Vladimir Lenin
He led the October Revolution; founder of the Soviet state
He took power in Russia in October 1917 and died in 1924. For the Jews his rule was two things at once, and both were real. The Pale of Settlement and all confessional restrictions were abolished; pogroms were declared a crime, and in 1918 a decree of the Council of People's Commissars was issued against them—for the first time in Russian history the state stood against the pogromists instead of looking away. Jews gained access for the first time to every office and university.
And the same rule destroyed Jewish life as communal life: Hebrew was banned as "the language of clericalism and Zionism"—the only language expressly banned in the USSR—Zionist organizations were broken up, ḥeders and yeshivot closed, synagogues confiscated, rabbis arrested. Only Yiddish was permitted, and only in its Soviet form.
Sources
Documents of the period
- The Council of People's Commissars decree against pogroms (1918); the ban on Hebrew — the abolition of the Pale and of pogroms — and the ban on Hebrew and Zionism
Basis: documents and evidence.