The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 21

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

52 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.Dr Johnson's PatreonRusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonPete 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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Okay. Could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes. Our Black Friday deals are eye-catching. But the letter chart's over here. Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, 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. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and add free, head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you support me through Substack or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into

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Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to part 21 of our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzhenyson. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today? I'm doing very well, but I can't guarantee the behavior, the cats. They're just waking up and anything can happen. So especially with the kittens.

So just steal yourself because it's just, it's chaotic action. We got a kitten recently, and I am well aware. I was reminded of what having a kitten is like. All right, here we go. Starting chapter six in the Russian Revolutionary Movement. And right up front, there's a bunch of names here right at the beginning that I'm going to stumble over. So please forgive me, you Russian speakers who have contact. If there's a list, you know, you could just skip over them and say, you know, if it gets too bad.

Yeah, there's a ton of names here. that's very possible. They could always just see the text. Okay. All right. In the Russian Revolutionary Movement, in the Russia of the 60s and 70s of the 19th century, when reforms moved rapidly, there were no economic or social motives

for a far-reaching revolutionary movement. Yet it was indeed under Alexander II from the beginning of his reforming work that this movement was born, as to prematurely ripened fruit of ideology. In 1861, there were student demonstrations in St. Petersburg. In 1862, violent fires of criminal origin in St. Petersburg as well, and the sanguinary proclamation of young Russia,

Molodoya Russia, in 1866, Karakazov's gunshots, gunshot, the prodromes of the terrorist era, half a century in advance. Let's stop right here. That first sentence tells you everything you need to know. Russia, in this era, was doing extremely well. It had the most advanced factory legislation in the world.

The urban artel had, you know, thousands of independent workers in the cities. There was no more serfdom. Peasants were governed by their own. democratic communes, Russia was feeding the world. Economic growth, both agriculturally and in terms of, well, in population growth, too, was going through the roof. Incomes all over the place were increasing. Of course, as always, the lowest tax rate in the European world, minimal, I don't think, or zero debt.

and yet you have this revolutionary movement. You also had Jews, and that answers the question. And it was also under Alexander II when the restrictions of the rights of the Jews were so relaxed that Jewish names appeared among the revolutionaries. Neither in the circles of Stankovitch, Herzen, or Ogoriov, nor of that of Petrake, Ketrakev. Khefsky, there had been only one Jew. We do not speak here of Poland. But at the student demonstrations of 1861, Mikuls, Uttin, and Gwen will participate, and we shall find Wutin in the circle of Nakayev. The participation of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement must get our attention. Indeed, radical revolutionary action became a more and more widespread form of

activity among Jewish youth. The Jewish revolutionary movement is a qualitatively important component of the Russian revolutionary movement in general. As for the ratio of Jewish and Russian revolutionaries over the years, it surprises us. Of course, if in the following pages we speak mainly of Jews, this in no way implies that there was not a large number of influential revolutionaries among the Russians. Our focus is warranted by the subject of our study. In fact, until the early 70s, only a few small number of Jews had joined the revolutionary movement and in secondary roles at that, in part no doubt because there were still very few Jews among the students. One learns, for example, that Leon Deutsch at the age of 10 was outraged about Karakazov's gunshot

because he felt patriotic. Similarly, few Jews adhered to the Russian nihilism of the 60s that, nevertheless, by their rationalism, they assimilated easily. nihilism had played an even more beneficial role in Jewish student youth than in Christian youth. Let's define the term. Nialism was a term that became very popular in Russian culture, and not just because of Turgian of either. It doesn't mean that they believe in nothing, despite the Latin. A nihilist in the Russian context was someone like Piazodov.

It was essentially what we would call today a positivist. Someone who claims quite dogmatically that science is the only way to knowledge. So that's not touched by the nihilo and nihilism. And the only way to get knowledge is through observation. So your typical very stereotypical laboratory scientist. And there's no reason to be. believe anything else. You know, it's not that they

don't talk about spiritual things or anything else because they think it's nonsensical and you can't really experiment with it, therefore, it doesn't exist. That's what we mean by a nihilist in the Russian context. So they were essentially a materialist,

atheist, nominalist, or at least deists, you know, and believer in the in the future progress of the scientific method. However, as early as the 70s, the circle of young Jews of the rabbinical school of Vilnius began to play an important role,

among them V. Yocleson, whom we mentioned later, and the well-known terrorist A. Zundolevich, both brilliant pupils destined to be excellent rabbis, A. Lieberman, future editor of La Pravda of Vienna, and Anna Einstein, Maxim Rom, Finkleston. This circle was influential because it was in close contact with the smugglers and permitted clandestine literature as well as illegal immigrants themselves to cross the border.

Mostly coming from Great Britain, by the way. It was in 1868 after high school that Mark Natanson entered the Academy of Medicine and surgery, which would become the Academy of Military Medicine. He will be as an organizer and a leading figure in the revolutionary movement. Soon with the young student Olga Schleisner, his future wife, whom Tika Mirov calls the second Sophia Parovskaya, although at the time she was rather the first. He laid the foundations of a system of so-called pedagogical circles, that is to say, of propaganda, preparatory, cultural, and revolutionary work with intellectuals. Uds in several large cities. These circles were wrongly dubbed Chikovskyists named after one of their lesser

influential members envy Chikovsky. Natanzan distinguished himself very quickly and resolutely from the circle of Nekkaev, and he did not hesitate subsequently to present his views to the examining magistrate. In 1872, he went to Zurich with Pierre Lavrov, the principal representative of the current of Pacific propaganda, which rejected the rebellion. Natinson wanted to establish a permanent revolutionary organ there. In the same year, he was sent to Shenkirsk in close exile, and through the intercession of his father-in-law, the father of Olga Schleiser,

he was transferred to Voronisch, then Finland, and finally released to St. Petersburg. He found there nothing but discouragement, dilapidation, inertia. He endeavored to visit the disunited groups to connect them, to weld them, and thus found that the first land and freedom organization and spending hundreds of thousands of rubles. I think it's safe to say that given how well that Russia was doing, the very fact that they didn't have a prison system, they don't have a, what we would call a regular police force. The Tsar was popular, and under him, every institution was democratic and self-governing. Russia was doing very well, and yet these Jews who personally were doing very well,

it's very rare to find a Jewish revolutionary who wasn't from the upper classes. So what was the problem? the problem is that Jews, once they were set free from their Kahul and anything else and got education in the West and whatever else they were doing, certainly connected with Great Britain, could not, you know,

they couldn't abide by a very strong, prosperous Orthodox Russia with a monarch, a very strong monarchy that controlled its currency. There was no objective reason to overthrow anything. The Jews, however, had a completely different mentality. They hate Christianity. They hate the Third Rome. And they certainly hated Alexander III. If there were no Jews in Russia, 1872, there would have been no revolutionary movement. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper

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Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes, our Black Friday deals are I catching, but the letter charts over here. Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, 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. Among the principal organizers of Russian populace, nationalism, Natinson is the most eminent revolutionary. It was in his wake that the famous Leon Deutsch appeared. As for the ironclad populist Alexander Mikhailov, he was a disciple of Mark the Wise.

Natanson knew many revolutionaries personally. Neither an order nor a writer, he was a born organizer and dad with an astonishing quality. He did not regard opinions and ideology. He did not enter into any theoretical discussions with anyone. He was in accord with all tendencies, with the exception of the extremist positions of Chaka, of Chakev, Lenin's predecessor, placed each and everyone where they could be useful. In those years, when Bakunin supporters and Lavrov supporters were irreconcilable, Natanson proposed to put an end to discussions about the music of the future and to focus instead on the real needs of the cause.

It was he who in the summer of 1876 organized a sensational escape of Pietr Kropotkin on the barbarian, that half-blood who would often be spoken of. In December the same year, he conceived and set up the first public meeting in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan at the end of the Mass on the day of St. Nicholas. All the revolutionaries gathered there, and for the first time, the red flag of land and liberty was displayed. Natanson was arrested in 1877, sentenced to three years detention, then relegated to Yakudia, and dismissed from revolutionary action until 1890. Well, there were two major names dropped here. Bakunin is the first one. My second one is Kropotkin. These are the two major leaders, writers, organizers in the anarchist movement.

anarchism, as silly as it is in this context, was very much a Russian phenomenon. Bakunin, I don't know if this is going to come up later, Bakunin was well aware, and he, as vile as he was in a lot of different ways, he's the one who attacked Karl Marx of simply being a mouthpiece for the Jews, for the Rothschilds. a lot of the leftists don't want to deal with this but Bakunin said that Marxism is a Rothschild front

you know the head of the another revolutionary revolutionary group Kupotkin was a little different and Bakunin also by the way I dedicated a book to Lucifer as the first real revolutionary he's not a good guy

but these are the two probably the two biggest names and anarchism at the time. And obviously, you know, Leninism and anarchism are very different, very different ideologies. You notice here in the end, land and liberty always made me laugh. Land. Well, peasants were already in control of the land. That was the point of the reforms. So I'm not sure what they, you know, they constantly refer to the landlords like they're in Britain.

people still talk about that. The peasants were in full control of the land after 1861, and that got even deeper as time went on. So they deliberately then did something to get arrested. They took out the red flag after the liturgy and at the cathedral, showing that that was the target. The fact that this was an Orthodox country was offensive to these people. there was no objective economic foundation for any kind of revolution, especially one so radical as the anarchist one.

There were a number of Jews in the circle of the Chikovskists in St. Petersburg, as well as in the branches in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa. And Kiev, notably, P.B. Axelrod, whom we had already mentioned, the future Danish publisher and diplomat Gregori Gurevich, future teachers, Semyon, Lory, and Leiser Lowenthal, his brother Namin Lohenthal, and the two commoner sisters. As for the first nihilist circle of Leon Deutsch in Kiev, it was constituted exclusively of young Jewish students. After the demonstration in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, three Jews were tried, but not Natanzan himself. At the trial of the 50, which took place in the summer of 1877 in Moscow, several Jews were charged with spreading propaganda among factory workers. At the trial of the 1393, there were 13 Jews accused. Among the early populace, we can also cite Lusuf Abtecman and Alexander Katinsky,

who were highly influential. I want to note, too, the word populism comes up. I don't like that being used in the Russian context. It has nothing to do with, I remember one day, a The Barnes Review, Willis Cardo came into my office. Oh, there was a populist movement in Russia. What about, I said, I said, Willis, listen, this is not, this has no connection with what we would call populism. This was just a revolutionary movement that thought that somehow they could organize the peasants against the system. Despite they're not being any good reason to join them, we'll see some more comic versions of that. they had no connection with the common people.

I don't think they particularly cared for the common people. But they pretended to, and that's where populism comes from. It's a terrible word to use in this case, but the word's going to come up again and again. And to be clear that this was a nihilistic movement. Natanson's idea was that revolutionary should involve the people, peasants, and be for them like lay spiritual guides. This march to the people, which has become so famous since then, began in 1873 in the Dolgishinian circle, where no Jews were courted.

Later, the Jews also went to the people. The opposite also happened. In Odessa, P. Axelrod tried to attract Jolie Obov in a secret revolutionary organization, but he refused. At the time, he was still a culturter. In the mid-70s, there were only about 20 of these populists all or almost all Lavrov and not Bukunin. Only the most extreme were listening to calls for the insurrection of Bacunin, such as Deutsch, who with the help of Stefanovic, had raised the Chilgoidin revolt by having pushed the peasants into thinking that the Tsar, surrounded by the enemy, had the people saying,

turn back all these authorities seize the land and establish a regime of freedom. It is interesting to note that almost no... The only way they can get listened to is to lie. It's to say, oh, no, the czar, they know how loyal these people are.

So they have to go to them and say, oh, no, the czar wants you to revolt. I'm one of you. I mean, the two-the-people movement, it's called, was really hilarious. It went nowhere. So you have these urban Jews who have probably never seen a peasant before, who just see them as ignorant, totally, you know, underestimating them in every way. They dressed up in peasant garb, which probably was generations out of date, tried to speak the vernacular of the peasant.

Of course, these were Jews. They probably still had an accent. They looked ridiculous. and they realized that the minute they started talking subversive, they'd get into the village and end up getting arrested. They'd just get handed over to the first, you know, get the hell out of here. So when that happened, they had to come up with a plan. Now we have to say, oh, no, we, the czar, we know all about what's going on in Petersburg. We know you love him and we love him too.

He wrote a letter saying, you guys have to kill the nobility. But, you know, his inner circle won't let that be released. That was a tactic that they used over and over again. It didn't go anywhere. They didn't believe them. These people had no idea how ridiculous they must have appeared to the peasants. They completely underestimated their intelligence. So it says all of the stereotypes that these Jewish leftists had about the peasantry,

trying to actually go to them and talk to them was really, it was a comedy. and they ended up you know they ended up probably getting beaten up and they weren't killed but they were they were beaten up and roughed up and kicked out you know with it with this like we would call today someone going to the

rednecks with a Brooklyn accent would be something like like what this was so it really was it's a comic failure but it was that that that tells you a lot about the Jewish mentality how arrogant that they thought that well we could just tell those people anything they're like

children. And it didn't quite work that way. 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. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro, search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Cooper. Design that moves.

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Dunebeg. Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. It is interesting to note that almost no Jewish revolutionary launched into the revolution because of poverty, but most of them came from wealthy families. In the three volumes of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, there is no shortage of examples. Only Paul Axelrod came from a very poor family, and, as we have already said, he had been sent by the Kahal to an institution solely to supplement the established quota. From there, very naturally, he entered the gymnasium of Mogilev, then the high school of Nijin. Came from wealthy merchant environment.

It came from wealthy merchant environments. Natanson, Deutsch, Aptekman, whose family had many Talmudist doctors of the law, including all his uncles, Katinsky, Garevich, Simeon Lurie, whose family, even in this milieu, was considered aristocratic, little Simon was also destined to be a rabbi, but under the influence of the Enlightenment, his father, Gertzlory, had entrusted his son to college to become a professor, the first Italian Marxist Anne Rosenstein, surrounded from childhood by governesses speaking several languages, the tragic figures of Moses Rabinovich and Betty Kamenka, Felice Shefftel, Joseph of Gozov, members of the Black repartition, among many others. And then again, Christina

Kasha Grinberg of a wealthy traditionalist merchant family who in 1880 joined the will of the people. Her dwelling housed clandestine meetings, she was an accomplice in the attacks on Alexander II, and even became in 1882 the owner of a clandestine dynamite factory that was condemned to deportation. Neither did fans. Mourinus come from a poor family. She also participated in the preparation of the attacks against the Emperor Alexander II and spent two years in the prison of Kara. Some came from families of rabbis, such as the future doctor of philosophy, Leibouv Axelrod, or Ida Axelrod. There were also families of the petty bourgeoisie, but wealthy enough to put their children through college, such as Azeek-Iranchik,

After college, he entered the School of Engineers of St. Petersburg, where he soon abandoned to embark in revolutionary activities. Alexander Bebergall, Vladimir Bogoros, Lazarus Goldenberg, the Lowenthal Brothers, often mentioned as made in the biographies of the aforementioned of the Academy of Military Medicine, notably in those of Natinson, Birbergal, Isaac Pavlovsky, Future Counter-Revolutionary, Emrovinovich, A. Katinsky, Solomon Chonovsky, Solomon Aronson, who happens to be involved in these circles, among others. Therefore, it was not material need that drove them, but the strength of their convictions. I think, I'm pretty sure he's being, he's being sarcastic here. When I wrote a book published by the Barns Review, actually, called the Soviet Experiment. And it's unique because it starts off saying, I'm going to show you that class, the workers, the proletariat had zero to do with the agenda of Lenin and Trotsky. That was a pretext.

The point of all of this was to figure out some way to destabilize what at the time was a relatively popular. monarchy, a relatively popular church, despite the old believers, get rid of them and take the wealth of this massive area for themselves. Don't forget, there's one key element here. As far as revolutionaries outside of Russia, Russia was seen as the ogre. Russia single-handedly destroyed revolutionaries. I mean, you know, in 1848, it was. Nicholas I first that put the emperor who had been driven out of Vienna back on the throne. He didn't get thanked for it. In fact, you got a war out of it, but Karl Marx says this.

Engel says this. We could go on and on talking about the Marxists, how they despise the Slav, and in particular, the Eastern Slav of the Russian Orthodox. These people were slated for annihilation. This comes straight out of Marxian. angles and very uncharacteristic. They get all emotional about it and stuff. They loved the Crimean War. They hated the anti-war movement that was developing in England over the Crimean War. But class, equality, the proletariat, that had absolutely nothing to do

with their hatred of the Russian monarchy and church. And therefore, the Soviet system was not about to concern themselves with the workers who, they didn't know, didn't understand, and didn't like. It is not without interest to note that in these Jewish families, the adhesion of young people to the revolution has rarely, or not at all, provoked a break between father and sons between parents and their children. The fathers did not go after the sons very much, as was then the case in Christian families,

although Gessia Gelfman had to leave her family a traditional old alliance family in secret. The fathers were often very far from opposing their children. Thus, Gors Lurie, as well as Isaac Kaminer, a doctor from Kiev, the whole family participated in the revolutionary movement of the 70s, and himself, as a sympathizer, rendered great service to the revolutionaries. Three of them became the husbands of his daughters. In the 1990, he joined the Zionist movement and became the friend. Is that, should be the 1890s? It has to be, yeah. Yeah, in the 1890s, he joined the Zionist movement and became the friend of Ahad Ham.

Neither can we attribute anti-Russian motivations to these early Jewish revolutionaries, as some do in Russia today. In no way. It all began with the same nihilism of the 60s. Having initiated itself to Russian education and to Goy culture, having been imbued with Russian literature, Jewish youth was quick to join the most progressive movement of the time, nihilism, and with an ease all the greater as it broke out with the prescriptions of the past. Even the most fanatical of the students of a yeshiva immersed in the study of the Talmud, after two or three minutes of conversation with the nihilists, broke with a patriarchal mode of thought. He, the Jew even pious, had only barely grazed the surface

of goy culture. He had only carried out a breach in his vision of the traditional world, but already he was able to go far, very far, to the extremes. These young men were suddenly gripped by the great universal ideals, dreaming of seeing all men become brothers and all enjoying the same prosperity. The task was sublime to liberate mankind from misery and slavery. And in order to convince someone of that, one of the great things about positivism and this nihilistic mentality is that it was very simple. you just get rid of your differences among people saying the only thing we really know is what we can observe

we don't have to worry about God we don't have to worry about the moral order that was a big one that's why it doesn't take very long to you know uh you could you could go to the jewish owned bars and brothels and not have to worry about confessing later it was a big deal to be able to say something like that um you know um you know monasticism in the ruffer Russian Empire was a shadow its former self, thanks to Peter the Great and Catherine, although it was reviving tremendously at this period of time. You know, it's very easy to convince somebody, especially, you know, a young man, his hormones are going crazy.

It won't take long to get him to join you if he thinks he's going to get late. Remember, there was no interaction between men and women generally. prior to the sexual revolution, it rarely happened. Unmarried women were, you know, not hidden away, but they were, you couldn't just go wandering off with a strange boy. These people, of course, were all sexual revolutionaries. And I tell you, we all know the one thing that the Jew doesn't believe in is the brotherhood of man. But all of these very simple, you know, we know we roll our eyes to this stuff today. but at the time, it's not something that you heard every day.

Going to, you know, the Russian Orthodox Church is hard. It's difficult. We're in Lent right now. It's always a struggle. We're always falling. You know, the standards are very high. How wonderful would it be to live a life doesn't have any standard. So it doesn't take long to convince the weaker young men that maybe there's something to this.

And they could go home and they could Russian literature was full of this stuff. Adustaceki made fun of it all the time. We believe in the brotherhood of man. How can you be against that? And that's it. But of course, the agenda behind it was far deeper. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th

because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value.

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Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Subject to lending criteria, terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunbeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa, savor sumptuous farm-fresh dining,

relax in our exquisite accommodations, step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Farage. And there played the role of Russian literature. Pavel Axelrod in high school had as his teachers Turgenev, Bilinski,

Dubrovobov and later LaSalle, who would make him turn to the revolution. Abtachman was fond of Chernshevsky. Let's go through the list. Look at the text. Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lizar Goldenberg, too, had read and reread all of these. And Rudin, who had died in the barricades, was his hero. Solomon Chudnovsky, a great admirer of Pissarev, wept when he died.

The nihilism of Semy and Lurie was born of Russian literature. He had fed on it. This was the case for a very large number. The list would be too long. But today, a century late... I'm sorry. I want to remind everybody that speaking of Russian literature, I have a book that I wrote many years ago on the topic,

the orthodox ideal in Russian literature. Right now it's on sale at Lulu, which is just a vendor. I published it I don't know about 9 million years ago and a lot of Gogol and this kind of thing

Russian literature was one place where the traditionalist orthodox ideal was very much still alive Google of course I've been dead by this point but if you're interested in the orthodox understanding

of literature that book might help although I was very young when I wrote it but today a century later there are few who remember the atmosphere of those years. No serious political action was taking place in the street of the Jews, as it was then called, while in the street of the Russians, populism was rising. It was quite simple. It was enough to sink and merge into the movement of Russian liberation. Now this fusion was more easily facilitated, accelerated by Russian literature and the writings of radical

publicists. By turning to the Russian world, these young people turned away from the Jewish, Jewish world. Many of them conceived hostility and disdain to Judaism of their fathers, just like toward a parasitic anomaly. In the 70s, there were small groups of radical Jewish youths who, in the name of the ideals of populism, moved more and more away from their people, began to assimilate vigorously and to appropriate the Russian national spirit. Until the mid-70s, the socialist Jews did not consider it necessary to do political work with their fellow men, because they thought the Jews have never possessed land and thus cannot assimilate socialist ideas. The Jews never had peasants of their own. None of the Jewish revolutionaries of the 70s could conceive of the idea of acting

for one's own nation alone. It was clear that one only acted in the dominant language and only for the Russian peasants. For us, there were no Jewish workers. We looked at them with the eyes of russifiers. The Jew must assimilate completely with the native population. Even artisans were regarded as potential exploiters, since they had apprentices and employees. In fact, Russian workers and craftsmen were not accorded any importance as an autonomous class. They existed only as future socialists who would facilitate work in the peasant world. Assimulation once accepted, these young people, by their situation, naturally tended towards radicalism, having lost on this new soil the solid conservative roots of their former environments. A revolutionary has to look and sound like a Russian.

You know, I think that's mainly what's being said here. You can't preach this as a blatant foreigner who can barely speak Russian. the fact that these occurred in the revolutionary movements developed in yeshivas and talmud schools you know of course that's no no shock there were aspects of it that irritated the older generation but that's pretty much universal assimilation meant that we can present ourselves as russian Remember, there was no Zionism. I shouldn't say that.

There was Zionism at the time, but it was very minor. Only the most radical Jews were interested in. No, they wanted to completely remake the goyous society under their control. That was as close as they were going to get. So I think that's what he means by saying you can't act in one's nation alone. There were so few of them relative to one of Russian. But you had to look and sound like a Russian in order to pull this all. we were preparing to go to the people, and of course, to the Russian people.

We denied the Jewish religion, like any other religion. We considered our jargon an artificial language and Hebrew a dead language. We were sincere assimilators, and we saw in the Russian education and culture salvation for the Jews. Why then did we seek to act among the Russian people, not the Jewish people? It comes from the fact that we had become strangers to the spiritual culture of the Jews of Russia, and that we rejected their thinkers who belonged to a traditionalist bourgeoisie from the ranks of which we had left ourselves. We thought that when the Russian people would be freed from the despotism and yoke of the ruling classes, the economic and political freedom of all the peoples of Russia, including the Jewish people, would arise.

And it must be admitted that Russian literature has also somewhat inculcated the idea that the Jewish people were not a people, but a parasitic class. also came into play the feeling of debt owed to the people of Great Russia, as well as the faith of the populist rebels and the imminence of a popular insurrection. In the 70s, the Jewish intellectual youth went to the people in the hope of launching with its feeble hands, the peasant revolution in Russia. As Abtickman writes, Natanson, like the hero of the mystery of Lermontov, knew the hold of only one thought, lived only one. but burning passion. This thought was the happiness of the people, this passion, the struggle for liberation. Aptuckman himself, as depicted by Deutsch, was emaciated of small stature, pale complexion, with very pronounced national features.

Having become a village nurse, he announced socialism to the peasants through the gospel. Let's be clear. He's also an instantist writing this from the point of view of the Narodnik, of the people's will organization. This is at a minimum what they were telling themselves, or at least what they were telling the public. Of course, a lot of this isn't true, but he's putting their position first before anything.

It was a little under the influence of their predecessors, the members of the Delgoucian Circle, which inscribed on the branches of the crucifix in the name of Christ, liberty, quality, fraternity, and almost all preached to gospel that the first Jewish populace turned to Christianity, which they used as a support point and as an instrument. Apdickman writes about himself, I have converted to Christianity by a movement from the heart and love for Christ,

not to be confused with the motives of Tan Borgeras, who in the 80s had converted to Christianity to escape the vexations of his Jewish origin, nor with the faith of Deutsch, with the feints of Deutsch, who went to preach the Molokanis by presenting himself as a good orthodox. How bad did I pronounce Molokanus? Yeah, I'll live. Probably as good as I would. Okay. But adds Abtachman, in order to give oneself to the people, there is no need to repent.

With regard to the Russian people, I had no trace of repentance. Moreover, where could it have come from? It is not rather for me, the descendant of an oppressed nation, to demand the settlement of this dealing, instead of paying the repayment of some. I am not sure which fantastic loan. Nor have I observed this feeling of repentance among my comrades of the nobility

who were walking with me on the same path. Again, this is from the point of view of the revolutionaries. These were atheists. They didn't convert to anything. But if you're going to try to develop a, peasant revolution, you at least have to know the basic vocabulary. If there's two groups of people that were completely opposite, it was your urban Jew and the Russian peasant.

They had zero in common. They had lungs and heart and brain. That's probably it. So, of course, they didn't literally convert. and of course there's no care or interest whatsoever in the Old Testament. That was never the issue. The Talmud was way too long for them to worry about. The Jews are going, and they weren't saying this at the time, but in Germany they were.

Moses has the Jews are going to be their own Messiah. That sounds a lot better than the minute regulations of the Talmud. That doesn't mean the spirit of the Talmud wasn't operating here. So keep in mind, Solzhenitsyn is laying out their public persona, most of which isn't true, but converting to Christianity, you have to put that in quotes. Let us note in this connection that the idea of rapprochement between the desired socialism and historical Christianity was not unconnected with many Russian revolutionaries at the time and as justification for their action and as a convenient tactical procedure.

V.V. Florovsky wrote, I always had in mind the comparison between this youth who was preparing for action and the first Christians. And immediately after, the next step, by constantly turning this idea into my head, I have come to the conviction that we will reach our goal only by one means, by creating a new religion. It is necessary to teach the people to devote all their forces to oneself exclusively. I wanted to create the religion of brotherhood, and the young disciples of Floreski tried to lead, the experiment by wondering how a religion that would have neither God nor saints would be received by the people? Well, one thing we know is that they had to use the old vocabulary. This kind of

nonsense, it didn't, you know, it didn't really go anywhere. But how it would be received, well, it depends on, you know, there's no way you could talk to a peasant, low nobility, you know, lower ranks, nobility at the time, without being Orthodox, unless you put things in an Orthodox way. This was, as he says, a tactical procedure. You're not going to get anywhere unless you, you know, put yourself forth that way. They say stupid things like, oh, no, we're orthodox.

We're going back to the early generations of Christianity. The liberation theology kind of nonsense. So that's what's happening here. His disciple, Gamov, from the circle of Dalgushin, wrote even more crudely, We must invent a religion that would be against the Tsar and the government. We must write a catechism and prayers in this spirit. The revolutionary action of the Jews in Russia is also explained in another way.

We find that exposed and then refuted by a Zhebrinochoff, there is a view that if through the reforms of the years 1860 to 1863, the Pala settlement had been abolished, our whole history would have unfolded, otherwise. If Alexander II had abolished a palest settlement, there would have been neither the Bund nor Trotskyism. Then he mentioned the internationalist and socialist idea that flowed from the West and wrote, if the suppression of the palest settlement had been of capital importance to them, all their struggle would have reached towards it. Now they were occupied with everything else.

They dreamed of overthrowing czarism. And one after the other, driven by the same passion, they abandoned their studies, notably the Academy of Military Medicine, to go to the people. Every diploma was marked with the seal of infamy as a means of exploitation of the people. They renounced any career, and some broke with their families. For them, every day not put to good use constitutes an irreparable loss, criminal for the realization of the well-being and happiness of the disinherited masses. And yet they wanted for nothing. and I think pretty soon we're going to see the role of Great Britain in financing a lot of these selfless revolutionaries.

But in order to go to the people, it was necessary to make oneself simple, both internally for oneself and practically, to inspire confidence to the masses of the people. One had to infiltrate it under the guise of a workman or a mouchik. However, writes Deutsch, how can you go to the people be heard and be believed when you are betrayed, by your language, your appearance, and your manners. And still, to seduce the listeners, you must throw jokes and good words in popular language. And we must also be skillful in work of the fields, so painful to townspeople. For this reason, Katinsky worked on the farm with his brother and worked there as a plowman. The Lowenthal brothers learned shoemaking in carpentry.

Betty Kamenskaya entered as a worker in a spinning mill to a very hard position. position. Many became caregivers. Deutsch writes that, on the whole, other activities were better suited to these revolutionary Jews, works within factions, conspiracy, communications, typography, border crossing. So this is like when an actor has an upcoming role and the role is working in a factory, well, they go and work in a factory. This is the exact same kind of thing. They're putting on an act. but because they got beaten up the last time they did this, now we have to absolutely try to convince these people

who aren't as dumb as we thought that we really are just like them. I'm going to get rid of the accent. And I think that's a great analogy. They're actors that are researching a role, and that's exactly what's happening here. The march to the people began with short visits, stays of a few months, a fluid march.

At first, they relied only on the, work of agitation. It was imagined that it would suffice to convince the peasants to open their eyes to the regime and power and the exploitation of the masses, and to promise that the land and the instruments of production would become the property of all. In fact, this whole march to the people of the populace ended in failure, and not only because of some inadvertent gunshot directed against the czar, which obliged them all to flee the country and to hide very far from the cities, but above all, because the peasants perfectly deaf to their preaching were even sometimes ready to hand them over to the authorities.

The populace, the Russians, hardly more fortunate, like the Jews, lost the faith in a spontaneous revolutionary will and in the socialist instincts of the peasantry and transformed into impenitent pessimists. I think pessimism just means, okay, if they're not going to go along, we're going to have to use more coercive methods of, convincing.

Clandestine action, however, worked better. Three residents of Minsk, Lesav Goetzov, Sal Lefkv, and Sal Grinfest, succeeded in setting up a clandestine press in their city that would serve the country as a whole. It survived until 1881. It was there that was printed in gold letters

to leaflet on the execution of Alexander II. It printed the newspaper the Black repartition, and then the proclamations of the will of the people. Deutsch referred to them as peaceful propagandists. Apparently, the term peaceful embraced everything that was not bombing, smuggling, illegal border crossing, and even the call to avoid paying taxes, appeal to the peasants of Lizar Goldenberg. Many of these Jewish revolutionaries were heavily condemned, heavily even by the measures of

our time. Some benefited from a reduction of their punishment, like Semy and Lurie, thanks a to his father who obtained for him a less severe regime in prison. There was also public opinion which leaned towards indulgence. Aptichmann tells us that in 1881, after the assassination of Alexander II, they lived relatively freely in the prison in Krasnaya, where the director of the prison, a real wild beast, was suddenly tamed and gave us all kinds of permissions to contact the deportees and our friends.

then we were well we were received in transition transit prisons not as detainees but as noble captives the prison director came in accompanied by soldiers carrying trays with tea biscuits jam for everyone and as a bonus a small glass of vodka was it not idyllic we were touched i've read over the years quite a bit of this movement's literature and the secondary literature that that goes along with the one thing that doesn't don't on them is that these people are doing very well, especially compared to the West. You don't have, you know, you don't have surf conditions. You don't have, you had far more populists in the legitimate sense. Popular government, I mean, peasants in the commune, that was their government. That was what they came across every day. Everyone had a voice.

yeah, that was socialist, although not in a materialistic way. They just figured, well, we can go and take that concept and as long as we make it, you know, secular and we control it, it'll be fine. And it just doesn't work that way. And pretty soon they're going to, they're going to just reject the whole thing and start from scratch. I think this is a natural stopping point, you know, start getting. I was just thinking that. Yeah, I think that's true. All right. So we'll end it right here. As I always do, remind you to go to the show notes on any platform.

They'll be there. And there'll be links where you can support Dr. Johnson's work. And maybe go to his page and reach out and thank him for this. And thank him also with a little donation or set up something monthly. and I'm sure he would appreciate it, as we all do when we're trying to do, or we're trying to do this as much as we can and put out as much material as we could possibly can.

Do you agree? I agree, yes, indeed. Yep. All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson, and I will see you in a couple days. On Wednesday. Bye-bye.