“Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, Stalin led them out of the Politburo,” whispered veterans of the Bolshevik Revolution, as winter 1927 approached the Moscow River’s banks.

The revolution that erupted 100 years ago this week was turning on its heroes, as Joseph Stalin was purging the late Vladimir Lenin’s protégés, confidants and aides. The expulsion those days of Leon Trotsky from the Communist Party was but the beginning of an anti-Jewish assault that would continue intermittently until Stalin’s death.

The revolution’s Jewish leaders would vanish much sooner than the communism for which they fought, but many Russians – to this day – still see the revolution as a Jewish plot.

Lenin’s deputies Lev Kamenev (originally Rozenfeld) and Grigory Zinoviev (born Hirsch Apfelbaum) and his treasurer Grigori Sokolnikov (Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant) were all Jews, as were Karl Radek (Sobelsohn), co-writer of the Soviet Constitution, Maxim Litvinov (Meir Henoch Wallach-Finkelstein), foreign minister of the USSR until his removal so Stalin could pact with Hitler.

This is, of course, besides Trotsky himself, builder of the Red Army and the only Soviet who served as both foreign and defense minister.

Most proverbially, a Jew – Yakov Sverdlov – oversaw the nighttime execution of Czar Nikolai, Empress Alexandra, and their five children.

Jewish revolutionaries were prominent beyond Russia as well.

In Germany, philosopher-economist Rosa Luxemburg led an abortive revolution in 1919 before being caught, clubbed, shot dead and dumped in a canal. In Hungary, Bela Kun – originally Kohn – led a short-lived communist coup several months after Luxemburg’s murder.

In Romania, Ana Pauker – originally Hebrew teacher Hannah Rabinsohn, and later the world’s first woman foreign minister – effectively ran the country for Stalin, before falling from grace and spending her last years under house arrest. In Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slansky was the second-most powerful figure before his public trial and execution alongside 11 other senior Jewish communists. In Poland, two of the three Stalinists who led its transition to communism – Hilary Minc, who collectivized its economy, and Jakub Berman, who headed its secret police – were Jews.

The revolution, in short, was so crowded with Jews that one had to wonder whether “the Jews” were inherently revolutionary.

A century on, it is clear they were not.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Middle-Israel-Was-the-Bolshevik-Revolution-a-Jewish-plot-513835

I don’t see much debate, just a victimization narrative.

For Jews, the fall of Tsarist Russia meant a new relative freedom: the end to the Pale of Settlement, which had prevented Jews from living in big cities, and the abolition of all other anti-Semitic laws, such as quotas for Jewish children in primary schools and discriminatory military service requirements. Soviet Russia also became the first country in the world to declare anti-Semitism a criminal offense.

But as Communism took root, it ignited a civil war that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews during the bloodiest pogroms the world would see until the Holocaust.

To commemorate the centennial of the revolution, academic conferences around the world are discussing the role Jews played in the uprising and its aftermath — and how they were affected by it.

Here’s a look at some of the events.

Ukraine

Were Ukrainian nationalist leaders responsible for the pogroms that caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews during the Russian civil war? This and other subjects were discussed at a October 15 conference in Kiev.

The conference, entitled “Ukrainian Jews: Revolution and Post-Revolutionary Modernization” brought together scholars from Russia, Israel, the United States, Ukraine, Hungary, and western Europe for presentations on topics ranging from the Jewish Communist Party (Poalei Zion) to images of synagogues in revolutionary art.

One of the central topics was whether the leaders of Ukraine, which declared itself independent from Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1921, were responsible for the pogroms that lead to the deaths of between 50,000 and 200,000 Jews – the greatest calamity to befall the Jewish people prior to the Holocaust.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Vitaly Chernoivanenko, the president of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies and one of the organizers of the conference, said that Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura cannot be held responsible for the pogroms.

“Petliura himself didn’t support the pogroms, but he couldn’t control the situation,” said Chernoivanenko. “Petliura didn’t control the entire territory. I think he would have protected the Jews.”

He also said the Jews were not the only victims of the pogroms. . . .

But outside of Ukraine, historians disagree with this point of view.
In a phone call, Gennady Estraikh, a Jewish history professor at New York University, called this universalist approach to pogrom victims historical revisionism.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/100-years-on-international-conferences-debate-jewish-role-in-russian-revolution/

Mass grave of Kozak Volyn Division of UNR Army found in Vinnytsia Oblast

According to a local, Mykola Drabaty, who remembers the stories recounted by elderly villagers, the soldiers buried in the grave were members of the Second Volyn Division of the UNR Army*, who were mobilized in Kukiv Volost, Mohyliv-Podilsky Raion, Podillya Governorate.

*Ukrainian People’s Republic/Ukrainian National Republic declared on June 10, 1917

The Ukrainian soldiers were captured by the Red Army. In November 1920, the Bolsheviks led them beyond the village and executed them mercilessly. Several shepherd boys witnessed how this massacre was carried out by the communist military.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2018/01/05/mass-grave-of-kozak-volyn-division-of-unr-army-found-in-vinnytsia-oblast/

December 20, 1720, #Russian Emperor Peter I ordered to #Kyiv Governor Mykhail Galitsin to remove all Ukrainian-language writings from local monasteries and destroy them.

https://hromadskeradio.org/news/2015/12/20/cogo-dnya-petro-i-nakazav-znyshchyty-v-monastyryah-teksty-ukrayinskoyu-movoyu