Lenin’s Jewish Question Lenin’s Jewish Question YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN New Haven and London Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College. Copyright © 2010 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Minion type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Petrovskii-Shtern, Iokhanan. Lenin’s Jewish question / Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-15210-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich, 1870–1924—Relations with Jews. 2. Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich, 1870–1924—Family. 3. Ul’ianov family. 4. Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich, 1870–1924—Public opinion. 5. Jews— Identity—Case studies. 6. Jewish question. 7.Jews—Soviet Union—Social conditions. 8. Jewish communists—Soviet Union—History. 9. Soviet Union—Politics and government. I. Title. DK254.L46P44 2010 947.084'1092—dc22 2010003985 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface How and Why This Book Was Written vii ONE From Nowhere to Zhitomir 1 two The Imperial Moshko 28 three Lenin, Jews, and Power 64 four Glue for the Vertebrae 100 five How Lenin Became Blank 134 Conclusion 169 Acknowledgments 173 List of Abbreviations 175 vi Contents Notes 177 Index 193 Photographs follow page 82 Preface: How and Why This Book Was Written When Jonathan Brent, my guardian angel from Yale University Press, suggested that I write a book on the Jewish origins of Vladimir Lenin, my answer was a grateful but firm no. By that time I had already seen a number of recently declassified doc- uments about Lenin’s Jewish ancestors in East European de- positories and was aware of the heated debates on this issue among Russian historians and archivists.What I learned about Moshko Blank, Lenin’s maternal great-grandfather, and Mosh- ko’s son Alexander Blank, the father of Mariia Aleksandrovna Ulianova (née Blank), did little to change my understanding of Lenin as the founder of the first communist state. Despite Lenin’s genealogy, there was hardly anything Jewish about Lenin’s Marxist upbringing or Lenin’s party leadership. Lenin, I reckoned, was a revolutionary idealist of consistent inter- nationalist convictions, perfect revolutionary pragmatism, per- sistent class consciousness, insatiable thirst for power, and graphic dictatorial proclivities. Jews were too cumbersome and particular for Lenin’s universalistic thinking, which had no place, apparently, for his purported Jewish heritage or Jew- ish concerns. viii Preface I had reason to doubt the existence of a “Jewish Lenin.” As a college student in the Soviet Union, I was obligated to take about five hundred hours of coursework on the theory and practice of communism. A mere list of courses would spark envy among my leftist-minded colleagues in California. I learned to apply Marxism, think Marxism, write Marxism, and live Marxism. I was quite successful with the first two pursuits and rather clumsy with the second two. Much later, as a skeptic seeking more nuanced methodologies than the wooden Soviet dogmas, I took courses at Brandeis University in modern and East European Jewish history. To my sheer dis- may I found out that communism and internationalism quite often did not get along and that the class struggle could ac- count neither for the rise nor for the demise of such a key phenomenon of the twentieth century as, for example, Sta- linism. More importantly, my new studies provided me with a comparative and critical view on the Russian revolution, which I no longer considered the triumph of class theory put into practice in one single country. Now I could avoid trivial answers to historical problems such as the overrepresentation of Jews among Russian revolutionaries—all those easy-to- digest, myth-making, and substance-free answers about inher- ent Jewish cosmopolitanism that are becoming increasingly popular. My reluctance to undertake the proposed project stemmed from a conviction: discussing Lenin’s Jewish relatives neglect- ing who Lenin was, how he treated the Jews, and what the Jew- ish question meant to him was tantamount to discussing a Jewish Lenin. And to call Lenin Jewish was to explain the Rus- sian revolution as a largely Jewish enterprise. I resisted telling a story about Lenin’s alleged Jewishness because for many who suffer from a national inferiority complex it would provide Preface ix just another proof of the extraordinary role of Jews in the Rus- sian revolution: its causes, character, and results. Antisemites readily argue that the Russian revolution was Jewish through and through, and in this manner they condemn it as contra- band that filthy non-Russian aliens smuggled into pristine Mother Russia. Philosemites do the same, emphasizing instead the true internationalist character of Russian communism and focusing on what they see as the inborn cosmopolitanism of the Russian Jews. Why should I join either side? Through my research into that period I realized that Jews performed a sec- ondary role—and the role they performed was not Jewish, whatever it signified at that time, or at least had nothing to do with their ethnic origin. Even if Lenin’s remote relative was a shtetl Jew, I found it inconceivable to tell a highly marginal story about a person who, simply put, did not belong in my version of Russian-Jewish history. And yet the idea puzzled me. However unimportant Lenin’s genealogical Jewishness was for the socialist revolu- tion, its perception by Russians has been a convoluted, highly charged, and significant subject. Because of this significance, attempts to make sense of Lenin’s Jewishness went through many phases, including scornful neglect, bans on archival quests, the heated exchange of ideas, sensational discoveries, and a crushing government-orchestrated silence. Starting in the 1920s, people proving or denying Lenin’s Jewishness pro- duced hundreds of pages worth of memoirs, journalistic es- says, and volumes of scholarly and quasi-scholarly writings. Hardly any memoir or book was ignored. Debates shifted from the kitchens of the USSR to the dining halls of New York in- volving Russian dissidents, far-rightists and Soviet authorities, socialist émigrés with a vested interest in the subject matter, and indiscreet historians. In 2009, the Russian-language web x Preface generated between nine hundred thousand and a million re- sponses to a search on two words combined, “Lenin” and “Jew.” The discussion of Lenin’s Jewish roots triggered bitter accusations among many online connoisseurs of Russian his- tory and culture, followed by fierce rebuffs from their no less educated and numerous opponents. Even if Lenin’s Jewish roots changed little about my un- derstanding of Lenin, the attitudes toward a “Jewish Lenin” complicated my vision of the Russian and Soviet treatment of Jews—as well as the self-identification of revolutionaries of Jewish descent fully assimilated into the socialist milieu. Lenin’s great-grandfather hated his Jewish identity, and his son— Lenin’s grandfather—flatly rejected it, while Lenin’s mother passed over it in silence. Lenin in some cases considered him- self a Russian and in others disassociated himself from any na- tional identity. His fellow party members of Jewish descent eagerly sacrificed their questionable Jewishness for the sake of a revolutionary internationalism that redeemed them from the ethnic conflicts in Russian society. The century-long perception of Lenin’s purported Jew- ishness is a history in and of itself. When archival research proved a Jewish relation, Stalin forbade Lenin’s kin to men- tion Lenin’s Jewish ancestors. In the 1960s, under Brezhnev’s regime, people who dared research Lenin’s uncomfortable ge- nealogy were laid off,and the documents they found were purged. Russian right-wing activists and writers considered the Jewish origins of many left-wing leaders scandalous, particu- larly after the October 1917 revolution, yet until late in the twentieth century they knew nothing about Lenin’s Jewish roots. When documents on Lenin’s origins finally saw the light of day, post-communist journalists evoked Lenin’s Jewishness to condemn the Russian communist experiment as a destruc- Preface xi tive Jewish endeavor. After all, the perception of Lenin’s Jewish roots—whatever its historical accuracy or significance—was a secondary yet peculiar aspect of the Jewish question in Russia. As such, it deserves its own story. Against the grandeur of the Russian socialist revolution Lenin’s Jewishness was a minor nuisance, but the history of this nuisance turned into a major issue. Let me set things straight. Lenin’s maternal great-grand- father Moshko Blank was a Jew; he converted to Christianity after his Jewish wife Miriam passed away. Lenin’s maternal grandfather Alexander Blank was born a Jew, and he converted to Christianity before his father did. Alexander Blank con- verted to Christianity as a teenager and married Anna Gross- chop, a Christian of German origin. Thus, in the strictest terms of Jewish tradition, Lenin’s mother, Mariia Blank, was born to a family of a Christian convert, married someone Russian Orthodox, and was not Jewish on either side. Neither was Lenin.