The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-05-01

eWS, less than two hundred Jewish Communists. You find most of them are waiting for some miracle to hap pen that would change the Soviet government so as to strike "a medium between Denikin as the Soviet, and evolve demo ocratic government as it is understood in this country, allow ing the individual the opportunity to develop his own genius particularly in the field of commerce.
 Tfte Jew will not stand the un1in- tied power of the state, the pressure from the top. The Jew is individ- ual. He has his own strivings and ambitions, whether in business or in any other line. And the present state in Russia is a condition approaching Q dictatorship in which individual enterprise in business is suppressed.
 Now, why are the Jews against the Bolsheyists? The Bolshevists have made no pogroms; and Denikin has. Of course, they are against Denikin. Take that for granted. They are against all those induIgi1g in massa- cres. You ask, why are they at the same time against Bolshevist Russia? There are some very convincing causes. The first is that the Russian Jew is against capital punishment, against any dictatorship. It goes against the grain, the makeup of the Jew, and many Americans know it from contact with the Russian Jews in this country. The Soviet govern ment was responsible for quite a number of executions. I am mot speaking of the red terror of which people in this country have very crude and distorted ideas. I am speaking of executions after tri- bunal had passed upon the cases There were numerous executions of that type.
 Some of the executed were Jews. In most eases the executed are ban dits; to be sure, many former of ficials of the Czar and some members of the Communist Party found guilty of corruption are executed. Many of the Jews could not stand capital pun ishment in a government which pro- fesses to be Socialist. This affected the younger Jews, those of radical tendencies. A far more potent req son is the fact that the mass of the Jews in Russia were small business people. They were commissioners, brokers, trades people of various de- scriptions, and shopkeepers. And the Soviet government has closed nearly all the private shops; has discon- tinued all the brokerage businesses of various types and has deprived the Jews of Russia of their means of livelihood. I am speaking of the ma- jority of the Jews.
 The Soviet government is essential 1y a government of the peasants. Now these Russian peasants are the ma jority of the people and in spite of their dislike of the Communist gov ernment or the Communist theories, they are for the Soviet government, and we, who believe in majority gov ernment, cannot help facing this sit uation. Here is a more or less 1egiti- mate government, peasant govern ment, which aims to eliminate the
 Jew as the middleman from the eco homie field, which means from life it. self.
 Now, when you find this out, when you discover that the Jews are simp- 1y deprived of their source of income, of their shops, which are either con- fiscated or sold out, you are not sur prised at finding that the bulk Of tho Jewish population of Soviet Russia is against the government. They ap- preciate that there have been no massacres in Soviet Russia. They ap- preciate the efforts of such people as Maxim Gorky, Lunarcharsky and the wife of Lenine, who have constituted themselves into a committee to com bat anti-Semitism.
 But here is the situation. Here | is a government which seeks to be proletarian. In the system which the | Soviet government seeks to erect 1 there is no place for a middle class; l and the Jewish people, it must be | acknowledged, are a middle class ele- I ment almost everywhere in Europe os-11 -1, And when you come to the prospects l for the future of the Jewish people 1 in Russia, you are up against this | dead wall, worse than any massacres | a wall of reality, that there is nc l place for the Jew in the Russia o1 | today and in the Russia which the | Soviet leaders are trying to erect. Now, take the case of the Ukraine
 In the Ukraine, there were massa | cres; tens of thousands have beer
 killed, and hundreds of thousand: | maimed and robbed of their home: | and their property.
 | But in the Ukraine, under Denikir 1 and Petlura, there was more, in the
 future for the Jews who remained
 alive, because Petlura and Deniki1 1 stand for business, for private proper ty; they stand for all those thing
 which allow individual efforts anC | transactions in which the Jews en
 gage in order to make their living
 But today the Ukraine is in the hand
 of Soviet Russia, eighty-fve or nfner. per cent. of it; and there is no ques ton but that Petlura will be wipet
 out if he is not already. Now tn
 Ukraine, as far as I can figure out
 is going to stay in the hands o
 Soviet Russia. The reason why it lef
 the hands of the0Bolshevists last sum
 mer was due to the fact that the
 sent down into the Ukraine a lot 0
 people who didn't know the countr
 and tried to impose upon the Ukrain
 the same Soviet rule that functione
 in Moscow, a system that did nc meet with the approval of tn
 Ukrania.n population. Lenine an : Ithe others recognized this be
 cause they paid dearly for it; an
 when I left Soviet Russia they di
 not intend to repeat their mistake C
 last summer. They will probably g a long way to meet the peculiar de mands of the Ukrainian peasants an allow them a certain freedom ( 1 individual effort and private owner ship, even if limited; and because ( i | 4I,o oracopt eytra ordinary militia