It isn’t a well-known fact that Leon Trotksy – the famous jewish Bolshevik leader and future rival to Stalin – was caught with $10,000 in cash by Canadian customs authorities in April 1917 while he is sailing back to Russia in order to take advantage of the recent overthrown of the Tsar in the February Revolution of that year after only arriving in the United States in January 1917. (1)
The interesting thing about this money is where on earth it came from since it was mentioned both by in 1919 by the Overman Committee of the U.S. Senate (2) and a 1919 British Directorate of Intelligence report. (3)
As Sutton observes:
‘It is quite remarkable that the committee adjourned abruptly before the source of Trotsky’s funds could be placed into the Senate record. When questioning resumed the next day, Trotsky and his $10,000 were no longer of interest to the Overman Committee.’ (4)
He continues by recording that:
‘We also learn from a British Directorate of Intelligence report that Gregory Weinstein, who in 1919 was to become a prominent member of the Soviet Bureau in New York, collected funds for Trotsky in New York. These funds originated in Germany and were channelled through the Volkszeitung, a German daily newspaper in New York and subsidised by the German government.
While Trotksy’s funds are officially reported as German, Trotsky was actively engaged in American politics prior to leaving New York for Russia and the revolution.’ On March 5, 1917, American newspapers headlined the increasing possibility of war with Germany; the same evening Trotsky proposed a resolution at the meeting of the New York Country Socialist Party “pledging Socialists to encourage strikes and resist recruiting in the event of war with Germany.”’ (5)
Now while Sutton is keen to read this as Trotsky’s willing collaboration with Germany’s interests; in truth all Trotsky was actually doing was following the anti-war pro-internationalist revolution line seen in the Zimmerwald Conference – which he was a major part of – of early September 1915 (6) and the similarity is just superficial (similar conclusions but completely different positions and beliefs)
This naturally doesn’t mean that the German Foreign Office/German intelligence didn’t organise the $10,000 for Trotsky because they seemingly shared a common goal – a separate Russo-German peace treaty and Russia out of World War One – because contrary to most assumptions intelligence agencies often make short-sighted mistakes based on the needs of the moment without mapping out the future consequences which then come back to bite them.
The source of this $10,000 is difficult to locate as it could well have come from Trotksy’s cousin Abram Givatovzo; who was a banker in Kiev before leaving for Stockholm during the Russian Revolution and who actively assisted the Bolsheviks with currency transactions from 1918 onwards despite publicly claimed to be ‘anti-Bolshevik’. (7)
If the money came from the German government – as it did for Lenin – then it probably came via one or several intermediaries: Olof Aschberg of ‘Nya Banken’ in Stockholm, Max Warburg in Hamburg, the largely amorphous ‘German Naphtha Industrial Bank’ that was tied to German intelligence operations and/or Georg Solmssen (born Georg Salomonsohn) of ‘Disconto-Gesellschaft’ in Berlin. (8)
Now of these only the ‘German Naphtha Industrial Bank’ is not jewish and then only because I have been to find out so little about it other than it keeps popping up relative to German intelligence operations around Europe during World War One. It is also worth noting that Solmssen later reappears as one of the jewish bankers funding Franz von Papen to stop the rise of Adolf Hitler in late 1932. (9)
Traditionally it is simply claimed this $10,000 came from ‘Germans and socialists’ (10) but in truth – as Sutton observes – it probably did come from the German government (11) however if it came from them; it almost without a doubt was transmitted to Trotsky by jewish bankers who were either pro-Bolshevik (Aschberg and Givatovzo) or simply anti-Russian (Solmssen and Warburg) but in any case they would have certainly hated the Tsar because of the alleged pogroms he was widely claimed to have ordered/allowed against their fellow jews. (12)
Indeed, there is no way that Trotsky earned that kind of money given that we know Trotsky’s income in 1917 in New York was $12 per week plus whatever he could earn by giving lectures. (13) He is alleged to have lived in the ‘poor quarters in the Bronx’ (14) but then managed to give away $310 to ‘his friends’, pay for his apartment which cost him $18 a month (15) and also provide for his family.
So, despite Nedava’s claim that his ‘lived in poor quarters in the Bronx’; the truth is that Trotsky and his family lived in comfort with Segal noting that:
‘They assumed unaccustomed command of such conveniences as electric light, a telephone, a fitted bath, a gas range, a garbage chute, an automatic lift.’ (16)
In addition to the fact that the Trotsky’s paid the rent three months in advance (17) and there is also some evidence that Trotsky was being driven around in a chauffeured limousine. (18) The fact is that Trotsky didn’t actually live in ‘poor quarters’ but rather an upscale apartment block, was able to pay his rent three months in advance, donate a significant amount of money to friends ($310 in 1917 is roughly equivalent to $7,769 today) and also keep his family in warm, fed and clothed on a mere $12 a week plus speaking fees is obvious.
So, he must have had a proverbial sugar daddy and that amount of money isn’t likely to have been raised by a bunch of socialists at meetings in circa three months now: is it?
Thus, in truth who Trotsky’s sugar daddy was is unknown, but it is certain that he had one or more wealthy backers, and we may reasonably suppose based on the above analysis – as well as the broad jewish hatred of the Russian Imperial government – that Trotksy’s wealthy backer(s) were jewish.
References
(1) Anthony Sutton, 1981, ‘Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution’, 1st Edition, Veritas: Morley, pp. 22-23
(2) Quoted in Ibid., p. 23; I have been unable to verify Sutton’s quote, but it looks genuine enough.
(3) Quoted in Ibid., pp. 23-24
(4) Ibid., p. 23
(5) Ibid., p. 24
(6) For example, see: Craig Nathan, 1989, ‘War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism’, 1st Edition, Duke University Press: Durham, esp. pp. 88-90
(7) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 37
(8) Ibid., p. 44
(9) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/debunking-the-myth-of-the-two-jewish
(10) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 30
(11) Ibid., p. 34
(12) On this see Mark Levene, 1992, ‘War, Jews and the New Europe: Diplomacy of Lucien Wolf, 1914-19’, 1st Edition, Liverpool University Press: Liverpool; on the pogroms themselves see John Klier, 2011, ‘Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York
(13) Joseph Nedava, 1972, ‘Trotsky and the Jews’, 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, p. 163
(14) Ibid.
(15) Ronald Segal, 1983, ‘The Tragedy of Leon Trotsky’, 1st Edition, Penguin: London, p. 117
(16) Ibid.
(17) Ibid., p. 118
(18) Sutton, Op. Cit., p. 22