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Support and do it there. Thank you. I want to
welcome everyone back to the Pekingana Show and I want
to welcome back Jay Autopoul. How are you doing? How
are you doing at the good cool. So let's get
into some history here. When you reached out to me,
I guess you decided upon a little history of Germans
in the Soviet Union prior to World War two and
during World War two. And yeah, I don't think. I
think last time we touched more on the polls and
just really touched upon this subject. So where do you
want to start.
Speaker 2: Well, start anywhere.
Speaker 3: So the German colonists started arriving in the Russian Empire
in the late eighteenth century. The first German colonist proper
outside of the Baltic region, where they weren't really colonists
but conquerors, was established in seventeen sixty four in the
Volga and then after that, starting really after eighteen oh four,
although there's earlier settlements in the Black Sea region, particularly
Ukraine and Crimea, and then later the Transcaucasus. In eighteen
eighteen settlements in Georgia, and they spread out eastward into
Kazakhstan and Central Asia and starting fairly late in nineteen
o seven into Siberia. Most of them are still living
in the Volga and Black Sea regions up until the
Second World War, when they are forcibly deported into kazakh
Dan and Siberia, and almost the entire German population of
European USSR is ethnically cleansed. But this is a process
that begins considerably earlier in the Soviet regime of kind
of ratcheting up anti German repression through the nineteen thirties
in particular.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the last time you talked to you,
you said that basically what was happening was there was
a growing suspicion of diaspora peoples within the Soviet Union
that actually had a homeland.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, So all of the diaspora groups except for Jews,
Assyrians and Gypsies were subject to national operations in thirty
seven and thirty.
Speaker 2: Eight by the NKVADAY.
Speaker 3: We had mass arrests and executions in the diaspora population
on the basis that they were spies for their home government,
or in the case of the Koreans who were forcibly
resettled in Central Asia in thirty seven from the Far East,
that they were working for the Japanese who were their
colonial power. But the Germans were hit the second hardest
after the Poles. In thirty seven thirty eight, about five
percent of the entire German population in the Soviet Union
was executed, but it was pretty much the top five
percent as far as education levels, and it was particularly
hard hit in the area around Odessa in Ukraine, which
had a population of almost one hundred thousand Germans before
the Second World War and being ethnically cleansed into Kazakhstan.
Speaker 1: Is there are there any numbers on how many of
those were how many of the Germans who were there
were actually ethnic Germans and not German Jews who just
made their way into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the Soviet nationality classification have Nemets for German
and yevre for Jew. So when they say nemets in
the Soviet archival documentation, they're talking about ethnic Germans, people
that are predominantly of Lutheran background, with a large Catholic
minority about twenty percent and a smaller Mennonite minority depending
on the region, between five and ten percent, but mostly
Lutherans by religion, and they were still mostly practicing all
the way up into the nineteen thirties before the massive
anti religious campaigns.
Speaker 1: So you said about five percent the top the top
five percent were taken out. I assume that would be
educated business owners things like that people of means people
who people who thought they may have influence outside of
the country. The other ninety five percent what happens to
them as war grows and well.
Speaker 3: So thirty seven thirty eight comes after the dispossession and
decoulakization of.
Speaker 2: The richer Germans.
Speaker 3: But with the case of the Germans, unlike with Russian
and the Ukrainian, the Soviet officials pretty much decided that
all Germans were Ulachs. In certain areas. For instance, in Turkmenistan,
the government actually stated that it was impossible to collectivize
the Germans, so they all to be deported as kulas
because they were all Kulach colonizers to the marrow of
their bones, with the phrase used by the officials. But
also there admistioned that the vast majority in some areas
the Germans being deported as kulaks to special settlement villages
in the far North, and the Euros were in point
of fact, not kulaks by the Soviet definition, but Middle
peasants instead, But because they were ethnically German, they are
automatically assumed to be Kulaks by the.
Speaker 2: NKVT operatives working on the ground.
Speaker 3: So this is already in nineteen thirty happening, and that's
about maybe fifty thousand Germans of maybe four percent of
the population, which is consider greater than the one point
two percent of the population Soviet of the whole that
deported as kulak at this time. But you can see
it darts rat up. You're four percent deported, five percent executed.
And then in forty one, one hundred percent in the
European areas forcibly relocated into Kazakhdan and Siberia, and then
later all of the able bodied adult men first and
then after October seventh, nineteen forty two women as well
mobilized into the labor army to work in gulag camps,
mostly in the urals, felling trees or in industrial construction.
Speaker 1: When you take into consideration that the attitude of international
jewelry outside of Russia towards Germans over a long period
of time. But let's just go from like nineteen from
the time the National Socialists take power in nineteen thirty three,
how what percentage at this time, from thirty six thirty
seven and then going through thirty seven thirty eight, going
through to the war, what percentage of the NKVD, and
these groups that would be concentrating on Germans are actually
ethnically Jewish, and I assume it's just the same kind
of animus towards the German people that they that was
happening in the quote unquote free world.
Speaker 3: It was very high in the thirties. So I don't
have exact numbers on the before the formation of the
NKDA in nineteen thirty four when it's still the Okpayuh,
but the de facto the head of the Okpayu for
most of the detakulakuization period of time is Genrik yea
Gooda and he's number two man do Urrey at the
peacetime where he's a sidelined, but the number one man
do Yuri Manzinski was very ill with heart disease all
from nineteen twenty three all the way till nineteen thirty four.
So the main man in the Okpau with Genrik Yagoda
becomes the first head of the NKA day in nineteen
thirty four. So that's when you have the first mass
wave of repression in the terms of nineteen thirty thirty
one roundup of Germans being accued of being Kulak's and
sent to special settlements mostly used for fourth labor and
forestry to cut down trees, places like arcangles in the
far North, and of course in the Euros with a
lot of forestry, and in the Vogan German Republic itself
with about six point six percent that was higher than
the German population as a whole. But there are certain
areas like Evapatoria, which is a district in Crimea where
seventeen percent of the German population is forcibly deported to
the special settlement villages for fourth labor in nineteen thirty
So after nineteen thirty four we have figures. So in
nineteen thirty four to all the way to the end
of the Great Terror and Yejav's removal and replacement Beria
November thirty eight, between twenty percent and forty percent of
the top one hundred or so NKVA and A officers
are ethnically Jewish. And in the period of time we're
talking of the Great Terror at thirty seven and thirty eight,
as I say, it concentrates in us Ukraine. So the
German operation of the total of fifty five thousand convictions,
of which forty two thousand almost are death sentences. Of
those forty two thousand death sentences eighteen thousand and five.
Speaker 2: Take place in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: The head of the nkv and A in the Ukraine
in thirty seven and thirty eight is a man named
Israel Leaplevski who was a former Bundist the Jewish Nationalist
before he became a Bolshevik. The boond was absorbed into
the communist part what becomes the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, and he specifically asked the head of the
NKBA yejav with not Jewish, although he is the number
two man. Belski, his original name is Abraham Abraham Levin
was Jewish during the first part. During the second part
of the Nationality operations, so we see Lapleski ask geijav
through up his quota for political arrest including the national
operations three separate times. So it wasn't that you hear
that he had no agency. It was all dollin in
y Asia. Lapleshky was pushing to arrest more people on
the National operation from Yasia and did it more than once.
Speaker 1: Well we know that, I mean even up to through today,
you see the evidence of the ethnic hatred for Russian
even for not only for Germans, but even for Russians.
So at this point have the Russians, that the ethnic
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 an immediate purge after the
Bolshevik Revolution, right, there was, Rightians were ethnic Russians were
killed by Yes, who were Just how long did that continue?
Let me I guess how long?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: The movement to as it were, rehabilitate the Russian nation
from this period of time between nineteen eighteen, really picking
up in nineteen twenty three with the Twelve Party Congress
in Karnazazia, all the way up until really nineteen thirty six,
when you have the first phrases of the Russian nation
during the Communists they were in Pravda. Yeah, this was
a period of time you have, So it lasts in
nineteen eighteen nineteen thirty six, you have really.
Speaker 2: Kind of a.
Speaker 3: Campaign, a systematic what they call against great power chauvinism.
But by great power they meant the ethnic Russians who
were more greater percentage of the Soviet Union than they
were Tzari Russia because they lost Finland, Poland at the
Baltic States, so they were over fifty percent majority, but
there was no affirmative action for them like there was
every other nationality during this time. And in thirty six
you start to change with the new constitution written by
Buharan and then you see at the end of the
Great Terror, Ja Gootas already been replaced in thirty six
by Jejaf who was half Russian, his mother was Lithuanian,
but he wasn't Jewish. November thirty eight, Beria comes in
and the percentage of Jews in the top ranks of
the NKFA day plummets from twenty percent to four percent.
So a few guys still around, like Brenzen who controls
the finances of the NKVA day a Nafthly Frankel, who
was famous from Gulag Archipelago. He's still head of the
rail construction for Gulag gula Hid.
Speaker 2: During the in.
Speaker 3: Part of Stalind well all the way to the end
of Stalin reign. All right, but there's a big decrease then,
and it really I think had to do with a
kind of a conflict based upon region and ethnicity within
the NKA Day. So originally the leadership of the Cheka,
the gay Peyu, Oh Gaypeyu and Nka Day are all
people from the Palist settlement, and they're not all Jewish.
Jagoda is the only one who makes it the very
top of Jewish, but they all are from the Palist
settlement and a lot of them have Jewish spouses. For
the first head of the Cheka, Dzinski, was Polish, but
his wife was Jewish. The second guy, Vinzinsky, is Polish,
but as I said, already assuming power in twenty three,
he's already ha to basically give over running of the
organization to Yagoda because he's not physically able to do
it himself. After you go to Yeja, So all these
people from the areas that were in the Police Lithuanian
Commonwealth and then they get basically removed by Bria, whose
center of powers in Georgia. The ethnic Georgian people like
Rapava and Carradza are also ethnic Georgian, ethnic Armenians from
Tabilisi like the Kobolov brothers, So they replace a lot
of the Jews that were in this kind of circle,
along with some Poles and people from Lithuania like gaijav
that had dominated the Cheka Gaypeu ob Payu Nkva day
all the way from nineteen seventeen up to nineteen.
Speaker 2: The end of nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: Eight, consider it to be something targeted when Baria takes
over for the amount of Jews and power in the
MKVD two, well, there are.
Speaker 3: A lot more Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians appointed, and they said
the Jewish percentage plummets down to four percent, although there's
still some high ranking Jews like Baronzone and Frankel.
Speaker 1: But that was targeted. But it was that done on purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they were basically different gangs. I mean, it's
just like in the US. Gangs in the Soviet Union
are based upon ethnicity or what they call natanal notes,
which is really ethno racial. In this case, it's a
little bit more complex than that. It's kind of coalitions
of different ethno racial groups. For by geography and that
you had the Jews and Polls in the original dominating
the original political police, and then Georgians and Armenians allied
with Russians in the second version of it under Berriam.
But the one big change you do see is that
the mass execution that took place in thirty seven, at
thirty eight under Yezhov and Belski, and then in Ukraine
Laplevsky was head, and then Belarus it was a Boris Berman,
the brother of the head of the Gulag from thirty
to thirty seven, Matve Berman. Those are largely replaced by
forced labor, either in labor camps or special settlements, because
Biria thought it was a waste to just shoot people
when you could work them to death.
Speaker 1: So the in studying the Spanish Civil War and you
look at the officers that were sent to advise there,
overwhelmingly I think last I counted, out of eleven of them,
like nine or ten were Jewish, and it seems like
when they got back they were executed. They were the
majority of them were summarily executed. What was that movement
in thirty eight and thirty nine to remove it? Was
that targeting Jews or was that just targeting.
Speaker 3: I think it's targeting people that were outside the Soviet Union,
because they also had one of the national operations is
not against the nationality. It's called the Hudderbdzi operation. And
when in thirty six they sold the Chinese Eastern railroad
in Manchuria to the Japanese. They recalled all of the
Russian workers back into the Soviet Union, and the people
that were stupid enough to return were either shot the
vast majority of them, or.
Speaker 2: Were set into time in a labor camp.
Speaker 3: When I would live in Kyrgyzstan, I knew a guy
who spent ten years in a labor camp because he
had returned from working on the railroad in Manchuria. But
he was still alive and spent every day drinking beer
and smoking cigarette, enjoying the fact that he'd outlived all
of his professors. But the reason was because they had
spent time outside the Soviet Union and therefore been exposed
to foreign ideas or perhaps engaged in conspiracies. So there
was that paranoia. I think that people returning from Spain
the same idea that they were a suspect for having
been outside the USSR and in contact with foreign environments.
Speaker 1: When it came to Russian forces during World War Two,
were were there any German conscripts into it? Or were
there any Germans who actually volunteered to fight against their
own Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, In the beginning, there were over thirty three thousand
Volga Germans who were fighting in the Red Army against
the Wehrmacht. They put up a Alamo type defense at
breast where they were wiped out by the Wehrmacht. They
were not removed from the military forces of the Soviet
Union until seventh September, and then they were all sent
to force what they called Construction Battalion, and then they
were mobilized into the Labor Army when it's created and
sent to the corrective labor camps of the Gulag in
the urals, primarily the fell timber and do inductual construction.
Some avoided it by changing their nationality in collaboration with
their commanding officers. Was one famous German soldiers who claimed
to be Alzerbaijani. He took the identity of a fallen comrade.
There were some that managed to work in the Partisans
Organi the Nkvada to fight against the Germans, but the
numbers are limited because there was in eighth September the
decree to remove all ethnic Germans from all Soviet military institutions.
So there were a handful that we know of that
managed to kind of work around this by claiming other
nationalities and having their commanding officers that go along with
the deception, but not very many the Vath majority of
were of the over thirty three thousand that were Volga
German that were still fighting in the Red Army by
September nineteen forty one were all sent to labor camps
by the Soviet government.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that certain groups were considered to be cool
ox even if they weren't. How much of how much
of this was at this point, how much of it
was actual ideology, the ideology of communism and Bolshevism, and
how much was it just basically there operating on autopilot,
And that's just what you Claire somebody at this point.
Speaker 3: I don't think it has much to do with any
type of Marxist ideology. I think a lot of it
is just the prejudices these people already had against these groups.
So they have Zaris roots, but of course they're not all.
It's not limited to Russian. Everybody that was in the
kind of Russian environment you read the kind of old
nineteenth century Russian literature, there is the stereotype of the
Germans as being a rich, undeserving colonizers in the Voga
in Ukraine or being exploiters. So during the Civil War
right the anarchis Undernester Makhna, they go after the Mennonites
because Makna had worked for the Mennonites as a farm
hand and didn't like the way he was paid and treated.
So all of the Mennonites that came.
Speaker 1: To that's ironic, but.
Speaker 3: In particularly it's quite violent, so much so particularly the
rapes of women that for the only time ever the
Mennonites in the world, they took up arms, being sponsored
by the German governances during World War One, still nineteen
eighteen before November, to create self protection units. And this
was a big deal for a creed that had been
pacifist in the early sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: How much was Asian Russia involved in this? You know,
most people when they think of Russia, you really only
think of European Russia, and that the side that is on.
But there's this whole other side which even though much
more sparsely, much more sparsely populated and ethnically diverse. Actually,
how much were they pulled in? How much of the
Soviet ideology and the Soviet the crushing Soviet hand did
they have to suffer all the way in the East.
Speaker 3: Well, there's not a lot of Central Asians. There are
quite a few Caucasians involved in the Soviet government, particularly
before the nineteen fifties, in large part because they're not educated,
in large part because their traditional way of life is
not congruence with the Soviet ideology. So the memberships in
the Communist Party are quite low and the involvement is
largely just on the local basis. But you do have
some groups. So one group which is not well studied.
During World War One, the Russian government brought in a
large number of Chinese workers from China, and during the
Bushvik Revolution most of them sided with the Bulsheviks.
Speaker 2: A lot of them joined the Red Army, and.
Speaker 3: There was a Chikai unit noted for its brutality, composed
entirely of Chinese that operated in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So let's switch over a little bit to the war
and the Eastern Front. So do you know, do you
have any like general numbers of on the Eastern battlefield,
on the Eastern Front, how many what the population of
Jews was. And obviously the Germans are accused and rightly
so in many cases of them just not caring about
any Jewish populations that are on the Eastern Front. When
I say, rightly so, they're accused because they didn't How
much did the Soviets care. It just doesn't seem to
me like if you're at war and you're at war
with the Wehrmacht, that you're taking special care to be like, oh,
wait a minute, we can't hurt these.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: The Jewish population in the Soviet Union was probably about
three million at the start of the war when Germany invaded,
and probably about a million were either evacuated or made
it on their own east to the front.
Speaker 2: I went to a conference in.
Speaker 3: Jerusalem was called Jews and their neighbors in Central Asia
about this. So they were disproportionately evacuated because they were
disproportionately members of the Communist Party and disproportionately working in
industries that were considered important by the Soviet government and
needed to be evacuated each of the euro to prevent
the Germans from confrum. So as a percentage, much larger
number of Jews of their population than non Jews were
officially evacuated by the Soviet government, but it appears to
have been on basis of party membership and necessary occupation
rather than Natanalos. So over a third of them were
evacuated East and a lot of them ended up in
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and they.
Speaker 2: Didn't get like with the German departies.
Speaker 3: The Kazakhs who had to share their house with Jewish
evacuees in Kazakhstan, we're not very happy about it. I
talked to one Jewish guy in Israel who ended up
as a child in one of those and he said, yeah,
they didn't really like us coming there because we didn't
speak their language and they had to give up their
space in their house. But I actually understand why they
didn't like it, though there is at least among among
that with that guy, an understanding of the problem. But yeah,
they did have it wasn't it. I don't think we
in the ethnic preference, but certainly due to their higher
membership in the party and needed economic industries, they had
a much greater number percentage evacuated than your average Russian
or Ukrainian.
Speaker 1: Are there any numbers on the percentage of the civilians
on the Eastern Front that were killed.
Speaker 3: It's disputed, but the numbers range from four million civilians
dying in the Soviet Union during the Second World War
due to the Germans. That's in addition to another two
million plus that Stalin killed through labor camps and special
settlements and execution, all the way up to ten million civilians.
I tend to go with the lower number, particularly because
the person who came up with the lower numbers, via Zemskoff,
was now dead. He was the first person who would
not a member of the Communist Party, allowed into the
Soviet archives to study the Gulag, and he wrote a
fantastic book on the special settlement regime kulaks and deported
Germans and other nationalities in two thousand and five, which
is still one of my go to references always. So
I'm more likely to trust Zemskoff, and I am the
official number from the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is
of course as an interest in blowing up the number
of Russian civilians that were killed during the war for
its own purposes support the government in Moscow.
Speaker 1: What do you think the numbers were on the war total?
You know, Daryl Cooper mentioned recently in the first episode
of Enemies Is German is German Series that sixty million
we could it could be sixty million, some say forty million,
some say twenty million.
Speaker 2: Are we including Asia in the Pacific?
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's including Asia in.
Speaker 3: The well, I know, I mean total numbers, you know,
range from the Soviet Union, which would be the largest
number absolute, from twenty to twenty seven million. Twenty seven
million is the official figure. Twenty million is somewhere with
Zemskoff is advocating although.
Speaker 2: The majority of those military losses and.
Speaker 3: The German losses from what I can say, are about
eight million, five million military and three million civilians.
Speaker 2: So sixty sixty.
Speaker 3: Million looks high, but forty million probably around right there.
Speaker 2: Certainly lots of people.
Speaker 3: It's hard to do a tabulation because you have to
be an expert every little country in Europe, and you know,
some countries in Europe they look small, but you know
they have large losses, places like Yugoslavia and Poland because
the war was quite fierce.
Speaker 1: Was there any hope at all that packs between Russia
and Germany, the Soviet Union in Germany before the war
could have could have lasted, that that it didn't have
to happen, that there there could have been peace.
Speaker 3: I don't know everything I've seen suggests this. Dallin thought
that the pact was only temporary so that he could
build up enough forces to invade Germany.
Speaker 2: So if the Germans.
Speaker 3: Didn't attack earlier, they were going to get attacked by
the Soviets and be on the defensive, all right. So
I don't see a scenario where the Soviet government under
Stalin decides that it's going to have a permanent peace
with Germany. In fact, if say somebody like Trotsky, there
wouldn't have been any piece at all.
Speaker 2: Thirty nine forty one wouldn't have existed.
Speaker 3: He would have already in the nineteen twenties been trying
to push revolution into Central Europe.
Speaker 1: So then you take the narrative of Icebreaker that Subaroff's
narrative that.
Speaker 3: I don't think it necessarily is because I think super
Off is pushing the date in a way that we
don't have enough evident support. But yeah, I think eventually,
when the Soviet forces get large enough, they would have
invaded everything.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You hear from defenders of Stalin today is that the
pact was only temporary because the capitalist powers wouldn't support
him earlier over Czechoslovakia. So eventually he was going to
you know, quote unquote liberate Central Europe. It was yet
they had to get enough military forces. Now I'm not
sure when that would have exactly been. It's not my
area of expertise, but yeah, eventually, you know, a couple
of years down the line, they wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: Held well obviously because of American backing, and not only that,
but goods transfer, the transfer what was the agreement where
the United States was manufacturing the United States was manufacturing
and delivering goods too. Le Lea's Yeah, Lenley's because of
len Lea's. Well, at the end of the war, the
Civic Union ends up with half of Europe anyway. Do
you think that if if Operation Barbarossa doesn't happen, if
he doesn't invade that if they would have been on
the offensive, that the Soviet Union would have taken the
whole peninsula.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: I think if the Germans hadn't attacked the Soviet Union
in forty one, that eventually, I don't know, would have
been forty three or forty four, the Soviet Union would
have attacked Germany.
Speaker 2: They would have gone to take.
Speaker 3: The parts of Poland that Germany had taken in nineteen
thirty nine and tried to move as far west as possible.
Speaker 1: Is that a Is that one of those opinions that
you that gets you in trouble and keeps you out.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've been out of academia for so long. There's no
trouble anymore. I just clean toilets now.
Speaker 1: Well, we're not ending right now, but this, I guess
this is as good point as any as anybody who's
watching who has an inn at any university or any
school whatsoever. Doctor Pohl here is looking is looking for
a job because it seems he seems to have been
locked out of academia, and not only in the United States.
I think you overseas, you you're having problems too.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, well, the jobs dried up overseas as far
as foreigners. But the last place I worked, American University
of Rasulamania is basically a CIA front who had two goals.
One to keep the curds in Iraq so that the
all the oil is under one central government and two
to impose the lgbt Q upon the Muslim population there.
So they didn't renew my contract when I said they
were stupid.
Speaker 1: Well, anyone who has anyone who can help. Please, you
can reach out to me and I'll make sure to
get get doctor, get the totarchor Paul. The United States
doesn't do len lease, doesn't join the war, there's a
Soviet there's the Soviet Union defeat Germany. I was saying,
if if the United States doesn't do len lease, doesn't
completely support the Soviet Union, how does the war go?
Speaker 3: Soviets still might win, but they would take much much
greater losses. It would take them much longer a period
of time, and instead of talking twenty to twenty.
Speaker 2: Seven million, we might be talking.
Speaker 3: One hundred million out of one hundred and seventy two
million people in the Soviet Union dying to try and win.
It would be a very pyrrhic victory if they did win.
Speaker 1: Seems like the meat grinder that we're seeing there today
is somewhat somewhat not similar. But the numbers, at least
on the Ukrainian side, seem to be seem to be
piling up. And when you consider some of the numbers
that are happening today and you compare them in scale,
you know, to the scale of World War Two, we
maybe even be seeing at that scale when you just
consider that this is a historic kind of local war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, some of the local wars get very high
percentages of young men dying. So I think Serbia during
World War One, something like a third of the young
men total died in combat. The war between the Triple
Alliance with the Paraguay a similar percentage. I think, Perish.
Speaker 1: When it comes to let's go back, let's go back
to Russia a little bit and to their to their
diaspora groups. You said that clearly that the reason why
certain groups were targeted were well, they were members of
an ethnic group that was considered an enemy, and they
had a government. And then what happens when Israel comes
into existence in nineteen forty eight, what is the attitude
towards the diaspora. Do Jews in the Soviet Union automatically
become a diaspora Now they can be looked upon with suspicion.
Speaker 3: It's not automatic because initially the Soviet Union believes that
it can create a socialist state allied with the USSR
in Israel, and it is particularly eager to reduce British power,
and it views the Arab monarchies such as King Abdullah
in Jordan, the king Abdullah, the first of the grandfather
of the current monarch, but also.
Speaker 2: The government in Iraq.
Speaker 3: Has British puppets, and also Egypt Evan before Nassar's revolution
overthrows the monarchy, so they support the Zionists initially in
nineteen forty eight. In nineteen forty nine, the way of
weakening the British way of opposing these reactionary pro British
monarchies in the Arab States established really through the League
of Nations mandates which were to give self determination an
independence to the Arab states that were taken out of
the Ottoman Empire. And this becomes changed later primarily because
the Israelis don't want to go along with the Soviets,
and after Stalin died, there is a change of policy
starting in nineteen fifty four with the Soviets approving a
large sale of Chech weapons to Egypt. After Nasar comes
to power, and basically the conflict goes that the Soviets
get tired of Shenanigan by people like go to my
ear who keeps wanting Soviet Jews to come to Israel,
claiming the Soviet Union is anti Semitic, but it's okay
with all the Jews in America just staying in America
and sending money. That didn't go well with the Soviet leadership.
And also the fact that Soviets looked at the map
and said, there's four million Jews in Israel and one
hundred million Arabs, maybe we should support the other side,
especially after the monarchies. Jordan, of course never got overthrown,
but in Iraq there was an overthrow of the monarchy
to a secular nationalist government that was much more friendly
to the USSR. And of course NASA coming to power
in Egypt much more favorable to Soviets, which is why
they green light the Czech arm sales. So by the
nineteen fifty six, when the British and French and Israelis
try and take the Suez Canal back from Egypt, which
had been nationalized by NASAR, the Soviets are on the
Arab side against the Israelis on this. Ironically, the United
States is as well, because the United States threatened the
British to evaluate their pound but if they don't pull
out of attacking Egypt. And this is at the same
time the Soviets are crushing the Hungarian revolution in Budapest.
So it provides a good diversion for the Soviets if
everybody's looking at what the British frends in Israelis are
doing in Egypt rather than what they are doing in Hungary.
And then but of course, by nineteen sixty seven, the
Soviet governor Brezhnev is thoroughly with the rest of the
Third world supporting the Arabs against the israel And in
sixty four they start they officially recognize the PLO as
the representative of the Palatinian people. So there's a big change,
a lot of it driven by pragmatic geopolitics and real
politics that it would be much better for the Soviets
internationally to support the larger Arab population against the smaller
Israeli one.
Speaker 1: Well, and you see that clearly in the fact that
most of Israel's enemies are using AK forty seven's that
are built in factories. In that the Soviets actually went
to Egypt and went went to other countries and built
factories to basically.
Speaker 3: Including in Egypt the AK forty seven factory in Egypt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I actually own one. I actually owned one
of the ones out of that factory. The Yeah, they're
It's really weird to me when people say that, like
historically Russia, that the Zionists controlled Russia, when you consider
that all of their enemies were using Russian weapons against them.
Speaker 2: It just changes.
Speaker 3: They initially, I said in forty eight, forty nine, they
support the Zionists, they want to weaken the British, they
want to weaken the Arab government that are in their
mind reactionary pro British. But after you have a series
of left wing they're not communists, but they're certainly not
favorable to the West. Revolutions in Egypt and Iraq and Syria,
the Bass that's coming to power in Syria and Iraq,
Nasa in Egypt. This all changes. So by nineteen fifty
six you see the Soviets certainly on the Arab side.
They had already started supporting with military arms the Egyptian
government of Nasar in fifty four. So there's a change
from the late stalin as There era when they think
they can get a Jewish Soviet people's Republic in Israel
versus supporting what they call the progressive regimes in the
Arab world. These kind of regimed like the Basist in
Syria and Iraq and NASA in Egypt.
Speaker 1: So the Soviet Union basically wins World War two. Stalin
at some point once he once the bomb is acquired,
you can consider him to be maybe the most powerful
man in the world, one of the most powerful men
that ever lived. What starts what starts their slide? What
do you see as their starts their slide down to
where yep, Empires don't fall overnight, they it takes a time.
Speaker 3: Well, really, ideologically, I don't think anybody believed in Marxism
Leninism even by the time of World War two. But
they then can switch to the Great Patriotic War. It's
kind of a way to mobilize. But then, of course
all the veterans die off and this is not sustainable.
So then they switch like many countries. Ironically a good
parallel to South Korea, where they switched from nationalist anti
Japanese sentiment under Sigmund Reed to economics under Park Chunghi.
Because Park chung he fought with the Japanese. They switched to, Okay,
we can materially give you a better standard of living
than your parents and grandparents had. But the problem was
they could look and see that, yeah, well, our standard
living is greater than our grandparents, but it's much lower
than Western Europe, and it's much lower than Japan, and
places like South Korea are becoming richer than us. This
is not sustainable we're becoming And when it totally stagnates
in the late bridge never it's not getting any better,
and then it starts to get worse, particularly you see
things like the life expectancy of men start to decline.
I think that was the end of because they had
nothing less to legitimize that the revolution itself hadn't been
they say, probably for nineteen forty one a real reason.
And when the Germans invaded, it'd rather than appeal to
Mark the Leninism talent, appeal to Russian nationalism for the
majority of the population. And then there were kind of
parallels appeal to each non Russian national nationality that it
would for their nationalism. So you know, you do this
for the Curgous nation, or you do this for the
Uzbek nation. It wasn't you do this for Marxism, Leninism
and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Speaker 1: How much of it had to do with just sort
of empire where you have satellites in central America, Islands,
South America, all through Eastern europe An Empire is very
hard to.
Speaker 2: Keep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's very expensive. I mean, the Soviets were
giving billions of dollars to places like Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia,
and one of the first things, you know, Gorbachev did
was he cut off these client dates right those there Cubas.
You know this the deal of of one pound of
one you know, barrel of oil for equivalent volume of
sugar is over because oil is worth a lot more
than sugar. And that really crippled the Cuban economy for
a while because they were dependent upon this heavy subsidy
from the USSR. And you know, certain places like Vietnam
were managed to reform in nineteen eighty three to starting
a ninety three to avoid famine and did fairly well.
Other places like Ethiopia, you know, the regime ended up
being overthrown and it still got problems of civil war.
Cuba did some reform, so it's not as bad as
it was, but they're still hurting because they still have
a largely socialist economy that is not nearly a dynamic
as the reformed ones in places like Vietnam, and China.
Speaker 1: So after Stalin dies, do you think that a lot
of it just becomes anti West and they see West
as being Zionists controlled. I mean, Yaki writes about this.
There's a lot of writers on the on the new right,
on the well the post war right, the illegal right,
start writing that, you know, you have to make your choice.
You're either with the Zionists or you're not and the
United States or Zionists controlled. So this is why Yaqui
was like, well, you know, this is why I'm siding
with the Soviet Union basically, or with the warsaw with
the Warsaw Pack.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pack state after nineteen sixty
seven war. Uh, they said, the Second and Third World
this is one of their pillars. It was the kind
of there were certain things that kind of like unified them,
and beyond that, there wasn't much that unified the third World.
One of them was opposition to Zionism. Another was opposition
of part heads in South Africa. Another was opposition to the
US intervention of Vietnam, and there was also opposition of
what remained of European colonialism, although as time went on
there were fewer European colonies and they were pulling out
and domestically it was a way to oppose Jewish immigration movement.
So the reason why the Soviets and they got more
grief over this one issue than anything else they did,
even though by far not the worst thing they did,
was they wanted to maintain the retain the educated Jewish
population in the Soviet Union that we're doing things like
being engineers and professors and whatnot, because they didn't want
to lose that human capital. But there was pressure from
the United States on behalf of Israel to allow them
to emigrate and leave the Soviet Union, and they were
Domestically there were a movement by Jews, people like Natan
Sharansky probably the most famous one, to engage in pressure
that would be visible to the rest of the world
on the government in Moscow to allow them to emigrate.
And this emigration movement was actually copied by the Germans
in nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy three to allow them
also to emigrate to West Germany. It wasn't as successful,
but it kind of did have a parallel imitation by
ethnic Germans. So the opposition to Zionism domestically was they
didn't want to lose the Jewish population because of disproportionate
number of them were in the higher economic workings of
the Soviet economy such as it was, and then internationally
to get support from first and foremost of the Arab
they but also the Third world in general. And also
I think there was still this resentment of the way
the Israelis had treated their original alliance in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that one of the easy examples from
history from the twentieth century you can see of the
Zionist Russian fight is the fact that the Soviet Union
backed the Kamis in Rhodesia, and when they did, the
Zionists armed the White Rhodesia. You had this war going
on just in Rhodesia where you can see that where
it's actually clear.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I know that the Israel had close military relations with
South Africa, accumulating in the joint nuclear test in the
Indian Ocean. All right, but this is of course, as
I said, by nineteen sixty seven, for domestic reasons, the
movement that emigrate out by some three million Soviet Jews,
and international politics, particularly dealing with the Middle East to
oppose Western interest, especially the United States, the Soviets had
become strongly in the anti Israeli camp, although literally enough,
unlike some of the more radical Arabs, the Soviet Union
never advocated that Israel itself ceased to exist. They were
always officially in the un that the West Makan Gods
the Strip become a separate Palestinian state, but the nineteen
forty eight borders continued to be the state of Israel.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's wrap up there. How can people
support you? Right now? We want to find you a
teaching position somewhere. But in the time, how can they
support you?
Speaker 3: Well, you can buy my book, which is distributed by
Columbia University Press, and also write to your local library
to ask them to acquire a copy of it. It's
currently in one thousand and fifty eight libraries worldwide, but
I haven't sold many copies the individuals. I don't know
the exact number, but it's probably a tenth of what
the library sales are. I have a Patreon which has
a five dollars subscription, and I am always available for editing, research, writing,
and even translation jobs. So I've gotten a couple of
translation jobs recently that subsidize my.
Speaker 2: Wages.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's if you wanted to support me another way,
then I've listed You can contact me by DM on
Twitter or my email, which is available on my academic
Edu site. If you go to my CV it's written
right there. But yeah, mainly if you have any work
for me, I'm pretty good at the research and writing
stuff by now, and my rates are very reasonable.
Speaker 1: Remind ever, bed at the title of the book.
Speaker 3: The Years a Great Silence, and then the subtitle The Deportation,
Special Settlement and Mobilization the Labor Army Ethnic Germans and
the USSR nineteen forty one to nineteen fifty five, published
by ibidem verr Log out of Stuttgart, but for the
US and Canada, Columbia University Press the distributor. So if
you go to their website and look up either my
name or the title of the book, you'll find the order.
Speaker 1: I'll provide links to all of that in the in
the show notes. Again, thank you Adam, thank you Peter,