The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 4

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

62 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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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 the Pekignano show. This is part four of our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzhenycin. How are you doing today, Dr. Johnson? I'm doing well. We're kind of snowed in out here, which as far as I'm concerned is a great thing. But you would think that people who live around here were born and raised in Barbados by the way they complain.

I mean, we're in Appalachia for Christ. This is how it is. But it's absolutely beautiful where I live now. It's all fields and everything. And it's just really, it's absolutely extraordinary. We got four or five inches in Alabama. And you would think that people would, have freaked out by that. No, it didn't even, I think the only thing that was cleaned out in the local supermarket, in the very small supermarket was milk. That was it. Everybody else was just like, yeah, we're going to stay in the house. I wonder if COVID just hardened everybody to these kind of things. No one really responds to these kind of, because, you know, 10 years ago, it would have been mass panic, something like that. Yeah, all the, all the milk, eggs, and toast would have been gone because

obviously when you're snowed in, you just eat French toast. That makes sense to me. All right. Here we go. Picking up right where we left off, page 24. And we're off. Those were the last regulations of Catherine. From the end of 1796, Paul I reigned. The Jewish Encyclopedia evaluates him in this way.

The time of the angry rule of Paul I first passed well for the Jews. All edicts of Paul I. The First concerning the Jews indicate that the monarch was tolerant and benevolent toward the Jewish population. When the interest of Jews conflicted with Christians, Paul I, the First by no means automatically sided with the Christian. Even when in 1797, he ordered measures to reduce the power of the Jews and the spirituals over the peasants, this was actually not set up against the Jews.

The point was the protection of the peasants. Paul recognized also the right of the Hasidim not to have to live in secrecy. He extended the right of Jews to belong to the merchant and townsman class, even to the Corland province, which was no Polish inheritance, and later, it also did not belong to the pale of settlement. Consistent with the policy, he denied the respective petitions of the parishes of Kofno, Kamenez, Purosk, Kiev and Vilna, and to be permitted to move the Jews out of their cities. Paul had it inherited the stubborn resistance

of the Polish landholders against any changing of their rights. Among these was the right over the Jews and the right to hold court over them. They misused these rights often. Thus, the complaint of the Jews of Berichich, Ukraine, against the princes of Razzaville stated, In order to hold our religious services,

we must first pay gold to those to whom the prince has leased our faith. And against Catherine's former favorite Simon Zoroz, one ought not to have to pay him for the air one breathes. In Poland, many Steadel and cities were the possession of nobles and the landowners assessed arbitrary and opportunistic levies that the residents had to pay. This is one of these really ballsy statements. I know the verbiage here in translation is a little muddled,

but the Jews somehow are projecting what everyone else in the Polish Empire, when it existed, was complaining about them. They're simply accusing everyone else of the exact same thing. The truth is, the opposite was the case. Jews continued to hold in former, Polish areas, the leases to pretty much everything. And just like the Khazar Empire charged tolls on it. And I think what he means here by spirituals, I don't remember, because I've translated bits and pieces of this, by spirituals, I think he means certain heretics.

I also inherited from, you know, Sosinians and non-Trinitarians. They weren't huge in Russia. they're not talking about old, old believer. I think that's what he's talking about. Unless it's just a, I don't know where the, I don't know what the word is that he's translating that way. Do you think, could it possibly be liquor? Well, the way he states it, it sounds like he's referring,

oh, reduce the power of the Jews and the spirituals. Yeah, it's possible. It sounds like they're referring to a group of people. Yeah, yeah, it does, yeah. So it could be, it could be just a strange. you know, spirits. It's just muddled in how it's in how it's stated. But we'll talk here in a minute about the commissions to study the Jewish problem in the Western parts of the empire by Tsar Paul, by the way, has been canonized for a whole bunch of very good reasons. I have an icon of him

in my office here. And part of it was eventually what he, you know, was to the at least in part against the Jews because everywhere they go you have even small towns were begging the authorities to allow him to throw the Jews out. It's everywhere and for all the same reasons

and because St. Petersburg wasn't all that aware of the Jewish mind at the time although they were slowly getting an education the commissions of Derjavan will change the Russian point of view on the Jews probably forever.

Derjavan and the Belarus famine. Since the start of the reign of Paul I, there was a great famine in white Russia, especially in the province of Minsk. The poet Gavrilla Romanovich Derjavin, then serving as senator, was commissioned to go there and determine its cause and seek a solution, for which task he received no money to buy grain, but instead had the right to confiscate possessions of negligent landowners, saw their stockpile, and distribute them. Der Javen was not just a great poet, but also an outstanding statesman who left behind unique

proofs of his effectiveness, which we will want to delve into in the following. The famine, as Der Javin confirmed, was unimaginable. He writes, when I arrived in White Russia, I personally convinced myself at the great scarcity of grain among the villagers. Due to the very serious hunger, virtually all nourished themselves from fermented grass mixed with a tiny portion of meal or pearl barley. The peasants were malnourished and sallow like dead people. In order to remedy this, I found out which of the rich landowners had grain in their storehouses,

took it to the town center and distributed it to the poor, and I commanded the goods of a Polish count, in view of such pitiless greed, to be yielded to a trustee. After the nobleman was made aware of the dire situation, he awoke from his slumber or better, from his shocking indifference towards humanity. He used every means to feed the peasants by acquiring grain from neighboring provinces, and when after two months the harvest time arrived, the famine ended.

When Der Javen visited the provincial government, he so pursued the noble rulers and district police captains that the nobility banded together and sent the Tsar a scurilous complaint against Der Javen. and that's something for the rest of his life he's going to have to deal with. Why don't you keep going and for a couple of paragraphs because then I'm going to have a lot to say after that.

Okay. Derjavan discovered that the Jewish schnaps distiller has exploited the alcoholism of the peasants, quoting, after I had discovered that the Jews were profit-seeking used the lure of drink to beguile grain from the peasants converted into brandy and therewith cause a famine. I commanded that they should close their distilleries in the village of Riosno.

I informed myself from sensible inhabitants, as well as nobles, merchants, and villagers about the manner of the life of the Jews, their occupations, their deceptions, and all their pedigogging with which they provide the poor dumb villagers with hunger, and on the other hand, by what means one could protect them from the common pack and how to facilitate for them an honorable and respectable way out, to enable them to become useful citizens. Afterwards in the autumn months, Der Javen described many evil practices of the Polish landlords and Jewish leasers in his memorandum on the mitigation of famine in white Russia and in the lifestyles of the Jews, which he also made known to the Tsar and

the highest officials of the state. This memorandum is a very comprehensive document that evaluates the conditions inherited from the Poles as well as the possibilities for overcoming the poverty of the peasants, describing the peculiarity. of the Jewish way of life of that time and includes a proposal for reform in comparison to Prussia and Austria. The very explicit practical presentation of the recommended measures makes this the first work of an enlightened Russian citizen concerning Jewish life in Russia in those first years in which Russia acquired Jews in a large mass. That makes it a work of special interest. The memorandum consists of two parts. One, on the residence of white Russian

in general in reviews of the memorandum, we usually find no mention of this important part. And two, on the Jews. 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 favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear.

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Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Farage. All right, so I can't overstate the importance of this. As far as Russian history is concerned, and this is a document that you would think a lot of our people would be very interested in. but is almost nowhere to be found until this book came out. Because, and there's two czars that are going to send him from the Senator Zhaven to investigate, both Paul and Alexander. Their concern was because there was a lot of unrest against the Jews, they needed to figure out what was causing it.

We know what was causing it, at the time they didn't know. And because there was quite a bit of money to be made there, they didn't want that apple card upset at all. So initially, it was called the Committee for the Organization of Jewish Life under the two emperors. And Dershavin was not an anti-Semite, if anything, he was a phylo-Semite. He was very neutral in this regard.

And let me quote directly from the Senate, their draft, I translated myself from Katasonev. and who mentioned it in 1993, the draft and purpose of the mission of the committee. It says, to discover the cause of the financial complaints from peasants and the nature of their livelihood. These complaints are to the detriment of agriculture

and economic life generally in these areas where the Jews live. This committee will deal with these issues and seek funds to remedy the present situation of the Jews. So there was a great interest in civic peace here. it's difficult to bring in an entirely, almost half a country into an empire. It's always a delicate operation. And so, Zar Paul, who was a very good man in all respects, was very concerned that this ought to be objective.

He maybe naively wanted to incorporate Jews into Russia without creating friction. Well, good luck with that. It also was, this area was very ethnically mixed. Of course, the Cossacks were there, Ukrainians, Poles, obviously, Germans, Hungarians, and Czechs. So he had to tread very lightly. The context is that the Baltic grain trade, although it was up and down depending on the era, it continued to be very profitable. So maintaining peace in that part of the empire was not just a security issue, but an economic necessity. Now, throughout this period of time, the revolutionaries in France, of course, loathed the Russian monarchy, thought maybe that approaching the Polish elites and create a pseudo-nationalist movement to separate themselves from the empire, that meant that this situation became even more great, because you really can't talk about Polish elite without talking about Jews.

So in both of these commissions under both emperors, the purpose was to understand the social relations in the area. And it was even put in such a way that it was to assist Jews in their transition from Polish to Russian rule. So this was not a negative thing. But Orthodox peasants were to get a fair hearing as to why they're so upset, why the unrest is constant, why they always want to throw the Jews out of their towns. And of course, the two purposes are very closely related. Now, initially, Drozavun said, he wasn't even talking about the Jews. He was motivated primarily by ending the arrogant action of Polish nobles, not Jews necessarily. Initially, he saw the Jews as just like employees of the Poles.

But pretty soon, that's going to be, that error is going to be dispelled. And a lot of the members of this commission, which he shared, most of the names here are not Russian. You have Pataki, Zartorksky, and Kachubei, who was Minister of the Interior. These aren't necessarily Russian names. So you had Poles here who had connections with these Polish elites, and these are Polish elite names anyway. So, you know, if anything, it was weighed in their favor. They were very close to aristocratic Polish interests and Jewish money. So there's no way you can call this commission anti-Jewish or anti-Jewish.

or anti-Polish. But the very fact that these guys, these lifelong enemies of Russia have already been integrated as senators show you how the Tsardom viewed ethnic relations. But also, as we said last time,

Jews in fairly small numbers, but with a lot of money, are already infiltrating Russia's major cities. East Oltenichu will mention that too. Ginsburg, Noyiken, Peretz especially. Many of them in, well, maybe 100 years

from then, they're going to be buying up the sugar plantations or beet plantations in Ukraine. A lot of the railroads were financed by them, just like the Rothschild did in Austria. And the Lena Goldworks. So, the Jewish encyclopedia may say that it was illegal for Jews to own land.

There was no laws restricting it, at least at the time. And the kaha'al, of course, was the core institution. So they wanted to integrate Jews into the system, despite being raised in this kahaal system. So we've already spoken about the Polish nobility and what their motivation is for bringing these Jews in and keeping them as a lot more than just accounts. the alliance between Polish nobles and Nikohal, even under Russia, seemingly was unbreakable. So let's continue here, but I've translated pieces of Dershavin's essays. And I've used a writer by the name of Vladimir Kolskyakov writing in a Belarusian journal,

who covered, you know, once I discovered this in Sultan Eaton's book, I just read everything I could on this topic. I came across a lot of amazing things. This is how my paper came into existence. And we'll catch up with all that here in a little bit. Dejavan begins by establishing that the agricultural economy was in shambles. The peasants there were lazy on the job, not clever. They procrastinate every small task and are sluggish and field work. Year in, year out, they eat unwinnowed corn in the spring,

Kolatucha or Balatusha from eggs and rye meal. In summer, they content themselves with a mixture of a small amount of some grain or other with chopped and cooked grass. They are so weakened that they stagger around. The local Polish landlords are not good proprietors. They do not manage the property themselves, but lease it out, a Polish custom. But for the lease, there are no universal rules protecting the peasants from overbearing or to keep the business aspect from falling apart. many greedy leasers by imposing hard work and oppressive taxes bring the people into a bad way and transform them into poor homeless peasants

this lease is all the worst for being short term made for one to three years at a time so that the leaser hastens to get his advantage from it without regard to the exhausting of the estate the emancipate go no no you're fine one more paragraph will be good Okay. The emaciation of the peasants was sometimes even worse. Several landlords that leased as traffic in spirits in their village to the Jews signed stipulations that the peasants may only buy their necessities from these leasers, triple price. Likewise, the peasants may not sell their product to anyone except the Jewish leaseholder,

cheaper than the market price. Thus, they plunge the villagers into misery, and especially when they distribute again their hoarded grain. They must finally give a double portion. Whoever does not do it is punished. The villagers are robbed of every possibility to prosper and be full. So it doesn't take long for Dersavid in this committee, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, to realize what was going on here.

This was an abuse of the peasantry that, It's not even serfdom at this point. So, of course, peasants weren't lazy. That's just a manner of speaking. They couldn't work. They were malnourished. But keep in mind, he also noticed that the barns were full of grain, and they were either going to export or for alcohol. Now, D'Javvin's powers, I think we already mentioned, they were mostly for,

information, but he could order abuses to end as far as food distribution. He did order the distribution of the produce, specifically from one Polish noble, Ognizki. And he wrote Emperor Paul

saying that he has the names of these offending landlords deliberately starving peasants. And he stopped a cart, and this is from the Kozlako article from 2014. he stopped a cart, a small caravan in Belarus owned by powerful Jewish merchants,

full of grain and flour. And he ordered that to go back to its initial owner and be distributed to the peasant. He absolutely forced landlords to make permanent adjustments to their way of living. But Polish nobles were doing this, of course, at the behest of Jews. they were both profiting tremendously.

Even things like short-term leases, well, that means that they could just raise the price because of the export trade, which was booming at the time. There was a huge demand in the West for Russian grain through the Baltic ports. That means the mass of production had to be increasing. And so the peasants were pressed very, very hard.

But of course, in a contradictory kind of way, remember these were mostly absentee landlords they weren't necessarily they're being able to see the fields this is very common at the time Jews were giving them this information and that's something else Dershavin said nine years at a minimum

and this has to be enforced he wanted the vodka monopoly to end I mean he and this this is the significance of the Tsarist system because Paul had the power to do this you could never do this in a republic. You couldn't do this in the U.S. today.

But obviously now, just right away, within a very short period of time, he's making some powerful enemies. But obviously, both the Poles and the Jews were very, very much alarmed. Now, let me quote D'Javvin here. I translated this. Oh, actually, no. Yeah, my first quote here is actually from Shulteneaton, or is included. in the book. But Shultan Isan will go on here. We'll see in a little bit to detail a lot of the specific methods used to torment these poor people. And it really is, it really is sad showing the mentality of, of that system just at

the time it became part of the Russian Empire. I think a lot of the people who are listening to this will try to apply it to like today, like our system and say, oh, they're just being, they're just being due they're making bad decisions. I don't think they realize they're not living under the same system or even caste structure that we, you know, they have a caste structure that isn't really a caste structure,

but you know what I mean. And I think people just look at it, oh, how could they be, well, these people aren't exactly free. They're not like, you know,

it's like if things are bad in Alabama, you can move, you know, you can move to Montana if you have, you know, if you have the means to do it. These people, don't really have options.

That's correct. Then he develops in more detail the problem of the liquor distilling. Schnapps was distilled by the landlords, the landed nobility, the schlachta of the region, the priest, monks, and Jews. Of the almost million Jews, two to three thousand live in the villages and live mainly from the liquor traffic.

The peasants, after bringing in the harvest, are sweaty and careless in what they spend, they drink, eat, enjoy themselves, pay the Jews for their old debts, and then whatever they ask for drinks, whatever they ask for drinks. For this reason, the shortages already manifest by winter. In every settlement, there is at least one, and in several settlements, a few taverns built by the landlords, where for their advantage and that of the Jewish leaseholders, liquor is sold day and night. There the Jews tricked them out of not only the life-sustaining grain, but that which is sown in the field, field implements, household items,

health, and even their life. And all that is sharpened by the moors of the Koleva. Jews travel, especially during the harvest in autumn through the villages and after they have made the farmer, along with his whole family drunk, drive them into debt and take from them every last thing needed to survive. In that, they box the drunkard's ears and plunder him. The villager is plunged into the deepest misery. He lists also other reasons for the impoverishing of the peasants. Doubtless behind these fateful distilleries stand the Polish landlords. Propritator and leaser act in behalf of the owner and attend to making a profit. To this class, Gessen asserts belong not just the Jews, but also Christians, especially priests. But the Jews were an irreplaceable,

active and very inventive link in the chain of exploitation of these illiterate emaciated peasants that had no rights on their own. If the white Russian settlement had not been injected with Jewish tavern managers and leasers, then the widespread system of exploitation would not have functioned, and removing the Jewish links in the chains would have ended it. And this is the first time that something so bold and clear and obvious was stated to people with power. But it put the emperor in a very difficult position. Money was clearly coming in here,

almost as if to buy the cooperation of the authorities. But the whole point of Drozhavun's mission was that this, you know, this can't continue. The export trade was tremendous. But Paul, being the emperor that he was, said very much like we heard with the Empress Elizabeth a couple last week maybe saying that it doesn't matter. The profit is not coming first here.

The very fact that the nature of, the nature of serfdom, even though that's a very broad word, it's not inherently exploitative. But when you add this kind of manipulation, we take this stuff for granted, advertising, public relations, flowery words used to fool people,

people. That's kind of normal. You see it on TV all the time, but this is this is something that a lot of people, especially in the Russian cities, we're not used to. And the manipulation was extremely, the very fact that they were taking advantage of alcoholism, promoting it, is, it was foundational here. Something else, Dershaven had a huge problem with. And that was the foundation for everything else that came after it. that so long as we have them hooked on this stuff, we could do what we pleased. It is, however, self-defeating. Regardless of what you think about the signs in this conflict, it was a totally unsustainable system because their health is going to give way. You need workers, but the population was growing, and I suppose this could be, for the medium term, you know, it lasted this long. but as the grain prices went up, the intensity of the oppression also went up, squeezing every bit. And so this is what D'Javan sees. As soon as he gets off his horse, he sees something that I don't think we would be prepared to look at.

And this was considered normal in the western parts of the Russian Empire. After this, Dershavin recommended energetic measures as, for example, for the expurgation of these burdens of peasant life. The landlords would need to attend to this problem. Only they alone who are responsible for the peasants should be allowed to distill liquor, under their own supervision and not from far-remove places, and to see to it that every year a supply of grain for themselves and the peasants would be on hand, and indeed as much as would be needed for good nutrition. If the danger arises that this is not done,

then the property is to be confiscated for the state coffers. The shinnops distilling is to begin no sooner than the middle of September and end middle of April. The whole time of land cultivation is to be free of liquor consumption. In addition, the liquor is not to be sold during worship services or night. The liquor stores should only be permitted in the main streets near the markets, mills, and establishments where foreigners gather. But all the superfluous and newly built liquor stores, whose number has greatly engulfed, increased since the annexation of white Russia are immediately to cease use for that purpose, the sale of liquor in them to be forbidden.

In villages and out-of-the-way places, there should not be any that the peasant not sink into drunkenness. Jews, however, should not be permitted to sell liquor either by the glass or the keg, nor should they be the brewmasters in the distilleries, and they should not be allowed to lease the liquor stores. Colodas are also to be forbidden as well as the short-term leasing of operations. By means of exacting stipulations, the leaser is to be prevented from working at operation into the ground. Under threat of punishment is market abuse to be forbidden, by which the landlords do not

permit their peasants to buy what they need somewhere else or to sell their surplus somewhere other than to the proprietor. There were still other economic proposals in the manner the scarcity of food can in the future be prevented in the white Russian province. And this is just, you know, Dershavin had to sit down

and figure out how the system worked. Keep in mind that the Koldov system was very insidious. It was simply, but simple, getting peasants drunk, specifically at Harvard's time, because they had money then, and to entice them to take out large loans

and, of course, you know, very high rates. But Dershavin did not want to bring this news back to the capital because the implications, and he did, of course, but the implications are tremendous. Since Jews function as the middlemen of the Polish economy, whether in Russia or in the old Polish empire, if you want to solve the peasant problem, you either expropriated them or assimilate them.

Emperor Paul, I think very naively, thought, had a third option, and that was settling these Jews on the land as small proprietors. And nearly every Jew refused this. They were not going to become business. You know, it's not nearly as profitable as what they were, unproductive parasites. Jews made their money gouging peasants,

and, you know, they took from the lords all the time because they were going in. They were capital to be manipulated. And we'll see here in this book, we're still in part one of this book. He will, Solzhenitsyn will quote Dershavin's own writings on this at length. And at the time, when I discovered this, it wasn't in English yet. So we'll get here in a second to exactly what Dersavins said about the nature of the system. And this also includes Jewish ownership over Orthodox and He said.

even Catholic parishes. I mean, yeah, Polish nobles were as illiterate as peasants were. But so it's not just that peasants were often ethnically alien, especially to the Jewish mind, but they were religiously alien. That makes exploiting them, destroying them much easier than if they were of the same, the same stuff. So you couldn't even get married. If Jewish owned the lease on an Orthodox church, you couldn't get married without paying

on top of everything else you were paying them. And this in particular was very obnoxious to the peasants. Peasants, by the way, that had proven to the world that there were very efficient cultivators of tremendous amounts of grain. But none of that benefited them. Starting from the Renaissance, you know, we're talking even 300 years. A spike in Western populations, which was continuing. drove grain prices through the roof.

That's where the money economy came from. Urban development came from. And the higher, as I said, the higher the price goes, the more the oppression develops. So this was incredibly obnoxious. So the Slavic grain was exported by a Jewish network, headquartered in several cities. As far as I can see, it was Antwerp, Constantinople,

Krakow, Poland, of course, and London. And they have satellite branches in Spain in Amsterdam and a very small one, even in St. Petersburg. So they had access to capital that no one else, no one else did. Now, there were poorer Jews. I think we talked about that already within the Kahaal system, which was weakening but was not gone. But it was incredibly obnoxious. And the only people who really profited from them were the nobles on the one side,

Polish landowners on the one side, and of course, their Jewish advisors on the other. In the second part of the memorandum, Derzabin going out from the task given by the Senate submitted a suggestion for the transformation of the life of the Jews in the Russian kingdom, not in isolation, but rather in the context of the misery of white Russia and with a goal to improve the situation. But here he set himself the assignment

to give a brief overview of Jewish history, especially the Polish period, in order to explain the current customs of the Jews. Among others, he used a conversation with the Berlin educated enlightened Jew physician Ilya Frank, who put his own thoughts down in writing. The Jewish popular teachers mingle mystic Talmudic pseudo-exegesis of the Bible with the true spirit of the teachings.

They expound strict laws with the goal of isolating the Jews from other peoples and to instill a deep hatred against every other religion. Instead of cultivating a universal virtue, they contrive, an empty ceremony of honoring God. The moral character of the Jews has changed in the last century to their disadvantage, and in consequence they have become pernicious subjects. In order to renew the Jews morally and politically, they have to be brought to the point of returning to the original purity of their religion.

The Jewish reform in Russia must begin with the foundation of public schools in which to Russian, German, and Jewish languages would be taught. what kind of prejudice is it to believe that the assimilation of secular knowledge is tantamount to a betrayal of religion and folk and that working the land is not suitable for a Jew? Der Javin declined in his memorandum a suggestion by Noda Heimovich Notgen, a major merchant from Sklof, whom he had also met. Although Notkin demurred from the most important conclusions and suggested to Dershavin that he that had to do with Jews, he was at the same time in favor, if possible, of excluding Jews

from the production of liquor and saw it as needful for them to get an education and pursue a productive career, preferably working with their hands, whereby he also held out the possibility of emigration into the fruitful step for the purpose of raising sheep and crops. Yeah, good luck with that. But that was the attempt all the way until Zara Nicholas I second to try to create something but these people are claiming to be the nobles of the world

the mediators of the world the presence of God on earth they are not going to pull weeds that's for the that's for the cattle I'm not so sure if your typical Polish noble especially the large ones

was there on hand to see what was going on they were getting of course information from there from their middlemen. The Jews were there on hand. So the point so far is that you can't get a more objective understanding of how the Jews operated in the Polish Empire or the Russian than this from a guy who didn't even want, who didn't even think the Jews were the problem.

He soon realized that they were the problem. There is no way of getting around this, which is why you don't hear about it very much. even in text dealing with you know surfdom in central Europe or something like that Eastern Europe doesn't come up

because there's absolutely nothing there's no answering this this is how it was this was the mentality coming from Khazaria that created the modern Talmudic Jew and this experience

solidified all of this in their mind this is how money is to be made this is who we are and if there's there's any kind of a reaction, you know, the Messiah's coming soon. You know, they always seem to think that. So they have no limits on their, on their behavior. And then we truly will be the masters of the planet.

This was normal. This was fully acceptable to the Jewish mind at the time. And this shocked a lot of people. And of course, needless to say, Dersauvin was in a lot of trouble for bringing this back to St. Petersburg. Following the explanation of Frank, who rejected the power of the Kehala, Der Javen proceeded from the same general consequences. The original principles of pure worship and ethics of the Jews has been transformed into false concepts, by which the simple Jewish people is misled and constantly is so led, so much so that between them and those of other faiths, a wall has been built that cannot be broken through,

which has been made firm, a wall that firmly binds the Jews together, and surrounded by darkness, separates them from their fellow citizens. Thus, in raising their children, they pay plenty for Talmud instruction, and that without time limit. As long as the students continue in their current conditions, there is no prospect for a change in their ways. They believe themselves to be the true worshippers of God and despise everyone of a different faith. They're the people are brought to a constant expectation of the Messiah. They believe that their Messiah by overthrowing all earthlings will rule over them in flesh and blood

and restore to them their former kingdom, fame, and glory. Of the youths, he wrote, they marry all too young, sometimes before they reach 10 years old, and though nubile, they are not strong enough. Regarding the Cahal system, the inner Jewish collection of levies provides to the Cahalot. every year an enviable sum of income that is incomparably higher than the state taxes that are raised from individuals in the census lists.

The Cahal elders do not excuse anyone from the accounting. As a result, their poor masses find themselves in the condition of severe emaciation and great poverty, and there are many of them. In contrast, the members of the Cahal are rich and live in superfluity by ruling over both levers of power the spiritual and secular they have a great power over the people in this way they hold them in great poverty and fear that kehelot issues to the people every possible command which must be performed with such exactitude and speed that one can only wonder it's no accident that Dersauvin went to various Jewish scholars

usually of German background who were part of the you know the so-called Jewish because these were the people who first started talking about how powerful the Talmud was over the minds of the of the Khal, especially in Eastern Europe. The fact that they were paying for this instruction. Now, of course, this is a massive group of books, but it seems to me it makes sense that the part of the Talmud that they were specifically interested in were the parts where they condemn the Gentiles as animals and everything else. and that justifies things like slavery and usury and profiting at the expense of others. Occasionally it was the Jews, but that was technically against the rules. And the Talmud ends up being both a religious or fall religious justification as well as a secular one, because their incomes were guaranteed by the unity and the cohesion.

that the Talmud studies provided. This is extremely important. And I think many of them at the time saw the Talmud essentially a secular book that gives us instruction as to who we are and what we're supposed to do. And so as always, even though they were in Eastern Europe in great numbers,

cohesion matters more than anything else. And that's why alcohol and manipulation and I remember these taverns It wasn't just alcohol. You know, they had prostitutes there, their version of whatever pornography was back there, which also comes up in a lot of the peasant complaints to St. Petersburg. They saw them as animals and wanted to keep them in a state as animalistic as possible.

And therefore, again, Djaven was in a rough position because he had to say this. He wrote about this at great length, realizing, though, that this is now putting the Russian government in a position where she's going to have to, to some extent, intervene and disrupt the financial cash cow that that part of the empire had become. D'Javan identified the nub of the problem thusly. The Jews' great numbers in white Russia is itself a heavy burden for the land on account of the disproportion to that of the crop farmers. This disproportion is the outstanding one of several important reasons that produces here

a shortage of grain in other edible stores. Not one of them was a crop farmer at that time, yet each possessed and gobbled up more grain than the peasant with his large family, who had harvested it by the sweat of his brow. After all, in the villages they are occupied in giving the peasant all their necessities on credit at an extraordinary rate of interest, and thus the peasant, who at some time or other became a debtor to them, can no longer get free of it. arching over this are the frivolous landlords that put their villages into Jewish hands, not just temporarily but permanently. The landowners, however, are happy to be able to shift everything onto the Jews. According to their own words, they regard the Jews as a sole reason for the wasting of the peasants, and the landlord only rarely acknowledges that he, if they were removed from his holdings,

would suffer no small loss since he receives from them no small income. income from the lease. And that last point is what we've been talking about since this began. What I've been talking about in my historical work in this part of the world for decades.

It became a symbiotic relationship very difficult to sustain and the victims were the peasantry. And despite their much greater numbers, they were in no position.

physically or mentally to band together against them. And they were apparently easy to manipulate. And remember, this is at the very beginning of the monetization of the economy. Something that your average peasant was very was not used to. Jews were very much used to it.

I don't even think the lords were used to it. But money then became this kind of talisman a symbol rather than actual products that the peasant made. So Dersovan was forced to conclude, and many Polish nobles too, now that they're under a very different kind of government, that this relationship was completely unhealthy, unsustainable, and they're destroying everything in their path. It's purely parasitic. The Jews produced absolutely nothing here. And the absentee landlord, I mean, they have some excuse because they were rarely on most of these properties. So, you know, they have some, not an entire excuse, but this was absolutely unjustified no matter what. The Talmud, however, absolutely justified it. And that's why the Jews were in a very special position here, and they continue to be.

Thus, D'Ur Javan did not neglect to examine the matter from a variety of angles. In fairness to the Jews, we must point out, also that during this grain shortage, they have taken care to feed not a few hungry villagers. though everyone also knows that that came with a bill. Upon the harvest being brought in, they will get it back a hundredfold. In a private report to the attorney general, D'Javin wrote, It is hard not to err by putting all the blame on one side. The peasants booze away their grain with the Jews and suffer under its shortage.

The landholders cannot forbid drunkenness, for they owe almost all their income to the distilling of liquor. and all the blame cannot be placed even on the Jews, that they take the last morsel of bread away from the peasant to earn their own life sustenance. To Ilya Frank, Der Jaubin once said, since the providence of this tiny scattered people has preserved them until the present,

we must take care for their protection. And in his report, he wrote with the uprightness of that time, if the most high providence to the end of some unknown purpose leaves on account of his purposes this dangerous people to live on the earth, then governments under whose scepter they have sought protection must bear it. They are thus obligated to extend their protection to the Jews so that they may be useful both to themselves and to the society in which they dwell. Because of all observations in white Russia and of his,

conclusion, and of all he wrote in the memorandum, and especially because of all these lines, and probably also because he praised the keen vision of the great Russian monarchs, which forbade the immigration and travel of these clever robbers into their realm, is D'Urjavan spoken of as a fanatical enemy of Jews, a great anti-Semite. He is accused, though unjustly, as we have seen, of imputing the drunkenness and poverty of the white Russian peasant exclusively to the Jews, and his positive measures were characterized as given without evidence to serve his personal ambition. Yeah, he was he was called, you know, even even by now amongst high society Jews had a tremendous influence. It was growing. It wasn't huge in St. Petersburg, but it was growing. The Jews were

putting out newspapers. They were well armed. These weren't, you know, innocent people, and militarily speaking, they could fight back. But this had been hidden. from public view for centuries. And neither Paul nor Alexander had any preconceived notion here. And they were never prejudiced against them. Jazevan had no animus against Jews before this. And, you know, as I've said a hundred times,

the commission exposed something that put the state in a very difficult position. The resettlement plan, which came from Zarpal. It was only partially carried out. He was, by the way, murdered. soon after. Alexander I would reorganize the whole thing. He didn't continue Paul's policies, though.

And don't forget, at this very same time, when Alexander I took over, Napoleon was talking about restoring the Sanhedron in the Middle East under his protection. So this was kind of, this proto-Zionism suggested that Jews would become the declared enemy of anyone who would rival the French emperor.

So the concept in Paul's mind and Alexander's mind, well, if they're satisfied with Russian rule, they would have no reason to serve Napoleon. Again, naive. But rather than expelling them, which was, it would be extremely difficult to do and very costly, his primary concern was to ensure a loyal Jewish presence in Western Russia. the second committee which under Alexander and I'm quoting it here the committee was to carefully consider the proposals of Derzavid and make observations

unto the improvement of the Jews not only in Belarus but also in other regions purchased from Poland as well as in the provinces of the south so even at this point there was absolutely no animus against the Jews here but there was a lot of

animus against Dersavent and Paul from the Cajal. But that he was in no wise prejudice against the Jews is indicated in that his whole memorandum emerged in 1800 in response to the actual misery and hunger of the peasants. The goal was to do well by both the white Russian peasants and the Jews.

He distinguished them economically and his desire was to orient the Jews toward a real productive activity of whom, as Catherine planned, of part first and foremost was supposed to have been relocated in territories that were not closed. As a critical difficulty, Derjavans saw the instability and transientness of the Jewish population, of which scarcely one-sixth was included in the census. Without a special extraordinary effort, it is difficult to count them accurately

because being in cities, stettel, manor, course, villages, and taverns, they constantly move back and forth. They do not identify themselves as local residents, but as guests that are here from another district or colony. Moreover, they all look alike and have the same name and have no surname. And not only that, all wear the same black garments. One cannot distinguish them and misidentifies them when they are registered or identified,

especially in connection with judicial complaints and investigations. Therein, the Kehlot takes Kheelot takes Ket, care not to disclose the real number in order to not unduly burden their wealthy with taxes for the number registered? The very structure of this institution was adversarial to any government that they were, that they were, whose territory they were in. They didn't have, you know, they didn't have surnames. You were no way to identify them.

They were constantly moving. They saw themselves as aliens. their sole purpose is to exploit the goyum around them by one way or another. No real principles other than that. There was no way to, you know, it's difficult to arrest them. It's difficult to treat them. You know, you don't know who's who. Clearly they're all, you know, they look alike.

I mean, they're not kidding here. There was simply no way to track them down, the worst of them down. they didn't identify themselves as local residents because they weren't local residents they were constantly in motion they had no connection to any place especially in in a Christian country and except as enemies except as parasites there's no other way to state it and no one could could debate this here let's do one more section and then we'll we'll We'll move on and pick up on the next episode. You mean not paragraph?

Is it one paragraph and you'll comment and then we'll be, we can move on? All right. Okay. Der Javen sought, however, a comprehensive solution to reduce the number of Jews in the white Russian villages without causing damage to anyone and thus to ease the feeding of the original residents. Yet at the same time, for those that should remain, to provide better and, and less degrading possibilities for earning their sustenance. In addition, he probed how to reduce their fanaticism

and without retreating in the slightest from the rule of toleration toward different religions, to lead them by a barely noticed way to enlightenment and after expunging their hatred of people of other faiths, above all, to bring them to give up their besetting intention of stealing foreign goods. The goal was to find a way to separate the freedom of religious conscience from the freedom from freedom from punishment of evil deeds again yes it's naive um but there wasn't much more they can do uh the money economy was was in their hands the grain trade was in their hands um it wasn't as if the peasants were able to take over it and do much for themselves that would

take a long time. But again, this is the first time the Talmud was exposed and pointed to in Russia as the cause here. And all of the means of manipulation, you did have a handful of Russians who could read the language. I would think more in Kiev than anywhere else. But essentially, he's saying, we want to keep Jews from being Jews. you know this is their Khazar background this is this is simply what they do

so long as they're in exile so long as they are in Christian or any other non-Jewish land and that that concept never quite you know and if they press too hard you're going to have constant unrest the most productive elements

of that part of the country we're going to have to leave and so they're in trouble either way and that goes from from this point in history all the way up to 1917. It was a constant problem after the collapse of Poland because there really was no obvious solution

given the circumstances here. Except, and again, to think that they're just going to give up this, give up their tremendously profitable life, appealing to their humanity or something like that, was naive, but they didn't think they had a choice here at the, we're coming at the dawn of the 19th century. I think a lot of people will look at this and as I said earlier think well they're I mean it's the it's the

peasant's fault for being exploited and really if you understand the situation if you understand the under if you have an understanding of what the average peasant what their worldview was what their education was really what you're looking at is you're basically looking at like if a parent exploited a child. And that's kind of a good, that's kind of, I think it's a good comparison because when you consider that, you know, these people really should be considering

all that they've been given, there should be a sense of noblesse oblige to these peasants. I mean, that's just what makes it all the more insidious. Yeah, and that was never going to happen. peasants were shrewd they were brilliant on the land the way that they

dealt with animals city people always thought they had special powers because they could you know they knew the cycles of nature so extremely well yeah they couldn't explain it in scientific terms but they actually were highly intelligent they were very motor and

you know as the years went on they became very political too at least a certain stratum in the Polish empire, of course, the Cossacks were the core of their rebellion. They rebelled all the time. But

after Catherine destroyed the Zaporosia, smashed their fortresses, Peter had done the same 100 years earlier. The Cossack military force was now not really the factor that it was, you know,

for Kim Milyinsky's time. They didn't have the armed assistance of paramilitary organization to assist them. There were plenty of uprisings, especially under Catherine. Of course, Pugachev occurred under Catherine,

where it was also an old believer rebellion. But, and that's exactly, though, what Zarr Paul and Alexander wanted to avoid. They didn't want to play into anyone's hands, especially the enemy.

This is, you know, the era of revolutionary France here. And that's all they needed. was to play into French hands. So they were in a very difficult position. And Dersavannik exposed this. And what they do to Dershavin, you know, later, I mean, he died a natural death.

Paul didn't, unfortunately. But Dershavent's reputation, they dragged through the mud for no other reason. And they realized that he was right, showing even at this point how powerful the Jews were in the Russian Empire, despite their few numbers in places like St. Petersburg. all right we'll pick up um right in the middle of the page on the next episode and once again i encourage people to go to the show notes they will be linked in everywhere and i have i actually have hot links on wherever the videos are so that you can support dr johnson's work and i appreciate

once again yeah and once again thank you and um until part five