(Mirror.)

Daniel Pasmanik (1869–1930) […] recalled his irritation upon hearing of the Russian soldiers’ delight when they were informed of Nicholas II’s overthrow. The soldiers expected that they would be able to return home, but as Pasmanik wrote in April 1917, Russia’s redemption required the removal of German militarism.⁴⁶

His view accorded with the Kadet policy to continue the war, a view that Bolshevik “defeatism” attacked. He attended a meeting of the city duma (congress) of Yalta following the February Revolution, where he claimed that no revolution would be realistic in peasant Russia, but attendees at the meeting were opposed to his idea.

After the meeting, he became more convinced that conscientious intellectuals’ lack of “monarchist energy” and “aim and solid will” to defeat demagoguery allowed the devastating situation of Russia.⁴⁷ He also tried to organize officers privately, though their “passivity” prevented him from succeeding.⁴⁸

Pasmanik considered the Bolshevik idea of the proletarian dictatorship to be narrow-minded and concerned only with proletarian interests. Furthermore, as a supporter of unfettered cultural creation, he suspected that the “uncultured” nature of the Bolsheviks would lead to Russia’s moral degeneration.

Though he emphasized that Zionism would not aim to preserve a specific culture and thus was reluctant to discuss Jewish culture per se, in the period after 1917 he often used the terms cultural or uncultured. Although he did not define it, his use of the term cultural suggested something civilized and Westernized. As I will note when I return to this issue later, he held a strong conviction that becoming “cultural” would change a barbaric human nature into a sophisticated one with a broad, statewide perspective.⁴⁹

In his Counterrevolutionary Diary (1923),⁵⁰ Pasmanik wrote about his motivation to serve the White resistance in these terms: “I am a determined opponent of all the revolutions following the war. For each was born not of the joy of creation but of defeat, that is, it was born of statewide attrition and cultural degeneration. […] In every respect, postrevolutionary Russia is losing the wealth that old Russia had.”

He defined the Russian Revolution as “an inevitable catastrophe under existing conditions, under the fully relaxed, obsolete bureaucracy, short-sighted obstinacy of the tsar, exhaustion of the front, feeble intelligentsia, lack of strong individuality, and uncultured masses.” Though seemingly inevitable, he wrote that “the revolt of the slaves will never lay the foundation for progress.”⁵¹

His suspicion of the Bolsheviks’ “anarchist” stance, which he believed would hamper any cultural creation, predated the October Revolution. His articles in Ialtinskii golos, the Kadet daily he edited, depicted the Bolsheviks as belonging to a crime ring and their tactics as demagogic.⁵² Correspondence from Burtsev reveals that he accused Bolshevik activists of having participated in espionage for Germany.⁵³

[…]

In 1920, he began editing the Russian Whites’ daily Obshchee delo with Burtsev in Paris. In September 1919 he had already contributed his first article to the newspaper, entitled “The Jewish Question in Russia.” He admitted that in theory the Bolsheviks should not be involved in pogroms, whereas the White Army led by Alexander Kolchak and Anton Denikin was antagonistic toward Jews and its victory would trigger pogroms.

But Pasmanik went on to stress that despite a general tendency to avoid violence, the Bolsheviks nevertheless demolished the economic life of the Jewish middle class. Moreover, in actuality, although Bolshevik rule rarely caused pogroms, once it was overthrown unprecedented, brutal pogroms occurred because radical members of the Bolsheviks, such as the commissars, included Jews.

Interestingly enough, Pasmanik noted that his close observation of Denikin’s activity did not find any pogroms in the area under Denikin’s rule. Pasmanik explained this as follows:

The unit of General Denikin entertained the ideal of gosudarstvennost’ [statehood], under which the harmonious unity of the classes, peoples, and religious groups would be achieved. Such a cultural concept of gosudarstvennost’ firmly contradicts anti-Jewish pogroms. Therefore, despite the antisemitic tendency of these and other officers or soldiers, his army as a whole did not allow pogroms, which, at last analysis, cast seeds of dissociation throughout the state.⁶²

In his own understanding, then, Pasmanik was never involved with anti-Jewish personalities and never betrayed his Jewish nationalism.

[…]

Pasmanik further lamented that although Russia was in need of a strong unifying force, how to achieve this was a matter of contention, with émigrés internally divided—the left calling for democracy and the right for reaction.

It was in this context that he expressed his belief in the merits of fascism, for it promised the strong leadership he believed was necessary. Fascism in Italy was a historical necessity, Pasmanik contended, arguing that Mussolini had been successful not only because he enjoyed support from a variety of people but also because he was a cultured figure.

Pasmanik also indicated that because Mussolini was cultured, he never allowed robbery, pogroms, or lawlessness, although recent scholarship has proven that this was not the case with other fascists.⁸⁴

(Emphasis added. See Taro Tsurumi’s citations for examples of Pasmanik’s prominence. Contrary to what Pasmanik wrote, Benito Mussolini did not prevent antisemitic violence, even when Pasmanik was still alive.)