Special Correspondence
Like revolutions and revolutionists, emigrants of all times and of all countries present certain common traits of psychology. Exile does not attenuate their grudges of party and does not at all change their political ideology.
A Russian Jew, a well-known journalist, Poliakoff Litovtzeff, recently addressed in good faith the following appeal to the anti-Semites: “What is it that you dislike in us? The time has perhaps arrived to submit this question to a public debate. Russians are no less interested in it than are the Jews.”
The head of the Russian nationalists, V. Choulguine, took it upon himself to reply by a book which appeared last month, “The Philosophy of Anti-Semitism.”
Mr. Choulguine finds an ever-growing recrudescence of anti-Semitism in Soviet Russia. “The time no longer exists when one could say and believe that it was an artificial movement, created by the Czarist rulers, fostered by mercenary publicists and maniacs, obsessed by a fixed idea. Anti-Semitism exists and its scope is broadening in all circles and in all the Russian parties; among the intellectuals as among the working people and peasants, among the Liberals and the Communists, no less than among the “Whites.” What is the cause of this movement and of its progress?
Before answering this question, V. Choulguine believes it incumbent upon him to discern three different aspects of anti-Semitism; the one, purely instinctive, racial anti-Semitism; the other, political; finally, a third one, mystic. On the other hand he distinguishes between the pre-war and the post-war anti-Semitism. As far as he is concerned, Mr. Choulguine says he has never known of racial anti-Semitism. His anti-Semitism was of a political order. He professed it as far back as 1905; he then saw Judaism rooting for the defeat in Manchuria and for the revolution. In 1914 Judaism changed its attitude; in the hope of winning equality of rights, it becomes patriotic and roots for victory.
Mr. Choulguine likewise changes and becomes favorable to the Jews. He would have remained so, had it not been for the triumph of Bolshevism, which places Mr. Choulguine back in his former position. “What the Russians dislike,” he tells Mr. Litovtzeff, “is that the Jews should have taken a leading part in this revolution, that they should have become the backbone of Communism. Their persevering will and their solidarity alone were able to consolidate the craziest, the most bloody and most abominable enterprise that Europe has ever seen and that has cost Russia irreparable losses. The Jews have become our masters and, by such title, have shown themselves merciless. Let one compare the conduct of the Russians, at the time of their power, with regard to the Jews, and the conduct of the latter, omnipotent, with regard to the Russians! The parallel is overwhelming. The pogroms are merely children’s pastimes alongside the destruction of Russia, the work of the Jewish domination of these last eleven years.”
Such is the current language of the neo-anti-Semitism, of that which dates from the Revolution. It presages terrible outbreaks awful reprisals when the day comes that the Russian nation has healed itself and again become the master of its destinies.
This language expresses the deep thought of the masses for whom it is an indisputable axiom that the Jews are Communists, and that in any event the influence that they exert upon the Bolshevik party is out of proportion to their number. And V. Choulguine is not far from admitting this premise. It matters little that the nominal head of Russia is called Lenin or Stalin, that Trotsky is banished, his staff hounded, that a great number of Jews have had to give up their administrative positions, that many others are in the anti-Soviet parties-all that is mere appearance or subterfuge; in reality, the Jews continue to govern Russia: Choulguine believes it, Choulguine affirms it and supports what he says with proof that in his eyes dispenses with all other: it is Jewish solidarity, incomparable solidarity, without precedent. unique, which combining with the tenacious activity, the ardent energy, the intelligence and suppleness of the race. defies all competition, sur- (Continued on Page 4)
In order to understand their cohesion, their mutual good-will, their power, there is no need to imagine any Protocols, nor any Elders of Zion. There is no conspiracy for the conquest of the world, no password, but an irresistible instinct that links the sentiments, harmonizes the intentions and concentrates the efforts, without the aid of any guide, without the command of any chief, towards an identical end, not expressed, perhaps unknown and nevertheless certain. Because there are tow kinds of solidarity : the one spontaneous, unconscious; such as the mind of the bee-hive, which animates the bees and the Jews. The other is obtained by the action and the will of the master, by the application of the yoke and the sting of the goad, as among the oxen…and the Russians. But how superior is the former, and what danger it conceals, for the Russians, in the struggle for life between them and the Jews!
Mr. Choulguine sees the Jewish strength not only in the press, but in all the essential branches of human activity. New perils for Russia, all the more terrible since he does not have faith in the strength of the Russian people and whom at the bottom he despises. Mr. V. Choulguine is not only anti-Semitic; he is also anti-Russian. He confesses it loudly and weighs his anti-Semitism and his anti-Russianism with the same scale. One may wonder whether he isn’t more anti-Russian than anti-Semite when he exclaims in an apocalyptic outburst: “Let the Jews raise themselves to a height at which they are already evidently arrived, thanks to their strength and their will. Let them make not the moon, but the sun of truth: give us a Jewish government, wise, clement, which will lead us to the good. Let the chosen people deserve being so, and from this day on irrational anti-Semitism will disappear and, with it, political anti-Semitism. But political anti-Semitism will be virulent so long as the Jews pile themselves upon the spinal column of the Russian people.”
Mr. Choulguine is convinced that a cruel and ferocious struggle will breakout in Russia. He is ill at ease and disturbed about it and would like “to limit this struggle within certain quarters.” In this Judeo-Russian war, “It would be necessary, as in all other wars, to distinguish and designate the forbidden blows, and already to catch a glimpse of and prepare the conditions of peace. In order to effect the mitigation of this brutal struggle, a double obligation imposes itself; that the Jews should refuse to produce social revolutions in Russia; that the Russians should refuse to commit pogroms. To which the Jews reply that they are not the authors of the revolution; that it has been brought about by the Russian people. But in this case, the Russians can also reply that they are innocent of the pogroms; that the Jews have been massacred by individuals with whom the Russian nation has nothing in common, such as the Petlurists, and others, upon whom it has no influence.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
