The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 111

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

40 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson continue a project in which Pete reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together," and Dr' Johnson provides commentary.Borhy Splacheni Krovyu: The Foundations and Causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022-2025The Soviet Abuse of Psychiatry and Its Roots in Leftist Ideology - Matthew Raphael JohnsonSelf-Indulgent Historical Mythology: The Fantasy of Stalin’s “Antisemitic Russian Nationalism”Stalin the Eternal Philosemite: Soviet Support for Zionism and Israel before and after 1948Communist Misrule in Soviet Kazakhstan: The Ideological and Ethnic Nature of the Goloshchyokin Genocide (1930-1933)‘Crushing the Resistance’ – Joseph Stalin’s Ukrainian Genocide RevisitedStalin the Eternal Philosemite: Soviet-American Joint Support for Zionism in the 1940sDr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Unmentionable Genocide: New Khazaria, the Russian Revolutions and Soviet Legality in the 1920s by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonWith Friends Like These. . . Patriarch St. Tikhon, General Anton Denikin and the Defeat of the White Armies, 1917-1922 by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Pete 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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Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the Pekignano Show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else. the things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy.

It's all because of you. And, yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So thank you. The Pekingona Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzhenison. This is episode number 111. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today?

Well, I'm going to be doing better tomorrow, I think. I'm going to have a procedure I never heard of because I never get sick the catheterization, my heart get rid of a few blockages and I won't look I'm wait look like I'm hung over all the time which I seem to look

to be exhaustion all the time which comes directly from that and that should solve all the other problems so I am somewhat looking forward to it despite it being a medical procedure anything can happen and of course if there's any Verset involved who cares Verset solves all problems All right well I'll probably put this out to supporters today It won't be public for a few days but I'll put it out to supporters today and they should know to be in

prayer for you tomorrow, which will be Wednesday, the 11th. Yeah, that would be nice. All righty, picking up where we left off last time. In the West, the official Soviet anti-Semitism began to be referred to as the most pressing issue in the USSR, ignoring any more acute issues and the most prescribed subject. Though there were numerous other prescribed issues such as force collectivization or the surrender of three million red army soldiers in the year of 1941 alone or the murderous nuclear experimentation on our own Soviet troops on the Toskoy range in 1954. Of course, after Stalin's death, the Communist Party avoided explicit anti-Jewish statements. Perhaps they practiced incendiary invitation-only meetings and briefings.

That would have been very much in the Soviet. Soviet style. Solomon Schwartz rightly concludes, quote, Soviet anti-Jewish policy does not have any sound or rational foundation, end quote. The strangulation of Jewish cultural life, quote, appears puzzling. How can such bizarre policy be explained? End quote. Well, he's right, although for the wrong reason, you know, after Stalin died, the Jewish power, whatever, you know, to the extent that ever drooped at all,

came back with great force. So, you know, and therefore that would cause Andrewsum, even within the party. But he doesn't understand that whatsoever. He has no conception of it. He refuses to believe that Jews

are a controlling element in many areas of Soviet life, starting from the revolution on, he lives in a bubble. He lives in his own world. Now, it is funny, and Shult and Heaton Henson is saying this in a funny way, that the Jewish issue is the most pressing issue.

And I'm telling you, if you read newspapers from that era, when it came to the Soviet Union, that was the issue in the mid-lid late, 50s. And it just shows the power of Jews in this country. It's the only thing that mattered. There was so many, you know, and he gives a list of things, terrible things that were going on that could go on in totalitarian system.

You could do whatever you want in totalitarian system. But, you know, this is still a Jewish country, whether they like it or not. And the West is going to focus not on the camps, not on the experimentations. and we're just getting into the very beginning of, oh, I don't think I sent it to you. I will today, I promise, the use of psychiatric facilities. And there they experimented with various drugs. They didn't use animals, they used prisoners. Sometimes that happened in America too, but, you know, that was a regular occurrence in the Soviet.

Union. That was a new, that was a new way and a nasty way of controlling people. And a doctor would get up and be very pompous and say he has asymptomatic schizophrenia, and he will go, oh, my God, not knowing what he's really talking about. But dissent, as I said last time, dissent was perceived by the medical establishment, of course, the Soviet establishment as irrational without foundation as Solomon's it says. Because they're in paradise. They're in the workers' paradise.

They're in the best run system on the planet. Descent from what? They're asking. It's just like the ruling class of regime today. They live in their own bubble. They start believing their own propaganda because they have to. But again, I'll repeat myself. The death of Stalin started the end of the USSR.

The rise of these various facts, you didn't have one all-powerful leader who saved the country from Nazism, Germany, whatever. And that gave him an authority that no one else ever had. And to replace him with Khrushchev, of all people, who could be just, his buffoonery was just, you know, it could be funny, it could be entertaining. but it was embarrassing to the, certainly to the KGB. And then you replace him with another Ukrainian, Brezhnev, you know, who had the charisma of this microphone here. And of course, people were going to start just, you know, and this is when, not only did factions form, this is when, you know, high party members started treating themselves. They did this before, but not to this extent.

Started treating themselves like gods, where ordinary workers would be exploited as they always were in the USSR. But they would have access, the party members would have access to everything, Western medical, capitalist medical medical treatment, which they needed sometimes, all kinds of Western-made products. and they loved it and no one else had it all these luxuries

was exposed only later so when Crucef came out and just ripped Stalin apart despite the fact that he was really ripping himself apart although he must have known that he was destroying

the he was cutting he was simply cutting off the branch the tree was sitting on that he probably didn't know. Underneath it all, the KGB was kind of running things until they got sick of them. And we'll get to that here soon too. Still, when all living things in the country were being choked, could one really expect that such vigorous and agile people would escape a similar lot?

To that, the Soviet foreign policy agendas of the 1960s added their weight. The USSR was designing an anti-Israel campaign. Thus, they came up with a convenient, ambitial. indifinate term of anti-Zionism, which became a sort of Damocles hanging above the entire Jewish population of the country. Campaigning against Zionism in the press became a sort of impenetrable shield as its obvious anti-Semitic nature became unprovable. Moreover, it sounded menacing and dangerous. Quote, Zionism is the instrument of the American imperialism, so the Jews had to prove their loyalty in one way or another to somehow convince the people around them that they had no connection to their own Jewishness, especially to Zionism, end quote.

And yeah, their own people, meaning Jews who were running the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. And they were being persecuted by other Jews. The foundation of Israel and its quote-unquote success through American sponsorship that that wrecked everything for the Soviets. I don't even know if Stalin could handle it, even though he founded it, because now you had a split identity that every reason to worry about it.

Of course, there was never any anti-Semitism officially, but anti-Zionism, this is when they were starting to finance Syria and Iraq and Egypt, and anyone else who would be military force against the Israelis, and pretty soon they would prove themselves to be very poor fighters on the battlefield until the last 20 years. But then that just got Jews excited around the world. well, you know, so

you had the most fanatical Stalinist Jews who were then taking action against Zionism. And by Zionism, the Soviets meant the Jewish nationalism. It's Soviet patriotism at this point. Very Jewish in the sense that they helped create it.

But for this separate state, now under, now using the American taxpayer, to sponsor it, you know, tail-wacking the dog. This was, this ruined so much in Soviet policy, foreign or otherwise. And again, in the West, this was a huge issue. Being the Zionist in the West was, at this point, was obvious. You know, it was the most wonderful thing in the world. But in the USSR, now you had a nationalist bot.

body that helped create this system. But the country is outside of the Soviet Union. A bit of Bizdan obviously didn't work. Crimea didn't work. So what are they going to do? And when the issue of the Jews leaving the USSR became acute, you began realizing just how powerful Jews were in the Soviet Union. Because even in Eastern Europe, they began saying,

we're losing the whole party. We can't have them going to Israel. What are you talking about? We'll lose everything. And, you know, very educated, and not just, you know, in the humanities, but also in military science. And it became a big deal from here on in. It ruined, the foundation of Israel ruined everything for the U.S.

disarm. The feelings of ordinary Jews in the Soviet Union became the feelings of the oppressed as vividly expressed by one of them. Quote, Over the years of persecutions and vilifications, the Jews developed a certain psychological complex of suspicion to any contact coming from non-Jews. In everything, they are ready to see implicit or explicit hints on their nationality. The Jews can never publicly declare their Jewishness, and it is formally accepted that this should be kept silent, as if it were a vice or a past crime. end quote. An incident in Malakovka in October 1959 added substantially to that atmosphere.

On the night of October 4th, October 4th in Malakovka, a settlement half an hour from Moscow with 30,000 inhabitants, about 10% of whom are Jews. The roof of the synagogue caught fire along with the house of the Jewish cemetery keeper, and the wife of the keeper died in the fire. On the same night, leaflets was scattered and posted across Malacov. away with the Jews in commerce. We saved them from the Germans, yet they became arrogant so fast that the Russian people do not understand any longer who's living on whose land." And I guarantee you, as far as a low-level members of the party, this was a, if not

a majority position, at least a substantial... minority believe this it was different prior to the war sovi soviets lost so many people as far as a battlefield was concerned it was overwhelmingly uh gentiles which is why they say you know we save them from the germans um and i think the claim here is that um that this was some kind of arson, you know, what you're doing rabbi kind of thing. I don't know if that's been proven or not. Again, the fact that you have a web of functional synagogues, which are pretty much independent, shows you that they were not being persecuted.

They're not being persecuted as Jews, and they function just like any other, except, you know, the Russian Orthodox, who are now in the camps, unless you were part of this tiny, official Soviet-made church body starting in 1941, which was having to extol the virtues of materialism.

This is talk about cognitive dissonance. I wouldn't want to be them, but I also don't judge them. But I think that's the point here, is that there's this kind of there's a huge, you know, people don't like the Jews.

No one really, likes the Jews. At the time, I don't think Jews like the Jews. But in this particular case, they had an absolute correct foundation to say that, you know, we did the fighting in the trenches and you respond with this arrogance. Now, whether or not it was an actual spade of arson, I don't know. Growing depression drove some Jews to such an extreme state of mind, as that described by D. Storman, some, quote, Jewish Philistines developed a hatred toward Israel, believing it to be the generator of anti-Semitism in the Soviet politics.

I remember the words of one successful Jewish teacher. One good bomb dropped on Israel would make our life much easier. That's exactly what I meant. It ruined everything. And as far as the Soviets are concerned, the fact that they couldn't make that work on Soviet soil, and therefore it's now being sponsored by the U.S. outside of Israel, outside of the Soviet Union.

And that created huge problems. And again, the very fact that that caused huge problems shows the power of the Jews at all eras of the USSR right up until the 70s. Yet there was an ugly exception indeed. In general, the rampant's anti-Zionist campaign triggered a quote, consolidation of the sense of Jewishness and people and the growth of sympathy toward Israel

as the outposts of the Jewish nation. I don't know if he's saying here that now the majority of Jews are Zionists. I know that in the Western world, that was the case after the war. But by consolidation of the sense of Jewishness, towards Israel. Now, of course, you know, the Orthodox never liked Zionism, or not Israel. Israel was a secular state, according to them. The Zionists who were living there in Jerusalem before Israel was put on them, didn't like it, still don't like it. And there's always riots, the draft riots, you hear about once in a while.

I don't know how rampant it was, but maybe this forced, Jews to see Israel differently. The propaganda was entirely anti-Israel from the Soviet press. The Jewish press was another matter, and the Jews had the power to have their own press within the party. Remember, the laws passed by Lenin that said anti-Semitism is punishable by long prison terms or during warfare, death, or, or, still in the books and they were still being enforced. This was a different matter. This was a political matter, not an ethnic matter. That quote there, the consolidation of the sense of Jewishness and people and the growth of sympathy toward Israel as the outposts of the Jewish nation. That's from Solomon Schwartz.

Okay. There is yet another ex... I'm sorry? That's important to know. Yeah. There is yet another explanation of the social situation in those years. Yes, under Khrushchev, Quote, fears for their lives had become the things of the past for the Soviet Jews, but the foundations of new anti-Semitism had been laid, as the young generation of political establishment fought for caste privileges, seeking to occupy the leading positions in arts, science, commerce, finance, etc. There, the new Soviet aristocracy encountered Jews whose share in those fields was traditionally high. the social structure of the Jewish population, which was mainly concentrated in the major centers of the country, reminded the ruling elite of their own class structure, end quote. So now you have three elements. Jews in relation to the party, Jews in relation to the state, and Jews in relation to their own class structure. And maybe even a fourth, Jews in relation to the Israelis.

Now, the way this is stated here, and I know it's a quote, they're the new Soviet aristocracy. Well, they were a huge part of the new Soviet aristocracy, but still some of this stuff had to be negotiated. There was no question that the Jews were a dominant element under Khrushchev, which goes along with the revitalization. of the campaign of atheism and the campaign against the church. And what was left of it was sent to the camps or executed. That was no problem, though, because the Soviet Union was a part of the World Council of Churches.

The Rockefeller created ecumenical bodies still exist today. And you had so many stupid people from the Church of England going over there saying, you know, they saw this Potemkin village of this beautiful cathedral. Then he would go back and say, oh, no, there's no persecution of Jews of Orthodox there. They had full religious freedom. I even saw a synagogue. And so Western media, who, you know, they're stupid at their best, mendacious at their worst, only saw the Jewish problem.

And, but there were, you know, of course, was always going to be a minority that despise the state. But that didn't really show up until months later. But there was no question that the Soviet aristocracy was largely Judaic. But they had numerous bodies. You know, the party, the state, their own institutions as Jews, and Israel to worry about. So even the best of times, that would be the case. remember it doesn't take you don't have to have a majority of Jews on the board of a certain institution for it to be Judaic

their their own sense of cohesiveness is far more powerful than anyone else especially if they're Russian and if Russian nationalism was immediately persecuted and executed right away these men there were various purges against any kind of the slightest manifestation of Russian national or Ukrainian nationalism anywhere. That was never the case against the Jews. And so it is interesting as far as the politics and the sociology of the whole thing. And is that Solomon Swartz, too, 71? No, that is E. Finkelstein, Jews in the USSR, country and world, 1981,

1989, volume one. Okay. All right. Doubtless, such encounters did take place. It was an epic crew change in the Soviet ruling establishment, switching from the Jewish elite to the Russian one. It had clearly resulted in the antagonism, and I remember those conversations among the Jews during Khrushchev's era. They were full of not only ridicule, but also of bad insults with the ex-villagers, Mewshiks, who have infiltrated the establishment.

Okay, music. That's a derogatory term for a farmer, for a peasant. That's pretty much along the lines of goyum. It doesn't have to be derogatory. But in this case, the way he's using it here, it is. And how dare they challenge us in these fields? yet altogether all the various social influences combined with the great prudence of the soviet authorities led to dramatic alleviation of quote prevalence of acuteness of modern soviet anti-semitism end quote by 1965 which became far inferior to what had been observed quote during the war and the first post-war years and it appears that a marked attenuation maybe even a complete dying out of the percentage quote is happening. End quote. Overall, in the 1960s, Jewish worldview was rather positive. This is what we consistently hear from different authors. Contrast this to what we just read,

that the new anti-Semitism grew in strength in the 1960s. The same opinion was expressed again 20 years later. Quote, Krushchev's era was one of the most peaceful periods of the Soviet history, for the Jews, end quote. In 1956 to 57, many new Zionist society sprang up in the USSR, bringing together young Jews who previously did not show much interest in Jewish national problems or Zionism. An important impetus for the awakening of national consciousness among Soviet Jews and for the development of a sense of solidarity with the state of Israel was the Suez crisis. Later, the International Youth Festival,

Moscow, 1957, became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist movement in the USSR among a certain portion of Soviet Jews. Between the festival and the Six-Day War, 1967, Zionist activity in the Soviet Union was gradually expanding. Contacts of Soviet Jews with the Israeli embassy became more frequent and less dangerous. Also, the important of Jewish Samizdat increased dramatically. The Jews always, you know, under Stalin, under anybody, had their own institutions within the Soviet state. Sometimes it wasn't liked, but there's not much they could really do about it. But we're getting to the point here where Jews are starting to pull away.

And this is an extremely important, I have a paper I'm not quite finished with, basically on the Soviet Union in the 1970s. And it was a complete, um, a complete, uh, a complete alteration of the nature of, of the Soviet Union. Uh,

because the Jews now saw Israel as part of the West as being wealthier than, than they were, or at least as the average Soviet citizen was. Um, and by now, be real, rebuilt capital after the war was getting old. And only heavy industry was being promoted,

not light industry, not consumer good. And you can't cover that up for long. The West was pulling away so fast. And these ads and their, you know, the fads, the music, all of that. I don't have it on me, but I have, this is in the 80s, a list of groups that were forbidden, rock groups from the West that were forbidden in the Soviet Union. And it's like one of the most conservative things I've ever seen.

You know, Van Halen was on there because they were completely sexual revolution. They were against a sexual revolution, apparently. Motley Cruz was on there in the early 80s. They mentioned a kiss as being somehow anti-Soviet fanatics, which I don't know where that came from. they just saw but really what they saw was Americans being happy with these groups, with these bands

and being able to do this. And of course, the Soviets couldn't do it. And they just continued to pull away and especially as far as the youth was concerned. And the idea of the Soviet, you know, Stalin was gone. These people here are nothing compared to him in terms of authority,

in terms of power. And there was no interest in the ruling class. It was pretty easy to make fun of Khrushchev. It was really easy to make fun of Brezhnev. You know, but there's a reason. You read the documents of the today of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. And most of the time, you don't realize you're reading a communist publication. Sometimes.

But most of the time, it's extremely Eurasianist, nationalist, right-wing. Stuff that we say. Not like Republicans say. It's anti-libertarian, but otherwise, they glorify, you know, Stalin and Lenin, but this is what happens when the Jews were pulling away. The Jews were pulling away,

and therefore you had Bob Seeger being forbidden to go to the Soviet Union because he was too anti-communist. I don't remember anything that Bob, Bob Seeger ever said it was anti-communist. I know Frank Zappa said a few things. That was at the very end. I know the Ramones, Johnny Ramon especially was anti-communist. They weren't even on the list.

So they start becoming conservatives in a certain way, in the Soviet context. You start getting a very bizarre situation. The profits for Jews, in other words, were in the West, in the Western world. They're moving fast. The technology is moving fast. There's so much money there. Look how well Israel's doing. Look at the victories they're having.

And we're stagnant in the Soviet. What are you going to say to Soviet Jews? That's where we're at right now. During the so-called Khrushchev's thaw period, the end of 1950s to the beginning of the 1960s, Soviet Jews were spiritually re-energized. They shook off the fears and distress of the previous age of the doctor's plot and the persecution of cosmopolitan. It even became fashionable in the Metropolitan Society to be a Jew. The Jewish motif entered Samistat and poetic swarees then so popular among the young. Rima Kazakova even ventured to declare her Jewish identity

from the stage. Yevtyshenko quickly caught the air and expressed it in 1961 in his Babayar, proclaiming himself a Jew and spirit. His poem and the courage of Literaturnaya Gazeta was a literary trumpet call for all of Soviet and world Jewry. Yveschenko recited his poem during a huge number of poetic sores, always accompanied by a roar of applause. After a while, Shastikovic, who often ventured into Jewish themes, set Yveshtoshenko's poem into his 13th symphony. Yet its public performance was limited by the authorities.

Baba Yars spread among Soviet and foreign juries as a reinvigorating and healing blast of air, a truly, quote, revolutionary act in the development of the social consciousness in the Soviet Union. It became the most significant event since the dismissal of the doctor's plot. End quote. In 1964 to 65, Jewish themes returned into popular literature. Take, for example, summer in Susniaka, Nyaki by Anatoly Rybakov or the Diary of Masha Rolnik, written apparently under heavy influence of the diary of Van Frank.

Quote, after the ousting of Khrushche from all his post, the official policy towards Jews was softened somewhat. The struggle against Judaism abated and nearly all restrictions on baking Motsu were abolished. Gradually, the campaign against economic crimes faded away too. Yet, the Soviet press unleashed a propaganda campaign against Zionist activities among the Soviet Jews and their connections to the Israeli embassy, end quote. All right. All right. I found it. I have to share it with everybody. um kiss acedc scorpions talking heads madonna and michael jackson there was a specific ban in

1985 um they they said that black sabbath was uh religious obscurantism um you know heavier bands were causing violence um and and it's just uh uh it went it went on and on and on it was um it was um and the weirdest reasons. You know, they couldn't possibly have heard it, but they heard something. But this was going to affect the Jewish population. Now, that 1985 ban was very real. But was it enforced properly?

You know, did it really, you know, could they have, we're getting to the point where, you know, in 85, of course, was, we're coming to the end. in fact the 1985 band the list was was typically 38 groups for the weirdest

of reasons they were saying the same things that you know right wingers were saying in the U.S. It's not satire the B-52s were banned for promoting violence the class for the same reason They claim that KISS was neo-fascist.

I think it's because the two S's at the end of their name. ACDC, neophascism. Judas Priest, anti-communism and racism. I don't know where that came from. Alice Cooper, violence and vandalism. The Scorpions violent. UFO for the same reason. Pink Floyd.

Distortion of Soviet foreign policy. talking heads myth of the Soviet military threat Donna Summer eroticism Tina Turner sex meaning promoting a sexual revolution Van Halen anti-soviet propaganda

I don't know where there with any anti-soviet propaganda and Hudeo Iglesias, neo-fascism Depeche Mode was violence village people in violence blondie, punk violence, you know, that was it. As far as I know, that's quite real.

And it makes sense when the Jews had long since abandoned that country. And then the Jewish Mafia, when you read Friedman's book, which I recommend you do, read Mafia, many of the Jews that formed the early mob came out of the prison system, out of the Goulog system. And they were sent there for, you know, they were on the black market, Zionism, you know, promoting Jewish nationalism against Soviet interests, stuff like that. So that's how irrational things were getting. You know, and it's just how conservative they were. but just the whole thing is bizarre.

I know everything in Van Halen. I've never come across anti-Soviet propaganda in any of them. I think it was just they were happy, and it was about, you know, it was optimistic. Not something that the Soviet Union, Soviet kids, especially couldn't hear. I think there's hilarious.

All right, we're going to cut it right there because we're having connection issues and plus this will give us just enough to finish up this chapter on the next episode. So yeah, both of us are, both of us are, you're not roboting, but you're delaying. You have a delay in your speech and everything when I'm looking at the video. So we'll just pick this up next time. This has been pretty, this has been the worst. This has been the worst.

I don't know why my speed is perfectly fine. I will remind everybody to anybody who's watching this as I release it today. Please pray for Dr. Johnson and the procedure is going through tomorrow. And to support Dr. Johnson by going over to the show notes and going over to the video descriptions and buy his new book or join Patreon or just send them some love on Cash App. There's a couple of ways to do that over there. And let him know you appreciate him. I'll be praying for you, Dr. Johnson, and I will talk to you in a couple days. Thank you. Thank you very much. All of you.