Ralph Miliband devoted his life to arguing that the Labour Party
has nothing to offer the working class. David Miliband - the
current foreign secretary, pictured left - is devoting his life
to proving it. Or so the leftie joke runs, anyway.
But I’ve just discovered that the family tradition of political activism goes back further than just two generations. Here’s a story originally published in what sounds like an extremely rightwing Russian newspaper and subsequently picked up by, well, the Daily Mail: [ See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-473214/Putin-aide-Milibands-hatred-Russia-runs-family.html saved as Miliband's hatred for Russia runs in family ]
… Russian political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, who is close to the Russian President, has claimed Mr Miliband inherited anti-Russian sentiments from his family.
The comments were last night being viewed as a sign of Moscow's bitterness towards Britain over the Litvinenko affair and the UK Government's refusal to extradite tycoon Boris Berezovsky to Moscow.
The attack came in Russian nationalist newspaper Tvoi Den. Mr Pavlovsky said: "David Miliband's hatred for Russia was inherited from his grandfather."
The newspaper said that in the Twenties the Foreign Secretary's grandfather, Samuel, then Shimon, Miliband, a native of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, had fought under the command of Trotsky 'eliminating' white Russians opposed to Communism.
He later came to England with his son Ralph, who became a Marxist academic, and whose sons David and Ed now serve in the Cabinet.
"David absorbed anti-Sovietism, as the saying goes, with his mother's milk," said Mr Pavlovsky.
Hang on a minute, Mr Pavlovsky. Maybe I’m missing something, but if Grandpa M was given to bumping off anti-commies under the direction of the then-commander of Lenin's Red Army, surely that’s pro-Sovietism at work, no?
Oh, and am I alone in detecting just the teeniest soupçon of anti-semitism in this outburst?
Posted at 14:30, 6 August 2007
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Comments (16)
Pavlovsky is, let us not forget, not a "political analyst" but a political operative on behalf of the Presidential Administration (i.e. the organisation formerly known as the Central Committee Secretariat). One of his best-known quotes being "We are creating a communications system that can be switched from peace to war at any time.."
Posted by Alex | 15:51, 6 August 2007
Erm, not at all related to the thread, but could you update your link to Socialist Unity blog?
Posted by Jim | 22:26, 6 August 2007
What is interesting about this news story is that the political analysis of the former KGB apparatchik, Putin sees a significance in the Miliband's grandfather having fought for the Red Army when it was led by Trotsky.
Could it be that Putin, child of Stalinism that he is, still finds something to fear in the slightest of historical connections to Trotsky?
Putin probably finds Miliband threateningly leftwing.
Posted by Neprimerimye | 22:37, 6 August 2007
Perhaps the Kremlin fears Miliband jr is going to suddenly turn into a Marxist or something.
Posted by a very public sociologist | 23:24, 6 August 2007
That's a horrible thought, Phil. You should be ashamed of yourself!
Posted by Neprimerimye | 02:18, 7 August 2007
Thanks Jim for asking about our SU blog link.
Dave's sensitivity to anti-Semitism must be more finely tuned than mine, becasue I cannot specifically see how this is anti-Semitic.
However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Putin and his government does turn to anti-semitism sometime soon.
Due to former anti-Semitism in the USSR, the largest group of exiles who had left Russia recently enough to still have useful business contacts were jewish at the time of the fall of Communism, and Israeli billionaies Lev Leviev and Arakadi Gaidamak mentored their proteges, like Roman Abromovitch during privatisation. In turn Abromovitch has helped them into the world of football club ownership (what better way to buy respectability).
The deep Russian reserves of anti-Semitism may be a well that Putin draws upon should he seek to move against the mega-rich who have benefited from privatisation.
Posted by andy newman | 08:08, 7 August 2007
Like Andy Newman I can't detect any anti-semitism there. Miliband never came across to me as Jewish in any case. He grew up in Brussels, but I didn't detect much Francophone culture either. In fact he came across as a pure product of Laski and the LSE, and with the kind of Englishness that is hard to miss. A prickly pear of a character.
I would have thought that the theme behind Pavlosky's remark is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were 'anti-Russian'.
Posted by Andrew Coates | 09:59, 7 August 2007
Putin probably finds Miliband threateningly leftwing.
Or possibly vice versa?
And can I put in a bid for an updated link too?
Posted by Splintered Sunrise | 10:17, 7 August 2007
The theme...is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were "anti-Russian".
Given that Putin and his mob are into Stalinist kitsch in a big way (the dirge of a national anthem, the hammer-and-sickle flags that still get paraded through Red Square to commemorate the War) I think Neprimerimye's explanation is more likely.
Posted by Mike | 12:26, 7 August 2007
Dirge of an anthem? The Soviet one? It's one of the best ever!
Posted by Jeff | 12:36, 7 August 2007
hammer-and-sickle flags that still get paraded through Red Square to commemorate the War
that is becasue the hammer and sickle flags are still the official emblems of the Russian army.
You know, the army that rid the world of Hitler.
Posted by andy newman | 15:47, 7 August 2007
I think Andrew Coates is right about the bolsheviks being alleged to be anti-Russian. I feel moved to admit that because it's the second time today that I've agreed with him on something (the first was on UKLN. Should I be woried:-)
Posted by Geoff Collier | 16:46, 7 August 2007
Andrew Coates wrote:
I would have thought that the theme behind Pavlosky's remark is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were 'anti-Russian'.
isn't it conceivable that it could be both?
the racist notion of the Jewish Bolshevik Revolution goes back years, add to that the institutionalised anti-Jewish racism in Russia pre-1917 and the Cold War antisemitism then it is perfectly possible that the Putin clique might see the Bolsheviks as pawns of some wider "Jewish conspiracy"?
God only knows their twisted mindset, but it is ceryainly conceivable that their anti-Sovietism is tinged with a streak of anti-Jewish racism
antisemitism in Russia goes back hundreds of years, was deep-rooted and hasn't vanished nowadays, has it?
Posted by http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/ | 19:24, 7 August 2007
Andrew Newman wrote "You know, the army that rid the world of Hitler."
Two points on this.
1/ A few others were involved.
2/ Replacing Hitlerism with Stalinism was not so fucking smart.
Posted by Neprimerimye | 20:02, 7 August 2007
One hesitates to rely on the Daily Mail version rather than the original, but the theme that Jewish communists were anti-Russian sounds familiar (after all, didn't we kill the Czar?!), and now that so-called "National Bolsheviks" march with monarchists and fascists it is quite possible that an "ex"-KGB person could merge "anti-Soviet" and "anti-Russian" - and yes, antisemitism provides a cement.
Why otherwise refer to "Warsaw's Jewish ghetto" -incidentally, until the Nazi occupation I don't believe Warsaw ever had a ghetto in the literal sense, though it had a large Jewish population.
The Polish reactionaries of course excused attacks on Jews by accusing them inter alia of being "Bolsheviks" and helping Russia.
It is true apparently that Sam Milliband joined the Red Army, and significant that a hack from Putin's Russia regards that as shameful.
It is good of the Russian police-journalist to acknowledge the Red Army as "Trotsky's", mind.
Regarding the Mitterand family, coming from the conditions of pre-war Poland they would not have to consciously identify as Jewish in either a religious or national sense to be such as a matter of fact. Even arriving in western Europe people were sometimes allowed to work but not to enter political and social organisations, so immigrants, including communists, formed their own organisations,neespapers, etc. presrving a cultural identity. Ralph Milliband was born in Brussels, not London.
But besides, if an antisemite chooses to label someone as Jewish,it is no use checking or denying it to see if the antisemite is mistaken. "I decide who is a Jew" -Goebbels.
So far as the Millibands go, I never met Ralph, but he was associated with Marcel Liebman (author of Leninism under Lenin), I remember someone pointing them out at a rally in London opposing the 1982 war on Lebanon. Liebman, who helped pioneer contacts with the Palestinians in talks with Naim Khider(the PLO's man in Brussels, who was assassinated) was a member of the Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique(UPJB), which originated in that immigrant tradition (and wartime resistance) although no longer Stalinist. While attending a conference they hosted in Brussels I was introduced to Milliband's widow. The old lady asked me if people still read Ralph Milliband's books, and when I said we did, she remarked drily about not getting royalties.
It was only later reading here about the young Milliband brothers that she had not mentioned either of them. Not a word about "My son the cabinet minister", then.
Posted by Charlie Pottins | 12:29, 8 August 2007
I see I forgot to check and correct that I had written "Mitterand" instead of Milliband!
Now that is a confusion - nobody could accuse Mitterand of being a Marxist, nor could we deny that having been a Vichy collaborator he was probably anti-Soviet (had Russians and not Germans occupied France he might have been different).
Any more typing bloomers like this and I will qualify for the Guardian, which once had a scoop concerning the "assassination of Tolstoy", evidently referring to the Russian novelist's period of exile in Mexico. If I am not mistaken I wrote congratulating them. Good thing you can't see my red face when I'm online reading what I've said.
Posted by Charlie Pottins | 12:41, 8 August 2007
