Quotes About Sverdlov

But the Stalin school of organizational work differed from the Sverdlov in one fundamental aspect that Stalin did not mention: it applied a self-serving test in selecting candidates for advancement in the party hierarchy. No longer did it suffice to give good indication that one was a person of ability, energy, and devotion to the Bolshevik cause.

Fiddler on the Roof gave a lot of attention to pogroms but made no mention of the fact that they were connected with the assassination of two Czars and the rise of the revolutionary Jew in Russia. There is no mention of Jews like Sverdlov murdering the Czar and his family in the aftermath of the revolution that never got mentioned either, because by then Tevye was living on the lower East Side of New York.

In the traditional Russian and Nazi definition of Jewishness, where parentage and surname counts as much as religious and cultural affiliation, such a view is plausible. But what was Jewish except lineage about Bolsheviks like Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamenev, or Sverdlov? Some were second- or even third-generation renegades; few even spoke Yiddish, let alone knew Hebrew.