Book description
In the years following the Russian Revolution, a bitter civil war was
waged between the Bolsheviks, with their Red Army of Workers and
Peasants on the one side, and the various groups that constituted the
anti-Bolshevik movement on the other. The major anti-Bolshevik force
was the White Army, whose leadership consisted of former officers of
the Russian imperial army. In the received-and simplified-version of
this history, those Jews who were drawn into the political and
military conflict were overwhelmingly affiliated with the Reds, while
from the start, the Whites orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish
violence, leading to the deaths of thousands of Jews in pogroms in the
Ukraine and elsewhere.
In Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites,
1917-1920, Oleg Budnitskii provides the first comprehensive
historical account of the role of Jews in the Russian Civil War.
According to Budnitskii, Jews were both victims and executioners, and
while they were among the founders of the Soviet state, they also
played an important role in the establishment of the anti-Bolshevik
factions. He offers a far more nuanced picture of the policies of the
White leadership toward the Jews than has been previously available,
exploring such issues as the role of prominent Jewish politicians in
the establishment of the White movement of southern Russia, the
"Jewish Question" in the White ideology and its
international aspects, and the attempts of the Russian Orthodox Church
and White diplomacy to forestall the establishment of a Jewish state
in Palestine.
The relationship between the Jews and the Reds was no less
complicated. Nearly all of the Jewish political parties severely
disapproved of the Bolshevik coup, and the Red Army was hardly without
sin when it came to pogroms against the Jews. Budnitskii offers a
fresh assessment of the part played by Jews in the establishment of
the Soviet state, of the turn in the policies of Jewish socialist
parties after the first wave of mass pogroms and their efforts to
attract Jews to the Red Army, of Bolshevik policies concerning the
Jewish population, and of how these stances changed radically over the
course of the Civil War.
"Budnitskii's excellent study will become the starting point
for all future investigations of Russia's Jews between Reds and
Whites."-Donald J. Raleigh, Kritika, in a review of the
Russian edition
Oleg Budnitskii is Professor of History and Director of the Center
for the Study of the History and Sociology of World War II at the
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow.
