Extensive but biased post here.
In the fifty or so years before the revolution, most representatives of organized religions, rabbonim in particular, showed utmost blindness and insensitivity to the plight of some 90% of your average Jew. Living in relative safety and stability while others starved away, the almost unequivocal support for the "melicha", constant collaboration with Okhranka, denouncing of all and every attempt to change the reality in more evolutionary way - and post-revolutionary antagonism of the new regime and failure to see the magnitude and depth of changes it brough about - all this was a defining factor in the relationship between Jews, Judaism and Communist Russia.
On the physical level, most Jews and certainly Jews as class reaped many benefits from the emancipation, removal of the Pale and subsequent move further east and availability of high education and better jobs, all of which were simply unthinkable under Tzar. Communist regime was responsible for evacuating the good part of surviving Jewry in the 40's and for breaking the back of the Germans.Instead of trying to stay out of politics and trying to get the best possible deal given the situation, the self-appointed leaders chose to antagonise the new regime, thus sealing the fate of spiritual Jewish life in Soviet Russia. That was often done from the safety of Jacob Schiff's funded operations in the States, and under a guise of "Struggle against Communism". This ended up costing many lives and many generations, and no attempt has been done to mitigate.
Today is May 9th, celebrated by many as the Victory Day for the Great Patriotic War. There is no sign of gratitude to the millions of Soviet soldiers, alive or not, whose resilience, dedication and selfnessness broke the back of Nazi Germany and assured survival of the world in general and of Jewish nation in particular. Completely underplayed in the popular Western view, these people played probably the most important role in the history of humanity and have very little to show for it. Many were Jewish. All males in my family fought on the frontlines and have more wounds and medals then I can ever count.
Most surviving veterans aren't homeless or hungry; both the State of Israel and the current rulers of former Soviet Union pay some pensions and throw them a bone here or there. Is it adequate ? How much is enough for those who very literally saved the world and paid for it with a leg, an arm, a lung ?
The sight of revisionism, recognizing Nazist collaborators with blood on their hands, as "freedom fighters" is rampant. Monuments to the fallen Waffen SS, UNA/UNSO, Bandera gangs became tolerable.
The least we can do is listen with respect.
בימים ההם ובעת ההיא נאום ה’ יבוקש את עוון ישראל ואיננו ואת חטאות יהודה ולא תימצאינה כי אסלח לאשר אשאיר
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