Two Hundred Years Together
Encyclopedia
"Two hundred years together" is a 2-volume historical essay by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
.
Solzhenitsyn published this two-volume work on the history of Russian
-Jewish relations in 2001 and 2002. The book stirred controversy and is viewed by many historians as unreliable in both factual data and ideological approach, and antisemitic. The book was published in French
and German
in 2002-2003, but there is no English translation to date (2011).
Solzhenitsyn criticizes the "scandalous" weakness and "unpardonable inaction" that prevented the Russian imperial state from adequately protecting the lives and property of its Jewish subjects. But he claims that the pogroms were in almost every case organized from "below" and not by the Russian state authorities. He criticizes the "vexing," "scandalous", and "distressing" restrictions on the civil liberties of Jewish subjects during the final decades of the Russian old regime. On that score, in chapter ten of the work he expresses his admiration for the efforts of Pyotr Stolypin
(Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 until 1911) to eliminate all legal disabilities
against Jews in Russia.
In the spirit of his classic 1974 essay "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations", Solzhenitsyn calls for the Russians and Russian Jews alike to take responsibility for the "renegades" in both communities who supported a totalitarian and terrorist regime after 1917. At the end of chapter 15, he writes that Jews must answer for the "revolutionary cutthroats" in their ranks just as Russians must repent "for the pogroms, for...merciless arsonist peasants, for...crazed revolutionary soldiers." It is not, he adds, a matter of answering "before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God."
Solzhenitsyn also takes the anti-Communist White movement to task for condoning violence against Jews and thus undermining "what would have been the chief benefit of a White victory" in the Russian Civil War: "a reasonable evolution of the Russian state."
Critics focus on Solzhenitsyn's insistence that Jews were as much perpetrators as victims in the communist repression, and that both Russians and Jews need to acknowledge their share of sin. Questions related to Jewish participation in the three Revolutions have been controversial. As Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB
colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB
), said: "The question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD
. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD
and Cheka
were serving ideas of social change. If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it will increase the passions of anti-semitism, which has deep roots in Russian history. I think it is better not to discuss such a question now." Others feel that Jews were not implicated enough to warrant a comparison with Russian antisemitism, or that any notion of the Collective responsibility should not be brought up.
Solzhenitsyn purports to document the over-representation of Jews in the early Bolshevik
leadership and the security apparatus, claiming, for instance, that of the 22 ministers in the first Soviet government three were Russian, one Georgian
, one Armenian
and 17 Jews. However, the first Bolshevik government, the Sovnarkom was composed of 15 People's Commissars (ministers), of whom only one (Trotsky) was Jewish, and of the 25 individuals who held that position between 1923 and 1930 only 5 were Jewish. Vadim Abramov's monograph "Jews in the KGB" demonstrated that although Jews were trusted by the early communist authorities because as formerly disenfranchised they were not expected to harbor any loyalties to Tsarist regime: their number in the security services at no point in history exceeded 9%, and from 1927 never exceeded 4%.
Solzhenitsyn also accused Jews of wartime cowardice, and evasion of active duty, stating "I had to bury many comrades at the front, but not once did I have to bury a Jew." while ignoring both the Jewish frontline casualties and the high number of Jews decorated for bravery in battle. He also claimed that Jews had a much easier life in the GULAG camps.
Similarities between Two Hundred years together and an antisemitic essay titled “Jews in the USSR and in the Future Russia”, attributed to Solzhenitsyn, has led to inference that he stands behind the anti-Semitic passages. Solzhenitsyn himself claims that the essay consists of manuscripts stolen from him, and then manipulated, forty years ago. However, according to the historian Semyon Reznik
, textological analyses have in fact proven Solzhenitsyn's authorship.
Richard Pipes
of Harvard University
as "a conscious effort to show empathy for both sides." and exonerating Jews for responsibility for the revolution
: "No, in no way can it be said that Jews 'made' the revolution of 1905 or 1917 as it was not made by another nation taken as a whole". At the same time Pipes notes that Solzhenitsyn is "too eager to exonerate czarist Russia
of mistreating its Jewish subjects, and as a consequence is insensitive to the Jews' predicament". In Richard Pipes' opinion, the book absolves Solzhenitsyn from the taint of antisemitism, although he thinks the author’s nationalism prevents him from being fully impartial, and that Solzhenitsyn is using outdated and inadequate sources. Pipes also takes with indignation Solzhenitsyn's refusal to consider "poisonous atmosphere in which Jews lived for generations in the Russian empire (an atmosphere originating in Russian Orthodox and nationalist circles)". Pipes writes, "If there is a discussion in Solzhenitsyn's book of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, a Russian forgery that for a century now has been fomenting murderous anti-Semitism worldwide, including in Nazi Germany, I missed it."
, a historian at London's University College
, describes the charges of anti-Semitism
as "misguided" , but at the same time writes that in his account of the pogrom
s of the early 20th century, Solzhenitsyn is far more concerned with exonerating the good name of the Russian people than he is with the suffering of the Jews, and he accepts the czarist government's canards blaming the pogroms on provocations by the Jews themselves.
historian Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
for using unreliable and manipulated figures, while ignoring evidence unfavorable to his own point of view. Petrovsky notes that Solzhenitzyn claims that Jews promoted alcoholism among the peasantry, flooded retail trade with contraband, "strangled" Russian merchant class in Moscow (pp. 39–41, 47). Jews lack industriousness ("непроизводительный народ" (pp. 52, 59), that they refuse to engage in factory labor (с. 244-245). They are averse to agriculture, and are unwilling to till the land either in Russia, or in Argentina, or in Palestine (pp. 73, 76, 157, 256, 258, 267-268) and blames Jews' own behavior for pogroms (pp. 210, 483, 120). Solzhenitsyn claims further that Jews use Kabbalah
to tempt Russians into heresy (p. 20), seduce them with rationalism and fashion (p. 21), provoke sectarianism and weaken the fiscal system (p. 70), commit murders on qahal's orders (p. 87), exert undue influence on the prerevolutionary government (p. 57). Petrovsky summarizes his critique that "200 years together is destined to take the place of honor in the canon of russophone antisemitica."
professor Zinaida Gimpelevich. According to Gimpelevich the critical opinion worldwide overwhelmingly tilts against Solzhenitsyn.
, specifically describes Two Hundred Years Together as a work that is "long, tedious, and slanderous."
When interviewed for Radio Liberty on the first anniversary of Solzhenitsyn' death, Vladimir Voynovich has stated that Solzhenitshyn harbored antisemitic sentiment all his life, as attested by the 1964 manuscript he later developed into "200 Years Together", and that he deliberately concealed it, because he knew it would have prevented him from receiving the Nobel Prize.
(a Russian novelist) in his critical study described "200 years" as "worthless as historical scholarship". Baklanov, himself a Second World War veteran, focuses on Solzhenitsyn's insistence on Jews' supposed wartime cowardice and unwillingness to face the enemy, which he argues is contradicted both by the statistics of Jewish casualties and the high number of Jews awarded the status of Heroes of the Soviet Union.
. According to Reznik Solzhenitsyn is careful in his vocabulary, generous in compliments toward Jews and maintains neutral tone throughout, but at the same time he not only condones repressive measures against Jews, but justifies them as intended for protection of the rights of Russians as the titular nation that supposedly "greatly suffered from Jewish exploitation, alcohol mongering, usury and corruption of the traditional way of life". Moreover Reznik notes that Solzhenitsyn uncritically used writings of antisemitic pseudo-historian Andrey Dikiy
for his statistical data of Jewish participation in early Soviet government and the security apparatus.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
.
Solzhenitsyn published this two-volume work on the history of Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
-Jewish relations in 2001 and 2002. The book stirred controversy and is viewed by many historians as unreliable in both factual data and ideological approach, and antisemitic. The book was published in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
in 2002-2003, but there is no English translation to date (2011).
Summary
In it, Solzhenitsyn emphatically denies that Jews were responsible for the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. At the end of chapter nine, Solzhenitsyn denounces "the superstitious faith in the historical potency of conspiracies" that leads some to blame the Russian revolutions on the Jews and to ignore the "Russian failings that determined our sad historical decline."Solzhenitsyn criticizes the "scandalous" weakness and "unpardonable inaction" that prevented the Russian imperial state from adequately protecting the lives and property of its Jewish subjects. But he claims that the pogroms were in almost every case organized from "below" and not by the Russian state authorities. He criticizes the "vexing," "scandalous", and "distressing" restrictions on the civil liberties of Jewish subjects during the final decades of the Russian old regime. On that score, in chapter ten of the work he expresses his admiration for the efforts of Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin served as the leader of the 3rd DUMA—from 1906 to 1911. His tenure was marked by efforts to repress revolutionary groups, as well as for the institution of noteworthy agrarian reforms. Stolypin hoped, through his reforms, to stem peasant unrest by creating a class of...
(Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 until 1911) to eliminate all legal disabilities
Disabilities (Jewish)
Disabilities were legal restrictions and limitations placed on Jews in the Middle Ages. They included provisions requiring Jews to wear specific and identifying clothing such as the Jewish hat and the yellow badge, restricting Jews to certain cities and towns or in certain parts of towns , and...
against Jews in Russia.
In the spirit of his classic 1974 essay "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations", Solzhenitsyn calls for the Russians and Russian Jews alike to take responsibility for the "renegades" in both communities who supported a totalitarian and terrorist regime after 1917. At the end of chapter 15, he writes that Jews must answer for the "revolutionary cutthroats" in their ranks just as Russians must repent "for the pogroms, for...merciless arsonist peasants, for...crazed revolutionary soldiers." It is not, he adds, a matter of answering "before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God."
Solzhenitsyn also takes the anti-Communist White movement to task for condoning violence against Jews and thus undermining "what would have been the chief benefit of a White victory" in the Russian Civil War: "a reasonable evolution of the Russian state."
Reception
The reception of Two Hundred Years Together has been quite varied. A distinguished historian Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern of Northwestern University have published a refutation of Solzhenitsyn's claims and has bluntly accused him of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, distinguished historians such as Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service have defended Solzhenitsyn against his detractors. Service has argued (before he actually read the book in question) that Solzhenitsyn is "absolutely right" that Jews were disproportionately represented in the early Soviet bureaucracy. Service also notes that Solzhenitsyn is very far from the anti-Semitism of the extreme Russian Right and addresses this issue in a moderate and responsible manner. In a review of volume 1 of Two Hundred Years Together that appeared in The New Republic Harvard historian Richard Pipes, a longtime critic of Solzhenitsyn, argues that the book exonerates Solzhenitsyn from any suspicion of anti-Semitism. Two Hundred Years Together has yet to appear in English although significant excerpts from the work can be found in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings: 1947-2005.Critics focus on Solzhenitsyn's insistence that Jews were as much perpetrators as victims in the communist repression, and that both Russians and Jews need to acknowledge their share of sin. Questions related to Jewish participation in the three Revolutions have been controversial. As Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
), said: "The question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
and Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
were serving ideas of social change. If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it will increase the passions of anti-semitism, which has deep roots in Russian history. I think it is better not to discuss such a question now." Others feel that Jews were not implicated enough to warrant a comparison with Russian antisemitism, or that any notion of the Collective responsibility should not be brought up.
Solzhenitsyn purports to document the over-representation of Jews in the early Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
leadership and the security apparatus, claiming, for instance, that of the 22 ministers in the first Soviet government three were Russian, one Georgian
Georgian people
The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....
, one Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
and 17 Jews. However, the first Bolshevik government, the Sovnarkom was composed of 15 People's Commissars (ministers), of whom only one (Trotsky) was Jewish, and of the 25 individuals who held that position between 1923 and 1930 only 5 were Jewish. Vadim Abramov's monograph "Jews in the KGB" demonstrated that although Jews were trusted by the early communist authorities because as formerly disenfranchised they were not expected to harbor any loyalties to Tsarist regime: their number in the security services at no point in history exceeded 9%, and from 1927 never exceeded 4%.
Solzhenitsyn also accused Jews of wartime cowardice, and evasion of active duty, stating "I had to bury many comrades at the front, but not once did I have to bury a Jew." while ignoring both the Jewish frontline casualties and the high number of Jews decorated for bravery in battle. He also claimed that Jews had a much easier life in the GULAG camps.
Similarities between Two Hundred years together and an antisemitic essay titled “Jews in the USSR and in the Future Russia”, attributed to Solzhenitsyn, has led to inference that he stands behind the anti-Semitic passages. Solzhenitsyn himself claims that the essay consists of manuscripts stolen from him, and then manipulated, forty years ago. However, according to the historian Semyon Reznik
Semyon Reznik
Semyon Reznik — Russian writer, journalist, man of letters and historian, noted in particular for his study of the blood libel and the resurgence of Neonazism in Russia...
, textological analyses have in fact proven Solzhenitsyn's authorship.
Richard Pipes review
The book has been described by historianHistorian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes
Richard Edgar Pipes is an American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union...
of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
as "a conscious effort to show empathy for both sides." and exonerating Jews for responsibility for the revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
: "No, in no way can it be said that Jews 'made' the revolution of 1905 or 1917 as it was not made by another nation taken as a whole". At the same time Pipes notes that Solzhenitsyn is "too eager to exonerate czarist Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
of mistreating its Jewish subjects, and as a consequence is insensitive to the Jews' predicament". In Richard Pipes' opinion, the book absolves Solzhenitsyn from the taint of antisemitism, although he thinks the author’s nationalism prevents him from being fully impartial, and that Solzhenitsyn is using outdated and inadequate sources. Pipes also takes with indignation Solzhenitsyn's refusal to consider "poisonous atmosphere in which Jews lived for generations in the Russian empire (an atmosphere originating in Russian Orthodox and nationalist circles)". Pipes writes, "If there is a discussion in Solzhenitsyn's book of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
, a Russian forgery that for a century now has been fomenting murderous anti-Semitism worldwide, including in Nazi Germany, I missed it."
John Klier review
John KlierJohn Klier
Professor John Klier was a pioneering historian of Russian Jewry and a pivotal figure in academic Jewish studies and East European history in the UK and beyond. At the end of his career and life, Professor Klier was the Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Professor of Modern Jewish History at University...
, a historian at London's University College
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, describes the charges of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
as "misguided" , but at the same time writes that in his account of the pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s of the early 20th century, Solzhenitsyn is far more concerned with exonerating the good name of the Russian people than he is with the suffering of the Jews, and he accepts the czarist government's canards blaming the pogroms on provocations by the Jews themselves.
Petrovsky-Shtern critique
Subsequently Solzhenitsyn was criticized by the Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
historian Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is a historian, philologist and essayist, noted in particular for his studies of the institution of Cantonism, his critique of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's controversial two volume-work about Jews in Russia, Two Hundred Years Together, as well as translations of Jorge Luis...
for using unreliable and manipulated figures, while ignoring evidence unfavorable to his own point of view. Petrovsky notes that Solzhenitzyn claims that Jews promoted alcoholism among the peasantry, flooded retail trade with contraband, "strangled" Russian merchant class in Moscow (pp. 39–41, 47). Jews lack industriousness ("непроизводительный народ" (pp. 52, 59), that they refuse to engage in factory labor (с. 244-245). They are averse to agriculture, and are unwilling to till the land either in Russia, or in Argentina, or in Palestine (pp. 73, 76, 157, 256, 258, 267-268) and blames Jews' own behavior for pogroms (pp. 210, 483, 120). Solzhenitsyn claims further that Jews use Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
to tempt Russians into heresy (p. 20), seduce them with rationalism and fashion (p. 21), provoke sectarianism and weaken the fiscal system (p. 70), commit murders on qahal's orders (p. 87), exert undue influence on the prerevolutionary government (p. 57). Petrovsky summarizes his critique that "200 years together is destined to take the place of honor in the canon of russophone antisemitica."
Zinaida Gimpelevich review
A detailed analysis of 200YT and an overview of critical opinion thereon was published by the University of WaterlooUniversity of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...
professor Zinaida Gimpelevich. According to Gimpelevich the critical opinion worldwide overwhelmingly tilts against Solzhenitsyn.
Vladimir Voynovich critique
In his interview another Russian dissident writer, Vladimir VoinovichVladimir Voinovich
Vladimir Nikolayevich Voinovich is a Russian writer and a dissident...
, specifically describes Two Hundred Years Together as a work that is "long, tedious, and slanderous."
When interviewed for Radio Liberty on the first anniversary of Solzhenitsyn' death, Vladimir Voynovich has stated that Solzhenitshyn harbored antisemitic sentiment all his life, as attested by the 1964 manuscript he later developed into "200 Years Together", and that he deliberately concealed it, because he knew it would have prevented him from receiving the Nobel Prize.
Grigory Baklanov critique
Grigory BaklanovGrigory Baklanov
Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov was a Russian novelist and editor, well known for his novels about World War II and as the editor of the literary monthly Znamya during the time of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms.-Biography:Baklanov was born Grigory Yakovlevich Friedman in Voronezh...
(a Russian novelist) in his critical study described "200 years" as "worthless as historical scholarship". Baklanov, himself a Second World War veteran, focuses on Solzhenitsyn's insistence on Jews' supposed wartime cowardice and unwillingness to face the enemy, which he argues is contradicted both by the statistics of Jewish casualties and the high number of Jews awarded the status of Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Semyon Reznik review
Another critical analysis was published by the Russian-American historian Semyon ReznikSemyon Reznik
Semyon Reznik — Russian writer, journalist, man of letters and historian, noted in particular for his study of the blood libel and the resurgence of Neonazism in Russia...
. According to Reznik Solzhenitsyn is careful in his vocabulary, generous in compliments toward Jews and maintains neutral tone throughout, but at the same time he not only condones repressive measures against Jews, but justifies them as intended for protection of the rights of Russians as the titular nation that supposedly "greatly suffered from Jewish exploitation, alcohol mongering, usury and corruption of the traditional way of life". Moreover Reznik notes that Solzhenitsyn uncritically used writings of antisemitic pseudo-historian Andrey Dikiy
Andrey Dikiy
Andrey Dikiy Andrey Dikiy Andrey Dikiy (Russian: Андре́й Ива́нович Ди́кий (real name - Andrey Zankevich; born Sept.3 1893, in the town of Haivoron, Russian Empire, now Ukraine — died Apr.4 1977, in New York City, USA) — Russian writer, emigre politician and journalist known for his extreme...
for his statistical data of Jewish participation in early Soviet government and the security apparatus.