Validity of an anti-Semitic quote attributed to Alexander Solzhenitsyn

[Sailor Haumea]

In anti-Semitic circles, I freely see the following quote circulated, and it's claimed that Alexander Solzhenitsyn said it:

You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

I have read that the only evidence of him ever saying this comes from "Dr." (lol) David Duke. Can anyone confirm or deny the authenticity of this quote? Holocaust deniers frequently use it as evidence that "da jooish Bolsheviks perpetrated the Holodomor!" It would be useful to know whether or not Solzhenitsyn actually said this.

[Sergey Romanov]

Yes, it's a fake quote by David Duke.

[Sergey Romanov]

Here is the source of the fake quote. https://archive.org/stream/TheSecretBeh ... m_djvu.txt

[DavidFrankenberg]

This is not too far from what you can understand of Soljenitsin's thoughts when you read his book 2OO years together...

[David Thompson]

DavidFrankenberg -- You wrote:

This is not too far from what you can understand of Soljenitsin's thoughts when you read his book 2OO years together...

To what specific passages from 200 Years Together do you refer? From the forum rules:

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[DavidFrankenberg]

I dont possess the book in its english version since it was not published in english, but i have it in french text.
I wd translate from french to english (i hope my translation is not too bad). The few english texts i found in internet are not complete so far as i know.

Here is what Soljenitsin says, citing Bulgakov in 1941 : "

the part taken by the Jews in bolshevism is, alas, inordinately big. And it is the sin of judaism (...) this is the strong will of judaism which, in power, has manifested itself through bolshevism and the crushing of the russian people (...) the persecution of christians was finding its most zelous actors among the jewish commissars like Goubelman-Iaroslavski".
[The jews] no longer felt, their head was spinning. Through the immensity of russian land, it scrolls : Elizabethgrad becomes Zinovievsk... and here we go hard ! The town where the tsar has been assassinated takes the name of the assassin Sverdlovsk.
(...)
We wont try to know if the communist Jews consciously tried to take revenge on Russia by annihilating it, by crushing the russian heritage, but deny this spirit of revenge would be like deny the inequality of rights under the tsar and deny the participation of Jews in bolshevism

".
It is clear in the mind of Soljenitsin : the Jews took revenge on Russia through the bolshevik Revolution because of the persecutions and especially the pogroms.

Soljenitsin likes to talk about the many leaders who were jewish, the many torturers of the Cheka and the assassins of the Romanov who were jewish.
Soljenitsin reported that, while he was in jail in Gulag, Jews were better treated than him (equating non-jews)... clearly meaning that jewish detainees were favoured by a somehow jewish system.

"If I would care to generalise, and to say that the life of the Jews in the camps was especially hard, I could, and would not face reproach for an unjust national generalisation. But in the camps where I was kept, it was different. The Jews whose experience I saw - their life was softer than that of others."

[Sergey Romanov]

That Solzhenitsyn was an antisemite is obvious. He didn't like Jews, but he was also careful not to pronounce the vulgar nonsense made up by Duke.

Also Solzh:

"It is necessary to state explicitly that the October coup was not carried by Jews (though it was under the general command of Trotsky and with energetic actions of young Grigory Chudnovsky during the arrest of Provisional Government and the massacre of the defenders of the Winter Palace). Broadly speaking, the common rebuke, that the 170-million-people could not be pushed into Bolshevism by a small Jewish minority, is justified. Indeed, we had ourselves sealed our fate in 1917, through our foolishness from February to October-December. "

[David Thompson]

Sergey and DavidFrankenberg -- Please provide enough of a citation for our readers to be able to find and confirm quotes. Solzhenitsyn's 200 Years Together, for example, is a two-volume work (in Russian) of more than a thousand pages (see the description at https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Together ... 5969707023). Hence the AHF rule:

Undocumented claims undercut the research purposes of this section of the forum. Consequently, it is required that proof be posted along with a claim. The main reason is that proof, evidence, facts, etc. improve the quality of discussions and information. A second reason is that inflammatory, groundless posts and threads attack, and do not promote, the scholarly purpose of this section of the forum.

This requirement applies to each specific claim. In the past, some posters have attempted to evade the proof requirement by resort to the following tactics, none of which are acceptable here:

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[snpol]

That Solzhenitsyn was an antisemite is obvious.

Agreed. However, he was intelligent enough and not complete idiot to express his real views in rude, vulgar form.

He didn't like Jews,

It itself is not a great sin. No one had to like Jews, Russians, Americans...

...but he was also careful not to pronounce the vulgar nonsense made up by Duke.

Couldn't agree more.

[DavidFrankenberg]

Sergey and DavidFrankenberg -- Please provide enough of a citation for our readers to be able to find and confirm quotes. Solzhenitsyn's 200 Years Together, for example, is a two-volume work (in Russian) of more than a thousand pages (see the description at https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Together ... 5969707023). Hence the AHF rule:

Undocumented claims undercut the research purposes of this section of the forum. Consequently, it is required that proof be posted along with a claim. The main reason is that proof, evidence, facts, etc. improve the quality of discussions and information. A second reason is that inflammatory, groundless posts and threads attack, and do not promote, the scholarly purpose of this section of the forum.

This requirement applies to each specific claim. In the past, some posters have attempted to evade the proof requirement by resort to the following tactics, none of which are acceptable here:

A general reference to a website, or a book without page references; citations or links to racist websites; generalized citations to book reviews; and citations to unsourced, secondary articles or opinions.

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning.

https://forum.axishistory.com/app.php/rules

As i said, i am using the french translation which you can find there https://www.barruel.com/soljenitsyne-de ... semble.pdf
My first quote is page 520, the second is page 715.

[Sergey Romanov]

That Solzhenitsyn was an antisemite is obvious. He didn't like Jews, but he was also careful not to pronounce the vulgar nonsense made up by Duke.

Also Solzh:

"It is necessary to state explicitly that the October coup was not carried by Jews (though it was under the general command of Trotsky and with energetic actions of young Grigory Chudnovsky during the arrest of Provisional Government and the massacre of the defenders of the Winter Palace). Broadly speaking, the common rebuke, that the 170-million-people could not be pushed into Bolshevism by a small Jewish minority, is justified. Indeed, we had ourselves sealed our fate in 1917, through our foolishness from February to October-December. "

https://archive.org/stream/Solzhenitsyn ... /mode/1up/

[snpol]

It should be noted that Solzhenitsyn's book "200 years together" is very popular among anti-Semites. But anti-Semitism is very subtle, not so rude and primitive as he refers to some historical facts damaging for Russians Jews, facts that show them in extremely negative light (detailed account of Jewish terrorism for example). Solzhenitsyn quotes some Zionists with their unpleasant anti-Russian sentiments. He quotes notorious anti-Semites and doesn't accuse their xenophobic views but uses some statistical data that at least indirectly backs the views.
On the page 194 (Russian edition) Solzhenitsyn recalls that his Father a student of Moscow university left it and went to fight on the front in 1914 as a volunteer. At the same time Solzhenitsyn uses statistical data: in 1915 - 2/3 of new students in medical faculty of Odessa university were Jews. University of Rostov has among new students a lot of Jews - juridical faculty 81%, medical faculty 56%, physical-mathematical 54%.
Sozhenitsyn quotes (p. 178) known anti-Semite Shulgin.

During this period, [a quarter of a century before the 1917 revolution], Jewry took over the political life of the country ... took over political Russia ... The brain of the nation (except for government and government circles) found itself in Jewish hands and got used to think on a Jewish pointer. " "With all the" restrictions ", the Jews ... took possession of the soul of the Russian people"

No, they are not words of Solzhenitsyn himself but I have an impression that he absolutely agree with it.
As I have said he widely uses statistics - 35% business people in Russia were Jews (with 5% of Jewish population). Number of Jewish doctors, lawyers and especially journalists were disproportionally big. Solzhenitsyn writes that almost all journalists that attended hearings in the States Duma (parliament) were Jewish. Even most of specialists in Russian culture were Jews according to Solzhenitsyn.

Here is on-line text of the book in Russian.
http://book-online.com.ua/read.php?book ... =48#s48_n0

[David Thompson]

Thanks for those citations, Sergey and DavidFrankenberg.

[Sergey Romanov]

It should be noted that Solzhenitsyn's book "200 years together" is very popular among anti-Semites. But anti-Semitism is very subtle, not so rude and primitive as he refers to some historical facts damaging for Russians Jews, facts that show them in extremely negative light (detailed account of Jewish terrorism for example). Solzhenitsyn quotes some Zionists with their unpleasant anti-Russian sentiments. He quotes notorious anti-Semites and doesn't accuse their xenophobic views but uses some statistical data that at least indirectly backs the views.
On the page 194 (Russian edition) Solzhenitsyn recalls that his Father a student of Moscow university left it and went to fight on the front in 1914 as a volunteer. At the same time Solzhenitsyn uses statistical data: in 1915 - 2/3 of new students in medical faculty of Odessa university were Jews. University of Rostov has among new students a lot of Jews - juridical faculty 81%, medical faculty 56%, physical-mathematical 54%.
Sozhenitsyn quotes (p. 178) known anti-Semite Shulgin.

During this period, [a quarter of a century before the 1917 revolution], Jewry took over the political life of the country ... took over political Russia ... The brain of the nation (except for government and government circles) found itself in Jewish hands and got used to think on a Jewish pointer. " "With all the" restrictions ", the Jews ... took possession of the soul of the Russian people"

No, they are not words of Solzhenitsyn himself but I have an impression that he absolutely agree with it.
As I have said he widely uses statistics - 35% business people in Russia were Jews (with 5% of Jewish population). Number of Jewish doctors, lawyers and especially journalists were disproportionally big. Solzhenitsyn writes that almost all journalists that attended hearings in the States Duma (parliament) were Jewish. Even most of specialists in Russian culture were Jews according to Solzhenitsyn.

Here is on-line text of the book in Russian.
http://book-online.com.ua/read.php?book ... =48#s48_n0

Solzh certainly was an antisemite, and in the original "draft" of the book he wrote in the 1960s he was even a bit more explicit. That said, he was a "kinder, gentler" antisemite. His antisemitism IMHO stemmed from his Russian nationalism - hence he believed in a sort of a collective responsibility, and called "both sides" - Russians and Jews - to apologize to each other.

His rhetoric contained an element of a reconciliation.

Which is why the Duke quote can be dismissed outright.

[Terry Duncan]

Whilst I cannot claim any great knowledge on this subject, I did see David Duke advertised on a live internet chat recently, so I spammed the chat asking about this quote and after a time I was given a 'it was in one of his pamphlets, not a book' answer. Looking at Wikipedia there is a hint there about such a pamphlet, but I cannot find it (I am pretty bad at searching so others may well find it easier) and it may exist only in Russian. The following is from Wikipedia;

"Similarities between Two Hundred Years Together and an anti-Semitic essay titled "Jews in the USSR and in the Future Russia", attributed to Solzhenitsyn, has led to inference that he stands behind the anti-Semitic passages. Solzhenitsyn himself claims that the essay consists of manuscripts stolen from him, and then manipulated, forty years ago. However, according to the historian Semyon Reznik, textological analyses have proven Solzhenitsyn's authorship."