés of Bolshevik Marxism. They were, however, probably more readily understood by his audience: “It was the Jews who out of our dirty earth managed to raise a glorious flower, Christ, son of a Jewish carpenter, to whom you, the enemies of the Jews, allegedly bow down. Christ's apostles, Jewish fishermen, were likewise such magnificent flowers of spirit, and they confirmed that the Christian religion on earth was the religion of the international brotherhood of the people, a religion in whose soil the ideas of socialism and the international took root.”¹²⁷

Dimanshtein's disapproval of Gorky's pamphlet probably had more to do with Gorky secretly protecting Zionists and attempting to denounce their persecutors (i.e., Jewish communists), as M. Agurskii and M. Shklovskaia have argued. As Gorky once wrote, “Like you, the Jews have factions that are hostile to one another: the Jewish Zionists want to resettle in Palestine, where they have founded a government; while others are against this and attack the Zionists, closing their schools and synagogues, and outlawing the teaching of the Jewish language to their children. Jews are just as much a fragmented people as we Russians are.”¹²⁸ There are, of course, several errors in Gorky's claims. The Jewish state in Palestine was yet to be founded, and there weren't any “Zionist” synagogues; at the time Zionism was still mostly a secular movement. Still, it is clear where Gorky's sympathies lay.

The Bolshevik leadership was well aware of the antisemitic attitudes that were widespread throughout the population at large, workers and peasants included. The military censors in charge of opening and checking mail would often run across statements to the effect that no one wanted to go to war, and that “it isn't worth fighting for the Soviet and the Jews” (Volkhov, Orel gubernia, June 3, 1919). Another correspondent complained about the effectiveness of some of the Jewish Communists in Tver. At an event billed as a “Congress of Soviets,” the brilliant Moscow orator Sosnovskii had managed to push through a resolution declaring that war must be waged until the Bolsheviks were victorious (this was no small feat, given the antiwar sentiment in most regions). After the resolution, however, “the Yids started up again, and everyone hung their heads in disappointment” (Tver, June 26, 1919). A Red Army soldier from the Kaluga gubernia complained that all of the deserters had gone home, and that they were angry at him for “serving Jewish power and selling his own skin” (June 25, 1919). Yet another letter from Nizhnedneprovsk claimed that “the workers are saying that they don't want to protect this Jewish [zhidovskoe] government anymore” (June 1, 1919). A Red Army soldier wrote home, “I curse this government, and wish that it would collapse, the sooner the better. Then I wouldn't have to serve those Yids, I could serve my own God. Down with the lot of them.”¹²⁹

An inhabitant of Kiev reported that much of the population did not support the Soviet government, and quite reasonably pointed out that “the large number of Jews [among the Bolsheviks] provides an excellent argument against Soviet authority” (June 12, 1919).¹³⁰ The Bolsheviks themselves were well aware of this problem. In May of 1919, a communist named Federchuk wrote to G. I. Petrovskii with the following request: “send respectable, balanced people who are able to gain the trust of the masses to do the agitation work. Then the peasants won't be able to latch on to Grigoriev's slogan: ‘Instead of land, they gave you the Cheka, and instead of freedom, they gave you commissars from among those who crucified Christ.’”¹³¹ It was not clear where such “respectable” people were to come from, especially as it was imperative that they be completely loyal to Soviet power. With Jews, one could be sure of at least one thing: they had no other choice but to side with the Soviets.

It should be noted that the “large number of Jews” was only one of many reasons people disliked the Soviet authorities. Ignorant of the fact that their mail was being read carefully by military censors, many people wrote quite openly on a number of other objections they had. Some of these were much more important than the ethnic make-up of the Party: corruption, persecution of the church, and a collapse in general morality were all important, not to mention the forced requisitions and mobilizations which often pitted brother against brother. Some accused the Jews of avoiding military service (“The Yid needs to fight, but he's not around. Ten of the Yids from the Tailors' Union have left, while all our Russians fight. We should beat them all, down to the very last Yid. Those speculators don't have anything to fear, while we're afraid of everything” [Livna, Orel gubernia, June 30, 1919]). But people were even more disturbed by communists who did not join the army: “The communists are all deserters. When they were allowed to rob the peasants they were all communists, but when they get to the front, they all run away” (Smolensk, undated); “Some of the comrades had come into the Party as wolves in sheep's clothing, but as soon as they heard the communists were being mobilized they made like bees and flew from the hive” (Oboian', Kursk gubernia, July 25, 1919), etc.¹³²

This is not to say that such sentiments were unique to those living under the Reds. The civilian population in White territories was just as likely to take issue with their living conditions, if not more so. They faced the same forced requisitions and confiscations, the same atrocities carried out on prisoners and the families of Red Army soldiers, the same public executions and punishments and so on. Often the disillusionment there was even more bitter, as many had expected the Whites to restore law and order (“Never would I have imagined that Denikin's army would engage in robbery. It wasn't just the soldiers, but the officers too. If I had known how the White victors would behave themselves, I would have hidden the linens and the clothes. Now there's nothing left” [Orel, November 17, 1919]). Rather than citing the numerous descriptions of robberies and violence that took place under the Whites, I will limit myself to an excerpt from a letter that best demonstrates why the majority of the population supported the Reds in the end: “You had everything under the Whites, but you were always under the whip [pod nagaikoi]. Let the White Army be damned. We've managed to wait for our comrades, and now at

least we live in freedom” (Vereshchagino, Viatka gubernia, August 8, 1919).¹³³

A number of Jews served in the terror organization known as the Cheka and it is widely accepted that Jews comprised a disproportionate number of its operatives. Leonard Schapiro wrote, for example, that “anyone who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with and possibly shot by a Jewish investigator.”¹³⁴ Zvi Gitelman has also claimed that serving in the Cheka was particularly popular with the Jewish population. He argues that the authorities found the Jews to be extremely reliable, as they had no connection to the old regime and were fervent enemies of the Whites. Moreover, Gitelman notes that some Jews joined the Cheka out of a desire to avenge crimes committed against the Jews by anti-Soviet forces, and by personal quests for power.¹³⁵

Both historians and memoirists, however, have largely relied on opinions, and not on material facts.¹³⁶ At the given moment, the only article to have examined the precise number of Jews working for the Cheka and the OGPU (the State Political Directorate) according to the rosters of the Bolshevik Central Committee is L. Krichevskii's “Jews in the Administration of the Cheka-GPU in the 1920s.”¹³⁷ For this study, we are only concerned with the numbers for the Civil War period. According to the September 1918 count of those employed at Soviet institutions in Moscow, there were 781 workers in the central administration. As of September 25, 1918 there were 278 Latvians, 49 Poles, and 29 Jews. In other words, Jews composed 3.7 percent of those employed. Among the senior officials of the Cheka there were 119 Latvians, 19 Poles, and 19 Jews (8.6 percent). Of the 70 commissars of the Cheka, 38 were Latvian, 22 Russian, 7 Poles, and 3 Jews (4.3 percent). There were 8 Jews (19.1 percent) among the 42 interrogators and deputy interrogators, whereas 14 were Latvian, 13 were Russian, and 7 were Jews. Notably, in the Section for Combating Counterrevolution, which was the most significant section of the Cheka, the six Jews constituted 50 percent of the interrogators.¹³⁸

In June–July of 1920, there were 1,805 individuals working in 32 gubernias for the “secret sections” of the Cheka. Of these 1,357 were Russian (75.2 percent), 137 were Latvian (7.6 percent), 102 were Jewish (5.6 percent), and 34 were Polish (I.9 percent), with other nationalities represented in significantly smaller numbers.¹³⁹ By the end of the Civil War (i.e., late 1920), there were more than 50,000 people working for the Cheka at the gubernia level. Of these 77.3 percent were Russian, 9.1 percent were Jewish, 3.5 percent were Latvian, 3.1 percent were Ukrainian, 1.7 percent were Polish, 0.6 percent were German, and 0.5 percent were Belorussian.¹⁴⁰ Thus the total number of Jews working for the Cheka was approximately 4,500 individuals.

Naturally, this percentage would prove to be much higher in the territories of the former Pale. Before his execution, P. M. Molozhavskii wrote the following note to his wife and daughter: “I write this note in the hopes that it will reach you, and that you will be able to recover my body. They didn't bother to interrogate witnesses. They are killing everyone, without care for justification or guilt. All of them are Jews.”¹⁴¹ A Chekist who was taken prisoner by the Whites admitted that Jews comprised 75 percent of the Kiev Cheka.¹⁴² V. I. Vernadskii recorded the following story of Senator V. P. Nosovich, who had been captured by the Kharkov Cheka only to miraculously escape: “He [Nosovich] said he saw people going to their deaths, and heard shots. They walked past on the way to their execution, naked except for their shirts, while Red Army soldiers (not Jews) followed them from behind.”¹⁴³ Apparently the “not Jews” marked this instance as exceptional.

The Kiev Cheka was particularly ruthless in carrying out the Red Terror. It was assisted by the All-Ukrainian Cheka (Vucheka), which had moved to Kiev after the surrender of Kharkov. The summer of 1919 would prove to be a true nightmare for the inhabitants of Kiev.¹⁴⁴ The protocols of the Kiev Cheka from May until August 1919 contained lists of sentences carried out, sometimes at a rate of more than fifty a day. At the time, the Kiev Cheka was by led Degtiarenko, with Shub and Ivanov serving as secretaries. The following members had the right to propose executions: Grinshtein, Savchuk, Shvartsman, Ugarov, Latsis, Iakovlev, Shishkov, Apeter, Vitlitskii.¹⁴⁵ Members Zakolupin, Rubinshtein, Livshits, David, and Balitskii served as advisors.¹⁴⁶ By no means did the Kiev Cheka limit itself to slaughtering people for political beliefs or social status. Nor did it spare people due to their ethnic heritage. Among the fifty-nine cases reviewed by the Kiev Cheka on August 5, 1919 (Degtiarenko presiding with Shub as secretary; members present were Grinshtein, Savchuk, Shvartsman, and Ugarov) there were instances of charges against Jews. The Cheka was just as merciless towards them as it was towards the Orthodox. Moisei and Aron Meerovich Soiferman, Isaak Iosifovich Linetskii, and Shaia and Mikhel Avrumovich Bukh, were all sentenced to death for selling counterfeit Kerenskii currency, while Aba Afroim Feldman and Meilakh Iakovlev Vainer were found guilty of banditry. Pison Isaakovich Koltun was sentenced to imprisonment in a second-degree camp.¹⁴⁷ Of course, given the swift carriage of justice, it was impossible to ascertain which of the condemned were actually guilty of the charges brought against them.

From 1917 to 1920 the membership of the upper echelons of the Cheka varied. In its first year (the Cheka was founded on December 7 (20), 1917), the Cheka appointed by the Sovnarkom included F. E. Dzerzhinsky (chair), G. K. Ordzhonikidze, Ia. Kh. Peters, I. K. Ksenofontov, D. G. Evseev, K. A. Peterson, V. K. Averin, N. A. Zhidelev, V. A. Trifonov, and V. N. Vasilevskii. By the very next day, only Dzerzhinsky, Peters, Ksenofontov, and Eseev remained. They were joined by V. V. Fomin, S. E. Shchukin, N. I. Ilin, and S. Chernov. By January 8, 1918, the collegium included Dzerzhinsky, Peters, Ksenofontov, Fomin, Shchukin, and V. R. Menzhinskii. They were joined by the leftist SRs V. A. Aleksandrovich (deputy chair, though he was later replaced by G. D. Zaks, who had by then joined the Bolsheviks), V. D. Volkov, M. F. Emelianov, and P. F. Sidorov.¹⁴⁸ After the elimination of the leftist SRs and their removal from positions of power, the membership roll included Peters (who ran the Cheka for a period until the investigation of the leftist SRs was completed), Dzerzhinsky, Peters, Fomin, I. N. Polukarov, V. V. Kamenshchikov, Ksenofontov, M. I. Latsis, A. Puzyrev, I. Iu. Pulianovskii, V. P. Ianushevskii, and Varvara Iakovleva, the sole woman to serve in the Collegium of the Cheka during the Civil War period. They were later joined by N. A. Skrypnik and M. S. Kedrov. In March 1919, a new collegium was announced, which included Dzerzhinsky, Peters, Ksenofontov, Fomin, Latsis, Kedrov, Avanesov, S. G. Uralov, A. V. Eiduk, F. D. Medved, N. A. Zhukov, G. S. Moroz, K. M. Valobuev, and I. D. Chugurin.¹⁴⁹ By 1920 the collegium consisted of Dzerzhinsky, Ksenofontov, Latsis, N. I. Zimin, V. S. Kornev, Menzhinskii, Kedrov, Avanesov, S. A. Messing, Peters, Medved, V. N. Mantsev, and G. G. Yagoda. Thus, from 1918 to 1920, four Jews served in the highest governing body of the Cheka: Zaks, Messing, Moroz (who first headed the Instructional Section, and later headed the Investigation Section), and Yagoda, who would work in the Cheka from 1920 onwards.

Jews also served in key positions in the administrations of the Central, Moscow, and Petrograd Chekas. Until his assassination on August 30, 1918, M.S. Uritsky served as the chair of the Petrograd Cheka. Yagoda served as Dzerzhinsky's second deputy (after Menzhinskii), and V. L. Gerson served as Dzerzhinsky's secretary. M. M. Lutskii served as Dzerzhinsky's Special Plenipotentiary (osoboupolnomochennyj). Of the five-person collegium of the Moscow Cheka formed under the chairmanship of Dzerzhinsky in December 1918, two were Jews: B. A. Breslav, the de facto chair up until April 1919, and Ia. M. Iurovskii, who had carried out the execution of the royal family.¹⁵⁰

From the data above, it is clear that the number of Jews in the Cheka did not exceed the proportion of Jews involved in the Party, Soviet, or military and governmental organizations. Thus it hardly seems worthwhile to look for any particular motives that attracted Jews to the Cheka. On the whole, such reasons would differ little from the more general tendency of the Jewish population to support the Soviet regime. Much like their non-Jewish comrades, there were probably some Jewish Chekists who were fanatics, those who measured their zeal in accordance with the Terror of the French Revolution. Others worked for the Cheka for the material gains such employment conferred. Still others simply enjoyed playing with other peoples' lives. There were undoubtedly sadistic executioners among them as well, who either came to the Cheka as such, or managed to acquire such qualities while acquainting themselves with their new profession.¹⁵¹

Latsis was put in charge of the Ukrainian Cheka in 1919. Lenin was quick to instruct him that “[t]he Cheka have brought a cloud of evil to Ukraine, as they have been formed too hastily, and have admitted a large number of hangers-on.” Lenin demanded that the Chekas be reformed, and that these “hangers-on” be expelled.¹⁵² Latsis responded that he had started to purge the Chekas “from my very first day of work on April 10…Our misfortune lies in the fact that we have nothing to work with. In Ukraine we collected the very same workers that we had dismissed in Moscow as being incompetent or unreliable.” Moreover, Latsis claimed, the percentage of communists in the Cheka was three times greater than in other Soviet organizations.¹⁵³

Latsis attempted to prevent excesses by liquidating the uezd-level Chekas and forbidding “petty speculation,” i.e., he forbade the Chekists from engaging in activities that could lead to abuse or corruption. It is indicative that from the very beginning Chekists in the Ukraine were forbidden from “seizing anything during an arrest, except for pertinent evidence.”¹⁵⁴ Apparently, there were problems in assuring that Chekists kept their “hands clean,” as Dzerzhinsky once said. This was hardly limited to Ukraine. Komarov, a representative from the Kostroma gubernia at a Congress of local Cheka cells, had the following to say about the relationship between the troops and the local Cheka organization: “If a member of the [Cheka] walks by and you don't bow to him, he'll glare at you for three weeks. At the drop of a hat they turn into officials from the time of Nicholas. And what talk can there be of forming a cell when they're drunk every day?…Requisitioned goods are never sent off, they're just used for the benefit of the collegium's own wealth.”¹⁵⁵

At the same time, the Cheka could not let good things go to waste. In August of 1919 the Presidium of the Cheka ordered that A. Ia. Belenkii be put in charge of collecting the personal effects of those executed by the Cheka, so that they could later be redistributed by the Presidium.¹⁵⁶ The head of Lenin's personal security detail and a member of the Party since 1902, Belenkii was a particularly trusted figure.¹⁵⁷

Working for the Cheka did have decided material benefits. In February of 1918, a Chekist's salary was 400 rubles a month, more than twice that of an unmarried Red Army soldier (150), and 1.5 times the salary of a married one (250). The salary of a collegium member (500 rubles) was equal to that of a People's Commissar (narkom). Cheka members also received food rations and free uniforms. Last but not least, they could always receive “bonuses” in the form of possessions taken from those who had been executed.¹⁵⁸ The Cheka were not alone in their use of confiscated goods. On occasion the VTsIK would request that its workers be given a list of “necessary fabrics and materials for clothes, linen, shoes, and other goods available at your canteen.” After the formation of the Commission for the Preparation of Gifts to be Sent to the Front (Komissiia po podgotovke otpravki podarkov na front), the Presidium of the VTsIK requested that the Cheka transfer “valuable items that you have that may be used as presents or awards (watches, cigarette cases, etc.) and place them at the disposal of the aforementioned Commission.”¹⁵⁹

V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, then in charge of the Sovnarkom and a participant in the formation of the Bolshevik secret police, compared Dzerzhinsky to Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville, the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal from the French Revolution.¹⁶⁰ N. I. Bukharin, who in 1919 represented the Central Committee of the Party at the Collegium of the Cheka, justified the Bolshevik terror several years later by quoting Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, claiming, “One needs to rule by iron, if it is impossible to rule by law.”¹⁶¹ M. I. Latsis gave the following blueprint for interrogating the accused: “[D]o not look for clues as to whether or not they rose up against the soviet in arms or in words. Your first duty is ask what class the accused belongs to, their social background, their education, and their profession. All of these questions will decide the fate of the accused.”¹⁶² In this sense, Latsis was simply paraphrasing Robespierre's statements from the National Convention concerning the introduction of the Law of 22 Prairial, which opened the Reign of Terror: “The only delay in punishing the enemies of the fatherland should be until such time as they are found out: it is not so much a question of punishing as of destroying them.”¹⁶³ It is worth remembering that according to the Law of 22 Prairial, all legal guarantees (the right to question, the right to defense, and to hear the testimony of witnesses) were suspended. Instead the inner convictions of the judge and jury were deemed sufficient to decide whether one was innocent or should be put to death. Revolutionary tribunals worked alongside committees that made do without juries. In this the Bolsheviks took much from their French predecessors. After all, was the “judicial troika” of December 1918, which included Dzerzhinsky, Latsis, Kedrov, and Ksenofontov, anything more than a direct “borrowing” from the French Terror?¹⁶⁴ Perhaps it was the following excerpt from Saint-Just's speech at the Convention on October 10, 1793 that led the Cheka to name their journal Red Sword: “You must punish nor merely traitors but the indifferent as well; you must punish whoever is passive in the Republic…between the people and its enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword.”¹⁶⁵

It is possible that such majestic phrases were intended to raise the stature of the Chekists in their own eyes. Even among their comrades within the Party, their investigations and punitive actions were less than popular (to say nothing of the terror they enforced on the rest of the population). It was only later that the image of the “valiant Chekist” was to take hold, thanks to the efforts of some (far from untalented) journalists, writers, and directors. For the moment they were (to use M. I. Latsis's formulation) the “thugs” of the revolution. The Cheka constantly experienced a dearth of workers, one that was all the more pressing as they were unable to rely on the pool of civil servants who had served before the Revolution.¹⁶⁶

At this stage the Cheka was hardly an elite intellectual segment of the Bolshevik apparatus, and its workers left much to be desired in the education department. Only 0.8 percent of those working for the Cheka in 1920 had completed a degree, 1.1 percent had at least spent some time in a post-secondary institution. 13.7 percent of workers had completed high school, while 12.5 percent had completed only some high school.¹⁶⁷ By 1921, the percentage of those with higher education had risen to 1.03 percent (513 individuals), while the overwhelming majority (57.3 percent) had not gone beyond primary school.¹⁶⁸ Of course, at this point the Cheka was not engaged in sophisticated special operations; their main function was to instill terror. Loyalty to the Bolshevik Party was more important than any education.

A distinct picture of the Jewish Chekists can be found in the biographical directory of the elite of the NKVD from 1934 to 1941. Of the Jews serving in the upper echelons of the NKVD in the 1930s, three-quarters (seventy-eight individuals) had begun their careers from 1918 to 1921. Nearly all of them (sixty-nine) came from former Pale territories, while the lion's share (sixty-six) came from a rather suspect class background, with most coming from the families of petty merchants or craftsmen. All but four of them were less than 30 years of age when they joined the Cheka. Thirty-five individuals were between 15 and 20, twenty-four between 21 and 25, and fourteen between 26 and 30. Half of them (thirty-seven) came to the Cheka from the Red Army, where nearly all of them started in the ranks. Fourteen of them had even managed to serve in the Tsarist Army. Six of these future leaders of the NKVD had either never gone to school or are missing educational information, nineteen had a primary education or had studied in school for a year or two, fourteen had an incomplete secondary education, twenty-six had a secondary education, eleven had an incomplete higher education, while two had completed teachers' exams. Four individuals had joined the Party before the revolution, while most of the rest had joined during the Civil War. Some had been members of other political parties, including some Jewish parties (four from Poalei Zion, and one Bundist).¹⁶⁹

The monograph ChK-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine: People, Facts, Documents, which examines the activities of Soviet security forces in Ukraine, includes some information about Jewish Chekists. Besides the individuals discussed, it lists thirty-five additional agents who began their careers in the period 1918– 21. Although some data is missing, the general picture is nonetheless intriguing. Of these thirty-five individuals, nine joined the Cheka between the ages of 15 and 20, ten between 21 and 25, and seven between 26 and 30. Fifteen of them came to the Cheka from the Red Army, where they had nearly all served in the ranks. Three had no formal education, eleven had failed to complete primary school, with an additional eleven completing a primary education, two had an incomplete secondary education, and six had completed secondary school. Twenty-six came from former Pale territories, while two were born beyond the Pale. Only three came from workers' families, while two were of the intelligentsia. The rest came from the craftsmen, servants, or small business owners (there is only information for twenty-eight people). Twenty-one entered the Bolshevik Party from 1917 to 1921, while two were members before the revolution. Among those who joined after the revolution, one was a former SR, one an anarchist, and one was a member of Poalei Zion.¹⁷⁰

Let us look at some of the survey data regarding those Jews who joined the Cheka during the Civil War, and went on to make a career for themselves in the organization.¹⁷¹ Among those of the “older generation” were Lev Belskii (Abram Levin), Iakov Genkin, and Samuil Gilman. Belskii was the son of a worker who was employed at a shipping office. He had successfully passed correspondence exams that qualified him as a private tutor and a pharmacist's apprentice. He worked as a pharmacist, joined the army in 1911, and went to the front in July 1914. He was a member of the Bund from 1905 to 1907, and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. In April 1918, at the age of 29, he was appointed the chair of the Simbirsk gubernia Cheka, and he continued to ascend the ranks of the organization. Genkin was the son of a teacher at a Jewish school who likewise had passed his tutor's exam. Before the revolution he worked as a mechanic and tinsmith. He completed four years at the local city school, and served in the army from 1911 to 1920. In March 1919, he joined the Bolshevik party. In 1921, at the age of 31, he was promoted from the ranks to the position of Cheka inspector of his division.

Most of those working for the Cheka were much younger, 20 years of age on average. The youngest was Mark Rogol, who had been born in Odessa to the family of a glass-blower. From the age of 13 he worked as an unskilled laborer at a tobacco factory, he joined the Bolsheviks by 15 (at the age of 17 he was expelled for drunkenness, but was later readmitted), and became an agitator for the Odessa Gubkom. Within a month (March 1920) he had joined the local Cheka, and by July was the deputy of the head of the Kremenchug Cheka. By September 1920 he was the head of Information and Intelligence for the Politburo of the Cheka of the Aleksandria uezd.

Mikhail Andreev (Sheinkman) was the son of a porter, had received a primary education, and joined the Bolsheviks in 1919. He became the deputy of the Mozyr uezd Cheka in July 1920, at the age of only 17. By December 1920 he was an investigator for the Belorussian Cheka. Isai Babich, the son of a cobbler who had completed two years at a religious school, joined the Bolsheviks in 1920 and became the assistant to the Special Plenipotentiary of the Nikolaev Cheka the same year, at the age of 18. He had transferred to the Cheka from his position as a typesetter for the political division of the Navy on the Southwest front. Abram Sapir (b. 1900) was the son of a train dispatcher and had never gone to school. His qualifications consisted of having worked at a train station as an unskilled laborer. He joined the Cheka in March 1919 as an investigator specializing in transportation matters in the Baranovichi Cheka. He joined the Bolsheviks in August 1919, and from March 1920 worked as the secretary of the Cheka section overseeing shipping in Odessa.

Mikhail Volkov (Vainer), the son of a tailor of unknown education, had worked as a clerk for a mine shopkeeper when he was a boy. He joined the Red Guard in October 1917, and joined the Bolsheviks in January 1918. He began working for the Cheka in May 1918 at the age of 18. He worked as an instructor in the Operations Section of the Kursk Cheka until June 1919, and then served in a number of Cheka organizations in the Red Army, heading the Cheka of the Thirty-second Rifle Division from 1919 to 1920, and the Eighteenth Cavalry Division in 1920.

Iakov Veinshtok, the son of a petty merchant, had finished four years at a local school (during the party purges of 1921, he was expelled for being part of the intelligentsia—apparently four years of schooling was too much for the party). Before joining the Bolsheviks in July 1919, he worked as a clerk in a trade office. He joined the Red Army in December 1919, and by the following May had joined the Cheka, serving in a number of leadership positions in a variety of military units. By September 1920 he was head of the Cheka organization attached to the Forty-first Rifle Division.

Some of the Jewish Chekists were more educated. Semen Gendin, the son of a doctor, apparently had managed to complete his courses at a gimnazium. He joined the Red Army in 1918 at the age of 16, and by 1921 was working as an investigator for the Moscow Cheka. Mark Gai (Shtokliand), the son of a hatter, finished the Kiev Art Academy and two years at the Law Faculty of Kiev University. He joined the ranks of the Red Army in October 1918, and engaged in political and managerial work with the military. He joined the Bolsheviks in March 1919, and the Cheka by May 1920. At just under 22 years of age, he was serving as the head of the Cheka Political Section attached to the Fifty-ninth Division.

The infamous brothers Berman were born to the proprietor of a brick factory in the Transbaikal oblast. Fortunately for them, their father's factory had failed early on, thus giving them a less suspicious social background. The elder, Mattvei, completed trade school, joined the army as a common soldier, graduated from the military academy in Irkutsk, and was promoted to the rank ofpraporshchik (ensign). In August of 1920 he became the chair of the Cheka in the Glazov uezd. Throughout the Civil War he served in a number of positions in the Ekaterinburg, Omsk, Tomsk, Verkhneudinsk, Eniseisk, and Semipalatinsk Chekas. The peak of his career saw him overseeing a gulag and the construction of the Moscow Canal, which was built mostly with prison labor. He eventually became the deputy to the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, and served briefly as the People's Commissar of Communication before his arrest and execution in 1939.

Mattvei's younger brother, Boris, completed four years of schooling, and worked in a shop as a boy. He served in the Red Guard, and was able to hide from the Whites thanks to a false passport. He was later mobilized by White forces and worked as a security guard for the Chinese Eastern Railway. He joined the Irkutsk Cheka in February 1921, still under the age of 20. Later, Boris would serve as the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs for the Belorussian SSR. He was shot two weeks before his older brother.

Semen Mirkin's story is perhaps the most bizarre of all. The son of a cobbler, he completed two years at a Jewish school before going to work as a tailor's apprentice (and later as a tailor) in numerous villages in the Pale of Settlement. In June 1915 he was in Orel, probably as a refugee. Despite being only 16 years old, he somehow ended up in the army (either freely or by conscription). On leaving the army in March 1918, he returned to his tailoring pursuits, but by July of the same year he once again found himself in the army. He continued his profession for the Red Army Cavalry School in Orel, and then as a tailor for the Ninth Infantry Division. By November 1919 he had joined the Bolsheviks, and he studied at a Party school in Rostov from April to December 1920. By January 1921, he was weaving a different kind of web as a military investigator for the Revolutionary Tribunal attached to the Thirty-first Division. He joined the Cheka in June of 1921, and was put in charge of combating banditry in the Twenty-second Infantry Division. This graduate of a heder and a Bolshevik school eventually became the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Northern Ossetian ASSR. In 1939 the former tailor was arrested, and he was executed in January of 1940.

It is not too difficult to imagine the kind of “investigations” carried out by these former tailors and typesetters, most of whom had only finished the fourth grade. Praskovia Semenovna Ivanovskaia (the daughter-i n-l aw of V. G. Korolenko and an old revolutionary) once rebuked a young female Cheka investigator, a seamstress by the name of “Comrade Rosa,” for terrorizing her charges by threatening to shoot them. Rosa replied to the charge “with heartfelt simplicity”: “But what am I to do if they don't confess?”¹⁷² In Kharkov, a former hairdresser by the name of Miroshnichenko and the 18-year-old Iesel Mankin constantly threatened their victims with death. On one occasion, Mankin leveled a Browning at the accused and said, “Your life depends on the correct answer.”¹⁷³ In all likelihood, there were much worse instances of abuse as well.

In the 1920s the number of Jews serving in the OGPU (the predecessor of the NKVD) increased. They also continued to serve in the upper levels of the OGPU in approximately the same proportion as they had during the Civil War. This increase was due at least in part to the large number of Jews who moved to major cities. Among the Jewish population it was easier to find workers with an education, knowledge of foreign languages and other skills in demand. The number of Jews in the OGPU-NKVD continued to grow in the first half of the 1930s as well, reaching a peak of 39 percent (forty-three individuals) in the upper levels of the NKVD in 1936. By 1941 only ten remained (5.5 percent).¹⁷⁴ The repressions of the second half of the 1930s drastically changed the ethnic makeup of the organization. By 1940 Russian comprised 84 percent of the central NKVD organization, followed by Ukrainians (6 percent) and Jews (5 percent, 189 individuals). By the end of the 1940s Jews were largely gone from the organization.¹⁷⁵

Soviet authorities did not discriminate against Jews on the basis of their ethnic heritage. When “excesses” did occur, they ran counter to the party line. However, ethnic heritage was not the only means of discrimination. Sometimes local authorities or requisition units would treat the entire local Jewish population as bourgeois, speculators, smugglers, or counterrevolutionaries.

In the spring of 1919, in the Klimovichi uezd in the Mogilev gubernia, a Soviet canteen was distributing apples in honor of the upcoming holidays. The man in charge of the distribution announced that all Russians should get in line, while “the Jews aren't to get any. They're all speculators.” The Jewish population of Kivichi, a village in the Chernigov uezd were ordered by requisition troops to pay a tax of 500,000 rubles, while the peasant population of the entire volost' was ordered to pay only 90,000. In Roslavl (Smolensk gubernia) an emergency tax of 800,000 rubles was placed on a Christian population of 45,000. The local Jewish population (of 2,000 people!) was to pay 3.2 million.¹⁷⁶

A Red Army soldier working for the ChON ¹⁷⁷ wrote home in June of 1919 that he was currently stationed in the village of Krasnopole, where he and his comrades had “driven out the deserters and conscripts” and had searched the homes of the local Jews, where they found “lots of goods, salt, bread, footwear, and a lot of silk.” Although the soldier in question had a monthly salary of 350 rubles, there is little doubt that his job had its perks: “there are a lot of speculators; you can take 1000 rubles worth of goods off of a single one depending on what they're carrying, sometimes more if you're lucky, and then you can sell [the goods] or exchange [them] in the village for bread and lard” (Orsha, Gomel gubernia, June 28, 1919).¹⁷⁸ Such looting was done almost in an official manner. On one occasion the writer Korolenko was on his way to the Poltava Cheka, in all likelihood to get someone out of trouble. On the road there he ran into an elderty Jew, who had just been released after his arrest. Shaking Korolenko's hand, he introduced himself: “I'm Goikhman, a bourgeois.” Korolenko remarked, “This Soviet power is seeking contributions from the bourgeoisie. He paid, and so they let him go.”¹⁷⁹

The fundraising efforts of the Cheka were to have a deleterious effect even on those who might have supported the Bolsheviks. A well-off elderly Jewish man from Kiev, who had been arrested several times and had “ransomed” himself just as many, admitted to an acquaintance that he had earlier sympathized with the socialists, and had hoped that they would do away with injustice. Now, quotas and the Pale of Settlement seemed to him “a fantastic dream”: “Back then they only robbed you once every five or six years, and only demanded blood sacrifices once every several decades. But at least the world was open, and you could leave this inhospitable homeland. Now they rob you constantly and spit all over you. This is the long-awaited socialism, an era of boorishness and criminal behavior, when the most barbaric instincts are given free rein!”¹⁸⁰

Of course these “additional expenditures” on the part of merchants in the form of bribes and lost goods were passed on to the consumer, which only served to further incense the local population at what they believed to be “speculation.” Not surprisingly, Jews were often the target of such animosity.

The concept of “class warfare” was more than a metaphor during the Civil War. In the fall of 1918, a Sirotin school representative was wounded while trying to solicit contributions from local merchants with the goal of creating a Jewish school with Yiddish instruction. The Secretary of the kombed (Committee of Poor Peasants) was killed trying to collect a tax from the very same merchants. In response, the local Cheka arrested twelve people, six of whom were executed.¹⁸¹

In Lepel, those merchants whose fortunes had been ruined by War Communism soon turned to smuggling. When they were caught, sentences were handed down that would have been unthinkable under the Tsarist regime. Five people were executed, while the rest were sent to labor camps.¹⁸² Other victims of the Bolsheviks included the Jewish merchant Okunev (from Sevastopol) and his son.¹⁸³

Jews had a significantly smaller chance of being taken hostage by the Bolsheviks during the war. As Cheka order No. 208 (December 17, 1919, signed by both Dzerzhinsky and Latsis) explains, a hostage is defined as “a captive who comes from the society or organization that is fighting against us. Moreover such an individual has value for the enemy…The enemy won't put out anything for a country teacher, a miller, a forester, or a shopkeeper, let alone a Jew.” Hostages were to be high officials, wealthy landowners, factory owners, talented professionals, scientists, relatives of the anti-Bolshevik leadership, etc.¹⁸⁴

One can only imagine what they meant by “talented professionals.” Apparently one of them turned out to be Ilia Ehrenburg, who, in order to escape capture, was forced to flee from Moscow to Ukraine in September 1918.¹⁸⁵ Of course, if there were no “valuable” members of society at hand, Jewish shopkeepers often proved a viable substitute, and were shot “in accordance with the Red Terror” with equal success.¹⁸⁶ Those who had served as officers during the Provisional Government, and those who were members of political parties that had fallen out of favor, were also common targets.¹⁸⁷ The assassination of the first Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, M. S. Uritsky, was largely motivated by the fact that Uritsky had ordered the death of V. Pereltsveig (a former cadet) along with twenty other hostages. L. I. Kannegiser, Uritsky's future assassin, had begged Uritsky to let his innocent friend go free, to no avail.¹⁸⁸

On May 12, 1919, fifty members of the bourgeoisie were arrested in Kiev. All of them “happened to be” Jews. A young university student described one of the arrests in her diary. Cheka agents stormed into her home with an arrest warrant for her uncle, who was away at the time. When the agents telephoned headquarters for further instructions, it was decided that any brother would do, and they took away the girl's father. Having gathered the requisite number of captives, all of them homeowners and merchants, all Jewish, they took them to the Cheka (at this point it was already the middle of the day). On this occasion, at least, the prisoners got lucky, the authorities were unable to come up with a reason to shoot all of them, and the majority of the prisoners were released within five days.¹⁸⁹

A number of well-off Jews from Poltava were less fortunate. Having been sent to the rear lines for forced labor, thirty-five of them ended up in the hospital with such severe injuries that even a member of the Bolshevik command ordered the following resolution to be included in his review of the matter: “Death to those miscreants who have disgraced Bolshevik power with their brutality.”¹⁹⁰ Such forays into “self-criticism” were few and far between.

Literally hours before Kiev was captured by Denikin's forces, a Jew by the name of Gorenstein was executed by the Cheka. His crime: looking younger than the age listed in his passport, which the authorities took to be fake. When friends and acquaintances protested his arrest, and it turned out that he was who he said he was, the Cheka high command turned their attention to another matter: who was trying to protect the wealthy owner of a sugar factory. The protests quickly ceased. As Gorenstein was not among those listed as being shot, his family had hopes that he was still alive. They soon discovered that he had been executed without orders. A member of the Cheka was later seen walking out of Sadovaia 5, the building where the executions took place, carrytng Gorenstein's patent leather boots, which were perhaps the only reason why Gorenstein was murdered.¹⁹¹