page_title: Żydokomuna
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Żydokomuna / Origin
caption_attribution_description: Polish anti-bolshevick propaganda piece. Polish-Soviet War. Biuro Propagandy Wewnetrznej. 31 VIII 1920.
context_page_description: Żydokomuna is an antisemitic canard or a pejorative stereotype suggesting that most Jews collaborated with the Soviet Union in importing communism into Poland, or that there was an exclusively Jewish conspiracy to do so. A Polish language term for "Jewish Bolshevism" or more literally, "Jewish communism", Żydokomuna is related to the "Jewish world conspiracy" myth.
  The idea originated as anti-communist propaganda at the time of the Polish–Soviet War and continued through the interwar period. It was based on longstanding antisemitic attitudes, coupled with a historical fear of Russia. Most of Poland's Jews supported the Piłsudski-controlled government, but after his death in 1935, rising levels of popular and state antisemitism pushed a small minority, several thousand at most, into participating in, or supporting, communist politics, which were relatively more welcoming to Jews. This was seized upon and inflated by anti-semites.
context_section_description: According to Joanna Michlic, "the image of the secularized and radically left-wing Jew who aims to take over [the country] and undermine the foundations of the Christian world" dates to the first half of the 19th century, to the writings of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Zygmunt Krasinski; by the end of the 19th century it had become part of the political discourse in Poland. The phenomenon, described with the term Żydokomuna, originated in connection with the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and targeted Jewish Communists during the Polish–Soviet War. The emergence of the Soviet state was seen by many Poles as Russian imperialism in a new guise. The visibility of Jews in both the Soviet leadership and in the Polish Communist Party further heightened such fears. In some circles, Żydokomuna came to be seen as a prominent antisemitic stereotype expressing political paranoia.
  Accusations of Żydokomuna accompanied the incidents of anti-Jewish violence in Poland during Polish–Soviet War of 1920, legitimized as self-defense against a people who were oppressors of the Polish nation. Some soldiers and officers in the Polish eastern territories shared the conviction that Jews were enemies of the Polish nation-state and were collaborators with Poland's enemies. Some of these troops treated all Jews as Bolsheviks. According to some sources, anti-Communist sentiment was implicated in anti-Jewish violence and killings in a number of towns, including the Pinsk massacre, in which 35 Jews, taken as hostages, were murdered. During the Lwów pogrom during the Polish–Ukrainian War, 72 Jews were killed. Occasional instances of Jewish support for Bolshevism during the Polish–Soviet War served to heighten anti-Jewish sentiment.
  The concept of Żydokomuna was widely illustrated in Polish interwar politics, including publications by the National Democrats and the Catholic Church that expressed anti-Jewish views. During World War II, the term Żydokomuna was made to resemble the Jewish-Bolshevism rhetoric of Nazi Germany, wartime Romania and other war-torn countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
caption: "The Bolsheviks Are Coming!"  1920 Polish propaganda poster
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