The Pattern of Ethnic Ashkenazi Genocidalism: The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine

The Jewish Century targets the popular audience more than scholars because a lot of the common beliefs that Yuri Slezkine debunks were long ago disproved in scholarly journals. The book is not really a detailed history, and it has some serious flaws because Slezkine, a history professor at UC Berkeley and specialist in the Soviet period, does not read Yiddish or Hebrew. The value of Slezkine's Apollonian/Mercurian interpretive framework is questionable, for it identifies Eastern European Ashkenazim and Eastern European Romany as anthropologically similar.

The book is a sort of extended essay or memoir-like reflection of the role of Soviet Jews (more precisely Soviet Ethnic Ashkenazim) during 20s and 30s when Russian Ethnic Ashkenazim became the quintessential Soviet nationality. They lost this privileged status after the establishment of the State of Israel because at that point Russian ethnic Ashkenazim could claim a homeland outside the Soviet Union just like Soviet Chinese, Estonians, Finns, Germans, Iranians, Koreans, Kurds, Latvians and Poles, who were all persecuted and deported internally during the 1920s-30s often under the supervision of Soviet ethnic Ashkenazi officials in an official policy of alienization.(+)

Slezkine clearly mourns the passing of the Golden Age of Soviet Russian Ashkenazim in 1948 and hates Zionism with obvious venom, for every reference in the book to Zionism and to any Zionist leader is full of scorn.

Yet, he clearly misses the fundamental similarity in thinking and behavior of Soviet Russian Ashkenazim and Zionist Russian Ashkenazim.

On p. 310-311 he tells the following story of the Markish family.

For the first time, the Soviet state had turned on some of its loyal and privileged subjects [Russian ethnic Ashkenazim] according to a clear -- and apparently non-Soviet -- principle. [Slezkine discusses the issue somewhat differently, but Stalin and other non-Jewish Soviet officials probably felt that they had been swindled by politically connected ethnic Ashkenazim into granting de facto recognition to the State of Israel.] For the first time, Hodl and her children [a reference to Sholem Aleichem's character Tevye the Milkman] found themselves among the aliens. For the first time, many of them began to doubt their Soviet faith -- and the culpability of previous aliens. As Ester Markish put it,

Only our own grief made us realize the horror of our lives in general: not only the suffering of the Jews or the suffering of the intelligentsia, but the suffering of the whole country and all the social groups and peoples that lived in it. After the arrest of [Perets] Markish, our maid, who had lived in our house for more than fifteen years and had, in effect, become a member of our family, said to me: "You are crying now, but you did not mind when my father was being dekulakized, martyred for no reason at all, and my whole family thrown out in the street?"

Ethnic Ashkenazi Soviet officials played the main and leading role in dekulakization/collectivization. Very few (I can only identify one with certainty) have ever expressed regret for their actions, which lead to the death by starvation of approximately 7 million people (all non-Jews of course).

Just as the Soviet elite (often Russian ethnic Ashkenazim) made native populations of the Russian Empire aliens in their own country, stole everything they had, deported them, and murdered them, likewise Zionist Russian ethnic Ashkenazim made the native population of Palestine aliens in their own country, stole everything they had, deported them, and murdered them.

We have here two levels of obliviousness: the inability of the author Slezkine to perceive the similarity of Soviet Russian ethnic Ashkenazim to Zionist Russian ethnic Ashkenazim in their thinking and behavior as well as the complete unawareness of the Markish family about the true feelings of their maid.

I attended a panel discussion at Harvard on The Jewish Century and afterward spoke with Steven Zipperstein, who was one of the panel members. He is The Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History and Co-Director of Jewish Studies at Stanford University.

I described the reaction of the reviewer from the Israeli Paper Yediot Aharonot (Late News) to Hanna Elias' movie The Olive Harvest, which is a love story/family drama set in the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. One of the characters early in the movie remarks that the settlements are a cancer on the land. The reviewer completely missed the movie's story, and only expressed shock and outrage that Palestinians would actually say and believe that "we Israelis are a cancer on the land."

I would almost equate the reviewer's obliviousness to Palestinian hostility to the Markish family's lack of awareness of the maid's anger except that after working in Israel and the Occupied Territories for 10 years, I cannot believe that any Israeli would be surprised by the hatred of Palestinians. I have to consider the reviewer to have been posturing in order to portray Hanna as some sort of propagandist.

Zipperstein only remarked sarcastically that Slezkine gets the translations wrong and a reviewer from the Israeli paper Haaretz (The Land), would have agreed with the Palestinian character. The blindness of the Markish family and the convenient obliviousness of Zionists seems to persist as denial among ethnic Ashkenazi Americans like Professor Zipperstein.

(+) The whining of American Ashkenazim and Russian ethnic Ashkenazim about mistreatment since the 1950s was somewhat hypocritical because treatment of Russian ethnic Ashkenazim was hardly unique in the Soviet Union. In fact after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Soviet Union applied a formula to Russian ethnic Ashkenazim that had for the most part been developed by Russian ethnic Ashkenazim for other nationalities within the Soviet Union. Russian ethnic Ashkenazim were angry that they were being hoist upon their own petard. It is hard to sympathize.

NOTE 1

Slezkine uses Tevye the Milkman's daughter Chava as a symbol for American Russian ethnic Ashkenazim and Zionist Russian ethnic Ashkenazim because she unlike Tseitl renounces traditional Russian Ashkenazi culture but does not marry the proletarian revolution like Hodel.

I suppose there is some similarity to Jabotinsky, who loved Russian culture and then became a Zionist leader, but most Zionists are more like Tevye, who was supposed to immigrate to Palestine but backed out, while others are perhaps like Shprintse, who is sacrificed when Tevye's machinations fail.

Beilke, whose husband was probably a fraudster and who ended up fleeing with him to America, is probably a better metaphor for American Russian Ashkenazim.

Overall Slezkine's attempt to map social currents among Russian Ashkenazim to Tevye's daughters may be somewhat labored.

In their rejection of parental authority and break from tradition, Tevye's daughters could be viewed as representations of a sort of cultural parricidal tendency in their generation of Russian Ashkenazim.

Tevye also has a tremendous anger toward traditional Eastern European Jewish culture, and I have the impression it is rather common in members of his generation even if they could not break from Jewish tradition.

I am somewhat surprised that Slezkine did not look for a metaphor in Tevye's relationship with Menachem Mendl.

NOTE 2

While I was not impressed by Professor Zipperstein's sensitivity to Palestinian feelings, he is actually one of the better historians of Russian Ashkenazim. I can recommend his book entitled, The Jews of Odessa, A Cultural History, 1794-1881, with the qualification that his focus on the Jews of Odessa is sometimes too narrow. He describes the conflicts of Odessan Jews with other Odessan ethnic groups but never seems to have researched such conflicts from the standpoint of any group but that of the Jews.

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