WALENDYsolje-Russia-and-the-Jews

the induced famines caused by the collectivization ofagriculture and the incessant food confiscations acrossthe countryside—were just as little a slanderous inventionof evil “class enemies” or “counter-revolutionaries”as was the unusually high percentage of prominent Jewscarrying out the brutal orders of the party, state, secretservices and military.As early as July 27, 1918, Lenin decreed a law privilegingJews; making all “active anti-Semites” outlaws, to beshot—in plain language, to be exterminated like verminbecause of mere “agitation,” without having actually deprivedanyone of his human rights. 41Solzhenitsyn remembers, “The law encouraged everyJew who had been insulted as a Jew to request prosecution.”42 [Today, this attitude is called “political correctness.”—Ed.]This fact is something that Solzhenitsyn brings up in arather reserved way. In reality, however,one specific group of citizenswas authorized to arbitrarily requestthe arrest and trial of anyone for allkinds of trivial or predatory reasons,and their liquidation. The generalpopulation had no possibility even todefend itself, for that would be deathbringing“agitation.”Subsequent articles of penal lawprovided that propaganda or agitationpromoters who “stir up national and religious enmity orethnic hatred”—which could include any critical wordabout the party, government or administration—receivebanishment for many years or a firing squad. [Solzhenitsynreceived eight years in prison, then with no warningthree more years of banishment in Kazakhstan—Ed.]Merely the possession of “agitational” literature or thesuspicion of an anti-Semitic attitude could be equated withpolitical crimes. Even a presumption sufficed for punishment.Here is an example of the effect of this law:In 1929 a certain I. Silberman deplored in the weeklynewspaper of the Soviet legal system (issue no. 4) that inthe People’s Courts of the Moscow city government toofew trials had occurred over anti-Semitism, and in factonly 34 in all of Moscow. (This means that every 10 daysa trial took place somewhere in Moscow because of anti-Semitism.)The articles in this magazine of the People’s Commissariathad the effect of an official order for its readers,which must be kept in mind. 43“The Red Terror, whoseexecution excesses hurledthe entire population of Russiainto constant anxiety andparoxysms of fright,characterized all periodsof Bolshevism.”The general expropriation of the entire population infavor of an illusory “people’s property,” the system of generalterror, the pervasive vulnerability of every unprivilegedcitizen—and as their consequence, arrests withoutmeasure, deportations into faraway hard labor camp-regionsand liquidations—were an integrated and mandatorypart of the state ideology of “Marxism-Leninism.” Thesehistorical facts must be acknowledged.The Red Terror had begun at the end of 1917; howeverit was proclaimed official policy by Lenin only on September5, 1918. This Red Terror, particularly with the helpof the Cheka, whose execution excesses hurled the entirepopulation across a vast Russia into constant anxiety andparoxysms of fright, characterized all periods of Bolshevismand permeated all its organizational structures.But early on, terrible details concerning this terrorcame to the attention of the whole world public. Solzhenitsyntells us:As early as January 1918 there were alreadymass executions under martial lawwithout any procedures or court hearings.These were followed by hundreds andlater thousands of innocent hostages beingseized, executed in mass nighttime shootingsor loaded on ships and sunk withthem [aboard]. 44There was no place [in the RSFSR, theRussian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, i.e. the hugeRussian part of the Soviet Union], where shooting did nottake place. By means of one verbal instruction [that ofCheka head F.E. Dzerzhinsky] many thousands of humanswere condemned to immediate death. 45Dzerzhinsky stated in a June 1918 press conference:We openly advocate organized terror. . . . Terror, intimes of revolution, is an absolute necessity. . . . The Chekais obligated to defend the Revolution and destroy the opponent,even if the sword sometimes touches the heads ofthe innocent.” 46 [Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926) was a wayward Polish aristocrat and hardenedMarxist revolutionary.]In the bulletin Red Terror of November 1, 1918, andthen again in the Christmas Day 1918 issue of Pravda,Lenin and Dzerzhinsky published without shame their proletarianprinciples, which they also implemented everywherein Russia. Solzhenitsyn paraphrases:16 S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 B A R N E S R E V I E W . C O M • 1 - 8 7 7 - 7 7 3 - 9 0 7 7 O R D E R I N G