Solzhenitsyn on the importance of Pyotr Stolypin
The embodiment of an ideal that serves as a counter to bolshevism.
This is a post on Pyotr Stolypin, who according to a 2008 Russian television poll is the second greatest Russian in history after Alexander Nevsky and ahead of Joseph Stalin, yet very few in the modern west have heard of him (there are essentially no English language biographies of him). It is worth introducing him to new eyes and ears and possibly reframe the understanding of him for those who have heard of him before, as his ideals continue to have important relevance.
I had vaguely heard of Stolypin’s zemstvo land reforms under the last Tsar Nicholas II, and came across his name again when reading the Gulag Archipelago in relation to the railway cars named “Stolypin cars”, which were used by the Soviets to shuttle gulag prisoners (called zeks), cramped, overcrowded and barely fed, across the icy, barren tundra leading to and separating the gulag prisons from the rest of society. There was also “Stolypin neckties”, named for the hangman’s noose used to execute anti-Tsarist revolutionaries under the martial law that Stolypin had introduced; somewhere between 3,000-5,500 radicals were convicted and executed by these special courts between 1906 and 1909 (it’s interesting how easy it was to smear the Tsar and his supporters for “right wing suppression” and “Stolypin neckties” when the Cheka under the Soviets was responsible for the murder of at least 20 million Soviet citizens, per journalist Sever Plocker in Ynet news, a 3,636x or greater increase - winners write the history no matter how extreme the lie, I suppose).
What really caught my eye, though, were a couple of quotes that Lenin had made about Stolypin. After Stolypin was assassinated by a Jewish communist, Lenin in the Paris newspaper "Social-Democrat" on 31 October 1911 wrote "Stolypin and the Revolution", calling for the "mortification of the uber-lyncher", saying: ″Stolypin tried to pour new wine into old bottles, to reshape the old autocracy into a bourgeois monarchy; and the failure of Stolypin's policy is the failure of tsarism on this last, the last conceivable, road for tsarism." He reiterated this in 1912 comments: “This ‘reform’, of course, gave dying serfdom a new lease of life…The “new lease of life” given by Stolypin to the old order and old feudal agriculture lies in the fact that another valve was opened, the last that could still be opened without expropriating all the landed estates.”
Now what did Lenin mean by this? What was Stolypin offering that Lenin recognized as an avenue that could have prevented the Bolshevik revolution? And why is it relevant to us today? I will offer Stolypin’s solution here, and then follow up with it with quotes from Solzhenitsyn in his novel August 1914, which is a strange novel. In the novel, published in 1971, Solzhenitsyn writes about the start of World War 1 and the disastrous (for Russia) Battle of Tannenberg, but then he went back and added well over 100 pages to the novel in a much expanded 1984 edition - which had been suppressed in the prior edition, seen (correctly) as too anti-Soviet - and which provides much color and commentary on Stolypin.
The Idea
What Stolypin believed is only a combination of a strong monarchy plus an expanding, healthy middle class could serve as a bulwark against leftist radicalism. Bolshevism, in essence, involves the creation of an oligarchical class via riling up the lowest classes to overthrow the existing order, leading to an extreme decline in quality of life for all but the oligarchy, and to Stolypin that result needed to be prevented at all cost. Lee Kuan Yew had a very similar philosophy as he successfully established Singapore, where he vigorously promoted the economic middle class, instituted a strong monarchy-in-all-but-name for over 40 years, and utilized strong-handed suppression of the left-wing, communist element. A strong monarchy plus a focus on the middle class leads to wealth, truth and justice, so long as the monarch is strong (succession rules sooner or later result in a weak monarch, which weakens the institution and allow oligarchy to grow), while an oligarchy with a compliant media seeks to poison society in every conceivable way, but primarily by pushing an endless stream of lies in order to keep populism weak so they can continue to parasite off society. This is a government structure argument, not a transvaluation of values argument; any society regardless of its core values will have to wrestle with these issues.
Essentially, Stolypin was trying to thread a fine needle, or walk a tight tightrope, whichever analogy you prefer. The far-right at the time wanted to simply crush the leftist elements in support of the Tsar, but Stolypin correctly saw that would only strengthen the leftist element due to the poverty of the population. The far-left at the time wanted to seize all the lands of the rich and weaken and then overthrow the Tsar, but that would only result in chaos, death and destruction. Stolypin’s solution was to walk a middle ground: to legalize peasant’s private ownership of land (which was a radical concept) in order to let them enjoy the fruits of their own labor1 (which he saw as part two of the agrarian reform of 1861), as well as institute additional agrarian reforms that would dramatically increase agricultural output2, while at the same time use an iron fist to crack-down on the terrorist leftist element. As Solzhenitsyn stated:
Stolypin saw in his mind the only path, the natural path, though in earthquake conditions it looked improbable: a knife-edge path along a broken ridge. In the past reform had for some reason always signified a weakening and possibly the collapse of the regime, while stern measures to restore order were taken to indicate a renunciation of reform. He saw clearly that the two things must be combined! And, characteristically, what he saw and knew he felt able to carry through courageously. He had no time for public political wrangles, and none for empty show: his preference was for purposeful action. He saw the path forward, and set out on it.3
Stolypin came from a prominent Russian aristocratic family and became involved in government in his early 20s. He was a visionary and saw what Russia needed from a young age, and he was also fearless and bold - he would place himself in danger at a moment’s notice, such as to personally confront antagonistic leftist crowds and calm them down without bodyguards4, and at one point he challenged a leftist politician who insulted him to a duel (despite Stolypin having six young kids, which seems irresponsible). His early successes in public service led to extremely rapid promotions which were highly unusual for the time, culminating in his appointment as interior minister under prime minister Ivan Goremykin in April 1906. In July, Goremykin resigned and was succeeded as prime minister by Stolypin; he was only 44 years old.
The problem
Stolypin had a heavy task in front of him. After Bloody Sunday and Russia’s catastrophic defeat in the Russio-Japanese war, the Tsar panic-agreed to leftist concessions when the revolution started gaining steam, and he published the very poorly drafted October Manifesto. The results of the Manifesto created, among many other problems, a shrieking, hysterical leftist press, which addressed the Tsar and government officials in a harsh, critical tone previously unheard of. Zhirkov calls this time "the flowering of Russian journalism". This so-called freedom of speech (really, free speech for the left-wing oligarchical owners of the press, ultimately financed by the Rothschilds, Schiffs and their allies) also opened the floodgates for meetings and organized anti-monarch political parties.5 The revolutionaries “grew more brazen everywhere; they brought arms in from abroad in quantities which endangered the country. They coerced people to take part in riots or strikes. Where they could not provoke a strike they damaged bridges or railway beds, or tore up telegraph poles, hoping to disrupt the country totally even without a strike wave….the agitators took advantage of every weak spot, every oversight - slowness in releasing time-expired conscripts, delay in replacing uniforms, slow rations, withholding of travel warrants.”6 Local authorities were caught off balance, and they, including the police, were too terrified to respond.
Stolypin stepped up to the plate: he responded by dissolving the first Duma, which was very left-wing and openly supported the revolutionaries, and instituted martial law:
The court machinery worked too slowly to make any impression on the masses or to reassure anybody. Field court-martial were the only thing for it. The situation was one of civil war - so the laws of wartime must apply. Swift measures would elicit popular support, and that was the surest way to stop the revolutionaries. Stolypin argued, “The resolve of right-thinking people to be seen defending order will in itself produce an impression calculated to daunt the “militants,” whose insane daring thrives on the pusillanimity of those who prefer a quiet life.”7
The Tsar shirked from such proposed action, though, but his hand was forced when revolutionaries blew up Stolypin’s out-of-town residence on Aptekarsky Island, killing 27 and seriously injuring 32, including two of his children.
The press responded with further threats to Stolypin and his family, but Stolypin, to his credit, doubled down: “Where bombs are used as arguments the natural answer is merciless punishment. To our grief and shame only the execution of a few can prevent the spilling of seas of blood.” As Solzhenitsyn explains8:
That was the beginning of the notorious Stolypin terror - a phrase so persistently foisted on the Russian language and the Russian mind (abroad it was worse still!) that even now the image of a black era of cruel excesses is seared onto our eyeballs. Yet all the terror amounted to was the introduction of field courts-martial (which operated for eight months) to deal with especially serious (not all) cases of looting, murder, and attacks on the police, on the civil authorities, and on peaceful citizens, so as to bring trial and sentence closer to the time and place of the time. (Urged to hold terrorists already under arrest hostage for the actions of others not yet captured, Stolypin of course rejected the idea.) Dissemination of subversive ideas in the army (previously practically unimpeded) was made a criminal offense. So was praise of terrorism (in which Duma deputies, the press, and indeed the general public had hitherto indulged unhindered). Bomb throwers were now subject to the death penalty, but those caught making bombs were not treated as actual murderers. Meetings organized by political parties and societies, provided they were not in public places and there were no outsiders present, or only outsiders belonging to the educated classes, did not require administrative supervision.
These draconian measures aroused the unanimous wrath of educated Russian society. There was a spate of newspaper articles, speeches, and letters (one from Lev Tolstoy) arguing that no one should ever dare to execute anyone, not even the most brutal of murderers, that field courts-martial could do nothing toward the moral rejuvenation of society (as though that was what terror was doing) but could only further brutalize it (something which terror did still more effectively)….Anyone who did not loudly approve of revolutionary terror was regarded by Russian society as a hangman himself.
Yet, whether Stolypin was brutalizing Russia or not, terrorism decline from the moment the field courts-martial was introduced.
To reiterate, somewhere between 3,000-5,500 leftist revolutionaries were executed under Tsarist martial law, whereas the Cheka under the Soviet Union murdered at least 20 million Soviet citizens. It’s hard to get over how crazy this disparity is and how people worldwide were fooled by an evil, disgusting, agenda-ridden media — the media literally set the terms of reality for most people.
Stolypin undertook these measures while having to seek the approval of a weak, shilly-shallying Tsar, who he supported despite his flaws because Stolypin accepted the importance of the monarchy as institutionally necessary for Russia to survive9:
Even though the sovereign’s actions showed not strength of purpose but a mixture of timidity and obstinacy, obstinacy even in error, even though the sovereign’s highest motivation was to avoid disquiet, he must nonetheless carefully seek out the dim spark of the sovereign’s will…because for the foreseeable future Russia could not advance, or indeed survive, if its monarchic structure and character was demolished. He must not give in to an ordinary human judgment of the limp and somewhat sluggish man facing him across the desk and smoking, with a soft, unassuming smile between his unassuming mustache and beard…the greatest of ministers was no substitute even for a weak hereditary monarch: Stolypin could never have chosen for himself the path of Bismarck who had ruthlessly violated the will of the monarch in the interests in the interests of the monarchy.
There was no doubt that the Emperor was perplexed, unsure of himself, afraid to take decisive steps lest they aggravate the disorders…he undoubtedly needed a strong man to do everything for him…All this together stirred in Stolypin pain and pity, first for Russia, but then for his sovereign too, that weak but virtuous man, weaker than any former Romanov, who through no wish of his own had found himself wearing the crown of Monomakh in those most difficult years. He could not leave this Tsar in distress, he must instill in him his own resolve; not only because they would not otherwise be able to accomplish their work for Russia but because he pitied the man’s fatal dilatoriness and indecision. (Although it needed no great foresight to see how easily this Tsar might recoil from his minister and betray him.)
The leftist revolutionaries kept trying to kill him, and Stolypin woke up as if each day would be his last. Speaking of those months, Stolypin would tell his intimates, “I offer up a prayer each morning and think of the day ahead as my last. In the evening I thank God for granting me one more day of life. I realize that death is often the penalty to be paid for one’s beliefs. And I feel strongly at times that the day will come when some murder’s plan will succeed. Still, you only die once.” As he put it, “There is no limit to the assistance I am ready to give and the concessions I am willing to make to put the peasantry on the path of cultural development. If we fail to carry out this reform we should all be swept onto the rubbish heap.”10 To the (still far-left wing) Second Duma, he argued:
We cannot set aside the urgent requests of the peasants, who are being drained of their substance and increasingly impoverished by our clumsy system of land tenure; we must not be slow to prevent the total ruin of the most numerous part of Russia’s population, which has become economically weak and no longer capable of ensuring for itself a decent existence by tilling the soil in the time-honored way.
Portions of the Second Duma were still collaborating with terrorists, but the Second Duma rejected their expulsion and therefore Stolypin dissolved the Duma and passed the agricultural reform law that he wanted.
During this period Stolypin also spent considerable efforts drafting and promoting a law granting equal rights to the Jews, which he hoped to use to tear numbers of Jews away from revolution.11 This is ironic given Stolypin was ultimately assassinated by a far-leftist Jewish revolutionary. However, the Tsar rejected the proposal, after much hesitation, with unusual decisiveness. Solzhenitsyn doesn’t go into it in this novel, but he later argues in “200 Years Together”, which has never had a full translation into English, that Jews were dramatically over-represented among left-wing revolutionaries, which was born out by other research.12
The results
Stolypin’s carrot-and-stick methods worked; the situation calmed down and the revolutionary energy in the air petered out. “Another ten to fifteen years,” Stolypin would tell his close collaborators, “and the revolutionaries won’t have a chance.”
Stolypin’s agricultural reforms were also starting to bear fruit. According to the Moscow Times, “Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms produced astounding results within a few years. Between 1906 and 1915, thanks to the efforts of Stolypin’s farmers, the productivity of crops nationwide grew by 14 percent, in Siberia by 25 percent. In 1912, Russia’s grain exports exceeded by 30 percent those of Argentina, the United States and Canada combined.” And that was only with the partial reforms that Stolypin had been able to institute against resistance from the left and right, and also the very slow rate of change in the Russian peasantry, who were scared of leaving the communal “obschinas” and accepting privately owned land because of pressure from the far left (which later turned out to be accurate; these peasants that took the government up on the offer were viciously targeted later by the Bolsheviks as “kulaks”) but still, a couple million Russian peasants did take the government up on the offer, and 2.8 million peasants moved to Siberia between 1908-1913 in part to take advantage of those reforms. Tax receipts showed that it was working because the peasants who owned the private land were producing much more and paying much more in taxes as a result.
Per South African central banker Stephen Mitford Goodson, “After the passing of the Stolypin Act in 1906, peasants could obtain individual title with hereditary rights… By 1913 two million families had availed themselves of this opportunity to acquire what became known as “Stolypin farms.” The Peasants’ State Bank, which was described at that time as the “greatest and most socially beneficent institution of land credit in the world” granted loans at a very low rate of interest. Agricultural production soared as a result - its production of cereals exceeded the combined production of Argentina, Canada and the United States by 25% in 1913. In that year Russia had 37.5 million horses, more than half of all those in the world. Russia produced 80% of the world’s flax and provided more than 50% of the world’s egg imports. Mining and industrial output expanded by huge margins. Between 1885 and 1913 coal production increased from 259.6 million woods to 2,159.8 million poods, cast iron production rose form 25 million poods in 1890 to 1,378 million poods in 1913 and petroleum production rose from 491.2 million poods in 1906 to 602.1 million poods in 1916. From 1870 to 1914 industrial output grew by 1% per annum in Great Britain, 2.75% per annum in the United States and 3.5% per annum in Russia. During the period from 1890 to 1913 industrial production quadrupled; the increase in GDP averaged 10% per annum between 1895-1914.”13
The downfall
Stolypin had greater confidence in the Third Duma, which, due to changes in its representation which, in part, decreased the representation of the far-leftist 5th column Polish contingent, were much more conservative than the first two Dumas. However, the far right still didn’t like or trust Stolypin for his agricultural reforms; they saw him as left leaning, just as the left saw him as perpetuating the Tsarist regime. Combined with the Tsar souring on Stolypin (too many were whispering in his ear that the crisis had passed and Stolypin was power hungry; the Tsar was too wishy-washy, and he both didn’t give Stolypin enough credit for calming the troubles and he discounted how easily the troubles could return), the Third Duma turned against Stolypin on a minor matter regarding further agricultural reform that humiliated him. Only the nationalists, about 1/3 of the Duma, fully supported him — the rest that had supported him previously were fair-weather friends, motivated by self-interest, greed, weakness and poor values, and readily abandoned him despite his brilliance and prior successes.
It became increasingly likely that Stolypin would be dismissed from his position as prime minister by the Tsar. The Duma tried to offer him a way out, to accept some demoted post in the Far East where he could focus on expanding farm production output, but he turned it down. Stolypin traveled to Kiev despite police warnings of an assassination plot, as there had already been 10 attempts to kill him; however, he was offered no police protection. During a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Kiev Opera in the presence of the Tsar and his eldest daughters, Stolypin was assassinated by Dmitry Bogrov, a far-leftist double-agent that was knowingly allowed to attend by the Tsarist secret police (Bogrov stated that he didn’t target the Tsar himself only because he was worried about retaliation in the form of anti-Jewish pogroms). Stolypin lay wounded for four days and the Tsar ungratefully never visited him; later the Tsar would bemoan that he didn’t have Stolypin to help as a strong-man front-man to avoid World War 1. An investigation into the four officers that allowed Bogrov to attend the Opera was later quashed by the Tsar, leading to speculation that the Tsar or the secret police knew about and/or planned the assassination of Stolypin.
After the assassination, the left-wing press went buckwild and falsely accused Stolypin of having knowledge of and even approving of Bogrov being at the Kiev Opera and smeared his character every which way, which were atrocious lies.
The death of Stolypin resulting in the stalling-out of the agriculture reforms and this, along with later strategic mistakes surrounding World War 1, gave the Bolsheviks the room they need to later make their move and conquer the country.
Conclusion
Perhaps if Russia had had a stronger monarch - which goes beyond Stolypin and includes later World War 1 decisions like the Tsar and his advisor’s decisions to garrison unstable and unreliable units of armed forces in Petrograd, and his decision to rush off to Petrograd basically on his own when the news of the 1917 February Revolution reached him instead of seeking an armistice with Germany and pushing back on Petrograd and Moscow with his reliable front-line troops - then the fate of Russia would have been different; one should give credit to the Tsar, though, for recognizing Stolypin’s talent early on and promoting him to Prime Minister in the first place and giving him such a degree of power so quickly.
Ultimately, it is only a combination of a strong middle class plus a strong head of government that can combat the combination of oligarchy, a controlled press and the lower classes. The former results in prosperity for society; the latter results in death, destruction, and poverty for all but the richest. This is why, in effect, globohomo is so myopically focused on destroying the American and western middle class; by weakening the middle class and turning the presidency into a toothless puppet, they strengthen oligarchy. They need the middle class to be hollowed out and destroyed (a process already in a very advanced state, but they can always squeeze more) so that they can usher in maximum oligarchy and death and destruction.
This is the lesson of Stolypin, and it is why people in the west should be familiar with him.
Solzhenitsyn, August 1914, p. 728: Stolypin argued, “The obligation for all to conform to a single pattern of farming can be tolerated no longer. It is intolerable for a peasant with initiative to invest his talents and efforts in land which is only temporarily his. Continual redistribution begets carelessness and indifference in the cultivator. Equal shares in the land mean equal shares in ruin. Egalitarian land use lowers agricultural standards and the general cultural level of the country at large.”
Also, p. 705, Solzhenitsyn opined philosophically: “Perhaps, though, in this self-denial [the communal land system], this harmonization of the will of the individual with that of the commune, this mutual aid and curbing of wild willfulness, there lay something more valuable than harvests and material well-being? Perhaps the people could look forward to something better than the development of private property? Perhaps the commune was not just a system of paternalistic constraints, cramping the freedom of the individual, perhaps it reflected the people’s philosophy of life, its faith? Perhaps there was a paradox here which went beyond the commune, indeed beyond Russia itself: freedom of action and prosperity are necessary if man is to stand up to his full height on this earth, but spiritual greatness dwells in eternal subordination, in awareness of oneself as an insignificant particle.
Thinking this way makes action impossible. Stolypin was always a realist. With him, thought and action were one. No one can ask the people to behave like angels. We have to live with property as we live with all the temptations of this life. And in any case, the commune created a good deal of discord among the peasants.”
Ibid, 712: “Stolypin insisted in the Duma that no repartition could make Russia as a whole richer, it would only lead to the ruin of the best farms and a reduction of the harvest. He quoted agrarian statistics quite unknown to the uninstructed peasant (none of whose rulers had ever felt inspired to leave his snug estate and explain such things to the common people), but also so unpalatable to the Kadets that they refused to accept and digest them. The country, said Stolypin, had 140 million desyatins of state land, but most of that was tundra or desert, and the rest was already allotted to peasants. The peasants had, altogether, 160 million desyatins, the gentry a third of that, 53 million, much of it forest, so that if the last scrap was redistributed it would not make the peasants rich. So then, handing out land left and right, seeking to pacify rebellious peasants by almsgiving, ws useless. Instead of trying to grab more land from others everyone should ill his own holding differently, learn to get eighty or a hundred puds from a desyatin, as the most efficient farmers did, instead of thirty-five.”
Ibid, 725.
Ibid, 707: “He was erect and well built, his movements were assured, his manner masterful - he was obviously not one of those who lay sleepless and trembling at night in their gubernatorial palaces. He could ride out without escort to face a furious mob on the city square, toss his greatcoat - “Hold that!” - to a hefty fellow advancing on him with a cudgel, and with a confident speech delivered in a ringing voice persuade the crowd to disperse. Conversely, when another crowd, moved by patriotic outrage, besieged a building at Balashov, Stolypin intervened personally, pushed through the crowd to save the intellectuals inside who were discussing political revolution, and suffered further damage to his congenitally weak right arm form a cobblestone flung by.a murderous hooligan.”
Also: “The third time [a leftist tried to assassinate him], the assassin leveled his revolver point-blank at his intended victim, once again in the presence of a crowd, but dropped his weapon when Stolypin undid his overcoat and called out, “Go ahead - shoot!”
Ibid, 717: “The press was free, and did not ask the government to authorize its outpourings; inevitably persons hostile to the government made use of it to corrupt the people (which meant the army too!). To mention only the least of these abuses, the legitimate press “reproduced without comment” revolutionary appeals however wild and nonsensical, and the resolutions of illegal conferences whatever their character. Intellectuals harbored the whole Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in private apartments and printed its destructive exhortations. The educated public was disposed to believe any lie or libel, so long as it was directed against the government, and newspapers had a predilection for printing such things and then not retracting them. The press had usurped a power greater than that of the government."
Stocks of revolutionary publications and weapons, “laboratories” producing bombs, illegal presses, and the headquarters of revolutionary organizations were concealed in educational institutions. But every time the police tried to lay a hand on them “the public” and the press raised a howl about their illegal interference in matters which did not concern them, while the educators, who could not quiet the rebellious young, sucked up to them and call them into question the results of searches. At teachers’ meetings caps and handbags were passed around labeled “For propaganda among the workers,” “For arms,” “In aid of the Socialist Revolutionary Committee.”
Ibid.
Ibid, 723.
Ibid, 724.
Ibid, 726.
Ibid, 728.
Ibid, 732.
In Russia at this time Jews made up 2% of the USSR’s population. When Theodor Herzl visited the Russian Empire in 1903, he met Count Witte, the Minister of Finance. According to Leonard Schapiro, who authored The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement in 1961, Herzl found that “50% of the membership of the revolutionary parties was Jewish.” Alexander Guchkov, the Russian minister of war in the Russian Provision Government after Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917, told the British military attache General Alfred Knox that “the extreme element consists of Jews and imbeciles.” Lenin’s return to Russia had included 19 members of his Bolshevik party, several of his allies among the Mensheviks and six Jewish members of the Jewish Labor Bund. Almost half the passengers on the train were Jewish.
Winston Churchill claimed the Jewish role in the Russian Revolution “probably outweighs [the role] of all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.” He named names: Maxim Litvinoff, Trotsky, Grigory Zinoview, Radek, Leonid Krassin. He accused Jews of playing “the prominent, if not indeed the principal part in the system of terrorism” that had then become known as the “red terror” or the suppression of those in the Soviet Union who deviated from the communist line. In the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and its Central Committee elected in August 1917, we find that five of the committee’s 21 members were Jewish. This included Trotsky, Zinoviev, Moisei Uritsky, Sverdlov and Grigori Sokolnikov. Except for Sverdlov, they were all from Ukraine. The next year they were joined by Kamenev and Radek. Jews made up 20% of the central committees until 1921. Half of the top contenders in the Central Committee of the Communist Party to take power after Lenin’s health declined in 1922 – Lev Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev – were Jewish. Yakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from November 1917 to his death in 1919, was Jewish. Of those in power that weren’t Jewish, according to Molotov, many had Jewish wives: “There is an explanation. Oppositionist and revolutionary elements formed a higher percentage among Jews than among Russians. Insulted, injured and oppressed, they were more versatile. They penetrated everywhere, so to speak.” He claimed that Jews were more “active” than average Russians.” The Bolsheviks made anti-semitism a capital offense after seizing power.
Within a short period of time, the Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB. We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags. The GPU’s deputy commander and founder/commander of the NKVD was a Jewish mass murderer named Genrikh Yagoda. Yagoda implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5% of those holding the senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges.
Stephen Mitford Goodson, “The History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind”, 76-82.
Fascinating! A couple of things spring to mind after reading this.
1. Most contemporary readers don't realise that Marxism was a compelling proposition to Russian peasants because, unlike the rest of Europe, they were still living as serfs: that is, they owned nothing (and were happy) because the landowner for whom they toiled was responsible for providing for them. Unlike slaves in the traditional sense, serfs weren't bought and sold as individuals; entire familes were simply considered part and parcel of the property. When you literally own nothing, the idea of seizing everyone's property and owning it communally sounds like a great idea.
2. Against this backdrop, Stolypin's idea of gradual privatization is genius. Indeed, it's similar to what China has done over the past few decades. Although the CCP is communist in name, China's economic engine runs on private enterprise.
3. Similarly, Stolypin's idea of granting equal rights to Jews was also brilliant. Contemporary observers who look with disdain on the Jewish enthusiasm for Marxism don't understand that Jews were continually subjected to violence ("pogroms") and discrimination in Tsarist Russia. While the atheism of Communism was a deal-breaker for most religious Jews, younger, more rebellious Jews saw Marxism as a path to the equality and assimilation that they yearned for. In subsequent decades, as fascism grew in Germany and Italy, Communism was perceived by most European Jews as the only alternative, leading to strong adoption of it. Stolypin's ideas, had they been implemented, could have provided a third and far superior option, not only for Jews but for all of Europe.
"The Shadow of the Winter Palace" made Stolypin so likeable and real, though not sure that was Crankshaw's objective. Do you have any recommendations for full books on Stolypin?