Balfour and Bolshevism, 99 Years On

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
This coming week marks the 99th anniversary of two of the seminal events of the 20th century: the release of the Balfour Declaration and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Both changed the course of history.

There are only a few documents in Middle Eastern history which have as much influence as the Balfour Declaration. It was sent as a 67-word statement contained within the short letter addressed by the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, on November 2, 1917.

In the letter, the British government stated its intention to endorse the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine:

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Following the First World War, Britain acquired a League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, its purpose was partially to put into effect the Balfour Declaration, in conjunction with the World Zionist Organization.

It specifically referred to “the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine” and to the moral validity of “reconstituting their National Home in that country.”

Furthermore, the British were instructed to “use their best endeavors to facilitate” Jewish immigration, to encourage settlement on the land and to “secure” the Jewish National Home.

At the time, the vast majority of Palestine’s population comprised Christian and Muslim Arabs, but Jewish settlement increased in the decades following 1917, as the Zionist project brought many Jews to the land.

By the time the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947 voted to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, the Jewish population had reached one-third of the Mandate’s total of almost two million people. Six months later, the State of Israel was born.

In 1917 tsarist Russia was bogged down in the First World War and its population was weary and hungry. Riots over the scarcity of food broke out in the capital, Petrograd, on March 8, and Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate one week later, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.

A new government was constituted under Aleksander Kerensky, but he was unable to halt Russia’s slide into political, economic, and military chaos.

By autumn the Communist Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, had won considerable support. Their slogan of “peace, land, and bread,” which included taking Russia out of the war, resonated among the hungry urban workers and soldiers, many of whom were already deserting from the front in large numbers.

On Nov. 7 the Bolsheviks and their allies staged a nearly bloodless coup, occupying government buildings, telegraph stations, and other strategic points. Kerensky’s attempt to organize resistance proved futile, and he fled the country.

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which convened in Petrograd, approved the formation of a new government composed mainly of Bolshevik commissars.

Though there would be many more years of civil war and instability, a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would eventually emerge, setting the stage for the worldwide ideological contest between Communist and capitalist states that would last for most of the century.

Next year being the centenary of these two seminal events, we will see many more articles like this one.