Contribute by: dr. Benedetto Ligorio, Ph.D. Post-Doc Early Modern History, Dep. of Philosophy, Sapienza University of Rome.
Lenin wrote several times against anti-Semitic racism, since 1905 and above all in various articles published in 1913, in the social-democratic phase of his political experience, but it is certainly in one of the rare recordings of the speeches given by Lenin that the repudiation of any form is summarized of anti-Semitic racism m as an expression of ethnic hatred that conceals a political hatred in line with its materialist and internationalist perspective. It is March 1919, it is one of the 13 speeches recorded by Tsentropechat, the Press Distribution Agency, established by the Central Executive Committee on November 26, 1918, reformed in 1922 and transformed into the “Soiuzpechat” Press Agency in 1930.
Russia in 1919, freed from Tsarist oppression and from the horrible pogroms that periodically hit Jews, had initiated a process of emancipation of ethnic groups, including the Jewish one in its variants, oppressed for sectarian and nationalistic reasons. A dynamic that in Europe had been initiated thanks to the secular values of the French Revolution and subsequently, in Italy, of the “Risorgimento” period.
Lenin explicitly cited the church inquisition and at the same time highlighted one of the classic strategies for defending one’s own privileges of the conservative model, dividing the people on ethnic, national and religious grounds. in this ideological game of chess, the Bolshevik leader responds with an attack: he puts the Enlightenment principle of criticism before religious obscurantism and the persecution of otherness, predisposes the value of acculturation and materialistic education as an instrument of emancipation, condemns the persecution of nationalism against the Jews.
“Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews.
This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.”
Definitely Lenin reaffirms, in the face of the exploiters, the principle of international equality, regardless of ethnicity, religion and nationality of all workers.
The speech of 1919 followed the “Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars for the eradication of the anti-Semitic movement” signed on 9 August 1918 by the “President of the Council” Ulyanov (Lenin), and by the “Secretary of the Council” Gorbunov, published for the first time in English in 1934, by “International Publishers”, in New York thanks to “Union Labor”.
The decree pointed out that following the information received, the counter-revolutionaries were organizing pogroms in many border towns against the Jewish population, thus taking back a weapon that belonged to the tsars. The counterrevolutionaries, according to the decree, instilled in the uncultivated population that their misfortunes and their poverty were determined by the Jews, and pointed out that surely the rich Jews knew how to protect themselves, while only the poor Jews were truly affected by anti-Semitic policies and only they fell victims of violence. The decree reaffirmed that in the Russian Soviet Socialist Federation, where the principle of self-determination was in force, there was no room for nationalist oppression. If the bourgeois Jews were enemies of socialism, they were as bourgeois, on the contrary, the Jewish workers are “Brothers”: “The Jewish workers are our Brothers. Any kind of hatred against every people is inadmissible and shameful”. The Council of People’s Commissars therefore declared that “anti-Semitic movements and pogroms against Jews are deadly for the interests of the workers ‘and peasants’ revolution and appeals to the effort of the People of Socialist Russia to fight this evil with every tool at their disposal. ” In the decree, the Council of People’s Commissars invited all the representatives of the Soviets to take positions without mediation and compromise to eradicate the anti-Semitic movements and outlawed the pogromists. A clear-cut position, which was evident in the development of schools, in the establishment of the KomBund, the new Jewish union that replaced the Bund, in the growth of Yiddish-language magazines, in the development of Jewish socialist-themed art, in particular Yuri Pen, a emancipated ethnic-cultural effervescence, like many others in early Soviet Russia and more generally in the USSR, which the Stalinist horrors overturned into a horrendous dystopia of gulags and psychopathic persecutions, which concealed forms of latent confessionalism.
Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened. It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers. Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations. Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.
V. I. Lenin 1919
Lenin on The Jewish Question – On the webpage of the University of Central Florida
European Jewish History Project 