The Pete Quiñones Show - The J. Otto Pohl ‘Stalin’ Episodes

Episode Date: April 26, 2026

1 Hour and 52 MinutesPG-13Dr. J. Otto Pohl received his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught at the American University Iraq Sulaimani, University of Ghana, and American University of Central Asia. He is the author of Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 (Greenwood, 1999), The Stalinist Penal System (McFarland & Co., 1997), and The Years of Great Silence The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941–1955 (Columbia University Press, 2022). His articles have appeared in, among other journals, The Russian Review, Journal of Genocide Research, Human Rights Review, and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism.This is a combination of two episodes:Episode 1062: Who Was the Most Persecuted Group Under the Soviet Regime? w/ J. Otto PohlEpisode 1166: An Overview of the Soviet Regime Pre- and Post-War w/ J. Otto PohlThe Years of Great SilenceDr. Pohl's SubstackDr. Pohl's PatreonDr. Pohl's TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete'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.

I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Yono show. I'm here with Jay Otto. It's pronounced your whole name. I want to say your whole name. I'm going to call you Otto, but. Jonathan Otto pole is the entire name. Awesome. Awesome. How are you doing, Otto?

I'm doing good. Good. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself. First time on the show. I have a PhD. I got fairly late. I was in my 30s from the School of Orienton, African Studies, at the University of London.

And I have a total of four books published. Most recent one two years ago, the years of Great Silence, published by Ibedem Verlag in Stuttgart, dealing with ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union during World War II mostly, although it has chapters both before and after the Second World War. I worked overseas as a history lecturer for 12 years in Kyrgyzstan, Ghana, and Iraq in the Kurdish region.

And I am currently living in New Mexico, where I came originally to be a middle school teacher, but the rest of it almost caused me to die in the classroom. So I am now currently working as a janitor for a grocery store. Do you see yourself possibly getting on with the university? Or do you, no? The overseas jobs have pretty dried up, much dried up, as has anything in my specific disciplinary field. I've applied to maybe 3,000 jobs in the U.S. for assistant professor positions, and I think I got maybe 10 interviews.

But the last one would have been in 2021. So it keeps getting more and more difficult. At this point, it's a better use of resources just to buy lottery tickets. Well, someone turned me on to your substack. 20th century musings in the 21st century. And I read two articles specifically that I got a lot out of, and that's what I wanted to ask you to come on and talk about. They both deal with the same subject, but different operations in Soviet Russia.

So the first article that I read was the myth that Jews were the ethnic group most persecuted by the Soviet regime, the Great Terror and National Operations. Why do people think that the, what has caused people to believe that Jews were the most persecuted group by the Soviets? Well, for the 37, 38, I think it's because there is a, even a book by, a person that used to be a good historian, and then she's completely sold out out of Canada, Lynn Viola. She wrote a very good book on decoulocization, the deportation of Kulaks to special settlement areas, particularly. in the far north in the Arctic Circle called the Unknown Gulag. But Lin Viola then wrote a book, I kind of remember the title of it, but basically it was about the purge of Jewish NKVe Day agents,

a couple hundred of them from the top ranks of the NKVA Day in November 1938 and how they were the real victims. But if you look at how many people were arrested and either executed or sent to labor camp, the same people. It's obviously, you know, this would be like writing a book saying that the people at Tangit Nuremberg were the real victims of the Holocaust. But because of the way political power is structured in North America, she can of course get away with it. So Yagoda, the head of the NKVe Day from 1934 to 1936, who was executed, Israel Lopleski,

who was the head of the NKVA day in Ukraine during the 37-38 terror, including the Polish and German operation, Boris Borman, the head of the NKVEDA in Belarus during this time in 37 and 38. Genrik Ljushkov wasn't executed by the Soviets because he fled to Manchuria and the Japanese executed him, but he was responsible for the 37 ethnic cleansing of Koreans from the Far East. So these people are prominent in the show trials and execution. in November 38 all the way up until 1941, but there are only a couple hundred of them. But I think this is where they're looking at.

They're saying, well, look at the prominent Jewish communist, like an even earlier Kameneveth and Zinivh, the first show trials executed were former Jewish Politburo members. But if you take the total numbers, it's only a couple hundred people. And at this time you had almost 78,000 ethnic polls, ethnic Poles and 46,000 ethnic Germans executed specifically because they were German or Polish in 37 and 38. So what do those numbers look like? What was the Jewish population of Russia at that time? What percentage were they? They were 1.8% of the total population, about 5.5% of the Communist Party. But under Yagoda and Yejaf,

The NKVe Day, they were between almost 40%, I think it was 38.5%, and 20% up until the purged by Biria of them in November 38, of the top 100 or so NKVe Day officers, including, as I said, the Yagoda himself, number one man, Leplowski, number one man for the Ukrainian Soviet Social Republic, Boris Berman, number one. one man for the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, Genrik Ljuskov, the Far Eastern Cry, the head of the Gulag from 1930 to 1938, the three men, Kogan, Matvei Berman, who was the brother Boris Berman. He was in power, his head of the Gulag, from 32 to 37, and then Israel Plinter.

So you really have, during the 1930s, when you have deculacization, the Holodomor, and of course the Great Terror in 37 and 38, complete with national operations against diaspora group, but not Jews, because they didn't have an independent homeland at that time, about 250,000, and the largest group being the Poles and second German, and then coming up Latvians. What was the justification for,

basically for the extermination of Poles and Germans and Latvians? Because they were diaspora groups that had independent states outside of the Soviet Union. And so it was deemed that because they were ethnically, and the Soviet idea of ethnosis, that culture is primordial. It kind of combines the idea of primordial culture with biological determinism through endogamy, that is the groups don't marry out much. So the culture continues to be reproduced through intermarriage of their only within their group. So it deemed that these people ultimately were politically suspect that they, when it came down to it, they would owe their political allegiance not to the Soviet Union, but to the government in Warsaw

or the government in Berlin or the government in Riga. depending which diaspora group you are talking about. Is that why they didn't go after the Jews because they didn't have a homeland yet? In big part, yes, because they start to, in a much less violent and much more toned down measures because they've gotten rid of the massive violence by then. At the end of the Stalin era. So you have the anti-cosmopolitan campaign under Jondonov, and then, of course, the doctor's plot, the very end of Stalin's life.

And in the post-Dalien era, you have later after the break between the Soviet government and Israel, anti-Zionist campaigns within the Soviet Union. But there's never any mass arrest or mass deportations or mass execution of Jews with Soviet citizenship. The one case of mass deportation of Jews by the Soviet government was about 50,000 Polish Jews that fled German-occupied Poland into the Soviet-occupied era in 1939, 1940.

And in 1940, they were given the choice. They either accept Soviet passports and citizenship or they would be forcibly relocated as special settlers. And so about 50,000 refused to take Soviet citizenship, wanting to keep their Polish citizenship, and were forcibly resettled. But almost all of the survivors, and their death rates were much lower

than those of Polish Catholics that were deported this time, were released two years later in 41 with the agreement between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet government to allow, police citizens to be evacuated out of the Soviet Union into Iran. Going back to the 200 that were, that Stalin killed, why did he get rid of them? Because they were closely associated with the former heads of the NKVA day that had been removed, in part because Stalin believed they were creating their own kind of political

fiefdoms that were independent of him and could challenge him and also largely because the Biria who was a fellow Georgian appointed by Stalin wanted to clear out all of the men that had been appointed by Yagoda and Yehshaf and appointed own men. So you see the NKVe-Ve-Day after November 38, far fewer Jews, they go down from 20% to 4% in the leadership, but a lot more Georgians, a lot more Russians, a lot more Ukrainians, and a lot more ethnic Armenians. And most of those Armenians from Georgia, people like the Kobolov brothers that were associated with Biria. So a lot of people point to the doctor's plot. I think Francis Parker Yaqui looked at the doctor's plot and deemed that the Soviet Union at that point was

going in a anti-Semitic direction. Do you see that because of the doctor's plot and how it was handled, or was that a misreading? Well, no, I mean, it was aimed at Jews, but the thing is the number of people that were arrested and killed is still in a small fraction. We're talking hundreds of people, whereas when we look at just the executions and the German operation and the Polish operation. We're talking tens of thousands of people ultimately. The diaspora groups targeted in 37-38 were altogether equal to the Jewish population, 1.8% of the population.

But they formed 250,000 out of 700,000 executions, so over a third. So let's go back to the executions by the amount executed by national. Polls were the biggest, how many polls were there? About total 78,000 were executed, not all in the Polish operation, some of them in what's called the Kulak operation and some other operations, but, and the Polish operation itself, not everybody executed it was Polish. It was about 110,000 people executed it. So, you know, some almost 30,000 were Belarusian and Ukrainians and other nationality.

The German operation had about 55,000 executions of which about 29,000, I mean, 55,000 convictions of which about 42,000 were executed, about 29,000 of the Germans. But when you add in Germans executed another operations like the Kulak operation, which was much harder than the German operation in the Volga German ASSR, most of the German execution for the German operation were in Ukraine and then the next area hit hard with Siberia. We're talking 46,000 or so Germans executed in 1937, 1938. How did they execute them? A bullet to the back of the head, a 9mm pistol, usually Tokarov. Yeah. Well, let's move. forward to the deportations and resettlements. Why only deportations and resettlements? Why aren't they going

through the trouble of killing these people? Well, when Biria replaces Yejof and most of the executions for political reasons as well as other reasons, under the Stalin era, almost all executions are for political crime. They occur at 37 and 38, which is the time Yejaf, who was of mixed ancestry, his father was Russian and his mother was Lithuanian, and he was from Vilnos. One of the reasons they suspect he particularly hated Polish people, the Polish operation.

When he was placed by Biberia, it was deemed that these mass executions were wasteful, because you did not get any labor out of the people you were shooting. So instead it was deemed that the better way was to punish people in a way which you could get some work out of them, although conditions were so horrible often people would not be able to work for very long before they became sick or even died. So Biria moved everything to forced labor from the execution that had been prominent under the Ja'i Shah. How are there so many at one point Jews in positions of power? Slezkin's book, The Jewish Century, shows that even in the beginning, it wasn't great, but it grows

and it grows. Famously, people said when Trotsky came back from New York, the people he brought with them were almost every single one of them were Jews. Were they Russians? Were they born Russian? Were they from somewhere else? Was this a Jewish? I don't know. I mean, in the Politburo, the first pullet bureau, after the Bolshevik take power, has seven people.

And four of them are Jewish, according to the Soviet record. So those are Trotsky, obviously. Born in Ukraine. Kaminaf, his father was Jewish, but is identified in almost all the as an ethnic Jew, Zinaviv, and a guy named Solokinov, which I can't find much information on him.

It doesn't seem everybody else can, but the Soviet information indicates his national note was Jewish. That's about all I know. And there were some other high-ranking officials later that were not in the Politburo for very long. And Svairdlov, who was responsible for the killing of the Tsar, led the hit squad, but was also the man who kept the records for organization of the party,

a position that Stalin later took over and allowed him to consolidate control over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. So in the beginning, you see there's at least three powerful Jews, Trotsky, Kamenov, and Zinovip, in the Soviet Pulitzer Bureau. and they're there from 1917 to 1926. And in 1926 and 1927, Stalin begins removing them as the potential actual opposition, so-called left opposition. And by 1928, he has consolidated his power. And there's a brief period of time

and there's no Jews in the Pulitzer Bureau. And then Stalin appoints Kaganovic, who was fiercely loyal to Stalin all the way up until his death right before the Soviet Union collapsed. So Kaganovich, if there had ever made any criticism of Stalin near the end of his life, it's veiled that Stalin wasn't harsh enough, didn't kill enough people. So was it a lot of just nepotism where one person would get appointed and then they'd bring in somebody, they'd bring in, you know, kinfolk, and it would just start growing and growing. Like you said that one of the reasons for the purge was it seemed like they were trying

to consolidate power into themselves. Well, for Jewish domination of the NKVedia officer corps and going back, also the Oge Payu, it's the predecessor, but we don't have as good of records. Memorial, which is now illegal in Russia, has compiled all the nationalities of all of the high-ranking NKVD officers from 1934 to 1941. It appears that a lot of these people were appointed by Yagoda, and they continued on under Yejjjav, and then Biria removes them. But there's also the fact when you look at the Gulag leadership,

which is the subsection of the NKVEDA and earlier had been under Ogepeu, what Ann Applebaum says is that the Gulag leadership, and administration with a dumping ground for those people in the NKVA Day that were considered not to be very competent or smart. But the leadership you look at, Berman is really responsible for growing it from 1932 to 37, his number two man is Israel Plinter. And Natalie Frankel, one of the few Gulag chiefs that stands out is actually being very, very smart. has a lot written about him by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago. He had originally come from Haifa and got to Russia to be a merchant and then ended up getting incarcerated during Lenin's time in the Slovoki camps in the Far North.

But he kept giving such great advice to the camp administrators on how to squeeze more labor for less food out of the inmate that they made him a gulag official. He became one of the top officials in the 30s, particularly early on with the building the White Sea Baltic Canal. Why is it that when we look at communist crimes, I mean, some of the stuff we've already mentioned is, you know, heinous is just if you're going to kill 100,000 people with just bullets to the back of the head. That takes some kind of will that I don't think the average person can even fathom. So why is it that we don't talk about communist crimes, but say, you know,

anything that Germans have ever done gets brought up or anything, you know, anyone who's ever shot a bad look at a Jew has their crimes are amplified? Yeah, well, I think there's been some good, academic literature by Jewish scholars on this. One work I would recommend is Yuri Slez-King, who is from the Soviet Union. He's a professor of history at University of California, Berkeley. Technically, I guess, he's only half Jewish. His father is Jewish, but under the Soviet system, he was considered Jewish. But he writes about how Jews in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, became interested and successful in running government becoming participants in disproportionate

numbers in government the same way they did other industries like Hollywood or banking, right? So this becomes an ethnic industry. So the NKVede and OgePU are literally viewed as kind of this is a Jewish business we can go into because Yagoda knows our family, our family and we'd get appointed and go up the ranks and Berman, you know, he had not only Boris Berman, his brother, head of the NKVay Day in Belarus, but another brother, Solomon Berman, was also a high-ranking officer in the NKVA day. So he had three brothers all in the NKVA day during the Stalin era in the 30s. So that's one explanation. And as far as not remembering it, not talking about it, I think Peter Novics, the Holocaust in American Life, where he talks about starting in the 60s, you start to see this use and intermentalization of atrocities and victimization, and particularly he calls the Victimization Olympics for political power.

And he specifically talks about the use of the Holocaust to get support for the state of Israel, starting in 1967, with the state. war what do you when you look at the um the attitude towards jews in the soviet union what is it well you know throughout the entire you have uh probably best term used as v giedelman called it uh the ambivalence right uh so the the policy oscillates but initially uh you have um you have after Stalin dies in 53, you're not, the head of the N.KV. The M.V.A. day at the time is still Biria. But he is so close to associate with Stalin.

Khrushchev and Malingov want to get rid of him along with Kaganovich and Molotov. Now, Burya is executed. Molotov is sent to be ambassador to the People's Republic of Mongolia or I guess Mongolian people's Republic obviously since it's almost just a another Soviet republic this isn't a big diplomatic posting for Molotov and Kaganovitch is appointed I think as a director of a cement factory in Siberia all right so after this time with Kaganovitch removed there are no more Jews in the Soviet Bullet Bureau for the

rest of its existence but they still remain overrepresented in the rank and file membership of the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, in part because they have higher education, in part because they're more urbanized, and also in part because they have put effort into it as a group to try and have as much representation as possible, using the government as a type of ethnic industry, as it were. So there's no longer a domination the way there was in the early Soviet regime with Trotsky and Kamenov and Zinnovif. And there's no longer any section of the Soviet government that's important, like the political police that has a Jewish domination. But they are overrepresented in the Communist Party. They are overrepresented in a number of desirable positions in the Soviet Union, white-collar jobs, but particularly things like scientists, university lecturers, published writers, the two best known and probably best quality-wise science fiction writers out of the Soviet Union,

the Sturgottsky brothers who were Jewish. They wrote a roadside picnic, which was the inspiration for the movie Stalker. So they have a pretty good position as far as that. And there is no persecution of Jews-Qua Jews in the post-Sovieter, but there is a strong crackdown after the break with Israel on political Zionists, particularly those who are actively petitioning to emigrate out of the USSR to go to Israel. But again, when you look at total number of arrest, total number of incarcerations, we're only talking a few hundred people, which puts it on about the same par as much smaller

groups that were doing the same type of thing, such as the Crimean Tatars, who had only one-tenth the total population that the Jews had. Yeah, that reminded me of something I wanted to ask, just going back. So, 1944, you have the foundation of Israel. Now they're a diaspora. There are diaspora people with a home. Was there any talk of getting deportation or, I guess at that point, it would have been deportation. Well, there isn't anything in the official Soviet archives about any math deportation of Jews with Soviet citizenship.

As I said, the only case where we have is those that refuse Soviet citizenship who had Polish passports in 1940. There has always been a lot of writing that there were rumors going around. They kept hearing on the metro and other places that there were planned to deport all the Jews in the Bureau of Bijan, which was the Jewish autonomous Obla, established by Stalin that almost no Jews moved to. but there's nothing in the archive. So if it was any planning stage, it was a very, very embryonic. As far as that was going on. And of course, then Stalin died on 5th of March, 1953,

and the entirety of Soviet policy changes. Now, initially the Soviets in 48 and 49 were strong supporters in the UN of Israel. A lot of the armament that were crucial for the Israeli victory of the Arabs came from Czechoslovakia after the communist coup in 1948 in that country. And it appears that the reason for the break between the Soviet Union, Israel, had to do with the Israelis, not the Soviets, and it had to do with Israelis not at the very top. That is Ben-Gurian liked the fact that he could get a lot of Soviet assistance. He admired the Soviet Union as kind of a strong model for a state, with a socialist economy, and, of course, its policies towards the Volga German,

the Korean Tatars being one to emulate regarding the Palestinian Arabs. But the ambassador to Moscow was Golda Maier, who was very rude to the Soviets. Golda Mair essentially said to Jews in the Soviet Union, they should owe their allegiance to Jerusalem and not Moscow. Told the Soviet government should allow all the Jews, especially the educated ones, to go to Israel rather than rebuild the Soviet Union for the damage caused by World War II. and the Soviets said, well, why don't you have like Jews from the United States, you know, the evil capitalist country that's obviously anti-Semitic, said, no, we want the Jews in the U.S. to stay there and just send us money. And so this types of insults were just almost too much.

And coupled with the fact that under Khrushchev, they looked and saw particularly after 1956, that there are a lot more people in Egypt and the Arab world and supporters of them in former colonies than the small state of Israel that perhaps they should completely change side, which is what happened. But if Golda Meyer had not been ambassador, if somebody who had the same outlook as Ben-Gurion had been ambassador, I think the Soviet-Israeli alliance would have lasted longer. after the war the the the united states pretty much wants the soviet unions to be like a junior partner to them from what i understand and Stalin tells them to take a walk and then you see the neocons who are founded by jews and are mostly jews come into existence why why did the neo con what was the reaction was there

anything happening with jews in the soviet union that would have caused the neocons to, you know, have like some kind of ethnic animosity, or was it more purely political? Depends on where you want to go. But I mean, a lot of it goes back to the Tsarsar and the pogroms, Kishneyev in 1903, because most of the Ashkenazi population in the United States are descended to people who left the pale of settlement in the Russian Empire following the pogromes in the early 20th century. And of course, so there's that. But of course, that took place under the Tsarist government

and then during the Civil War. While there are a couple of cases of Bolsheviks engaging in pogrom, most of them were by white forces or Ukrainian nationalists forces or anarchists rather than Bolsheviks. But I think a big thing of it was that after World War II. There wasn't any real

Jewish influence the way there had been in the 20s, in the Pulibur and in the 30s in the NKVA Day. And there was also the fact that there was an affirmative action program

from the very beginning in the USSR, which favored titular nationalities, particularly for higher education. So this meant that if you were in Tashcan and you were an ethnic Uzbek, you got preference to go to the university in Tashkent. Now, Jews were overrepresented greatly in Soviet universities, but it was kept to the level was not dominated completely because there was active discrimination in favor of Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, Ukrainians and Ukraine, Georgians and Georgia.

So if you lived in your own national Soviet Social Republic, you got preference, particularly for higher education, but also for desirable jobs in the government, desirable jobs in industry, positions in the local Communist Party. And so this was always portrayed in the Western literature as discrimination against Jews because they said, well, you know, majority of people go to the University of Tashkent must be ethnic Uzbeks. We can't have a majority of them being Jewish when Jews are only 4% of the population. But the American Jews thought, well, no, you know, if we can score the test tight enough, we should be able to have 100% of the positions in Uzbekistan and leave the Ushbekistan. was Beck's with none. Wow. Yeah. Great attitude, especially when you consider the attitude in Israel since 1948, whereas it's like good luck getting anything good if you're not Jewish.

You made the comment about them being Ashkenazis and the pogroms. Is that further evidence just pointing to evidence that the initial, revolution was funded by them, funded by, I mean, I think you get some funding from it. Yeah, and I think a lot of the resentment against both the Tsarist Russian government, as well as Russians in general, and certain particular, the word in Russian, so Slovi, it means like a status. It's kind of like it's like an ethno-class status, but the Cossack. they particularly did not like. And there is actually a mass extermination of Cossacks during the Russian Civil War when Lenin is still in charge.

And you have Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinnivvif in the Politburo. So I wanted to go back to the programs for a second. Researchers like Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson says that the, a lot of the, of the times the pogroms were basically what would happen was is that revolutionary Jews would start you know start acting up and committing violence and then you know like the black hundred or groups would come in to stop them and then the jewish own newspapers would you know be like oh look these you know they're just attacking jews for no reason at all Do you have any reason to believe that that would be?

It's not my area of expertise. The person is now dead. It's probably the best researcher on it was at, I believe he was at, he was at one of the University of London. I think it might have been Birkbeck, but John Clear, he wrote on it. And he said, you know, one of the myths, when you look at the archives of the Tsarist government,

one of the myths that is clearly not true. is the idea that the Tsar's government was instigating and supporting it. The Tsar's government had a very low opinion of the pogroms and tried to put a suppress them because it viewed it as chaos and anarchy that threatened their rule. So even while the Tsar's government was obviously no great lover of Jews, although it was always open under the Tsars. If they converted to Russian Orthodoxy, they were no longer considered to be Jewish. It wasn't an ethnic or racial classification until the Soviets took power ironically.

And then it becomes one of the national. But interestingly enough, only Ashkenazis got the designation Javeritz, which literally means Hebrew. So other groups, the Buharan Jews, for instance, or the Jews in the Caucasus, which are often called Tats, but I'm told that's a derogatory term. So mountain Jews and Buharan Jews, these other Eastern Jews, they were considered separate ethnic groups from the Ashkenazi,

which were classified as Hebrews. You mentioned the offering them to convert and immediately your mind goes to Spain. It seems like that was tried throughout the last 2,000 years. is sure you can stay as long as you convert. And then, of course, Spain had the Marano problem. Well, yeah, Spain is a bit different. But there were some Jews that did convert and become Christians,

just as there were Muslims. In fact, there were a number of Tatar Muslims that converted to Christianity and joined the Russian nobility. after the Yvonne the 4th took Kazan Hanate. So it certainly wasn't, at least the Tsarish government was in good faith. If you actually get baptized and become a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, right, then you are considered to be the same as any other Russian Orthodox Christian, and the fact that you were born Jewish and have Jewish heritage becomes irrelevant.

In the Soviet state, you couldn't change after, I believe, in 1938, you couldn't change your nationality legally. So if you had two Jewish parents would say Jew on your identification documents, you had two German parents would say German. If you had a mix, you could choose one of those two at age 16, but not another. So if you were half German and half Polish, right, you can choose one of the two, but you're still going to be screwed. Well, let's finish up with this. The revolution, everything that happened afterwards, the revolution, the way that people like Yagoda treated Christians, treated Russians, was this all animosity for the last 600 years of Russian history, how they feel they were treated, the pale of settlement, Kemmelnetsky, is this, is that what? I think that's part of the motivation for a number of them, particularly when you go on the lower levels.

You start saying things like the decoulocization where they're using open racial epithats against Germans and Poles. And this is in 1930 already, 1931. But I think you look at somebody like Kaganovic, while he never denied he was Jewish, I don't think he was being motivated by the fact he was Jewish ancestors. I think he viewed himself as an international communist and a loyal supporter of Stalin, and he did what Stalin said. And if necessary to bring socialism, he was going to have to be very violent. And certain ethnic groups weren't going to make it because they were inherently counter-revolutionary.

and so the vulgar germans the khrman tatars the chechens were these were all peoples that had proven themselves unable to integrate into socialism and so had to have forced to be used to help them along by destroying their organic compact settlements but i think when you know higher levels it's more ideological i think somebody like trotsky somebody like Kaganovitch, even somebody like Yagoda, I don't think they were thinking, I'm doing this to get back for the fact that the Russians and Ukrainians and other people, you know, engaged in pogromes and other violence against Jews. But I think certainly since the party and the apparatus is so large when you get to the lower levels on the ground and the implementation, there is quite a bit of that. It is interesting that there are so many revolution. So many groups with revolutionary thought in Russia, it just, it's, I mean, that's going to, the, the budding of heads is going to be incredible because when those revolutionary groups, they're not backing down for anything. So it's either going to be, you know, accept who I am or, you know, and we're going to work to try to take over, or are you going to have to kill us, basically. Well, yes, there was an extreme amount of violence.

And then, of course, as violent as 1918 and 1921 was, and it led to famine in 21 and 22, which was particularly harsh on the Germans in Volga and Ukraine, it became much more violent in the 1930s and 1940s. And so it's, as Stalin said, we want to compress the 100 years of industrialization, which involved, of course, a mass dislocation of people from the countryside into industrial factories in Great Britain. They want to compress that into 10 years, right? 1.10, which of course means that the suffering

involved in that gets multiplied by a factor of at least 10. So I think these people were looking at we want to accomplish creating an industrial powerful military you know super state along lines of using the power of the state to basically you know bootstrap everything up so everything is controlled by the state which is controlled by the vanguard party so that it can has a clear trajectory. And of course, this was considered to be the injustice to means, right? That is, in reality, they were right, that the vast majority of the descendants of the survivors

had a much higher standard of living than their grandparents did. That is, by the time you get to the 1960s and 1970s, there is a much, much higher standard of living, both materially but also culturally for people in the Soviet Union than existed under the Tsar. But to do that, you have at least 10% of the population violently killed. And, of course, large numbers of people who weren't killed, you know, displaced to special settlements, sent to labor camps to work for years. deprived of basic human dignity and rights. So it becomes, you know, this injustice to means by being very violent and oppressive,

those who survive, physically aren't killed by this, their descendants, their grandchildren will have a better standard of living than existed previous. The problem with this is countries that didn't go through this like Western Europe, and Japan and the United States had even higher standards of living. Yeah. Well, I have two questions. One is in reference what we've been talking about. The other one is going to be a little bit off the book. But like the Black Book of Communism throws out

amazing numbers of dead by the hands of the government in the Soviet Union, whether actually executed or worked to death in a gulag. Do you have a number? Yeah. Oh, my personal number? Yeah. I would say I'm probably getting at, well, depends what you include, but somewhere between 10 and 15 million.

But if we, it probably is not higher than that just because it's, just not enough people, if you include the losses in World War I and World War II for the demographics to make sense. It also turns out people are harder to kill than you would think. So if you remove all the food from Ukraine, it doesn't kill all of the Ukrainians. It kills about 15% in a period of two years, which is significant. But almost logically you think, well, if nobody has any food, shouldn't all of them die? and yet somehow 85% of the population managed through various ways to just physically resist through survival to find enough food to eke out until that two-year period was out. So it's amazing how bad conditions can get in things like a Soviet labor camp, even one north of the Arctic Circle, and people still physically survive.

So I think this is one of the things that's not taking an account. But, you know, the Black Book of Communism, I would say the numbers in the chapter on the Soviet Union itself, and it verth, who is the French scholar wrote, that doesn't give a total figure. His figures are pretty accurate, I would say, overall. What got controversy was the 100 million figure by Quartot for all communist regimes in the front, of which 20 million were supposedly the USSR. And of course, the big chunk is going to be China, particularly the famine after the Great Leap Forward, which is less direct than something like the Holodomor, where you have a targeted area being deliberately deprived of food for a couple of years.

What's the numbers on the Holodomor? The official number from the Ukrainian government now, I believe, is 3.8 million. All right. So this was the last. question I wanted to ask you, when you look at Israel today, how much do you think of what they're doing, especially when it comes to just seems like the extermination of populations has to do with that revolutionary spirit that you talked about, like the higher, you know, you said some of the ones on the lower may have like animosity, but some on the higher have that revolutionary spirit, that socialist spirit.

How much of that do you think carries over to what we're seeing today in Israel? In 48, there's what the Arabs call the Nakabah, which means catastrophe, where vast majority of the Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims are forced out of their home, is forced out of what becomes the state of Israel in 48 into Jordan, the Gaza Strip, which is under Egyptian administration, Syria. Lebanon. The West Bank is annexed by Jordan, but a lot of the Palisidians refugees and Expellees go there. Benghuryan certainly wanted to create a socialist Jewish state. The difference between the early left-wing socialist Zionist and the Soviets was there was no pretense to any internationalism.

There was only going to be one nationality. It wasn't going to be any federation between different ethnic groups. It wasn't going to be, so something like the Uzbek Soviet Social Republic, was never on the table for the Palestinians by people like Bangurian and others that were closer in their mindset to the Soviets than people like Jabotinsky, who was heavily influenced by Mussolini. But I think there is this idea that, yeah, it is kind of a creation of a revolutionary state in 48 that by creating the first modern Jewish state, the first state since the destruction

of the second temple in 70 AD that the models to look at were successful socialist revolutions like the USSR where the power of the state had managed to accomplish what we consider great things against great odds. And part of that of the ethnic angle and that the Soviets had dealt very harshly with ethnic groups they considered to be enemy nations. And the Israelis viewed that as a positive model regarding the Arabs came under their control. But of course, there are a number of key differences, particularly geography. There's no Siberia or Kazakhstan. So they send them to, so they just kicked them out to the nearest Arab states bordering Israel.

Yeah, it's interesting that Israel right now is, and from the start, is such an anachronism in that World War II is basically fought to destroy states like them, an ethno state. But one of the things I like to point out is that they may have an ethno state right now, but they're still multicultural. and they're multicultural within the Jews there are multicultural and that is a Yeah, you know, my one trip to Israel The one is I was invited And they paid for everything

To give a paper on The neighbors of Jews in Central Asia So I gave a paper on the deported German In Kazakhstan But the one thing I kind of noticed was The only thing that held a lot of the various Jewish groups together in Israel was their opposition to the Arabs. So the preferred language of everybody I was in contact with was Russian, not Hebrew. They used Hebrew to speak to

other Israelis, but amongst themselves they used Russian, right? And I think this is a pattern that has existed earlier with Moroccan Jews using Arabic, Yemeni Jews using Arabic, Iraqi Jews using Arabic, Iraqi Jews using Arabic, Persian Jews, obviously using a Farsi. But the thing is, you know, the Russian ones are so much larger, is over a million of them. So they have for a consistently long time kind of resisted assimilation. That is, they'll go with general Israeli opposition to the Arabs, but they're not giving up Russian for Hebrew. Yeah, that's really interesting that an ethno state that, it tries to bond itself based on the hatred of one people.

I wonder who else in history has been accused of that. I don't know. I must be imagining it. Why does you tell everybody where they can find your work and support your work? Well, I have a book that you can get off of Columbia University Press to use a great silence. I have a Patreon. It hasn't been too active recently because I haven't been doing any thing regarding it. For a while, since I've been working a physical labor job.

Currently, I have an article I'll be writing for the yearbook of the Ukrainian Studies Institute at University of Westlaw and Poland on Crimea and Tatars, their deportation 80 years ago. My last academic publication was at the end of last year, it was a chapter in a book on Russian Germans on four continents. I again wrote about Germans deported to Kazakhstan. on. But my email, j.a.u.poll at gmail.com is connected to my PayPal if anybody interested in sending me any money if they really want to. But the big thing for why I would like to come on as many shows as possible right now is my book has not done as well the last two years as I thought it should. So not that I care too much about the money from it, but I'd like people to at least read it.

and since I spent probably better chunk of more than 10 years doing all the research while I was in Kyrgyzstan and even Ghana and Iraq. So a lot of Soviet archives from Moscow, some from Bishkek, some from Tartu in Estonia, some from the forced repatriation, some from Washington, D.C. role of the U.S. military enforcing ethnic Germans back to the Soviet Union to be sent to special settlements. So yeah, I would, if you could buy my book and ask your local library to buy my book, that would be great. All right. I'm going to, I'll make sure to link to it in the show notes, link to your substack, link to the Patreon, link to everything. All right. Thank you, Otto. I appreciate it. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanjana show, and I want to welcome back Jay Otto Poll.

How are you doing, how you done, Otto? Good. Cool. So let's get into some history here. When you reached out to me, I guess you decided upon a little history of Germans in the Soviet Union prior to World War II and during World War II. And, yeah, I don't think, I think last time we touched more on the polls. and just really touched upon this subject. So where do you want to start?

Well, we start anywhere. So the German colonists started arriving in the Russian Empire in the late 18th century, the first German colonist proper outside of the Baltic region where they weren't really colonists, but Conquerors was established in 1764 in the Volga. and then after that, starting really about eight, after 1804, although there's earlier settlements in the Black Sea region, particularly Ukraine and Crimea, and then later the Transcaucasas and 1818 settlements in Georgia, and they spread out eastward into Kazakhstan and Central Asia and starting fairly late in, 1907 into Siberia. Most of them are still living in the Volga and Black Sea regions up until the Second World War when they are forcibly deported into Kazakhstan and Siberia and almost the entire

German population of European USSR is ethnically cleansed. But this is a process that begins considerably earlier in the Soviet regime of kind of ratcheting up anti-German repression through the 1930s in particular. Well, I think the last time you talked to, you said that basically what was happening was there was a growing suspicion of diaspora peoples within the Soviet Union that actually had a homeland. Yes. Yes.

So all of the diaspora groups except for Jews, Assyrians, and Gypsies were subject to national operations in 37 and 38 by the NKVe Day. We had mass arrests and executions in the diaspora population on the basis that they were spies for their home government. In the cases of the Koreans who were forcibly resettled in Central Asia, in 37 from the Far East that they were working for the Japanese who were their colonial power. But the Germans were hit the second hardest after the polls in 37, 38, about 5% of the entire German population in the Soviet Union was executed. But it was pretty much the top 5% as far as education levels. And it was particularly hard hit in the area around Odessa in Ukraine, which had a population

of almost 100,000 Germans before the Second World War and being ethnically cleansed into Kazakhstan. Are there any numbers on how many of those were, how many of the Germans who were there were actually ethnic Germans and not German Jews who just made their way? Yeah, yeah. The Soviet nationality classification have Nemets for German and Yevre for Jew. So when they say Nemitz in the Soviet archival documentation, they're talking about ethnic Germans, people that are predominantly of Lutheran background with a large Catholic minority, about 20%, and a smaller Mennonite minority, depending on the region, between 5 and 10%, but mostly Lutherans by religion. and they were still mostly practicing all the way up into the 1930s before the massive anti-religious campaigns.

So you said about 5%, the top 5% were taken out. I assume that would be educated business owners, things like that, people of means, people who thought they may have influence outside of the country. The other 95% what happens to them as war grows. Well, so 37-38 comes after the dispossession and decoulocization of the richer Germans. But with the case of the Germans, unlike with Russians and Ukrainian, the Soviet officials pretty much decided that all Germans were Ku Klok's in certain areas. For instance, in Turkmenistan, the government actually stated that it was impossible to collectivize the Germans, so they all be deported as Kuulaks because they were all Kuulak colonizers to the marrow of their bones, was the phrase used by the officials.

But also, it mentioned that the vast majority in some areas of the Germans being deported as Kuulaks to special settlement villages in the far north and the euros were in point of fact not coolax by the soviet definition but middle peasants instead but because they were ethnically german they are automatically assumed to be kulax by the nkvd operatives working on the ground so this is already in 1930 uh happening uh and that that's about maybe 50 000 germans uh maybe 4% of the population uh which is considerably greater than at 1.2% of the population of the whole that deported as Kuulak at this time. But you can see it starts rashly up. You have 4% deported, 5% executed.

And then in 41, 100% in the European areas, forcibly relocated into Kazakhstan and Siberia. And then later all of the able-bodied adult men first, and then after October 7th, 1942, women as well mobilized into the labor army to work in gulag camps, mostly in the euros, felling trees, or in industrial construction. When you take into consideration that the attitude of international jewelry outside of Russia, towards Germans over a long period of time, but let's just go from like 19, from the time the National Socialists take power in 1933. What percentage at this time, from 36, 37, and then going through 37, 38, going through

to the war, what percentage of the NKVD and these groups that would be concentrating on Germans are actually ethnically Jewish, and I assume it's just the same kind of animus towards the German people that was happening in the quote-unquote free world? It was very high in the 30s. So I don't have exact numbers before the formation of the NKVEDA in 1934

when it's still the OK-Paeu. but de facto, the head of the Ogepeu for most of the Degucization period of time is Gennrik Jagoda, and he's number two man to Uri. There's a peacetime where he's sidelined, but the number one man to Yere Mijinsky was very ill with heart disease from 1923 all the way until 1934. So the main man in the Oge Paiyu was Gendrik Jagoda, becomes the first head of the NKVay Day in 1934.

So that's when you have the first mass wave of repression in the terms of 1930, 31, roundup of Germans being accused to being Kuulaks and sent to special settlements, mostly used for fourth labor and forestry to cut down trees, places like Arkangles in the Far North, and, of course, in the Urals, with a lot of forestry. And in the Volga German Republic itself, it's about 6.6 percent that was higher than the German population as a whole. But there are certain areas like Evapatoria, which is a district in Crimea, where 17 percent

of the German population is forcibly. deported to the special settlement villages for fourth labor in 1930. So after 1934, we have figures. So in 1934, all the way to the end of the Great Terror and Yejav's removal and replacement of Bury in November 38, between 20% and 40% of the top 100 or so NKVeighi officers are ethnically Jewish. And in the period of time, we're talking of the Great Terror at 37 and 38. As I say, it concentrates in Ukraine. So the German operation of the total of 55,000 convictions, of which 42,000 almost are death sentences. Of those 42,000 deaf sentences, 18,05 take place in Ukraine. The head of the NKVNA and A in

Ukraine in 37 and 38 is a man named Israel Leplewski, who was a former boondist, a Jewish nationalist before he became a Bolshevik. The boon was absorbed into the communist part, what becomes the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And he specifically asked the head of the NKVoslov, who was not Jewish, although his number two man, Belski, his original name is Abraham Levine, was. Jewish during the first part, during the second part of the nationality operations. So we see La Plasque asked Jaeuf to up his quota for political arrest, including the national operations, three separate times.

So it wasn't that you hear that he had no agency. It was all Stalin and Yezsche. Leplowski was pushing to arrest more people on the national operation. from the Eja and did it more than once. Well, we know that, I mean, even up to, through today, you, you see the evidence of, um, the ethnic hatred for, for Russian, even for not only for Germans, but even for Russians. Um, so I, I, I, I, at this point have the Russians that, the ethnic Russians that needed to be, um, eliminated, have they already been eliminated?

I'm not sure I understand the question Well I mean There was an immediate purge after the Bolshevik revolution right There was ex-Russians were Ethnic Russians were killed by Yes Who were just how long did that continue Let me

I guess that's a better question How long that? Yeah The movement to As it were rehabilitate the Russian nation From this period of time between 1918, really picking up in 1923 with the 12-party Congress in Kornazazia all the way up until really 1936 when you have the first praises of the Russian nation during the communist era in Provda.

Yeah, this was a period of time. You have, so it lasts from 1918 and 1936, you have really kind of a campaign that's systematic, what they call against great power of chauvinism. But by great power, they meant the ethnic Russians who were more, a greater percentage of the Soviet Union than they wore a Tsarath, Russia, because they lost Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states. So they were over 50% a majority. but there was no affirmative action for them like there was every other nationality during this time. And in 36, you start to change with the new Constitution written by Buhardin.

And then you see at the end of the Great Terror, the Gagod has already been replaced in 36 by Yejaf, who was half Russian. His mother was Lithuania, but he wasn't Jewish. November 38, Biria comes in and the percentage of Jews in the top ranks of the NKVe Day plummets from 20% to 4%. There's a few guys still around like Berenzen who controls the finances of the NKVe Day. Naftily Frankel, who is famous from Solzhenits and Gulag Archipelago. He's still head of the rail construction for Gulag, Gullogged, during the end part of Staling's, well, all the way to the end of Staling's

rain, but there's a big decrease then. And it really, I think, had to do with, there's a kind of a conflict based upon region and ethnicity within the NKVEDA. So originally, the leadership of the Chekha, the Gay-Peu, O Gaypeu, and NKVe Day are all people from the Pailail of Settlement. And they're not all Jewish. Yagodup is the only one who makes it the very top of Jewish, but they all are from the pale settlement. A lot of them have Jewish spouses, for instance, the first head of the Chekha Dersinski was Polish, but his wife was Jewish. The second guy, Menjinsky, is Polish, but as I said, already assuming power in 23, he's already have to basically give over running of the organization to Yagoda because he's not physically able to do it himself. After Yerga,

So all these people from the areas that were in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And then they get basically removed by Biria, whose center of powers in Georgia is an ethnic Georgian. People like Rapa and Karazha are also ethnic Georgians, ethnic Armenians from Tablisi like the Kobelof brothers. So they replace a lot of the Jews that were in this kind of. a circle along with some poles and people from Lithuania like Jaegov that had dominated the Czechka, Gaypew, Ogepeu, NKVAD, all the way from 1917 up to 19, the end of 1938.

So do you consider it to be something targeted when Beria takes over for the amount of Jews in power in the MKVD2? Well, yeah, because there are a lot more Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Ukrainians appointed. As I said, the Jewish percentage plummets down to 4%. Although there's still some high-ranking Jews like Barronzen and Frankl. But that was targeted? But was that done on purpose? Yes, because they were basically different gangs.

I mean, just just like in the U.S., gangs are based upon ethnicity. or what they call Natan al-Nos, which is really ethno-racial. In this case, it's a little bit more complex than that it's kind of coalitions of different ethno-racial groups by geography and that you had the Jews and Poles in the original, dominating the original political police, and then Georgians and Armenians allied with Russians in the second version of it under Biryam.

But the one big change you do see is that the mass execution that took place in 37 and 38 under Yejaf and Belski and then in Ukraine, Lophevsky was head. And in Belarus it was Boris Berman, the brother of the head of the Gulag from 3237, Montvei Berman. Those are largely replaced by forced labor, either in labor camps, or special settlements because Biria thought it was a waste to just shoot people when you could work them to death. So in studying the Spanish Civil War and you look at the officers that were sent to advise

there overwhelmingly, I think last I counted out of 11 of them, like 9 or 10 were Jewish. And it seems like when they got back, they were executed. the majority of them were summarily executed. What was that movement in 38 and 39 to remove? Was that targeting Jews or was that just targeting people? I think it's targeting people that were outside the Soviet Union because they also had one of the national operations is not against the nationality. It's called the Haribnizzi operation.

And when in 36, they sold the Chinese Eastern Railroad in Manchuria to the Japanese. they recalled all of the Russian workers back into the Soviet Union. And the people that were stupid enough to return were either shot the vast majority of them or were sent into time in a labor camp. When I lived in Kyrgyzstan, I knew a guy who spent 10 years in a labor camp because he had returned from working on the railroad in Manchuria. But he was still alive and spent every day drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, That's enjoying the fact that he'd outlived all of his repressors.

But the reason was because they had spent time outside the Soviet Union, therefore been exposed to foreign ideas or perhaps engaged in conspiracies. So there was that paranoia. I think that people returning from Spain are the same idea that they were a suspect for having been outside the USSR and in contact with foreign environments. When it came to Russian forces during World War II, were there any German conscripts into it? Or were there any Germans who actually volunteered to fight against their own people? Yes, yes.

In the beginning, there were over 33,000 Volga Germans who were fighting in the Red Army against the Vermeckt. They put up an Alamo-type defense at Brest, where they were wiped out by the Vermect. They were not removed from the military forces of the Soviet Union until 7th September, and then they were all sent to force what they call it construction battalions, and then they were mobilized into the labor army when it's created, and sent to the corrective labor camps of the Gulag and the Ural, primarily that fell timber into industrial construction. Some avoided it by changing their nationality. in collaboration with their commanding officers.

There was one famous German soldier who claimed to be Azerbaijani. He took the identity of a fallen comrade. There were some that managed to work in the partisans, organized the NKVEDA to fight against the Germans. But the numbers are limited because there was, in 8th September, the decree to remove all ethnic Germans from all Soviet. military institutions. So there were a handful that we know of that managed to kind of work around this by claiming

other nationalities and having their commanding officers to go along with the deception, but not very many. The vast majority were of the over 33,000 that were Volga Germans that were still fighting in the Red Army by 8th September, 1941. were all sent to labor camps by the Soviet government. You mentioned that certain groups were considered to be Kulaks, even if they weren't. How much of this was, at this point, how much of it was actual ideology, the ideology of communism and Bolshevism, and how much was it just basically they're operating on autopilot,

and that's just what you declare somebody at this point? I don't think it has much to do with any type of Marxist ideology. I think a lot of it is just the prejudices these people already had against these groups, so they have Tsarist roots. But, of course, they're not limited to Russian, everybody that was in the kind of Russian environment. You read the kind of old 19th century Russian literature, there is a stereotype of the Germans as being rich, undeserving colonizers in the Volga and Ukraine or being exploited.

So during the Civil War, the anarchist under Nestor Machna, they go after the Mennonites because Makhna had worked for the Mennonites as a farmhand and didn't like the way he was paid and treated. So all of the Mennonites became targeted. That's ironic. But in particular, it's quite violent, so much so, particularly with the rapes of women, that for the only time ever, the Mennonites in the world, they took up arms of being sponsored by the German governments during World War I still 1918 before November to create self-protection units. And this was a big deal for a creed that it. been pacifists since the early 16th century.

How much was Asian Russia involved in this? Most people, when they think of Russia, you really only think of European Russia and the side that is on. But there's this whole other side, which even though much more sparsely populated and ethnically diverse, actually, how much were they pulled in? How much of like the Soviet? ideology and the Soviet, the crushing Soviet hand, did they have to suffer all the way in the East? Well, there's not a lot of Central Asians. There are quite a few Caucasians involved in the

Soviet government, particularly before the 1950s, in large part because they're not educated, in large part because they're traditional way of life is not congruence with the Soviet ideology. So the memberships in the Communist Party are quite low and the involvement is largely just on the local basis. But you do have some groups, so one group which is not well studied during World War I, the Russian government brought in a large number of Chinese workers from China. And during the Bolshek revolution, most of them sided with the Bolsheviks. A lot of them joined the Red Army. A lot of them joined the Red Army. and there was a Checa unit noted for its brutality composed entirely of Chinese that operated in Ukraine.

So, all right, let's switch over a little bit to the war and the Eastern Front. So do you know, do you have any like general numbers of, on the Eastern battlefield, on the Eastern Front, how many, what the population of Jews was. and obviously the Germans are accused and rightly so in many cases of them just not caring about any Jewish populations that are on the Eastern Front. When I say rightly so, they're accused

because they didn't. How much do the Soviets care? It just doesn't seem to me like if you're at war and you're at war with the Vermeck that you're taking special care to be like, oh, wait a minute, we can't hurt these Jews over here. Well, the Jewish population in the Soviet Union was probably about three million at the start of the war when Germany invaded. And probably about a million were either evacuated or made it on their own east of the front.

I went to a conference in Jerusalem. It was called Jews and their neighbors in Central Asia about this. So they were disproportionately evacuated because they were disproportionately. members of the Communist Party and disproportionately working in industries that were considered important by the Soviet government and needed to be evacuated each of the Euro to prevent the Germans from Congress. So as a percentage, much larger number of Jews of their population than non-Jews were officially evacuated by the Soviet government. But it appears to have been on basis of party membership and necessary occupation rather than national notes. So over a third of them were evacuated east, and a lot of them ended up in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. And they didn't get like with the German deportees, the Kazakhs who had to share their house with Jewish evacuees and

Kazakhstan, we're not very happy about it. I talked to one Jewish guy in Israel who ended up as a child in one of those. And he said, yeah, they didn't really like us coming there because we didn't speak their language and they had to give up their space in their house. But I actually understand why they didn't like it. There is at least along with that guy an understanding of the problem. But, yeah, they did have, it wasn't, I don't think we, an ethnic preference, but certainly due to their higher membership in the party and needed economic industries, they had a much greater number, percentage evacuated than your average Russian or Ukrainian. Are there any numbers on the percentage of the civilians on the Eastern Front that were killed? It's disputed, but the numbers range from 4 million civilians dying in the Soviet Union during the Second World War due to the Germans. That's in addition to another 2 million plus that Stalin killed through labor camps and special settlements and execution, all the way up to 10 million civilians.

I tend to go with the lower number, particularly because the person who came up with the lower number, is the end Zemskopf, was now dead. He was the first person who would not a member of the Communist Party allowed into the Soviet archives to study the Gulag. And he wrote a fantastic book on the special settlement regime, Kulags and deported Germans and other nationalities in 2005, which is still one of my go-to references always. So I'm more likely to trust Zemskopf, and I am the official number from the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is, of course, as an interest in blowing up the number of Russian civilians that were killed. during the war for its own purposes to support the government in Moscow. What do you think the numbers were on the war total? Daryl Cooper mentioned recently in the first episode of enemies,

his German series, that 60 million. It could be 60 million, some say 40 million, some say 20 million. Are we including Asia in the Pacific? I don't know if he's including Asia in the Pacific. Yeah, well, I don't know. The numbers, you know, range from the Soviet Union, which would be the largest number absolute from 20 to 27 million. 27 million is the official figure.

20 million is somewhere where Zemskopf is advocating. Although the majority of those are military losses. And the German losses, from what I can see, are about 8 million, 5 million military, and 3 million civilians. So 60 million looks high, but 40 million probably around, right? Certainly lots of people. It's hard to do a tabulation because you have to be an expert on every little country in Europe. And some countries in Europe, they look small, but they have large losses,

places like Yugoslavia and Poland because the war was quite fierce. Was there any hope at all that packs between Russia and the Soviet Union and Germany before the war could have lasted, that it didn't have to happen, that there could have been peace? I don't know. Everything I've seen suggests that Stalin thought that the fact was the, only temporary so that he could build up enough forces to invade Germany. So if the German didn't attack earlier, they were going to get attacked by the Soviets and be on the defensive.

So I don't see a scenario where the Soviet government under Stalin decides that it's going to have a permanent peace with Germany. In fact, if, say somebody like Trotsky, there wouldn't have been any piece at all. 3941 wouldn't have existed. He would have already in the 1920s been trying to push revolution into central Europe. So then you take the narrative of Icebreaker that Suverroff's narrative that I don't think it necessarily because I think Suverroff is pushing the date in a way that we don't have enough evidence support. But yeah, I think eventually when the Soviet forces get large enough,

they would have invaded. Everything, you know, you hear from defenders of Stalin today is that the pact was only temporary because the capitalist powers wouldn't support him earlier over Czechoslovakia. So eventually he was going to, you know, quote unquote, liberate Central Europe. It was just they had to get enough military forces. Now, I'm not sure when that would have exactly been, it's not my area of expertise. But yeah, eventually, you know, a couple of years down the line, they wouldn't have held. Well, obviously because of American backing and not only that, but goods,

the transfer, what was the agreement where the United States was manufacturing? the United States was manufacturing and delivering goods to... Len Leis. Len Lease. Yeah, Len Lees. Because of Len Lees, well, at the end of the war, the Soviet Union ends up with half of Europe anyway. Do you think that if Operation Barbarossa doesn't happen, if he doesn't invade, that if they would have been on the defensive that the Soviet Union would have taken the whole peninsula? Yeah, I think if the Germans hadn't... attacked the Soviet Union in 41. That eventually, I don't know, would have been 43 or 44, the Soviet Union would have attacked Germany.

They would have gone to take the parts of Poland that Germany had taken in 1939 and tried to move as far west as possible. Is that one of those opinions that gets you in trouble and keeps you out of? No, I've been out of academia for so long. There's no trouble anymore. I just clean toilets now. Well, we're not ending right now, but I guess this is a good point as any is anybody who's watching who has an inn at any university or any school whatsoever. Dr. Pole here is looking for a job because he seems to have been locked out of academia.

and not only in the United States, I think you overseas, you're having problems too, right? Yeah, well, the job's dried up overseas as far as foreigners. But the last place I worked, American University of Iraq, Sula mania, was basically a CIA front who had two goals, one, to keep the Kurds in Iraq so that all the oil is under one central government, and two, to impose the LGBTQ upon the Muslim population there. So they didn't renew my contract when I said they were stupid. Well, anyone who can help, please, you can reach out to me,

and I'll make sure to get through to Dr. Pol. The United States doesn't do-Len-Lis, doesn't join the war. does the Soviet Union defeat Germany? I was saying if the United States doesn't do lend lease, doesn't completely support the Soviet Union, how does the war go? The Soviets still might win, but they would take much, much greater losses.

It would take them much longer a period of time, and instead of talking 20 to 27 million, we might be talking a hundred million out of 172 million people in the Soviet Union dying to try and win. It would be a very Pyrrhic victory if they did win. Seems like the meat grinder that we're seeing there today is somewhat not similar, but the numbers, at least on the Ukrainian side, seem to be, seem to be piling up and when you consider some of the numbers

that are happening today and you compare them in scale to the scale of World War II we maybe even be seeing at that scale when you just consider that this is a historic kind of local war yeah well some of the local wars

get very high percentages of young men dying so I think Serbia during World War I, something like a third of the young men total, died in combat. The war between the Triple Alliance with Paraguay had a similar percentage, I think, perish. When it comes to, let's go back to Russia a little bit and to their diaspora groups. You said that clearly that the reason why certain groups were targeted were, well, they were members of an ethnic group that was considered an enemy, and they had a government. And then what happens when Israel comes into existence in 1948?

What is the attitude towards the diaspora? Do Jews in the Soviet Union automatically become a diaspora now that can be looked upon with, you know, with suspicion? It's not automatic because initially the Soviet Union believes that it can create a socialist state allied with the USSR in Israel. And it is particularly eager to reduce British power. And it views the Arab monarchies such as King Abdullah in Jordan, the King Abdullah I, the first, so the grandfather of the current monarch, but also the government in Iraq, British puppets, and also Egypt even,

before Nasser's revolution overthrows the monarchy. So they support the Zionist initially in 1948 and 1949 as a way of weakening the British, a way of opposing these reactionary pro-British monarchies in the Arab states established really through the League of Nations mandates, which were to give self-determination and independence to the Arab states that were taken out of the Ottoman Empire. And this becomes changed later, primarily because, because the Israelis don't want to go along with the Soviets. And after Stalin dies, there is a change of policy starting in 1954

with the Soviets approving a large sale of Czech weapons to Egypt after NASA comes to power. And basically, the conflict goes that the Soviets get tired of shenanigans by people like Golda Meyer, who keeps wanting Soviet Jews to come to Israel, claiming the Soviet Union is anti-Semitic, but it's okay with all the Jews in America, just staying in America and sending money. That didn't go well with the Soviet leadership. And also the fact that Soviets looked at the map and said,

there's four million Jews in Israel and 100 million Arabs. Maybe we should support the other side, especially after the monarchies, Jordan, of course, never got overthrown. But in Iraq, there was an overthrow of the monarchy to a secular nationalist government that was a much more friendly to the USSR. And, of course, Nasser coming to power in Egypt, much more favorable to Soviets, which is why they greenlight the Czech arms sales. So by the 1956, when the British and French and Israelis try and take the Suez Canal back from Egypt, which had been nationalized by Nasser, the Soviets are on the Arab side against the Israelis on this. Ironically, the United States is as well, because the United States threatened the British to devaluate their pound if they don't pull out. of attacking Egypt. And this is the same time the Soviets are crushing the Hungarian revolution in Budapest.

So it provides a good diversion for the Soviets if everybody's looking at what the British, French, and Israelis are doing in Egypt rather than what they are doing at Hungary. And then, of course, by 1967, the Soviet government of Brezhnev is thoroughly with the rest of the third world supporting the Arabs against Israel. And in 64, they officially recognize the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people. So there's a big change. A lot of it driven by pragmatic geopolitics, a real politics, that it would be much better for the Soviets internationally to support the larger Arab population against the smaller

Israeli one. Well, and you see that clearly in the fact that most of Israel's enemies are using AK-47s that are built in factories, that the Soviets actually went to Egypt and went to other countries and built factories

to basically... Yeah, including in Egypt. It was an AK-47 factory in Egypt. Yeah, I actually own one. I actually own one of the ones out of that factory. the yeah there it's really weird to me when people say that like historically Russia

that the Zionists controlled Russia when you consider that all of their enemies were using Russian weapons against them it changes they initially I said in 4849 they support the Zionists they want to weaken the British they want to weaken the Arab government that are in their mind reactionary and pro-British. But after you have a series of left-wing, they're not communist, but they're certainly

not favorable to the West, revolutions in Egypt and Iraq and Syria, the Bhas that's coming to power in Syria and Iraq, Nasser and Egypt, this all changes. So by 1956, you see the Soviets certainly on the Arab side. side, they had already started supporting with military arms, the Egyptian government of Nasser, in 54. So there's a change from the late Stalinist era when they think they could get a Jewish-Soviet People's Republic in Israel versus supporting what they call the progressive regimes in the Arab world, these kind of regimes like the Baathist in Syria and Iraq and Nasser and Egypt.

So the Soviet Union basically wins World War II. Stalin at some point, once the bomb is acquired, you can consider him to be maybe the most powerful man in the world, one of the most powerful men that ever lived. What starts their slide? What do you see as their slide down to where, empires don't fall overnight. It takes a...

Well, really, ideologically, I don't think anybody believed in Marxism, Leninism, even by the time of World War II. But they then can switch to the Great Patriotic War

as kind of a way to mobilize But then, of course, all the veterans die off, and this is not sustainable. So then they switch, like many countries, ironically, a good parallel of South Korea, where they switch from national anti-Japanese sentiment under Sigmundry to economics under Park Chung-hee, because Park Chung-hee fought with the Japanese. They switched to, okay, we can materially give you a better standard of living. your parents or grandparents have but the problem was they could look and see that yeah well our standard living is greater than our grandparents but it's much lower than western europe and it's much lower than

japan and places like south korea are becoming richer than us this is not sustainable we're becoming and when it totally stagnates in the late brezhnair is not getting any better and then it starts to get worse particularly you see things like the life expectancy of men start to decline I think that was the end of it. They had nothing left to legitimize it. The revolution itself hadn't been, as I say, probably since 1941, a real reason. And when the Germans invaded, rather than appeal to Marxism, Lenism, Stalin appealed to Russian nationalism for the majority of the population. And then there were kind of parallels appealed to each non-Russian nationality, that it would,

for their nationalism. So, you know, you do this for the Kyrgyzstanation, or you do this for the Uzbek nation. It wasn't, you do this for Marxism, Leninism, and the Bolshevik Revolution. How much of it had to do with just sort of empire where you have satellites in Central America, islands, South America, all through Eastern Europe, an empire is very hard to keep. Yeah, well, it's very expensive. I mean, the Soviets were doing. giving billions of dollars to places like Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia. And one of the first things, you know, Gorbachev did was he cut off these client dates, right? So the Cubans, you know, the deal of one pound of, one, you know, barrel of oil for the equivalent

volume of sugar is over because oil is worth a lot more than sugar. And that really, you know, crippled the Cuban economy for a while because they were, dependent upon this heavy subsidy from the USSR. And, you know, certain places like Vietnam were managed to reform in 1983, starting in 93, to avoid famine and did fairly well. Other places like Ethiopia, you know, the regime ended up being overthrown and it still got problems of civil war. Cuba did some reform, so it's not as bad as it was, but they're still hurting because

they still have a largely social. economy that is not nearly as dynamic as the reformed ones in places like Vietnam and China. So after Stalin dies, do you think that a lot of it just becomes anti-West and they see the West as being Zionist controlled? I mean, Yaqui writes about this. There's a lot of writers on the new right, well, the post-war right, the illegal right, start writing that, you know, you have to make your choice. You're either what the Zionist. or you're not, and the United States are or Zionists controlled, so

this is why Yaki was like, well, you know, this is why I'm siding with the Soviet Union, basically. Or with the Warsaw Pact, with the Warsaw Pact. Yeah, well, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact state, after 1967 war, they said the second and third world, this is one of their pillars.

There were certain things that kind of like unified them, and beyond that there wasn't much that unified the third world. One of them, was opposition to Zionism. Another was opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Another was opposition to the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. And there was also opposition of what remained of European colonialism,

although as time went on, there were fewer European colonies since they were pulling out. And domestically, it was a way to oppose Jewish emigration movement. So the reason why the Soviets, and they got more grief over this one issue than anything else they did, even though by far not the worst thing they did, was they wanted to maintain the, retain the educated Jewish population in the Soviet Union that were doing things like being engineers and professors and whatnot because they didn't want to lose that human capital. But there was pressure from the United States on behalf of Israel to allow them to emigrate and leave the Soviet Union. And domestically, there were a movement by Jews, people like Nate and Sharonsky, probably the most famous one, to engage in pressure that would be visible to the rest of the world on the government in Moscow to allow them to emigrate. And this emigration movement was actually copied by the German. Germans in 1972, 1973, to allow them also to emigrate to West Germany.

It wasn't as successful, but it kind of did have a parallel imitation by ethnic Germans. So the opposition to Zionism domestically was they didn't want to lose the Jewish population because of disproportionate number of them were in the higher economic workings of the Soviet economy, such as it was. And then internationally to get support from first and foremost the Arab States, but also the third world in general. And also, I think there was still this resentment of the way the Israelis had treated their original alliance in 19. 49. Yeah, I think that one of the easy examples from history from the 20th century you can see of the Zionist Russian fight is the fact that the Soviet Union backed the commies in Rhodesia. And when they did, the Zionist armed the white Rhodesia. You had this like war going on just in Rhodesia where you can see that where it's actually clear. Well, yeah, I don't know that. I know that Israel had close military relations with South Africa,

accumulating and a joint nuclear test in the Indian Ocean. But this is, of course, as I say, by 1967, both for domestic reasons, the movement that emigrate, by some three million Soviet Jews and international politics, particularly dealing with the Middle East to oppose Western interests, especially the United States. The Soviets had become strongly in the anti-Israeli camp. Although interestingly enough, unlike some of the more radical Arabs, the Soviet Union never advocated that Israel itself ceased to exist. They were always officially in the UN that the West Bank and Gaza strip become a separate Palestinian state, but the 1948 borders continue to be the state of Israel. All right, well, let's wrap up there. How can people support you right now? We want to find

you a teaching position somewhere, but in the meantime, how can they support you? Well, you can buy my book, which is distributed by Columbia University Press, and also write to your local library to ask them to acquire a copy of it. It's currently in 1,058 libraries worldwide, but I haven't sold many copies to individuals. I don't know the exact number, but it's probably a tenth of what the library sales are. I have a Patreon, which has a $5 subscription. And I am always available for editing, research, writing, and even translation jobs. So I've gotten a couple of translation jobs recently that subsidize my wages. But yeah, if you wanted to support me another way, then I've listed,

you can contact me by DM on Twitter or my. email which is available on my academic EDU site if you go to my CV it's written right there but yeah mainly if you have any work for me I'm pretty good at the the research and writing stuff by now and my rates are very reasonable remind everybody the title of the book the years of great silence and then the subtitle, the deportation, special settlement, and mobilization of labor army of ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941 to 1955, published by Ibidim Verlog out of Stuttgart.

But for the U.S. and Canada, Columbia University Press, the distributor, so if you go to their website and look up either my name or the title of the book, you'll find the order sheet. I'll provide links to all of that in the show notes. Again, thank you, Otto. Thank you, Peter.