Anti-Jewish violence took tens of thousands of lives as pogroms, many organized by the White Armies, became a key feature of the Russian Civil War. Original Bolshevik and Lenin’s personal secretary, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich was Executive Secretary to the Council of People’s Commissaries and chairman of the Committee against Pogroms when this was written. From Lithuanian nobility, Bonch-Bruyevich was a class traitor. Joining the revolutionary movement in the 1890s, he brings that long view into this impassioned denouncement of antisemitism in the former Russian Empire, including in the ranks of its workers and peasants, and its dangers to the revolution.

‘New Pogroms’ by Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 2 No. 5. January 31, 1920.

In the course of the famous Beylis trial—Beylis was accused of having murdered the young Yushinsky at Kiev—the Moscow Rabbi Maze was heard as an expert; I remember as if it were yesterday this solemn moment of the abominable ritual murder trial. The Beylis trial had long since passed out of the stage where it was a trial merely of one man; it was the Jewish people who were being judged by the Czarist functionaries on the bench. And then appeared the child of the Jewish people, a true descendant of an ancient people, brave before the Czarist tribunal; he looked straight into the eyes of these people, who held the power; he pronounced his astonishing profession of faith which must have gone straight to the soul of each one present; I know that it made an impression not only on the judges, who soon ceased to smile, not only on the listeners in the crowded hall, but also on the jury, which was charged with the duty of unravelling this inextricable affair, and which, in spite of the calumnies and intrigues of the Czar’s “justice” of the imperial prosecutors, returned a verdict of acquittal in favor of the Jewish people.

I see him still, this unusual orator, small in stature, leaning forward over a table in order the better to control his audience, expounding in a voice that was becoming warmer and warmer, the religious mentality and the character of his people, describing the procedure of its ceremonies, its manners and its customs. “From the Kiev Court of Assizes this touching profession of faith of an entire race re-echoed over all the world: the profession of this people persecuted and physically humiliated, but preserving through all its sufferings and misfortunes, all the power and all the energy of its moral splendor. After the first vibrant and passionate words, a poignant emotion had seized all in the room.” In my diary of that period, those are the words in which I characterized this memorable day of the Kiev trial of this astonishing demonstration of the Pontiff of the Jewish people.

When I recall this solemn and tragic moment in which the sad story of the sufferings of the Jewish people was presented, my thought moves involuntarily towards those frontier regions in Russia which are largely inhabited by Jewish populations, in which the accursed White Guards, the Polish bourgeoisie, landed proprietors, the nobles and the assassins of everybody, recruited, equipped, and enlisted through force of gold by the European bourgeoisie, have thrown themselves upon the population like wild beasts. These monsters indulge in their bloody and bestial orgy of nightmare and of horror, cutting the throats of women and old men, appeasing their sadistic rage on children, destroying everything that is in their way, and leaving behind them only ashes and corpses, where a day before an active, productive life was still in progress. Wherever the organizing hand of the western bureaucracy makes itself felt, particularly where the Entente propaganda puts in its appearance, the ex-“Allies” of Russia fall upon us and propagate anti-semitism, with its abominable reaching of hatred. The cry of “Death to the Jews” resounds from one end of these unfortunate provinces to the other, handed over as they are defenseless, to the Polish, Roumanian, and other reactionary bands in the pay of Lloyd George, Clemenceau and other managers of the world bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, wherever the Soviet power has been established, wherever the Soviet Government has been founded and fortified, all these savage excesses have become impossible. The Israelites, like the representatives of all other nationalities, whatever they may be, live in peace, following with absolute liberty whatever occupations the political and economic conditions created by the blockade permit them to engage in—and unfortunately these conditions, owing to the blockade, are becoming progressively more difficult and painful. The workers and peasants of Soviet Russia, of Ukraine, of Crimea, of Lithuania, of White Russia, of the regions of the Caucasus, the Volga, the Don, the Urals (all of which are Soviet territory, from the north of Russia to the south), know very well that at present, under their Government, and in their Soviet territories, all distinctions of nationality, religion and race have been obliterated once for all. It is in Soviet territory that the ancient maxims have truly been realized: “All men are brothers”; “No more Hellenes, no more Jews.” There are now only workers, first to last, having the same rights to existence.

If the struggle is still going on, it is now against the exploiters, the beadles of the bourgeoisie and the nobility, the landed proprietors, the individuals and organizations who are violating the liberties, the honor, and the dignity of the peoples living in Russia, who threaten the very existence of the millions of the proletarians and peasants living in our country.

Monsters in human form at present ravage Lithuania and White Russia, which have been cut off by the Poles; everywhere the innocent blood of the poor Israelites continues to flow in torrents. What has not been done by these mercenaries of the European bourgeoisie, habituated to measure the value of blood and the lives of men in gold?

Information recently received concerns fifty localities in which the number killed has been capable of record; in addition to these localities, there are still some scores of others which have also had pogroms, and in which the number of victims is not yet precisely known. Proskurov has recorded 3,000 killed; Felshtin, 2,000 killed; Teplik, 350; Zhitomir, 410; Ovrutch, 80; Berditchev, 30; Radomysl, 32; Vassilkov, 110; Tchernobyl, 100; Mejgopie, 104; Dombrovitsy, 19; also the following places: Stepantsy, Possava, Korosten, Poltava, Kobelaky, Romedane, Loubny, Elizabetgrad, Znamenka, Kormya, Ivanovo, Oboukov, Piriatine, Gornostaytol, Fastov, Olchantsy, Bobrinskaya, QOlevsk, Berezane, Kleben, Letitchev, Medjibodj, Zenkov, Koublitsch, Ladyjine, Zhranov, Katai-Gorod, Tchernovka, Sobolevka, Skvira, Konev, Taracha, Bougouslav, Balta, Bobrobitsy, Lugin, etc., etc. Certain localities have become victims of pogroms several times. Lands, houses, furniture, everything, has been destroyed, thrown out, sacked. The violators have broken down doors, windows and stoves, have torn up the floors, have broken to pieces machines and tools in the workshops, simultaneously killing and massacring and murdering without mercy. In the villages, children may be seen wandering about, left without parents and without homes. In the fields and in the woods, you find fugitives and unfortunates who have lost their way while escaping; all of them are half mad and terrified by the mere idea of returning to their houses. In the yards you see people walking up and down who have partly or totally lost their reason; others remain for whole days sitting on the ruins, as if they were counting something, casting frightened glances in all directions; while, in the surroundings, in market towns and villages, the old regime of the Czar is being restored, to the great joy of Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and all those who hate peace, who violate the working and peasant population, and who threaten to shoot everybody in any little field where they may find them. Drunk with blood and violence, this maddened bourgeoisie and their ferocious bands of mercenaries threaten Russia and the whole world with the same atrocities, if the workers and peasants are audacious enough to raise their heads and refuse to yield to those whose trade is the shedding of blood for gold—and they have plenty of gold to make the blood flow.

It is characteristic of what is going on now in the west and southwest of Russia, that it is being repeated identically beyond the Volga, at the foot of the Urals, in the kingdom of Kolchak, that lackey of Czarism, who is being jumped upon from all sides by the Reds. We witness here the same ferocity; the same repressions, the same savage vengeance against peasants and workers whose lives have been one long martyrdom; the same savageries are practised against the workers of the land, of the factories, of the shops, because they dared, in the twentieth century, at the end of the struggle that lasted almost a century, after five years of slaughter without precedent, boldly to declare to the entire world that they also were men, that they refused to live any longer in slavery, and have decided to organize their lives as they thought best.

Who are these bold persons? Are they not the whole Russian people? They are the millions of peasants and workers belonging to all the nationalities living in Russia. It is they who want to shake off the yoke of the financiers, the landed proprietors, of international capitalism, of the civilized English, French, and German barbarians, who have so long been actually bleeding our country, and who now want to continue to cut it to pieces. Is it not time for all those who have still a remnant of conscience and of honor, to finally understand that the cause of Soviet Russia is the cause of the dignity and the very existence of the whole nation, and that, if we wish to preserve for Russia her independence, we must all rise as one man to shake off forever the horrid yoke of world imperialism? The Jewish pogroms must awaken all those who are sleeping and finally prove to them what many have thus far not wanted either to see or hear.

The Jewish people are spread all over the world. They count among the bourgeoisie a considerable number of representatives. Everywhere and always the Jew has been rightly proud of his spirit of solidarity and, in fact, even the representatives of its wealthy classes, those who had forgotten and were exploiting the misery and the century-long serfdom of their race-brothers, have always trembled when the tocsin of the pogrom of Kishinev and other cities of Russia resounded. The Jews have always said: “The persecutions and the sufferings of our people move the heart of every Israelite, whoever he may be. And now that unheard of pogroms have broken out in Russia no longer stimulated by the knout of the Czar’s lackeys, no longer unleashed by the provocation of governors, but now under the auspices of the Clemenceaus, the Lloyd Georges and other managers of the world bourgeoisie, who are egging on against Russia veritable hordes of assassins, bands of mercenaries, the hungry pack of landed proprietors who have been unlanded, Livonian barons, Polish szlachta, in short, all the capitalists and their hangers-on—will now the Jewish people in France, in America, and in England, not raise their voice? Will they not protest against their Prime Ministers and their Presidents? Is it they who are now causing the blood of the Jews to flow?

We must reply to this coalition of gilded bellies by the international union of the proletarians, of the peasants, and of all other workers, in order to oppose to all reaction, of whatever source, a wall of insurmountable bayonets, to defend with our lives this new regime of justice and of liberty that has been established in our Soviet Russia. Only this regime can lead humanity on the road of happiness and assure to all the means of subsistence. There have never been, and we are happy to say there will never be, any “pogroms” where the Soviet power shall have planted the sublime banner of the Socialist Federated Soviet Republic of all the peoples and all the nationalities.

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of original issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v1v2-soviet-russia-Jan-June-1920.pdf