What do you think?
Rate this book
Comrade. Jew. We Only Wanted Paradise on Earth
257 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 5, 2018
I had the pleasure of visiting the Judisches Museum Wien during my last visit to Vienna. The museum focuses on the Jewish experience in Austria, and its current special exhibit focuses on the Jewish participation in Communist movements, from the beginning of the Soviet revolution through the current day. This book provides a much deeper insight into the very personal experiences of people, complete with a series of wonderfully written essays. The book is beautifully rendered with high quality images that augment the text.
In one of the essays, there is a tremendously appropriate quote by Buchner from Danton’s Death that “The Revolution devours all its children.” This was especially true for many early Jewish intellectuals who enthusiastically supported the onset of Communism. The Jewish experience under Tsarist Russia, and under the Hapsburgs and before them, continued to be one in which the Jewish people experience regular pogroms (in Russia) or at the very least discrimination. Communism looked to be a way to seek equality for people, and even though many of the early Communist leaders came from Jewish backgrounds, many of them had also distanced themselves from Jewish religious practice. “Jews made a disproportionate contribution in terms of their numbers to the development of Socialism. The progentiors of the movement – Karl Marx, Moses Hess, Ferdinand Lassalle, Viktor Adler, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky – all became veritable icons of the woerkers’ movement. In most cases their Jewish origins and the “Jewish question” were of secondary importance. For them, anti-Semitism was a symptom of capitalism and would no longer exist in a classless society. With the end of capitalism, the Jews as an independent group would also disappear and become fully assimilated.” Of particular interest to me was the Jewish community settled in Soviet Sibera named Birobidzhan. I knew virtually nothing about this community, which started with much propaganda and enthusiasm, only to be eventually abandoned during the open emigration policy in the 1970s. Eventually Yiddish had been banned, and the forced assimilation policy ended in failure. Birobidzhan with one of the highest emigration percentages in all of the Soviet Union, and although it today contains a very small population of Jewish people, it retains the name of Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
Ultimately, this is a great book that seeks to provide not only the historical context, but also the individual stories of those people who found themselves passionately committed to the Soviet experiment, many of whom became disaffected in a reasonably short period of time during the twentieth century.
See my other reviews here!
In one of the essays, there is a tremendously appropriate quote by Buchner from Danton’s Death that “The Revolution devours all its children.” This was especially true for many early Jewish intellectuals who enthusiastically supported the onset of Communism. The Jewish experience under Tsarist Russia, and under the Hapsburgs and before them, continued to be one in which the Jewish people experience regular pogroms (in Russia) or at the very least discrimination. Communism looked to be a way to seek equality for people, and even though many of the early Communist leaders came from Jewish backgrounds, many of them had also distanced themselves from Jewish religious practice. “Jews made a disproportionate contribution in terms of their numbers to the development of Socialism. The progentiors of the movement – Karl Marx, Moses Hess, Ferdinand Lassalle, Viktor Adler, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky – all became veritable icons of the woerkers’ movement. In most cases their Jewish origins and the “Jewish question” were of secondary importance. For them, anti-Semitism was a symptom of capitalism and would no longer exist in a classless society. With the end of capitalism, the Jews as an independent group would also disappear and become fully assimilated.” Of particular interest to me was the Jewish community settled in Soviet Sibera named Birobidzhan. I knew virtually nothing about this community, which started with much propaganda and enthusiasm, only to be eventually abandoned during the open emigration policy in the 1970s. Eventually Yiddish had been banned, and the forced assimilation policy ended in failure. Birobidzhan with one of the highest emigration percentages in all of the Soviet Union, and although it today contains a very small population of Jewish people, it retains the name of Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
Ultimately, this is a great book that seeks to provide not only the historical context, but also the individual stories of those people who found themselves passionately committed to the Soviet experiment, many of whom became disaffected in a reasonably short period of time during the twentieth century.
See my other reviews here!
Displaying 1 of 1 review