Jewish Bolshevism

Jewish Bolshevism, Judeo-Bolshevism, Judeo-Communism, and known as Żydokomuna in Poland, is a pejorative stereotype Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, Żydzi w kierownictwie UB. Stereotyp czy rzeczywistość?, Biuletyn IPN (11/2005), p. 37-42 based on the claim that Jews are the driving force behind the modern Communist movement, specifically the Russian Bolsheviks.
The expression was the title of a pamphlet, The Jewish Bolshevism, and became current after the October Revolution (1917) in Russia, featuring prominently in the propaganda of the anti-communist "White" forces during the Russian Civil War. It spread worldwide in the 1920s with the publication and circulation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It made an issue out of the Jewishness of some leading Bolsheviks (most notably Leon Trotsky) during and after the October Revolution. Daniel Pipes says that "primarily through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Whites spread these charges to an international audience."Pipes, Daniel (1997): Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (The Free Press - Simon & Shuster) p.93. ISBN 0-684-83131-7 James Webb writes: It is rare to find an anti-Semitic source after 1917 which does not stand in debt to the White Russian analysis of the Revolution."Webb, James (1976): Occult Establishment: The Dawn of the New Age and The Occult Establishment, (Open Court Publishing), p.295. ISBN 0-87548-434-4
The label "Judeo-Bolshevism" was used in Nazi Germany to equate Jews with communists, implying that the communist movement served Jewish interests and/or that all Jews were communists.Laqueur, Walter (1965): Russia and Germany (Boston: Little, Brown and Company) In Poland before World War II, Żydokomuna was used in the same way to allege that the Jews were conspiring with the USSR to capture Poland. The allegation still sees use in antisemitic publications and websites today.
==Russia==
Jews had been a persecuted minority in the Russian Empire. They had endured a form of racial segregation in the Pale of Settlement, as well as sporadic pogroms. In the period from 1881 to 1920, more than two million Jews left Russia.Political Activity and Emigration. Beyond the Pale. The History of Jews in Russia. (Exhibition by Friends and Partners Project)
According to Berel Wein:
Expulsions, deportations, arrests, and beatings became the daily lot of the Jews, not only of their lower class, but even of the middle class and the Jewish intelligentsia. The government of Alexander III waged a campaign of war against its Jewish [citizens]... The Jews were driven and hounded, and emigration appeared to be the only escape from the terrible tyranny of the Romanovs."Wein, Berel. Triumph of Survival: The Jews in the Modern Era 1600-1990. Brooklyn: Mesorah, 1990.
Jews in relatively large numbers joined various ideological currents favoring gradual or revolutionary changes within the Russian Empire. Those movements ranged from the far left (anarchists,Goncharok, Moshe. Century of Will: Russian Anarchism and Jews (XIX-XX Centuries). Jerusalem: Mishmeret Shalom, 1996. http://makhno.ru/lit/vek_voli/3.php Bundists, Bolsheviks, MensheviksLevin, Nora. The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917. 1st Vol. New York: New York University Press, 1988. P. 13.) to moderate left (TrudoviksAscher, Abraham. The Revolution of 1905. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. P. 148) and constitutionalist (Constitutional DemocratsWitte, Sophie. "JUST BEFORE THE DUMA OPENED; Victory of the Constitutional Democrats Achieved in the Face of Arrests, Imprisonment, Exile, Riots, and Even the Gallows --- Their Opponents Used Police, Army, Hooligans, and National Treasury in Vain --- The Outcome of Tremendous Significance to Russia." Trans. Herman Bernstein. New York Times. 24 Mar. 1907. Part Three Magazine Section, P. SM8. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E0DE3DE1738E033A25757C2A9659C946697D6CF) parties. Such monarchist parties as Union of the Russian People expressed clearly antisemitic attudes, and included antisemitic paragraphs in their political program.
===Jewish Bolsheviks===
A high percentage of ethnic Jews in comparison to the percentage of the total population took an active part in Bolshevik movement and revolutionary leadership before the revolution and for years afterSamson Madiyevsky, Jews and the Russian Revolution: whether there Was a Choice, an article in Lechaim (online) - see details below. Most of these Jews were hostile to traditional Jewish culture and Jewish political parties, and were eager to prove their loyalty to the Communist Party's atheism and proletarian internationalism, and committed to stamp out any sign of "Jewish cultural particularism".
On the eve of the February Revolution, the Bolshevik party had about 10,000 members, of whom 364 were ethnic Jews.Kara-Murza, Sergey. "Revolutionary (Socialist) Political Forces between February and October". Soviet Civilization. Vol. 1. ( The chapter about the growth of Russian political parties during February-October 1917 online) 
Of the 21 members of the Central Committee (CC) of the Bolshevik party in April 1917,Blunden, Andy "The Bolsheviks" The Marxists Reference Archive. Retrieved February 10, 2009 three were ethnic Jews: Lev KamenevHerf, Jeffrey. The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. P 96.De Cruet, R. H. Perez. "Timebase 1925-29". 2006. The Holocaust Project: A Multimedia Chronography. Humanitas International. 15 Feb. 2009. http://www.humanitas-international.org/holocaust/1925-29t.htm, Grigory Zinoviev, and Yakov SverdlovSimkin, John. "Yakov Sverdlov". Russian Revolutionaries: 1914-20. Spartacus Educational. Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2009. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSsverdlov.htm. Of the thirteen committee members who, during the historic meeting on October 10, 1917, agreed for the necessity of armed revolution (leading to the October Revolution), six were Jewish: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Leon Trotsky, Moisei UritskySimkin, John. "Moisei Uritsky". Russian Revolutionaries: 1914-20. Spartacus Educational. Retrieved Feb. 20, 2009. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSuritsky.htm, Sverdlov, and Grigory Sokolnikovalthough Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed the revolution, and Trotsky abstained).Central Committee Meeting—10 Oct 1917 The ethnic lineage of Vladimir Lenin, the head of the committee and the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, was diversely composed of Russian, German, Swedish, Jewish, and Kalmyk blood.
Of the 25 Bolsheviks who worked alongside Lenin as members and candidate members of the Politburo of the Central Committee from August 1917 to 5 March 1918 (between the 6th and 7th congresses)Blunden, Andy. "The Bolsheviks" The Marxists Reference Archive. Retrieved February 12, 2009. there were six ethnic Jews: Adolph JoffeHoffman, Stefani, and Ezra Mendelsohn. The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. P. 178., Kamenev, Sokolnikov, Trotsky, Uritsky, and Zinoviev. Concurrently, there were eleven Russians (BubnovRoginsky, A.B. (Ed.). "1938. August". 1998. The Communarka Memorial. 15 Feb. 2009. Bubnovhttp://www.memo.ru/memory/communarka/Chapt10.htm, BukharinBrackman, Roman. The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life. London: Routledge, 2001. P. 173., KiselyovRoginsky, A.B. (Ed.). "October". 1998. The Donskoye Memorial. 15 Feb. 2009. http://www.memo.ru/memory/DONSKOE/d37-10.htm, KrestinskyRoginsky, A.B. (Ed.). "1938. March". 1998. The Communarka Memorial. 15 Feb. 2009. http://www.memo.ru/memory/communarka/Chapter5.htm, Milyutin, OppokovRoginsky, A.B. (Ed.). "Списки Жертв" ("Lists of Victims"). Жертвы политического террора в СССР (Victims of Political Terror in the USSR). Memorial International Historical-Enlightenment, Human Rights and Humanitarian Society. http://lists.memo.ru/d25/f157.htm , Preobrazhensky"Preobrazhensky Yevgeni Alekseyevich". S.I. Vavilov Institute of Natural History and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved on February 15, 2009. http://www.ihst.ru/projects/sohist/repress/don/1937/preobrajensky.htm, Sergeyev, StasovaUfarkin, Nikolai Vasilyevich. "Stasova Yelena Dmitrievna 15. 10. 1873 - 31. 12. 1966 Hero of Socialist Labor". Heroes of the Country. Retrieved February 15, 2009. http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=9259 , and YakovlevaBaikulova, S.E., Ya. Yu. Matveyeva, and A. L. Bauman (Editor). Руководители Санкт-Петербурга (Leaders of St. Petersburg). St. Petersburg: Neva and Moscow: OLMA-Press, 2003. P. 552.), two Latvians (Berzin"Берзин Ян Карлович" ("Berzin, Yan Karlovich"). Большая Советская Энциклопедия (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia). Third Edition. Ed. Alexander Prokhorov. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978. http://bse.sci-lib.com/article111543.html "И латышские стрелки стали шпионами: Расстрельные списки" ("And the Latvian Riflemen Became Spies: Execution Lists"). Vyechernyaya Moskva. 19 July 2002. Retrieved 24 Feb. 2009. http://www.vmdaily.ru/article.php?aid=52137 and SmilgaGordin, Valentin. "И латышские стрелки стали шпионами: Расстрельные списки" ("And the Latvian Riflemen Became Spies: Execution Lists"). Vyechernyaya Moskva. 19 July 2002. Retrieved 24 Feb. 2009. http://www.vmdaily.ru/article.php?aid=52137 ), two Ukrainians (MuranovRumyantzev, Vyacheslav. "Муранов Матвей Константинович" ("Muranov Matvei Konstantinovich"). ХРОНОС – Всемирная История в Интернете (HRONOS - World History on the Internet). Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2009. http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/muranov.html and SkrypnykGeller, M., and A. Nekrich. "Поиски Генеральной Линии" ("Searches for the General Line"). История России: 1917-1995 (The History of Russia: 1917-1995). Vol. 1. http://www.krotov.info/history/11/geller/gell_1920.html ), two  Georgians (DzhaparidzeOlson, James S., Lee Brigance Pappas, and Nicholas Charles Pappas. An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. P. 64. and Stalin), one Pole (DzerzhinskySalamon, Janusz. "Uwolnić się od strachu". ("Ease Back From Fear".) Gazeta Wyborcza. June 3, 2008. Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2009. http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,4993670.html ), the Finnish-and-Russo-Ukrainian Alexandra KollontaiCondit, Tom. "Alexandra Kollontai". The Alexandra Kollontai Archive. Andy Blunden. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 20 Feb. 2009. http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/into.htmFarnsworth, Beatrice. Aleksandra Kollontai: Socialism, Feminism, and the Bolshevik Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980. P. 3-4., and one Armenian (ShahumyanIvanovsky, Vladimir. "Ставрополь. Куда Исчезла Армянская Улица?" ("Stavropol. Where Has the Armenian Street Gone?"). Stavropolskie Gubernskie Vedomosti. 12 Jan. 2006. Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2009. http://www.yerkramas.org/news/2008-12-28-2986).
Of the 22 Politburo Bolsheviks working alongside Lenin from 8 March 1918 to 17 March 1919 (between the 7th and 8th congresses) as members or candidate members there were seven ethnic Jews: Joffe, Mikhail Lashevich"Surnames Starting with the Letter 'L'". Jewish Encyclopedia of Russia. 1995. JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy. 12 Feb. 2009. http://www.jewishgen.org/BELARUS/rje_l.htm, Sokolnikov, Sverdlov, Trotsky, Uritsky, and Zinoviev. Concurrently, there were nine Russians (Bukharin, Kiselyov, Krestinsky, Oppokov, Sergeyev, Alexander ShlyapnikovRoginsky, A.B. (Ed.). "Расстрелы в Москве - С" ("Shootings in Moscow - S"). 2004. Жертвы политического террора в СССР (Victims of Political Terror in the USSR). Memorial International Historical-Enlightenment, Human Rights and Humanitarian Society. Retrieved on Feb. 16, 2009. http://mos.memo.ru/shot-58.htm , Vasili ShmidtRoginsky, A.B. (Ed.). "1938. July". 1998. The Communarka Memorial. 12 Feb. 2009. http://www.memo.ru/memory/communarka/Chapter9.htm, Stasova, and Mikhail VladimirskyRumyantzev, Vyacheslav. "Владимирский Михаил Федорович" ("Vladimirsky Mikhail Fyodorovich"). ХРОНОС – Всемирная История в Интернете (HRONOS World History on the Internet). Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2009. http://www.hrono.info/biograf/vladimirskim.html ), three Latvians (Berzin, Smilga, and Stuchka), one Ukrainian (PetrovskyRumyantzev, Vyacheslav. "Петровский, Григорий Иванович" ("Petrovsky, Grigory Ivanovich"). ХРОНОС – Всемирная История в Интернете (HRONOS - World History on the Internet). Retrieved on Feb. 16, 2009. http://www.hrono.info/biograf/petrovski.html ), one Pole (Dzerzhinsky), and one Georgian (Stalin).
The Second All-Russian Congress of the Workers', Soldiers', and People's Deputies' "Decree Instituting the Council of People's Commissars" of 17 October 1917 established the NarkomatsKulegin, A.M. "Наркоматы" ("Narkomats"). Энциклопедия Санкт-Петербурга (Encyclopedia of St. Petersburg). Retrieved on Feb. 16, 2009. http://www.encspb.ru/article.php?kod=2804022941 ,or People's Commissariats. These were to be coordinated by a central body, the Council of People's Commissars, or, effectively, the cabinet of the Bolshevik government. Besides Lenin as chairman of the council and Gorbunov as secretary, it was to be composed of fourteen ministerial positions. These were occupied by fifteen officials called the People's Commissars (or Narkoms)of whom only Trotsky was ethnically Jewish.Deutsch, Mark, "Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a Mirror of Russian Xenophobia". Moskovskiy Komsomolets. 10 Jan. 2003. http://www.sem40.ru/anti/7820 (The position of People's Commissar for Military Affairs was concurrently filled by both Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko and Nikolai Krylenko, while no People's Commissar for Railways was temporarily appointed.)Rigby, T.H. "The Birth of the Council of People's Commissars". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 20.1 (April 1974): 70-75.
After Lenin's death, the title of the chairman of the Narkom passed to Alexei Rykov, an ethnic Russian.Khlevniuk, Oleg V. and Nora Seligman Favorov (Translator). Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. P. 11 Among the 23 Narkoms between 1923 and 1930, there were thirteen Russians (including Rykov), five Jews, two Georgians (Stalin and Ordzhonikidze), one Pole (Dzerzhinsky), one Moldovan (Frunze), and one Latvian (Rudzutak). In the 1930s, there was one person of Jewish descent in the Politburo: Lazar Kaganovich.
According to the 1922 party census, there were 19,564 Jewish members of the Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total. The same year's figures for the 44,148 members of the Bolshevik party that had joined before October 1917 the Old Guard, as Lenin referred to them, which included those who had joined the Bolshevik Party during its massive growth phase between February and October 1917 indicated that 7.1% were ethnic Jews. 65% were ethnic Russians.
Among members of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union (parallel to the Central Committee of the Communist Party) in 1929, there were 402 Russians, 95 Ukrainians, 55 Jews, 26 Latvians, 13 Poles, and 12 GermansJewish representation had actually declined from 60 members in 1927.Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. P. 81
Of the 417 Communists who constituted the ruling circles of the Soviet Union in the mid-1920sas members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the People's Commissars, and the chairman of the Executive Committeea mere 27, or just 6%, were ethnic Jews.
The numbers of Jews in important positions continued to shrink in the 1930s when Stalin had his old comrades Kamenev and Zinoviev executed while in prison, after a rigged trial in 1936. Zinoviev and Kamenev had previously been expelled, in October 1927 and December 1927 respectively, from the top positions they shared with Stalin in the Soviet ruling elite. Leon Trotsky had concurrently been expelled from the Soviet Union in 1927 and was then assassinated in Mexico City in 1940, by a Soviet agent, the Catalan Spaniard Ramón Mercader.
Between 1936 and 1940, during the Great Purge, Yezhovshchina and in particular after the rapprochement with Nazi Germany, Stalin had largely eliminated Jews from top level party, government, diplomatic, security and military positions in the Soviet UnionNora Levin "The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917" Vol.1, p.318-325. After dismissing Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939, Stalin immediately directed incoming Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews". Although some scholar believe that the latter decision was affected mostly by domestic reasons, others argue it possibly was a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks.Moss, Walter, A History of Russia: Since 1855, Anthem Press, 2005, ISBN 1843310341, page 283 Remaining Jews were eliminated (with a few notable exceptions) after the war, during the antisemitic campaigns in 1947-1953.
According to historian Iakov Etinger, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were antisemitic in nature, and a more intense antisemitic policy developed toward the end of World War II,Ro'i, Yaacov, Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, Routledge, 1995, ISBN 0714646199, page 103-6 Stalin in 1946 allegedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy."
Walter Laqueur states in his book The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day:
To what extent did the presence of many Jews among the Communist leadership contribute to antisemitism? It certainly played an important role in antisemitic propaganda, and it is certainly true that during the 1920s Jews were heavily overrepresented in the ranks of party and state officials. With the rise of Stalin, Jews were removed from key positions and very often "liquidated." The fact that other minorities were also disproportionately highly represented did not greatly matter - there was no tradition of anti-Latvianism in Russia, nor were Latvians found in the very top positions. Nor did it matter that Jews were equally strongly represented among other anti-Communist parties of the left such as the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, or that the anti-Stalinist opposition was to a considerable extent of Jewish extraction.Walter Laqueur. The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Oxford University Press, 2006 ISBN 0-19-530429-2 p.105
In his 1938 book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proved Forgery, based on his testimony at the Berne Trial, Vladimir Burtsev wrote:
"Antisemites... refused to acknowledge the important and indisputable fact that the Jews who participated in the Socialist and Anarchist movements around the world, including the Russian Jews in particular, were renegades of the Jewish nation who had no connection with Jewish history nor with Jewish religion nor with Jewish masses, but were rather exclusively internationalists, promoting the ideas shared by Socialists of other ethnicities, and were hostile to the Jewish nation in general." The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proved Forgery (Ch. 3) by Vladimir Burtsev
=== Cheka ===
According to figures provided by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, there was a total of 49,991 Cheka operatives as of 1 October 1921: 38,648 Russians, 4,564 Jews, 1,770 Latvians, 1,559 Ukrainians, 886 Poles, 315 Germans, 186 Lithuanians, 152 Estonians, 102 Armenians, and 1,808 from other ethnic groups.Kapchinskiy, O.I. "National Composition of the Central Apparat of the OGPU in the 1920s". Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. http://web.archive.org/web/20070625074442/http://www.fsb.ru/history/read/1999/kapchinsky.html The Cheka's Board of thirteen functionaries was composed of three Russians (Kedrov, Ksenofontov, and Mantsev), three Jews (Messing, Unszlicht, and Yagoda), two Latvians (Latsis and Peters), two Poles (Dzerzhinsky and Menzhinsky), one Ukrainian (Bokiy), one Belarusian (Medved), and one Armenian (Avanesov).
The ethnic breakdown for mid-level and upper-level officials of the OGPU leadership (the Cheka's successor agency in the 1920s) for 15 November 1923 consists of 54 Russians, 15 Jews, 12 Latvians, 10 Poles, and 4 others.
Of the 2,402 functionaries in the central apparatus of the OGPU as of 1 May 1924, there were 204 Jews, 1,670 Russians, 208 Latvians, 90 Poles, 80 Belarusians, and 80 Ukrainians, with functionaries from other ethnic groups the remaining 3.5%.
Yagoda's secret police oversaw the execution of both Zinoviev and Kamenev, but fell victim to Stalin's next round of purges. In September 1936, Yagoda was replaced by Nikolai Yezhov, not of Jewish descent According to Yezhov had Russian father and Lithuanian mother., until Yezhov was also arrested and executed in March 1937, becoming replaced by Lavrentiy Beria, an ethnic GeorgianNodia, Ghia. "Causes and Visions of Conflict in Abkhazia". Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post Soviet Studies Working Paper Series. Winter 1997-1998. University of California eScholarship Repository. Retrieved 1 March 2009. http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=iseees/bps like Joseph Stalin. No other Jew besides Yagoda held the highest position within the bureaucracy of Soviet state security organizations. Under Yezhov, the number of Jews fell precipitously (to just 6 people) while the number of ethnic Russians among the leadership of the NKVD secret police rose to 102 people (67%)and the purges, at Stalin's instigationKhrushchev, Nikita S. Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ("On the Personality Cult and its Consequences"). 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Moscow. 24–25 February 1956. http://www.trussel.com/hf/stalin.htmFiges, Orlando. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. London: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, 2007. Pp. 227-315., then entered their bloodiest period (1937–1938) .
Vadim Abramov's monograph "Jews in the KGB" demonstrated that although Jews were trusted by the early communist authorities because as formerly disenfranchised they were not expected to harbor any loyalties to Tsarist regime, their number in the security services at no point in history exceeded 9%, and from 1927 never exceeded 4%Vadim Abramov "Евреи в КГБ". (Yauza Press 2005, 2006).
Walter Laqueur, in Russia and Germany, A Century of Conflict, traces this conspiracy theory to Nazi ideologue and Baltic German, Alfred Rosenberg:
==Nazi Germany==
In Nazi Germany, this term expressed the common perception that Communism was a Jewish-inspired and Jewish-led movement seeking world domination from its very origin. The term was popularized in print by German journalist Dietrich Eckhart, who authored the pamphlet "Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin" ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin") in the early 1920s, thereby tying Moses and Lenin as both Communists and Jews. Alfred Rosenberg's 1923 edition of the Protocols "gave a forgery a huge boost".Daniel Pipes (1997): Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (The Free Press - Simon & Shuster) p.95. ISBN 0-684-83131-7 This was followed by Hitler's highly inflammatory statement in Mein Kampf (1924): "In Russian Bolshevism we must see Jewry's twentieth century effort to take world dominion unto itself."
According to Michael Kellogg, the author of The Russian Roots of Nazism. White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945:
In his groundbreaking 1939 book, L’Apocalypse de notre temps: Les dessous de la propagande allemande d’après des documents inédits (The Apocalypse of Our Times: The Hidden Side of German Propaganda According to Unpublished Documents), Henri Rollin stressed that "Hitlerism" represented a form of "anti-Soviet counter-revolution" which employed the "myth of a mysterious Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik plot." Rollin investigated the National Socialist belief, which was taken primarily from White émigré views, that a vast Jewish-Masonic conspiracy had provoked World War Ⅰ, toppled the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and unleashed Bolshevism after undermining the existing order through the insidious spread of liberal ideas. German forces promptly destroyed Rollin’s work in 1940 after they occupied France, and the book has remained in obscurity ever since.The Russian Roots of Nazism. White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 by Michael Kellogg (excerpt)
A major source for propaganda about Jewish Bolshevism in the 1930s and early 1940s was the pro-Nazi and virulently antisemitic international Welt-Dienst / World-Service / Service Mondial news agency founded in 1933 by Ulrich Fleischhauer.
==United States and Great Britain, 1920s==
The American ambassador to Russia, David R. Francis, wrote in January 1918 that most of the Bolshevik leaders were Jewish.Francis, David R. Russia From the American Embassy. New York: C. Scribner's & Sons, 1921. p. 214. A report by British Intelligence, "A Monthly Review of the Progress of Revolutionary Movements Abroad", states in the first paragraph that international Communism is controlled by Jews.U.S. National Archives. Dept. of State Decimal File, 1910–1929, file 861.00/5067. Capt. Montgomery Schuyler, a military intelligence officer in Russia, reported regularly to the chief of staff of U.S. Army Intelligence, who relayed the reports to the US president. In one of these reports, declassified in 1958, Schuyler states: "It is probably unwise to say this loudly in the United States, but the Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning, guided and controlled by Russian Jews of the greasiest type..."U.S. National Archives. Record group 120: Records of the American Expeditionary Forces, June 9, 1919. In another report on June 9, 1919, Schuyler wrote the following, which the historical record shows to be inaccurate:
Lucien Wolf, one of the voices of the period who took issue with the propagation of the Jewish Bolshevism conspiracy and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion hoax concurrently being spread in the West, writes in The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs (1921):
In an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald on February 8, 1920, Winston Churchill asserted::
Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle."Cover Story: Churchill's Greatness. Interview with Jeffrey Wallin. (The Churchill Centre) However, according to Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill had been sent a copy of The Protocols a few weeks prior to the publishing of this article.Gilbert, Martin, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship, Henry Holt and Company, 2008. p. 44
Such attitudes were not uncommon in the UK at the time of the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. The British court of inquiry, appointed to investigate the Arab 1920 Palestine riots, associated Zionism with Bolshevism and identified the Jewish nationalist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky with a Labor Zionist party, Poale Zion, which the court called "a definite Bolshevist institution."Segev, Tom, One Palestine, Complete, Metropolitan Books, 1999. p.141 In reality, Jabotinsky was a staunch anti-socialist who had fought with the Jewish Legion of the British Army in World War I and was already emerging as a leader of the right-wing Revisionist Zionist opposition to the Labour Zionist movement.Shavit, Yaacov. Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement 1925-1948. London: Routledge, 1988. P. xi.
In the early 1920s, a leading British antisemite, Henry Hamilton Beamish, announced that "Bolshevism was Judaism."Webb, James (1976): Occult Establishment: The Dawn of the New Age and The Occult Establishment, (Open Court Publishing), p.130. ISBN 0-87548-434-4
==Iran, 2006==
The allegation was revived in a December 28, 2006 interview by Iranian Presidential Advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin who was appointed secretary-general of the new "World Foundation for Holocaust Studies" established at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust: 
== See also ==
*Jewish left
==Further reading==
* Mikhail Agursky: The Third Rome: National Bolshevism in the USSR, 1987, Westview Press, ISBN 08133-0139-4
* Frank L. Britton: Behind Communism, 1952, Author, Los Angeles
* Dennis Fahey: Rulers of Russia, 1940, 3rd American edition, revised and enlarged, Condon Printing Co., Detroit
* Jeffrey Herf: The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, 2006, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674021754, 9780674021754
* Michael Kellogg: The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945, 2005, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521845122
* Benjamin Pinkus. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0521389267, 9780521389266
*Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein: '"Juedischer Bolschewismus". Mythos und Realität'. Dresden: Antaios 2003, ISBN 3-935063-14-8, 2. ed. Graz Ares 2010,  ISBN 978-3-902475--75-6
* Yuri Slezkine: The Jewish Century, 2004, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-11995-3
* Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Deux Siecles Ensemble. Tome 2. 1917-1972. Juifs et Russes pendant la periode Sovietique.1917-1972, 2003, Fayard, Paris. ISBN 2-213-61518-7
* Arkady Vaksberg: Stalin against the Jews, 1994, Vintage Books (a division of Random House, New York), ISBN 0-679-42207-2
* Robert Wistrich: Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky, 1976, Harrap, London, ISBN 0-245-52785-0
==Footnotes==
==External links==
* Jews,Communism,and the Jewish Communists
* Stalin and the Jews by Stephen Schwartz (weeklystandard.org)
* Stalin's Jewish affair by Israeli journalist Dmitri Prokofiev (ynetnews.com)
* From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism by Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov (www.fas.harvard.edu)
Category:Antisemitism