James wrote:
>Both Chris and I are talking about anti-Semitism in eastern
>Europe and Russia, and about how influential it is. I think Chris's point was
>that there were people who hold those views, but that other antagonisms such as
>the conflict with Chechnya were more important to the state.
I do not dispute that war in Chechenya is by far more important to the russian state, then antisemitism is. The soviet/russian troops, up to 1994 deployed in my home town in northern Germany, have been sended to Chechenya many times. After the first tour a young lieutenant took a few grenades and throw them around in the garrison.He killed three, before he was shot. My father made pictures of the flowers on the place, when two days later he arrived in Makarovsk with a official german delegation for the celebration of 50th anniversary of the soviet victory in WWII. Later on they have been a little more cautious with there returning men, sometimes. Comparable things did not happen because of antisemitism. (And Chris would say, this is an anecdote.) But this misses the point:
>Sebastian, though, heaps up a number of examples in an eighty year dash through
>the history of eastern Europe and Russia, that appear to show that anti-Semitism
>is endemic. This, it seems to me, is a cherry-picking approach to history that
>tend to flatten the historical specifity of different periods (maybe cherries is
>the wrong metapor).
It is not about a few "cherrys",=2 0but about the history of marginalization and taking away the majority of surving jews of eastern europe: The Kielce pogrom, the bargaining with zionism, the Slansky-trial,the 1968-events in Poland - they all caused waves of emigration. In history not the number of days ore years is most mportant: There are turning points, and acting in such turning points is crucial. The things I spoke about resulted in the emigration of vast majority of the surviving eastern european jews. (And to be sure: Israel was not their favourite destination, but there was no much choice.)
>Yes, there was a decidedly anti-Semitic edge to Stalin's appeal to Great Russian
>Chauvinism in the Second World War and immediately after, during the Slansky
>trial (Ilya Ehrenburg refers to it in his memoirs).
BTW: Ehrenburg is a good starting point, but there is much more to be read (Vassili Grossmann?)
>And the backward-looking Russian chauvinist movements like Pamyat are pretty
>marginal today. Making them emblematic of what Russia is really like would be
>like saying that Gordon Brown was just the front man for the British National
>Party.
Marginal? In the end-of perestroika-period Pamyat was not marginal, and it was this time (1988-1993), in wich the most important changes took place.
>BUT THE OTHER side of the argument, the one that both Sebastian and Andie are
>resistant to, is that when considering the deplorable aspects of 'backward
>Slavic Culture' it is as well to20be aware of the fact that you are participating
>in a long history of anti-slav racial stereotyping.
"anti-slav racial stereotyping" ? I do not - see my other post. But contrary to you I do see the conflicts inside the not at all homogenous "slavic culture" - in my words: in the class societies of eastern europe - too. And in the eastern europe class conflicts antisemitism was every time a weapon of reaction, where it countries with slavic culture ore without (the baltic region, northern russia, Hungary, Romania).
>So all your historical examples of east European anti-Semitism seem to add up to
>a pattern of behaviour because you have missed out the counter examples.
I did not, I mentioned the extrem "harsh legislation" in Poland against those, who helped jews under nazigerman occupation.
>As
>Abram Leon explains, while West Europeans were persecuting Jews throughout the
>middle ages, they lived in peace with their neighbours in East Europe.
Right, I mentioned this point a few weeks ago in a thread on the origin of the eastern european jews. But some time later came the kozak uprising of Bogdan Chmelnyzky in 1648 hundreds of thousands of jews were killed. History is full of counterexamples.
>Or that
>the Bolshevik revolution in Russia rallied the Russian people behind a party
>with many Jewish leaders (as did the 1919 revolution in Hungary).
You like russian literature? Take Isaac Babel on this point. His view is less one-sided. And Pilsudski personally was no Anti-Semite - the Sanacja-camp of his followers was, though not so militant anti-semite like the rivaling Endecja.
Chris seemed critical on telling "anecdotes". I did not. I missed the point of Krystynas story. It is the fact, that the same time, she heard from the priest his view on ghettos, she and her family were hiding a jewish family in there small flat in Warsaw. It seemed a safe place, because the builiding next door was a german police station. Later in 1942 they moved them out to another hiding:the double risk of hiding jews and using the flat for illegal meetings was to high. Only a few days later Krystyna was imprisoned and the flat searched. I did not add this. I thought it to be well known, that acitvity in polish leftist underground /and not only the leftist, but parts of the bourgeois underground too, see the activities of the Zegota/ included the attempt to help the persecuted jews. OK, this was a mistake.
To come to an end: There seems to be no bridge between the different perspectives. I'm looking from the point of view of a rank and file east european leftist, not only internationalist in words, but in words too: but able to discuss in german. english, polish and russian. I do not share the favorite attitude of some of the "western" left, quite excited about everybody, who in some way ore another oppposes the US ore EU, with no idea about what's going on inside - in=2 0the past: in the eastern block - today: in Russia, China, Iran and so on and on.
For me the story of post-second-world-war antisemitism inm eastern europe is not a story about "the others" - it is the story about some of the crimes and mistakes commited sometimes by full hearted and minded communists - Gomulka in 1968! - commited in the name of communism. That's why it is a story dealing with me too. Like the defeat of the german labor movement in 1933 and the complete failure of the german resistance to stop Hitler. I do not belong to that kind of people, inventing themselve anew every morning.
Sebastian
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