ORIGINAL: Mynok
Certainly I must since you have a vested interest in the subject....far more than I do (though I should have more as a Christian). But I'm still curious, because my reading (limited though it is) on the pogroms was that they were very detrimental to the eastern European Jews. Perhaps this was more directed at the Hasidim than the more secular types? Curious as to your views on that.
I do agree that many Jews were Bolsheviks. Not sure that translated so much into many Jews being Soviets. I see a transformation in the 20s and 30s from the Marxism of the revolution into the Soviet structure that was not as accepting of your people.
I'm sorry, but I'm I'm still having a tad of trouble with your terminology. The "pogroms" as a series of events in the late 1800s certainly were detrimental to the Jews. That was a redirection of racial animosity (on the part of the Tsarist government) pure and simple. But what you referred to above as "Stalin's pogroms" was a very different thing. After googling the term I find that it refers to the arrest and execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was a very real event, and one that my family was fairly close to, since my grandfather knew several of the members, including Mikhoels (pardon the phonetic spelling). What it was not, was a racially motivated event. It was Stalin disposing of a tool no longer useful, same as he would have done to Poles, Czechs or Romanians. To his credit, however, the Soviet government under Stalin, to my knowledge, never had a policy of (overt or otherwise) discrimination against Jews.
Whew. This is a very big subject, and I have to run along now. [:D]
A very good day to all.
