Who to duel with

Reply to Mark Solonin's answer

Mark Solonin, with whom we were declared enemies of the people together by the Russian Military Historical Society at their famous exhibition "Myths about War", did me the honor of answering my article in Novaya. I said in it that one of the forms of response to anti-Semitic attacks should be a calm analysis of how exactly the Jews participated in the Red Terror. My first impression of his answer, unfortunately, is some overexposure in content and a stylistic approach to the border beyond which rudeness begins. But then I thought that since such a respected and worthy person saw my text like that, it means that I explained something poorly. Since the question seems to be very important, I will try, without entering into polemics with his, for sure, fair remarks, to state my position as briefly as possible once again.

There is a widespread idea in society about the special role of Jews in many Russian tragedies, in particular, in organizing terror. In the phrase Chekist-Jew, for many of our fellow citizens it is the word Jew that is important. This idea lies almost on the surface, ready to be updated at any moment. That is why Tolstoy's statement about the Pale of Settlement, revolvers and Russian churches attracted such attention - he said what many think. This is a mental reality, a phenomenon of social consciousness that will not disappear from the fact that we ignore it.

You can not react to this in any way, not wanting to enter into a discussion with people with a primitive-aggressive picture of the world. The nobles did not duel with lackeys. But I am not a nobleman, I am a commoner and ready to fight with anyone.

Next - forks. If the idea of ​​a disproportionately large role for Jews in organizing terror is not true, it must be refuted. How the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", blood libel and so on were refuted. By the way, not without success. Even the most anxious anti-Semites have not heard about blood in matzah for a long time.

If this is true, then it is necessary to analyze the reasons, both common to all discriminated ethnic and / or confessional groups, and specific to those who come from a Jewish environment.

This, in my opinion, should be done for at least two reasons.

First, if we do not speak, then they speak for us. And what they say is not just medieval savagery, it is the preparation of new pogroms, their ideological justification. If they publish lists of Jewish executioners, then our contemptuous ignoring of these lists only helps enthusiasts to expose the Jewish conspiracy against the Russian people.

Secondly, it is important for us. I do not speak for everyone - for some of us, for me, for example. My Jewishness is a positive part of my self-consciousness, despite the fact that I am not religious, do not observe and do not even know traditions very well, I am married to an ethnic Russian woman, etc. But I am pleased to realize what a huge, completely incommensurable contribution to the size of our people, the Jews have made to world civilization. Jewishness somehow predetermined the achievements of Freud and Einstein, Marx and Mandelstam, Spinoza and Zuckerberger. Just as it certainly has to do with the military exploits of the Jews in antiquity, and now - during the Second World War and in modern Israel. Among the Jews who left their mark on history were religious and secular, Jews and Christians. There were people who kept their connection with Jewish culture and rejected, denied such a connection. But they were all Jews, and many Jews today are proud of this fact.

But if we consider Christian Mandelstam, an atheist and a subverter of Marx's religion, to be Jews, if we remember this, there is an option to forget, but we remember! - then do we have the right to forget that Sverdlov, Zinoviev and Kaganovich were Jews? This fact can be treated in different ways - as an accident, as a natural outlier for any people, as a natural consequence of discrimination. But he must be treated.