KOSHER COSSACKS
Simon Sebag Monte, on
Russia's treatment
of the Jews
Moscow WHEN Russian security forces recently arrested Vladimir Gusinsky, one of the plutocrats known as the Oligarchs, an old fear was reawakened. Gusinsky is a Jew, leader of the Russian Jewish Federation, and his arbitrary arrest and equally myste- rious release had a terrible echo: of the violent anti-Semitism of Tsarist Cossacks galloping though Jewish shtetls, and of Stalin's secret policemen knocking on Jew- ish doors in the middle of the Muscovite night.
Hopefully, President Vladimir Putin will be a force for good, and the Gusinsky affair was probably a shot across the bows of an over-mighty media baron. But while Putin is still an enigma, and when the all-power- ful Oligarchs — who are mainly Jewish inspire such widespread mistrust, it is not surprising that some saw the arrest as a sin- ister step backwards. Anti-Semitism is again a popular panacea, used by ordinary Russians to explain their nation's bewilder- ing slide from Imperium to Pandemonium, and it is a spectre that looms large in the intolerant darkness of Russian history.
Since the mid-18th century, when Empress Elisabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, expelled 'the enemies of Christ', anti-Semitism has been present in many forms, from mob rule to bureaucratic prej- udice. During the 19th century, Nicholas I made anti-Semitism official, banning Jews from the major cities, confining them to their Pale. of Settlement. Tsars, including Nicholas II (who is, worryingly, moving towards Orthodox sainthood) encouraged the pogroms that kept Jews in permanent terror. Given their persecution, it is hardly surprising that there were Jews — Trot- sky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and even, shame- fully, secret police chief Yagoda — among the Bolshevik leadership, but, equally, it was no coincidence that these were Stal- in's main victims during the Thirties. A short alliance with the Jewish intelli- gentsia during the second world war was just window-dressing to charm America, and it ended in 1945 when Stalin and his brutish cultural supremo, Andrei Zhdanov, hounded and murdered promi- nent 'rootless cosmopolitans'. Stalin's Doctor's Plot, the arrest of the Kremlin's Jewish doctors, was almost certainly the first act in an intended slaughter of Rus- sian Jews. His death intervened but the Soviet regime was now aggressively Rus- sian chauvinist and anti-Semitic. The last prominent Jew was Stalin's coarse hench- man, Lazar Kaganovich, sacked from the Politburo in 1957. Jews returned to public life only in 1991. It is a dark tale, except for one colossal, flamboyant exception, who might provide a model for President Putin as a different sort of Russian states- man: one who did not equate tolerance with weakness.
In December 1787, Prince Potemkin, Catherine the Great's consort and co- ruler, founded a regiment of Orthodox Jewish Cossacks to liberate Jerusalem the culmination of his obsessional philo- Semitism. This Potemkin was not some Westernised Voltairean fop but a son of the Orthodox Church, a mercurial Slavic bogatr (hero), one of Russia's most suc- cessful imperial statesmen, conqueror of the Black Sea, founder of the Black Sea fleet, builder of Sebastopol. He even fought the first Chechen war. No one is suggesting that Putin should replicate all Potemkin's deeds. But as a humanitarian who cared about the life of each soldier, 'I've had my bum pinched.' protected minorities, tolerated criticism from writers and wanted to build a mosque in Moscow — all this at the height of Tsarist autocracy — Potemkin is an exam- ple to Putin and today's Russian military that tolerance does not signify selling out to Russia's enemies. The first partition of Poland in 1772 brought large numbers of Jews — 45,000 — into the Russian empire. Catherine granted Potemkin a huge estate, named Krichev, in these new lands. Potemkin thus came into contact with orthodox Jews for the first time. He liked their reli- gion, culture and dynamism. Potemkin was embarking on the Herculean task of populating the empty southern steppes around the Black Sea with settlers, and he immediately tried to attract Jews from both Poland and the Mediterranean, especially Italy, to his new cities. He settled these Jews in Cossack villages. One wonders if this contributed to the growing Cossack anti-Semitism. He also gathered round him a court of Jewish rabbis with whom he loved to dis- cuss theology. He never travelled without them.
One in particular, Joshua Zeitlin, a mer- chant and scholar, became his favourite entrepreneur and close friend. Indeed, Zeitlin was soon so wealthy that he was to Potemkin what the Oligarchs were to Pres- ident Yeltsin — part of the family. The two men — consort of the Russian Empress and rabbi in yamulka and ringlets — would ride together chatting amicably. Zeitlin 'walked with Potemkin like a broth- er and friend'. He achieved a position that no practising Jew in Russia has ever achieved before or since, remaining proud- ly unassimilated, steeped in rabbinical learning and piety, yet standing high in the Prince's court. Russians would approach the Prince's horse with petitions while poor Jews would hand Zeitlin religious queries. The rabbi would dismount and write out his answers before riding on. This was an astonishing relationship, not merely for 18th-century Russia but even for our time. Potemkin promoted Zeitlin to 'court counsellor' and nobility. Russian Jews called him 'Lord Zeitlin'; Russian nobles grumbled that Potemkin loved 'any- thing with a big snout'.
When Zeitlin complained that Jews hated being described as zhidy — Yids the Prince sponsored Zeitlin's Jewish dele- gation that were presented to the Empress, who then decreed that they should official- ly be known as evrei — Hebrews — which remains the official description today. This made Potemkin a Jewish hero, constantly mobbed by Jewish fans.
Meanwhile, after discussions with Zeitlin and his perambulant rabbis about the fighting prowess of the Biblical Israelites, the Prince decided to arm the Jews. Potemkin had raised a Jewish cavalry squadron on his estate, and when the Russo-Turkish war started, he wanted to liberate Constantinople for the Orthodox; Church; so why not let the Jews liberate Jerusalem?
One of his obsessions was the Cossacks. So he decided to found the Israelovsky Regiment of Jewish Cossacks. The idea was particularly ironic, given the Cossack anti-Semitism — but then Potemkin was a prince of irony. Ironies redoubled: the Jewish Cossacks were commanded by a German, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The Prince de Ligne, doyen of 18th-centu- ry cosmopolitanism and quite a philo- Semite himself, was amazed: 'Prince Potemkin formed the singular project of raising a regiment of Jews,' he wrote to his master, the Habsburg emperor Joseph II. `He intends to make Cossacks of them. Nothing amused me more.' Ligne made a point of watching them train with their long Cossack lances: 'Thanks to the short- ness of their stirrups, the beards come down to the knees and their fear on horse- back makes them like monkeys.' They looked 'ridiculous'.
Soon two squadrons of Jewish Cossacks were on patrol against the Turks, but Ligne claimed that they were not a success because they were as terrified of their own horses as of those of the enemy. Ligne joked to Joseph that the Prince was getting so muddled between reality and Biblical fantasy that, after seven months' training, he sadly decided to end his rare experi- ment. But this was probably the first attempt by a foreign power to arm the Jews since Titus destroyed the Temple.
What happened to Potemkin's Polish- Jewish Cossacks? Were any of them among the Polish Jews who six years later raised 500 cavalrymen to fight for Poland against Russia? Some of these followed their Colonel, Berek Joselewicz, to fight for Napoleon's Polish cavalry formations. Since Joselewicz was killed in a skirmish with the Austrians during Napoleon's 1809 campaign, it is likely that there were veter- ans of Potemkin's Jewish Cossacks fighting for the Emperor at some of his most cele- brated victories. Nor was this the end of the story, because in the mid-19th century, the great Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz helped form another regiment of Jewish Cossacks — Hussars of Israel — to fight the Russians, alongside Britain, France and Turkey, in the Crimean war. These direct descendants of Potemkin's Jewish lancers fought alongside dissident Cos- sacks against the Russians outside Sebastopol.
On Potemkin's death, Zeitlin retired to his sumptuous estate at Ustye in Belorus- sia. There this most unusual Jewish financier patronised Hebraic scholarship, conducted scientific experiments in his lab- oratory, and held his own court with eccentricity and magnificence. But the Jews mourned the Prince: they were never again to have such an eminent protector. Potemkin's humanitarianism and toler- ance, his rabbis and Jewish Cossacks, pro- vide a precedent for Russia's present leader to emulate.
Prince of Princes — The Life of Potemkin by Simon Sebag Montefiore is published on 21 September by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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