Żydokomuna: Difference between revisions

Żydokomuna (Polish for "Judeo-Communism" or "Judeo-Bolshevism") is a pejorative term that has been used to express an antisemitic stereotype that blamed Jews for having advocated, introduced and run Communism in Poland.

Origins

The expression "Żydokomuna" was coined in 1817 by the Polish Enlightenment writer and political activist Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz in his dystopia, The Year 3333, or the Incredible Dream (Rok 3333 czyli Sen niesłychany). The novel presented a fantastic vision in which Poland would become a sinister Judeo-Polonia run by assimilated Jews. It described a Warsaw of the future, renamed Moshkopolis (in the Polish, Moszkopolis) after its Jewish ruler Moshko (in the Polish, Moszko), and was published during the period of European Jewish history known as the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah).

The Żydokomuna myth was rediscovered and popularized in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. Many Poles felt threatened by the prospect of revolution, and by a new form of Russian imperialism embodied in the Soviet regime. The visibility of Jews in both the Soviet leadership and in the Polish Communist Party further heightened the strength of the mythology. Many Jews had been drawn to the communist movement as a result of effects of antisemitism. According to Jaff Schatz, a historian of Polish Jewish communism, the strength of the Żydokomuna myth was in the combination of a Polish fear of Russia, anti-communism, and anti-semitic attitudes. Schatz notes that "because anti-Semitism was one of the main forces that drew Jews to the Communist movement, Zydokomuna meant turning the effects of anti-Semitism into a cause of its further increase."

The expression was used once more during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-21, when massacres and violence against Jews, such as the Pinsk massacre, were justified by recourse to the widely spread myth that all Polish Jews were communists.

The Żydokomuna myth became a centerpiece the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Polish Right during the the years leading up to World War II. Polish Catholic church publications commonly expressed the myth, supplemented by an open and virulent anti-Jewish incitement. The Jewish role in the communist movement in Poland or internationally was not a factor in shaping the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles at this time. Although Jews were well represented in the Polish Communist Party, Jewish communists were a minuscule political and social group with little or no actual influence in the Polish Jewish community or Poland as a whole.

During World War II, "Żydokomuna" was applied to resemble the "Jewish-Bolshevism" rhetoric of Nazi Germany, wartime Romania and other war-torn countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

History

Criminalizing Jews

In the period between the two world wars, the zydokomuna myth grew concurrently in Poland with the myth of the "criminal Jew." Statistics from the 1920s had indicated a Jewish crime rate that was well below the Jewish population percentage. However, a subsequent reclassification of how crime was reported—which now would include minor offenses—succeeded in reversing the trend, and Jewish criminal statistics had shows an increase relative to population by the 1930s. These statistics were used by the Polish anti-semitic press to propagate an image of the "criminal Jew;" additionally, political crimes by Jews were maginified, creating a perception of a criminal Żydokomuna.

Polish Communist Party (1918 - 1938)

Support for Poland's communist and pro-Soviet parties came largely from Ukrainian and Orthodox Belarusian voters. As noted by historian Joseph Marcus, the Polish Communist Party (KPP) was not a "Jewish party," and was, by virtue of its opposition to Jewish economic and national intterests, strongly anti-Jewish. The KPP had strong Jewish representation at higher levels. In Polish court proceedings against communists between 1927 and 1936, 90% of the accused were Jews. Out of fifteen leaders of the KPP central administration in 1936, eight were Jews. Jews constituted 53% of the "active members" (aktyw) of the KPP, 75% of its "publication apparatus", 90% of the "international department for help to revolutionaries" and 100% of the "technical apparatus" of the Home Secretariat. In terms of membership, before its dissolution in 1938, 25% of KPP members were Jews; most urban KPP members were Jews—a substantial number, given an 8.7% Jewish minority in prewar Poland.

Nonetheless, research on voting patterns in Poland's parliamentary elections in the 1920s has shown that Jewish support for the communists was proportionally less than their representation in the total population; based on 1928 elections data, it can be estimated that only 5% of Jews were sympathetic enough to the communist cause to vote for the KPP. In the end, while most Jews were neither communists nor communist sympathizers, a substantial and quite visible portion of the Polish Communist leadership in the interwar period were Jews. However, research by Jeffrey Koppstein and Jason Wittenberg, who analyzed the communist vote in interwar Poland, has shown that the notion of the "communist Jew" was a myth at the mass level. The authors note that not only were most communists not Jews, but most Jews were not communists. Nonetheless it was the disproportionately large representation of Jews in the communist leadership led to the spread of the Żydokomuna myth, which in the late 1930s was widely used in the propaganda of the National Democrats, who after Józef Piłsudski's death in 1935 hoped to take power.

Soviet invasion of Poland

Following the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, Jewish communities in eastern Poland welcomed with relief the Soviet occupation, which they saw as a "lesser of two evils" that had saved them from the openly anti-semitic Nazi Germany. Additionally, the Soviets had suppressed a wave of September, 1939 peasant revolts that had targeted Jews, and as well, the invading regime had an official policy of opposition to anti-semitism, which was welcomed by Polish Jews alienated by the anti-semitic Polish state. This response implanted in the Polish collective memory the image of Jewish crowds greeting the invading Red Army as liberators, further strenghthening the anti-semitic zydokomuna myth. Such behavior affronted non-Jewish Poles, who likely exaggerated Jewish participation in the Soviet occupation because a Jewish presence in the government apparatus was a novel phenomenon in 1939 Poland. Jews and other minorities from within Poland occupied positions in the Soviet occupation government—such as teachers, civil servants and engineers—that they trouble achieving under the Polish government. What Poles saw as occupation and betrayal, some Jews, including Polish Jewish communists who emerged from the underground, saw as an opportunity for revolution or retribution. This strengthened the myth of zydokomuna, which would hold Jews responsible for the introduction of communism in Poland.

Though Jews had benefited from the effects of the Soviet invasion, this occupation soon began to strike at the Jewish population as well; independent Jewish organizations were abolished and activists were arrested. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who had fled to the Soviet sector were given a choice of Soviet citizenship or returning to the German occupied zone. The majority chose the latter, and instead found themselves deported to the Soviet Union, where ironically, 300,000 would escape the Holocaust. After Operation Barbarossa and the beginning of Nazi terror in the former Polish eastern territories, many Jews—who were generally barred from joining the official Polish resistance group, the Armia Krajowa, (which was hostile to armed Jewish partisans, whom it often referred to as "bandits") instead joined the Armia Ludowa of the communist Polish Workers' Party and Soviet guerrilla groups, which increasingly clashed with Polish guerillas; contributing to yet another perception of Jews working with the Soviets against the Poles.

Post World War II

Immediately after World War II, the Soviet-backed communist government lent support to the revival of Jewish cultural, political, and social life, which had been decimated by the Holocaust. Thousands of Jews returned from exile in Soviet Union; amongst them were a small number of Jewish communists who played a minor, but highly visible role in the unpopular communist government. The new government's hostility to the wartime Polish exile government and resistance — which it accused of being nationalist, reactionary and anti-semitic — further strengthened the myth, to the point where in the popular consciousness Jewish Bolshevism was seen as having conquered Poland. It was in this context that, in the immediate post-war years, Poland experienced an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish violence.

According to Teresa Torańska, "all or nearly all of the directors (of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland) were Jewish". This allegation was denied by official sources which claimed that the Ministry of Security employed only one Jewish officer, presumably the head of the Ministry, Jakub Berman. A recent study by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance showed that out of 450 people in director positions in the Ministry (from 1944 to 1954), 167 (37.1%) were of Jewish ethnicity, compared to an approximately 1% of the Polish post-war Jewish population. According to Joanna B. Michlic, the belief that the secret police was somehow a Jewish institution is inaccurate and colored by a belief in the Żydokomuna myth. While Jews were indeed overrepresented relative to their percentage of the general population, the vast majority of Jews did not participate in the repressive apparatus, and indeed most were not supportive of communism. Szwagrzyk has also quoted Jan T. Gross, who argued that many Jews who worked for the communist party cut their ties with their – Jewish, Polish or Russian – culture, and tried to represent the interests of international communism only, or at least that of the local communist government. Nonetheless this contributed to the post-war stereotype of Jews as agents of the secret police. Because Jews were also visible in the ranks of other Polish Communist organizations, this further fed the 'Żydokomuna' theory.

1950s—present

Postwar Polish-Jewish relations has lent itself to controversy, with the Żydokomuna myth again being revived. Post-1989 Polish historiography has seen a revival of an ethnonationlist historical approach with the works of authors such as Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, Bogdan Musiał, and Tomasz Strzembosz. This school has in particular been critical of recent studies by Jan T. Gross on anti-Jewish violence in Poland during and after World War 2. During the debate over Gross's work, Gross and his supporters characterized Żydokomuna as an antisemitic cliché while to Gross’s critics Żydokomuna was a fact of history. According to historian Joanna Michlic, among the latter group of historians, "Judeo-communism served the purpose of rationalizing and explaining the participation of ethnic Poles in killing their Jewish neighbors and, thus, in minimizing the criminal nature of the murder." Chodakiewicz argued that after the Soviet takeover of Poland in 1945 violence had developed amid postwar retribution and counter-retribution, exacerbated by the breakdown of law and order and a Polish anti-Communist insurgency. According to Chodakiewicz, some Jewish "avengers" endeavored in extracting justice from the Poles who harmed Jews during the War and in some cases Jews attempted to reclaim property confiscated by the Nazis. These phenomena further reinforced the stereotype of Żydokomuna, a Jewish-Communist conspiracy in post-war Poland. Chodakiewicz claims that after World War Two, the Jews were not only victims, but also aggressors. He describes cases in which Jews cooperated with the Polish secret police, denouncing Poles, members of the Home Army. According to him, some 3500 to 6500 Poles died in late 1940s because of Jewish denounciations or were killed by Jews themselves. Holocaust scholar Antony Polonsky has strongly criticized writing that Chodakiewicz exaggerates the Jewish presence in the post-war communist government, fails to take into account what Polonsky calls the widespread character of antisemitism in postwar Poland, and appears to hold all Jews responsible for the crimes committed by the communists, whether of Jewish origin or not.

The numbers of Jews in communist structures gradually fell. Urząd Bezpieczeństwa was liquidated. With time, more Poles joined the communist party. Additionally, Mieczysław Moczar's nationalist "anti-Zionist" faction became increasingly influential in the communist party, leading to the March 1968 events, and a government sponsored anti-semitic campaign which resulted in most remaining Jews leaving Poland.

The concept of the Jew as a "threatening other" was employed in the 1970's and 1980's in Poland by both the communist government in its attacks on the political opposition, including against the Solidarity trade union movement and against the Workers' Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, or KOR). This image of the Jew was also used by the anti-communist opposition, including by segments of the Solidarity movement. Post communist Poland experienced what has been described as a sudden, intennse and widespread outburst of anti-Jewish mood," including allegations that Jews were to blame for Poland's "decline" during the communist years, and Jew0-baiting of political opponents during election campaigns. More recent efforts have emerged from a wide range of sources in the Polish community to challenge these conceptions of Jews and to foster a pluralistic society in Poland. The term Żydokomuna is now used almost exclusively by fringe nationalists associated with Radio Maryja, usually in reference to former communist party members and to "liberals" who have supported capitalist reforms, globalization and European integration. Organizations attacked as "Żydokomuna" have included the SLD and UW political parties, and Gazeta Wyborcza, whose editor-in-chief, Adam Michnik (born Aaron Szechter), is a Jew.

External links

• Jews,Communism,and the Jewish Communists

See also

• Massacre of Brzostowica Mala
• Jewish Bolshevism
• Kielce pogrom
• Bund
• Zionist-Occupied Government
• History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union: Jews and Bolshevism

Further reading

• Template:Pl icon August Grabski, "Działalność komunistów wśród Żydów w Polsce (1944-1949)", Trio, Warszawa 2004, ISBN 8388542877
• Template:Pl icon Krystyna Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, Komunizm. Anatomia półprawd 1939-68, Warszawa: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992, ISBN 8370540260