The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1166: An Overview of the Soviet Regime Pre- and Post-War w/ J. Otto Pohl

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

59 MinutesPG-13Dr. J. Otto Pohl received his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught at the American University Iraq Sulaimani, University of Ghana, and American University of Central Asia. He is the author of Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 (Greenwood, 1999), The Stalinist Penal System (McFarland & Co., 1997), and The Years of Great Silence The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941–1955 (Columbia University Press, 2022). His articles have appeared in, among other journals, The Russian Review, Journal of Genocide Research, Human Rights Review, and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism.Dr. Pohl joins Pete to field various questions about the Soviet regime, before, during, and after the War.The Years of Great SilenceDr. Pohl's SubstackDr. Pohl's PatreonDr. Pohl's TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Cool. So let's get into some history here. When you reached out to me, I guess you decided upon a little history of Germans in the Soviet Union prior to World War II and during World War II. And yeah, I don't think, I think last time we touched more on the polls and just really touched upon this subject. So where do you want to start? Well, we start anywhere. So the German colonists started arriving in the Russian Empire in the late 18th century, the first German colonist proper outside of the Baltic region where they weren't really colonists,

but conquerors was established in 1764 in the Volga. And then after that, starting really after 1804, although there was earlier, settlements in the Black Sea region, particularly Ukraine and Crimea, and then later the Transcaucasus in 1818 settlements in Georgia. And they spread out eastward into Kazakhstan and Central Asia and starting fairly late in 1907 into Siberia. Most of them are still living in the Volga and Black Sea regions up until the Second World War when they are forcibly deported into Kazakhstan and Siberia, and almost the entire German population of European USSR is ethnically cleansed. But this is a process that begins considerably earlier in the Soviet regime of kind of ratcheting up anti-German repression

through the 1930s in particular. Well, I think the last time you talked to you, you said that basically what was happening was there was a growing suspicion of diaspora peoples within the Soviet Union that actually had a homeland. Yes. Yes, so all of the diaspora groups except for Jews, Assyrians, and gypsies

were subject to national. operations in 37 and 38 by the NKVay Day. We had mass arrest and executions in the diaspora population on the basis that they were spies for their home government or in the case of the Koreans who were forcibly resettled in Central Asia in 37 from the Far East that they were working for the Japanese who were their colonial power. But the Germans were hit the second. hardest after the polls in 37, 38, about 5% of the entire German population in the Soviet Union was

executed. But it was pretty much the top 5% as far as education levels. And it was particularly hard hit in the area around Odessa in Ukraine, which had a population of almost 100,000 Germans before the Second World War and being ethnically cleansed into Kazakhstan. on. Are there any numbers on how many of those were, how many of the Germans who were there were actually ethnic Germans and not German Jews who just made their way? Yeah, yeah. The Soviet nationality classification have Nemets for German and Yevre for Jew. So when they say Nemets in the Soviet archival documentation, they're talking about ethnic Germans, people that are predominantly of Lutheran background with a large Catholic

minority, about 20 percent, and a smaller Mennonite minority, depending on the region, between 5 and 10 percent, but mostly Lutherans by religion. And they were still mostly practicing all the way up into the 1930s before the massive anti-religious campaigns. So you said about 5%, the top 5% were taken out. I assume that would be educated, business owners, things like that, people of means, people who thought they may have influence outside of the country. The other 95%, what happens to them as war grows? Well, so 37-38 comes after the dispossession and decoulocization of the richer Germans. But with the case of the Germans, unlike with Russians and Ukrainian, the Soviet officials pretty much decided that all Germans were Kulaks in certain areas.

But for instance, in Turkmenistan, the government actually stated that it was impossible to collectivize the Germans, so they all be deported as Kuulaks because they were all Kuulak colonizers to the marrow of their bones, was the phrase used by the officials. But also, it mentions that the vast majority in some areas of the Germans being deported as Kuulaks to special settlement villages and the far. North and the Euro's were in point of fact not Kulax by the Soviet definition, but middle peasants instead. But because they were ethnically German, they are automatically assumed to be Kulaks by the NKVD operatives working on the ground. So this is already in 1930 happening, and that's about maybe 50,000 Germans, maybe 4% of the population, which is considerably greater than the one point.

2% of the population of the whole that deported as Kuulak at this time. But you can see it starts to ratchet up, you have 4% deported, 5% executed, and then in 41, 100% in the European areas, forcibly relocated into Kazakhstan in Siberia, and then later all of the able-bodied adult men first, and then After October 7th, 1942, women as well mobilized into the labor army to work in gulag camps, mostly in the euros felling trees or in industrial construction. When you take into consideration that the attitude of international jewelry outside of Russia towards Germans over a long period of time, but let's just go from like, 19, from the time the National Socialists take power in 1933.

How, what percentage at this time, from 36, 37, and then going through 37, 38, going through to the war, what percentage of the NKVD and these groups that would be concentrating on Germans are actually ethnically Jewish? And I assume it's just the same kind of animus towards the Germans. in people that they that was happening in the quote-unquote free world it was very high in the 30s so I don't have exact numbers on the before the formation of the NKVEDA in 1934 when it's still the okay pay-u but the de facto the head of the Oge payu for most of the Ditch-Kulacization period of time is Genrik Yagoda, and he's number two man to Uri. There's a peacetime where he's sidelined,

but the number one man to Uri Menzinski was very ill with heart disease from 1923 all the way until 1934. So the main man in the Ogepeu was Gennaric Agoda, become the first head of the NKVadei in 1934. So that's when you have the first mass wave of repression in the terms of 1930, 31, roundup of Germans being accused of being Kuulaks and sent to special settlements, mostly used for fourth labor and forestry to cut down trees, places like Arkangles in the far north and, of course, in the Urals, with a lot of forestry. And in the Volga German Republic itself, it's about 6.6%. So it's higher than the German population as a whole. But there are certain areas like Avaetoria, which is a district in Crimea,

where 17% of the German population is forcibly deported to these special settlement villages for fourth labor in 1930. So after 1934, we have figures. So in 1934, all the way to the end of the Great Terror and Yejav's removal and replacement of Bury in November 38, between 20% and 40% of the top 100 or so NKVe VIII officers are ethnically Jewish. And in the period of time, we're talking of the Great Terror at 37 and 38. as I say, it concentrates in Ukraine. So the German operation is a total of 55,000 convictions of which 42,000 almost are death sentences.

Of those 42,000 deaf sentences, 18,05 take place in Ukraine. The head of the NKVA in the Ukraine in 37 and 38 is a man named Israel Laplowski, who was a former Boondist, a Jewish nationalist, before he became a bullfusc. Bolshevik, the wound was absorbed into the communist part, what becomes the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And he specifically asked the head of the NKVoslov, who was not Jewish, although his number two man, Belski, his original name is Abraham Levine, was Jewish during the first part, during the second part of the nationality operations. So we see Loplesque asked Jayaev to up his quota for political arrest, including the national operations, three separate times.

So it wasn't that you hear that he had no agency. It was all Stalin and Yajja. Leplowski was pushing to arrest more people on the national operation from Yajjav and did it more than once. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28, because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

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it's Ergrid Ponga'i. Well, we know that, I mean, even up to, through today, you see the evidence of, um, the ethnic hatred for, for Russian, even for not only for Germans, but even for Russians. Um, so I, I, I, I, at this point have the Russians that, the ethnic Russians that needed to be, um, eliminated, have they already been eliminated? Uh, I'm not sure I understand the question. Well, I mean, there was an immediate purge after the Bolshevik revolution, right? There was ex-Russians were, ethnic Russians were killed by, who were just, how long did that continue?

Let me, I guess that's better point. How long that? Yeah. The movement to, as it were, rehabilitate the Russian nation from this period of time between 1918, really picking up in 19, 23 with the 12-party Congress in Kornazazia all the way up until really 1936 when you have the first praises of the Russian nation during the communist era in Provda. Yeah, this was a period of time. So it lasts from 1918 and 1936 you have really kind of a campaign that's systematic, what they call against great power of chauvinism.

But by great power, they meant the ethnic Russians who were more, a greater percentage of the Soviet Union than they wore, Tsarath, Russia, because they lost Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states. So they were over 50% a majority. But there was no affirmative action for them like there was every other nationality during this time. And in 36, you start to change with the new constitution written by Buharan. And then you see at the end of the Great Terror, the God has already been replaced in 36 by Yejaf, who was half Russian. His mother was Lithuania, but he wasn't Jewish.

November 38, Biria comes in, and the percentage of Jews in the top ranks of the NKVe Day plummets from 20% to 4%. There's a few guys still around, like Berenzen, who controls the finances of the NKVayday. Naftily Frankel, who is famous from Solzhenits and Gulag Archipelago. He's still head of the rail construction for Gulag, Gulloched, during the end part of Staling's,

well, all the way to the end of Stalin's reign. But there's a big decrease then. And it really, I think, had to do with is a kind of a conflict based upon region and ethnicity within the NKVEDA. So originally the leadership of the Chekha, the Gay-Peu, O Gaypeu, and NKVe-Day are all people from the Pala settlement. And they're not all Jewish. Yagodot is the only one who makes it very top of Jewish.

But they all are from the Pail of Settlement. A lot of them have Jewish bouses, for instance, the first head of the... the Jakkad Dersinski was Polish, but his wife was Jewish. The second guy, Menjinsky is Polish, but as I said, already, assuming power in 23, he's already have to basically give over running of the organization to Yagoda because he's not physically able to do it himself. After Yerga, so all these people from the areas that were in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, And then they get basically removed by Biryup, whose center of powers in Georgia is an ethnic Georgian.

People like Rapava and Karazha are also ethnic Georgians, ethnic Armenians from Tablisi, like the Kobolov brothers. So they replace a lot of the Jews that were in this kind of circle along with some poles and people from Lithuania like Asia. that had dominated the Czechat, gay peu, Ogepeyu, NKVD, all the way from 1917 up to 1938. The end of 1938. So do you consider it to be something targeted when Beria takes over for the amount of Jews in power

and the NKVD2? Well, yeah, because there are a lot more. Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians appointed, as I said, the Jewish percentage plummets down to 4%, although there's still some high-ranking Jews like Barronzen and Frankl. But that was targeted, but was that done on purpose? Yes, because they were basically different gangs. I mean, just like in the U.S., gangs in the Soviet Union are based upon ethnicity or what they call Natanal notes, which is really ethno-racial.

In this case, it's a little bit more complex than that it's kind of coalitions of different ethno-racial groups by geography, and that you had the Jews and Poles in the original, dominating the original political police, and then Georgians and Armenians allied with Russians in the second version of it under burial. But the one big change you do see is that the mass execution that took place in 37 and 38 under Yejahjof and Belski and then in Ukraine, Leplefsky was head. And then in Belarus it was Boris Berman, the brother of the head of the Gulag from 3237, Montvei Berman. Those are largely replaced by forced labor, either in labor camps or special settlements, because Biri, thought it was a waste to just shoot people when you could work them to death. So the, in studying the Spanish Civil War and you look at the officers that were sent to

advise there overwhelmingly, I think, last I counted out of 11 of them, like 9 or 10 were Jewish. And it seems like when they got back, they were executed. They were, the majority of them were summarily executed. what was that movement in 38 and 39 to remove? Was that targeting Jews or was that just targeting people? I think it's targeting people that were outside the Soviet Union because they also had one of the national operations is not against the nationality. It's called the Haribnizzi operation.

And when in 36, they sold the Chinese Eastern Railroad in Manchuria to the Japanese. They recalled all of the Russian workers back into the Soviet. Union. And the people that were stupid enough to return were either shot the vast majority of them or were sent into time in a labor camp. When I lived in Kyrgyzstan, I knew a guy who spent 10 years in a labor camp because he had returned from working on the railroad in Manchuria. But he was still alive and spent every day drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, enjoying the fact that he'd outlived all of his repressors. But the reason was because they had spent time outside the Soviet Union,

therefore been exposed to foreign ideas or perhaps engaged in conspiracies. So there was that paranoia. I think that people returning from Spain and the same idea that they were a suspect for having been outside the USSR and in contact with foreign environments. When it came to Russian forces during World War II, were there any German conscripts into it? Or were there any Germans who actually volunteered to fight against their own people? Yes, yes. In the beginning, there were over 33,000 Volga Germans who were fighting in the Red Army against the Vermeckt.

They put up an Alamo-type defense at Brest, where they were wiped out by the Vermect. They were not removed from the military forces of the Soviet Union until 7th September, and then they were all sent to force where they call it construction battalions, and then they were mobilized into the labor army when it's created and sent to the corrective labor camps of the Gulag and the Urales, primarily that fell timber into industrial construction. Some avoided it by changing their national in collaboration with their commanding officers. It was one famous German soldier who claimed to be Azerbaijani.

He took the identity of a fallen comrade. There were some that managed to work in the partisans, organized the NKVEDA to fight against the Germans. But the numbers are limited because there was in 8th September the decree to remove all ethnic Germans from all the Germans. from all Soviet military institutions. So there were a handful that we know of that managed to kind of work around this by claiming other nationalities and having their commanding officers

that go along with the deception, but not very many. The vast majority were of the over 33,000, that were Volga Germans that were still fighting in the Red Army, by 8 September 1941 were all sent to labor camps by the Soviet government. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.

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At Specsavers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals. Like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. You mentioned that certain groups were considered to be cool, ox, even if they weren't. How much of this was, at this point, how much of it was actual ideology, the ideology of communism and Bolshevism, and how much was it just basically they're operating

on autopilot, and that's just what you declare somebody at this point? I don't think it has much to do with any type of Marxist ideology. I think a lot of it is just the prejudices these people already had against these groups, so they have Tsarist roots. But of course, it's not limited to Russian, everybody that was in the kind of Russian environment. You read kind of old 19th century Russian literature. There is a stereotype of the Germans as being rich, undeserving colonizers in the Volga and Ukraine or being exploited. So during the Civil War, the anarchist under Nestor Makna, They go after the Mennonites because Makhna had worked for the Mennonites as a farmhand and didn't like the way he was paid and treated.

So all of the Mennonites became targeted. That's ironic. But in particular, it's quite violent, so much so, particularly with the rapes of women, that for the only time ever, the Mennonites in the world, they took up arms. being sponsored by the German governments during World War I still 1918 before November to create self-protection units. And this was a big deal for a creed that have been pacifists since the early 16th century. How much was Asian Russia involved in this? Most people, when they think of Russia, you really only think of European Russia.

And the side that is on. But there's this whole other side, which even though much more sparsely populated and ethnically diverse, actually, how much were they pulled in? How much of like the Soviet ideology and the Soviet, the crushing Soviet hand, did they have to suffer all the way in the East? Well, there's not a lot of Central Asians. there are quite a few Caucasians involved in the Soviet government, particularly before the 1950s. In large part because they're not educated, in large part because their traditional way of life is not congruence with the Soviet ideology. So the memberships in the Communist Party are quite low, and the involvement is largely just on the local basis. But you do have some groups, so one group which is not well studied during World War I, the Russian government brought in a large number of Chinese workers from China.

And during the Bolshevik Revolution, most of them sided with the Bolsheviks. A lot of them joined the Red Army, and there was a Chekha unit noted for its brutality composed entirely of Chinese that operated in Ukraine. So, all right, let's switch over a little bit to the war. and the Eastern Front. So do you know, do you have any, like, general numbers of, on the Eastern battlefield, on the Eastern Front, how many, what the population of Jews was? And obviously, the Germans are accused and rightly so in many cases of them just not caring about any Jewish populations that are on the Eastern Front.

When I say rightly so, they're accused because they, didn't. How much did the Soviets care? It just doesn't seem to me like if you're at war and you're at war with the Wehrmacht that you're taking special care to be like, oh, wait a minute, we can't hurt these Jews over here. Well, the Jewish population in the Soviet Union was probably about three million at the start of the war when Germany invaded. And probably about a million were either evacuated or made it on their own east of the front. I went to a conference in Jerusalem. It was called Jews and their neighbors in Central Asia about this. So they were disproportionately evacuated

because they were disproportionately members of the Communist Party and disproportionately working in industries that were considered important by the Soviet government and needed to be evacuated each of the Euro to prevent the Germans. So as a percentage, much larger number of Jews of their population, the non-Jews, were officially evacuated by the Soviet government. But it appears to have been on basis of party membership and necessary occupation rather than

Natan al-Nos. So over a third of them were evacuated east, and a lot of them ended up in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. and they didn't get like with the German deportees, the Kazakhs who had to share their house with Jewish evacuees in Kazakhstan, we're not very happy about it. I talked to one Jewish guy in Israel who ended up as a child in one of those. And he said, yeah, they didn't really like us coming there because we didn't speak their language,

and they had to give up their space in their house. But I actually understand why they didn't like it. There is at least among that. with that guy, an understanding of the problem. But, yeah, they did have, it wasn't, I don't think we, an ethnic preference, but certainly due to their higher membership in the party and needed economic industries, they had a much greater percentage evacuated than your average Russian or Ukrainian. Are there any numbers on the percentage of the civilians on the eastern front that were killed?

It's disputed, but the numbers range from four million civilians dying in the Soviet Union during the Second World War due to the Germans. That's in addition to another 2 million plus that Stalin killed through labor camps and special settlements and execution, all the way up to 10 million civilians. I tend to go with the lower number, particularly because the person who came up with the lower number, is the end Zemskopf, was now dead. He was the first person who would not a member of the Communist Party allowed into the Soviet archives to study the Gulag. And he wrote a fantastic book on the special settlement regime, Kulags and deported Germans and other nationalities in 2005, which is still one of my go-to references always. So I'm more likely to trust Zemskopf, and I am the official number from the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is, of course, as an interest in blowing up the number of Russian civilians that were killed.

during the war for its own purposes to support the government in Moscow. What do you think the numbers were on the war total? Daryl Cooper mentioned recently in the first episode of enemies, his German series, that 60 million. It could be 60 million, some say 40 million, some say 20 million. Are we including Asia in the Pacific? I don't know if he's including Asia in the Pacific. Yeah, well, I don't know.

The numbers, you know, range from the Soviet Union, which would be the largest number absolute from 20 to 27 million. 27 million is the official figure. 20 million is somewhere worth. Zemskopf is advocating, although the majority of those are military losses. And the German losses, from what I can see, are about 8 million, 5 million military, and 3 million civilians. So 60 million looks high, but 40 million probably around, right?

Certainly lots of people. It's hard to do a tabulation because you have to be an expert on every little country in Europe. And some countries in Europe, they look small, but they have large losses, places like Yugoslavia and Poland because the war was quite fierce. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you.

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and Germany before the war could have lasted that it didn't have to happen, that there, there could have been peace. I don't know. Everything I've seen suggests that Stalin thought that the pact was only temporary so that he could build up enough forces to invade Germany. So if the German didn't attack earlier, they were going to get attacked by the Soviets and be on the defensive. So I don't see a scenario where the Soviet government under Stalin

decide that it's going to have a permanent peace with Germany. In fact, if, say, somebody like Trotsky, there wouldn't have been any peace at all. 3941 wouldn't have existed. He would have already in the 1920s been trying to push revolution into Central Europe. So then you take the narrative of Icebreaker, that Suverroff's narrative, that the Russian were going. I don't think it necessarily as because I think Superoff is pushing the date in a way that we don't have enough evidence support.

But yeah, I think eventually when the Soviet forces get large enough, they would have invaded. Everything, you know, you hear from defenders of Stalin today is that the pact was only temporary because the capitalist powers wouldn't support him earlier over Czechoslovakia. So eventually he was going to, you know, quote unquote, liberate Central Europe. It was just they had to get enough military forces. Now, I'm not sure when that would have exactly been. It's not my area of expertise. But, yeah, eventually, you know, a couple of years down the line, they wouldn't have held.

Well, obviously because of American backing and not only that, but goods, transfer the transfer what was the agreement where the United States was manufacturing though the United States was manufacturing and delivering goods to Len Lease, Len Lease, yeah,

Len Lees because of Len Lease well at the end of the war the Soviet Union ends up with half of Europe anyway do you think that if if Operation Barbarossa doesn't happen if he doesn't invade that if they

would have been on the defensive that the Soviet Union would have taken the whole peninsula? Yeah, I think if the Germans hadn't attacked the Soviet Union in 41, that eventually, I don't know, would have been 43 or 44, the Soviet Union would have attacked Germany. They would have gone to take the parts of Poland that Germany had taken in 1939 and tried to move as far west as possible. Is that a, is that one of those opinions that you, that gets you in trouble and keeps you out of academia? I don't know. I'm getting out of academia for so long. There's no trouble anymore. I just clean toilets now.

Well, let's, we're not ending right now, but this, I guess this is a good point as any is anybody who's watching who has an inn at any university or any school whatsoever. Dr. Pole here is looking for a job because he seems to have been locked out of academia. And not only in the United States, I think that you overseas, you're having problems too, right? Yeah, well, the job's dried up overseas as far as foreigners. But the last place I worked, American University of Iraq, Sula Mania was basically a CIA front who had two goals. One, to keep the Kurds in Iraq so that all the oil is under one central government. And two, to impose the LGBTQ upon the Muslim population there. So they didn't renew my contract when I said they were stupid. Well, anyone who has, anyone who can help, please, you can reach out to me

and I'll make sure to get through to Dr. Pole. The United States doesn't, do lend lease doesn't join the war? Does the Soviet Union defeat Germany? I was saying if the United States doesn't do lend lease doesn't completely support the Soviet Union, how does the war go? The Soviets still might win, but they would take much, much greater losses. It would take them much longer a period of time, and instead of talking 20 to 20, 27 million, we might be talking 100 million out of 172 million people in the Soviet Union dying to try and win. It would be a very Pyrrhic victory if they did win. Seems like the meat grinder that we're seeing there today is somewhat, somewhat not similar,

but the numbers, at least on the Ukrainian side, seem to be piling up. And when you consider some of the numbers that are happening today, and you compare them in scale, you know, to the scale of World War II, we maybe even be seeing at that scale when you just consider that this is a historic kind of local war. Yeah, well, some of the local wars get very high percentage. of young men dying. So I think Serbia during World War I, something like a third of the young men total died in combat.

The war between the Triple Alliance with Paraguay had a similar percentage, I think, perish. When it comes to, let's go back to Russia a little bit and to their, to their diaspora groups. You said that clearly that the reason why certain groups were targeted were, well, they were members of an ethnic group that was considered an enemy,

and they had a government. And then what happens when Israel comes into existence in 1948? What is the attitude towards the diaspora? Do Jews in the Soviet Union automatically become a diaspora now that can be looked upon with suspicion?

It's not automatic because initially the Soviet Union believes that it can create a social estate allied with the USSR in Israel. And it is particularly eager to reduce British power. And it views the Arab monarchies such as King Abdullah in Jordan, the King Abdullah I, first of the grandfather of the current monarch, but also the government in Iraq, British puppets, and also Egypt even, before Nassar's revolution overthrows the monarchy. So they support the Zionist initially in 1948 and 1949, the way of weakening the British, a way of opposing these reactionary pro-British monarchies in the Arab states established really through the League of Nations mandates,

which were to give self-determination and independence to the Arab states that were taken out of the Ottoman Empire. And this becomes changed later, primarily because, because the Israelis don't want to go along with the Soviets. And after Stalin dies, there is a change of policy starting in 1954 with the Soviets approving a large sale of Czech weapons to Egypt after NASA comes to power. And basically, the conflict goes that the Soviets get tired of shenanigans by people like Golda Meyer, who keeps wanting Soviet Jews to come to Israel, claiming the Soviet Union is anti-Semitic, but it's okay with all the Jews in America,

just staying in America and sending money. That didn't go well with the Soviet leadership. And also the fact that Soviets looked at the map and said there's 4 million Jews in Israel and 100 million Arabs, maybe we should support the other side, especially after the monarchies, Jordan, of course, never got overthrown. But in Iraq, there was an overthrow of the monarchy to a secular nationalist government that was a much more friendly to the USSR. And, of course, Nasser coming to power in Egypt, much more favorable to Soviets, which is why

they greenlight the Czech arms sales. So by the 1956, when the British and French and Israelis try and take the Suez Canal back from Egypt, which had been nationalized by Nasser, the Soviets are on the Arab side against the Israelis on this. Ironically, the United States is as well, because the United States threatened the British to devaluate their pound if they don't pull out. of attacking Egypt. And this is the same time the Soviets are crushing the Hungarian revolution in Budapest. So it provides a good diversion for the Soviets if everybody's looking at what the British, French, and Israelis are doing in Egypt rather than what they are doing at Hungary. And then, of course, by 1967, the Soviet government of Brezhnev is thoroughly with the rest

of the third world supporting the Arabs against Israel. And in 64, they officially recognize the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people. So there's a big change. A lot of it driven by pragmatic geopolitics and real politics, that it would be much better for the Soviets internationally to support the larger Arab population against the smaller Israeli one. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th

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Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kosh Farage. Well, and you see that clearly in the fact that most of Israel's enemies are using AK-47s that are built in factories, that the Soviets actually went to Egypt and went to other countries and built factories to basically... Yeah, including in Egypt. It was an AK-47 factory in Egypt. Yeah, I actually own one.

I actually own one of the ones out of that factory. Yeah, it's really weird to me when people say that, like, historically Russia, that the Zionists controlled Russia when you consider that all of their enemies were using Russian weapons against them. Well, it changes. Initially, I said in 48, 49, they support the Zionists. they want to weaken the British. They want to weaken the Arab government that are, in their mind, reactionary and pro-British. But after you have a series of left-wing, they're not communist, but they're certainly not favorable to the West,

revolutions in Egypt and Iraq and Syria, the Bhas that's coming to power in Syria and Iraq, Nasser and Egypt, this all changes. So by 1956, you see the Soviets, certainly on the Arab side, they had already started supporting with military arms, the Egyptian government of Nasser in 54. So there's a change from the late Stalinist era when they think they can get a Jewish-Soviet People's Republic in Israel versus supporting what they call the progressive regimes in the Arab world, these kind of regimes like the Baathist in Syria and Iraq and Nasser and Egypt.

So the Soviet Union basically wins World War II. Stalin at some point, once the bomb is acquired, you can consider him to be maybe the most powerful. man in the world, one of the most powerful men that ever lived, what starts their slide? What do you see as their, starts their slide down to where, you know, empires don't fall overnight. They, it takes a... Well, really, ideologically, I don't think anybody believed in Marxism, Leninism, even by the time of World War II.

But they then can switch to the Great Patriotic War as kind of a way to mobilize. But then, of course, all the veterans die off, and this is not sustainable. So then they switch, like many countries, ironically, a good parallel of South Korea where they switch from national anti-Japanese sentiment under Sigmund Reed to economics under Park Chung-hee, because Park Chung-hee fought with the Japanese,

they switched to, okay, we can materially give you a better standard of living than your parents, the grandparents have. But the problem was they could look and see that, yeah, well, our standard of living is greater than our grandparents, but it's much lower than Western Europe, and it's much lower than Japan. And places like South Korea are becoming richer than us. This is not sustainable. We're becoming, and when it totally stagnates in the late Brezhnev era, it's not getting any better. And then it starts to get worse, particularly you see things like the life expectancy of men start to decline.

I think that was the end of it. They had nothing left to legitimize it. The revolution itself hadn't been, as I say, probably since 1941, a real reason. And when the Germans invaded, it rather than appealed a little bit of it. Marxism, Lenism, Stalin appealed to Russian nationalism for the majority of the population, and then there were kind of parallels appealed to each non-Russian nationality that it would were their nationalism. So, you know, you do this for the Kyrgyz nation, or you do this for the Uzbek nation. It wasn't, you do this for Marxism, Leninism, and the Bolshevik revolution.

How much of it had to do with just sort of empire, where you have some sort of, you have satellites in Central America, islands, South America, all through Eastern Europe. An empire is very hard to keep. Yeah, well, it's very expensive. I mean, the Soviets were giving billions of dollars to places like Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia. And one of the first things, you know, Gorbachev did was he cut off these client dates, right? told the Cubans, you know, the deal of one pound of, one, you know, barrel of oil for the equivalent volume of sugar is over because oil is worth a lot more than sugar.

And that really, you know, crippled the Cuban economy for a while because they were dependent upon this heavy subsidy from the USSR. And, you know, certain places like Vietnam were managed to reform in 1983, starting in 93 to avoid famine and did fairly well. well. Other places like Ethiopia, you know, the regime ended up being overthrown and it still got problems of civil war. Cuba did some reform, so it's not as bad as it was, but they're still hurting because they still have a largely socialist economy that is not nearly as dynamic as reformed ones in places like Vietnam and China. So after Stalin does, do you think that a lot of it just becomes anti-West and they see the West as being Zionist controlled. I mean, Yaki writes about this. There's a lot of writers on the new right, well, the post-war right, the illegal right,

start writing that, you know, you have to make your choice. You're either with the Zionists or you're not, and the United States are Zionist controlled. So this is why Yaki was like, well, you know, this is why I'm siding with the Soviet Union, basically. or with the Warsaw Pact, with the Warsaw Pact. Yeah, well, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact state, after 1967 war, they said the second and third world, this is one of their pillars. There were certain things that kind of like unified them, and beyond that there wasn't much that unified the third world. One of them was opposition to Zionism, another was opposition to apartheid in South Africa, another was opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

And there was also opposition of what remained of European colonialism, although as time went on, there were fewer European colonies since they were pulling out. And domestically, it was a way to oppose Jewish emigration movement. So the reason why the Soviets, and they got more grief over this one, issues and anything else they did, even though it's by far not the worst thing they did, was they wanted to maintain the, retain the educated Jewish population in the Soviet Union that were doing things like being engineers and professors and whatnot, because they didn't want to lose that human capital. But there was pressure from the United States on behalf of Israel to

allow them to emigrate and leave the Soviet Union. And domestically, there were a movement by Jews, people like Nate Shoransky, probably the most famous one, to engage in pressure that would be visible to the rest of the world on the government in Moscow to allow them to emigrate. And this emigration movement was actually copied by the Germans in 1972, 1973, to allow them also to emigrate to West Germany. It wasn't as successful, but it kind of did have a parallel imitation by ethnic Germans. So the opposition to Zionism domestically was they didn't want to lose the Jewish population because of a disproportionate number of them were in the higher economic workings of the Soviet economy, such as it was. and then internationally to get support from first and foremost the Arab States, but also the third world in general.

And also, I think there was still this resentment of the way the Israelis had treated their original alliance in 1949. Yeah, I think that one of the easy examples from history from the 20th century, you can see of the Zionist Russian fight is the fact that the Soviet Union backed the commies in Rhodesia

and when they did, the Zionist armed the white Rhodesia. You had this like war going on just in Rhodesia where you can see that where it's actually clear. Well, yeah, I don't know that Israel had

close military relations with South Africa, accumulating in the joint nuclear test in the Indian Ocean. But this is, of course, as I said, by 1967, both for domestic reasons, the movement that emigrate out by some three million Soviet Jews and international politics, particularly dealing with the Middle East to oppose Western interests, especially the United States, the Soviets had become strongly in the anti-Israeli camp. Although interestingly enough, unlike some of the more radical Arabs, the Soviet Union never advocated that Israel itself ceased to exist. They were always officially in the UN that the West Bank and Gaza Strip become a separate Palestinian.

Indian state, but the 1948 borders continue to be the state of Israel. All right. Well, let's wrap up there. How can people support you right now? We want to find you a teaching position somewhere, but in the meantime, how can they support you? Well, you can buy my book, which is distributed by Columbia University Press, and also write to your local library to ask them to acquire a copy of it. It's currently in 1,058 libraries worldwide, but I haven't sold many copies to individuals.

I don't know the exact number, but it's probably a tenth of what the library sales are. I have a Patreon, which has a $5 subscription. And I am always available for editing, research, writing, and even translation. job. So I've gotten a couple of translation jobs recently that subsidize my wages. But yeah, that's, if you wanted to support me another way, then I've listed, you can contact me by DM on Twitter or my email, which is available on my academic EDU side. If you go to my CV, it's written right there. But, yeah, mainly if you have any work for me,

I'm pretty good at the research and writing stuff by now. My rates are very reasonable. Remind everybody the title of the book? The Years of Great Silence, and then the subtitle, The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization of Labor Army of Ethnic Germans, in the USSR, 1941 to 1955, published by Ibnem Verlog out of Stuttgart. But for the U.S. and Canada, Columbia University Press, the distributor.

So if you go to their website and look up either my name or the title of the book, you'll find the order sheet. I'll provide links to all of that in the show notes. Again, thank you, Otto. Thank you, Peter.