The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 67

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

57 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 c...ontinue a project in which Pete reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together," and Dr' Johnson provides commentary.Dr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Starting point is 00:02:58 You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount. of material that I do, I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy. It's all because of you. And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So, um, thank you. The Pekignana Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to part 67 of our reading of Alexander Solzhenyson's 200 years together.
Starting point is 00:03:35 Dr. Johnson, how are you doing this fine Saturday? It is a fine Saturday. I'm looking over and it is 65 degrees in my office, despite it being on the second floor. It is sunny. The corn next door is ready to be harvested probably in another month. It's just everything feels right. So let's get this done before something ruins it.
Starting point is 00:04:03 Yeah. Yeah, it's been a high 50s, low 60s in the morning here. It's been getting up to 80 during the day, but it's definitely not Alabama weather, you know, that you're, you know, July Alabama weather. So, yeah, it's really nice. All righty, picking up where we left off. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks were conducting their financial operations diligently abroad, mainly via Stockholm. Since Lenin's return to Russia, secret supplies had come to, them of German provenance through the Nia Bankin of Olaf Ashberg. This did not exclude the financial
Starting point is 00:04:44 support of certain Russian bankers, those who, fleeing the revolution, had sought refuge abroad, but had transformed there into volunteer support of the Bolsheviks. An American researcher, Anthony Sutton, has found, with half a century of delay, archival documents. He tells us that, If we are to believe a report sent in 1918 to the State Department by the U.S. ambassador in Stockholm, among these Bolshevik bankers is the infamous Dmitri Rubinstein that the revolution of February had gotten out of prison, who had reached Stockholm and made himself the financial agent of the Bolsheviks. We also find Abram Zhivotovsky, a relative of Trotsky and Lev Komenov. Among the syndicates were Denisov of the Ex-Bank of Siberia, Kamenka of the Bank Azov Don,
Starting point is 00:05:43 and Davidov of the Bank of Foreign Trade. Other Bolshevik bankers, Gregori Leesin, Schifler, Schifter, Iakov Berline, and their agent, Isidore Kohn. Yeah, we've been, we've been forgetting about Jewish bankers within the bound of the old Russian Empire. Some of them were leaving, but they were transferring money to the Reds and continued to do so once they left. They weren't fleeing the Bolsheviks. They were fleeing the war. But now, I think this is the first time we're mentioning Anthony Sutton. When I read his three-volume work on concerning how the,
Starting point is 00:06:35 U.S. built Soviet Russia. I shouldn't say, sorry, the Soviet Union. I was never the same. I mean, this was one of those books. It's a voice set. He had another one that he published later. It's one of these books that just altered my perception. It was many, many years ago.
Starting point is 00:06:57 And the fact that, first of all, it proves that communism was false, because that would be impossible. Any communist power would not have the support of banks or industrialists abroad. That's laughable in Marx's own theory. But in this three volume, one of the reasons is three volumes is because
Starting point is 00:07:20 he is so detailed he has receipts, he has everything you can imagine. There is no denying that in every sector, financial is one, but from mining, you know, coal especially, gold, electricity, auto, you know, all the foundational
Starting point is 00:07:44 industries that you would need to rebuild a country. Every one of them came from a Western, usually an American corporation who saw an opportunity to make a huge profit there. At the same time you had Bolshevik members of the party coming over to universities and institutes in Britain and the U.S. learning about how to do it and then get sent back. What kind of a clearly, it's not an anti-communist situation here. That never stopped. That never ended. So by the time you get to someone like Nixon who did have a firm understanding of of Bolshevism and then Ronald Reagan, as we all know, they were powerless. It's very hard to tell an American billionaire where he could make money and where he can't.
Starting point is 00:08:46 Reagan used to complain about the fact that he's trying to ban sales of back then the high-tech computer stuff to the USSR, but he couldn't. you know there was no there were no sanctions on it um so i mean this shows you something this is one of the major reasons why the whole history of the 20th century has to be rewritten i said it before i'm going to say it a million times again henry ford built the largest ford plant in the world in karkov in western ukraine uh under the you know under stalin and almost everything that the Soviet automotive, you know, they branched out, but it all came from that one factory. Now, Marxism suggests that that would be impossible. That can't be.
Starting point is 00:09:42 What kind of a Cold War can you have when you have trade like that at its most fundamental levels where presidents are powerless to stop it? You know, the Russian-American Export-Import Bank, all these other institutions that developed over the years. And you know, the one thing the one thing where sanctions were temporarily placed on Russia was, of course, about the Jews.
Starting point is 00:10:08 The Jackson-Vannock Amendment forcing the Soviets to permit immigration of Russian Jews to Israel. That's what caused the first that's what caused the first set of sanctions
Starting point is 00:10:23 and the only set of sanctions. And that was lifted. So, clearly what we've been told about the Cold War of the U.S. I can say what the U.S. fought the Soviets in Korea and Vietnam. I said, well, sure. You know, the U.S. is going to fight any empire that's growing that large. It didn't matter what the ideology was. You know, they're worried about being kept out of the trade deals.
Starting point is 00:10:51 That has nothing to do with Marxism or Bolshevism or Lenin. I mean, Nixon went over and supported the Chinese right in the middle of his men. slaughter of Chinese people and both in the greatly forward and then the cultural revolution afterward. They exposed to their first nuclear weapon in 1964. No one got upset. Iran has peaceful nuclear power and then there should be bombed back into the stone age. Not nuclear weapons, nuclear power, two very different things.
Starting point is 00:11:25 The world is completely different when your opponent is on the left of the political spectrum versus on the right, vaguely speaking. The communists got, you know, the communists were backed by the U.S. I think the only really until the empire was threatening to get too large for the American mind to handle. And they couldn't allow all of Asia to come under. So then why would they need the U.S. then? But that has nothing to do with ideology.
Starting point is 00:11:57 And this is at the same time Marxists are taking over American universities. They're taking over things like psychology. So talk about the anti-communist West is absolutely laughable. And I think we're just getting into some of that stuff right here. These had left Russia. Others in the opposite direction left America to return. They were the revenants. All of them revolutionaries, some from long ago, others of recent date.
Starting point is 00:12:27 who dreamed of finally building and consolidating the new world of universal happiness. We talked about it. We talked about it in Chapter 14. They were flocking across the ocean from the port of New York to the east or from the port of San Francisco in the direction of the west. Some former subjects of the Russian Empire, others purely and simply American citizens, enthusiasts, who even didn't know the Russian language. Listen, you can't
Starting point is 00:12:53 overestimate the intellectual side of this. How many American and British intellectuals really thought that the Soviet Union was the wave of the future? Even under Stalin, especially after the victory in World War II, he had such a tremendous reputation.
Starting point is 00:13:13 All of Stalin's debt was canceled. Can you imagine? Capitalist canceling debts on the on the Soviet Empire. So you had enthusiasm, yeah, they didn't know anything, but they had all of their very idiosyncratic understanding to what they thought Bolshevism was. It's got to be better than the U.S.
Starting point is 00:13:37 And that went straight up until, of course, the Vietnam War where the U.S. was struggling, although it's self-imposed. And maybe, I don't know, maybe the Soviet system is better. Without bothering to mention that the U.S. never had sanctions on trading with the Soviet Union. Who was then sending that same stuff to North Vietnam?
Starting point is 00:14:00 And the only victims there were, of course, American boys and the South Vietnamese where the ARVN held on and fought to the very last man while the U.S. pulled the rug out from under them in 74-75. It's tragic. And I love how he says, a new world of universal happiness. That's exactly in some cases. how it was, you know, Bertrand Russell and people like that, although he went back and forth on that issue. A lot of people went back and forth on that issue, both under Lenin and under
Starting point is 00:14:32 Stalin. It's, you know, you can't really overstated. I thought it was just a faction many years ago. No, no, it was a huge portion of the American intelligentsia that saw the Soviet Union this way. Well, remember, Walter Durantee, the New York Times went to Ukraine during the whole of Dormar and he said, oh, they're hungry, but they're not starving. So this experiment must go forward. If I'm not mistaken, yeah, that's certainly not the only time they did it. The New York Times did that in China, too. If I'm not mistaken, I think he finally had his Pulitzer Prize posthumously taken away for that.
Starting point is 00:15:21 I'm not 100% sure. There was a move among Ukrainians to do that. I don't know if it actually went through or not. In 1919, A.V. Turkova Williams wrote in a book published then in England, quote, there are a few Russians among the Bolshevik leaders. Few men imbued with Russian culture and concerned with the interests of the Russian people. In addition to foreign citizens, Bolshevism recruited immigrants who had spent many years outside the borders. Some had never been to Russia before. There were many Jews among them. They spoke Russian badly. The nation of which they had become masters was foreign to them, and moreover, they behaved like invaders in the conquered country. End quote. And if in Tsarist Russia, Jews were excluded from all official posts, if schools and state
Starting point is 00:16:11 service were closed to them, on the other hand, in the Soviet Republic, all committees and commissariats were filled with Jews. Often they exchanged their Jewish name for Russian name, but this masquerade did not deceive anyone. Well, it may have deceived a few people, but the number of people who, you know, we're writing about this at the time, and we're going to get into some of that now. I mean, we know, you know, congressmen, senators who started to realize this. Back at 1919, I guess you could talk a little bit like that in the U.S. and in Western Europe. Of course, today, if you talk about it, you go to prison, especially in the EU. But yeah, that paragraph, just what you just read from Williams,
Starting point is 00:16:58 that's precisely. And, you know, she was a witness. That's it. That's the summary of everything we've been talking about. That same year, 1919, at the Senate hearings of the Overman Commission and Illinois University professor P.B. Dennis, who arrived in Russia in 1917, declared that in his opinion, quote, an opinion that matched that of any Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen. These people deployed in Russia an extreme cruelty and ferocity in their repression against the bourgeoisie. The word is used here without any pejorative nuance in its primary sense, the inhabitants of the boroughs.
Starting point is 00:17:38 Or, among those who carried out murderous propaganda in the trenches and in the rear, there were those who, one or two years before 1917 and 1918, still lived in New York. Yeah, in Brooklyn. Yeah, what Solznyton is kind of correcting here, the definition of a proletarian and a bourgeois was never stable. The bourgeois Z was whoever the Soviet said was one.
Starting point is 00:18:14 Certainly, you know, a former organized in a collective, in the commune, which is an ancient institution, is not a member of the bourgeoisie, but when they were being slaughtered, of course, they had to have been. So they stretched the definition. And I guess really indirectly, people like Schiff or any of the Soviet bankers were considered proletarians. Because remember, the party was the van Goghers,
Starting point is 00:18:49 was the vanguard of the proletariat. And they were there to set up the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, the dictatorship in the Soviet Union was the working class, the working man, regardless of who actually made it up. And it was a level of just self-deceit that is extraordinary. And I don't want to act like there aren't plenty of professors who still don't buy, who still think that, there are plenty of them. I think that's kind of going away.
Starting point is 00:19:28 I mean, they know that that's not true now. But that was, you know, the dictatorship of the proletarian murdered people who were part of the bourgeoisie, no matter what class they were in. It didn't make any difference. It was whoever their enemies were. Now, the original definition of bourgeoisie is someone who lived in a city. But it came to mean the merchant classes, and it came to mean those who became wealthy that way, either in banking or in trading. So it's hilarious that, you know, the Jews' enemy was the Jews in truth.
Starting point is 00:20:07 That's what the Jews were, but they can never say that. It's almost a mockery of language. And that's why the propaganda had to be so severe. and the violence had to be so severe, and people who were pointing this out had to go to the camps to make sure that they didn't have to hear it again. The last thing I wanted to do was hear how ridiculous the use of these words was. In February 1920, Winston Churchill spoke in the pages of the Sunday Herald. In an article entitled Zionism Against Bolshevism, Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People, he wrote, today we see this company of outstanding personalities, emerging from clandestinity,
Starting point is 00:20:48 from the basements of the great cities of Europe and America, who grabbed by the hair and seized by the throat the Russian people and established itself as the undisputed mistress of the immense Russian empire. Keep in mind here with Churchill, he was always a phylo-Semite. I love how he used the word, the basement, like the basement dweller. We still use that with your mom's basement or something like, you know, making fun of somebody. He was heavily in debt, as was his father, to various Jewish bankers. But he was a, he supported Zionism, not Bolivism. So he thought he had a way out that way.
Starting point is 00:21:36 But Winston Churchill says something like this. And he talked about the Jews in this regard all the time, back. then, you know it's true. He'd be the last one to try to besperch the name of Jews. So he claimed he was, you know, they should be Zionists, not, not Bolshevists, but they were in the USSR. Basements of the great cities of Europe and America. I mean, you know, that's, that's pretty funny. There are many known names among these people who have returned from beyond the ocean. Here is M. Grusenberg, who had previously lived in England, where he had met Sunyatzen, then lived for a time in the United States in Chicago where he had organized a school for the immigrants,
Starting point is 00:22:24 and we find him in 1919, General Counsel of the R.SFSR in Mexico, a country on which the revolutionaries found the great hopes Trotsky would turn up there. Then in the same year, he sat in the central organs of the common turn. He took service in Scandinavia, Sweden, He was arrested in Scotland. He resurfaced in China in 1923 under the name of Borodin with a whole squad of spies. He was the principal political advisor to the executive committee of the Qumintang, a role which enabled him to promote the career of Mao Zetong and Zhu Lai. However, having suspected Borodin-Gruzenberg of engaging in subversive work, Shanghai Shek expelled him from China in 1927. What was that?
Starting point is 00:23:12 Like just, that's like a meme right there. Well, we got kicked out of another country. How does he get kicked? How bad does a revolutionary have to be to get kicked out of China by Shanghai, by Shanghai, returning to the USSR, he passed unharmed the year 1937. During the war with Germany, we find him editor-in-chief of the Soviet information office alongside Drizzolosovsky. He will be executed in 1951 about the Bolshevik Jews executed
Starting point is 00:23:49 in the 1930s. See Infra Chapter 19. Yeah, that's fun. Don't forget, the Kuman Tang back then, it wasn't like the nationalist party that fled to Taiwan. At the time, prior to World War II, in the 20s, it had a left wing and it had a right wing. It was a huge party. so you can have support from Marxists and nationalists at the same time since Japan was the enemy. Of course, that's going to change much later. Among them also, Samuel Agerski, who became one of the leaders of Belarus, arrested in 1938, he served the sentence of deportation. He is the father of the late Em Agerski, who prematurely disappeared and who did not follow the same path as his progenitor, far from it.
Starting point is 00:24:37 Let us also mention Solomon Slepik, an influential member of the common turn, he returned to Russia by Vladivostok, where he took part in assassinations. He then went to China to try to attract Sun Yat-Send in an alliance with communism. His son Vladimir would have to tear himself, not without a clash, from the trap into which his father had fallen in his quest for the radiant future of communism. Stories like this, and some even more paradoxical, there are hundreds of them. Yeah, Sunyat Sen was somewhat of a liberal. He certainly was anti-royalist, but he was no Marxist. But this is kind of like, you know, if someone, I'm from New Jersey. I'm from Union County, New Jersey. If somehow, because we have similar political views, a guy from the Congo shows up and says, oh, you know, come back. We need you to run our agriculture department.
Starting point is 00:25:36 And I get the, and I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know the language. I don't know. All I know is that I guess I must be a proletarian now. And of course they ran it into the ground. It was all about them sucking it dry, everything, anything they, any value they could, not having created it themselves, of course. And that's what this is like, you know, dragging people, Akerski is from Brooklyn.
Starting point is 00:26:05 You know, and then, you know, doing, doing all of this. because, you know, say, this is outrageous. You can get these guys solely for being Jewish leftists and then putting them wherever, sticking them whatever office you need them for, regardless of the fact that they know zero about it. Demolishers of the bourgeois, what unquote Jewish culture also turned up.
Starting point is 00:26:32 Among them, the collaborators of S. Demonstien in the European Commissariat, the S.R. Dubkovsky, Agorski, mentioned, and also Canter, Shapiro, Kaplan, former emigrant anarchists who had returned from London and New York. The objective of the commissariat was to create a center for the Jewish communist movement. Seems redundant. In August 1918, the new communist newspaper in Yiddish, Emis, the truth, announced, quote, the proletarian revolution began in the street of the Jews. A campaign was immediately launched against the Edders and the Talmud.
Starting point is 00:27:11 Mottora. In June 1919, countersigned by Esa Gerski and Stalin, the dissolution of the Central Bureau of the Jewish Communities was proclaimed, which represented the conservative fraction of Judaism, the one that had not sided with the Bolsheviks. It is nonetheless true that the socialist Jews were not attracted primarily to the Bolsheviks. Now, however, where were the other parties? What had become of them? What allowed the Bolshevik party to occupy an exclusive position was the disintegration of the old Jewish political parties. The Bun, the Zionist socialist, and the Zionists of the Poli had split up and their leaders had joined the victors camp by denying the ideals of democratic socialism, such as M. Race, M. Frumkina Esther, A. Weinstein,
Starting point is 00:28:02 M. Litvanov. Yeah, Weishel talked about this a few weeks ago. Their disagreements were fairly minor. They were all Marxists in one form or another. you know, the Mensovics, for the most part, were. So, you know, saying, oh, just, you know, okay, we disagree on a few issues, but I'm still going to support you guys. And then, of course, I get some crazy, you know, high office for some reason. As a result, yeah, it was, it was too tempting. But this is exactly the same group of people as Thalun is going to get rid of. Is it possible? Even the Bund, this extremely belligerent organizations, which even Lenin's positions were not suitable, which showed itself so intransigent on the principle of the cultural
Starting point is 00:28:46 and national autonomy of the Jews? Well, yes, even the Boond. Quote, after the establishment of Soviet power, the leadership of the Boon and Russia split into two groups in 1920, the right, which is in its majority, emigrated, and the left, which liquidated the Bund in 1921, and adhered in large parts of the Bolshevik Party. Among the former members of the Boond, we can cite the irremovable David Zaslovsky, the one who for decades would put his pen at the service of Stalin, he would be responsible for stigmatizing mandelstem and Pasternak. Also, the Laplaceky brothers, Israel and Grigori, one from the outset would become an agent of the Cheka and stay there
Starting point is 00:29:29 for the rest of his life. The other would occupy a high position in the NKVD in 1920. Then would be deputy commissar of the people, president of the small Sov Narcum of the R. Svnaum of the R. SSFSR, then Deputy Attorney General of the USSR, 1934, 1939, he would be a victim of repression in 1939. Solomon Kotler immediately promoted First Secretary of Orthborg, of Vologa, of Tavar, of the Regional Committee of Oral. Or also Abraham Heifitz, he returned to Russia after February 1917, joined the Presidium of the Bund's main committee in Ukraine was a member of the Central Committee of the Bund. In October 1917,
Starting point is 00:30:16 he was already for the Bolsheviks. And in 1919, he figured in the leading group of the common turn. You know, I guess maybe you could see Stalin's point of view. Yes, he did purge the party, but he wasn't anti-Jewish. But this army of Jews that they got from all over the world, they had no right to be there. They were good to fill in during the revolution. immediately afterwards. But as far as building a modern socialist state, they were not suited to it at all. Same thing for the military command.
Starting point is 00:30:49 This is exactly why Stalin purged the party. And because they were almost exclusively Jews, it looks like this is an anti-Semitic repression. So you're a scholar writing in the U.S. in the 70s or 80s. and you have a choice to make. Do I, am I, will I just be forced to admit that Bolshevism was Jewish? Or do I just say Stalin's an anti-Semite?
Starting point is 00:31:23 And of course, they all chose the latter. It has to be one of the two that he deliberately chose Jews to get rid of. No, it was nothing but Jews to get rid of. They were the revolutionary corps. You see, these people had no, none of them had any right at all to be in the positions they were given. You know, there's only so many Jews in the world. So many Jewish leftists in the world. And these guys went from place to place to place wherever they were needed.
Starting point is 00:31:50 You know, they weren't statesmen. The very opposite of that. And Stalin said, well, that might be okay in 1919, but it's not okay in 1939. To the leftists of the Bund joined the left of the Zionist Socialists and the Serp. Those entered the Communist Party as early as 1919. The left wing of the Poli-Zion did the same in 1921. In 1926, according to an internal census, there were up to 2,500 former members of the Bund in the party.
Starting point is 00:32:21 It goes without saying that many, later on, fell under the blade. Quote, under Stalin, the majority of them were victims of ferocious persecutions. Beekerman explains, quote, the Bund, which had assumed the role of representative of the Jewish working masses, joined the Bolsheviks in its most important and active part. Jewish working masses, yeah. In his memoirs, David Asbel tries to explain the reasons for this ascension by reflecting on the example of his uncle Aaron Isaacovich Weinstein,
Starting point is 00:32:56 an influential member of the Boone that we mentioned above. He had understood before all others that his party, as well as the other socialist parties, were condemned. He had understood also another thing to survive and continue to defend the interests of the Jews would be possible only by joining the Bolsheviks. I mean, from the Jewish point of view, I mean, strictly from the Jewish point of view, you could understand. They had legislation that banned any negative reference, any insult to the Jews, let alone attacks or physical violence. And they were the major core of defeating Hitler in just a few years.
Starting point is 00:33:43 So if you're a Jew, clearly, the USSR is that's, you know, they were gods to these people. And it was only much later that they came out with the theory that Stalin was anti-Semitic. He was surrounded by Jews. His daughters married Jews. I mean, it was, it's absolutely absurd. And of course, we're going to get into that much later in this, in this book. You will explain in detail. Solomon was not anti-Jewish whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:34:11 He was no different than Lenin or Trotky in any respect. But from the Jewish national point of view, it just made sense. This was the Messiah is starting to show himself. for how many of them the reasons, one, survive, two, continue to defend the interests of Jews, were decisive. Tentatively, both objectives were achieved. It will note also that after October the other socialist parties of the SR and the Mensheviks, who, as we know, had a large number of Jews in their ranks and at their heads, did not stand up against Bolshevism either.
Starting point is 00:34:50 Scarcely aware of the fact that the Bolsheviks had dismissed this constituent assembly, which they had called for, they withdrew, hesitated, divided themselves in their turns, sometimes proclaiming their neutrality in the Civil War. Other times their intention to temporize. As for the SR, they downright opened to the Bolsheviks a portion of the Eastern Front and tried to demoralize the rear of the whites. So you had Jews in any real leftist movement, from moderate liberals all the way to all the way to Bolsheviks. And those who fled, who fled. the country
Starting point is 00:35:25 well there were some who did so they went with Stalin I'm sorry they went with Trotsky and you know during the purges of what they thought was of Jews or they became what we call neocons today they became you know
Starting point is 00:35:50 they ended up being so opposed to Stalin there's any of these big anti-Semite that we needed some some golem like the US to hammer away at them they eventually became that that front that group of people for a long time I didn't think that there was a direct link between those two but there there actually is it just eventually you know we started off just being anti-Stalin he's an anti-Semite we have and then it just coalesced into this you know the Soviet Union is is rotten so long
Starting point is 00:36:24 as it's a Stalinist system, and the U.S. seems to be fighting it in Korea and Vietnam, therefore, the U.S. now is our best bet. But we also find Jews among the leaders of the resistance to the Bolsheviks in 1918. Out of the 26 signatures on the open letter of prisoners on the affair of the Workers' Congress, written at Togonka Prison, no less of a quarter or Jewish. The Bolsheviks were pitiless toward the Mensheviks of this kind. In the summer of 1918, R. Abramovich, an important Menshevik leader, avoided execution only by means of a letter addressed to Lenin from an Austrian prison by Friedrich Adler, the one who had shot down the Austrian Prime Minister in 1916 and who had been reprieved. Others, too, were stoic. Grigory Binstock, Simon Weinstein, arrested several times.
Starting point is 00:37:17 They were eventually expelled from the country. Yeah, the confrontation with Stalin didn't mean that they were they were they were all socialists of one kind or another they were all leftists of one kind or another this wasn't a principled stand uh whatsoever they were they were you know this that there was factionalism it's always going to be factionalism some decided us to make the jump and not worry about it others said you know Stalin might not be in our interest after all because again people confused the purge of the old bolsheviks with the confused with with the purge of jews the fact of the old bolsheviks the fact that the old bolsheviks the fact that the old Bolsheviks were Jews, but it comes down to Stalin's motivation.
Starting point is 00:38:00 No, it was to, you know, these half-revolutionaries from, you know, New York City or from the, you know, the basements of Paris, as, as he says, they're not, they're not competent to run a country. They may be competent to create a revolution and defend it, but not to run. The same thing for his purpose. of the military. These were revolutionary civil war type leaders. No, no, no. If there's going to be a war, there has to be a meritocracy here to some extent. So it had nothing to do with the fact that they were Jewish, but people get confused either deliberately or indelibly because the old Bolsheviks were almost all Jews. But that's why the purges occurred. In February 1921, in Petrograd, the Mensheviks certainly supported the deceived and hungry workers. They pushed them to protest and strike, but without any real conviction.
Starting point is 00:38:59 And they lacked audacity to take the lead of the Kronstadt insurrection. However, this did not in any way protect them from repression. We also know a lot of Mensheviks who joined the Bolsheviks, who exchanged one party label for another. They were Boris Mogadov, he became head of the political section of the 10th Army, then Donbos, Secretary of Pradesh, provincial committees of Poltova, Samara, instructor on the Central Committee. Abram de Borin, a true defector, he rapidly climbed the echelons of a career of red professor,
Starting point is 00:39:32 stuffing our heads with dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Alexander Gwikbarg, member of the Soviet Revolutionary Committee, public prosecutor at the trial of the Ministers of Kolchak, member of the College of the Commissariat for Justice, then president of the Little Sav Narkham. Some of them held out for some time until their arrests, such as I. Layaakovetsky, Maiski, the others in great numbers, were reduced very early to silence from the trial of the imaginary Unified Menshevik Bureau of 1931, where we find Gimer Sokanov, who was the designer of the tactics of the executive committee in March 1917.
Starting point is 00:40:14 A huge raid was organized throughout the union to apprehend them. There were defectors in the SR. Karkov Lyftchitz, for example, vice president of the Sharnagov Cheka in 1919, then Karkov, then president of the Kiev Cheka, and at the height of the rapid career, vice president of the Ukrainian GPU. There were anarchist communists, the most famous being Lazar Kogan, special section of the armies, assistance of the chief of the army of the Veshka in 1930, senior official of the Gulag, and in 1931, chief of the White Sea shipyard of the NKVD.
Starting point is 00:40:57 There are extremely sinuous biographies. Ilya Kit Wittenko, a lieutenant in the Austrian army, taken prisoner by the Russians, and from the moment the Bolsheviks are in power, takes his ranks at the Cheka. Good boy, and then in the army, and in the 1930s was one of the reformers of the Red Army, and then in the whole for 20 years.
Starting point is 00:41:19 You know, I don't want to be repetitive, but these these biographies are laughable you know if if you were a leftist Jewish professor say at Rutgers in 1920 also you had to do was fly to the USSR and you could be a dictator of a little section you could run a bureau you could even run the army or a part of the army and how do you go from an anarchist to being the head of the gulag these people didn't have principles you know, it was, you know, it was Jewish interests primarily. I think anarchists are kind of ridiculous the way that they are in the U.S. anyway, you know, most anarchists are communists.
Starting point is 00:42:04 There's a handful of others who are more individualists, but it's real, and I've noticed, and I have some personal experience with this, the anarchists in academia, they run their departments with an iron fist. I'll mention any names, but, he uh they'll you know anarchy is just a just this negative attack against um what they think the society is against white people against what they consider a white nomination and it's the same thing here you know they're anarchists for a while and then when oh my god all these jobs are opening up he ends up running the gulag my god and the shipyard what the hell do he know about that you could do whatever you wanted if you were a jewish leftist at the time the sky was the limit.
Starting point is 00:42:54 You know, who knows what job you can get if you went over there. And what about the Zionists? Let us remember in 1906 they had posited and proclaimed that they could not stay away from the Russians' fight against the yoke of the autocracy, and they had actively engaged in said battle. This did not prevent them in May 1918, when the yoke still weighed so heavily, to declare that in matters of Russian domestic policy, they would henceforth be neutral. very obviously in the hope of avoiding the risk that the Bolsheviks would accuse them of being counter-revolutionaries. And at first, it worked.
Starting point is 00:43:28 Throughout the year in 1918 and during the first six months in 1919, the Bolsheviks left them alone. In the summer of 1918, they were able to hold the all-Russian Congress of Jewish communities in Moscow, and hundreds of their communities had their Palestinian week. Their newspapers appeared freely, and a youth club, the heralds, was created. But in the spring of 1919, local authorities undertook to ban the Zionist press here and there, and in the autumn of 1919, a few prominent figures were accused of espionage for the benefit of England. In the spring of 1920, the Zionist organized a pan-Russian conference in Moscow. Result, all the participants, 90 people, were interned in the Buturka prison.
Starting point is 00:44:13 Some were condemned, but the penalty was not applied following the intervention of a delegation of Jewish citizens. syndicates from America. Yeah. The Vesheka Presidium declared that the Zionist organization was counter-revolutionary and its activity was now forbidden in Soviet Russia. From this moment
Starting point is 00:44:32 began the area of clandestinity for the Zionists. This whole thing, it's the deception has so many layers. Sometimes it just, it breaks a lot of people's brain. You know, we had the Balfour Declaration, which was done already. Therefore,
Starting point is 00:44:48 Britain was dedicated to the Zionist idea. But Britain also backed the Red Armies whenever they could, allowed the Tsar to be murdered. Britain was certainly no enemy and was investing in the USSR, clearly no enemy of Marxism. So for ideological reasons, they had to act like being a spy for England was a terrible thing, when in reality, so much of the revolutionary movement came from there.
Starting point is 00:45:18 You know, certainly prior to 1905, London was the headquarters of the revolutionary movement. And I love the fact that the Americans, the Jews have so much power that the Jews in America can commute sentences in the USSR, just with a protest letter going back and forth. That means the Jews knew precisely what was going on in the Soviet Union. They knew exactly what was happening to people. And then, but don't forget, later, Zionism became the official ideology of the Soviet Union. It was Stalin founded the state of Israel. Stalin's people, Gromiko and others in the UN,
Starting point is 00:46:03 defended the foundation of the state of Israel. There wasn't until much later that, you know, the U.S. gave them a much better deal than the Soviets could. And it was a different story then. But for a while, for a couple of years after 1948, this was Stalin's project, especially after Bureau Bidjdan failed. So just, you know, it's almost like we have to map out the deceit on a piece of paper. It's so, it's so absurd.
Starting point is 00:46:31 M. Haifitz, who is a thoughtful man, reminds us very well of this. Did the October coup not coincide exactly with the Balfour Declaration, which laid the foundations of an independent Jewish state? Well, what happened? A part of the new Jewish generation followed the path of Herzl and Batinsky, while the other, bigger, yielded to temptation and swelled the ranks of the Lenin Trotsky-Stalin band, exactly what Churchill feared. Hurtzl's way then appeared distant, unreal, while that of Trotsky and Bagritsky enabled the Jews to gain immediate stature and immediately become a nation in Russia, equal and right and even privileged. Yeah, the British controlled, you know, Palestine. The chances of them, other than a massive invasion in war with Britain, of creating a state was out of the question.
Starting point is 00:47:21 That's not going to be permitted until when the British Empire fell apart after World War II. Also defector, of course, and not least, Lev Mechlus of the Poles-Zion. His career is well known, and Stalin secretariat in the editorial board of the Pravda at the head of the Red Army's political sector in the state defense commissariat and commissioner of state control. It was he who made our landing in Crimea in 1942 fail. At the height of his career, in the org borough of the Central Committee, his ashes are sealed in the wall of the Kremlin. Of course, there was an important part of the Jews of Russia who did not adhere to Bolshevism. Neither the rabbis, the lecturers, nor the great doctors, nor a whole mass of good people,
Starting point is 00:48:06 fell into the arms of the Bolsheviks. Turkova writes in the same passage in her book a few lines later, quote, the predominance of the Jews among the Soviet leaders put to despair those of the Russian Jews who, despite the cruel iniquities suffered under the Tsarist regime, regarded Russia as the motherland and led the common life of all Russian intelligentsia refusing in communion with her any collaboration with the Bolsheviks. But at the time, they had no opportunity of making themselves heard publicly, and these pages are naturally filled not with their names, but with those of the conquerors, those who have bridled the course of events.
Starting point is 00:48:43 You know, it's not unfair to say that before the Civil War started, the Bolsheviks could count on maybe 2% of the entire old Russian Empire's support. Top heavy with Jews, no doubt. But that means that there was plenty of Jews outside of it. But the question is, why were they outside of it? They were all on the left. They all hated the monarchy. They all had pretty much the same agenda, which is why it was so easy for so many of them to, to jump ship and join them, even if they didn't agree on everything.
Starting point is 00:49:19 It gave them immediate power, immediate privilege, and domination over Goyem, who they hated. This isn't like that it changed them. They were always like this. Now they have the power to act on it. Two illustrious terrorist acts perpetrated by Jewish arms against the Bolsheviks in 1918 occupy a special place. The assassination of Yuritsky by Leonid.
Starting point is 00:49:44 Kenegissar and the attack on Lenin by Fanny Kaplan. Here too, though, the other way around was expressed a vocation of the Jewish people to be always among the first. Perhaps the blows fired at Lenin were rather the result of SR intentions. But as for Kenegissar, born of hereditary nobility by his grandfather, he entered the school of officer cadets in 1917. By the way, he was in friendly relations with Sergei Yassanen. I admit, full well, Mark Aldenov's explanation. In the face of the Russian people in history, he was moved by the desire to oppose the names of Yuritsky and Zinoviev with another Jewish name. This is the feeling he expresses in a note transmitted to his sister on the eve of the attack,
Starting point is 00:50:30 in which he says he wants to avenge the peace of Brestlovak, that he is ashamed to see the Jews contribute to install the Bolsheviks in power, and also avenge the execution of his companion of the School of Artillery at the Cheka of Petrograd. Well, that treaty was a whole separate matter. You know, they gave away huge chunks of the old Western Russian Russian Empire to the Germans. It caused a lot, regardless of your background, it caused a huge amount of, it made them even less popular than they were before.
Starting point is 00:51:08 And it wasn't until World War II that, of course, Stalin got it back. It should be noted, however, that recent studies have revealed that these two attacks were perpetrated under suspicious circumstances. There was strong presumption that Fannie Kaplan did not shoot Lenin at all, but was apprehended to close the case, the convenient culprit, by chance. There is also a hypothesis that the Bolshevik authorities themselves would have created the necessary conditions for, can I guesser, to fire his shot. This I strongly doubt, for what provocation with the Bolsheviks have sacrificed their beloved child, President the Cheka. One thing, however, is troubling. How is it that later, in full red terror, when was attained by force of arms through the entire country, thousands of innocent hostages, totally unconnected with the affair, the whole Kanagesser family was freed from
Starting point is 00:51:59 prison and allowed to emigrate? We do not recognize here the Bolshevik claw. Or would it be the intervention of a very long arm to the highest-ranking Soviet instances. A recent publication tells us that the relatives and friends of El Kanagissar had even drawn up an armed attack plan against the Czechos-Petrograd to free their prisoner, and that all, as soon as they were arrested, were released and remained in Petrograd without being disturbed. Such clemency on the part of the Bolshevik authorities may be explained by their concern to avoid ill feelings with the influential Jewish circles in Petrograd. The Kanagissar family had kept his Judaic faith, and Leonid's mother, Rosalia
Starting point is 00:52:43 Eduardoovna, declared during an interrogation that her son had fired on Yuritsky because he had turned away from Judaism. But here is a Jewish name that has not yet obtained the deserved celebrity. Alexander Abramovich Valenkin, hero the clandestine struggle against the Bolsheviks. He was a volunteer in the Hussars at the age of 17. In 1914, he was decorated four times with the cross of St. George, promoted to officer then, on the eve of the revolution, he became captain of cavalry. In 1918, he joined the clandestine Organization Union for the defense of the homeland of liberty. He was apprehended by the Cheka
Starting point is 00:53:22 at the time when, as the organization had been discovered, he was delaying the destruction of compromising documents. Focused, intelligent, energetic, uncompromising toward the Bolsheviks, he infused in others the spirit of resistance. Executed by the Bolsheviks, it goes without saying. The information about him came to us from his comrade in arms in the underground in 1918 and also from his cellmate in 1919, Vasilievich Fyodorovich Clementeev, a captain in the Russian army. These fighters against Bolshevism, whatever their motivations,
Starting point is 00:53:56 we venerate their memory as Jews. We regret that there were so few, as were too few the white forces during the Civil War. Now, he is one of the exceptions that we have talked about a few times. He saw Russia as being very good to the Jews, as he had every reason to believe, either was drafted or joined the army, went up the ranks, and was treated very well. He became a patriot of a sort. and so when the Bolfix took over there was no way
Starting point is 00:54:34 he was going to especially after the treaty you know how many men died to take that area to push the Germans out now we're giving it away I thought I thought our side won you know but even without that there were a handful of Jews that were that were legitimate patriots and there's always going to be exceptions So he's, you know, everywhere we go, there's a few, you know, Jews like that.
Starting point is 00:55:03 We have them in this country. He didn't convert as far as I know. But his military experience brought him to a very patriotic point of view. And I have the feeling that it was the treaty that that kind of set him off as a firm enemy of the Leninists. So this is just one of the exceptions. We mentioned that. We haven't put any name to it. Well, this is a name we could put to it.
Starting point is 00:55:33 Awesome. All right. Natural break. We will come back in a couple of days with part 68. Or is this 68? No, this is 67. Part 68. That's unbelievable.
Starting point is 00:55:47 All right. As I do at the end of every episode, please go to the show notes and please go to the description in the videos and all the links to how you can donate to Dr. Johnson are there. please show him how much you appreciate all the work he's doing here. And as I always do, I thank you, Dr. Johnson. I'm learning as much as the audiences and all of this. Well, I'm having a great time. This has been a great idea and a great experience.
Starting point is 00:56:14 As you see, a lot of this is off the top of my head because I know way too much about this. I need to stop myself or else we should be going for hours and hours and hours. and it's just been got so many paper ideas and book ideas are coming out of this as if I need another book to work on. But this has been a blast for me too. But unfortunately, I do need financial support from our friends. And so do you. I do. But yeah, this is, I could be sitting here reading this by myself and people would get a lot out of it.
Starting point is 00:56:54 I think the what makes this invaluable and what is going to make this timeless and something that people will be watching and listening to probably 20, 25 years from now and beyond is the fact that you're here to provide all this background and um you know I just want to say thank you thank you for doing this with me. Oh you're more than welcome talk to you in a couple days all right my friend bye bye

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