This was a tremendous opening of opportunity, undreamt of by Jews heretofore. There was a price to be paid: if you wanted to advance in Soviet society, you had to throw away your religion, whatever your religion was, in this case, Judaism. You had to give up any nationalism, any Zionism. You had to forget about Hebrew. You could still speak Yiddish, yes, that was approved but generally speaking, it was clear that Russian was the key to upward mobility and success.” – Professor Zvi Gitelman
Amongst the revolutionary Bolsheviks, there were several Jews in Lenin’s Politburo, the central policy making group in the Bolshevik Communist Government. None of them retained any connection to their Jewish roots, culture, or religion and were totally dedicated to their “new god, the Socialist Revolution.”
- Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) headed the Red Army and was Chief of Soviet Foreign Affairs
- Yakov Sverdlov (Solomon) was the Bolshevik party’s Executive Secretary and Chair man of the Central Executive Committee
- Grigori Zinoviev (Radomyslsky) headed the Communist International (Comintern)
- Karl Radek (Sobelsohn) was Press Commissar
- Maxim Litvinov (Wallach) was Foreign Affairs Commissar.
It was only following Lenin’s death in 1924, when Stalin emerged victorious over his rivals, that the leading roles of the Jews in the Soviet state and Communist party diminished.
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- http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/russ/datesr.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution
- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook39.html
- http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/russianrev/
- http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_Weber.html
- http://www.fresno.k12.ca.us/schools/s090/lloyd/russian_revolution.html
- http://libcom.org/tags/russian-revolution
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