Was Stalin of Jewish/Hebrew descent ?

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Hanski
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#46

Post by Hanski » 16 Aug 2003, 16:06

Without Russian language skills, I understand the name that Yosif Vissaryonoviths Dzhugashvili chose for himself means "made of steel".

He also had a nickname "Koba". Where does it originate from, does it have a meaning or particular connotations in Russian?

Hanski

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AHLF
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#47

Post by AHLF » 16 Aug 2003, 17:55

hmononen wrote:Without Russian language skills, I understand the name that Yosif Vissaryonoviths Dzhugashvili chose for himself means "made of steel".

He also had a nickname "Koba". Where does it originate from, does it have a meaning or particular connotations in Russian?

Hanski
Actually, Dzhugashvili means "son of Dzhuga"(no particular translation to what Dzhuga is).
best,

AHLF.


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Wulpe
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#48

Post by Wulpe » 18 Aug 2003, 12:29

ChristopherPerrien wrote: The biggest danger, Is that if Stalin was born a "Jew", it could give

more "validity?" to some very bad tenants of Hitler's and Nazi's beliefs about the alliance of Jews and Communists. This is my "riason de' entre'"
( premise or theory) for starting this topic in the first place.
The number of Jews in the bolshevist party would be interesting. The only source I know seems anti-jewish biased: according to Robert Wilton´s The Last Days of the Romanovs. How Tsar Nicholas II and Russia´s Imperial Family were murdered (London, Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1920) the highest party officials in 1918/1919 had this ethnical composition:

457 Jewish
35 Latvian
17 Russian
15 German
11 Armenian
3 Polish
3 Finnish
2 Ukrainian
1 Lithuanian
1 Hungarian
1 Asian
1 Czech

michael mills
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#49

Post by michael mills » 18 Aug 2003, 13:59

Christopher Perrien wrote:
The biggest danger, Is that if Stalin was born a "Jew", it could give
more "validity?" to some very bad tenants of Hitler's and Nazi's beliefs about the alliance of Jews and Communists. This is my "riason de' entre'"
( premise or theory) for starting this topic in the first place.
Although it was a tenet of National Socialist ideology, promoted in particular by Alfred Rosenberg, that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy to take over first Russia and then the World, no National Socialist ever surmised that Stalin himself was Jewish.

In fact, one stream of thought within National Socialism held that Stalin was in fact a Russian nationalist who was purging out all the Jewish Bolsheviks (eg Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev) and transforming the Soviet Union from a Communist state to a more traditonal authoritiarian Russian nationalist polity. Ribbentrop in particular was a protagonist of that concept, and for a long time he was trying to convince Hitler that the Soviet Union was no longer a hotbed of Jewish Bolshevism but rather a state with which Germany could do business; he finally succeeded in August 1939.

Ribbentrop was not alone in his mistaken view that Stalin was destroying "Jewish Bolshevism". Trotsky in exile was propagating the idea that Stalin had betrayed the Revolution, and was in fact resurrecting anti-Semitism. Many conservative politicians in Europe believed that the mass purges from 1936 onward and the Moscow trials constituted the Russian "thermidor", with Stalin playing the role of a Bonaparte, extingusihing the last embers of the Revolution and instituting a more traditional regime.

michael mills
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#50

Post by michael mills » 18 Aug 2003, 14:12

Wulpe wrote:
The number of Jews in the bolshevist party would be interesting. The only source I know seems anti-jewish biased: according to Robert Wilton´s The Last Days of the Romanovs. How Tsar Nicholas II and Russia´s Imperial Family were murdered (London, Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1920) the highest party officials in 1918/1919 had this ethnical composition:
The figures given are probably correct for 1918-19.

However, by 1933, Jewish influence at the top levels of the regime was much less. Trotsky had been exiled, and the other two top Jews, Kamenev and Zinoviev, had been stripped of power.

The only Jews left at the top, ie in Stalin's inner circle, was Kaganovich, and he was there purely because he was a flunky of Stalin, not because he had any personal power.

Nevertheless, Jews were still over-represented in the middle levels of the power structure, and constituted a sort of managerial class. They could even be the equivalent of ministers, eg Litvinov, which in any other country would be the summit of power, but not in the USSR, where ultimate power was held by Stalin and his inner circle, who actually did not hold state office.

The Jewish managerial class was hit particularly hard by the purges during the Ezhovshchina of 1936-38, when the latent anti-Semitism of the masses was allowed to bubble up, although not overtly of course. However, the replacement of Ezhov by the notably philosemitic Beria in November 1938 put a halt to the persecution of the managerial class, and Jews returned to senior positions in the bureaucracy.

According to the census of 1939, 40% of the Jewish population were classed as "sluzhashchie", that is white-collar workers, the equivalent of public servants, and their dependants. That was a much higher proportion than for any other population group, where the majority were classed as industrial workers or peasants.

ChristopherPerrien
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#51

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 18 Aug 2003, 19:30

Thanks Wulpe ans Micheal for those posts.
457 Jewish
35 Latvian
17 Russian
15 German
11 Armenian
3 Polish
3 Finnish
2 Ukrainian
1 Lithuanian
1 Hungarian
1 Asian
1 Czech
Those figures are "interesting". They validate early Nazi's beliefs that at least in the Soviet Union in the early days of the Nazi party the Communist movement was lead and controlled by Jews in the S.U.
90:457= about 80% Jewish

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