List Of Jews In Soviet Russia

The Bolsheviks Of Russia

Revised 1-26-05

Most of the top Bolshevik officials in communist Russia from 1917-onward were Jewish by race/ethnicity. The few non-Jewish officials in the list below are specifically noted as being not Jewish. [Note on name spellings: Russian names are spelled differently depending upon the source, e.g., Yoffe is also spelled Ioffe and sometimes Joffe; Grigory is sometimes Grigori or even Grigorii].

It should be noted that most of the Bolshevik leaders who were not Jewish nonetheless had Jewish wives, e.g. Bukharin, Rykov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kirov, Dzherzhinsky, Lunacharsky. As such, the Jewish taproot that ran through Soviet government from 1917-onward is larger than many people realize. Also, the term ‘Bolshevik’ is used rather loosely here.

1. Vladimir I. Lenin [1870-1924]: first Premier of the USSR; Marxist theoretician; a lawyer; founder of the Bolsheviks [1903]; supreme dictator of early Bolshevik regime; founder of the Comintern; author of the Marxist handbook “State and Revolution”; Lenin was one-quarter Jewish, and is rumored to have been married to a crypto-Jew, however, evidence of that seems lacking.

2. Joseph Stalin [1879-1953]: an early Bolshevik; supreme dictator of Soviet Union from 1927-1953. After V. Lenin’s death, and prior to 1927, the Bolshevik regime was run by a triumvirate composed of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin. Stalin was the editor of the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda [“Truth”]. Stalin was married to a Jewess, i.e. his third marriage, which apparently wasn’t officially formalized. Stalin was not a vigorous supporter of forcing Communism upon other countries — unlike Trotsky — a feature which likely prevented a Soviet assault upon various Western countries. [Not Jewish].

3. Leon Trotsky [t/n Bronstein] [1879-1940]: Trotsky was a Menshevik; was Commissar of Foreign Affairs; supreme commander of the Soviet Red Army; member of Politburo; he rebelled against Stalin and his supporters and was murdered by Stalin for that reason. Trotsky strongly advocated the idea of global — not simply local — Marxist revolution.

4. Lazar M. Kaganovich [1893-1991]: a prime director of mass-murder for Stalin; held a series of vocations, including commissar of transport, heavy industry and the fuel industry; a Politburo member; he was Stalin’s brother-in-law and also his chief advisor; many execution orders bore Kaganovich’s signature [1], evidence that he had the power to order the deaths of civilians [2]. During the 1930s, he was in charge of the deportations of “enemies of the state” to Siberia; was nicknamed the “Wolf of the Kremlin” because of his penchant for violence. He was considered by many to be the most powerful and important man under Stalin. Died of old age in Moscow.

5. Grigory Zinoviev [aka Apfelbaum; aka Radomyslsky] [1883-1936]: great pal of Lenin; member of the Central Committee; chairman of the Comintern; member of Politburo; executive of secret police; first president of the Third International; A. Lunacharsky called him “one of the principal counsellors of our Central Committee and [he] belongs unquestionably to the four or five men who constitute the political brain of the Party.”

6. Grigori Y. Sokolnikov [1888-1939]:a Bolshevik; friend of Trotsky; Commissar of Finance; a diplomat; member of the “Left Opposition”; Soviet ambassador to England; creator of the “chervonetz,” the first stable Soviet currency; was part of “Russian” delegation that signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty in 1918; member of the Central Committee and Politburo.

7. Moisei Uritsky [1873-1918]: Uritsky was a Menshevik; chief of the Petrograd Cheka, in which capacity he ordered many people who opposed Communism to be executed as “counter-revolutionaries”; Commissar for Internal Affairs in the Northern Region; the commissar of the Constituent Assembly; member of the Central Committee; a member of the “Revolutionary Military Center.”

8. Felix Dzherzhinsky [1877-1926]: a Pole; a high-strung fanatic; founder/director of the Cheka [All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage], which was later renamed the State Political Directorate [GPU], which later became the OGPU and then the NKVD [Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs]; member, Central Committee; Commissar of Transport. [Not Jewish but philosemitic and married to a Jew].

9. Maxim Litvinov [aka Wallakh] [1876-1951]: Soviet foreign minister/diplomat/ambassador; in 1933, he persuaded the United States to recognize the Communist Soviet government as “legit” — thanks, in part, to America’s president F. D. Roosevelt being part-Jewish; first chairman, State Committee on the Anthem [official musical anthems].

10. Lavrenti Beria [1899-1953]: member of the Cheka; later became head of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs [NKVD] in Georgia, then later the NKVD proper. Beria had large numbers of prisoners executed [3]; was involved in the Atomic Bomb project in the USSR; [Beria was roughly 1/4 Jewish from his mother’s ancestry].

11. Yakov [Jacob] Sverdlov [aka Solomon] [1885-1919]: member, “Revolutionary Military Center”; member, Central Committee; close buddy of Lenin; aided Lenin with Lenin’s political theories; Sverdlov ordered the massacre of the Czar’s family in 1918. Sverdlov succeeded Kamenev and became the second Jewish president of the so-called “Soviet Republic.”

12. Sergei M. Kirov [1886-1934]; early Bolshevik; member of the Politburo; Secretary of the Central Committee; Communist Party boss in Leningrad. Stalin used Kirov’s murder in 1934 to justify the party purges and treason trials of the late 1930s. [Apparently not Jewish but married to a Jew].

13. Nikolai V. Krylenko [1885-1938]: an early Bolshevik; member of editorial board of Pravda; member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet; famous chess player; member of the Communist Party Central Committee; a military commissar; as President of the Supreme Tribunal he prosecuted most political trials in the 1920s; in 1931, Stalin appointed Krylenko Commissar of Justice; he was involved in the convictions of many Communist Party members during the Great Purges. [Not Jewish].

14. Karl Radek [aka Sobelsohn] [1885-1939]; early revolutionary; old confidante of Lenin; member of the Central Committee; an “international” Communist activist; a key player in the creation of the Comintern; a writer for the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia; participated in the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations with Germany; he also was active in Germany, working with Jewish-German Communist Rosa Luxemburg.

15. Viacheslav I. Molotov [1890-1986]: early Bolshevik; helped found Pravda newspaper; head of the Ukrainian Communist Party; member of the Politburo; Commissar for Foreign Affairs; headed a Politburo commission to “eliminate the kulaks as a class.” [Apparently not Jewish but philosemitic; his wife was Jewish, named Zhemchuzina].

16. Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko [1884-1939]: a former Menshevik; Chief of Political Administration of the Red Army; an unofficial ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Poland; Commissar for Military Affairs in Petrograd; Commissar of War; led the Red Army invasion of the Ukraine; led the attack on the Winter Palace; editor of the Menshevik “Nashe Slovo” newspaper.

17. Yakov [Jacob] Yurovsky [y/b/d unknown]: head of Ekaterinburg Cheka; “Commissar of Justice” for Ural Regional Soviet; the leader of the Bolshevik squad that carried out the murders of Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918. The murder of mild-mannered Nicholas was carried out almost completely by Jews, including Goloshchekin, Syromolotov, Safarov, Voikov, in addition to Yurovsky.

18. Grigory Sergo Ordzhonikidze [1886-1937]; member of the Politburo; Commissar for Heavy Industry; helped solidify Bolshevik power in Armenia and Georgia; Chairman of the Caucasus Central Committee of the Communist Party; First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Communist Party Committee; Chairman of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party; became Stalin’s top economic official. [Apparently not Jewish].

19. Genrikh [Henry] Yagoda [1891-1938]; a Polish Jew; former Cheka member; an officer in SMERSH, the Ninth Division of the OGPU, its liquidation arm; People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs; chief of the NKVD; also in charge of gulag forced-labor camps. Developing fast-acting poisons was a Yagoda hobby; he created a laboratory for that purpose.

20. Lev Kamenev [aka Rosenfeld] [1883-1936]; member of the Central Committee; Chairman of the Moscow Soviet; member of Politburo; author of Marxist handbook “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” 1920; was elected first President of new Bolshevik government, aka “Soviet Republic” [Lenin was Premier]; was married to Trotsky’s sister.

21. Anatoly V. Lunacharsky [1875-1933]; an early Marxist; Commissar for Education and Enlightenment; League of Nations ambassador; key player in persuading Russian workers to support the Bolshevik Revolution; was an author – wrote the “Revolutionary Silhouettes” of top Bolshevik pals; [Apparently not Jewish but married to a Jew].

22. Fedor [Theodore] Dan [1871-1947]: was a Menshevik; was a member of the editorial board of the Menshevik journal “Iskra”; was author of the book “The Origins of Bolshevism” [1943], where he claimed that Bolshevism had been chosen by history to be “the carrier of socialism”; but he was actually an opponent of most Bolshevik ideas; he was sent into exile in 1921 after being arrested; he was married to Menshevik leader Julius Martov’s sister.

23. Nikolai Bukharin [1888-1938]: Lenin’s chief Marxist theorist; general secretary/chairman of the Comintern; member of the Politburo; member, Central Committee; he was editor of Pravda and also Izvestia, a political newspaper; led, with Rykov, the “Right Opposition” to defend the NEP [New Economic Policy]; [Apparently not Jewish yet married to a Jew].

24. Nikolai Yezhov [1895-1939]: early Bolshevik; served in various capacities in the Cheka, GPU, and OGPU; was military commissar in various Red Army units; was G. Yagoda’s deputy; People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs; head of NKVD; was deputy People’s Commissar of Agriculture for the USSR.

25. Mikhail I. Kalinin [1875-1946]; early Bolshevik; cofounder of the newspaper Pravda; nominal, “puppet” president of Soviet Union until 1946; replaced Sverdlov as Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party; Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

26. Isaac Steinberg [y/b/d unknown]; Commissar of Justice. Later brought Jewish-flavored radicalism to Australia.

27. Alexei Rykov [1881-1938]; Premier of Soviet Union until 1930; member of Lenin’s Politburo; Commissar of the Interior; Chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy; Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars; led the “Right Opposition” with Bukharin to defend the NEP [New Economic Policy]. [not Jewish, but married to a Jew].

28. Matvei D. Berman [y/b/d unknown]: chief of gulag system and Deputy Commissar of the NKVD; brother of Boris.

29. Naftaly Frenkel [y/b/d unknown]: a director of the gulag prison camp system; Turkish-born; was works chief/chief overseer of the one-hundred-and-forty-mile-long Belomor [White Sea-Baltic] canal project in Russia, a canal linking the White Sea and the Baltic, built from 1931–34; it was created entirely with slave labor; 60,000 workers died building the canal, the project having a mortality rate of roughly 10%.

30. Adolph Yoffe [aka Ioffe] [1883-1927]: Commissar of Foreign Affairs; ex-Menshevik; close friend of Trotsky’s; helped publish the Pravda newspaper; delegate at the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations; member of the State General Planning Commission; was later Soviet ambassador to China, Japan and Austria.

31. Lev Inzhir [y/b/d/ unknown]: chief accountant for the gulag prison system.

32. Boris Berman [ -1938]: served as the Byelorussian NKVD’s Commissar until 1938; brother of Matvei.

33. K. V. Pauker [y/b/d unknown]: head of the Operations Department of the NKVD.

34. Aleksandr Orlov [aka L. Feldbin] [1898-1970]: member of the Cheka; advisor to Spanish Communists in Spain; commander, Soviet Red Army; later worked at the Law School of the University of Michigan in America [!].

35. Ilya Ehrenburg [1891-1967]: Soviet propaganda minister during WWII; delegate for Moscow in the Supreme Soviet; Communist writer; organizing member of JAC [Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee]; worked for Izvestia newspaper; performed research regarding Spain for the NKVD; author of book “The Ninth Wave,” and winner of two Stalin Prizes.

36. Yemelyan Yaroslavsky [t/n M. I. Gubelman]; [birth/death dates unknown]; head of the Central Control Commission; apparently was in charge of stopping the Christian religion in Russia.

37. Pavel [aka Paul] Axelrod [1850-1928]; co-founded Russia’s first socialist party with Georgii Plekhanov.

38. A. B. Khalatov [ ]; Commissar of publishing, head of food allocations in the Soviet Union.

39. Yona Yakir [ -1937]; Soviet military general; a commander in Kiev; purged by Stalin.

40. A. A. Slutsky [ ]; boss of Boris Berman [see above].

41. Semyon [aka S.G.] Firin [ ]; a commander at the White Sea-Baltic canal project.

42. Jacob [aka Yakov] Rappoport [ ]; a Latvian Jew; deputy commander at the White Sea-Baltic canal project.

43. V. Volodarsky [t/n M. M. Goldstein] [1891-1918] ; a Bolshevik; press commissar in Petrograd; Ukranian; lived in America for some time; assassinated.

44. G. D. Sachs [1882- ]; a Bolshevik; a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee which directed the Bolshevik takeover of Russia.

45. Dziga Vertov [t/n Denis or Dennis Kaufman] [1896- ]; involved in Soviet propaganda programs involving film/movies.

46. Mikhail Koltsov [ ]; a top Communist journalist in Russia.

47. Jaan Anvelt [1884 – 1937]; head of the Estonia government controlled by Moscow.

48. Martyn Latsis [ ]; top Cheka official; author of an early book about the Cheka.

49. I. A. Teodorovich [ ]; Commissar of Provisions.

50. Simon [aka Simeon] Dimanstein [ ]; Commissar of Nationalities; author.

51. Jacob Fuerstenberg [aka “Ganetzsky”] [t/n Jakub Hanecki] [1879-1937]; Polish; a top aide to Lenin and a key player in Lenin’s rise to power.

52. Alexander Israel Helphand [aka “Parvus”] [1867-1924]; helped Trotsky develop the theory of “permanent revolution.”

53. David Riazanov [aka Goldenbach] [1870-1938]; responsible for Soviet government publication of Karl Marx’s literary works.

54. Mikhail Milshtein [ ] a military officer; deputy director of Soviet military intelligence during WWII.

55. Gregory Gershuni [1870-1908]; an early revolutionary in Russia; was involved in the assassinations of Russian political leaders.

56. Polina S. Zhemchuzhina [1884 -1970]; wife of Molotov; Deputy Commissar of the Food Industry; Commissar of the Fish Industry.

57. Nikolai N. Sukhanov [aka Nikolai Gimmer] [1882-1940]; an economist; a member of the Contact Committee; an author.

58. I. P. Meshkovsky [aka I. P. Goldenberg] [ ]; a member of the Central Committee.

59. David A. Dragunsky [1910-1992]; a Colonel-General in the Soviet army.

60. Ivan D. Chernyakhovsky [1906-1945]; Soviet military general.

[1] Kaganovich’s signature as appearing on execution orders/lists: the book “The Black Book of Communism,” Harvard University Press, USA, 1999, page 189, hardcover.

[2] about Kaganovich’s crimes: Here

[3] Beria instigating the mass executions of the Katyn massacre: book “The Black Book of Communism,” page 368-369, hardcover.

Sources for the above document include, but are not limited to: the book “Red October,” by Robert V. Daniels, Scribners, 1967; the book “The Harvest of Sorrow,” by Robert Conquest, Oxford University Press, 1986; the book “The Black Book of Communism,” by Stephane Courtois et al, Harvard University Press, 1999; plus web searches and public library research.