-4

We will return to the question of the title, and it is the primary question, but I would like to begin the train of thought with a somewhat different question:

Was it negligent for Jewish people to live in countries at risk of having their territory conquered by the Russian Empire or the USSR?

Territory was conquered by the Russian Empire, and when the Russian Empire became the USSR, that territory was controlled by the USSR, and Jewish people weren't permitted to leave, at least according to various sources who use the word "refusenik" and also suggested by various sources giving statistics on Jewish emigration from the USSR in various time periods.

Specifically, we can compare the number of Jewish people who emigrated from the USSR between August 23rd 1939 (the date when the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Germany and the USSR was officially announced as having been signed) and December 8th, 1991 (the date when Yeltsin and the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine signed an agreement ending the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev resigned) ...

... with the number of Jewish people who emigrated (from territory of the former USSR) between December 9th, 1991 and October 2019.

Nevertheless, people such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn express outrage that Jewish people had influence, from within the USSR, on the policies of the USSR. Of course, if territory where they were living was conquered, and then they were not permitted to leave, then inevitably any influence they had would most directly and immediately affect the country that conquered that territory.

The above train of thought may, however, give rise to another consideration. Territory conquered by the Russian Empire and USSR wasn't necessarily thought of as "territory that contains a significant number of Jewish people." It may have been of interest primarily for other reasons, with little attention paid to the presence of Jewish people.

On the other hand, if we consider Egypt's wars with Israel, such as in 1948 and 1973, then it strains credibility to suggest that people in Egypt who were in favor of involvement in those wars barely noticed that there were Jewish people living in the territory where Egyptian soldiers were being sent to fight.

Let us suppose that it has been political leadership talent rather than luck that accounts for why Egypt hasn't experienced an event like what happened to the Russian Empire in 1917. In particular, does the historical record show that Egypt had extensive and mutually beneficial relations with the Russian Empire, but avoided interacting with the USSR after the Bolsheviks took power, or after Bolshevik power was consolidated, because of the danger of Jewish influence within the USSR affecting Egypt?

After the USSR officially recognized Israel very early, did the USSR's change of policy to alignment against Israel mean that there was no danger for Egypt in making deals with the USSR? How did the USSR's change of policy with respect to Israel erase all Jewish influence within the USSR, and how could it suddenly cause the United States to become "The Great Satan", with allegedly too much Jewish influence within the USA suddenly affecting the policies of the USA?

Returning to the original question: Does the talent or luck of Egypt's political leaders explain why Egypt hasn't had a revolution like the one of the year 1917 in the Russian Empire?

I recognize that on matters involving the Middle East, Israel, and Jewish people there tends to be a lot of controversy about what is factual background information and what is exaggeration or pure invention. Therefore, I encourage answers that supply citations to reliable reference sources, along at least one short excerpt from each source.

Specifically, I think that it would be most appropriate to focus attention on sources that are thought to be completely reliable. If you provide more than one reference source, then claims made by the sources should be consistent with each other, because it is possible to have two sources that conflict with each other and for neither of them to be accurate. Furthermore, if you rely entirely upon one source, then what you are doing is not exactly "research" aimed at learning about the world, but more like textual analysis of a book, akin to Biblical exegesis.

Ren Eh Daycart
  • 212
  • 1
  • 11
  • 1
    Egypt can be very tolerant, and ruthlessly discriminatory. There is a huge Russian Friendship memorial at the Aswan dam for what it's worth. –  Oct 25 '19 at 20:57
  • 4
    This is a very roundabout question. It kind of sounds like you're really trying to figure out what the Egyptian government planned to do if they conquered Israel. That is a much easier question to answer and it would be more likely to get a real answer, though it would probably be a better fit for [history.se] – divibisan Oct 26 '19 at 00:07
  • "It kind of sounds like you're really trying to figure out what the Egyptian government planned to do if they conquered Israel." That's not my intention. Perhaps I should edit, but I will need to add more rather than removing anything. – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 00:27
  • That's up to you. Just a warning: it seems like you're expecting a lot for a bunch of volunteers. I think this comparison could make a fascinating book, but, in my opinion, it's probably too much to address in one question here. You'd probably do better if you divided your question into many smaller questions, and asked those over time – divibisan Oct 26 '19 at 01:10
  • "expecting a lot for a bunch of volunteers" I'm hoping that somebody who is interested in the question will eventually notice it. Such a person will already have all or almost all the required background knowledge and may simply review the details quickly from the person's own sources of information. I don't think it's a lot, but perhaps, when people are used to some fixed stimulus-response reactions, and they encounter a familiar stimulus taking them somewhere unfamiliar -- by means of a train of thought that doesn't require any expert knowledge to follow -- they don't know how to react. – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 01:19
  • 1
    I'm sorry, but we are trying to stay politically neutral on this website "Was X naive and foolish" isn't a question which fits into this concept, because the question already contains a value judgment in its title and expects one as an answer. – Philipp Oct 26 '19 at 08:57
  • @Philipp --> I revised it to refer to the alternatives of skilled leadership (a kind of expertise, as in "facts, references, or specific expertise") versus luck. If the concept of expertise is itself merely a matter of subjective opinion, then we are left with only facts and references, but if the reference sources are written by people who have no expertise, then we would be left with only facts. – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 09:09
  • 1
    There seems to be a lot of antisemitism buried in this question, but it's also unclear what the question actually is. – pjc50 Oct 26 '19 at 13:56
  • 1
    I answered the second version of the question. – Shadow1024 Oct 26 '19 at 15:49
  • 1
    @pjc50 You could say that there's anti-Sunni bigotry buried in some denominations of Islam and Anti-Shia bigotry buried in some denominations of Islam. Former US President George W Bush was ridiculed for not anticipating religious, sectarian conflict in Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. On the other hand, you can make a distinction between Islam and Muslims and accuse people who talk about Anti-Sunni bigotry or Anti-Shia bigotry of being Islamophobes who fail to appreciate the difficulties faced by Muslims in Iraq, and don't appreciate the complex role of Islam in history. – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 18:00
  • To address only the title, what exactly do you mean by "like"? Egypt has had half a dozen or so revolutions in the last century, but none were like the Russian one, presumably because Egypt was never like Tsarist Russia. – jamesqf Oct 27 '19 at 04:29
  • @jamesqf I can merely observe that the claim that Egypt was never like Tsarist Russia seems to be in as much need of clarification as the title. After all, they both use the word "like", and I suspect that it's not a coincidence that they both use the word "like." – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 27 '19 at 04:32
  • @Ren Eh Daycart: Well, that's what I'm asking you :-) Why do you think that Egypt is sufficiently similar to Tsarist Russia that they should have had similar revolutions? – jamesqf Oct 27 '19 at 16:13

1 Answers1

-1

Were leaders of the Russian Empire before 1917 naive and foolish compared to the leaders of Egypt in more recent times?

I consider issue of annexing / conquering lands with potentially trouble making minority as issue that could not be narrowed down to Jews. In Tsar's empire the main problem with annexed Polish lands was not a small minority of Jews (8%?), but overwhelming majority of Polish who were welcoming Napoleon's troops as liberators, organised two uprises against Russian rule in XIXth century and were more than happy to rebel at first sign of regime weakness in 1905. As Chechenya has landscape suitable for prolonged guerrilla warfare, trying to maintain Chechnya and its ethnic groups could be considered as a greater challenge to the Russian Empire and then the to the USSR and now to Russian Federation than Jewish people have been a challenge to maintaining the whole of the territorial unit, nation-state, and official member of the United Nations (UN) now known as "Russian Federation." Compared to Chechyns, Jews -- who were a bit overrepresented in socialist movements but were not contesting territorial integrity of the empire -- seem to have posed little challenge to maintaining territorial integrity of the political unit.

Even within the premise of the question, I don't consider it plausible that a deeply authoritarian, Eastern Orthodox regime would foresee that -- after a few regime changes -- a future political movement that replaced the Eastern Orthodox regime could be evaluated in terms of wise and cautious political leadership or navigation versus reckless leadership based purely on whether or not a very small, ethno-religious minority is present in territory controlled by the regime.

After you reworked question:

Does skilled leadership or luck explain why Egypt hasn't had a revolution like the one that affected the Russian Empire in 1917?

1) OK, first relation between Ashkenazi Jews and communists revolution, which is rather weak:

But a mean IQ of 110 is not enough to explain Jewish achievement (Nisbett 2009:181). It is likely that Jews also have a geographic advantage. Since the Enlightenment and particularly in the twentieth century, European Jews have been highly concentrated in major urban centers (Warsaw, Berlin, Frankfurt, Vienna, Paris, New York City, Los Angeles, etc.). These areas tended to have the infrastructure to support intellectual achievement. Indeed, even without postulating high Jewish IQ, from their location alone we would expect them to be overrepresented in intellectual endeavors.

  • In Russian revolution of 1917 there were other ethnic groups highly overrepresented too, for example Latvians. (just who would bother to talk about them? ;) )

  • There were countries with communists revolutions (China, Vietnam, Cambodia) which in no way could be explained by Jewish minority.

  • Judging from the question you are roughly aware of recent history and ethnic composition of Eastern Europe. You touched issue of Jews in Tsar Empire living mostly on ethnically Polish lands... Just somehow you overlooked that in spite of that Poland experienced no (internal) communist revolution (not even a failed internal revolution, such as was experienced in Germany or Hungary).

2) I'd argue that social dynamics between Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardi Jews was absolutely different. - Regardless whether we explain that by genetic or cultural issues, Ashkenazi -- and not Sephardic -- Jews ended being up being highly overrepresented in intellectual movements, for example (from the same source):

For example, though never more than 3% of the US population (Pinker 2006), Jews constitute 31% of US Nobel laureates in chemistry, 50% in economics, 37% in physics, 39% in physiology or medicine, and 33% in literature (jinfo.org).

When observing a salient or discrepant or disproportionate statistical outcome -- without cherry-picking -- among any and all Jewish people applying intellectual effort, the general characteristic "Jewish" doesn't explain the data, but creates a new puzzle. Outcomes achieved as a result of Ashkenazi Jews applying intellectual effort are nothing like estimated statistical outcomes achieved as a byproduct of Sephardic Jews applying intellectual effort.

Summary: already weak link, absolutely different social dynamics between countries, and less intellectually efficacious Jews in Egypt.

Ren Eh Daycart
  • 212
  • 1
  • 11
Shadow1024
  • 5,907
  • 1
  • 20
  • 31
  • --> Thank you for the extra content in your revised answer to my revised question. "you overlooked that in spite of that Poland experienced no (internal) communist revolution. (not even a failed one, like in Germany or Hungary)" --> A great point, but it's difficult for me to see how to incorporate that into the question if I were to make a 2nd major revision to the question. Perhaps the first part of the body of the question should focus purely on the question itself -- to compensate for the limited space available in titles -- before starting the train of thought? – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 18:11
  • @RenEhDaycart You asked about an issue which is a taboo in nowadays mainstream West, so it's unlikely you would manage to squeeze much more info out of this question. If you anyway want to dig deeper about the subject, I'd suggest to pick something narrow, which would not sound as if it is about Jews, like ex. factors leading to communism revolution, or differences in far left movements between West and ME. – Shadow1024 Oct 26 '19 at 19:24
  • --> The problem I am faced with is that there are a number of different taboos, and I don't wish to guess which ones are operating here and self-censor myself. I would prefer to accumulate records of the exact messages used to convey views, while myself being open to various approaches to formulating any questions or ideas I may have. There are known taboos and unknown taboos, and the unknown taboos are a greater danger than the known taboos, if one over-reacts to one's own alleged violation of a known taboo that may actually be a pretext for enforcing an unknown taboo. – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 19:44
  • @RenEhDaycart Don't worry, apparently even trendy left wing politicians have problems with that ;) https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/45691/what-is-wrong-with-justin-trudeau-or-anyone-masquerading-as-aladdin/45713#45713 – Shadow1024 Oct 26 '19 at 19:48
  • @RenEhDaycart Then this site, which just embraced as obligatory using new gender pronouns (to be fair users reaction was rather unenthusiastic, curious how far are we from some turning point of history...) may not be optimal for such purposes. If you desire more open flow of contentious ideas, I'd suggest looking up people refereed as the "intellectual dark web". – Shadow1024 Oct 26 '19 at 20:03
  • 1
    --> I'm interested in the opposite: participating in venues that are more mainstream than Stack Exchange, with a higher volume of participation from the general public. Have you heard of Quora? Stack Exchange seems to be more transparent than Quora about what the rules mean, and how to apply them in actual cases, but Quora seems to provide quicker user-generated responses to questions, and a bigger audience of potential participants for many questions. Is there a third Q & A venue that I should know about? – Ren Eh Daycart Oct 26 '19 at 20:16