Reinhold Elstner
11-21-2004, 12:54 PM
Jews in the NKVD of Stalin’s Soviet Union
By Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/tr/2004/3/3_04.html [then download PDF copy]
In celebration of the Golden Calf called political correctness,
a “No-No word of the year” is chosen in Germany at the
beginning of each new year (Unwort des Jahres). In 2003, the
word chosen was “Tätervolk”, which means “perpetrator people”
or “perpetrator nation”. This term is usually used to refer
to the German people as the perpetrators of ‘the Holocaust’.
Using this word in this context does not normally lead to reactions
in Germany, since many Germans feel morally superior
when they collectively accuse their own people. However,
when this word was used in the context of Jews as the main
perpetrators of Bolshevist crimes in the early Soviet Union, all
hell broke loose.
This happened in October of 2003, when German Member
of Parliament Martin Hohmann, during a speech entitled “Justice
for Germany” (Gerechtigkeit für Deutschland), pondered
the question, whether it was justified that Germany is still today
treated like a criminal among nations for what happened two
generations earlier.1 He stated that this special treatment is
based upon a concept of hereditary guilt, which is in opposition
to all Christian and modern Western values. He rejected the notion
that Germans are a “perpetrator people” just as he rejected
the notion that Jews should be held collectively responsible for
what some ancestors of Jews did during the Soviet revolution.
Neither the Germans nor the Jews, he summarized, are
Tätervölker.
That comparison was enough for him to get publicly ostracized,
thrown out of Parliament and out of his political party
(the Christian Socialist CDU), and vilified by the media. However,
a criminal prosecution against him for “inciting to hatred”
had to be stopped after it turned out that he really didn’t say
anything wrong. As a result of this, Hohmann’s infamous use of
the word “Tätervolk” led to this word being the No-No-word of
2003 chosen by an obscure, non-democratic prize committee.2
This event may be taken as an opportunity to investigate the
issue of disproportionately high Jewish involvement in the Soviet
terror apparatus a little more thoroughly.
In 2001, Nikita Petrov published an article that sheds some
light into this topic. Petrov investigated the “Tendencies of
Change in the Consistency of the Cadre of the Organs of the
Soviet State Security during the Stalin Era.”3 Although the time
Table 1: Number of Leading NKVD Staff Members – by Nationality
(absolute numbers and percentage of total, listed by dates)
Nationality 10. July 34 1. Oct. 36 1. March .37 1. July .37 1. Jan. 38 1. Sept. 38 1. July 39 1. Jan. 40 26. Feb. 41
Russians 30 (31.25%) 33 (30.00%) 35 (31.53%) 38 (33.63%) 58 (45.31%) 85 (56.67%) 102 (56.67%) 111(64.53%) 118 (64.84%)
Jews 37 (38.54%) 43 (39.09%) 42 (37.84%) 36 (31.86%) 35 (27.34%) 32 (21.33%) 6 (3.92%) 6 (3.49%) 10 (5.49%)
Ukrainians 5 (5.21%) 6 (5.45%) 6 (5.41%) 5 (4.42%) 4 (3.13%) 10 (6.67%) 19 (12.42%) 29 (16.86%) 28 (15.38%)
Poles 4 (4.17%) 5 (4.55%) 5 (4.50%) 4 (3.54%) 1 (0.78%) 1 (0.67%) - - -
Latvians 7 (7.29%) 9 (8.18%) 8 (7.21%) 7 (6.19%) 5 (3.91%) - - - 1 (0.55%)
Germans 2 (2.08%) 2 (1.82%) 2 (1.80%) 2 (1.77%) 2 (1.56%) 1 (0.67%) - - -
Georgians 3 (3.13%) 4 (3.64%) 5 (4.50%) 4 (3.54%) 4 (3.13%) 5 (3.33%) 12 (7.84%) 12 (6.98%) 12 (6.59%)
Armenians 1 (1.04%) 1 (0.91%) 1 (0.90%) 1 (0.88%) 1 (0.78%) 1 (0.67%) 2 (1.31%) 2 (1.16%) 2 (1.10%)
Aserbaijanians 1 (1.04%) 1 (0.91%) 1 (0.90%) 1 (0.88%) - - - - -
Belorussians 3 (3.13%) 2 (1.82%) 3 (2.70%) 3 (2.65%) 2 (1.56%) 3 (2.00%) 1 (0.65%) 3 (1.74%) 4 (2.20%)
Others 1 (1.04%) 1 (0.91%) - 1 (0.88%) 1 (0.78%) 3 (2.00%) 1 (0.65%) 1 (0.58%) 3 (1.65%)
No data 2 (2.08%) 2 (1.82%) 3 (2.70%) 11 (9.73%) 15 (11.72%) 9 (6.00%) 10 (6.54%) 8 (4.65%) 4 (2.20%)
period covered by Petrov, as far as it is of interest here, covers
only the years from 1934 to 1941, the data obtainable from
documents stored in Soviet archives still allows us to come to
some definite conclusions.
Table 1, as taken from Petrov’s paper, lists the number of
leading staff members of the Soviet People’s Commissariat for
Internal Affairs (NKVD, predecessor of the later KGB) according
to their nationality. Until the outbreak of the Great Purges
in 1937/38, Jews apparently had a huge proportion in the leading
positions of the Soviet terror machinery. Petrov explains in
this regard:
“Of course, the presence of so many Latvians, Poles,
and especially Jews in the leadership of the NKVD is explained
by the nature of restrictions prior to 1917, to which
they were subjected. With its romanticism of blurring national
borders, the bolshevist regime opened all venues to
numerous representatives of these nationalities. They justly
viewed the new state order as ‘theirs,’ as one to which they
belonged unconditionally. Many representatives of the nationalities
mentioned became active in political and social
live and successfully pursued their careers after October
1917. The leading cadre of the NKVD reflects this tendency
in concentrated form.”
Although Jews were not a larger majority in the Soviet Union
than, for example, Germans, Poles, or the Baltic people,
their dominance in the Leadership of the NKVD is tremendous:
They represented the biggest single group, even before the Russians,
who numbered more than 30-times as many people as the
Jews. It can be assumed that the over-representation of Jews in
leading positions of the USSR in general and the NKVD or its
predecessors in particular may have been even greater in the
years prior to Stalin’s rule; at least it can be assumed that the
initial enthusiasm of members of ethnic or religious minorities
for the new Soviet regime, as it was described by Petrov, decreased
with the years between 1918 and 1934, that is, during
17 years of uninterrupted terror. Such a reduction of the Jewish
portion will have resulted only for statistical reasons, simply
because of the sheer numbers of Russians, it was more likely
that a Russian would occupy an available position rather than a
Jew.
One should keep in mind, however, that this applies only to
leading positions of the NKVD. Petrov relates in this regard:5
“Jews were not as strongly represented when considering
all staff members of the state security. On March 1,
1937, 7% of all employees of the state security system were
Jews, and on January 1, 1941, this percentage shrank to
4%. During the years before the war, the principle used to
select the cadre members for the nomenklatura lead to a
massive change of the ethnic make-up of the NKVD apparatus.
At that time, no specific politics to remove especially
Jews from the state security existed as yet. That changed between
1950-1953, when the persecution of the MGB system
was directed exclusively against Jews. Already in 1950,
Jews made up only 1.5% of the entire strength of the operating
cadre.”
To illustrate this, Table 2 shows the various nationality percentages
of all employees of the state security system. Although
even here Jews were still overrepresented in early 1937,
it is not nearly as drastic as in the leading positions.
Thus, if at the times of the Red Terror members of an ethnic
group representing 80% of the population (Russians) were re-
Table 2: Nationality of all members
of the State Security Services of the USSR4
Nationality 1. March 37 1. Jan. 41 30. Nov. 50
Russian 65% 66% 77.1%
Ukrainian 11% 16% 11%
Belorussian 4% 2.7% 1.9%
Georgian 1.2% 1.3% 1.0%
Armenian 1.8% 1.8% 1.3%
Aserbaijanian 0.4%
Kasakhian 0.8%
Usbekian 0.3%
Latvian 1% 0.3%
Lithuanian 0.3%
Estonian 0.2%
Turkmen 0.1%
Tajikian 0.1%
Kirgisian 0.1%
Karelian and Finish 0.1%
Moldavian 0.1%
Jews 7% 4% 1.5%
Other Nationalities 3.3%
Foreign” Nationalities 1.2% 0.1%
sponsible for 30% of the terror, and in turn members of a group
representing 1.8% of the population (Jews) were responsibly
for almost 40% of the Terror, then the following relation results:
0.4
0.018 ÷ 0.3
0.8 = 22.2 ÷ 0.375 = 59.26
This means that statistically, the Jews of the Soviet Union
bear 59 times as much responsibility for the Red Terror per
capita than the Russian population. Even that does not justify
demands for collective guilt, collective responsibility, collective
shame, or accusations of being a “perpetrator people” as
are often and unjustly imposed on the German people. But it
makes understandable, why a German Member of Parliament
might touch upon this issue in his speech.
Whoever claims that Martin Hohmann made false statements
when he explained that Jews bore a disproportionately
huge responsibility for the Red Terror can only claim ignorance
of the facts as an excuse.
Notes
1 Hohmann referred to the book by Rogalla von Bieberstein as reviewed in
this issue of TR. For a complete reproduction of his speech and a discussion
of the subsequent “scandal”, see Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung
7(3&4) (2003), pp. 417-421; online:
www.vho.org/VffG/2003/3/Hohmann417-421.html
2 Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 Jan. 2004.
3 Nikita Petrov, “Veränderungstendenzen im Kaderbestand der Organe der
sowjetischen Staatssicherheit in der Stalin-Zeit”, Forum für osteuropäische
Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte, 5(2) (2001), www1.kueichstaett.
de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/petrow.htm
4 Petrov gives as sources: “This table was compiled using archival material:
GARF, holding 9401, IL. 8, file 43, sheets 33-34; ibid., file 64, sheet 24;
CA FSB, holding 4-os., IL. 8, file 11, sheets 310-341.”
5 Ibid., footnote 16.
By Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/tr/2004/3/3_04.html [then download PDF copy]
In celebration of the Golden Calf called political correctness,
a “No-No word of the year” is chosen in Germany at the
beginning of each new year (Unwort des Jahres). In 2003, the
word chosen was “Tätervolk”, which means “perpetrator people”
or “perpetrator nation”. This term is usually used to refer
to the German people as the perpetrators of ‘the Holocaust’.
Using this word in this context does not normally lead to reactions
in Germany, since many Germans feel morally superior
when they collectively accuse their own people. However,
when this word was used in the context of Jews as the main
perpetrators of Bolshevist crimes in the early Soviet Union, all
hell broke loose.
This happened in October of 2003, when German Member
of Parliament Martin Hohmann, during a speech entitled “Justice
for Germany” (Gerechtigkeit für Deutschland), pondered
the question, whether it was justified that Germany is still today
treated like a criminal among nations for what happened two
generations earlier.1 He stated that this special treatment is
based upon a concept of hereditary guilt, which is in opposition
to all Christian and modern Western values. He rejected the notion
that Germans are a “perpetrator people” just as he rejected
the notion that Jews should be held collectively responsible for
what some ancestors of Jews did during the Soviet revolution.
Neither the Germans nor the Jews, he summarized, are
Tätervölker.
That comparison was enough for him to get publicly ostracized,
thrown out of Parliament and out of his political party
(the Christian Socialist CDU), and vilified by the media. However,
a criminal prosecution against him for “inciting to hatred”
had to be stopped after it turned out that he really didn’t say
anything wrong. As a result of this, Hohmann’s infamous use of
the word “Tätervolk” led to this word being the No-No-word of
2003 chosen by an obscure, non-democratic prize committee.2
This event may be taken as an opportunity to investigate the
issue of disproportionately high Jewish involvement in the Soviet
terror apparatus a little more thoroughly.
In 2001, Nikita Petrov published an article that sheds some
light into this topic. Petrov investigated the “Tendencies of
Change in the Consistency of the Cadre of the Organs of the
Soviet State Security during the Stalin Era.”3 Although the time
Table 1: Number of Leading NKVD Staff Members – by Nationality
(absolute numbers and percentage of total, listed by dates)
Nationality 10. July 34 1. Oct. 36 1. March .37 1. July .37 1. Jan. 38 1. Sept. 38 1. July 39 1. Jan. 40 26. Feb. 41
Russians 30 (31.25%) 33 (30.00%) 35 (31.53%) 38 (33.63%) 58 (45.31%) 85 (56.67%) 102 (56.67%) 111(64.53%) 118 (64.84%)
Jews 37 (38.54%) 43 (39.09%) 42 (37.84%) 36 (31.86%) 35 (27.34%) 32 (21.33%) 6 (3.92%) 6 (3.49%) 10 (5.49%)
Ukrainians 5 (5.21%) 6 (5.45%) 6 (5.41%) 5 (4.42%) 4 (3.13%) 10 (6.67%) 19 (12.42%) 29 (16.86%) 28 (15.38%)
Poles 4 (4.17%) 5 (4.55%) 5 (4.50%) 4 (3.54%) 1 (0.78%) 1 (0.67%) - - -
Latvians 7 (7.29%) 9 (8.18%) 8 (7.21%) 7 (6.19%) 5 (3.91%) - - - 1 (0.55%)
Germans 2 (2.08%) 2 (1.82%) 2 (1.80%) 2 (1.77%) 2 (1.56%) 1 (0.67%) - - -
Georgians 3 (3.13%) 4 (3.64%) 5 (4.50%) 4 (3.54%) 4 (3.13%) 5 (3.33%) 12 (7.84%) 12 (6.98%) 12 (6.59%)
Armenians 1 (1.04%) 1 (0.91%) 1 (0.90%) 1 (0.88%) 1 (0.78%) 1 (0.67%) 2 (1.31%) 2 (1.16%) 2 (1.10%)
Aserbaijanians 1 (1.04%) 1 (0.91%) 1 (0.90%) 1 (0.88%) - - - - -
Belorussians 3 (3.13%) 2 (1.82%) 3 (2.70%) 3 (2.65%) 2 (1.56%) 3 (2.00%) 1 (0.65%) 3 (1.74%) 4 (2.20%)
Others 1 (1.04%) 1 (0.91%) - 1 (0.88%) 1 (0.78%) 3 (2.00%) 1 (0.65%) 1 (0.58%) 3 (1.65%)
No data 2 (2.08%) 2 (1.82%) 3 (2.70%) 11 (9.73%) 15 (11.72%) 9 (6.00%) 10 (6.54%) 8 (4.65%) 4 (2.20%)
period covered by Petrov, as far as it is of interest here, covers
only the years from 1934 to 1941, the data obtainable from
documents stored in Soviet archives still allows us to come to
some definite conclusions.
Table 1, as taken from Petrov’s paper, lists the number of
leading staff members of the Soviet People’s Commissariat for
Internal Affairs (NKVD, predecessor of the later KGB) according
to their nationality. Until the outbreak of the Great Purges
in 1937/38, Jews apparently had a huge proportion in the leading
positions of the Soviet terror machinery. Petrov explains in
this regard:
“Of course, the presence of so many Latvians, Poles,
and especially Jews in the leadership of the NKVD is explained
by the nature of restrictions prior to 1917, to which
they were subjected. With its romanticism of blurring national
borders, the bolshevist regime opened all venues to
numerous representatives of these nationalities. They justly
viewed the new state order as ‘theirs,’ as one to which they
belonged unconditionally. Many representatives of the nationalities
mentioned became active in political and social
live and successfully pursued their careers after October
1917. The leading cadre of the NKVD reflects this tendency
in concentrated form.”
Although Jews were not a larger majority in the Soviet Union
than, for example, Germans, Poles, or the Baltic people,
their dominance in the Leadership of the NKVD is tremendous:
They represented the biggest single group, even before the Russians,
who numbered more than 30-times as many people as the
Jews. It can be assumed that the over-representation of Jews in
leading positions of the USSR in general and the NKVD or its
predecessors in particular may have been even greater in the
years prior to Stalin’s rule; at least it can be assumed that the
initial enthusiasm of members of ethnic or religious minorities
for the new Soviet regime, as it was described by Petrov, decreased
with the years between 1918 and 1934, that is, during
17 years of uninterrupted terror. Such a reduction of the Jewish
portion will have resulted only for statistical reasons, simply
because of the sheer numbers of Russians, it was more likely
that a Russian would occupy an available position rather than a
Jew.
One should keep in mind, however, that this applies only to
leading positions of the NKVD. Petrov relates in this regard:5
“Jews were not as strongly represented when considering
all staff members of the state security. On March 1,
1937, 7% of all employees of the state security system were
Jews, and on January 1, 1941, this percentage shrank to
4%. During the years before the war, the principle used to
select the cadre members for the nomenklatura lead to a
massive change of the ethnic make-up of the NKVD apparatus.
At that time, no specific politics to remove especially
Jews from the state security existed as yet. That changed between
1950-1953, when the persecution of the MGB system
was directed exclusively against Jews. Already in 1950,
Jews made up only 1.5% of the entire strength of the operating
cadre.”
To illustrate this, Table 2 shows the various nationality percentages
of all employees of the state security system. Although
even here Jews were still overrepresented in early 1937,
it is not nearly as drastic as in the leading positions.
Thus, if at the times of the Red Terror members of an ethnic
group representing 80% of the population (Russians) were re-
Table 2: Nationality of all members
of the State Security Services of the USSR4
Nationality 1. March 37 1. Jan. 41 30. Nov. 50
Russian 65% 66% 77.1%
Ukrainian 11% 16% 11%
Belorussian 4% 2.7% 1.9%
Georgian 1.2% 1.3% 1.0%
Armenian 1.8% 1.8% 1.3%
Aserbaijanian 0.4%
Kasakhian 0.8%
Usbekian 0.3%
Latvian 1% 0.3%
Lithuanian 0.3%
Estonian 0.2%
Turkmen 0.1%
Tajikian 0.1%
Kirgisian 0.1%
Karelian and Finish 0.1%
Moldavian 0.1%
Jews 7% 4% 1.5%
Other Nationalities 3.3%
Foreign” Nationalities 1.2% 0.1%
sponsible for 30% of the terror, and in turn members of a group
representing 1.8% of the population (Jews) were responsibly
for almost 40% of the Terror, then the following relation results:
0.4
0.018 ÷ 0.3
0.8 = 22.2 ÷ 0.375 = 59.26
This means that statistically, the Jews of the Soviet Union
bear 59 times as much responsibility for the Red Terror per
capita than the Russian population. Even that does not justify
demands for collective guilt, collective responsibility, collective
shame, or accusations of being a “perpetrator people” as
are often and unjustly imposed on the German people. But it
makes understandable, why a German Member of Parliament
might touch upon this issue in his speech.
Whoever claims that Martin Hohmann made false statements
when he explained that Jews bore a disproportionately
huge responsibility for the Red Terror can only claim ignorance
of the facts as an excuse.
Notes
1 Hohmann referred to the book by Rogalla von Bieberstein as reviewed in
this issue of TR. For a complete reproduction of his speech and a discussion
of the subsequent “scandal”, see Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung
7(3&4) (2003), pp. 417-421; online:
www.vho.org/VffG/2003/3/Hohmann417-421.html
2 Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 Jan. 2004.
3 Nikita Petrov, “Veränderungstendenzen im Kaderbestand der Organe der
sowjetischen Staatssicherheit in der Stalin-Zeit”, Forum für osteuropäische
Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte, 5(2) (2001), www1.kueichstaett.
de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/petrow.htm
4 Petrov gives as sources: “This table was compiled using archival material:
GARF, holding 9401, IL. 8, file 43, sheets 33-34; ibid., file 64, sheet 24;
CA FSB, holding 4-os., IL. 8, file 11, sheets 310-341.”
5 Ibid., footnote 16.