The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 89

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

55 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 PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Unmentionable Genocide: New Khazaria, the Russian Revolutions and Soviet Legality in the 1920s by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonWith Friends Like These. . . Patriarch St. Tikhon, General Anton Denikin and the Defeat of the White Armies, 1917-1922 by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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one? Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the Pekignonez Show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else.

The things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy, it's all because of you. And, yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So thank you. The Pekingona Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzhenyson. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today?

I discovered something recently. If you look up the band suicidal tendencies on YouTube, even if you specify an album or a song or say it's a band, you get all of this, you're not alone, hear all the phone numbers before you get. So, you know, my profile now must think I have this problem. Thus by looking, so it really, and the same thing goes for Google. So when you guys, you know, just be prepared for this.

I tried to make it. It's a band. Here's a song. Here's the album. Didn't matter. Those two words were in it. And that's all the, the system cared about. So be careful.

I wonder what happens if you try to pull up the band death. The what? The band death. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, that one of those bands years ago, I never, I never got into them. There's anything wrong with them, but you can't get into everyone, you know? There's always going to be bands that fall by the wayside for whatever reason. A lot of my friends were fans.

You know, but, you know, you can't, you know, there were so many, especially back then. Are they still around? Are they still touring? The guitar player died like 25 years ago. I don't know if they're, I don't know that they can even tour without Chuck. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I've been.

Farner, Farner is touring with zero original members. That's, that makes no sense whatsoever. Absolutely ridiculous. Boston is touring with one guy, you know, Tom. Well, Brad Dump died. I mean, he, yeah, he unfortunately killed him, yeah. He had suicidal tendencies. One of the great, one of the great vocals, a vocalist in all rock music, as we all know.

I've been on a, um, all of the catalog, Judas, priest journey lately? Yeah, I have phases. I go just like that. It depends on what's going on what I'm into. I had an overkill one because they're from New Jersey. They're awesome. And that ended.

And I'm kind of in between now. So, well, I started with suicidal. It's been so long since I listened to them. And yeah, so now apparently my profile in Google has that mentioned. so overkill is the band i've seen more than any other live yeah oh i've seen them before too i've seen them at um capital theater did i see i don't know at lamores in brooklyn i probably did i don't remember way back when um yeah i saw so many bands there really 20 times yeah i saw them with exodus one time all right we can talk about music all day maybe we'll do that one day and and just we'll advertise

it as a 200 years together episode and then just talk about music. I think people are entertained by it. I think people like it. All right. Here we go. Beekerman and Pazmanic paint a very gloomy picture of the state of the Jewish culture in the USSR

in 1923. All is torn up and trampled underfoot in the field of Jewish culture. All foundations of a nationalist Jewish culture are shaken and all that is scared is stomped into the mud. S. Dubnoff saw something similar in 1922 and wrote about rueful wreckage and a picture of ruin and the progress of dark savages

destroying the last remnants of a bygone culture. I mean, it's not like they were directly targeted, but I don't know what Jewish culture means. You know, I don't know who he's talking about. There's all these different groups. They're acting as if they were being attacked. they were not but I guess so many Jews realized that you know the money the power was with the Soviets or on the left and that's where they all went but and this is this was you know

Zionists were depending on which group you're talking about Zionists were always iffy with the USSR you know Stalin tried to square that circle he did he was the force that founded Israel even at the UN, as I've said many times in 1948, but then he realized that so many of his best people are leaving. That didn't really worry the Soviet Union until the late 60s and early 70. However, Jewish historiography did not suffer destruction in the first 10 years after the revolution, as it is attested to by the range of allowed publications. government archives, including those from the Department of Police, opened after the revolution, have given Jewish scholars a view on Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement,

pogroms, and blood libel trials. The Jewish Historical Ethnographical Society was founded in 1920 and published a two-volume material on the history of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia. The society later came under attack from the Yevsek, and it was abolished in 1929. The journals, the Jewish news, and the Jewish Chronicle were shut down in the mid-20s. S. Dubnov's Jewish antiquity remained in publication, even after he left the USSR in 1922, but was closed in 1930. The Jewish ethnographical museum functioned from 1916, but was closed in 1930. And it was closed by Yemsek, was closed by other Jews.

I don't off the top of my head know the reason. You could probably speculate and be correct. But, you know, I don't know if worrying about, you know, so-called pogroms, you know, it's endless victimization from them. At the same time, they're destroying the Russian nation, the Russian church, and any manifestation of Christianity anywhere, except those handful of groups that they controlled. I don't know if this is deflection or they're so narcissistic collectively that doesn't even bother them. Everything revolves around them. I think the latter may at least in part be true. In the 1920s, Jewish culture had two divergent fates, one in Hebrew and one in Yiddish.

Hebrew was strongly repressed and forbidden as authorities sought as a carrier of religion and Zion. Zionism. Before the consolidation of Soviet power in the years 1917 to 1919, there were more than 180 books, brochures, and journals in Hebrew, mostly in Odessa, but also in Kiev and Moscow. The feeling that the fate of Hebrew was connected with the fate of the victorious communist revolution held in the early 20s among young people attempting to create a revolutionary literary tribune under whose banner they hope to unite the creative strength of world Jewry. However, at the insistence of the Evsec, Hebrew was declared a reactionary language, and already in 1919, the people's commissariat of education had forbidden the teaching of Hebrew in all educational institutions. The removal of all Hebrew books from libraries had begun.

Yiddish culture fared much better. Yiddish was the language of the Jewish masses. According to the 1926 census, 73% of Jews listed Yiddish as their mother tongue. another source cites a figure of 66%. That is the Jewish population could preserve its culture in Yiddish. Soviet authorities used this. If in the early years of Soviet power and Bolshevism, the opinion prevailed that Jews should discard their language and nationality.

Later, the Jewish commissariat of the Narcomat of Nationalities, the Yevsec, and the Jewish sections of the Republican Narcomats of Education, began to build Soviet Congress. culture in Yiddish. In the 20s, Yiddish was declared one of the official languages of Bailovarcia. In Odessa of the 20s and even the 30s, it was a language of many government institutions with Jewish hours on the radio and court proceedings in Yiddish. Well, you know, I know we belabor this point so often, but this is yet one more piece of evidence about how Jewish the party was. You can remember I had a discussion with someone recently that I had made the argument that Yiddish contains many Turkic elements. And I was challenged on that. And I realized that, you know, there's many

dialects and variants of Yiddish all over the place. In Ukraine, you do have Turkic elements, not up north. It's more heavily dramatic. So, but the fact that, you know, you already have an official language here, this internationalist movement, and the fact that in Ukraine, you had entire government institutions, where it was spoken almost exclusively. So, but to this day, I mean, I have a sense, and it's going to come up later, of what in the hell Soviet culture is. you know socialist realism I guess it's something that they had to invent from the ground up

and it's just like Soviet patriotism which sometime Vladimir Putin falls into that was typical of his generation although you know he came up in the generation where Jews had abandoned the Soviet Union

and so you had a much more room for Russian nationalism. And people who don't understand why so many nationalist groups had looked to the party for assistance. But at that time, in the 80s, it made a certain amount of sense. But Soviet culture was so artificial and absurd. And clearly, the Jews had a enormous role in its creation. A rapid growth in Yiddish schools began in 1923 throughout the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1923 and continuing through 1930, a program of systematic Yiddishization was carried out, even forced upon Jewish schools in the former pale of settlement. Many schools were switched to Yiddish without considering the wishes of parents.

In 1923, there were 495 Yiddish schools with 70,000 Jewish children. In 1928, there were 900 schools, and in 1930, they had 160,000 children. This can be partially explained by the fact that Ukrainians and Bialrucians at this time received full cultural autonomy and saw Jewish children as potential agents of russification. Jewish parents didn't want their children in Ukrainian or Bailurussian schools, and there were no more Russian schools. They had no choice but to go to Yiddish schools. They did not study Jewish history in these schools.

Instead, there was class war and the Jews. Just as in the Russian schools, there was no study of Russian history or any of, history, only social sciences. Throughout the 20s, even those few elements of a specifically Jewish education were gradually driven out of Soviet Jewish schools. By the early 30s, the autonomously functioning system of Soviet Jewish schools had been officially done away with. Yeah, the key phrase there is, there were no more Russian schools. That's the one ethnic group that was attacked. Lennon and Stalin wrote on destroying any sense of the true Russian culture, which revolves around

the church. You can't have Russian culture without the church. And keep in mind, too, that the Soviets also tried to simplify and manipulate and change many aspects of the language. The Russian that I learned, whenever that was 20 years ago, I struggle with some of the much older, even 200 years ago, the orthography and everything else. It's very different. The Soviets did this all over the place, you know, because they, even though it was the language of the Russian people in general, it still had, because like

everything, it had connections with the church and theology. So, you know, the Chinese did it with their characters too. So it is more, it is simpler now, but the phrase, there were no more Russian schools, that's the key element. That's the genocide we're talking about here. I think they did study Jewish history, just, you know, within the Soviet context, which I don't think anyone had a problem with that was in power at the time. From 1918, there were independent Jewish schools of higher education, ENU, Jewish People's University, until 1922 in Moscow, P-E-NU in Petrograd, which became Petrograd IVEZ, Institute of Higher Jewish Learning,

one of whose founders and later rector was Semyon Lazinsky, boasting a number of distinguished scholars among faculty and large number of Jewish graduates. Supported by joint Ives functioned until 19. 25. Jewish divisions were established at educational science departments at Belarusian University 1922 and at second Moscow State University, 1926. Central Jewish CP school teaching in Yiddish was established in 1921. Jewish educational system included special educational sciences, science technical colleges, and more than 40 industrial and agricultural training schools. So as Russian schools are shut down, they're building and, of course, subsidizing,

specifically Jewish schools of all types, you know, with the Yiddish language. But it just shows you who's in charge here. Jewish culture continued to exist and even received no small encouragement, but on the terms of Soviet authorities. The depths of Jewish history were closed. This took place on a background of the destruction of Russian historical and Philosophical Sciences, complete with arrests of scholars. So many of them were forced to leave.

Solzhenitsin, I think, despite everything, they could have killed him, but he was too well-known. They just dumped them off in the West. But he's now hitting the point very hard. But again, I'm not sure what Jewish culture is. because Jewish atheists, and I think the overwhelming majority of Jews are atheists in one form or another, they could still use all the so-called religious things, you know, Yom Kippur and all that, but as a form of ethnic consolidation and solidarity, not necessarily religion. And that's a key distinction to keep in mind here.

Jewish culture of the 20s could more accurately be called a Soviet proletarian culture in Yiddish. And for that kind of Jewish culture, the government was ready to provide government and for that kind of Jewish culture, the government was ready to provide newspapers and theater. 40 years later, the book of Russian jury gives a less than gloomy assessment of the cultural situation of Jews in the USSR in the early Soviet years. In Moscow, the worldwide Jewish telegraphic agency, ETA, continued to exist into the 40s as an independent unit. The only such agency in the Soviet nation that did not come under TASS, sending communications abroad, of course, subject to Soviet censorship. Newspapers were published in Yiddish, the main one being the house organ of the Yvesek, the Moscow Der Amos, from 1920 to 1938.

According to Demonstein, there were 34 Yiddish publishers in 1928. Yeah, I like the censorship. The Jews completely dominated the censorship boards in the USSR. I don't like making a huge distinction between the party and the state on the one hand and Jews on the other. They were so intertwined by this point. it's it's very hard to to separate them again there's only so many jews in the world and this really only applies to belarus or belarus ukraine and and parts of of western um western western western uh the western part of the empire uh but because of the

freedoms that jews were given far more than anyone else they were setting up shop all over the place now. So people who had no connection with them before, now were learning what they were really like up close. Yiddish literature was encouraged, but naturally with a purpose, to turn Jews away from an historical Jewish past, to show before October as a gloomy prologue to the epoch of happiness and a new dawn, to smear anything religious and find in the Soviet Jew, the new man. even with all this it was so attractive to some prominent jewish writers who had left the country that they started to return to the USSR poets david goffstein always suspected of harboring nationalist sentiment and lebe vitco easily accommodated to soviet environment and became a prolific poet returned in

1925. Perez-Marcish easily understands the needs of the party in 1926. Moses Kulbach and Dernister, the real name of the latter was Pinkos Kaganovich. He later wrote novel Mashpur family characterizes the most un-Soviet and liberal work of Jewish prose in the Soviet Union, returned to 1988. David Bergelsen returned to 1929. He paid tribute to those in power. The revolution has a right to cruelty, where he, Marquish, and Vitgo were to experience themselves in 1952. Well, this tells you a lot of what, you know, this is something else we should bring up in argument. Jews abroad saw the USSR as in some sense the promised land. This was a place where we can flourish. So you have people who had kind of went into self-exhaxon.

now returning. You had Jews who had never stepped foot in that part of the world, moving to the Russia or the Soviet Empire, realizing that they could probably, I don't know, they could be head of the Air Force in a couple days the way they seem to run the offices here. And that's very, that's extremely, I think Jewish history, what they mean is the religious sense of the term. the fact that Jews were always persecuted for no reason I think that was always a part of the curriculum but always according to it's going to be in a very secular done in a very secular way

but again as I've said before the so-called Jewish religion is as Moses has proved and spent his life proving fully consistent with the doctrine of the Soviet Union The bourgeois Hebrew culture was suppressed. A group of writers headed by H.N. Beulik left for Palestine in 1921. Another group of Hebrew writers existed until the mid-30s, occasionally publishing in foreign journals. Some of these authors were arrested and disappeared without a trace while others managed to escape the Soviet Union. Regarding Jewish culture expressed in Russian language, Yevsec interpreted it as the result of government

directed efforts to assimilate Jews and Tsarist Russia. Among those writing in Yiddish, a split between proletarian writers and companions developed in the mid-20s, like in Soviet literature at large. Majority of mainstream writers then switched to the Russian language. Yeah, I mean, if they wanted to sell books, that's what they had to do. The concept of assimilation was absolutely out of the question. and, you know, it's one of these things where sometimes they would speak either Hebrew or Yiddish at home and Russian, depending on where they live.

But I love the idea of where was it up here, the concept of, yeah, Jewish culture of the 20s could more accurately be called a Soviet proletarian culture in Yiddish. There were so few Jews that could actually be called proletarians. it just goes to show that these, in my book on the topic, the Barnes Review published, my book on the topic goes to great lengths to show that these terms are absolutely meaningless. Buzwasi, proletariat, these were manipulated solely for political expediency. As we've talked about it before here, and so be very careful when they use these terms. the Western press would just hear propaganda coming out of the USSR

and they write it all, oh, okay, you know, without any criticism or anything. But of course, Stalin got rid of some of the old Bolsheviks. We've talked about that. We'll talk about it a little bit, I don't know, I think in the near future. And since the Bolshevik movement was so Jewish

back then, it appeared to be an anti-Semitic movement, but it certainly was not. The Jewish Chamber Theater in Yiddish and Moscow flowered since 1921 at a high artistic level with government aid. In 1925, it was transformed into the state Jewish theater, Gosset. It traveled through Europe and became an unexpected representative of Soviet power in the eyes of world Jewry. It made fun of pre-revolutionary ways and religious life on the Stedal. Michels excelled as an actor and in 1928 became the director. The history of the Hebrew's theater, Gabimah, which began before the revolution, was much more complicated.

Originally supported by Lunarscharski, Gorki, and Stanislavski, it was persecuted as a Zionist nest by the Yevsec, and it took a decision by Lenin to allow it to exist. Gabima became a government theater. It remained the only outpost of Hebrew in the USSR, though it was clear it had no future. The theater critic A. Kugel said it had departed from Jewish daily life and lost its Jewish spirit. In 1926, the troop went on a European tour and did not return, disappearing from history soon after. You know, when you read Sultan Eaton's, you know, semi-fiction, like the Red Wheel or Cancer Ward, a lot of his characters clearly are with you know Jewish names or otherwise described with Jewish features are like this they're they're simply they conformed

they did whatever it was necessary to you know sell books and they didn't really care so much about ideology so long as it meant you know dead Gentiles or more Gentiles in in the Gulag And, you know, talent was not important. What mattered was your connections with the party and your willingness to conform. No different than your typical white male professor in academia right now. He conforms himself sometimes to an extreme degree. So he will be accepted within academia as a whole because they're watching him. He's not going to get tenure if he seemed to be.

reactionary in one way or another. So remember, anything that gets shut down by Yevsevsech is a Jewish group. So this isn't, you know, the party Jews saw Jews outside of it sometimes is, you know, but this is, remember, a small minority cared about Hebrew, really. It was almost dead. I was almost a totally dead language until the foundation of Israel. and 1948 kind of resurrected it, although I think the Jews in Jerusalem always maintained it, but I'm not sure about that, but there were a tiny minority as well.

So it's Jews deciding, you know, what Jewishness is, what essentially is their country. By contrast, the government Yiddish theater was a real boon for Jewish theater arts in USSR. In the early 30s, there were 19 professional Yiddish theater groups with a training school at Gossett in Moscow and Jewish dramatic art studios in Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow. Here it is worth remembering the posthumous treatment of the ill-fated Jewish Goghsevich. His book episodes published in 1926 satirizes revolution-era Jewish bourgeois. He died in 1927. He died in 1927. in 1928, the Soviet censor bans his play Simka, the rabbit-hearted, based on his earlier book. As an anti-Boisoiswa work, it should have been fine, but taking place in a Jewish setting

and making fun of the stupidity, cowardice, and greed of its subjects, it was banned because of fears that it would cause Judeophobic feelings. All right, that's my comment on that. In the meantime, what was the conclusion? condition of Zionist organizations in the USSR. They were fundamentally incompatible with communist authority and were accused of international imperialism and collaboration with the Entente. Because of their international standing, the Soviets had to deal carefully with them. In 1920, the Evesec declared a civil war on the Jewish street against the Zionist organizations. Repression

of Zionism deepened with the ban on Hebrew. However, anti-Zionist pressure did not exist anywhere and was not sufficiently severe. That is, long-term imprisonment and exile were relatively rare. In the spring of 1920, right-wing Zionists were frightened with arrests, but on May 1st were amnestyed. The dual policy of the crime... So at this point, keep in mind that even when these groups were banned or forced to disband, or even members arrested, didn't mean very much.

much. This was not the case with Orthodox people. Anyone deemed a Russian nationalist. Long-term imprisonment was the norm. But when it comes to the Jews, they'll tell you, see, the Soviets were anti-Jewish too. You know, it was Jewish, Jews, imprisoning Jews for a short time and amnestead. Even right-wing Zionists, it can be, you know, yes, they are incompatible to a great extent of the Moses Hess. If someone, I don't know, he was widely read at the time, I think he was, but, but he, or maybe he wasn't even permitted, but even when these guys got arrested and sent to jail, it was for a very short time or amnestyed right away. But it's important to note, as he does here, that they had to tread lightly. you know they needed they were very image conscious they were powerful Jews that had supported them in England and you know being some repressive quote unquote against the Jews may may lead to a reaction from them so they had to be very careful what they can do and that was part of the reason well the Russians of course they didn't give a damn you know they can be wiped out it didn't matter but the Jews of course had full control of so many institutions in the

the West at this point. Remember, too, that Zionist groups were a tiny minority. Really was only after World War II that it really took off. The dual policy of the Kremlin was apparent in its discussions with representatives of the World Zionist Organization. Shisharan did not dismiss out of hand. It's the latter's solicitations as the Soviets were not yet ready to denounce Zionism once and for all, as had the Yves The more so since, from the beginning of NEP, lessening government pressure gave Zionist groups' breathing space. Interestingly, Zürzinski wrote in 1923 that the program of the Zionists is not dangerous to us. On the contrary, I consider it useful.

And again, in 1924, principally, we can be friends with Zionists. The Central Zionist Bureau existed in Moscow from 1920 to 1924. In March of 1924, its members were arrested, and only after much pleading from within the country and from overseas was exile to Central Asia replaced with exile abroad. In 1923, only two officially permitted Zionist organizations remained, Poel de Zion and the legal portion of the youth organization Gekaus, whose purpose was agricultural colonization of Palestine. They saw experience with collective farms in the USSR's preparation for this. They published a journal from 1924 to 1926. Even the left wing of the Zionist Socialist Party, Zerai Zion, youth of Zion, adopted a sharper tone vis-à-vis the Bolsheviks,

and when the arrest in 1924, through those shortened duration, became more widespread, they went underground. The underground movement was finally dispersed only in the 1921st. 20s, in the late 1920s? Well, I think Dersinsky's opinion was a pretty common one. Poli-Zion, if you remember, our earlier discussions, was a group that had Moses Hess as their center, for the most part. But when the Soviets pleaded for the establishment of Israel in 1948, they did establish

what was more or less collective farm system, the kibbutz, and and others, and they always had pictures of Stalin in their workshops and everything else. And those didn't come down until, so I've heard, those didn't come down until the 1970s. Jewish blood will not oil the wheels of revolution. An organizational slogan of the movement conveys the sense of the underground Zerai Zion with its significant youth organizations in Kiev and Odessa. Regarding the government, they formally recognized Soviet authority, but at the same time declared opposition to the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Much of its work was directed against

the Yevsec. In particular, they agitated against the Crimean Resettlement Plan, seeing it as disturbing their national isolation. From 1926, the party weakened and then disappeared. There was a wave of arrest of Zionists from September to October of 1924. Some of the of those arrested were tried in secret and given sentences of three to ten years in the camps. But in 1925, Zionist delegates were assured by the C.I.K. of VK.P.B. Smidovich and the Subnarkham, Reikov, and the GPU, that they had nothing against Zionists as long as they did not arouse the Jewish population against Soviet power. And I think that was the key. That really, that says it all at this point. I think the worry, yeah, there were some Jews that worried about simply the, you know, the pure dictatorship of one party, despite its substantial Jewish elements, there may come a day where that can turn on them.

And we've already seen, you know, members of the party not liking Jews very much, Gentiles, of course, not liking Jews very much because the privileges they received, among many other things. I guarantee you that the three to ten years in the early camps, yeah, and here we go, Lenin created those, Stalin didn't create those, it's in 1924. You know, Lenin was on his way out, but they certainly predate Stalin. So, again, the number of Jews in these groups was fairly small, but the ideology is what they worried about. And it wasn't until after World War II, the Soviet victory over Germany, did minds change there. And actually, in the early years, the first year or two of Israel, it was elements in the U.S. that were far more worried about its establishment and recognition than Stalin, because they were very upset that it may turn the Arabs again. them and they had oil interest there and everything else. For the Soviets, it didn't matter.

They were a backward people, as they were officially called. Deep Hasmatics suggested in 1924 that Zionist, Orthodox, and nationalist Jews should be in the front ranks of those fighting alongside Soviet power in the Bolshevik worldview. But there was no united front and no front rank. In the second half of the 20s, persecution of the Zionists was was renewed in the exchange of prison sentences for exile abroad was sharply curtailed. In 1928, authorities dissolved. That until then, quasi-legal Polish Zion and liquidated the legal Gakalus closing its farms. Almost all underground Zionist organizations were destroyed at that time.

Opportunities to leave declined sharply after 1926. Some of the Zionists remained in prison or were exiled. yeah i think the the opportunities to leave i think that had that that was connected to russians um jews uh being the smugglers that they always were had no problem uh no problem with it um but not only were they not leaving you know uh but you had many jews migrating to to the ussr from from all over the world um but destroyed all that means is that they were they were they were liquidated. They were killed, murdered. The worst that ever happened to them was that they went into exile. The mass attraction of young urban Jews to communists and Soviet culture and

programs was matched with no less stubborn resistance from religious Jewry and older Jews from the former pale. The party used the rock of the Yves'ev sect to crush and suppress the resistance. One only has to be in a Jewish city such as Minsk or Vibtipsk to see how all that was once worthy in Judaism respected and worthy of respect had been turned upside down, crushed with poverty, insult, and hopelessly and how those pushed into higher places are the dissolute, frivolous, arrogant, and brazen. That's all a quote. Bolshevik power, quote, became the character, become the carrier of terrible ruin, material, and moral in our Jewish world. The mass of Jewish Bolsheviks on one hand, and of Jewish NEP men on the other, indicate the depth of the cultural

collapse of Jewry. And if radical healing from Bolshevism among the Russian people is to come from revival of religious, moral, and nationalist life, then the Jewish idea must work for that also in their lives." End quote. Yeah, so when the Russians would do this, I mean, they had been, they had been broken by this point, they were simply shot. And I have quotes from Lenin and the early Stalin giving instructions in this regard. But there is a good point here. There were a certain number of Jews who realized that regardless of the power that Jews have, in the Bolivic State, that they're making some ridiculously stupid economic decisions,

that there is famine everywhere, and it's their own fault. Putting Jews in charge of a group of collective farms is suicide. That you did have poor Jews that were affected by this, by these stupid and ridiculous decisions, just like anyone else. So there was some reason to oppose it, despite the fact that it was, you know, the F-second. It did ruin a lot of people. But all they care about is the Jews that were ruined.

Russians were ruined en masse. But there was some legitimate reason for Jews, not necessarily just older ones. And I think that division is exaggerated. We've actually talked about that in the 1905. revolution too we did that you know was that 10 years ago we did that um there was some legitimate yeah there's some legitimate reason um to to say that this this is not going well and work they did but indicators vary as to a degree of intensity and success a near contemporary considered quote jewish society turned out either to have no rudder and no sale or was confused

and in this confusion spiritually turned away from its sources. In contrast to Russian society, where there was still some resistance, albeit clumsy and unsuccessful. I'm not sure if he's referring to peasant uprisings, which were almost exclusively Russian, Ukrainian, especially in the distant areas of the empire. he might be, but anything Russian, anything specifically Russian was banned and complete destroyed in the way that we normally use the word destroyed. Clemsy and unsuccessful, that's probably true. It was desperate. And these are the reasons why when Germany invaded, you had so many millions of Russians and Ukrainians

saying thank God for this liberation, at least for a while. From the end of the 20s to the beginning of the 30s, the Jews abandoned their traditional way of life on a mass scale. In the past 20 years, Russian jury had gone further and further away from its historical past, killing the Jewish spirit and Jewish tradition. That's all a quote. And a few years later, on the very eve of World War II, quote, with the ascension of Russia of the Bolshevik

dictatorship, the fight between fathers and children and the Jewish street had taken a particularly bitter form. Yeah, keep in mind, that's not necessarily because the older generation was against Soviet power. You could be in favor of Soviet power and yet still condemn many of the things, economic things that they were doing. I knew every Jew realized that they were in charge here. And again,

When someone says Jewish tradition, I think that they just mean like the various rituals. I mean, no synagogue was ever shut down. They would really have to be, you know, doing something insane for that to happen. But that's a matter of policy. I mean, you have fathers and sons debating things now, but that doesn't mean they reject the American system of government. you know they they certainly supported it um and even the state policy of atheism didn't bother them again because the overwhelming majority of jews then and now are atheists um and they're again that's perfectly their their system their religion is perfectly consistent with it that doesn't

mean they accepted every aspect of it and every decision that was made in moscow it was um recently there was a case where a Jewish guy had kidnapped and tortured some woman out West. And that was highlighted on Twitter. And a couple of the very activist Jews on Twitter said, well, he's not a real Jew because he's not religious. And the question I wanted to ask was, okay, then tell me how many Jews died in the Holocaust. Taking stock a half century later, M. Agerski reminisces in Israel that the

misfortunes that befell Jews after the revolution to a large degree were brought on by the renunciation by Jewish youth of its religion and national culture, the singular exclusive influence of communist ideology. The mass penetration by Jews in all areas of Russian life and of Soviet leadership in the first 20 years after the revolution turned not to be constructive for Jews but harmful. Finally, an author in the 1990s writes, quote, Jews were the elite of the revolution and on the winning side. That's a peculiar fact of the Russian internationalist

socialist revolution. In the course of modernizing, jury was politically Bolshevized and socially Sovietized, the Jewish community as an ethnic, religious, and national structure disappeared without a trace. Jewish youth coming to Bolshevism were intoxicated by its new role in influence. For this, others too would have gladly given up their nationality. But this turning from the old ways to internationalism and atheism was not the same as assimilation into the surrounding majority, a century's old Jewish fear. This was leaving the old, along with all the other youth to come together and form a new Soviet people. Only a small stream was truly assimilationists in the old sense, like these people who converted to Orthodox Christianity and

wish their own dissolution in the Russian culture. We find one such example, an attorney Y. Gurevich, legal defender of Metropolitan Vendeman, during his fatal trial in 1922. You know, despite the fact that the church was in effect, I mean, it existed in certain place. It's very hard to shut down everything. It was just so, so large. You still have this trickle of conversions. But as I said a long time ago, if you want to talk about assimilation in the true sense and become Russia, well, they would have to be orthodox. A Russian who's an atheist and claims to be a defender of Russian. It doesn't make any sense. sense. Russian culture is by its very structure, the letters in the alphabet, the cuisine, even the pattern of the Roshnik and all these other things, they all have religious elements

to them. And the same thing goes for Ukraine, whose culture in the West was different, closely related, but different. So, but you did have always had a trickle of Conversions. Remember, the Soviet Union always kept kind of a handful of churches open. So when they brought churchmen from the West over, they could see. They'd have priests up there with big smiles. And Stalin essentially created his own church in 1944, creating the Moscow Patriarchate, which you know it's hard you're there there you should hear when they when Stalin died the obituaries they wrote about what a Christian man he was it's sickening but that was the only kind of legal um orthodox uh there was and they and they continue to exist throughout

the rest of even though you know persecutions were consistent so but when you say the ethnic religious national structure disappeared without a trace well so much of that wasn't necessary anymore you know ethnicity these are structures of survival as i've term that's my term for why nationalism is so is so important but given the fact that they were running the show to a great extent a lot of these things weren't needed this was this was their country No, obviously not every single Jew is going to agree with that. No, our country is only in Israel because they honestly believed that they were the same people who, you know, wrote the Psalms. But, you know, I think the typical Jewish point of view was that we don't need these anymore. That's when we were in exile. Well, I don't think we're in exile anymore. I think we've created our own promised land.

What is your take on this quote here from the book in English? It is The End of Lies, Rufeland and the Jews in the 20th century by Sonia Margulina, that Jewry was politically Bolshevized and socially Sovietized. Oh, yeah, we just, yeah, we said that here. It makes me chuckled just a little bit because Bolshevism and Soviet world was to a great extent, their creation. There was, you know, so I hate the idea of separating the party from jewelry because they were just so significant.

And it didn't matter. They don't have to be a majority. They just have to have just enough. And they're so fanatically cohesive. They could take over the whole thing without, you know, necessarily being a majority. So, I mean, of course it goes both ways, but we talk about, you know, so-called Bolshevik culture, which is almost sound ridiculous to say that. It's an anti-culture, like, you know, the American culture is an anti-culture. That was as much of Jewish as anything else.

Yeah, of course, the old timers are going to be worried. You know, they could turn on us or something. Even party members don't like us. Gentile party members don't like us. anything could happen. But I think the key element is that they were intoxicated by their new role and influence. They're not giving up their nationality. That was never the case.

Again, depending on how you define nationality, they were always the separate people, even in a country run by a huge number of their co-religionists. They still wanted a separate state, Crimea, Bidobisdan, where they could make sure. Sure, but only Jews, only Jews live. All right. Two paragraphs when we come to a natural break. Okay. The Jewish Encyclopedia writes of Jewish Workers in the party and government apparatus

of economic, scientific, and even military organizations and institutions that most did not hide their Jewish origins, but they and their families quickly absorbed Russian culture and language, and being Jewish, lost its cultural content. Yes, the culture which sustained them suffered Soviet men was created, but the decades which followed showed that a remnant of Jewish self-awareness was preserved and remained. Even in the flood of the internationalism of the 20s, mixed marriages between Jews and Russians or Jews in any non-Jew, as measured from 1924 to 26, were only 6.3% of the total marriages

for Jews in the USSR, including 16.8% in RSFSA. but only 2.8% in Bilo-Russia and 4.5% in Ukraine. According to another source on average in USSR, 8.5% in RSFSR, 21%, in Bialaurcia, 3.2%, and in Ukraine, 5%. Assimulation had only begun. Yeah, and that was the whole thing. That's just what I said. There was no conception of them

there was no demand for them to give up their nationality, whatever that might be. However, that might be defined. You know, that's the, that's the clear issue. I didn't even know what cultural content means in this regard. I don't know what about what Russian culture that they're absorbing. I get the language part of it. I guess it's just, you know, food and things like that, ways of speak jokes. I don't know.

but certainly Russian culture is Orthodox at its foundation. So it's being used in a very sloppy sense here. You know, well, this is Jewish encyclopedia, but yeah, the lack of mixed marriages was, tells you everything. The same thing for the U.S. today. All righty, we will pick up on episode 90. in a couple days i want to encourage everyone to go over to the show notes and to go to the description on the video and donate to dr johnson's work all the links are there that you can do

that at and um yep that's it as always thank you dr johnson this was a good one i appreciate it no no thank you and i know when my book on the ukraine war comes out you're gonna promote the hell out of it and i appreciate that in advance not a problem definitely definitely people need to I was going to say people are getting half the story, but they're not even getting half the story. Yeah, that's right. We want to talk about a couple days here now, so.

Yep. I'll talk to you. Take care. All right, my friend. Bye-bye. You're going to be. I don't know.