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(June 12, 2022 / Jewish Journal) In early 1917, shortly after the deposition of the last Russian czar, the Provisional Government of the Russian Empire abolished all restrictions on Jewish civil rights. Until then, Jews were largely restricted to the Pale of Settlement along the Empires western border, faced quotas in schools and experienced other forms of professional, economic and political discrimination. For about half a year, until the October Revolution that overthrew the Provisional Government and brought the Bolsheviks to power, Russian Jews experienced true political and religious freedomat least by the standards of the time.

When the Bolsheviks took control of Russia, that freedom vanished for all of the Empires citizens, including its Jews. Having established a dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communists banned all other political parties. In practice, Soviet citizens now had fewer voting rights than they did under the czar after the 1905 revolution, which had led to the creation of a representative legislative assembly based on a multiparty system.

The officially atheist Communist Party also cracked down on religious practice and institutions. This included imprisoning and even murdering religious leaders, destroying places of worship (or repurposing them for secular purposes) and suppressing religious education. For Soviet Jews, this meant that most synagogues were closed, rabbis were either forced to resign or violently repressed and Hebrew language and religious instruction were effectively outlawed, replaced by an officially sanctioned Yiddish culture that preached the new Bolshevik religion. This was nothing less than a state-sponsored effort to erase Jewish culture and traditions throughout the empire.

Nevertheless, many Russian Jews welcomed Bolshevik rule. They comprised disproportionate numbers in early Soviet governments and state institutionsas did other ethnic groups denied such opportunities in the Russian Empire. Despite newfound prohibitions on their religious, ideological and social practices, in the 1920s Soviet Jews excelled in Soviet political, cultural and professional life.

During the early years of the USSR, Soviet Jews continued to experience the (relative) legal equality first granted them by the Provisional Government. Anti-Semitism was even officially outlawed by the government. In exchange, the Jews had to sacrifice the ability to practice their religion, one of the few rights afforded them by the czars (albeit with various restrictions). However, this de facto legal equality would disappear after World War II, though it remained de jure until the USSRs collapse.

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Shortly after the Holocaust, Stalin initiated what historians have called the black years of Soviet Jewry, during which the government forced Soviet Jews out of prestigious professions and universities, arrested and in many cases murdered Jewish leaders and fomented an atmosphere of anti-Jewish hysteria throughout the USSR. Stalins death in 1953 brought an end to the worst of this official anti-Semitism, but Soviet Jews would continue to face unofficial discrimination and legal inequality. This took the form of university and professional quotas, the widespread dissemination of state-sponsored anti-Semitic propaganda under the fig leaf of anti-Zionism and arbitrary refusals by the government to allow them to emigrate. This legal and unofficial discrimination began to wane only during the final years of perestroika and glasnost, before dying along with the Soviet Union.

What does this have to do with Jews in Russia today? Like their ancestors under the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, Jews in Russia and the other nations of the former USSR are free to practice their religion without government interference. Like Jews in the early years of the Soviet Union, they have excelled politically, economically and culturally since the collapse of communism. And in recent years, just like those early Soviet Jews, they have had to sacrifice one kind of freedom for another. Whereas the former had to relinquish their religious freedom for political equality, Jews in Russia today increasingly find themselves losing the political freedom theyand other Russian citizensexperienced after the collapse of the USSR, while successfully defending their freedom of worship.

While the relative political freedom of the Boris Yeltsin era has steadily eroded during Vladimir Putins (and Dmitry Medvedevs) rule, it has taken a nosedive since Russias invasion of Ukraine in February. Since then, the government has shut down what little remained of Russias independent press. It has passed laws allowing Russians to be imprisoned solely for criticizing its attack on Ukraine, which the government calls a special military operation. It has jailed opposition leaders like Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza on unsubstantiated charges of extremism and terrorism after first poisoning them.

Russias 150,000 Jews are now watching developments in the relationship between their government and community leaders with baited breath, wondering if (and how) it will affect the unimpaired religious freedom they have enjoyed since the fall of communism. Jewish religious and communal leaders have faced increasing pressure from the Russian government in recent months to publicly support its invasion of Ukraine. Like Moscows Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, most have refused to do so. Goldschmidt, who is also president of the Conference of European Rabbis, is now in exile in Israel. Rabbi Berel Lazar of Chabad, one of Russias two chief rabbis, has called for an end to the madness of the invasion and demanded an apology from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after he claimed on Italian television that Hitler had Jewish roots.

Thousands of Russian Jews have emigrated since Russias invasion of Ukraine began in 2014. Israel has seen the biggest influx of Russian olim since the fall of the USSR. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who was also the countrys first ambassador to the USSR, once said, Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself. If pessimism is a luxury, it is one that the Jews of the former Soviet Union have too often denied themselves to their detriment. As the history of Russia and its Jews has repeatedly shown, even when things have been looking up for a while, they can always get worse again. In the midst of a Russian economy facing its greatest decline in decades, Russian Jews should allow themselves the luxury of pessimism as they plan for their future in (or out) of the country.

Oleg Ivanov is a freelance writer and editor.

This article was originally published by Jewish Journal.

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Russian Jews have long been forced to sacrifice one freedom for another - JNS.org

Throughout my life, I have watched the world become more American. On every continent, people learn English, watch U.S. films, wear blue jeans, and aspire to live in pluralist, capitalist, and individualist societies. The dissemination of American values was one of the happiest facts of the 20th century. But I fear that the 21st century has brought an altogether darker cultural export.

The core American value used to be freedom. Freedom of speech meant no one could drag you to jail for saying the wrong thing. Freedom of assembly meant no one could close down a political party, labor union, or church congregation for sedition. People chose their jobs, their homes, their spouses. America was conceived in liberty, and when countries escaped fascism in 1944, or communism in 1989, they aspired to be more like America.

That was then. Starting in the late 20th century and accelerating terrifyingly around 2015, the United States has switched from elevating individual rights to elevating group rights. It has, in other words, returned to the tribal thinking that its creation was intended to defy. The precepts that drove the campaign for civil rights race doesnt define you, everyone is equal before the law, character trumps skin color are now deemed reactionary and offensive. Ethnic differences (and, to a lesser degree, differences of sex, sexuality, and so forth) are deemed supremely important. They define your place in an imagined hierarchy of privilege and determine what you can say, what college scores you need, and what positions you can occupy.

We can argue about the origins of this tendency. Did it come from the notions of guilt and justification that animated the earliest settlers? (I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville.) Did it arrive later, brought by socialist German academics? Or was it an overcorrection, a reaction to the ugliness of slavery and segregation?

Whatever its genesis, the American virus has leaked out and become a global pandemic. Across the West, especially in other white-majority, English-speaking countries, social questions are now seen through the distorting prism of Americas civil rights struggles.

In Britain, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are (along with Nelson Mandela) among the most familiar historical figures, with hundreds of classrooms and junior schools named after them. Almost any British child can identify them, whereas perhaps one in a hundred could tell you anything about, say, John Locke.

Our vocabulary has become Americanized. People talk of all-white juries as though there are alternatives in chunks of rural Britain. Race relations are presented in Black Lives Matter's terms, although black people in Britain are just 3.3% of the population, less than half as numerous as, say, South Asians.

Even if we accepted the fundamentally illiberal premise of a universal black experience or a universal white experience, there is no real comparison between the American South and the rest of the Anglosphere.

There were very few black people in Britain before 1948. The first arrivals from the Caribbean had, in many cases, served patriotically in World War II and did not regard themselves as immigrants at all. Slavery was abolished in all of Britains colonies a generation before the U.S. Civil War. In the mother country, a court ruling in 1772 had established that any slave brought to Britain was free the moment he set foot on our soil.

Yet, to this day, white conservatives in Britain are trolled with images of burning crosses and Klansmens hoods, while black conservatives are called Uncle Toms and house Negroes. Quite apart from being terrifically rude, what have these things got to do with Britain?

It all comes down to the extraordinary cultural reach of American media. We watch not just The West Wing, House of Cards, and Veep, but nonpolitical dramas and comedies that shape our sense of current affairs, from Billions to The Simpsons.

I have written before about how the understandable American squeamishness about blackface now dictates that white British actors cant play black roles a wholly imported taboo. I have written about how the American Lefts anathematization of the term Anglo-Saxon has spilled over into the United Kingdom.

Some British universities have even, hilariously, picked up the acronym BIPOC though the indigenous people represented by the I are, in Britain, white. Nothing, though, beats Britains BLM protests, which saw largely white crowds shouting, Hands up, dont shoot! at unarmed London coppers.

Even in the U.S., bringing people up with inherited grievances based on how they look strikes me as dreadful. But for the rest of the world to be importing someone elses quarrel is beyond tragic.

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The world is being infected by America's race pathology - Washington Examiner

EXCLUSIVE:

A first-of-its-kind museum dedicated to the victims of communist regimes is opening on Capitol Hill.

The nonprofit Victims of Communism Museum will throw open its doors to the public on June 13. (A press preview is scheduled for Thursday.)

Ambassador Andrew Bremberg emphasized the urgency of the museums message, noting public surveys showing a general acceptance of socialist and communist ideas among young people.

Its imperative that we teach Americans about the victims, failures and holes of communism because Americans reject communism as soon as they learn anything about it, Amb. Bremberg said in an exclusive interview with The Washington Times. The problem is that today, many young people just have no idea who Joseph Stalin was or who Mao Zedong was, and they were the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century.

The ambassador, who served as U.S. permanent representative at the United Nations in Geneva from 2019 to 2021, is president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit authorized by a unanimous act of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Amb. Bremberg said the foundation raised millions of dollars to rehabilitate and build out two floors of its building for the museum, which is within view of the U.S. Capitol, two blocks from Union Station. Then-President George W. Bush dedicated the Victims of Communism Memorial statue at a nearby intersection in 2007.

The new museum is opening as a growing number of states have enacted laws requiring that public schools teach about the evils of communism efforts the foundation is supporting by developing a web-based curriculum.

More people are realizing that the experience of communism really hasnt gotten the heavy attention, especially here in the United States, that it needs to educate our citizenry about it, Amb. Bremberg said. A museum is a tremendous way of doing that.

The two-floor museum at 900 15th St. NW seeks to honor the more than 100 million people killed by communist regimes such as the now-defunct Soviet Union and the 1.5 billion people who still live in communist nations like China and Cuba.

The museum consists of a permanent gallery, a temporary gallery and an education space that includes an education hall with documentary videos for school groups.

It also includes a small number of historical artifacts, including photographs and personal possessions, that are a mix of reproductions and items that people in communist nations donated.

Amb. Bremberg said the permanent gallery orients visitors to the lies spread by communism in the 20th century through a digital interactive educational experience for students.

The temporary exhibit showcases more in-depth exhibits on people living and dead whose lives were ruined by communism, he added.

For most Americans growing up, anyone younger than me has no memory or experience of the Berlin Wall falling, said Amb. Bremberg, 43. Thats concerning because they havent learned about it. Thats why we see more Americans interested in communism who think it just hasnt been tried right yet.

Founded by 19th-century German political theorist Karl Marx, communism calls for a single-party, government-run economy in which private property is outlawed. During the 20th century, Marxist regimes imprisoned, tortured and executed millions of people.

Link:
Victims of Communism Museum to open in nation's capital - Washington Times

Defying their Party's official policy, two communist lawmakers in Russia's far east Primorye region on Friday expressed their disagreement over the imperialist war in Ukraine and called President Vladimir Putin to end the military campaign.

We demand the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. We demand an end to military action, legislative assembly member Leonid Vasyukevich said during Fridays session. Vasyukevich, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), said continuing Russias three-month campaign in Ukraine would lead to an imminent increase in military deaths and injuries.

"During a military operation, people become disabled. These are young people who could be of great use to our country," he added.

Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of Primorsky Krai who was present during the meeting, labeled Vasyukevich a traitor and accused him of defaming the Russia army and our defenders, who are in the fight against Nazism. Subsequently, Vasyukevich and his colleague, Gennady Shulga, were ejected from the Legislative Assembly and threatened with harsh measures for speaking out against the war.

Anatoly Dolgachev, the head of the Communist Party in the regional parliament, quickly sought to distance his organization from Vasyukevich, claiming that his demarche had been unsanctioned, and said that his comments besmirch the honor of the CPRF".

IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM

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Russia: Communist Party deputies in Primorye region demand an end to Ukraine War - In Defense of Communism

Vivek Katju

Ex-Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

IN his address to the second in-person Quad summit held in Tokyo on May 24, US President Joe Biden said, Prime Minister Modi, its wonderful to see you in person and I thank you for your continuing commitment to making sure democracies deliver, because that is what this is about: democracies versus autocracies. And we have to make sure we deliver.

For all its claims of respecting democracy, the US doesnt hesitate to support dictators if its interests demand.

Two months earlier, Biden was in Warsaw to underline NATOs unity to meet the challenge of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a speech on March 26, he reminded the world of the power of the people in the face of a cruel and brutal system of government. The totality of the speech indicates that he was referring to the Cold War and the ideological struggle between the West and the Soviet Union, though he avoided using the words Cold War and communism. At the same time, seeking to link the Cold War times to present contestations, Biden implied that then too there was a battle between democracy and autocracy. However, the word autocracy was not generally used by the US during the Cold War. The popular formulation was the free world versus godless communism.

Through the Cold War, the US stressed that its system was based on freedom, respect for individual rights and choices while communism crushed individual rights and aspirations by punishing dissent. It also emphasised that communism sought to spread its predatory wings throughout the world and had to be contained. Today, as the West and its allies seek to meet the political and diplomatic challenge of an aggressive China in the Indo-Pacific and worldwide, and of Russias actions in Ukraine, it is making the same ideological points in a different vocabulary, necessitated by changes in China and Russia.

China and Russia, decades ago, consigned to history their communist economic systems which were based on full state ownership of all economic assets as well as denial of any private enterprise. Now, private enterprise is the norm, though within the parameters set by the state; in Chinas case determined by the Xi Jinping-controlled party and in Russias by President Vladimir Putin. The political systems of both countries, though, are in the control of strong leaders. Besides, in China the Chinese communist party does not allow any other vehicle of political expression. As the economic ordering of these states has changed, the West cannot call them communist. Hence, the use of the term autocracy, which implies one-man authoritarian rule unconstrained by state institutions. The democracy versus autocracy binary therefore is the replacement of the Cold War binary of free world versus evil and godless communism.

The end of the Cold War witnessed a reassertion by the West and its allies on the nature of global order, which they premised on an expansion of democratic polities which would be committed to an open and rules-based system. Now, Biden is asserting that the worlds leading autocracies China and Russia are undermining the rules-based international order by their policies and actions which are violating the sovereignty of states and eroding the institutional structure which is upholding global order. And he is placing all this in the democracy versus autocracy binary. Certainly, Russias invasion of Ukraine is indefensible and China has become aggressive.

History bears witness to the non-static nature of global orders. What is common to all global orders are the dichotomies that are underlined by states that uphold international order and benefit from them. These states always project their systems as enlightened and on the right side of history, holding at bay the forces of darkness and barbarism. It is fascinating that the West is now emphasising that a global order based on the ascendancy of democracies which can deliver is threatened by autocratic polities. The US is finding it necessary to show that democracies can deliver, perhaps, inter alia, because of the different way in which China and its own system handled the Covid pandemic.

Through the Cold War period, the US and its allies enjoyed greater prosperity than the communist countries. They attributed this to the advantages of the market economies. The West also outstripped the communist world in science and technology with the beginnings of the digital age. In some areas, especially those related to the military, space and nuclear, the Soviet Union managed to compete, but by the 1980s, it had become clear that it was lagging behind. However, the rise of China has been astonishing in the past three decades in manufacturing, and increasingly, in technology. This is leading it to assert that unlike the democracies, its own system is delivering growth and making its people prosperous. It is also pointing to the success of the way it has handled the pandemic and is contrasting it with the performance of the democracies in pandemic management. It is in this context that Bidens praise of Modi for making sure that democracies deliver has to be placed. Modi would be gratified by Bidens assessment that India has done well in its overall management of the grave global dislocation because of the pandemic, the consequent international economic difficulties which have been further compounded by Russias invasion of Ukraine. But the test of the performance of a government does not lie in the views of outsiders, but of its own people.

For all its claims of respecting democracy, the US did not hesitate to support the most autocratic dictators during the Cold War who terrorised their peoples as long as its interests were served. In some cases, it deposed popular governments, as in Iran and Chile, and replaced them with ruthless dictators. All this was justified in the cause of democracy against communism! Today, too, the US does business with autocrats if its interests demand. So much for democracy versus autocracy.

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The American wordplay - The Tribune India