Lenin's Jewish roots put on display in Russian museum
Exhibition reveals letter written by Lenin's sister claiming maternal grandfather was Ukrainian Jew; Stalin told sister to keep letter quiet.
By JPOST.COM STAFFLenin statue_311 reuters(photo credit: Ilya Naymushin / Reuters)
Documents apparently confirming rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish ancestors can now be seen at Russia’s State History Museum, AP reported on Monday.Among the newly released documents on display at the museum is a letter written by Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova, claiming that their maternal grandfather was a Jew from the Ukraine who converted to Christianity to escape persecution in the Pale of Settlement and have access to higher education, the report said.RELATED:Neo-Nazis discover Jewish roots; embrace Judaism'DNA shows Hitler of mixed race'“He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of [the western Ukrainian city of] Zhitomir,” Ulyanova wrote in 1932 in a letter cited by AP.In the letter written to Josef Stalin, who replaced Lenin after his death in 1924, Ulyanova wrote, “Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly. I am very sorry that the fact of our origin – which I had suspected before – was not known during his lifetime.”Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, identified himself only as Russian under the czarist rule in the country, during which anti-Semitism was rampant.He adopted the name Lenin in 1901 while in exile in Siberia.According to the AP report, Lenin oversaw a brief period of promotion of Jewish culture which ended in the early 1930s when Stalin encouraged anti-Semitic purges and created a plan to relocate all Soviet Jews.Ulyanova requested that Stalin make Lenin’s Jewish background known to combat the rise of anti-Semitism, AP reported. She wrote in her letter, “I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists.It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses.”
Stalin ignored Ulyanova’s request and told her to “keep absolute silence” about the letter, according to the exhibition’s curator, Tatyana Koloskova.The documents counter information presented in Lenin’s official biography, written by his niece Olga Ulyanova, in which she claims that his family had only Russia, German and Swedish roots.Anna Ulyanova’s letter was discovered by Russian historians in the early 1990s, but its authenticity was questioned.
