Jews and Communism in Moldova/Moldavia (1924 - June 1941)

[R. Bryant]

Karl Radl

As part of my work on the relationship between jews and communism: I have been undertaking to write some summary articles on the subject of the power of jews in relation to the non-Russian Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs), which made up a significant amount of the Soviet Union's territorial base. While the jewish role in the Soviet Union is famous in relation to Russia as well as the Ukraine: it is less well-known in relation to the smaller SSRs and by showing that jewish dominance occurs at both the SSR and central level (i.e. the central Bolshevik Party) then it strongly supports the identification of jews with the rise and crimes of communism (i.e. the Judeo-Bolshevism thesis).

One of the tiniest of all the SSRs was Moldavia, which was originally an Autonomous Region; which was the governmental grade below an SSR, and being located on the south-western border of the Ukraine was a source of constant friction between the USSR and the nationalist government of Romania. (1)

The Moldavian ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic); following the failure of a communist coup d'etat in Romania, came into being on 24th October 1924 when several Bolsheviks made a formal request to Georgy Chicherin (then Commissar for Foreign Relations) who initially resisted, but soon relented with the Moldavian ASSR being subordinated to the Ukrainian SSR having the chief function of reclaiming the province of Bessarabia from Romania via a concerted propaganda campaign emphasizing Moldavian identity and independence within the Soviet Union.

The letter that called the Moldavian SSR into being in 1924 was signed by ten Bolsheviks: Grigore Kotovski, Alexandru Badulescu, Pavel Tcacenco, Solomon Tinkelman, Alexandru Nicolschi, Alexandru Zalic, Ion Dic-Dicescu, Theodor Diamandescu, Teodor Chioran and Vladimir Popovici.

Interestingly enough of these five were of jewish origin: Alexandru Badulescu (nee Ghita Moscu), Solomon Tinkelman, Alexandru Nicolschi (nee Boris Grünberg), Ion Dic-Dicescu (nee Isidor Cantor) and Theodor Diamandescu. This means that 50 percent; or fully half, those who brought the Moldavian ASSR into being were jewish: when the entire jewish population of the ASSR in 1926 (two years after it had come into being) was only 8.5 percent of the total population (i.e. 48,564 out of 572,339 individuals). (2)

This is obviously a significantly disproportionate amount of jewish involvement in the creation of the Moldavian ASSR: however this is not surprising given that the communist movement in Moldova; as well as in Bessarabia, had long been dominated by jews. (3) It is also of interest to note that of the members of the Moldavian Communist Party in 1925 (just after the creation of the Moldavian ASSR) only 6.3 percent were actually Moldavian, while 15.7 percent of them were jewish. (4)

By the time of the Soviet invasion and annexation of Bessarabia on 20th June 1940: the composition of the Moldavian Communist Party had changed somewhat since now 17.5 percent of the membership were now actually Moldavian, but yet still 15.9 percent were jewish. (5)

When we recall that the jews only represented 8.5 percent of the total population of the Moldavian ASSR in 1926 then we can see that the representation of jews in the Moldavian Communist Party in 1925 was over double their representation in the total Moldavian population in 1926.

By 1940 the jewish representation in the Moldavian Communist Party had actually increased by 0.2 percent, while the jewish population had decreased to 45,620 individuals from 48,564 individuals according to the 1936 census data. Or in percentage terms: the jews had decreased from 8.5 percent to 7.8 percent of the population of the Moldavian ASSR by 1936, but yet by 1940 they had actually increased by 0.2 percent in their representation in the Moldavian Communist Party.

This in summary means that between 1925 and 1940: the jews decreased as a total element of the population of the Moldavian ASSR, but yet composed more of its local Communist Party over the same time period. That is quite a significant fact and indicates the scale of jewish involvement in communism was both significant and highly disproportionate.

When we factor in Bessarabia things get even more frightening: in so far that in 1940 there were 285 Bessarabian communists of this number 186 were jews. (6) This means that of the communists in Bessarabia a whopping 65.2 percent were jews.

Representative of this jewish domination is the fact that Moldavia was one of the few Soviet ASSRs/SSRs with its own Yiddish theatre company [only dissolved in 1946] (7) despite being one of the smallest: it also had one of the highest concentrations of jews relative to its total population in the Soviet Union. (8)

With so significant an over-representation in the Moldavian Communist Party the jews naturally were a major element in the local Stalinist terror machine whose principle victims in Moldavia till 1944 tended to be illiterate industrial workers and farmers (9) who were mostly non-jewish. (10) The local NKVD; necessarily dominated by local jewish communists given the composition of the Moldavian Communist Party, under the command of Sergo Goglidze; a Georgian, managed to send 53,356 individuals to Gulags or have them shot and 32,423 individuals were deported to other SSRs within the Soviet Union for political crimes between June 1940 and June 1941alone. (11)

In comparison in the 1930s before Goglidze arrived: the local NKVD had killed 4,913 individuals while deporting 15,000 to Gulags. A further 18,000 individuals had been starved to death by the Soviet Union in the Holodomor, which also effected the Moldavian ASSR (that remember was part of the Ukrainian SSR). (12) This wasn't good enough for Stalin and he had several ranking members of the Moldavian ASSR's NKVD shot before bringing in Goglidze. (13)

We should also pause to note that while the jews were massively over-represented in the local communist parties: they were also significantly under-represented in the early killings of the Great Purge; (14) although they were hit at a higher rate in the later killings, (15) and that the killings; as often misunderstood, were not a highly centralized affair, but rather what has been termed 'Soviet in spirit, local in context'. (16)

In other words while Stalin and the Kremlin gave a guiding spirit to the local NKVD operation: they did not actually direct it apart from when major show trials were in preparation. This means with the over-representation of the jews in the Moldavian Communist Party; as well as in the local NKVD, that the killing; or deportation to Gulags, of over 100,000 residents of Moldova rests heavily upon the jews.

This then makes sense of why anti-jewish violence became so significant in Moldova during the Second World War with the Moldavian rising against the jews with the predictable violence (17) that followed the kindling of such passions by their murderous oppression by jewish communists.


References

(1) Igor Casu, 2010, 'Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940-1953', p. 39 in Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe (Eds.), 2010, 'Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression', 1st Edition, Manchester University Press: New York
(2) The Jewish Virtual Library for some reason believes that half the population of Moldavia was jewish in 1920 (!?!) (see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ldova.html ): however this is clearly not accurate so I have taken my figures from Alexandr Voronovici, 2010, 'The Moldovan ASSR between the Bolshevik “Empire” and Greater Romania: Nation- and State- Building in the Soviet Borderland (1917-1940)', Published MA Thesis: Central European University, p. 51
(3) Michael Bruchis, 1984, 'Nations, Nationalities, People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia', 1st Edition, Columbia University Press: New York, pp. 141-197
(4) William Crowther, 1990, 'Ethnicity and Participation in the Communist Party of Moldavia', Journal of Soviet Nationalities, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 148-149
(5) Ibid.
(6) Casu, Op. Cit., p. 40
(7) Benjamin Pinkus, 1988, 'The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 200; William Korey, 1970, 'The Legal Position of Soviet Jewry: A Historical Enquiry', p. 85 in Lionel Kochan (Ed.), 1970, 'The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917', 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York
(8) Ibid, p. 80
(9) Robert Conquest, 2008, 'The Great Terror: A Reassessment', 3rd Edition, Pimlico: London, p. 258
(10) Implied by Voronovici, Op. Cit., p. 59; also see Jorg Baberowski, Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, 2008, 'The Quest for Order and the Pursuit of Terror: National Socialist Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union as Multiethnic Empires', p. 205 in Michael Geyer, Sheila Fitzpatrick (Eds.), 2008, 'Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York
(11) Casu, Op. Cit., pp. 41-43
(12) Ibid, p. 40
(13) Conquest, Op. Cit., p. 434
(14) Terry Martin, 1998, 'The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4, p. 856, n. 266
(15) Conquest, Op. Cit., pp. 401-402
(16) Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe, 2010, 'Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Problems, Perspectives and Interpretations', p. 3 in McDermott, Stibbe, Op. Cit.
(17) Shmuel Ettinger, 1976, 'The Modern Period', p. 1069 in Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson (Ed.), 1976, 'A History of the Jewish People', 1st Edition, Weidenfeld & Nicholson: London

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