WI/PC: The Soviet Union purged Jews in the mid 1920s-30s?

[A Piece of History]

Inspired by this video from TiK about Karl Marx's anti-Semitism

For the sake of argument, let's imagine that after Trotsky, who came from a Ukrainian-Jewish family, is purged, Stalin decides that ethnic and religious Jews, by definition, are Trotskysts or capitalists and decides to purge them from public life, even sending them to gulags simply for being Jewish? How plausible is this idea?

 

[ArtosStark]

Well, it’s hard to say there was a group that Stalin wouldn’t purge. So it seems plausible on the face of it.

 

[Persephone]

Inspired by this video from TiK about Karl Marx's anti-Semitism

For the sake of argument, let's imagine that after Trotsky, who came from a Ukrainian-Jewish family, is purged, Stalin decides that ethnic and religious Jews, by definition, are Trotskysts or capitalists and decides to purge them from public life, even sending them to gulags simply for being Jewish? How plausible is this idea?

Well, considering that post-WWII, Stalin was in the process of organizing an Anti-Semitic campaign known as the Doctors' Plot that was only stopped as a result of Stalin's death, it's not too far of a stretch to consider that he could've ramped it up even further into a Soviet Holocaust. There's even a timeline on this site, Twilight of the Red Tsar, that postulates the possible effects of Stalin's prolonged survival and what could've happened to the Jews of the Soviet Union (spoiler alert: it's not pretty).

 

[Omar04]

TIK is an idiot who thinks Socialists control universities. He doesn't even mention Bruno Bauer who Marx was responding to in On the Jewish Question. Marx argues that Jews should be emancipated and not forced to lose their Jewish identity in contrast to Bauer who says the Jews cannot be emancipated politically without first renouncing Judaism. He takes a materialistic view of Judaism: "What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism." and directly after "The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appears in pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money." Marx is attacking Prussian monied interests here, not Jews.

Nevertheless, North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville, and the Englishman Hamilton unanimously assure us. The North American states, however, serve us only as an example. The question is: What is the relation of complete political emancipation to religion? If we find that even in the country of complete political emancipation, religion not only exists, but displays a fresh and vigorous vitality, that is proof that the existence of religion is not in contradiction to the perfection of the state. Since, however, the existence of religion is the existence of defect, the source of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself. We no longer regard religion as the cause, but only as the manifestation of secular narrowness. Therefore, we explain the religious limitations of the free citizen by their secular limitations. We do not assert that they must overcome their religious narrowness in order to get rid of their secular restrictions, we assert that they will overcome their religious narrowness once they get rid of their secular restrictions. We do not turn secular questions into theological ones. History has long enough been merged in superstition, we now merge superstition in history. The question of the relation of political emancipation to religion becomes for us the question of the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the religious weakness of the political state by criticizing the political state in its secular form, apart from its weaknesses as regards religion. The contradiction between the state and a particular religion, for instance Judaism, is given by us a human form as the contradiction between the state and particular secular elements; the contradiction between the state and religion in general as the contradiction between the state and its presuppositions in general.

TIK likes to spread cultural marxism conspiracy theories in his videos so it is no surprise he is reading Marx line by line and stripping it of any relevant context:

Well, I dare. I dare to question it, because it turns out that these wonderful marxists are denying the holocaust. It turns out that these wonderful socialists are promoting and justifying theft and murder. It turns out they're the ones who are immoral. It turns out that their ideology is undefendable. Those who control the past, control the future, and the marxists control the past. Since the cold war era, if not much much earlier, socialists have invaded the universities, and have been miseducating the youth. Think about it. WHO writes the history books? Public, socialised, state academic, historians. And who teaches in these public, socialised, state schools? People who believe in socialised control of the means of production. These socialised state historians and these socialised state academics have the most to gain from have the most to gain from the furhter expansion of the public, socialised, state sector. So they're pushing a false narritive of history, a false narritive of the news, a false definition of the words we use in everyday language, like: state. All as a way of defending "real socialism": the state. They've spun history through the lens of class warfare, gender warfare, racial warfare, calling this "social science." They've warped society into misunderstanding the true nature of socialism and capitalism. Most don't even know the meaning of the terms and when you point them out, backed by a host of sources and examples from their own literature, actual evidence, you get told: "You don't know what you're talking about."

From "Why they don't tell you about Hitler's "Shrinking Markets" problem"

 

[Persephone]

SNIP

Full disclosure: I don't know dick about TIK, his channel, or his political views. But even if you take what you've presented into account, you're still ignoring what OP's question actually is in favor of attacking a youtuber who may or may not be an idiot (again, I don't know dick about him, so I couldn't say). That question being "Could the Soviet Union have purged Jews in the 20s and 30s?", not "Is TIK an idiot pushing biased views on his audience?". It's unnecessary and honestly detracts from discussion around the potential antisemitism involved in an alternate Soviet Union. By no means am I trying to dictate what you do, but for OP's sake, try to at least keep that in mind.

 

[jlckansas]

One of the problems with purges in this time periods under Stalin means that you and your family will most likely be sent to the Gulag at the least, Lubyanka or it’s regional equivalent on the way, to out right death as an enemy of the state. Purge in this periods does not mean removal from civil and military life into internal exile.

It would be possible for Stalin and his government to reach a Third Reich level if not surpass the number of people killed if they do this.

 

[Deleted member 90563]

Full disclosure: I don't know dick about TIK, his channel, or his political views. But even if you take what you've presented into account, you're still ignoring what OP's question actually is in favor of attacking a youtuber who may or may not be an idiot (again, I don't know dick about him, so I couldn't say). That question being "Could the Soviet Union have purged Jews in the 20s and 30s?", not "Is TIK an idiot pushing biased views on his audience?". It's unnecessary and honestly detracts from discussion around the potential antisemitism involved in an alternate Soviet Union. By no means am I trying to dictate what you do, but for OP's sake, try to at least keep that in mind.

It's OK to criticise videos, especially if they're are factually incorrect, posted in the forum.

And one of the consequences of such persecution might be Jews fleeing to safe countries with already large Jewish populations, like the USA, Hungary, Poland, and Germany.

 

[David T]

"There is a bulky output of literature alleging that Marx’s essay On the Jewish Question is anti-Semitic because it equates Jewry with the spirit of money-making, the merchant-huckster, preoccupation with self-interest and egoism-that is, with the commercialism of the new bourgeois order. The charge has been furthered in various ways, including forgery: one honest critic renamed the essay A World Without Jews as if this were Marx’s title. [1] Few discussions of the essay explain clearly its political purpose and content in connection with the Jewish emancipation question, or even accurately present the views of its target, Bauer. Mainly, the allegation is supported by reading the attitudes of the second half of the twentieth century back into the language of the 1840s. More than that, it is supported only if the whole course of German and European anti-Jewish sentiment is whitewashed, so as to make Marx’s essay stand out as a black spot. This note will take up only the 1843 essay and its background.

"The general method was memorably illustrated in C.B. Kelland’s 1936 novel Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which some may know as a Gary Cooper film. In an attempt to have a hearing declare Mr. Deeds of unsound mind, two little old ladies are brought in from his home town to testify. It’s well known, one explains, that he is pixillated – balmy in the head. The honest woman’s evidence seems damning. But the case blows up later when she is asked one more question: “Who else in your town is pixillated?” She answers: “Why, everybody!”

"As soon as the question is raised, it is not difficult or even controversial to show that virtually the entire population of Germany (and the rest of Europe, too) was pixillated- that is, habitually used and accepted the words Jew and Jewry in the manner of Marx’s essay whether they were favorable to the Jews’ cause or not, whether they were anti-Semitic or not, whether they were Jews or not. In this they were only following the very old, if now discredited, practice of using national and ethnic names as epithets, usually derogatory, for people showing a trait supposedly characteristic of the nation or ethnic group. This practice, which began to be suppressed in self-consciously polite society only a few decades ago, was as common in English as in any other language, and some of it still hangs on. Consider a few: wild Indian (active child), apache (Paris criminal), Hottentot (as in Hottentot morality), street arab, gypsy, bohemian, Cossack, blackamoor, Turk; or, as an adjective: Dutch courage, Mexican general, French leave. Another of this group, for centuries, has been Jew..."

Hal Draper: Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype (1977)

Hal Draper: Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype (1977)

www.marxists.org

 

[Persephone]

It's OK to criticise videos, especially if they're are factually incorrect, posted in the forum.

And one of the consequences of such persecution might be Jews fleeing to safe countries with already large Jewish populations, like the USA, Hungary, Poland, and Germany.

Fair point, hadn't considered that. Though the idea of Jews fleeing to places like Hungary, Poland, and Germany brings up another question: Are those countries communist or otherwise Soviet-aligned by the time the Soviets begin ramping up their persecution campaigns? Because if they are, then that can only lead to more trouble for the unlucky refugees...

 

[David T]

In the 1920's and 1930's the CPSU simply couldn't do without Jewish cadres, even if Stalin were anti-Semitic. (That after World War II he became paranoid about Soviet Jews and their alleged American and Israeli connections is beyond dispute but evidence of his anti-Semitism earlier in his life is more ambiguous.) Trotsky explains it in "Thermidor and Anti-Semitism":

"The Soviet regime, in actuality, initiated a series of new phenomena which, because of the poverty and low cultural level of the population, were capable of generating anew, and did in fact generate, anti-Semitic moods. The Jews are a typical city population. They comprise a considerable percentage of the city population in the Ukraine, in White Russia and even in Great Russia. The Soviet, more than any other regime in the world, needs a very great number of civil servants. Civil servants are recruited from the more cultured city population. Naturally the Jews occupied a disproportionately large place among the bureaucracy and particularly so in the lower and middle levels. Of course we can close our eyes to that fact and limit ourselves to vague generalities about the equality and brotherhood of all races. But an ostrich policy will not advance us a single step. The hatred of the peasants and the workers for the bureaucracy is a fundamental fact of Soviet life. The despotism of the regime, the persecution of every critic, the stifling of every living thought, finally the judicial frame-ups are merely a reflection of this basic fact. Even by a priori reasoning it is impossible not to conclude that the hatred for the bureaucracy would assume an anti-Semitic color, at least in those places where the Jewish functionaries compose a significant percentage of the population and are thrown into relief against a broad background of the peasant masses. In 1923 I proposed to the party conference of the Bolsheviks of the Ukraine that the functionaries should be able to speak and write in the idiom of the surrounding population. How many ironical remarks were made about this proposal, in the main by the Jewish intelligentsia who spoke and read Russian and did not wish to learn the Ukrainian language! It must be admitted that in that respect the situation has changed considerably for the better. But the national composition of the bureaucracy changed little, and what is immeasurably more important, the antagonism between the population and the bureaucracy has grown monstrously during the past ten to twelve years. All serious and honest observers, especially those who have lived among the toiling masses for a long time, bear witness to the existence of anti-Semitism, not only of the old and hereditary, but also of the new, “Soviet” variety. " https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/02/therm.htm

 

[Raferty]

I echo what @David T says about the existence of Jewish cadres. The 25 Thousanders sent into Ukraine for collectivization were disproportionately inclusive of Jewish party cadres from the Donetsk region, for example. This isn't to get into ZydoKommuna type conspiracies about Jews, of course, but just a practical reality that the CPSU had far too many Jews at it's frontline operational ranks for a proper purge to take place.

However, Jews who are shown to have sympathies with Bundism, Zionism, or other political currents in the Eastern European Jewish communities at the time absolutely could face purges on those grounds, falsely or otherwise, as being sympathizers with revisionism, bourgeoisie-nationalism, or other proscribed ideas.

Stalin didn't like Jews, period, he didn't want them marrying into his family and would frequently make Jew jokes in front of Jewish party members as a power move. He was known to also think Jewish women were whorish gold diggers and said so repeatedly in front of his inner circle, including those with Jewish wives like Voroshilov and Molotov. So I don't think this is outside his character to launch such a purge. I just think it's unlikely to be on the basis of Jewish ethnoreligious backgrounds alone because it would be infeasible

 

[PrinceofApathy]

Lenin had already attacked Jewish institutions, to say that the Soviet Union was antisemitic would be an understatement. The Soviets would absolutely purge any Jew, or any other minority, that didn't tow the party line exactly.

Yevsektsiya - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Sam R.]

Where are the “willing executioners” and “ordinary men?”

The most monstrous direct attack on working peoples communities happened because of ten years of urban food underconsumption due to scissors. The willing executioners of Ural-Siberian and the attack on rural trading networks which made famine relief impossible were urban workers, organised conscious workers, who were sick of limited food supply.

And where are these people for the local rootless cosmopolitan who isn’t a capital city doctor?

Are we really going to use great man theory as a justification because someone read a summary of applebaum once and nobody’s read Fitzpatrick or Djilas on the sociology of nomenklatura purges?

 

[Cudymcar]

Total ASB. Physically impossible.

 

[BeardedHoplite]

Yeah, TiK's military histories are really, really good but his political and economic takes are garbage. Like "the Nazis were Socialist bc it's in the name" bad. Despite his occasional dismissal of Cold War historians, he often times takes their bait about the Soviet Union at face value

Kinda weird he supports an ultracapitalist state when he is a NEET living off unemployment and Youtube money as well

 

[CHKeeley]

Lenin had already attacked Jewish institutions, to say that the Soviet Union was antisemitic would be an understatement.

Rather than the attack on Jewish institutions being a specific act of anti-semitism, wouldn't it make more sense to frame it within the broader context of state-atheism and attack on religion in general? Alleging Lenin's "fierce anti-semitism" and the proof of this is that he used Jewish cadres (Yevsektsiya members, largely Kombundists) to attack Jewish institutions and Zionism after a series of approvals and reversals of policy? In the broader context of attacks on the Orthodox religion, seizure of the churches, and persecution of the clergies, I think it's a stretch to frame the assault against Jewish organizations as well as being specifically an strong example of anti-semitism in the USSR as you put it.

As quoted by @David T earlier in the thread, anti-semitism very much existed in the USSR and both inside and outside the CPSU in both attitudes of Party members and attitudes of the masses of the peasantry in regards to dealing with disproportionately Jewish party cadres. I don't think though that it makes sense to allege the entire nature of the early Soviet state from the days of Lenin to be strongly anti-semitic because they attacked Jewish synagogues alongside every other church - that's much more a policy of state-atheism than any specific policy of anti-semitism and hostility to "inherent Judaism" implied by the charge of state directed anti-semitism on Lenin's part.

 

[Polish Eagle]

Stalin spent a large part of the 1930s changing the makeup of the Party and the NKVD—by 1939, Greater Russians made up the vast majorities of both, with a large number of the Jews who had been present earlier marginalized (according to Timothy Snyder, by then the only ethnic minority over represented in the NKVD was, naturally, Georgians). Before then, a purge would be shooting oneself in the foot.

It might be possible in a No WWII/Molotov-Ribbentrop Alliance timeline, in the 1940s though.

 

[Raferty]

Yeah, TiK's military histories are really, really good but his political and economic takes are garbage. Like "the Nazis were Socialist bc it's in the name" bad. Despite his occasional dismissal of Cold War historians, he often times takes their bait about the Soviet Union at face value

Kinda weird he supports an ultracapitalist state when he is a NEET living off unemployment and Youtube money as well

I actually think he made a very good point about the nature of the nationalization of industry in Nazi Germany. I didn't buy the shrinking market theory as much as the overheated economy theory, but I think a lot of people underplay the role of the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs and its action using NSDAP shop steward 'spontaneous' demonstrations to justify seizing and nationalizing factories. I don't think you could call it socialist as they did allow private property, and of course just because they abrogated that right in the constitution as part of the Reichstag Fire decree doesn't mean they had any ideological compunction to its elimination. But the vast majority of the German economy was a state run economy and I think sometimes people think that the Krupps of the world had far more autonomy than they really did in OTL.