Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920

Oleg Budnitskii, Timothy J. Portice

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780812208146
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

In the years following the Russian Revolution, a bitter civil war was waged between the Bolsheviks, with their Red Army of Workers and Peasants on the one side, and the various groups that constituted the anti-Bolshevik movement on the other. The major anti-Bolshevik force was the White Army, whose leadership consisted of former officers of the Russian imperial army. In the received—and simplified—version of this history, those Jews who were drawn into the political and military conflict were overwhelmingly affiliated with the Reds, while from the start, the Whites orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence, leading to the deaths of thousands of Jews in pogroms in the Ukraine and elsewhere.In Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920, Oleg Budnitskii provides the first comprehensive historical account of the role of Jews in the Russian Civil War. According to Budnitskii, Jews were both victims and executioners, and while they were among the founders of the Soviet state, they also played an important role in the establishment of the anti-Bolshevik factions. He offers a far more nuanced picture of the policies of the White leadership toward the Jews than has been previously available, exploring such issues as the role of prominent Jewish politicians in the establishment of the White movement of southern Russia, the "Jewish Question" in the White ideology and its international aspects, and the attempts of the Russian Orthodox Church and White diplomacy to forestall the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.The relationship between the Jews and the Reds was no less complicated. Nearly all of the Jewish political parties severely disapproved of the Bolshevik coup, and the Red Army was hardly without sin when it came to pogroms against the Jews. Budnitskii offers a fresh assessment of the part played by Jews in the establishment of the Soviet state, of the turn in the policies of Jewish socialist parties after the first wave of mass pogroms and their efforts to attract Jews to the Red Army, of Bolshevik policies concerning the Jewish population, and of how these stances changed radically over the course of the Civil War.

CHAPTER 1

Jews in the Russian Empire, 1772–1917

The Jews “arrived” in Russia without having to leave the comfort of their homes.¹ As a result of the three Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795), the Russian Empire suddenly acquired the largest Jewish population of any country in the world. In the year 1800, 22.8 percent of the world's Jewish population resided within Russian territory, a number that was to increase throughout the nineteenth century (46.9 percent in 1834, 50.0 percent in 1850, 53.4 percent in 1880) before decreasing in the beginning of the twentieth century (39.0 percent in 1914). The number of Jews in the Russian Empire also continued to grow in absolute numbers. In 1772, Russia's annexation of the Belorussian territories raised the total of Russian Jews by some 60,000, with the Second and Third Partitions further increasing the number by 500,000, and an additional 300,000 coming under Russian sovereignty after the annexation of the Duchy of Warsaw. Other figures put the post-partition Jewish population of the Russian Empire at 800,000.²

However, the main cause of the increasing number of Jews within the Russian Empire was population growth. Two consequences of strict adherence to the religious norms of Judaism, which had a profound influence on Jewish family life and standards of hygiene, were high birth rates and low mortality rates. Thus, despite the massive emigration that occurred from 1881 to 1914, in 1914 nearly 5.25 million Jews were living in Russia. However, the Jewish population as a percentage of the total population of the Russian Empire, which had grown from 1.5 percent in 1800 to 4.8 percent in 1880, began to steadily decrease, reaching 3.1 percent in 1914. It is worth noting that these figures are approximate; other sources provide different numbers. Concrete data is only available from 1897 onwards, after the first Russian census was carried out. According to this data, 5,189,400 Jews lived in the Russian Empire in 1897, which was approximately 4 percent of Russia's population and 49 percent of the Jewish population of the world.³

At least at first, the Russian authorities' relationship towards the Jews was remarkable for its relative tolerance; in 1772 the first official address to the newly acquired territories stated that those living there, Jews included, were to have the same rights as Russian subjects. It could even be said that most of the Jews in question barely noticed their shifting from one state to another. However, new laws regarding Russia's newest territories were to bring both benefits and problems for their Jewish populations. As a result of Catherine II's reforms in the organizational structure of the Empire in 1778, Jews were included in the “trade and industrial” class. In accordance with Catherine's decree of January 7, 1780, Jews were allowed to register in the merchant class, and were allowed to participate in municipal organizations (such as the ratusha and magistrat) as equals with their Christian compatriots. At the same time, Jews who were not registered as merchants were included among the petty bourgeois (meshchanine), and forced to pay a higher head tax (podushnaia podat' ).

From 1785 onwards, the Charter to the Cities (Gramota na prava i vygody gorodam Rossiiskoi Imperii) allowed Jews to register in any of the six categories of urban inhabitants that were allowed to participate in the city Duma: “Whereas people of the Jewish faith, having already entered the Empire as equals according to the edicts of Her Majesty, are in every case to observe the law, established by Her Majesty, that all are to use these rights and privileges according to their call and station, without regard to either faith or nationality.”

Nevertheless, Jews were not always able to take advantage of the rights they were afforded, and they nearly always faced opposition from the local Christian population in general, and from the Polish gentry in particular. Jews were often prevented from participating in elections, and the imperial authorities proved unable to achieve full compliance with the laws they passed down, despite numerous demands that these laws be observed.

The ability to move freely from place to place was one of the most sought-after privileges for citizens of the Russian Empire. For Russia's Jewish population, this right was also one of the first to be restricted. In this case, the imposition of restrictions resulted from commercial competition between Jewish and Russian merchants in the late eighteenth century. In 1782, the Senate decided to allow merchants living in the newly acquired territories to move from city to city for business purposes. This was no small boon, as they had earlier forbidden merchants from leaving the towns in which they were registered. Apparently, the author of the law had intended to include only the Belorussian territories in the law, but this was not explicitly stated in the text. Taking advantage of this “loophole,” Jewish merchants began to start businesses within Russia itself, with some registering among the merchant guilds of Moscow and Smolensk.⁴ Unused to serious competition, Muscovite merchants were convinced that the Jewish merchants' bargaining skills could be achieved only through dishonest and fraudulent means. The Christian merchants submitted a complaint to A. A. Prozorovskii, then Governor General of Moscow, claiming that the only possible way for the Jewish merchants to set their prices so low was through the use of contraband, and that the Jews had settled in Moscow illegally.

Prozorovskii forced the Jewish merchants to leave Moscow, leading them to submit a complaint to the authorities in St. Petersburg. “Her Majesty's Council” rejected their petition, forbidding them to register as merchants except in the Mogilev and Polotsk gubernias (Belorussia), the Ekaterinoslav region (namestnichestvo) and the Tauride oblast, which had recently been carved out of territories acquired from the Ottoman Empire.⁵ The Council's decision in the matter was approved by Catherine II on December 23, 1791. For all intents and purposes, this decision laid the groundwork for what was eventually to become the Pale of Settlement.⁶

The new territories acquired after the Second and Third Partitions increased the number of areas where Jews were allowed to live. At the same time, the new laws concerning these territories forbid Jews from settling beyond them (i.e., within Russia itself). According to the ukaz of June 13, 1794, Jews were allowed to live in the following territories: the Minsk, Iziaslav (later Volynia), Bratslav (later Podolia), Polotsk, Mogilev, Kiev, Chernigov, and Novgorod-Seversk gubernias, as well as Ekaterinoslav and the Tauride oblasts. In 1795, two newly formed gubernias (Vilna and Grodno) were added. The Pale of Settlement would wax and wane in size over the course of the following century. By the turn of the twentieth century, it would include fifteen gubernias: Bessarabia, Vilna, Vitebsk, Volynia, Grodno, Ekaterinoslav,⁷ Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolia, Poltava, Tauride,⁸ Kherson, Chernigov, and Kiev (excluding Kiev proper).

While Western European Jews quickly gained political rights and freedoms from the period of the French Revolution onwards, their Russian counterparts remained “distinct from the native population by their religion and their own social institutions, and fulfilled a specific economic role that was separate from the one played by the dominant corporations and trade guilds”⁹ for nearly a hundred years after their “arrival.” Properly speaking, one can only truly conceive of a specifically “Russian” Jewry from the 1870s onwards. Before this point, most of the Empire's Jews were more “Polish” than “Russian.”¹⁰

During their time as subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews were the bearers of capitalist values. In fact, it was precisely for economic development that they had been “summoned” by the Polish monarchy centuries earlier. Jews occupied positions in management and administration, often completely taking over these tasks from the local gentry. They leased land, estates, and shops, and held monopolies on goods such as salt or spirits. They were also active in other economic spheres, having a large presence in credit markets and trade. Jewish craftsmen had a near monopoly in sectors such as tailoring and shoemaking; some Jews earned their livelihood through agriculture.

In the 1760s, Catherine II attempted to attract Jewish settlers to Novorossiia in order to occupy empty lands, and to increase the paltry numbers of the “Third Estate” in the territories.¹¹ As potential competitors, it is hardly surprising that the Jews were to come into conflict with their Christian neighbors. However, it should be noted that by the time of the Partitions Jewish economic influence had already significantly diminished from its peak in the Middle Ages. This was especially true in the financial sphere, where they had been unable to compete with monasteries and wealthy landowners. Yet despite this, the Jews' reputation for being “exploitative” persisted among the general population, particularly among the peasantry.

This stereotype was given further currency by the senator and poet Gavriil Derzhavin, who in 1799 responded to a petition submitted by the Jews of Shklov, who claimed persecution at the hands of one of Catherine II's former favorites, S. G. Zorich. The following year, Derzhavin went to Belorussia in order to investigate the reasons for a famine, and was shocked by the things he saw. The title of his travel notes speaks for itself: “The Opinion of Senator Derzhavin Regarding the Abominable Lack of Bread Due to the Coercive Designs of the Avaricious Jews, and on Their Reorganization and Other Matters.”¹²

The “need” to protect local populations from Jewish “exploitation” became one of the cornerstones of Russian policy towards its new subjects. It quickly became the justification for expelling Jewish populations from certain towns, forbidding freedom of movement, and limiting the number of professions Jews could enter. Government policy also focused on combating Jewish “fanaticism,” on the one hand, and possible “rehabilitation” on the other. Many considered the “exploitative nature” of the Jews to be a consequence of this “fanaticism,” which largely consisted of the idea that the Jews believed themselves to be a chosen people, and thus despised their non-Jewish neighbors. Equally important was the fear that Jews were not loyal to the local authorities, and that for the Jewish population the religious demands of Judaism were more important than adherence to governmental laws.¹³ The “liberal” and “conservative” approaches to the “Jewish question” differed mainly in the fact that liberals preferred to give Jews rights to help speed the assimilation process, while conservatives insisted on Jewish “reform” before any rights were to be granted.

In general, the Russian authorities strove for the full integration of Jews into Russian society. Various individual authorities differed only in the methods they tried to adopt. More liberal initiatives, such as allowing “useful” Jews to live beyond the Pale, and expanding Jewish access to educational institutions (even to the point of providing subsidies) alternated with more conservative ones, such as forced deportations from certain towns, or prohibitions on traditional clothing. Such contradictory tendencies would occasionally appear together in a single law.¹⁴ The struggle against Jewish “fanaticism” reached its peak during the reign of Nicholas I, who in 1827 subjected the Jewish population of the Empire to military conscription (the armed forces were often used as a vehicle to convert subjects to Orthodoxy), and in 1844 established government institutes for Jews whose faculty and administration were completely composed of Christians.¹⁵ Throughout the nineteenth century, numerous commissions and committees dedicated to the “Jewish question” attempted to advance governmental policy.¹⁶ The initiatives undertaken ranged from the reasonable to the absurd. In the end, the state's attempts to assimilate its Jewish population proved unsuccessful. This fact can be seen in the exceptionally low number of Jews who decided to convert to Christianity, despite the many benefits such a decision offered. Throughout the entire nineteenth century, only 84,500 Jews (or 0.7 percent of the Jewish population) decided to convert to the Christian faith.¹⁷ In this respect at least, the “material” proved too resistant to be shaped to the government's designs.

This program of assimilation differed from the Jewish experience under Polish rule. Many Jews had decided to go to Poland not only because of the many economic rights offered by the Polish monarchy, but also because of additional guarantees that allowed them to follow their own way of life. Under the Poles, Jewish cultural and legal institutions were openly tolerated and had official recognition, although the degree of such tolerance varied, and anti-semitism due to religious reasons or economic competition did occur on a regular basis. At the same time, Jews did not integrate themselves into the native populace. They lived in their own neighborhoods, spoke their own language, and wore “traditional” clothing (which was considered to be purely Jewish but had, in fact, been adopted in Poland around the sixteenth century). Men wore beards and side-locks, while women shaved their heads and wore wigs. It would be naïve to think that this “segregation,” if you will, was resulted solely from the attitude of Christians towards their Jewish neighbors, and that Jews were suffering for the lack of day-to-day interaction with their Christian countrymen outside of their business dealings. As Jacob Katz has shown, the ghetto walls were built from both sides.¹⁸ Jews were able to get along without closely interacting with the surrounding local population, and Jewish dietary laws and other restrictions made simple things such as going to visit one's neighbors problematic.¹⁹ Besides, for most of those living in the shtetl the ongoing debates between the hasidim²⁰ and mitnagdim²¹ were often more engaging and pertinent to their lives than the events taking place in the local Christian community.

The Jewish Enlightenment movement (Haskalah) was not widespread in Russia. Its adherents, the maskilim,²² were few in number and were forced to rely on official support in their reform efforts. The situation of Russian Jews, whose cultural and social status was often higher than their neighbors, was markedly different from the situation in Germany, where Haskalah had originated. At the turn of the nineteenth century, several maskilim who had been educated in Germany or had traveled extensively abroad propagated the idea of expanding secular education within the Jewish population. In 1800, Dr. I. Frank gave Derzhavin an essay in German entitled “Is it Possible for a Jew to Become a Good and Decent Citizen?” which called for the establishment of secular schools with instruction in German and Hebrew. The Russian maskilim Perets, Notkin, and Nevakhovich also strove to overcome the gulf separating the Jewish and Russian communities. In 1803 Nevakhovich was to publish the first work of Russian-Jewish literature, entitled “Lament of the Daughter of Judah” (Vopl'dshcheri iudeiskoi).

The patriarch of the Russian Haskalah was I. B. Levinzon, whose book Mission in Israel (Missiia v Israile, 1828) proposed a program of education reform, including the teaching of European languages and secular subjects to Jews. Levinzon also called for Russian to replace Yiddish as the language of everyday communication.²³ Unlike their European counterparts, Russian maskilim did not call for religious reforms to Judaism, nor were they extreme assimilationists. Their works, for the most part, were published in Yiddish. The only place in the Russian Empire where the maskilim experienced any real success in their efforts was Odessa; by the end of the 1820s, they were a major force within the community there. However Odessa, with its multicultural population, economic and cultural possibilities and rather large Jewish population, was an exception to the rule.²⁴

Jewish entrepreneurship experienced rapid growth throughout the nineteenth century. The first Russian industrialists and bankers were often either Jews or Old Believers. This fact speaks less to the inherent business acumen or capitalist mentality of either religious minority than to the reality of their persecution. Having been forced to flee persecution on a number of occasions, both groups were capable of quickly switching their professions and could adapt their knowledge and abilities to new economic climates, a skill...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Jews in the Russian Empire, 1772–1917
• Chapter 2. The Jews and the Russian Revolution
• Chapter 3. The Bolsheviks and the Jews
• Chapter 4. “No Shneerzons!” The White Movement and the Jews
• Chapter 5. Trump Card: Antisemitism in White Ideology and Propaganda
• Chapter 6. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Pogroms of 1918–1920
• Chapter 7. Russian Liberalism and the “Jewish Question”
• Chapter 8. The “Jewish Question,” White Diplomacy, and the Western Democracies
• Chapter 9. Battling Balfour: White Diplomacy, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Problem of the Establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine
• Chapter 10. Jews and the Red Army
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography of Archival Sources
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• Gallery Follows