by Isidor Saslav
(Swans - January 26, 2009) In light of the recent terrible events in Israel/Gaza I thought the following letter exchange between myself and a colleague might be of interest to Swans' readers. A colleague wrote me and several other friends the following:
Hamas' charter accuses Jews of causing the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, World War I and World War II, and with forming "secret organizations, all over the world, in order to destroy [those countries'] societies and to serve the Zionists' interests, such as the Freemasons, the Rotary Clubs, the Lions. . ." If only the Jews really accomplished all that by themselves and all of those organizations really were linked to Jews.
I replied as follows:
My take: Though I also doubt most everything stated in the Hamas charter, there is one thing everyone should investigate for themselves and if they did would probably end up agreeing with that statement, namely the role of the Jews in the Russian Revolution.
Fact 1: the Jews had suffered horribly under the Czarist pogroms in Russia and Poland (emigration to America, etc) and were only too glad to lend their efforts to the Czar's overthrow. Trotsky and many other leaders of the revolution were indeed Jewish.
Fact 2: On the other side of the ocean many of the leaders of New York banking circles were also indeed Jewish (Lehman, Seligman, Belmont [né Schoenberg], etc.). They had been eyeing for years the investment opportunities in Russia but were blocked in their access by the presence of the English and the French bankers who had the Czar all sewn up (Franco-Russian Entente, etc.). It was largely through English and French pressure that the Czar brought Russia into the war against Germany and Austria.
Fact 3: When the Kerensky revolution took place in 1917, Kerensky kept these investment alliances in place and was thus as reluctant to leave the war as the Czar had been. But once the Bolsheviks were noticed as a possibility it was Seligman and company who financed Lenin's train ride back to Russia so that he could stir things up, oust the French and British, and allow Wall Street to have its turn at financing Russia.
That is indeed how it turned out, and it was Lenin who did finally withdraw Russia from the war, much to the indignation of the allies (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk). I'm not sure if Lenin's Wall Street backers were in favor of that move since the U.S. was already in the war on the side of the allies. (Trotsky had spent the war in New York up to 1917. I wonder if it was he who spoke to the Jewish Wall Streeters.) So ironical as it seems, given America's later distaste of the Soviet Union for decades, it was Jewish capitalist investors from New York who helped to set up communism in the first place and Jewish Russian revolutionaries who helped carry out the work. Perhaps the bankers figured they could eventually overcome Lenin and his philosophy and re-institute a Kerensky-type regime that would welcome their foreign investment, much as Castro was at first welcomed in Cuba. But when Castro, like Lenin, proved an intransigent communist as well the present blockade was instituted against him, much as recognition of the Leninist regime was withheld by the U.S. till 1934.
Fact 4: Most of the ex-leaders of the revolution purged by the notorious anti-Semite Stalin were indeed the Jewish leaders, starting with Trotsky. Stalin continued his anti-Semitic shenanigans with the so-called "Jewish doctors' plot," which he cooked up shortly before his death.
So in sum: Far from denying the Jews' role in the Russian Revolution I hail it with pride as helping to remove one of the most oppressive regimes on the face of the earth in its time. PS: I think I've heard that one of Lenin's forebears was also Jewish.
Isidor
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