The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 94

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

64 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.Borhy Splacheni Krovyu: The Foundations and Causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022-2025Dr 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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Over 18s only, lending criteria, terms and conditions apply, subject to a monthly. monthly fee of 6.50 and government stamp duty of 30 euro. Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. If you want to get the show early and ad free, head on over to the peak canyonez show.com. There you can choose from where you wish to support me. Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me about this, even though I think on the last ad, I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed, you're going to have to subscribe through substack or through Patreon.

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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 Pekignanoshow.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of 200, years together by Alexander Solzhenyson. Episode 94. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today?

I can't believe that. This has been going on for so long. It's just a part of my life now, you know, 94, 94 hours worth of material over one book. But I'm doing better. And I am joined here by Stanley um guarding me but he's not really guarding me he's sleeping on the cat bed next to me occasionally I hear him snore but uh so you know and he's doing wonderful Marcel's doing wonderful you know relatively speaking so um I thank God we're out of that disastrous fall period of of my life it was not doing well but I think that's over awesome yeah it seems like a lot of our guys had health issues all at the same time. Mine were in September or years, went into October, I mean, and like three or four

other guys had something going on at the same time. So, yeah, hopefully this winter will just treat us right. Oh, I love winter. I definitely do, especially out here. Yeah. All right. taken up where we left off last time. Yes, sir.

Never publicized information about events of different times flows from different sources, about the regional plenipotentiaries of GPU and KVD in the 1930s, before 1937. The names of their offices were, the names of their offices fully deserved to be written in capital letters, for it was precisely them and not the secretaries of the obcums, who were the supreme masters of their oblasts, of the life and death of any inhabitant, who reported directly only to the central NKVD in Moscow. The full names of some of them are known, while only initials remain from others, and still of others, we know only their last names. They moved from post to post

between different provinces, if we could only find the dates and details of their service, alas, all this was done in secret. And in all of the 1930s, many Jews remained among those provincial lords. According to the recently published data, in the regional organs of state security, not counting the main directorate of state security, there were 1,776 Jews, 7.4% of the total members serving. You know, it was such a shock when, in the early 90s, because I was there for it, I was in college when those files were open for the first time, it was a shock really to the left because everything that people like Joe McCarthy, others like him, Henry Ford, everything that

they were saying was true. Now, I know that there was some attempt to, you know, get rid of a lot of them, put them out of order. I don't know if there were many destroyed just so it couldn't keep going, but by the mid-90s, this stuff had been now published and, well, not even in English in certain places. And it just, you know, those documents show that everything that people like us, you know, our forebearers, were saying decades ago was absolutely true about the USSR. A few Jewish, a few Jewish, a few Jewish. Plenipotentiaries are listed here. In Belarusia, Israel Leplovsky, brother of the deputy

general prosecutor Gregori Leplevsky. We already saw him in the Checa. Later, he worked in a senior post in the GPU as a commissar of state security of second rank, and now we see him as the narcom of internal affairs of Belarus, Russia from 1934 to 1936. In the Western Oblast, I am Blat, He later worked in Chelyabinsk in the Ukraine. Z. Katsnelson, we saw him in the Civil War all around the country from the Caspian Sea to the White Sea. Now he was the deputy head of the Gulag. Later, we see him as Deputy Narcom of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. In 1937, he was replaced by Laplovsky.

We see D.M. Sokolinsky, first in Donets Oblast, and later in Venetza Oblast, L-Y-Y-A-Fa-Vylovich and Friedberg in the northern caucuses. Yeah, we could. I don't want you to suffer anymore. This is a list, you know, working for, yeah, and every, every republic. And so that seven, what does he say, 7.3% figure, it's a little misleading. Since at the mid and local levels, they were absolutely dominant. and remember they also control the gulag

and they controlled the police apparatus at the federal or what we would call the federal level or the all union level as they would call it so he just shows that he's refuting the notion that Stalin had any purge of Jews as Jews it's utter nonsense

Jews were everywhere maybe not to the extent as they were in you know in the 20s because some of them just made good revolutionaries but not good workers. You know, I said it before, but building a modern estate that's able to support revolutions in other parts of the world, you know, your typical revolutionary nut job isn't very useful. But that figure can be misleading. That's 7.3, whatever it was, what do you say?

7.4% of the total, you know, that's misleading because they are, they are in key positions. They're in dominant positions, not just at the top level, but at the mid-level as well. And, you know, really only need, to be honest, a handful of Jews in any group, and they're going to run it, especially since criticizing them was illegal. so Russians and Georgians and others needed to come in and staff the bureaucracy and of course, you know, be drafted into the army, but it didn't make it any less of a Judaic movement. All these high-placed NKVD officials were tossed from one oblast to another in exactly the same manner as the secretaries of obcoms. Take, for instance, Vladimir Sissarsky was plenty of potential of the GPU, NKVD in Odessa, Kiev, and in the Far East. By 1937, he had risen to the head of the

special section of the main directorate of state security of the NKVD, just before Shapiro. Or look at Asmirinoff Coral. In 1933-36, he was head of the Danopropet Skrof, sorry about that, GPU, NKVD. In 1937, he was in charge of the Western Siberia NKVD. He also served in the central apparatus of the GPU, NKVD. In the mid-1930s, we see Elvool as the head of Moscow and later of Saratov Police. The plenipotentiary in Moscow was El Belski after serving in Central Asia. Later, he had risen to the head of the Internal Services troop of the NKVD. In the 1930s, we see many others. Fosham was in charge of the border troops. Miersen was the head of the economic planning section of the NKVD, L.I. Barrensen and later L.M. Abramson headed the finance department

of the Gulag and Abram Flixer headed the personnel section of the Gulag. All these are disconnected pieces of information, not amenable to methodical, I don't think that's supposed to say anal. Moreover, I think that's the misprint, yeah. Yeah. There were special sections in each provisional office of the NKVD. Here is another isolated bit of information. Yaakov Braverman was the head of the Secretariat of the Special Section of the NKV in Kiev. He later worked in the same capacity in the central NKVD apparatus. You know, if we had read the previous paragraph where there's this laundry list of Jews, not just in Russia, but in all the provinces and all the republics,

in dominant positions, you have to come to the conclusion that Jews were not persecuted in this era. They were thriving in this era. It was Russians, and it was Ukrainians who were not, who were suffering, because this is a period of starvation. This is a period of the continued destruction of the church, which is very core of orthodox, of Russian culture. and bringing it up is a problem and it's considered a pogrom as we've mentioned before just to even bring it up just to

if you're an argument with somebody over something you say that's because you're a Jew you believe this kind of thing you're going to stick with your other Jews that that's you're off you're done even though it's completely true truth is never a defense in these things so the people had to bite their tongue

but I think at this stage Stalin had just kind of apolitical bureaucrats I mean yeah they all gave lip service to the USSR but they had to they had to be professionals in order to run Department of Defense or anything else but I started to laugh at when I saw the finance department of the Gulag for some reason it doesn't seem to go together And also, I should note, and I've said it before too, that moving them around has a lot to do with making sure that they don't have, get any roots in one particular place.

Because then killing them or removing, you know, expelling them or doing something equally awful to them, it's going to be more difficult. They always have to be strangers to you. even though they're going on whatever you can't develop any so that's why they're moved around so much a lot of secret police services do the exact same thing so regardless of the official numbers we're seeing Jews in dominant positions in pretty much everything with Russians in Ukraine right in the bureaucracy

and be a Baltz and some Germans underneath them doing all the work. They're not the ones getting their hands dirty most of the time. So the NKVD had its own economic planning section, you know. But if you're going to have a purely planned economy, every aspect of your existence has to be under state control and understate observation and surveillance. There's no other way to do it. That's why it doesn't matter where.

where socialism is going to take place, the U.S., Canada, wherever, and if a purely social government takes over, they're going to have to do that. Without the market, what are you going to do? So, that's the main point here. But that's why they get moved around. But you notice, though, that a few weeks ago, we saw how Jews were just, pushed around. They were getting any job. One was in the Navy. Then he became secretary of, you know, part of the agricultural department. Then he became head of

propaganda. You know, that was just, it was ridiculous to hear it. They, they couldn't have worked. Now you start, you're starting to see more specialized expertise. Because even though they're, um, they're being moved around and they have different job titles in different places, um, they seem to be focused on one thing. And that's, uh, that's, that's a very, that's a, that's a Stalinist development. And no, we more people were killed by the Stalinist system, not because it was worse than, than Leninist one, but he had this bureaucracy built with a lot of American money that he could use that he had at his disposal. Um, you had rebellions all the time, especially over

religious stuff. But as a bureaucracy became more professional, more and more people were going to be murdered. At Tesco, we're delighted to announce our brand new Belmain Express store

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sign up now by searching Bank of Ireland air credit card and go from tap to take off bank of ireland begin over 18s only lending criteria terms and conditions apply subject to a monthly fee of six euro 50 and government stamp duty of 30 euro bank of Ireland is regulated by the central bank of Ireland. Later, in 1940, when the Soviets occupied the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the head of the Vinsk, NKVD, was one Kaplan. He dealt so harshly with the people there that in 1941, when the Red Army had hardly left and before the arrival of Germans, there was an explosion of public outrage against the Jews. In the novel by D.P. Vitkovsky, Half-Life, there is a phrase about the Jewish looks of investigator Yaakovlev. The action is set during Khrushchev's regime.

Vitovsky put it rather harshly so that Jews, who by the end of the 1960s, were already on the way of breaking away from communism and in their new political orientation developed sympathy to any camp memoirs were nonetheless repulsed by such a description. I remember V. Gershuni asked me how many other Jewish investigators did Vitovsky come across during his 30-year-long ordeal? And, you know, it really depends not just on the ideology, but on the personality. They were always pretty harsh wherever they were. But, you know, in some places, it was particularly nasty.

And yet in history textbooks today, they will be condemned for welcoming the Germans. the normal population while coming the Germans in most of Russia did most of Russia did it's unfortunate that the SS later on mess that up especially in Ukraine

but at least initially the infantry you know regular army was just and they were they were giving information on, you know, the partisans.

They're given information on, you know, certain parts of the topography and everything else. And they assisted the German cause tremendously. So this is part of the reason why Stalin had the policy that even if you had been a P.O.W. Like Sultan Eaton was. A German P.O.W. You still were tainted. It could really never be a part of society. you know, because he was well aware how hated his movement was.

It may have been subconscious. You know, he thinks that he is the end of all history. He wasn't a bad writer. People think of him as just a thug and an ignoramus. No, he was about the same as Lenin in that department. His works were available online for free in English, any other language. I don't think Lenin was much of a philosopher either. but

Stalin took Lenin and Trotsky and then was able to amplify everything through these Jews that they were unable to do because they it was a new revolutionary government that was dealing with practically civil war conditions now while you still have rebellions all over the place they weren't nearly as large as they were in the 20s

but they existed I don't want to downplay it. They're very, very strict gun laws. There were no gun laws in Tsarist, Russia, whatsoever. You could do whatever you wanted. And I guarantee you they were not enforced against Jews in this period of time. But that's, you know, the point of this is, you know, is to lay out a reason why they were hated and why they were well,

Jews were hated and why the Germans were such a relief. Finally, you had some rational economic organization. You know, they kind of just went in. The attitude was, let's do the opposite of what Stalin did. If you go to my archives, it really just a few months ago, and I've done it before, but I've developed newer ideas on the Lakot in the forest of eastern Belarus

it was a fairly small national socialist community and it did extremely well and Lakot is had its own flag had its own security services and I strongly recommend anyone that was kind of almost an experimental

NS community that was only made possible by the German advance, but it wasn't too long before. I mean, the Germans didn't have a chance anyway, and they were well aware of it. Hitler was well aware of it. They didn't have a chance. The only reason they were able to continue this invasion

is that they took all of the mass of supplies that were at the western border of the USSR. The German army was not ready for this kind of a thing. the German Air Force certainly was not ready for this kind of thing. They didn't have the armor for it. The armor was very weak. It was not a Blitzkrieg by any means. You had about 250,000 horses that were used in bringing,

what kind of a Blitzkrieg could be done that way. So, but this is, you know, this is why he was done, he was going to preempt an invasion. It was a suicidal mission. But when he was victorious in the beginning, he was the Germans absolutely were loved by by everyone they may have had different reasons but it's important to realize why what an astonishing forgetfulness betrayed by that rather innocent slip would not it have been more appropriate to mention not the 30 years but 50 years

or at least 40 years indeed vatowski might not have encountered many Jewish investigators during his last 30 years from the end of the 1930s, though they could still be found around even in the 1960s. Yet Vitovsky was persecuted by the organs for 40 years. He survived the Solofky camp, and he apparently did not forget the time when a Russian investigator was a less frequent site than a Jewish or a Latvian one. Nevertheless, Gushini was right in implying that all these outstanding and not so outstanding posts were fraught with death for their occupants. The more so, the closer it was to 1937 to 1938. Yeah, the thing to keep their mind is that they weren't purged for being Jews.

Now, Solzhenitsyn did say something earlier, a few paragraphs ago, that I'm writing on right now that needs to be taken more seriously, is the Jews eventually pulled away from the Soviet Union roughly in the late 60s, early 70s because of Israel and the success of the Western world and stuff like that. You know, the capital was growing old. The prophets weren't there anymore. Then you may have had some actual anti-Jewishness

coming out in the party. Russian nationalist groups look to the port, believe it or not, in the 80s, Russian nationalists, groups often were, you know, they looked to the party for assistance. And when you read some of their, you know, I'm talking about official documents here, you have a nationalist point of view. Yeah, they may have a picture of Lenin on the top of it. That scares people, but it should not be frightening. Otherwise, it's purely nationalist, Eurasian, Orthodox stuff. And it's only because the Jews had pulled away, not because

or persecuted, but they wanted to go to Israel, going to go to the US, because we all know that the real promised land for them is New York City. At Tesco, we're delighted to announce our brand new Belmain Express store is now open, where the quality you've come to expect from us is now just down the road. Pick up some great value essentials,

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Over 18s only. Lending criteria, terms and conditions apply, subject to a monthly fee of 6.0.50 and government stamp duty of 30 euro. Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Our arbiters confidently ruled from their heights, and when they were suddenly delivered a blow, it must have seemed to them like the collapse of the universe,

like the end of the world. Wasn't there anyone among them before the onslaught who reflected on the usual feeling? fate of revolutionaries? Among the major communist functionaries who perished in 1937 to 38, the Jews comprise an enormous percentage. For example, a modern historian writes that if from the 1st January 1935 to the 1st January 1938, the members of this nationality headed more than 50% of the main structural units of the central apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, then by January 1st, 1939, they headed only 6%.

Yeah, it's important to note that, oh yeah, go ahead, go ahead, let's do the next one. Okay, using numerous execution lists that were published over the recent decades and the biographical tombs of the modern Russian Jewish encyclopedia, we were able to trace to some degree the fates of those outstanding and powerful Czechists, red commanders, Soviet party officials, and others whom we mentioned in the previous chapters of this book. Yeah, it's, I want to reiterate here, and Stalin really had no choice in the matter. Stalin was a revolutionary.

He was a bank robber, you know, but there's a big difference between carrying out a revolution, when it mentions with the reflect on the fate of revolutionaries. Well, it starts to eat itself, a revolution, a true revolution. usually ends in civil war. This was a controlled war, but it still was, you know, their own destruction. Same thing in France. You know, revolution, of course, is totalitarian, therefore, it's leftist by definition. But there was a great degree of arbitrariness in the system.

And whether this benefited Jews or not, you know, Jews still remained very powerful. but the Jews that were removed were not removed because they were Jews. It was because they were often very wild revolutionaries. They didn't know how to build the state. They didn't understand how bureaucracy worked, but they had to be one if they were going to be a killing machine that they installed in Vichage. All right. I have come to a paragraph.

that is just a list of names. I'm not going to read every name here. I will read the title here. Among the Chequess, the destruction was particularly overwhelming. The name of those executed or italicized. There's about 30 names here. You can see Shapiro's there, and the last name they mentioned is Yagoda. So I will move on.

Yes, yes. Thank God. I don't want to hurt you in any way. Nowadays, entire directories containing lists of the highest officials of the central apparatus of the main director to the state security of the NKVD, who fell during the Eschoff's period of executions and repressions are published. There were, there we see many more Jewish names. But only accidentally, thanks to the still unbridled glasnos that began in the beginning

of the 1990s, we learned about several mysterious biographies. formerly shoddered in secrecy. For example, from 1937, Professor Gagori Myronovsky, a specialist in poisons, headed the Laboratory X in the special section of operations technology, the NKVD, which carried out death sentences through injections with poison by the direct decision of the government in 1937 through 47 and in 1950. The executions were performed in a special prisoner cell at Laboratory X. as well as abroad, even in the 1960s and 1970s. Myronovsky was arrested only in 1951.

From his cell, he wrote to Beria, quote, dozens of sworn enemies of the Soviet Union, including all kinds of nationalists, were destroyed by my hand, end quote. And from the astonishing disclosure of 1990, we learned that the famous mobile gas chambers were invented, as it turns out, not by Hitler during World War II, but in the Soviet NKVD in 1937 by Isay Davidovich Berg, the head of the administrative and maintenance section of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast.

Sure, he was not alone in that enterprise, but he organized the whole business. This is why it is also important to know who occupied middle-level posts. It turns out that I.D. Berg was entrusted with carrying out the sentences of the Troika of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast. He dutifully performed his mission, which involved shuttling prisoners to the execution place. But when three Troikos began to work simultaneously in the Moscow Oblast, the executioners became unable to cope with the sheer number of executions. Then they invented a time-saving method. The victims were stripped naked, tied, mouths plugged, and thrown into a closed truck, outwardly disguised as a bread truck. On the road, the exhaust fumes were redirected into the prisoner-carrying compartment, and by the time,

the van arrived in the burial ditch to prisoners were ready, quote unquote, ready. Well, Berg himself was shot in 1939, not for those evil deeds, of course, but for the anti-Soviet conspiracy. In 1956, he was rehabilitated without any problem, though the story of his murderous invention was kept preserved and protected in the records of his case and only recently discovered by journalists. Yeah, I think you know what Shulteney was getting at there. He just gave one small, small example, and no one bothered to notice that the Germans were using diesel, which is not necessarily poisonous, the exhaust. The Russians were using, or Soviets were using gas, gas engines. That whole phenomenon after the war was a lot of projection. The Soviets projected a lot of their

evil onto whatever enemy they you know germans or um um even the italians and the spanish um and i love this notion of the i i've i've read bread trucks meat trucks so when they're bringing uh foreign dignitaries around these trucks mobile murder vehicles say you know meat deliveries oh they're doing so well you know it's it's only only these people can think of that um But none of them were executed because they were too evil. That was not the issue. They were executed because there were Jews either. You know, we've been over this before.

And there was a lot of chaos for some of this prior to the war, but after the war, with American assistance, we'll be reading this soon. The Jews, again, rose to great prominence. It was a new generation now. So, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not the same, the same level of someone like Trotsky. These people were getting older. And, but yeah, the bread truck thing, and then then they're projecting that onto the Germans is, you know, there is a place for psychology here, the concept of defense mechanisms. I mean, I use a projection all the time in American foreign policy. You know, whatever the U.S. is going through, they projected onto another country.

That's not, you know, and that's the only way I think most of the American foreign policy bureaucrats could deal with it, those who aren't already sociopaths. A big problem psychologically is, you know, how many of these party members were not sociopaths, and then had to somehow deal with this. That was a big issue. We'll get to that a bit later. This Christmas give the gift that lasts all year with Irish Country Magazine. Subscribe now for 40 euro

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Ireland. Our current trust score on trust pilot is 4.9 based on over 2,000 reviews on November 5th, 2025. There are so many individuals with outstanding lives and careers in the list above. Bella Coon, the butcher of Crimea, himself fell at that time, and with him the lives of 12 commissars of the communist government of Budapest ended. However, it would be inappropriate to consider the expulsion of Jews from the punitive organs as a form of persecution. There was no anti-Jewish motif in those events. Notwithstanding that if Stalin's praetorians valued not only their present benefits and power,

but also the opinion of the people whom they governed, they should have left the NKVD and not have waited until they were kicked out. This wouldn't have spared many of them death, but surely it would have spared them the stigma. The notion of purposeful anti-Jewish purge doesn't hold water. Quote, according to available data at the end of the 1930s, the Jews were one of the few national minorities belonging to which did not constitute a crime for an NKVD official. There were still no regulations on national and personal policy and the state security agencies that were enforced from the end of the 1940s to the early 1950s. You know, they were the only group.

You know, Stalin enforced the anti-Semitism laws as much as Lenin did. He gave interviews. He spoke on this topic. He wrote on this topic. The anti-Semites and Russian nationalists were a great evil. That old myth about him being a nationalist or even orthodox, it's really hard to dislodge. The Union of the Russian people, headed by Nasadov, who I've worked with before, has done a great job in Russian trying to get rid of that. But, you know, even today, you go to, you know, one of the parties that got kicked out of Ukraine, it's the one party state in Ukraine today.

I can't believe I'm talking about this again. There are four parties to make it look like the multi-parties, but they're all exactly the same. Their agenda is exactly the same, mostly in English on their website. I lost my train of thought. What was I talking about? You're talking about Ukraine and parties and... Oh, yeah. And some of the so-called socialist parties, the progressive socialist party of Ukraine, one of my favorite.

I cited from them all the time. time. Her name was Natalia, something. And, you know, the communist tended to be more durationist than anything else. And they talk about the important place of orthodoxy in national life. You know, they get a little iffy about Nicholas II, but otherwise, you know, I use them quite a bit to understand, especially Ukrainian affairs, but elsewhere too. that's why the left-right distinctions in Soviet-Ukrainian or Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian politics sometimes fail because they call themselves progressive socials. What the hell does that mean?

And yet I'm reading their, for years ago, I'm reading their agenda, and oh my God, I agree with almost every word of it. And so, and people, if they still, will use a picture of Lennon at the top of their website so they don't want to read it. No, no, there's something wrong. And it throws people off. I've been dealing with that for a very long time, too. And I don't know if you know this, but I was the first to translate the Declaration of Independence

and the first constitution of the Eastern Republics of Ukraine into English. when it first happened in early, very early 2014 and I was criticized for supporting them all over the place all over the place he's just communists and I said well yeah I know the symbolism is which you have to understand

it makes a certain amount of sense but just read the material and for the most part you know 90% of it is is something that we would say and I always admired the so-called progressive socialist party of Ukraine

I used I cited for them I used them I did my research I had so many historical works on there and the so-called right wing as the media called it were liberals, neoliberal connected with the U.S. So that's part of the reason

one of the reasons that in the Communist Party of Ukraine was a little bit harsher a little bit different in that respect there was some Trotskyite and whatever they were all kicked out for various reasons leaving only the four

with that one single ideology but it's important to bring this out when we're talking about you know the ideology of this era and what happens later on I'm not sure what he means here

by belonging to which did not constitute a crime for an NKVD official. You know, I don't fully understand what he's talking about there. But regardless, yeah, the notion of a purposeful anti-Jewish purge doesn't hold water. It didn't happen. It wasn't seen that way. There were phylo-Semitic, philo-Jewish. all the way and no one was no

and remember just because they were purged it didn't mean they were killed some of them were shot some of them were just forcible you know forcible retirement so that goes especially for the military so you know it's a complex era and there was a lot of

as I've said there's a lot of complexity and chaos at the at the period because everyone's getting you know kicked out and that's never good for the health of the society but everything changed then of course

1941. Many party activists fell into the destructive wave of 1937 and 1938. From 36 to 37, the composition of the Soviet of people's commissars began to change noticeably as the purges during the pre-war years ran through the prominent figures in the people's commissariats. The main personage behind collectivization, Yakovlev, had met his bullet. The same happened to his comrade in arms, Kalmanovich and Rukominovich. Rukimovich and many others.

The meat grinder devoured many old honored Bolsheviks, such as the long-retired Raiusinov and the organized for the murder of the Tsar Golshakken, not to mention Kamenev and Zinoviev. Lazare Kaganovich was spared, although he himself was the iron broom in several purges during 1937 and 1938. For example, they called his swift purge of the city of Ivanov, the black tornado. I do want to note that Golishchenkin, yes, he was involved in the murder of the czar,

but he was the first dictator of Kazakhstan that started the, could only be called genocidal policy against the natives there. Of course, he knew zero about Kazakh life. That wasn't the point. It was to destroy how they were living, mostly, you know, pastoral.

sheep herders and goat herders and everything else and there were these nomadic peoples they were completely destroyed as I think I mentioned a few weeks ago he was replaced by yet another Jew who was also purged eventually and by the time they were done Kazakhs were a minority in their own country

they offer us the following interpretation, quote, this is a question about the victims of the Soviet dictatorship. They were used by it and then mercilessly discarded when their services became redundant. End quote. What a great argument. So for 20 years, these powerful Jews were really used, yet weren't they themselves the zealous cogs in the mechanism of that very dictatorship right up to the very time when their services became redundant? Did not they make the great contributions of the destruction of religion and culture, the intelligentsia, and the multi-million peasantry?

Yeah, this was, you know, we'd say, what a great argument, you know, used by, originally discarded. Well, discarded by whom? Who could that be? The assumption is that the party is inherently Russian or Ukrainian or something, and they're just a small piece of it. No, they were a huge part of the party. And those that purged them were often themselves Jews.

We've talked about that in earlier discussions too. This Christmas on Sky, you can turn a silent night into stoppage time delis. And lots of good, never's a goal. An old mince pie into a stunning try. It's stupendous from Lundster. And a winter chill into an alley pan. Hallie Thrill. Luke the New Glitla.

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plus a seven-year warranty across the MG range. Smart and efficient, discover the MG S5EV today at FrankineMG. Visit frankinemG.com. Tise and C's Apply. A great many red commanders fell into the axe. Quote, by the summer of 1938, without exception, all commanders of military districts who occupied these posts by June 1937, disappeared without a trace.

The political administration of the Red Army suffered the highest losses from the terror, end quote, during the massacre of 1937 after the suicide of Gammarnik. Your Gamernik. Of the highest political officers of the Red Army, death claimed all 17 army commissars, 25 out of 28 corps commissars, and 34 out of 36 brigade divisional commissars. We see a significant percentage. of Jews and the now-published lists of military chiefs executed in 1937 to 1938. Gregory Stern had a very special military career. He advanced along the political officer's path.

During the Civil War, he was military commissar at regimental, brigade, and divisional levels. In 1923 to 25, he was head of the special detachments of the Korishm, a short-lived republic after the Bolshevik Revolution, troops during the suppression of rebellions in Central Asia. Until 1926, he was the head of the political administration division. Later, he studied at the Military Academy for Senior Military Officers. In 1929 through 34, he was a military advisor to the Republican government in Spain, not to be confused with Manfred Stern, who also distinguished himself among the Red Spaniards under the alias of General Claibor.

Later, he was the chief of staff of the Far Eastern Front and conducted bloody battles at Lake Casson in 1938, together with Meckless, at the same time conspiring against Marshall Bluchcher, whom he ruined and whose post of the front commander he took over after the arrest of the latter. In March 1939, at the 18th Party Congress, he made this speech, quote,

Together we have destroyed a bunch of good-for-nothings, the Chukashvskis, Gamerniks, Ubershev's, while he himself later was shot, well, he himself was shot later in autumn 1941. Stern's comrade in arms in aviation, Yakov-Schmushkov-Schmushkovich also had a head-spin-spin career. He too began as a political officer until the mid-1930s. Then he studied the Academy for Top Officers. In 1936 or 37, he had also fought in Spain and was known as General Douglas. In 1939, he was commander of the aviation group at Calcun-Gol. After that, he rose to the commander of all Air Forces of the Red Army, the General Inspector of the Air Force. He was arrested in May, 1941, and executed in the same year.

There's a lot here. First of all, for those who maybe haven't been following closely, a revolutionary brigade is not the same as a regular army. This was a, and Yol Kim Hoffman agrees with me on this in his Stalin's War of Execution, which I strongly recommend. you know they didn't know much about military strategy and formal formal ideas they knew guerrilla warfare they knew cell structure or that kind of that's why they were Jews with these ranks they weren't really colonels and generals it's like trotsky was a head of the red army but from what he had no military experience he was a revolutionary though but he also knew that he a solomon knew that he had to create a regular army. And that's why some of these people had to go.

Number two, I do want to point out, Calcun Goh. We covered this one else at the bar interview years ago. It showed, it proved the superiority of Soviet weapons far superior than the Germans or anything the Americans had. Their new tanks were used there. The Blitzkrieg was created there, not by the Germans. It was a Soviet idea that, you know, I remember by 1941, Stalin had more amphibious tanks than Germany had total.

German tanks were radically inferior to the Soviets and was on display at that battle. Yeah, people may point out the Finnish war, but that Manorheim line was considered impregnable, and they did it. That was not seen by people who knew as a defeat. It was something that people thought no one could do, but they were willing to do it. So, Calcun Gold proves that invading USSR, there was no sense of victory. Germany didn't have the equipment. their tanks were inferior to say the least. Yeah, the men were solid.

They're high-level commanders, of course, World War I vets, many of them. They were solid. But they had no chance against what was on display in Mongolia. And the Japanese, who were also fairly advanced, lost very badly. And so those are two important things to come out out of this. and so I know there's certain I say the same things over and over again I don't know who's following each and every episode

and who's just picking one at a time but these are very important insights to understand this stuff but you know Stalin wanted a situation where a guy would work his way through the ranks like a normal soldier not just become a gorilla with a rifle who then later called the colonel

you know he can't have that anymore And that was the point of the Persians. I'm going to read a couple sentences here, and then I'm going to skip over a very long list of names that, and most of, a lot of these names, we've already heard. We've been talking about. So it's painful. The wave of terror spared neither administrators nor diplomats. Almost all the diplomats mentioned above were executed. Let's name those party, military, diplomatic, and managerial figures who we mentioned before on these pages who now were persecuted.

It's like a hundred names here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that list follows up with, this is indeed a commemoration roster of many top-place Jews. Below are the fate of some prominent Russian Jewish socialists who did not join the Bolsheviks or who even struggled against them. Boris Bogdanovich was in Odessa and the grandson and son of labor suppliers. He graduated from the best commerce school in Odessa. While studying, he joined Social Democrat Societies. In June 1905, he was the first civilian who got on board the mutinish battleship Potemkin

when she entered the port of Odessa. He gave a speech for her crew, urging sailors to join Odessa's labor strike. He delivered letters with appeals to consulates of the European powers in Russia. He avoided punishment by departing for St. Petersburg, where he worked in the Social Democratic Underground. He was a Menshevik. He was sentenced to two long, to two-year-long exiles one after another, to that's a long name, I don't know how to pronounce, and to Vologda. Siberian. Before the war, he entered the elite of the Menshevik movement.

He worked legally on labor questions. In 1915, he became the Secretary of the Labor Group at the Military Industrial Committee, was arrested. in January 1917 and freed by the February Revolution. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputy of Petrograd and regularly chaired its noisy sessions, which attracted thousands of people. From June 1917, he was a member of the Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and persistently opposed ongoing attempts to the Bolsheviks to seize power. After the failed Bolshevik Revolution in July 1917, he accepted the surrender of the squad of sailors besieged at the Petro Pavlovsk Fortress.

After the October coup in 1918, he was one of the organizers of the anti-Bulshevik workers' movement in Petrograd. During the Civil War, he lived in Odessa. After the Civil War, he tried to restart the Menshevik political activity, but at the end of 1920, he was arrested for one year. That was the beginning of the many years of unceasing arrests and sentences, exiles and camps, and numerous transfers between different camps. called Great Road of so many socialists in the USSR. And all that was just for being a Menshevik in the past and for having Menshevik convictions, even though by that time he was no longer engaged in politics and during brief respites simply worked on economic posts and just wanted a quiet life. However, he was suspected of economic sabotage. In 1922, he requested permission to emigrate,

but shortly before departure was arrested again. First, he was sent to solaceous. He was sent to Solofi prison camp and later exiled to the Pechora camp in the Urals. His sentences were repeatedly extended by three years. He experienced solitary confinement in the Suistal camp and was repeatedly exiled. In 1931, they attempted to incriminate him in the case of the All-Soviet Bureau of Mensheviks, but he was lucky and they left him alone. Yet he was hauled in again in 1937, imprisoned in the Omsk jail, together with already imprisoned communists, where he survived, non-stop interrogations, which sometimes continued without a pause for weeks, at any time of the day or night, there were three shifts of investigators. He served out seven years in the

Kargopol camp. Several other Mensheviks were shot there. Later, he was exiled to cyclists. I can't pronounce that. In 1948, he was again sentenced and exiled to Kazakhstan. In 1950s, he was rehabilitated. He died in 1960, a worn out old man. Yeah, these, you know, he was so much of the opposition, both to Lenin and Stalin, it's, it was more extreme against Stalin because of who he was in the system that he created. It came from the left. It came from other communists and anarchists. It wasn't like there were monarchists out there doing this. I've been asked before why, in heaven's name, didn't, didn't Zarr Nicholas I second, should?

shoot Lenin and Trotsky. And I don't have a clear answer for it. Yes, he was considered under protection from the Germans during the war. He came in quite late. Trotsky was there. Being sent to Siberia was not really a punishment. Remember, they didn't have much of a prison system. Being exiled to Siberia meant you went to live with somebody.

who was compensated for it and you could just leave at any time there were no barbed wire or anything else and the assumption is that you wouldn't make

that long trek well he did and many others did too sometimes you're like boomer conservatives love these people because they were anti Stalinists

despite the fact that if they had power they would have done the exact same thing just to a different group of people They would have purged a different group of people The Great Road of Socialists in the U.S.S.R. This man was just simply not considered trustworthy And also, by the way, on the mutiny of the Potemkin, I have a lecture and also a paper published on that

that the story there is completely, is mostly nonsense. and like everything that your typical boomer believes and that that's worth I think the Barnes of you published it I can never remember but I love this idea of you know he avoided punishment by going to St. Petersburg you know two year long exiles

these really weren't much punishment there was just simply a matter of time before he made his way back same thing for the rest of them You know, and if it wasn't for the revolution, he would have been, you know, Zorn Aquas was extremely lenient to these people. And I hate to say it, it was an error on his part. And these, you know, exhaled Siberia sounds awful, right? It sounds terrible. But it really wasn't, not for your typical, a Russian, whether, you know, a Jew or Russian.

They didn't perish there. They didn't die there. They were able to write, you know, Lenin wrote many works there. It wasn't going to prison to great extent because the czarists didn't really have a full prison system yet. They were forced to create one very late. But, of course, the Soviets with American assistance, created a real regular prison system, not just the gulags, but a separate prison system as well. So the opposition to Stalin came from other communists, at least at this point, or at least people who used communist.

That was the only way that you could ever get to anybody. So, and, you know, why Nicholas didn't just shoot some of these people? I don't have an answer, and it's a shame. This Christmas on Sky You can turn a silent night Into stoppage time to lice An old mince pie Into a stunning try

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and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity. grid so every home, business, and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland. Learn more at airgrid.I.E. We're sort of at a point here where he's just, he's going to cover these people and he covers like five or six of them and then who were active anti-communists but were communist or anti-Bolsheviks

but were communists themselves and then he comes up to a list of people who Jewish people who seem to be completely like innocent they were just were they were just persecuted by by the Bolsheviks so what do you want to do we want to read through all of this it'll take their it'll take another 20 minutes to read through all of this or do you want to save it for next time or do we want to give the do we want to give the listeners a reading assignment of their own. No, no, I don't mind reading this stuff. I trust Solton Eaton's biographies.

He had very good sources. And I think we should save the rest for the next time. We load these people up. You know, I'm exhausted by the time we're done with this. but there's a lot of information here. But I think it's important, you know. But again, in conclusion, no one was persecuted because they were a Jew. Yeah, that's the most important thing to, you know, once you realize that, you realize that the, you know, there was a big difference.

and the reason why is because there were, well, how much of it do you think has to do with, like, Dr. J. Otto Pol, he says that a lot of the reason why, or the main reason that Poles and Germans were at this time being taken out into the forest and shot en masse, up to 60,000 to 70,000, was because they were a diaspora people. and that the reason why there were a couple reasons why

Jews weren't persecuted for being Jews is one, there were a lot of Jews in charge and two, at this point they weren't a diaspora people who had another country that they could collaborate with. He said that he believes a lot of the Poles and a lot of the Germans were persecuted and executed because there was another country

that they could possibly collaborate with. It was very dangerous to them. You're exactly right. right. This was essentially the Jewish homeland for a while. So they were not a diaspora people. I mean, of course, there were Jews elsewhere, but the bulk of, certainly the overwhelming majority of the, as Kanazi were in USSR, a huge amount was 80% of the Jewish population was there. So they were not a diaspora people. But at the time, you had polls and Germans who had strongly anti-competual.

I mean, it's governments. Lithuanians, I think Lithuanians were another group that was, uh, were persecuted as well. Yeah. Um, yeah, Tartars certainly were as well for, for a different set of reasons.

Charters were just simply relocated, um, which is really hard to do properly. Um, they were on a diaspora people, but they were Turkic. You know, and there was a, empire that was unfriendly not so much the not so sorry at some point but

even the earlier on at this point we're talking about the young Turk movement which was was somewhat more sympathetic and cooperated with the USSR quite a bit but also had many major ideological disagreements eventually just siding with the West not that long afterwards. But Ottomanism still was in the back of the minds of those making policy here that maybe they can't be trusted. So maybe they were somewhat of a diaspora people, but they were dangerous. They were perceived as dangerous.

And because Marxism was materialist, literally, everything is made of material, just matter in the void, killing a whole bunch of them, really doesn't mean that much. I don't know how you'd be upset about murder. If you're, you know, you can't really be a consistent materialist, but if you are, what's a big deal about murder? It's just more, you know, just atoms falling down. What's the big deal?

What's the big problem with it? And I think that was part of the mentality, too. Anything that they needed to do to maintain themselves. And this was an error to what we're talking about, where, you know, again, Stalin felt themselves. far more secure in his position than Lenin ever did. But I don't want to, I don't want to downplay the fact that there were plenty of rebellions everywhere, especially against collectivization.

It was, it was nonstop. And as far as the persecution of the church, you know, it just, there was no one left to kill after a one. Everyone else either was, you know, they were dead. underground or they were in exile so as far as these ethnic groups yes it were very dangerous absolutely right to make that assumption and of course as we all know they tried to blame the Germans for some of this and only recently were found out to be lying all right we will pick up the next time and I'll just remind everybody to go to the

show notes page and to go to the description in the video I have included a link to Dr. Johnson's latest book on Ukraine. That's another way that you can support him. Go pick up that book. But there are multiple ways to support him there. And, yeah, we will see. We'll be back in a couple days. As always.

Thank you, Dr. Johnson. Oh, no, I appreciate your help. Thank you. Thank you.