World Significance of the Russian Revolution Prefatory Letter by Dr. Oscar Levy

 



THE WORLD SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 



PREFATORY LETTER, 
By Dr. Oscar Levy. 

Dear Mr. Pitt-Rivers, — 

When you first handed me your MS. on The 
World Significance of the Russian Revolution, you expressed 
a doubt about the propriety of its title. After a perusal 
of your work, I can assure you, with the best of consciences, 
that your misgivings were entirely without foundation. 
No better title than The World Significance of Ike Russian 
Revolution could have been chosen.for no event in any age 
will finally have more significance for our world than this 
one. We are still too near to see clearly this Revolution, 
this portentous event, which was certainly one of the 
most intimate, and therefore least obvious, aims of the 
world-conflagration, hidden as it was at first by the fire 
and the smoke of national enthusiasms and patriotic 
antagonisms. It was certainly very plucky of you to try 
and throw some light upon an event which necessarily 
must still be enveloped in mist and mystery, and I was 
even somewhat anxious, lest your audacity in treating 
such a dangerous subject would end in failure, or what is 
nearly the same, in ephemeral success. No age is so 
voracious of its printed offspring as ours. There was thus 
some reason to fear lest you had offered to this modem 
Kronos only another mouthful of his accustomed nourish- 
ment for his immediate consumption. 

I was, I am glad to report, agreeably surprised, — sur- 
prised, though not by the many new facts which you give, 
and which must surprise all those who take an Interest in 



li PREFATORY LETTER 

current events — facts, I believe, which you have carefully 
and personally collected and selected, not only from 
books, but from the lips and letters of Russian eye-witnesses 
and sufferers, from foes as well as from friends of the great 
Revolution. What I appreciate more than this new light 
thrown on a dark subject, more than the conclusion drawn 
by you from this wealth of facts, is the psychological 
insight which you display in detecting the reasons why a 
movement so extraordinarily bestial and so violently 
crazy as the Revolution was able to succeed and finally 
to overcome its adversaries. For we are confronted 
with two questions which need answering and which, 
in my opinion, you have answered in your pamphlet. 
These questions are : (1) How has the Soviet Government, 
admittedly the Government of an insignificant minority, 
succeeded not only in maintaining but in strengthening 
its position in Russia after two and a half years of power ? 
And (2) Why has the Soviet Government, in spite of its 
outward bestiality and brutal tyranny succeeded in 
gaining the sympathies of an increasing number of people in 
this country? You give the answer : Bolshevism was opposed 
by Democracy only, and a Democracy which was too 
cowardly to draw the last consequences of its own creed, 
which, of course, is ultimately nothing else but Bolshevism. 
The Bolshevist simply did what his father, Mr. Democrat, 
said he would do if he could but never dared to do — 
hence the latter's vacillation and hypocrisy and failure, 
hence the former's energy, sincerity and success. " No 
movement " you rightly say on p. 14 about the " White 
Opposition " — " representing a heterogeneous jumble of 
contradictory elements can ever defeat another movement, 
which at any rate knows its own mind and allows of no 
compromise." .... 

What, then, is this wonderful " own mind " of the 
Bolshevists ? Yon rightly recognize that there is an 
ideology behind it and you clearly diagnose it as an 
ancient ideology. There is nothing new under the Sun, 
it is even nothing new that this Sun rises in the East. 



PREFATORY LETTER 111 

The Sua has a habit of rising there, his rays, thousands 
of years ago, used to select for a first visit the deserts 
and mountains of Palestine, where lonely Prophets 
caught this radiance and whence eager apostles 
brought it to pagan and less " enlightened " countries. 
It was by them that the light was carried to Europe, 
where, it is true, it was received at first somewhat un- 
willingly and distrustfully. After a couple of centuries this 
resistance was overcome, and moreover, what yonder was 
called the Reign of God and the Millennium of Brotherhood, 
became with us in Europe the " Reign of Liberty," the 
" Reign of Reason," the " Reign of Equality," and finally 
the " Reign of the Proletariat." We all remember from 
History these passionate followers of St. Peter and St, 
Paul — though more of the latter than the former — who, 
in Apostolic succession saw the coming " Dawn," and 
preached the Holy Faith. There is a direct line from 
Savonarola to Luther, and from Luther to Robespierre, 
and from Robespierre to Lenin . . Lenin, the Lenin of to-day, 
may have been partially converted by that experience 
of men and affairs which has converted many an enthusiast 
and, alas I has frequently made a cyme or a rogue of 
him : one certain thing that may be gathered from his 
writings is this, that he was before the Revolution a dreamer 
and a visionary, and one quite worthy of his spiritual 
ancestors, of whom I have only named some, while omitting 
many other important names. It is quite certain that 
he started his revolutionary career as a true and convinced 
Apostle of " Light and Faith," which he preached as the 
orthodox disciple of his spiritual father, who inspired the 
" Newest " testament " Das Capital I " In M. Landau 
Aldanov's book, Linine* there is to be found an account 
of a young student who visited the Smolny Institute in 
order to witness the first public appearance of Lenin after 
the Bolshevist coup d'ttat. Neither Trotsky nor the others 
made much impression upon the young man, but Lenin 

• Bibliothiqut d'Histoim ConUtaporaine, Paris, 1919, p. 70. 



W PREFATORY LETTER 

received with rapturous applause completely turned 
his head. "One could not say that it was a political 
harangue. It was the cry from the soul of a man who 
had waited thirty years for that moment." " I thought," 
the witness adds, " that I was listening to the voice of 
Girolamo Savonarola II" ... Poor Savonarola — he, a 
man no doubt of finer grain than his Russian progeny, 
was heard complaining one day, that he had to fight for 
his Heaven with the weapons of Hell. 

" To Hell with such a Heaven ! " That is the 
answer that you, would give to the outpourings of these 
enthusiasts and fanatics. You could give that answer 
honestly, indignantly, even passionately. For you have 
lost faith in Democracy and yours has become another 
aim, another valuation, another vision for the future of 
Mankind. One day, it is quite certain, this vision of yours 
will overcome its inspired opponent, whose representative 
now sits, though none too safely, upon his bloodstained 
throne. " A definite, positive movement," to quote your 
own words, " alone can defeat another definite move- 
ment I " But how could the undefined and undefinable 
Democrats, the Democrats of Statistics and Economics, 
the frequenters of Lecture Rooms and Debating Societies. 
the professors of " progress and evolution," ever even dare 
to oppose a movement that realised so gloriously what 
they themselves had alwa\'s professed to believe, to hope, 
and to cherish 1 How could they ever venture to attack 
with their paper-dart arguments the heavy armour plate 
of pure conscience and inspired belief ? How could this 
democratic powder ever allow itself to collide with the 
Bolshevist fire ? For Bolshevism is a religion and a faith, 
How could these half -con verted believers ever dream to 
vanquish the '* Truthful " and the " Faithful " of their 
own creed, these holy crusaders, who had gathered round 
the Red Standard of the Prophet Karl Marx, and who 
fought under the daring guidance of these experienced 
officers of all latter-day revolutions — the Jews ? 

I am touching here on a subject which, to judge from 



PREFATORY LETTER V 

your own pamphlet, is perhaps more interesting to you 
than any other. In this you are right. There is no race 
in the world more enigmatic, more fatal, and therefore 
more interesting than the Jews. Every writer who, like 
yourself, is oppressed by the aspect of the present and 
embarrassed by his anxiety for the future must try to 
elucidate the Jewish question and its bearing upon our 
Age. For the question of the Jews and their influence on 
the world past and present, cuts to the root of all things, 
and should be discussed by every honest thinker, however 
bristling with difficulties it is, however complex the subject 
as well as the individuals of this Race may be. For the 
Jews, as you are aware, are a sensitive Community, and 
thus very suspicious of any Gentile who tries to approach 
them with a critical mind. They are always inclined — 
and that on account of their terrible experiences — 
to denounce anyone who is not with them as against them, 
as tainted with " mediaeval " prejudice, as an intolerant 
Antagonist of their Faith and of their Race. 

Nor could or would I deny that there is some evidence, 
some prima facie evidence of this antagonistic attitude in 
your pamphlet. You point out, and with fine indignation, 
the great danger that springs from the prevalence of 
Jews in finance and industry, and from the preponderance of 
Jews in rebellion and revolution. You reveal, and with 
great fervour, the connection between the Collectivism 
of the immensely rich international Finance — the Demo- 
cracy of cash values, as you call it — and the international 
Collectivism of Karl Marx and Trotsky — the Democracy of 
and by decoy-cries, . . , And all this evil and misery, the 
economic as well as the political, you trace back to one 
source, to one "Jons ei origo malorum " — the Jews, 

Now other Jews may vilify and crucify you for these 
outspoken views of yours ; I myself shall abstain from 
joining the chorus of condemnation I I shall try to under- 
stand your opinions and your feelings, and having once 
understood them— as I think I have— I can defend you 
from the unjust attacks of my often too impetuous Race. 






Vi PREFATORY LETTER 

But first of all, I have to say this : There is scarcely an 
event in modem Europe that cannot be traced back to the 
Jews. Take the Great War that appears to have come to an 
end, ask yourself what were its causes and its reasons : you 
will find them in nationalism. You will at once answer 
that nationalism has nothing to do with the Jews, who, as 
you have just proved to us, are the inventors of 
the international idea. But no less than Bolshevist 
Ecstasy and Financial Tyranny can National Bigotry 
(if I may call it so) be finally followed back to 
a Jewish source — are not they the inventors of 
the Chosen People Myth, and is not this obsession part and 
parcel of the political credo of every modem nation, however 
small and insignificant it may be ? And then think of the 
history of nationalism. It started in our time as a reaction 
against Napoleon ; Napoleon was the antagonist of the 
French Revolution ; the French Revolution was the con- 
sequence of the German Reformation ; the German Refor- 
mation was based upon a crude Christianity ; this kind of 
Ghristianity was invented, preached and propagated by the 
Jews : therefore the Jews have made this war ! . . . Please 
do not think this a joke : it only seems a j oke, and behind it 
there lurks a gigantic truth, and it is this, that all latter-day 
ideas and movements have originally sprung from a 
Jewish source, for the simple reason, that the Semitic idea 
has finally conquered and entirely subdued this only 
apparently irreligious universe of ours. 

It has conquered it through Christianity, which of 
course, as Disraeli pointed out long ago, is nothing 
but " Judaism for the people." The Ideal of Democracy 
contained in this appeal of the Jews to the people was their 
successful battle cry, their most wonderful propaganda 
work, their " Dieu le veult," that finally forced the world 
to follow them. With it they have inspired — or, if you 
will, infected — Lollards and Hussites, Protestants and 
Puritans, Socialists and Bolshevists alike. Now Demo- 
cracy, as we all know, declares — or pretends to proclaim — 
everybody free and equal : it was therefore bound to 



PREFATORY LETTER VU 

destroy the bond, feudal or patriarchal, between lord and 
serf, master and servant, and it replaced it, had to replace 
it, by another bond (a bond it had to invent for the occasion) 
that of wages and salaries. Democracy, as we all know, 
abolished slavery — that natural slavery in which the 
master took an interest in his slaves, because they were part 
and parcel of his most valuable property ; but it re- 
introduced it in the form of Wage Tyranny, by means of 
which the " freed " serf could be freely exploited and even 
squashed out like a lemon without any harm being done 
to the Master's interests. Thus ended this glorious hberty 
principle of the Reformation and the Revolution : the 
finest theory that has ever been invented for the most 
miserable of all practices, that have ever defiled this 
world. No doubt the Jews are responsible for this, as 
they are responsible for everything, because they are the 
spiritual fathers of Democracy and therefore of 
plutocracy. But now let me ask you this one 
question : " Have they perchance introduced these 
theories into this country ? Were Cromwell and his 
Ironsides Jews ? Was the Puritan Revolution inspired by 
an English Trotsky? Was Charles I. beheaded at the 
bidding of a Jewish commissary of the people ? . . . 
Why, there were no Jews in this country before Cromwell. 
The Roundheads of the Great Rebellion, it is true, chanted 
and rechanted the Hebrew psalms, but their poetry alone 
and not the poets themselves had up to this time been 
admitted to England. The Christians did the wonderful 
thing all by themselves, just to prove to the world, what 
good Jews they could be if " the Spirit moved them 1 " 
And when Jews were once admitted, they and the Christians 
alike became the victims as well as the exploiters of this 
Puritanism, this democracy, this idealism, this plutocracy. 
The Scotch and American financier succeeded as well as 
his brother of the original Puritan faith. The Christian 
usurer took his pound of flesh with the same gusto as did 
his colleague of the Jewish persuasion. And as to the 
factory system, that destroyed and destroys the soul and 



Viii PREFATORY LETTER 

body of men as well as the bounty and beauty of the 
land ; it has been and is carried on by blonde and flat- 
nosed Jews — at least in this country — as successfully as 
by their dark and sharp-featured brethren on the Continent 
of Europe. 

All this " tu-quoque " argument is, of course, no excuse 
whatever for the Jews. There is no doubt that the Jews 
regularly go one better or worse than the Gentile in what- 
ever they do, there is no further doubt that their influence 
to-day justifies a very careful scrutiny, and cannot possibly 
be viewed without serious alarm. The great question, 
however, is whether the Jews are conscious or unconscious 
malefactors. I myself am firmly convinced that they 
are unconscious ones, but please do not think that I wish 
to exonerate them on that account. ... A conscious 
evildoer has my respect, for he knows at least what is 
good, an unconscious one — well : he needs the charity 
of Christ — a charity which is not mine — to be forgiven for 
not knowing what he is doing. But there is in my firm 
conviction not the slightest doubt that these revolutionary 
Jews do not know what they are doing ; that they are 
more unconscious sinners than voluntary evildoers. I am 
glad to see that this is not an original observation of mine, 
but that you yourself have a very strong foreboding about 
the Jews being the victims of their own theories and 
principles. . . . On p. 39 of your pamphlet you write : 
" It may be that the Jews have always been instrumental 
in bringing about the events that they most heartily 
disapprove of ; that maybe is the curse of the Wandering 
Jew." If I had not the honour, as well as the pleasure, 
of knowing you personally, if I were not strongly aware 
of your passionate desire for light and your intense loathing 
of unfairness, this sentence, and this sentence alone, which 
tells the truth, will absolve you in my eyes from the odious 
charge of being a vulgar anti-Semite. 

No, you are not a vulgar, you are a very 
enlightened, critic of our Race. For there is an anti- 
semitism, I hope and trust, which does the Jews more 



PREFATORY LETTER IX 

justice than any blind philo-semitism, than does that 
merely sentimental " Let-them-all-come Liberalism," which 
in itself is nothing but the Semitic Ideology over again . And 
thus you can be just to the Jews, without being " romantic " 
about them. You have noticed with alarm that the Jewish 
elements provide the driving forces for both communism 
and capitalism, for the material as well as the spiritual 
ruin of this world. But then you have at the same time 
the profound suspicion that the reason of all this extra- 
ordinary behaviour may be the intense Idealism of the Jew. 
In this you are perfectly right. The Jew, if caught by 
an idea, never thinks any more in water-tight compart- 
ments, as do the Teuton and Anglo-Saxon peoples, whose 
right cerebral hemisphere never seems to know what its left 
twin brother is doing : he, the Jew, like the Russian, at 
once begins to practise what he preaches, he draws the 
logical conclusion from his tenets, he invariably acts upon 
his accepted principles. It is from this quality, no doubt, 
that springs his mysterious force — that force, which you no 
doubt condemn, but which you had to admire even in the Bol- 
shevists. And we must admire it, whether we are Jews or 
whether we are Christians, for have not these modern Jews 
remained true to type, is there no parallel for them in history, 
do they not go to the bitter end even in our day, do they 
not take the Cross upon their shoulders, as once did their 
great Brother in Race ? Their brother in Race as well as in 
Revolution, He, against whom the accusation, as found in 
the Gospel of St. Luke xxiii, 6, ran, " He stirreth up the 
people teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from 
Galilee to this place." .... Who stirred up the people 
during the late war in Germany ? Who pretended to 
have again the truth, that truth about which Pontius 
Pilate once shrugged his shoulders ? Who pleaded for 
honesty and deanhness in Politics, that honesty which 
brings a smile to the lips of any experienced Pro-consul of 
to-day ? Writers, who were mostly Jews : Fried, Feraau, 
Latzko, Richard GreUing — the author of " J 'Accuse." 
Who was killed, and allowed himself to be killed for these 






X PREFATORY LETTER 

very ideas and principles ? Men and women of the Jewish 
Race : Haase, Levine, Luxemburg, Landauer, Kurt Eisner, 
the Prime Minister of Bavaria. . . . From Moses to Marx, 
from Isajah to Eisner, in practice and in theory, in 
idealism and in materialism, in philosophy and in politics, 
they are to-day what they have always been : passionately 
devoted to their aims and to their purposes, and ready, 
nay, eager, to shed their last v drop of blood for the 
realisation of their visions. 

"But these visions are all wrong," you will reply. . . . 
" Look where they have led the world to. Think, that 
they have now had a fair trial of 3,000 years standing. How 
much longer are you going to recommend them to us and 
to inflict them upon us ? And how do you propose to get 
us out of the morass into which you have launched us, if 
you do not change the path upon which you have led the 
world so disastrously astray ? ' 

To this question I have only one answer to give, and it 
is this : " You are right." This reproach of yours, 
which — I feel it for certain — is at the bottom of your anti- 
Semitism, is only too well justified, and upon this common 
ground I am quite willing to shake hands with you and 
defend you against any accusation of promoting Race 
Hatred : If you are anti-Semite, I, the Semite, am an 
anti-Semite too, and a much more fervent one than even 

you are We have erred, my friend, we have 

most grievously erred. And if there was truth in our error 
3,000, 2,000, nay, a 100 years ago, there is now nothing 
but falseness and madness, a madness that will produce an 
even greater misery and an ever wider anarchy. I confess 
it to you, openly and sincerely, and with a sorrow, whose 
depth and pain an ancient Psalmist, and only he, could 
moan into this burning universe of ours, . . . We who 
have posed as the saviours of the world, we, who have 
even boasted of having given it " the " Saviour, we are 
to-day nothing else but the world's seducers, its destroyers, 
its incendiaries, its executioners. . , . We who have 
promised to lead you to a new Heaven, we have finally 



PREFATORY LETTER XI 

succeeded in landing you into a new Hell. . . . There 
has been no progress, least of all moral progress, . . . And 
it is just our Morality, which has prohibited all real pro- 
gress, and — what is worse — which even stands in the way 
of every future and natural reconstruction in this ruined 
world of ours, ... I look at this world, and I shudder 
at its ghastliness : I shudder aU the more, as I know the 
spiritual authors of all this ghastliness. . . . 

But its authors themselves, unconscious in this as in all 
they are doing, know nothing yet of this startling revela- 
tion. While Europe is aflame, while its victims scream, 
while its dogs howl in the conflagration, and while its very 
smoke descends in darker and even darker shades upon 
our Continent, the Jews, or at least a part of them, and 
by no means the most unworthy one, endeavour to escape 
from the burning building, and wish to retire from Europe 
into Asia, from the sombre scene of our disaster into the 
sunny corner of their Palestine. Their eyes are closed to 
the miseries, their ears are deaf to the meanings, their 
heart is hardened to the anarchy of Europe : they only 
feel their own sorrows, they only bewail their own fate, they 
only sigh under their own burdens. . . . They know 
nothing of their duty to Europe, which looks around in 
vain for help and guidance, they know nothing even of 
their own great ancestors, to whose heart the appeal of 
pity was never made in vain : they have become too 
poor in love, too sick at heart, too tired of battle, and lo I 
these sons of those who were once the bravest of 
soldiers are now trying to retire from the trenches to the 
rear, are now eager to exchange the grim music of the 
whistling shells with that of the cow-bells and vintage 
songs in the happy plain of Saron. , . . 

And yet we are not all Financiers, we are not 
all Bolshevists, we have not all become Zionists. 

. . And yet there is hope, great hope, that this same Race 
which has provided the Evil will likewise succeed in supplying 
its antidote, its remedy — the Good. It has always been so 
in the past — was not that fatal Liberalism, which has 



xii PREFATORY LETTER 

finally led to Bolshevism — in the very midst of that dark 
nineteenth century, most strenuously opposed by two 
enlightened Jews — by Friedrich Stahl, the founder of the 
Conservative Party in Germany, and by Benjamin Disraeli, 
the leader of the Tory Party in England ? And if these 
two eminent men had no suspicion yet that their own race 
and its holy message were at the bottom of that unfor- 
tunate upheaval, with which their age was confronted : 
how eager, how determined, how passionate will be 
the opposition of the Disraelis of the future, once they 
have clearly recognised that they are really fighting 
the tenets of their own people, and that it was their 
" Good," their " Love," their " Ideal," that had launched 
the world into this Hell of Evil and Hatred. A new 
" Good," as new Love, a true Love, an intelligent Love, a 
Love that calms and heals and sweetens will then spring 
up amongst the Great in Israel and overcome that sickly 
Love, that insipid Love, that romantic Love, which has 
hitherto poisoned all the Strength and all the Nobility of 
this world. For Hatred is never overcome by Hatred : 
it is only overcome by Love, and it wants a new and a 
gigantic Love, to subdue that old and devilish Hatred of 
to-day. That is our task for the future — a task which 
will, I am sure, not be shirked by Israel, by that same 
Israel which has never shirked a task — whether it was for 
good, or whether it was for evil. . . . 

Yes, there is hope, my friend, for we are still here, our 
last word is not yet spoken, our last deed is not yet done, 
our last revolution is not yet made. This last Revolution, 
the Revolution that will crown our revolutionary work, will 
be the revolution against the revolutionaries. It is bound 
to come, and it is perhaps upon us now. The great day of 
reckoning is near. It will pass a judgment upon our 
ancient faith, and it will lay the foundation to a new 
religion. And when that great day has broken, when the 
values of death and decay are put into the melting-pot to 
be changed into those of power and beauty, then you, my 
dear Pitt-Rivers, the descendant of an old and distinguished 



PREFATORY LETTER xiii 

GentUe family, may be assured to find by your side, and as 
your faithful ally, at least one member of that Jewish Race, 
which has fought with such fatal success upon all the 
spiritual battlefields of Europe. 

Yours against the Revolution and for Life ever 

flourishing, 

Oscar Levy. 
Royal Societies Club, 

St. James' Street, 

London, S.W. 

July, 1920.