The New Republic 25 November 2002 (Vol. 227, Issue 22), pp. 26–28 Section: BOOKS & THE ARTS

Alone Together: Solzhenitsyn and the Jews, revisited.

By Richard Pipes

Richard Pipes is professor emeritus of history at Harvard University and the author most recently of Communism: A History (Random House).

Recently Alexander Solzhenitsyn sin"--the ultimate sin being the 1917 published a long book called Dvesti let revolution that brought Russia untold vmeste, or Two Hundred Years Together, miseries. the first of two volumes devoted to the Someone familiar with history of Jews in Russia from the third Solzhenitsyn's treatment of Jews in his partition of Poland in 1795, when Russia, historical novels cannot escape the feeling until then effectively without Jews, that, at least in some measure, this suddenly acquired one million Jewish undertaking is an effort to rid the author subjects. It covers the years between 1795 of the reputation for anti-Semitism. and 1916. The follow-up volume will bring Although Solzhenitsyn has always the story up to the year 1995. indignantly rejected this accusation, it One cannot help but marvel at the was not entirely unmerited. In Lenin in intellectual energy of a novelist who in his Zurich, he depicted the Russian Jew seventies undertakes research on a vast Alexander Parvus-Helphand as a slimy, and tangled historical theme with which sinister, almost satanic figure as he he has only the most superficial attempted to hire the exile Lenin to work familiarity. In his introduction, for the Germans. In The Red Wheel, when Solzhenitsyn says that during his work on dealing with the assassination of his hero the Russian Revolution he had frequently Peter Stolypin by Dmitry Bogrov (whom run into the problem of Russo-Jewish he named "Mordka" or Mordechai, lest relations but found no history that anyone miss his nationality), illuminated the subject in a balanced Solzhenitsyn attributed to the assassin, matter. His book is an attempt to without any historical warrant, a desire to remedy this lacuna. He makes a prevent Stolypin from reforming Russia, conscious effort to show empathy for both since what was good for Russia was bad sides, calling on Jews and Russians to for the Jews. In fact, Bogrov came from a display "patient mutual understanding thoroughly assimilated family--his and an acknowledgment of their share of grandfather was a convert and his father Richard Pipes review of “200” Page 2 of 6 a member of the Kievan Nobles' Club-- They financed much of the country's and he had no Jewish interests in mind. railroad construction. At one time they Solzhenitsyn's new book (which is controlled the bulk of its grain trade. not yet available in English) helps to These activities helped Russia to attain a clarify the writer's attitude toward Jews. spectacular rate of economic growth at He draws a sharp distinction between the end of the nineteenth century. Still, religious Jews and assimilated Jews, the czarist authorities tended to regard notably those assimilated Jews who the Jews as engaged in "unproductive" joined the revolutionary movement. For work, and on more than one occasion the former he has admiration that verges they attempted to settle Jews forcibly on on mystical reverence. "The preservation the land. Solzhenitsyn recounts these of the Jewish people for more than two economic activities, but in a manner thousand years in diaspora," he writes, intended to convey how good Russia was "arouses amazement and respect": "The to the Jews rather than how good the role of the small but energetic Jewish Jews were for Russia. nation in the vast and expansive history To his credit, he disposes of the of the world is undeniable, powerful, canard, widespread in late czarist Russia, persistent, and even salient. Russian that the Jews exploited the peasants. He history included. But it remains an cites the historian I. Orshanskii to the historical mystery for all of us. For the effect that Jewish traders opened markets Jews as well. This strange mission by no for peasants by transforming articles of means brings them happiness either." He consumption into commodities, in this also respects Zionists and expresses manner enriching the peasantry. The esteem for Israel. But his attitude toward historical evidence indeed indicates that assimilated Jews is ambivalent, and he Russian peasants fared better in the seems uncertain about whether or not regions populated by Jews--that is, the they contributed to Russia's well-being. so-called Pale of Settlement--than in His difficulty is due to the fact that he is a other parts of the empire where legal nationalist; nationalism in general--and residence was forbidden to Jews. Russian nationalism in particular--is not Solzhenitsyn reserves his hostility readily compatible with tolerance toward for those assimilated Jews who, from the Jews, partly for religious reasons, partly 1860s onward, in large numbers joined because they refuse to dissolve without a the revolutionary movement. He cites trace in the ethnic community in the name after name, and he conveys the midst of which they live. impression that Jews supplied the This ambivalence is apparent in leadership as well as the rank and file of Solzhenitsyn's treatment of the Jewish this movement, adding naively that his contribution to the pre-revolutionary stress on Jewish radicals "does not mean, Russian economy. He describes in of course, that there were not many and considerable detail the important important revolutionaries among the functions that Jews performed in the Russians." country's economy, thanks to their The subject is very complicated. industry and their ability to put capital to Although Jews, especially converts, did its most effective use. They were play a significant part in radical prominent in banking, and they launched subversion, the ranks of the Russia's sugar and timber industries. revolutionaries were certainly dominated Richard Pipes review of “200” Page 3 of 6 by Russians. At one point Solzhenitsyn Russia. But what sort of criterion is this asserts quite wrongly (citing a Jewish by which to measure the role of an ethnic writer) that Jews imported Marxism to group in public life? If Jews were Russia. In reality, this was the work of prominent in socialist ranks, they also Russians such as George Plekhanov, who stood out in capitalist circles: in the organized in Switzerland Russia's first judgment of the German historian Marxist party, and Peter Struve, who Werner Sombart, they actually invented popularized Marx's ideas inside the capitalism. They were also over- country. Statistics on this controversial represented among physicists, chemists, subject are scarce, and most of the mathematicians, medical doctors, chess evidence is impressionistic and anecdotal. players, university students, and the many other occupations that called for intellectual distinction. Indeed, if the standard is to be the share in the population at large, then it must also be noted that Jews were disproportionately attracted also to fascism. "In Italy there were innumerable Fascist Jews," Zeev Sternhell observed in The Birth of Fascist Ideology. "Their percentage in the movement was much higher than in the population as a whole." Conversely, they were under-represented among Russia's murderers and arsonists. So what are we to make of all this? Only that, as Solzhenitsyn likes to stress, Jews are a highly dynamic nation: as such, they are over-represented in most fields of endeavor in which they participate. Just to set the record straight, let it be noted that in 1917, when they got their chance to vote freely in national elections, the majority of Russian Jews Alexander Solzhenitsyn by Jack Coughlin for The cast ballots not for the Socialists or the New Republic Communists but for the Zionists: thus, in the All-Jewish Congress, they cast 60 percent of the vote for the Zionists. The Still, it cannot be doubted that the Communist Party census of 1922 revealed proportion of Jews in the ranks of that less than one thousand Jews had Russian revolutionaries significantly joined the party before 1917. exceeded the proportion of Jews in the There is another aspect to this population at large. This fact, previously vexing issue. Virtually all the Jews who played down by Jewish historians, was joined the revolutionary movement broke confirmed a few years ago by Erich with their religion and community: they Haberer in his study Jews and were apostates. Typical was the attitude Revolution in Nineteenth-Century of Trotsky when he was approached by Richard Pipes review of “200” Page 4 of 6 the chief rabbi of Moscow during the Civil rules; and even when they were in force, War with a plea to help fellow Jews such rules were overcome by bribing the victimized by the pogroms. "I am not a police. Jew," he angrily replied. "I am an What Solzhenitsyn almost entirely Internationalist." The high percentage of misses is the poisonous atmosphere that Jews in the ranks of the revolutionaries was created by anti-Semitic propaganda only serves to demonstrate that Jews who emanating from the Orthodox church and abandon their religion and turn their nationalist circles. Government backs on their people become uprooted censorship--which cracked down on and hence capable of the wildest liberal and socialist publications excesses--which does not detract from whenever they called for political Judaism, but redounds, on the contrary, reform--gave free rein to incitement to its credit. against Jews in the daily and periodical To be fair, for all his emphasis on press. If there is a discussion in their participation in radical ranks, Solzhenitsyn's book of The Protocols of Solzhenitsyn absolves Jews of the Elders of Zion, a Russian forgery that responsibility for the revolution: "No, in for a century now has been fomenting no way can it be said that Jews ‘made' the murderous anti-Semitism worldwide, revolution of 1905 or 1917 as it was not including in Nazi Germany, I missed it. made by another nation taken as a True, similar hate propaganda flourished whole." If there is a bias in this book, it is in contemporary France and Germany, in favor of the czarist government, which but in those countries, where there was Solzhenitsyn strives to acquit of its freedom of speech and freedom of the reputation for persistent hostility toward press, the government's blessing was not its Jewish minority, and its subjecting the implied. Solzhenitsyn dismisses the Jews to no end of discrimination and notorious Union of Russian People-- persecution. Up to a point, he is right. which propagated the slogan "beat the The czarist government's treatment of its Yids, save Russia"--as an unimportant Jewish subjects was inconsistent. It marginal group, but he ignores the fact vacillated between the desire to draw that it had hundreds of branches across Jews out of their seclusion and have them the country, and incited pogroms, and assimilate and the contrary desire to received government subsidies for such isolate them. The former trend prevailed activities. Nor does he mention that in the first half of the nineteenth century, Nicholas II thought well enough of the the latter in the second half, when Jewish Union of Russian People to accept its involvement in the revolutionary insignia. movement persuaded the government Still, Solzhenitsyn properly that the Jews' assimilation was exonerates the czarist government from dangerous. The result of these responsibility for the terrible pogroms of inconsistent policies was a legal the 1880s and the early 1900s. Hearsay nightmare: in essence, Russian Jews notwithstanding, no evidence has come to could do nothing that they were not light that the government instigated specifically permitted to do, which violence against Jews, let alone organized necessitated the creation of a distinct it. In not doing so, it acted in its own branch of jurisprudence. Constant interest, for it realized that riots against exceptions were made to discriminatory Jews could readily turn first against Richard Pipes review of “200” Page 5 of 6

Christian landlords and then against its enjoyed all the rights of Russians of equal own officialdom. As he points out, the status, but asks whether it was socialists/ revolutionaries of the People's "acceptable, morally as well as practically, Will welcomed the pogroms for the same to give Jews access to life's bounties on reason, seeing in them a manifestation of condition that they change their religion." "class consciousness." He himself (In this connection he makes an interprets the pogroms as spontaneous astonishing error in asserting that Count outbursts, which he blames, rather Egor Kankrin, the finance minister of vaguely, on the "tragic quality" of Nicholas I, was the converted son of a Russians and Ukrainians, "in moments of rabbi, and Count Karl Nesselrode, anger, to succumb to blind passion ... Nicholas's long-serving minister of unable to distinguish the guilty from the foreign affairs, a convert from Judaism. innocent." In fact, the former was born in the family For all his insistence that the of a German mining engineer, and the record of czarism in its treatment of Jews latter's father was a Protestant count of is much better than it has been the Holy Roman Empire.) customarily depicted, Solzhenitsyn shows The source base of Solzhenitsyn's understanding for the hardships inflicted book is thin. He relies heavily on a few on Russian Jews. The Pale of Settlement, secondary works, such as the sixteen- introduced under Catherine the Great as volume Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia, or a kind of Jewish reservation, "cast a Jewish Encyclopedia, that was published somber shade" (in his words) on Jewish on the eve of World War I, and Iurii existence up to the very eve of revolution: Gessen's standard two-volume Istoriia it became increasingly unbearable as its evreiskogo naroda v Rossii, or History of population exploded. Describing attempts the Jewish People in Russia, published in to force Jews to turn to agriculture, he 1925 and 1927. Ignorance of foreign acknowledges that farming is not a skill languages has placed beyond that can be learned overnight: Solzhenitsyn's reach the rich literature on "agriculture is high art, inculcated in his subject in English, German, and generations, and it is futile to settle French (not to mention Hebrew). These people on the land against their wishes or lacunae, combined with his forceful without their cooperation." He describes interventions at each stage of the the restrictions imposed on Jews as narrative, make his history something "vexing, painful, even appalling." The more than a personal statement yet less coincidence between pogroms and the than a work of scholarship. celebrations of Christian Easter fills him Still, Solzhenitsyn's book is a "with bitterness and anxiety." The Beilis notable achievement in its attempt to trial of 1913, in which a Jew was accused place the "problem" of Russian Jewry in of ritual murder (though subsequently political and social perspective, and one acquitted), he characterizes as a that does credit to its author's reputation. "debasement of justice." "How not to If Solzhenitsyn does not quite succeed in understand their grief?" he wonders exonerating pre-revolutionary Russia of compassionately when Jews were singled responsibility for subjecting its Jewish out for deportation from the frontier citizens to uncivilized discrimination-- regions during World War I. He notes after all, it was the only Christian country that Jews who converted to Christianity that in the nineteenth century still Richard Pipes review of “200” Page 6 of 6 subjected its Jewish citizens to medieval least he absolves himself of the taint of disabilities--and even if he does not fully anti-Semitism. understand the latter's predicament, at ~~~~~~~~

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