The Jewish school and training systems also came under repression. Jewish scientific institutions were closed and Jewish writers and artists, however eccentric and degenerate their Stalin cult, were not spared. The din surrounding the "construction of socialism" drowned out all suspicions of antisemitism.

Solzhenitsyn also reminds us of the fates of many Russian-Jewish socialists who had not followed the Bolsheviks or had even fought against them. An accounting of those victims would distract from the fact that a great number of the perpetrators of Jewish origins were still in charge during the years 1937-1939 from Yeshov to finally Beria.

A similar repression also hit two-thirds of the exiled German anti-fascists living in the USSR, and the Polish Communist Party was completely liquidated. These numbers became accessible after Nikita Khrushchev ordered studies done at the XXIInd Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956. [The Black Book of Communism, p. 330]

In Solzhenitsyn 's handling of the true extent of the persecution of Jews during the Yeshov era (1937-38), based on what he found in the Jewish encyclopedias and other books by Jewish authors, Solzhenitsyn began to have doubts and to notice contradictions.

On the one hand, Solzhenitsyn refers to the dissolution that was ordered in 1938 of the Jewish sections of the Communist Party, sections which had existed for many years. Solzhenitsyn refers to "the across-the-board arrests of high Yevsektsia functionaries in Moscow, as well as of the whole upper level of the administration of the Jewish resettlement organization."

Solzhenitsyn then quotes an S. Schwartz, who had written:

"In the context of the purge, nearly all Jewish communists left the stage who had played any important roles." [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 339]

Then the great Russian author refers to the Book of Russian Jewry, which claimed that ". . . after the Yeshov terror in the Soviet Union not one personality of any name in Jewish public life, in journalism, culture or even science remained free." [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, pp. 138, 332]

A recent historian even opines that of the "over 50 percent" Jews among the most important NKVD apparatchiks, by January 1939 only six percent remained. This "purge ratio" with a remainder of only "six percent" might be a substantial exaggeration on the part of interested parties, intent on highlighting their role, as usual, as "victims" and making the reader forget their own terrible complicity in communist crimes. [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 308]

Solzhenitsyn opposes to this the fact that half a million Jews had remained as state officials at the same time, occasionally in important positions, and the influx of Jewish migrants continued, particularly from Ukraine into Moscow. [Vol. II, Jews in the Soviet Union, pp. 330-331]

In addition, he brings up the incredible preference for Jews in the education system, which had begun in 1917: "In 1935 the Jewish percentage of college students was nearly 7 times the Jewish percentage of the country as a whole In 1929, 13.5% of all students at the universities of the USSR were Jews, in 1933 12.2%, in 1936 13.3%, and of doctoral students they were 1 8% with a Jewish portion of 1.8%) of the population." [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 331]

The effect this had on the composition of the leadership class in all areas of state activity was as one would expect. In The Little Jewish Encyclopedia, however, without of course indicating the true reason — continuous revolutionary terror — for the high Jewish ratios in comparison to their population average of 1.8%>, we read: "Country- wide, by end of the 1920s already 13.6%o of those active in the sciences were Jews, in 1937. . . already 17.6%o. In 1939 they represented over 1 5,000 scientists and university professors, i.e. 15.7%o of those so employed." [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 337]

Solzhenitsyn mentions further examples from culture and the press as well as of those who daily churned out atrocity propaganda. He raises the issue of "an ocean of vile brochures meant to make idiots of the masses." [Vol. II, Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 336]

"Among the film directors of the 1930s Jews formed a clear majority. Who was being suppressed here, the viewer being treated as a fool, with his soul flattened with lies and crude didactics or the directors who manufactured falsified movie biographies, pseudo-historical movies and current-events propaganda films with all their inflated monumentality and inner emptiness?"

Rather disapprovingly, The Jewish Encyclopedia notes:

"An inconceivable number of Jews, cameramen and directors made popular-science movies, instructional and documentary films; these were the Soviet films that were the most strongly affected by the state, and here a skillful cut- ting and splicing technique permitted them to present tendentiously arranged materials as genuine film documents."

The official Soviet atmosphere of the 1930s was completely free of animosity toward Jews, and until the beginning of war [in 1939, right after Stalin signed his Non- Aggression Pact with Hitler] an overwhelming majority of Soviet Jews probably remained well-disposed toward the Soviet ideology. [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, pp. 334-335]

At this point Solzhenitsyn comes back to Grigory Aronson and on page 140 throws his own statement back at him:

The Jews were not robbed of their general citizen rights They continued to occupy posts in the state and party machinery, and in the diplomatic corps as among the army generals and the university professors there were still some Jews Thus we enter the year 1939." [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 332]

Solzhenitsyn found the summarizing confession of The Jewish Encyclopedia impressive: "It was precisely at the end of the 1930s that the Jews reached the high point of their importance in the different areas of life in Soviet society within the whole era that Soviet power existed." [Vol. II, The Jews in the Soviet Union, p. 338]

But it was during this "high point" that, as historical science proves, there were 40 million victims of political terror, among whom, it should not be overlooked, there were at least some thousands, if not more, of hapless Jewish victims.

Here Solzhenitsyn has correctly recognized that doubts are appropriate about the representations of the Jewish encyclopedias and all the authors who write the history of their own brethren in connection with the Stalin era. After all, they stand before the delicate task of explaining to the world why their brethren served the Bolshevik system and from the outset could support those responsible for the persecutions. It could not have been for humanitarianism, for the Red Terror of Lenin and Stalin was its exact opposite.

The very concealment and playing down of these singular crimes, which were world-historical in their nature and scope, could not forever remain hidden as to the methods, the order of magnitude and the perpetrators. And assignments of blame to others are unconvincing. And so they become entangled in constant contradictions and lies, on the one hand praising their "clever brethren," so numerous in high state positions, in the economy, in academic occupations, receiving titles and medals, and on the other hand attempt to serve their mandatory role as poor victims who need the compassion of the world.

After all, postwar they had to display without reservation their enthusiasm for the "great, peace-loving Soviet Union" in its "liberation struggle for civilization" and with its "Jewish 'Heroes of the Soviet Union." This was necessary to maintain their dogmatic and singular defamation of National Socialist Germany and drive from the consciousness of mankind the incredible performance of the Third Reich during the peace years in building a solid, happy country.

For all that, one fact remains: The Germans did not first bring up this small people in their evaluation of Bolshevism! It was the Russians themselves and the other peoples of the world!

The Ukrainian Independence Movement

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This movement actually predated the Stalin era. Ukraine, which is about the size of France, had been under the domination of the czars of Russia for 200 years. With the collapse of Russian rule in March 1917, it seemed the long-awaited opportunity for independence had finally arrived. Ukrainians declared their country to be an independent republic and re-established the ancient capital city of Kiev as their seat of government. However, by the end of 1 91 7, Vladimir Lenin sought to reclaim all the areas formerly controlled by the czars, especially Ukraine.

As a result, four years of chaos and conflict followed in which Ukrainian nationalist troops fought against Lenin's Red Army, and also against Russia's White Army (troops still loyal to the czar) as well as other invading forces, including the Germans and Poles. By 1921 , the battles ended with a Soviet victory. But the resistance continued. The people refused to become cogs in the Soviet farm machine and remained stubbornly determined to return to their pre-Soviet farming lifestyle. Some refused to work at all, leaving the wheat and oats to rot in unharvested fields. Once again, they were placing themselves in conflict with Stalin. Stalin responded to their unyielding defiance by dictating a policy that would deliberately cause mass starvation and result in the deaths of millions. An estimated 7-10 million persons perished in the farming area of Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the food they had grown with their own hands. Shown are victims of the terror famine.