Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.
Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.
Today's book club selection is Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "200 Years Together." Published in two volumes--in 2001 and 2002--the book explores the history of Jews in Russia from the late 18th century to the late 20th century, with a particular focus on the Soviet era.
Solzhenitsyn traces the historical relationship between Jews and Russians over two centuries, beginning with Catherine the Great's establishment of the Pale of Settlement in 1791, which confined Jewish populations to certain regions in the Russian Empire. He goes on to document the integration of Jews into Russian society during the 19th century, exploring their contributions to commerce, education and culture, while also addressing tensions over assimilation and discrimination.
Solzhenitsyn provides a historical account of Jewish communities in Russia following their inclusion in the empire after the partitions of Poland during the late 18th century. He examines their initial confinement to the Pale of Settlement and their gradual but uneven assimilation during the 19th century.
Solzhenitsyn argues that Tsarist policies were both protective and restrictive.
On the one hand, Jews faced exclusion and quotas; on the other hand, Jews were also encouraged to participate in the cultural and economic life of Russia. This led to social and economic mobility, and to rise in Jewish prosperity. He demolishes the myth of the supposedly unmitigated oppression that Jews lived under during the reign of the Tsars.
The heart of the book however is a detailed account of the role the Jews played in the the Bolshevik Revolution and during the subsequent Soviet era. Critics of the book have claimed that Solzhenitsyn blamed the Jews for the revolution and for the imposition of the Soviet system on the Russian people. This is untrue. While acknowledging that many Jews did play a prominent role in the Bolshevik movement and in the terror that followed Lenin's seizure of power, Solzhenitsyn does not hesitate to detail the repression that Jews lived under during Soviet times. Jewish religious and cultural practices were suppressed as brutally as Russian Orthodox religious and cultural practices were.
Nonetheless, Jews will forever be associated with Bolshevism. This is understandable. Jews were prominent among the Bolsheviks, and they had a wildly disproportionate presence--relative to the size of their population--among Soviet officialdom.
However, as Solzhenitsyn points out, there is something very self-serving about the Russian habit of blaming Bolshevism on the Jews. It serves to get Russians off the hook. Most of the Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin and Stalin, were not Jews. Moreover, Jewish Bolsheviks never thought of themselves as Jews; in fact, they disdained their Jewish origins and upbringing, and did little to advance Jewish culture and identity. To be sure, the Jewish Bolsheviks, like all of the Bolsheviks, harbored a deep animus toward the Russian people and Russian culture.
When it comes to the last years of the Stalin era, Solzhenitsyn describes the purges of Jewish intellectuals and the dismantling of Jewish institutions. However, unlike most Western commentators, Solzhenitsyn refuses to see this repression as uniquely targeted against the Jews. It was of a piece with Stalinist repression as a whole. The brutal treatment accorded to the Jews was not very different from the brutal treatment accorded to everyone else.
Solzhenitsyn concludes with a call for reconciliation between Russians and Jews, as well as mutual acknowledgment of shared suffering. It's unlikely to happen, but Solzhenitsyn was a devout Christian, and reconciliation and acknowledgment of sins are key parts of the Christian faith.
Naturally, Solzhenitsyn's call for mutual reconciliation didn't sit well with critics. How could Solzhenitsyn draw any parallels between the pain endured by Jews and that endured by Russians? How could there be any symmetry between victimizers and victimized? The value of Solzhenitsyn's book is that it demolishes the simple-minded, anti-Russian tropes that Western commentators, neo-conservatives, professional Russophobes, and Jewish emigres in the West have been peddling for years.
The book is not an easy read. Nothing Solzhenitsyn wrote ever is, but it's an important book that all Gagglers should at least attempt to get through.
