Bardon Kaldian says:
Although we do have media exploitation of shoah; Jewish ethnic animus toward Czarist regime, etc., the notion of the Jewish Bolshevism is wrong.
Jews had not been numerically over-represented in the CP USSR (and its earlier variants). They’ve comprised ca. 5% of all card-carrying Bolsheviks & close to 50% of the Politburo during Lenin’s times (never reached 50%+)*. They- Russian & Ukrainian Jews (except in the BUND)- never advocated separate Jewish interests, and, what is more important, they did not perceive themselves as Jews in a national sense- except in cases when they fiercely attacked Zionism as a “grave ideological error”. Many of them were actually Russian national loyalists, which was evident from their behavior in the Brest-Litovsk treaty crisis, when Lenin had had virtually all the Bolshevik party & Politburo against himself, this time based purely on “national pride” agenda (“we won’t give our land to Germans”.)
As for influence, to put it shortly: it was Lenin, an ethnic Russian with marginal Jewish ancestry (a converted mother’s father Moishko Blank, himself an anti-Semite) he wasn’t aware of until he was 35, and later didn’t care about, who has created & lead the successful global socio-political transformation called Communism. Lenin designed & built Bolshevik party as a highly militarized, disciplined & ideologically dogmatic sect, a universal machine for transformation of all resentments (social, national, religious, personal, ethnic, “racial”, cultural, economic,..) into a “laser beam” of focused, almost inevitably violent determination for possession of total power and creation of a new, Communist utopia.
Both ideas and actions in the crucial periods from 1903. to 1922. were his, frequently opposed by more cautious Russian & ethnically non-Russian Bolshevik leadership. The most prominent Bolshevik rulers during the revolution and civil war, of Jewish origin, had been: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov and Trotsky. Sverdlov was perhaps the most influential among Bolshevik Jews in the earliest stage, but he died (or was killed) too soon. He himself never developed any idea, nor had been the central figure in any significant event- except the execution of Russian royal family. Trotsky, who had been a Menshevik but switched his loyalties to Lenin, played the pivotal role in organization of the Red Army, but his vanity & verbal excesses have alienated him from many other top Bolsheviks who feared his influence: so “Jewish” Zinoviev and Kamenev formed an alliance with the Georgian Stalin (and his lapdogs) to isolate & destroy Trotsky. They succeeded, but were later destroyed in the power struggles with other Stalin’s allies (this time ethnic Russian Bukharin and others). At the end, the entire “old guard”, except Stalin, had been killed, one way or another. So much for “Jewish solidarity”.
What Kevin Macdonald can’t (or won’t) see is that pure stats don’t mean much. One person, Lenin, totally dominated the party & the Revolution (the foundation of the Bolshevik ideology, the central strategy and tactics in post-February days, the planning and execution of the October coup d’etat, formation of the Cheka, the decision to switch to War Communism, the tactical withdrawal in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty, crucial political/economic “retreat” embodied in the New Economic policy, …). On many occasions Bolsheviks of Jewish extraction had tried- unsuccessfully- to counter Lenin’s unique combination of radicalism & pragmatism, but inevitably failed: they’ve been frequently too radical, but not realistic enough; in other instances like the October coup, they were mostly too cautious and afraid to move (so was Stalin). In all critical moments Lenin virtually raped the party- and won.
Somewhere around 1920-1921, Stalin became the man of Lenin’s primary confidence. He was the only person who could see him without prior notice (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky, ..and other Jewish Bolsheviks couldn’t). After 1922. (Lenin died in 1924., completely incapacitated), Stalin was, effectively, the most influential Communist ruler & all other influential political figures, whether Jewish, ethnic Russian, Caucasian, Polish, Baltic, Ukrainian, …could not overthrow him, nor impose their ideas and practices. Eventually, Stalin got rid off all leaders of revolution and mercifully “spared” only figures of secondary importance whose chief characteristics had been blind loyalty to him.
To summarize: over-representation of Soviet Jews in the early stages of the Communist revolution (Sverdlov, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Uritsky, Ioffe ..or their enemies like Martov, Gershuny, Blumkin (he has later “converted”, but was executed as a Trotskyst during the Purges), Dora Kaplan …) or in Stalin’s Soviet Union (Kaganovich, Yagoda, Litvinov, Neftali Frenkel, ..) is an interesting phenomenon, but proves- nothing. The very formation of a new type of society was, essentially, the result of Lenin’s genius; consolidation of the new “theocratic” empire was in the hands of one man, Stalin. All Communist Jews, from top to bottom, were mostly executors and followers, not shapers of history along the ideas & practices they themselves had created. And I won’t address the issue of Soviet Jewish victims (Mandel’shtam, Mikhoels, Babel’, …). So, Kevin MacDonald is partially right, but his thesis about some imaginary Jewish survival strategy & brilliant success and “high life” in the Soviet Union they had- according to MacDonald – made for themselves is simply- wrong.
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* Of the 21 full members of the Central Committee of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party at the time of the October 1917 Revolution, six were of Jewish origin. That makes 29%. Or 7 out of 31, if you include the 10 candidate members.
The number dropped drastically after the purges
