To get to the Russian Revolution, and then to Jerusalem, in this article we need to go round the houses a little, backwards and forwards in time, around Europe and finally to the Revolution itself. We start with a retrospective look, post Revolution, at the Jewish Internationalists according to Sir Winston Churchill and Mrs Nesta Webster. The Internationalists were those who had a vision of a communist style One World.
Churchill and Mrs Webster
In 1920, in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, Winston Churchill wrote an article called ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism: A struggle for the soul of the Jewish People’. In it he identifies three groups of Jews. National Jews or Zionists, industrious and productive Jews and lastly Internationalist Jews. Of the first two groups he was immensely positive. He extols their progressive ways and their good relations with Britain and France.
Churchill lists amongst these Internationalist Jews Leon Trotsky, the Ukrainian born Jewish number two to Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg a Polish socialist who naturalised to Germany. She worked with Karl Liebknecht, a Lutheran, who was a member of the 1912 Reichstag and co-founder with Luxemburg of the Spartacus league, who were anti war loans and pro socialist democracy. He also mentions Emma Goldman (United States), Bela Kun (became Hungarian communist dictator) and of course Karl Marx, introduced to communism by Friederich Engels, whose family were wealthy cotton mill owners and Pietist Lutherans. This group he describes as follows:
‘The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most if not all of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world.’
Many notable Germans, some of whom feature in this article, were Lutheran protestants. Karl Marx, his siblings and his children were baptisted in to the Lutheran Church and Leon Trotsky attended the Lutheran St Paul’s Cathedral school in Odessa. It was the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer that the Kaiser had visited in Jerusalem in 1898 when Theodore Herzl attempted to persuade the Kaiser to help the Zionists build their country in Palestine, as seen in Part 1 of this series.
Churchill then refers to an author called Mrs Webster, who was known for her unorthodox writing about secret societies and movements, the aim of whom was world dominance. The ‘plot’ is loosely identified in her work ‘World Revolution’ written after Churchill’s article, in 1921. She notes similarities between the French and Russian Revolutions and the work of subversive European Continental Freemasons (not British). This is surprising as Lutheran doctrine found that Freemasonry practiced a form of idolatry which they strongly disagreed with. Marx and Engels both had connections to Lutheranism. Perhaps the communist manifesto casting aside of religion, provoked a reaction in the Lutheran and other religious communities, and with it the assumption that the communists must be worshiping something, hence the assumption of Freemasonry.
Whilst there may have been some elements of Webster’s writing that bore resemblence to reality, a lot of her theory lacked grounding in tangible evidence, contained clear contradictions and lacked sound reasoning. Unsurprisingly her works are later rejected as ‘conspiracy theory’.
She talks, however, at length about the concept of ‘internationalism’, as a pary to patriotism and nationalism. Germany under the Kaiser was nationalist, but in her view it controlled the ‘internationale’ abroad and this is where things get very interesting. She quotes Mr Adolf Smith (p. 199) when talking about the Russian Revolution;
‘That Socialism, as ‘made in Germany,’ and destined mainly for foreign exportation, would facilitate the invasion not only of Russia, but also of France, Italy and even England, was not very apparent at first. Yet this might have been suspected, for it was evident at the Socialist Internationale, whenever it was controlled by Germans, became a pan-German association.’
In other words, she believed that socialism was invented in Germany. Instead of being used in Germany it was meant to turn the global working class in to a weapon with which Germany could overthrow other countries.
If this was the case, that Germany was influencing socialism abroad, what would the impact be on the new Bolshevik government and indeed Europe? This pan-german socialism is strongly echoed in the pan-communism of the Communist party of the Soviet Union after its formation in 1917. Socialist and communist influences were already evident in the Trade Unions, before Karl Marx and Friederich Engels even put pen to paper when they met in 1844. Communist movement was largely enabled by The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of 1834 founded by the Welsh Robert Owen. He was also founder of Utopian Socialism and the author of failed socialist utopian commune-led experiments in America (1824-1828).
The concept of communism was rooted even earlier in the work Utopia by Sir Thomas More from 16th century England. In Utopia More envisioned a society without borders, restrictions or ownership, where everyone lived in blissful equality. He was appointed as Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor in 1529. He was asked to communicate on behalf of Henry VIII with Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran branch of the Protestant Church in Germany. He would later be beheaded for refusing to recognise Protestantism. It is possible that this schism between the Catholic Church and Protestantism has wielded more weight over recent times than is evident.
It is also beneficial to bear in mind that Moscow and St Petersburg were two of the five constituencies of German Lutherans in Russia, as seen on this map.
The Black Hand
A Serbian terrorist from the Black Hand secret military group under the leadership of Apis (Dragutin Dimitrijević’s psuedonym, meant Sacred bull or Bee), assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarayevo on 28th June 1914. Serbia (allied with Russia) wanted unification with Bosnia, in a similar way that Germany had recently unified its constituent states. First Serbia would have to take Bosnia away from Austria-Hungary. Germany was on Austria-Hungary’s side but attempted, with the help of the Russian Tsar, to calm matters. The Kaiser mentions ‘the unscrupulous agitation that has been going on in Serbia for years’ in a telegram to Tsar Nicolas – worth noting for future reference.
Apis would later be put to death by the Serbian Prince Regent Aleksandar on 26 June 1917. Apis had foolishly declared that he would remove Aleksandar in the same way that he had brought him to the throne, and his father King Petar I Karadjordjevic. Apis played the role of King Maker but it is unclear who he was working for.
The work ‘Apis, the congenial conspirator’ written by David MacKenzie in 1927 details how Apis learned to speak German during long visits to Germany and even attended the great Kaisermanover, a national German army exercise held in 1906. (p.57) He was then appointed to the General Staff section of the Serbian Army and formed a group of loyal officers, exerting pressure on the government to provide funds and modern weapons. At odds with other military leaders and politicians, the Black and White hand Factions were formed. The Serbians allied with the Bulgarians, Greeks and Montenegran’s against the Ottomans. Serbia, however, was not traditionally an expansionist nation. Was Apis being employed by Germany to clear a physical path through to the Ottoman Empire in anticipation of its collapse? Meanwhile France, Britain and Russia were in accord to not act on the Ottoman Empire as individual nations.
If Germany was pulling Serbia’s strings through Apis, this would mean that the Kaiser, or members of his government, despite the long term friendship with the Austro-Hungarian Kaiser, may well have played some part in the assassination. It is telling that there are two single mentions of Franz Ferdinand in the Kaiser’s Memoirs (p. 246), and neither express sorrow or remorse over the death. He seemed solely concerned with whether he should continue with his international engagements or stay in Germany, so as not to spark a war for which he might be blamed.
Somewhat conveniently at the time of the assassination, the Kaiser was at the German Keil Regatta. It just so happened that the British Admiral Warrender had sailed to the Regatta for official mutual inspection of naval fleets. It might have looked to the impartial observer that Franz Ferdinand’s death was entirely unexpected. Even if suspicions were aroused the British might appear at that point to be in league with Germany, despite the widespread concern about the Kaiser’s intention to expand his empire.
Helphand, the Revolution’s Littlefinger
Indeed the assassination did set off a chain of declarations of war across Europe and the Middle East. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the Jewish journalist and writer from Odessa, Russia (now Ukraine), left on a tour of western Europe reporting for the Russian newspaper ‘Russkya Viedomosti’ in 1914. Whilst he was by now a firm Zionist, he did not single out Jewish participation in his reporting of the war effort. The Jewish inhabitants of each country fought alongside the non-Jewish. The Russian army included a vast 300,000 Jewish soldiers. We will come to Jabotinsky’s arrival in Alexandria, Egypt and then on to Palestine in the next article.
Jabotinsky had written about a great war looming on the horizon in an article titled ‘Horoscope’ on 1st January 1912, perhaps partly in the hope that a war, with the help of the Revolutionaries, would create the change in Russia that the Jews so badly needed. (p.3451 iOS Kindle, Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, Shmuel Katz, 2014). It is also possible he had heard talk of war amongst his fellow revolutionary writers, perhaps through the St Petersburg publication ‘Iskr’ for which Trotsky wrote. His article was left uncharacteristically uncensored by Russian officials. Were there plans afoot to unseat the Tsarist regime anyway?
One of the authors at ‘Iskr’ was a Jewish Russian (Lithuanian) called Alexander Parvus or ‘Helphand’. He knew Lenin, worked closely with Rosa Luxemborg and seemed at first glance to be a mentor for Trotsky. He was frequently given the front page of the ‘Iskr’ socialist newspaper according to ‘The Prophet Armed’ Trotsky, 1879-1921 Deutscher, Isaac. (P. 100.) Lenin wrote about him ‘Parvus deals primarily with the development of the world market’. Interestingly the idea of ‘permanent revolution’, which is normally attributed to Trotsky, was believed to have been an idea that Parvus conveyed before Trotsky (p.102.) He was also apparently against the Zionist idea for a nation of Jews.
There was something slightly aloof about Parvus. He didn’t become directly involved in the Menshevik or Bolshevik groups, maintaining an overview of the two groups. He had been expelled numerous times from Germany before he met with the German Imperial Ambassador to Constantinople.
Parvus had suggested to the Ambassador that Germany assist financially in enabling Lenin and the Bolsheviks to travel to Petrograd to remove the Tsar and establish a Revolutionary government. The Ambassador outlined the benefits to Germany as explained by Parvus in a cable on 9 January 1915. The reply came from Gottlieb von Jagow, Secretary of State for the Foreign Office, affirming a meeting for Parvus with the Kaiser. Kurt Riezler, detailed to the Kaiser at General Headquarters, would be at the meeting but his role not disclosed. Riezler would later head up the Stockholm Russia division in September 1917, just a month ahead of the planned ‘revolution’. Sweden was officially neutral in World War I.
After the meeting with the Ambassador, Parvus travelled back towards Germany and visited David Ryazanov (David Borisovich Goldendach), the Odessan born revolutionary in Vienna. Ryazanov was an internationalist like Trotsky, where Parvus was a nationalist. The author A.B.Zeman of the The Merchant of Revolution; the life of Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus) 1867-1924 (1965) states that Parvus was ‘looking for up-to-date information about the Russian Social Democrat exiles: on their policies and mood, on their latest alliances and enmities.’ (p142). This seemed very much an intelligence gathering exercise. Trotsky’s co-writer Alexinsky in October 1915 branded Parvus an Agent Provocateur and Parvus found himself being gradually pushed out of the inner revolutionary circle (p.220 The Prophet Armed).
In the collection of documents from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry “Germany and Revolution in Russia 1915-1918” A.B.Zeman, (Documents, 1958) Parvus’s memorandum proposal for the Revolution was submitted to the Foreign Ministry in early March 1915. By 11 March approval had been given for an initial 2 million German marks to fund the revolution, and Parvus was to be able to travel freely in Germany with a police passport. Then again on the 6 July a new request for 5 million marks was granted.
Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German envoy to Copenhagen sent a cable to the German understate Secretary on 14th August 1915. In it he stresses the importance of getting a document by Parvus published speedily. He states ‘I have the hope that we shall not only emerge from this war as the external victors and the greatest power in the world...’ but hoped their victory could allow them to unify disparate groups around the Kaiser. (p. 5., Documents, Zeman, 1958)
In the same collection of papers the conditions of a peace accord between Germany and Revolutionary Russia are laid out as communicated from Lenin and here we start to see the layers of secrecy being applied to the process. The Germans needed it to appear there was no connection whatsoever between them and the Revolutionaries (p.7., Documents, Zeman, 1958). Rantzau also served in the new Weimar government after the fall of the German Empire. A collection of documents well worth reading.
It is also evident from communications on 8 May 1916 that there were at least three agents organising Russian propaganda on behalf of Germany. Litchev gathered Scandinavian socialist revolutionaries from Stockholm and Haparanda. Klein organised distribution of pamphlets amongst Russians returning from Canada and American, discouraging them from signing up to the Tsar’s army, showing graphic pictures of what the German prisoner of war camps looked like. Keskula, an Estonian business man also had contact with Scandinavian socialist groups, and passed on Lenin’s situation reports regularly. All of these men were funded as part of the operation.
As well as acting as go between for Germany and the Bolsheviks on this matter, Parvus then went on to advise the first President of the German Weimar Republic after the collapse of the German Empire No doubt encouraged by Rantzau. He is said to have quoted Martin Luther as follows: ‘I know of no other way than anger and zeal; when I want to write well, pray well, and preach well, I must be angry’. (The Merchant of Revolution, A.B.Zeman, p.47 1958)
Socialist Calls for Peace
Whilst these negotiations were going on Vladimir Lenin left the Polish village Poronin and escaped to Switzerland claiming a relatively easy political asylum. During his stay he attempted to garner support from European left socialist groups at the Zimmerwald conference in Autumn 1915 and Kiental conference in 1916. The Zimmerwald Socialist Conference was led by the Swiss and Italians. This was their Manifesto as drafted by Leon Trotsky. In it they claimed that Capitalism was the root of the European ‘Slaughterhouse’, not forgetting that Switzerland was a neutral country.
‘Regardless of the truth regarding immediate responsibility for the outbreak of this war, one thing is clear: the war that produced this chaos is the result of imperialism, the striving by capitalist classes of each nation to feed their greed for profit through exploitation of human labour and natural resources around the entire globe.’
Of course, if the root of the war was down to a desire for territorial expansion by the Kaiser, this statement would be partially correct. However, by ignoring the individual root of responsibility of the war, they in effect were forgiving the aggressor and blaming those who were attempting to defend themselves.
The conference was the result of the collective gathering of workers unions from across Europe and had its roots in the radical Working Men’s Association (First international) a selection of anarchist, socialist, communist and trade union groups founded by George Odger (British Trade Unionist from 1859) and Henri Tolaine (wrote the workers ‘The Manifesto of the Sixty’ 1864) among others.
Swiss Socialist politician Robert Grimm was the organiser of the Zimmerwald Conference. His influence is mentioned in the series of German letters and cables surrounding the Russian Revolution (p.46, Documents, A.B.Zeman 1958). In communications between the State Secretary to the Minister in Bern, Grimm is given permission by Zimmermann to travel through Germany unimpeded, however Sheidemann and Ebert, state that he is almost certainly pro-entente (pro the British and French) in April 1917 when the transport of Lenin and the Revolutionaries from Switzerland is underway. Friederich Ebert was the German Socialist Party leader who would become the first democratically elected President of the Weimar after the fall of the German Empire, though of course he would be advised by Parvus, who seemed to have many fingers in many pies.
Lenin also attended the conference but, contrary to the tone in Trotsky’s manifesto and the general wish for peace, called for an ‘armed uprising against capitalism’. It was not as well received as he had hoped. He then joined the more radical Zurich Social Democrats when he moved to Zurich, but again little progress was made.
A special train
Less than a month after the first revolution of February 1917, when Russia’s ebb was low, the military depleted from the demoralisation propaganda spread by the Germany agents, and the people starving and ready for decisive change, Parvus asked the German Party leader Adolf Muller for help to arm the workers, prosecute the Tsar, and a number of other measures (The Merchant of Revolution, A.B.Zeman, p. 207). A communique is then passed from the German Foreign Ministry to the Treasury on 1st April asking for 5,000,000 marks to continue their political work in Russia. The monies were approved just two days later. The German government had a different Revolutionary government to deal with than the one they had intended and they needed to move swiftly to change that.
In a cable from the Understate Secretary to the Minister in Bern, Switzerland, 26 March 1917, (p.26 Documents, A.B.Zeman) we see that the ‘Special train will be under police escort’, that the Minister should send a list of names and the date of departure, and there would be a handover to German officials at the border. The English seemed to have got wind of the intended movement of Russian Revolutionaries through France and would not allow them to reach Russia, very possibly because they also knew of the help and encouragement they were receiving from the enemy of the Entente, Germany. Instead the Revolutionaries suggested that a request to allow 300-400 exiles in Switzerland to return to be transported instead in to Sweden via Germany (p.50 Documents, A.B.Zeman). Amongst these exiles Lenin and about 40 other Bolsheviks would hide. The operation must be swift and attract as little attention as possible.
The train left Switzerland around the 6/7 April 1917 and arrived in Sassnitz north Germany on 11th April where they spent the night and then headed to Malmo in Sweden. In a cable to the Foreign Ministry we learn that 33 Russian emigres had arrived but the remainder were held up because of passport issues.
Finally the critical message arrived at the Political section of General Staff in Berlin on 21st April 1917. "Lenin's entry into Russia successful. He is working exactly as we would wish".
Lenin’s Bolsheviks would then work alongside the First Revolutionary Government in a Dual Power until 24th October 1917, when Lenin’s Red Guard led an armed insurrection with 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and a number of workers. The defeat of Alexander Kerensky’s first Russian Republic government was swift.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the Balfour declaration was sent by Balfour to Lord Rothschild on the 2nd November 1917, just one week later.
The first Revolutionary government consisted of a number of Jewish leaders who were deposed and replaced with Lenin, Trotsky and their government. It also seemed, when Trotsky was later driven out of government in 1923, that the Jews had fulfilled their usefulness and were now dispensible. Parvus, who had become a millionaire in the period leading up to the revolution, had been shunned by the communists for his capitalist approach to business.
E. Vandervelde and Findlay, Jean E. H wrote in their work ‘Three aspects of the Russian Revolution’ (London 1918, p.134) a whole chapter on German propaganda. In it the author notes the pitfalls of German propaganda.
‘The essence of the German propaganda is always the same; they try to convince the Russians that they are the victims of British and French Imperialism, for which they are making a great mistake in allowing themselves to be killed.’
This is the same sort of troop demoralising propaganda we are told came from the Bolshevik Red Army. The Bolsheviks who without Germany would probably never have taken Russia, nor formed the Soviet Union.
When the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Internationalists were gathered in Petrograd, a leading member of the revolutionaries was expressing how difficult he was finding it to get a British Military passport having been a British resident. Of course, it didn’t strike them for a second that their subsequent reliance on Germany might have something to do with that.
German propaganda dropped over Russian territory showed a map of Russia surrounded on all sides by a tentacled British Octopus, a symbol that seems to be used regularly as a deflection from the real aggressor.
Vandervelde implies that this fear based propaganda actually serves to provoke ‘a psychological reaction’. Where Russian’s were concerned, the greater the perceived abuse of good faith the greater the reaction. Germany was actively prodding a sore point, in that the Revolution had brought the existing relationship between Britain and Imperial Russia to a shuddering halt. Instead of foreseeing their own actions in partnering with Britains enemy Germany would have consequences they took the propaganda bait.
To follow: how did the migration of Russian Jews to Palestine begin, which nations were involved and what really happened between the British Military, the Jewish troops and the Arabs.
Malmo in Denmark?? Malmo is in Sweden.