From 1817, It was legal for jews to convert to Christianity and no denomination could turn them away. By doing so jews could now achieve freedom and liberties they did not previously have in Russia. Thus jews started to convert to Christianity in the 19th century and waves of new conversions also occurred from 1907 to 1917
A small minority of emancipated Jews in 19th century Europe, having tasted a whiff of liberty and freedom as equal citizens under the law, went one step further. They converted to Christianity, leaving behind Judaism once and for all and fully integrating themselves into Christian societies.
From 1817 onward, Jewish converts could legally choose whatever Christian denomination suited them. After 1906, Jewish apostates could return to Judaism without penalty.
Schainker’s data is derived from the Pale of Settlement, the western part of Russia where the majority of Jews were forced to live until the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. According to her statistics, this region produced 69,400 Jewish converts to Russian Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism. A further 15,000 converted to other tolerated religions
https://archive.ph/02AlHDuring the period between late 19th century and early 20th century, jews often attempted to change their surnames however it was not so easy as jews were not allowed to change their surnames by law, even if they had converted to Christianity. To change their surnames, they needed the permission of the Chancellery of Petitions first. However, there were numerous examples of jews that got their approval to have their surnames changed. Jews who converted and served in the military were not affected by this rule and could change their surnames. This gave jews a loophole to counteract this rule, all they needed to do was to join the military. However, numerous exceptions were made to converted jews who hadn't served in the military to change their surnames. Jews having the ability to change their religion and then their surnames meant that indications that they were of jewish heritage in their official documents were entirely removed and they could now be portrayed as fully Russian.
Precisely because the Jewish surname carried so much symbolic weight, the Chancellery of Petitions rejected most requests. Only in exceptional cases did the Chancellery present a case for the tsar's approval that merited extra-legal considerations
The law only made one exception—for Jewish converts in the military. 65 But Drajšpic never served in the military. Officials also noted an important precedent: a number of Jewish converts, who never served in the military, were allowed to change their surnames in the 1870s and '80s. Due to Drajšpic's exceptional moral qualities and genuine faith in Russian Orthodoxy, the Ministry of Justice as well as the Chancellery of Petitions found his request deserving.
In most cases, the petitioners had to have been converted for a 'considerable' amount of time. Second, baptized Jews had to exhibit what was regarded as 'respectable conduct and ways of life'. Usually this meant that they had broken all ties with their Jewish parents and relatives, married a Russian Orthodox (or in some cases a Catholic or Protestant) spouse, and attempted to raise their children in a non-Jewish environment
Second-generation baptized Jews and other individuals with Jewish-sounding names also petitioned for many of the same reasons discussed above, but these petitions were usually affirmed. The townsman Aleksandr Michajlov Berenštejn, for example, who was the son of a baptized Jew, petitioned to change his surname to 'Andreev', which he already used in common day-to-day affairs
As we got closer to the Bolshevik Revolution the amount of request made by jews to have their surnames changed to Russian sounding names were more frequently accepted by the state;
In the late imperial period, with the rapid growth of ethnic consciousness and nationalist sentiment, officials were sensitive to such associations and respected the wishes of second-generation baptized Jews and individuals with Jewish-sounding names
Source: The Jewish Intelligentsia, state administration, and the myth of conversion in Tsarist Russia, Eugene Avrutin.
The Russian Orthodox Church recognized the threat of jews being able to change their surnames on top of having changed their religious affiliation so they made the decision in 1903 that the phrase 'evreev' (from the jews) be stamped on the passport of all jewish converts to Russian Orthodoxy so it can be recognized they were conversos.
This revealed two things. Many jews were trying to change their surnames to Russian-sounding names and if you did not have access to a jewish persons passport, jews would still be able to portray themselves as a non-jew to the non-jews around them and they'd have no way of knowing they were dealing with a converso.
It also reveals that the frequency that the jews wanted to hide their identity increased during the period leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution.
The children of a jew who had converted to Christianity could have their children aged 7 and under converted to Christianity. If a jew decides to intermarry with a Christian, this instead becomes mandatory.
According to an 1842 Senate decree, made in consultation with the tsar and the Ministry of State Domains, if a Jewish parent converted, all children of the same gender ages seven and younger could be converted by that parent. In the case of intermarriage, when a convert from Judaism married a Christian, the laws regarding child conversion were stricter. All eligible children were required to be converted together with the spouse desiring intermarriage and these children were required to be reared as Christians.
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On the topic of intermarriage, if a jewish woman were to marry a Russian Christian man, this would allow her change her surname to her husband's Russian name. Her children with him would make them fully jewish under jewish law, they would automatically have a Russian surname, and their appearance would appear more Russian due to this admixture. Increasing the potency of hiding jewish heritage. For a jewish man, it was not as easy to have his surname changed as mentioned previously, but not impossible. A converso jewish man marrying a Christian Russian woman would however increase the likelihood of him getting approval by the Chancelly of Petitions to have his surname changed.
In the late 19th century, jewish sects focused on 'assimilation' rose. These sects encouraged to drop the negative characteristics and behaviors that's associated with the jewish identity and focus on blending and assimilating with the Russians. The intentions were most likely not sincere as one of the sects admitted that this was their attempt to appease the Russian government to grant the jews full citizenship and rights. In other words, this was the early communist attempt by jews to implement liberal laws for jews in a non-violent but deceptive way. Naturally, these sects also pushed for intermarriage. This is to show that this mindset was increasing among jews in the late imperial period, were 'blending in' became an objective of to a sizeable portion of the jewish population in Imperial Russia. This was certainly true when it came to the Bolshevik jews.
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By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian populace was still very aware of the jewish problem, for many centuries jews were not given citizenship and access to the same freedoms and rights as a Russian for this very reason. It was only a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution had happened that jewish emancipation in Russia became a reality. So how exactly did the Bolsheviks, which the majority of its leaders were jewish, manage to take a country that was 'anti-semitic'? The simple answer to this question is that the majority of the Russian population had no idea they were jewish. The jewish Bolshevik leaders had changed their surnames to Russian-sounding names in an attempt to conceal their identity. Then you have the possibility of Bolsheviks who today is still identified as a non-jew but in reality, could be descendants of generations of conversos as crypto-jewry started to become more prominent in Russia starting from the 19th century. One big example of this would be Lenin himself who was identified as a 100% non-jew until the fall of the Soviet Union when it proven his maternal grandfather was jewish (the possibility of his maternal grandmother being jewish is still there only no evidence of this has surfaced yet).
VLADIMIR LENINLenin did not like to talk about either his family's origins or background;
''Vladimir lIyich Ulyanov, who took the name Lenin, was always reticent about the origins and background of his family''
Source: THE BOLSHEVIKS 'The Intellectual and Political History of the 'Triumph of Communism in Russia'-ADAM B. ULAM
The author above makes it seem like it's mostly because the origins of his family did not line up with the expectations of a Bolshevik leader based on their own phony propaganda with his father being a Tsarist loyalist and religious and his mother being a daughter of a small landowner with his family having non-Russian ancestry. However, I think the biggest reason is his non-Russian ancestry because Lenin did indeed have jewish blood in him which Stalin was aware of but ordered the sister of Lenin to keep it a secret.
Vladimir Lenin's maternal grandfather's family was the Blank family. It included Moshe Itzkovich Blank, a jewish convert to Christianity. He had changed his name to Dmitry Ivanovich Blank to conceal his jewish identity further. More examples are Abel Blank, baptized as Dmitry Dmitrievich Blank, and Lenin's maternal grandfather, Srul Moshevich Blank, baptized as Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. Lenin's jewish heritage was concealed throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, it was only revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union when a portion of Soviet archives was temporarily available to researchers. The first biography of Lenin was written by the jew David Shub, who had personally met Lenin. Schub biography of Lenin was one of the most authoritative sources on Lenin for the longest time, he had helped to conceal the jewish heritage of Lenin by claiming Lenin was mostly of German and Russian ancestry. Lenin is a perfect example of how jews used their modus operandi of infiltration by hiding their jewish identity through conversion and name-changing to deceive the non-jewish population, and through their offspring that was portrayed as Russians but secretly were carrying jewish blood in them managed to climb up to the highest rank of power, even in a country that was very jew aware, like Russia.
LEON TROTSKY While Leon Trotsky jewish heritage was not kept a secret, he did however change his name from the very jewish name Lev Bronstein to Leon Trotsky to appear more Russian. According to Robert Service 'Trotsky':
''Trotsky hated when people emphasized his Jewish background. He had spent his whole revolutionary career striving to escape the bounds of origins''
In fact, before the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky and other jewish Bolsheviks who became the leaders of Bolshevik Russia were not known figures to the public;
''Given the widely conflicting opinions of Trotsky and his fame as a Marxist, it is well to remember that at one time his name was little known. Indeed, before the October Revolution Trotsky, like other Bolsheviks, was familiar only to a relatively small circle of revolutionaries and radicals. One of the many tasks of the newly proclaimed Bolshevik regime was to explain who its members were, and the history of their relations in the pro-revolutionary era''
Source: Trotsky, Ian D. Thatcher p.2
YAKOV SVERDLOV Yakov Sverdlov's jewish identity was not kept a secret, but he still changed his name to sound more Russian, his original name was; Yankel-Aaron Movshevich Sverdlov. As pointed out previously, Sverdlov was one of the jews who were active in underground revolutionary activities and was thus not a known figure to the public, same goes for him being jewish. This is why shortly after the Bolsheviks came to power he was put into the very high position of 'Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets', making him the head of the Bolshevik state, a post he would until he died in 1919. However, his position as the head of the Bolshevik state became an increasing problem for the Bolshevik leadership during the Russian Civil War, the reasoning being that anti-Bolshevik propaganda focused on how jewish the leadership of the Bolsheviks was as this was not widely known to the public at this time. This is why after his death, he was succeded by the seemingly fully Russian, Mikhail Kalinin, in an attempt to make it less obvious how jewish the Bolshevik leadership was as a means to counter-act the effectiveness of the anti-Bolshevik propaganda.
''Jacob Sverdlov, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets and thus officially the head of the Bolshevik state, had just died. Sverdlov was of Jewish origin, something the Bolsheviks in the first hush of their victory considered as quite irrelevant to a man's fitness for this or that post. But now with the Civil War in full swing, with all the cries about the ''Jewish commissars,'' it was an excellent opportunity to entrust this figurehead post to a ''real'' Russian; Michael Kalinin.''
Source: The Bolsheviks; The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia, Adam B. Ulam
YURI STEKLOV The problem of jews hiding their real identity in Soviet Russia is not just found within the highest echolon of the Bolshevik leadership but also in their journalist and historian circles. One example would be Yuri Steklov who was a journalist, historian, and editor of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia. His real surname was Nahamkis;
''To Tseretelli and the ''defenist'' majority of the Soviet one of the most loathsome opponents was Steklov. He was the editor of Izvestia, the official news organ of the Soviet, the closest approximation revolutionary Russia had to an offical gazette, and as such was sabotaging the policy of the majority. Yet it would have been ''undemocratic,'' a violation of the minority rights, simply to fire Steklov. Hence his opponents dug out a ''scandal''. Steklov, whose real name was Nahamkis, had petitioned first the Tsarist and then the Provisional Government authorities to have it legally changed to his party pseudonym. This was shameful, un-Socialist attempt to conceal one's Jewish origin! Steklov was dicredit as a revolutionary statesman, but continued editing Izvestia. Such were the concerns and issues that agitated the Soviet.
Source: The Bolsheviks; The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia, Adam B. Ulam
OTHER PROMINENT JEWISH BOLSHEVIK WHO HAD CHANGED THEIR SURNAMES TO MORE RUSSIAN SOUNDING ONES From Hirsch Apfelbaum to Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev
From Lev Borisovich Rozenfeld to Lev Kamenev (His father was a jewish convert to Russian Christian Orthodoxy who married an ethnic Russian Orthodox woman)
From Enokh Gershevich Iyeguda to Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda
From Karl Sobelsohn to Karl Berngardovich Radek
EFFORTS MADE BY THE BOLSHEVIK GOVERNMENT TO CONCEAL THE JEWISHNESS OF ITS LEADERSHIP ''What we do know for sure is that while the Soviet government and Communist spokesmen abroad have continued to exhibit both leaders as Russians, it has always been the policy to discourage any exploration of their antecedents''
Source: The Zionist Factor, A Study of the Jewish Presence in 20th century History, Ivor Bensen
Except for Lunacharsky, Commissar of Education and Trotsky for Foreign Affairs, the names of the new rulers were little known. Such Bolshevik stars as Sverdlov, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin were not included. The first three may have been left out because of their Jewish origin. The government had to find acceptance among the masses of peasants and soldiers, among whom anti-Semitism was thought a potent force; hence with the obvious exception of Trotsky no Jews were included.
''Though it might be pointed out that few peasants would discern Jews behind the Russian names of Ziiloviev or Sverdlov, and anyway many anti-Bolsheviks were firmly convinced that Lenin himself was a Jew''
Source: The Bolsheviks; The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia, Adam B. Ulam
So-called anti-Semitism was illegal in Soviet Russia as early as 1922 which could lead to capital punishment if found 'guilty'. Anti-Semitism included revealing who was a jew in the Bolshevik government as that had been the focus of anti-Bolshevik propaganda during the Russian Civil War which the Bolsheviks had classified as a movement of 'anti-Semites'.
''Anti-Semitism is so strong that only the iron discipline imposed by the Bolsheviks and the fear of capital punishment restrains the Red soldiers and the women from starting pogroms everywhere.
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