Table Of ContentLenin’s Jewish Question
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:01:04 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
This page intentionally left blank
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:01:04 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Lenin’s
Jewish
Question
YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN
New Haven and London
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:01:04 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Published with assistance from the foundation established in
memory ofAmasa Stone Mather ofthe Class of,Yale College.
Copyright © by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced,in whole or in part,
including illustrations,in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections andofthe U.S.Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press),without written
permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for
educational,business,or promotional use.For information,please
e-mail [email protected] (U.S.office) or [email protected]
(U.K.office).
Set in Minion type by Integrated Publishing Solutions.
Printed in the United States ofAmerica.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Petrovskii-Shtern,Iokhanan.
Lenin’s Jewish question / Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN----(cloth :alk.paper)
. Lenin,Vladimir Il’ich,–—Relations with Jews. .
Lenin,Vladimir Il’ich,–—Family. . Ul’ianov family.
. Lenin,Vladimir Il’ich,–—Public opinion. . Jews—
Identity—Case studies. . Jewish question. . Jews—Soviet
Union—Social conditions. . Jewish communists—Soviet
Union—History. . Soviet Union—Politics and government.
I. Title.
DK.LP
.'—dc
This paper meets the requirements ofANSI/NISO Z.–
(Permanence ofPaper).
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:01:04 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Contents
Preface How and Why This Book
Was Written vii
ONE From Nowhere to Zhitomir
two The Imperial Moshko
three Lenin,Jews,and Power
four Glue for the Vertebrae
five How Lenin Became Blank
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
List ofAbbreviations
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:06:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
vi Contents
Notes
Index
Photographs follow page
This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:06:41 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Preface: How and
Why This Book Was Written
When Jonathan Brent,my guardian angel from Yale University
Press, suggested that I write a book on the Jewish origins of
Vladimir Lenin,my answer was a grateful but firm no.By that
time I had already seen a number ofrecently declassified doc-
uments about Lenin’s Jewish ancestors in East European de-
positories and was aware of the heated debates on this issue
among Russian historians and archivists.What I learned about
Moshko Blank,Lenin’s maternal great-grandfather,and Mosh-
ko’s son Alexander Blank,the father of Mariia Aleksandrovna
Ulianova (née Blank), did little to change my understanding
of Lenin as the founder of the first communist state.Despite
Lenin’s genealogy, there was hardly anything Jewish about
Lenin’s Marxist upbringing or Lenin’s party leadership.Lenin,
I reckoned, was a revolutionary idealist of consistent inter-
nationalist convictions,perfect revolutionary pragmatism,per-
sistent class consciousness, insatiable thirst for power, and
graphic dictatorial proclivities. Jews were too cumbersome
and particular for Lenin’s universalistic thinking, which had
no place,apparently,for his purported Jewish heritage or Jew-
ish concerns.
This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:07:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
viii Preface
I had reason to doubt the existence of a “Jewish Lenin.”
As a college student in the Soviet Union,I was obligated to take
about five hundred hours of coursework on the theory and
practice of communism. A mere list of courses would spark
envy among my leftist-minded colleagues in California. I
learned to apply Marxism, think Marxism, write Marxism,
and live Marxism. I was quite successful with the first two
pursuits and rather clumsy with the second two.Much later,
as a skeptic seeking more nuanced methodologies than the
wooden Soviet dogmas,I took courses at Brandeis University
in modern and East European Jewish history.To my sheer dis-
may I found out that communism and internationalism quite
often did not get along and that the class struggle could ac-
count neither for the rise nor for the demise of such a key
phenomenon of the twentieth century as, for example, Sta-
linism.More importantly,my new studies provided me with
a comparative and critical view on the Russian revolution,
which I no longer considered the triumph of class theory put
into practice in one single country.Now I could avoid trivial
answers to historical problems such as the overrepresentation
of Jews among Russian revolutionaries—all those easy-to-
digest,myth-making,and substance-free answers about inher-
ent Jewish cosmopolitanism that are becoming increasingly
popular.
My reluctance to undertake the proposed project stemmed
from a conviction:discussing Lenin’s Jewish relatives neglect-
ing who Lenin was,how he treated the Jews,and what the Jew-
ish question meant to him was tantamount to discussing a
Jewish Lenin.And to call Lenin Jewish was to explain the Rus-
sian revolution as a largely Jewish enterprise.I resisted telling
a story about Lenin’s alleged Jewishness because for many who
suffer from a national inferiority complex it would provide
This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:07:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Preface ix
just another proofofthe extraordinary role ofJews in the Rus-
sian revolution: its causes,character,and results.Antisemites
readily argue that the Russian revolution was Jewish through
and through,and in this manner they condemn it as contra-
band that filthy non-Russian aliens smuggled into pristine
Mother Russia.Philosemites do the same,emphasizing instead
the true internationalist character ofRussian communism and
focusing on what they see as the inborn cosmopolitanism of
the Russian Jews.Why should I join either side? Through my
research into that period I realized that Jews performed a sec-
ondary role—and the role they performed was not Jewish,
whatever it signified at that time,or at least had nothing to do
with their ethnic origin.Even if Lenin’s remote relative was a
shtetl Jew, I found it inconceivable to tell a highly marginal
story about a person who, simply put, did not belong in my
version ofRussian-Jewish history.
And yet the idea puzzled me. However unimportant
Lenin’s genealogical Jewishness was for the socialist revolu-
tion,its perception by Russians has been a convoluted,highly
charged,and significant subject.Because of this significance,
attempts to make sense of Lenin’s Jewishness went through
many phases, including scornful neglect, bans on archival
quests, the heated exchange of ideas, sensational discoveries,
and a crushing government-orchestrated silence. Starting in
the s,people proving or denying Lenin’s Jewishness pro-
duced hundreds of pages worth of memoirs, journalistic es-
says, and volumes of scholarly and quasi-scholarly writings.
Hardly any memoir or book was ignored.Debates shifted from
the kitchens of the USSR to the dining halls of New York in-
volving Russian dissidents,far-rightists and Soviet authorities,
socialist émigrés with a vested interest in the subject matter,
and indiscreet historians. In , the Russian-language web
This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:07:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
x Preface
generated between nine hundred thousand and a million re-
sponses to a search on two words combined, “Lenin” and
“Jew.”The discussion of Lenin’s Jewish roots triggered bitter
accusations among many online connoisseurs of Russian his-
tory and culture,followed by fierce rebuffs from their no less
educated and numerous opponents.
Even if Lenin’s Jewish roots changed little about my un-
derstanding of Lenin, the attitudes toward a “Jewish Lenin”
complicated my vision ofthe Russian and Soviet treatment of
Jews—as well as the self-identification of revolutionaries of
Jewish descent fully assimilated into the socialist milieu.Lenin’s
great-grandfather hated his Jewish identity, and his son—
Lenin’s grandfather—flatly rejected it, while Lenin’s mother
passed over it in silence.Lenin in some cases considered him-
selfa Russian and in others disassociated himselffrom any na-
tional identity. His fellow party members of Jewish descent
eagerly sacrificed their questionable Jewishness for the sake of
a revolutionary internationalism that redeemed them from the
ethnic conflicts in Russian society.
The century-long perception of Lenin’s purported Jew-
ishness is a history in and of itself. When archival research
proved a Jewish relation, Stalin forbade Lenin’s kin to men-
tion Lenin’s Jewish ancestors. In the s, under Brezhnev’s
regime,people who dared research Lenin’s uncomfortable ge-
nealogy were laid off, and the documents they found were
purged.Russian right-wing activists and writers considered the
Jewish origins of many left-wing leaders scandalous,particu-
larly after the October revolution, yet until late in the
twentieth century they knew nothing about Lenin’s Jewish
roots.When documents on Lenin’s origins finally saw the light
of day,post-communist journalists evoked Lenin’s Jewishness
to condemn the Russian communist experiment as a destruc-
This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:07:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
