Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Jana Show.
Speaker 1: I'm here with Jay Otto. That's your whole name, I
Speaker 1: want to I want to say your whole name. I'm
Speaker 1: going to call you Odo.
Speaker 2: But Jonathan Auto Pole.
Speaker 1: Is awesome, awesome. How are you doing Ato?
Speaker 2: Knowing? Good?
Speaker 1: Good? Tell everybody a little bit about yourself first time
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 2: I have a PhD. I got fairly late. I was
Speaker 2: in my thirties from the School of Oriental and African
Speaker 2: Studies at the University of London, and I have a
Speaker 2: total of four books published, the most recent one two
Speaker 2: years ago. The year is a Great Silence published by
Speaker 2: Ibidem ver Lagh and Stute Gart, dealing with the ethnic
Speaker 2: Germans in the Soviet Union during World War Two, mostly,
Speaker 2: although it has chapters both before and after the Second
Speaker 2: World War. I worked overseas as a history lecturer for
Speaker 2: twelve years in Kyrgyzstan, Ghana and Iraq in the Kurdish region,
Speaker 2: and I am currently living in New Mexico, where I
Speaker 2: came originally to be a middle school teacher, but the
Speaker 2: dress of it almost caused me to die in the classroom,
Speaker 2: so I am now currently working as a janitor for
Speaker 2: a grocery store.
Speaker 1: Do you see yourself possibly get getting on with a
Speaker 1: university or do you now.
Speaker 2: The overseas jobs are pretty dry much dried up, as
Speaker 2: as anything in my specific disciplinary field. But I've applied
Speaker 2: to maybe three thousand jobs in the US for assistant
Speaker 2: professor positions, and I think I got maybe ten interviews,
Speaker 2: but the last one would have been in two thy
Speaker 2: twenty one, So it keeps getting more and more difficult.
Speaker 2: At this point, it's a better use of resources just
Speaker 2: to buy lottery tickets.
Speaker 1: Well, someone turned me onto your sub stack twentieth century
Speaker 1: musings in the twenty first century, and I read two
Speaker 1: articles specifically that I got a lot out of, and
Speaker 1: that's what I wanted to ask you to come on
Speaker 1: and talk about. They both deal with the same subject
Speaker 1: but different different operations in Soviet Russia. So the first
Speaker 1: article that I read was the myth that Jews were
Speaker 1: the ethnic group most persecuted by the Soviet regime the
Speaker 1: Great Terror and national operations? Why do people think that
Speaker 1: the What has caused people to believe that Jews were
Speaker 1: the most persecuted group by the so.
Speaker 2: Well, for the thirty seven thirty eight I think it's
Speaker 2: because there is a even a book, but you personally
Speaker 2: used to be a good historian, and then she completely
Speaker 2: sold out out of Canada. Lynn Viola, she wrote a
Speaker 2: very good book on de Koulokization, the deportation of culos
Speaker 2: to special settlement areas, particularly in the far North in
Speaker 2: the Arctic Circle, called the Unknown Gulag. But Lynn Viola
Speaker 2: then wrote a book I kind of remember the title
Speaker 2: of it, but basically it was about the purge of
Speaker 2: Jewish Nkvday agents, a couple hundred of them from the
Speaker 2: top ranks of the NKA Day in November nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: and how they were the real victims. But if you
Speaker 2: look at how many people were arrested and either executed
Speaker 2: or sent a labor camp by the same people, it's
Speaker 2: obviously you know, this would be like writing a book
Speaker 2: saying that the people that tanged at Nuremberg with the
Speaker 2: real victory of the Holocaust. But because of the way
Speaker 2: political power is structured in North America, she can of
Speaker 2: course get away with it. So Yagoda, the head of
Speaker 2: the NKVA Day from nineteen thirty four to nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: who was executed Israel Leaplevski, who was the head of
Speaker 2: the NKVDAY in Ukraine during the thirty seven thirty eight
Speaker 2: terror including the Polish and German operations. Boris Burman, the
Speaker 2: head of the NKV DAY in Belarus during this time
Speaker 2: in thirty seven and thirty eight. Genrik Lyushkov wasn't executed
Speaker 2: by the Soviets that he fled to Manchuria and the
Speaker 2: Japanese executed him, but he was responsible for the thirty
Speaker 2: seven ethnic cleansing of Koreans from the Far East. So
Speaker 2: these people are prominent in the show trials and execution
Speaker 2: in November thirty eight, all the way up until the
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one. But they're only a couple hundred of them.
Speaker 2: But I think where they're looking at they're saying, well,
Speaker 2: look at the prominent Jewish communists, like and even earlier
Speaker 2: kamen ethan Zineviv. The first show trials executed were former
Speaker 2: Jewish Pullet Bureau members. But if you take the total numbers,
Speaker 2: it's only a couple hundred people. And at this time
Speaker 2: you had almost seventy eight thousand ethnic Poles and forty
Speaker 2: six thousand ethnic Germans executed. Specifically because they were German
Speaker 2: or Polish in thirty seven and thirty eight.
Speaker 1: So what do those numbers look like? What was the
Speaker 1: Jewish population of Russia at that time? What percentage were they?
Speaker 2: They were one point eight percent of the total population,
Speaker 2: about five and a half percent of the Communist Party,
Speaker 2: But under Yagoda and Yejaf the NKFA day they were
Speaker 2: between almost forty percent I think, with thirty eight point
Speaker 2: five percent and twenty percent up until the purged by
Speaker 2: Beeria of them in November thirty eight. Of the top
Speaker 2: one hundred or so NKVA Day officers, including and I said,
Speaker 2: the Jagota himself number one man Lapleski, number one man
Speaker 2: for the Ukrainian Soviet Solis Republic, Boris Berman, number one
Speaker 2: man for bill Russian Soviet Socist Republic, Genrik Lyushkov, the
Speaker 2: Far Eastern Kry, the head of the Gulag from nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty to nineteen thirty eight, the three men Kogan, mattve Berman,
Speaker 2: who was the brother Boris Berman, he was in power
Speaker 2: as head of the Gulag from thirty two to thirty seven,
Speaker 2: and then Israel Plinner. So you really have during the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties when you have de kulakization, the Helota more
Speaker 2: and of course the Great Terror in thirty seven and
Speaker 2: thirty eight, complete with national operations against diaspora group but
Speaker 2: not Jews because they didn't have an independent homeland at
Speaker 2: that time about two hundred and fifty thousand, the largest
Speaker 2: group being the Poles and second German and then coming
Speaker 2: up Latvians.
Speaker 1: Well, what was the justification basically for the extermination of
Speaker 1: Poles and Germans and.
Speaker 2: Latvians because they were they were diaspora groups that had
Speaker 2: independent states outside of the Soviet Union, and so it
Speaker 2: was deemed that because as they were ethnically and the
Speaker 2: Soviet idea of ethnos is that culture is primordial, it
Speaker 2: kind of combines idea of primordial culture with biological determinism
Speaker 2: through indogamy, that is, the groups don't marry out much.
Speaker 2: Culture continues to be reproduced through intermarriage of their only
Speaker 2: within their group. So it deemed that these people ultimately
Speaker 2: were politically suspect that they when it came down to it,
Speaker 2: they would owe their political allegiance not to the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: but to the government in Warsaw or the government in
Speaker 2: Berlin or the government in Riga, depending which the Asport
Speaker 2: group you are talking about.
Speaker 1: Is that why they didn't go after the Jews because
Speaker 1: they didn't have a homeland yet.
Speaker 2: In big part, yes, because they start to in a
Speaker 2: much less violent and much more toned down measures, because
Speaker 2: they've gotten rid of the massive violence by then at
Speaker 2: the end of the Stalin era, so you have the
Speaker 2: anti cosmopolitan campaign under Jondanov and then of course the
Speaker 2: Doctor's plot the very end of Stalin's life, and in
Speaker 2: the post Dollen era you have later after the break
Speaker 2: between the Soviet government and Israel, anti Zionist campaigns within
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. But there's never any mass arrest or
Speaker 2: mass deportations or mass executions of Jews with Soviet citizenship.
Speaker 2: The one case of mass deportation of Jews by the
Speaker 2: Soviet government was about fifty thousand Polish Jews that fled
Speaker 2: German occupied Poland into the Soviet occupied Era area in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine nineteen forty, and in nineteen forty they
Speaker 2: were given the choice they either accept the Soviet passports
Speaker 2: and citizenship or they would be forcibly relocated as special settlers,
Speaker 2: and so about fifty thousand refused to take Soviet citizenship.
Speaker 2: Wanting to keep their Polish citizenship and were forcibly resettled,
Speaker 2: but almost all of the survivors and their death rates
Speaker 2: were much lower than those The Polish Catholics that were
Speaker 2: deported this time were released two years later in forty one,
Speaker 2: with the agreement between the Polish government and exile and
Speaker 2: the Soviet government to allow Polish citizens to be evacuated
Speaker 2: out of the Soviet Union into Iran.
Speaker 1: Going back to the two hundred that Stalin killed, why
Speaker 1: did he get rid of them?
Speaker 2: Because they were closely associated with the former heads of
Speaker 2: the nkvaday that had been removed, In part because Stalin
Speaker 2: believed they were creating their own kind of political fiefdoms
Speaker 2: that were independent of him and could challenge him, and
Speaker 2: also largely because the Buria, who was a fellow Georgian
Speaker 2: appointed by Stalin, wanted to clear out all of the
Speaker 2: men that had been appointed by You go to Yashav
Speaker 2: and appointed own men. So you see the NKVA day
Speaker 2: after November thirty eight, far fewer Jews, they go down
Speaker 2: from twenty percent to four percent in the leadership, but
Speaker 2: a lot more Georgians, a lot more Russians, a lot
Speaker 2: more Ukrainians and a lot more ethnic Armenians, and most
Speaker 2: of those Armenians from Georgia, people like the Kobolov brothers
Speaker 2: associated with Buria.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people point to the Doctor's Plot.
Speaker 1: I think Francis Parkriyaki looked at the Doctor's Plot and
Speaker 1: deem that the Soviet Union at that point was going
Speaker 1: in a anti Semitic direction. Do you see that because
Speaker 1: of the because of the Doctor's Plot and how it
Speaker 1: was handled or was that a misreading?
Speaker 2: Well no, I mean it was aimed at Jews. But
Speaker 2: the thing is the number of people that were arrested
Speaker 2: and killed is still name, you know, a small fraction.
Speaker 2: We're talking hundreds of people, whereas we look at just
Speaker 2: the executions and the German operation and the Polish operations,
Speaker 2: we're talking tens of thousands of people. Ultimately, the diaspor
Speaker 2: groups targeted in thirty seven thirty eight were all together
Speaker 2: equal to the Jewish population one point eight percent of
Speaker 2: the population, but they formed two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: out of seven hundred thousand executions, so over a third.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to the to the executions by
Speaker 1: the I'm out executed by the nationality polls were the biggest,
Speaker 1: were the biggest. How many Poles were there?
Speaker 2: About total seventy eight thousand were executed, not all in
Speaker 2: the Polish operation, some of them in what's called the
Speaker 2: Kulak operation and some other operations, but and the Polish
Speaker 2: operation itself, not everybody executed it. With Polish it was
Speaker 2: about one hundred and ten thousand people executing it, so
Speaker 2: you know, some almost thirty thousand were bil of Russian
Speaker 2: and then Ukrainians and other nationality. The German operation had
Speaker 2: about fifty five thousand execution, of which about twenty nine thousand,
Speaker 2: I mean fifty five thousand convictions, which about forty two
Speaker 2: thousand were executed, about twenty nine thousand the Germans. But
Speaker 2: when you add in Germans executed in other operations like
Speaker 2: the Kulak operation, which was much harder than the German operation.
Speaker 2: In the Voca German assr most of the German executions
Speaker 2: for the German operation we're in Ukraine and then the
Speaker 2: next area hit hard with Siberia. We're talking forty six
Speaker 2: thousand or so Germans executed in nineteen thirty seven nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight.
Speaker 1: How did they execute them?
Speaker 2: Bullet to the back of the head of a nine
Speaker 2: millimeters pistol usually tokarah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, let's move forward to the deportations and resettlements.
Speaker 1: Why only the deportations and resettlements. Why aren't they why
Speaker 1: aren't they going through the uh through the trouble of
Speaker 1: killing these people.
Speaker 2: Well, when Berria replaces Jajov and most of the executions
Speaker 2: for political reasons as well as other reasons. There's there's
Speaker 2: under the stalin are. Almost all executions are for political crimes.
Speaker 2: They occurred at thirty seven and thirty eight, which is
Speaker 2: the time Yajaf who was a mixed ancestry. His father
Speaker 2: was Russian and his mother was Lithuanian, and he was
Speaker 2: from Vilnos. One of the reasons they suspect he particularly
Speaker 2: hated Polish people on the Polish operation. When he was
Speaker 2: placed by Berria, it was it deemed that these maths
Speaker 2: executions were wasteful because you did not get any labor
Speaker 2: out of the people you were shooting, right, So instead
Speaker 2: it would deem that the better way was to punish
Speaker 2: people in a way which you could get some work
Speaker 2: out of them, although conditions were so horrible. Often people
Speaker 2: would not be able to work for very long before
Speaker 2: they became sick or even died, so Biria moved everything
Speaker 2: to forced labor from the execution that had been prominent
Speaker 2: under the Yeja.
Speaker 1: How are there so many at one point Jews in
Speaker 1: Possessions of Power? Celes Kin's book The Jewish Century, you know,
Speaker 1: shows that even in the beginning it wasn't great, but
Speaker 1: it grows, and it grows famously. People said, when Trotsky
Speaker 1: came back from New York, the people he brought with
Speaker 1: them were almost almost every single one of them were Jews.
Speaker 1: Were they Russians? Were they born Russian? Were they from
Speaker 1: somewhere else? Was this a Jewish?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean in the Pullet Bureau, the
Speaker 2: first Pullitt Bureau after these Bolshevik tic power has seven people,
Speaker 2: and four of them are Jewish according to the Soviet records,
Speaker 2: So those are Trotsky obviously born in Ukraine. Kamin F'
Speaker 2: his father was Jewish, but is identified in almost all
Speaker 2: the literature as an ethnic Jew Zenoviv and a guy
Speaker 2: named Solokanoff, which I can't find much information on him,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't seem anybody else can, but the Soviet
Speaker 2: information indicates his Nasanale notes was Jewish. That's about all
Speaker 2: I know. And there were some other high ranking officials
Speaker 2: later that were not in that in the Pullet Bureau
Speaker 2: for very long and Sparedlofsk who was responsible for the
Speaker 2: killing of the Czar, led the hit squad, but was
Speaker 2: also the man who kept the records for organization of
Speaker 2: the party, a position that Stalin later took over and
Speaker 2: allowed him to consolidate control over the Communist Party of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. But so in the beginning, you see
Speaker 2: there's at least three powerful Jews Trotsky, Kama athan Zenevich
Speaker 2: in the Soviet Pullet Buro, and they're there from nineteen
Speaker 2: seventeen to nineteen twenty six, and by in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty seven, Stalin begins removing them as the
Speaker 2: potential actual opposition until called left opposition, and they are
Speaker 2: by nineteen twenty eight. He has consolidated his power and
Speaker 2: there's a brief period of time and there's no Jews
Speaker 2: in the Pullet Burerou, and then Stalin appoints Kaganoch, who
Speaker 2: was fiercely loyal to Stalin all the way up until
Speaker 2: his death, right before the Soviet Union collapsed. So Kaganovic,
Speaker 2: if there had ever made any criticism of Stalin near
Speaker 2: the end of his life's veiled that Stalin wasn't harsh enough,
Speaker 2: didn't kill enough people.
Speaker 1: So is it a lot of just nepotism where one
Speaker 1: person would get appointed and then they'd bring in somebody,
Speaker 1: and they'd bring in kin folk and it would just
Speaker 1: start growing and growing. Like you said that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons for the purge was it seemed like they
Speaker 1: were trying to consolidate power into themselves.
Speaker 2: Well for Jewish domination of the NKVT officer corps and
Speaker 2: going back also the Oka pay Ooh, it's the predecessor.
Speaker 2: We don't have as good of records. Memorial, which is
Speaker 2: now illegal in Russia, has compiled off the Natinale nots
Speaker 2: of all of the high ranking NKVD officers from nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four to nineteen forty one. It appears that a
Speaker 2: lot of these people were appointed by Yagoda and they
Speaker 2: continued on under Yeja and then Biria removes them. But
Speaker 2: there's also the fact when you look at the Gulag leadership,
Speaker 2: which is a subsection of the nk day and later
Speaker 2: and earlier had been under okay ooh. What Ann Applebaum
Speaker 2: says is that the Gulag leadership and administration with a
Speaker 2: dumping ground for those people in the nkvday that were
Speaker 2: considered not to be very competent or smart. But the
Speaker 2: leadership you look at Berman is really responsible for growing
Speaker 2: it from nineteen thirty two to thirty seven. Is number
Speaker 2: two man is Israel plinner and nathlete Frankel, one of
Speaker 2: the few Gulag chiefs that stands out as actually being very,
Speaker 2: very smart, has a lot written about him by Alexander
Speaker 2: Solzanitsen and the Gulag ar Pellago. He had originally come
Speaker 2: from Haifa and God to the Russia to be a
Speaker 2: merchant and then ended up getting incarcerated during Lenin's time
Speaker 2: in the Slovaki camps in the Far North, but he
Speaker 2: kept giving such great advice to the camp administrators on
Speaker 2: how to squeeze more labor for less food out of
Speaker 2: the inmate that they made him a Gulag official, and
Speaker 2: he became one of the top officials in the thirties,
Speaker 2: particularly early on with the building the White Sea Baltic Canal.
Speaker 1: Why is it that when we look at communist crimes
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the stuff we've already mentioned is,
Speaker 1: you know, Heinus is just if you're going to kill
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people with just bullets to the back
Speaker 1: of the head, that takes some kind of will that
Speaker 1: I don't think the average person can even fathom. So
Speaker 1: why is it that we don't talk about communist crimes,
Speaker 1: but say, you know, anything, you know, anything that the
Speaker 1: Germans have ever done gets brought up, or anything you know,
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who's ever tried a bad look at
Speaker 1: a Jew has their crimes are amplified.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think there's been some some good academic
Speaker 2: literature by Jewish scholars on this. One. Work I would
Speaker 2: recommend is Juris les King, who was from the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: is a professor of history at University of California, Berkeley. Technically,
Speaker 2: I guess he's only half Jewish. His father is Jewish,
Speaker 2: but under the Soviet system he was considered Jewish. But
Speaker 2: he writes about how Jews in the Soviet Union and
Speaker 2: elsewhere became interested and successful in running government, becoming dissipants
Speaker 2: in disproportionate member numbers in government the same way they
Speaker 2: did other industries like Hollywood or banking right, so it's
Speaker 2: becomes an ethnic industry. So the nk A Day and
Speaker 2: Okpu are literally viewed as kind of, this is a
Speaker 2: Jewish business we can go into because Jagoda is a
Speaker 2: you know, knows our family, and we can get appointed
Speaker 2: and go up the ranks. And Berman, you know, he
Speaker 2: had not only Boris Berman, his brother, head of the
Speaker 2: NKV DAY in Biliruths, but another brother, Solomon Berman, was
Speaker 2: also a high ranking officer in the NKVD. So he
Speaker 2: had three brothers all in the NKV DAY during the
Speaker 2: Stalin era in the thirties. So that's one explanation. And
Speaker 2: as far as not remembering it not talking about it,
Speaker 2: I think Peter Novic's The Holocaut and American Life where
Speaker 2: he talks about starting in the sixties, you start to
Speaker 2: see this use and intermentalization of atrocities and victimization and
Speaker 2: particularly called the victimization Olympics for political power, and he
Speaker 2: specifically talks about the use of the Holocaust to get
Speaker 2: support for the state of Israel starting in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: seven with the war.
Speaker 1: What do you when you look at the attitude towards
Speaker 1: Jews in the Soviet Union what is it.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, throughout the entire we have probably best
Speaker 2: term user the z Geedleman called it the ambivalents. Right,
Speaker 2: So the policy oscillates, But initially you have after Stalin
Speaker 2: died in fifty three, you're not that the head of
Speaker 2: the MK the NBA day at the time is still Beeria,
Speaker 2: but he is so close to associated with Stalin. Khrushchov
Speaker 2: and Mahlankov want to get rid of him along with
Speaker 2: Kaganovich and Malotav. Now Berya is executed, Malotov is sent
Speaker 2: to me ambassador to the People's Republic of Mongolia or
Speaker 2: I guess Mongolian People's Republic. Obviously, since it's almost just
Speaker 2: another Soviet republic, this isn't a big diplomatic posting for Malotav.
Speaker 2: And Kaganovich is appointed I think as a director of
Speaker 2: a cement factory in Siberia. All right. So after this time,
Speaker 2: with Kaganovich removed, there are no more Jews in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Pullar Bureau for the rest of its existence. But
Speaker 2: they still remain overrepresented in the rank and file membership
Speaker 2: of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in part
Speaker 2: because they have higher education, in part because they're more urbanized,
Speaker 2: and also in part because they have put effort into
Speaker 2: it as a group to try and have as much
Speaker 2: representation as possible. It's using the government as a type
Speaker 2: of ethnic industry, as it were. So there's no longer
Speaker 2: a domination the way there was in the early Soviet
Speaker 2: regime with the Trotsky and Kamenoff and Zeneviev. And there's
Speaker 2: no longer any section of the Soviet government that's important,
Speaker 2: like the political police that has a Jewish domination. But
Speaker 2: they are overrepresenting the Communist Party. They are overrepresented in
Speaker 2: a number of desirable positions in the Soviet Union, white
Speaker 2: collar jobs, but particularly things like scientists, university lecturers, published writers.
Speaker 2: At the two best known and probably best quality wise
Speaker 2: science fiction writers out of the Soviet Union, of the
Speaker 2: Strugatsky brothers, who were Jewish, they wrote Roadside Picnic, which
Speaker 2: was the inspiration for the movie Stalker. So they have
Speaker 2: a pretty good position as far as that. And there
Speaker 2: is no persecution of Jews quad Jews in the post
Speaker 2: Soviet era, but there is a strong crackdown after the
Speaker 2: break with Israel on political Zionists, particularly those who are
Speaker 2: actively petitioning to emigrate out of the USSR to go
Speaker 2: to Israel. But again, when you look at total number
Speaker 2: arrest total number of incarcerations, we're only talking a few
Speaker 2: hundred people, which puts it on about the same par
Speaker 2: as much smaller groups that were doing the same type
Speaker 2: of things, such as the Korean Tatars, add only one
Speaker 2: tenth the total population that the Jews had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that reminded me of something I wanted to ask,
Speaker 1: just going back, So nineteen forty eight, you have the
Speaker 1: foundation of Israel and now there are a diaspora. There
Speaker 1: are diaspera people with a home. Was there any talk
Speaker 1: of getting, you know, deportation or I guess at that
Speaker 1: point it would have been deportation.
Speaker 2: Well, there isn't anything in the official Soviet archives about
Speaker 2: any math deportation of Jews with Soviet citizenship. They said,
Speaker 2: the only case where we have is those that refused
Speaker 2: Soviet citizenship who had Polish passports. In nineteen forty there
Speaker 2: has always been a lot of writing that there were
Speaker 2: rumors going around that they kept cheering on the Metro
Speaker 2: and other places that there were planned to deport all
Speaker 2: the Jews and Thebijan, which was the Jewish autonomous Obla
Speaker 2: established by Stalin that almost no Jews moved to. But
Speaker 2: there's nothing in the archives, so if it was any
Speaker 2: planning stage, it was very very embryonic as far as
Speaker 2: that was going. And of course then Stalin died on
Speaker 2: fifth of March nineteen fifty three, and the entirety of
Speaker 2: the Soviet policy changes. Now. Initially, the Soviets in forty
Speaker 2: eight and forty nine were strong supporters in the un
Speaker 2: of Israel. A lot of the armaments that were crucial
Speaker 2: for the Israeli victory of the Arabs came from Czechoslovakia
Speaker 2: after the communists coup in nineteen forty eight in that country.
Speaker 2: And it appears that the reason for the break between
Speaker 2: the Soviet and Israel had to do with the Israelis,
Speaker 2: not the Soviets had to do with Israelis. Not at
Speaker 2: the very top. That is, Ben Gurian liked the fact
Speaker 2: that he could get a lot of Soviet assistance. He
Speaker 2: admired the Soviet Union as kind of a strong model
Speaker 2: for state with a socialist economy, and of course its
Speaker 2: policies towards the Vulgar German the Korean Tatars being one
Speaker 2: to emulate regarding the Palestinian Arabs. But the ambassador to
Speaker 2: Moscow was gold in my Ear, who was very rude
Speaker 2: to the Soviets. Gold in my Ear essentially said to
Speaker 2: Jews in the Soviet Union they should owe their allegiance
Speaker 2: to Jerusalem and not Moscow. Told the Soviet government should
Speaker 2: allow all the Jews, especially the educated ones, to go
Speaker 2: to Israel rather than rebuild the Soviet Union the damage
Speaker 2: caused by World War Two. And then the Soviets said, well,
Speaker 2: why don't you have like Jews from the United States,
Speaker 2: you know, the evil capitalist country obviously anti Semitic. No,
Speaker 2: we wanted to use the US to stay there and
Speaker 2: just send us money. And so this type of insults
Speaker 2: were just almost too much, and coupled with the fact
Speaker 2: that under Krushchev they looked and saw, particularly after nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six, that there are a lot more people in
Speaker 2: Egypt and the Arab world and supporters of them and
Speaker 2: former colonies than the small state of Israel, that perhaps
Speaker 2: they should completely changed sides. Is what happened. So the
Speaker 2: but if Golden my Ear had not been ambassador, if
Speaker 2: somebody who had the same outlook as Ben Gurion had
Speaker 2: been ambassador, I think the Soviet Israeli alliance would have lasted.
Speaker 1: Longer after the war. The United States pretty much want
Speaker 1: the Soviet Unions to be like a junior partner to them,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, and Stalin tells them to take
Speaker 1: a walk. And then you see the Neo Khans, who
Speaker 1: are founded by Jews and are mostly Jews, come into existence.
Speaker 1: Why did the Neo Kan what was the reaction? Was
Speaker 1: there anything happening with Jews in the Soviet Union that
Speaker 1: would have caused the Neo Khans to you know, have
Speaker 1: like some kind of ethnic animosity or was it or was.
Speaker 2: It depends on where you want to go. But I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of it goes back to the Tsarist
Speaker 2: era and the pogromes Kishniev in nineteen oh three, because
Speaker 2: the most of the Ashkenazi population in the United States
Speaker 2: are descending to people who left the Paleist settlement in
Speaker 2: the Russian Empire following the pogroms in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 2: and of course, so there's that, but of course that
Speaker 2: took place under the Tsaris government and then during the
Speaker 2: Civil War. While there are a couple of cases of
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks engaging, for most of them were by white forces
Speaker 2: or Ukrainian nationalists forces or anarchists rather than Bolsheviks. But
Speaker 2: I think a big thing of it was that after
Speaker 2: World War Two, all right, there wasn't any real Jewish
Speaker 2: you know, influence the way there had been a in
Speaker 2: the twenties in the Polar Buro and in the thirties
Speaker 2: in the NKA day. And there was also the fact
Speaker 2: that there was an affirmative action program from the very
Speaker 2: beginning in the USSR which favored titular nationalities, particularly for
Speaker 2: higher education. So this meant that if you were in
Speaker 2: Tashkent and you were an ethnic Uzbek, you got reference
Speaker 2: to go to the university in tash can Right now,
Speaker 2: Jews were overrepresented greatly in Soviet universities, but it was
Speaker 2: kept to the level was was not dominated completely because
Speaker 2: there was active discrimination in favor of Uzbek's and Uzbekistan,
Speaker 2: Ukrainians and Ukraine, Georgians and Georgia. So if you lived
Speaker 2: in your own national Soviet Social Republic, you got preference,
Speaker 2: particularly for higher education, but also for desirable jobs in
Speaker 2: the government, desirable jobs in industry, positions in the local
Speaker 2: Communist party. And so this was always portrayed in the
Speaker 2: Western literature as discrimination against Jews because they said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, majority of people go to the University of
Speaker 2: tash Can must be ethnic Uzbeks. We can't have majority
Speaker 2: of them being Jewish when Jews are only four percent
Speaker 2: of the population. But the American Jews thought, well, no,
Speaker 2: you know, if we can, if we can score the
Speaker 2: test tieing up, we should be able to have one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the position to us back as down
Speaker 2: and leave the uzbex with none.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, great attitude, especially when you consider the attitude
Speaker 1: in Israel since nineteen forty eight worse. It's like good,
Speaker 1: good luck getting getting anything good if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not Jewish. You made the comment about them being Ashkenazis
Speaker 1: and the pograms. Is that further Is that further evidence?
Speaker 1: Just pointing to evidence that the the the initial revolution
Speaker 1: was funded by them, funded by I mean, I think.
Speaker 2: They can get some funding from it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of the resentment again both the Czaris Russian
Speaker 2: government uh as well as Russians in general and certain particular.
Speaker 2: The word in Russian so Slovia, it means like a
Speaker 2: status kind of like it's it's like an ethno class status.
Speaker 2: But the Cossacks they particularly did not like, and there
Speaker 2: is actually a math extermination of Cossacks during the Russian
Speaker 2: Civil War when Lenin is still in charge and you
Speaker 2: have Trotsky cabinet and Zeneviev in the Pullet bureau.
Speaker 1: So the I wanted to go back to the programs
Speaker 1: for a second. Researchers like doctor Matthew Rafael Johnson says
Speaker 1: that the h a lot of the times the programs
Speaker 1: were basically what would happen was is that revolutionary Jews
Speaker 1: would start, you know, start acting up and committing violent ones,
Speaker 1: and then you know, like the Black Hundred or groups
Speaker 1: would come in to stop them, and then the Jewish
Speaker 1: owned newspapers would you know, be like, oh, look these
Speaker 1: you know, they're just attacking Jews for no reason at all.
Speaker 1: Is do you have any any reason to believe that
Speaker 1: that would.
Speaker 2: Be It's not my expertise. The person's now dead. That's
Speaker 2: probably the best researcher audit was that I believe he
Speaker 2: was that he was at one of the University of London.
Speaker 2: I think it might have been Burkebeck, but Johanna and
Speaker 2: John clear Yeah. He wrote on it and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the myths when you look at
Speaker 2: the archives of the Tsar's government. One of the myths
Speaker 2: is that is clearly not true is the idea that
Speaker 2: the Tsar's government was instigating uh and supporting The Tzari's
Speaker 2: government had a very low opinion of the programs and
Speaker 2: tried to put us suppressed them because it viewed it
Speaker 2: as chaos and anarchy that threatened the rule. So even
Speaker 2: while the Tzar's government was obviously no great lover or Jews,
Speaker 2: although it was always open under the Czars, if they
Speaker 2: converted to Russian Orthodoxy, they were no longer considered to
Speaker 2: be Jewish. It wasn't an ethnic or racial classification until
Speaker 2: the Soviets took took power, ironically, and then it becomes
Speaker 2: one of the national But interestingly enough, only Ashkenazi's got
Speaker 2: the designation Javans, which literally means Hebrew. So other groups
Speaker 2: the Buharan Jews for instance, or the Jews in the Caucuses,
Speaker 2: which are often called tops, but I'm told that's the
Speaker 2: derogatory term. But so Mountain Jews and Buharan Jews, the
Speaker 2: other Eastern Jews, they were considered separate ethnic groups from
Speaker 2: the Ashkenazi, which were classified as Hebrews.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the offering them to convert, and immediately your
Speaker 1: mind goes to Spain. It seems like they've that's been,
Speaker 1: that was tried throughout the last two thousand years. Is sure,
Speaker 1: you can stay as long as you convert, and then
Speaker 1: you know, of course Spain had ther the Morano problem.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, Spain is a bit different. But there were
Speaker 2: some Jews that did convert and become Christians, just as
Speaker 2: there were Muslims. In fact, there were a number of
Speaker 2: Tatar Muslims that converted to Christianity and joined the Russian
Speaker 2: nobility after the Ivan the Fourth took Kazan Hanate, so
Speaker 2: it certainly wasn't at least the Tsar's government was in
Speaker 2: good faith. If you actually, you know, get baptized and
Speaker 2: become a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, right then
Speaker 2: you are considered to be the same as any other
Speaker 2: Russian Orthodox Christian and the fact that you were born
Speaker 2: Jewish and have Jewish heritage becomes irrelevant. Right in the
Speaker 2: Soviet state, you couldn't change after I believe in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight, you couldn't change your nationality legally, So if
Speaker 2: you had two Jewish parents with a jew on your
Speaker 2: identification documents, you had two German parents with a German.
Speaker 2: If you had a mix, you could choose one of
Speaker 2: those two at age sixteen, but not another. So if
Speaker 2: you were half German and half Polish, right, you could
Speaker 2: choose one or two. But you're still going to be screwed.
Speaker 1: Well, let's finish up with this. The Revolution, everything that
Speaker 1: happened afterwards the Revolution, the way that people like you
Speaker 1: go to treated treated Christians, treated Russians. Was this all
Speaker 1: animosity for the last six hundred years of Russian history,
Speaker 1: How they feel they were they were treated the pale
Speaker 1: of settlement Kewlnetsky is this is that what I.
Speaker 2: Think this is part of the motivation for a number
Speaker 2: of them, particularly when you go on the lower levels.
Speaker 2: You start thinking things like the dekoulakization, where they're using
Speaker 2: open racial epithets again Germans and polls, and this is
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty already nineteen thirty one. But I think
Speaker 2: you look at somebody like Kaganovich. While he never denied
Speaker 2: he was Jewish, I don't think he was being motivated
Speaker 2: by the fact that he was a Jewish ancestor. I
Speaker 2: think he viewed himself as an international communist and a
Speaker 2: loyal supporter of Stalin, and he did what Stalin said,
Speaker 2: and necessary to bring socialism, we're going to have to
Speaker 2: be very violent, and certain ethnic groups weren't going to
Speaker 2: make it because they were inherently counter revolutionary. And so
Speaker 2: the Volga, Germans, the komand Tatars, the Chechens, these were
Speaker 2: all peoples that had proven themselves unable to integrate into
Speaker 2: socialism and so had to had force said to be
Speaker 2: you to help them along by destroying their organic compact settlements.
Speaker 2: But I think when you higher levels it's more ideological.
Speaker 2: I think somebody like Trotsky, somebody like Kaganovich, even somebody
Speaker 2: like Yagoda, I don't think they were thinking I'm doing
Speaker 2: this to get back for the fact that Russian and
Speaker 2: Ukrainians and other people's, you know, engage in progromes and
Speaker 2: other violence against Jews. But I think, certainly, since the
Speaker 2: party and the apparatus is so large, when you get
Speaker 2: to the lower levels on the ground and the implementation,
Speaker 2: there is quite a bit of that.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that they there are so many revolution
Speaker 1: era there's so many groups with revolutionary thought in Russia.
Speaker 1: It just it's I mean, that's going to the butting
Speaker 1: of heads is going to be incredible because when those
Speaker 1: revolutionary groups, they're not backing down for anything. So it's
Speaker 1: either going to be accept who I am or and
Speaker 1: we're going to work to try to take over, or
Speaker 1: you're going to have to kill us.
Speaker 2: Basically, well, yes, there was an extreme amount of violence,
Speaker 2: and then of course as violent as nineteen eighteen nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty one was and it led to famine in twenty
Speaker 2: one and twenty two, which was particularly harsh on the
Speaker 2: Germans in Volga and Ukraine, it became much more violent
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, and so it's
Speaker 2: it's as Dollin said, we want to compress the hundred
Speaker 2: years of industrialization, which involved of course a mass dislocation
Speaker 2: of people from the countryside into industrial factories in Great Britain.
Speaker 2: They want to compress that into ten years, right, one tenth,
Speaker 2: which of course means then that the suffering of involved
Speaker 2: in that gets multiplied by a factor of at least ten.
Speaker 2: So I think these people were looking at we want
Speaker 2: to accomplish creating an industrial, powerful military, you know, super
Speaker 2: state along lines of using the power of the state
Speaker 2: to basically, you know, bootstrap everything up, so everything is
Speaker 2: controlled by the state, which is controlled by the Vanguard Party,
Speaker 2: so that it has a clear trajectory. Right. And of
Speaker 2: course this was considered to be the ind just to
Speaker 2: fy the means, right, that is, the in reality they
Speaker 2: were right that the Vath majority of the descendants of
Speaker 2: the survivors had a much higher standard of living than
Speaker 2: their grandparent. That is, and by the time you get
Speaker 2: to the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, there is a
Speaker 2: much much higher standard of living both materially but also
Speaker 2: culturally for people in the Soviet Union then existed under
Speaker 2: the Czar. But to do that you have at least
Speaker 2: ten percent of the population violently killed, and of course
Speaker 2: large numbers of people who weren't killed, you know, displaced
Speaker 2: to special settlement, sent to labor camps to work for years,
Speaker 2: deprived of basic human dignity and rights. So it becomes
Speaker 2: you know, this injustified the means by by by being
Speaker 2: very violent and oppressive. Those who survive physically are killed
Speaker 2: by this, their descendants, their grandchildren will have a better
Speaker 2: standard of living than existed previous. The problem with this
Speaker 2: is countries that didn't go through this, like Western Europe
Speaker 2: and Japan and the United States had even higher standards
Speaker 2: of living.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I have two questions. One is in reference
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about. The other one is going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit off the book. But like
Speaker 1: the Black Book of Communism throws out amazing numbers of
Speaker 1: debt by the hands of the government in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: whether actually executed or worked to death in a gulag.
Speaker 1: Do you have a Do you have a number?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my personal number. Yeah, I would say I'm probably
Speaker 2: getting at well, it depends what you include, but somewhere
Speaker 2: between ten and fifteen million. But if we it probably
Speaker 2: is not higher than that, just because it's just not
Speaker 2: enough people. If you include the losses in the World
Speaker 2: War One and World War Two for the demographics to
Speaker 2: make sense. It also turns out people are harder to
Speaker 2: kill than you would think. So if you remove all
Speaker 2: the food from Ukraine, it doesn't kill all of the Ukrainians.
Speaker 2: It kills about fifteen percent in a period of two years,
Speaker 2: which is significant. But you know, almost logically think, well,
Speaker 2: if nobody has any food, should all of them die?
Speaker 2: And yet somehow eighty five percent of the population managed
Speaker 2: through various ways to just physically resist through survival to
Speaker 2: find enough food to eke out until that two year
Speaker 2: period without. So it's the amazing how bad conditions can
Speaker 2: get in things like a Soviet labor camp, even one
Speaker 2: north of the Arctic circle, and people still physically survive.
Speaker 2: So I think this is one of the things that's
Speaker 2: not taking an account. But you know the Black Book
Speaker 2: of Communism, I would say the numbers in the chapter
Speaker 2: on the Soviet Union itself and it birth to the
Speaker 2: French scholar. Whether that doesn't give a total figure, his
Speaker 2: figures are pretty accurate. I would say overall what got
Speaker 2: controversy was one hundred million figure by Quartou for all
Speaker 2: communist regimes in the front of which some twenty million
Speaker 2: was supposedly the USSR. And then of course the big
Speaker 2: chunk is going to be China, particularly the famine after
Speaker 2: the Great Leap Forward, which is less direct than something
Speaker 2: like the Heloto more, where you have a targeted area
Speaker 2: being deliberately deprived of food for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: What's the numbers on the whole little more?
Speaker 2: The official number of the Ukrainian government now I believe
Speaker 2: at three point eight million.
Speaker 1: All right, So This was the last question I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask. You're when you look at Israel today, how
Speaker 1: much of do you how much do you think of
Speaker 1: what they're doing, especially when it comes to just seems
Speaker 1: like the extermination of populations has to do with that
Speaker 1: revolutionary spirit that you talked about, like the higher. You said,
Speaker 1: some of the ones on the lower may have like animosity,
Speaker 1: but some of the higher have that revolutionary spirit, that
Speaker 1: socialist spirit. How much of that do you think carries
Speaker 1: over to what we're seeing today?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean in forty eight, this is what the
Speaker 2: Arabs called the Knakaba, which means catastrophe, where vath majority
Speaker 2: of the Arabic speaking Christians and Muslims are forced out
Speaker 2: of their home, is forced out of what becomes the
Speaker 2: state of Israel and forty eight into Jordan. The Gaza
Speaker 2: Strip which is under Egyptian administration. Syria Lebanon the West
Speaker 2: Bank is annexed by Jordan, but a lot of the Palatinians,
Speaker 2: refugees and expelles go there. Ben Gurian certainly wanted to
Speaker 2: create a socialist Jewish state. The difference between the early
Speaker 2: left wing socialist Zionists and the Soviets was there was
Speaker 2: no pretense to any internationalism. There was only going to
Speaker 2: be one nationality. It wasn't going to be an any
Speaker 2: federation between different ethnic groups. It wasn't going to be right.
Speaker 2: So something like the you know, Uzbek Soviet Social Republic, right,
Speaker 2: it was never on the table for the Palestinians by
Speaker 2: people like Ben Gurian and others that were closer in
Speaker 2: their mindset to the Soviets than people like Yabatinsky, who
Speaker 2: was heavily influenced by Selini. But I think there is
Speaker 2: this idea that, yeah, it is kind of a creation
Speaker 2: of a revolutionary state in forty eight, that by creating
Speaker 2: the first modern Jewish state, the first state since the
Speaker 2: destruction of the Second Temple and seventy a d that
Speaker 2: the models to look at were successful socialist revolutions like
Speaker 2: the USSR, where the power of the state had managed
Speaker 2: to accomplish what you know, we considered great things against
Speaker 2: great odds, and part of that the ethnic angle, and
Speaker 2: that the Soviets had dealt very harshly with ethnic groups
Speaker 2: they considered to be enemy nations, and the Israelis viewed
Speaker 2: that as a positive model regarding the Arabs came under
Speaker 2: their control. But of course, there are a number of
Speaker 2: key differences, particularly geography. There's no Siberia or Kazakhs dan
Speaker 2: send them to, so they just kicked them out to
Speaker 2: the nearest Arab states bordering Israel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's interesting that Israel right now is and
Speaker 1: you know, from the start, it is such an anachronism
Speaker 1: in that, you know, World War two is basically fought
Speaker 1: to destroy states like them in ethno state. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I like to point out is that
Speaker 1: they may have an ethno state right now, but they're
Speaker 1: still multicultural, and they're multicultural within Judy. You know, the
Speaker 1: Jews there are multicultural, and that is a.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, you know, my one trip to Israel, the
Speaker 2: one because I was invited and they paid for everything
Speaker 2: to give a paper on the neighbors of Jews in
Speaker 2: Central Asia. So I gave a paper on the deported
Speaker 2: German in Kazakhstan. But the one thing I kind of
Speaker 2: noticed was the only thing that held a lot of
Speaker 2: the various Jewish groups together in Israel was their opposition
Speaker 2: to the Arabs. So the preferred language everybody I was
Speaker 2: in contact with was Russian, not Hebrew. They used Hebrew
Speaker 2: to speak to other Israelis, but among themselves they used Russian, right,
Speaker 2: And I think this is a pattern that has existed earlier,
Speaker 2: with the Moroccan Jews using Arabic, yay Many Jews using Arabic,
Speaker 2: Iraqi Us using Arabic, Persian Jews obviously using a Parsi.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, you know, the Russian ones, they're
Speaker 2: so much larger. It is over a million of them,
Speaker 2: So they have for a consistently long time kind of
Speaker 2: resisted assimilation. That is, they'll go with general Israeli opposition
Speaker 2: to the Arabs, but they're not giving up Russian for Hebrew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting that an ethno state that it
Speaker 1: tries to bond itself based on the hatred of one people.
Speaker 1: I wonder who else in history has been accused of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I must be imagining it. Why did
Speaker 1: you tell everybody where they can find your work and
Speaker 1: support your work?
Speaker 2: Well, I have a book that you can get off
Speaker 2: of a Columbia University Press to use a great silence.
Speaker 2: I have a Patreon. It hasn't been too active recently
Speaker 2: because I haven't been doing any thing regarding it since
Speaker 2: for a while. I've been working a physical labor job.
Speaker 2: But currently I have a article I'll be writing for
Speaker 2: the yearbook of the Ukrainian Studies Institute at University Wafflaw
Speaker 2: and Poland on Korean Tatars their deportation eighty years ago.
Speaker 2: My last academic publication was at the end of last year,
Speaker 2: was a chapter in a book on Russian Germans on
Speaker 2: four Continents. I again wrote about German reported to Kazakhstan.
Speaker 2: But my email j dot auto pull at gmail dot
Speaker 2: com is connected to my PayPal if anybody interested in
Speaker 2: sending me any money if they really want to. But
Speaker 2: the big thing for why I would like to come
Speaker 2: on with these shows as possible right now is my
Speaker 2: book has not done as well in the last two
Speaker 2: years as I thought it should, so not that i
Speaker 2: care too much about the money from it, but I'd
Speaker 2: like people to at least read it. And I spent
Speaker 2: probably better chunk of more than ten years doing all
Speaker 2: of the research. I was in Kyrghyzstan and even Ghana
Speaker 2: and Iraq, so a lot of Soviet archives from Moscow,
Speaker 2: some from Bishkeek, some from Tartu in Estonia, and some
Speaker 2: from on the force repatriation, some from Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: The role of the US military enforcing ethnic Germans back
Speaker 2: to the Soviet Union to be sent to special settlements.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I would if you could buy my book
Speaker 2: and ask your local library to buy my book, that
Speaker 2: would be great.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna I'll make sure to link to
Speaker 1: it in the show notes, linked to your substack, links
Speaker 1: to the Patreon link to everything. All right, thank you, Ada,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. I want to welcome everyone back to
Speaker 1: the Pekanana Show and I want to welcome back Jay
Speaker 1: out O, Paul. How are you doing? How are you doing?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 1: Cool? So let's get into some history here. When you
Speaker 1: reached out to me, I guess you decided upon a
Speaker 1: little history of Germans in the Soviet Union prior to
Speaker 1: World War two and during World War two, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think last time we touched more
Speaker 1: on the polls and just really touched upon this subject.
Speaker 1: So where do you want to start.
Speaker 2: Well, start anywhere. So the German colonists started arriving in
Speaker 2: the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century, the first
Speaker 2: German colonist proper outside of the Baltic region, where they
Speaker 2: weren't really colonists but Conquerors was established in seventeen sixty
Speaker 2: four in the Volga and then after that, starting really
Speaker 2: after eighteen oh four, although there's earlier settlements in the
Speaker 2: Black Sea region, particularly Ukraine and Crimea, and then later
Speaker 2: the Transcaucasus. In eighteen eighteen settlements in Georgia, and they
Speaker 2: spread out eastward into Kazakhstan and Central Asia and starting
Speaker 2: fairly late in nineteen o seven into Siberia. Most of
Speaker 2: them are still living in the Volga and Black Sea
Speaker 2: regions up until the Second World War, when they are
Speaker 2: forcibly deported into kazakh Dan and Siberia, and almost the
Speaker 2: entire German population of European USSR is ethnically cleansed. But
Speaker 2: this is a process that begins considerably earlier in the
Speaker 2: Soviet regime of kind of ratcheting up anti German repression
Speaker 2: through the nineteen thirties in particular.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the last time you talked to you,
Speaker 1: you said that basically what was happening was there was
Speaker 1: a growing suspicion of diaspora peoples within the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: that actually had a homeland.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so all of the diaspora groups except for Jews,
Speaker 2: Assyrians and Gypsies were subject to national operations in thirty
Speaker 2: seven and thirty eight. By the NKVA day, we had
Speaker 2: mass arrest and executions in the diaspora population on the
Speaker 2: basis that they were spies for their home government, or
Speaker 2: in the case of the Koreans who were forcibly resettled
Speaker 2: in Central Asia in thirty seven from the Far East,
Speaker 2: that they were working for the Japanese who were their
Speaker 2: colonial power. But the Germans were hit the second hardest
Speaker 2: after the Poles. In thirty seven thirty eight, about five
Speaker 2: percent of the entire German population union was executed, but
Speaker 2: it was pretty much the top five percent as far
Speaker 2: as education levels, and it was particularly hard hit in
Speaker 2: the area around Odessa in Ukraine, which had a population
Speaker 2: of almost one hundred thousand Germans before the Second World
Speaker 2: War and being ethnically cleansed into Kazakhstan.
Speaker 1: Is there are there any numbers on how many of
Speaker 1: those were how many of the Germans who were there
Speaker 1: were actually ethnic Germans and not German Jews who just
Speaker 1: made their way into Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, the Soviet nationality classification have nemets for German and
Speaker 2: yevre for Jew. So when they say Nemets. In the
Speaker 2: Soviet archival documentation, they're talking about ethnic Germans, people that
Speaker 2: are predominantly of Lutheran background, with a large Catholic minority
Speaker 2: about twenty percent and a smaller Mennonite minority depending on
Speaker 2: the region between five and ten percent, but mostly Lutherans
Speaker 2: by religion, and they were still mostly practicing all the
Speaker 2: way up into the nineteen thirties before the massive anti
Speaker 2: religious campaigns.
Speaker 1: So you said about five percent the top, the top
Speaker 1: five percent were taken out. I assume that would be
Speaker 1: educated business owners, things like that, people of means, people
Speaker 1: who people who thought they may have influence outside of
Speaker 1: the country. The other ninety five percent what happens to
Speaker 1: them as as war grows and.
Speaker 2: Well, so thirty seven thirty eight comes after the dispossession
Speaker 2: and decouplocization of the richer Germans. But with the case
Speaker 2: of the Germans, unlike with Russians and the Ukrainian, the
Speaker 2: Soviet officials pretty much decided that all Germans were kulaks.
Speaker 2: In certain areas. For instance, in Turkmenistan, the government actually
Speaker 2: stated that it was impossible to collectivise the Germans, so
Speaker 2: they all to be deported as kulak because they were
Speaker 2: all Kulak colonizers to the marrow of their bones, with
Speaker 2: the phrase used by the officials. But also there admitioned
Speaker 2: that the vast majority in some areas of Germans being
Speaker 2: deported as kulaks to special settlement villages in the far
Speaker 2: North and the Euros were in point of fact not
Speaker 2: kulaks by the Soviet definition, but Middle peasants instead. But
Speaker 2: because they were ethnically German, they are automatically assumed to
Speaker 2: be Kulaks by the NKVT operatives working on the ground.
Speaker 2: So this is already a nineteen thirty happening, and that's
Speaker 2: about maybe fifty thousand Germans, maybe four percent of the population,
Speaker 2: which is considerably greater than the one point two percent
Speaker 2: of the population Soviet know the whole that deported as
Speaker 2: kulak at this time, but you can see it, darts
Speaker 2: rats up. You're four percent deported, five percent executed. And
Speaker 2: then in forty one, one hundred percent in the European
Speaker 2: areas forcibly relocated into Kazakhtan and Siberia, and then later
Speaker 2: all of the able bodied adult men first and then
Speaker 2: after October seventh, nineteen forty two women as well mobilized
Speaker 2: into the labor army to work in gulag camps, mostly
Speaker 2: in the eurals felling trees or in industrial construction.
Speaker 1: When you take into consideration that the attitude of internet
Speaker 1: national jewelry outside of Russia towards Germans over a long
Speaker 1: period of time. But let's just go from like nineteen
Speaker 1: from the time the National Socialists take power in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, how what percentage at this time from thirty
Speaker 1: six thirty seven and then going through thirty seven thirty
Speaker 1: eight going through to the war, what percentage of the
Speaker 1: NKVD and these groups that would be concentrating on Germans
Speaker 1: are actually ethnically Jewish, And I assume it's just the
Speaker 1: same kind of animus towards the German people that they
Speaker 1: that was happening in the quote unquote free world.
Speaker 2: It was very high in the thirties. So I don't
Speaker 2: have exact numbers on the before the formation of the
Speaker 2: NKA in nineteen thirty four, when it's still the okpay ooh,
Speaker 2: but the de facto the head of the Okapayu for
Speaker 2: most of the detakulacuisation period of time is Genrik yea Gooda,
Speaker 2: and he's number two man do Urrey at the peacetime
Speaker 2: where he's a sidelined, but the number one man do
Speaker 2: Yuri Manzinski was very ill with heart disease all from
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three all the way till nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 2: So the main man in the Okapayu with Genrik Yagoda
Speaker 2: becomes the first head of the NKA day in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four. So that's when you have the first mass
Speaker 2: wave of repression in the terms of nineteen thirty thirty
Speaker 2: one roundup of Germans being accued of being Kulak's and
Speaker 2: sent to special settlements mostly used for fourth labor and
Speaker 2: forestry to cut down trees, places like arcangles in the
Speaker 2: far North and of course in the Euros with a
Speaker 2: lot of forestry, and in the Vogan German Republic itself
Speaker 2: at about six point six percent, that was higher than
Speaker 2: the German population as a whole. But there are certain
Speaker 2: areas like Evapatoria, which is a district in Crimea where
Speaker 2: seventeen percent of the German population is forcibly deported to
Speaker 2: the special settlement villages for fourth labor in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: So after nineteen thirty four we have figures. So in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four to all the way to the end
Speaker 2: of the Great Terror and Yejav's removal and replacement Beria
Speaker 2: November thirty eight, between twenty percent and forty percent of
Speaker 2: the top one hundred or so NKVA and A officers
Speaker 2: are ethnically Jewish. And in the period of time we're
Speaker 2: talking of the Great Terror at thirty seven and thirty eight,
Speaker 2: as I say, it concentrates in Ukraine. So the German
Speaker 2: operation of the total of fifty five thousand convictions, of
Speaker 2: which forty two thousand almost are death sentences. Of those
Speaker 2: forty two thousand death sentences eighteen thousand and five take
Speaker 2: place in Ukraine. The head of the NKVNA and Ukraine
Speaker 2: in thirty seven and thirty eight is a man named
Speaker 2: Israel Leplevsky, who was a former Bundist the Jewish Nationalist
Speaker 2: before he became a Bolshevik. The Boon was absorbed into
Speaker 2: the the Communist part what becomes the Communist Party of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, and he specifically asked the head of
Speaker 2: the NKBA Yejia offer with not Jewish. Although he is
Speaker 2: the number two man Belski his original name is Abraham
Speaker 2: Abraham Levin was Jewish during the first part, during the
Speaker 2: second part of the National the operations, so we see
Speaker 2: Lapleski asked geijav through up his quota for political arrest,
Speaker 2: including the national operations, three separate times. So it wasn't
Speaker 2: that you hear that he had no agency. It was
Speaker 2: all dollin in Yeasia. Lapleski was pushing to arrest more
Speaker 2: people on the national operations from Yasia and did it
Speaker 2: more than once.
Speaker 1: Well we know that. I mean even up to through today,
Speaker 1: you see the evidence of the ethnic hatred for Russian
Speaker 1: even for not only for Germans, but even for Russians.
Speaker 1: So at this point have the Russians, that the ethnic
Speaker 1: Russians that needed to be eliminated, Have they already been eliminated?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I understand the question.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there was there were there is an
Speaker 1: immediate purge after the Bolshevik Revolution, right, there was Russians,
Speaker 1: were ethnic Russians were killed by yes, who were Just
Speaker 1: how long did that continue? Let me I guess how
Speaker 1: long that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the movement to as it will rehabilitate the Russian
Speaker 2: nation from this period of time between nineteen eighteen, really
Speaker 2: picking up in nineteen twenty three with the twelve Party
Speaker 2: Congress in Karnazazia, all the way up until really nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six, when you have the first phrases of the
Speaker 2: Russian nation during the Communists there are in Pravda. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this was a period of time you have, so it
Speaker 2: lasts in nineteen eighteen nineteen thirty six you have really
Speaker 2: kind of a campaign, a systematic get what they call
Speaker 2: against great power chauvinism, but by great power they meant
Speaker 2: the ethnic Russians who were more greater percentage of the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union than they were Tzaris Russia because they lost Finland,
Speaker 2: Poland in the Baltic States, so they were over fifty
Speaker 2: percent a majority, but there was no affirmative action for
Speaker 2: them like there was every other nationality during this time.
Speaker 2: And in thirty six you start to change with the
Speaker 2: new constitution written by Buharan and then you see at
Speaker 2: the end of the Great terror, Ya Gootazori been replaced
Speaker 2: in thirty six by Yejaf who was half Russian. His
Speaker 2: mother was Lithuanian, but he wasn't Jewish. November thirty eight,
Speaker 2: Bria comes in and the percentage of Jews in the
Speaker 2: top ranks of the NKFA day plummets from twenty percent
Speaker 2: to four percent. So a few guys still around, like Brenzon,
Speaker 2: who controls the finances of the NKA day nafterle Frankel,
Speaker 2: who was famous from Sulzanias and Gulag Archipelago. He's still
Speaker 2: head of the rail construction for Gulag gula Hid during
Speaker 2: the in part of Stalins well all the way to
Speaker 2: the end of Stalins reign, all right, but there's a
Speaker 2: big decrease then, and it really I think had to
Speaker 2: do with a kind of a conflict based upon region
Speaker 2: and ethnicity within the NKA day. So originally the leadership
Speaker 2: of the Cheka, the gay peu Ohau Nka Day are
Speaker 2: all people from the Palist settlement, and they're not all Jewish.
Speaker 2: Jagoda is the only one who makes it the very
Speaker 2: top Jewish, but they all are from the Palist settlement
Speaker 2: and a lot of them have Jewish spouses. For the
Speaker 2: first head of the Chaka, Dzinski, was Polish, but his
Speaker 2: wife was Jewish. The second guy, Vinzinsky, is Polish, but
Speaker 2: as I said, already assuming power in twenty three he's
Speaker 2: already ha to basically give over running of the organization
Speaker 2: to Yagoda because he's not physically able to do it himself.
Speaker 2: After you go to Yaja. So all these people from
Speaker 2: the areas that were in the Police Lithuanian Commonwealth and
Speaker 2: then they get basically removed by Bria, whose center of
Speaker 2: powers in Georgia. The ethnic Georgian people like Rapava and
Speaker 2: Carredza are also ethnic Georgian ethnic Armenians from Tabilisi like
Speaker 2: the Kobolov brothers, So they replace a lot of the
Speaker 2: Jews that were in this kind of circle, along with
Speaker 2: some Poles and people from Lithuania like Gaijav that had
Speaker 2: dominated the Cheka Gaypeiu ob Payu Nkva day all the
Speaker 2: way from nineteen seventeen up to nineteen the end of
Speaker 2: ninety thirty eight.
Speaker 1: So do you consider it to be something targeted when
Speaker 1: Baria takes over for the amount of Jews and power
Speaker 1: in the MKVD two.
Speaker 2: Well become there are a lot more Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians appointed,
Speaker 2: and they said the Jewish percentage plummets down to four percent,
Speaker 2: although there's still some high ranking Jews like Baronzon and Frankel.
Speaker 1: But that was targeted. But was that done on purpose?
Speaker 2: Yes, because they were basically different gangs. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just like in the US. Gangs in the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: are based upon ethnicity or what they call natanal notes,
Speaker 2: which is really ethno racial. In this case, it's a
Speaker 2: little bit more complex than that. It's kind of coalitions
Speaker 2: of different ethno racial groups. For by geography, and that
Speaker 2: you had the Jews and Poles in the original dominating
Speaker 2: the original political police, and then Georgians and Armenians allied
Speaker 2: with Russians in the second version of it under Berriam.
Speaker 2: But the one big change you do see is that
Speaker 2: the mass execution that took place in thirty seven and
Speaker 2: thirty eight under yezav And Belski, and then in Ukraine
Speaker 2: Laplevsky was head, and then Belarus it was a Boris Berman,
Speaker 2: the brother of the head of the Gulag from thirty
Speaker 2: to thirty seven, Matve Berman. Those are largely replaced by
Speaker 2: forced labor, either in labor camps or special settlements, because
Speaker 2: Biria thought it was a waste to just shoot people
Speaker 2: when you could work them to death.
Speaker 1: So the in studying the Spanish civil war, and you
Speaker 1: look at the officers that were sent to advise there.
Speaker 1: Overwhelmingly I think last I counted, out of eleven of them,
Speaker 1: like nine or ten were Jewish, and it seems like
Speaker 1: when they got back they were executed. They were the
Speaker 1: majority of them were summarily executed. Was what was that
Speaker 1: movement in thirty eight and thirty nine to remove it?
Speaker 1: Was that targeting Jews or was that just targeting?
Speaker 2: I think it's targeting people that were outside the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union because they also had one of the national operations
Speaker 2: is not against the nationality. It's called the Hudderbdzi operation.
Speaker 2: And when in thirty six they sold the Chinese Eastern
Speaker 2: Railroad in Manchuria to the Japanese, they recalled all of
Speaker 2: the Russian workers back into the Soviet Union and the
Speaker 2: people that were stupid enough to return were either shot,
Speaker 2: the vast majority of them, or were set into time
Speaker 2: in a labor camp. When I would live in Kyrgyzstan,
Speaker 2: I knew a guy who spent ten years in a
Speaker 2: labor camp because he had returned from working on the Railroaduria.
Speaker 2: But he was still alive and spent every day drinking
Speaker 2: beer and smoking cigarettes enjoying the fact that he'd outlived
Speaker 2: all of his professors. But the reason was because they
Speaker 2: had spent time outside the Soviet Union and therefore been
Speaker 2: exposed to foreign ideas or perhaps engaged in conspiracies. So
Speaker 2: there was that paranoia. I think that people returning from
Speaker 2: Spain the same idea that they were a suspect for
Speaker 2: having been outside the USSR and in contact with foreign environments.
Speaker 1: When it came to Russian forces during World War Two,
Speaker 1: were were there any German conscripts into it? Or were
Speaker 1: there any Germans who actually volunteered to fight against their
Speaker 1: own Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes. In the beginning there were over thirty three thousand
Speaker 2: Volga Germans who were fighting in the Red Army again
Speaker 2: the Wehrmacht. They put up a Alamo type defense at
Speaker 2: Breast where they were wiped out by the Wehrmont. They
Speaker 2: were not removed from the military forces of the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union until seventh September, and then they were all sent
Speaker 2: to force what they called Construction Battalion. And then they
Speaker 2: were mobilized into the Labor Army when it's created and
Speaker 2: sent to the corrective labor camps of the Gulag in
Speaker 2: the Urals primarily the fell timber and industrial construction. Some
Speaker 2: avoided it by changing their nationality in collaboration with their
Speaker 2: commanding officers. Was one famous German soldier who claimed to
Speaker 2: be Alzerbaijani. He took the identity of a fallen comrade.
Speaker 2: There were some that managed to work in the Partisans
Speaker 2: organied the Nkada to fight against the Germans, but the
Speaker 2: numbers are limited because there was in eight September or
Speaker 2: the decree to remove all ethnic Germans from all Soviet
Speaker 2: military institutions. So there were a handful that we know
Speaker 2: of that managed to kind of work around us by
Speaker 2: claiming other nationalities and having their commanding officers that go
Speaker 2: along with the deception, but not very many. The Vath
Speaker 2: majority were of the over thirty three thousand that were
Speaker 2: Volga Germans that were still fighting in the Red Army
Speaker 2: by September nineteen forty one, were all sent to labor
Speaker 2: camps by the Soviet government.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that certain groups were considered to be cool ocks,
Speaker 1: even if they weren't. How much of how much of
Speaker 1: this was at this point, how much of it was
Speaker 1: actual ideology, the ideology of communism and Bolshevism and how
Speaker 1: much was it Just basically they're operating on autopilot and
Speaker 1: that's just what you declare somebody at this point.
Speaker 2: I don't think it has much to do with any
Speaker 2: type of Marxist ideology. I think a lot of it
Speaker 2: is just the prejudices these people already had against these groups.
Speaker 2: So they have Zaris roots. But of course they're not all.
Speaker 2: It's not limited to Russian. Everybody that was in the
Speaker 2: kind of Russian environment you read the kind of old
Speaker 2: nineteenth century of Russian literature, there is a stereotype of
Speaker 2: the Germans as being a rich, undeserving colonizers in the
Speaker 2: Voga in Ukraine or being exploiters. So during the Civil War,
Speaker 2: right the anarchis Undernester Makhna, they go after the Mennonites
Speaker 2: because Makna had worked for the Mennonites as a farm
Speaker 2: hand and didn't like the way he was paid and treated.
Speaker 2: So all of the Mennonites.
Speaker 1: That became that's ironic, but in.
Speaker 2: Particularly it's quite violent, so much so particularly with the
Speaker 2: rapes of women that for the only time ever the
Speaker 2: Mennonites in the world, they took up arms, being sponsored
Speaker 2: by the German governances. During World War One, still nineteen
Speaker 2: eighteen before November to create self protection units, and this
Speaker 2: was a big deal for a creed that had been
Speaker 2: pacifist in the early sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: How much was Asian Russia involved in this? You know,
Speaker 1: most people when they think of Russia, you really only
Speaker 1: think of European Russia, and that decide that his But
Speaker 1: there's this whole other side which even though much more sparsely,
Speaker 1: much more sparsely populated and diverse. Actually, how much were
Speaker 1: they pulled in? How much of the Soviet ideology and
Speaker 1: the Soviet the crushing Soviet hand did they have to
Speaker 1: suffer all the way in the East.
Speaker 2: Well, there's not a lot of Central Asians. There are
Speaker 2: quite a few Caucasians involved in the Soviet government, particularly
Speaker 2: before the nineteen fifties, in large part because they're not educated,
Speaker 2: in large part because the traditional way of life is
Speaker 2: not congruence with the Soviet ideology. So the memberships in
Speaker 2: the Communist Party are quite low, and the involvement is
Speaker 2: largely just on the local basis. But you do have
Speaker 2: some groups. So one group which is not well studied.
Speaker 2: During World War One, the Russian government brought in a
Speaker 2: large number of China. These workers from China, and during
Speaker 2: the Bolshek Revolution most of them sided with the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2: A lot of them joined the Red Army, and there
Speaker 2: was a Chikai unit noted for its brutality composed entirely
Speaker 2: of Chinese that operated in the Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So let's switch over a little bit to the war
Speaker 1: and the Eastern Front. So do you know, do you
Speaker 1: have any like general numbers of on the eastern battlefield,
Speaker 1: on the Eastern Front, how many what the population of
Speaker 1: Jews was. And obviously the Germans are accused and rightly
Speaker 1: so in many cases of them just not caring about
Speaker 1: any Jewish populations that are on the Eastern Front. When
Speaker 1: I say, rightly so, they're accused because they didn't. How
Speaker 1: much did the Soviets care. It just doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: me like if you're at war and you're at war
Speaker 1: with the Wehrmacht, then you're taking special care to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we can't hurt these Jews over here.
Speaker 2: Well, the Jewish population in the Soviet Union was probably
Speaker 2: about three million at the start of the war when
Speaker 2: Germany invaded, and probably about a million were either evacuated
Speaker 2: or made it on their own east of the Front.
Speaker 2: I went to a conference in Jerusalem was called Jews
Speaker 2: and their neighbors in Central Asia about this. So they
Speaker 2: were disproportionately evacuated because they were disproportionately members of the
Speaker 2: Communist Party and disproportionately working in industries that were considered
Speaker 2: important by the Soviet government and needed to be evacuated
Speaker 2: each of the euro to prevent the Germans from conference.
Speaker 2: So as a percentage, much larger number of Jews of
Speaker 2: their population than non Jews were officially evacuated by the
Speaker 2: Soviet government. It appears to have been on basis of
Speaker 2: party membership and necessary occupation rather than natsanalos. So over
Speaker 2: a third of them were evacuated East and a lot
Speaker 2: of them ended up in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and they
Speaker 2: didn't get like with the German departies. The Kazakhs who
Speaker 2: had to share their house with Jewish evacuees in Kazakhstan,
Speaker 2: we're not very happy about it. I talked to one
Speaker 2: Jewish guy in Israel who ended up as a child
Speaker 2: in one of those and he said, yeah, they didn't
Speaker 2: really like us coming there because we didn't speak their
Speaker 2: language and they had to give up their space in
Speaker 2: their house. But I actually understand why they didn't like it,
Speaker 2: though there is at least among among that with that guy,
Speaker 2: an understanding of the problem. But yeah, they did have
Speaker 2: it wasn't it. I don't think we in the ethnic preference,
Speaker 2: but certainly due to their higher membership in the party
Speaker 2: and needed economic industries, they had a much greater number
Speaker 2: percentage evacuated than your average Russian or Ukrainian.
Speaker 1: Are there any numbers on the percentage of the civilians
Speaker 1: on the Eastern Front that were killed.
Speaker 2: It's disputed, but the numbers range from four million civilians
Speaker 2: dying in the Soviet Union during the Second World War
Speaker 2: due to the Germans. That's in addition to another two
Speaker 2: million plus that Stalin killed through labor camps and special
Speaker 2: settlements and execution, all the way up to ten million civilian.
Speaker 2: I tend to go with the lower number, particularly because
Speaker 2: the person who came up with the lower numbers, Viazemskoff,
Speaker 2: was now dead. He was the first person who would
Speaker 2: not a member of the Communist Party allowed into the
Speaker 2: Soviet archives to study the Gulag, and he wrote a
Speaker 2: fantastic book on the special settlement regime kulaks and deported
Speaker 2: Germans and other nationalities in two thousand and five, which
Speaker 2: is still one of my go to references always, so
Speaker 2: I'm more likely to trust Zemskoff and I am the
Speaker 2: official number from the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is
Speaker 2: of course as an interest in blowing up the number
Speaker 2: of Russian civilians that were killed during the war for
Speaker 2: its own purposes support the government in Moscow.
Speaker 1: What do you think the numbers were on the war total?
Speaker 1: You know, Darryl Cooper mentioned recent in the first episode
Speaker 1: of Enemies Is German Is German Series that sixty million.
Speaker 1: We could it could be sixty million, some say forty million,
Speaker 1: some say twenty million.
Speaker 2: Are we including Asia in the Pacific?
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's including Asia, well, I know,
Speaker 1: I mean total.
Speaker 2: The numbers, you know, range from the Soviet Union, which
Speaker 2: would be the largest number absolute, from twenty to twenty
Speaker 2: seven million. Twenty seven million is the official figure. Twenty
Speaker 2: million is somewhere with Zamskoff is advocating, although the majority
Speaker 2: of those, the military losses and the German losses, from
Speaker 2: what I can say, are about eight million, five million
Speaker 2: military and three million civilians. So sixty sixty million looks high,
Speaker 2: but forty million probably around right, lots of people. It's
Speaker 2: hard to do a tabulation because you have to be
Speaker 2: an expert on every little country in Europe. And you know,
Speaker 2: some countries in Europe they look small, but you know
Speaker 2: they have large loss of places like Yugoslavia and Poland
Speaker 2: because the war was quite fierce.
Speaker 1: Was there any hope at all that packs between Russia
Speaker 1: and Germany, the Soviet union in Germany before the war
Speaker 1: could have could have lasted, that that it didn't have
Speaker 1: to happen, that there there could have been peace.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Everything I've seen suggests this. Daalin thought
Speaker 2: that the pact was only temporary so that he could
Speaker 2: build up enough forces to invade Germany. So if the
Speaker 2: Germans didn't attack earlier, they were going to get attacked
Speaker 2: by the Soviets and be on the defensive, all right.
Speaker 2: So I don't see a scenario where the Soviet government
Speaker 2: under Stalin decides that it's going to have a permanent
Speaker 2: peace with Germany. In fact, if say somebody like Trotsky,
Speaker 2: there wouldn't have been any piece at all. Thirty nine
Speaker 2: forty one wouldn't have existed, he would have already in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties been trying to push revolution into Central Europe.
Speaker 1: So then you take the narrative of Icebreaker that super
Speaker 1: Off's narrative.
Speaker 2: That I don't take it necessarily is because I think
Speaker 2: super Off is pushing the date in a way that
Speaker 2: we don't have enough evident support. But yeah, I think eventually,
Speaker 2: when the Soviet forces get large enough, they would have
Speaker 2: invaded everything. You know. You hear from defenders of Stalin
Speaker 2: today is that the pact was only temporary because the
Speaker 2: capital those powers wouldn't support him earlier over Czechoslovakia, right,
Speaker 2: so eventually he was going to you know, quote unquote
Speaker 2: liberate Central Europe. It was just they had to get
Speaker 2: enough military forces. Now I'm not sure when that would
Speaker 2: have exactly been, it's not my area of expertise, but yeah, eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of years down the line, they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: Held well obviously because of American backing, and not only that,
Speaker 1: but goods transfer, the transfer what was the agreement where
Speaker 1: the United States was manufacturing the United States was manufacturing
Speaker 1: and delivering goods too lean LEAs. Yeah, Lenley's because of
Speaker 1: len Lea's well, at the end of the war, the
Speaker 1: Civic Union ends up with half of Europe anyway, Do
Speaker 1: you think that if if Operation Barbara it doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't invade, that if they would have been
Speaker 1: on the defensive, that the Soviet Union would have taken
Speaker 1: the whole peninsula.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think. I think if the Germans hadn't attacked
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union in forty one, that eventually, I don't know,
Speaker 2: would have been forty three or forty four, the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union would have attacked Germany. They would have gone to
Speaker 2: take the parts of Poland that Germany had taken in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine and tried to move as far west
Speaker 2: as possible.
Speaker 1: Is that a Is that one of those opinions that
Speaker 1: you that gets you in trouble and keeps you out.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've been out of academia for so long. There's no
Speaker 2: trouble anymore. I just clean toilets. Now.
Speaker 1: Well, we're not ending right now, but this, I guess
Speaker 1: this is a good point as any as anybody who's
Speaker 1: watching who has in at any university or any school whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Doctor Pohl here is looking is looking for a job
Speaker 1: because it seems he seems to have been locked out
Speaker 1: of academia, and not only in the United States. I
Speaker 1: think you overseas, you you're having problems too, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the jobs dried up overseas as far as foreigners.
Speaker 2: But the last place I worked, American University of Xulamania,
Speaker 2: is basically a CIA front who had two goals. One
Speaker 2: to keep the curds in Iraq so that the all
Speaker 2: the oil is under one central government, and two to
Speaker 2: impose the lgbt Q upon the Muslim population there. So
Speaker 2: they didn't renew my contract when I said they were stupid.
Speaker 1: Well, anyone who has uh, anyone who can help, please
Speaker 1: you can reach out to me and I'll make sure
Speaker 1: to get get through to doctor Paul. The United States
Speaker 1: doesn't do len lease, doesn't join the war, there's a
Speaker 1: Soviet do's the Soviet Union defeat Germany. I was saying,
Speaker 1: if if the United States doesn't do lend lease, doesn't
Speaker 1: completely support the Soviet Union, how does the war go?
Speaker 2: Uh? Soviets still might win, but they would take much
Speaker 2: much greater losses. It would take them much longer a
Speaker 2: period of time. And instead of talking twenty to twenty
Speaker 2: seven million. We might be talking one hundred million out
Speaker 2: of one hundred and seventy two million people in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union dying to try and and win. It would
Speaker 2: be a very purehic victory if they did win.
Speaker 1: Seems like the meat grinder that we're seeing there today
Speaker 1: is some somewhat not similar. But the numbers, at least
Speaker 1: on the Ukrainian side seem to be seem to be
Speaker 1: piling up. And when you consider some of the numbers
Speaker 1: that are happening today and you compare them in scale,
Speaker 1: you know, to the scale of World War Two, we
Speaker 1: maybe even be seeing at that scale when you just
Speaker 1: consider that this is a historic kind of local war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, some of the local wars get very high
Speaker 2: percentages of young men dying. So I think Serbia during
Speaker 2: World War One, that's something like a third of the
Speaker 2: young men total died in combat. The war between the
Speaker 2: Triple Alliance with the Paraguay a similar percentage.
Speaker 1: I think, Perish when it comes to let's go back,
Speaker 1: let's go back to Russia a little bit and to
Speaker 1: their to their diaspora groups. You said that clearly that
Speaker 1: the reason why certain groups were targeted were well, they
Speaker 1: were members of an ethnic group that was considered an enemy,
Speaker 1: and they had a government. And then what happens when
Speaker 1: Israel comes into existence in nineteen forty eight, what is
Speaker 1: the attitude towards the diaspora. Do Jews in the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union automatically become a diaspora Now they can be looked
Speaker 1: upon with ye with suspicion.
Speaker 2: It's not automatic because initially the Soviet Union believes that
Speaker 2: it can create a socialist state allied with the USSR
Speaker 2: in Israel, and it is particularly eager to reduce British power.
Speaker 2: And it views the Arab monarchies such as King Abdullah
Speaker 2: and Jordan, the King Abdullah, the first of the grandfather
Speaker 2: of the current monarch, but also the government in Iraq
Speaker 2: with British puppets, and also Egypt Evan before Nassar's revolution
Speaker 2: overthrows the monarchy, so they support the Zionists initially in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty eight. In nineteen forty nine, the way of
Speaker 2: weakening the British way of opposing these reactionary pro British
Speaker 2: monarchies and the Arab states established really through the League
Speaker 2: of Nations mandates which were to give self determination an
Speaker 2: independence to the Arab states that were taken out of
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire, and this becomes changed later primarily because
Speaker 2: the Israelis don't want to go along with the Soviets,
Speaker 2: and after Stalin died, there is a change of policy
Speaker 2: starting in nineteen fifty four with the Soviets approving a
Speaker 2: large sale of Chech weapons to Egypt. After NASA comes
Speaker 2: to power, and basically the conflict goes that the Soviets
Speaker 2: get tired of Shenanigan by people like go to my
Speaker 2: ear who keeps wanting Soviet Jews to come to Israel,
Speaker 2: claiming the Soviet Union is anti Semitic, but it's okay
Speaker 2: with all the Jews in America just staying in America
Speaker 2: sending money. That didn't go well with the Soviet leadership.
Speaker 2: And also the fact that Soviets looked at the map
Speaker 2: and said, there's four million Jews in Israel and one
Speaker 2: hundred million Arabs, maybe we should support the other side,
Speaker 2: especially after the monarchies. Jordan, of course never got overthrown,
Speaker 2: but in Iraq there was an overthrow of the monarchy
Speaker 2: to a secular nationalist government that was much more friendly
Speaker 2: to the USSR, and of course NASA coming to power
Speaker 2: in Egypt much more favorable to Soviets, which is why
Speaker 2: they green light the Czech arm sales. So by the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six, when the British and French and Israelis
Speaker 2: try and take the Suez Canal back from Egypt, which
Speaker 2: had been nationalized by Nasar, the Soviets are on the
Speaker 2: Arab side against the Israelis on this Ironically, the United
Speaker 2: States is as well, because the United States threatened the
Speaker 2: British or to evaluate their pound but if they don't
Speaker 2: pull out of attacking Egypt. This is the same time
Speaker 2: the Soviets are crushing the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest, so
Speaker 2: it provides a good diversion for the Soviets if everybody's
Speaker 2: looking at what the British, Frenchs and Israelis are doing
Speaker 2: in Egypt rather than what they are doing in Hungary.
Speaker 2: And then but of course, by nineteen sixty seven, the
Speaker 2: Soviet governor Brezhnev thoroughly with the rest of the Third world,
Speaker 2: supporting the Arabs against the israel And in sixty four
Speaker 2: they start they officially recognize the PLO as the representative
Speaker 2: of the Paladinian people. So there's a big change, a
Speaker 2: lot of it driven by pragmatic geopolitics and real politics
Speaker 2: that it would be much better for the Soviets internationally
Speaker 2: to support the larger Arab population against the smaller Israeli one.
Speaker 1: Well, you see that clearly in the fact that most
Speaker 1: of Israel's enemies are using AK forty seven's that are
Speaker 1: built in factories. In that the Soviets actually went to
Speaker 1: Egypt and went went to other countries and built factories
Speaker 1: to basically.
Speaker 2: Including in Egypt, the AK forty seven factory in Egypt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I actually own one. I actually owned one
Speaker 1: of the ones out of that factory. The yeah, they're
Speaker 1: It's really weird to me when people say that, like
Speaker 1: historically Russia, that the Zionists controlled Russia, when you consider
Speaker 1: that all of their enemies were using Russian weapons against them.
Speaker 2: It just changes. They initially, I said in forty eight,
Speaker 2: forty nine, they support the Zionists, they want to weaken
Speaker 2: the British, they want to weaken the Arab governments that
Speaker 2: are in their mind reactionary pro British. But after you
Speaker 2: have a series of left wing they're not communists, but
Speaker 2: they're certainly not favorable to the West. Revolutions in Egypt
Speaker 2: and Iraq and Syria, the Basis coming to power in
Speaker 2: Syria and Iraq, NASA in Egypt. This all changes. So
Speaker 2: by nineteen fifty six you see the Soviets, certainly on
Speaker 2: the Arab side, they had already started supporting with military
Speaker 2: arms the Egyptian government of Nasa in fifty four. So
Speaker 2: there's a change from the late Stalin as there era
Speaker 2: when they think they can get a Jewish Soviet People's
Speaker 2: Republic in Israel versus supporting what they call the progressive
Speaker 2: regimes in the Arab world, these kind of regimes like
Speaker 2: the Bassist in Syria and Iraq and NASA in Egypt.
Speaker 1: So the Soviet Union basically wins World War two. Stalin
Speaker 1: at some point once he once the bomb is acquired,
Speaker 1: you can consider him to be maybe the most powerful
Speaker 1: man in the world, one of the most powerful men
Speaker 1: that ever lived. What starts what starts their slide? What
Speaker 1: do you see as their starts their slide down to
Speaker 1: where ye empires don't fall overnight. They It takes a.
Speaker 2: Well, really ideologically, I don't think anybody believed in Marxism
Speaker 2: Leninism even by the time of World War two. But
Speaker 2: they then can switch to the Great Patriotic War. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a way to mobilize. But then, of
Speaker 2: course all the veterans die off, and this is not sustainable,
Speaker 2: so then they switch like many countries. Ironically a good
Speaker 2: parallel to South Korea, where they switched from the nationalist
Speaker 2: anti Japanese sentiment under Sigmund reed to economics under Park chunghi.
Speaker 2: Because Park chung he fought with the Japanese. They switched to, Okay,
Speaker 2: we can maturely give you a better standard of living
Speaker 2: than your parents and grandparents had. But the problem was
Speaker 2: they could look and see that, yeah, well, our standard
Speaker 2: living is greater than our grandparents, but it's much lower
Speaker 2: than Western Europe, and it's much lower than Japan, and
Speaker 2: places like South Korea are becoming richer than us. This
Speaker 2: is not sustainable we're becoming and when it totally stagnates
Speaker 2: in the late bridge neverra it's not getting any better,
Speaker 2: And then it starts to get worse, particularly you see
Speaker 2: things like the life expectancy of men start to decline.
Speaker 2: I think that was the end of it. They had
Speaker 2: nothing less to legitimize that the revolution itself hadn't been
Speaker 2: as they say, probably since nineteen forty one a real reason.
Speaker 2: And when the German debadd it'd rather than appeal to Marxism, Leninism, Dowalent,
Speaker 2: appeal to Russian nationalism for the majority of the population.
Speaker 2: And then there were kind of parallels appeal to each
Speaker 2: non Russian national nationality that it would for their nationalism. So,
Speaker 2: you know, you do this for the Curgous nation, or
Speaker 2: you do this for the Uzbek nation. It wasn't you
Speaker 2: do this for Marxism, Leninism and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Speaker 1: How much of it had to do with just sort
Speaker 1: of empire where you have satellites in Central America, Islands,
Speaker 1: South America, all through Eastern europe An empire is very
Speaker 1: hard to keep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's very expensive. I mean, the Soviets were
Speaker 2: giving billions of dollars to places like Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia.
Speaker 2: And one of the first things, you know, Gorbachev did
Speaker 2: was he cut off these client dates, right, those are Cubas.
Speaker 2: You know, the deal of one pound of one you know,
Speaker 2: barrel of oil for equivalent volume of sugar is over
Speaker 2: because oil is worth a lot more than sugar, and
Speaker 2: that really, you know, crippled the Cuban economy for a
Speaker 2: while because they were dependent upon this heavy subsidy from
Speaker 2: the USSR. And you know, certain places like Vietnam were
Speaker 2: managed to reform in nineteen eighty three to starting a
Speaker 2: ninety three to avoid famine and did fairly well. Other
Speaker 2: places like Ethiopia, you know, the regime ended up being
Speaker 2: overthrown and it still got problems of civil war. Cuba
Speaker 2: did some reform, so it's not as bad as it was,
Speaker 2: but they're still hurting because they still have a largely
Speaker 2: socialist economy that is not nearly a dynamic as the
Speaker 2: reformed ones in places like Vietnam and China.
Speaker 1: So after Stalin dies, do you think that a lot
Speaker 1: of it just becomes anti West and and they see
Speaker 1: the West as being Zionists controlled. I mean, Yaki writes
Speaker 1: about this. There's a lot of writers on the on
Speaker 1: the new right, on the well the post war right,
Speaker 1: the the illegal right, start writing that, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to make your choice. You're either with the Zionists
Speaker 1: or you're not and the United States or Zionists controlled.
Speaker 1: So this is why Yaqui was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm siding with the Soviet Union. Basically
Speaker 1: or with the warsaw with the warsaw pack game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the Soviet Union warsaw Pack state. After nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven War, uh, they said, the second and third World,
Speaker 2: this is one of their pillars. It was the kind
Speaker 2: of there are certain things that kind of like unified them,
Speaker 2: and beyond that, there wasn't much that unified the third world.
Speaker 2: One of them was opposition to Zionism. Another was opposition
Speaker 2: to PARTEID in South Africa, another was opposition to the
Speaker 2: US mention in Vietnam. And there was also opposition of
Speaker 2: what remained of European colonialism, although as time went on
Speaker 2: there were fewer European colonies and they were pulling out
Speaker 2: and domestically. It was a way to oppose Jewish immigration movement.
Speaker 2: So the reason why the Soviets and they got more
Speaker 2: grief over this one issue than anything else they did,
Speaker 2: even though by far not the worst thing they did,
Speaker 2: was they wanted to maintain the retain the educated Jewish
Speaker 2: population in the Soviet Union that were doing things like
Speaker 2: being engineers and professors and whatnot, because they didn't want
Speaker 2: to lose that human capital. But there was pressure from
Speaker 2: the United States on behalf of Israel to allow them
Speaker 2: to emigrate and leave the Soviet Union, and they were
Speaker 2: Domestically there were a movement by Jews, people like Nate
Speaker 2: Sharonsky probably the most famous one, to engage in pressure
Speaker 2: that would be visible to the rest of the world
Speaker 2: on the government in Moscow to allow them to emigrate.
Speaker 2: And this emigration movement was actually copied by the Germans
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy three to allow them
Speaker 2: also to emigrate to West Germany. It wasn't as successful,
Speaker 2: but it kind of did have a parallel imitation by
Speaker 2: ethnic Germans. So the opposition to Zionism domestically was they
Speaker 2: didn't want to lose the Jewish population because of disproportionate
Speaker 2: number of them were in the higher economic workings of
Speaker 2: the Soviet economy such as it was, and then internationally
Speaker 2: to get support from first and foremost of the Arab dates,
Speaker 2: but also the Third World in general. And also I
Speaker 2: think there was still this resentment of the way the
Speaker 2: Israelis had treated their original alliance in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that one of the easy examples from
Speaker 1: history from the twentieth century you can see of the
Speaker 1: Zionist Russian fight is the fact that the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: backed the Kamis in Rhodesia, and when they did, the
Speaker 1: Zionists armed the White Rhodesia. You had this war going
Speaker 1: on just in Rhodesia where you can see that where
Speaker 1: it's actually clear.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I don't know. I know that the Israel
Speaker 2: had close military relations with South Africa, accumulating in the
Speaker 2: joint nuclear test in the Indian Ocean. But this is
Speaker 2: of course, as I said. By nineteen sixty seven, both
Speaker 2: for domestic reasons the movement that emigrate out by some
Speaker 2: three million Soviet Jews, and international politics, particularly dealing with
Speaker 2: the Middle East to oppose Western interest, especially the United States,
Speaker 2: the Soviets had become strongly in the anti Israeli camp,
Speaker 2: although interally enough, unlike some of the more radical Arabs,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union never advocated that Israel itself ceased to exist.
Speaker 2: They were always officially in the un that the West
Speaker 2: Magan Gods the Strip become a separate Palestinian state, but
Speaker 2: the nineteen forty eight borders continued to be the state
Speaker 2: of Israel.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's wrap up there. How can people
Speaker 1: support you? Right? Now we want to find you a
Speaker 1: teaching position somewhere, But in the meantime, how can they
Speaker 1: support you?
Speaker 2: Well, you can buy my book, which is distributed by
Speaker 2: Columbia University Press, and also write to your local library
Speaker 2: to ask them to acquire a copy of it. It's
Speaker 2: currently in one thousand and fifty eight libraries worldwide, but
Speaker 2: I haven't sold many copies of the individuals. I don't
Speaker 2: know the exact number, but it's probably a tenth of
Speaker 2: what the library sales are. I have a Patriot which
Speaker 2: has a five dollars subscription, and I am always available
Speaker 2: for editing, research, writing, and even translation jobs. So I've
Speaker 2: gotten a couple of translation jobs recently that subsidize sole
Speaker 2: my wages. But yeah, that's If you wanted to support
Speaker 2: me another way, then I've listed You can contact me
Speaker 2: by DM on Twitter or my email, which is available
Speaker 2: on my academic EEDU site if you go to my
Speaker 2: CV it's written right there. But yeah, mainly if you
Speaker 2: have any work for me, I'm pretty good at the
Speaker 2: research and writing stuff by now, and my rates are
Speaker 2: very reasonable.
Speaker 1: Remind everybody at the title of the book.
Speaker 2: The years a great Silence, and then the subtitle the Deportation,
Speaker 2: Special Settlement and Mobilization the Labor Ethnic Germans and the
Speaker 2: USSR nineteen forty one to nineteen fifty five, published by
Speaker 2: ibidem verir Log out of Stuttgart, but for the US
Speaker 2: and Canada, Columbia University Press the distributor. So if you
Speaker 2: go to their web site and look up either my
Speaker 2: name or the title of the book, you'll find the
Speaker 2: order sheet.
Speaker 1: I'll provide links to all of that in the in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Again, thank you Atto, thank you Peter