Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

History’s Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia By the Bolsheviks, by Sean McMeekin. 2009. Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Soviet Communists Stole: The Leading Roles of Jewish Communists Yakov Yurovsky and Leon Trotsky in Massive-Thievery Soviet Practices

This work features some seldom-presented information. I focus on some of it.

BOMBSHELL: COMMUNISTS STOLE MORE THAN THE NAZIS

We will never hear this in the media or in history books, but Jews were not, as portrayed, the most-stolen people in the 20^th century. Author McMeekin makes this explosive statement, “Like the Nazis, the Bolsheviks obtained this gold by looting banks and robbing whole categories of people–and they procured substantially more gold, silver, and other precious stones (especially diamonds) from “class enemies” than did the Nazis from Holocaust victims. Like the Nazis, the Bolsheviks had gold melted down and sold to obtain hard currency, which they used to purchase desperately needed war matériel.” (p. 2; Emphasis added).

DOUBLE STANDARDS. HISTORIANS AND HOLLYWOOD IGNORE COMMUNIST CRIMES

McMeekin elaborates, “Unlike the Nazis, however, the Bolsheviks’ audacious looting of an entire continent has attracted little notice from historians…The disparity in attention paid to Nazi and Communist crimes is itself old news: the world still awaits Hollywood’s first feature film exposé of the Red Terror or Soviet Gulag, to accompany its first several thousand dramatizing Nazi evil.” (p. 2).

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THE MURDER AND ROBBERY OF THE RUSSIAN ROYAL FAMILY

Here is how author Meekin characterizes Yakov Yurovsky, “Head of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, tasked with overseeing the Romanov murder-robberies in July 1918.” (p. 232).

He adds that, “The Romanov executions themselves were carried out on the night of 16-17 July 1918, without any semblance of a trial, but only a pro forma sentence of guilt (for “continued aggression against Soviet Russia”). In the basement of Ipatev’s house, Yurovsky’s execution squad fired a ferocious hail of bullets into the bodies of Nicholas Romanov, his doctor Botkin, the tsarina, their daughters, and their ladies-in-waiting. Only Nicholas was killed on the spot.” (p. 41).

“Yurovsky, proud of his role in supervising the executions and the disposal of the corpses (for which services he would be promoted and congratulated personally by Lenin)…” (p. 42).

“What was the total Bolshevik take from the various Romanov murder-robberies? Yurovsky personally secured for the regime, by his own boast, some eighteen pounds of diamonds and other jewelry, sewn into the corsets of the tsar’s daughters, along with a pearl strand belonging to the tsarina later appraised at some 600,000 gold rubles, or $300,000.” (p. 43).

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COMMUNISTS STOLE: LEON TROTSKY LEADS THE DESPOILATION OF THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES

Author McMeekin thus characterizes Lev Trotsky, “…the Politburo commissioner for the liquidation of looted church valuables in 1921-22, of which campaign he was the principal architect.” (p. 231; Emphasis added).

The author adds, “The very next day, Trotsky, just then putting the finishing touches on the agitprop line for the Bolshevik campaign against the Church, temporarily revoked authorization for Soviet purchasing agents abroad…an operation ostensibly devoted to relieving the hungry was entrusted primarily to the Cheka, now renamed the State Political Directorate or GPU, and directed by Trotsky, the commissar of war. With Trotsky in overall command, the offensive against the Church was meticulously planned at a series of closed sessions held in December and January 1921-22 of the Sovnarkom, the Politburo, and the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party…We may also put to rest any lingering claims that the confiscations were devoted to famine relief, as the 2 January resolution explicitly stated that saleable valuables obtained from the Church would go not to famine victims but to the Gokhran… (p. 80). [The Gokhran was the State Treasury for the Preservation of Valuables: p. 235].

TROTSKY SMEARS THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES

The author continues, “Propaganda was central to Trotsky’s conception of the confiscations: they must appear to have come from a groundswell of popular outrage against the Church (thus the letter-writing campaign). Trotsky’s plan was also premised on widespread popular resistance to GPU church-looting teams, which could then be blamed on ‘inhuman and greedy’ clergymen who would be hauled in for sensational show trials. The expected defense of many churches and monasteries by crowds of faithful parishioners would also, of course, serve as justification for bringing in the Red Army to crush the resistance. Russia’s parishioners did not disappoint Trotsky’s expectations…” (pp. 80-81).

COMMUNISTS STOLE: TROTSKY’S RELENTLESS DETERMINATION TO ROB CHURCH PROPERTY

“Trotsky, in particular, was incensed by the scale of the resistance. He would now lay down a tougher line on church confiscation protocol, which included the issuance of threats to leading clergymen that they would be held personally responsible for resistance to confiscations in their churches.” (p. 81).

“On 13 April 1922, some thirty-two clergymen were arrested in Moscow for, in effect, failing to cooperate in sacking their churches. By the time the anticlerical show trial opened on 26 April in the theater of the Moscow Polytechnic Museum, another twenty-two defendants had been hauled in. Trotsky himself took charge of the press campaign, smearing them as ‘black hundreds’ and ‘counterrevolutionaries.'” (p. 83).

COMMUNISTS STOLE: CONSEQUENCES OF TROTSKY’S CHURCH ROBBERIES

“Trotsky’s church confiscations initiative could go only so far in restoring temporary liquidity in gold and silver bullion…” (p. 199).

“Trotsky’s commission was given a number of different official mandates before finally, after March 1922, being placed in charge of the sale of ‘church valuables.'” (p. 245).

“Then there were the thousands of Orthodox icons swooped up in Trotsky’s church expropriation campaign of 1922–those, at least, that had survived the depredations of Gokhran silver sorters. Paraded before potential buyers in Europe, many of the most sacred icons of the Orthodox faith were now pawned off to nonbelieving collectors.” (pp. 217-218).