Zydokomuna Elite USSR Unprecedented Sachar

A History of the Jews in the Modern World, by Howard M. Sachar. 2006

Zydokomuna: The Jewish Presence in the First Soviet Government Was Unprecedented in ANY Government

This is a mini-encyclopedia of Jewish history beginning about the 17th century. Sachar’s main emphasis is on the Jews of Europe. Owing to the large number of topics raised by the author, this review is necessarily limited to consideration of only a few of them.

DOES NOT AWFULIZE THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE

Sachar departs from the common lachrymose view of Jewish history. He presents a nuanced view of the Jewish experience in post-Reformation Europe: “These constructs must be judged in the context of their time, of course. If Jews possessed fewer rights than did their urban Christian neighbors, they also bore fewer obligations and enjoyed more privileges than did Europe’s peasant masses.”(p. 5).

JEWISH AND THE LIQUOR TRADE (PROPINACJA)

After Poland was partitioned in the late 1700’s, the erstwhile Polish Jews of eastern Poland became Russian Jews, as described by Sachar: “All attempts by Jews to participate in municipal government were effectively blocked by their Russian neighbors, on the grounds that the Jews engaged in “parasitical” “exploitative” activities among the surrounding peasants, especially through their control of the liquor trade. The latter charge actually was well founded. Accustomed in Poland to function as middlemen between aristocrats’ estates and the countryside, Jews had become proficient in buying up and converting harvested grain and potato crops into mash, and mash into distilled spirits, which resisted the vicissitudes of the weather. The peasantry offered a sure and certain marker for liquor, and the Jews exploited it fully.”(p. 54).

JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY OVER PARTITIONED POLAND, AND THEREAFTER

During the Russian rule of eastern and central Poland, a Jewish bourgeoisie developed in Congress Poland (pp. 70-71). In time, this pitted Poles against the mostly-Jewish industrialists. Of course, Jewish dominance of commerce also occurred at lower levels. Sachar describes the Polish-Jewish conflicts that became widely known soon after the resurrection of the Polish state: “In the 1920’s, too, the government found ways to restrict Jewish economic activity. The rationale was Jewish overcrowding in commerce and the professions. Here, in fact, the statistics bore out the charge. By 1922, Jews comprised 52% of Poland’s tradesmen and owned 48% of the nation’s retail shops (although most of these were diminutive market stalls). A majority of attorneys in larger cities were Jews, and in medicine the Jewish presence ranked second only to the German.”(p. 414). Sachar, however, doesn’t put any of the foregoing statistics in context: Jews comprised only 10% of the Polish population.

ZYDOKOMUNA IN THE FIRST SOVIET GOVERNMENT: “NEVER BEFORE HAD SO MANY JEWS SERVED IN ANY EUROPEAN CABINET”

Sachar elaborates on the role of Jews in Communism. On one hand, he cites Alexander Kerensky, who asserted that 99% of Russian Jews were anti-Bolshevik (p. 334). On the other hand, the very disproportionate number of Jews in Communism is striking. Bearing in mind the fact that Jews comprised a small percentage of the Russian population, one can appreciate Sachar’s figures on Jewish Communism (the ZYDOKOMUNA). In December 1917, 5 of the 21 members of the Soviet Central Committee were Jews, prompting Sachar to remark: “NEVER BEFORE HAD SO MANY JEWS SERVED IN ANY EUROPEAN CABINET.” (p. 327; Emphasis added).

Furthermore, Howard M. Sachar believes that Jews were prominent in Soviet Communism no less so than they were in the Communist parties of western Europe. By the early 1920’s, Jews in the Soviet Union accounted for 15-20% of delegates to party congresses (p. 330), and comprised an even higher percentage of party technocrats (including mid-level administrators).

THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY

Sachar discusses the reparations for the Holocaust paid out by West Germany (p. 630), including the fact that the reparations cover property losses of the Jews. Those individuals and organizations seeking compensation from Poland for WWII-era property losses are clearly asking the wrong nation for reparations.