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- [00:01]
Professor Tony Michaels
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Eddie Portnoy
Welcome everyone, to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. My name is Eddie Portnoy and I'm the academic advisor and director of exhibitions here at yivo. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with yivo, we are a unique institution for the contemplation, exploration and celebration of Yiddish language and Eastern European Jewish culture. To this end, we maintain a library and archive that contain over 24 million documents and artifacts and approximately 400,000 books. Scholars and researchers from around the world come to YIVA to perform their research using these resources. In addition, we offer many classes on Jewish culture and Yiddish language, exhibitions and public programs like this one, where we aim to bridge the worlds of Jewish culture and our vast library and archival collections. Among our current. One of our. Among our current projects is the digitization of YIVO's voluminous Jewish labor and political archives, which encompasses more than 3.5 million pages of documents from the 1870s to the 1990s. Collected initially by the Jewish Labor Bund, these materials help illustrate how the Jewish working class was instrumental in the international labor movement, how Jewish immigrants to the United States brought their political ideologies, social consciousness and demand for labor reform to the new and fertile ground of the American working class, joining other ethnic groups in the fight for fair wages and workers rights. And I can just add that this project recently had its NEH and ILMS funding pulled. So if anyone is feeling particularly generous and would like to donate, we would be most appreciative. These collections of which I speak are among those in which this evening's speaker has spent an enormous amount of time doing research on the Jewish labor movement and the revolutionary figures connected to it. Our speaker tonight is Tony Michaels, the George L. Mosse professor of American Jewish History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of A Fire in Their Jewish Socialists in New York, editor of Jewish A Documentary History, and co editor of the Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume 8, the Modern World, 1815-2000. Professor Michaels will be speaking tonight on the Revolutionary Jews, Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowski and the influences of their ideologies. This lecture has been brought to you thanks to the generous support of the Racklin family. Please join me in welcoming Professor Tony Michaels.
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Professor Tony Michaels
Thank you, Eddie, for your generous introduction. And I too would like to thank the Racklin family for the generosity in making this lecture possible. I'd like to thank Ivo for hosting me and especially Alex Weiser, Julia Rothkov and Eddie Portnoy for handling all the negotiations and helping me to get here, so thank you. Okay. I'm going to. You're going to have to bear with me with the technology. I don't have many images, but I do have a few. And I have this little device I'll keep right here. All right. During the first decade and a half of the 20th century, roughly between the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, thousands of Jewish revolutionaries migrated to the United States. Two of the most famous and most influential during this period were leon Trotsky and Dr. Chaim Jitlowski. Zhatlovsky came to New York in the fall of 1904 as an emissary of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, a party that would be the largest party in Russia in 1917. It was a party that Trotsky, Zhetlovsky helped to fight, found a few years before he came to the U.S. trotsky came in early 1917, a Russian social democrat, a leading member of the Russian Social Democrats, a Marxist party. Of course, the two men differed from one another in important ways. Zhytlovsky adhered to Russia's agrarian populist tradition, whereas Trotsky, again a Marxist, viewed the urban proletariat as. As the primary social force in Russia. Zhulovsky was also an avowed Jewish nationalist who saw no contradiction between nationalism and socialist internationalism. Trotsky, by contrast, considered proletarian internationalism the antithesis of Jewish nationalism and indeed nationalism of all kinds. And it's safe to say he would have objected to the title of my talk inasmuch as it classifies him as a Jewish revolutionary. It's not how he defined himself. But I hope during the course of the lecture will become clear why I chosen to label him in this way. The difference is notwithstanding, and there are more differences than the two I just mentioned, there are good reasons to discuss Trotsky and Shetlovsky in relation to one another. Although Trotsky did not define himself as a Jew for most of his adult life, maybe in his entire adult life, he famously disavowed any nationality. I want to emphasize this. Jewish or Russian. He famously referred to himself as a social democrat and only that. When asked, are you a Russian or are you a Jew? He said, neither, I'm a social democrat, and only that. Still, Trotsky was seen by others as a Jewish Quite often throughout his life, both Jews and non Jews view Trotsky as such. Furthermore, toward the end of his life, Trotsky had begun to think seriously about the Jewish predicament, and he arguably laid the groundwork for a new approach to the problems of poverty and antisemitism that plagued Jews. When Trotsky began to address the Jewish question, the proverbial Jewish question, in the 1930s, he did so in a way that affirmed Jewish national aspirations. One could say that Trotsky. And I say this with some care, I don't want to overstate the point, but one could say that Trotsky pivoted towards Zitlowski's way of thinking on the Jewish question, not because he read Jetlovsky's writings or engaged with them directly, but because Trotsky had begun to draw certain conclusions that overlapped with Zitlowski's way of thinking, which is to say that Jews were a nation and demanded a particular solution to the problems facing Jews. But they diverged sharply in at least one way. While Trotsky was a staunch. At the end of their lives, I've already mentioned two ways they diverged early in the 20th century. By the 1930s, Stalin was of. I mean, Trotsky was, of course, an opponent of Stalin, indeed the world's leading analyst and critic of. Of Stalinism as a social and political system. Zitlowski, by contrast, moved squarely into the Stalinist camp by the end of the 1930s. In short, the positions and ideas put forward by Trotsky and Zitlowsky contributed to and reflected the shifting landscape of Jewish politics in the first half of the 20th century. Prior to the 1930s, these two figures occupied opposing poles when it came to issues of socialism and nationalism. But their position changed in surprising ways with the rise of Nazism. To trace their diverging and converging trajectories, in particular, how they were received by some Jewish intellectuals who admired both Zitlowski and Trotsky, again, despite their differences in perspective. I will introduce a third person into this discussion, and that is the Yiddish poet Aaron glance Lailis, who is best known for his role in modern Yiddish poetry, but who also played an active role in the political debates of the era. So I will introduce Laiolis later. I'll say more about him later, but I wanted to tell you up front, because he's not in the title, that Aaron Lailis will be brought into the discussion because as someone who admired Zhetlovsky and Trotsky and engaged with both of them quite seriously during the era we're talking about. So I'll turn to Zhitlovsky first. And here's gonna be the test of my prowess. Lack there. Oh, here we go. There's Chaim Zhitlowski, born in 1865, died in 1943. This was taken toward the end of his life, but I don't know. I don't know when. Okay, so we turn to Zhatlovsky. Zhatlovsky, as I mentioned, came to New York City in 1904 on a speaking tour on behalf of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He was sent to raise money for the party which had recently assassinated the Russian Interior Minister. This party was responsible for carrying out a slew of assassinations during the first half of the 20th century. He was not involved in those assassinations, but he was an important person in the party and played an important role in formulating its platform in the early 1900s. They sent Trotsky. The party sent Trotsky and Catherine Breshkovskaya on a fundraising tour. Zhitlovsky was chosen because of his ties to the Jewish immigrant Jewish community, his mastery of the Yiddish language and his expertise as a theoretician. He raised. He and Breshkovskaya raised a lot of money. The party, most of which went for the purchase of weapons to form self defense groups and was. You were used for other purposes. I'm sorry. Yes, I'm sorry. Did I say someone? I have a feeling. I have a feeling there's more confusion like that to come, but I'm going to do my best. Shetlovsky was one of many emissaries who came to the US during this period of between 1905 and 1917 is mentioned. But Zhetlovsky exerted the greatest influence and elicited the greatest excitement in that particular period. He developed an influential theory which he called Progressive Jewish nationalism, based on three main principles. The first was that Jews constituted a viable nation bounded by a common language and culture, the Yiddish language. In this view, intellectuals must take the lead in creating a fully developed Yiddish language civilization in the areas of science, humanistic knowledge and the arts. His vision of what he called Yiddish e Kultur, which didn't mean just Yiddish culture, but Yiddish culture in the high advanced sense that I just tried to indicate the expanse of science and the arts and so forth. This vision was altogether novel and indeed appeared rather eccentric in the eyes of most of his contemporaries, socialist and not. But it also was highly exciting for reasons I'll mention in a few moments. Second, Zhitlowski contended that working class internationalism and Jewish nationalism should be understood as complementary and mutually reinforcing principles, contrary to what most European socialists believed at the time. And most, for that matter, most Jewish socialists in New York believed at the time. Third, Zhitlowski insisted that Jewish national revival required communal autonomy in the Diaspora, which is to say a measure of self governance by Jews of internal Jewish affairs. That's what I mean by autonomy and in addition to communal autonomy in the Diaspora, Russia, the United States and so on, that Jews required a Jewish homeland in Palestine or were ever feasible. In other words, what was known as territorialism. He believed in autonomy and territorialism for the Jews within a socialist framework. Zhutlovsky was not the first or only Jewish thinker to advocate for one or more of these principles. The historian and communal activist Simon Dubnov, for instance, formulated a politically liberal version of Jewish communal autonomy. But Zhytlovsky was the first socialist to forge a coherent theory of Yiddish national culture, communal autonomy and territorial settlement, the core elements of his progressive Jewish nationalism, and inject this into the revolutionary movement. So other people were associated with some of these ideas. He was the only one to put that all together and again inject it into the revolutionary movement. Zhytlovsky generated tremendous excitement in the United States when he came in the fall of 1904. In addition to the prestige he enjoyed as leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he appealed to the sentiments of many leftists in the United States. I'm talking now about Jewish immigrants primarily, who had already started in reaction to the 1903 Kishine pogrom and anti Semitic violence. More broadly, it already started to reconsider their earlier rejection of Jewish nationalism. Going back to their earlier days in the 1880s and the 1890s. Shetlovsky offered a fully developed theory that redefined the basic terms of discussion. What socialists had traditionally called internationalism. Zhitlowsky labeled cosmopolitanism, which he defined as the mistaken belief that nations were growing obsolete and individuals could somehow choose to live in an undifferentiated mass of humanity. Zhitlowski held that national self awareness was intensifying and that cosmopolitanism was not only deluded, but its claim to universalism reflected a kind of national chauvinism that expected small, stateless nations like the Jews to dissolve themselves into large, powerful nations. The correct meaning of internationalism, according to Zhulovsky, was not the denial of nationality, but the cultural development of all nations, weak and strong, small and large, in a spirit of brotherhood between peoples. That was a phrase he used to those who believe that nationalism necessarily caused intergroup conflict. Zhitlowski responded that nations could just as likely provide peaceful, cooperative forms of community. A correct understanding of internationalism, with emphasis properly placed on the hyphen, recognized that quote of the right of peoples to self determination in harmony with one another. Jetlovsky's ability to reconcile seemingly immutable dichotomies thrilled people who had grown tired of having to choose between the particular and the universal. Quote Jew and Man, the title of one of his famous essays, One Thing. In its purported opposite, Jitlovsky explained how a modern person could integrate multiple facets into a whole identity. Highly educated and cultivated, a philosopher who had earned a PhD from a Swiss university, Zhetlovsky taught by word and deed that a Jew could feel perfectly at home in what he called general human culture and in Yiddish, akultur, or this Yiddish culture that he imagined was coming into existence. At the same time, who Zitlowski was and how he presented himself added to the credibility of his ideas in the public mind. Schitlowski spoke German and Russian perfectly, without an accent, but he could also hold forth in a polished, sophisticated Yiddish of a kind few had ever heard. One could listen to Zhitlowski expound on myriad subjects and feel as if transported into the future Yiddish culture that he envisioned. The example he set demonstrated the possibility of the goals he preached. And I'll quote one prominent individual and his reaction to Zhulovsky, that's Rabbi Judah Magnus, who at the time, he was a former rabbi and at the time was the head of the Federation of American Zionists, later the first head of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He wrote to an associate of Zhetlovsky's. Quote, Anyone? Sorry? Quote. It is not given to many men to have influenced others so deeply in so short a time as Dr. Zhytlovsky. Anyone who has eyes to see can know of the great change Dr. Zhetlovsky has brought about in the spiritual makeup of the Jewish community of Russia and in this country, the United States. Zhetlowski's true Jewish heart, his inexorable logic, his artistic and dignified eloquence, have carried conviction with them and have given a new Jewish color to the life, especially of our radical Jews. End quote. Another quote about Czitlovsky's image and impact. This one comes from an anarchist who, while still an anarchist, embraced Jetlovsky's Jewish nationalism. His name was Isroel Kopolov, and he wrote to Zhitlovsky, this is from 1908. The previous quote was from 1906. Kopolov wrote to him simply, you are, you know, the prototype, the personification of our people, end quote. So I give you these quotes to give you a sense of the image of Zhitlowsky in the eyes of his admirers and to give you a sense of the influence he had. Not only his ide ideas I'm trying to stress here, but his self presentation. The two can't be separated. The way he presented himself had a bearing on how the ideas were received. That gave him credibility because just to draw this, emphasize this point even more, the fact is he was head of a major Russian party, not a Jewish party. The fact that he had a PhD, the fact that he spoke German and Russian perfectly, again with no Yiddish accent, and on top of it could just as easily shift into Yiddish and speak in a highly elevated, sophisticated way that it's safe to say, I would say no one in New York City had heard until 1904 when they saw Zhulovsky. He really attracted throngs of people by his ability to again fuse together seeming dichotomies. And he embodied it as much as he preached it intellectually. Let's shift to Leon Trotsky. When Trotsky moved to the United States in January 1917. Hold on, I'm sorry, there's Trotsky. The picture I'm showing you here is from a book, a collection of Trotsky's writings that had been translated into Yiddish. I think this is from 1921. So this is a book of his writings that were translated into English from Russian by a man named Moyse Olgin, who was a leader of the Bund, himself a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He put together the first collection of Trotsky's writings in English in this country. As far as I know, that was 1918. A couple years later, the Jewish Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party decided to translate the book into Yiddish and add this illustration of him. And there you go. And he later wrote Trotskyism Counter Ernie Shooting the Skies. Now that you mention it, yes. Let's mention Olgan's notorious tract from the 1930s called Trotsky or Trotskyism Counter Revolution in Disguise. Another book that was translated into Yiddish. It's a odious tract. When Trotsky. So when Trotsky moved to the US in January 1917, he didn't represent a political party, meaning he was not an emissary of the Russian Social Democrats the way Zhitlovsky was for the psr, the party of socialist revolutionaries. He came by himself with his family looking for refuge. Trotsky had bounced around through a number of countries between roughly 1906 and 1917. Nor did Trotsky intend to join the immigrant Jewish community. The man born Lev Davidovich Bronstein made clear that he felt no attachment to the Jewish people. As I mentioned, he was once asked famously, are you a Jew or Russian? And he retorted, I am neither a Russian nor a Jew, but an internationalist. Some versions will say he said, I'm a social democrat. There are different versions of this counterposing Jewish Solidarity. Trotsky's with internationalism. Trotsky's internationalism was of the sort that Zitlowski vigorously challenged. Still, regardless of how Trotsky identified himself, Yiddish speaking immigrants tended to view him as one of their own. Following Trotsky's arrival before Wirths, the leading Yiddish daily of its time featured his picture on the front page of the newspaper with a caption that read, quote, this is comrade Trotsky, the Russian Jewish revolutionary who was driven from all of Europe because of his revolutionary ideas, end quote. The accompanying profile to that picture highlighted Trotsky's Jewish background and mentioned that while Trotsky could neither read nor speak Yiddish, he understood Mamaloshin well and wished to learn Hebrew. Both claims were untrue, but they appealed to the sentiment of the four Verses readers. By all accounts, Trotsky made a strong impression on the immigrant Jewish public. The Forwitz described a speech he delivered in Cooper Union, for instance, as quote, masterful in the full sense of the word. Olgin, who I referred to in connection with this book, Olgen, who was a product of the Bund, he was not a Russian social democrat at that time. He likened Trotsky to, quote a compressed spring quote, he is always aggressive. He is full of passion, that white, heated, vibrating mental passion that characterizes the intellectual Jew. So let me. End quote. So, you know, here Trotsky is identified as a Jew. He's identifying as having a supposed Jewish character trait, intellectual passion, which was not only a stereotype of Jews in Russia, it was a strong stereotype in New York at that time. And this was seen by certainly intellectuals and people on the left as a positive trait. I'll give you a couple of other quotes from people who used to watch Trotsky's lectures in 1917. This is by a man named Maurice Malkin, who used to see Trotsky lecture at the Rand School, the Socialist Party school downtown. He remembers Trotsky as, quote, a pyrotechnic orator. Quote, his hands would shoot into the air, he would pivot from foot to foot. His voice, at one moment soothing, would suddenly shriek with indignation and his whole body would tremble. Then suddenly composed, he would be soulful and lugubrious. End quote. Final quote. This is from Lewis Waldman A well known labor lawyer and member of the New York State assembly, he recollects, quote, Trotsky had an extraordinary sense of the dramatic, which together with an excellent stage presence and rich choice of language in a masterful use of invective, combined to give him complete mastery over an audience, end quote. These kinds of recollections, I think we could probably go on for the rest of tonight with recollections. In reading these recollections in similar, in similar word, notice the difference between what Trotsky was praised for and what Zhitlowsky was praised for. Zitlowski was poised, he was dignified. It was always Dr. Zhitlowski to remind the audiences that you were standing before a scholar. That was what impressed people. Trotsky impressed people by his passion, his excitement, his excitability, his ability to make audiences laugh, to cut someone down to size if he felt they needed to be, and so on. So one is seen as a Jew Trotsky. The other is seen implicitly as not a Jew. Ironically, he's a Jewish nationalist, but he had the bearing of a well bred Gentile. And this is what impressed people. He represents a new kind of Jew, right? This scholarly, learned figure who's preaching Jewish nationalism in Yiddish, the lowly language of Yiddish. You wouldn't expect that from a Zhitlovsky. You do expect Trotsky, Trotsky's manner from a Jew. Trotsky is behaving, acting, performing. If you use a current academic, trendy word, he's performing Jewishness without any effort. This is how a Russian Jew talks. This is how a Russian Jew argues. This is how a Russian. All right, so there's an irony. There is that I'm trying to highlight a powerful orator. Trotsky also earned recognition as a forceful writer who excelled at compelling, and I'm quoting Olgin again, short, stirring articles comprehensible to the masses. Zhulovsky didn't write that way. I'll just say as an aside, he wrote long sentences. In fact, someone, a linguist, a Yiddish linguist, once wrote that he is a master of the art of the long sentence. That's, that's, that's not Trotsky. I mean, he could write a long sentence, but this is, I think, what he was famous for. Most of Trotsky's articles appeared in a Russian language newspaper, socialist newspaper called Novi Mir, that he co edited, by the way, with Nikolai Bukharin, who would later become the editor of Pravda, a major leader of the Bolsheviks. Other articles appeared in the New Yorker Volkseitung, a German socialist paper, or a very respected newspaper edited by someone named Ludwig Lore, who was a German born Jew. Trotsky also contributed to the Yiddish Forverts, whose circulation of 175,000 not only was the largest of all Yiddish newspapers, it was larger than Novi Mir in the New Yorkers for Volksaitung combined, far larger, which is to say, and he published a number. He published articles in other Yiddish publications as well. This is to say that ironically, here's another irony, that through Yiddish, a language Trotsky could not speak or read, he reached the largest number of his readers in the United States. It was through Yiddish that he gained not only most of his Jewish readers, but most of his readers in the US during this time. Trotsky's Theory Lest you think that his short sentences conveyed simple or superficial ideas, they did not. Trotsky's Theory and here I'm going to describe quickly his theory of revolution. And I do with some trepidation, because I know there's more than one person in this audience who knows Trotsky's writings extremely well, better than I do. And this is no doubt an oversimplification, but I'm going to give it a shot. Trotsky's Theory of Revolution this is Trotsky at his most original, at least in New York during this time. Formulated in response. His theory of revolution, formulated in response to the 1905 revolution, showed him it is most original. Trotsky argued that the Russian bourgeoisie was too weak, too dependent on the monarchy, and insufficiently committed to liberal principles to establish a stable parliamentary government if they were ever able to overthrow the tsar and establish such a government. Trotsky expected the bourgeoisie to remain weak in the coming years after 1905. But this did not trouble him. Trotsky perceived in this seemingly unfortunate situation an opportunity that would enable the proletariat to emerge as the leading social class during the next revolutionary outbreak that he believed would inevitably come. Trotsky predicted that the proletariat would not stop at the establishment of a democratic parliament, which is what liberals would presumably do. But the proletariat would press forward to the founding of a worker state. In the process of defending political democracy, the proletariat, Trotsky predicted the proletariat would realize it had no choice but to push towards socialism. Trotsky further contended that the next Russian revolution would necessarily spark revolutions in Germany and other industrialized countries, the support of which underdeveloped Russia would need for its own Survival. Eventually a united federation of socialist states would coalesce, Trotsky predicted. Without presenting it as such, Trotsky formulated a major revision of Marxist theory. Is that okay to say? Russian social democrats, both in its Bolshevik and Menshevik wings, had traditionally believed that Russia would need to pass through a successful bourgeois liberal revolution before a proletarian socialist one could be achieved at some later date. Accordingly, Russian Marxists had traditionally expected socialist revolutions to occur first in the most economically advanced countries. Not so Trotsky. He concluded that Russia's relative underdevelopment could engender an accelerated revolutionary process that would begin in Russia and move westward, culminating in a pan European socialist order. His analysis was optimistic in the extreme. Trotsky maintained that a proletarian revolution was most likely to occur in the seemingly least likely country on the European continent. And he predicted it would happen soon. Trotsky left the United States shortly after the tsar's overthrow in March 1917. He was only in New York for 10 weeks. Seven months later Trotsky led a workers uprising in St. Petersburg that toppled the Provisional Government that replaced the Czar and replaced the Provisional Government with the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The beginning of what would become the Soviet Union, the core Soviet Republic and what would become the Soviet Union. A civil war ensued from which the Red army, which was organized by Trotsky, emerged victorious. After three years of fighting, several other newly established Soviet republics fused with the Russian one to create the Soviet Union in 1922. Trotsky's ascent to the heights of power. Only Lenin was more powerful than Trotsky. Trotsky's ascent fascinated many observers abroad. That a Jew by parentage, if not affirmation could reach the heights of power in Russia elicited amazement. Jewish commentators often spoke of Trotsky with great admiration. I'm going to read to you three examples to illustrate how Trotsky was perceived in the early revolutionary period by Jewish commentators in this country. The first quote is from a newspaper, a Jewish newspaper in English called the Sentinel. And the newspaper praised Trotsky as, quote, a statesman of the very first order and a true Jewish. Let that sink in. Trotsky is described by. This is a non socialist Jewish newspaper. Let me just stress that. And the newspaper's masthead says it is devoted to the interests of the Jews. Describes Trotsky as a true Jew. Let me continue with an editorial. This is also not the opinion of a contributor or a columnist. It is the editorial of the newspaper represents the newspapers official opinion. Quote Trotsky has heartened the cause of democracy by the manly fashion in which he has upheld it face to face with its enemies. And to the surprise of the German rulers, what was confidently regarded by them as a prologue to peace has turned out to be an ominous handwriting on the wall, a gloomy reminder that the Prussian program cannot be carried out. Thus, through Trotsky, Russia has done its bit. In spite of the collapse of the armed forces once marshaled by the Teutons, Trotsky has shown that he is needed at the helm. He has kept faith with democracy. In spite of his impulsive remarks disowning his Jewish connections, Trotsky has acted like a true Jew in the most critical situation of the war. A few more Jewish prime ministers like Trotsky would bring Kaiser to Knossa. Second quote. This is from the anarchist newspaper Freiharbeiter Stimme. It is not a Marxist paper, which is noteworthy here because Trotsky's a Marxist. Here's what the anarchist Freiherbert Stimmer writes. He refers to the headline. Refers. The headline's called R. Trotsky. Unser Trotsky. I mean, talk about language. Claim to the guy, our Trotsky. Here's what the newspaper said. Quote. Yes, Lev Trotsky, exclamation mark. He is the man helping as much as a single person can to rebuild the world, to shape the destinies of the nations of the earth. We Jews may feel truly glad and be proud that again, a son of our people, on whose heart the great word justice has been written in fiery characters, has applied all his strength and power toward the triumph of justice. Yes, we may say it, and we may say it openly, and that we are proud of Trotsky because he is a Jew. Third quote. This is from a writer named as Zaks. He came to the United States, a member of the Bund, later became a Communist. He depicted Trotsky as not just a Jew, but a mighty protector of the Jews, of the Jewish people, and the redeemer of what he describes as Jewish national honor. I'm going to quote him now. I wish that many radical Jews like Trotsky were heads of government. Our foes would then have gnashed their teeth and foamed with rage, but they would not have dared to touch us, let alone perpetrate massacres and pogroms against us. The Jewish Bolsheviks demonstrate before the entire world that the Jewish people has not yet degenerated and that this ancient people is still alive and full of vigor. If a people can produce men who can undermine the foundation of the world and strike terror into the hearts of countries and governments, then it is a good omen for itself, a clear sign of its youthfulness, its vitality and stamina. End quote. The youthfulness and stamina of the Jewish people. That's what he's referring to here. In a similar vein, an English newspaper called the Liberator, Pro Bolshevik magazine published in New York, published a cartoon that shows Trotsky holding a rifle while he towers over trembling heads of state. The caption dubbed him, quote, the east side Jew that conquered Europe. I'll show you the image. There he is, the east side Jew. You can see. Let's try this nice little feature here. The east side Jew that conquered Europe. There's Trotsky, Here are various European leaders, There's General Pilsudsky, Clemenceau. And they are terrified because this mighty Jew is conquering Europe not just to the benefit of the working class, but to the benefit of the Jew. The Jews as a whole, not benefit. So once again, the irony. Trotsky, who does not stand for Jewish nationalism or act in the name of the Jewish people, is embraced and celebrated by Jews and some non Jews who worked in this magazine as a Jew and protector of them at their most dire moment. Let me just remind you that these statements were published in and around the Russian Civil war, when Jews were being slaughtered wholesale throughout the Ukraine and pogroms were being carried out beyond in Poland and elsewhere. So that hopefully will give you a sense of the emotional climate in which Trotsky is being depicted as a great Jewish hero. Okay. The above depictions would have surely mortified Trotsky had he known of them. But American commentators viewed Trotsky as a Jew, regardless of his own sense of identity. This is not to say that all Jews sympathized with Trotsky. Rabbi Stephen Weiss, head of the American Jewish Congress and a very prominent Reform rabbi, did not like Trotsky and warned against associating him with the Jews. He referred to Trotsky as a social aberration and dislike Trotsky till the time of his death. All right? He's an example of a prominent figure in the Jewish community who did not like any of this sort of thing that I'm describing to you. At the same time, to make things, you know, to. To carry on with this point of people who didn't like Trotsky, there was a common anti Semitic view. Stephen Weiss was not an anti Semite, I want to make that clear. But there was an anti Semitic view of Trotsky that placed him at the center of an international Judaic Bolshevik conspiracy. And I'll just read to you a couple quotes. The attorney General Palmer stated this. My information shows that communism in this country is an organization of thousands of aliens who were direct allies of Trotsky. End quote. Here is a quote from in a senate subcommittee meeting by Reverend George Simons, who was the former superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Russia and Finland prior to the revolution. And he alleged, quote, the present chaotic conditions in Russia are due in large part to the activities of Yiddish agitators of the Lower east side of New York City who went to Russia immediately following the downfall of the czar. End quote. No, I'm sorry, it's not the end of the quote. I'll continue. These Yiddish agitators from the New York east side followed in the trail of Trotsky, who was himself on the east side at the time of the czar's overthrow. End quote. Final quote comes from a journal called the Forum. Quote, when drunk with power, Lenin and Trotsky sought, beginning with Germany to make Bolshevism the ruling force in every civilized country. Where did they send many of their clever, cleverest propagandists? They sent them to New York, to the Lower east side, the breeding place of revolt in the new world. End quote. So these are just examples of really what was a widespread view of Trotsky and Jews. So, in short, Trotsky captured the attention of enemies and sympathizers alike. In the minds of admirers, Trotsky represented the glory of the Russian revolution and its special significance to the Jewish people. To those unwilling to distinguish between a government inclusive of Jews from a government dominated by them, Trotsky posed a threat to Western civilization. Feared or venerated, Trotsky personified the revolution in the eyes of many. Now I'm turning to the third and final figure who I mentioned at the beginning. This is Erin Glantz, Laelis, the Yiddish poet. There he is. This is a portrait that appeared in a 1954 collection of his writings. No, I take that back. This is not 1940. This is from the 1930s, mid-1930s. I don't know who took the picture, but there it is, as I say, the middle. And I don't know when the picture was taken. I assume the picture was taken not too much earlier than the publication of this book, but I don't know for sure. I don't have time to go into the whole biography of Laelis, nor his importance to the development of Yiddish literature, especially Yiddish poetry. He was, I'll just say he was a member, a central figure in a group of modernist poets referred to as the Insechisten, the introspectivist poets. They're modernist poets who experimented with things like free verse and in other aspects of poetic form and content. He was very active. He was a central figure in this group. He edited their literary journal. And he's most famous to this extent any Yiddish poet's famous in the 21st century. He's most well known as a Yiddish poet, but he participated actively in the political debates of the period as a newspaper columnist for Dirk Tug, the most intellectual of the Yiddish dailies in its time. And he published in many other magazines and newspapers. So he's an important fixture on the intellectual scene in the 1920s, 1930s and beyond. Laelis's political outlook was complex. He was an admirer of Trotsky, Sorry, he was an admirer of Zitlowski. In many ways he was a Yiddishist, self avowed, meaning that he viewed the center of Jewish culture as Yiddish and the survival and development of Yiddish as a supreme end in and of itself. He was also what he described as a 100% territorialist, meaning he believed Jews needed a homeland, a territory somewhere or in many places. You know, it didn't have to be in one place, one or many places in Palestine or elsewhere. And at the same time he professed a strong commitment to internationalism, in contradistinction to what he called official Zionism. Laelis argued that the various problems faced by Jews in the Diaspora could not be solved by a single nation state in a world dominated by imperialism. Jewish interests and values called for internationalism. Laila said, and I'm going to quote from an article he wrote in 1937, quote. Less than any other people can we set. We Jews sacrificed the principle of internationalism for the sake of nationalism. Internationalism remains and must remain our highest aspiration, our greatest and most virtuous goal, end quote. He was not saying this to disavow internationalism, nationalism. I want to be clear. He is emphasizing both at the same moment as equally important. In fact, well, let's just say equally important. Laelis perceived a convergence of socialist internationalism and Jewish nationalism in the seeming unlikely figure of Leon Trotsky. Lalis considered Trotsky the greatest revolutionary of our time, end quote. He saw him as a man of great integrity, courage and brilliance. His friend, I'll just say as an aside, Leolis friend and colleague Yanko Glachstein, another very important Yiddish poet, viewed Trotsky in basically identical terms as Leo listed. Both Gladstein and Leolis held Trotsky in high regard, but they also wish Trotsky would use his prodigious talents to revise Bolshevism in democratic and humane ways. Quote Leolis. I'm quoting Lailis. It must be recognized that freedom, democracy, the right of criticism, minority rights, the sanctity of human life, respect for individual personality, that all of this is as fundamental for the victory of socialism is the nationalization of the means of production. End quote. What Leolist who was very pro. How do I put it? He, he, he, he, he applauded the October Revolution. This, this is, should be important. So we thought the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution was justified, beyond justified, extremely important and laid the foundation for a new society and created a model that should be emulated everywhere. I should have said that this is a criticism not only of Stalinists but in gentler form of Trotsky. He doesn't have enough appreciation, he's saying, of the individual of democratic rights and so on. I'll continue the quote now. Laelis said what? 37. He wrote this, I mean he wrote this kind of thing multiple times in the 30s. I'm quoting from 37 what Laelus wanted to see from Bolsheviks, not as an alternative to Bolshevism, but from Bolsheviks. He wanted to see what he called a new approach. I'm quoting him. New approach to the ethical foundation of socialism. That would be true, honest, libertarian with respect to human life and alert to human suffering. End quote. I told you he's complicated. We're talking about someone who's a, who's pro Bolshevik and a libertarian. In his own words. He is a Jewish nationalist and a staunch internationalist. Right. Like I said, I told you, he's a complicated individual. If Trotsky, Leila said, would be willing to humanize Bolshevism and give recognition to Jewish national rights, Trotsky could play a great role in the national liberation of the Jewish proletariat. In a decade tormented by Stalinism, fascism and economic depression, Leolis invested hope in Trotsky. Laelis engaged closely with Trotsky's ideas. The poet translated Trotsky's grand history of the Revolution, History of the Russian Revolution into Yiddish and wrote a play about the author Trotsky's struggle for power with Stalin in his introduction to the drama, which Laila serialized in Freiharbiter Stimme, the anarchist weekly. And it was also this play about Trotsky and his struggles with Stalin also was reprinted in Warsaw's Litvarische Bled Era, a prestigious literary weekly. So it was red on both sides of the Atlantic is my point. Leela speculated about Trotsky's Jewish identity. Lelis knew that Trotsky was, and I'm quoting him, not at all consciously Jewish, end quote. But Laelus also felt sure that the play's hero had contemplated his Jewish background at some point in his life. A person of Trotsky's incisive intelligence who had commented on the Russian dimension to Lenin's personality must have given thought to what Leolis called, quote, his own national Jewish roots that connected Trotsky to other revolutionaries of Jewish descent, Karl Marx first and foremost. Furthermore, Trotsky, according to Leolis, exhibited a certain type of Jewish perspective that layalists saw expressed in Trotsky's opposition to Stalin, specifically to the dictator's drive to build socialism in one country. End quote. Just bear with me. I'm going to explain what that quote means so you'll understand, Lalas. You'll understand what the concept socialism in one country means, so you'll understand what Leolis is saying about Trotsky. So Stalin's goal of socialism in one country, that's Stalin slogan entailed. His goal entailed breakneck industrialization, severe exploitation of workers and peasants, the creation of a totalitarian bureaucracy, and the subordination of revolutionary movements abroad to the Kremlin's strategic interests. Trotsky dismissed socialism in one country as a contradiction in terms, an impossibility. You cannot have socialism in one country. Socialism's prospects in Russia, according to Trotsky, depended on the occurrence of revolutions in more developed countries that could provide technological and financial aid to their backward neighbor, meaning Russia. Trotsky warned, quote, without a more or less rapid victory of the proletariat in advanced countries, the workers government in Russia will not survive. Left to itself, the Soviet regime must either fall or degenerate. End quote. That's Trotsky's, taken from Trotsky one of his many critiques of Stalin. Lalas sensed in the Trotsky Stalin dispute over socialism in one country a divide between Jew and gentile. Quote. I'm quoting Leolist. Socialism in one country. Oh, sorry, I'm not quoting leolism. Socialism in one country represented to laelists a kind of Russian national chauvinism, while Trotsky's internationalism exhibited a diasporic consciousness embedded in Jewish historical experience. In other words, of course, it's a Jew who's used to living in a diaspora in the Diaspora, who would look at socialism in one country and say, how narrow. Right? This is Russian chauvinism. Trotsky the Jew looks at the world. He looks to the solution. He looks to revolution as an international process. So here's what he writes. Laelis writes, quote, I cannot accept that it is only accidental. He wrote in the Freiharberiter Stimmer, the anarchist paper. I cannot accept that it is only accidental that in the aforementioned conflict over socialism in one country, it is a Jew who does not want to restrict himself to state or national borders. End quote. Lelis thus drew a direct connection between Trotsky's Jewish background and his internationalist outlook. Of course, antisemites would say the same thing, but invert it, give it a negative valence. Okay? For most of his adult life, Trotsky showed little interest in the Jewish people. But Leolist detected changes of late. In an article published in the Yiddish journal Yiddish, Laelist cited a 1932 letter that Trotsky published in a Yiddish newspaper in which Trotsky predicted that Jews would play a particularly important role in the revolutionary movement in the United States. Trotsky said, quote, historical conditions have made the Jewish worker susceptible to the ideas of scientific communism. The first condition Trotsky meant. Sorry, the first condition Laelis mentioned was, quote, Jewish disbursement. The diasporic character of the Jewish people was reason enough to expect Marxist internationalist ideas to exert. And again, I'm quoting Trotsky to exert a big influence among the Jewish proletarians of the United States, end quote. The second condition that Trotsky mentioned was the socioeconomic marginality of Jewish workers, that is their concentration in secondary and declining sectors of the capitalist economies in various countries. That's a very important observation and I'm going to get back to it soon to explain what's so important about Trotsky's perception that Jews exist in the margins of capitalist economies. Trotsky observed that Jews, and I'm quoting him here, Jews are the weak link of the proletariat, end quote. He referred to Jewish workers, furthermore, as the. And I'm quoting the most oppressed and disenfranchised part of the proletariat in Poland, in the Baltic regions, in France, and evidently also in Palestine, end quote. I will not be mentioning the last part. Why is he mentioning Palestine? We'll have to save that for later. But again, I wanted you to hear the full quote. Trotsky's comments were noteworthy to Lailis because they demonstrated that the man who once disavowed any national identity had begun to think about Jews in terms of what lailists called their own character, their own structure and their own inclinations. End quote. Rather than submerge the Jews into an undifferentiated mass, Trotsky viewed Jews as the most oppressed and disenfranchised part of the proletariat, and inferred that their abnormal position and geographic dispersion predisposed them toward internationalism. Trotsky re emphasized this point in 1934. Lest you think this was an offhanded remark, he re emphasized this point in 1934, two years later, from the previous quote that I read to you when he told an interviewer that, quote, the foreign born Jewish worker in the United States will play in some respects a decisive role in the American proletarian revolution. End quote. Trotsky did not elaborate on his prediction. One wonders what Trotsky meant by decisive, but it marked the second time that Trotsky mentioned publicly the special role he expected Jewish workers to play. Leolis noticed that Trotsky, having grown cognizant of Jewish socioeconomic marginality, distinguished himself from the Bund, the Jewish Workers Party that staked its very existence in Poland on the structural integration of Jewish workers into that country's economy. They were saying two different things about Jewish workers. The Bund was saying Jewish workers are being incorporated into the economy in a healthy manner, or would be soon enough. Trotsky says they are the weak link of the proletariat that exists on the margins. Furthermore, unlike the Bund, Trotsky had come to appreciate the value of a territorial solution to the Jewish plight. While Trotsky never wavered in his conviction that only revolution on a global scale could solve the problems of antisemitism and poverty that afflicted Jews, he nonetheless validated the settlement of Jews on a common territory. A year after Hitler's rise to power, an interviewer asked Trotsky to state, quote, his attitude about Palestine is a possible Jewish homeland and about a land for the Jews generally. End quote. That was the question I just quoted, posed to Trotsky. Trotsky called such a territorial option, quote, conceivable, albeit contingent upon what he called a triumphant socialism. Less than three years later, in January 1937, Trotsy offered his strongest and most widely publicized statement on Jews in an interview conducted by two Yiddish journalists in Mexico City. With the aid of a translator, Trotsky began by sharing what he called his greatest regret for his inability to speak in Yiddish. He said Quote. During my youth, I rather leaned toward the prognosis that Jews of different countries would be assimilated and the Jewish question would thus disappear in a quasi automatic fashion. The historical development of the last quarter of a century, Trotsky continued, has not confirmed this perspective. End quote. In other words, his prediction, like most Marxists, that the Jews would almost automatically disappear has not happened. As of 1937, antisemitism had grown more threatening than ever and most Jews had not assimilated in the sense of total disappearance into the societies in which they lived. The cultural vitality of Jews furthermore impressed Trotsky. Quote the Jews have created their own press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted to modern culture. That's Jitlovsky's idea. Yiddish is a modern culture. Let me keep going. Quote One must therefore. This is Trotsky again. Quote One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come. End quote Furthermore, while Trotsky disapproved of Zionism or any solution thought to be dependent on what he called rotting capitalism, and that's the invective that Trotsky was famous for on rotting capitalism and British imperialism. Trotsky anticipated the establishment of a formally designated Jewish territory in the future. And I'm quoting him. Once socialism has become master of our planet, or at least its most important sections, Trotsky ventured to say it will open the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. End quote. It will then become feasible for certain nationalities or parts of nationalities to establish homelands of their own. Quote the dispersed Jews who want to be reassembled in the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under the sun. End quote In a follow up article solicited from Trotsky by the Yiddish daily Der Tug, Trotsky reiterated his prediction. Quote the very same methods of solving the Jewish question which under decaying capitalism has a utopian and reactionary characteristic, that is Zionism, will, under a regime of a socialist federation, take on a real and salutary meaning. End quote despite, in other words, despite Trotsky's rejection of Zionism, Trotsky had come to view Palestine as a potential Jewish homeland. Now Trotsky never developed a full fledged analysis of the Jewish question. In the final years of his life, he focused his energies on building a new league of revolutionary parties known as the Fourth International, defending the Bolshevik legacy against the Soviet state and other matters. This fact has led some historians to minimize the significance of Trotsky's Thoughts about Jews. It is undeniable, I'll repeat this, that his remarks were brief and episodic, but it would be a mistake to disregard them as trivial. Their import becomes apparent when viewed in the light of Marxist history. Marxists had traditionally believed that the Jewish people would disappear in, quote, a quasi automatic fashion as capitalism evolved and the class struggle proceeded. Trotsky himself acknowledged that prior to Hitler's rise to power, the predicaments of Jews had, quote, never occupied his attention. After 1933, however, Trotsky felt he no longer had, in his words, the right to be blind to the Jewish problem which exists and demands a solution, end quote. The solution Trotsky reached was both national and international in character. He drew three conclusions about Jews that overlapped with Zionism. One, the Jews constituted a viable nation. Two, Jewish workers occupied a precarious socioeconomic position in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and three, they were entitled to a territory of their own and Palestine. It should be mentioned for the sake of clarity that Trotsky disagreed with both Zionists and the anti Zionist Bund on certain points. Trotsky, unlike Bundists, believed Jews occupied a structurally disadvantaged economic position. As I said before, the Bund rejected that proposition. In contrast to Zionists, however, Trotsky concluded that Jewish workers could and indeed would function as effective political actors, not despite their collective weakness, but because of it. Think of his analysis of Russian backwardness. This is what he had said 30 years earlier when talking about Russia. Its backwardness made it more likely to be the site of a revolution. He's now applying, I think subconsciously the same analytical structure to the Jews. The Jews are effective revolutionaries because they're weak. According to Zionists, by contrast, Jews could not act effectively on their own behalf in the absence of a firm economic foundation. Trotsky predicted that Jewish workers would play a, quote, decisive role in the struggle for socialism. Not as an independent political force, mind you. Trotsky opposed all forms of independent Jewish politics, including and especially the Bund, but as an integral element within a jet within general revolutionary parties, by which he meant Jewish workers should join general parties. That's the way towards their liberation. So he differed from the Bund and Trotsky on this question of whether Jews need their own political parties. He opposed independent Jewish politics. Trotsky was convinced that only through proletarian unity could Jewish workers liberate themselves in both class and national terms, both those ways. As for his third conclusion, it bears repeating that Trotsky dismissed the possibility of a Jewish national homeland until after the triumph of A proletarian revolution worldwide. It was futile in Trotsky's mind to work for a Jewish homeland in the here and now, an opinion obviously Zionists did not agree with. But according to Trotsky, only revolution can ensure the survival of the Jews as a nation based on a socialist economy and a shared territory. Trotsky advanced in original perspectives, in short, not a coherent theory or a program, but a clearly expressed viewpoint that eschewed Zionism and Buddhism but was too nuanced to be characterized as anti Zionist. He planted the seed of a new theoretical approach that incorporated Jewish workers as a national group into his revolutionary Marxist framework. Laelus admiration for Trotsky notwithstanding. Taking this back to Laelis, he refrained from joining any Trotskyist party. Trotsky had not moved far enough toward Jewish nationalism, nor developed a sufficient appreciation of civil and political liberties to satisfy Leolis's libertarian and Jewish nationalist instincts. Leolis respected Trotsky. He agreed with him on fundamental issues having to do with the October Revolution. But Lailis could not become a Trotskyist. The differences were simply too wide for him to ignore. I'm going to now jump ahead to the conclusion. What I was going to discuss, and we can discuss later, is the fact that Zhitlovsky becomes a Stalinist. We can save that till later. Just keep in mind Zhitlowski becomes a Stalinist. And I'll just conclude with these, with these just final comments, and that is. By the dawn of the 1940s, Zhetlovsky had become an avowed Stalinist. Layalists had abandoned the hope of a synthesis between Jewish territorialism, Yiddishism and proletarian revolution a la the Bolsheviks. And Trotsky lay dead at the hand of a Soviet agent in Mexico City. With Stalin securely in power and the war in Europe raging, the range of conceivable options for Jews had dramatically narrowed, leaving Soviet style communism, American democracy and Jewish statehood in Palestine as the remaining options. Thank you. I believe we have plenty of time for questions and I'm of course happy to entertain them. Alex, could you comment on Lenin's possible Jewish background when he discovered it and what impact it had on history or Lenin? I'm afraid I can't. I know there is this discussion about Lenin's Jewish background or potentially Jewish background. There is a book about this that deals entirely with this subject. I think the author's name is Yohanan Petrovsky, but I haven't read the book, I'm sorry to say, so I really can't comment on that. I'm sorry.
- [68:11]
Audience Member 1
Thank you so much for this stimulating intellectual experience. It seems from the way you presented that Trotsky perhaps benefited from the projection of Jews upon him as someone that can save the Jews. And, you know, and that, that he represents, he must have absorbed it the way you present it. And, and therefore he, he, he, you know, you could see the progression of his ideas. What, you know, you left us with this, you know, with this enigma. How did Czytlovsky, what made him become, you know, go the other way in a sense and become a Stalinist and give up his original ideals?
- [69:01]
Professor Tony Michaels
It is an enigma. You know, how does Stalin, who's a really, I mean, how does Zitlowsky, who's really for years a staunch critic of the Bolsheviks? I mean, his view, so Jetlovsky's view of the Bolsheviks is that it was. The Bolshevism was inherently amoral. And he wrote a lot about this. I mean, he thought Bolshevism had departed from what he viewed as a strong moral tradition in socialism. And once in power, as he, as he put it, turned man into the cog of a machine. That was, that was Zhilovsky's view going into the 1930s. And then he comes out of the 1930s an Open, not a covert Stalinist, but an open Stalinist. Why? Quickly. There are several things, several factors. One was the People's Front. He believed that the People's Front, meaning that the Communists were reaching out to progressive, or so called progressive and liberal elements, moderating their goals, becoming less sectarian, and that that showed that the Communists were leaving behind their worst tendencies. Second, as part of the People's Front, the Communists embraced Yiddish culture quite actively and in fact were the leading force behind a worldwide Yiddish cultural conference in Paris. To Zhitlowski, this was a major significance. This is what he wanted. His whole adult life was a unification of Yiddish cultural activists and writers. 1937, I think that plays a really big role. Third, and this is in Zhytlovsky's words, they're confronted with Hitler. And there's only one way, according to Zhulovsky, to confront Hitler, and that is by supporting Stalin. Actually, finally, there's one more thing, and that was that he believed Berubid, which Trotsky called a bureaucratic farce. The Berobidan was a model, as he put it, Shitlowski put it, a model for all countries with a large Jewish population. They should give a territory for Jews. Remember, Shitlowski is a territorialist, so he views Stalin as acting on the territorial Principle. So Zhidlowski didn't say, there are great things happening in Berbidan. I mean, if he did, it was fairly muted. What he said is, it exists, it's an example for all to follow, and it's a potential for us to take advantage of. These are some of the reasons why he embraces Stalinism. We have one question online about precisely this topic, which asks if this was prior to Operation Barbarossa or a result of it, this move to Stalinism. No, I think it's prior to that. Yeah, it's prior to that.
- [72:03]
Audience Member 1
How did political parties exist and work in tsarist Russia?
- [72:07]
Professor Tony Michaels
I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question. In tsarist Russia, it was a monarchy.
- [72:13]
Audience Member 1
Like, how did political parties exist and work?
- [72:15]
Professor Tony Michaels
They were illegal. These were legal parties, which is you could say why Zhilovsky was in Switzerland. You know, I mean, your options in this period were you either leave the country or go. Or go to jail. I mean, pretty soon you're probably going to be arrested. And many of the revolutionaries moved abroad, including to the United States. But the Switzerland, Germany, England, France, so parties had to operate. So many people left Russia so they could continue the revolutionary work. And relative freedom. I say relative because, for one reason, the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, operated in a number of countries, actually. So you. It wasn't always possible to escape the long arm of the Tsarist law. But those who stayed in the countries, who weren't arrested and, you know, in Siberia somewhere, where had to operate illegally, they operated underground.
- [73:11]
Audience Member 2
Was Zhidlovsky unique in his support for Stalin over Trotsky? Like, where was the American Jewish socialist movement more broadly, like in the 30s?
- [73:22]
Professor Tony Michaels
I missed the first part of the question. I'm sorry, my ears are actually quite clogged. The American Jewish socialist movement more broadly in the 1930s, were they staunchly Stalinist? Ah, there was. There were division. There were divisions. There was a large Jewish Communist movement. There was a larger. The larger Jewish labor movement was, you know, democratic socialists. I'm talking about the unions, the workman circle, the forward. That was even larger than the Communist movement. And then you had people in smaller parties, Socialist Zionist parties, anarchists, people like that. So there was, you know, an array of political positions and ideologies, which had always been the case, really, since the beginning of the Jewish workers movement, the 1880s. And so, you know, there were different competing views. And some of what was going on is what I tried to indicate. You have people evolving up to World War II and through World War II and beyond the largest segment of the Jewish working class in the 1930s supported either the Socialist Party or Roosevelt. You know, from a social democratic standpoint. Does that get your question? Did the Jewish Communists accept the vilification of Trotsky? Yes, yes, enthusiastically. And it's kind of ugly. I mean, if you see, if you.
- [74:52]
Eddie Portnoy
If you.
- [74:52]
Professor Tony Michaels
It is ugly. If you read the Yiddish Communist newspaper, the Morgen Freiheit, what they say about Trotsky over and over, day after day. Well, you know, sometimes you read Red Some. Right. But no, Trotsky is called a fascist. Every day they say he's a Nazi collaborator. That's the allegation that he's collaborating with the Nazis. This is. You know, you can read articles in the 40s when Trotsky's dead, and, you know, there are articles saying we should have the Moscow trial, our own Moscow trials, so we could execute all the traitors, not just the Trotskyists, all the alleged traitors. I'm sorry, that's what Communists are saying in the 30s and 40s when it comes to Trotsky and other dissidents. So, yes, this permeates the atmosphere of the Jewish Communist movement. It's not something that many people wanted to remember later if they were still alive. Some regretted it. Some just pretended like they never participated or engaged in any of this.
- [76:05]
Audience Member 2
Fascinating lecture. I was just wondering, this idea of Zhytovsky, in the end, ironically becoming Stalinist. Yeah, but Stalinist in the sense that by taking this direction, he was actually connecting with people who were internationalist, that is Yiddish culture all over the world. For example, you know, the Arbiter Ring in England didn't split on communist socialist grounds. So unlike the American Arbiter Ring, which membership peaked in 1925, the British arbiter rings membership peaked in 1938. So I just wanted to say, do you see a paradox there that actually, by being your term Stalinist, he had actually become an internationalist, I. E. A Trotskyist, because Trotsky is about international revolution, permanent revolution. And so Szytovsky, because he sides with the Communists in the 30s, he can go to the International Yiddish Congress. Whereas all the American radicals who choose to side against the Communists are excluded from the development of international Yiddish culture.
- [77:12]
Professor Tony Michaels
So Zhitlovsky disagreed. Let me try and answer your question this way. Let me try and answer it this way. Zhitlovsky disagreed with American Communists in the 30s and the Soviet Union in the 30s, because according to the Soviet definition of Jewish nationality, Jews were national minority in the Soviet Union, but only in the Soviet Union. They were anti diasporists. Zhutlovsky was a diasporist for the reasons I already said. He believed Jews were part of a worldwide nation that should forge bonds with each other. So because of this difference, the Soviet government did not send a delegation to the Paris conference. Communists from America went to the Paris Conference and made common cause with Shitlovsky and the other Yiddishists. But the Soviet Union didn't because they couldn't give. They refused to give official sanction by virtue of sending a delegation to a body that spoke in the name of the Jewish nation. Worldwide, a thousand airtime Stalinists helped sponsor it, in fact took the lead in organizing the conference. But the Soviet Union at the 11th hour did not send a delegation. Stalinist in every country but the Soviet Union. So the Stalinists from all countries went to Paris. The Soviet Stalinist did not go to Paris. They set the whole. This is the irony. The Soviet Union set in motion a process through the People's Front that led to the conference in Paris that they then refused to sanction because it was Zhitlovskyite in its conception. I mean, they identified Zhitlovsky as the sort of ideological architect and they wouldn't abide by it. However, this is the second half of your question I'm trying to address that Zhitlowski agreed with Stalin on the principle of socialism in one country. His view was, the Soviet Union is huge. Why can't it build socialism? You know, the Trotskyists are being realistic here. You know, he didn't attack Trotsky. Shitlowsky never attacked Trotsky in the way the Stalinist did. I want to be clear about that. And he even wrote that Trotsky was not guilty of collaborating with Nazis. He did say Trotskyists in the Soviet Union were guilty of a conspiracy. Surely they must be. And so there is some difference. So Zhytlovsky is not a communist. He is a Stalinist in the ways I'm trying to define. He believed in socialism in one country. He opposed the idea of a political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist regime. He described all dissidents blanketly as enemies of the Soviet state. And he said that the Soviet Union is a dictatorship. That's not the communist vocabulary. The communist would never say that he said that. But he said not to worry because there would be a natural evolutionary process to democracy. But if you try to promote democracy, if there's a Trotskyist Left Opposition trying to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy, then you're Going to get Nazism in the Soviet Union. That's what he said. Trotskyism, in other words, leads to Nazism or any attempt to democratize the Soviet Union. These are the ways that he's a Stalinist. If it sounds strange, it is strange. He's saying, I disagree with Bolshevism on every principle. And then he's saying at the same time, but Stalin is actually a really good leader. Okay, next question.
- [80:57]
Audience Member 2
Thanks.
- [80:57]
Professor Tony Michaels
I have a question, which is Trotsky's
- [81:00]
Eddie Portnoy
writings on the Jewish question in the 1930s.
- [81:02]
Professor Tony Michaels
Trotsky? Yeah.
- [81:03]
Eddie Portnoy
Did those attract any attention from his followers and the other parties of the
- [81:07]
Professor Tony Michaels
fourth International during his lifetime or afterwards? Okay, I'm glad you asked that question. How did Trotsky's followers in one or another political party in the 1930s or 1940s react to the writings that I was quoting from? From what I can tell, the Trotskyist newspapers and magazines paid little if any attention to those writings in the 30s. So they see, they seem to just ignore them. This changed in the 40s when some of them, some of these writings and interviews and so forth started to appear in English translation in various Trotsky's periodicals. Okay, how are they then interpreted? Sometimes they were interpreted through what I'd call a Nero, anti Zionist lens, which is to say they looked at Trotsky's negative comments about Zionism and took it to mean this is the authentic position of Trotsky or Trotskyism. Other times they saw that Trotsky himself was starting to shift, but realize there is not a theory there, there's just the beginning of a theory. And so there were efforts by Trotskyists in the forties to come up with an interpretation of the Jewish question to meet the challenges of the moment, which is to say the Holocaust or the refugee problem caused by the Holocaust and the question of whether or not Jews should have the right to immigrate to Palestine. That's one question. Whether or not they had national rights in Palestine, That's a second question. And the third question, I'm parsing it this way for clarity. And the third question growing out of the second is, if Jews have some kind of national rights in Palestine, does that right include the right to statehood? So there was a whole discussion that emerges in the 40s, sometimes referring to Trotsky's writings, other times not referring to Trotsky's writings, saying that either, depending on where you wind up in 48, either Jews do have national rights, Jewish statehood isn't ideal. But it's the only option right now that Jews need a state in the moment or an opposing view that says no, Jews should not, they have no right to go to Palestine. The right of Jews to go to Palestine infringes necessarily on Arab rights and that the correct goal is a revolution in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would join together to create a new kind of state that isn't a Jewish state or an Arab state for that matter. So it depends. My short answer, I'm trying to give you a taste of the debates in the 1940s and my short answer is Trotsky himself. His writings don't seem to be invoked that often. They're sometimes evoked in ways that justify opposing positions. And finally, when it comes to concrete and expansive analysis of the situation of Jews in post war Europe and the situation in Palestine, there are at times radically different conclusions, even when they're drawn from the same principles. I want to thank once again Professor Tony Michaels for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.