File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-02-28.000, message 51


Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 10:38:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Peasant Rebellions and antisemitism


In his recently published "Jewish History, Jewish Religion", Israel 
Shahak draws a distinction between the Nazi genocide and earlier 
persecution of the Jews such as occurred in Eastern Europe before the 
twentieth century.

He characterizes the Nazi policies as inspired, organized and carried out 
from above by state officials. But in the earlier periods, persecution of 
the Jews came from below, from popular movements. Jews were allied with 
the ruling elite in these earlier periods--with emperors, popes, kings, 
aristocrats and the upper clergy. Furthermore, the elites defended the 
Jews during these antisemitic outbursts, not out of considerations of 
humanity, but because the Jews were useful and profitable to them. The 
defense of the Jews was tied up with defense of "law and order", hatred 
of the lower classes and fear that anti-Jewish riots might develop into 
general popular rebellion. This was true even of Tsarist Russia. During 
the time of Tsarism's greatest strength, under Nicholas I or in the latter 
part of the reign of Alexander III, pogroms were not tolerated by the 
regime, even though legal discrimination was intensified.

Shahak's comments on the 17th century Chmielnicki revolt in Ukraine 
illustrates these points:

"Perhaps the most outstanding example is the great massacre of Jews 
during the Chmielnicki revolt in the Ukraine (1648), which started 
out as a mutiny of Cossack officers but soon turned into a widespread 
popular movement of the oppressed serfs: 'The underpriviliged, the 
subjects, the Ukrainians, the Orthodox [persecuted by the Polish 
Catholic church] were rising against their Catholic Polish masters, 
particularly against their masters' bailiffs, clergy and Jews.' (John 
Stoye, Europe Unfolding 1648-88) This typical peasant uprising against 
extreme oppression, an uprising accompanied not only by massacres 
committed by the rebels but also by even more horrible atrocities 
and 'counter-terror' of the Polish magnates' private armies, has 
remained emblazoned in the consciousness of east-European Jews to this 
very day--not, however, as a peasant uprising, a revolt of the oppressed, 
of the real wretched of the earth, nor even as vengeance visited upon 
all the servants of the Polish nobility, but as an act of gratuitous 
antisemitism directed against Jews as such. In fact, the voting of the 
Ukrainian delegation at the UN and, more generally, Soviet policies on the 
Middle East, are often 'explained' in the Israeli press as 'a heritage 
of Chmielnicki' or his 'descendants'."

(Israel Shahak is a retired Professor of Organic Chemistry and 
human-rights activist who has lived in Israel for the last 40 years. 
He was born in Poland and was incarcerated in Belsen during WWII.)

Louis Proyect

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