Below are the introductory note and excerpts from the second chapter of the new book The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class, which includes two of the writings by V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the Bolshevik Party. The book describes the continuity of the communist movement in the fight against Jew-hatred going back more than 100 years. It helps make clear the decisive importance of building a communist leadership capable of leading hundreds of millions to fight to take political power for the working class and oppressed nations in the U.S. and worldwide. Copyright © 2024 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
From the opening of the twentieth century, V.I. Lenin led the political fight in the tsarist empire’s massive “prison house of nations” for a united and centralized working-class party — a party incorporating all those who agreed with its program, regardless of their language, national, or religious origin.
That disciplined revolutionary workers party, known as the Bolsheviks from 1903 on, joined the front lines of the fight against anti-Jewish pogroms promoted by Russia’s capitalist rulers. The Bolshevik-led proletarian government brought to power by the victorious October 1917 revolution put a stop to those brutal attacks on Jews.
The young soviet government was defended by the newly formed volunteer Red Army, led by Lenin and commanded by Leon Trotsky. Its backbone came from the ranks of the most politically conscious workers of all nationalities throughout the former tsarist realm. In a bitter war lasting some three years, they not only crushed the counterrevolutionary armies of Russia’s toppled capitalists and landowners. They also defeated the invading armies of imperialist powers from London and Paris, as well as from Washington, Tokyo, and others.
The survival and victory of the new workers state was due in no small part to the intransigent battle the Bolsheviks waged — before, during, and after the October victory — to defend the rights of all oppressed nationalities, including the millions of Jews, across the former tsarist empire. The Bolsheviks educated the toilers about the origins and reactionary character of Jew-hatred. Lenin’s two opening pieces from 1918-19 are examples.
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Jews aren’t working people’s enemies, the enemies are capitalists of all countries
From speech on phonograph record
V.I. Lenin, March 1919
Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews.
When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organized pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert against the Jews the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to turn away their attention from the enemy of the working people, capital. . . .
It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism.
Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters, and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations, and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob, and disunite the workers.
Shame on accursed tsarism, which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred toward the Jews, who foment hatred toward other nations. Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.
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Pogroms are fatal to the workers and peasants revolution
From resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars
V.I. Lenin, July 1918
According to reports received by the Council of People’s Commissars, the counterrevolutionaries are carrying on agitation for pogroms in many cities, especially in the frontier zone, as a result of which there have been sporadic outrages against the toiling Jewish population. The bourgeois counterrevolution has taken up the weapon that has slipped from the hands of the tsar.
The absolutist government, each time when the need arose, turned the wrath of the peoples directed at itself against the Jews, at the same time telling the uneducated masses that all their misery comes from the Jews. . . .
In the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, where the principle of self-determination of the toiling masses of all peoples has been proclaimed, there is no room for national oppression. The Jewish bourgeois are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeois. The Jewish worker is our brother.
Any kind of hatred against any nation is inadmissible and shameful.
The Council of People’s Commissars declares that the anti-Semitic movement and pogroms against the Jews are fatal to the interests of the workers and peasants revolution and calls upon the toiling people of Socialist Russia to fight this evil with all the means at their disposal.
National hostility weakens the ranks of our revolutionaries, disrupts the united front of the toilers without distinctions of nationality, and helps only our enemies.
The Council of People’s Commissars instructs all Soviet deputies to take uncompromising measures to tear the anti-Semitic movement out by the roots. Pogromists and pogrom-agitators are to be placed outside the law.