(, Polish for "Judeo-Communism") is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, or pejorative stereotype, suggesting that most Jews collaborated with the Soviet Union in importing communism into Poland, or that there was an exclusively Jewish conspiracy to do so.Krajewski, Stanislaw (2000). "Jews, Communism, and the Jewish Communists" . In András Kovács (ed.). Jewish Studies at the CEU: Yearbook 1996–1999. Central European University. A Polish language term for "Jewish Bolshevism", or more literally "Jewish communism", Żydokomuna is related to the "Jewish world conspiracy" myth.Gerrits, André (1995). "Antisemitism and Anti-Communism: The Myth of 'Judeo-Communism' in Eastern Europe". East European Jewish Affairs. 25(1), 71 (49–72).
The idea originated as anti-communist propaganda at the time of the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1920), and continued through the interwar period. It was based on longstanding antisemitic attitudes, coupled with a historical fear of Russia. Most of Poland's Jews supported the government controlled by Józef Piłsudski;Kopstein, Jeffrey S., and Jason Wittenberg. "Who voted communist? Reconsidering the social bases of radicalism in interwar Poland." Slavic Review 62.1 (2003): 87–109. after his death in 1935, rising levels of popular and state antisemitism pushed a small minority, several thousand at most, into participating in, or supporting, communist politics, which were relatively more welcoming to Jews. This was seized upon and inflated by antisemites.
With the Soviet invasion of Poland and Stalin's 1939 occupation in eastern Poland, the Soviets used privileges and punishments to encourage ethnic and religious differences between Jews and Poles, characterized by Jan Gross as "the institutionalization of resentment". The stereotype was also reinforced because, as noted by Jaff Schatz, "people of Jewish origin constituted a substantial part of the Polish communist movement", even though "Communist ideals and the movement itself enjoyed only very limited support" among Polish Jews. There was an upsurge in the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as Communist traitors; it erupted into mass murder when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet eastern Poland in the summer of 1941.
The stereotype endured into postwar Poland because Polish anti-communists saw Poland's Soviet-controlled Communist government as the fruition of prewar communist anti-Polish agitation and associated it with the Soviets' appointment of Jews to positions of responsibility in the Polish government. It was also reinforced by the prominent role of a small number of Jews in Poland's Stalinist regime (in particular, Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc). Michael C. Steinlauf noted that Jewish communists, despite their small number, have gained a notorious reputation in Poland, "believed to have masterminded the enslavement [of that country]" and became "demonized" as part of the Żydokomuna canard.
Background
The concept of a Jewish conspiracy threatening Polish social order may be found in the pamphlet (The Year 3333, or the Incredible Dream) by Polish Enlightenment author and political activist Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz; it was written in 1817 and published posthumously in 1858. Called "the first Polish work to develop on a large scale the concept of an organized Jewish conspiracy directly threatening the existing social structure," it describes a Warsaw of the future renamed Moszkopolis after its Jewish ruler.
At the end of the 19th century, Roman Dmowski's National Democratic party characterized Poland's Jews and other opponents of his party as internal enemies who were behind international conspiracies inimical to Poland and who were agents of disorder, disruption and socialism. Historian Antony Polonsky writes that before World War I, "The National Democrats brought to Poland a new and dangerous ideological fanaticism, dividing society into 'friends' and 'enemies' and resorting constantly to conspiratorial theories ("Jewish-Masonic plot"; "Żydokomuna"—"Jew-communism") to explain Poland's difficulties." Meanwhile, some Jews played into National Democratic rhetoric by their participation in exclusively Jewish organizations, such as the Bund and the Zionist movement, even as other Jews zealously participated in national institutions such as the Polish Army and Józef Piłsudski's ideologically multicultural Sanation regime.
History Origins
According to Joanna Michlic, "the image of the secularized and radically left-wing Jew who aims to take over [the country] and undermine the foundations of the Christian world" dates to the first half of the 19th century, to the writings of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Zygmunt Krasinski; by the end of the 19th century it had become part of the political discourse in Poland. The phenomenon, described with the term Żydokomuna, originated in connection with the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and targeted Jewish Communists during the Polish–Soviet War. The emergence of the Soviet state was seen by many Poles as Russian imperialism in a new guise. The visibility of Jews in both the Soviet leadership and in the Communist Party of Poland further heightened such fears. In some circles, Żydokomuna came to be seen as a prominent antisemitic stereotype expressing political paranoia.
Accusations of Żydokomuna accompanied the incidents of anti-Jewish violence in Poland during Polish–Soviet War of 1920, legitimized as self-defense against a people who were oppressors of the Polish nation. Some soldiers and officers in the Polish eastern territories shared the conviction that Jews were enemies of the Polish nation-state and were collaborators with Poland's enemies. Some of these troops treated all Jews as Bolsheviks. According to some sources, the anti-Communist sentiment was implicated in anti-Jewish violence and killings in a number of towns, including the Pinsk massacre, in which 35 Jews, taken as hostages, were murdered. During the Lwów pogrom during the Polish–Ukrainian War, 72 Jews were killed. Occasional instances of Jewish support for Bolshevism during the Polish–Soviet War served to heighten anti-Jewish sentiment.
The concept of Żydokomuna was widely illustrated in Polish interwar politics, including publications by the National Democrats and the Catholic Church that expressed anti-Jewish views. During World War II, the term Żydokomuna was made to resemble the Jewish-Bolshevism rhetoric of Nazi Germany, wartime Romania and other war-torn countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Interwar period During the period between the two world wars, the myth of Żydokomuna became intertwined with that of the "criminal Jew". Statistics from the 1920s had indicated a low Jewish crime rate. In 1924, 72 percent of those convicted of crimes were ethnic Poles, 21 percent "Ruthenians/Ukrainians", and 3.4 percent Jews. A reclassification of how crime was recorded, which now included minor offenses, reversed the trend. By the 1930s, Jewish criminal statistics showed an increase relative to the Jewish population. Some Poles, particularly as reported within the right-wing press, believed these statistics confirmed the image of the "criminal Jew"; additionally, political crimes by Jews were more closely scrutinized, enhancing fears of a criminal Żydokomuna.
Another important factor was the dominance of Jews in the leadership of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP). According to multiple sources, Jews were well represented in the KPP. Notably, the party had strong Jewish representation at higher levels. In January 1936 the national composition of the central party authorities were as follows: out of the 19 KC (central committee) KPP members 11 were Polish, 6 were Jewish (31,6%), 1 was Belarusian and 1 Ukrainian. Jews made up 28 out of the 52 individuals of the "district activists" of the KPP (53.8%), 75% of its "publication apparatus", 90% of the "international department for help to revolutionaries", and 100% of the "technical apparatus" of the Home Secretariat. In Polish court proceedings against communists between 1927 and 1936, 90% of the accused were Jews. In terms of membership, before its dissolution in 1938, 25% of KPP members were Jews; most urban KPP members were Jews, which was a substantial number, given an 8.7% Jewish minority in prewar Poland. Some historians, including Joseph Marcus, qualify these statistics, alleging that the KPP should not be considered a "Jewish party", as it was in fact opposed to traditional Jewish economic and national interests. The Jews supporting the KPP identified as international Communists and rejected much of the Jewish culture and tradition. However, KPP, along with the Polish Socialist Party, was notable for its decisive stand against antisemitism. According to Jaff Schatz's summary of Jewish participation in the prewar Polish Communist movement, "[t]hroughout the whole interwar period, Jews constituted a very important segment of the Communist movement. According to Polish sources and Western estimates, the proportion of Jews in the KPP [the Communist Party of Poland] was never lower than 22 percent. In the larger cities, the percentage of Jews in the KPP often exceeded 50 percent and in smaller cities, frequently over 60 percent. Given this background, a respondent's statement that 'in small cities like ours, almost all Communists were Jews,' does not appear to be a gross exaggeration." It was the disproportionately large representation of Jews in the communist leadership that led to Żydokomuna sentiment being widely expressed in contemporary Polish politics. However, the total number of Jewish Communists was low at 5,000–10,000 members or less than 1% of the Polish-Jewish population.
Share of Communist vote by religion and ethnicity (1928)Kopstein, Jeffrey S., and Jason Wittenberg. "Who voted communist? Reconsidering the social bases of radicalism in interwar Poland." Slavic Review 62.1 (2003): 87–109. Pages 102, 108.Group % voted Communist % of Communist vote % of population (1921 census)East Orthodox Christians 44%Ukrainian: 25% 10%Uniate Ukrainians 12% 12%Jews 7% 14% 11%Catholics 4% 16% 64% According to some bodies of research, voting patterns in Poland's parliamentary elections in the 1920s revealed that Jewish support for the Communists was proportionally less than their representation in the total population. In this view, most support for Poland's Communist and pro-Soviet parties came not from Jews, but rather from Ukrainian and Eastern Orthodox Christian Belarusian voters. Schatz notes that even if post-war claims by Jewish communists that 40% of the 266,528 Communist votes on several lists of front organizations at the 1928 Sejm election came from the Jewish community were true (a claim that one source describes as "almost certainly an exaggeration"), this would amount to no more than 5% of Jewish votes for the communists, indicating the Jewish population at large was "far from sympathetic to communism".