Rus Sian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917– 1920
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Rus sian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917– 1920 —-1 —0 —+1 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd i 8/19/11 8:37 PM JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania David B. Ruderman, Series Editor Advisory Board Richard I. Cohen Moshe Idel Alan Mintz Deborah Dash Moore Ada Rapoport- Albert Michael D. Swartz A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. -1— 0— +1— 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd ii 8/19/11 8:37 PM Rus sian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917– 1920 Oleg Budnitskii Translated by Timothy J. Portice university of pennsylvania press philadelphia —-1 —0 —+1 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd iii 8/19/11 8:37 PM Originally published as Rossiiskie evrei mezhdu krasnymi i belymi, 1917– 1920 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005) Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112 www .upenn .edu/ pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 -1— Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data 0— ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4364- 2 +1— 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd iv 8/19/11 8:37 PM In memory of my father, Vitaly Danilovich Budnitskii (1930– 1990) —-1 —0 —+1 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd v 8/19/11 8:37 PM -1— 0— +1— 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd vi 8/19/11 8:37 PM contents List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Jews in the Rus sian Empire, 1772– 1917 6 Chapter 2. Th e Jews and the Rus sian Revolution 34 Chapter 3. Th e Bolsheviks and the Jews 69 Chapter 4. “No Shneerzons!” Th e White Movement and the Jews 123 Chapter 5. Trump Card: Antisemitism in White Ideology and Propaganda 173 Chapter 6. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Th e Pogroms of 1918– 1920 216 Chapter 7. Rus sian Liberalism and the “Jewish Question” 275 Chapter 8. Th e “Jewish Question,” White Diplomacy, and the Western Democracies 296 Chapter 9. Battling Balfour: White Diplomacy, the Rus sian Orthodox Church, and the Problem of the Establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine 334 —-1 —0 —+1 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd vii 8/19/11 8:37 PM viii contents Chapter 10. Jews and the Red Army 356 Conclusion 406 Notes 415 Bibliography of Archival Sources 489 Index 000 Ac know ledg ments 493 -1— 0— +1— 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd viii 8/19/11 8:37 PM abbreviations BAR Bakhmeteff Archive of Rus sian and East Eu ro pe an History and Culture, Columbia University CC Central Committee Cheka Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage Comintern Communist International d. delo, a fi le within a fond (archival term) EKOPO Jewish Committee for Assistance to War Victims ESDRP Jewish Social Demo cratic Workers’ Party Evkom Jewish Comissariat of the People’s Comissariat of Nationalities Evvoensek Jewish Section of the Department of International Propaganda of the Po liti cal Administration of the People’s War Commissariat of the Ukrainian SSR f. fond, document collection (archival term) GARF State Archive of the Rus sian Federation GARO State Archive of the Rostov oblast Gorkom City Committee Gubkom Gubernia Committee HIA Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University Joint American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee l. page (archival term) LRA Leeds Rus sian Archive Narkom People’s Comissar OESRP United Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party OGPU State Po liti cal Directorate, successor to the Cheka op. inventory (archival term) Polrevkom Polish Revolutionary Committee —-1 Revkom Revolutionary Committee —0 —+1 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd ix 8/19/11 8:37 PM x abbreviations RGASPI Rus sian State Archive of Socio- Political History RKP Rus sian Communist Party SERP Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party Sovdep Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies Sovnarkom Soviet of People’s Commissars Tsevaad Central Bureau of Jewish Communities VChK All- Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage Voenrevkom Military Revolutionary Committee VTsIK All- Russian Central Executive Committee YIVO YIVO Institute for Jewish Research -1— 0— +1— 137-48292_ch00_1P.indd x 8/19/11 8:37 PM Introduction From 1918 to 1920, Rus sian Jewry suff ered persecution and devastation on a scale that had not been seen since the Khmelnitskii Uprising in the seven- teenth century. Of all the tragedies in the annals of Jewish History, only the Holocaust would surpass this period in savagery and wanton murder. To this day, experts still diff er as to the total number of Jews who perished in the pogroms, the bloodiest of which took place in Ukraine in 1919 and 1920. Literature on the subject places the total number of victims anywhere in the range of 50,000 to 200,000 killed or mortally wounded. Not included in this number are countless other victims who were robbed, raped, or permanently disfi gured. Perhaps due to the shadow of the Holocaust, the causes, conditions, and consequences of these events have yet to be suffi ciently studied. At the same time, a number of scholars have attempted to draw comparisons between the Holocaust and the pogroms that had occurred some twenty years earlier. Avraam Greenbaum, for example, claimed that “in some ways— especially since killings were sometimes carried out as a kind of “national duty” with- out the usual robbery— they bear comparison with the Holocaust some twenty years later.” David Roskies deemed the mass murder of Jews during the Civil War to be “the Holocaust of Ukrainian Jewry.” Richard Pipes, writing much in the same vein, claimed that “in every respect except for the absence of central or gani za tion to direct the slaughter, the pogroms of 1919 were a prelude to and a rehearsal for the Holocaust. Th e spontaneous lootings and killings left a legacy that two de cades later was to lead to the systematic mass murder of Jews at the hands of the Nazis: the deadly identifi cation of Communism with Jewry . in view of the role this accusation had in paving the way for the mass destruction of Eu ro pe an Jewry, the question of Jewish involvement in Bolshevism is of more than academic interest.” Th ough these contributions are valuable, the pogroms of 1918– 20 and —-1 the role of the “Jewish question” in the larger context of the Civil War have —0 —+1 137-48292_ch01_1P.indd 1 8/19/11 8:38 PM 2 introduction hardly been examined in the detail they deserve. Still, the goal of the present study is not limited to investigating the tragic events of the pogroms them- selves in isolation. Th ough any study of the period would be remiss to ignore these events, the suff ering of the Rus sian Jewish population was but a part of the larger tragedy of the Rus sian Revolution and the ensuing Civil War. In this tragedy, Jews played the role of both victim and executioner. Like many of the peoples of the former Rus sian Empire, the Jewish population found itself fragmented into a number of diff erent groups and organizations during this “new time of troubles.” Th ese groups, each having its own world- view and set of priorities, often came into confl ict with one another. In the given historical context, it is impossible to talk about the Jews “in general.” Instead, this study will focus on those groups and individuals who were important participants in the politi cal and social development of Russia as a whole, as well as those who participated in the numerous Jewish nationalist movements. Th is does not mean that I will be focusing exclusively on prominent politicians and social activists. Jewish privates who served in the Volunteer Army during its Ice March to Kuban, Jewish members of the Red Army, Jew- ish tailors and accountants who would go on to become Chekists, the “bour- geois” Jews who were persecuted by those very same Chekists, and the large number of Jews who were not involved in any sort of po liti cal activity would all come to play vital parts in the historical events of 1918– 20, and their sto- ries deserve to be told as well. Of less concern for my investigation are the “internationalists” who re- jected their Jewish heritage, and the Zionists who tried to distance themselves from the po liti cal events inside Rus sia. Th ey will not, however, be completely ignored. Trotsky (who once claimed that the Jews interested him as much as the Bulgarians) will make an appearance, as will a number of Zionists who were unable to stay completely “above the fray” due to varying circumstances (including, on occasion, the Cheka). It is worth bearing in mind throughout that for the overwhelming majority of the Jewish population, the central goal during the Civil War was survival and escape from the violence that was tak- ing place all around them. In this they diff ered little from the non- Jewish population, who faced similar challenges. It should be noted, however, that surmounting such challenges was particularly diffi cult for those of Jewish heritage. -1— I would like to emphasize that this study is concerned not only with Jew- 0— ish history. It is rather about the history of the Civil War in Rus sia. At the +1— 137-48292_ch01_1P.indd 2 8/19/11 8:38 PM introduction 3 same time, writing a full history of the Jewish experience of the Rus sian Civil War, or examining all aspects of the “Jewish question” during the Rus sian Civil War, would be an impossible task.