The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 31

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

56 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.

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 favourite 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. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. 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 Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply.

Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Savour sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the Wild Atlantic Surounds. 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 Dune-Bend. Search Trump, Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kosh Farage. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and ad-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 any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file and you can listen to it any way you wish.

I really appreciate the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows me to basically put out an episode every day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two, even three a day. And yeah, can't do it without you. So thank you for the support. 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 31 of our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Salshenyessen. How are you doing today, Dr. Johnson? I am under attack. by a, I don't know what the, what the collective name is, but a, a swarm of stink bugs. I don't know what the, what the real name is, but there, I think a swarm would be somewhat dramatic, but, but there's a lot of them. And the cats are useless. They don't really care about them too much. But, yeah, you never know what's going to happen around here. Since me and you are both in the middle of nowhere, this sort of thing is to be expected.

I haven't had a stink bug attack in a while, but this year is bad. How are you doing? Doing good. I had a couple get in. Had a couple wasps in the last week get in. So not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, like real wasps. Oh, right, right. The infect, yeah.

Yes. So, yeah, had to. My cats don't care about the stink bugs either, but the wasps, oh, they want to get stung by those really bad. Yeah, yeah, you all have seen the pictures of the dogs who get stung by a bee and their face looks like, you know, looks like a, looks like a catrish mint. Yeah. All right, moving on. In addition to the grain trade, the wood trade and sugar industry where they occupied a predominant position, other areas must be cited in which the Jews largely contributed to development. flower milling, fur trade, spinning mills, confection, the tobacco industry, the brewery.

In 1835, they were also present at the major fairs in Nizhny Novgorod. In Trans-Bakalia, they launched a livestock trade which took off in the 90s, and the same happened in Siberia for their production of coal. Andero Suji Hard Coal and the extraction of gold, where they played a major role. And after 1892, the Ginsburg devoted themselves almost exclusively to the extraction of gold. The most prosperous enterprise was the Lena Gold Mining Company, which was controlled, in fact, from 1896 until its death in 1909, by Baron Horace Ginsburg, son of Everald Ginsburg, found of the bank of the same name and president of its branch in St. Petersburg. The son of Horace, David, also a baron, remained at the head of the Jewish community of St. Petersburg until his death in 1910.

His sons, Alexander and Alfred sat on the board of Lena, the gold mining company. Another son, Vladimir, married the daughter of the owner of the Kiev sugar factory, L.I. Brodsky. Horace Ginsburg was also the founder of the gold extraction companies from, I'm not going to read these names, and a few others. In 1912, a huge scandal about the Lena mines broke out and caused quite a stir throughout the country. The operating conditions were abominable.

The workers had been misled. Appropriately, the Tsarist government was accused of everything and demonized. No one in the regional liberal press mentioned the main shareholders, notably the Ginsburg's sons. If you go to my archives, the Orthodox Nationalist, on Radio Island, Albion, you will find, I want to say, six weeks ago, maybe two months, maybe a little bit more. I did a lecture on precisely that last few sentences there. The, you know, Jewish left this on the outside, Jewish left this on the inside, pretended to be opponents, but in fact the agenda was the same.

and it goes to show the press to a great extent, not like in the U.S., under Jewish control, there was no censorship at all, at least none effective. Maybe the few in Petersburg may have been, but, yeah, they went out of their way to make sure that, I mean, mining is rough to begin with. When you think that the miners are goyam, it gets even worse.

and of course everything that the press said at the time was translated into English in Britain and then eventually found its way to America and not a shred of that story was ever challenged by anybody. I have a, you know, I spent an hour, I have a paper, I don't know, in very rough form right now on that same topic,

but it was, so given the time period, 1912, This was, you know, the war was only a couple of years away. And the left, which was Jewish, used this without ever saying who ran it, blaming the monarchy. A few people got killed. And, of course, in a very strategic area. Now, besides that, I'm happy that Shulzhenits and notes that these people are carrying each other. You know, sugar, gold, you know, Jews are clearly involved in monopolizing

very lucrative industries, fundamental industries. I mean, coal, you can't get any more fundamental than that, especially at the time. The Rothschilds had an interest in the oil in Baku, Azerbaijan today. Baku, of course, the capital city. So they were not just dominating these industries, which were very strategic, but marrying into one another, so you have even more cohesiveness, even more ethnic focus. I guarantee you that was an arranged marriage for the sake of strategy more than anything else. But there's a lot here. But as far as Alina is concerned, the revolutionaries made a big deal about that,

blaming the monarchy for it for some reason while it was the Jews who created and violated all of the Azarist factory legislation. You can't treat workers like that in Russia. It's hard to enforce, but they did it anyway. And of course, they essentially invented a story,

like the pogroms, like somebody like bloody Sunday, like all the other things that the press there invented and was taken as absolute truth in France, Britain, and then eventually in the U.S., and that is that Lena in particular, is repeated word for word from leftist propaganda in the academic literature on the topic today. At the beginning of the 20th century, Jews represented 35% of the merchant class in Russia. Shulgin gives us what he observed in the southwest region.

Where have they gone, Russian traders? Where is the Russian third state? In time, we had a strong. Russian bourgeoisie. Where have they gone? They were ousted by the Jews lowered into the social ladder to the state of Moushiks. The Russians in the southwest region have chosen their own fate. It is clear, and at the beginning of the century, the eminent politician Viigurko observed, the place of the Russian merchant is more and more frequently taken by a Jew. The Jews also gained influence and authority in the booming sector of the cooperative system. More than half of the mutual

credit and savings and loan companies were in the palest settlement. 86% of their members in 1911 were Jewish. I don't have a lot to add here because we've dealt with this already. The difference between the Jewish merchants and pretty much any other merchant in the world. We've already discussed the forms of competition, their creation of advertising, the so-called general store where everything else was special. you know, the push cart, these things were unheard of trying to undercut, undercut competition. The push cart was important because there was no overhead, and that was used to lower the price.

And then, of course, once everyone else was out of business, they brought it back up again. And, you know, this wasn't a significant factor in the merchant class prior to the Jews being in Russian great numbers after the partition of Poland. There's a mountain of literature on this. None of it can really talk about this the way we do. But Muzhik, this is another word for peasant, maybe a lower peasant. But when you talk about the merchant class, you can't just use that word. It's an abstraction. The way that the Jews approached it and the way that Russians and pretty much everyone else approached it are very different.

And even when we go back to the Italian republics, I've dealt with these, you know, a few centuries earlier in the, created the Renaissance. Jews are in almost every aspect of this, sometimes taking Italian sounding names. They were kicked out of every one of those republics as well in dealing with Byzantium. Eventually, they helped bring it down, the empire down. It gets dangerous, though. when you're starting to see the banking industry falling under their control

and if it wasn't for the monarchy keeping control of the currency at that level the entire financial system would have been completely essentially under Rothschild control with their branches all over all over the west of Russia

our history would be very very different ready for huge savings we'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th 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. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. 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 Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of hire 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 Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Save us 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 Dune-Beg. Search Trump, Ireland gift vouchers, Trump on Dunbiog, Kosh Farage. We have already spoken of the construction and operation of the Russian railways by the Poli Yakov brothers Blyak and Varsovsky. What, with the exception of the very first lines, almost all the railways that were later built were made by concessionary companies

in which the Jews occupied the command posts. But as of the 1890s, the state was the first builder. On the other hand, it was under the leadership of David Margoline that was created in 1883, the Great Shipping Company on the NEPA and its tributaries, the main shareholders of which were Jews. In 1911, the company owned the fleet of 78 vessels in account of 71% of the traffic on the Nieper. Other companies operated on the Western Divina, the Neiman, joined the Merinsky Canal, and the Volga. There were also about 10 oil companies belonging to Jews, from Baku. The biggest were the oil company belonging to the brothers S and M. Poliak and to Rothschild

and to the joint stock company of the Caspian Black Sea behind which was found the name of Rothschild. These companies were not allowed to extract oil. They specialized in refining and exporting. You keep in mind in the early years of Putin's presidency, they tried to you know, the oligarchic class that was created in the wake of the fall of the USSR was almost exclusively Jewish. And if you remember Mikhail Kodikoski, the oil magnate, you know, he was one of the most corrupt billionaire at like, you know, 30, was arrested on his way to sell Siberian oil fields to ExxonMobil. Putin says, there's a million reasons we have

to arrest this guy. But if those fields would have been sold to not only a foreign but a hostile power, Russian sovereignty couldn't have existed. Now, I always have to use the qualifier

that domestically oil, natural gas comprised maybe 10% of, at the most of Russian GDP. I mean, Norway is far more dependent on oil than Russia. Externally, it's higher than that. It could be as high as 40% or more, depending on how we define oil, you know, how much, you know, that's because that's a huge industry.

So this isn't the first time. This clearly has been a plan of the Jewish mentality. for a long time in Russia. And when you talk about coal, things like sugar, oil, the basics like livestock, that's the foundation of an economy. And had the revolution that occurred and had the monarchy remained, they would have had to deal with this in one way or another. The revolution was either going to look like it did in 1917

or like it did in 1995. It's pretty much the same group of people with the same outcome. but, you know, I think by this point in the discussion, we realized that the Jews have been, you know, bringing these people in after the partitions of Poland was a disaster. Despite how well Russia was doing at the time, contrary to all the mythology, all the peasantry was doing,

and even the merchant class was doing, despite all that, This actually was despite the fact that Jews had taken over some of this, and this would have continued in centralization. And depending on, let's say that Zorniglas survived, whoever would have come later, they may have found one pliable enough to give over the currency to the Rothschild family. That what if is kind of important,

but the revolution was going to occur under Jewish control in one form or another, or Russia would be the large, expulsion of Jews in the many, many times that's occurred in history in terms of the number of people removed. One of those three things would have had to happen. But it was in finance that the economic activity of the Jews was the most brilliant. Credit is an area where Jews have long felt at home. They have created new ways and it perfected the old. They played a leading role in the hands of a few large capitalists and in the organization of commercial investment banks. The Jews

brought out of their ranks, not only the banking aristocracy, but also the mass of employees. The bank of Evesel Ginsburg, founded in 1859 in St. Petersburg, grew in strengthened thanks to its links to the Mendelssohn in Berlin, the Warburg, in Hamburg, the Rothschilds in Paris and Vienna. But when the financial crisis of 1892 broke out and because of the government's refusal to support its banks with loans, as that happened twice before, E. Ginsburg, we withdrew from business. By the 70s, there existed a network of banks founded by the three Polyakov brothers, Jacob, Samuel, and Lazar. These are the Azov-Don commercial bank to be later managed by B. Kaminka, the mortgage lending of Moscow, the Don Land Bank, the Polyakov Bank, the International Bank,

and a few other houses, which will later form the unified bank. The Bank of Siberia had a Soloveitchik at its head, the Commercial Bank of Warsaw was directed by I. Blyok. In several other large establishments, Jews occupied important posts. In two large banks only, the Commercial Bank of Moscow and that of the Volga Kama, there were no Jews either in the leadership or among the staff. The Polyakov brothers all had the rank of secret counselor, and as we have said, all three were granted hereditary nobility. Yeah, there's not much to add to this. There's no denying it.

Talking like this can get you sent to prison in the European Union and Canada. But this is where liberal republics come from. That's essentially what a republic is. A monarchy is able to keep a lid on this as much as humanly possible. I'll repeat myself. If Nicholas II had survived, there would have had to have been a mass expulsive or

nationalization, which kind of makes more sense, or else they would have simply taken over the economy entirely. You know, a handful of them. And foreign policy would have been dictated by banging connections in Britain and France.

So these are extremely important issues and numbers, but you're not going to find them in your typical textbook, which means a historian out there in academia writing about this and not talking about this, this era, and not mentioning this, sounds ridiculous. Whether he knows that he simply can't do it or he just doesn't know, it doesn't matter. But talking about the Russian economy, the turn of the century, and not mentioning all of this, which is what they do, you see the distortion that's going to come out in these textbooks.

And the theories that then are based on that without knowledge of this stuff, clearly this was an ethnic economy at certain levels. And it was only a strong monarchy that was able to make sure the land stayed in peasant hands, the Artel or the kind of the commune, although in the cities, with shared tools and everything else for artisans, they were protected. It's one of the reasons that the commune existed was to make sure that that land was completely inalienable. had that not existed and had the monarchy not been there, the peasants would have been completely

dispossessed and then mobilized by the Jews to take over whatever Russian government existed. Thus at the dawn of the 20th century, the palest settlement had already completely emptied itself of its substance. It had not prevented the Jews from occupying solid positions in the vital sectors of the country's life, from economy and finance to the intellectual sphere. The pale no longer had any practical utility. It's economic and political purpose was outdated. It had only filled the Jews with anti-government bitterness and resentment. It had thrown oil on the fire of social discontent and had struck the Russian government with the seal of infamy in the eyes of the West. You know, when you're this privilege, as a

Jews were, with this level of power, and of course they were only promoting each other, you have to invent problems. You know, they're still revolutionaries, despite how well they're treated. One has nothing to do with the other. So you have to create problems. You have to invent stories to give some mental justification for killing people. And that's where all of this, you know, the programs and everything else came from. The Pala Settlement was a very privileged part of the empire. It's always been very porous. Now, of course, it essentially didn't exist. And it was a home base, essentially for them. Discontent? What are they talking about? No other group in Russia. Maybe the Germans, yeah, maybe the Germans were doing better. But Germans were finding their presence in the state

and sometimes in the army. The Jews, of course, outside of that in finance. And even the other industries that they controlled, it was still financial. They weren't out in the fields, you know, or in the foundry. They were, you know, it was still a map. of finance. When you have your friends and all these other industries and you're marrying industries to each other through their children, you have a very powerful and very hostile tiny minority in the country. But they still were revolutionaries, so they had to create things. And given that the neuroticism of the Jewish mind, it wasn't that hard to do. So, again, writing a history of the revolutionaries,

revolution and not mentioning any of this is what you're going to get is sounds nice, but you know, it's, they're operating with access to maybe half the information. The other half they're not allowed to talk about. So what do you get? What product are you going to get there? And that's why academia is a joke in these areas. Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse

sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Coupra plug-in hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers.

Coopera. Design that moves. 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.

Savour 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. But let us be clear, this Russian Empire with the slowness and sclerosis of its bureaucracy, the mentality of its leaders, where and in, what way did it fall behind all through the 19th century and decades before the revolution? It had been unable to settle a dozen major problems affecting the life of the country. It had not been able to organize local civil self-government, install Zemfuss in rural districts, carry out agrarian reform, remedy the state of pernition.

state, pernicious state of humiliation of the church or communicate with civil society and make its action understood. It had managed neither the boom of mass education nor the development of Ukrainian culture. To this list, let us add another point where the delay proved catastrophic. The revision of the real conditions of the pale settlement, the awareness of their influence on all positionings of the state. The Russian authorities have had 100 years and more to solve the problems of the Jewish population, and they have not been able to do so, neither in the sense of an open assimilation, nor by allowing the Jews to remain involuntary isolation, that which was already theirs a century before.

This is a very weird paragraph. And I don't know, I don't know what he's getting at. Civil self-government at the local level was already there. The state apparatus may have, in Petersburg, may have. empowered it. But it was there, even before Alexander II, it was empowered under Alexander the Second and the reforms of 1861. Agrarian reform had been done already. The humiliation of the church, unfortunately, I mean, that's, that's a bit dramatic. But after Peter the Great, you know, I've, I'm working on a book on this topic. I have many lectures on it to force the church. And this

has nothing to do. We had many great saints in this era. This is, you know, at the level of, of, you know, the empire as a whole. And it was very, you know, especially financially, it was very tightly controlled at that level, not doctrine or anything like that.

But from Peter the Great to Catherine the second, these essentially westernized non-Or, they were they converted to orthodoxy, but they really weren't Orthodox at all. Peter the Great was a Freemason. The Freemasons dominated the country in the middle of the 18th century. Yeah, they did do a lot of damage to the church.

that took a you know 100 years to to be able to work through and of course it ended in 1917 anywhere so he's right on that one mass education was a fact too i don't know what mass means but um the massive amounts of money the increasing amounts of money spent on education was extraordinary under alexander and nicholas Ukrainian culture that was a huge error on their part that's true but the Jewish question which we've been talking about for God knows it feels like three years now he couldn't be

any more correct but it certainly wasn't from a lack of trying and it wasn't from a lack of commissions that just seemed to be the habitual answer to things and it never came up with an answer the only one that really mattered was the first one the Dershavin commission he explained the problem

but as Jews became more and more powerful that was forgotten. And as members of the Senate and Russian elites, many of whom were unfortunately Freemasons and Westernizers were in business with these people. So as the commissions went on, as the 19th century went on, they became less and less relevant

because they were being very closely watched, if not staffed by the Jews themselves. We spent a lot of time, and I have a paper on the Dershavin Commission. It was extremely important. You don't read about it very much. You don't hear about it very much. That stated the issue.

Everything else was really a way to muddy the waters. And so it certainly wasn't from a lack of trying. But as we've said a hundred times, the state was in a very, very difficult position by the middle of the 19th century, as well as where we are not too long before World War I. Meanwhile, during the decades from the 70s to the beginning of the 20th century,

Russian Judaism experienced a rapid development. an undeniable blossoming of its elite, which already felt cramped, not only within the limits of the palest settlement, but in those of the empire. When analyzing the concrete aspects of the inequality in Jewish rights in Russia, the palest settlement and the numerous clauses, we must not lose sight of this general picture. For if American Judaism grew in importance, the Jews of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century still constituted nearly half of the Jewish population of the planet. This is to be remembered as an important fact in the history of Judaism.

And it is still Mr. Beekerman, who, looking behind him over the ditch of the revolution, wrote in 1924, Zaris Russia was home to more than half the Jewish people. It is natural, consequently, that the Jewish history of the generations that are closest to us is mainly the history of the Jews of Russia. And even though in the 19th century, the Jews of the West had been richer, more influential, and more cultured than we were, The vitality of Judaism was nevertheless in Russia, and this vitality grew stronger and stronger at the same time as the Russian Empire flourished. It was only with provinces populated by Jews were united to Russia that this rebirth began. The Jewish population grew rapidly in number,

to such an extent that it was able to leave a very numerous colony overseas. It had amassed and possessed important capital in its hands. A middle class had grown and acquired a the standard of living of the lower strata had also grown incessantly. By a variety of efforts, the Jews of Russia had been able to overcome the physical and moral objection which they had brought from Poland. European culture and education reached Jewish circles, and we went so far in this direction we have amassed such spiritual wealth that we have been able to afford the luxury of having a literature in three languages. All this culture, all this wealth. All this wealth. All this wealth. It is in Russia that the Jews of Eastern Europe have received them.

Russian Judaism, by its numbers and by the greenness of the energies it contains, proved to be the backbone of all the Jewish people. I don't know what he means by the moral objection with an A, not an O, because wherever they went in the European world, they were privileged, or they became privileged. Yet it's true, the numbers were extremely. high the Russian economy was doing with a few like that there was a panic in Russia for a very short time but in general inflation was zero taxes were low the cost of living was was low and

wages were to say the least competitive anywhere else so it isn't as if the Jews you know dominated everyone else lived in poverty that's certainly not the case I do think that has a lot to with the policies of the monarchy, especially under Alexander of the third, Alexander the third. We talk about Judaism. We're talking about an ethnic group. The religious aspect of it was not relevant and was not important. It was only significant when it had something to do with, you know,

justifying their cohesiveness, justifying revolution or whatever, but that was a secondary concern. This is an ethnic minority, not a religious one, and a hostile minority. they were always in contact with Jewish elite centers. At this point, of course, Istanbul, Antwerp, Amsterdam, London, increasingly New York. And this, you know, that kind of shape that it makes. I probably should mention Paris. And they function as a unit. But in terms of sheer numbers, yeah, it was dominated by the Russians, and it was a huge problem for the empire. The Jews were a problem wherever they go. But they were an elite in the Turkish empire. And even there, they changed their names to sound more Turkish, sometimes the sound more Arabic, depending on where they were.

But their policies were always the same everywhere. And it's typified by Gazaria, and that's why I focused so much on that in my own research. But it isn't because of the Jews that the Russian economy was doing very well. It was despite them. You mentioned their changing names. I try to remind people as much as possible or educate people as much as possible that every prime minister of Israel, with the exception of Monacham Began, changed their name. to sound more Middle Eastern.

Yeah, it's Exhameer. Yeah. It's a common tactic, and sometimes we forget about that. It's like the Sephardic Jews. Their last names don't sound, everyone thinks Goldstein and Goldblatt. Sephardic names, sometimes they sound Italian or Spanish.

You have to be very careful. A more recent author, our contemporary, confirms in 1989, the correctness of this painting brushed by his elder witness of the time. He wrote, The public life of the Jews of Russia had reached at the turn of the two centuries, a degree of maturity and amplitude which many small peoples in Europe might have envied. If there is a reproach that cannot be made to the prison of the people, it is to have denationalized the people, be it the Jews or others.

Certain Jewish authors, it is true, deplore the fact that in the 80s, the cultivated Jews of the Capitol had hardly been involved in the defense of Jewish interests, that only Baron Ginsburg and a few other wealthy Jews with good relations. The Jews of Petersburg, 30 to 40,000 in 1900, lived unconnected with one another,

and the Jewish intelligentsia, in its majority, remained aloof, indifferent to the needs and interests of the community as a whole. Yet it was also the time when the Holy Spirit of the Renaissance hovered over the palest settlement and awakened in the younger generations the forces that had been dormant for many centuries among the Jewish people. It was a veritable spiritual revolution. Among Jewish girls, the thirst for instruction showed literally religious signs. And already, even in St. Petersburg, a large number of Jewish students frequently higher education institutions at the beginning of the 20th century, a great part of the

the Jewish intelligentsia felt that it was its duty to return to its people. Yeah, I think the claim that wealthy Jews in the big cities didn't care about Judaism as a whole. I think that's, if it existed, this writer is wildly exaggerating it. Their entire, their power comes from their cohesiveness. So I think this might be somewhat of an exaggeration on the author's part, not Shultzhenitsyn, whoever he's quoting here. Thanks to this spiritual awakening at the end of the 19th century, very diverse and sometimes contradictory trends emerged in Russian Judaism.

Some of them will be called upon to determine to a large extent the destinies of our land throughout the 20th century. At the time, the Jews of Russia envisaged at least six possible orientations, however, incompatible with each other. Namely, first, the safeguard of their religious identity by isolation, as had been practiced for centuries, but this path became more and more unpopular. Second, assimilation. Third, the struggle for national and cultural autonomy,

the active presence of Judaism in Russia as a distinct element. Fourth, emigration. Fifth, adherence to Zionism. Sixth, adherence to the revolution. This is a very important list, and he's absolutely correct. You notice that for the most part, while they are very different, they don't contradict. Isolation, immigration, don't have much of an impact. But again, I would like to see that better defined.

We don't even know what assimilation means. It's certainly not conversion. Zionism, I guess, would be a form of immigration, but it's certainly not it's not logically contradicted by adherence to the revolution. National and cultural autonomy is, the exception of immigration, is perfectly compatible with all of them. And you could also be assimilated and still struggle for national and cultural autonomy. I don't know what the identity by isolation, unless it's, it simply means that the old Hasidic idea of just not really being involved with society,

I don't think it means that. But the more I look at this list, the more I realize how close they all are to each other. Because even in immigration, they still are going to maintain their contacts, depending on who it is, with their families and their community back home. Moses Hess has already connected Zionism and the revolution. but Jews have never been particularly religious in the modern era. So religious identity, I want to say maybe racial identity there. And it became more and more unpopular because I don't think it was meant to be exploitative.

So yes, there are definitely, it's more different emphasis, rather than a path you can go on. You could go on two or three of these. at the same time. And the only thing, immigration and Zionism, the right wing in Russia, the Black Hundreds in particular,

took that as partially a solution. Their literature, Black Hundreds' literature near the end of the Russian Empire suggested a mass deportation to the Middle East and the support of something like an autonomous entity there,

simply getting them out of the country. For the most part, that was also in the Christian socialist party of, in Austria. And the right wing in general kind of had that as a as a solution.

So these are more personality types than actual ideological agendas for the most part. And it's not like, you know, those who supported Zionism hated the revolutionaries. It was just a matter of what are we going to do now

versus what are we going to do in 50 years. And the one thing that holds them all together, including assimilation, is cohesiveness. Because unless assimilation means the conversion to orthodoxy, then that's probably the vaguest option here. Then assimilation really just means maintaining your Jewish identity, but just not, you know, telling people about it. Just kind of acting like a normal person in day-to-day life. So I'll conclude by saying that these are personality types, not necessarily agendas that someone's going to be dedicated to in particular. Indeed, the proponents of these different tendencies were often united in the work of acculturation of the Jewish masses in three languages, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian, and in welfare works, in the spirit of the theory of small gestures in vogue in Russia in the 80s. Mutual aid was embodied in Jewish associations, some of which, after the revolution, were able to continue their action in emigration.

This was the case with the Society for the D dissemination of Education among the Jews of Russia, which had been founded in 1863. By the mid-90s, the society was already opening its own schools with, besides an education in Russian, courses in Hebrew. It convened pan-Russian conferences on the theme of Jewish popular education. In 1891 began the works of a commission of Jewish history and ethnography, which in 1908 became the Society of Jewish History and Ethnography. It coordinated the study of Jewish history through Russia and the collection of archives. In 1880, the king of railways, Samuel Poliakoff, founded the Society of Craft and Agricultural Labor among the Jews. The latter collected a good deal of money.

and devoted the bulk of its efforts at the beginning of its efforts to the transfer of Jewish artisans outside the Pala's settlement to the central provinces. We have seen that after the initial authorization given in 1865 to this transfer, the craftsman moved only in small numbers. What happened after the pogroms of 1881 and 1882? We could think, now they will certainly leave. They have the help the SCAL plus the... a subsidy from the government for the displacement, they will not remain there, moping around,

confined in the damned pale, where one was condemned to a wretched death, but no. After more than 10 years of efforts on the parts of the SCAL, only 170 artisans moved. The SCAL decided that to help artisans inside the pale by purchasing tools, setting up workshops, and then creating professional schools. This is, I mean, he's funny. He, he knows. He knows. He knows. knows he's funny in writing this. But he's tongue in cheek talking about what your typical academic thinks was going on in the pale at the time. The pale wasn't a prison. You could pretty much do whatever you want.

Taxes were lower. It's just, as we said before, it was a privileged part of the empire. And he's deliberately stating it as if, well, Jews were so tormented by the government, apparently. but that's okay because they'll get a subsidy from the same government to move elsewhere, which, of course, he worded it that way very much on purpose. And, you know, the mentality was that this, oh, these were minor civil wars. But why would there be displacement after a program that wasn't, you know, very few people died. Mostly were Russian.

Armed Jews usually started it. And that's simply, that's a fact of the matter. We've dealt with that already. There wasn't a whole lot of property damage But that's how it's going to be explained And we know that that's the case At least in part because they wouldn't leave Why would why would

Poliakov give a dam Whether they stay in the pale or not The only possible reason he could have is that in spreading them around He can increase their influence But again, artisans Now I'm talking about you know like we would say basically the trades today, working with your hands in a very skilled way, we've already established that that's a small minority of the Jewish population. So I think this was kind of a

made-up issue more than anything else. Just like they wouldn't farm the land, they really weren't going to work with their hands. It certainly existed, you know, butchers and things like that, but it was hardly an important part of the other Jewish community at the time. Immigration was taken over by the Society for Colonization by the Jews, whose creation followed the opposite course, first abroad, then in Russia. It was founded in London in 1891 by Baron Moritz von Hirsch, who, for the purpose, made a donation of two million pounds sterling. His idea was the following.

to substitute the chaotic emigration of the Jews of Eastern Europe with a well-ordered colonization oriented towards the countries requiring cultivators, and thus to bring back at least part of the Jews to the cultivation of the land, to free them from this anomaly, which arouses the animosity of the European peoples. To seek for the Jews who leave Russia a new homeland and to try to divert them from their usual activity, trade, make them farmers, and thereby contribute to the work of the rebirth of the Jewish people. This new homeland, it would be Argentina. Another objective was to divert the wave of Jewish immigration away from the shores of the United States, where, owing to the influx of immigrants, the wage decline induced by their competition, there rose the specter of anti-Semitism.

As it was proposed to populate this land with Jews of Russia, an office of the Society for Colonization opened in St. Petersburg in 1992. It set up 450 information offices. and 20 neighborhood committees. They received the candidates for emigration to help them obtain their exit papers from the territory. They negotiated with the maritime messengers. They procured travelers with tickets at reduced prices.

They published brochures on countries likely to welcome new settlers. Sliasburg denounces in passing the fact that no person not holding a double title as a banker or a millionaire had access to their direction. Well, I think our listeners already have figured out that this society for colonization, the justification for it is complete propaganda. And the Hirsch and others who set it up knew that.

This had nothing to do with making them cultivators. I guarantee you that it's a double entendre, that cultivators, meaning, you know, the revolution for Jewish power wherever. what they really mean is they're sending Jews to places that don't have a lot of them, but still there's a lot of potential for money making to create a network, to even out the numbers. I've heard of Argentina before. Obviously it didn't last long.

I don't know why Argentina. The Zionist movement tended to focus on Middle East. But immigration, which is specifically the issue here, there was a lot of other places. Of course, depending on what year we're talking about, let's say, you know, 1900, the Jews were just starting to get a towhold in places like New York, especially Brooklyn, places like that. But this has nothing to do with getting people to farm the land.

That was written with the Goyam in mind, acting like that's even an issue. Obviously, that's not the case. It's about power. It's about evening out the population. It's about making sure that there's a substantial community in most politically or economically significant parts of Europe and the Americas. I know this is something we keep bringing up, but most people, and maybe this is their first episode, some people will hear.

But this society for colonization was opened in St. Petersburg in 1892, and they opened up 450 offices and had 20 neighborhood committees. If all of the Jews were in jail in the Pala settlement, how do they have 450 information offices in St. Petersburg in 1892? There are magical people. Since the end of the 19th century, the emigration of Jews from Russia had been growing steadily for various reasons, some of which have already been mentioned here. One of the most serious of these was a compulsory conscription. If so many young men, it is Denneken who writes it, chose to mutilate themselves, was it not better to emigrate? Especially when we know that conscription simply did not exist in the United States.

The Jewish authors are silent on this motif in the Jewish encyclopedia itself in the article, The Emigration of the Jews of Russia does not say a single word of it. It is true that this reason does not explain on its own the emigration boom in the 90s. Another reason, also of significance, the provisional regulation, of 1882. The third major shock was the expulsion of Jewish craftsmen from Moscow in 1891, and also this other, very violent, the establishment of the state monopoly on spirits in Russia in 1996, which deprive all the tenants of drinking places of their income and reduce the revenues of the distillers. Sliusberg, those who had been expelled from the villages or provinces of the

interior were volunteers for immigration. She Aronson notes that in the 80s, an average of 15, thousand Jews emigrated each year and that they were up to that was up to 30,000 in the 90s. Well, that's probably a legitimate list of things. We already talked about the monopolization of vodka. And it did hurt the Jews to some extent. We also keep in mind, we've dealt with this a while ago, that the word craftsman, and this is relevant to the other. paragraph we just were talking about. Jews were never very honest as to what they did. They would

claim to be a cultivator or a craftsman and have nothing to do with it. I think it was a few weeks ago we came across that issue in Jolzhenitsyn. And it was precisely because they were not craftsmen. They were merchants trying to undersell Russian merchants that they were they were kicked out. That and beyond the fact that they were, of course, revolutionaries. but the establishment of the monopoly, and this is roughly around the time where the Union of the Russian people was being founded in Ukraine. There was some reaction. Nicholas II was well aware of the Jewish issue.

Whether that was important or not, I'm not 100% sure. But I'm willing to say that that was a big chunk of the reason why you had this immigration, which as far as Russians are concerned was a very much. very good thing. The attitude of the Russian authorities in the face of this growing immigration, a genuine boons of the state, was benevolent. The Russian government readily agreed to the establishment of the SCJ and St. Petersburg and the measures that it adopted to promote immigration. It did not interfere in any of its aspects, authorizing the age group of the conscripts to emigrate with their families. It issued free exit visas and granted special rates on trains. On one condition,

however, once gone, the immigrants were never to return to Russia again. Now, that's a commission I can get behind. It's a commission I can get behind, but enforce, again, it's always about enforcement, isn't it? They were smugglers. You know, they acted as a crime syndicate, which is why they adapted so easily in the U.S., in New York and a few other places, Chicago, during Prohibition. There were plenty of people. in Russia who knew what was going on, including in the royal family. The peasantry always knew

what was going on. Russian merchants more than anyone knew what was going on. So Jews were starting to realize that they're pushing, but they have no conception of pulling back. That's not in their vocabulary. So immigration was sort of a way to release some of the pressure. Their population was exploding, but both the royal family and many other segments of the population, had had enough. To cross the ocean, it was necessary at the time to pass through England, which meant that in the English port cities, there was provisionally a crowd of Jewish immigrants, some of whom remained and settled in Great Britain, while others returned there after an attempt to settle in the United States. As early as 1890, English public opinion rebelled against

the policy of the Russian government. The Jewish question is constantly occupying the columns of the British newspapers. In America, too, the question of the situation Jews and Russia remains day after day of actuality. Having assessed the propositions that this migratory flow was likely to take, Great Britain soon closed its doors. Well, we've dealt with this as well. Britain, especially its media, was so dominated by Jews. I mean, this was the home of the Rothschild family,

that this became an obsession, like race in America. It's the same mentality. It was a way to, with the same, the ultimate point of or purpose of British policy was to overthrow the monarchy and bring about a liberal leftist revolution, what occurred in the February revolution, Masonic revolution and Russia. That was the point. Jews realized that so long Karl Marx said this, Engels said this, most major Marxist writers at the end of the 19th century said this after Marx. So long as the Russian Empire exists. That is, so long as the Russian monarchy exists,

revolution throughout Europe is not going to happen. For that to happen, the Russian crown has to go. And this was said by Jews all over the place. It was simply too wealthy, too large, growing too quickly, and too aware of the Jewish problem. And after the reigns of Alexander and Nicholas, Nicholas I first, before them, before Alexander the second, You know, this knowledge of what the Jews were in Russia was growing.

The monarchy in Russia was a huge block to Rothschild domination of that market, the currency, and gold reserves and everything else. The monarchy had to go, which is one of the reasons, probably maybe even the dominant reason, why the Jewish question was such an obsession in the so-called British media at the time. I'll do one last paragraph and leave it off there because it looks like there's a little bit of a break here. Okay. The immigration to Argentina had also stopped in 1894. The Jewish encyclopedia described this as a brooding crisis in the Argentine question. Sliosberg spoke of the disenchantment of immigrants in Argentina.

The disgruntled rebelled and sent collective petitions to the administration of Baron Hirsch. The Duma debates highlighted a situation. similar to the experience in new Russia. Immigration to Argentina provides examples that confirm that in many cases people have received land on very advantageous terms, but have abandoned it to engage in other trades more in line with their abilities. If Russians at this point hadn't learned this, then they really need to find another job. This is one thing absolutely undeniable. Like the sun's going to come up in the morning. that last sentence is absolutely and precisely true.

You didn't need Argentina. I don't know that much about the immigration there or why there. You don't need the Argentine situation to convince you of that. That's been the experience in Russia for the last hundred years. All right. So we'll come back with episode 32. I encourage everyone to go to the show notes. Go to the show notes on the videos that are posted on YouTube, on Rumble,

and on Odyssey, click the links and support Dr. Johnson's work so he can keep educating us here. Thank you, my friend. Of course. I appreciate it, and I'll talk to you in a couple days. Thank you, Dr. Johnson.