Kevin MacDonald's review of a book by J. Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland (1991)
in Kevin MacDonald, THE CULTURE OF CRITIQUE: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport, Connecticut & London, 1998). Page numbers are in MacDonald's book. Comments by Peter Myers are shown {thus}. Date September 16, 2001; update October 21, 2004.
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{Poland's postwar Communist government was Jewish-dominated; the 1967 Middle East War forced Poland's Jews to finally choose between Zionism and Communism. Removal of Jews from the leadership allowed Poles to take over, who would later be more amenable to Solidarity. Jews created Communism, but the Jew-Gentile divide later destroyed it.}
{p. 61} Communism and Jewish Identification in Poland
Schatz's (1991) work on the group of Jewish communists who came to power in Poland after World War II (termed by Schatz "the generation") is important because it sheds light on the identificatory processes of an entire generation of communist Jews in Eastern Europe. Unlike the situation in the Soviet Union where the predominantly Jewish faction led by Trotsky was defeated, it is possible to trace the activities and identifications of a Jewish communist elite who actually obtained political power and held it for a significant period.
The great majority of this group were socialized in very traditional Jewish families
{quote} whose inner life, customs and folklore, religious traditions, leisure time, contacts between generations, and ways of socializing were, despite variations, essentially permeated by traditional Jewish values and norms of conduct.... The core of cultural heritage was handed down to them through formal religious education and practice, through holiday celebrations, tales, and songs, through the stories told by parents and grandparents, through listening to discussions among their elders.... The result was a deep core of their identity, values, norms, and attitudes with which they entered the rebellious period of their youth and adulthood. This core was to be transformed in the processes of acculturation, secularization, and radicalization sometimes even to the point of explicit denial. However, it was through this deep layer that all later perceptions were filtered. {end quote} (Schatz 1991, 37-38; my emphasis)
Note the implication that self-deceptive processes were at work here: Members of the generation denied the effects of a pervasive socialization experience that colored all of their subsequent perceptions, so that in a very real sense, they did not know how Jewish they were. Most of these individuals spoke Yiddish in their daily lives and had only a poor command of Polish even after joining the party (p. 54). They socialized entirely with other Jews whom they met in the Jewish world of work, neighborhood, and Jewish social and political organizations. After they became communists, they dated and married among themselves and their social gatherings were conducted in Yiddish (p. 116). As is the case for all of the Jewish intellectual and political movements discussed in this volume, their mentors and principle influences were other ethnic Jews, including especially Luxemburg and Trotsky (pp. 62, 89), and when they recalled personal heroes, they were mostly Jews whose exploits achieved semi-mythical proportions (p. 112).
Jews who joined the communist movement did not first reject their ethnic identity, and there were many who "cherished Jewish culture ... [and] dreamed of a society in which Jews would be equal as Jews" (p. 48). Indeed, it
{p. 62} was common for individuals to combine a strong Jewish identity with Marxism as well as various combinations of Zionism and Bundism. Moreover, the attraction of Polish Jews to communism was greatly facilitated by their knowledge that Jews had attained high-level positions of power and influence in the Soviet Union and that the Soviet government had established a system of Jewish education and culture (p. 60). In both the Soviet Union and Poland, communism was seen as opposing anti-Semitism. In marked contrast, during the 1930s the Polish government developed policies in which Jews were excluded from public-sector employment, quotas were placed on Jewish representation in universities and the professions, and government-organized boycotts of Jewish businesses and artisans were staged (Hagen 1996). Clearly, Jews perceived communism as good for Jews: It was a movement that did not threaten Jewish group continuity, and it held the promise of power and influence for Jews and the end of state-sponsored anti-Semitism.
At one end of the spectrum of Jewish identification were communists who began their career in the Bund or in Zionist organizations, spoke Yiddish, and worked entirely within a Jewish milieu. Jewish and communist identities were completely sincere, without ambivalence or perceived conflict between these two sources of identity. At the other end of the spectrum of Jewish identification, some Jewish communists may have intended to establish a de-ethnicized state without Jewish group continuity, although the evidence for this is less than compelling. In the prewar period even the most "de-ethnicized" Jews only outwardly assimilated by dressing like gentiles, taking gentile-sounding names (suggesting deception), and learning their languages. They attempted to recruit gentiles into the movement but did not assimilate or attempt to assimilate into Polish culture; they retained traditional Jewish "disdainful and supercilious attitudes" toward what, as Marxists, they viewed as a "retarded" Polish peasant culture (p. 119). Even the most highly assimilated Jewish communists working in urban areas with non-Jews were upset by the Soviet-German nonaggression pact but were relieved when the German-Soviet war finally broke out (p. 121) - a clear indication that Jewish personal identity remained quite close to the surface. The Communist Party of Poland (KPP) also retained a sense of promoting specifically Jewish interests rather than blind allegiance to the Soviet Union. Indeed, Schatz (p. 102) suggests that Stalin dissolved the KPP in 1938 because of the presence of Trotskyists within the KPP and because the Soviet leadership expected the KPP to be opposed to the alliance with Nazi Germany.
In SAID (Ch. 8) it was noted that identificatory ambivalence has been a consistent feature of Judaism since the Enlightenment. It is interesting that Polish Jewish activists showed a great deal of identificatory ambivalence stemming ultimately from the contradiction between "the belief in some kind of Jewish collective existence and, at the same time, a rejection of such an ethnic communion, as it was thought incompatible with class divisions and harmful to the general political struggle; striving to maintain a specific kind of
{p. 63} Jewish culture and, at the same time, a view of this as a mere ethnic form of the communist message, instrumental in incorporating Jews into the Polish Socialist community; and maintaining separate Jewish institutions while at the same time desiring to eliminate Jewish separateness as such" (p. 234). It will be apparent in the following that the Jews, including Jewish communists at the highest levels of the government, continued as a cohesive, identifiable group. However, although they themselves appear not to have noticed the Jewish collective nature of their experience (p. 240), it was observable to others - a clear example of self-deception also evident in the case of American Jewish leftists, as noted below.
These Jewish communists were also engaged in elaborate rationalizations and self-deceptions related to the role of the cornmunist movement in Poland, so that one cannot take the lack of evidence for overt Jewish ethnic identity as strong evidence of a lack of a Jewish identity. "Cognitive and emotional anomalies - unfree, mutilated, and distorted thoughts and emotions - became the price for retaining their beliefs unchanged.... Adjusting their experiences to their beliefs was achieved through mechanisms of interpreting, suppressing, justifying, or explaining away" (p. 191). "As much as they were able to skillfully apply their critical thinking to penetrative analyses of the sociopolitical system they rejected, as much were they blocked when it came to applying the same rules of critical analysis to the system they regarded as the future of all mankind" (p. 192).
This combination of self-deceptive rationalization as well as considerable evidence of a Jewish identity can be seen in the comments of Jacub Berman, one of the most prominent leaders of the postwar era. (All three communist leaders who dominated Poland between 1948 and 1956, Berman, Boleslaw Bierut, and Hilary Minc, were Jews.) Regarding the purges and murders of thousands of communists, including many Jews, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Berman states:
I tried as best I could to explain what was happening; to clarify the background, the situations full of conflict and internal contradictions in which Stalin had probably found himself and which forced him to act as he did; and to exaggerate the mistakes of the opposition, which assumed grotesque proportions in the subsequent charges against them and were further blown up by Soviet propaganda. You had to have a great deal of endurance and dedication to the cause then in order to accept what was happening despite all the distortions, injuries and torments. (In Toranska 1987, 207)
As to his Jewish identity, Berman responded as follows when asked about his plans after the war:
I didn't have any particular plans. But I was aware of the fact that as a Je~shouldn't or wouldn't be able to fill any of the highest posts. Besides, I don't mind not being in the front ranks: not because I'm particularly humble by nature, but because it's not at all the case that you have to project yourself into a position of prominence in
{p. 64} order to wield real power. The important thing to me was to exert my influence, leave my stamp on the complicated government formation, which was being created, but without projecting myself. Naturally, this required a certain agility. (In Toranska 1987, 237)
Clearly Berman identifies himself as a Jew and is well aware that others perceive him as a Jew and that therefore he must deceptively lower his public profile. Berman also notes that he was under suspicion as a Jew during the Soviet anti-"Cosmopolite" campaign beginning in the late 1940s. His brother, an activist in the Central Committee of Polish Jews (the organization for establishing a secular Jewish culture in communist Poland), emigrated to Israel in 1950 to avoid the consequences of the Soviet-inspired anti-Semitic policies in Poland. Berman comments that he did not follow his brother to Israel even though his brother strongly urged him to do so: "I was, of course, interested in what was going on in Israel, especially since I was quite familiar with the people there" (in Toranska 1987, 322). Obviously, Berman's brother viewed Berman not as a non-Jew but, rather, as a Jew who should emigrate to Israel because of incipient anti-Semitism. The close ties of family and friendship between a very high official in the Polish communist government and an activist in the organization promoting Jewish secular culture in Poland also strongly suggest that there was no perceived incompatibility with identifications as a Jew and as a communist even among the most assimilated Polish communists of the period.
While Jewish members saw the KPP as beneficial to Jewish interests, the party was perceived by gentile Poles even before the war as "pro-Soviet, antipatriotic, and ethnically 'not truly Polish' " (Schatz 1991, 82). This perception of lack of patriotism was the main source of popular hostility to the KPP (Schatz 1991, 91). On the one hand, for much of its existence the KPP had been at war not only with the Polish State, but with its entire body politic, including the legal opposition parties of the Left.
On the other hand, in the eyes of the great majority of Poles, the KPP was a foreign, subversive agency of Moscow, bent on the destruction of Poland's hard-won independence and the incorporation of Poland into the Soviet Union. Labeled a "Soviet agency" or the "Jew-Commune," it was viewed as a dangerous and fundamentally unPolish conspiracy dedicated to undemmining national sovereignty and restoring, in a new guise, Russian domination. (Coutouvidis & Reynolds 1986,115)
The KPP backed the Soviet Union in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 and in the Soviet invasion of 1939. It also accepted the 1939 border with the USSR and was relatively unconcerned with the Soviet massacre of Polish prisoners of war during World War II, whereas the Polish government in exile in London held nationalist views of these matters. The Soviet army and its Polish allies "led by cold-blooded political calculation, military necessities, or both" allowed the uprising of the Home Army, faithful to the noncommunist
{p. 65} Polish government-in-exile, to be defeated by the Germans resulting in 200,000 dead, thus wiping out "the cream of the anti- and noncommunist activist elite" (Schatz 1991, 188). The Soviets also arrested surviving noncommunist resistance leaders immediately after the war.
Moreover, as was the case with the CPUSA, actual Jewish leadership and involvement in Polish Communism was much greater than surface appearances; ethnic Poles were recruited and promoted to high positions in order to lessen the perception that the KPP was a Jewish movement (Schatz 1991, 97). This attempt to deceptively lower the Jewish profile of the communist movement was also apparent in the ZPP. (The ZPP refers to the Union of Polish Patriots - an Orwellian-named communist front organization created by the Soviet Union to occupy Poland after the war.) Apart from members of the generation whose political loyalties could be counted on and who formed the leadership core of the group, Jews were often discouraged from joining the movement out of fear that the movement would appear too Jewish. However, Jews who could physically pass as Poles were allowed to join and were encouraged to state they were ethnic Poles and to change their names to Polish-sounding names. "Not everyone was approached [to engage in deception], and some were spared such proposals because nothing could be done with them: they just looked too Jewish" (Schatz 1991, 185).
When this group came to power after the war, they advanced Soviet political, economic, and cultural interests in Poland while aggressively pursuing specifically Jewish interests, including the destruction of the nationalist political opposition whose openly expressed anti-Semitism derived at least partly from the fact that Jews were perceived as favoring Soviet domination. The purge of Wladyslaw Gomulka's group shortly after the war resulted in the promotion of Jews and the complete banning of anti-Semitism. Moreover, the general opposition between the Jewish-dominated Polish communist government supported by the Soviets and the nationalist, anti-Semitic underground helped forge the allegiance of the great majority of the Jewish population to the communist government while the great majority of non-Jewish Poles favored the anti-Soviet parties (Schatz 1991, 204-205) The result was widespread anti-Semitism: By the summer of 1947, approximately 1,500 Jews had been killed in incidents at 155 localities. In the words of Cardinal Hlond in 1946 commenting on an incident in which 41 Jews were killed, the pogrom was "due to the Jews who today occupy leading positions in Poland's government and endeavor to introduce a governmental structure that the majority of the Poles do not wish to have" (in Schatz 1991, 107).
The Jewish-dominated communist government actively sought to revive and perpetuate Jewish life in Poland (Schatz 1991, 208) so that, as in the case of the Soviet Union, there was no expectation that Judaism would wither away under a communist regime. Jewish activists had an "ethnopolitical vision" in which Jewish secular culture would continue in Poland with the cooperation and approval of the government (Schatz 1991, 230). Thus while the govern-
{p. 66} ment campaigned actively against the political and cultural power of the Catholic Church, collective Jewish life flourished in the postwar period. Yiddish and Hebrew language schools and publications were established, as well as a great variety of cultural and social welfare organizations for Jews. A substantial percentage of the Jewish population was employed in Jewish economic cooperatives.
Moreover, the Jewish-dominated government regarded the Jewish population, many of whom had not previously been communists, as "a reservoir that could be trusted and enlisted in its efforts to rebuild the country. Although not old, 'tested' comrades, they were not rooted in the social networks of the anti-communist society, they were outsiders with regard to its historically shaped traditions, without connections to the Catholic Church, and hated by those who hated the regime. Thus they could be depended on and used to fill the required positions" (Schatz 1991, 212-213).
Jewish ethnic background was particularly important in recruiting for the internal security service: The generation of Jewish communists realized that their power derived entirely from the Soviet Union and that they would have to resort to coercion in order to control a fundamentally hostile noncommunist society (p. 262). The core members of the security service came from the Jewish communists who had been communists before the establishment of the Polish communist govemment, but these were joined by other Jews sympathetic to the govemment and alienated from the wider society. This in tum reinforced the popular image of Jews as servants of foreign interests and enemies of ethnic Poles (Schatz 1991, 225).
Jewish members of the internal security force often appear to have been motivated by personal rage and a desire for revenge related to their Jewish identity:
{quote} Their families had been murdered and the anti-Communist underground was, in their perception, a continuation of essentially the same anti-Semitic and anti-Communist tradition. They hated those who had collaborated with the Nazis and thosc who opposed the new order with almost the same intensity and knew that as Communists, or as both Communists and Jews, they were hated at least in the same way In their eyes, the enemy was essentially the same The old evil deeds had to be punished and new ones prevented and a merciless struggle was necessary before a better world could be built. {end quote} (Schatz 1991, 226)
As in the case of post World War II Hungary (see below), Poland became polarized between a predominantly Jewish ruling and administrative class supported by the rest of the Jewish population and by Soviet military power, arrayed against the great majority of the native gentile population. The situation was exactly analogous to the many instances in traditional societies where Jews formed a middle layer between an alien ruling elite, in this case the Soviets, and the gentile native population (see PTSDA, Ch. 5). However this intermediary role made the former outsiders into an elite group in Poland, and
{p. 67} the former champions of social justice went to great lengths to protect their own personal prerogatives, including a great deal of rationalization and self-deception (p. 261). Indeed, when a defector's accounts of the elite's lavish lifestyle (e.g., Boleslaw Bierut had four villas and the use of five others [Toranska 1987, 28]), their corruption, as well as their role as Soviet agents became known in 1954, there were shock waves throughout the lower levels of the party (p. 266). Clearly, the sense of moral superiority and the alhuistic motivations of this group were entirely in their own self-deceptions.
Although attempts were made to place a Polish face on what was in reality a Jewish-dominated govemment, such attempts were limited by the lack of trustworthy Poles able to fill positions in the Communist Party, government administration, the military and the intemal security forces. Jews who had severed formal ties with the Jewish community, or who had changed their names to Polish-sounding names, or who could pass as Poles because of their physical appearance or lack of a Jewish accent were favored in promotions (p. 214). Whatever the subjective personal identities of the individuals recruited into these govemment positions, the recruiters were clearly acting on the perceived ethnic background of the individual as a cue to dependability, and the result was that the situation resembled the many instances in traditional societies where Jews and crypto-Jews developed economic and political networks of coreligionists: "Besides a group of influential politicians, too small to be called a category, there were the soldiers; the apparatchiks and the administrators; the intellectuals and ideologists; the policemen; the diplomats; and finally, the activists in the Jewish sector. There also existed the mass of common people - clerks, craftsmen, and workers - whose common denominator with the others was a shared ideological vision, a past history, and the essentially similar mode of ethnic aspiration" (p. 226).
It is revealing that when Jewish economic and political domination gradually decreased in the mid- to late-195Os, many of these individuals began working in the Jewish economic cooperatives, and Jews purged from the internal security service were aided by Jewish organizations funded ultimately by American Jews. There can be little doubt of their continuing Jewish identity and the continuation of Jewish economic and cultural separatism. Indeed, after the collapse of the communist regime in Poland, "numerous Jews, some of them children and grandchildren of former communists, came 'out of the closet'" (Anti-Semitism Worldwide 1994, 115), openly adopting a Jewish identity and reinforcing the idea that many Jewish communists were in fact crypto-Jews.
When the anti-Zionist-anti-Semitic movement in the Soviet Union filtered down to Poland following the Soviet policy change toward Israel in the late 1940s, there was another crisis of identity resulting from the belief that anti-Semitism and communism were incompatible. One response was to engage in "ethnic self-abnegation" by making statements denying the existence of a Jewish identity; another advised Jews to adopt a lower profile. Because of the
{p. 68} very strong identification with the system among Jews, the general tendency was to rationalize even their own persecution during the period when Jews were gradually being purged from important positions: "Even when the methods grew surprisingly painful and harsh, when the goal of forcing one to admit uncommitted crimes and to frame others became clear, and when the perception of being unjustly treated by methods that contradicted communist ethos came forth, the basic ideological convictions stayed untouched. Thus the holy madness triumphed, even in the prison cells" (p. 260). In the end, an important ingredient in the anti-Jewish campaign of the 1960s was the assertion that the communist Jews of the generation opposed the Soviet Union's Mideast policy favoring the Arabs.
As with Jewish groups throughout the ages (see PTSDA, Ch. 3), the anti-Jewish purges did not result in their abandoning their group commitment even when it resulted in unjust persecutions. Instead, it resulted in increased commitment, "unswerving ideological discipline, and obedience to the point of self-deception.... They regarded the party as the collective personification of the progressive forces of history and, regarding themselves as its servants, expressed a specific kind of teleological-deductive dogmatism, revolutionary haughtiness, and moral ambiguity" (pp. 260 261). Indeed, there is some indication that group cohesiveness increased as the fortunes of the generation declined (p. 301). As their position was gradually eroded by a nascent anti-Semitic Polish nationalism, they became ever more conscious of their "groupness." After their final defeat they quickly lost any Polish identity they might have had and quickly assumed overtly Jewish identities, especially in Israel, the destination of most Polish Jews. They came to see their former anti-Zionism as a mistake and became now strong supporters of Israel (p. 314).
In conclusion, Schatz's treatment shows that the generation of Jewish communists and their ethnically Jewish supporters must be considered as an historic Jewish group. The evidence indicates that this group pursued specifically Jewish interests, including especially their interest in securing Jewish group continuity in Poland while at the same time attempting to destroy institutions like the Catholic Church and other manifestations of Polish nationalism that promoted social cohesion among Poles. The communist government also combated anti-Semitism, and it promoted Jewish economic and political interests. While the extent of subjective Jewish identity among this group undoubtedly varied, the evidence indicates submerged and self-deceptive levels of Jewish identity even among the most assimilated of them. The entire episode illustrates the complexity of Jewish identification, and it exemplifies the importance of self-deception and rationalization as central aspects of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy (see SAID, Chs. 7, 8). There was massive self-deception and rationalization regarding the role of the Jewish-dominated government and its Jewish supporters in eliminating gentile nationalist elites, of its role in opposing Polish national culture and the Catholic Church while building up a secular Jewish culture, of its role as the agent
{p. 69} of Soviet domination of Poland, and of its own economic success while administering an economy that harnessed the economy of Poland to meet Soviet interests and demanded hardship and sacrifices from the rest of the people.
{p. 98} Jews thus achieved leading positions in these societies in the early stages. but in the long run, anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European communist societies became a well-known phenomenon and an important political cause among American Jews (Sachar 1992; Woocher 1986). As we have seen, Stalin gradually diminished the power of Jews in the Soviet Union, and anti-Semitism was an important factor in the decline of Jews in leadership positions in Eastern European communist governments.
The cases of Hungary and Poland are particularly interesting. Given the role of Jewish communists in postwar Poland, it is not surprising that an anti-Semitic movement developed and eventually toppled the generation from power (see Schatz 1991, 264ff). After Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech of 1956 the party split into a Jewish and anti-Jewish section, with the anti-Jewish section complaining of too many Jews in top positions. In the words of a leader of the anti-Jewish faction, the preponderance of Jews "makes people hate Jews and mistrust the party. The Jews estrange people from the party and from the Soviet Union; national feelings have been offended, and it is the duty of the party to adjust to the demands so that Poles, not Jews, hold the top positions in Poland" (in Schatz 1991, 268). Khrushchev himself supported a new policy with his remark that "you have already too many Abramoviches" (in Schatz 1991, 272). Even this first stage in the anti-Jewish purges was accompanied by anti-Semitic incidents among the public at large, as well as demands that Jewish communists who had changed their names to lower their profile in the party reveal themselves. As a result of these changes over half of Polish Jews responded by emigrating to Israel between 1956 and 1959.
Anti-Semitism increased dramatically toward the end of the 1960s. Jews were gradually downgraded in status and Jewish communists were blamed for Poland's misfortunes. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion circulated widely among party activists, students, and army personnel. The security force, which had been dominated by Jews and directed toward suppressing Polish nationalism, was now dominated by Poles who viewed Jews "as a group in need of close and constant surveillance" (p. 290). Jews were removed from important positions in the government, the military, and the media. Elaborate files were maintained on Jews, including the crypto-Jews who had changed their names and adopted non-Jewish external identities. As the Jews had done earlier, the anti-Jewish group developed networks that promoted their own people throughout the government and the media. Jews now became dissidents and defectors where before they had dominated the state forces of Orthodoxy.
The "earthquake" finally erupted in 1968 with an anti-Semitic campaign consequent to outpourings of joy among Jews over Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. Israel's victory occurred despite Soviet bloc support of the Arabs, and President Gomulka condemned the Jewish "fifth column" in the country.
{p. 99} Extensive purges of Jews swept the country and secular Jewish life (e.g., Yiddish magazines and Jewish schools and day camps) was essentially dissolved. This hatred toward Jews clearly resulted from the role Jews played in postwar Poland. As one intellectual described it, Poland's problems resulted essentially from ethnic conflict between Poles and Jews in which the Jews were supported by the Russians. The problems were due to "the arrival in our country ... of certain politicians dressed in officer's uniforms, who later presumed that only they - the Zambrowskis, the Radkiewiczes, the Bermans - had the right to leadership, a monopoly over deciding what was right for the Polish nation." The solution would come when the "abnormal ethnic composition" of society was corrected (in Schatz 1991, 306, 307). The remaining Jews "both as a collective and as individuals ... were singled out, slandered, ostracized, degraded, threatened, and intimidated with breathtaking intensity and ... malignance" (p. 308). Most left Poland for Israel, and all were forced to renounce their Polish citizenship. They left behind only a few thousand mostly aged Jews.
The case of Hungary is entirely analogous to Poland both in the origins of the triumph of communist Jews and in their eventual defeat by an anti-Semitic movement. Despite evidence that Stalin was an anti-Semite, he installed Jewish communists as leaders of his effort to dominate Hungary after World War II. The government was "completely dominated" by Jews (Rothman and Lichter 1982, 89), a common perception among the Hungarian people (see Irving 1981, 47ff). "The wags of Budapest explained the presence of a lone gentile in the party leadership on the grounds that a 'goy' was needed to tum on the lights on Saturday" (Rothman & Lichter 1982, 89). The Hungarian Communist Party, with the backing of the Red Army, tortured, imprisoned, and executed opposition political leaders and other dissidents and effectively harnessed Hungary's economy in the service of the Soviet Union. They thus created a situation similar to that in Poland: Jews were installed by their Russian masters as the ideal middle stratum between an exploitative alien ruling elite and a subject native population. Jews were seen as having engineered the communist revolution and as having benefited most from the revolution. Jews constituted nearly all of the party's elite, held the top positions in the security police, and dominated managerial positions throughout the economy.
{end selection}
Marxist policy on farming: Small private farms cf communal farms and state farms: marx-vs-the-peasant.html.
Jaff Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland: schatz.html.
Lech Walesa attended the canonization of Josemaria Escriva: http://www.opusdei.org/art.php?w=32&a=1643.
This, coming from the Opus Dei website, indicates that he is a member of Opus Dei. Therefore it's likely that he knew about CIA funding of Solidarity - even though other Solidarity leaders did not - and was complicit in it.
Vladimir Pozner on Why Jews left the Soviet Union - Max Shpak on Why the West Betrays Russians: jewish-emigration-ussr.html.
More from Kevin MacDonald's book The Culture of Critique: macdonald.html.
To buy Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of Critique: http://www3.addall.com/New/submitNew.cgi?query=culture+critique.
Write to me at contact.html.