The Soviet Union's Anti-Pogrom Mandate of 1918: the World's First Hate-Crime Law?

This decree (i.e., law) outlawing anti-Semitism - or more specifically, outlawing pogroms against Jews and the pogromists themselves - was issued on July 27, 1918. It was apparently the first law banning anti-Semitism - at least in recent history - and so was somewhat of a milestone [1]. That decree, composed and signed by V. I. Lenin (who was part-Jewish himself), was issued by the heavily-Jewish Sovnarkom (a.k.a. the Council of Peoples' Commissars/a.k.a. the core of the Soviet - or Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic - government) [2]. That law mandated the death penalty, without a courtroom trial, for people engaged in pogroms against Jews. There can be no doubt that Lenin wasn't the only man behind this anti-Semitism decree, given the ethnic make-up of the Sovnarkom and the fact that Lenin was surrounded by Jews in his daily activities. Powerful Jews such as Trotsky and Zinoviev were also members of the Sovnarkom. Lenin was simply the most public face of that law. In other words, that law was Jewish-made, and was designed to protect Jews in a communist state created by Jews (in fact, the Soviet Union was the world's first communist state) [3].

(On a related note, the founder of the world's second communist state, the Jewish activist Bela Kun, in Hungary, decreed in that state's constitution in early April 1919 that anti-Semitism was outlawed there, too [i.e., "racial or national oppression" was prohibited]. Thankfully, Kun's Jewish-heavy government existed for only about 6 months) [4].

We find it interesting that those above-mentioned laws came from Marxist states, and, that they sprang from one ethnic group.








[1] more about the 1918 Soviet anti-pogrom decree Here and also Here

[2] the Sovnarkom was roughly 75% Jewish during that era, according to Robert Wilton, who authored a book about the Romanovs, the Russian royal family, in 1920

[3] the Soviet Union mentioned as a Jewish-created state Here

[4] more about Kun's Hungarian regime Here

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