The question is: was this meanness (for example, a pogrom and blasphemous attitude towards someone else's shrine) brought up in him precisely by his national and religious culture?

A. Vaksberg proves the thesis that at the end of the 1930s state anti-Semitism began to gain strength with the help of very interesting figures: "If in the summer of 1934 Jews made up 31 percent of all employees of the highest echelon of the NKVD, in the autumn of 1936 - 39%, in the spring of 1937 - 37%, in the autumn of 1938 - 21%, and already in the summer of 1939 only about 4%."229

Yes, yes – every nation has its own scoundrels. But we must also think about why among the executioners there were so many people brought up in one of the cultures of a multinational country.

Have there been anti-Jewish pamphlets in the history of Christian theology? –Were. Could they have played any role in the merciless attitude towards Jews in the minds of at least some Germans? – Yes, they could.

But there were also anti-Christian pamphlets published by Jewish polemicists. Could they have played some role in the merciless attitude towards Russian priests in the minds of at least some Chekists and their then and current journalistic servants?

And when talking about "scoundrels" and "peoples", it is also important to ask how his native community reacted to his not-so-secret pogrom antics – condemned or encouraged.

In the first of the catastrophes experienced by Russia in the twentieth century, at least there were attempts by Jewish communities to besiege some of their overzealous members. For example, in 1918 the envoys of the Volhynia and Podolsk rabbinates begged Trotsky to retire, since all his fellow tribesmen would have to answer for him. In turn, the Soviet instruction on the creation of commissions for the confiscation of church valuables prescribed the creation of two parallel commissions: official and valid. With regard to the official commission, it was prescribed "to observe strictly that the national composition of these official commissions should not give rise to chauvinistic propaganda." This means that at that time, both those Jews who were religious and those who were immersed in secular and political life understood that the Jews themselves must make efforts not to provoke a reaction.

By the way, there was a reaction. One of its forms was the mass cooperation of the Balts with the SS during World War II. The fact that tens of thousands of Latvians and Estonians joined the SS legions and actively participated in the "liquidation" of the Jews was a consequence of the fact that the punitive face of the Soviet regime, which came to them two years before the Germans, was as cruel as it was semitic. One crime gave rise to another. But if we want to avoid a repetition, at least we need to admit the untruth of both sides. And not to dress one of them in exclusively white sacrificial clothes.232

And today? Will I really have a better attitude towards the Jews when I see that Jewish publicists write about Russia as "a huge, terrible power that has targeted thousands of nuclear missile deaths on the rest of the world"233, and they say about my people that "in the depths of the soul of every Russian the mentality of a slave pulsates" (Aron Gurevich)234?

I hope that Jewish journalism today is intelligent and organized enough to hear and respond to the muffled murmur that has been going on in Russia for a century.

MERRY HOLIDAY OF PURIM

The holiday of Purim is not an ordinary holiday like Harvest Day or New Year. Purim is too unique. Perhaps none of the modern peoples has a holiday dedicated to this kind of event.