National Vanguard - Issue no. 72, 1979

Dostoievsky (1877) On the Jews
by Dr. William L. Pierce

Feodor Dostoievsky was one of Russia's greatest writers. The son of a physician of modest means, he had the opportunity for an education, and was trained as an engineer. He remained close to the common people of Russia in the experiences of his life and in his writing.

Dostoievsky was a fervent patriot, but his association with a circle of radical writers led to his arrest at the age of 27. He was subsequently sentenced to death, reprieved at the last minute, and transported to Siberia, where he spent four years in a prison labor camp. This was followed by several years as a private in a Siberian unit in the Russian army. After his return from Siberia Dostoievsky wrote a number of novels, including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), The Possessed (1871), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), all of which enjoyed immense popularity. It was his Diary of a Writer, however, published in a number of installments in the period 1873-1881 which most explicitly stated his feeling for his people and for Russia.

Dostoievsky's Diary dealt with a great many issues of burning interest to his fellow countrymen, showing clearly the insight and sensitivity which made him one of the most beloved of all the great writers Russia has produced. Boris Brasol, who translated Diary of a Writer into English, has described the reaction of the Russian people to Dostoievsky's death on February 9th, 1881:

"The news of Dostoievsky's passing spread instantly, like an electric current, to the remotest parts of Russia, and a wave of mourning swept through the hearts of her saddened people... Enormous crowds attended his funeral: men and women from all walks of life — statesmen of high rank and downtrodden prostitutes; illiterate peasants and distinguished men of letters; army officers and learned scientists; credulous priests and incredulous students — they were all there.

"Whom did Russia bury with so great a reverence? Was it only one of her famous men of letters? Indeed not: in that coffin lay a noble and lofty man, a prudent teacher, an inspired prophet whose thoughts, like mountain peaks, were always pointed toward heaven, and who had measured the depths of man's quivering heart with all its struggles, sins, and tempests; its riddles, pains, and sorrows; its unseen tears and burning passions. . . . "

As much as his people loved him, Dostoievsky in turn loved them - and despised their enemies and exploiters. Foremost among the latter were the Jews of Russia. In Dostoievsky's time there were some three million of them, some descended from the Khazars, an Asiatic tribe of southern Russia which had converted to Judaism a millennium earlier, and some who had flocked into Russia from the West during the Middle Ages, when they were forcibly expelled from every country in western and central Europe.

Scorning honest labor, the Jews had fastened themselves on the Russian peasants and craftsmen like an army of leeches. Money-lending, the liquor trade, and White slavery were their preferred means of support — and their means of destroying the Russian people.

So great was the Russians' hate for their Jewish tormenters that the Russian rulers were obliged to institute special legislation, both protecting the Jews and limiting their depredations against the Russian people. Among the latter was a ban against Jewish settlement in central Russia; they were restricted to the regions of western and southwestern Russia (the "Pale of Settlement") where they had been most heavily concentrated at the time Catherine the Great had proclaimed the ban, in the 18th century.

This, of course, was regarded by the Jews as "persecution," and it was their incessant wailing about not being allowed to fasten themselves on the people of central Russia which first moved Dostoievsky to set his pen to paper on the Jewish question. In the section of his Diary published in March 1877, the writer remarked:

". . .I know that in the whole world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly, after each step and word of theirs -- about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom. One might think it is not they who are reigning in Europe, who are directing there at least the stock exchanges and, therefore, politics, domestic affairs, the morality of the states."

Dostoievsky, who had become all too familiar with Jews and their personal attitudes toward their Russian hosts, first as a boy on his parent's small estate, where he observed the Jews’ dealings with the local peasants, and later in prison, where he noted the aloof behavior of the Jewish prisoners toward Russian prisoners, went on to speculate about what would happen to the Russians if the Jews ever got the whiphand:

". . .Now, how would it be if in Russia there were not three million Jews, but three million Russians, and there were eighty million Jews -- well, into what would they convert the Russians and how would they treat them? Would they permit them to acquire equal rights? Would they permit them to worship freely in their midst? Wouldn't they convert them into slaves? Worse than that: wouldn't they skin them altogether? Wouldn't they slaughter them to the last man, to the point of complete extermination, as they used to do with aliens in ancient times, during their ancient history?"

This speculation turned out to be grimly prophetic, for only a little more than four decades later bloodthirsty Jewish commissars, who made up the bulk of the Bolshevik leaders, were supervising the butchering of Russians by the millions.

Dostoievsky correctly identified the secret of the Jews' strength -- indeed, of their very survival over a period of 40 centuries -- as their exclusiveness, their deeply ingrained mental outlook upon the whole non-Jewish world as an alien, inferior, and hostile thing. This outlook led the Jews to always think of themselves as having a special situation or standing. Even when they were trying most ingratiatingly to convince the non-Jews that Jews were just like everyone else, they maintained the inner attitude of a people who constituted a special community within the larger, Gentile community. Dostoievsky pointed out:

". . . It is possible to outline, at least, certain symptoms of that status in statu -- be it only externally. These symptoms are: alienation and estrangement in the matter of religious dogma; the impossibility of fusion; belief that in the world there exists but one national entity, the Jew, while, even though other entities exist, nevertheless, it should be presumed that they are, as it were, nonexistent. 'Step out of the family of nations and form your own entity, and thou shalt know that henceforth thou art the only one before God; exterminate the rest, or make slaves of them. Have faith in the conquest of the whole world; adhere to the belief that everything will submit to thee. Loathe strictly everything, and do not have intercourse with anyone in thy mode of living. And even when thou shalt lose the land, thy political individuality, even when thou shalt be dispersed all over the face of the earth, amidst all nations -- never mind, have faith in everything that has been promised thee, once and forever; believe that all this will come to pass, and meanwhile live, loathe, unite, and exploit -- and wait, wait . . . ."

Is it any wonder that, although virtually every American with a high school education has either read Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment or his The Brothers Karamazov (or both), his Diary of a Writer has been quietly consigned to oblivion by the controlled educational and publishing establishments in this country? The only printing of Diary of a Writer currently listed in Books in Print is one issued by a small, specialty publisher (Octagon Books) for sale to libraries and priced at a prohibitive $47.50. That price tag ought to keep it safely out of the hands of curious American readers!

Those fortunate enough to be able to borrow a copy of the book can read a great many more of Dostoievsky's penetrating comments on the behavior of and attitude of the Jews in Russia toward the Russian people during the 19th century. Dostoievsky especially condemned the exploitation of the poor, ignorant, and helpless Russian peasants by the voraciously greedy and utterly heartless Jews. For example:

"Thus, Jewry is thriving precisely there where the people are still ignorant, or not free, or economically backward. It is there that Jewry has a champ libre. And instead of raising, by its influence, the level of education, instead of increasing knowledge, generating economic fitness in the native population — instead of this the Jew, wherever he has settled, has still more humiliated and debauched the people; there humaneness was still more debased and the educational level fell still lower; there inescapable, inhuman misery, and with it despair, spread still more disgustingly. Ask the native population in our border regions: What is propelling the Jew — and has been propelling him for centuries? You will receive a unanimous answer: mercilessness. 'He has been prompted so many centuries only by pitilessness to us, only by the thirst for our sweat and blood.'

"And, in truth, the whole activity of the Jews in these border regions of ours consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them, taking advantage of the local laws. They have always managed to be on friendly terms with those upon whom the people were dependent. Point to any other tribe from among Russian aliens which could rival the Jew by his dreadful influence in this connection! You will find no such tribe. In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and of course, the reason therefore is that status of statu of his, that spirit of which specifically breathes pitilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature who is not a Jew. . . .

"Now, what if somehow, for some reason, our rural commune [i.e., the institutionalized system of Russian peasant society] should disintegrate, that commune which is protecting our poor native peasant against so many ills; what if, straightaway, the Jew and his whole kehillah [i.e., organized Jewry] should fall upon that liberated peasant -- so inexperienced, so incapable of resisting temptation, and who up to this time has been guarded precisely by the commune? Why, of course, instantly this would be his end; his entire property, his whole strength, the very next day would come under the power of the Jew, and there would ensue such an era as can be compared not only with the era of serfdom but even with that of the Tartar yoke."

Again, how tragically prophetic!

This article was transcribed by William Wilson from the book, The Best of Attack and National Vanguard 1970-1982, edited by Kevin A. Strom (1984).

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/dost.htm

* * *

These quotes from Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer are from pages 38-40 of Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After by British scholar, Peter Duncan.

True, it is very difficult to learn the forty-century-long history of a people such as the Jews; but, to start with, this much I know, that in the whole world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly, after each step and word of theirs,—about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom. One might think that it is not they who are reigning in Europe, who are directing there at least the stock exchanges, and therefore politics, domestic affairs, the morality of the states. ... In my opinion, the Russian peasant, and generally, the Russian commoner, virtually bears heavier burdens than the Jew.

Remember that at the time when the Jew "has been restricted in the free selection of the place of residence," 23 millions of "the Russian toiling mass" have been enduring serfdom which was, of course, more burdensome than "the selection of the place of residence." Now, did the Jews pity them then?—I don't think so: in the Western border region and in the South you will get a comprehensive answer to this question. Nay, at that time the Jews also vociferated about rights which the Russian people themselves did not have; they shouted and complained that they were downtrodden and martyrs, and that when they should be granted more rights, "then demand from us that we comply with the duties toward the state and the native population."

... I have just read in the March issue of The Messenger of Europe a news item to the effect that in America, in the Southern States, they have already leaped en masse upon the millions of liberated Negroes, and have already taken a grip upon them in their, the Jews', own way, by means of their sempiternal "gold pursuit" and by taking advantage of the inexperience and vices of the exploited tribe. Imagine, when I read this, I immediately recalled that the same thing came to my mind five years ago, specifically, that the Negroes have now been liberated from the slave owners, but that they will not last because the Jews, of whom there are so many in the world, will jump at this new little victim. This came to my mind, and I assure you that several times during this interim I was asking myself: "Well, why doesn't one hear anything about the Jews there; why do not newspapers write about them, because the Negroes are a treasure for the Jews; is it possible that they would miss it?" And at last my expectation came true, the newspapers have written it up,—I read it.

If one should start writing the history of this universal tribe, it would at once be possible to discover a hundred thousand analogous and even more important facts, so that one or two additional facts would mean nothing in particular. However, it is curious that the moment you should require information about the Jew and his doings, without leaving your chair, stretch out your hand to any newspaper at random which happens to be near you, and look at the second or third page: unfailingly, you will find something about Jews, and unfailingly—that which is most characteristic, and unfailingly—the same exploits!

...I will be told that everybody is hatred-stricken, and therefore lying. Of course, it may happen that everyone to the last man is lying; but if everybody is lying and hatred-stricken, whence did this hatred arise? Since this universal hatred does mean something; as Bielinsky exclaimed once: "indeed, the word everybody does mean something!"

I assure you that the Russian commoner perceives and understands only too well (the Jews do not conceal it) that the Jew does not want to take meals with him, that he has an aversion toward him, seeking as much as possible to avoid him and segregate himself from him. And yet, instead of feeling hurt, the Russian commoner calmly and clearly says: "such is his religion; it is because of his faith that he does not take meals with me and shuns me," not because he is spiteful.

...how would it be if in Russia there were not three million Jews, but three million Russians, and there were 80 million Jews,—into what would they convert the Russians and how would they treat them? Would they permit them to acquire equal rights? Would they permit them to worship freely in their midst? Wouldn't they convert them into slaves? Worse than that: wouldn't they skin them altogether? Wouldn't they slaughter them to the last man, to the point of complete extermination, as they used to do with alien peoples in ancient times, during their ancient history?

I assure you that in the Russian people there is no conceived hatred of the Jew, but perhaps there is a dislike of him, maybe—a strong dislike. Oh, this cannot be avoided; this exists; but it arises not from the fact that he is a Jew, nor because of some racial or religious hate, but from other causes of which not the native people but the Jew himself is guilty.

* * * * *

In order to exist 40 centuries on earth, i.e., virtually the entire historical period of mankind, and besides, in such a close and unbroken unity; in order to lose so many times one's territory, one's political independence, almost one's religion— and again to unite each time, to regenerate in the former idea, to create anew laws and almost religion—nay, such an extraordinarily strong and energetic people would not have existed without status in statu, i.e. "a state within a state," which they have always and everywhere preserved at the time of their dispersions and persecutions. Speaking of "a state within a state", I am by no means seeking to frame an accusation. Still, what is the meaning of this "state within a state"? What is its eternal, immutable idea? Wherein is the essence of this idea?

It is possible to outline certain symptoms of that "state within a state"—be it only externally. These symptoms are: alienation and estrangement in the matter of religious dogma; the impossibility of fusion; belief that in the world there exists but one national entity—the Jew, while, even though other entities exist, nevertheless it should be presumed that they are, as it were, nonexistent:

"Step out of the family of nations, and form your own entity, and thou shalt know that henceforth thou art the only one before God; exterminate the rest, or make slaves of them, or exploit them. Have faith in the conquest of the whole world; adhere to the belief that everything will submit to thee. Loathe strictly everything, and do not have intercourse with anyone in thy mode of living. And even when thou shalt lose the land, thy political individuality, even when thou shalt be dispersed all over the face of the earth, amidst all nations,—never mind, have faith in everything that has been promised thee, once and forever; believe that all this will come to pass, and meanwhile live, loathe, unite and exploit, and—wait, wait..."

Such is the essence of that "state within a state", and, in addition, there are, of course, inner and, perhaps, mysterious laws guarding this idea.

You say, educated Jews and opponents, that all this is nonsense, and that even if there be a status in statu, religious persecution since the Middle Ages and earlier has generated it, and this "state within a state" came into existence merely from the instinct of self-preservation. However, if it continues, it is because the Jew has not yet been given equal rights with the native population.

But this is how I feel: should the Jew be given equal rights, under no circumstance would he renounce his "state within a state". Moreover, to attribute it to nothing but persecution and the instinct of self-preservation—is insufficient. There would not have been enough tenacity in store for self-preservation during 40 centuries; the people would have grown weary of preserving themselves for so long a time. Even the strongest civilizations in the world have failed to survive half of the 40 centuries, losing their political strength and racial countenance. Here it is not only self-preservation that constitutes the main cause, but a certain compelling and luring idea, something universal and profound... something of a pre-eminently religious character. Their Providence, under the initial name of Jehovah, with his ideal and his covenant, continues to lead his people toward a firm goal—this much is clear. it is impossible to conceive a Jew without God.

I do not believe in the existence of atheists even among the educated Jews: they all are of the same substance. Even in my childhood I have read and heard a legend about Jews to the effect that they are awaiting the Messiah, all of them, the lowest Yiddisher and the most learned one —the philosopher and the cabalist—rabbi; that they all believe the Messiah will again unite them in Jerusalem and bring by his sword all nations to their feet; that this is the reason why the overwhelming majority of Jews have a predilection for one profession—the trade in gold and goldsmithery; all this in order that when Messiah comes, they should not need to have a new fatherland and be tied to the land of aliens in their possession, but to have everything converted into gold and jewels so it will be easier to carry them away when

The ray of dawn begins to shine:
Our flute, our tabor and the cymbal,
Our riches and our holy symbol
We will bring back to our old shrine,
To our old home—to Palestine.

All this I heard as a legend, but I believe the substance of the matter is there, in the form of an instinctively irresistible tendency. In order that such a substance of the matter might be preserved, it is necessary that the strictest "state within a state" be preserved. And it is being preserved. If, however, among the Jews there exists in reality such an inner rigid organization as unites them into something solid and segregated, one may well give thought to the question whether equal rights with the native population should be granted to them.

If they, in full armor of their organization and their segregation, their racial and religious detachment; in complete armor of their regulations and principles utterly opposed to that idea abiding by which the whole European world has been developing; —should they demand complete equalization in all possible rights with the native population, wouldn't they then be granted something greater, something excessive, something sovereign compared with the native population?

Jewry is thriving precisely where the people are still ignorant, or not free, or economically backward. It is there that Jewry has a champ libre (‘free rein’)! And instead of raising, by its influence, the level of education, instead of increasing knowledge, generating economic fitness in the native population,—instead of this, the Jew, wherever he has settled, has still more humiliated and debauched the people; there humaneness was still more debased and the educational level fell still lower; there inescapable, inhuman misery, and with it despair, spread still more disgustingly. Ask the native population in our border regions: What is propelling the Jew—has been propelling him for centuries? You will receive a unanimous answer: mercilessness. "He has been prompted so many centuries only by pitilessness for us, only by the thirst for our sweat and blood."

The whole activity of the Jews in our border regions consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them. They always managed to be on friendly terms with those upon whom the people were dependent. What, in the course of decades and centuries, has become of the Russian people where the Jews settled is attested by the history of our border regions. —Point to any other tribe from among Russian aliens which could rival the Jew by his dreadful Influence in this connection!

You will find no such tribe. In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and the reason therefore is that the ‘state within a state’ of his, the spirit of which specifically breathes with pitilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature who is not a Jew.

Oh, it goes without saying that man always, at all times, has been worshipping materialism, and has been inclined to perceive and understand liberty only in the sense of making his life secure through money hoarded by the exertion of every effort and accumulated by all possible means. However, at no time in the past have these tendencies been raised so cynically and so obviously to the level of a sublime principle as in our Nineteenth Century. "Everybody for himself, and only for himself, and every intercourse with man solely for one’s self"—such is the ethical tenet of the majority of present-day people, even not bad people, but, on the contrary, laboring people who neither murder nor steal. And mercilessness for the lower masses, the decline of brotherhood, exploitation of the poor by the rich,—all this existed also before and always; however, it had not been raised to the level of supreme truth and of science—it had been condemned by Christianity, whereas at present it is being regarded as virtue.

Thus, it is not for nothing that over there the Jews are reigning everywhere over stock-exchanges; it is not for nothing that they control capital, that they are the masters of credit, and it is not for nothing—I repeat—that they are also the masters of international politics, and what is going to happen in the future is known to the Jews themselves: their reign, their complete reign is approaching! We are approaching the complete triumph of ideas before which sentiments of humanity, thirst for truth, Christian and national feelings, and even those of national dignity, must bow. We are approaching materialism, a blind, carnivorous craving for personal material welfare, a craving for personal accumulation of money by any means—this is all that has been proclaimed as the supreme aim, as liberty, in lieu of the Christian idea of salvation only through the closest moral and brotherly fellowship of men.

People will laugh and say that this is not all brought about by the Jews. Of course, not only by them, but if the Jews have completely triumphed and thriven in Europe precisely at the time when these new principles have triumphed there to the point of having been raised to the level of a moral principle, it is impossible not to infer that the Jews have contributed their influence to this condition. Our opponents point out that only the summit of the Jews is rich—bankers and kings of stock-exchanges—while the rest are literally beggars, running about for a piece of bread, offering commissions and anxiously looking for an opportunity to snatch somewhere a penny for bread.

As against this, the summit of the Jews is assuming stronger and firmer power over mankind, seeking to convey to it its image and substance. Jews keep vociferating that among them, too, there are good people. Oh, God! Is this the point?—Besides, we are speaking not about good or bad people. And aren't there good people among those? Wasn't the late James Rothschild of Paris a good man?—We are speaking about the whole and its idea; we are speaking about Judaism and the Jewish idea which is clasping the whole world instead of Christianity, which "did not succeed"…

Source: The Diary of a Writer, vol. 2 (B. Brasol, trans), Charles Scribner's Sons (1877/1949), pp. 640-651