The Revolutionary Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson, AKA Natan Alexandrovich Schneerson, Party name Ерёма, Party name Фридрих
Forgotten Alter Rebbe's Einiklach
On the subject of Did the Rayatz recreate the Chabad movement from scratch? and The Eclipse of the Schneerson Family.
It took some time to understand who was this man with all the different names. He was born in 1881, about 20 years older than Ramash. Some Russian family tree site claims that he was a grandson of the המהרי"ל, Yehuda Leib Schneerson, who was the son of Tzemach Tzedek and the first Chabad Rebbe of Kopust. I am not sure. Was his father an Avrohom? Don’t see any Avrohom among the sons of the Kopuster Rebbe. Maybe great-grandson of the Kopuster or even some different Schneerson? Contrary to today’s acute Schneerson scarcity, there were a great many of them then.
Sara Guber-Griz was obviously an upper class, but she became an avid Marxist and was teaching a weekly class in Yekaterinoslav. Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson was on a business trip in Yekaterinoslav from Petrograd and didn’t miss an opportunity to visit the “revolutionary class” that turned into their first date. Here is how he introduced himself on the first date, according to his daughter:
“ My father is a descendant of the Alter Rebe from Lubavichi, a merchant of the first guild (купец первой гильдии), has houses and shops in St. Petersburg. [I wonder if all grandchildren automatically inherited this tille from the Tzemach Tzedek, which allowed them to live beyond the pale, which in turn would speed up the acculturation]
But Anatoly himself broke up with his family. As a thirteen-year-old boy, he got involved with a revolutionary circle. This became known, and he was expelled from the gymnasium. The angry father kicked his son out of the house and gave him to a photographer to study. But this did not stop the boy, and he did not interrupt his ties with the revolutionaries. On the advice of one of his senior comrades, Tolya mastered a self-taught mathematics course to the extent necessary for the work of a bank clerk. And the same a friend [another revolutionary banker?] arranged for him to work in a bank, where he himself occupied a prominent place. So Anatoly became a bank employee. And he successfully moved up the corporate ladder. Now he was on a business trip in Yekaterinoslav to establish contacts with the local branch of the bank. This came out very opportunely, as it coincided with party affairs in the city.”
You see a pattern here, people of means become revolutionaries first. This Chabadsker banker with substantial holdings from his father and himself couldn’t wait for the revolution. Once a meshichist, always a meshichist… This is the same man listed in Forgotten Schneersons who Converted to Communism and were killed in Stalin's Purges under his other name, Natan Alexandrovich Schneerson. Ironically, in the Sacharov archive he is mentioned as “not a member of the party” when he was obviously more a member of the party than the party itself… Perhaps the reason, he was a prominent Menchevik. Evidently, he traveled to party conventions in Europe, where he spoke in opposition and in front of Lenin and his Bolsheviks. His daughter quotes a pun that Lenin said about him, the party name - “Ерёма, Ерёма, сидел бы ты дома!”.
But it turned out this man might not have been as radical as some of his siblings. Two dentists and one lawyer among them. Some of them, according to Anatoly Abramovich’s daughter, converted to Christianity to advance their carrier. [… I need a glass of water…]
These two sisters, Maria Schneerson and Alexandra Orlova, emigrated to the USA in the late 70s and wrote about the extended family:
Disturbed shadows, Part I - Потревоженные тени Part I
Disturbed shadows, Part II - Потревоженные тени Part II
Both Sara and Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson had second marriages. Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson had three children from his second marriage. Another two daughters and a son, Dima Schneerson.
The einikle Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson AKA Natan Alexandrovich Schneerson was shot by NKVD on October 9 of 1937. NKVD lied to the family, telling he was sentenced to 10 years without the right of correspondence. Only later they found out. His cremated ashes dumped into the same "Common Grave Number 1" at Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow with another two Schneersons, one from Surazh and the einikle of the מהרי"ד.
Anatoly Schneerson’s son Dima Schneerson arrested in 1937 because of his “enemy of the people” father, Dima Schneerson starved to death in a camp. Alexandra Orlova’s son writes that everyone starved in that camp.
Robert Gilman, the stepfather of Maria and Alexandra Schneerson arrested in 1922 and sent in exile to Solbichegorsk, arrested again in 1930 and sent in exile to Tomsk, arrested again in 1937 and died in Krasnoyarsk.
Maria Schneerson
Passed away on August 13, 2008, in the USA. Her nephew wrote this obituary:
…“In the second half of the 40s, she studied at the graduate school of the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University, where brilliant scientists Gukovsky, Azadovsky, Eichenbaum, Zhirmunsky taught. All of them were affected to one degree or another by the anti-Semitic campaign. A graduate student with the surname Schneerson did not even try to defend an already written dissertation "on Tyutchev". A dissertation on Pushkin's fairy tales was rejected by the Attestation Commission. The third attempt was successful, because this time the scientific work was about the "great proletarian writer" Maxim Gorky.
But how to get a job for a candidate of philological sciences with the surname Schneerson? A chance helped. The Leningrad Regional Institute of Teacher Improvement needed an employee whose duties included inspection trips to villages, towns, and cities of the Leningrad region. Can you imagine what this area was like in the 50s? I traveled it up and down in the 60s and early 70s - first as a geologist, then as a correspondent for the agricultural editorial office of Leningrad television. I have been to the wild bear corners, where Maria had previously visited – in the Podporozhsky and Lodeynopolsky, and it was impossible to imagine her lonely fragile figure in these remote places.
In addition to the trips, she had a thousand responsibilities. She wrote articles about the methodology of teaching literature. And in the mid-60s, she and two of her co-authors (also Jews) wrote a textbook of Russian literature for the 9th grade. A Russian literary critic was invited to be the editor, because the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation would never approve a textbook with three Jewish authors' surnames on the cover for the publication.
In 1978, when Maria Schneerson was already 63 years old, she emigrated to the United States, and her second life began here. She did what she always wanted to do, but had no opportunity to do in the Soviet Union – she became a literary critic. She has written and published dozens of articles about Bulgakov, Grossman, Solzhenitsyn, Astafyev, Belov, Shukshin, Kuraev... Her essays were published in the magazines "Grani", "Continent", "Novy Zhurnal", "Vestnik", in the New York newspapers "New Russian Word" and "New American", in the Paris newspaper "Russian Thought". In 1984, the publishing house "Posev" published her book about Solzhenitsyn. And she, along with her sister Alexandra Orlova, was among the regular authors of the almanac "Jewish Antiquity".
"I came to the conclusion," Maria wrote, "that I am an extremely happy person: I was never imprisoned and was not subjected to repression; during all the years of the war I have not heard a single shot, I have not seen a single person killed; I was sentenced to death by doctors at the age of 17 (tuberculosis) remained alive; escaped to freedom from the Brezhnev's Russia and I do not know the horrors of the current one... This happiness is a “negative” happiness – but there was also an absolute happiness, wonderful friends, a favorite job and much more...”
Second Marriage of Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson
Lubov Radchenko was a prominent Menshevik and a professional revolutionary, hence party connection to Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson. She was a friend of Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, but Lenin treated her with animosity because of the political differences, even though they knew each other for many years prior to the revolution. She was also arrested in 1926 and imprisoned for several years. Her daughter Evgeniya Radchenko (14 years younger than Anatoly) fell in love, seduced Anatoly Abramovich Schneerson on a trip to Kiev and then married him. They had three children together as I wrote. I don’t believe this second family was Jewish.
In the last decades of his life, before he was shot by NKVD, Natan Alexandrovich Schneerson was a founder, director, and curator of arts ands crafts museum in the New Jerusalem monastery. New Jerusalem is a town in the suburb of Moscow, with the historic New Jerusalem Kremlin. The town is also known as Voznesensk or Istra. This museum is still open to visitors in a new home. Of course not a single word about the founder and creator of the museum. Which reminds me, ahh.., never mind…
