A Short Statistical View of Jews in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

A Short Statistical View of Jews in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

By

J. Otto Pohl

There is a lot propaganda minimizing,  obfuscating, and outright denying the existence of large numbers of Jews in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Why this historical fact is frequently denied in the face of irrefutable evidence is not something I will explore here. Rather, I will just go over the statistics of Jewish over-representation in the CPSU using a source written by an Israeli Jew (Yaacov Ro’i) and published on the website of a Jewish organization (YIVO). At no time were Jews excluded from the CPSU and even in 1990 the percentage of Soviet Jews in the party was more than double the percentage as the population as a whole. The disproportionate membership of Jews in the ruling CPSU of the USSR is simply an undeniable statistical fact.

Let us start with looking at the statistics for the ruling Communist Party itself. As early as 1917 out of only 23,600 member of the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) a full 1,000 were Jews including 6 out of 17 Central Committee members, or more than a third. Heavy over-representation in the rank and file of the Communist Party would be a defining social feature of Soviet Jews until the end of the USSR in 1991. The 1926 census counted Jews as making up 1.8% of the population of the USSR. Yet in 1922 they were 5.2% of the membership of the ruling Communist Party. Due to the size of the Communist Party doubling from 400,000 to 800,000 this percentage dropped down to 4.3% in 1927 even though in absolute numbers Jewish membership in the party increased. In 1939 Jews made up 13.4 % of the membership of the Communist Party in the Ukrainian SSR. Twenty years later in 1959 Jews only made up 1.9% of the population of the Belorussian SSR, but 6.4% of the party. Over 10.3% of Jews in the republic were party members. In 1976 Jews with only 1.9% of the Soviet population still were the sixth largest nationality in the CPSU after Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Volga Tatars, and Uzbeks. This meant they had more more party members than considerably larger nationalities like Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, and Lithuanians. Even right before the collapse of the USSR still 14.5 % of Soviet Jews were members of the party versus only 6.47% for the USSR population as a whole. That is the average Jew in the Soviet Union was more than twice as likely to be  privileged as a party member than the average non-Jew . (https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union). Note that this source is written by an Israeli Jew and published on the website of a Jewish organization. It can in no way be claimed to be anti-Semitic propaganda.

Again I am puzzled by the absolute denial of reality by a very large number of people. I don’t have a good explanation for it. The basic historical facts can not simply be wished away by unsupported statements.  Nonetheless, the disproportionate membership of Jews in the CPSU from 1917 to 1991 is an irrefutable fact.