—A Review of Two Hundred Years Together, Solzhenitsyn and the Jewish Question

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A Review of Two Hundred Years Together, Solzhenitsyn and the Jewish Question

Peter C. Patton

I have finally read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s remarkable two volume historical essay Two Hundred Years Together. What an adventure it has been. Research and writing the two volumes occupied the last decade of his life and were published in 2001 and 2003, but are still not available in English translation. They were translated by Columbus Falco and appeared listed along with a color picture of the book by amazon.com and other booksellers but suddenly disappeared without explanation. They simply are “no longer available.” A few chapters have appeared in Russian scholar’s blogs on the Internet and two foreign language translations are available.

Also, on the Internet one finds two partial English translations https://archive.org/stream/AleksandrSolzhenitsyn200YearsTogether/Aleksan...

as a fairly complete but poorly edited translation into English, and https://thechosenites.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/200-years-together.pdf

as an admittedly partial but well written translation without the 1500 footnotes of the original. For a quick (circa 386 page) read, I recommend the latter.

Amazon.com does list the Russian original, Dvesti Let Vmeste, so I bought the two volume set.  While I had a part-time job translating Russian engineering papers for the U S Air Force as a graduate student in the late 1950s my Russian is now more than 50 years old and it was never up to Solzhenitzyn. So, I discovered translations into French and German which I read far better than Russian. I ordered the two volume French edition from Amazon.ca but only got volume one. The second volume is now somehow no longer available either from Amazon in Canada or France. I did find a used copy on Ebay from Italy and bought it. The German translation was a huge disappointment. It is in one large volume but is not faithful to the genre of the original as is the French translation, Deux siècles ensemble. Solzhenitsyn wrote his historical essay structured like a conversation moving from one idea to the next by association, rather than by time, events, or even topic. The German edition, Zweihundert Jahre Zusammen fits the original 27 chapters into 15 chapters organized in strict topical Teutonic fashion. For example, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian original’s chapter 15, becomes part of chapter 3 in the German translation.

Without indulging in conspiracy theories I wanted to learn why the book is still not available in English and why volume two is so difficult to find in French. Volume one doesn’t contain anything more embarrassing to the Jews than already exists in The Jewish Encyclopedia (see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ for a PDF), however it does present a case that the so called Tsarist pogroms against the Jews were not government sanctioned at all, but rather were Orthodox Jews attacking and killing Hassidic and secular Jews while the government officials often looked aside, not wanting to get involved in a local religious dispute. They read a bit like Caiaphas cornering the Roman government into crucifying Jesus by mob action. Solzhenitsyn does however give names, aliases, family histories, and numbers because the author knew and worked with some of these people when a communist or later as a fellow dissident in the Gulag. He does make the point that the others do not, that while the fraction of the Russian population that were Jews before the revolution was only 4%, the representation of Jews in the Bolshevik party before and after the revolution was 27%. The author also points out that most of these were in fact assimilated Jews like Lev Bronstein, a.k.a. Leon Trotsky. In the final chapter on assimilation, as a solution to the Jewish Question which has haunted Europe for centuries, he finds himself caught in a dilemma: whether they should assimilate and become Christian Europeans, or stay faithful to a religious heritage that has maintained them as a people for millennia. He reluctantly concludes that they would ultimately best immigrate to Israel although he says he has never been sympathetic with Zionism. Of course, more than a million Russian Jews have done so and today Israel now has a Russian Question.  While the well-educated Russian Jews have assimilated economically, they still speak Russian, they live together in Russian communities, and they generally look down on Israel’s Levantine culture as inferior to their own Eastern European culture. The patrons of theater, concerts, and art exhibits in Israel are mostly Russian Jews. While they have all come to the country under the aegis of the Law of Return, the males are not circumcised and what is worse, they insist on eating pork, the main food of Central and Eastern Europeans. Talmudic Law says that the hooves of swine must never touch Ha Eretz, the Holy Land, and they don’t.  Pigs are raised on remote farms in Israel on wooden platforms six inches above the ground.

But the controversial issue with this book apparently lies in volume two. By my reading, the author just come right out and says it, as he is wont to do. The Greeks told Diogenes that if he ever actually found an honest man, he would not like him. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn seems to be that man, however only half of his readers don’t like him. The passage, on page 101 of volume two, reads as best as I can find it rendered into English:
The question then emerges of when Communist authority spread from Russia, and came to engulf world Judaism. The stormy participation of Jews in the Communist revolution drew cautious statements of concerns about world Jewry that were quieted, their evidence concealed, by communist and Jews worldwide, who attempted to silence it by denouncing it as extreme anti-Semitism.

After 70 or 80 years passed, and under the pressure of many facts and discoveries, the view of Jewish involvement in the revolutionary years opened slightly. Already many Jewish voices have discussed this publicly. For example, the poet Naum Korzhavin has noted that as long as it is taboo to speak of the participation of the Jews in Bolshevism, it will be impossible properly to discuss the revolutionary period. There are even times now when Jews are proud of their participation—when Jews have said that they did participate in the revolution, and in disproportionately large numbers. M. Argusky has noted that Jews involved in the revolution and the civil war was not limited to the revolutionary period but also continued in their considerable and widespread involvement in running the state apparatus. Israeli socialist S. Tsiryul’nikov has stated that from the beginning of the revolution Jews served as the basis of the new communist regime. But most Jewish authors today still deny the contribution of Jews to Bolshevism, sweeping the evidence aside with anger, or more frequently with reference to the pain such evidence causes them.
But despite their pain there is no doubt that these Jewish otshchepentsy for several years after the revolution dominated Bolshevism, headed the belligerent Red Army (Trotsky), the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Sverdlov), ran both capitals (Zinoviev), the Comintern (Zinoviev), the Profintern/Red Trade Union International (Dridzo-Lozovskiy) and the Komsomol (Oscar Ryvkin, and after him Lazarus Shatskin.)

But, why would this passage cause people to shun this book? In the 30s and 40s liberal Jews were proud of their participation the Great Experiment, but after Russian Communism proved to be a complete economic and political, if not genocidal failure, they wanted to sweep it “unter dem Teppich” as the German translation reads following this passage. Nobody wants to ever have been associated with a failed project. Even the most ardent Marxists assert that Karl himself said Communism could never be successfully implemented in an industrially backward nation (e.g., Russia) or a primitive agricultural economy (e.g., China). He predicted that England would be the first communist nation and the United States the second. How can you redistribute the wealth if there is no wealth to redistribute? Marxists had high hopes for Venezuela, the wealthiest nation in South America, but alas that grand experiment failed for some unknown reason (go figure!), so hopes are now turning to The Republic of South Africa, the wealthiest nation in Africa.  I hate to be a stick in the mud, but after the newly elected Marxists have killed or driven off all the Boers (read farmers) in RSA, they will surely starve along with the Venezuelans. Those farms already appropriated by indigenous Africans are failures. On a recent news feed a European journalist asked a native RSA woman where they would get their food after they had driven out the Boers; she said: “The same place we get it now, in the grocery store.” Chavez and Maduro soon discovered that loyal military officers cannot successfully run a nationalized oil industry, and the RSA Marxist government will soon learn that people who have never farmed cannot raise food, or at least not enough to support a modern urbanized society. But, perhaps they will stumble across Stalin’s classic solution to agricultural production, the collective farm. In the Ukraine, implementation of that solution may have resulted in the death of 35 million Kulaks (read farmers).

What can we learn from this remarkable historical essay that may help guide society today? The Jews were rejected by Europe because they were different and they refused to assimilate. Napoleon offered them first class citizenship in his new Europe, but they still refused to assimilate. For this, Solzhenitsyn praises them from his own vantage point as a devout Russian Orthodox Christian nationalist, but he admits this was the Jewish Question. Only the Russians have a Holy Land like the Jews’ Ha Eretz. Is the next problem for the West the Muslim Question? Muslim immigrants and refugees have shown little progress toward assimilation and if anything, Shari’a Law is much more severe and separating than Orthodox Judaism, which after all, was born in 14th Century Poland, rather than the Middle East.

What can we learn from history? Perhaps the British historian Trevor-Roper was correct when he observed that “The only thing we learn from history, is that we don’t learn from history.”

 

Today, I finished reading an English offprint of Solzhnietsyn's 200 years Together, checking some passages in the German and French translations. In a couple of cases I even checked some of the names and numbers in the Russian original. All the pogroms in 100+ years of pre-revolutionary Russia amounted to the death of only 3000 Jews,  none these pogroms were central government sponsored, all of them were local, and many were Orthodox Jews killing and robbing Hassidic Jews. He compares that to one week in Spain when the Inquisition killed 20,000 Jews.

Like Immanuel Kant once said: "One must always tell the truth no matter whom it hurts, even if it is yourself."
Solzhnietsyn is a truth teller. His Jewish critics can't gainsay him, but they whine that he is too harsh. One even chided him for pointing out that so many of the criminal supervisory elements in the Gulags were Jewish, He said "Couldn't you at least have given a few of them Russian names?"
Solzhnietsyn replied that this statement was a typical Jewish complaint. No remorse, no acceptance of guilt, just denial.
It is pretty obvious why this book has not been translated into English! The international (and American) Jewish community doesn't want the general public to know about their intense  involvement in Bolshevism and its crimes, and their total lack of repentance. They just want us to forget about it.

The Greeks told Diogenes, the cynic philosopher, that if he ever actually found an honest man, he wouldn't like him. I see now why Solznietsyn has so many critics and enemies. His honesty is unbearable to the guilty, their fellow-travelers. shills, and protectors, and all liberals generally.

----------------------------------------------------

added thoughts by R.A.B.

Or quite possibly, we are not allowed to learn from history because we are taught so many lies so that the fraud cannot be discovered and resolved.

Man’s problem is summed up by the common thread of thought and the repeated quotation of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), in the printed, translated form of his university lectures, titled, What Is Called Thinking?  This thought really, is the only point of value (that I could recognize) in his entire book (the rest seems to be circular mental “busy-work” passed off as profound thought; I am not saying the book does not have more value, I just could not bear through it, though I tried repeatedly, to find any more):


“What is truly most thought provoking in our thought-provoking world is that we are still not thinking.”

Well echoed the Prophet Hosea, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee... seeing thou hast forgotten the Law of thy God, I will also forget thy children." (Hosea 4:6)

 

other books of interest along a similar topic as Solzhenitsyn:

by Robert Alan Balaicius: (Lithuanian-American)
- Are You An Anti-Semite...?, (what actually is a Semite?) 24pp., 2.50 + P&H.

- A Bolshevik Primer — and the Planned Extermination of Christendom; exposes those behind Bolshevism and Communism and details the long-planned mongrelization of Christendom; 176 pages, pb., with 145 Illustrations, 14.50 + P&H.

- The Communist Manifesto (1848) [Originally titled: “Manifest of the Communist Party”] by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (56pp.) — with Illustrated Historical Introduction — & A Comparison of the 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto, “Democracy,” and Marxist, Unconstitutional U.S. Law, with the Bill of Rights / the 10 Amendments to the Constitution and the 10 Commandments - also containing the Declaration of Independence, Common Law Citations, Court Rulings and Quotes on Freedom, added by Robert Alan Balaicius; Including photos, background information, and photos of these and more: Karl Marx, Philips Corporation family, Adam Weishaupt, Bernard Lazare, Winston Churchill, Dr. Oscar Levy, Maurice Samuel, Marcus Eli Ravage, Samuel Roth, Vladimir Lenin, David Ben-Gurion, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Harry Waton, Friedrich Engels, Moses Hess, Theodore Herzl, Jacob Schiff, Judah P. Benjamin, Albert Pike, John Wilkes Booth, Charles Booth, William Booth, Rabbi Isadore Loeb, Dimitry Manuilsky, 132pp. total, pb., 12.50 + P&H.  Also exposes the Marxist roots of the modern banking conspiracy, and those who opposed it: quotes by Jackson, Jefferson, Madison, as well as several U.S. Presidents who spoke out against it and tried to stop it and were assassinated (Lincoln, Garrison, Kennedy).

- Fearless and Godly Pioneers for the Truth:  An Illustrated Short History of Some Patriotic Christian Teachers, Preachers, Evangelists, Lecturers, Publishers, Soldiers, and Statesmen, Modern Era —and a Background History of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and an Introduction to the Jewish Bolshevik War against the Christian Romanov Tsars and Imperial Russia. & A Word About God’s True Covenant People; Including (but not limited to) histories, bibliographies, and pictures of: Luke Rader, Daniel Rader, F.F. Bosworth, Rev. William Bell Riley, James M. Gray, Rev. Captain Merton Smith, Rev. William Pascoe Goard, Dr. Henry W(ellington). Stough, Harold Stough, Henry W. Stough, Jr., Dr. Mordecai Fowler Ham, Henry Ford, William J. Cameron, Arno Clemons Gaebelein, Sergei Nilus, Dr. Martin Luther, J.B. Pranaitis, Osman Bey, Victor Marsden, H.A. Gwynne, Leslie Fry, Lady Queenborough, Nesta Webster, Princess Radziwill, R.A. Torrey, Rev. William Herrstrom, Rev. William L. Blessing, Kenneth Goff, Rev. Gerald B. Winrod, Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith, Alfred P. Sloan, Charles Coughlin, Leonard Feeney, Dennis Fahey, Ezra Pound, Sen. Charles Lindbergh, Commander William Guy Carr, Serge Monast, Robert O’Driscoll, Viscount Leon de Poncins, Howard Rand, Lieut. Prof. Charles Totten, Elizabeth Dilling, John T. Flynn, Sen. Joeseph McCarthy, Sen. Jack B. Tenney, Liet.-Col. Jack Mohr, Congressman Larry MacDonald, Congressman Paul Findley, Eustace Mullins, George Stimpson, John Swinton, Mayor John Francis Hylan, H. L. Hunt, Lyrl Clark Van Hyning John Stormer, Gary Allen, Col. E.N. Sanctuary, Robert Edmondson, Clem Davies, Texe Marrs, and the Jewish: Dr. Alexander Schiffner, Benjamin Freedman, Henry Klein, Jacob Brafman, Myron Fagan, Elieser Bassin, Dr. Emanuel Josephson, and Henry Makow. 224pp., pb., 18.00 + P&H.

- God’s Chosen People: Who Is - Who Isn’t - and Why —Who’s trying to Destroy Whom and Is There Any Hope?, 88pp., 6.00 + P&H.

- The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Rabbinical Teachings Concerning Christians [Memorial Edition to Honor a Great Lithuanian.] (1892), Rev. I.B. Pranaitis (Lithuanian Priest murdered for this book), translated by & with intro by Col. Sancutary; 144pp., pb. (94 page original + 30 page Illustrated Biographical and Historical Introduction by Robert Alan Balaicius, 11.50 + P&H.

- Uncovering the Mysteries of Your Hidden Inheritance, 192pp., pb., 16.00 + P&H; Hb., 26.00 + P&H; documented, illustrated; hiding of this truth is at the root of the conspiracy.

- What’s Keeping God from Delivering America, Britain and Europe from Destruction...?, 112pp., pb., 10.50 + P&H.  

- Who Is Responsible for the DEATH of Christendom...?; 21pp., 2.00 + P&H.

- Why Christendom is on the Verge of Extinction & The Cause of and Solution to All our Problems, 88pp., 6.00 + P&H.

by other authors:

- Death at Katyn (1944) 48pp., 5.00 + P&H. Thousands Polish/Lithuanian) officers murdered by Soviets WWII, buried mass grave in forest—at Nuremberg War Crimes trials Soviets blamed Germans; now proven Soviets did it, recently, Russian government confessed.

- A Greater Miracle Than The Lost Ten Tribes Discovered—The Dead Six Million Uncovered...!, 544pp., paperback, very deep expose. Exposes multi-billion dollar Holocaust Industry (lists the many holocaust museums around world), exposes Holocaust Mafia; Hall of Fame for those who have spoken out and have had their lives ruined—100s photos) and those behind it. Extensive list of nations (with dates) which expelled the “jews.” Very compelling compilation of evidence and insight, (“jewish” experts, population data, chemistry, math and science, history, etc.) Revisionist book list, indexed. Actual photocopies from original copies of the census data (compiled by “jewish” sources) from the World Almanac and Book Facts for 1934, 1945, 1946, 1950 30.00 + P&H. Illustrated. A powerhouse of information.

- Human Cost of Communism in China, Prepared at Request of Sen. T. Dodd for Subcom. to Investigate Admin. of Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of Committee on Judiciary US Senate, 1971, 44pp., 4.00 + P&H.

- Human Cost of Soviet Communism, Prepared at Request of Sen. Dodd for Subcom. to Investigate Administration of Internal Security Act & other Internal Security Laws of Comm. on Judiciary US Senate, 1971, 40pp., 4.00 + P&H.

- Iron Curtain Over America (1951), Col., Professor John Owen Beaty, 268pp., pb., + his treatise, “How to capture a University” + photo and brief biography, c.300pp. total. 18.00 + P&H.

- The Secret Holocaust, Mullins, 34pp., 400 + P&H. (against white European Christians). A MUST for those who don’t know this; see also Human Cost of Soviet...; 66 to 180 MILLION white Christians exterminated by Jewish Bolshevism.

- Soviet Evidence at Katyn: Document USSR-54 at Nuremberg, 48pp., 7.00 + P&H.

- The Truth About Bolshevik and Nazi Atrocities in Lavia (1943), Ludwigs Ekis (former Latvian Finance Minister and Envoy in Kaunas (Lithuania), Warsaw (Poland), Bucharest (Roumania), Budapest (Hungary), and Ankara (Turkey), 27pp., 3.00 + P&H (compare the two lists; the list of Nazi atrocities is about a paragraph and the Bolshevik the remainder of the book)

See also:

- I Was A Slave In Russia (1958) & I Found God In Soviet Russia (1959) 192pp. [intro. by Billy Graham], 192pp., John Noble; 2 incredible books, on Christian faith through persecution. When “allies” (USSR) took over after bombing of Dresden, German-born U.S. citizen & his family were arrested, their business stolen by USSR, and they were imprisoned for nearly 15 years under torture. Incredible. A must. new printing, 2-in-1, pb., 24.00 + P&H.

- Tortured For His Faith, Popov (Roumanian pastor suffered 18 years imprisonment/torture behind iron curtain) 146pp., pb., 8 00 + P&H.

- For Those Still At Sea (1978) Simas Kudirka, 226pp., Hb. out of print, a few good used copies [Inquire]. [Contains some vulgar language.] Incredible story, Lithuanian seaman literally jumped ship, to defect onto US Coast Guard cutter; bureaucratic incompetence, given back; spent 15 years hard labor Siberia, never gave up hope. A must. [made into tv movie, “The Defection of Simas Kudirka” (1978) Alan Arkin.]
and

- The Persecutor (1973) Sergei Kourdakov; Russian Secret Police Officer; job to beat/torture Christians; converted to Christ, jumped ship off North American Coast, defected to America, began speaking against communism; he later died “while cleaning his gun” (assassinated). Out of print, good used copies available. A must. [Inquire]