--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote: Maybe the Nazis would have been a better deal for the religionists (except Jews, of course).
--- There actually were a couple of very small Jewish groups like the Karaites (I was discussing this with M. Pollak offlist) in Ukraine who successfully appealed to the Nazis that they be considered religiously, not racially, Jewish and so be exempted from Nazi anti-Jewish decrees. It was the same strategy they used to get equal right under the Tsar. There were Karaites in the Waffen-SS, which apparently troubled Himmler.
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And I can see, as how Stalin's politburo had at least one person of Jewish origin on it, that a lot of anti-Semites might have seen Nazi propaganda as "truth". ---
Kaganovich was the biggest Jewish figure. Stalin enjoyed taking the piss out of Ribbentrop by making him toast to "our Jewish comrade." Kaganovich was in charge of things architectural when they blew up the Christ the Savior cathedral. At the time he told Stalin with alarm that "the Black Hundreds will blame it on me!" Which they probably did. (I saw an anti-Putin poster recently showing him with goats' legs and wearing a Star of David.)
Stalin's politburo was heavy on ethnic minorities. Stalin himself and Beria -- Georgian. Kaganovich -- Jewish. Mikoyan -- Armenian. Budenny -- Cossack. Krushchev -- Ukrainian. (In his book on his father Sergo Beria memorably describes Budenny as "an abortion soaked in alcohol.")
-- Didn't Stalin change "the line" on religion before 1941 in order to line up at least the Orthodox types behind the defense of the USSR?
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Yes.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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