Miliukov, Leader of Russian Provisional Regime. Refutes Coughlin; Says Germany Financed Reds

Pavel N. Miliukov, Foreign Minister in the first Russian revolutionary government, today categorically denied that Jews had financed the Bolshevist revolution, as asserted in a book quoted by Father Charles E. Coughlin, and declared that the first funds received from abroad by the Communists were furnished by Germany.

Professor Miliukov, in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, denounced as “untrue and invented” the charges contained in a purported United States Secret Service report on financing of the revolution, which said that Jacob Schiff, Kuhn Loeb & Co., and other Jewish bankers had sent funds to the Bolshevists.

This alleged report, which has been repudiated by the Secret Service in Washington, is contained in the book, “The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World,” by Professor Denis Fahey of Blackrock Seminary, Dublin. Father Coughlin used it as the basis of his charges in radio broadcasts that Jews financed and influenced the Russian revolution and that Mr. Schiff in April, 1917, made a public declaration attributing the revolution’s success to his financial aid.

Prof. Miliukov was shown a copy of the book, in Chapter VI of which, entitled “Agents of the Revolution,” there is reproduced the alleged Secret Service report with a statement that it was transmitted to Paris by the French High Commission and published in the Documentation Catholique of Paris. After reading this chapter, Prof. Miliukov dictated to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent and then initialed the following statement:

“The allegations therein are based on second-hand information taken from all kinds of sources devoted to the spread of anti-Jewish propaganda and represented in a distorted and partial way. As I know, these facts are extremely untrue and invented.

“As a matter of fact Jacob Schiff cabled me as Foreign Minister congratulations on the establishment of the provisional Russian government long before the Bolsheviks came to power.

“The truth is that Germany, and not Schiff or others, transferred money to Lenin (leader of the Bolshevist revolution) and his associates through the Stockholm Nya Banken. There are documents published, some of which testify definitely to the German source of the first moneys obtained by the Bolsheviks.

“It would take too long to refute in detail the allegations in Fahey’s book, but it can be said that they are another of the usual kind of anti-Jewish propaganda. These allegations have already been refuted more than once.”

Prof. Miliukov, who is known also as a historian, was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the provisional government under Prince lvov from february to may, 1917. This government was succeeded by Alexander kerensky’s regime, which fell in the October Bolshevist revolution. Prof. Miliukov was a leader of the Cadet party, the Constitutional Democrats in Russia, and was known as a leader of the conservative opponents of the Czarist regime. He is now publisher of a Russian-language daily newspaper here, the “Latest News.”