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autisticri0t · 10 months ago

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I deeply apologise that I only just saw this but I figured I’ll bring it up and give people a New Year’s resolution to stop using that fucking thing.

I also want to state before I get any accusations - I’m not against anyone who is communist. I’m against people using the hammer and sickle as a ‘anti fascist’ symbol. Im Jewish (conservodox) myself with family members who lived in Russia previously. None are alive and therefore I cannot ask them personally but I did all my research and cited my sources within this post. If you have any questions, dm me or leave them in the comments - reblogs aren’t my strong suit and I will not see your answer immediately.

It’s also important to note that sources or quotes I may mention will reference ‘Zionists’. Please note that it’s usually a thinly disguised term for Jewish people in this case. My tip when identifying it goes as follows - replace Zionist or whatever the term is with Jew and listen to how it sounds.

My TLDR of this post goes as follows:

- almost every soviet Russian leader caused some form of torment to the Jews.

- the Soviet Union hardly benefitted to the Jews in any way and committed horrific acts against the Jews in the name of communism.

- they sided with the fucking nazis and denied everyone that genocide took place on Russian soil. I don’t know what to tell you.

Okay here are the actual reasons, with a hell load of history and atrocities along the way.

That being said, do not read if you’re triggered by this content. This took me three days to write and it was not easy. There’s a lot of terrible things that happened here, but I think it’s important to mention the blood that lies on the blades of the sickle and the head of the hammer. The first part especially has stories that I don’t wish to happen upon my worst enemies.

1: they quite literally sided with the nazis. You know. Hitler and all that? The people you’re all against? That guy? They committed horrific atrocities on soviet Russian soil?

Odessa massacre? Stalag 325?

In the book Holocaust by Bullets - penned by Father Patrick Desbois - he found out that at least 1.5 million Jews were murdered in the soviet/nazi occupation in Eastern Europe. Father Desbois’ grandfather was a prisoner of war in Stalag 325, but rarely discussed it. His only commentary went as followed (quoted directly from Father Desbois)

And then one day, one summer morning, sitting beside him in the little gray truck, I pushed him, pushed him so much that he told me about his three escape attempts. I was seven years old. He had tried to escape from the camp twice and failed, but on his third attempt his fellow-inmates helped him by stomping their clogs on the ground, making a racket to create a diversion while he jumped into a thicket. It was successful. He made it to the train station of Strasbourg, in Alsace, a region of France which had been annexed as part of Germany. He went to buy a ticket to return to his wife and son in Chalon-sur-Saône. He asked for a ticket in German. The lady behind the counter answered him in French. My grandfather paused for a moment: "In that instant I knew I had failed. She was going to report me! I didn't even make it to the train. The Gestapo arrested me. Destination Rawa-Ruska." Then my grandfather fell silent. And afterwards . . . ? There was no afterwards. This silence, from a man usually so cheerful, was charged with meaning. The silence had a name: Rawa-Ruska.

(…)

Just once, he uttered these words: "For us, the camp was difficult; there was nothing to eat, we had no water, we ate grass, dandelions. But it was worse for the others!" That sentence was engraved in my consciousness as a child for all time. I realized that he couldn't say any more about it. But who were the others?

(Page 21-22)

This silence prompted the priest to find out what had happened. He met with the deputy mayor of Rawa Ruska who arranged for 100 people who witnessed this massacre to tell their stories. Jews would shot and thrown into pits they were forced to dig. Some would be thrown in alive and suffocated that way. The pits would move as Jews suffocated to death. After every testimony relating to the pits, the witnesses recounted the same thing: the earth moved for three days. I read his book - Holocaust by Bullets - where he met with people who gave horrific testimonies.

"Where we come from the Nazis machine-gun the Jews but in the west they kill them in camps." - Polina Pavlona Katsenko, page 12. She had joined the red army and had found Auschwitz.

At the edge of the ditch the earth had been packed into a makeshift ladder. The Jews undressed, while the guards beat them. Completely naked, family after family, fathers, mothers, and children went calmly down the steps and lay face down on top of the bodies of those who had just been shot. A man called Humpel, a German policeman, advanced, upright, walking on the dead bodies, pistol in hand, and murdered each Jew, one after the other, with a bullet in the back of the neck. Less than 10 meters away, the two sisters saw everything. Before starting his work that morning, Humpel had put on a white coat like a doctor's smock, and then had gone down into the ditch. Luba thinks he wanted to protect his uniform. At regular intervals, he stopped shooting, climbed out of the pit, took a break, drank a small glass of liquor, and went back into the ditch. Naked, another Jewish family climbed down into the ditch and lay face down. The massacre lasted one full day. Humpel killed all the Jews in the village, single-handed. - the testimony of Vira and Luba, the 460th eye witness account of the massacre of Ukrainian Jews. Page 13-15

On the other side of the barricade, they caught sight of little Dora. She was naked. In the icy cold, she was begging the Germans to give her back her coat: "Give me my jacket, I'll give you my shoes in exchange!" But the Germans listened to no one's requests. Dora was shot. (Page 217)

This is all I felt able to share.

All of these testimonies were only revealed in the 2000s - over 60 years after the massacre of 1.5 million jews in the Soviet Union.

After World War Two ended, the Soviet Union often denied the horrific actions that took place on their land.

Oh and don’t forget how the Soviets kept ignoring it and quite literally disbanded a Jewish organisation they made over this.

But don’t worry, I’ll get there soon ;)

2: “but that was Stalin! That does not represent Lenin’s views!”

Okay, valid point. They were two different people. Let’s check Lenin’s views about Jewish people then shall we?

In March 1919, Lenin delivered a speech about “Anti-Jewish pogroms.” During this speech he essentially said “hey guys can we stop killing Jewish people? They did nothing to us and had been oppressed for god knows how long let’s just leave them alone okay?”

A nobel speech which summarises how capitalism breaks us apart by creating hatred against different groups and turning us against each other-

What’s that? Sorry I forgot to mention: a few months later all Jewish properties were seized by the soviet government in their scheme to basically say to others religions “hey fuck your religion”. This was an attempt to assimilate religious people. Many Jewish people would be familiar with this as it’s so common we made a festival about it one time - idk if you’ve heard of it, it’s called Chanukah. Look it up, it’s more than just funky candles and donuts and fried potatoes.

Kehilahs (basically Jewish community places) were shut down.

But sure, Lenin and the soviet government were totally supportive of Jewish people and their faith. Whatever helps you guys sleep at night.

3: I was going to leave out Stalin since I figured people may know of his atrocities by now. Then I remembered of a conversation I had with someone who very seriously told me that Stalin was a good leader despite his well documented anti semitism and dictator leadership. So no, he’s not getting away with shit here.

So Stalin was a pretty hardcore anti-semite but I’ll mainly focus on after world war 2 since we all know the atrocities he committed during that time. He started a campaign that went by various names but namely the anti cosmopolitan campaign.

This namely happened due to an organisation called Jewish Anti Fascist Community. They were established by Stalin after Hitler’s totally shocking betrayal against Russia and were tasked with assisting the Soviets by telling everyone else that was definitely no Anti Semitism in the Soviet Union (unless we ignore the details mentioned earlier).

After the war they basically started archiving every that happened to the Jews in Eastern Europe, including the Holocaust. Two soviet men of the group published a book (The Black Book of Soviet Jewry - all hail the internet archive!) in collaboration with the JAC with 500 pages worth of manuscripts and eyewitness of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Which conveniently mentioned a lot of the atrocities Russia committed while they were allies with Germany.

I won’t go too far into it because I’m going down a completely different rabbit hole but just know Stalin wasn’t really fond of the JAC at this point because of their disagreements with the soviets.

He then proceeded to start with an ‘anti cosmopolitan campaign’ (read: anybody who was Jewish was fucked)

Mysteriously two years later, the Chairman of the JAC - Solomon Mikhoels, also a Yiddish actor - was found dead on a narrow road with his friend Vladimir Golubov-Potapov (theatre critic). It was a tragic death that definitely was not an assassination organised by the Soviet government. A soviet newspaper definitely did not admit that they killed him.

Though not officially mentioned, other Jews with connections to the JAC were also arrested or killed. They were:

- Der Nister, a Yiddish writer (arrested in 1949, died in a labour camp a year later)

- Yitzhak Nusinov, a literary critic (arrested and died in prison in 1950)

- Shmuel Persov and Miriam Zheleznova, both journalists (shot and killed in 1950)

In 1952, Stalin committed his final act upon the Jewish people - The Night Of The Murdered Poets. This was when fifteen soviet Jews were put into trial and executed within the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. Only two survived. They were:

- Benjamin Zuskin (1899 - 1952) - an actor who did a lot of Jewish theatre and held the title of People’s Artist of the RSFSR. He had been acting for over 30 years and had performed with Solomon Mikhoels (remember him?). Most of his children had been killed in the Kovo Ghetto. He had been arrested in hospital in 148 while being treated for depression and had been put to sleep (it was a way of treating depression just go with it). He woke up to find himself in prison, where he remained until 1952 - when he was murdered.

- Joseph Yuzefovich (1890 - 1952) - a researcher for the institute of history, soviet academy of sciences and a trade union leader. He and the other members were tortured so badly, he said to court that he was ready to confess that he was the pope’s nephew. He was one of two who did not confess to his crimes. Joseph was murdered in 1952.

- Solomon Lozovsky (1878 - 1952) - a prominent communist and Bolshevik revolutionary who found himself Chairman of the trade union and later general secretary of the red international labour unions. After a conversation between Mikhoels in 1944 about where to establish a Jewish homeland in Russia, Stalin went ‘ah ha! Anti soviet activity!’ And had Lozovsky arrested and tortured in 1949. He defended himself so hard the judge basically had to take a breather for a week - the only time this happened in a political trial during Stalin’s ruling of Russia. He was murdered in 1952.

- Boris Shimliovich (1892 - 1952) - a prominent revolutionary who was involved in the Russian civil war and later the JAC. He was also a medical director in the Botkin Clinical Hospital. He was arrested in 1949, his injuries so severe he was carried to court in a stretcher. He was one of two members to not confess to any crimes. Boris was murdered in 1952.

- Leon Talmy/Talmi (1893 - 1952) - translator and journalist and a former communist party USA member. He was born in what is now Belarus and became a member of the Zionist socialist party. He would move to the US with his parents where he would become a secretary for the newspaper Unzer Vort. After the February revolution in Russia, Talmy moved there and worked for more newspapers and became part of the communist party in Russia. He did various Yiddish translations during this time and would later join the JAC. He was arrested in 1949 and murdered in 1952. (shout out to the congress for Jewish culture for this info)

- Ilya Vatenberg (1887 - 1952) translator and editor of the JAC newspaper, labour Zionist leader in Austria and US. After studying law and running a law firm until 1914, Ilya moved to Vienna until 1920, at which point he moved to America. There he became a member of the Zionist socialists party Poale Zion. He then met his wife Chaika and they would move to Russia together. He would work as a censor for the publishing house of foreign literature and later an official for JAC. He would also write article for their newspaper. He was arrested in 1949 with Chaika and was murdered in 1952.

- Chaika Valenverg-Ostrovskaya (1901 - 1952) - a translator for the JAC and the wife of Ilya. Due to her various language skills in English and Yiddish (after living in America for ten years), she would work as a typist for the association of scientists and later the same publishing house Ilya worked. She would then work in the JAC as a typist and translator, therefore not often involved in the political affairs. However, she was arrested in 1949 and murdered in 1952.

- Emilia Teumin (1905 - 1952) - an editor for a variety of papers as well as the soviet information bureau. Her father was a member of the communist party and after Germany attacked Russia, Emilia became a translator for the Soviet form office. She would later join the JAC and had compiled documents about nazi persecution in the Soviet Union. As a result, she was arrested in 1949 and was murdered in 1952.

- Lieb Kvitko (1890 - 1952) - a well known Yiddish children’s author and poet who wrote for the JAC’s newspaper and a literary magazine called The Heymland. He was murdered in 1952.

- Dovid Hofshteyn (1889 - 1952) - a Yiddish poet who often worked to teach Jewish boys who had been orphaned form the pogroms. He would protest the banning of Hebrew, which caused him to move around countries for various times. In 1926, he returned to continue his work and became a member of the communist party. Shortly after the state of Israel was established, he had been arrested and was murdered in 1952.

- Peretz Markish (1895 - 1952) - a Russian Yiddish poet who wrote many poems and became the co founder of the soviet school of writers. He would awarded the order of Lenin in 1939. He would join the communist party and worked with the JAC. He was arrested in 1949 and murdered in 1952. He left behind two sons, Shimon and David, and his wife Esther. They fought to keep his memory alive.

- Itzik Feffer (1900 - 1952) - a Yiddish poet who fought for the red army and was in prison for a bit before being released by armed workers. He started to edit literary and art magazines and was a member of the communist party. His poems often involved themes of socialism and were published frequently. He would write the poem The Shadows of the Warsaw Ghetto - in memory of the 750 Jews involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He also worked with the JAC’s newspaper but also the NKVD. Despite the fact that everyone blatantly knew, honey didn’t made much since they mostly did activities in the name of Soviet Russia (before they started archiving the actions of Soviet Russia during the Holocaust). Shortly after Mikhoel’s assassination, Feffer was arrested and accused of treason. Due to his involvement with touring the west with Mikhoels, many attempted to save him such as Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein. Paul even met Feffer in prison and Feffer warned him of his imminent death. Paul would publicly tribute Feffer and would sing Zog Nig Keynmol - popular Yiddish anthem of Holocaust survivors - and wrote to defend him. Despite these efforts, Feffer was murdered in 1952 and left behind his only daughter.

- David Bergelson (1884 - 1952) - a Yiddish writer who went through pogrom after pogrom in his youth. Despite this, his family were wealthy and tutored in in Russian, English and Yiddish. After the first failed revolution, he became a writer and wrote for various publications as well as writing his own novels, essays and short stories. He was also heavily involved in the JAC. He was murdered in 1952 . he left behind Lev Bergelson - his only child. His last words were quoted as being “Earth, oh earth, do not cover my blood!”

- Solomon Bregman (1885-1953) - a writer who collected materials for the infamous Black Book). He was arrested in 1948, survived his injuries in 1952 but fell into a coma while in prison and died in jail.

- Lina Stern (1878 - 1968) - a biochemist and physiologist for the Soviet and a pioneer in the blood brain barrier. She already found it difficult to get into her academic field due to her Judaism and had to study abroad in Switzerland as a result. I won’t pretend to have a clue what she did because I am not a scientist, but essentially she made a lot of mind blowing progress of the blood brain barrier and became incredibly well known as a result. She also won the Stalin prize and was the first female member of the academy of sciences. By 1939, the Russians allied with nazi Germany, which Stern did not like and joined with the JAC during that time. As a result, she was arrested. However unlike the other members, she ended up being given a prison sentence of three years and a five year exile. However, this ended early after Stain’s death. From there, she was the head of the department of physiology at Biophysics Institute until 1968. This made Lisa Stern the only survivor.

I’m aware this feels like a different road, but I feel the need to mention everyone’s backstories because when we argue over this matter, we forget real Jewish people lived in soviet Russia. They fought through hell and back for a way to make their lives and everyone else’s lives better in whatever way they could - through art, literature, science, politics. And whatever else they could’ve done was crushed by one man - in the name of soviet Russia and communism.

Yet people still choose to defend the hammer and sickle that represents the people who murdered thirteen Jews.

“When one’s thoughts turn to the martyrs of August 12, the painful question asked by the poet Leib Opeskin of Vilna arises: “Can one forget, may one forget?

Forget Mikhoels, Bergelson, Markish, Feffer, Hofshtein, Kvitko, Zuskin, Solomon Lozovsky, Boris Shimelevich, forget all of our own who during World War II were the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow? Can we forget Leon Talmy who was the New York secretary of the ICOR (Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union), can we forget our own Morning Freiheit staff member Elyeh Wattenberg and his wife, Chaikeh Ostrovsky, who all left here in the 1930s to build a new life in the Soviet Union?

And, indeed, so much was built there then! When one speaks of the Yiddish culture, this ought not be forgotten. This underscores even more the scope of the tragedy that occurred, the great crime that was committed against the Jewish people and against socialism itself.” - Paul Novick, The Anti-Zionist Campaign in the USSR

During this time, Stalin had accused various Jewish doctors of trying to assassinate soviet leaders - this became known as the doctors plot. There has been accusations previously against Jewish doctors, notably Dr Yakov Etinger. He had been accused of mistreatment of Andrei Zhdanov (died in 1948 of heart disease, possibly intentional misdiagnosis) and Alexander Shscherbakov (died in 1945 of heart failure caused by drinking and obesity). Etinger died in prison in 1951 after being brutally tortured during his interrogation.

When accusations about Etinger were brought to MGB minister Viktor Abakumov by Mikhail Ryumin (after torturing Etinger), Abakumov did not believe them. Ryumin then wrote to Stalin and accused Abakumov of killing Etinger to hide a conspiracy of killing soviet leaders. Abakumov was arrested and tortured before being executed in 1954 for fabricating the Leningrad affair.

What became known as the Killer Doctors Case then was brought up in 1952 after a letter was dug up where Lydia Timashuk wrote that Zhdanov had suffered a heart attack but it was misdiagnosed and the doctors covered up the mistake. The doctors who treated him however were Russian so Jewish doctors Etinger supposedly mentioned were arrested. Head of security Nikolai Vlasik was fired and later arrested for ignoring the letter.

9 doctors (six of which were jewish) were accused and were initially going to be charged. However Stalin’s death came and the charges were quickly dismissed. After this, it was revealed Stalin had planned to send Jewish people into camps and possibly deport them. But due to his sudden death, Stalin never got to do this.

And good fucking riddance. All he did was use the hammer and sickle as a symbol for his tyranny. All he did was suppress people for expressing themselves and archiving history. Is this what we want communism to be? Because this is what you represent with every time you use it for your cool funky fresh battle jacket.

4: okay well there were other soviet leaders after Stalin? Surely they weren’t as anti semetic right?

Well Nikita Khrushchev almost immediately started an anti religion campaign which destroyed all religious buildings and life including Judaism. So… not a good start.

Jews would receive even more anti semeitism and propaganda ramped up again.

Khrushchev was even quoted as saying “naturally if the Jews now tried to occupy leashing positions in the republic, the local inhabitants would object.” (Page 17)

Synagogues were shut down, with the accusations that drunken activities and criminals ran wild in them. Tefillin (prayer shawls) could not be made or worn. No observance of Jewish worship or prayer or ritual was to be allowed without permission of the authorities. This was particularly vital because Jews rely on synagogues to keep Judaism alive - even now they’re often community centres as well as places of worship. Without this and the production of Jewish articles, Jewish religious life declined to an all time low under Khrushchev’s rule. These synagogues would be turned into warehouses, meeting halls and clubs.

Other forms of anti semeitism happened too, such as:

- Jews would be forced to work Saturdays - the day of shabbos, when Jews were not allowed to work. They’d try their best to avoid this but this was a difficult task.

- rabbis would be charged for various anti soviet activities and were often imprisoned.

- Jewish cemeteries were closed with various excuses given out as to why. Many Jews were forced to cremate their dead relatives - a big no no in Judaism.

- when returning from the Holocaust, many Jews would not be able to return to their homes. A particularly common scenario in Ukraine and Poland. It was a particular fact that stuck with me when I visited Poland in 2022.

- Khrushchev started a economic campaign during which he claimed that “economic crimes” were because of Jews. Speculation, bribery and black markets would be punished by death. Those executed were mostly jewish.

Even in newspapers, one could not escape the Jewish stereotypes that plagued soviet newspapers, that published an article the evils of ‘Zionism’ (read: Judaism). The television and radio would frequently discuss Jews, their supposed plans to take over the world.

Anti semetic books were frequently published between Khrushchev and Brezhnev’s reigns, such as Judaism Without Embellishment. I won’t go into the contents of the book since it’s a lot of your typical anti semetic bullshit but if you want an idea, here’s the front cover.

This book was widely acclaimed within soviet Russia, but after international pressure, the soviet communist party newspaper the Pravda would published a condemnation of the book, stating:

There is no such thing as anti-semeitism in the USSR and cannot be.

Page 35. (See internet? We’ve always been this way).

Other anti Semitic books were published, and went through similar cycles to JWE. One such book was In the Name of the Father and the Son by Ivan Shevtov, which featured a lot of anti semeitic conspiracy theories from the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - a notorious conspiracy theory book which features a lot of anti semeitism about the Jewish people.

“In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies. While they jeer and shout,

'Beat the Yids. Save Russia!' Some grain-marketer beats up my mother.

O my Russian people!

I know

you are international to the core.

But those with unclean hands

have often made a jingle of your purest name. I know the goodness of my land.

How vile these antisemites—

without a qualm they pompously called themselves

the Union of the Russian People!”

- Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. This poem was written about the 1941 Odessa massacre, during which 34,000 - 100,000 Jews and Romani people were massacred by the Romanian soldiers in Ukraine. Russia had refused to acknowledge this massacre. Khrushchev harshly condemned Yevtushenko for this work in a meeting with soviet writers and accused him of lying about anti semitism in Russia.

“Okay? Well the anti religious campaign only lasted until Khrushchev was fired. Surely Brezhnev was better?”

After the Six Day War, during which Russia sided against Israel, as well as the Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking affair, rampant anti Zionist propaganda would be made. They were mostly thinly disguised anti semeitism. One particular example I found was Secrets and Explicit - essentially a version of The Eternal Jew, a nazi propaganda film from 1940. Secrets even featured a lot of scenes from The Eternal Jew.

If that’s not an antisemitic film, I dunno what is!

During this time Jews could not leave to go to Israel or the US and jewish schools and informal centres were closed. Many Jews desired to get out of Russia and move to Israel due to the increase in anti semeitism. One man who expressed this idea, Boris Kochubievsky, was put into a mental institution without any questioning. In an article about ‘Zionists’, one even mentioned a way to point them out: “hairy chest and arms”, “shifty eyes” and a “hook like nose.” Jews would frequently compared to nazis. Jewish activists were exiled, jailed and send to psychiatric hospitals where they suffered harsh conditions.

Like I mentioned, a lot of the anti Zionism tended to lean towards anti semitism a lot of the time.

Public pressure did eventually allow Jews to leave and in the 70s, 250,000 Jews would leave. The leaving process was often frustrating and if one’s application was rejected, they would be harassed constantly. They would be known as refuseniks. A further 80,000 would leave at the end of the decade.

While Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko’s reigns over the Soviet Union we’re brief, both were reluctant to change the soviet policy on Jews and even Tammy didn’t have much of the impact that Khrushchev and Brezhnev did.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s attitude to Jews varies depending on who you ask.

Forward - a Yiddish newsletter - made a variety of articles about him upon in death in 2022.

When discussing the lack of Jews left in Russia by the time, Benjamin Ivry mentions a speech by Gorbachev at Babi Yar.

“There, Gorbachev noted that although the right to emigrate had been established for Russia’s Jews, “we… greatly regret the fact that our (Jewish) compatriots are leaving, that the country is losing so many talented, skillful, enterprising people.”

In a different nation, the inclusion of the term “enterprising,” possibly alluding to the astuteness of Jewish oligarchs in accumulating rubles, might have raised some eyebrows. But as Russian leader, Gorbachev was given credit for merely admitting that antisemitism existed at all: “The venomous sprouts of antisemitism arose even on Soviet soil. The Stalin bureaucracy, which publicly disassociated itself from antisemitism, in fact, used it as a means to isolate the country from the outside and strengthen their dictatorial position with the help of chauvinism.”

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt would also discuss his own interactions with the leader, joking to him that he should run for prime minister in Israel. Gorbachev would allow the rabbi to reinstate Jewish schools and synagogues again for the first time in years.

Rina Shamilov would write an article about her parents life as refuseniks, thanking Gorbachev for his efforts in allowing Jews out.

Gorbachev’s work paving the way for our family to leave made him a hero to us. As my mother said, it meant “that my family and kids had the opportunity to escape a painful reality.” Three decades later, the monumental significance of his intervention in our lives still feels fresh.

That’s not to say life as a Jew in Russia was perfect from there.

During a seven day massacre of Armenians in Baku in 1990, a Jewish/Armenian neighbourhood was vandalised. The police and soldiers that were there did nothing. The soviet soldiers would declare martial law there, but it would be too late.

By 1992, 367,000 Jews left Russia.

So, in conclusion, Gorbachev was the only leader who had a somewhat peaceful attitude with Jews. And this had mostly been due to the fact that most of them had left.

But the damage had been done.

Because in the 63 years before Gorbachev’s reign, Jews had been persecuted, murdered and exiled for simply what they believed in, no matter how much they did for communists.

Is any of this okay? Is anything of this something you want in your communist utopia, marked by hammers and sickles and red stars? Is this what you want to see? Because by using the Hammer and Sickle, you’re representing a country’s long history of anti semeitism and persecution towards Jewish people. Even despite their great contributions and achievements for the Soviets, they were murdered, not allowed to leave, not allowed to express themselves or their culture openly. They were exiled, they were executed and brandished with shame.

The Hammer and Sickle has done nothing for the Jewish people. Soviet Russia did nothing for Jewish people. And I hope one day we set it aside and acknowledge that it’s a symbol of spite towards people who did nothing but exist.

If you chose to use this symbol after all I’ve spoken of, I can’t stop you. After all, I’m a single Jewish person in Britain, a distant and quiet voice that can only be heard from a screen.

But I will be angry. I’ll be angry that after I recounted over 60 years of Jewish genocide and persecution, you still chose to wear that bloody hammer and sickle. I’ll be angry that you will dismiss my evidence as stuff from the past. I’ll be angry when you tell me it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t represent the communist idea.

And I’ll cry because after over 100 years of people writing about their pain, sobbing over unjustly murdered relatives, opening telling their tales of how they ran away from a government and country that did nothing but hate them, You’ll still wear that bloody hammer and sickle.

But maybe ignorance is bliss.

“Under the banner of Communism and the hammer and sickle, millions of people--Jews and anarchists, but many many more besides--were persecuted, jailed, silenced, tortured, repressed, and murdered (…) Perhaps people who identify as statist Communists will also be moved by this material to renounce their politics and join us in our struggle against domination, racism, and oppression of all kinds... but we do not have any great hopes of that.”

- A Jewish-Anarchist Refutation of the Hammer and Sickles

Hot take: honestly we should probably stop using the hammer and sickle as a symbol of communism. It’s (debatably) anti semetic and soviet russia doesn’t really represent the whole communism idea very well but I guess people are in denial or something

#I nearly got a virus from my research you better read those sources #Holocaust #judaism #tankies #communist #anarchy #anarchocommunism #anarchism #communism #soviet #soviet Russia #Soviet Union

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