On a certain level I can actually understand why so many Russian Jews became Bolsheviks. In 1900 Russia was probably the single worst country on the planet to be a Jewish resident of, with genuine and pervasive anti-Semitism, attitudes that came right out of the year 900 abounding and pogroms happening at the drop of a hat. Little wonder so many of the Jews who grew up in such a state would develop such a psychotic hatred of everything associated with the Tsar who ruled it, from the Church to the people to the notion of a Russian nation itself.

That said: although our traumas naturally influence us, in the end we are our choices. And regardless of their sob stories the choices made by the Jewish Bolsheviks earned them death, whether it came from the Tsar's executioners or Stalin's once he outmaneuvered them. Ironically, by becoming mass murdering commies, they vindicated everything their enemies said about them. As well the attempts of the Communists in Germany to imitate them drove what had been one of the friendliest European countries to Jews pre-WW1 into the arms of, well, literally Hitler.

On a certain level I can actually understand why so many Russian Jews became Bolsheviks. In 1900 Russia was probably the single worst country on the planet to be a Jewish resident of, with genuine and pervasive anti-Semitism, attitudes that came right out of the year 900 abounding and pogroms happening at the drop of a hat. Little wonder so many of the Jews who grew up in such a state would develop such a psychotic hatred of everything associated with the Tsar who ruled it, from the Church to the people to the notion of a Russian nation itself.

That said: although our traumas naturally influence us, in the end we are our choices. And the choices made by the Jewish Bolsheviks earned them death, whether it came from the Tsar's executioners or Stalin's once he outmaneuvered them. Ironically, by becoming mass murdering commies, they vindicated everything their enemies said about them. As well the attempts of the Communists in Germany attempt to imitate them drove what had been one of the friendliest European countries to Jews pre-WW1 into the arms of, well, literally Hitler.